Historically the British government has been extremely violent towards workers across England.
Britain often presents itself as a stable democracy with a proud tradition of civil liberties. Yet the historical record tells a far harsher truth. For more than two centuries, British governments and employers have repeatedly used state power to suppress workers across England who dared to organise, protest, or demand justice.
This pattern of repression has not disappeared. It has evolved. What once arrived on horseback or with the hangman’s rope now increasingly comes through databases, surveillance, and digital control.
State Violence Against Workers: A Long History
In 1819, the Peterloo Massacre revealed the British state at its most brutal. Cavalry charged into a peaceful crowd of tens of thousands in Manchester demanding parliamentary reform. At least 18 people were killed and more than 600 injured. It remains one of the bloodiest assaults on political assembly in British history.
During the early 1800s, the Luddite and Swing riots emerged from mass desperation. Skilled textile workers and rural labourers rebelled against starvation wages, mechanisation and enclosure. The government responded with troops, mass arrests, executions and transportation. Entire communities were shattered to protect property and employer power.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs of the 1830s suffered a similar fate. Their crime was forming an early trade union. For that, six farm labourers were arrested, convicted under archaic laws and transported to Australia. The message was unmistakable: organise and you will be punished.
Dangerous Work and Disposable Lives
Violence was not limited to protests. Work itself was deadly. Britain’s industrial economy was built on the injury and deaths of workers across mines, mills, docks and railways at levels that would today be unthinkable.
Modern Health and Safety Executive data shows that fatal injury rates have fallen sharply since the 1980s. Yet even now, around 124 workers a year still lose their lives at work across Britain. The difference is that the state can no longer openly tolerate the mass death once considered normal.
Instead, repression has shifted form.
From Physical Force to Legal and Digital Control
Anti-trade union laws introduced from the Thatcher era onward have created some of the most restrictive organising conditions in Europe. Complex ballot rules, extended notice periods and bans on solidarity action have systematically weakened workers’ ability to resist.
In recent years, this trend has intensified. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 expanded police powers over protest, while the Public Order Act 2023 introduced new offences such as “locking on” and widened stop-and-search powers around demonstrations.
These developments mirror wider concerns raised by the union about civil liberties and trade union rights being steadily eroded.
Digital ID and the New Frontier of Control
Under the current Labour Government, proposals for Digital ID systems have been partially softened following public and political resistance. However, the underlying direction remains clear: increased reliance on centralised digital identity systems tied to employment, services and legal status.
Digital ID risks giving governments and employers new tools to monitor, restrict and discipline workers. Where historical repression relied on physical force, modern control operates through access denial, algorithmic decisions and state-controlled data systems.
When identity, work and compliance become digitally linked, the balance of power shifts decisively away from workers and towards the state.
Why Workers Must Be Alert
Workers must recognise that while the methods change, the pattern does not. From Peterloo to protest bans, from transportation to Digital ID, the objective remains the same: control over labour.
The Workers of England Union believes trade unions must continue to resist this challenge to employment rights, privacy and freedom of expression. The union is clear in its position:
“We need to stop Digital ID.”
Because history shows that once such powers exist, they are never used lightly — and never against the powerful.
References
- Wikipedia.
- National Violence Database (NVDatabase).
- ProtestHistory.org.uk.
- Health and Safety Executive.
- TUC Congress reports.
- GOV.UK legislation archives.
- Crown Prosecution Service.
- StopWatch UK.
