Harry Atkinson and the Socialist Church, 1896-1906
James Taylor
Abstract
In the early 1890s Harry Atkinson, the subject of this paper, travelled to England and spent a year as foundation secretary of the Manchester and Salford Labour Church. In Manchester Atkinson worked closely with the Church’s founder John Trevor and experienced the colour and symbolism of protest and demonstration, and the ritual and rhetoric of Labour Church services. He met, listened to and worked with an array of socialist agitators and activists, including Robert Blatchford, Ben Tillett, Tom Mann, Edward Carpenter and Keir Hardie, becoming familiar with a wide spectrum of socialists forms, ideas and ideologies. Atkinson returned to New Zealand in 1893 and established the Socialist Church in Christchurch in 1896. The Socialist Church was the first group in the colony to call itself socialist, and Atkinson gathered around him a circle of friends, colleagues and comrades who would go on to play leading roles in the New Zealand labour movement, including Jack McCullough, Jim Thorn and James and Elizabeth McCombs.
This paper considers the various radical and socialist traditions which informed the work of Atkinson and his circle and analyses the major concerns of the group. The Socialist Church was part of a broader, transnational ‘world of labour’, shaped by multi-directional flows, contacts and dialogues. But while inspired by foreign or overseas experiences, ideas and literature, members were driven by local concerns, adapting to the colonial context and local peculiarities. Propaganda and preaching socialism were important parts of the Church’s work, but political projects and agitation for social reform were also undertaken. Atkinson and members of the Church practised a particular form of radicalism that was intensely interested in local issues— municipal government, female equality and the radical reform of democratic institutions were leading concerns. Atkinson’s experiences, and a closer examination of the activities of the Socialist Church, provide a lens into understudied features of colonial New Zealand radicalism and socialism outside the usual foci of trade unions, the workplace and formal labour politics.
James Taylor is a Cataloguer and Researcher at the New Zealand Film Archive/Ng? Kaitiaki O Ng? Taonga Whiti?hua
Introduction
In 1953 Bert Roth, the librarian and labour historian, began a year-long correspondence with Harry Atkinson, the subject of my masters thesis and my paper today.1 Atkinson was uneasy and suspicious at first, however once he realised Roth was a sympathetic ‘fellow traveller’ their relationship warmed and Atkinson opened up to Roth. These reflective— and sometimes rambling— letters give an insight into people, events and some of the motivations for establishing the Socialist Church. Importantly, Atkinson also set out his beliefs, including his idea of socialism:
To me Socialism is not a set of dogmas but a living principle, a striving after human betterment under all circumstances…. the spirit of socialism envisages a higher plane of living for all individuals than merely the gaining of a living.’2
This ethical-moral conception of socialism was long held by Atkinson— at the time of writing he was 84 years old. Indeed, Atkinson is a quite unique figure in New Zealand’s labour history due to his experience of the Labour Church movement in Manchester in the early 1890s. But for the most part he has been neglected by New Zealand historians, bar Roth, who later described him as the ‘father of New Zealand socialism’.3
Despite this, Atkinson and the Socialist Church barely register in New Zealand labour historiography. He has, for the most part, suffered from the condescension of posterity. I sought to redress this imbalance, and my MA was a biographical study of Atkinson’s intellectual life and associational activities from the period 1890 to 1905, and a reconstruction of the activities of the Christchurch Socialist Church. My paper today examines a few of the important traditions that influenced and drove Atkinson, and the work of the Christchurch Socialist Church. I briefly discuss the familial traditions of the Atkinson- Richmond clan to which he was born, and how he was introduced to radical and socialist ideas in Wellington in the late 1880s. The majority of the paper focuses on the ethical socialism and plebeian radicalism that he was exposed to in Manchester, where he worked for a year as foundation secretary of John Trevor’s Manchester and Salford Labour Church. Following this I discuss his work in Christchurch, where he was a key but neglected conduit and mentor in the emergent local socialist subculture of the mid 1890s. I pay particular attention to municipal concerns, before concluding with a short survey of his work after the Socialist Church.
