page_title: Industrial Revolution in Scotland
section_title: Class identity
hierarchical_section_title: Industrial Revolution in Scotland / Impact / Class identity
caption_attribution_description: English: The trademark of the Carron Company above the old entrance to the Carron Ironworks.
context_page_description: The Industrial Revolution in Scotland was the transition to new manufacturing processes and economic expansion between the mid-eighteenth century and the late nineteenth century. By the start of the eighteenth century, a political union between Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing British Empire, resulting in the Treaty of Union of 1707. There was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. New crops were introduced and enclosures began to displace the run rig system and free pasture. The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear, some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glass-works, breweries, and soap-works, setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial center after 1815.
context_section_description: One of the consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation was the development of a distinct skilled working class. W. H. Fraser argues that the emergence of a class identity can be located to the period before the 1820s, when cotton workers in particular were involved in a series of political protests and events. This led to the Radical War of 1820, in which a declaration of a provisional government by three weavers coincided with a strike by Glasgow cotton workers. The climax of the five-day war was a march from Glasgow Green to Falkirk to take control of the Carron Iron Works. It ended in a cavalry charge by government forces at Bonnymuir. The result was a discouragement of direct political action by workers, although attempts at political reform continued in movements like Chartism and the short hours movement in the 1830s.
  From the 1830s the political influence of the working classes was expanded through the widening of the franchise, industrial action and the growth and organisation of trade unionism. There were less than 5,000 eligible voters in Scotland before the 1832 Reform Act saw the enlargement of the franchise to include middle class men of business. The 1868 Act brought in skilled artisans and that of 1884 admitted many farm workers, crofters, miners and unskilled men. These changes were supported by trade unions, which developed from the mid-century. Concerted industrial action was undertaken by spinners in the cotton industry in 1836-7 after a collapse of foreign markets led to wage cuts, but was ultimately defeated by the factory owners. The most sustained industrial action was in the mining industry, where the owners controlled employment as well as housing and retail trade through the truck system. In 1887 colliers in the west of Scotland won a major victory over both wages and rents. Scottish trade unionism in the nineteenth century differed from that in the rest of Britain in that unions were often small and highly localised and lacked higher industrial and national organisation. Trade councils were established in Edinburgh in 1853 and in Glasgow in 1858 in an attempt to organise on a regional basis, but were often ineffectual. The new unionism of the last two decades of the century saw the dockers and railwaymen organise a network of regional and national support, but this began to wain towards the end of the century and the situation of union parochialism would remain the dominant mode until union amalgamations got under way after 1914.
caption: The Carron Company trademark on the Carron Works, the objective of the 1820 Radical War
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