Abstract
Britain in the mid-nineteenth century was nearing its peak as a major world power. The industrial revolution and ultimate victory in the long series of wars against the French had provided the springboard to an economic and imperial supremacy which were the envy of other nations. Domestically, Britain seemed by the 1850s to have entered onto a period of equally enviable social and political stability after the unrest and near-revolution of earlier years. Of course, the picture of peace and prosperity can be overdrawn. In the 1850s, Britain went to war with Russia in the Crimea and had to suppress a mutiny among Sepoy troops in India. At home, poverty remained widespread and violence was still a ready means of mediating social discontent. The campaign for parliamentary reform culminated in the trampling down of the railings in Hyde Park by demonstrators in 1866. Yet, economically at least, the signs of progress were undeniable. Apart from the slump produced in the Lancashire cotton industry by the American civil war, the 1850s and 1860s were a boom period for industry and agriculture alike. Britain benefited from having a rapidly maturing industrial economy, with a well developed infrastructure, linked to a world-wide trading empire.
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Notes
Henry Phelps Brown, The Origins of Trade Union Power (Oxford, 1986), pp. 23–9.
John Morley, Life of Gladstone (London, 1908), vol. 1, p. 569.
Ross Martin, TUC: The Growth of a Pressure Group, 1868–1976 (Oxford, 1980), p. vii.
W. H. G. Armytage, A. J. Mundella, 1825–1897. The Liberal Background to the Labour Movement (London, 1951).
Quoted in Samuel H. Beer, Modern British Politics (London, 1966), p. 264.
For a full study of the reforms of the Disraeli government see, Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London, 1967).
Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation (2nd edn, London, 1983), chapter 15.
M. E. Rose, The Relief of Poverty, 1834–1914 (London, 1972), gives a good general treatment of this theme.
Memorandum, quoted in Stephen Gwynn and Gertrude Tuckwell, The Life of Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1917), vol. 2, p. 21.
José Harris, Unemployment and Politics (Oxford, 1972) is the basic text for the study of unemployment policy before 1914.
Viscount Samuel, Memoirs (London, 1945), p. 6.
Roger Davidson, Whitehall and the Labour Problem in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain (London, 1985), pp. 34–5.
P. J. Macdonell, ‘The Historic Basis of Liberalism, in Essays in Liberalism by Six Oxford Men (London, 1897), p. 261.
E. H. Hunt, British Labour History, 1815–1914 (London, 1981), p. 319.
Davidson, Labour Problem, is the fullest analysis of the history of the Labour Department. See also the same author’s ‘Llewellyn Smith, the Labour Department and government growth’ in Gillian Sutherland (ed.), Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-century Government (London, 1972), pp. 227–62.
It should be pointed out, however, that it was only from the 1890s that reliable records were kept. Even then, the 30.4 million days lost in 1893 was exceptional, not exceeded until 1912. Henry Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (3rd edn, London, 1976), pp. 293–4.
John Saville, ‘Trade Unions and Free Labour: the background to the Taff Vale Decision’, in Asa Briggs and John Saville (eds), Essays in Labour History (London, 1960), pp. 328–30.
Roger Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, 1893–1985 (London, 1986), chapter 2, provides a balanced recent analysis of the Featherstone case.
Roger Davidson, ‘Social Conflict and Social Administration: The Conciliation Act in British Industrial Relations’, in T. C. Smout (ed.), The Search for Wealth and Stability (London, 1979) chapter 9.
This was argued by L. G. C. Money, Riches and Poverty (London, 1905).
For general studies of the New Liberalism see Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism (Oxford, 1978)
and Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978).
On Hobhouse, Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology (Cambridge, 1979) is valuable. See also, David Powell, ‘The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1886–1906’ Historical Journal, June 1986, pp. 369–93.
James Mawdsley of the Cotton Spinners was a ‘Con-Lab’ candidate in the Oldham by-election of 1899. On Lancashire generally, see Patrick Joyce, Work, Society and Politics (London, 1982).
Martin Pugh, The Tories and the People (Blackwell, Oxford, 1985) offers a study of popular Conservatism through the prism of the Primrose League.
A full account of the dispute is contained in R. Mervyn Jones, The North Wales Quarrymen, 1874–1922 (Cardiff, 1982).
E. W. Evans, Mabon (Cardiff, 1959), p. 38.
Henry Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party (Oxford, 1965), p. 116.
Henry Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (London, 1976), p. 4.
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© 1992 David Powell
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Powell, D. (1992). The Emergence of the Labour Question, 1868–1906. In: British Politics and the Labour Question, 1868–1990. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22464-7_2
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