226	ENGLISH    SAOA
malicious charge, however wild, of peculation or self-seeking
brought against them. Their creed was regarded, in pubs and
other places, where sound men congregated, as laughable if not
lunatic. In the 1895 election—a Conservative triumph—only one
working man held his seat and every one of the twenty-seven
candidates put up by the virgin independent Labour Party
suffered defeat at the polls.^1 It was not till the great Conservative
rout of January, 1906, when the rising tide of collectivism swept
an almost revolutionary Liberal government into power that a
Parliamentary Labour Party took its place as a permanent force
in politics with a solid bloc of 51 seats and a strength sufficient
to sway the course of legislation.
Even many of the Trade Union and Co-operative Society
leaders—often stalwarts of the local Tory working mens' dub—
regarded the new socialism with disfavour. It was too highbrow
and foreign for their shrewd liking^2: too far removed from the
familiar tastes and prejudices of the simple men they represented.
Had those who represented the larger forces of organised capital
been a little more sympathetic towards their Labour vis-&-vis
instead of treating them, as they too often did, as impertinent
inferiors who had forgotten their place, the intellectual socialist
movement might well have died still-born.
Yet a new spirit was abroad in the land. A reconciliation
between Capital and Labour that might have been possible a few
years earlier, became harder with the coming of a new generation.
For just as th6 first translation of the scriptures spelt out by
unlettered zealots lent wings to an earlier English revolution,
so the education of the board school helped to carry a new con-
ception of life into the homes of the people. To cater for the
needs of this new class of reader, a halfpenny press made its
appearance, jejune, snappy, sensational. The first in. the field was
the radical Star—the "twinkle, twinkle little star" of the late
'eighties and 'nineties. It had many imitators. Those who
controlled this revolutionary power might differ in politics and
educational purpose, but the circulation of their papers and the
^ljrhe Party Chest for the Election totalled only £400. Ardent supporters pawned
their watches, Sunday suits, accordions and fiddles.—Sir James Sexton, Agitator, 145*
^1 "Much daring, I went one night to speak at the Battersea Branch of the Social-
Democratic Federation where I was so belaboured with words about exploitation,
proletariat, bourgeois and others of learned length and thundering sound just then
imported from Germany that I believe I retired sore all over and determined to go no
more to Social-Democratic Federation Branches. And I never have."
—G. N. Barnes, from Workshop to War Cabinet, 42.