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The Politics of the Poor - The East End of London 1885-1914 (Hardcover, REV)
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The Politics of the Poor - The East End of London 1885-1914 (Hardcover, REV)
Series: Oxford Historical Monographs
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This book is about the political views of the 'classic' poor of
London's East End in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The
residents of this area have been historically characterized as
abjectly poor, casually employed, slum dwellers with a
poverty-induced apathy toward political solutions interspersed with
occasional violent displays of support for populist calls for
protectionism, imperialism, or anti-alien agitation. These factors,
in combination, have been thought to have allowed the Conservative
Party to politically dominate the East End in this period. This
study demonstrates that many of these images are wrong. Economic
conditions in the East End were not as uniformly bleak as often
portrayed. The workings of the franchise laws also meant that those
who possessed the vote in the East End were generally the most
prosperous and regularly employed of their occupational group.
Conservative electoral victories in the East End were not the
result of poverty. Political attitudes in the East End were
determined to a far greater extent by issues concerning the
'personal' in a number of senses. The importance given to
individual character in the political judgements of the East End
working class was greatly increased by a number specific local
factors. These included the prevalence of particular forms of
workplace structure, and the generally somewhat shorter length of
time on the electoral register of voters in the area. Also
important was a continuing attachment to the Church of England
amongst a number of the more prosperous working class. In the place
of many 'myths' about the people of the East End and their
politics, this study provides a model that does not seek to explain
the politics of the area in full, but suggests the point strongly
that we can understand politics, and the formation of political
attitudes, in the East End or any other area, only through a
detailed examination of very specific localized community and
workplace structures. This book challenges the idea that a
'Conservatism of the slums' existed in London's East End in the
Victorian and Edwardian period. It argues that images of abjectly
poor residents who supported Conservative appeals about
protectionism, imperialism, and anti-immigration are largely wrong.
Instead, it was the support of better-off workers, combined with a
general importance in the area of the 'personal' in politics
emphasized by local social and workplace structures, which
delivered the limited successes that the Conservatives did enjoy.
General
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