¹ Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Brighton, 1980);Google Scholar Jones, G. Stedman, “The Language of Chartism”, in: The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–1860, ed. by Epstein, J. and Thompson, D. (London, 1982);Google Scholar id., “Rethinking Chartism”, in Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983);Google Scholar Calhoun, C., The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago, 1982);Google Scholar Glen, R., Urban Workers in the Early Industrial Revolution (London, 1983).Google Scholar See also Musson, A. E., British Trade Unions 1800–1875 (London, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² The first chapter in Glen, Urban Workers in the Early Industrial Revolution, summarises recent debates concerning class in early-nineteenth-century England. See also Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1980),Google Scholar Preface and Conclusion; Hobsbawm, E. J., Worlds of Labour (London, 1984);Google Scholar Thompson, D., The Chartists (London, 1984). See also the essays by Sykes, Behagg and Epstein in The Chartist Experience for an emphasis upon the class character of Chartism.Google Scholar

³ Thus, for example, the “generous but critical reception” given to Edward Thompson's book in the 1960's academic press. See Thompson, , The Making, p. 917.Google Scholar

⁴ The “halting” of the “forward march of labour” has certainly been of central importance in Stedman Jones's historical questioning of class. See his Languages of Class, op. cit., p. 1 and Introduction. Political changes have, at least at the conscious level of intention, informed the work of Calhoun, Glen and Joyce to a much lesser extent.

⁵ From his “objective” socio-structural vantage point, Calhoun has directed (or, more “objectively”, misdirected) his fire at Edward Thompson's alleged preoccupation with culture and consciousness (“culturalism”) at the expense of the ldquo;objective” structural determinations of class and social reality. Despite his acknowledged debt to Thompson's anti-reductionist standpoint, Stedman Jones also claims that Thompson's central notion of “experience” is subjectivist in character. Stedman Jones much prefers Althusser's concept of hidden structure. I would suggest that Thompson is fully alive to the importance of structure, is suspicious of the notion of permanently hidden structures (i.e. beyond the perception of mere mortals, if not academics), and offers a convincing defence of his historical practice. For such matters see Calhoun, , The Question of Class Struggle, op. cit., pp. x, 22, 33;Google Scholar Jones, Stedman, Languages of Class, pp. 12, 20;Google Scholar Thompson, E. P., “The Politics of Theory”, in: People's History and Socialist Theory, ed. by Samuel, R. (London, 1981); and the excellent article by E. M. Wood, “E. P. Thompson and His Critics”, in: Studies in Political Economy, No 9 (1982). For “total history” see Joyce, Work, Society and Politics, op. cit., p. xxiv.Google Scholar

⁶ Indeed, it may be justifiably argued that Stedman Jones does not really offer a poststructuralist reading of language at all, but rather that his overriding concern rests with the history of radicalism as a body of ideas; and that such ideas are approached in the manner of conventional intellectual history, complete with its insufficient attention to context and complexity of meaning. As Karen Sawislak has noted, “Because he is convinced that the Chartists said only what they meant, and meant only what they (literally) said, Stedman Jones sees Chartism only as a political movement with little to do with the productive system” (“Rethinking Chartism”, discussion paper, Yale University, 1987). Stedman Jones could have clarified his methodological concerns by providing an outline of the theories of Saussure and the post-structuralists; and, as Robbie Gray observes in his subtle and perceptive review, by acknowledging that post-structuralist work on language and reality “is itself a field of debate, rather than a firmly constituted method which historians can adopt” (Gray, R., “The Deconstructing of the English Working Class”, in: Social History, XI (1986), p. 367). In reference to the above issues, see J. Foster, “The Declassing of Language”, in: New Left Review, No 150 (1985), esp. p. 43.Google Scholar

