LIKE LIONS AFTER SLUMBER: CHALLENGES TO BRITISHNESS BY JEWISH AND IRISH IMMIGRANTS IN LATE-VICTORIAN LONDON

<p dir="ltr">Focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century in London, this dissertation seeks to answer several unanswered historical questions, including: How did Irish Catholic and Eastern European Jewish immigrants challenge long-held beliefs regarding the nature of British identity and how did they conform? What was the relationship between Irish dockers, Jewish tailors, radical socialists, and conservative religious leaders and how did this tenuous relationship aid or hinder the labor movement? Why were poor immigrant workers successful in their strikes in 1889, while more likely figures of resistance were not? And why did the subsequent New Unionism movement then fail to utilize the strength displayed by dockers and tailors at the turn of the century? </p><p dir="ltr">The Dockers’ and Tailors’ strikes of 1889 have long been read by historians as a militant, socialist, liberal victory for unskilled, immigrant workers, one that ushered in a new age of unionism in Britain. However, this dissertation finds that the strikers were successful only to the degree that they were able to convince the public that they were working to reform labor conditions and uphold traditional British ideals of honor, freedom, justice, masculinity, and industry. It was despite, not because of, the socialist background of their leaders that immigrant workers supported the strikes. More alike than historians have previously shown, Irish and Jewish immigrants fought back against the prevalent idea that they were undesirable outsiders and laid claim to their right to work as Englishmen in the summer of 1889. Drawn together by their proximity of settlement in the East End, similarly low socioeconomic status, mutual concerns over the education of their children and vice within their communities, allied beliefs on gender, and their shared place as religious, ethnic, and social outcasts in Britain, Irish and Jewish immigrants asserted their place in the British labor market and society. Although they were repeatedly told that they were not part of the nation, these immigrants nevertheless used the rhetoric of British identity to make their arguments for improved working conditions. </p><p dir="ltr">The strikes were a spectacular moment of unity between immigrants, socialists, religious leaders, and the general public. However, once the strikes were over, underlying racial and class tensions between these groups combined with the insular sectarianism that previously inhibited a mass movement of workers returned to stymie the progress made during the summer of 1889. I argue that the dissonance between the idealism of British socialist values and the reality of their ingrained practices helps explain why the New Trade Unionism movement stumbled to create meaningful change in the years following the strikes.</p>