It wasn’t just the need for political protection of the unions’ legal positions that led to the LRC’s creation, however. There is a view that rapid industrialisation and increasing world competition homogenised and radicalised the working class around this time, and made the foundation of an independent working class party inevitable. Pressures were placed upon the labour force to compete with foreign markets by improved productivity, seeing an increase in use of technology and a decrease in craftsmanship, with the beauty of the finished product of much less importance. Eric Hobsbawm describes the urban proletariat of this time as, ‘the [proletariat] of the fish and chip shop, the football team and its supporters, the working class seaside holiday, the public elementary school, the working class pattern of betting… and not least, the Labour councillor and the “new” union’. According to David Martin, the forces that were having this effect upon the urban working class were also affecting the lower middle class way of life. The gap between the two was widening, and Martin characterises the Edwardian era as the period in which class consciousness was perceptibly growing.
This view does not go without criticism, however. The sudden creation of a factory-based proletariat has been exaggerated, as most workers were still not members of unions and, furthermore, lifestyles and living patterns did not alter remarkably under the stresses of mechanisation, decreasing regionalisation, Parliamentary reform and greater workplace supervision.
To take one example, the engineering industry was a pioneering sector of mechanisation. Industrial disputes between 1897-1898 were won by the employers, giving them a greater reign over change in the sector. However, in the years before the First World War changes were unremarkably slow and there is little evidence of radical change in the workforce.
Having said this, it is unfair to look for massive changes which brought about the advent of a Labour Party. Rather, the evidence suggests that there was just enough change in the working class, including sufficient pressure at certain points of the production process, and sufficient fear among trade unionists of an uncertain future for the LRC to be created. Even in its small and weak 1900 form, the LRC was evidence of the unions’ desires to demonstrate some degree of political as well as industrial capability in asserting their interests.
The role socialism had at this time is not so clear. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, socialism groups were mainly rather small and in great difficulty. While socialist groups had little influence upon the creation of the LRC, they did have some say in the TUC conference which founded the Committee.
One major problem for the Labour movement was that it could not reconcile the wants of unions – who were the major driving force at the time – and the socialists, with whom most Labour politicians had what could be called ‘sympathies’ at the very least. Some socialists felt that the trade unions were narrow, elitist bodies were actually obstructed the advancement of workers’ rights. This argument is plausible, as in 1900 just 2.1million workers were union members, from a potential workforce of 16million. Members’ interests and general workers’ interests were, at strongest, shared on occasion by dint of coincidence. As some socialists saw it, the unions were concerned with the narrow economic gain of their members.
The Independent Labour Party, founded in 1893, had begun to tie trade unionist and socialist feeling together. Keir Hardie, for example, was a typical candidate whose background as a miner and political position as a leading socialist of the movement synthesised the two factions. The influence of the Independent Labour Party should not be overstated in the founding of the LRC, however, as its influence in 1900’s discussions was negligible.
Socialism certainly had some appeal. At the time, the market seemed too arbitrary to address the social problems of the day. Its flaws were at best problematic and at worst terminal according to many intellectuals, and for the first time living standards were not perceived to be rising as a result of capitalist non-intervention. Socialism offered order and control, and as such was one considered solution to the British social problem.
Other intellectuals, such as the young civil servant Sidney Webb, were in favour of the advances of public administration into public life. This is because it would raise the civil servant’s role and powers, replacing the capitalist whose intentions were without such altruism but were motivated instead by personal accumulation of wealth and status.
Another argument is that socialism had a role to play following the death of Gladstone. Many radicals had clung on to Gladstonian promises of radical solutions, even though he failed to meet many of these radical promises. As Edwardian Liberalism struggled to sustain this radical appeal, there came a niche amongst certain voters that had once been occupied by Gladstonians and socialism was well placed to gain a foothold.
One important question for the period is to ask just how socialist the Labour Party was. In 1906, 22 of the 30 Labour MPs were trade unionists and eight were sponsored by the ILP. Of the trade unionists, 11 cited their ideological standing as socialist, while the other 11 did not. All eight of the ILP MPs declared themselves to be socialist.
However, many MPs in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) were middle aged, and had therefore cut their political teeth in an age when socialism was scarcely thought of in Britain. There was a strong tendency toward the Liberal traditions of piecemeal reform and compromise within the existing political structure – neither of which indicated a particularly socialist intent. This can be explained in part by the fact that the trade unionists came from a background of negotiation and compromise, leading the PLP to be a tougher political negotiator within the given system. Also important was the Gladstone-MacDonald pact of cooperation between Liberal and Labour local parties in defeating Tory candidates. In 24 seats, the Gladstone-MacDonald pact had benefited the Labour candidates as they ran unopposed by Liberal rivals.
There was also a prevalent view that social ills could not be cured by collective remedies without a change in individual responsibility. Many Labour activists and politicians preached teetotalism and abstinence, blaming the individual for many social ills rather than pointing the finger at the negligent capitalist state.
