Critiques of the history of British Socialism tend to begin with the assumption that the Labour movement preferred evolution to revolution, reform to fundamental change. The local Labour leadership is alleged to have responded to the difficulties of radical politics between 1880 and 1920 by tamely following a policy of tactical moderation devised in London by the Parliamentary front bench.

To better understand why Marxist Internationalism took on the forms that it did during the revolutionary epoch that followed World War I, it is useful to reconsider the “International Labor and Socialist Conference” that met at Berne from January 26 to February 10,1919. This gathering not only set its mark on the “reconstruction” of the Second International, it also influenced both the formation and the development of the Communist International. It is difficult, however, to comprehend fully what transpired at Berne unless the crucial role taken in the deliberations by Kurt Eisner, on the one hand, and the Zimmerwaldian Opposition, on the other, is recognized. To a much greater extent than has generally been realized, the immediate success and the ultimate failure of the Conference depended on the Bavarian Minister President and the loosely structured opposition group to his Left. Nevertheless every scholarly study of the Conference to date, including Arno Mayer's excellent treatment of the “Stillborn Berne Conference”, tends to underestimate Eisner's impact while largely ignoring the very existence of the Zimmerwaldian Opposition. Yet, if these two elements are neglected it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fathom the real significance of Berne. Consequently there is a need to reevaluate Eisner's role in the proceedings, particularly his behind the scenes activities, as well as to consider the attempt to resurrect the Zimmer-waldian movement during the Conference. In no small way the responsibility for the fateful decisions taken at Berne, decisions which ultimately proved detrimental to the cause of the International, lies with the hyperactive Kurt Eisner and the relatively passive Zimmer-waldian Opposition.

The different elements which came together to form the Labour Representation Committee in February 1900 were, when it came to party organisation, at once its strength and its weakness. Labour was not in the position of a totally new political party having to build up a political machine from scratch, rather the LRC was able to utilise and build upon existing organisations: these were the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society, those trade unions which supported the LRC, and trades councils throughout the country (the Social Democratic Federation disaffiliated from the LRC after little more than a year's membership). At both a local and a national level, however, these organisations were often hostile to each other, jealous of their independence and suspicious of attempts by the LRC Executive to control them.

In his most recent return to a thesis first stated in 1957, Professor Norman Cohn remains convinced of the “parallels and indeed the continuity” between medieval millenarianism and modern totalitarianism. While Professor Cohn's treatment of this theme has in 1970 been stated “more briefly” than in 1957, it is difficult to share his view that it has simultaneously been rendered “more clearly”. Indeed the latest edition of The Pursuit of the Millennium might easily persuade the reader that Professor Cohn had surrendered that hypothesis which formed a major interest of his work.

„You'll certainly fancy, my dear child, that I am very fond of books, because I trouble you with them at so unseasonable a time”, schreibt Marx 1868 seiner auf Hochzeitsreise befindlichen Tochter Laura, um dann mit dem Unterton bitterer Selbstironie fortzufahren: „But you would be quite mistaken. I am a machine, condemned to devour them and then, throw them, in a changed form, on the dunghill of history. A rather dreary task, too, […].”

One of the most important aspects of late nineteenth century European intellectual life was the revival of Thomism, which enveloped the philosophical, social and political outlooks of Catholics. The great influence of the Neo-Thomistic intellectual current appears somewhat enigmatic in view of recent criticism of the methods and substantive propositions employed by turn of the century Thomistic philosophers. The very word “philosopher” might in fact be justifiably denied to many of these Neo-Thomists, since they seem to have forgotten too often that philosophy means asking questions. It is rare to see in their works a creative application of Thomistic ideas to the modern world. Instead, they attempted to fit modern society into a rigid, dogmatic framework of Thomistic principles. And if these principles turned out to be straightjackets, neither philosophy nor Aquinas, but only the Neo-Thomists are to blame. For Aquinas' philosophy, as Etienne Gilson and Ralph M. McInerny have recently pointed out, was an extremely creative adaptation of Aristotle's thought to medieval intellectual, social and political conditions, as well as to the principles of Christianity. Aquinas' method of continuous questioning stood in contrast to the dogmatism of most of his self-proclaimed disciples in modern times.

The separation of the contributions to the theory and practice of socialism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was not seriously posited during their lifetimes, but only in the following generation. The separation, as opposed to the contributions of their entire working lives, of the respective quality of thinking in either case, was a matter of which Engels was conscious, for he wrote: “Marx was a genius, we others were at best talents. Without him the theory today would be far from what it is. Therefore it rightly bears his name.” The evaluation by Engels of the relation between the two was duly repeated by their biographers. Mehring wrote: “There is no doubt that Marx was philosophically the greater of the two and that his brain was more highly trained.” Mayer compared the two: “Marx was driven by the harsh goad of genius; Engels lived under the gentler domination of his rich humanity.” Ryazanov simply posited that the collaboration of the two and their mutual support proceeded in perfect harmony, with the minor thesis of Engels's supportive role. Both Mehring and Ryazanov cited Engels's own words of modesty quoted above. Auguste Cornu has written with reference to the beginning of the collaboration: “Engels' study of the origin of communism was more on the economic and social level than on the philosophical and political plane, and portrayed it as a necessary product of the development of capitalist society. This lent definition to Marx's still theoretical and abstract conception.” Cornu, who is of the orthodox school, had reference to the articles on political economy in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844) by Engels. While he concedes nothing to the higher intellectual attainments of one over the other, he develops the theme of the power of abstraction of Marx, of concretion of Engels. That there was identity of thought and activity of Marx and Engels is the view which seeks to establish orthodoxy of the socialist doctrines of various parties; the qualitative difference of their brain power, accordingly, implies no difference in the substance of the production in either, whether in the theory or practice of socialism resp. communism.

