ABSTRACT
In Britain in the fifteen years before the first world war the dominant Lib-Labism of the trade unions was replaced by a socialist-flavoured Labourism. One attitude in the French labour movement, an attitude which could be resistant to radical ideas or, in syndicalism, could be very radical, was ouvrierisme. The Osborne Judgment put both the Liberal and the Unionist Parties into a dilemma as to what extent they could resist trade union pressures to reverse it and yet ensure labour representation in Parliament. At the local level, just as at the national level, the history of the Labour Party in the years before the first world war is very much a history of a struggle between socialist trade unionists and Lib-Lab trade unionists to win working class support. The parliamentary Labour Party appeared even less effective and independent after 1910, when it was fearful of pushing the Liberals from power and precipitating another general election.