⁷ Pickering, P. A., “Class without Words: Symbolic Communication in the Chartist Movement”, in: Past Present, No 112 (1986);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Epstein, J., “Rethinking the Categories of Working-Class History”, in: Labour/Le Travail, No 18 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Stedman Jones's criticisms of Edward Thompson's view of radicalism and Chartism are brief but unmistakable, Languages of Class, pp. 16–20. Somewhat surprisingly, Dorothy Thompson's work on Chartism is not directly addressed in either LCh or RCh. Presumably, as an advocate of the “class” character of Chartism, Dorothy Thompson is to be placed in the “social” camp. Simultaneously, given her close attention to the politics of class, Dorothy, like Edward Thompson, Jim Epstein and Robert Sykes, is not to be seen as a reductionist of an economic kind. However, the implication in Stedman Jones's work is that the Thompsons largely fail to apply their aversion to economic reductionism to the study of language, the latter being seen far too unproblematically as the expression of “experience”. See Thompson, , The Making, pp. 782, 887–915;Google Scholar Thompson, D., The Early Chartists (London, 1971), Introduction.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Jones, Stedman, Languages of Class, p. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 209

¹¹ It might be assumed, therefore, that Stedman Jones is not abandoning economism in favour of idealism, but is intent upon the construction of a sophisticated materialism. However, many of Stedman Jones's other references to such matters are far less clear and unambiguous than the passages quoted in the text. For example, in Languages of Class he seems at various points to seriously doubt: the very nature of material determination (p. 7); the significance of “class” as an “ontological reality” (preferring, instead, to treat “class” as a “discursive” reality, and to “explain languages of class from the nature of politics rather than the character of politics from the nature of class”, p. 8); and the extent to which material factors exerted any significant influence upon the language of popular radicalism (“But the form in which these discontents were addressed cannot be understood in terms of the consciousness of a particular social class, since the form pre-existed any independent action by such a class and did not significantly change in response to it”, RCh, p. 95, italics added). Indeed, I will argue that in practice Stedman Jones improperly releases the political ideas of the Chartists from their material influences and limits, affords such ideas inflated autonomy, and thus embraces idealism.

¹² Ibid., p. 24.

¹³ LCh, pp. 13, 15–16, 20, 23, 31, 45; RCh, pp. 153–54.

¹⁴ Thompson, , The Making, pp. 11, 782;Google Scholar Thompson, The Chartists, op. cit., chs 5, 6, 10; Jones, Stedman, “Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution”, in Languages of Class, pp. 60–62.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Jones, Stedman, RCh, p. 117;Google Scholar id., “Some Notes on Karl Marx and the English Labour Movement”, in: History Workshop, No 18 (1984).

¹⁶ Id., “Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution”, loc. cit., pp. 45–55, 66–74.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 73.

¹⁸ Id., Languages of Class, pp. 7, 16.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ “The Language analysed here is largely taken from radical literature and speeches reported in the radical press. […] it is not suggested that this is the only language Chartists employed”. LCh, note 10.

²¹ For Chartism in the cotton districts see Sykes, R., “Early Chartism and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire”, in: The Chartist Experience; Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974);Google Scholar Kirk, N., The Growth of Working Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England (London, 1985), ch. 2.Google Scholar

²² The primary aim of this article is to document the existence of anti-capitalist ideas within Chartism rather than to assess the relative weight of such ideas within Chartist ideology as a whole. As suggested to me by John Walton and Steve Jones, questions concerning the typicality of such ideas merit further investigation. This exercise is, however, largely beyond the scope of the present article.

²³ For the process of combined and uneven capitalist development in nineteenth-century Britain see Samuel, R., “Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in mid-Victorian Britain”, in: History Workshop, No 3 (1977), esp. pp. 7–13, 45–60.Google Scholar

²⁴ Thompson, N. W., The People's Science: The Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816–34 (Cambridge, 1984). Thompson suggests that Gray, Bray, Thompson and Hodgskin employed a notion of labour exploitation which owed far more to the thinking of Smith than that of Ricardo (pp. 86–90, 106).Google Scholar

²⁵ Thompson has written, unpublished correspondence, November 1985, that “Rethinking Chartism' runs contrary at almost every point to the central thesis of The People's Science”.

