Morality and Control-Edwin

In chapter seven of this week’s reading, Thompson discusses the interesting relationship of morality and working class life. The beginning of the chapter focused on what would appear to the reader and to Thompson as benign pleasures which were the result of custom more than willful decadence. It is argued in this chapter that the condemnation of various forms of vice derived from a sense of “factory discipline” or an “extension of the factory bell or clock from working to leisure hours” (407, 403). Everything from the annual fair to more personal vices such as adultery and alcoholism are mentioned as being under attack from both industrial and religious organizations.

It is interesting to note how, under the guise of moral uprightness, there was a noticeable activity of reduction towards working class peoples residing in areas of substantial economic production. The condemnation of tradition is one of the few ways in which an authority can not only subvert but demoralize a group larger than itself. In dismissing the annual fair as debauched and persecuting individuals for personal faults there was a definite creation of “an image of rural isolation and ‘idiocy’” (405). This type of reduction serves a ruling class directly by disrupting the cohesive factors which can serve to bind a social group. Meeting places are eliminated and commonalities are labeled as backwards or antiquated. As Thompson notes: “Working people discovered in the industrial revolution a moral rhetoric which was authentic and deeply expressive of their collective grievances and aspirations, but which seems stilted and inadequate when applied to personal relations” (414).