In the UK World Book Day is on 6th March this year. Its focused on encouraging children and young people to read.
It seems odd in that context to suggest E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class. A history book of almost 1,000 pages.
Certainly for new readers its a book to dip into it. Thompson’s researches recount numerous instances and stories of working class life in the first half of the nineteenth century, often vignettes of events and incidents.
In the 1968 Postscript for the paperback edition he dealt with right-wing critics who claimed that he had exaggerated the numbers at protests. One particular instance he deals with is the 180,000 who may have attended a mass protest in 1833 in Birmingham protesting at the actions of the first Government elected after the 1832 Reform Act.
Thompson notes it was not just a demonstration but an event, accounting perhaps for the large numbers:
It was organised with a hustings set up with stands and scaffolding with contingents marching in behind horsemen. Thompson basing his account on local press reports (and the hostile Times) describes it as a cross between a festival and a fair ‘an excellent excuse for making holyday.. around the skirts of the meeting were refreshment booths, ginger-beer, table ale, oranges and biscuits’. Every account noted the vast number of women and children’
Surely an account that could engage a younger reader and perhaps set them thinking
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