Familial Traditions and Wellington
Harry Atkinson was born into a less well-known side of the Atkinson-Richmond clan. His father Decimus was younger brother of Sir H. A. Atkinson, while his mother Marion was a member of the Ronalds family who lived opposite the Atkinson farmstead Hurworth— an example of the bonds of intermarriage that made the family one of the most prominent groupings in colonial society. Atkinson’s parents’ lives were marked by constant financial struggle and Harry did not attend university, unlike some other cousins, though he did receive a secondary-school education at Nelson College. After finishing this he began a mechanical engineering apprenticeship in Auckland in 1887, completing it in Wellington in 1890.
It was in Wellington that Atkinson was first exposed to radical reading. The Atkinson-Richmond clan had by this time a long familial tradition of involvement in local politics, prohibition and women’s suffrage and it was through his extended family in Wellington that he was introduced to socialist ideas and literature. This introduction came through a family friend, Frederick Frankland, who unfortunately I can’t discuss in detail today— but he is a fascinating figure in his own right.
Frankland lived next door to the Atkinsons, and he organised a reading group where people would discuss and debate books, ideas and writers. This ranged from Russian anarchism to Thomas Kirkup’s and the Fabian Society’s comparative and empiricist exposition of varieties of socialist thought, Thoreau’s American anti-modernist fiction, to the English romanticism and communitarianism of Edward Carpenter—all would come to have a hugely influential presence in Atkinson’s thought.4 Furthermore, the group and social nature of reading would remain a key aspect of the way he encountered literature. Atkinson would participate in sociable reading communities for much of his life.
The Manchester and Salford Labour Church
Atkinson finished his apprenticeship in 1890 and he made his way to Manchester, where in 1892 he became foundation secretary of John Trevor’s Manchester and Labour Church. Late nineteenth-century England was a time of social upheaval and transformation. As Edward Carpenter recalled:
the Socialist and Anarchist propaganda, the Feminist and Suffragist upheaval, the huge Trade Union growth, the Theosophic movement, the new currents in the Theatrical, Musical and Artistic worlds, the torrent of change even in the religious world— all contributed so many streams and headwaters, converging as it were to a great river… One felt that something massive must surely emerge from it all. 5
John Trevor’s Labour Church was part of this ‘torrent of change’, and Atkinson found himself in the midst of a vibrant and dynamic socialist associational and intellectual culture. Trevor was a former Unitarian minister, who had broken away from the Church in a quest to found a religion which could broach the problem of the alienation of working people from the established churches, as well as to satisfy his own search for God, free from what he saw as the repressive shackles of an ignorant clergy, and the hypocrisy of churches patronised by the wealthy.6
Both Trevor and Atkinson were two of many individuals who experienced powerful conversions to socialism during this time. Yet neither Trevor nor Atkinson were Christian socialists, and indeed the literature of the Labour Church constantly reinforced this distinction. Instead, the philosophy of the Labour Church was based on a critique of established religions for not undertaking their social role when faced with the misery and poverty of working people exploited by the industrial capitalism of the time. For Trevor, the labour movement epitomised the most likely bearer of social change and progress. But he also felt labour couldn’t just be driven by material aspirations: there needed to be a spiritual and moral dimension to any future social transformation. He founded the Labour Church to provide this.
