ABSTRACT
The attitude and utterances of some of the propertied classes and their newspapers during the general strike afforded sufficient evidence of the existence of large and influential circles in Great Britain who still look on the working population as lower orders and on their independent actions as rebellious. The individualist and competitive phase of capitalist enterprise generated out of its material conditions and interests the ideas of toleration, freedom of thought, respect of the individual conscience and judgment, and bequeathed it as a spiritual legacy to posterity. Organised Labour fought with determination, with exasperation, and some groups with revolutionary fervour, not for the overthrow or transformation of the existing order, but against being deprived of the advantages gained in the years 1917–1920. The conversion of organised Labour to socialism was one of the phenomena of the years 1917–1928.
