The Century of Industrialisation

This chapter indicates the inappropriateness of imparting too much homogeneity to the three interest groups of state, capital and labour. During much of the period under discussion, labour is clearly divisible into those scarce skilled trades on which unionism was founded, and the mass of unskilled labour, a substantial proportion of whom were impoverished by the social experience, if not the economic rewards, deriving from industrialisation. Indeed, during the early period of industrial growth the upper echelons of the artisan class are barely distinguishable from those small masters who comprised such an important segment of capital. Both the objective mobility between these groups (with some skilled workers becoming small masters during prosperous times and returning to employed status at others) and the vertical bonding which took place by skilled workers adopting the outlook, values and aspirations of those immediately above them, acted to obscure, the delineation of capital and labour. Similarly, the state may be identified as a diverse institution with, for example, the judiciary often acting against the spirit, if not the letter, of legislation emerging from Parliament.