Wilkes and Liberty, by Georges Rudé

[p020] Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774. By George Rudé. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 30s. ‘In 1779, Saunders Welsh, the London Magistrate, told Dr. Johnson that more than twenty such persons died every week of starvation in the streets and garrets of London.’ (The Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 410. Quoted, George Rudé, p. 9, n.2) Eighteenth century London was - grim. Commercial expansion had swollen its population, and while farming techniques had made con-. siderable progress, life for a large urban population that had become dependent on wages as a source of life was precarious. When bread sold at 14d. a lb. the poor could live. When it rose to 2d. a lb. they starved. 1768 was one of those bad years. It was also the year in which John Wilkes’ agitation for civil liberty evoked its first significant response from the London working class. Before Wilkes, 18th century politi- cians, pamphleteers and journalists had stirred up feeling against the King’s government. Such agitations rarely reached far below the level of the urban rich and the rural gentry. John Wilkes was the first politician of his century to mobilize mass sup- port in a political fight for the pre- servation and extension of democratic freedoms. George III came to the throne in 1760. A group of Whigs centring round the Earl of Chatham opposed his foreign policy as _ insufficiently belligerent. The peace that brought the Seven Years War to an end in 1763 had not brought those gains in the West Indies at the expense of Spain which a powerful group of City merchants regarded as their due. Wilkes was a political agitator, running the North Briton as an organ 17 Book Reviews of this group. The King and his Chief Minister, stung by the paper’s violence, retaliated with a series of arrests under a General Warrant. Wilkes challenged the legality of General Warrants. His success earned him widespread support and made it harder for future governments to quell opposition through arbitrary arrests. When Wilkes was elected MP for the County of Middlesex, in 1768, a House of Commons subservient. to the King’s orders decided to expel him. When Parliament reassembled, a huge demonstration gathered at St. George’s Fields. Soldiers opened fire, 11 lives were lost and many more were wounded. Wilkes denounced the massacre and the- King panicked. He insisted on Wilkes’ expulsion from the House—‘a measure whereon almost my Crown depends’—and the House complied by 219 votes to 137. The high price of wheat touched off an unprecedented movement for wage increases among a section of the London proletariat. ‘In mid- May, George Rudé points out, ‘as the price of wheat at the London Corn Exchange rose to 56s. a quarter, the authorities were faced with almost simultaneous demands and demon- strations by sailors, watermen, coopers, hatters, glass - grinders, sawyers, tailors, weavers and coal- heavers.’ Their demands for higher wages to meet the higher cost of living were On occasions accompanied by cries of ‘ Wilkes for ever’. Wilkes became associated in some of their “minds with the cause of the poor against the rich. This, almost despite himself, was Wilkes’ stupendous achievement. This gave Wilkes his lasting niche in English history. Not all the economic struggles of the wage earners developed into a political fight against the King’s government. The Newcastle sailors declared for ‘Wilkes and Liberty’. The London sailors did not. Neither did the tailors, watermen, glass- grinders, hatters and sawyers, whose economic demands never became linked with a _ political movement. On the other hand, Whig politicians, Yorkshire gentry and London mer- _chants had their grievances against the government. Wilkes, whether they liked it or not, was their most effective spokesman. Here and there, notably among the weavers and coal- heavers, Wilkes touched off a re- sponse from sections of the prole- tariat not normally affected by political agitations. That was all. But it was enough. The main value of Rudé’s book lies in its detailed analysis of the social basis of the Wilkite movement during the years 1868 to. 1874 when the agitation was at its height. From this it became clear for the first time how sporadic and partial was Wilkes’ support among the prole- tariat. His most sustained backing came, as might have been expected, ~ . from the London petty-bourgeoisie— coal merchants, §warehousemen, brewers, haberdashers, linen drapers, saddlers and the like. Outside the City it was the freeholders of Middlesex —a handful of gentry, much greater numbers of tradesmen and manufacturers and, overwhelmingly, the lesser freeholders. ranging from 40/- to £10 a year—whose consistent loyalty seated Wilkes triumphantly in the Commons at the General Election of 1774. Rudé’s book is a useful contribu- . tion to social history. It deepens our understanding of the immediate ante- cedents of the British Labour Move- ment. In insight and originality it does not compare with his great study of The Crowd in the French Revolution. In>the last chapter the author tries to explain why this extra- ordinary movement developed when it did, why modern British radicalism

[p021] 18 was born in the 1760s. Neither Rudé’s nor anyone else’s explanation is completely satisfactory. The great Whig families resented a brash new monarch who challenged their controt over Parliament. The merchants demanded a more effectively aggres- sive foreign policy. Small free- holders -suffered from _ enclosing landlords and turnpike trusts. Small craftsmen, traders and wage earners went bankrupt and hungry during the high food prices of 1768 and of the early 1770s. To lead these disparate elements and to weld them temporarily into an effective political force came a richly born, dissolute, improvident, sardonic and immensely audacious democrat, who combined organising drive with great shrewd- ness. Persecuted relentlessly by the King and his ministers, Wilkes stood firm and fought back. In doing so -he became a symbol for the oppressed and discontented. Under his leadership the bourgeois-demo- cratic revolution was carried a step further, The proletariat was waiting in the wings. Wilkes called them on to the stage and put the fear of God, or of the Devil, into the King and his Establishment. H.C. Anti-Marex