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 The
MAKING
of the
ENGLISH
WORKING
CLASS
bjE.P. Thompson

V I N T A G E B O O K S . A Division of Random House

NEW YORK
 CONTENTS

Preface 9

Part One: T H E L I B E R T Y T R E E
I Members Unlimited 17
II Christian and Apollyon 26
III "Satan's Strongholds" 55
IV T h e Free-born Englishman 77
V Planting the Liberty Tree 102

Part Two: T H E C U R S E O F A D A M
VI Exploitation 189
VII The Field Labourers 213
VIII Artisans and Others 234
IX T h e Weavers 269
X Standards and Experiences 314
i. Goods 314
ii. Homes 318
iii. Life 32a
iv. Childhood 331
XI The Transforming Power of the Cross 350
i. Moral Machinery 350
ii. T h e Chiliasm of Despair 375
XII Community 401
i. Leisure and Personal Relations 401
ii. The Rituals of Mutuality 418
iii. T h e Irish 429
iv. Myriads of Eternity 444

\
 Part Three: T H E W O R K I N G - G L A S S PRESENCE
XIII Radical Westminster 451
XIV A n Army of Redressers 472
i. T h e Black Lamp 472
ii. T h e Opaque Society 484
iii. T h e Laws against Combination 497
iv. Croppers and Stockingers 521
v. Sherwood Lads 552
vi. By Order of the Trade 575
XV Demagogues and Martyrs 603
i. Disaffection 603
ii. Problems of Leadership 607
iii. Hampden Clubs 631
iv. Brandreth and Oliver 649
v. Peterloo 669
vi. T h e Gato Street Conspiracy 700
XVI Class Consciousness 711
i. T h e Radical Culture 711
ii. William Gobbett 746
iii. Garlile, Wade and Gast 762
iv. Owenism 779
v. " A Sort of Machine" 807
Bibliographical Note 833
Acknowledgements 837
Index 838
 PREFACE

T H I S BOOK KAS a clumsy title, but it is.one which meets its

purpose. Making, because it is a study in an active process,
which owes as much to agency as to conditioning. The working
class did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was
present at its own making.
Class, rather than classes, for reasons which it is one purpose of
this book to examine. There is, of course, a difference. "Work-
ing classes" is a descriptive term, which evades as much as it
defines. It ties loosely together a bundle of discrete phenomena.
There were tailors here and weavers there, and together they
make up the working classes.
By class I understand an historical phenomenon, unifying a
number of disparate and seemingly unconnected events, both
in the raw material of experience and in consciousness. I
emphasise that it is an historical phenomenon. I do not see
class as a "structure", nor even as a "category", but as some-
thing which in fact happens (and can be shown to have
happened) in human relationships.
More than this, the notion of class entails the notion of
historical relationship. Like any other relationship, it is a
fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at
any given moment and anatomise its structure. The finest-
meshed sociological net cannot give us a pure specimen of
class, any more than it can give us one of deference or of love.
T h e relationship must always be embodied in real people and
in a real context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct
classes, each with an independent being, and then bring them
into relationship with each other. We cannot have love without
lovers, nor deference without squires and labourers. And class
happens when some men, as a result of common experiences
(inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their
interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose
interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The
class experience is largely determined by the productive
relations into which men are born—or enter involuntarily.
Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are
handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-
systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience
appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can
see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups
undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any
law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different
times and places, but never in just the same way.
There is today an ever-present temptation to suppose that
class is a thing. This was not Marx's meaning, in his own
historical writing, yet the error vitiates much latter-day
"Marxist" writing. " I t " , the working class, is assumed to
have a real existence, which can be defined almost mathe-
matically—so many men who stand in a certain relation to the
means of production. Once this is assumed it becomes possible
to deduce the class-consciousness which " i t " ought to have (but
seldom does have) if " i t " was properly aware of its own position
and real interests. There is a cultural superstructure, through
which this recognition dawns in inefficient ways. These cultural
"lags" and distortions are a nuisance, so that it is easy to pass
from this to some theory of substitution: the party, sect, or
theorist, who disclose class-consciousness, not as it is, but as it
ought to be.
But a similar error is committed daily on the other side of
the ideological divide. In one form, this is a plain negative.
Since the crude notion of class attributed to Marx can be
faulted without difficulty, it is assumed that any notion of
class is a pejorative theoretical construct, imposed upon the
evidence. It is denied that class has happened at all. In another
form, and by a curious inversion, it is possible to pass from a
dynamic to a static view of class. " I t " — t h e working class—
exists, and can be defined with some accuracy as a component
of the social structure. Class-consciousness, however, is a bad
thing, invented by displaced intellectuals, since everything
which disturbs the harmonious co-existence of groups per-
forming different "social roles" (and which thereby retards
economic growth) is to be deplored as an "unjustified dis-
turbance-symptom". 1 The problem is to determine how best
" i t " can be conditioned to accept its social role, and how its
grievances may best be "handled and channelled".
1 A n example o f this approach, covering the period of this book, is to be found

