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Fighting... Manchester Capitalism

Manchester capitalism is a term used to describe the most rapacious forms of capitalist exploitation and greedy free-market economics. But what made Manchester home of the industrial revolution and so integral to early capitalism? Here’s a bit of history:

Prior to the 1800’s, Manchester was a small market town that mainly produced coarse woollen materials. The opening of the Duke of Bridgewater canal in 1759 and then the expansion of the waterways to Merseyside suddenly made coal very cheap. Technological improvements brought about during the industrial revolution paved the way for Manchester to become the central hub of Britain’s textiles industry. The population increased dramatically during the 19 th century, as people were drawn from rural areas towards the opportunity the new cotton mills created. Working conditions were appalling, outbreaks of fevers and infectious diseases were rife due to poor sanitation, workers were unskilled and poorly paid. Social unrest amongst workers, who feared for their jobs as low-paid unskilled, began to organise against the burgeoning merchant class. Many laws were passed to quell dissent, but they were largely ineffectual and the social crisis culminated in the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ in 1819.

The Peterloo Massacre

It was early in the 19 th Century that cotton workers sought to effect lasting change in their social situation by obtaining a parliamentary voice.

On 16 th August 1819, a public meeting was held in St. Peter’s Field with Henry Hunt, the most popular orator in Lancashire speaking to about 80,000 people. Fearing a riot, the local magistrates ordered over 1,500 soldiers to Manchester to charge into the crowd and arrest Hunt. After the crowd was dispersed, 10 of the leaders were arrested, including Hunt who was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison and 11 people lay dead, either killed by sabre, trampled or shot. The term ‘Peterloo Massacre’ was coined as a satirical nod to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.

The Luddites

The Luddite movement was mostly active in the north of England and the midlands between 1811 and 1816. Starting off in Nottingham, stocking manufacturers received angry anti-technological letters from “General Ned Ludd and his Army of Redressers”.

Craftsmen who’d seen their livelihoods endangered and even destroyed decided to take direct action. Their main targets were the new, wide frames operated by unapprenticed workers, which produced poor quality but cheap stockings. The machines of the industrial revolution were a direct threat to worker’s livelihoods. In just three weeks, more than 200 of these frames were destroyed. There were many attacks on mills and their owners during that period, so much so that, for a while, soldiers were clashing more with Luddites than with the French army!

In 1816 there was a revival of Luddite activity due to a bad harvest and decline in trade and 53 frames were smashed, but as we know, the machines prevailed.

The Chartist Movement

Manchester played a vital role in the three phases of the Chartist movement. In 1832 the government passed the Reform Act, extending suffrage to men paying over £10 in annual rent and abolishing 56 ‘rotten boroughs’. However, the Chartist movement looked on this as a ‘great betrayal’ of the workers by the middle classes and only helped to fuel the class struggle. Chartist emphasis was on violent solutions and they alienated much of the working class. Division began to set in and they gradually lost momentum. Parliament rejected their National Petition in 1839, and after arrest of leader Feargus O’Connor the movement seemed defeated.

However, a second wave of Chartism came about in 1841 under James Leach and with the release of O’Connor, the creation the National Charter Association and thanks to new-found allies in the Trade Unions the political movement was revived. After the second petition was rejected by the government, rioting strikes and sabotage had all but brought the cotton industry to a halt. However, the mill-owners were able to starve out the revolts.

Again in 1948, rioting broke out as the dispossessed youth took to the streets, but this time the Chartist leaders helped the authorities to quash them.

Free trade

The ‘Corn Laws’, in force between 1815 and 1846, were import tariffs and taxes designed to limit the import and to encourage the export of wheat. The Laws guaranteed prices for British landowners and protected them from competition.

First signs of the potato blight in Ireland and devastating crop harvests in England led to severe grain shortages with thousands starving to death. It was the well-fed middle classes, however, that began the campaign against the Corn Laws, forming the ‘Anti-Corn Law League’ in 1839 in Manchester’s Free Tade Hall (now a posh hotel).

The League was led by liberal business owners who followed the free-trade economics of men like David Ricardo and Adam Smith. While they argued that the repeal of import tariffs would lead to cheaper grain prices benefiting the poorest, they also knew that they’d be able to lower workers’ wages to increase profits. Their campaign was successful in 1846.

The Corn Law debate was essentially one between protectionist conservative aristocrats and reformist liberal businessmen. The repeal was a victory for the latter and for free trade and market economics. It stands for what is sometimes called ‘Manchester Capitalism’.

Engels and Marx

A radical critique of Ricardo’s and Smith’s political economics was offered by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and also took its shape in Manchester. Engels arrived in Manchester in 1842 to manage his father’s cotton factory. Yet, he spent much of his time in Chetham Library researching his book on The Condition of the Working Class in England. Marx, who lived in London, came for frequent visits.

The widespread poverty amongst the Mancunian proletariat shocked them both and inspired a life-long analysis of capitalism as an abstract form of social domination. They found that the accumulation of capital and commodities was not driven by the greed and hunger of a few individuals. Instead, exploitation and oppression were themselves symptoms of capital’s intrinsic need to create immaterial value and of commodities becoming a fetish for social relationships.

The result of their Manchester experience was not an alternative or better vision of political economy, but a radical critique of the very concept. What they aimed for (at least in Marx’ later writings) was not the (self)-realisation of the working class and freedom through labour, but the realisation of a classless society and freedom from capitalist forms of labour.

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text to be published in the 2006/07 Shortcutz edition