First published in 1985. The essays in this book pull together the diverse strands of research to give a comprehensive picture of the Labour Party, which strived to carve out for itself a niche within an existing political framework. The first part of the book examines the composition, the national, local and regional organisation of the party, and its relations with the working classes, the TUC and the Liberals. In the second part the contributors discuss the party’s stand on the main political issues of the day: education, the suffragettes, Ireland and other major areas of concern in the political arena at the beginning of the century.