²⁶ Thompson, , The People's Science, op. cit., pp. 87–88, 96–102, 110.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 96, 145.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 108–09.

²⁹ Ibid. For the relationship of Owen and Owenism to the political radicalism see Claeys, G., “Language, Class and Historical Consciousness in Nineteenth Century Britain”, in: Economy and Society, XIV (1985), esp. pp. 246–56.Google Scholar

³⁰ Thompson, , The People's Science, p. 110.Google Scholar

³¹ Id., unpublished correspondence.

³² Id., The People's Science, pp. 76–81, 148.

³³ Ibid., pp. 148–50, 219–28.

³⁴ See, for example, Thompson, , The Making, p. 782.Google Scholar

³⁵ Thompson, , The People's Science, pp. 221–22.Google Scholar

³⁶ Challinor, R., “Peter Murray McDouall and ‘Physical Force Chartism’”, in: International Socialism, Second Series, No 12 (1981);Google Scholar Jenkins, Mick, The General Strike of 1842 (London, 1980), pp. 36, 39, 161, 163–64.Google Scholar

³⁷ Mc. Douall's Chartist and Republican Journal (hereafter Mc. Douall's Journal), 31 07 1841.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Hence McDouall wrote, ibid. (italics added): “The trades can never have protection until they have political power. Because the masters have first the will to reduce wages, and they have secondly, the power to enforce a reduction. They make the workman first poor, and then they make him submissive. The exaction of the masters come [sic] first. That might be borne, had it been the only plucking to which workmen are subjected. It is, however, so contrived that after the master has concluded, the government begins their [sic] tything”. The remainder of the article is devoted to criticism of the excessive burden of indirect taxation shouldered by workers.

⁴⁰ Especially in its “moral” critique of reification and the loss of human concerns and values under a system obsessed with profit maximisation, competition and individualism. See Marx, K., Capital, I (London, 1970), pp. 71–83, 577–95, 645Google Scholar For Marx's notions of alienation and commodity fetishism see also id., Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, ed. by Bottomore, T. B. and Rubel, M. (London, 1956), pp. 167–77.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mc. Douall's Journal, 17 April 1841. Italics added.

⁴² Ibid., 3 April.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ For Pilling see Jenkins, The General Strike of 1842, op. cit., ch. 4.

⁴⁵ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, Esq., and Fifty-eight Others (London, 1843), p. 249.

⁴⁶ For Leach see Sykes, , “Early Chartism and Trade Unionism”. loc. cit., pp. 171–72;Google Scholar Jenkins, , The General Strike of 1842, pp. 53, 137–38, 227–28.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Stubborn Facts from the Factories, by a Manchester Operative [Leach, J.] (London, 1844), pp. 3, 50.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, op. cit., p. viii.

⁴⁹ Saville, J., Ernest Jones: Chartist. Selections from the Writings and Speeches of Ernest Jones (London, 1952), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Mc. Douall's Journal, 3 April 1841.

⁵¹ Ibid., 10 April. Italics added.

⁵² Ibid., 17 April.

⁵³ Ibid., 10 July. The similarity between McDouall's and Marx's condemnations of the largely hollow character of the worker's “freedoms” under nineteenth-century capitalism will be readily observed. For Marx, , see Capital, I, op. cit., pp. 176, 356.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Mc. Douall's Journal, 3 July.

⁵⁵ It could, for example, be argued that McDouall presented an idealised picture of the situation of the worker under petty commodity production, especially in relation to the eighteenth-century handloom weaver. But, in this context, see the cautionary note struck by Edward Thompson in ch. 9 (“The Weavers”, esp. pp. 297–98) of The Making.

⁵⁶ See, for example, the unsatisfactory attempt by McCord, N., “Adding a Touch of Class”, in: History, LXX (1985),Google Scholar to draw a distinction between “belief” and “reality”. What such a positivistic approach ignores or, at best, underplays is the role of consciousness as an integral part of “reality”. See on this latter point Williams, R., Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), pp. 59–71, 75–82.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Thompson, , The Making, p. 12.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. viii.

