The Crusade

Abstract

By 1900, English radical traditions seemed to have petered out and yet there appeared the possibility of at least a challenge to the Liberal monopoly of the working-class and radical vote. This was to come from the slow and painful evolution of an independent ‘labour party’ which had grown from an alliance of new unionism and intellectual ‘socialist’ and ‘labour’ clubs and associations. That it would prove a disappointment to revolutionaries did not mean that it might not come to power by legitimate means and still inveigle revolutionary socialist ideas into Parliament.