The Making of the English Working Class - E.P. Thompson.

 

I must have read E.P. Thompson's book 'The Making of the English Working Class' about four times over the years and every time I read the book, I read it in an entirely different way. I probably first read Thompson's book in the early 1980s, when an anarchist friend called Ian Smith, recommended the book to me. Ian taught sociology at Ashton College on Beaufort Road.

I am skeptical about Thompson's basic premise that there was such a thing as a homogeneous 'working-class' by the time of the Reform Bill struggles and he shows an excessive interest in religious cranks like the Muggletonians.  Nevertheless, there are some excellent chapters on the early radicals (Jacobins) who were very much influenced by the French Revolution.

The Napoleonic Wars were initially a war against Jacobinism aimed at restoring the Bourbons to the throne of France. The French Revolution put the fear of death in the British oligarchs who corruptly governed Britain through their pocket and rotten boroughs. That fear also led to repressive measures being taken against radicals. Many British radicals knew that that had little to fear from a French invasion of Britain.

Today, 'Bonapartism' is synonymous with political opportunism. After Napoleon staged a coup on (18 Brumaire), November 9 1799, he became a provisional consul and then later, First Consul of France and by 1802, Consul for life, with the power to appoint his own successor. In May 1804, he became Emperor of France and put members of his own family on the thrones of Europe. Napoleon and his brothers did rig elections, but it must also have occurred to some people, that there was something rather contradictory about being the Emperor of a French Republic. Napoleon's regime rested on French military domination in Europe and when the tide started to turn, and the French people grew tired of war, that was the end of Napoleon.