⁵⁹ Saville, , Ernest Jones, op. cit., pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ For examples of employer “tyranny” see Dutton, H. I. and King, J. E., “The Limits of Paternalism: The Cotton Tyrants of North Lancashire, 1836–54“, in: Social History, VII (1982), pp. 60, 64–69;Google Scholar Kirk, , Working Class Reformism, op. cit., pp. 267–72.Google Scholar

⁶¹ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. 249.

⁶² Ibid., p. 251.

⁶³ “And I do say that if Mr. O'Connor has made it a chartist question, he has done wonders to make it extend through England, Ireland, and Scotland. But is was always a wage question, and ten hours bill with me”. Ibid., pp. 254–55, italics added.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 255.

⁶⁵ Mc. Douall's Chartist Journal and Trades' Advocate, 28 August 1841.

⁶⁶ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, pp. vi-vii.

⁶⁷ Facts, Stubborn, op. cit., p. 40.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Dutton and King, “The Limits of Paternalism”, loc. cit.

⁶⁹ Mc. Douall's Journal, 17 April 1841.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 24 April.

⁷¹ Mc. Douall's Chartist Journal and Trades' Advocate, 25 September.

⁷² The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. vii.

⁷³ Facts, Stubborn, p. 83.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. 250.

⁷⁵ Mc. Douall's Journal, 25 April 1841.

⁷⁶ Saville, , Jones, Ernest, p. 149.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. viii.

⁷⁸ Ibid., pp. vi–vii.

⁷⁹ Facts, Stubborn, p. 12.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ See, for example, Mc. Douall's Journal, 14 August 1841; Lambertz, J., “Sexual Harassment in the Nineteenth Century English Cotton Industry”, in: History Workshop, No 19 (1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸¹ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, pp. vi–vii, 252–53; Facts, Stubborn, p. 12; Mc. Douall's Journal, 19 and 26 June, 31 July, 7 and 14 August 1841.Google Scholar

⁸² See, for example, Mc. Douall's Journal, 7 August; Thompson, , The Chartists, p. 148.Google Scholar

⁸³ Facts, Stubborn, pp. 7ff., 26.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, pp. vi–vii.

⁸⁵ Ibid., pp. 279–81; Mc. Douall's Journal, 7 August.

⁸⁶ Thompson, , The Making, p. 222.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Mc. Douall's Journal, 26 June.

⁸⁸ Thompson, , The Chartists, p. 252.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Above, pp. 24, 26.

⁹⁰ Epstein, J., The Lion of Freedom: Feargus O'Connor and the Chartist Movement, 1832–1842 (London, 1982), pp. 273–74.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Thompson, , The Making, ch. 8; I. J. Prothero, “London Chartism and the Trades”, in: Economic History Review, Second Series, XXIV (1971).Google Scholar

⁹² See the view of Noel Thompson outlined above, pp. 14ff. For an emphasis upon the notion of exploitation within exchange rather than within production, see Prothero, I. J., Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London: John Gast and his Times (Folkestone, 1979), esp. p. 336.Google Scholar

⁹³ Goodway, D., London Chartism 1838–1848 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 7.

⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 9.

⁹⁶ Behagg, C., “An Alliance with the Middle Class: the Birmingham Political Union and Early Chartism”, in: The Chartist Experience, p. 69;Google Scholar cf. id., “Custom, Class and Change: The Trade Societies of Birmingham”, in: Social History, IV (1979), pp. 458–63.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Id., “An Alliance with the Middle Class”, p. 72; cf. Prothero, Artisans and Politics, op. cit., pp. 224–25.

