ON THE DARK SIDES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: WORKERS' MISERY AND LABOUR MOVEMENT

In the second half of the 18th century, Great Britain experienced strong population growth - one of the prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution, as the necessary labour force was now available. However, far too many people sought work in the burgeoning industrial cities, as mechanisation put millions of artisans out of work, and many farmers sought new employment as their farms became unprofitable after being freed from manorial labour. In Manchester, the first industrial city, the population increased sixfold between 1711 and 1831. In London, it increased by about 130% between 1800 and 1850, and in Paris - where industrialisation began later - it doubled.

Nowhere was prepared for the onslaught, and slums grew in the industrial cities because there was neither enough housing nor sewage or drinking water. Moreover, those who did find work were paid a pittance, enough only for the cheapest accommodation. People slept five to a bed - and rented it out to strangers while they worked. Others lived in damp cellars, dark alleyways or holes in the ground.

Notorious examples of housing squalor are 'back-to-backs', such as those in Birmingham in the West Midlands: Long rows of small houses built back to back so that only the front had windows, with tiny back gardens where the privy stood and pigs often lived. The situation was even worse in the tenement blocks: Berlin became a model, where speculators built multi-storey blocks with up to six backyards, squeezing in more multi-storey blocks. Several thousand people lived in these estates. 

Hygiene in the working class districts was disastrous. With no sewers, rubbish, including human faeces, piled up in the streets. While landlords made fortunes, infant mortality rose, outbreaks of cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis claimed victims and life expectancy fell: in the port city of Liverpool by 1840 it was 17 years - 10 years below the English national average. Not only Friedrich Engels, in his famous essay on the cotton metropolis of Manchester, but many observers in Western Europe debated the 'social question' in the first half of the 19th century, but governments refused to take action. 

With so many people looking for work, factory owners could afford to pay poverty wages. Working hours ranged from 12 to 16 hours, 6 days a week. Violations of the strict time and work discipline resulted in immediate wage deductions, if not dismissal. A skilled worker, perhaps operating a mechanical loom, might earn enough to live on, but usually the whole family had to work: Women for half the wage, children for even less. Children were in demand mainly for their size and agility: in the mines they had to pull coal-laden wagons through the lowest tunnels on all fours, in the spinning mills they had to collect cotton waste from under the machines. 

Workers were largely unprotected from noise, dirt and pollutants: Tiny cotton flakes in the air in spinning mills, mineral dusts in mines, toxic chemicals in ironworks and chemical plants. Workplace accidents were common. Many men were no longer able to work by the age of 40 - and those who were unemployed, too sick or too old ended up on the streets. Mass redundancies were also the norm during the periodic crises. 

In the early 19th century, organised resistance by workers began to emerge: in Britain, skilled workers joined together to form trade unions, still in the tradition of the guilds, but which also called for industrial action. In the 1810s, handloom weavers in Glasgow, spinners in Manchester and miners in Northumberland went on strike. In 1824 they succeeded in overturning the ban on coalitions, which prohibited trade unions. Trade unionism was legalised, but not strikes, which often led to bloody clashes with the forces of law and order. 

The first important workers' association was the British 'Chartists'. They were concerned not only with better working conditions, but also with political participation: In the 'People's Charta' of 1838, they demanded the vote for all men. After decades of struggle, the British Factory Act of 1847 became a symbol, limiting the working day to 10 hours for the first time - but initially only for women and children, who made up the majority of the workforce in cotton mills. Child labour was gradually restricted in most European countries - in Prussia in 1839 under pressure from the military, which feared for the supply of suitable recruits. However, nowhere in the 19th century was the employment of children completely banned. 

The forerunner of co-operatives, the second pillar of the labour movement, also emerged in Britain: in 1844, Manchester weavers founded the 'Rochdale Society', which provided practical self-help for workers while remaining politically neutral. Soon co-operatives such as the 'Konsum-Vereine' were supplying their members on the continent with affordable food, building their own large bakeries, setting up purchasing companies and demonstrating their strength with prestigious new buildings. In many cases they were also politically active.

1848 saw the publication of Karl Marx's 'Communist Manifesto', one of the most influential theoretical writings of the labour movement - although it had no impact on the revolutions of that year. On the continent, particularly in France and Germany, workers and journeymen took to the barricades together in 1848, demanding political freedoms. In France they won the 12-hour day, but in the end the governments brutally crushed the uprisings.

From the middle of the century, conditions began to improve. In industrial cities, the systematic construction of sanitary facilities began after cholera outbreaks had raised fears that epidemics could spread quickly beyond working-class districts. Trade unions fought for higher wages, although in many countries they were still closely monitored: They were not fully legalised in Britain until 1882 and in France until 1884. 

In the last third of the 19th century, the labour movement finally achieved lasting improvements, as the relatively homogeneous, mass-organised workforce in the industrial cities was increasingly able to use strikes as a means of exerting pressure - even if violent clashes with the police were still commonplace. In addition to sectoral unions, national unions were formed, such as the British Trades Union Congress in 1868. In 1864, a congress in London, attended by Karl Marx, founded the first 'International Labour Association', the so-called 'First International'. 

In the electoral reforms of this period, the British Parliament recognised the right of the majority of workers to vote. German Chancellor Bismarck introduced disability, accident and sickness insurance in the 1880s, but his calculation to divide the workforce politically did not work. Gradually, other industrialised countries introduced insurance for wage earners. 
The trade unions were now joined by socialist parties, which fought not only for democratic rights but also for a fundamental transformation of the capitalist economic system, whether through reform or revolutionary means. Germany, with its high level of organisation and influential theoreticians, became a pioneer: the first two workers' parties had already emerged there in the 1860s, and in 1875 they united to form the 'Socialist Workers' Party of Germany', which became the SPD. In Belgium, the socialist parties of Flanders and Wallonia united to form the Belgian Labour Party in 1885, the often divided French workers' parties founded the forerunner of today's Parti Socialiste in 1905, and the British Labour Party emerged in 1906. With increasing electoral success, they established a fundamentally new political current in the parliaments.