ABSTRACT
While the Trade Union leaders, their demands for improved Labour Laws Satisfied, were identifying themselves more and more completely with the Liberal Party, a new Radicalism was developing quite apart from the Labour movement. However, a handle had been given for attacking the Socialists as the enemies of Trade Unionism, and the older Union leaders promptly took advantage of it. Michael Davitt, unlike Parnell and most of the Irish leaders, was by conviction a Socialist, and advocated public ownership of the land; and there were from the outset close connections between the Irish Land League and the British Socialists. The events had reduced the Democratic Federation from a general movement of London Radicalism to a small body supported mainly by individual Socialists, with the adherence of only a very few of the London Radical clubs. The Socialists, indeed, found George’s doctrines exceedingly useful as an introduction to the propaganda of Socialism.
