E.P. Thompson’s Analysis of the English Working Class Formation
E.P. Thompson attempted to trace the formation of the working class between the years 1780 and 1832. Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class:
- Recounts the popular revolts which influenced the English Jacobin agitation at the end of the eighteenth century, like the Peterloo Massacre. 60,000 people gathered at St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester. The main speaker at the meeting was Henry Hunt, a leading political reformer. The crowd gathered to hear Hunt speak about reform. Local magistrates decided to arrest him. In the chaos that followed, eleven people died and many were injured. This event soon became known as ‘Peterloo’, after Britain’s recent victory at the Battle of Waterloo. There were different views about Peterloo. Some people blamed the magistrates; others cited the violence of the crowd. All sorts of people, including MPs, attacked the behavior of the yeomanry, saying they were guilty of over-reacting because the meeting was peaceful. However, the government chose to defend the magistrates and the yeomanry. Then, to add insult to injury, the government introduced new laws to restrict political rights.
- Describes the particular experiences of workers during the Industrial Revolution, giving “an estimate of the character of the new industrial work-discipline, and the bearing of this on the Methodist Church.” The Methodist Church was an evangelical Protestant religion founded by John Wesley in the eighteenth century which attracted large numbers of poor people who found in it the promise of self-improvement and salvation. Thompson argued that if the Methodist Church could be understood to be positive in some respects, it also served to weaken the poor by adapting them to strict forms of work-discipline (submission) and child labor. In this and other senses, Methodism worked directly against the political interests of the poor and in favor of the industrial capitalists. The Methodist repression of possible radicalism and tendency to channel all passion into guilt and public confession led Thompson to describe the Methodist Church as “a ritualized form of psychic masturbation.” A final point: do not confuse the Methodists with all representatives of the church. As Thompson shows, the relation between the church, repression, and radicalism was complex.
- Narrates the story of plebeian radicalism (like Luddism) with relation to working-class consciousness and political theory. Luddism describes the British textile workers who (between 1811 and 1816) were involved in rioting and machine-breaking. This was a result of seeing their livelihoods severely threatened by the introduction of machines and the factory system of production. This was the industrial workers’ version of peasant revolts (in the tradition of rural workers who rioted and broke machinery). As Thompson noted with great succinctness: “Luddism ended on the scaffold.” The movement is believed to be named after Ned (Edward) Ludd, an eighteenth-century Leicestershire workman who was known as a machine breaker and who became a popular hero.
The working class was present at its own making. By class, he understands a historical phenomenon, unifying a number of disparate and unconnected events, both in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. He does not see class as a “structure” or as a “category.” Thompson observed historical change in such a way that he could detect patterns in relationships, ideas, and institutions which would indicate the formation of a working class.
Thompson showed how working groups, towards the end of the eighteenth century, fought for what they saw as their rights by setting up institutions to express their ideas. This involved things like:
- The establishment of popular movements to protect or improve wages and traditional ways of life
- Demands for social and political rights
- Complaining about increasing exploitation, rising food prices, and taxes
- The organization of meetings
- The printing of radical newspapers and journals