Trade Societies, Politics and the Trade Cycle

Abstract

IN early trade-union development, there was a strong tradition of looking to the State for protection. Trade societies had, for example, frequently petitioned Parliament for enforcement of the Elizabethan regulations regarding wages and apprenticeship. But during the eighteenth century Parliament, Government and local justices came increasingly to adopt a policy of laissez-faire, or non-interference in industrial affairs, and the ancient wages and apprenticeship clauses of the Statute of Artificers were finally abolished in 1813–14. Moreover, with the passing of the Combination Laws, Parliament was clearly coming down more heavily on the side of the employers. At the same time the ideas of the French Revolution, as expressed in this country in Paine’s Rights of Man, began to exercise a powerful influence on the minds of politically-conscious working men and caused them to turn to Radicalism; the speeches and writings of Thelwall and Spence extended these ideas to include economic and social as well as political rights.