ABSTRACT

The social structure of nineteenth-century British cities also varied tremendously. In the great factory towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire segregation was marked. Oldham has fitted events in that Lancashire cotton town into Leninist interpretation of revolutionary class consciousness with skilled men forming the necessary 'vanguard' in a concerted attempt to force a maximum eight-hour working day by strike action in 1834. The Oldham study finds evidence of active class consciousness only in 1834 and in 1842, the worst year of Chartist agitation. After this Oldham's 'revolutionary vanguard' was 'liberalised' by middle-class stratagem which divorced working-class leadership from its natural constituency. Both among the skilled and the unskilled, consciousness of status in an industrial community was further developed than was class consciousness. Class consciousness was a transparent veil which might be thrown over, but could not conceal, the immense variety of working organisations and experiences in nineteenth-century Britain.