The Making of the English Working Class

The book’s title, The Making of the English Working Class, reflects Thompson’s historical approach to class, which he views as both “an active process” and a “historical relationship” (9) that cannot be divorced from its particular context. He distinguishes his historical approach from that of other social scientists, who tend to study class without reference to time and place. Thompson describes his book as a “biography of the English working class” (11) in its formative years, which he identifies as 1780-1832. He concludes by explaining that his subject is the English working class, as opposed to Scottish, Welsh, and Irish counterparts.

Chapter 1 establishes the historical context for all of Part 1. It opens with a quotation from the “leading rules” of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), a group of pro-democracy reading and debating clubs: “That the Number of our Members be unlimited” (17)—a feature that marked the LCS as “a new kind of organization” (21). 

The LCS rule of unlimited membership was significant because it was a direct counter to suffrage laws that had been in place since the mid-17th century. After the English Civil War of the 1640s, Puritan soldiers insisted that the