W.T. Stead ran a survey of 25 Labour and 20 Lib-Lab MPs, asking them which books they had found most useful in establishing their political ideologies and careers. The list was largely filled with the Bible, Shakespeare, Dickens and Bunyon while only two individuals cited Marx.
An important movement of the time was the ‘national efficiency’ movement, which sought to remedy social problems by addressing what were seen as national inefficiencies in the distribution of labour, opportunities and in some cases capital. The Labour Party was tied in with this, largely amongst its reforming wing of Fabians and other evolutionary socialists. However, the national efficiency movement was very much associated with the new Liberalism of the Edwardian age; there were few fundamental ideological differences between Liberal radicals and the likes of Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
So, if there was so little difference between the Liberal and Labour parties, why did the PLP maintain its distance at all? Its MPs sat in opposition to the Liberal governments and backbenchers such as Victor Grayson became increasingly scathing and uncooperative in their attacks on the Liberal party.
The first widely acknowledged reason was that the mainstream parties simply had too little affinity with or knowledge of working class lives, whereas the new Labour MPs almost all did. The MPs came largely from vocational backgrounds of factory and/or mine labour followed by some years’ experience in politics either as propagandists for the ILP or as trade union officials.
Even Lloyd George, with his considerable working class popularity, admitted that it was not until late in his career that he came close to understanding the nature of poverty. Another example of new Liberalism’s failure is C.F.G. Masterman who attempted to address what he called the ‘multitude’. His tone came to typify the strict and unpopular tone of the national efficiencists, which goes some way to explaining why Fabians and the like tended toward the Labour Party.
Having first-hand experience of unemployment – either their own or of many within their previous communities – Labour MPs disagreed with Liberals on this issue. It was a common belief within the Labour Party that there is such a thing as the ‘right to work’. The Liberals disagreed, something which the more belligerent Labour MPs attributed to their self-interest for ‘rents and profits’. Union-sponsored candidates such as Pete Curran in Jarrow flourished under right-to-work campaigns with the support of workers and unions alike. Curran’s success in topping the polls ahead of the Conservatives, Liberals and Nationalists gave Labour confidence in the first decade of the 20th Century that they could tackle the main parties on such issues and defeat them.
This new confidence contributed to the greater reconciliation of the trade unions and the socialists. W.A. Appleton spoke to a trade union conference and declared all differences between the unions and the socialists ‘terminological, and not fundamental’.
Their rivalry with the Liberals did cause a problem, however. This split the country’s progressive vote and allowed the Conservative party a chance to make electoral gain once more. This rekindled the old spirit of the Gladstone-MacDonald pact, which was established in 1903. In 1910 the Liberals and Labour gladly cooperated to defeat the Conservatives, and all 40 Labour victories were in some way assisted by Liberal complicity.
It would seem, then, that there were a variety of factors contributing to the rise of the Labour Party in this period. Its conception was largely a result of trade union self-preservationism, but socialist cooperation and changing patterns of class behaviour had some influence. The subsequent growth of the party seems to be in part attributable to the Liberal Party’s struggle to empathise with working class voters, its failure to revive its radical appeal immediately after Gladstone’s death, and also its keenness to cooperate with Labour where this would see the Conservative hold on Parliament diminish.
As the Labour Party came more and more to represent union interest, principally through its right-to-work ideology, the movement was galvanised not only through greater union affiliation but also through the effect this had in bringing socialists and trade unionists together. While their views were not necessarily made to converge in any ideological sense, there became a commonality of aims which could be achieved best by cooperation and, in other words, best through the Labour Party.
Class consciousness had an important role in advancing the Labour Party. MPs could speak to an audience more aware of its common social position and its separation from the wealthier classes. This, however, is not sufficient explanation for the Labour Party’s rise at the time. A great many non-Labour politicians sought to woo to this social class, not least because it now constituted a great proportion of the electorate. It could only be by a combination of factors that the working class responded increasingly to the Labour politicians’ arguments, some of which are already outlined above. Further to this, though, the Labour politicians themselves were highly class-conscious and spoke to the proletariat voters from a position much less removed from working class life than previous candidates had been.
While class consciousness did have some considerable importance in establishing and subsequently advancing the Labour Party’s cause, the role of socialism cannot be overlooked. There was a popular and intellectual disenchantment with laissez-faireism, and the lack of market control was in some quarters blamed for the continuing social decay throughout areas of Britain. Therefore, some turned to socialism as the ideological solution and the Labour Party espoused this more than any of the other parties.
Distinguishing between the appeal of socialism and the role of class consciousness is difficult, largely because socialism itself is a class conscious ideology and class consciousness is a futile force without something through which to channel itself. And therefore, I would conclude the discussion by indicating the mutual interests of social and class consciousness: while socialism depended on greater class consciousness at the time to foster support, class consciousness was better able to articulate itself through the political movement of socialism.