Search results for ""Author Martin Wright""

This study examines the spread of socialism in late-Victorian and Edwardian Wales, paying particular attention to the relationship between socialism and Welsh national identity. Welsh opponents of socialism often claimed it to be a foreign import, whereas socialists often asserted that the Welsh were socialist by nature. This study – the first full-scale study of the influence of early socialism across all of Wales – demonstrates that the reality was more complex than either assertion would admit. Rather than focusing on the structural growth of socialism, the topic is discussed in terms of the spread of ideas and the development of a political culture. The study culminates in a discussion of attempts, in the period before the Great War, to create a specifically Welsh socialist tradition. In approaching the topic from this angle, this study restores a part of the lost diversity of British socialism that is of striking contemporary relevance.

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This is the first full-length study of the material and visual culture of the British labour movement in almost half a century. It draws together the fruits of recent research into a comprehensive material and visual analysis of the nineteenth-century labour movement’s development. It analyses the meaning of ‘labour things’, the role they played in the lives of working people and the ways they have influenced the writing of labour history. Over ninety beautifully illustrated, expertly contextualised objects are used to narrate the history of British labour in its most crucial phase of development. Chapters on curation and preservation, a directory of museums where labour things may be seen, and a full bibliography complete the treatment of this important and rapidly developing field, making the book not just essential academic reading but a handbook for anyone who wishes to explore this vital part of our shared culture.

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