Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825–1875

Abstract

In nineteenth-century Britain, friendly societies (working-class mutual benefit clubs) and ruling elites contested definitions of respectability and independence in a struggle to delineate relations between societies and the state. This process was an important part of an ongoing set of negotiations by which working-class organizations influenced middle-class attitudes toward collective action. Pressure from friendly societies forced members of Parliament and bureaucrats to accept their claim to respectability and, with it, to independence from state control, changing the discourse of respectability in three stages. During the first quarter of the century, clergymen and landowners equated respectability with middle-class patronage and independence from the Poor Law. Around midcentury, the societies appropriated the discourse of respectability and, with qualified elite approval, used it to redefine independence as freedom from middle-class supervision. By the 1870s, however, friendly society leaders requested government assistance to limit the independence of rank-and-file members, whose autonomy they claimed was a threat to the societies' respectability. Friendly societies wanted, as one member wrote, “to do what is ‘respectable.’” This meant redefining respectability in a collective, working-class context. While middle-class definitions rested on the premise that individualism and self-help were the twin foundations of respectability, friendly societies gained access to the social power of respectability by offering an alternative definition based on collective self-help and independence from external control. Friendly societies were democratically managed insurance clubs offering sickness and burial coverage and sociable activities in return for regular payments. They often met in public houses, which they identified as respectable, contradicting middle-class attitudes.

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