Whenever Oxford appears in relation to politics in twenty-first-century Britain, it is usually followed by a nod to the University's remarkable capacity for training prime ministers: fitting them for service as first lord of the treasury through politics, philosophy and economics (the much-disdained PPE degree) and a thorough grounding in the Conservative party. To review a book focused on left-wing politics in Oxford, therefore, might seem somewhat surprising given popular perceptions of both the city and its ancient university as Tory. But as so often is the case, the popular and the real are quite a long way apart. Oxford and Oxford University both have a radical, left-wing tradition which deserve to be better known. In this new study, Duncan Bowie, a well-respected scholar of housing and planning, and a former Labour party councillor in Oxford (1979–83), endeavours to restore to public awareness what was once called ‘Red Oxford’. His emphasis is on the politics of the city, rather than the university itself, although inevitably the two intertwine: town can never quite escape gown.

Reform and Revolt comprises more than 40 chapters of varying lengths set into five distinct parts, the three largest of which carry the narrative from nineteenth-century radicalism, to the emergence of socialism in the 1880s and the presence of the Independent Labour party (ILP) after 1893; and finally to the battle between the Labour party and the Communist party between the wars. In so doing, Bowie provides a relatively traditional narrative of the unfolding of left politics, but with a clear eye for the local activist and campaigner. Thus, he argues, in the civic history of the city ‘there was continuity in progressive reform politics’ (p. vii). There are, inevitably, sacrifices because of this kind of perspective, the most important of which relates to the influx of Welsh migrants to Oxford in the 1930s in the wake of the Depression of the coal trade. As Andy Chandler has shown in his research – which alas escapes mention – many of the Welsh migrants, who came to work in the car plants at Cowley, were regarded by long-established residents as even more radical than the radical elements of the population of the city itself and thus had a substantive impact on the political ethos of the city.

There are a few nods to this kind of impact, particularly in earlier chapters when Bowie discusses the relationship between the workers who came to study at Ruskin College and the growth of the ILP in Oxford. But, unfortunately, Bowie rushes through his laying out of the narrative to squeeze in 150 years of development. Ruskin College students Noah Rees and Noah Ablett were not merely ‘leading militants in the Miners Union of South Wales’ (p. 123) – sic, it should read the South Wales Miners’ Federation – but authors of the key syndicalist pamphlet of the so-called Great Unrest between 1910 and 1914 (the Miners’ Next Step of 1912) and, in Ablett's case, a significant figure in the Plebs League and the National Central Labour College. Ruskin College, of course, lay outside the University's remit and often provided shelter to more radical elements of the city's student population – none more so than in the 1930s when the University authorities sought to extinguish communist influence by banning the communist-led October Club. One consequence of that action, during the Popular Front era at the end of the 1930s, was famously to lead to communist infiltration of the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC). The OULC was to split early in World War II with the social democratic, pro-war faction led by Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland going on to form the Oxford University Democratic Socialist Club.

These tensions were similarly felt in the city Labour party which had to navigate the TUC's and Labour party's national executive committee's strong opposition to any dealings with the Communist party, on the one hand, and the relatively enthusiastic desire of local members to create a ‘united front’ against the Conservative-dominated National Government on the other. Oxford City Labour party was one of those, like Cardiff Trades and Labour Council, which fell strongly under the influence of the Communist party. Indeed, Bowie speculates that Hector Prickett, the Labour party secretary in Oxford, may even have remained a member of the Communist party during his tenure (p. 213). This shaped Oxford's left politics in the years leading up to World War II, although as with the University Labour Club, the outbreak of World War II forced members to choose between the Labour position (which was pro-war) and the Communist position (which was pro the Nazi–Soviet pact). The Communist influence waned as a result.

For urban historians, of course, these machinations of local politics provide local colour but are of relatively modest interest. To that end, it must be said that this book, compared with Bowie's earlier studies of housing and planning, is perhaps of less immediate relevance. Indeed, Reform and Revolt is an overly traditional study of local politics, typical of labour history from several decades ago. This does not make it a bad book, by any means; it is certainly stimulating and (for readers unfamiliar with Oxford's left history) eye-opening. Yet it could well have been a stronger intervention into the field and one cannot fail to conclude that it is an opportunity missed. The final two sections have the character of an appendage and do not add a great deal to the book's narrative, and whilst the appendices are interesting they could easily have been excised. With the space thus gained, Bowie could have slowed down his discussion and demonstrated more forcefully that Oxford was (and is, still) radical. As it is, I suspect students will ransack pages for choice quotes. Who can really blame them? There are worse fates for a book.