Recent Articles on English Working-Class History

English labor and working-class history increasingly is becoming a respectable occupation for middle-class historians, and much of the recent work reflects middle-class bias and assumptions. One clear indication of this is the use of middle-class terminology. Much of the work noticed here – and some of it is very good – is about “the lower class.” A “lower class” can be identified only from a middle-class perspective; in the 1830s and 1840s, working people contemptuously rejected terms such as “lower classes” and “humbler classes”, insisting instead that they be referred to as the working or industrious class. Middle-class men anxious for working-class support learned the lesson quickly; historians are proving more insensitive over a century later.