Trevor’s Labour Church was a leading flag-bearer for what Stephen Yeo and Sheila Rowbotham have described as ‘new life socialism’— a form of socialism that emphasised universal fellowship and brotherhood, as well as personal spiritual transformation, as the best way forward towards the ‘new life’.7 The stress on fellowship led to a predominance of associational activity, while transformation or conversion was most explicitly manifested in the call to ‘make socialists’, and the importance of education as a form of agitation.8
Conversion to socialism was a striking aspect of autobiographies of the period, but also striking is the strong autodidactic culture and the gospel of self- improvement and self-education.9 Many of the leading figures from the period, such as Robert Blatchford, Keir Hardie, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann, were born into poor working-class families, worked from a young age and were self-taught, undertaking intense programs of reading. Tillett, for example, recalled working on the London docks where he ‘tried to save money, and starved to buy books… struggling to learn Latin, and even trying to study Greek, lending my head and aching body to the task after my day’s work’.10 The material read was broad— it was not all dry theory, but rather drew from a diverse range of authors and traditions— particularly North American and British romanticism. Two of the most important writers during this period were William Morris and Edward Carpenter, who foregrounded their critique of capitalism on moral and ethical bases, equal to, or more important than economic analyses.11
However, as Ian Barrow and Logie Bullock have argued, the ‘sentimentalism’ of the period should not be overstated.12 There was a dose of continental European theory and also republican, Chartist and plebeian democratic traditions, with an emphasis on ‘strong’ democratic reforms, which encompassed, for example, debates about forms of democracy and electoral representation. Ideas concerning leadership, referendum, proportional representation and discussions about political independence were common topics in pamphlets, books and periodicals of the time.13
During the year Atkinson served as foundation secretary people from a wide range of socialist groups and ideological positions spoke at Labour Church services. Apart from the usual sermons from Trevor, other guests included Edward Carpenter, who spoke on ‘The Future Society’, Keir Hardie, who prior to the formation of the Independent Labour Party spoke on ‘A Labour Programme’, as well as the well-known trade unionists Ben Tillett, and Tom Mann, the journalist Robert Blatchford, and R.B Cunninghame Graham, the radical M.P.
However, the Labour Church was not just lectures—there was also what Yeo has described as a ‘cultus’. There are few remaining accounts of Labour Church services, but those that we have describe an atmosphere of ‘quiet revivalism’, and an intensity of feeling and aspiration. Furthermore, it was a large-scale movement—the Labour Church could draw up to 4,000 people to services, and by the end of Atkinson’s time in Manchester the Labour Church movement had spread to ten cities in England and Scotland. Atkinson also took part in labour- related activities within the wider community, including the formation of a union and cooperative society for local mat-makers? a May Day parade and demonstration which was attended by 60,000 people; and sat in on the meeting which founded the Manchester and Salford Independent Labour Party.
After a year working for Trevor, Atkinson resigned from his position and spent time in London. In 1893 he married Rose Bell, whom he’d met at a Labour Church social and would share a 63-year partnership. He then returned to New Zealand, in his own words a ‘confirmed socialist’.14 Atkinson had been exposed to a powerful moral critique of capitalism and an ethical conception of socialism, rather than a militant, revolutionary Marxism. The socialists and socialisms of the period stressed the importance of education and self-education, and fellowship and cultural activity. But, he was also involved with industrial organisation and political activity, as well as more practical matters of routine administration.
