The Drive for Participatory Democracy in Nineteenth Century Britain

In association with the industrial revolution, a wide range of new selfhelp organisations, from friendly societies and cooperatives to trade unions, were constructed by rising urban working classes and a lower middle class in nineteenth century Britain. The process was broad and deep, built upon a pre-existing culture of democracy, and extended through a vibrant autodidact workers' society. Against entrenched oligarchical power, the popular movement aimed not only at universal suffrage and governmental power, through the formation of a Labour Party, but also at clean government and a participatory democracy of self-determining groups and institutions. After a century of struggle the successes of the British working classes were intermixed with failure. Their efforts nonetheless represented an exemplar of democratisation based on a burgeoning civil society and strong trade union movement within advancing capitalist development, as witnessed again in South Africa through the 1980s and possibly beyond.