The Making of the English Working Class

English historian E.P. Thompson (1924-1993) published his social history book The Making of the English Working Class (1963) while serving as Senior Lecturer at Leeds University. A veteran of the Second World War, Thompson graduated from Cambridge University, where he joined the Communist Party. Though he left the Party in disgust over the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Thompson remained committed to Leftist ideals such as internationalism and anti-capitalist egalitarianism. Written in part from a Marxist perspective, The Making of the English Working Class (1963) details the formation of English working class in the late 18th to early 19th centuries. A piece of seminal New Left scholarship, the book now appears at #30 on The Modern Library’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Plot Summary

The Making of the English Working Class (1963) describes the historical process by which the men and women of the English working class developed a consciousness of a distinct identity with distinct interests. This process occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The book opens in 1792, a critical year in which Thomas Paine published Rights of Man and the French Revolution took a radical turn. Whilst Paine published the first part of Rights of Man in 1791, the second part didn’t appear until early 1792. This guide follows Thompson in using 1792 as the publication date. The book concludes with the Reform Act of 1832, by which time the English working class had been formed.

Thompson’s emphasis on class as a “historical phenomenon” that “happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships” (9) distinguishes his approach from that of empiricists who analyze the past in quantitative terms. While economic statistics can be useful, Thompson argues that excessive reliance on measurable data obscures the actual experiences of people who once lived. Furthermore, economists and economic historians, in their haste to defend capitalism, too often downplay the Industrial Revolution’s destructive impact, which many working-class men, women, and children felt as a catastrophic change in the way they lived and especially in the way they worked. Thompson, therefore, hopes to “rescue” the English working class from “the enormous condescension of posterity” (12). Indeed, this phrase serves as one of the book’s major themes, highlighting Thompson’s critique of prevailing scholarly orthodoxies and his reading of historical evidence from a working-class perspective.

The book’s structure advances Thompson’s argument that the English working class emerged in response to hostile political and economic forces, the combination of which made for an experience unique to England. Part 1, “The Liberty Tree,” sets the political context. In the 1790s, English Jacobins embraced the ideas of Thomas Paine and derived inspiration from their French counterparts. Alarmed, the English ruling class used the government to suppress revolutionary ferment. Counter-revolution involved mass censorship, laws prohibiting large gatherings or demonstrations, an extensive network of government spies, arrests, trials for sedition, suspension of Habeas Corpus, lengthy imprisonments, and public executions. This period of counter-revolutionary repression, which lasted until 1820, drove English Radicalism underground, where it nourished insurrectionary aspirations.

Part 2, “The Curse of Adam,” provides the economic context. During the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 18th century, England’s workers experienced dramatic and often traumatic changes. Of course, there were many who resisted displacement by labor-saving machinery, but Thompson does not view working-class grievances as stemming from new technology alone. Citing the laissez-faire theories of Adam Smith, and using new technology as an excuse, industrial capitalists embarked on a deliberate crusade to destroy England’s traditional paternalist economy and erect in its place a world of cut-throat competition and the de-humanizing regimentation of the factory system. Exploitation took many forms: low wages, long hours of monotonous work, child labor, laws prohibiting trade unions, and above all the re-shaping of the working man’s character to suit the needs of the new capitalist order. These resulted in the erosion of artisanal independence, such as, for instance, the disappearance of old weaving communities. Even the rural enclosure movement symbolized the new exploitative ethos.

In Part 3, “The Working-Class Presence,” Thompson fuses the political and industrial contexts, arguing that the combination of political counter-revolution and capitalist exploitation called the English working-class into existence. A hostile government, allied to hostile employers, left the working class with no choice but to organize itself. Thompson shows how the working-class response to counter-revolution and exploitation played out during the 19th century’s first three decades via the Luddite movement, the Pentridge Rising, Peterloo, the Cato Street Conspiracy, and the formation in the 1820s of a distinct Radical culture. He also notes that this experience was unique. Because England’s Industrial Revolution coincided with the French Revolution, only in England did the industrial working class confront both capitalist exploitation and counter-revolutionary repression.

To Note: Because Thompson focuses exclusively on the English working class, to avoid confusion, this guide uses “English” even in places where “British” might be a more accurate term. Also, following Thompson, this guide uses “Jacobinism” to refer to a specific political movement spawned in the 1790s, whereas “Radicalism” describes a broader phenomenon that took shape in the early 19th century.