Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:18:42.288Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Popular Radicalism and the Socialist Revival in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Jon Lawrence
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The twentieth century has not been kind to the “Whig interpretation of history” with its emphasis on the inexorable triumph of reason and progress. Mortally wounded on the battlefields of Flanders, the liberal certainties that underpinned it were finally laid to rest in the shadow of the Holocaust. With the Whig interpretation died the tradition of seeing nineteenth-century politics in terms of the gradual, but uninterrupted, evolution of democratic principles and institutions. In its place emerged a new orthodoxy that stressed the discontinuities of popular politics during the nineteenth century and argued for three distinct phases of political development. The first, a phase of militant, semirevolutionary politics, coincided with the “industrial revolution” and led up to the defeat of Chartism in the late 1840s. This, it was argued, was followed by a period of stabilization during the mid-Victorian decades characterized by relative prosperity and political docility among the working classes. The final phase began with the economic downturn of the late 1870s and was said to have witnessed the reemergence of working-class militancy and socialist politics and to have culminated in the formation of the class-based Labour party.

This three-phase model emerged in embryonic form between the wars in the agitprop histories of Marxist writers such as Theodore Rothstein and T. A. Jackson and in the more influential works of G. D. H. Cole and the Hammonds. At the same time, many of the reductionist assumptions that underpinned it were simultaneously finding favor within Britain's emergent school of economic historians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 163 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Butterfield, H., The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931)Google Scholar.

2 For instance, see May, T. E., The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George the Third, 1760–1860, 2 vols. (London, 1861 1863)Google Scholar, republished as May's Constitutional History of England, 1760–1911, 3 vols., edited and continued by Holland, Francis (London, 1912)Google Scholar. From a different perspective, see Ludlow, J. M. and Jones, L., The Progress of the Working Class, 1832–1867 (London, 1867)Google Scholar.

3 See Rothstein, T., From Chartism to Labourism: Historical Sketches of the English Working Class Movement (London, 1929)Google Scholar; and Jackson, T. A., Trials of British Freedom: Being Some Studies in the History of the Fight for Democratic Freedom in Britain (London, 1940)Google Scholar.

4 Especially Cole, G. D. H., A Short History of the British Working Class Movement, 1789–1927, 3 vols. (London, 1925–1927)Google Scholar; Hammond, J. and Hammond, B., The Age of the Chartists, 1832–54: A Study of Discontent (London, 1930)Google Scholar.

5 For instance in the political speculations of Sir John Clapham. See Johnson, R., “Culture and the Historians,” in Working Class Culture: Studies in History and Theory, ed. Clarke, J., Critcher, C., and Johnson, R. (London, 1979), pp. 44 and 49–53Google Scholar, for a discussion along these lines of both Cole and the economic historians.

6 For instance, Thompson, E. P., William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London, 1955)Google Scholar, and The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, E. J., Labour's Turning Point, 1880–1900 (London, 1948)Google Scholar, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1964)Google Scholar, chaps. 1–3, 9–12, and 14–16; Hobsbawm, E. J. and Rude, G., Captain Swing (Woking, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Saville, J., “Chartism in the Year of Revolution (1848),” Modern Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1952–1953): 23–33Google Scholar, and 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement (Cambridge, 1987), esp. pp. 200–229Google Scholar.

7 Hence the title of Harrison's, RoydenBefore the Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics, 1861–1881 (London, 1965)Google Scholar. For its influence on standard textbook histories of the period, see Wood's, A.Nineteenth-Century Britain, 1815–1914 (London, 1960), pp. 334–37Google Scholar. More sophisticated liberal histories such as Clarke's, PeterLancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Vincent's, JohnPollbooks: How Victorians Voted (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar are similarly organized around the assumption of a shift from nonclass to class voting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

8 Pelling, H., The Origins of the Labour Party, 1880–1900 (London, 1954), p. 7Google Scholar.

9 For instance, Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, 1974), esp. pp. 203–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian Britain (Brighton, 1980)Google Scholar; Gray, R., The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), esp. pp. 115–20 and 165–83Google Scholar; Crossick, G., An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society: Kentish London, 1840–1880 (London, 1978), esp. pp. 247–54Google Scholar; and Tholfsen, T., Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian Britain (London, 1976), esp. pp. 197–240Google Scholar.

