The Development of the British Working Class, A Debate: Part II

Ross McKibben, "Why Was There No Marxism in Great Britain?" English Historical Review, (Vol. XCIX (April 1984), No. 391), pp. 297-331.

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (NY: Vintage Books, 1966, 2nd ed.).

F.M.L. Thompson, The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830-1900, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Yet both historians (E.P. Thompson and F.M.L. Thompson) have left unanswered another crucially important question. While all may argue that there was a revolutionary atmosphere during the first half of the nineteenth century, why did it suddenly vanish afterwards? Some historians have suggested that organized religion, Marxism's traditional enemy in attracting working-class support, prevented Marxism or any other comparable revolutionary mass movement from gaining mass support in Britain. In particular, the belief that "Methodism prevent[ed] revolution, or the development of a revolutionary movement in Britain" remained strong when Eric Hobsbawm wrote his essay in 1957.

Yet, as Hobsbawm argues, this view is largely false. Though Wesleyan Methodism was "hostile to..." a revolution or a revolutionary mass movement forming, Hobsbawm points out it was not strong enough to have much political impact. [1] It was "not a serious force [in the South]..." and was only sporadically a serious force in the northern, industrialized areas. Moreover, "a great deal of the radical and revolutionary uprest of the period took place in areas in which... [Methodism]... [and] organized religion of such was weak..." [2] He concludes that it is likely that workers were attracted to both Methodism and Radicalism, yet the former "had no more chance of preventing large numbers of them from being rebellious than had the Archbishop of Canterbury..." [3]

Though it may be true that religion did not play much of a role in restraining revolution during the first half of the nineteenth century, it is clear, Ross McKibben argues, that it was an important limiting factor on the possible development of Marxism during the second half. A common "Religious affiliation threw working-class churchgoers into the company of the middle classes and encouraged an egalitarian bonhomie..." In addition, it conditioned members of the working-class: "Its structures helped to familiarize the working classes... with 'political' behavior and gave an acceptable-though utterly conventional-ethical force to working-class politics." [4]

Yet, another, more important, reason was the growing acceptance by the middle and upper classes of a working-class role in the economic and political spheres by the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Though working class consciousness may have been originally defined by a long period of class conflict or by the divisive effects of such laws as the Great Reform Bill, by the 1880s, it was being drastically redefined by moderation and compromise. Once the "vulgarized ideological precepts [such as that of the] 'free born Englishman'..." were accepted by all classes, and the "stereotypes of the upstanding and no-nonsense British workingman..." were "absorbed into the larger stereotype of the nation, the state was more or less compelled to withdraw from the sphere of industrial relations..." [5] As a result, McKibben exclaims, "The British unions were given a freedom of action unique in Europe and (as far as I know) in the world, unencumbered by law or opinion." [6] Possessing the ability to control at least part of their lives, many members of the working class did not feel the need to actively participate in politics or class struggles like their counterparts in Europe may have felt. As long as the State was not seen as an enemy, and as long as the workers did not feel that they were politically powerless, the ability of revolution to crop in Britain remained non-existent.

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