Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England

Trygve Tholfsen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367858322
• eBook ISBN: 9781000076677
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1976, Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England examines working-class radicalism in the mid-Victorian period and suggests that after the fading of Chartist militancy the radical tradition was preserved in a working-class subculture that enabled working men to resist the full consolidation of middle-class hegemony. The book traces the growth of working-class radicalism as it developed dialectically in confrontation with middle-class liberal ideology in the generation after Waterloo. Intellectual forces were of central importance in shaping the character of the working-class Left and the Enlightenment, in particular, as the chief source of ideological weapons that were turned against the established order. The Enlightenment also provided the intellectual foundations of the middle-class ideology that was directed against the incipient threat of popular radicalism. The book notes that the same intellectual forces that entered into the first half of the nineteenth century also shaped the value system that provided the foundations of mid-Victorian urban culture. These forces also contributed to the rapprochement between working-class liberalism, bringing latent affinities to the surface. It is also emphasised, however, that inherited ideas and traditions exercised their influence in interaction with the structure of power and status.

1
PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION

This book deals with a well known episode in English social history: the swift transition from the militant working-class radicalism of the 1830s and 1840s to the relative quiescence of the age of equipoise. The older interpretation of these developments depicted a working-class surrender to middle-class ideology and the cult of respectability. In the light of recent scholarship, however, we have come to recognise a more complex phenomenon that poses a number of interesting problems of interpretation. The mid-Victorian working man no longer appears as the passive victim of ideological embourgeoisement; to a considerable degree he remained faithful to the values of the radical tradition. However muted, radicalism continued to be a bulwark against the triumph of middle-class ideology, despite numerous points of affinity between them. Yet working-class radicalism was very well integrated into a cohesive culture dominated by the middle-class. Hence, when we look at the mid-Victorian city, we see not only consensus and stability but unresolved ideological and social conflict: a stable culture in a state of inner tension.

The classic interpretation of the mid-Victorian period in the history of the working-class movement was laid down by the Webbs in their History of Trade Unionism. Surveying the trade union world in the late 1840s, they described the emergence of a ‘new spirit’, characterised by an acceptance of various aspects of middle-class ideology — individualism, respectability, self-help, and self-improvement. In the Webbs’ account the ‘New Model’ trade unionist was a respectable working man, imbued with the middle-class economics and middle-class values. G.D.H. Cole, in his magisterial works of synthesis, described a similar shift in outlook in the working-class movement as a whole: ‘The New Co-operation of 1844, the New Unionism of 1850, the new Friendly Society Movement… were all signs of this changed spirit — all attempts to work with and within the capitalist order instead of seeking its overthrow.’ The nub of Cole’s interpretation was the total domination of mid-Victorian society and culture by a newly ascendant capitalist class: ‘Everything thus tended to impress on working-class organisation in the Victorian era the mood and character dominant in Victorianism itself - a mood of acquisitiveness, which measured man by money and reckoned virtues largely in monetary terms.’¹

This interpretation, firmly based on a mass of supporting evidence, has not been overthrown or refuted. Yet the monochromatic picture painted by the Webbs has been modified by recent scholarship, which has depicted the mid-Victorian working man as a more complex and interesting figure. We have been reminded of his persisting radicalism, genuine independence, lack of servility, and imperviousness to crude political economy and middle-class propaganda. Without denying the prevalence of many of the traits singled out by the Webbs, historians have remarked on the presence of other characteristics which do not readily fit into the older stereotype. Geoffrey Best, for example, has commented on the ambiguity of trade unionist attitudes which often combined an extreme laissez faire individualism with ‘elements of socialist idealism, class solidarity and pragmatic collectivism.’²

