The Making of the English Working Class

E.P. Thompson argues that the English working class made itself. This act of creation occurred in the context of new ideas about political liberty. It also occurred despite powerful social and economic forces working against it.

Eighteenth-century English writers celebrated the idea of liberty as their nation’s special inheritance. This idea was rooted in both myth and fact. As a myth, the story of English liberty chronicles the nation’s centuries-long recovery from the tyranny imposed by William the Norman, whose invasion and conquest in 1066 brought feudalism to England. According to this myth, events such as Magna Carta in 1215 and the English Civil War of the 1640s represent dramatic moments in a long story of redemption that culminates in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, the triumphant moment that secured English liberty. Notwithstanding its mythical elements, the story of English liberty does have a factual basis. By “liberty,” English writers meant, first and foremost, freedom from the arbitrary power wielded by absolute monarchs. The Glorious Revolution, for instance, established a constitutional balance that made Parliament a permanent and independent feature in the English government, not subject to the will of a king or queen.