Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T15:14:40.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The study of social conflict in English industrial towns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Lynn Hollen Lees
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The problem of social conflict is central to the historiography of nineteenth-century cities. Since Friedrich Engels wrote his powerful indictment of social relations in English industrial towns, urban historians have told and retold tales of dramatic struggles between workers and their middle-class employers. Whether seen from a Marxist or non-Marxist perspective, the standard books on social life in industrial towns abound with strikes, demonstrations, confrontations, and other more subtle signs of conflict. A. Temple Patterson and Malcolm Thomis depict the often tumultuous responses of Leicester and Nottingham framework knitters to their economic decline. Accounts of urban Chartism regularly link workers’ economic and social demands to strong middle-class disapproval and disavowal within a local context. Books on the 1830s and 1840s are particularly rich in incidents of confrontation, but the growing literature on the late nineteenth century also emphasizes this theme. Gareth Stedman Jones places middle-class misconceptions and fears at the centre of his analysis of casual labour in London, and Robert Grey's discussion of Edinburgh artisans assumes the reality of class conflict as a determinant of urban social relations. Nevertheless our understanding of divisions among urban social groups and of the relationships of one group to another remains primitive and unsatisfactory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 7 , May 1980 , pp. 34 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Engels, Friedrich, The Condition of the Working Class in England edited by Henderson, W. O. and Chaloner, W. H. (1958).Google Scholar

2 Patterson, Alfred Temple, Radical Leicester: A history of Leicester (1954)Google Scholar; Thomis, Malcolm I., Politics and Society in Nottingham, 1785–1835 (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

3 Briggs, Asa (ed.), Chartist Studies (1959).Google Scholar

4 Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society (1971)Google Scholar; Gray, Robert Q., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (1976).Google Scholar

5 Hennock, E. P., Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and reality in nineteenth-century urban government (1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fraser, Derek, Urban Politics in Victorian England (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vigier, François, ‘Change and apathy; Liverpool and Manchester during the Industrial Revolution’ (M. A. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1970).Google Scholar

6 Foster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early industrial capitalism in three English towns (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gadian, D. S., ‘Class consciousness in Oldham and other northwest industrial towns, 1830–1850’, Historical Journal, xxi (1978)Google Scholar; Barnsby, George, ‘The Working Class Movement in the Black Country, 1815–1867’ (University of Birmingham, M.A. thesis, 1965)Google Scholar; Stevenson, John, ‘Food riots in England, 1792–1818’, in Ouinault, R. and Stevenson, J. (eds), Popular Protest and Public Order: Six studies in British history, 1790–1820 (1974).Google Scholar

7 Read, Donald, The English Provinces, 1760–1960: A study in influence (1964), 35.Google Scholar

8 Briggs, op. cit., 3.

9 Foster, op. cit., 121.

10 Turner, Victor, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic action in human society (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1974), 24.Google Scholar

11 Sutton, John F., The Datebook of Remarkable and Memorable Events Connected with Nottingham and Its Neighbourhood (1895)Google Scholar; A Chronicle of Events in Leicester (1890).

12 Knowles, K. G. J. C., Strikes: A study in industrial conflict (1952), 197.Google Scholar

13 Shorter, Edward and Tilly, Charles, Strikes in France, 1830–1968 (1974)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Tilly, Louise and Tilly, Richard, The Rebellious Century, 1830–1960 (1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilly, Charles, ‘Collective action in England and America, 1765–1775’, in Brown, Richard Maxwell and Fehrenbacher, Don E. (eds), Tradition, Conflict and Modernization: Perspectives on the American Revolution (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Schweitzer, R. A., ‘The study of contentious gatherings in early nineteenth century Great Britain’, Historical Methods, xii (Summer 1979).Google Scholar

14 Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, ‘Report on strikes and lockouts’, P.P. 1890, LXVIII, 480–533; P.P. 1890–1, LXXVIII, 743–804; P.P. 1894, LXXXIII pt. 1, 594–660; P.P. 1895, XCII, 211; The Labour Gazette, ‘ Monthly lists of trade disputes’, 1895–1911.

15 See Shorter and Tilly, op. cit.

16 Tilly, Tilly and Tilly, op. cit.; see also Tilly, Charles, ‘How protest modernized in France, 1845–1855’, in Aydelotte, William, Bogue, Alan and Fogel, Robert (eds), The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History (Princeton, 1972)Google Scholar, and Tilly, Charles, ‘Major forms of collective action in modern Europe’, Theory and Society, ii (1976).Google Scholar

17 Sutton, op. cit.

18 Gurnham, Richard, Two Hundred Years: The hosiery unions, 1776–1976 (1976).Google Scholar

19 Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and anti-structure (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977).Google Scholar

20 Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors, op. cit., 35–41.

21 Rudé, George, The Crowd in History: A study of popular disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848 (New York and London, 1964), 214–36.Google Scholar

22 Young, Alfred F., The Crowd and the Coming of the American Revolution: From ritual to rebellion in Boston, 1745–1776 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

23 Rozman, Gilbert, Urban Networks in Chʾing China and Tokugawa Japan (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar; idem, Urban Networks in Russia, 1750–1800, and Premodern Periodization (Princeton, 1976).

24 Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul, English Towns in Transition, 1500–1700 (1976).Google Scholar

25 Patterson, op. cit., 307.

26 Barnsby, op. cit., 9–16, 74–94.

27 The Pioneer, ccxli (20 01 1906).Google Scholar

28 Vine, J. R. Somers, English Municipal Institutions, Their Growth and Development from 1835 to 1879 Statistically Illustrated (1879), 11, 14–15.Google Scholar

29 Fraser, op. cit., 10.

30 Vine, op. cit., 52–9, 60–2.

31 ‘Abstract of a Return…of several cities and boroughs of Great Britain, their populations respectively, the number of police…’, P.P. 1854 (C. 345), LIII, 509.Google Scholar

32 R. Quinault, ‘The Warwickshire county magistracy and public order, c. 1830–1870’, in Quinault and Stevenson, op. cit., 187–92.

33 ‘Abstract of a Return showing the Number of the Constabulary Force in each County or Division of a County in England and Wales’, P.P. 1847, XLVII, 632–9.Google Scholar

34 Vine, op. cit., 60–2; The Census of England and Wales for 1891, P.P. 1893–1894 (C. 6948), CIV, 160–75.Google Scholar

35 Gurnham, op. cit., 6–16; Cuthbert, Norman H., The Lace Makers' Society: A study of trade unionism in the British lace industry, 1760–1960 (1960), 10–19.Google Scholar

36 Turner, H. A., Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy: A comparative study of the cotton unions (1962), 62–3, 66–7, 287–8.Google Scholar

37 Cuthbert, op. cit., 31–2, 48, 54.

38 Gurnham, op. cit., 26–8, 32–3, 50–6; Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group C, Vol. I, P.P. 1892 (C. 6708–III) XXXIV, 63.Google Scholar

39 H. A. Turner, op. cit., 115–17, 122, 129–32, 144–6; Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, Group C, Vol. I, 18.Google Scholar

40 Webb Trade Union Collection, Series E, A-XLVII, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

41 Webb Trade Union Collection, Series E, A-IV.

42 Shorter and Tilly, op. cit., 188.