Wales and socialism : political culture and national identity c. 1880-1914

Thesis examines the spread of socialist ideas and the growth of the socialist movement in Wales in the period 1880-1914. It pays particular attention to the way in which socialists related to Welsh national identity, and analyses the processes through which the universalist ideals of socialism were related to the particular and local conditions of Wales. It examines the interplay between Wales and the wider world that occurred through the medium of the socialist movement, and balances this against the internal dynamic and organic growth of socialism within Wales itself. Having surveyed and commented upon existing British and Welsh labour historiography, the thesis opens with a discussion of the first „modern‟ socialists to undertake propaganda in Wales in the 1880s. It then examines the way in which socialist societies began to put down roots in the 1890s, through case studies of the Fabian Society in Cardiff and the Social Democratic Federation in south Wales. The central part of the thesis is concerned with the rise of the most important of the socialist organisations, the Independent Labour Party. Attention is given to the way in which the ILP used the south Wales coal strike of 1898 to gain its ascendancy in Welsh socialist politics, and the nature of the political culture that was created by the party in south Wales. The remainder of the thesis discusses the nature of socialist growth beyond south Wales, and pays particular attention to indigenous Welsh forms of socialism. The thesis concludes with an examination of the rapid growth of the socialist movement in Wales after 1906, and the consequent debate that occurred about the relationship of socialism, Welsh nationalism and the Welsh language