10 Reid, A., “Politics and Economics in the Formation of the British Working Class: A Response to H. F. Moorhouse,” Social History 3, no. 3 (1978): 347–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Intelligent Artisans and Aristocrats of Labour: The Essays of Thomas Wright,” in The Working Class in Modern British History: Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling, ed. Winter, J. (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Jones, G. Stedman, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 90–178Google Scholar.

12 For instance, Howell, D., British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888–1906 (Manchester, 1983), esp. pp. 277–82 and 363–73Google Scholar; Clarke, P., Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and many of the contributions in Biagini, E. and Reid, A., eds., Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organized Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Wolfe, W., From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881–1889 (New Haven, Conn., 1975)Google Scholar, which, though much neglected, provides many important insights into these continuities.

13 See Biagini and Reid, eds., Currents of Radicalism; and Taylor, M., “Radicalism and Patriotism, 1848–1859” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar. There are currently also a considerable number of British “theses in progress” on this topic. Though dated, Gillespie, F. E., Labor and Politics in England, 1850–1867 (Durham, N.C., 1927)Google Scholar, remains a useful survey of Radicalism during this period.

14 Hobsbawm, E., Worlds of Labour: Further Studies in the History of Labour (London, 1984), p. 182Google Scholar.

15 Marx, K., “The Poverty of Philosophy” in Collected Works Volume 6, 1845–48, by Marx, K. and Engels, F. (London, 1976), pp. 210–11Google Scholar.

16 Thompson, E. P. and Yeo, E., The Unknown Mayhew: Selections from the Morning Chronicle, 1849–50 (London, 1971), p. 404Google Scholar. For a detailed picture of this Radical subculture, see Prothero, I., Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London: John Gast and His Times (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

17 Jones, G. Stedman, Languages of Class, pp. 90–178Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., pp. 102–3 and 176–78.

19 See Kirk, N., “In Defence of Class: A Critique of Recent Revisionist Writings upon the Nineteenth-Century English Working Class,” International Review of Social History 32 (1987): 2–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 43–47; and Saville, 1848 (n. 6 above), pp. 200–229.

20 For an interesting discussion of the impact of European nationalists on British Radicalism in the 1850s, see Claeys, G., “Mazzini, Kossuth and British Radicalism, 1848–1854,” Journal of British Studies 28, no. 3 (1989): 225–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Northern Star (November 15, 1851).

22 See Taylor (n. 13 above), esp. chaps. 2, 5, and 6, and conclusion.

23 Ibid.; and Matthew, H. C. G., “Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Politics of Mid-Victorian Budgets,” Historical Journal 22, no. 3 (1979): 615–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See Biagini, E. F., “British Trade Unions and Popular Political Economy, 1860–1880,” Historical Journal 30 (1987): 811–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matthew; and Jones, G. Stedman, “Some Notes on Karl Marx and the English Labour Movement,” History Workshop Journal 18 (Autumn 1984): 124–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 130–36.

25 Bee-Hive (April 10, 1864). The Northern Star (November 8, 1851) notes that Kossuth's London reception was attended by “few names of celebrity from the ranks of the ‘Liberal Party.”’

26 Tholfsen (n. 9 above), p. 320. See also Harrison (n. 7 above), pp. 78–136, esp. p. 81. These arguments tend to mistake the urge to refute Robert Lowe's claim that the working classes were “venal, ignorant and drunken” with special pleading on behalf of a respectable elite.

27 Bee-Hive (September 14, 1867) (original emphasis).

28 Reynolds's Newspaper (September 1, 1867). This argument was standard fare for Reynolds's, see November 10, 1867: “class legislation is the curse of the English working classes and the crime of their rulers” or December 15, 1867: “the English working classes have been systematically robbed and starved by act of Parliament.”

29 Republican (October 1, 1870).

30 Reynolds's Newspaper (December 15, 1867).

31 Leventhal, F. M., Respectable Radical: George Howell and Victorian Working Class Politics (London, 1971), pp. 71–89Google Scholar.

32 Harrison p. 116.

33 Wright, T., “The press and the people,” in his Own New Masters (London, 1873), pp. 334–35 and 346Google Scholar. See also The Dictionary of Labour Biography, 1st ed. (London, 1976)Google Scholar, s.v. “George Reynolds,” 3:149Google Scholar.

