The Long Eighteenth Century

by Frank O'Gorman

  Even with these reservations, however, there can be little doubt that in the years immediately after the war, with the disappearance of the most powerful patriotic restraints, the forceful expression of lower-class hostility to government repression can no longer be denied. Among certain of the old artisan trades, especially in the textile industry, among the domestic weavers and frame knitters and among the early factory workers, congregated into the demographically exploding towns of Lancashire, the West Riding and the North Midlands, political protest movements appeared on an extraordinary scale. Certainly, the scale of the vast meetings, with their fiery rhetoric and mass proletarian audiences, impressed contemporaries and continues to impress historians. In particular, the government repression in 1817 created a wave of very real, perhaps unprecedented, proletarian resentment. Although the radical platform still proclaimed the creed of traditional, popular constitutionalism, the mood of the meetings was increasingly one of social bitterness. During 1818 the brief economic upturn led to strikes which sought the restoration of former pay scales. When political agitation resumed in 1819 it was with clear class overtones. From the great series of political meetings which marked the summer months, of which Peterloo was one, the middle classes largely absented themselves. These became vast rallies of working people. The upper classes shuddered, many of them believing that revolution was close at hand. This mass, nationally organized demand for universal suffrage encompassed not only the traditional geographical areas from which radicals had drawn support – the metropolitan areas, East Anglia and the north-east – but also now, unquestionably, the newer industrial districts and newer factory occupations as well.

  By this time powerful elements of class organization were entering into industrial disputes. Combinations of workers were to be found, for example, among the Wiltshire woollen towns as early as 1802. In the same year the Yorkshire shearmen went on strike in the Leeds area and with the aid of a strike fund forced their employers to meet their demands. Strike funds also aided the efforts of the Lancashire and Cheshire cotton spinners in a three-month strike in 1810. In this dispute around 10,000 workers were locked out in Stalybridge alone. Two years later nearly 40,000 cotton workers went on strike in Cumberland and Scotland. In 1818 there were strikes in many parts of the country, but particularly in the north-west. The Lancashire weavers and calico printers both went on strike, as did the Manchester cotton spinners. There were even attempts to organize them into a national movement. Spinners’ delegates from the Manchester strike made contact with the ‘Philanthropic Hercules’, a would-be national body of all unions led by the leader of the shipwrights, John Gast.

  Whether all these agitations were overwhelmingly class agitations is, however, still not entirely clear. There are several reasons for this. First, even some of the most militant of class warriors, the Luddites, were seeking to maintain their own skills, their own differentials and their own exclusiveness. It is a mistake to see Luddism, however compelling the cause and however tragic the condition of the men and their families, as a class movement. Furthermore, much trade union activity was of an exclusive character, particular rather than general. The early trade unions were anxious to protect their own skills and the wages of their own members; such unions would restrict apprenticeships and operate closed shops. So much for class solidarity! Second, the idea of a homogeneous ‘factory proletariat’ may, in part at least, be a myth. When historians have examined the work that workers actually did they find a great variety of specialized trades and processes and minute distinctions of skill and differentials of pay which, in their way, are reminiscent of the subtle gradations of a society of orders.

  Third, much of the class hostility to be found in the post-war years was locally generated by a dispute in a particular industry or, as in 1820 at Swansea, by an attempt to suppress a union combination of copper smelters, which led to violence and injuries. At Coalbrookdale in 1821 3,000 miners, who had been trying to close the pits as a protest against reduced wages, fought a body of yeomen cavalry who had been brought in to break the strike. Two people died and dozens were injured. There can be no question that these were serious, sometimes violent and certainly militant disputes. Much of this union activity was bread-and-butter business, far removed from the Utopian schemes of the early cooperative societies of the 1820s, whose objective was to peacefully transform capitalist society into a socialist commonwealth. Robert Owen’s appeals to the masses to adopt a cooperative and unionized solution to social ills for long evoked little response. For a while in the late 1820s and early 1830s some union leaders dreamed of national unions which would unite both the skilled and the unskilled, but they all floundered on the usual obstacles of geography and indifference. The great factories of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Glasgow and the coal mines of the north-east were still untypical of the working environments of most workers. Even in the textile industry, only cotton was produced in large factories. Elsewhere in the industry the domestic system still survived. Finally, although class consciousness could certainly be stirred up on certain occasions, for example in 1817 and in 1819, it is not clear that it could maintain itself in ‘normal’ times. Class tension and class conflict appeared on occasions of particular stress and difficulty. Certain occupations may for a time have conceived themselves to be a part of a provincial, even a national movement, with an awareness of shared class identity, as in 1819 and 1831. However, working people often lacked the literacy and the leisure, and their communities sometimes lacked the institutions – libraries, clubs and newspapers – which might have sustained class feeling over a period of years.

