Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:22:26.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The “Chiliasm of Despair” Reconsidered: Revivalism and Working-Class Agitation in County Durham

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

J. A. Jaffe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.

It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”

There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 23 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Halévy, Elie, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 3 (London, 1961)Google Scholar, The Birth of Methodism in England, trans. Semmel, Bernard (Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar.

2 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, Vintage, ed. (New York, 1963), pp. 350–400Google Scholar.

3 Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rudé, George, Captain Swing (London, 1969), p. 291Google Scholar. The quotation comes from Rudé, 's Ideology and Popular Protest (London, 1980), p. 92Google Scholar. This view differs considerably from Hobsbawm's earlier views on Evangelicalism and radicalism; see Hobsbawm, E. J., “Methodism and the Threat of Revolution in Britain,” History Today (1957)Google Scholar, reprinted in Labouring Men (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

4 Ward, W. R., Religion and Society in England, 1790–1850 (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Hempton, David, Methodism and Politics in British Society (London, 1984), pp. 74–76Google Scholar.

5 Hempton, pp. 22–27, 77–80; Bernard Semmel has argued similarly that Methodism was a type of theological counterpart to the liberal ideology of the so-called Age of Democratic Revolutions. However, Semmel, like Halévy, claimed that Wesleyan ideology prevented revolution in England by offering a “new, democratic faith in its Arminian Christianity, and by mobilizing popular energies in pursuit of personal salvation, while strengthening the motives for obedience and subordination.” See Semmel, , The Methodist Revolution (New York, 1973), pp. 192–93Google Scholar.

6 Gilbert, Alan D., Religion and Society in Industrial England, 1740–1914 (London, 1976), pp. 86–92Google Scholar.

7 Gilbert, Alan D., “Methodism, Dissent and Political Stability in Early Industrial England,” Journal of Religious History 10, no. 4 (December 1979): 381–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 392.

9 Hempton, p. 29.

10 Jaffe, J. A., “The State, Capital, and Workers' Control during the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Social History (June 1988), pp. 719–36Google Scholar; Colls, Robert, The Pitmen of the Northern Coalfield (Manchester, 1987), pp. 88–98, 248–56Google Scholar.

11 In the nineteenth century, the miners had participated in regional strikes in 1809 and 1825. See Colls, pp. 74–87; Hair, P. E. H., “The Binding of the Pitmen of the North-East, 1800–1809,” Durham University Journal, n.s., 27, no. 1 (December 1965): 1–13Google Scholar.

12 Newcastle Chronicle (March 5, 1831).

13 Patterson, W. M., Northern Primitive Methodism (London, 1909), p. 251Google Scholar; Newcastle Chronicle (March 5, 1831).

14 Colls, pp. 189–92.

15 Morton to Durham, May 22, 1832, Lambton Estate Archives Office, Lambton MSS.

16 Jaffe, J. A., “Economy and Community in Industrializing England: The Durham Mining Region before 1840” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1984), pp. 250–54Google Scholar.

17 On the long-term trends of the bond, see Colls, pp. 45–73; on the particulars appropriate to the demands of this strike, see Jaffe, , “Economy and Community,” pp. 230–54Google Scholar.

18 Flinn, Michael W., The History of the British Coal Industry (Oxford, 1984), vol. 2, 1700–1830: The Industrial Revolution, pp. 199–206Google Scholar.

19 General Meetings of the Coal Owners of the Tyne and Wear, June 1, 1831, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland County Record Office (RO), 107.

20 Newcastle Chronicle (August 20, 27, 1831).

21 Morton to Bouverie, June 8, 1831, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Home Office (HO) 40/29/89.

22 See Jaffe, , “State, Capital, and Workers' Control” (n. 10 above); Colls, p. 92Google Scholar.

23 Buddie to Londonderry, June 2, 1831, Durham, Durham County RO, London-derry Papers D/Lo/C 142 (718).

24 Morton to Durham, June 1, 1831, Lambton MSS.

25 Newcastle Chronicle (September 8, 1832).

26 General Meetings of the Coal Owners of the Tyne and Wear, May 5, 1832, in The Times (June 29, 1832). Copy in the Northumberland County RO.

27 See Jaffe, “The State, Capital, and Workers' Control.”

28 North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (N.E.I.M.M.E.), Bell Collection (Newcastle upon Tyne, n.d.), 11:543.

29 The following data come from Primitive Methodist Circuit Accounts, Durham, 1828–36, Durham County RO M/Du 34.

30 Durham County RO M/Du 34.

31 See Werner, J. S., The Primitive Methodist Connexion (Madison, Wis., 1984), pp. 146–57Google Scholar.

32 Morton to Durham, April 16, 1831, Lambton MSS. See also Morton's letter to the Home Office, June 8, 1831, HO 40/29/89.

