Readers fresh to this area of history will find this book relatively easy and be amazed to be told that much or even most of it is new to specialists. Until recently, historians had time and again picked over some vital features of the area while either blind or indifferent to those others whose relevance this book argues. True, during the last decade or so there has been work that touches on some aspects of our themes, but this has focused mainly on single organisations and particular regions – such as Dylan Morris's study of the ILP – or on very different problems – such as Duncan Tanner's important contribution to the debate on why and how Labour replaced the Liberal Party as the main alternative to the Conservatives. Like some other recent authors, such as Jon Lawrence, Tanner emphasises the overlaps between socialist and non-socialist radicalism. While these are hardly absent from our book, we focus almost entirely on the ‘Labour movement’ as traditionally understood – socialist organisations and trade unions: a different perspective.

With concern over low participation in US elections, over the European Union's ‘democratic deficit’, with Central and Eastern Europe launching half-built parliamentary hulls into an economic hurricane blowing towards the whirlpool of authoritarian nationalism, with the uncertainties of post-apartheid South Africa, and a host of other developments worldwide, discussion of the nature and forms of democracy has never been more vital.