  Yet by about 1820 the concept of a ‘working class’ was in wide circulation, as any examination of radical speeches at events like Peterloo and the march of the Blanketeers, will confirm. Ricardo had popularized the argument that landlords, capitalists and workers had conflicting class interests, and it received considerable attention in the 1820s. The Economist, founded in 1821, and the LCS, established in 1824, were among the most important propaganda organs of the emerging working class in the 1820s. In their pages Tom Paine’s political ‘rights of men’ became the ‘rights of labour’ of the early socialists. Working men were taught that parliamentary reform, in the shape of universal suffrage, would guarantee to the worker the fruits of his labours. In 1823 Thomas Hodgkin and Joseph Robertson founded the Mechanics magazine which, together with a number of successors, sought to instil a sense of common identity among its readers. In 1830 John Doherty established yet another grandly titled body, the National Association for the Protection of Labour, with its newspaper, Voice of the People. It may have been a magnificent aspiration to unite all trades and crafts in a peaceful, united struggle against the capitalists. Like all such bodies, however, it swiftly collapsed. The force of its rhetorical message, however, was not forgotten. In this way social and economic antagonisms were constantly being redefined in class terms.

  No less important than the circulation of class ideology and class language in the making of the working class were the residential realities of the new industrial towns. Because of their rapid growth, they did not manifest the delicate social hierarchies of older towns; they were created on the basis of a sometimes quite drastic social segregation. In established communities the old language of orders survived because such residential segregation was uncommon, a fact which promoted status consciousness and fine gradations of social awareness. In the new industrial towns skilled workers tended to live in the same streets as other skilled workers, rarely marrying their sons and daughters into the ranks of other social groups. It was these quite sharp patterns of residence and marriage, as well as common patterns of work and, sometimes, political experience, which betokened the unmistakable and continuous existence of a working-class culture. Because of residential segregation, furthermore, there developed common patterns of leisure, often of religious observance and even of education. The historian of class, therefore, should be as alive to the less frequently researched patterns of
lower-class housing as to the much more familiar territory of class ideology and language.

  It remains to include the rural labouring classes in this discussion. As late as the census of 1831 there were still twice as many agricultural labourers as labourers in manufacturing industry. With the disappearance of the peasantry, Britain became a country of rural landless labourers whose dependence on the landlord class for employment and housing was considerable. With enclosure and the loss of common rights and, after 1780, with the decline of in-service working, and thus the prospect of reasonably secure employment on the great estates, there was a noticeable loosening of the bonds of deference in the countryside. As a result, there were many scattered acts of violence and vandalism and even some regional patterns of disaffection, as in East Anglia in the years immediately after 1815. The demobilization of soldiers and seamen crowded the labour market at exactly the same time as the appearance of threshing machines reduced the demand for labour on the land. Before the Swing Riots of 1830–1, however, there was little sign of organized, nationally based action, although a resentful culture of protest, arson and violence was developing. In spite of the existence of considerable social bitterness in the countryside, a coherent rural working class could not yet emerge because of physical isolation, the hegemonic presence of the great estate and the fragility of political awareness. Furthermore, the harsh operation of the Poor Law maintained efficient surveillance and superintendence over the lives of many sections of the rural poor. Although many of the features of English and Welsh rural life were to be found in the lowlands of Scotland and in Ireland, rural society in these nations was characterized by the survival of the rural peasantry. In these places, alternatives to agricultural employment which might have mopped up surplus population did not exist. Harsh conditions prevailed and considerable suffering was the consequence. Such obstacles powerfully hindered the emergence of a nationwide rural working class.

