English Socialism - Regional Accent? Drawing on the Many Rich Traditions That Still Exist within the Regions and Nations of Britain Is a Potential Pathway to a Renewed Socialism Nationally

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North and South: A different kind of socialism


The Independent Labour Party was established in Bradford in 1893, and formed the political basis of the modern Labour Party. The choice of location was not accidental: the majority of delegates at the founding conference came from organisations based in Yorkshire and Lancashire. The ILP was a child of the industrial North. As E.P. Thompson has argued, fulminating against London-centric history:

  the Colne Valley; its first authentic parliamentary challenges came in
  Bradford and Halifax: its first conference showed an enormous
  preponderance of strength in the North of England. (1)

In the years before the First World War, the difference between a 'Northern' ethical socialism that placed most stress on moral values, and the more Marxist-inclined London-based politics of the Social Democratic Federation, were apparent to several commentators. In 1895, Robert Blatchford, that flawed genius of socialist proselytising, wrote:

  far as our Northern people are concerned I am convinced that beyond
  the mere outline of State Socialism Karl Marx and his countrymen have
  Whitman. (2)


  The inevitable result was a patchy geographical advance during
  Labour's early history and a movement that acquired pronounced local
  London as it was in Yorkshire ... (3)


The contours of early Northern socialism

The socialism that emerged in the North during the 1890s had roots not only in the radical Liberalism of the previous generation, but in the traditions of the handloom weavers of Pennine Lancashire and Yorkshire a century before. …

