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John Stevenson, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England, The English Historical Review, Volume CXXII, Issue 498, September 2007, Pages 1044–1046, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cem212
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Extract
IN spite of its sub-title, those expecting primarily an update and reprise of the late George Rudé's study of the rioting London populace of the eighteenth century will be somewhat wrong-footed, but, it might be said, agreeably so. While Shoemaker's study builds on the work of his predecessor and of others, he broadens it out in new and different directions, though ones not unrelated to earlier concerns. In many respects Rudé's concern was to bring respectability to the apparent mayhem and violence of the despised ‘mob’. His examination of the major episodes of violent disorder in eighteenth-century London, including the infamous Gordon Riots, demonstrated that most rioters were relatively ordinary inhabitants of the metropolis, usually working tradespeople and journeymen, not the depraved and drunken underclass of later caricature. Undirected violence and vicious bloodlust were rare, the latter virtually non-existent. Many ‘riots’, including the long-running Wilkite disturbances, revealed entirely rational motives, were often conducted with great ceremony and ritual, and demonstrated a consistent set of beliefs. London crowds showed a persistent xenophobia, based upon a bellicose support for English Protestantism and ‘liberties’. ‘True Britons’ were, in short, English, Protestant, and Free, and these views were expressed in attacks upon foreigners, religious minorities, and those threatening perceived ‘liberties’, whether through arbitrary or unpopular laws, such as General Warrants, innovatory taxation, such as the Excise or Cider Tax, or the persecution of popular champions, such as Vernon, Wilkes and, later, Burdett and Queen Caroline. The study of the ‘mob’ thereby provided a window into the ideas and beliefs of hitherto inaccessible groups in the capital. Rudé also studied crowds in the French Revolution and had described the mutation of crowd actions of the Parisian populace into the political activities of the Revolutionary clubs. In his rehabilitation of the London ‘mob’, especially in its sub-political belief in Englishmen's liberties, he identified a proto-working-class radicalism which would only take more positive shape in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the formation of the popular political societies such as the London Corresponding Society and the formulation of a radical reform programme of universal suffrage and annual parliaments.
