Probably not terribly relevant, but just something I remembered. In Dickens' <i>Hard Times</i>, any labourer who did not join the Union would be cast out. He would be shunned and everyone would turn their backs on him when he past by thereafter on the roads. No other of his union was allowed to speak to him either. (One's own fellow working people are the only ones that one ever had natural interactions with in the times of class-conscious Britain. Without them to talk to, one had no one.)
The same is repeated in E. Gaskell's <i>North And South</i> (British book, not the American story of the same name), where even mill workers who broke a strike early or broke Union laws in doing so, would be cast out of their fellow worker's society, company and acceptance. They'll ignore you.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/ecgns10.txt
North and South excerpt - Gaskell:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'Well! If a man doesn't belong to th' Union, them as works next
looms has orders not to speak to him--if he's sorry or ill it's
a' the same; he's out o' bounds; he's none o' us; he comes among
us, he works among us, but he's none o' us. I' some places them's
fined who speaks to him.</b> Yo' try that, miss; try living a year or
two among them as looks away if yo' look at 'em; try working
within two yards o' crowds o' men, who, yo' know, have a grinding
grudge at yo' in their hearts--to whom if yo' say yo'r glad, not
an eye brightens, nor a lip moves,--to whom if your heart's
heavy, yo' can never say nought, because they'll ne'er take
notice on your sighs or sad looks (and a man 's no man who'll
groan out loud 'bout folk asking him what 's the matter?)--<b>just
yo' try that, miss--ten hours for three hundred days, and yo'll
know a bit what th' Union is.'</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hardt10.txt
Hard Times excerpt - C. Dickens:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'Stephen Blackpool,' said the chairman, rising, 'think on 't agen.
Think on 't once agen, lad, afore thou'rt shunned by aw owd
friends.'</b>
There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man
articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen's face. To
repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all their
minds. He looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain
of anger with them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their
surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-
labourer could.
'I ha thowt on 't, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I
mun go th' way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o' aw heer.'
He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and
stood for the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they
slowly dropped at his sides.
'Monny's the pleasant word as soom heer has spok'n wi' me; monny's
the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter
heart'n than now. I ha' never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were
born, wi' any o' my like; Gonnows I ha' none now that's o' my
makin'. Yo'll ca' me traitor and that - yo I mean t' say,'
addressing Slackbridge, 'but 'tis easier to ca' than mak' out. So
let be.'
He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform,
when he remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
'Haply,' he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he
might as it were individually address the whole audience, those
both near and distant; 'haply, when this question has been tak'n up
and discoosed, there'll be a threat to turn out if I'm let to work
among yo. I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I
shall work solitary among yo unless it cooms - truly, I mun do 't,
my friends; not to brave yo, but to live. I ha nobbut work to live
by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no heighth
at aw, in Coketown heer? <b>I mak' no complaints o' bein turned to
the wa', o' bein outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard,</b>
but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at
aw, my friends, I think 'tis that.'
Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building,
but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the
centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with
whom they had all bound themselves to renounce companionship.
Looking at no one, and going his way with a lowly steadiness upon
him that asserted nothing and sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all
his troubles on his head, left the scene.
[...]
<b>Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives,
the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the
land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and
never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who
passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of
friends. </b> Such experience was to be Stephen's now, in every waking
moment of his life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at
his door, at his window, everywhere. By general consent, they even
avoided that side of the street on which he habitually walked; and
left it, of all the working men, to him only.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This group behaviour developed naturally as a way of forcing labourers to stick together in a Union as a group against the Masters who ran the (cotton) mills and other manufacturing centres in the north of the UK.
Even the medieval guilds (including guild of beggars) had very strict rules about behaviour. And for breaking important rules, you had to face expulsion.
The same is repeated in E. Gaskell's <i>North And South</i> (British book, not the American story of the same name), where even mill workers who broke a strike early or broke Union laws in doing so, would be cast out of their fellow worker's society, company and acceptance. They'll ignore you.
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/ecgns10.txt
North and South excerpt - Gaskell:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'Well! If a man doesn't belong to th' Union, them as works next
looms has orders not to speak to him--if he's sorry or ill it's
a' the same; he's out o' bounds; he's none o' us; he comes among
us, he works among us, but he's none o' us. I' some places them's
fined who speaks to him.</b> Yo' try that, miss; try living a year or
two among them as looks away if yo' look at 'em; try working
within two yards o' crowds o' men, who, yo' know, have a grinding
grudge at yo' in their hearts--to whom if yo' say yo'r glad, not
an eye brightens, nor a lip moves,--to whom if your heart's
heavy, yo' can never say nought, because they'll ne'er take
notice on your sighs or sad looks (and a man 's no man who'll
groan out loud 'bout folk asking him what 's the matter?)--<b>just
yo' try that, miss--ten hours for three hundred days, and yo'll
know a bit what th' Union is.'</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hardt10.txt
Hard Times excerpt - C. Dickens:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'Stephen Blackpool,' said the chairman, rising, 'think on 't agen.
Think on 't once agen, lad, afore thou'rt shunned by aw owd
friends.'</b>
There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man
articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen's face. To
repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all their
minds. He looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain
of anger with them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their
surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-
labourer could.
'I ha thowt on 't, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I
mun go th' way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o' aw heer.'
He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and
stood for the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they
slowly dropped at his sides.
'Monny's the pleasant word as soom heer has spok'n wi' me; monny's
the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter
heart'n than now. I ha' never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were
born, wi' any o' my like; Gonnows I ha' none now that's o' my
makin'. Yo'll ca' me traitor and that - yo I mean t' say,'
addressing Slackbridge, 'but 'tis easier to ca' than mak' out. So
let be.'
He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform,
when he remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
'Haply,' he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he
might as it were individually address the whole audience, those
both near and distant; 'haply, when this question has been tak'n up
and discoosed, there'll be a threat to turn out if I'm let to work
among yo. I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I
shall work solitary among yo unless it cooms - truly, I mun do 't,
my friends; not to brave yo, but to live. I ha nobbut work to live
by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no heighth
at aw, in Coketown heer? <b>I mak' no complaints o' bein turned to
the wa', o' bein outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard,</b>
but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at
aw, my friends, I think 'tis that.'
Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building,
but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the
centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with
whom they had all bound themselves to renounce companionship.
Looking at no one, and going his way with a lowly steadiness upon
him that asserted nothing and sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all
his troubles on his head, left the scene.
[...]
<b>Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives,
the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the
land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and
never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who
passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of
friends. </b> Such experience was to be Stephen's now, in every waking
moment of his life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at
his door, at his window, everywhere. By general consent, they even
avoided that side of the street on which he habitually walked; and
left it, of all the working men, to him only.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->This group behaviour developed naturally as a way of forcing labourers to stick together in a Union as a group against the Masters who ran the (cotton) mills and other manufacturing centres in the north of the UK.
Even the medieval guilds (including guild of beggars) had very strict rules about behaviour. And for breaking important rules, you had to face expulsion.