The situation of working-class radicalism in mid-Victorian urban culture provides more than enough material to satisfy the contemporary historian’s appetite for ambiguity and paradox. Thus, although the mid-Victorian working man preserved his radicalism and independence, he was nevertheless well integrated into a remarkably cohesive culture — a tightly knit structure of values, institutions, roles and ritual — built on a social base dominated by the middle classes. A firm consensus on basic values had been established, especially on the overriding importance of the moral and intellectual improvement of the individual. Ordinary activity directed toward the common goals of the community was invested with the highest moral significance, and spokesmen for all classes took pleasure in celebrating each small instalment of progress. On the other hand, the mid-Victorian cities were the scene of continual class conflict, which manifested itself socially and ideologically. There was considerable working-class resistance to the middle-class and its pretensions. Yet criticism of middle-class propaganda was often accompanied by an affirmation of values which corresponded closely to official platform rhetoric, and working-class militancy assumed forms which were congruent with a culture that presupposed middle-class preeminence. These apparently contradictory characteristics are reflected in two successive sentences in a letter which Marx wrote to Engels after attending a working-class meeting in London in 1863. On the one hand, Marx noted that ‘the workers themselves spoke excellently, with a complete absence of bourgeois rhetoric and without in the least concealing their opposition to capitalists.’ Yet in the next breath he expressed the hope that the English workers would soon ‘free themselves from their apparent bourgeois infection.’³ Thus Marx noticed not only characteristics of mid-Victorian working men which the Webbs were later to emphasize, but also other traits which were to be momentarily forgotten.

When we turn to Chartism, the starting point for a discussion of the transition to mid-Victorian radicalism, we also have to take account of scholarship since the second World War. First and foremost, E.P. Thompson has demonstrated the richness and depth of the traditions of popular radicalism on which the Chartist movement rested. Studies of the unstamped press have shown the diffusion of new forms of working-class radicalism in the 1830s. At the same time other monographs have provided a much fuller picture of Owenism, so different from Chartism and yet very much a part of a broader working-class radical tradition. Local studies have contributed to a better understanding of Chartism in the provinces. We no longer see provincial Chartism in Hovell’s terms as essentially a movement of hunger and desperation, dominated by handloom weavers, to be understood in contrast to the moderation and rationality of the movement that had originated with London artisans. Textbook accounts of a moderate London program transformed by the wild men of the North have been superseded. We now recognise the intellectual strength of the Chartist Left both in the provinces and in London. Within the framework of Chartism, working-class radicalism voiced a trenchant critique of the political and social order, explicitly rejecting the ideology that an aggressive bourgeoisie was trying to impose.⁴

This picture of early-Victorian radicalism lends new point to a question that a generation ago seemed to have been settled once and for all. How was it that so formidable a movement of reasoned protest, high aspiration, and proud class consciousness gave way so swiftly to mid-Victorian consensus? In that form, however, the question is misleading, since working-class radicalism did not merely dissolve into middle-class ideology, but persisted in a different form, continuing to resist propaganda from above and to foster a spirit of independence and pride among workingmen. Yet the traditions of radicalism were certainly softened by acculturation and accommodation. Thus, we are not dealing merely with the fading of protest but with a number of complex processes involving continuity and change, conflict and consensus, accommodation and resistance.

An inquiry into such matters will necessarily take as its point of departure Thompson’s brilliant book; the notes give some indication of the extent to which this study is indebted to his work. As will be seen, however, this book deals not only with a later period but with a subject that is defined in different terms. First, it is limited to working-class radicalism, whereas Thompson examines a much broader topic, the ‘working class’ as a whole. Moreover, as a Marxist, Thompson treats working-class radicalism primarily in relation to the categories of class and class consciousness. Here the phenomenon is approached from a different vantage point.

