Bernard Reaney – The Class Struggle in 19th Century Oxfordshire, The Social and Communal background to the Otmoor disturbances of 1830 to 1835
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Bernard Reaney – The Class Struggle in 19th Century Oxfordshire, The Social and Communal background to the Otmoor disturbances of 1830 to 1835
[Ruskin College History Workshop 1970] buy used at abebooks.co.uk If you use this link to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission This pamphlet is a study of resistance. It describes the long drawn out fight of the commoners of Otmoor to defend their rights against enclosure, a fight which lasted for at least fifty years, from 1786, when an enclosure Bill was first mooted, to 1835, when the unity of the resistance broke up. The story of the Otmoor disturbances is already familiar in its broad outlines from the account given by the Hammonds in The Village Labourer. But it is told here by Benard Reaney with a wealth of new documents which make it possible for him to offer important new interpretations, and to place the disturbances in a context of class antagonisms and alignments. The 'possessioning' of September 6, 1830, is shown as part of a well-organised and highly-skilled resistance which in some respects reached a higher point after 1830 than before. Documents in the Oxfordshire Record Office and P.R.O. are drawn upon to show the strategies of resistance, and the pattern of militancy is related to the social structure of Otmoor's seven towns — in partiuclar the idiosyncracies of Charlton-on-Otmoor, 'the focus of all principal discontent', the home of 'the more numerous and daring of the offenders'. A valuable section on the 'break-up of the resistance' discusses the social antagonisms which undermined the popular alliance from within. The study is a critical one, and it is hoped that it may offer useful lessons to those engaged in the still unresolved struggle between property and common rights. Contents
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