The Christchurch Socialist Church
Harry and Rose then settled in Christchurch in 1894, and Harry worked as an engineer at the Addington Railway Workshops. The couple became involved in various local radical groups— these included the Progressive Liberal Association, led by Tommy Taylor and the Isitt brothers; Our Father’s Church and the First Canterbury Fabian Society, both led by the radical Anglican churchman Rev. James O’Bryen Hoare, while Rose was also active in the Canterbury Women’s Institute and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Atkinson had a wide conception of the labour movement, and for him this included various women’s organisations, often treated separately by labour historians. As he told Roth `I do not think Women’s organisations, the WCTU as well as the Institute should be overlooked in any treatment of the Labour Movement of those days’.15
There were a number of reasons for forming the Socialist Church in 1896. One was to provide an explicitly socialist organisation in the city, which for the most part was dominated by artisanal radicalism and middle-class progressivism. Another reason was various overseas influences— William Lane’s Cosme colony was an object of much interest, while writers such as Robert Blatchford, Bruce Glasier and Katherine St John Conway were strongly pushing the idea of the ‘religion of socialism’ in pamphlets and the pages of the socialist newspaper The Clarion, which Atkinson subscribed to.16 Locally, unemployment, or surplus labour protests were becoming increasingly common, while Atkinson was also spurred on by a newly formed friendship with Jack McCullough.17
However, of course, Atkinson’s experience with Trevor was also hugely important:
In my effort here I plumped for the term Socialist. The word church was not added it was fundamental as embodying the religious ideal. In my view socialism in this religious sense is as much a spirit as a goal.18
For Atkinson, the religion of socialism was a personal ethic of responsibility, and a whole way of life, but he also saw in fellowship and association the embodiment of the virtues of socialism:
Like Trevor I was imbued with the idea that it was important to recognise that in itself the effort for betterment inherent in the labour movement was religious. Trevor called it God in the Labour Movement. I did not express myself that way, but the feeling was similar, that the movement was deeply & in a very real sense religious. Otherwise it was nothing leading nowhere, like incoherent ravings & bad temper.19
The main role of the Church in Atkinson’s eyes was to ‘preach’ socialism, and this took a number of forms.20 Instead of Sunday services, there were Saturday or Sunday afternoon meetings in Cathedral Square, where Atkinson, and his close mate McCullough would speak, sometimes to large crowds, but `most often, I think, to very few’.21
The main activity was weeknight meetings where the usual activity was the reading of papers, mostly by church members, but sometimes by guests. There would then be discussion, at the conclusion of which a resolution would be passed, expressing the Church’s opinion on the matter under consideration. Topics ranged from general ones, such as `Imperialism & Socialism’,22 `War’, `Co-operation and Socialism’,23 and `Scientific Communism’,24 to those concerned with local issues, such as `What a City Councillor Might Do’,25 `The Unemployed’26 and `Currency Reform’.27 Books were discussed; these included Marx’s Capital,28 as well as the work of G. B. Shaw,29 and Edward Bellamy,30 alongside articles from newspapers, such as The Clarion, and the American paper The Appeal to Reason. The Church also sent delegates to local conferences and conventions, on topics such as prohibition, land settlement and local government reform.
From 1896 until the Church wound down in 1905 there were a number of concerns and political campaigns such as agitating for full political rights for females? and demands for democratic change and reform. From 1896 to 1900 an important concern was agitation for full municipal franchise, and from 1900 onwards a major concern of the Church was the drafting of a socialist municipal program, and a resolution was passed to this effect in April 1901. The Church’s municipal program not only illustrates the circulation of ideas, and how the Church was one node in wider transnational networks, but also illustrates an intensely localised form of political activity. At a general level, municipal socialism was an important project because, as Stromquist argues? ‘city politics addressed immediate, tangible needs of workers and their families that were common to urban, industrial life irrespective of national boundaries’.31
Over the course of 1901 the programs of the Canterbury Trades and Labour Council and Progressive Liberals were studied,32 and the church hosted visitors from other parts of New Zealand who spoke of activities in their regions. But while a local concern this was driven by international influences. The group studied the programs of the Socialist League of Sydney33 and articles from a Californian newspaper The Challenge.34 Alongside calls for improved and locally owned municipal facilities, there were also calls for more democratic local government— the initiative and referendum was demanded in local matters, as was preferential voting, and the extension of the franchise— echoing British socialist arguments for these measures.35 This form of political activity `embodied a politics of local autonomy and grassroots democracy that was tied directly to workers’ lives and their immediate, concrete needs… it was an assertively local politics that simultaneously defined itself in internationalist terms’.36
