ABSTRACT
Hardie, chairman of the Independent Labour Party, was the country’s leading socialist politician, known through both his oratory and journalism as an unsparing critic of the exploitation and ugliness of capitalism. In particular Labour politicians had the same attitude towards accepting piecemeal reforms and working within the existing framework. Many Labour activists invoked the ‘New Jerusalem’ of the socialist millennium that was to arise. The similarity between the language of politics and that of religion was particularly marked in the northern areas where Labour had most support. The ideology of the early Labour Party can be understood as more than a series of political and legislative proposals; to use the phrase of a modern political scientist, ‘values which spring from the experience of the British working class’. The Osborne judgement had made the party dependent on the willingness of the government to bring in amending legislation at a time when sections of the broader labour movement were becoming increasingly militant.
