Forgot which topic I'd parked my question under, Grey, so sorry for tardy thanks for the response! I do wonder if unions really played such a strong part in securing better conditions for workers, or whether certain philanthropic models - like Port Sunlight, for example - were also a spur? Of course, no cottonmill owner did anything good for his workers that wasn't intended to increase output, but all the same, some men did seem to be enlightened and engaged in work reforms which impacted upon social improvements. Not enough, of course, as Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor demonstrated horribly, and Hogarth's cartoons illustrated all too precisely. But there was an upswing, if you will, among the emerging moneyed middle classes to pull some of their sweating working-class fellows along with them. As every 'working class' family I observed or knew when I lived in Staffordshire back in the 1990s, there was little interest in unionism until Mrs T started kicking the coalmines into touch. They were busy being aspirational, adding a second car or fourth telly - nothing wrong with that, but it seemed that by then issues of class (based on wealth/income/materialist display) were pretty faded around the edges.