⁹⁸ Behagg, , “An Alliance with the Middle Class”, p. 69.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ It must, however, be remembered that the pace and extent of structural economic change and proletarianisation varied considerably both within and between trades. See, for example, Donnelly, F. K. and Baxter, J. L., “Sheffield and the English Revolutionary Tradition, 1791–1820”, in: International Review of Social History, XX (1975);Google Scholar Baxter, J. L., “Early Chartism and Labour Class Struggle: South Yorkshire 1837–1840”, in: Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire, ed. by Pollard, S. and Holmes, C. (Barnsley, 1976).Google Scholar In some centres of “artisan” production, where economic change did not threaten the position of a “labour aristocracy”, middle- and working-class radicals tended to work together more easily. See, for example, Crossick, G., An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London 1840–1880 (London, 1978),Google Scholar ch. 10; Gray, R. Q., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), pp. 155–64.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ The claim is made here that Stedman Jones greatly underestimates the extent to which former “abuses” had, by the 1830's, expanded into a system of production, and that such a system was perceived by many Chartists as intent upon achieving a hegemonic position within the world of production as a whole. See RCh, pp. 116–17.

¹⁰¹ Thompson, , The Making, pp. 8–10; Thompson, The Early Chartists, op. cit., Introduction.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Thompson, , The Chartists, pp. 2–5, 304–06;Google Scholar Briggs, A., “The Local Background of Chartism”, in: Chartist Studies, ed. by id. (London, 1959).Google Scholar

¹⁰³ For example, the goals of individual and collective worker independence, which were central to Chartism, were to be achieved by such various (yet complementary rather than conflicting) means as trade unionism, political struggle, co-operation and the Land Plan.

¹⁰⁴ Briggs, , “The Local Background”, loc. cit., pp. 2–3, 15;Google Scholar id., “National Bearings”, ibid., p. 291.

¹⁰⁵ Thus, McDouall: “Never, my friends, will the free labourer rise superior to the black slave, until he has the power in his own hands of shortening the hours of his labour: of securing better payment for his labour, and of possessing the real privilege of the free labourer, which are [sic] simply to be paid well for his labour, to possess the means of protecting it, and to have the free liberty of enjoying it”, Mc. Douall's Journal, 10 July 1841. James Leach wanted “an alteration in the institutions of this country as will guarantee to labour that protection which it so imperatively demands”, The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. 278. See also ibid. for the views of Pilling (pp. 249–51) and Christopher Doyle (pp. 268–70) on such matters. Demands for greater control over the pace, nature and duration of work and for workers to receive the full fruits of their labour were often made in the Chartist period. See, for example, Mc. Douall's Journal, 10 and 17 April, 10 July; Saville, , Jones, Ernest, p. 151.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ See, for example, Mc. Douall's Journal, 10 July, 7 August.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 17 April; Saville, Ernest Jones, p. 151; Thompson, The Chartists, p. 337.

¹⁰⁸ Mc. Douall's Journal, 17 April; Saville, , Jones, Ernest, pp. 151–52; Thompson, , The Making, p. 913.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Thompson, , The Making, p. 12, ch. 8.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Herein lies an important key to mid-Victorian working-class reformism: the advances made by workers's organisations during the late 1840's and 1850's and the establishment of a foothold, however unstable, within the existing “system”. I fully endorse Stedman Jones's views upon this development. See Kirk, Working Class Reformism, ch. 4.

¹¹¹ Esp. his “Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870–1900”, in Languages of Class.

¹¹² For the Marxist method of abstraction see the very helpful article by Johnson, Richard, “Reading for the Best Marx: History-Writing and Historical Abstraction”, in: Making Histories, ed. by id. et al. (London, 1982).Google Scholar

¹¹³ Foster, , “The Declassing of Language”, loc. cit., pp. 40–41, 43, has made the important point that, in adopting a “non-referential conception of language”, Stedman Jones ignores the meanings of words within specific historical contexts. “The crucial nexus of social practice, language and consciousness is simply ignored”, writes Foster; the study of language is effectively divorced from an examination of social practice, and the upshot is a form of idealist reductionism.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Thompson, E. P., “Eighteenth-Century English Society: Class struggle without class?”, in: Social History, III (1978), p. 150.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Id., The Making, p. 9.

¹¹⁶ Marx, K. and Engels, F., On Britain (Moscow, 1953), pp. 249–70.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Ibid., pp. 270–71.

