ABSTRACT
The mass of vertical craft structures remained dominant in a essentially fluid, homogeneous society, but were beginning to yield just somewhat to a more monolithic, horizontally based industrial proletariat. Bass only envisaged the Society in terms of paying out friendly benefits and applying pressure on Parliament to reduce working hours because of the danger of accidents. ‘Moderate in tone, and altogether free from anything like bitterness or invective against society’ was the kindly pat on the head which The Times gave to the 1877 proceedings at Leicester. The London evidence remains fragmentary, but what at least is clear is that the Socialism of the 1880s did not so much appear out of the blue as from certain streaks of scarlet apparent on the horizon some years earlier. William Morris, Treasurer of the pro-peace Eastern Question Association, was soon to become a Socialist and attempt to convert the working class wholesale to Gladstonian morality without the laissez-faire whitewash.