However, Socialist Church activities were not restricted to local politics and meetings. Atkinson and other members produced print material and attempted to establish propaganda organs. In 1897 there was a short run of print production: a newspaper, The Socialist, as well as Socialist Church Monthly Leaflets. These featured the principles of the Church, excerpts from writers such as Henry George, Robert Blatchford, and John Trevor, as well as William Morris and Walt Whitman. Local political news was reported, alongside events in Britain and continental Europe, and reflected the eclectic variety of ideas and beliefs, and causes and concerns of the socialism of the period.37 Atkinson and members of the Church also played an important role in the importation, distribution and dissemination of socialist and radical literature. Copies of the Socialist Party newspaper the Commonweal were sold at members and open-air meetings, along with material from overseas particularly the Clarion, and various pamphlets and books.38
In doing so they undertook what could be described as the ‘flattening of space’ through the circulation of ideas and reading material, making New Zealand one link in a ‘Anglophone, transoceanic zone’ of radicalism and dissent.39 The Clarion was one of a number of contemporary British labour newspapers which “constituted a vibrant forum for socialist debate across a wide range of issues” and by distributing the paper the Church kept local members up-to-date with important issues and debates in the UK.40 But, the inverse of this also occurred. Importantly the newspaper published letters and articles written by socialists living and sojourning in the colonies, and thus kept people in the metropole informed of goings-on on the edges of empire. As Neville Kirk has argued, this sort of circulation of material illustrates “an active and lively flow and interchange of personnel, ideas and debate among socialists” within the British World.41 By importing and distributing the Clarion and other literature into the colony, the Socialist Church was part of these wider processes involving the two- way, indeed multi-directional, exchange of ideas, ideology, debates and tactics. By examining Atkinson as a biographical case study we can see not only local, but also trans-national, influences, motivations and effects.
Later Work and Legacies
In 1905 the Socialist Church disbanded— the Political Labour League had been formed, and Atkinson’s friends Jack McCullough and Jim Thorn were more focussed on trades union organising. In 1906 Rose and Harry travelled to England, but little is known of this trip. They returned after a year away, and in 1908 Atkinson founded a new organisation-- the Christchurch Fabian Society. The Labour Church movement had by this time lost its influence in the UK, and it seems, also with Atkinson.
Despite this, Atkinson remained active in local politics and protest. In 1908 he, Tommy Taylor and Jack McCullough garnered national attention for their campaign against Joseph Ward’s gifting of a dreadnought to the British Navy, while the Fabian Society continued as a site for debate and discussion, as well as being an important distributor of socialist and radical literature. According to Roth, `[d]uring the war years it became one of the main sources of supply for socialist propagandists throughout New Zealand’.42
Prior to and during the First World War Atkinson became increasingly involved with anti-militarist and pacifist organisations. He was the first vice-president of the National Peace Council formed in 1911, but he dropped out of active work in the labour movement post-1917. This was perhaps because of seeing the punishment meted out to his friend Jim Thorn, who was charged with sedition in 1916 and stripped of his civil rights, not to mention the effect the war years had on the family of Jack McCullough.43 It seems the prosecution of dissent during World War I had its intended effect.
Despite this Harry and Rose would tirelessly work for the causes of pacifism, anti-militarism and internationalism well into their later years. He was a founding member of the League of Nations Union, the No War Movement and the Peace Pledge Union, and later strongly supported the work of the United Nations, amongst other interests.44 However now, his `main work for socialism was done in the drawing room of his home rather than in the public square’.45
Conclusion
Harry Atkinson was born into a family with strong traditions of freedom of religious thought, local political involvement and agitation for suffragism and prohibition. He was introduced to a constellation of socialist and radical writers and ideologies in Wellington, and encountered the autodidacticism that was such an important part of late nineteenth-century socialism. In Manchester, working as foundation secretary for John Trevor’s Labour Church, he experienced a vibrant socialist culture and personally met and knew many leading British socialists. Crucially, he also took on Trevor’s conception of socialism as ethical and moral. In Christchurch Atkinson became a key mentor and conduit in an emergent socialist subculture, and in establishing the Socialist Church provided a vehicle for people such as Jack McCullough, Jim Thorn and James and Elizabeth McCombs, who would go on to have leading roles in the New Zealand labour movement. Christchurch would be home to the strongest local labour organisation by the time of the outbreak of the First World War.
