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From Socialist Worker, No. 95, 2 November 1968, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Making of the English Working Class
by E.P. Thompson
Pelican Books 18s
This marvellous book is a republication of the hard-backed edition of 1963 with a few revisions and a final up-to-date postscript which answers some rather more orthodox historians.
Thompson traces the rich history of the English working-class movement from 1780–1830, and not merely the political movement, for he delights with descriptions of ideology and manners of the class whether religious, economic or social.
He performs an immense service in revising for us the work of bourgeois scholars by showing us that the history of the worker’s struggle in this period is not one of ‘freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent’ but instead one of pitiless oppression judicial murder, provocations by spies and secret arming and training for a revolution against ‘Old Corruption’ that never came.
So effective was the repression and the triumph of the ruling class that 50 years later men hardly dared to speak of their part in the widespread revolutionary conspiracies of those bitter days.
Today nearly all memory of this furious and courageous past is gone from the collective conscious of the workers. Yet what a tradition there is which any socialist movement in the world could be proud of George Mellor and Jeremiah Brandreth, hanged for their parts in the killing of the abominable Horsfall and the Pentridge Rising respectively, were, men of heroic stature and in both cases they were almost certainly two of the secret army of Luddite ‘captains’.
Who now remembers Colonel Despard, the old Jacobin, hanged for treason and then quartered in 1803? He was probably innocent of the particular charges against him. He, with many others, is part of the suppressed, insurrectionary conspiratorial history of the left in this country which is far more important than was once believed.
Even if the British did not produce a programme or great ideologist, they spring far more directly from the most oppressed classes than do continental conspirators.
Fortunately everything in the book is not gloom and heroism. The chapters on non-conformist religion religion are often hilarious and provide an excellent antidote to the pious moralisings of the present day Christian Union types.
The utterly nauseous Jabez Bunting,who refused to officiate at the funeral of a Luddite killed in the attack on Rawfolds Mill, is a case in point as he is still revered by some religious sectarians today.
Whether Thompson is speaking of drillings on the moor, the ravings of Joanna Southcott or the procedures and rituals of early trade unions he quotes from contemporary documents, letters, pamphlets or novels to give us a real flavour of the period.
It is perhaps true that there is a certain inconclusiveness about this book. Was a revolution possible during the period, let alone probable? Thompson does not answer the question though by implication he is pessimistic.
Perhaps he considers the posing and replying to such questions no part of the historian’s job though others may enjoy this piece of speculation.
Whatever faulty there may be,the work is a must for the bookshelves of all socialists. Even if it is a bit indigestible in total it can be dipped into and chapters can be read on their own with tremendous enjoyment. To be recommended as a present for the festival of the winter solstice.
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