Work and Leisure

History of work 25ResistanceChanges in work patterns under industrialisation did not happen smoothlyand without resistance. Thompson (1967), in referring to the many ways inwhich factory owners sought to impose the new discipline on their labourforces, notes:In all these ways – by the division of labour; the supervision of labour;fines; bells and clocks; money incentives; preachings and schoolings; thesuppression of fairs and sports – new labour habits were formed, and anew time-discipline was imposed. It sometimes took generations . . . andwe may doubt how far it was ever fully accomplished [but] this is a placeof the most far-reaching conflict . . . the historical record is not a simpleone of neutral and inevitable technological change, but is also one ofexploitation and of resistance to exploitation.(Thompson 1967: 90, 93–4)The nineteenth century saw the development of organised labour and associatedpolitical movements designed to stem the worst excesses of employerexploitation, notably in relation to the employment of children and women,and to improve the worker’s lot by campaigns for better working conditions,increased pay and reduced working hours. Political analysis was brought tobear on the phenomenon of labour in industrial capitalism. At the heart ofKarl Marx’s analysis was the observed increasing level of exploitation oflabour by the capitalist, which was seen as unsustainable and destined to leadeventually to revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system (Marx andEngels 1952 [1848]: 60).The persistence of pre-industrial leisure patterns can also be seen as a formof resistance. When the tasks of the industrial worker were done there wastime left over, however little. The Puritan ethic, the nineteenth-century‘Samuel Smiles’ type ethic of self-improvement (Anthony 1977: 77–9) and themodern materialist ethic would require the individual to find other wholesomeand ‘self-improving’ activity to fill this residual time. In fact, it wouldappear that, apart from the minimal demands of church attendance, whichnot all heeded in increasingly secular urban centres, free time was generallyfilled with diversionary pastimes such as drinking and entertainment, andquasi-leisure activities such as attendance at fairs and markets. Such was theattraction of these activities, that they often impinged on supposed workinghours – the best known example being the institution of ‘St Monday’,referred to earlier. Thus work was ‘kept in its place’ and had to compete withleisure for a share of the worker’s time.Leisure historians note that the nature of many of the leisure activitiesengaged in by the urban industrial working class, such as violent and cruelsports, gambling and extensive consumption of alcohol, prompted moral