Critiques of the history of British Socialism tend to begin with the assumption that the Labour movement preferred evolution to revolution, reform to fundamental change. The local Labour leadership is alleged to have responded to the difficulties of radical politics between 1880 and 1920 by tamely following a policy of tactical moderation devised in London by the Parliamentary front bench.

One of the most important aspects of late nineteenth century European intellectual life was the revival of Thomism, which enveloped the philosophical, social and political outlooks of Catholics. The great influence of the Neo-Thomistic intellectual current appears somewhat enigmatic in view of recent criticism of the methods and substantive propositions employed by turn of the century Thomistic philosophers. The very word “philosopher” might in fact be justifiably denied to many of these Neo-Thomists, since they seem to have forgotten too often that philosophy means asking questions. It is rare to see in their works a creative application of Thomistic ideas to the modern world. Instead, they attempted to fit modern society into a rigid, dogmatic framework of Thomistic principles. And if these principles turned out to be straightjackets, neither philosophy nor Aquinas, but only the Neo-Thomists are to blame. For Aquinas' philosophy, as Etienne Gilson and Ralph M. McInerny have recently pointed out, was an extremely creative adaptation of Aristotle's thought to medieval intellectual, social and political conditions, as well as to the principles of Christianity. Aquinas' method of continuous questioning stood in contrast to the dogmatism of most of his self-proclaimed disciples in modern times.

The strike of stevedores and dock labourers in the Port of London in 1889 has come to symbolise that ferment and upsurge of labour activity, in favour of combined action, which found expression in the “new unionism”. Indeed the great spread of union organisation in the London area at this period has usually been regarded as the main phase of new unionism. It is true that labour historians have long been aware that widespread agitation and union recruitment were also afoot among both provincial dockers and other groups who had been either unorganised, or whose previous attempts at unionism had proved sporadic and abortive. The Liverpool dockers, in particular, became engaged in 1890 in a protracted struggle involving almost as great a number of strikers as on the London docks in the previous year. This Liverpool strike had all the makings of a “labour war”, and it resulted in a profound impact upon industrial relations on the Mersey waterfront. However, the events and consequences of this dispute together with the activities of the National Union of Dock Labourers which organised it have so far received less detailed attention than either the dock strike in the metropolis or the London dockers union.

Mid-Victorian Scotland was a remarkably homogeneous society, and the milieu, in which the labour movement developed, had very long traditions of social repression and economic backwardness. A system of democracy inherited from the Calvinist revolution of 1559, social mobility and the comparatively superior educational opportunities of working class children were, in the considered opinion of a large number of journalists, clergymen and members of Parliament, the dominant characteristics of Scottish democracy. In practice, the educational opportunities and social mobility open to the working classes were severely circumscribed by the conditions industrial capitalism had engendered; and in the mid-1860s the labour movement, though influenced by the traditions – and the mythology – of Scottish democracy, looked to America for their model of a democratic society.

In an earlier article, I outlined some of the main social and demographic characteristics of the Bedfordshire parish of Cardington during the late eighteenth century, using for the purpose the invaluable survey of the parish compiled by a local schoolmaster, James Lilbourne, in 1782. Because of the growing interest in the historical process of social change, it has been thought worthwhile to examine the socio-demographic structure of Cardington at a later period. The date chosen for this second snap-shot was 1851 and the source materials used are the enumerators' schedules of the parish which were prepared for the census of that year. Although the listings for 1782 and 1851 differ somewhat, both in the nature of their content and in the degree of their coverage of the local population, a crude comparison between them has proved to be possible.