Abstract
Before considering the imperialist, racialist and ‘radical Right’ movements in Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it may be instructive to compare the present state of research upon the subject with that upon the pre-war Left. Although many gaps doubtless remain in the historiography of the latter, the vast outpouring of recent literature has resulted in a considerable extension of knowledge upon such aspects as the causes of labour unrest, the intellectual roots of the ‘New Liberalism’, revisionism within the SPD, the early years of the Labour Party, working-class voting patterns, reading habits, attitudes to war and peace, and so on. The Right, by contrast, has been much less thoroughly researched, a fact perhaps best indicated by the way in which one can still see historians using such generalised terms as ‘the Right’ or ‘Conservative forces’ without further qualification. It would be a rash scholar today who referred to, say the social composition of the ‘Left’ or its attitude towards revolution without immediately explaining whether he meant radical Liberals or socialists, trade unionists or Fabian intellectuals, Marxists or non-Marxists. Our knowledge of the various sub-groups on the Left of the political spectrum, and of the differences between their respective aims and stances, is simply much more advanced than our knowledge of the Right.
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Kennedy, P. (1981). The Pre-war Right in Britain and Germany. In: Kennedy, P., Nicholls, A. (eds) Nationalist and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany Before 1914. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04958-5_1
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