Rank and file soldiers were not 'the scum of the earth' but included a cross section of working-class men, who retained their former civilian culture. While they often exhibited pride in regiment and nation, soldiers could also demonstrate a growing class consciousness and support for political radicalism. The book will challenge assumptions that the British army was politically neutral, if privately conservative, by uncovering a rich vein of liberal and radical political thinking among some soldiers, officers and political commentators. This ranges from the Whig 'militia' tradition, through radical theories on tactics and army reform, to attempted ultra-radical subversion amongst troops, and the involvement of soldiers in riots and risings. Case studies are given of individual 'military radicals', soldiers or ex-soldiers who were reforming and later socialist activists. Popular anti-French feeling of the Napoleonic Wars is examined, alongside examples of rank and file bravery which fostered widespread loyalty and patriotism. This contributed to soldiers being used successfully in strike breaking, and deployed against rioters or Chartist revolts. By the late Victorian period, popular imperialism was an important part of working-class support for Conservatism. The book explores what impact this had on rank and file soldiers, whilst outlining minority support for socialism.

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Fellow Travellers examines the shifting practices and strategies adopted by Communist militants as they sought to build and maintain support on the railways. In a period in which the Communist party struggled to establish a foothold in many French workplaces, activists on the railways bucked the trend and set down deep and lasting roots of support. They maintained this support even through the sectarian period of the Comintern's shift to class against class, deepening their participation within railway industrial relations and gaining the experience of engagement with managers and state officials upon which they would build during the years of the Popular Front. Here France's railway employees joined alongside their fellow workers in shaping a new social contract for workers, extending the principle of democratic representation into the workplace. While the Popular Front experiment proved shortlived, its influence was long lasting. In the post Liberation period, the key tenets of the Popular Front experience re-emerged within the nationalised SNCF, shaping the particular character of railway industrial relations – the peculiar mix of collaboration and hostile confrontation between management and workforce that continues to make the French railways one of the most contested sectors of the modern French economy.

The late-Victorian and Edwardian East End was an area not only defined by its poverty and destitution, but also by its ethnic and religious diversity. In the neighbourhoods of East London diasporic communities interacted with each other and with the host society in a number of different contexts. In Socialism and the Diasporic 'Other' Daniel Renshaw examines the sometimes turbulent relationships formed between Irish Catholic and Jewish populations and the socialist and labour organisations agitating in the area. Employing a comparative perspective, the book analyses the complex relations between working class migrants, conservative communal hierarchies and revolutionary groups. Commencing and concluding with waves of widespread industrial action in the East End, where politics were conflated with ethnic and diasporic identity, this book aims to reinterpret the attitudes of the turn-of-the-century East London Left towards 'difference'. Concerned with both protecting hard-won gains for the industrial proletariat and championing marginalised minority groups, the 'correct' path to be taken by socialist movements was unclear throughout the period. The book simultaneously compares the experiences of the Irish and Jewish working classes between 1889 and 1912, and the relationships formed, at work, at worship, in political organisations or at school, between these diasporic groups.

In 1958, Britain and Denmark both advocated closer European cooperation through the looser framework of the Free Trade Area (FTA) rather than membership of the nascent European Economic Community (EEC). By 1972, however, the situation had changed drastically. The FTA was a long-forgotten concept. Its replacement, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), seemed economically and politically inept. Now, at the third time of asking, both countries were on the verge of joining the EEC as full members. This compelling analysis compares how the European policies of the British Labour Party and the Danish Social Democrats evolved amid this environment. Based on material from 12 archives in four countries, it updates our knowledge of key moments in both parties' interaction with the integration story, including in the formative stages of the EEC in 1958¬–60 and the negotiations for British and Danish EEC membership in 1961–63, 1967 and 1970–72. More innovatively, this book argues that amid an array of national and international constraints the reciprocal influence exerted by Labour and the SD on each other via informal party contacts was itself a crucial determinant in European policymaking. In so doing, it sheds light on the sources of Labour European thinking, the role of small states like Denmark in the integration process, and the prominence of the Anglo-Scandinavian nexus in the broader narrative of British foreign policy in this period.