^{page 175 note 1} “Homage to Tom Maguire”, in: Essays in Labour History, ed. by Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (1967), pp. 277ff.Google Scholar

^{page 175 note 2} Mann, Tom, ILP General Secretary's Monthly Report, National Administrative Council minutes, 03 1894.Google Scholar See, for example, Clayton, Joseph, The Rise and Decline of Socialism in Great Britain (1926), p. 82;Google ScholarPoirier, P., The Advent of the Labour Party (1958), pp. 48–50;Google ScholarPelling, H., The Origins of the Labour Party, 1880–1900, 2nd ed. (1965), pp. 158–60;Google ScholarDowse, R. E., Left in the Centre, The Independent Labour Party, 1893–1940 (1966), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

^{page 176 note 1} Newspaper companies were not the only business ventures in which socialists were involved. Local ILP branches often formed trading companies both to undercut local shopkeepers and to enhance their own funds, e.g., Manchester ILP Trading Society, Bradford and District ILP Trading Society. Other companies were formed to fulfil specific objectives such as purchasing premises, e.g., Socialist Institute Ltd. was formed to buy the Bradford Labour Institute, the Hull Friendly and Trades Societies Club Ltd. was able to borrow money from 48 local labour and trade-union clubs and societies to buy a vacant mechanics' institute; see Labour Leader, 12 December 1896, p. 429; 26 December 1896, p. 453; 16 January 1897, p. 20; 23 January 1897, p. 31. Virtually all these companies were formed under the provisions of the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts. Unfortunately, the Registry of Friendly Societies is less useful to historians than the Registry of Public Companies; the statutory returns are less informative and files are only kept for a very short period. See, for example, the file of the Atlas Press Society, which was Keir Hardie's last attempt to organise the Labour Leader as a company around himself, Scottish Record Office, FS5/193, 19 October 1900. For objections to registering a company under Companies Acts, see Labour Leader, 14 July 1900, p. 219.

^{page 176 note 2} Registry of Public Companies, N 106263. Henceforth the company will be referred to as the Labour Leader Ltd., since one object of this analysis is to examine the original shareholder list.

^{page 177 note 1} Public Record Office, BT/31/17292/81915.

^{page 177 note 2} PRO, BT/31/18313/96196.

^{page 177 note 3} In general, the information contained in company files is standard. There are some variations, however, depending on the type of company involved. Some companies consisted of a handful of directors who were the only shareholders; e.g., Clarion Newspaper Co., PRO, BT/31/31789/42159; Labour Publishing Company, whose directors included Norman Angel, Page Arnot, George Lansbury, G. D. H. Cole and H. N. Brailsford, PRO, BT/31/26290/171318. In neither case does the file contain any balance sheets. In contrast, other companies had large numbers of shareholders and returned their annual balance sheets regularly; e.g., Labour Newspapers Ltd. (publishers of the Daily Citizen from 1912 to 1915), PRO, BT/31/119898/20435; see also British Library of Political and Economic Science, Coll. G/1972/lff.

^{page 178 note 1} The average weekly income of the urban wage-earning family was probably between 25/– and 30/– in 1900, rising to between 30/– and 35/– in 1914. See, for example, A. L. Bowley, Wages and Incomes in the United Kingdom since 1860 (1937). Recognising the difficulties many people might have in finding £1, Keir Hardie offered shares in the Labour Leader in 1900 in instalments of 2/6d with guaranteed three-monthly intervals between instalments and a five-week period of grace for every payment; Labour Leader, 17 March 1900, p. 83b. In fact the prospectus proposed share intervals of only one month; see prospectus attached to Labour Leader, 25 August 1900.

^{page 178 note 2} In common with most other labour newspapers, the Labour Leader, for instance, published full lists of all contributors to the numerous appeals that were launched in its columns. In 1899 the paper offered scholarships to Ruskin College, Oxford, to those readers who raised the greatest amount of money in the ILP Easter Egg Appeal.

^{page 178 note 3} See, for example, Morgan, K. O., “The Merthyr of Keir Hardie”, in: Merthyr Politics: The Making of a Working Class Tradition, ed. by Williams, Glanmor (1968).Google Scholar The Merthyr branch of the ILP was one of only five branches founded in Wales up to 1897; Fourth Annual Report of the ILP Conference, 1897, p. 10; ILP News, April 1897. The growth of the ILP in Wales was stimulated by the appointment of Willie Wright as South Wales organiser during the period of the 1898 coal stoppage; H. Pelling, op. cit., p. 180; Morgan, K. O., Wales in British Politics, 1867–1922 (1963), pp. 204–05.Google Scholar

^{page 179 note 1} Thompson, Paul, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (1967), pp. 250–62;Google ScholarFifty Years History of the Woolwich Labour Party, 1903–53, ed. by Stuckle, R. B. (1953).Google Scholar

^{page 180 note 1} The instructions of the National Administrative Council had been that the shares be held jointly by W. Field and J. R. MacDonald, but Field's name does not appear in the Register; NAC minutes, 15–16 June 1904.

^{page 180 note 2} Untitled pamphlet published by the ILP urging members to take up more shares: John Burns Collections, TUC Library, LL 39 (41) 371 (06) 21, 21 April 1905.

^{page 180 note 3} Including Miss Isabella Ford and Philip Snowden.

^{page 180 note 4} NAC minutes, 24–26 September and 11 November 1903; 21–23 March 1904.

^{page 180 note 5} Pelling, op. cit., p. 24.

