Cost of living crisis. E P Thompson on how ‘the Regulators’ dealt with in 1766
E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class looks at eighteenth century food riots, and argues that in many cases these were well thought through protests designed to ensure a fair price was paid for bread.
He notes one example in the Thames Valley in 1766:
The villages and towns, Abingdon, Newbury, Maidstone) were visited by large parties of labourers, who styled themselves ‘the Regulators’, enforcing a popular price on all provisions (the action commenced with gangs of men working on the turnpike road who said ‘with one voice, Come one and all to Newbury in a Body to Make the Bread cheaper’
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