The main body of the book (chapters 5–10) comprises a description of various aspects of working-class radicalism in the mid-Victorian period that followed its climactic early-Victorian phase (chapter 3). These chapters seek to describe the forms and conditions in which radical values and principles survived in an environment that was unfavourable in a number of different ways: the power and status structure required submission and deference; the culture put a premium on the ceremonial incantation of consensus ideals and sentiments that bore an affinity to many of the aims of radicalism; the moral and intellectual hegemony exercised by the middle classes tended to impose a middle-class form on consensus values. These phenomena are examined in the setting of mid-Victorian urban culture, with special reference to the ambivalent relationship between working-class radicalism and middle-class liberalism.

The processes that moulded these cultural and ideological patterns and mediated the transition from the early-Victorian to the mid-Victorian period are considered in chapters 2—5. It is suggested that the inner logic of the principles of working-class radicalism played a part in shaping its response to developments in middle-class liberalism and in the culture as a whole. From this angle chapter 2 outlines the intellectual and ideological origins of early-Victorian working-class radicalism. It is emphasized that Enlightenment liberalism provided the foundations of both working-class radicalism and the middle-class ideology against which it was directed. With the emergence of a more genial version of middle-class liberalism during the period of maximum social and ideological conflict (chapter 4), the road to rapprochement and consensus was open. Chapter 5 describes how the confluence of these ideological and intellectual currents contributed to the development of a cohesive culture, characterised by a pervasive consensus and a distinctive sensibility of aspiration. In the favourable setting provided by economic improvement and expansion, the same intellectual forces that had influenced the development of working-class radicalism and middle-class liberalism — the Enlightenment, evangelicalism, and romanticism — helped to shape the culture of which both were integral components. Working-class radicalism had to contend not only with middle-class predominance but with the attenuating and softening influence of a culture to whose creation diverse intellectual and social forces had contributed.

The argument of the book entails a number of conceptual and theoretical problems that call for some comment. At the most general level there is the difficulty, familiar to every historian, of conceptualising the elusive reality of phenomena characterised by constant change and endless diversity. Thus, ‘working-class radicalism’, for example, is not susceptible of summary definition. Not only was it changing over the years, but at any moment in time it displayed considerable variation. Yet it clearly embodied common characteristics. Hence in the following chapters such terms as ‘salient’ and ‘distinctive’ occasionally appear in tandem with metaphors of spectrum and continuum, permutation and combination. Another aspect of the problem of unity and diversity that is prominent in Victorian social history is geographical variation, especially from one city to another. In a definitive work this would be handled by comparative history on a large scale. This book, however, has the more limited objective of attempting to describe the ‘central’ features of working-class radicalism without, it is hoped, doing violence to regional variation.

Another recurring problem concerns the interplay between social and intellectual forces. In one sense there is no difficulty, since professional historians are committed to a methodological pluralism that treats as an open question the nature and effectiveness of the causal factors operating in a given situation. In practice, however, particularly when dealing with a subject like this one, there is a natural tendency to assign a sort of de facto primacy to social and economic forces. Such forces clearly played an important part in resolving the early Victorian crisis. The decline in Chartist agitation, together with the over-all ‘relaxation of tension’ and the achievement of ‘stability’, were in large measure the consequence of a relative improvement in the economic situation. Similarly, the apparent transformation of the militant Chartist into the ‘respectable working man’can be understood in part in economic terms, including an expansion of the skilled segment of the labour force as a result of economic growth. In G.D.H. Cole’s formulation, the mid-Victorian working-class adjusted to a mature capitalist economy. Since this line of explanation is so well grounded, one can hardly suggest that there is a prima facie case for the thesis that intellectual forces were of equivalent importance.

But there is a case to be made. To begin with, the character of the early-Victorian crisis itself cannot be explained simply by reference to economically determined conflict and unrest. Working-class radicalism embodied more than a protest against immediate grievances. It posed a profound challenge to the legitimacy of the social and political order. That challenge was based on solid intellectual and ideological foundations provided by the Enlightenment. Thus, although working-class radicalism was rooted in practical circumstances, such as economic dislocation and class conflict, these were not sufficient causes. The character and intensity of popular radicalism had been shaped by intellectual traditions inherited from the past. Moreover, since the challenge posed by working-class agitation in early-Victorian England was so deeply rooted, it could not be dispelled merely by a change in the economic situation. Similarly, when we turn to the 1850s and 1860s and consider the specific characteristics of mid-Victorian urban culture, especially its value system and its cohesiveness, we cannot explain it primarily in terms of its social and economic base.