^{page 180 note 6} For Pethick-Lawrence see Gooch, G. P., Historical Surveys and Portraits (1966).Google Scholar

^{page 180 note 7} R. E. Dowse, op. cit., p. 19.

^{page 181 note 1} Thirteenth Annual Report of the ILP Conference, 1906; 19th Annual Report of the ILP Conference, 1912.

^{page 182 note 1} These branches produced between them 18 different newspapers from 1895 to 1905. See my “Local Newspapers of the Independent Labour Party, 1893–1906”, in: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, Nos 28–29 (1974).

^{page 184 note 1} Philip Poirier distinguishes between 7,000 “paying” members and a “total” membership of 20,000; The Advent of the Labour Party, p. 49. See also Dowse, op. cit., p. 12. The ILP claimed a membership of 14,000; Labour Party Foundation Conference and Annual Conference Reports (Hammersmith Reprints, 1967), p. 198.

^{page 185 note 1} K. O. Morgan describes his career as “contradictory”. “The most hated coalowner in South Wales, he was the friendly associate of Keir Hardie.” “D. A. Thomas: The Industrialist as Politician”, in: Glamorgan Historian, III (1966), ed. by Williams, Stewart, esp. pp. 45–50.Google Scholar

^{page 185 note 2} See, for example, the letter of apology to the Registrar of Public Companies from the evidently harassed Secretary, PRO, BT/31/18313/96196.

^{page 186 note 1} The Borough of Woolwich Labour Pioneer began as the Woolwich and District Labour Notes, first published in November 1898 by the Woolwich and Plumstead ILP. It discontinued in December 1899 but resumed publication as the Borough of Woolwich Labour Journal in October 1901, published by the Trades Council, and the title Pioneer was assumed by the new company in 1904.

^{page 186 note 2} Stewart, William, Keir Hardie (1921), p. 274;Google Scholar Paul Thompson, op. cit., p. 262. For Fels's sponsorship of Lenin, see Dudden, A. P. and von Laue, T. H., “The RSDLP and Joseph Fels”, in: American Historical Review, LXI (1955–1956).Google Scholar

^{page 186 note 3} Thompson, op. cit., p. 262.

^{page 186 note 4} Ibid., p. 262. Grinling was listed as holding 100 shares.

^{page 187 note 1} Company prospectus, 19 March 1914, BT/31/17292/81915.

^{page 187 note 2} See Fifty Years History of the Woolwich Labour Party, op. cit.

^{page 188 note 1} Dr Schwartz-Lyon, System of Classification (International Labour Organization), quoted in Carr-Saunders, A. M. and Jones, D. Caradog, A Survey of the Social Structure of England and Wales (1927), p. 35.Google Scholar For further discussion of this particular problem see ibid., pp. 33–47.

^{page 188 note 2} For fuller discussion of this system see Guy Routh, Occupation and Pay in Great Britain, 1906–60 (National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 1965), ch. 1 and Appendix A.

^{page 189 note 1} The term “miner” has, for example, posed special difficulties for sociologists. In the Hall-Jones system of grading, miners were assigned to group VI (semiskilled manual), while Young and Willmott regraded them to group V (skilled); Hall, J. and Jones, D. Caradog, “The Social Grading of Occupations”, in: British Journal of Sociology, I (1950);Google Scholar M. Young and P. Wilmott, “Social Grading by Manual Workers”, ibid., VII (1956).

^{page 189 note 2} See, for example, Marshall, T. H., “The Nature and determinants of social status”, in: Year Book of Education, 1953;Google ScholarMoser, C. A. and Hall, J. R., “The Social Grading of Occupations”, in: Social Mobility in Britain, ed. by D. V. Glass (1954);Google ScholarKraus, Irving, “Some perspectives on social stratification and social class”, in: Sociological Review, XV (1967).Google Scholar For a useful survey of the subject see Davies, Ioan, Social Mobility and Political Change (1970).Google Scholar An interesting departure from the conventional systems is offered in Neale, R. S., Class and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century (1972), ch. 1.Google Scholar

^{page 190 note 1} The Pearson Chi-Square test has been employed to test “goodness-of-fit” in all cases. The result is highly significant (Probability 0.001); see Holt, W. L., Statistics (1969).Google Scholar

^{page 191 note 1} Lockwood, David, The Black-Coated Worker: A Study in Class Consciousness (1958).Google Scholar

^{page 193 note 1} Labour Leader: 9 (2.2% of all shareholders); Woolwich Pioneer: 23 (4.5%); Merthyr Pioneer: 42 (5.4%).

^{page 194 note 1} Included in the category of “unidentified” are those shareholders for whom no occupational entry is made at all, and also those who have described themselves as “gentleman” or “artisan”, although wherever possible the individual in question has been allocated to a definite occupational group; hence G. P. Gooch, who describes himself in the Woolwich list as an “artisan”, was allocated to group IA, and Pete Curran, who adopts the description “agitator” for himself, is allocated to the IIB. In some cases, admittedly rare, an individual who is entered in two lists has given a different occupational description on each occasion; Pethick-Lawrence, for example, gives his occupation as “barrister” in the Woolwich Pioneer but “journalist” in the Labour Leader list. As evidence of possible omissions in the lists, Keir Hardie's will includes five shares in the Merthyr Pioneer valued at 2/6d, although Hardie's name does not appear among the listed shareholders. I am grateful to Dr Kenneth O. Morgan of The Queen's College, Oxford, for this information.