The strike of stevedores and dock labourers in the Port of London in 1889 has come to symbolise that ferment and upsurge of labour activity, in favour of combined action, which found expression in the “new unionism”. Indeed the great spread of union organisation in the London area at this period has usually been regarded as the main phase of new unionism. It is true that labour historians have long been aware that widespread agitation and union recruitment were also afoot among both provincial dockers and other groups who had been either unorganised, or whose previous attempts at unionism had proved sporadic and abortive. The Liverpool dockers, in particular, became engaged in 1890 in a protracted struggle involving almost as great a number of strikers as on the London docks in the previous year. This Liverpool strike had all the makings of a “labour war”, and it resulted in a profound impact upon industrial relations on the Mersey waterfront. However, the events and consequences of this dispute together with the activities of the National Union of Dock Labourers which organised it have so far received less detailed attention than either the dock strike in the metropolis or the London dockers union.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, the relationship of poverty and drunkenness became a topic of bitter social controversy. The debate often had hopelessly polarized positions, being reduced in crudest form to a disagreement over whether poverty caused intemperance or the reverse. The very emotionalism and repetition of the argument, while disappointing to the logician, was a clear sign of the deep passions that the question invoked. While contributors to this debate stretched across the spectrum of religious and political alignment, the controversy was essentially the creature of the left. As will be argued, the question of self-inflicted poverty through drunkenness excited the Liberal and emergent socialist-labour parties far more than it did the Conservative-Unionist sector.

Mid-Victorian Scotland was a remarkably homogeneous society, and the milieu, in which the labour movement developed, had very long traditions of social repression and economic backwardness. A system of democracy inherited from the Calvinist revolution of 1559, social mobility and the comparatively superior educational opportunities of working class children were, in the considered opinion of a large number of journalists, clergymen and members of Parliament, the dominant characteristics of Scottish democracy. In practice, the educational opportunities and social mobility open to the working classes were severely circumscribed by the conditions industrial capitalism had engendered; and in the mid-1860s the labour movement, though influenced by the traditions – and the mythology – of Scottish democracy, looked to America for their model of a democratic society.

G. D. H. Cole has drawn attention to the militancy of the unions outside of the craftsmen's trades in the 1860's. The “class cleavage” which he ascribed to the engineering, shipbuilding and the building trades enabled the skilled men to use their “New Model Unions” as exclusive barriers against dilution by the semi-skilled and labouring classes. In consequence, the Amalgamated Unions had pacific tendencies which were only partially offset by their adoption of a centralised organisation, through which policy making and finance were mainly controlled. Although Cole described the Ironworkers' Union as one of the provincially based Amalgamated Unions, the three main unions which were formed by the ironworkers in the years 1862–3 never really succeeded in amalgamating along the lines described. When they did come together in 1868, after a period of disastrous defeats, the form of amalgamation they adopted resulted in a very weak union. The executive committee insisted upon making all decisions on the use of the strike tactic, but allowed the branches almost complete control over union finances.

The idea of a “labour aristocracy” pervades writing about the British working class of the second half, and especially the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This emphasis is, in my view, correct: the behaviour and consciousness of working people cannot be explained without some such concept of divisions within the working class. But this proposition has too often been allowed to conclude, rather than to commence the enquiry. The fragmentation of the manual working class into different strata and sub-cultures may take several forms, and is bound to have local and industrial variations. In approaching the problem it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between differences in the class situation of various groups of workers, and the formation of separate working class strata – a cultural and political process. Three main levels of analysis are relevant to this problem: the stratification within the working class, in terms of class situations (relative earnings, security, prospects and opportunities, position of subordination or autonomy in the workplace, and so on); the extent to which various strata of manual workers were distinguished by the cultivation of particular styles of life, and by commitment to particular sets of norms and values; and the consequences of these for institutions embodying the interest of manual workers as a class (unions, parties, etc.) and for the patterning of conflict and consensus in the society.

In an earlier article, I outlined some of the main social and demographic characteristics of the Bedfordshire parish of Cardington during the late eighteenth century, using for the purpose the invaluable survey of the parish compiled by a local schoolmaster, James Lilbourne, in 1782. Because of the growing interest in the historical process of social change, it has been thought worthwhile to examine the socio-demographic structure of Cardington at a later period. The date chosen for this second snap-shot was 1851 and the source materials used are the enumerators' schedules of the parish which were prepared for the census of that year. Although the listings for 1782 and 1851 differ somewhat, both in the nature of their content and in the degree of their coverage of the local population, a crude comparison between them has proved to be possible.