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The Dialogue of Struggle: The Contest over Ideological Boundaries in the Case of London Silk Weavers in the Early Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Marc W. Steinberg
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Extract

The early decades of the nineteenth century are widely recognized as formative years for the English working class. During the first two decades a wide variety of trade groups struggled at both the regional and national levels to protect artisanal rights and unmuzzle the legally muted voice of labor (Prothero 1979; Randall 1991; Rule 1986; E. P. Thompson 1966). Success was at best uneven. Revocation of the Statute of Apprentices in 1813–14 was an alarming defeat for artisans who sought to protect their trade privileges from growing capitalist incursions. The successful repeal of the Combination Laws that had barred trade unions in 1824 encouraged a clamoring among many of London’s trades to resuscitate wage rates, precipitating strikes in many industries. Also emerging from the lean years was a new understanding of the relations between capital and labor. “The interests of the masters and men,” London’s Trades’ Newspaper pronounced, “are as much opposed to each other as light is to darkness” (Hollis 1973: 45).

Type
Special Section: Making History from Above and Below: Elite and Popular Perspectives on Politics
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1994 , pp. 505 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

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