ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 has shown that as boundaries between the skilled and unskilled lost their economic and social clarity, a more homogeneous working class emerged in the years after 1850. This descriptive exercise is, however, only a starting point. The fact that the working class became more homogeneous does not tell us how this process was interpreted by the people concerned or how it affected the potential for class-based collective action. Such growing uniformity could lead to greater sectionalism and division within the working class, as those skilled workers losing their privileges fought to defend them or saw their success or failure in individual terms. This chapter therefore explores how the restructuring of work and labour market relations affected relations between classes and within classes. We will show that the process of homogenisation discussed in Chapter 2 was indeed seen by skilled workers as a threat to the traditional autonomy of their work position, leading them to stage persistent defensive action. However, the second part of the chapter shows that the slow but unmistakable trend towards the bureaucratisation of the labour market which began from the late Victorian period ultimately served to politicise large sections of the working class, paving the way for a more militant and combative trade union movement.
