ABSTRACT
There has always been much communal self-help among working-class men and women, especially between members of the same family, in times of sickness or adversity. Although thinking and better-informed co-operators were becoming more and more concerned at the state of the lower echelons of the working classes, the average rank-and-file member was suspicious of social experiments of the kind attempted in Coronation Street, Sunderland. No doubt political expediency was another factor, and helps to explain the coming of the pre-war Liberal reforms; but for whatever reason, working-class self-help had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. In one sense then, the Liberal reforms closed an epoch in the history of working-class self-help. Especially in the middle years of the nineteenth century, working-class men spent long hours after work on union business – indeed, many gave their lives to it.