  Distinctions of class were, nevertheless, developing with some speed in the early nineteenth century. Historians, while recognizing this, should resist the temptation to leap to conclusions about inevitable conflict between the classes. They should at the very least consider the ubiquity of collaboration between members of the middle and working classes in their joint crusade against ‘old corruption’ and in favour of reform. Many members of the working class were prepared to accept the capitalist system but to work peacefully for its reform. Furthermore, trade unions were specialized bodies which negotiated with their employers, and thus within the framework of the capitalist system, over bread-and-butter issues like pay, hours and conditions of work. Such attitudes were particularly prominent during periods of relative prosperity, suggesting strongly that while class resentment could be unleashed at moments of economic stress and political bitterness, at other periods there was no inevitable or rational hostility between the working and middle classes. If they were to be successful, working-class political movements needed sustained support from other, more powerful, social groups. By the same token, middle-class reform obviously needed popular support to become effective. Without that collaboration, reform movements failed in the 1790s; with some measure of collaboration, reform became a possibility in the immediate post-war years. With consistent, nationally organized and well-coordinated class collaboration between 1830 and 1832 the reform of Parliament was ultimately to be achieved.

  CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDER IN LATER HANOVERIAN BRITAIN

  To what extent, if at all, did the position of women during the long eighteenth century improve? Such a question, of course, rests upon the social and political complexion of the group under consideration. It also depends upon a host of non-gender considerations such as age, religion and geography. In almost all areas of life, national and local, eighteenth-century society was dominated by men. Men wrote, and male historians subsequently wrote up, the historical record to emphasize and legitimize that domination. In spite of the near-universal prevalence of patriarchal literature and values, women showed themselves capable of contesting, and often subverting, its precepts. Their activities in family life, in literature, in politics and in the economy showed clearly that they were capable of substantial achievement. Consequently, eighteenth-century men were prone to look over their shoulders for ‘petticoat power’, whether upper-class women toying with helpless husbands or shrewish wives from the lower orders cuckolding their husbands. Women could enjoy power in many situations and circumstances, but such power was usually deemed to be irregular and thus unwarranted. Yet the stubborn survival of patriarchy during the long eighteenth century does not mean that gender roles remained unchanged. Indeed, there was constant tension between the orthodox, biblical constructions of gender and newer forms of gender, which was perhaps typical of a complex and rapidly changing society and culture.

  Much has been made in the recent literature of an alleged gender division of labour according to which men after the middle of the century increasingly inhabited the ‘public’ sphere of business and politics, leaving the ‘private’ sphere of domesticity to women.40 The construction of masculinity on which such a separation was based arose, of course, upon biblical precepts about the male role as head of the household with duties as well as powers, but thereafter constructs of masculinity followed social patterns. Upper-class masculinity was moulded by codes of chivalric honour and by physical, usually military courage. Foreign, and particularly colonial, adventure was essentially a masculine activity, a manly occupation, a proving ground for male achievement, consequently leaving little room for feminine values. Under the twin pressures of Evangelicalism and of the demand of polite social conformity, middle-class masculinity followed a more sedentary pattern, involving Christian love, moral earnestness, personal sincerity and the performance of paternal duties. However, the masculine identity of the middle-class Christian father arose as much from his commercial occupation as from his Christian paternalism. He was literate, numerate and a responsible employer. In this world of Christian commercialism, sexual restraint, not sexual indulgence, was the mark of mature masculinity. Furthermore, the spread of a culture of politeness, as Lawrence Klein has shown, altered the nature of social discourse in the early and middle decades of the century, doing much to define the manners of the elite, elaborating the language, manners and sociability and yet the independence of the gentleman.41 At the same time, it did much to meld the social behaviour of the upper and middling orders, doing much to foster a common pattern of manners. On the other hand, lower-class men had a different construction of masculinity to do with physical strength and endurance, stoical reliability and sexual indulgence. Indeed, the alarming growth of unmarried pregnancies during the eighteenth century was probably a response to the increase in the number of unemployed and landless labourers who had little or no conception of restraint, planning and patience.