¹¹⁸ Hobsbawm, E. J., “History and ‘The Dark Satanic Mills’”, in Labouring Men (London, 1964).Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ The key lay, of course, in Marx's distinction between the concepts of labour and labour power. Marx's pamphlet Wage Labour and Capital was published under Engels's guidance in 1891, but originated in a series of articles by Marx in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in April 1849. Engels explained that he was forced to correct it as it did not, in the original, distinguish between the concepts labour and labour power – hence no theory of surplus value. According, however, to Rosdolsky (quoting from Marx's Grundrisse) by 1848 “his theory of surplus-value, the cornerstone of his economic system, was established in its fundamentals”, although due to interruptions to Marx's work the developed concept of surplus value would probably be dated to 1850–51. I am grateful for this information to a colleague, Keith Gibbard, in the Department of Economics, Manchester Polytechnic. See also McLellan, D., Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (London, 1973), pp. 296, 344–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹²⁰ Calhoun, , The Question of Class Struggle, pp. 45–55.Google Scholar But see Thompson, D., “Women and Nineteenth-Century Radical Politics: A Lost Dimension”, in: The Rights and Wrongs of Women, ed. by Mitchell, J. and Oakley, A. (Harmondsworth, 1976), p. 114, for the broad spectrum of radical ideas.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Thompson, , The Making, pp. 913–15; Thompson, , The Chartists, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

¹²² Hobsbawm, E. J., “Artisan or Labour Aristocrat?”, in: Economic History Review, Second Series, XXXVII (1984), p. 362.Google Scholar For an excellent discussion of the dynamic character of artisan thought, especially the transformation from customary to more forward-looking goals, see Prothero, , Artisans and Politics, op. cit., Conclusion.Google Scholar

¹²³ Thompson, , The Making, p. 913.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Thompson, , The Chartists, p. 240.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Ibid., p. 253.

¹²⁶ Ibid., pp. 245–51; Storch, R. D., “The Problem of Working-Class Leisure”, in: Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain, ed. by Donajgrodzki, A. P. (London, 1977), pp. 139–42.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Storch, , “Working-Class Leisure”, p. 138.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ Yeo, E., “Culture and Constraint in Working-Class Movements, 1830–1855”, in: Popular Culture and Class Conflict 1590–1914, ed. by id and Yeo, S. (Brighton, 1981), pp. 157-60;Google Scholar Thompson, , The Chartists, p. 251.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ The Trial of Feargus O'Connor, p. vi.

¹³⁰ J. A. Epstein, “Some Organisational and Cultural Aspects of the Chartist Movement in Nottingham”, in: The Chartist Experience.

¹³¹ For continued class conflict in the mid-Victorian years see Kirk, , Working Class Reformism, pp. 245–72.Google Scholar

¹³² Saville, J., “A Commentary by Way of Conclusion”, in 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement (forthcoming). Much of the following section concerning the character of the State is heavily indebted to John Saville's work.Google Scholar

³³ See, for example, Kirk, , Working Class Reformism, pp. 148–154, 164–65, 182–89, 336.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Richards, P., “State Formation and Class Struggle, 1832–48”, in: Capitalism, State Formation and Marxist Theory, ed. by Corrigan, P. (London, 1980).Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Jones, Stedman, Languages of Class, p. 73.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Kirk, , Working Class Reformism, pp. 25, 31, 267–69.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Saville, “A Commentary”, loc. cit., pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Ibid., p. 27.

¹³⁹ Jenkins, , The General Strike of 1842, p. 219.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ Thompson, , The Chartists, p. 295.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ Saville, , “A Commentary”, pp. 27–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴² See Foster's, John introduction to Jenkins, The General Strike of 1842, esp. pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ John Foster and Ellen Wood have both criticised the idealist thrust of Stedman Jones's recent work. See Foster, , “The Declassing of Language”, pp. 40–45;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wood, E. M., The Retreat From Class (London, 1986), pp. 102–15.Google Scholar