ABSTRACT
Within the limits of the evidence, some of the answers should already have become clear.
In Oldham at least the changes associated with liberalization (the extension of the vote, the development of mass parties, the legal recognition of trade unions) were quite obviously part of a process by which specifically capitalist authority was reimposed and the workingclass vanguard pushed back into isolation. Obviously, too, it was the earlier development of some form of mass class consciousness which originally made this necessary.