The Socialist Church was part of a broader, transnational ‘world of labour’, shaped by multi-directional flows, contacts and dialogues. But while inspired by foreign or overseas experiences, ideas and literature they were driven by local concerns, adapting to the colonial context and local peculiarities. Members of the Church were intensely interested in local issues— municipal government, female equality and the radical reform of democratic institutions were leading concerns. To use a more modern phrase, they ‘thought globally, but acted locally’. Atkinson’s later involvement with pacifism and anti-militarism were forebears to New Zealand’s anti-nuclear and peace movements.
In the small amount of literature that has discussed Atkinson and the Socialist Church, his world view and the ideas of fellowship, education and association put forward have often been described as ‘Christian Socialist’. It was not. Rather it was a result of his direct experience of ‘new life socialism’ in Manchester and a continuing connection to neglected traditions of British socialism and radicalism.
Finally, Atkinson’s, and others, belief in ethical socialist traditions are too often dismissed as idealism or utopianism in labour historiography. However, as Geoff Eley reminds us:
Socialism’s utopian imperative was crucial to its rank-and-file support. At the vital rhetorical and motivational levels… the sense of a better and attainable future was what allowed countless ordinary supporters of the socialist parties to commit their sustained support.46
It was the ethical-moral traditions of socialism that I have discussed today that sustained a lifetime’s work of political concern and social agitation for Harry Atkinson, and no doubt countless others.
1 James E. Taylor, ‘To me, Socialism is not a set of dogmas but a living principle’: Harry Atkinson and the Christchurch Socialist Church, 1890-1905’ (MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2010).
2 Harry Atkinson to Bert Roth, June 1953, in H. Roth Biographical Notes, MS Micro 0714, Reel 2, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (ATL) [Henceforth Roth Bio Notes].
3 H. O. Roth, ‘In Memoriam: Harry Albert Atkinson’, Here and Now, June 1956, 18.
4 Atkinson to Roth, 17 February 1954, in Roth Bio Notes, MS Micro 0714, Reel 2, ATL.
5 Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams (1918), 246, quoted in D. D. Wilson, ‘The Search for Fellowship and Sentiment in British Socialism, 1880-1914′ (MA thesis, University of Warwick, 1971), 4.
6 Richard Storey, ‘Trevor, John (1855-1930)’, in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (ed.), Dictionary of Labour Biography Vol. VI (London: Macmillan Press, 1982), 249-53? See also Trevor’s autobiography My Quest for God (London: Labour Prophet Office, 1897).
7 Stephen Yeo, ‘A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883-1896’, History Workshop Journal, 4, Autumn 1977, 5-56; Sheila Rowbotham and Jeffrey Weeks, Socialism and the New Life: The Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (London: Pluto Press, 1977)? D. D. Wilson, ‘The Search for Fellowship’.
8 Mark Bevir, ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891-1902’, Journal of British Studies, 38, 2 (April 1999), 217-245.
9 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).
10 Ben Tillett, Memories and Reflection (London: John Long Limited, 1931).
11 On this point, see also E. P. Thompson’s work on William Morris, particularly, ‘Romanticism, Moralism and Utopianism: The Case of William Morris’, New Left Review, 99, Sept-Oct 1976,105. On some of the philosophical bases of ethical socialism, see D. D. Wilson, `The Search for Fellowship’, 48-56.
12 On the problem with this characterisation, see Kevin Manton, ‘The Fellowship of the New Life: English Ethical Socialism Reconsidered’, History of Political Thought, XXIV, 2 (Summer 2003), 282-304.
13 See Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880-1914, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and also Ian Bullock, ‘Socialists and Democratic Form in Britain, 1880-1914: Positions, Debates and Conflicts’ (PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1981).
