ABSTRACT
The ‘failure of London socialism’ has often been explained by reference to a unique metropolitan tradition of popular conserva tism, nursed in an urban environment hostile to the development of any unified proletarian movement. That the socialist intelligentsia found the capital a desirable headquarters has never been disputed; equally, however, it is usually assumed that, by its very nature, London was intrinsically incapable of fostering or sustain ing a mass movement for radical social change - a meteoric ‘new unionism’ and the sect-like SDF proved rather than challenged the rule. The political attitudes of Londoners have been distinguished from their provincial counterparts by reference to the absence of a factory proletariat, a surfeit of acquisitive middle-class suburban ites, the rapid and seductive commercialization of leisure, the proximity of Parliament and Crown, and the vastness of the conurbation. Accordingly, to glance at the map of London was to perceive the cause of the dissipation of radical movements - the anomie of urbanness coupled with the riches so tantalizingly close at hand militated against both the left’s organizational potential and perhaps even its credibility. Posed against the stereotypical portrait of a more stable and incremental growth of labour and socialist currents in other parts of Britain, such a profile has been invoked in order to help account for the putative ‘backwardness’ of London labourism.1
