ABSTRACT
The two MPs elected for Leicester in 1906 personified the two rival elements of the late Victorian and Edwardian British Labour movement. Henry Broadhurst, member for Leicester since 1894, was a staunch supporter of Liberal-Labour politics, representing the tradition that had dominated the town's working-class allegiances for much of the late Victorian period. During the early 1890s the major trades, hosiery and boot manufacture, underwent significant structural changes, with moves to mechanisation and factory production, leading to rising industrial tension. The alliance fostered between the Liberal Association and the trade council was not solely the product of a belief that co-operation would secure mutual benefits in the form of increased numbers of elected representatives. The Liberal Party's key challenge after 1892 was how to maintain the support of both industrialists and workers at a time of industrial tension and when the traditional conciliatory institutions, arbitration boards and nonconformist churches, were themselves becoming ideologically divided by battles between capital and labour.
