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The Moral Economy of the Crowd: Some Twentieth-Century Food Riots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Anthony James Coles
Anthony James Coles*
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster
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Extract

      But often in the world's most crowded streets
      And often, in the din of strife,
      There rises an unspeakable desire
      After the knowledge of our buried life ….

The Buried Life, Matthew Arnold

Any comparison between historical phenomena is fraught with many dangers, particularly where a century separates their occurrence. Nevertheless, it is proposed to compare certain aspects of social protest in 1916-17 with the disturbances more closely associated with the final decade of the eighteenth century — the form of protest in question being taxation populaire. For, while examples of such riots can be found from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, as R. B. Rose has written, “… we shall be justified in regarding taxation populaire as primarily and typically an eighteenth century phenomenon.” E. P. Thompson, moreover, considers that “… the final years of the eighteenth century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market.” In both periods the country was suffering from wartime inflation, and food shortages caused by failures in domestic harvests and interruptions in imported supplies, threatened to cause breaches in social harmony. And in both cases the two national governments that emerged were fully prepared to repress the threat to national security posed by outbreaks of working-class unrest. Besides such central parallels, others of a more trivial nature spring to mind. Not too much imagination is needed to see the spirit of the Church and King Mobs marching amongst the ranks of those who attacked pacifist meetings and the property of those with German names; though it may be considered outrageously fancilful to see the devilry of Arthur Thistlewood behind Mrs. Wheeldon's plot to poison Arthur Henderson and Lloyd George.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 157 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. Rose, R. B., “Eighteenth Century Price Riots and Public Policy in England,” International Review of Social History, VI (1961), 283Google Scholar.

2. Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Penguin, ed.; London, 1968), p. 73Google Scholar.

3. G. D. H. Cole and R. Postgate compared certain aspects of repression in the First World War with “the devices of the age of Sidmouth and Castlereagh.” The Common People, 1746-1946 (London, 1968; reprt.), p. 539Google Scholar.

4. Times, 9 April 1917.

5. Carlisle Journal, 15 Dec. 1916.

6. Lloyd, E. M. H., Experiments in State Control (Oxford, 1924), p. 282Google Scholar.

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9. Burke's, EdmundThoughts and Details of Scarcity (London, 1797)Google Scholar presents perhaps one of the most extreme of political economic views. For an early debate on the merits of both systems of thought, see Cobbett's Parliamentary History, Vol. 33, cols. 29-31, 819-28, the debate on the Bill for Preventing the Forestalling, etc. of Live Cattle, 1797. For a survey of current work in this field see Taylor, Arthur J., Laissez-faire and State Intervention in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11. Ibid., pp. 42-44.

12. Whitehaven Advertiser, 16 Dec. 1916.

13. Ibid., 23 Dec. 1916.

14. Carlisle Journal, 12 Dec. 1916.

15. Whitehaven Advertiser, 23 Dec. 1916.

16. Carlisle Journal, 16 Jan. 1917.

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18. Whitehaven News, 7 Dec. 1916.

19. Ibid., 8 Feb. 1917.

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21. C.R.O., The Thomas Carey Scrapbook, pp. 253, 257.

22. Pitch market: Pitchmarkets consisted of stalls occupied by farmers and smallholders who brought their produce into town for sale on market day; as such they represented part of the direct producer-consumer link (see Section II above).

23. West Cumberland Times, 17 Jan. 1917.

24. C.R.O., Thomas Carey Scrapbook, p. 257.

25. Ibid., p. 259.

26. Whitehaven News, 25 Jan. 1917.

27. Whitehaven Journal, 25 Jan. 1917.

28. Carlisle Journal, 23 Jan. 1917.

29. Whitehaven News, 25 Jan. 1917.

30. C.R.O., Thomas Carey Scrapbook, p. 258.

31. Carlisle Journal, 26 Jan. 1917.

32. Whitehaven Advertiser, 23 Dec. 1916.

33. Carlisle Journal, 6 Feb. 1917.

34. Ibid., 23 Jan. 1917.

35. West Cumberland Times, 31 Jan. 1917. This second proposal seems an echo of the City of Exeter's Market Regulations of 1795; part of which said: “… AND WHERE AS the Prices of all sorts of Victuals … brought to this Market, are generally increased by Means of Hucksters … buying, at an early Period of the Market, large Quantities of Goods, with an Intent to sell the same again in the said Market or elsewhere, before the Inhabitants can be properly supplied … a Practice so injurious to the Public should be discouraged and restrained ….” Public Record Office, London, Home Office Papers, H.O. 42/34.

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40. Times, 9 April 1917.

41. Rose, R. B., “Eighteenth Century Price Riots,” I.R.S.H., (1961), 291Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., 282-83.

43. Quoted in Ministry of Labour. Reports of Investigations into the Industrial conditions in certain Depressed Areas, Cmd. 4728, P.P., 1934, 30.

44. A combination of pursuits that had parallels with those of the Cornish tinners of a hundred years previous. See Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, p. 68nGoogle Scholar.

45. Gregory, Roy, The Miners and British Politics (London, 1968), p. 88Google Scholar.

46. Ibid., pp. 183-85.

47. Workington Star, 23 June 1916.

48. According to John McCarron, who became a miners' delegate in Maryport soon after the First World War, such sympathies persisted in the area well into the twenties.

49. Wood, O., “The Development of West Cumberland Iron, Coal and Shipbuilding Industries, 1750-1914,” (Ph.D. thesis, London University, 1952), p. 259.Google Scholar

50. At Stirling's Montreal mine at Cleator Moor coal and iron were brought up the same shaft.

51. Cole, G. D. H., Labour in the Mining Industry, 1914-1918 (Oxford, 1923), p. 5Google Scholar. According to Cole only one other example existed of such a liaison.

52. That Owenite Socialism had taken root in the region is witnessed by the riots in Whitehaven, caused when a crowd of “Protestant Englishmen” attacked the property and persons of the town's “Utopian socialists” — see Carlisle Journal, 27 Aug. 1842Google Scholar. That the principles of producer-co-operation were put into effect can be seen in the establishment of two co-operatively owned pits by the colliers at Cross Low and Townshead, Dearham, West Cumberland. See Bulmer, R., Cumberland Directory 1901, p. 718Google Scholar.

53. Woodcock, George, Anarchism (Penguin reprt.; London, 1970) pp. 298–99Google Scholar.

54. Workington Star, 26 Jan. 1917.

55. Bowley, Marion, Housing and the State (London, 1945), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

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58. Cmd. 4728, P.P., 1934, 20.

59. According to Martin Munro, a 75-year old native of Workington, in conversation with the author in April 1975.

60. A reference to the colors of Lord Lonsdale (and the Cumberland Tories) andthe river that runs through Maryport.

61. Maryport News, A Nov. 1916.

62. Whitehaven News, 25 Jan. 1917.

63. Carlisle Journal, 30 Jan. 1917.

64. Ibid., 12 Oct. 1917.

65. Workington Star, 26 Jan. 1917.

66. Carlisle Journal, 26 Jan. 1917.

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68. C.R.O., Thomas Carey Scrapbook, p. 102.

69. H. M. Hyndman attacked industrial syndicalism for its use of the obsolete tactics of the “Levellers and Luddites.” Kendal, Walter, The Revolutionary Movement in British Politics (London 1969), p. 44Google Scholar.

70. Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd,” Past and Present, No. 50, 136Google Scholar.