The view that class occupied a central place in the lives of nineteenth-century English workers has recently come under increasing criticism within the fields of labour and social history. Joyce (1980), Stedman Jones (1982 and 1983), Calhoun (1982) and Glen (1984) are prominent examples of scholars who have proclaimed, albeit to varying degrees and with different points of emphasis, that at various times during the nineteenth century workers were far less motivated by class than claimed by Edward and Dorothy Thompson, Hobsbawm and likeminded historians. Criticisms of this latter group of historians are, of course, not new. Nevertheless it may be suggested that the recent criticisms of class do possess two distinguishing characteristics. Firstly, they have surely gathered a momentum and a degree of influence within labour and social history which the criticisms of the 1960's (especially the positivist-based critiques of Edward Thompson's view of class) failed to achieve. (This change is, in part, related to the defeats and retreats suffered by the labour movement under Thatcherism, and the current intellectual and political re-assessment of the historical strength of class-consciousness within the British working class.) Secondly, the criticisms of the 1980's issue from a much wider range of theoretical perspectives than was the case during the 1960's.

Nineteenth-century housing was not all gloom and doom. For significant elements of the nation the standard of comfort and material welfare improved substantially. Suburbanization of the middle classes in the second half of the century appreciably improved environmental conditions, the family in particular benefitting from a semi-rural existence with only the commuting breadwinner subject to the hostility of urban conditions. In the last third of the nineteenth century rising real incomes were especially beneficial to artisans and the more regularly employed labouring class. last third of the nineteenth century rising real incomes were especially beneficial to artisans and the more regularly employed labouring class. Linoleum, curtains, parlour furniture, even pianos transformed the immediate appearance of the home; shoes, a change of clothes and running water that of the people; and the kitchen range, water closets and gas mantles re-arranged the domestic patterns in other respects. The possibility of an outing to the seaside was for many a realistic one, while the growth of organized sport created leisure possibilities, as did the expansion of clubs and other social activities.

On 26 December 1933 the front page of the socialist daily Vooruit (Forward) carries a lyrical description of the Christmas Congress of the Belgian Labour Party, already glorified by its old patron Emile Vandervelde as “the most wonderful socialist convention of the past 25 years”. In a long speech on the first day of session “comrade Rik de Man” has elaborated the Plan of Labour. When he leaves the rostrum he is embraced by Vandervelde and flooded by the acclamations of the delegates.

In a well known study of the building industry written some years ago, Richard Price argued that the institutionalisation of trade unions and general formalisation of industrial relations that occurred during the latter half of the nineteenth century were influences that tended to restrict the capacity of work groups to regulate the conditions of their working lives. Whereas earlier labour historians, from the Webbs onwards, had emphasised the part played by formal organisations in the improvement of working conditions, Price stressed the capacity of informal groups to control the way work was conducted. Price's approach, and that of other writers adopting a similar perspective, has been extremely influential, not least because it accorded well with developments taking place in the modern industrial relations setting of the 1960s and 1970s, where interest was focussed upon autonomous work group activity. In the context of the mid-nineteenth century, however, Price certainly pushed his argument a long way. The capacity of craft workers, possessing a strong corporate tradition, to regulate autonomously conditions in their trade was one thing, but Price suggested that work group formation and activity extended to labourers, in building and other industries. Dock labourers, in particular, were held to have been capable of such regulative activity, “long before unionisation”. If this was indeed the case, then the argument regarding the negative contribution of formal union organisation and collective bargaining must presumably be held to apply even in those sectors of employment where the new unionism of the 1880s and 1890s made its appearance.

Not long ago, sociologists and labor economists used to talk confidently about the “natural history of the strike”. By that they meant its rather smooth progress along a line that supposedly rose rapidly in the early stages of industrial growth, gradually flattened out with the establishment of stable collective bargaining, and slowly fell as the strike proceeded to “wither away” in the prosperity of “advanced industrial society”.

Among the various theoretical insights which seek to explain the emergence (and, for our purposes, the amendment) of ‘social’ legislation, the interpretation advanced by Oliver MacDonagh to explain nineteenth century governmental developments is widely known. This approach, which ascribes legal changes to the ‘pressure of events’, is built upon a five-stage model, progressing from the ‘discovery’ of an ‘evil’, to its administrative solution by means of legislative enactment. MacDonagh's formulation attracted, in turn, the criticism of those students of nineteenth century government growth, who pointed to the influence of Benthamite ideas as the forcing-house of change. Latterly, John Goldthorpe has sought to place emphasis on the role of social movements in galvanising legal reforms, suggesting how different interest groups might vie with one another in a pluralistic struggle for success.

Central to Professor Pollard's “Reflections on a Re-consideration” is the contention that in 1917 Britain's co-operators decided to enter electoral politics as a result of the acceleration of long-run economic and social change. This decision, it is argued, emerged naturally from the steady prewar growth in class-consciousness established by secular shifts in the fabric of Britain's economy and society. We can agree that there is some evidence of a slow growth of class-consciousness before 1914, but not that this should have as its “natural” outcome the establishment of a political party by the British co-operative movement. It remains my contention that this departure was principally the result of the post-1914 experience of British co-operators.