Introduction

For more than two centuries the regulation of the labour market by government has been met with both intense opposition and a strong support. Despite a strong opposition from employer circles and advocates of free markets, the regulation of the labour market did advance steadily for nearly 200 years, beginning with the very first decade of the 19th century. It was only with the advent of the neoliberal tide in the late 1970s that governments have turned sharply against the welfare state and the protective legislation of pay and other work conditions.

The history of the 19th century offers us a window into the predicament of workers when employers enjoyed a laissez faire regime in their workplace. But it also shows us how a truly effective state-regulation system can transform the workplace into a significantly more humane place. Those early factories had been rightly described as the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’.

Although state regulation of the conditions under which work was performed had been resisted, history offers us many examples of widespread changes in work conditions that were at first sought only by a minority of social reformers, but once they were imposed by a government edict, they ultimately became the shared social norm. For instance, child labour is now deemed abhorrent, but that was not the case during much of the 19th century. This tells us that state regulation can also be an agent of cultural change.

From the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ to more humane workplaces

The progressive legislation of the 19th century was driven by the 19thcentury response to the urban squalor and the harsh working conditions that prevailed in the emerging factories of the ‘industrial revolution’. It is thanks to the Enlightenment philosophy of the late 18th century, and persistent agitation by 19th-century social reformers, that we now have in place some limits on the outcomes of unfettered markets. The relentless effort of the social reformers ultimately resulted in a spate of novel legislations that improved both the lot of workers and the urban landscape. They also paved the way for the modern labour market institutions and public sector services that we are familiar with nowadays.

The process of industrialisation in Britain, as in other European countries and in North America, depended on long hours of work that was performed by both adults and young children.