34 Wright, p. 346.

35 Berridge, V., “Popular Sunday Papers and Mid-Victorian Society,” in Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day, ed. Boyce, G., Curran, J., and Wingates, P. (London, 1978), p. 259Google Scholar. See also Humpherys, A., “Popular Narrative and Political Discourse in Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper,” in Investigating Victorian Journalism, ed. Blake, L., Jones, A., and Madden, L. (Basingstoke, 1990)Google Scholar.

36 Berridge, p. 256.

37 Ibid.

38 Jones, A., “Workmen's Advocates: Ideology and Class in a Mid-Victorian Newspaper System” in The Victorian Periodical Press: Soundings and Samplings, ed. Shattock, J. and Wolff, M. (Leicester, 1982), pp. 297–316Google Scholar, quotes on pp. 310 and 313.

39 Review of Reviews (June 1906), p. 579Google Scholar. Seldon was born in 1868, and so his exposure to Chartist politics and the popular Radical tradition was very much a late-Victorian one.

40 Lee, H. W. and Archibald, E., Social Democracy in Britain (London, 1935), p. 30Google Scholar.

41 Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., s.v. “The Democracy.” The earliest reference given is to GeneralThompson's, ThomasExercises, Political and Others (London, 1842)Google Scholar.

42 Duncan, W., Life of Joseph Cowen (London, 1904), pp. 161–62Google Scholar. See also Baylen, J. and Gossman, N., eds., Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals (Brighton, 1984)Google Scholar, s.v. “Joseph Cowen,” 2:159–64Google Scholar.

43 Bee-Hive (August 12, 1876). See also Industrial Review (November 2, 1878) for hostile reactions from George Howell and others to Potter's rejection by the local Liberal Hundred at the Peterborough by-election.

44 Reynolds's Newspaper (December 19, 1886).

45 Reynolds's Newspaper (November 29, 1885).

46 Pelling, H., America and the British Left: From Bright to Bevan (London, 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 3. See also Joyce (n. 9 above), pp. 293 and 318–19, which notes the striking absence of labor leaders from “the Liberal party apparatus” in Blackburn.

47 Dalley, W. A., The Life Story of W. J. Davis, J.P. (Birmingham, 1914), pp. 44–64Google Scholar; and Briggs, A., History of Birmingham, Vol. II: Borough and City, 1865–1938 (London, 1952), pp. 192–94Google Scholar.

48 Green, C., “Birmingham Politics, 1873–1891: The Local Basis of Change,” Midland History 2, no. 2 (1973): 84–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Waller, P. J., Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool, 1868–1939 (Liverpool, 1981)Google Scholar, chaps. 8–11; Jeyes, S. H. and How, F. D., The Life of Sir Howard Vincent (London, 1912)Google Scholar; and Lawrence, J., “Party Politics and the People: Continuity and Change in the Political History of Wolverhampton, 1815–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

50 Reynolds's Newspaper (February 12 and September 24, 1893).

51 Reynolds's Newspaper (December 3, 1899).

52 See Wilkins, M. S., “The Non-Socialist Origins of England's First Important Socialist Organization,” International Review of Social History 4 (1959): 199–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Soutter, F. W., Recollections of a Labour Pioneer (London, 1923), pp. 128–56Google Scholar; and Justice (May 26, 1888). See Justice (June 2, 1888) for Quelch's editorial on the need for cooperation, but not compromise, with “advanced” (by which he meant collectivism Radicalism.

54 Reynolds's Newspaper (December 19, 1886, and November 3, 1889).

55 Reynolds's Newspaper (May 14, 1893).

56 See Reynolds's Newspaper (January 25 and July 26, 1891) for examples of this attitude.

57 H. Pelling, America and the British Left (n. 46 above), chap. 4. For examples of disillusionment with republican-democracy abroad, see Justice (May 19, 1888); and Lee and Archibald (n. 40 above), p. 30.

58 Justice, “Socialism and the Suffrage” (October 21, 1893)Google Scholar.

59 Justice (May 30, 1885) and almost weekly thereafter. See also Hyndman, H. M., England for All: The Text Book of Democracy (reprint, Brighton: Harvester, 1973)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

60 Justice (October 25, 1884).

61 See Mann, T., Why I Joined the National Democratic League (London, 1900), p. 2Google Scholar; and Thompson, P., Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (London, 1967), p. 108Google Scholar.

