Such sentiments as these permeated movements which sought to mobilise working people against their enemies. ‘Chartism’, said the Annual Register, ‘is in fact an insurrection directed against the middle classes.’ And yet the class character of such movements is widely questioned.

The case against an extensive and significant working-class radicalism can be easily stated, incorporating points already made in this study. The male ‘working class’ was not united but divided by occupation, skill and a myriad other factors. The workplace was characterised by compromise and agreement as much as by conflict, and conflicts often set workmen against workmen instead of wage-earners against employers, and, if employers were condemned, it was the bad or dishonourable ones, not the whole class. Hostility was directed less at the masters than at middlemen seen as their common enemy. It was tyrannical or oppressive behaviour, not economic exploitation, that aroused most anger, and violence was more likely against police than employers. Trade societies performed extra-workplace functions, were not predicated on conflicts of interest between employers and employees, and divided the working class, not only between trades but also within trades.