The Making of the English Working Class

Chapter 15 focuses on the years 1815-1820, immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, an era that Thompson calls the “heroic age of popular Radicalism” (603). The chapter is divided into six subsections: “Disaffection,” “Problems of Leadership,” “Hampden Clubs,” “Brandreth and Oliver,” “Peterloo,” and “The Cato Street Conspiracy.”

The first three subsections can be summarized in a single word: diffusion. The government’s two decades of counter-revolutionary repression had stifled Radicalism to such an extent that it had no geographic center and no single leader around whom to coalesce. Major John Cartwright, septuagenarian advocate for Parliamentary reform, organized the Hampden Clubs. William Cobbett, the Tory squire, penned scathing denunciations of Old Corruption. Henry Hunt, the orator, brought these messages to the post-war crowds. None of these men, however, had any interest in leading a working-class revolution. In London, Radical conspirators such as James Watson, Arthur Thistlewood, and Thomas Preston hoped to establish an English republic by force if necessary. Francis Place’s Westminster Committee, however, was busy building bridges to middle-class reformers. To the extent that Radicalism had any semblance of cohesion in these post-war years, credit belongs to the vibrant Radical Hampden Clubs, which held a national convention in January 1817. Delegates gathered, however, under the shadow of the London Spa Fields riots of November and December 1816. The government used these Spa-Fields disturbances as pretext for a fresh round of persecution that left Radicalism scattered once more.

The fourth subsection, “Brandreth and Oliver,” tells the story of the failed Pentridge Rising of June 1817. Once again, standard historical accounts underestimate the insurrectionary possibilities of the time. In April, William Oliver, a government spy, infiltrated the Radicals in the old Luddite strongholds of Nottingham and the West Riding, assuring them that sympathetic rebels were prepared to join them in the capital. On June 9, perhaps taking their cue from Oliver, a group of insurrectionists led by Jeremiah Brandreth left the town of Pentridge and began a march on Nottingham, where they planned to gather weapons and supporters and then proceed to London to overthrow the government. Troops intercepted and arrested them. The degree to which Oliver instigated the Pentridge Rising remains an open question. Public opinion, nonetheless, was shocked and outraged by the revelation of a spy’s role.

The fifth and sixth subsections describe the Peterloo massacre and the Cato Street Conspiracy. On August 16, 1819, between 60,000 and 100,000 people, including thousands of women and children, gathered at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester to demonstrate for the right to mass demonstration. By all accounts, their conduct was peaceful, but it also featured much drilling and the appearance of military-like discipline. Alarmed by both the size and the discipline of the working-class crowd, a local cavalry unit called Manchester Yeomanry chose to disperse the gathering by force. 11 people were killed. Of the nearly 600 injuries reported to the Peterloo Relief Committee by the end of 1819, 161 were saber wounds. The government seized upon Peterloo as pretext for the tyrannical Six Acts, which authorized, among other things, warrantless searches of suspects’ homes. In 1820, a group of enraged and desperate London Radicals led by Arthur Thistlewood hatched the Cato Street Conspiracy, a plan to murder the entire Cabinet. Once again, however, a government spy had infiltrated the Radicals. Thistlewood and his companions were arrested and executed.