The Eighth Annual Report Of The Amalgamated Society Of Carpenters And Joiners From December 1866 To December 1867

The rapid eclipse of Chartism, and the relative tranquility of the period 1848-67 has been one of the most enduring puzzles of nineteenth-century British history. This book takes a fresh look at this conundrum, treating the period between the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 as a coherent whole for the first time. It suggests that previous depictions of 1848 as a watershed in British history have both exaggerated the nature of the transitions which occurred at mid-century, and have over-estimated both the collapse of radical attitudes and the fading of working-class resentment. The experiences of the Manchester working class show that poverty, unemployment and hardship persisted through the mid-Victorian boom. While some workers may have taken advantage of economic opportunities and the various movements of social and moral reform promoted by the middle class to acquire respectability, in general, attempts at middle-class ’moral imperialism’ brought only marginal changes to popular culture and attitudes. Instead, it is argued, the roots of the radical collapse and of political stability lie elsewhere: in the initial failure of radical leaders to sustain a firm consensus on effective strategies of reform, and in changes in the political culture of the mid-century city which closed off spaces in which independent working-class politics could continue to function. In the context of the most important industrial city of the era, this study provides a wide-ranging analysis of the complex forces which forged the uneasy compromise on which mid-nineteenth century stability rested.

First published in 1974, Trade Unions and Society examines the process by which trade unions sought and achieved recognition in the three decades after 1850. It shows a parallel process: on the one hand, trade unionists struggling to attain the indispensable Victorian virtue, ‘respectability’, without sacrificing their essentially protective functions; on the other hand, employers recognizing the value of an ordered system of industrial relation in which trade unions could exert discipline and control over their workers. While this was going on, middle-class radicals (often themselves employers) continued their attack on aristocratic domination of political institutions and looked to a ‘labour aristocracy’ as allies. The book shows the manner in which, thanks to their own efforts and those of their indefatigable publicists, unionists became identified with the respectable elite of the working class. It deals with a crucial period in the trade union development but looks at it not merely from the point of view of the unions, but also that of the employers, politicians, the press, intellectuals, political economists, giving for the first time a rounded picture of trade unionism and industrial relations in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This book will be of interest to students of economics and history.

First published in 1978. Mid-Victorian Britain was relatively stable in comparison with the turbulent period that preceded it, and that stability is in part explained by the emergence of an artisan elite with a specific relationship to the society around it. This book examines that elite: its clubs and societies, co-operatives and building societies; its values and ideology, challenging the notion that these artisans directly absorbed middle-class values; its politics, tracing the evolution from Chartism through the Reform League and on to a radical liberalism which existed in constant tension with the local liberal middle class. A careful reconstruction of the social, political and industrial life of these artisans is set within the context of the local communities, and their understanding of the mid-Victorian society in which they lived is seen as the explanation for their values and activities. This title makes a major contribution towards our understanding of the nineteenth-century working class.