Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONsingle but decisive asset, collective indispensability. 'No strike-breaking'(or words to similar effect) was—and has remained—the first commandmentin their moral code; the breaker of solidarity (described bythe morally loaded adjective 'black' as in 'blackleg') was the Judas oftheir community. Once they had acquired even a flickering of politicalconsciousness, their demonstrations were not the mere occasionaleruptions of an exasperated 'mob', which easily relapsed into apathy.They were the stirrings of an army. Thus in a city like Sheffield,once the class struggle between middle and working class had becomethe main issue in local politics (in the early 1840s), a strong and stableproletarian bloc immediately appeared. By the end of 1847 there wereeight Chartists on the town council, and the national collapse ofChartism in 1848 barely affected it in a city where between ten andtwelve thousand hailed the Paris Revolution of that year: by 1849Chartists held almost half the seats on the council. 2 *Below the working class and the Jacobin tradition there lay thesubstratum of an even older tradition which reinforced both: that ofriot, or the occasional public protest by desperate men. The directaction or rioting, the smashing of machines, shops or the houses of therich, had a long history. In general it expressed sheer hunger or thefeelings of men at the end of their tether, as in the waves of machinebreakingwhich periodically engulfed declining hand-industries threatenedby the machine (British textiles in 1810-11 and again in 1826,continental textiles in the mid-1830s and mid-1840s). Sometimes, as inEngland, it was a recognized form of collective pressure by organizedworkers, and implied no hostility to machines, as among miners,certain skilled textile operatives or the cutlers, who combined politicalmoderation with systematic terrorism against non-unionist colleagues.Or else it expressed the discontent of the unemployed or the starving.At a time of ripening revolution such direct action by otherwisepolitically immature men and women could turn into a decisive force,especially if it occurred in capital cities or other politically sensitivespots. Both in 1830 and in 1848 such movements threw a giganticweight behind otherwise quite minor expressions of discontent, turningprotest into insurrection.IVThe labour movement of this period was, therefore, neither in compositionnor in its ideology and programme a strictly 'proletarian' movement,i.e. one of industrial and factory workers or even one confined to wageearners.It was rather a common front of all forces and tendencies212