Socialism and the Diasporic ‘Other’ simultaneously examines how left-wing politics functioned within the diasporic communities and how Irish and Jewish populations were viewed by the wider socialist and trade union movements. It discusses the similarities and differences in how politics and communal dynamics were apparent in the Irish and Jewish East Ends, and the relationships formed between Irish and Jewish women, men and children in numerous contexts. It also compares the structures and agendas of the Jewish and Catholic metropolitan hierarchies, and how communal leaderships attempted to ma ... More

Socialism and the Diasporic ‘Other’ simultaneously examines how left-wing politics functioned within the diasporic communities and how Irish and Jewish populations were viewed by the wider socialist and trade union movements. It discusses the similarities and differences in how politics and communal dynamics were apparent in the Irish and Jewish East Ends, and the relationships formed between Irish and Jewish women, men and children in numerous contexts. It also compares the structures and agendas of the Jewish and Catholic metropolitan hierarchies, and how communal leaderships attempted to maintain control over working class migrant communities. The book emphasises the lack of consistency in progressive attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, and the use of ethnic difference as a way of demarcating political space in an often chaotic and fractured London left. It argues that there were two key major differences in the ways in which communal politics functioned in Jewish and Irish Catholic East London, the first based around the nature of hierarchical authority, and the second on how class relations manifested themselves in the communities. It roots the divergent paths that Jewish and Irish communal East End politics took before the First World War in these differences.