Abstract
From the mid-1880s in Battersea there was a growing desire for working-class representation. At first this seemed strong enough to overwhelm the liberal and radical organisations in the area. However, this spontaneous desire was not channelled into an independent organisation. The local M.P., John Burns, increasingly drifted towards the liberals in the 1890s, and the Battersea Trades and Labour Council worked with the Liberal and Radical Associations, taking on a marked lib-lab hue after 1897. Local politics were dominated by the Progressive Alliance of liberals, radicals, labour and socialists. The progressives controlled the vestry and borough council from 1892 until the First World War, except for three years when the liberal elements felt strong enough to break away. After the end of the war the liberals were swept away.
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Notes
C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1897) vol. 1, p. 279.
H. S. Simmonds, All About Battersea (1882) p. 4.
Morgan Crucible Company Limited, Battersea Works 1856–1956 (1956) p. 34.
The churches were St Barnabas’, St Luke’s, and the Ascension, each with a Sunday attendance of over a thousand. R. Mudie-Smith (ed.), The Religious Life of London (1904) p. 453; and
B. Clarke, The Parish Churches of London (1966) pp. 195–8.
E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Nineteenth Century London Labour Market’, in Centre for Urban Studies (ed.), London: Aspects of Change (1964) p. 8.
P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour. The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (1966) pp. 45–6.
R. V. Clements, ‘British Trade Unions and Popular Political Economy, 1850–1875’, Economic History Review, XIV (1961) pp. 93–104.
W. S. Sanders, Early Socialist Days (1927) p. 12.
J. Burgess, John Burns: The Rise and Progress of a Right Honourable (1911) pp. 96–7.
Battersea Labour League, Objects and Rules with Parliamentary and Municipal Programme (1894). Copy in the British Museum.
W. Kent, John Burns: Labour’s Lost Leader (1950) p. 47.
H. Haward, The London County Council From Within (1932) p. 21.
For the development of unemployment policies see: B. Gilbert, The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain (1966);
K. D. Brown, Labour and Unemployment 1900–1914 (Newton Abbot, 1971 );
J. Harris, Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy, 1886–1914 (Oxford, 1972 ).
F. S. W. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918–1949 (1969) pp. 3–4.
This is in contrast to P. Clarke’s Lancashire where he finds progressivism enjoying its finest hour in 1910. P. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (1971) p. 406.
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© 1974 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Wrigley, C. (1974). Liberals and the Desire for Working-Class Representatives in Battersea, 1886–1922. In: Brown, K.D. (eds) Essays in Anti-Labour History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02039-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02039-3_6
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