Labour's Lost Leader

Labour's Lost Leader PDF Author: Paul Tyler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857714171
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The life story of Will Crooks has a Dickensian resonance. As a working class child, born into abject poverty, he experienced the rigours of Poplar Workhouse and Poor Law school. Nearly forty years later Crooks became Chairman of the Poplar Board of Guardians, the very board that had given him shelter during his challenging early years. Crooks was a member of the Coopers' Union for fifty-five years, and a leading pioneer of the trade union and Labour movement for over thirty. This significant and sometimes controversial figure has been overlooked by modern historians. Here Paul Tyler presents a pioneering political biography of a significant Labour figure at both a local and national level and an important reinterpretation of the early trade union and labour movement from the 1880s to the 1920s.

The Labour Church

The Labour Church PDF Author: Jacqueline Turner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786724022
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The Labour Church was an organisation fundamental to the British socialist movement during the formative years of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Labour Party between 1891 and 1914. It was founded by the Unitarian Minister John Trevor in Manchester in 1891 and grew rapidly thereafter. Its political credentials were on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in 1893, and the Labour Church proved a formative influence on many pioneers of British socialism. This book provides an analysis of the Labour Church, its religious doctrine, its socio-political function and its role in the cultural development of the early socialist arm of the labour movement. It includes a detailed examination of the Victorian morality and spirituality upon which the life of the Labour Church was built. Jacqui Turner challenges previously held assumptions that the Labour Church was irreligious and merely a political tool. She provides a new cultural picture of a diverse and inclusive organisation, committed to individualism and an individual relationship with God. As such, this book brings together two major controversies of late-Victorian Britain: the emergence of independent working-class politics and the decline of traditional religion in a work which will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the labour movement.

British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906

British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888-1906 PDF Author: David Howell
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719017919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description


Labour and the Caucus

Labour and the Caucus PDF Author: James Owen
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1781385653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
By providing a comprehensive and multi-layered picture of the troubled relationship between working-class radicals and organised Liberalism in England between 1868 and 1888, Labour and the Caucus offers a new, innovative pre-history of the Labour party.

George Lansbury

George Lansbury PDF Author: John Shepherd
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191542059
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
'The most lovable figure in modern politics' was how A.J.P Taylor described the Christian pacifist, George Lansbury. At 73 he took over the helm of the Labour Party of only 46 MPs in the Depression years of the 1930s. Throughout a remarkable life, Lansbury remained an extraordinary politician of the people, associated with a multitude of crusades for social justice. He resigned from Parliament to support 'Votes for Women', and for the next ten years edited the fiery Daily Herald. In 1921 Lansbury led the 'Poplar Rates Rebellion' - when thirty Labour councillors went willingly to prison in defiance of the government, the courts and their own party leadership. As Labour leader, Lansbury was known universally as a committed socialist an implacable opponent of capitalism and imperialism. He never sought personal wealth, travelled everywhere by public transport, and made his home in impoverished East London. His final years were spent in a tireless international peace crusade to prevent the drift towards another world war. In this major new biography, John Shepherd draws on an impressive range of research to reconstruct the life of a charismatic Labour pioneer. He reaffirms George Lansbury's standing at the heart of Old Labour and his importance to British politics as a whole.

The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889

The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889 PDF Author: David Edward Owen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674358850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Of all the major cities of Britain, London, the world metropolis, was the last to acquire a modern municipal government. Its antiquated administrative system led to repeated crises as the population doubled within a few decades and reached more than two million in the 1840s. Essential services such as sanitation, water supply, street paving and lighting, relief of the poor, and maintenance of the peace were managed by the vestries of ninety-odd parishes or precincts plus divers ad hoc authorities or commissions. In 1855, with the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works, the groundwork began to be laid for a rational municipal government. Owen tells in absorbing detail the story of the operations of the Metropolitan Board of Works, its political and other problems, and its limited but significant accomplishments--including the laying down of 83 miles of sewers and the building of the Thames Embankments--before it was replaced in 1889 by the London County Council. His account, based on extensive archival research, is balanced, judicious, lucid, often witty and always urbane.

Peers, the Parties and the People

Peers, the Parties and the People PDF Author: Neal Blewett
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349006521
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description


Striking a Light

Striking a Light PDF Author: Louise Raw
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441121048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
In July 1888, fourteen hundred women and girls employed by the matchmakers Bryant and May walked out of their East End factory and into the history books. Louise Raw gives us a challenging new interpretation of events proving that the women themselves, not celebrity socialists like Annie Besant, began it. She provides unequivocal evidence to show that the matchwomen greatly influenced the Dock Strike of 1889, which until now was thought to be the key event of new unionism, and repositions them as the mothers of the modern labour movement. Returning to the stories of the women themselves, and by interviewing their relatives today, Raw is able to construct a new history which challenges existing accounts of the strike itself and radically alters the accepted history of the labour movement in Britain.

Vanishing for the vote

Vanishing for the vote PDF Author: Jill Liddington
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847798888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Vanishing for the vote recounts what happened on one night, Sunday 2 April, 1911, when the Liberal government demanded every household comply with its census requirements. Suffragette organisations urged women, all still voteless, to boycott this census. Many did. Some wrote ‘Votes for Women’ boldly across their schedules. Others hid in darkened houses or, in the case of Emily Wilding Davison, in a cupboard within the Houses of Parliament. Yet many did not. Even some suffragettes who might be expected to boycott decided to comply – and completed a perfectly accurate schedule. Why? Vanishing for the vote explores the ‘battle for the census’ arguments that raged across Edwardian England in spring 1911. It investigates why some committed campaigners decided against civil disobedience tactics, instead opting to provide the government with accurate data for its health and welfare reforms. This book plunges the reader into the turbulent world of Edwardian politics, so vividly recorded on census night 1911. Based on a wealth of brand-new documentary evidence, it offers compelling reading for history scholars and general readers alike. Sumptuously produced, with 50 illustrations and an invaluable Gazetteer of suffrage campaigners.

London in the Twentieth Century

London in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Jerry White
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407013076
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Jerry White's London in the Twentieth Century, Winner of the Wolfson Prize, is a masterful account of the city’s most tumultuous century by its leading expert. In 1901 no other city matched London in size, wealth and grandeur. Yet it was also a city where poverty and disease were rife. For its inhabitants, such contradictions and diversity were the defining experience of the next century of dazzling change. In the worlds of work and popular culture, politics and crime, through war, immigration and sexual revolution, Jerry White’s richly detailed and captivating history shows how the city shaped their lives and how it in turn was shaped by them.