ABSTRACT
The one phase saw the culmination of the process by which Britain became predominantly a nation of town-dwellers in which the townsman’s interests – good wages, cheap food and a flourishing export trade – took pride of place and a decreasing minority could be said to live in rural conditions. The occasion was the situation produced by the movement among agricultural labourers which Joseph Arch began in 1872. The immediate cause of the development of the movement in the seventies among the agricultural labourers was no doubt the general development of trade unions in the late sixties and seventies in the industrial districts, which was naturally copied in the country districts. The general impressions of a good many observers suggest that the majority of those of the clergy who were challenged by the strike were hesitant, or explicitly neutral, and that they disappointed such of the labourers as appealed to them.