62 From its inception in 1851 Reynolds's carried a regular column by “Gracchus,” the pseudonym used by Babeuf and the sansculottes, and made frequent appeals to “the Democracy” to “take matters into their own hands” as the French had done in 1789, 1848, and later 1871 (e.g., January 25, 1891).

63 The Republican (June 1, 1871): Reynolds's Newspaper (October 3, 1886); and Justice (September 14, 1889).

64 Justice (May 3, 1890), cited in Collins, H., “The Marxism of the Social Democratic Federation,” in Essays in Labour History, 1886–1923, ed. Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (London, 1971), p. 55Google Scholar.

65 Justice (September 14, 1889).

66 Circular of May 20, 1890, Fabian Society Archives (FSA), Nuffield College, Oxford, Harvester microfilm (HM) part 4, reel 11 F21/1.

67 “The Report on the Lancashire Campaign,” FSA, HM part 2, reel 9 63/3. See also Pease, E. R., The History of the Fabian Society (London, 1918), pp. 95–100Google Scholar.

68 Thompson, E. P., “Homage to Tom Maguire,” in Briggs, and Saville, , eds., 1:310Google Scholar. See also Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Fabians Reconsidered,” in Labouring Men (n. 6 above), pp. 253–54Google Scholar.

69 Fabian Tract No. 6: The True Radical Programme (London, 1887) 9Google Scholar. See also Fabian Tract No. 41: The Fabian Society: What it has Done and How it has Done It (London, 1892)Google Scholar.

70 “Report,” FSA, HM part 2, reel 9 63/3.

71 McBriar, A. M., Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 179–80Google Scholar; also Pugh, P., Educate, Agitate, Organize: 100 Years of Fabian Socialism (London, 1984), pp. 38–39Google Scholar.

72 See Clarke, , Liberals and Social Democrats (n. 12 above), p. 34Google Scholar, where he cites Shaw's comment that “for years past every Sunday evening of mine has been spent on some more or less squalid platform, lecturing, lecturing, and lecturing.”

73 Thompson, , “Homage to Tom Maguire,” pp. 301–2 and 310Google Scholar.

74 Lawrence, “Party Politics (n. 49 above), chap. 4.

75 Hobsbawm, , “The Fabians Reconsidered,” pp. 253–54Google Scholar.

76 Wolfe, , From Radicalism to Socialism (n. 12 above), esp. pp. 151–81 and 251–91Google Scholar.

77 Wolverhampton Express and Star (April 10, 1891).

78 By October 1893 the society claimed to have printed 55,000 copies of Sidney Webb's, Facts for Socialists (London, 1887)Google Scholar; 20,000 copies of Webb's, The Workers' Political Programme (London, 1890)Google Scholar (both sold for one penny); and 180,000 copies of Phillips's, W. L.Why are the many poor? (London, 1884)Google Scholar, and C. M. Wilson's What Socialism Is, both free pamphlets. See Fabian Tract No. 47: The Unemployed (London, 1893), p. 20Google Scholar.

79 McBriar, , Fabian Socialism, pp. 29–47Google Scholar.

80 Fabian Tract No. 5: Facts for Socialists, 3d ed. (London, 1890), p. 15Google Scholar. This tract went through many revisions, but its fundamentally Radical economic analysis was never abandoned.

81 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

82 Facts for Socialists, p. 12 (my emphasis). Of course, for most socialists competition, of whatever sort, represented the negation of socialism.

83 See Jones, Stedman, Languages of Class (n. 11 above), pp. 120–25 and 132–61Google Scholar.

84 Fabian Tract No. 13: What Socialism Is (London, 1890), p. 3Google Scholar (my emphasis).

85 Fabian Tract No. 11: The Workers' Political Programme (London, 1890), p. 8Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., p. 11.

87 What Socialism Is, p. 2.

88 Yeo, S., “A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883–1896,” History Workshop Journal 4 (Autumn 1977): 5–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 For instance, his A Policy for the Labour Party (London, 1920)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 3 and 10, and Socialism: Critical and Constructive (London, 1921)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 7 (“Socialist Society”).

90 Lawrence, “Party Politics and the People” (n. 49 above).