  In all of these constructions of masculinity, women were left to become ‘angels in the home’. Women commanded the family and the children, and maintained overall responsibility for the moral welfare of its members. This construction of femininity operated around the dependence of women upon men as constrained in countless biblical and customary precepts. Although Lord Mansfield, President of the Court of King’s Bench for almost thirty years after 1756, extended the range of exceptions to the common law role that a married woman had no separate legal personality, it is by no means clear how much difference this made in practice. Certainly, the male adult householder was the only family member who possessed the independence necessary to conduct its dealings with the outside world. Furthermore, many women may well have exercised power and authority even in areas of life when they were legally powerless. The social inferiority of women was re-emphasized by Evangelicals at the end of the century even though they accepted that women occupied a special position in view of their capacity for moral virtue. They emphasised the traditional roles of women as wives and mothers. To the Evangelicals the home and the hearth was the sphere of upper- and middle-class women. They
should organize it, adorn it and bring culture and learning to it. Women might help informally in the world of work, but that was not their prime responsibility. Similarly, they might enhance civic occasions and political celebrations with their presence, but it was the men whom they were enhancing and their achievements that were being celebrated. Feminine values embraced the ideals of passive acceptance, calculated restraint and the avoidance of violence and harshness. These ideals of femininity were universally recycled during the century and were powerfully endorsed by writers like Hannah More and by scores of lesser-known, usually female writers, who painstakingly set out how women might apply these precepts to daily life. The fact, for example, that women could have property settled on them before marriage which the husbands could not legally take from them was not widely publicized.

  Some voices were raised against patriarchy and the idea of ‘separate spheres’ for men and women during the late eighteenth century. When Mary Wollstonecraft did so in the 1790s, she stood in a long line of writers and pamphleteers who had asserted the right of women to education, to a freer choice of marriage partner and, in general, to a more equal relationship with men. Indeed, the qualities she claimed most to admire: independence, rationality, strength, dignity and virtue, were all associated with masculinity. Indeed, she encouraged men to become more, not less, masculine. Many writers, including male authors such as Steele, Defoe and Richardson, offered literary portraits of women in their writings which were far removed from the shrinking violets who inhabited the manuals of formal etiquette. In the second half of the century the number of women writers leaped ahead. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), however, was a rational critique of the basis of patriarchy. Refuting the theory of the natural subordination of women, Wollstonecraft affirmed the natural autonomy of women, arguing that women had a right to equality with men and, indeed, the right to pursue their own careers. What she wished to do was to combine and to unite the qualities seen hitherto as female and male, i.e. feeling and rationality. While shocking to many contemporaries in her rejection of biblical precepts, Wollstonecraft was much less radical than might at first appear. The measures of education which she claimed for women were reserved to the upper and middle classes. She was writing for women in those social groups who enjoyed leisure and comfort. She deplored the fact that too many women from the middling orders had been seduced by fashion and by their love of externals to neglect their rationality. She had little to say to poor women who might have benefited from greater social equality. Furthermore, she was vague about the ability of women to establish and to realize their claims to greater equality, in practice looking to men to release women from their bondage. Nevertheless, she gave an historic impetus to the cause of women’s rights. Many women were shaken out of their torpor by the fresh, radical language which she employed. Just when Evangelicals were energetically reworking the old hierarchical ideas about the place of women, Wollstonecraft launched an important intellectual challenge to patriarchal ideas which was to act both as an intellectual example to others and as a symbolic repudiation of the subordination of women.