i n the w o r k o f a colleague o f Professor T a l c o t t Parsons: N . J . Smelser, Social

Change in the Industrial Revolution (1959)-
 If w e remember that class is a relationship, and not a thing,
we can not think in this way. " I t " does not exist, either to
have an ideal interest or consciousness, or to lie as a patient
on the Adjustor's table. Nor can we turn matters upon their
heads, as has been done by one authority who (in a study of
class obsessively concerned with methodology, to the exclusion
of the examination of a single real class situation in a real
historical context) has informed us:
Classes are based on the differences in legitimate power associated
with certain positions, i.e. on the structure of social roles with respect
to their authority expectations An individual becomes a member
of a class by playing a social r6le relevant from the point of view
of authority.... He belongs to a class because he occupies a position
in a social organisation; Le. class membership is derived from the
incumbency of a social r61e.J
T h e question, of course, is how the individual got to be in
this "social role", and how the particular social organisation
(with its property-rights and structure of authority) got to be
there. And these are historical questions. If we stop history at a
given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of
individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch
these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe
patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions.
Glass is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the
end, this is its only definition.

I f I have shown insufficient understanding of the methodo-

logical preoccupations of certain sociologists, nevertheless I
hope this book will be seen as a contribution to the under-
standing of class. For I am convinced that we cannot understand
class unless we see it as a social and cultural formation, arising
from processes which can only be studied as they work them-
selves out over a considerable historical period. This book can
be seen as a biography of the English working class from its
adolescence until its early manhood. In the years between 1780
and 1832 most English working people came to feel an identity
of interests as between themselves, and as against their rulers
and employers. This ruling class was itself much divided, and
in fact only gained in cohesion over the same years because
certain antagonisms were resolved (or faded into relative
insignificance) in the face of an insurgent working class,
1 R . Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Steitty (1959), pp. 148-9.
Thus the working-class presence was, in 1832, the most
significant factor in British political life.
The book is written in this way. In Part One I consider
the continuing popular traditions in the 18th century which
influenced the crucial Jacobin agitation of the 1790s. In
Part T w o I move from subjective to objective influences—the
experiences of groups of workers during the Industrial Revolu-
tion which seem to me to be of especial significance, I also
attempt an estimate of the character of the new industrial work-
discipline, and the bearing upon this of the Methodist Church.
In Part Three I pick up the story of plebeian Radicalism,
and carry it through Luddism to the heroic age at the close of
the Napoleonic Wars. Finally, I discuss some aspects of political
theory and of the consciousness of class in the 1820s and 1830s.
This is a group of studies, on related themes, rather than a
consecutive narrative. In selecting these themes I have been
conscious, at times, of writing against the weight of prevailing
orthodoxies. There is the Fabian orthodoxy, in which the great
majority of working people are seen as passive victims of
laissez fake, with the exception of a handful of far-sighted
organisers (notably, Francis Place). There is the orthodoxy of
the empirical economic historians, in which working people
are seen as a labour force, as migrants, or as the data for
statistical series. There is the "Pilgrim's Progress" orthodoxy,
in which the period is ransacked for forerunners—pioneers of
the Welfare State, progenitors of a Socialist Commonwealth, or
(more recently) early exemplars of rational industrial relations.
Each of these orthodoxies has a certain validity. All have added
to our knowledge. M y quarrel with the first and second is that
they tend to obscure the agency of working people, the degree
to which they contributed, by conscious efforts, to the making
of history. M y quarrel with the third is that it reads history in
