[4] Its tone is captured by the oft-quoted line from the preface: "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.

[7] Tensions escalated as 18th century nouveau riche who held new leases in Waltham began to violate the traditional rights of the local population by enclosing their ever expanding estates and surrounding gardens with fences.

Thompson decried this inequity and detailed the widespread corruption that enabled the passage of the bill, specifically the role of "Robert Walpole and the Whig administration in the passing and implementation of the Act".

[8]: 574  David Eastwood argued that it "transformed the study of labour, class and political radicalism in Britain and America and is incontestably the single most influential work of history of the post-war period".

[9]: 65 Geoffrey Best called it a "valuable and exciting book" but noted Thompson's neglect of the "flag-saluting, foreigner-hating, peer-respecting side of the plebeian mind" and asked, "How large a portion of 'the working class' did those 'artisans' form from whom so much of his evidence necessarily comes, and of how many hundreds of thousands of lower-class folk do we remain so much more ignorant that we cannot speak as confidently about them?

[11] In December 2023, BBC Radio 3 issued five episodes of its series The Essay "reflecting on the legacy, ideas and personal inspiration of The Making of the English Working Class" to mark sixty years since its first publication.