The Moral Economy of the Crowd: Some Twentieth-Century Food Riots

Abstract

But often in the world's most crowded streetsAnd often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life ….The Buried Life, Matthew ArnoldAny comparison between historical phenomena is fraught with many dangers, particularly where a century separates their occurrence. Nevertheless, it is proposed to compare certain aspects of social protest in 1916-17 with the disturbances more closely associated with the final decade of the eighteenth century — the form of protest in question being taxation populaire. For, while examples of such riots can be found from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, as R. B. Rose has written, “… we shall be justified in regarding taxation populaire as primarily and typically an eighteenth century phenomenon.” E. P. Thompson, moreover, considers that “… the final years of the eighteenth century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market.” In both periods the country was suffering from wartime inflation, and food shortages caused by failures in domestic harvests and interruptions in imported supplies, threatened to cause breaches in social harmony. And in both cases the two national governments that emerged were fully prepared to repress the threat to national security posed by outbreaks of working-class unrest. Besides such central parallels, others of a more trivial nature spring to mind. Not too much imagination is needed to see the spirit of the Church and King Mobs marching amongst the ranks of those who attacked pacifist meetings and the property of those with German names; though it may be considered outrageously fancilful to see the devilry of Arthur Thistlewood behind Mrs. Wheeldon's plot to poison Arthur Henderson and Lloyd George.