Lack Of Socialist Success In The 19th Century

Another explanation for the lack of socialist success was that with 80% of the population being working class and even with the many reform acts and the third reform act that added 6 million to the electorate they were still far from universal male suffrage. This would have hindered the socialist movement as it meant that there were many numbers of working class and poverty stricken men who could not vote. This is important, as these were the people that the socialist movement would want to appeal to and gain support from. This can be viewed because as male suffrage was improved in the later and early 20th century labour gained votes and became more popular.

Another reason for the limited success of socialism in the 19th century was the inefficiency
They failed to set out their aims clearly like the conservative party did in the later years. The SDF was ‘never clear about priorities or methods’ this meant that they had limited supporters, as it was difficult to know what they were standing for. Throughout the nineteenth century there were various socialist parties such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the Socialist League and the Fabien society. Many of these socialist movements attracted intellectual middle class men but they did little to attract the workers who they were supposedly working to better. The federation was strongly opposed to the liberal party . Another failure was those socialists were too concerned with the idea of ‘making socialist’ rather than making a political party, it did not matter to the socialists what party the members were part of as long as they were members of a Socialist party. This meant that there was a limited impact because the numbers were spread of different parties. The independent labour party was another socialist group. Part of the failure of the socialist movement to unify came when the labour party supported an alliance with the trade unions rather than with the socialist movements. The labour party was gaining votes through trade unions and it is argued by Stanley Pierson that ‘Hyndman
Hyndman, leader of the SDF was known for behaving autocratically and he did not want party policy discussion within the party . This caused activists such as John Burns and William Morris who later went on to find the Socialist league. This created a ‘fundamental division’ within socialist movements of the time. Although there were efforts to unify the socialist movement under one political organisation this failed because of the vastly different opinions. There was also the inability of the socialist movements to compromise and provide alternatives to those things that they