Any attempt to describe the interplay between aspects of class and culture runs up against another difficulty. Although the two have to be separated for analytical purposes, they are in fact closely intertwined in their concrete historical manifestations. Thus, the character of a social class is determined not only by its socio-economic situation but also by cultural traditions; and a given culture bears the impress of class, past and present. For Marx, however, there was no problem; the essence of a social class is determined by socio-economic circumstances. His comment on the proletariat states his position with his usual clarity and precision: ‘It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment considers as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what in accordance with this being, it will historically be compelled to do. Its aim and historical action is irrevocably and clearly foreshadowed in its own life situation as well as in the whole organisation of bourgeois society today.’⁵ In such statements as this and in his schematic formulation of the relationship between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, Marx forcefully asserted the primacy of social and economic forces in determining the character of a class. Hence his position can serve as a contrast to the methodological assumptions on which this book is based. It should be pointed out, however, that neo-Marxist thought in the twentieth century has abandoned the base-superstructure model for a more flexible formulation. Thus, Eugene Genovese has argued that the developing nature of a social class ‘necessarily embraces the full range of its human experience in its manifold political, social, economic, and cultural manifestations.’⁶

The role of culture in shaping the character and outlook of social classes complicates the sort of discussion of ‘middle-class values’ that figures in the chapters that follow. On the one hand, it is clear that the mid-Victorian cities were permeated by values — such as the Protestant ethic and utilitarian individualism - that were nothing if not ‘middle-class’ in texture. They bore the stamp of a commercial bourgeoisie, separate and distinct from the landed class above and the working class below. Certain middle-class values, in turn, came under fire from working-class radicalism. While some such formulation is indispensable, however, it can be misleading if too much is made of it. Thus, we are not dealing with two discrete value systems, each socially determined, one of which was achieving domination over the other. Rather, there was a clash between divergent versions of common values, along with extensive overlapping as well as areas of unresolvab-le incompatibility. The aspiration to moral and intellectual improvement, for example, was not the creation of the middle-class as such, but was the end product of an historical process reaching back to the Greeks and Hebrews. Hence workingmen who accepted the ideal of individual improvement -or who esteemed rationality, education, and independence — cannot be said to have surrendered to middle-class values. On the contrary, just as the middle classes had fashioned a distinctive value system out of the ideas and beliefs of western culture, so working-class radicalism was a democratic and egalitarian version of inherited ideals.

A related aspect of this problem concerns the form in which the middle-class was attempting to impose its values on the working-class. It has often been noted, for example, that the middle-class wished to create the working-class in its own image. This image, however, was refracted through the prism of class. Hence the values which the middle-class preached to the working-class were by no means identical to the values to which they themselves subscribed. On the contrary, the ‘middle-class values’ which workingmen were invited to accept took on a form deemed appropriate to their station. This propaganda assumed that working men would accept their subordinate position, respect their superiors, work hard, and defer to authority, while at the same time moving gradually toward the moral and intellectual heights that had already been scaled by their superiors. Although the success myth came to figur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• Dedication Page
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Problems of Interpretation
• 2 The Genesis of Working-Class Radicalism
• 3 The Challenge of Working-Class Radicalism
• 4 The Mellowing of Middle-Class Liberalism, 1834–51
• 5 Mid-Victorian Urban Culture
• 6 Power and Status Relations
• 7 Middle-Class Hegemony
• 8 The Working-Class Subculture
• 9 Trade Unions and Friendly Societies
• 10 Working-Class Radicalism and Parliamentary Reform
• Index