Socialism in the United Kingdom

Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the birth of the Labour Party.

Origins

The Reformation occurred later in Britain than in most of mainland Europe. As in the rest of Europe, various liberal thinkers such as Thomas More became prominent, but another important current was the emergence of the radical Puritans who wanted to reform both religion and the nation. The Puritans were oppressed by both the monarchy and by the established church. Eventually these pressures exploded in the violent social revolution known as the English Civil War, which many Marxists see as the world's first successful bourgeois revolution.
During the war several proto-socialist groups emerged. The most important of these groups were the Levellers, who advocated electoral reform, universal trial by jury, progressive taxation and the abolition of the monarchy and aristocracy and of censorship. This was strongly opposed by Oliver Cromwell's government, who also persecuted the moderate reformist group the Fifth Monarchy Men and the radical utopian group the Diggers.

19th century

Industrial Revolution and Robert Owen

The Industrial Revolution, the transition from a farming economy to an industrial one, began in the UK over 30 years before the rest of the world.
Textile mills and coal mines sprang up across the whole country and peasants were taken from the fields to work down the mines, or into the "Dark, Satanic Mills", the chimneys of which blacked the sky over Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Appalling conditions for workers, combined with support for the French Revolution turned some intellectuals to socialism.

The pioneering work of Robert Owen, a Welsh radical, at New Lanark in Scotland, is sometimes credited as being the birth of British Socialism. He stopped employing Children under the age of 10, and instead arranged for their education, and improved the working and living conditions of all his workers. He also lobbied Parliament over child labour, and helped to create the co-operative movement, before attempting to create a utopian community at New Harmony.

Trade unions

The trade union movement in Britain gradually developed from the Medieval guild system. Unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, but were already widespread in cities such as London. Workplace militancy had also manifested itself as Luddism and had been prominent in struggles such as the Radical War (or Scottish Insurrection) in Scotland in 1820, when 60,000 workers went on a general strike, which was soon crushed.

From 1830 on, attempts were made to set up national general unions, most notably Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834, which attracted a range of socialists from Owenites to revolutionaries. It played a part in the protests after the Tolpuddle Martyrs' case, but soon collapsed.

Militants turned to Chartism, the aims of which were supported by most socialists, although none appear to have played leading roles.

More permanent trade unions were established from the 1850s, better resourced but often less radical. The London Trades Council was founded in 1860, and the Sheffield Outrages spurred the establishment of the Trades Union Congress in 1868. Union membership grew as unskilled and women workers were unionised, and socialists such as Tom Mann played an increasingly prominent role.

Christian socialism

The rise of Non-Conformist religions, in particular Methodism, played a large role in the development of trade unions and of British socialism. The influence of the radical chapels was strongly felt among some industrial workers, especially miners and those in the north of England and Wales.

The first group calling itself Christian Socialists formed in 1848 under the leadership of Frederick Denison Maurice. Its membership mainly consisted of Chartists (see below). The group became dormant after only six years, but there was a considerable revival of Christian socialism in the 1880s, and a number of groups sprang up. Ultimately, Christian socialists dominated the leadership of the Independent Labour Party, including James Keir Hardie.

Chartist movement

The Chartist movement of the 1830s and 1840s was the first mass revolutionary movement of the British working-class. Mass meetings and demonstrations involving millions of proletariat and petty-bourgeois were held throughout the country for years.

The Chartists published several petitions to the British Parliament (ranging from 1,280,000 to 3,000,000 signatures), the most famous of which was called the People's Charter (hence their name) in 1842, which demanded:
# Universal suffrage for men.
# The secret ballot.
# Removal of property qualifications for members of parliament.
# Salaries for members of parliament.
# Electoral districts representing equal numbers of people.
# Annually elected parliaments.

The government subsequently subjected the Chartists to brutal reprisals and arrested their leaders. The remaining party then split as a result of a divide in tactics: the ''Moral Force Party'' believed in bureaucratic reformism, while the ''Physical Force Party'' believed in workers' reformism (through strikes, etc.).

The Chartist movement's reformist goals, although not immediately and directly attained, were gradually achieved. In the same year as the People's Charter was created, the British Parliament instead responded by passing the 1842 Mining Act. Carefully valving the steam of the working-class movement, Parliament reduced the working day to ten hours in 1847.

Marx and early Marxism

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels