The Condition of the Working Class in England · Character

Richard Oastler

The factory reformer whose campaign for the ten-hour day made him a rallying name for workers demanding limits on industrial exploitation.

supporting

Also known as Oastler

First appearance: labour movements

As a supporting figure in The Condition of the Working Class in England, Richard Oastler is not background color—the story leans on what they do once the chapter opens.

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Oastler represents the reformist strand of the struggle, the fight to shorten the working day and check the worst abuses of the factory system. He is a reminder that the workers' cause attracted allies from outside their own ranks, and that the ten-hour agitation was one of the concrete fields in which their manhood found exercise. His campaign sits at the hinge between the book's documentation of suffering and its account of organized resistance.

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See Richard Oastler in labour movements