1st Edition

The British Working Class 1832-1940

By Andrew August Copyright 2007
    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    In this insightful new study, Andrew August examines the British working class in the period when Britain became a mature industrial power, working men and women dominated massive new urban populations, and the extension of suffrage brought them into the political nation for the first time. 

    Framing his subject chronologically, but treating it thematically, August gives a vivid account of working class life between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, examining the issues and concerns central to working-class identity. Identifying shared patterns of experience in the lives of workers, he avoids the limitations of both traditional historiography dominated by economic determinism and party politics, and the revisionism which too readily dismisses the importance of class in British society. 

    Acknowledgments
    PART I: 1832-1870

    Introduction: Britain in 1832

    1.  Forming the Urban Working Class

    2.  Labor in the “Factory Age”

    3.  Leisure and the Urban Worker

    4.  Working-Class Identity and Politics

    PART II: 1870-1914

    Introduction: Discontinuity in 1870?

    5.  The “Traditional” Working-Class Community

    6.  Control, Conflict and Collective Bargaining in the Workplace

    7.  Expanding Leisure Opportunities

    8.  Class Identity and Everyday Politics

    PART III: 1914-1940
    Introduction: The Working Class and the Great War

    9.  Old and New Working-Class Communities

    10. Unemployment, Dislocation and New Industries

    11. Cinema, Dance Hall and Streets

    12. Patriotism, Politics and Identity

    Conclusion:  Change and Continuity, 1832-1940
    Epilogue
    Bibliography

     

    Biography

    Andrew August is Associate Professor of History in the Abington College of Penn State University, Pennsylvania, USA. He is the author of Poor Women's Lives: Gender, Work and Poverty in Late-Victorian London (1999).