This thesis is a study on Fabian attitudes towards the struggle for independent labour representation during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The Fabian Society has often claimed it greatly influenced the struggle to establish a working-class political party prior to the inauguration of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900. Yet, many of the Fabians' contemporaries disagreed. This thesis challenges any assertion that the Fabian Society greatly influenced the LRC. Through a study of the Fabian Society's early history, beliefs and attitudes it is clear that the Fabians were more likely to be very negative towards any rank and file movements. The Fabians had little faith in the "average sensual man". Even their Manifesto "To Your Tents Oh Israel" cannot, in the final analysis, be viewed as concrete proof that the Fabian Society placed great hope in the working man and in his struggle for labour representation.

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The main purpose of this study has been to establish the chanoino character of the RAs (Research Associations) in the UK from 1970 to 1989 and beyond. The last major piece of research carried out on the RAs was the Bessborough Report which was undertaken in 1972. One of the main problems encountered was the availability of secondary data on the RAs. Most of the data, especiall y statistical ones, had to be generated from primary sources e.g. Annual Reports of RAs, internal papers of RAs and interviews. Consequently, a great amount of time and effort went into the accumulation of data. The thesis is divided into five parts. Part 1 consists of the research methodology. Part 2 and 3 provide the necessary background information in order to map out the changes in the RAs over the two decades. Part 4 forms the core of the thesis and it presents the results of the research model used. Part 5 presents the conclusions and recommendations of the study.

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In the early decades of British industrialization, the ill-health of textile factory workers attracted considerable public interest and provoked discussion and debate among a growing number of medical men, operatives, manufacturers, and social and political commentators. Guided by previous studies of the “framing” of disease, this dissertation examines how such ill-health was conceived, designated and responded to in the period from 1784 to 1833. The dissertation reveals that workers themselves held a relatively constant view of their condition. In the early part of the nineteenth century, they drew attention to a variety of ailments and throughout the period they saw a clear link between their maladies and the conditions of their labour. By contrast, medical understanding shifted significantly, and as it traced a course more or less at odds with that of popular comprehension, the nature and causes of worker suffering were substantially redefined. In the 1780s and 1790s, doctors identified the illness of factory labourers as “low, nervous fever,” an acute contagious disorder generated by the crowding and confinement of human bodies. A generation later, in the period from 1815 to 1819, the ill-health of mill workers was conceptualized, by a portion of the medical community, as “debility,” a poorly-understood state of constitutional feebleness attributed to aspects of machine work. In the early 1830s, medical authorities regarded factory workers’ sickness primarily as “digestive disease” and located its source in habits and diet. The reconceptualization of worker ill-health yielded an ultimately optimistic assessment of the consequences of industrial growth, failing to offer strong support to demands for legislative restriction of factory operation. It also served to sanction changing social relations through providing evidence of the physical and moral distinctness of the manufacturing population. As medical theory altered, so, too, did practices of relief and assistance. While mill owners, and doctors, became increasingly unwilling to assume responsibility for the well-being of the industrial workforce, operatives engaged ever more extensively in practices of self-help. The expansion of the textile industry, however, ensured the continuation of their affliction and incapacity. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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Both modern and contemporary commentators have over the past 140 years written many millions of words on the subject of the abuse of child labour in factories and trades in the first half of the nineteenth century. The subject was highly charged with emotion at that time. The detailed observations of intelligent and perceptive men contrast with the partial accounts of honest and not so honest early Victorians. Together they have blurred the definition between truth and the embellishment of it. This lack of clarity on the issue of child labour has left modern historians great scope for widely differing interpretations and the evidence for believing that conditions were as bad or as good as suited their particular point of view. It is regretted that there is insufficient material in South Africa to enter fully into the often bitter arguments of the, so called, 'optimists' and 'pessimists' in respect of the improvement or deterioration of the standard of living of the labouring classes in the first half of the nineteenth century. Child labour was not one of the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. The labour of children within the domestic economy had, certainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, been regarded as socially acceptable. The aim of this work is to trace the conditions of child labour in the early years of the Industrial Revolution as the spread of factories demanded more and more young hands and imposed an alien and sometimes inhuman discipline on the workers. As the numbers of children employed expanded not only in total but also as a proportion of the total labour force, the realisation that the labour of children was presenting a grave social problem gradually dawned upon the governments of the time. This work traces the development of legislation from the first faltering step forward of the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802 to the passing of the Factory Act of 1847 which provided for a ten hours' working day. This type of legislation was an experiment which developed in efficiency by trial and error. Detailed consideration is given to the arguments of the supporters and the opponents of restrictions being placed on the complete freedom of the manufacturers. This was a battle eventually to be won by the supporters of restriction on the freedom of the masters. Nearly twenty years have passed since detail ed consideration was given to the parallel development of the awareness that the labour of children was a problem and the steps taken to alleviate it. The aim in this work is to consider the most recent publications that deal with particular aspects of the problem. The intention is to penetrate the contradictory claims made in the first half of the nineteenth century, and to attempt to clarify as accurately as possible the realities of the conditions of child labour and to trace their improvement to the middle of the century.