The Making of the English Working Class?

Abstract

A real confrontation aity open conflict between scholars is a purgative experience', according to the Times Literary Supplement.2 Purgative perhaps, especially for the contestants, but also enlightening, especially for those who try to assess the evidence used and conclusions established in the confrontation. The two most interesting, lively and probably most important recent debates among British historians are those concerned with the gentry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and with the labouring poor during the industrial revolution. This latter debate, also, has spilled over into economics where a main pre-occupation is economic growth (of which the English industrial revolution is an interesting example), and into 'the new history' with its interests in social and cultural change, stimulated by Marxism, sociology and a revolt against the dullness and irrelevance of much traditional history. Some of the main controversialists in 'the standard-of-living debate' have come from the fringes of the established academic world, from areas remote from agreed courses and acceptable topics; their work, criticized as polemical, is certainly spirited, even aggressive. And although for scholars passion is not necessarily a good master, it is a great inspiration. Mr Thompson has been inspired to write a big book widely acclaimed by reviewers and already the subject of serious academic discussion. This review of the book does not aim to cover all the issues raised by Mr Thompson, but examines his main theses, his use of evidence, his theories of class and revolution and his analyses of Methodism and the standard-of-living, and tries to assess his importance in the historiography of the English industrial revolution.