Mar 17 Socialism, Unionism, and the Labour Party

The Big Picture 1840s-1910s

I. conditions
Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People of London (1899-1903)
-Charles Booth Online Archive
S. Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life (1901)
Karl Marx

II. socialism
A. revolutionary Marxists
H.M. Hyndman (1842-1921) and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) (1881)

B. Fabianism
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
-Report on Fabian Policy (1896)
Beatrice and Sydney Webb, H. G. Wells, Ramsay MacDonald
Robert Blatchford (1851-1943), Merrie England (1894)

III. unionism
responses of politicians and employers

new unionism
Trade Union Congress (1868)
match girls' strike (1888)
London gasworkers' strike (1889)
dockers' strike (1889, 1890)
miners' strike (1897)
engineers' strike (1897)

Gas workers' rally at Peckham Rye, 1889, Illustrated London News, 12 Oct 1889

IV. emergence of the Labour Party
Keir Hardie (1856-1915)
Independent Labour Party (ILP) (1893)
Labour Representation Committee (LRC) (1900)
Labour Party (1906)

Keir Hardie

Conclusion: the welfare state