The roots of the left are to be found in the early industrial age. Demands for equality, political representation, rights at work and better care for the poor can be traced further back in recorded history, but it was during this epoch that the left grew in confidence and popularity, taking on many of the characteristics and policies that became synonymous with leftist politics.

The dawning of the industrial age transformed our societies in ways that are difficult to fully appreciate today. Western nations urbanised swiftly during the nineteenth century as the established features of the agrarian economy fell away. Towns and cities that hosted new sites of industrial production grew rapidly as workers from around the country, and sometimes further afield, moved in search of work. Many traditional aspects of pre-industrial culture and identity were lost entirely while others quickly adapted to fit in with the new world.

In both Britain and the United States, industrial production was for some time largely unregulated. Industrial workers were often subjected to extreme danger and exploitation. This is not to say that ordinary men and women lived lives of boundless freedom and fulfilment before the dawning of the industrial age. Child labour, for instance, was entrenched in small-scale manufacturing sites and throughout much of the agricultural system before large-scale factories became a common feature of industrial towns and cities. Industrialism did, however, change the nature and our expectations of work.

The literature on Western industrialism is too voluminous to summarise here. What we want to do is bring into relief the sources of agitation and piecemeal reform that qualitatively improved workers’ lives and opened doors through which they could step and exercise at least some influence on politics and economic life. When in the nineteenth century improvements did come, they derived from the agitation of evangelical Christians as much as the activities of trade unions and other sections of the organised left. The power of trade unions grew gradually throughout the nineteenth century, but they were not all animated by the relatively new and growing philosophy of socialism.