Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain

ISBN-13: 9780333565742 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 222 str.

John Belchem

Opis

A wide-ranging overview of radicalism throughout the "long" 19th century, from the days of "Wilkes and Liberty" to the aftermath of World War I, this study offers a critical introduction to new linguistic and cultural approaches. It studies both working-class and middle-class radicalism.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- The 18th Century.- Context: Civic Humanism, Commercial Liberalism and the Crowd Radicalism, Revolution and War, 1790-1815.- The Radical Mass Platform, 1815-20.- Ideology, Public Opinion and Reform, 1820-1835.- Radicalism and Class, 1835-50.- Radicalism, Liberalism and Reformism, 1850-75.- Gladstone, Lib-Labism and New Liberalism Labour's Turning-Point?.- Liberals, Labour and the Progressive Alliance.- Conclusion: The First World War and After.- Further Reading.

O autorze

JOHN BELCHAM is Reader in History at the University of Liverpool. He is Secretary of the Society for the Study of Labour History and has published several books, including 'Orator' Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (1985); Industrialization and the Working Class: The English Experience, 1750-1900 (1990); Class, Party and the Political System in Britain, 1867-1914 (1990); and, as co-editor with Richard Price, A Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century World History (1994).

Blurb

In offering a wide-ranging overview of radicalism throughout the 'long' nineteenth century, from the mid eighteenth century to the aftermath of the First World War, this study contests the methods and findings of recent revisionist interpretations.

Radical movements faced a more difficult task than other political formations since they sought not merely to construct an audience - to find a language which resonated with people's material needs and greivances - but to mobilise for change. Options were limited as radicals had to conform to rhetorical, organisational and cultural norms to ensure popular legitimacy and support. This volume pays particular attention therefore to contextual factors: to the changing codes and conventions of political culture and public space. Through critical engagement with revisionist and post-modernist interpretations, it throws new light on factors which often divided liberals from radicals, and indeed, radicals from themselves.

This is an accessible and much-needed introduction to the new linguistic and cultural approaches to nineteenth-century popular politics.