14 Atkinson to Roth, 17 February 1954, in Roth Bio Notes, MS Micro 0714, Reel 2, ATL.
15 Atkinson to Roth, 12 April 1953, in Roth Bio Notes, MS Micro 0714, Reel 2, ATL.
16 Nunquam (Robert Blatchford), ‘The New Religion’, Clarion, 25 April 1896, 153, expanded to pamphlet form, The New Religion, Clarion Pamphlet, No.20 (London: Clarion Newspaper Company, 1897)? Katherine St. John Conway and J. Bruce Glasier, The Religion of Socialism: Two Aspects (Manchester: Labour Press Ltd, c.1897).
17 H. O. Roth, ‘In Memoriam: Harry Albert Atkinson’, 18.
18 Letter, Harry Atkinson to Bert Roth, 17 February 1954.
19 Ibid.
20 “I still hold to my feelings as to the importance of this aspect of the necessary work of preaching socialism,” Atkinson to Roth, 1 March 1954.
21 Roth, H. `In Memoriam: Harry Albert Atkinson’, 19.
22 Socialist Church minute book, 12 July 1900.
23 Socialist Church minute book, 6 August 1900.
24 Star, 12 May 1897.
25 Socialist Church minute book, 26 July 1900.
26 Socialist Church minute book, 20 August 1900.
27 Socialist Church minute book, 17 Sept 1900.
28 Star, 16 October 1897.
29 Star, 8 January 1897.
30 Star, 25 March 1897.
31 Shelton Stromquist, ”Thinking Globally? Acting Locally’: Municipal Labour and Socialist Activism in Comparative Perspective, 1890-1920′, Labour History Review 74, 3 (December 2009), 235.
32 Socialist Church minute book, April 1901.
33 Socialist Church minute book, 1 April 1900.
34 Socialist Church minute book, 28 April 1901.
35 Socialist Church minute book, 28 April 1901? Barrow and Bullock, Democratic Ideas, 1996.
36 Shelton Stromquist, ‘`Thinking Globally; Acting Locally’: Municipal Labour and Socialist Activism in Comparative Perspective, 1890-1920′, Labour History Review, 74, 3 (December 2009), 235.
37 See The Socialist at ATL and Socialist Church Monthly Leaflets in Socialist Church Records 1897-1903, 94-106-14/14, Roth, Herbert Otto, 1917-1994: Papers, MS-Group-0314, ATL.
38 For details see Socialist Church Cash Book, in Roth, Herbert Otto, 1917-1994: Papers, 94-106-07/04-, ATL.
39 John H. M. Laslett, ‘Linking the Old World with the New: Recent Studies of Labour Migration, Race and Political Protest in America and the British Empire’, Labor History 46, 2 (May 2005), 189. Duncan S. A. Bell, ‘Dissolving Distance: Technology, Space and Empire in British Political Thought, 1770-1900’, The Journal of Modern History 77, (September 2005), 528.
40 Neville Kirk, ‘The Conditions of Royal Rule: Australian and British Socialist and Labour Attitudes to the Monarchy, 1901-11′, Social History 30, 1 (2005),78.
41 Neville Kirk, Comrades and Cousins: Globalization, Workers and Labour Movements in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914 (London: The Merlin Press, 2003), 150-151.
42 H. Roth, ‘In Memoriam: Harry Albert Atkinson’, 20: “The Atkinson home in Carlton Mill Road was turned into a veritable storehouse of books and pamphlets”.
43 See Melanie Nolan, ed., War & Class: The Diary of Jack McCullough, (Wellington: Dunmore Publishing, 2009). One son died on the front, two others ‘went bush’.
44 He was also a member of the Labour Party, the Engineers Unions, the Workers Education Association, Howard League for Penal Reform and `a student of Esperanto and of the Maori Language’.
45 H. Roth, ‘In Memoriam: Harry Albert Atkinson’, 20.
46 Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 15.