‘Medieval Working Practices’? British Agriculture and the Return of the Gangmaster

Abstract

The Select Committee Report reviewed here outlines both the fact of and the dynamics structuring the return to British agriculture of the gangmaster system. Wrongly described by some observers as an aspect of a developing capitalism, by conservative historiography as benign/non-coercive, and by the present British government as the resurgence of ‘medieval working practices’, this highly exploitative form of labour contracting was condemned earlier, by the 1867 Children's Employment Commission. Then, as now, it involved the recruitment/control of casual workers, and is currently based on much the same kinds of coercive mechanisms as its nineteenth century counterpart. Rather than being a pre- or non-capitalist relic, however, the gangmaster system corresponds to the restructuring of the rural labour process by cost-cutting agribusiness enterprises and commercial farmers. As such, it is argued here, it represents the authentic face of a twenty-first century capitalist agriculture.

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