The Black Lamp was a secret and illegal
working class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
revolutionary group that existed during the early 19th century in
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...
.
Little documentary evidence of the group's activities survives, and historians have disputed those details that do remain. One of the most influential accounts of the group comes from historian Edward Thompson, who construed the organization as integral to the birth of British working-class
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...
. Others, including J.R. Dinwiddy, have argued that Thompson may have been entirely mistaken in theorizing a revolutionary tradition in contemporary Yorkshire, claiming that the group may not have existed at all. The very name, some have asserted, may be a misreading of the description "Black Lump". Some have asserted that the organization coalesced around economic rather than political interests; historian Richard Brown concludes that both factors are likely to have played a part.
See also
*
Edward Despard
Edward Marcus Despard (175121 February 1803), an Irish officer in the service of the British Crown, gained notoriety as a colonial administrator for refusing to recognise race as a distinction in English law and, following his recall to London, ...
*
Luddism
The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality. They often destroyed the machines in organ ...
Notes
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References
* Earl Fitzwilliam, Fitzwilliam Papers, F.45(d)
* Home Office Papers 42.66
* A. Aspinall, ''The Early English Trade Unions'' (1949)
* E.P.Thompson, ''The Making of the English Working Class'' (1963)
History of social movements
Industrial Revolution
19th century in the United Kingdom
Organisations based in Yorkshire