33 Newcastle Chronicle (June 2, 1832).

34 Ibid. (August 20, 1831).

35 Ibid. (June 23, 1832).

36 Ibid. (March 10, 1832).

37 Ibid.

38 Newcastle Courant (April 21, 1832).

39 Buddle to Londonderry, June 21, 1832, Durham, Durham County RO, Londonderry Papers D/Lo/C 142 (851).

40 Newcastle Courant (April 21, 1832).

41 Walker, R. B., “The Growth of Wesleyan Methodism in Victorian England and Wales,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 24, no. 3 (July 1973): 270–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Morris, R. J., Cholera 1832 (London, 1976), pp. 11, 60–64Google Scholar. See also the reports in the Newcastle Chronicle (November 5, 1831). Colls's interpretation of both Methodism and the events of the 1831–32 strike are seriously weakened by inconsistencies in his chronology of the cholera. See Colls (n. 10 above), pp. 97, 152, and 256, where the cholera is reported to have appeared in July 1832, October 1831, and August 1832, respectively.

43 Buddle to Londonderry, December 29, 1831, Durham County RO, Londonderry Papers D/Lo/C 142 (772).

44 Morton to Durham, January 30, 1832, Lambton MSS.

45 Morton to Durham, January 16, 1832, Lambton MSS.

46 Colls, pp. 151–54.

47 Werner (n. 31 above), p. 171.

48 The statistical evidence of Primitive Methodist membership is contrary to Morris's assertions that cholera revivals “did not take place in the big towns and cities” (Morris, p. 145).

49 Thompson (n. 2 above), p. 389.

50 Colls, p. 151.

51 Colls, pp. 86–88.

52 A Voice from the Coal Mines; or, A Plain Statement of the Various Grievances of the Pitmen of the Tyne and Wear (South Shields, 1825), p. 5Google Scholar.

53 Rules and Regulations for the Formation of a Society to be Called the United Association of Colliers of the Rivers Tyne and Wear (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1825), p. 13Google Scholar.

54 Rules and Regulations of the Coal Miners' Friendly Society in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham (Newcastle, 1832)Google Scholar.

55 Kendall, H. B., The Origin and History of the Primitive Methodist Church (London, 1909), 1:10, 48Google Scholar.

56 Laqueur, Thomas W., Religion and Respectability (New Haven, Conn., 1976), pp. 9–18Google Scholar; see also Currie, Robert, Methodism Divided (London, 1988), pp. 132–33Google Scholar.

57 N.E.I.M.M.E., Bell Collection, 11:218.

58 A Voice from the Coal Mines, pp. 25–26.

59 Hair, P. E. H., “The Social History of the British Coal Miners, 1800–1845” (D.Phil., Oxford University, 1955), p. 293Google Scholar.

60 Spring, David, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century: Its Administration (Baltimore, 1963), p. 123Google Scholar.

61 The story is related in Fynes, Richard, The Miners of Northumberland and Durham (Blyth, 1878)Google Scholar, and is repeated in Hammond, J. L. and Hammond, Barbara, The Skilled Labourer (reprint, New York, 1979), p. 35Google Scholar.

62 Gilbert (n. 7 above), pp. 397–98.

63 Quarterly List of Members, 1832–1841, Tyne and Wear County Archives (T.W.C.A.) 1096/23, South Shields Circuit.

64 Primitive Methodist Circuit Accounts, 1828–1836, Durham County RO M/Du 34.

65 Jaffe, , “Economy and Community” (n. 16 above), pp. 161–70Google Scholar; for the case of Hetton, the center of union agitation in 1831–32, see Sill, Michael, “Mid-Nineteenth Century Labour Mobility: The Case of the Coal-Miners of Hetton-le-Hole, Co. Durham,” Local Population Studies 22 (1979): 44–50Google Scholar.

66 Quarterly List of Members, 1832–1841, T.W.C.A. 1096/23, South Shields Circuit.

67 See, e.g., the report of the June rally in the Newcastle Chronicle (June 23, 1832).

68 Wilson, John, Memories of a Labour Leader (London, 1910), pp. 202–3Google Scholar.

69 McLeod, Hugh, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (Hamden, Conn., 1974), pp. 48–55Google Scholar. On miners' suspicion of reading and education, see the remarks in Watson, Aaron, A Great Labour Leader (London, 1908), p. 67Google Scholar, and Wilson, pp. 206–8.

70 Lawson, Jack, A Man's Life (London, 1832), pp. 107–8, 114Google Scholar.

71 Watson, pp. 165–71; Oxberry, John, Thomas Hepburn of Felling: What He Did for the Miners (Felling-on-Tyne, 1959)Google Scholar; Primitive Methodist Magazine (1865), pp. 546–47Google Scholar; Colls (n. 10 above), p. 352, n. 29.

72 This argument is made in greater detail in Jaffe, “Economy and Community,” chap. 6.

73 Wilson, p. 146. In part, Wilson refused to become branch secretary of the union because “I have always held the view that in the selection of lodge officials something more than mere clerking ability or power to declaim are essential.” One may infer from this that literacy and expository skills were at times the basis for the selection of union representatives. Wilson relates a similar experience at Haswell Colliery in 1869 when he was put forward as the librarian of the workingmen's institute because “there was no one so well qualified as John Wilson” (p. 224).

74 Children's Employment (mines), Parliamentary Papers, 1842, 16:63Google Scholar.