The Making of the English Working Class

“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.”

One of the book’s most sentences identifies Thompson’s purpose and establishes a major theme. To “rescue” the hitherto voiceless men and women who comprised the English working class means viewing history from their perspective and taking seriously their aspirations. Thompson finds much of mid-20th-century scholarship condescending—its practitioners, in particular economists and economic historians, in their haste to extol industrial capitalism’s material benefits, too easily gloss over the Industrial Revolution’s catastrophic impact on England’s working poor. Historians also tend to downplay what Thompson views as the very real possibility of a late-18th or early-19th-century English revolution led by an incipient working class. This quotation supports the theme “The Enormous Condescension of Posterity.”

“Too often events in England in the 1790s are seen only as a reflected glow from the storming of the Bastille. But the elements precipitated by the French example—the Dissenting and libertarian traditions—reach far back into English history. And the agitation of the 1790s, although it lasted only five years (1792-6) was extraordinarily intensive and far-reaching. It altered the sub-political attitudes of the people, affected class alignments, and initiated traditions which stretch forward into the present century. It was not an agitation about France, although French events both inspired and bedevilled it. It was an English agitation, of impressive dimensions, for an English democracy.”

This passage summarizes much of Part 1, which highlights the Englishness of English Radicalism in the 1790s. Few would disagree with seeing 19th century English Radicalism as a predominantly English phenomenon, but to make the same claim for the 1790s is to challenge prevailing historical assumptions. Without ignoring the obvious impact of the world-changing French Revolution, Thompson emphasizes aspects of the English experience that distinguish English Jacobinism from its French counterpart.