Agricultural History Review, Volume 42 Part 1 (1994), pp. 49–62

This essay is essentially a 'polemic' concerned to look critically at who literally worked the land of Britain in the nineteenth century. Looking at England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales it argues that small family producers -- that is peasants -- make up a far larger part of the agricultural workforce than has previously been ar~maed. This is true both of their work on their own holdings and of their work as migrants. Similarly it is argued that farm servants form a much more important part of the total British agricultural labour force than most work would suggest. Taken together throughout Britain these two groups are actually larger than the supposedly 'normal' landless farm labourer. 

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