The history of unionism in England can’t be understood without at least two major historians: Edward P. Thomson and Eric Hobsbawn. After introducing them, this paper aims at summarizing the main steps of the history of the labour movement and unionism in England since the end of the 18th century, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. This is the summary of the course offered by Ingrid Hayes during the first semester.

Eric Hobsbawn is a British historian, famous for his trilogy: The Age of Revolution¹, The Age of Capital² and The Age of Empire⁴. Through this masterpiece, reinventing the game between sources, facts and long history, he changed the way British history was understood. He followed the same trend as his French counterparts, consisting in reducing as much as possible the importance of events. He later published The Age of Extremes¹, a period that Hobsbawn not only studied but also lived and experienced himself, raising the question of distance towards history. Hobsbawn was a controversial historian due to his long-lasting support of the USSR. In terms of historical approach, he has been criticized for his eurocentrism and denial of history for non-western countries, as well as the combination of two very different approaches in a way that was not always consistent: history from below and history from above.

Edward P. Thompson is also a British historian, famous for his work on social history and use of unexplored sources. The Making of the English Working Class⁵, published in 1963 stands for his major work and can still be considered as a staple for students in British history. He aimed at telling the history of those who supposedly didn’t have any in the society:

“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” (quoted from the preface)⁶.

The work of Edward P. Thompson raises two major ideas. First, the idea of Class-Consciousness can be analyzed through the concepts of « class » and « agency ». Thompson redefines class as something that happens, i.e., a relationship between individuals or groups of individuals, in which individuals can act independently. This is opposed to an oversimplified conception of class, conditioning the lives and histories of individuals and wrongly attributed to Marxism. Second, the idea of Moral Economy is a kind of non-written social contract. It defines the drivers of early bread riots with both the economic need but also the social norms and obligations. His overall work largely influenced the Cultural Studies and Subaltern Studies.

The Industrial Revolution triggered a range of major modifications to the way labour was considered, while maintaining some traditional, pre-industrial structures such as the royal family and nobility. English Jacobinism can be considered as the first social movement gathering artisans and small entrepreneurs, in the aftermath of bread riots and the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century. It claimed more democracy but the movement was less violent than its French counterpart. Following the central theme of Moral Economy, it is then Luddism, still as a local initiative, which took the lead of social movements in England, during the first ten years of the 19th century. This movement gathered skilled workers whose living conditions were deteriorating due to the automation of industries. Facing both this automation and a shrinking market, due, among others to the wars against France, the workers couldn’t cope with the situation anymore. Two major events will then take over in terms of social movements: Peterloo and Tolpuddle. Peterloo is a massacre that occurred in 1819 in Manchester, during a demonstration claiming, among others, more affordable bread. Tolpuddle is a major case which ended up building the image of workers unfairly sent to Australia, as martyrs of social movements. The martyrs of both events fed the memory of the workers’ movement.

Affiche du Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival 2020 – Tolpuddle Martyrs

From 1726 to 1800, a series of various acts were passed in favour of employers, thus increasing the will of workers to meet up in order to defend their interests. The fact that Acts were passed to limit or control worker meetings actually proves that unionism was raising. The Combinations laws of 1800, outlawing the organization of workers, were repealed in 1824, major dates for British unionism: trade union was by then no longer illegal. Chartism was born in 1839. Contrary to previous movements, Chartism was more unified and nationwide. It rose against a system giving privileges and access to political life to a rich minority; more specifically, it rose against the Act of 1832, perceived as an additional protection of interests of Members of Parliament. The initial claims were not new: vote for all men aged over 21, no property qualification to become an MP, salaries for all MPs, voting in secret, equal-sized electoral districts and finally, annual general elections. But the committee was better organized, and the movement reached a wide-range scale: it was supported by millions of signatures on petitions and the list of claims went bigger and bigger. The rise of unionism, first locally, and then nationwide with Chartism led to parliamentary and legal adjustments (Corn Law of 1815 repealed in 1848 for example), probably avoiding major movements such as those that happened at the same time in other European countries.

Later, at the end of the 19th century, the so-called New Unionism movement rose steadily until 1911, before merging with general unionism. Originally, it claimed differences with old unionism, craft and old-fashioned unionism. New Unionism strengthened the movement nationwide, developed it to new categories of workers, new industries which barely had any workers’ committees and reached a peak in massive memberships. Two major strikes were led by new unionism: the Matchgirls Strike in 1888 and the London Dock Strike in 1889. Finally, both old and new unionism merged and in the aftermath of different movements, the Labour Representation Committee was created in order to secure parliamentary representation for themselves, but it was the Taff Vale Case that triggered the creation of the Labour Party, as an official party represented by MPs. In 1906, the Labour Party was officially born.

Social movements during the 19th century led to the birth of the Labour party. This history is characterized by major and violent events such as Peterloo, Tolpuddle or the London Dock Strike, but Great Britain never experimented social revolutions such as those that happened in other European countries at that time. This is a major enigma raised by Edward P. Thompson: the historical perspectives brought by socialist historians are one of the keys to understand this exception.

Anne-Laure Paris
Master 2 EAD Histoire des sociétés modernes et contemporaines dans les mondialisations.
Mémoire d’histoire moderne sous la direction de Caroline Galland.

¹HOBSBAWN Eric J., The Age of revolution: 1789-1848, New York, New American Library, 1962, 416 p.
²HOBSBAWM Eric J., The age of capital: 1848-1875, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975, 354 p.
³HOBSBAWM Eric J., The age of empire: 1875-1914, New York, Pantheon Books, 1987, 404 p.
⁴HOBSBAWM Eric J., The age of extremes : 1914-1991, s.l., s.n., 1994, 627 p.
⁵THOMPSON Edward P., The Making of the English Working Class, New York, Vintage, 1963, 848 p.
⁶Ibid.

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