Labour and the Free Churches, 1918-1939 ─ Radicalism, Righteousness and Religion

It has long been held that the early Labour movement owed a debt to Nonconformity, but relatively little attention has been paid to this relationship during the interwar years. The Labour Party and the Free Churches 1918-1939 explores how, during this period, the party formalized, replaced the Liberals as the main party of the Left in Britain, and created a boundary between itself and the recently formed Communist Party. Peter Catterall demonstrates the influence on political Nonconfirmity on these developments, through the ideological, political and electoral relationship between the Free Churches and the Labour Party. In contributing to the rethinking of the relationship between state, society and socialism, this book makes an original contribution to the history of 20th-century Britain and in particular to the history of the Labour Party and of the Churches, showing that the Labour Party's relationship with the Free Churches contributed a distinctive ethical character to British socialism.