This project digitizes listings and descriptions of socialist, reformist, and progressive organizations from the 1897 Labour Annual. Over 30 pages are summarized, showing the wide variety of groups in late Victorian Britain working on social, economic, and political reform issues. These groups addressed topics like unions, women's suffrage, temperance, education, cooperatives, and international issues. The diversity of organizations revealed in this snapshot provides insight into the socially and politically active landscape in 1897.

1. A S N A P S H O T
O F S O C I A L I S M
P R O G R E S S I V E
O R G A N I S AT I O N S L I S T E D
I N T H E
L A B O U R A N N U A L
1 8 9 7
A D I G I TA L P R O J E C T
B Y PA U L R I C H A R D S

2. A SNAPSHOT
OF SOCIALISM
• This project seeks to digitise
the listings and descriptions of
the socialist, reformist, and
progressive organisations in
the ‘Labour Annual’ 1897,
between pages 97 and 126.
• For the first time, there is now a
digital record of the rich variety
of ‘social, economic and
political reform organisations’
in 1897, displaying the very
wide range of groups extant at
the time.
• This is a snapshot of socialism
and social reform in the late-
Victorian era of political and
social upheaval.

3. THE LABOUR ANNUAL 1897
• A ‘year-book’ of social, economic and political reform
• Edited by Joseph Edwards, Wallasey
• Published by the Labour Press, Tib Street, Manchester
• 1 shilling for paper edition, 2 shillings blue cloth, gilt.

4. • At the fin de siècle, British
civic society was alive with
campaigns, formations,
networks and organisations
committed to social and
economic progress: the ‘new
unions’ of the 1880s, the
women’s movements,
working-class political
movements, and single issue
campaigns all overlapping,
forming, dissolving and
reforming like amoeba. The
Labour Annual was an
attempt to pull the strands
together into one source
book.

5. • The Ancoats Brotherhood
boasts speakers including
Milicent Fawcett, William
Morris and Russian anarchist
Kropotkin. Note their Arts
and Crafts logo – might it be
by Walter Crane?
• The Armenian Information
Bureau highlights their
persecution under the
Ottoman Empire.
• Note also the appearance of
Birkbeck Literary and
Scientific Institution, the
forerunner of Birkbeck
College.

6. • This page shows settlements
in working class areas,
women’s suffrage
organisations, temperance
organisations, and the
‘Children’s Happy Evenings
Association’ which provided
after-school care for
deprived children.
• The Church Army is still
going today, as a provider of
‘social housing’.

7. • Here we see the power and
range of the Co-operative
Movement.
• Also the Church of England
Emigration Society,
encouraging people to move
to the colonies.

8. • The Cosme co-operative in
Paraguay was an early
attempt at ‘fair trade.’
• The Croydon Brotherhood
Church, a Christian Socialist
body, had links to the
Fellowship of the New Life,
which spawned the Fabian
Society in 1884.

9. • The anarchists make an
appearance. Their ‘Freedom’
newspaper was started in
1886 by Peter Kropotkin and
Charlotte Wilson (who was
also a member of the Fabian
Society). A version of the
publication is still being
produced.

10. • The International Federation
of Ship, Dock and River
Workers grew from the
success of the Dock Strike in
London of 1889. Two of the
leaders of the strike Ben
Tillett and Tom Mann are
listed here.

11. • The Irish Socialist Republican
Party was founded in 1896 by
James Connolly, one of the
leaders of the 1916 Easter
Uprising. His statues and
monuments stand across
Ireland and the world.

12. • Free school meals,
vegetarianism, spiritualism,
Sunday Observance, and the
London Mendicity Society, an
organisation dedicated to
tackling fraud and deception.

13. • You can still see the results of
The Metropolitan Drinking
Fountain and Cattle Trough
Association’s work in London.
• There are also more
settlements, trade unions,
Morley College (still going
strong in Lambeth, South
London) and the National
Free Labour Association,
which appears somewhat
incongruous.
• The National League for the
Abolition of the House of
Lords still has some way to
go.

14. These pages reveal the
dichotomy between Christians
and secularists within the
broader progressive movement.
We can see two of the ‘new
unions’, both Ben Tillet’s
dockworkers, and the teachers’
union.
The Peace Society was a
forerunner to the antiwar and
antinuclear movements of the
twentieth century.

15. Some familiar names here – the
Royal National Life-Boat
Institution and the St. John
Ambulance Association.
The SDF, the ‘Marxian’ sect, was
present at the birth of the
Labour Representation
Committee in February 1900.
Plus a campaign to nationalise
the Railways!

16. We can see a wide range of
organisaitons on these pages:
Toynbee Hall (still going),
temperance, trade unions,
socialists, getting more women
engaged as the Poor Law
Guardians, suppression of the
opium trade in the Far East, tax
reform, and the forerunner of
Battersea Dogs’ Home.
The Theosophists eventually
claimed Annie Besant as a
member.

17. There are many women’s
organisations on these pages,
including ones promoting
women as council candidates,
and as trade unionists.
Also the Vegetarian Society,
founded in 1847, based today
in Manchester.

18. These late entrants to the
directory include international
organisations and a huge
variety of organisations which
demonstrate the variegation
and number of fin de siècle
social reform organisations:
anti-tobacco, education,
autodidacticism, insurance, land
reform, co-ops, drinking
fountains, ‘healthy and artistic
dress’, women’s rights, anti-
animal cruelty, ghosts and the
NSPCC.

19. • On this final page, we can see
Josephine Butler’s campaign
against ‘vice’ after her success
in repealing the Contagious
Diseases Acts.
• Also groups opposed to
animal vivisection,
‘demoralization of native races
by liquor’, Co-operatives, and
the Women Lecturers’
Association.

20. ‘The trouble with socialism is that it takes too many
evenings.’
- Oscar Wilde

21. A S N A P S H O T
O F S O C I A L I S M
A D I G I TA L P R O J E C T
BY PA U L R I C H A R D S
F O R M A V I C TO R I A N S T U D I E S
AT B I R K B E C K ,
U N I V E R S I T Y O F L O N D O N
M AY 2 0 1 8