the light of subsequent preoccupations, and not as in fact it
occurred. Only the successful (in the sense of those whose
aspirations anticipated subsequent evolution) are remembered.
The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are
forgotten.
I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite
cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian"
artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott,
from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and
traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new
industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their com-
munitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrection-
ary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived
through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did n o t
Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience;
and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned
in their own lives, as casualties.
O u r only criterion of judgement should not be whether or
not a man's actions are justified in the light of subsequent
evolution. After all, we are not at the end of social evolution
ourselves. In some of the lest causes of the people of the In-
dustrial Revolution we may discover insights into social evils
which we have yet to cure. Moreover, this period now compels
attention for two particular reasons. First, it was a time in
which the plebeian movement placed an exceptionally high
valuation upon egalitarian and democratic values. Although
we often boast our democratic way of life, the events of these
critical years are far too often forgotten or slurred over. Second,
the greater part of the world today is still undergoing problems
of industrialisation, and of the formation of democratic
institutions, analogous in many ways to our own experience
during the Industrial Revolution. Causes which were lost in
England might, in Asia or Africa, yet be won.
Finally, a note of apology to Scottish and Welsh readers.
I have neglected these histories, not out of chauvinism, but
out of respect. It is because class is a cultural as much as an
economic formation that I have been cautious as to generalising
beyond English experience. (I have considered the Irish, not
in Ireland, but as immigrants to England.) T h e Scottish record,
in particular, is quite as dramatic, and as tormented, as our
own. T h e Scottish Jacobin agitation was more intense and
more heroic. But the Scottish story is significantly different.
Calvinism was not the same thing as Methodism, although it is
difficult to say which, in the early 19th century, was worse.
W e had no peasantry in England comparable to the Highland
migrants. And the popular culture was very different. It is
possible, at least until the 182c«, to regard the English and
Scottish experiences as distinct, since trade union and political
links were impermanent and immature.

This book was written in Yorkshire, and is coloured at

times by West Riding sources. M y grateful acknowledgements
14 THE MAKING OF THE WORKING CLASS

are due to the University of Leeds and to Professor S. G .

Raybould for enabling me, some years ago, to commence the
research which led to this book; and to the Leverhulme
Trustees for the award of a Senior Research Fellowship,
which has enabled me to complete the work. I have also learned
a great deal from members of my tutorial classes, with whom I
have discussed many of the themes treated here. Acknowledge-
ments are due also to the authorities who have allowed me
to quote from manuscript and copyright sources: particular
acknowledgements will be found at the end of the volume.
I have also to thank many others. Mr. Christopher Hill,
Professor Asa Briggs, and M r . John Saville criticised parts of
the book in draft, although they are in no sense responsible for
my judgements. Mr. R. J . Harris showed great editorial
patience, when the book burst the bounds of a series for which it
was first commissioned. M r . Perry Anderson, Mr. Denis Butt,
M r . Richard Cobb, Mr. Henry Collins, Mr. Derrick Crossley,
Mr. T i m Enright, Dr. E. P. Hennock, Mr. Rex Russell, Dr.
John Rex, Dr. E. Sigsworth, and M r . H. O . E. Swift, have
helped me at different points. I have also to thank Mrs. Dorothy
Thompson, an historian to whom I am related by the accident
of marriage. Each chapter has bfeen discussed with her, and I
have been well placed to borrow not only her ideas but material
from her notebooks. Her collaboration is to be found, not in
this or that particular, but in the w a y the whole problem is
seen.
Halifax, August 1363