1889 — Socialism and New Unionism

Abstract

ACCORDING to Cole, 1889 was the year in which ‘British Labour’ asserted itself ‘as a movement of the whole labour class against exploitation’ [23]. Other labour historians who have written from a socialist standpoint have likewise seen 1889 as a great turning-point in the history of the movement. What made this year so significant for these writers was not so much the great increase in trade union membership, as the influence gained by socialism in the trade union world. The Webbs wrote: ‘Within a decade [from 1885] we find the whole Trade Union world permeated with Collectivist ideas¡­. This revolution in opinion is the chief event of Trade Union history at the close of the nineteenth century’ [68:374–5]. Various modern writers have made the same basic point. Thus E. J. Hobsbawm suggested: ‘Ideologically and politically the union expansions after 1889 marked a sharp turn to the left, the creation of a new cadre of leaders and policy-makers — mostly inspired by various versions of socialism — and the association of the movement with an independent working-class political party and, after 1918, a socialist programme’ [35:358].