A distinctive strength of Dr Hilson's well-written analysis of the formation of social democratic labour parties in the naval dockyard towns of Plymouth (England) and Karlskrona (Sweden) is its generalizing ambition while at the same time acknowledging the importance of contingency and local traits. Hilson wants to avoid the lack of nuance sometimes felt in single-factor designs where, for instance, ‘timing of democracy’, ‘culture’, and so on, may be given too much importance; equally, she wants to stay clear of the myopia of the case studies trapped by British exceptionalism or German sonderweg from which few conclusions other than those pertaining to the case itself can be drawn. A string of elegantly selected counter-examples helps Hilson challenge common wisdoms of earlier research, her intention being to show ‘that the politics of the dockyard town . . . were . . . more complex and interesting than they are sometimes assumed to be’. However, the study has an overarching, far more daunting, aim (p. 13), which is to ask ‘why did social democratic labour parties emerge in most European countries during the late nineteenth century?’
Hilson's clever strategy to focus on cases that are as comparable as possible reduces the disturbing risks faced by studies with many variables but few cases. Although different in size, both towns were isolated from other urban centres and were dominated by a state-owned, militarily-run shipyard. Hilson shows enviable knowledge of national political and social histories as well as of the urban settings. Well-balanced in length, the book divides into eight chapters. The first three provide an accomplished overview of earlier research cultivating the ground for the study's objectives, while the remaining five offer close-up studies of the towns and a conclusion. Along the way we learn about the astonishingly lively Plymouth co-operative movement; the extraordinary tradition of ‘petitioning’ by dockyard workers to the Admiralty and its perhaps unintended effect of establishing an early system of political lobbying; the transformation of Karlskrona May Day parades from naval reveilles to labour manifestations; and trade unionists' struggle to ‘tame’ the sometimes rowdy wilfulness of their fellow workers. With pertinent national contextualizing, a rich web of societal threads is interwoven with local political and media debates and with social and economic development. This tale of two cities at what was a dramatic turning-point in European history – the transformation from various forms of political repression to some of the most democratic countries in the world – highlights significant differences as well as similarities between the two cases.
However, the story of differences and similarities, and the coznclusions we are supposed to draw, is where perhaps Hilson fails fully to deliver. She achieves no small thing by opening our eyes to ‘the contingency and open-ended nature of political change’ (p. 254). But, as the conclusions stand, they sum up rather than conclude. Hilson could have tried designing her study around testable hypotheses: this is a traditional means of increasing the degree of generalization in comparative studies with a small number of cases, but as a strategy it carries the all-too-common risk of crudely testing crude hypotheses with cases picked to confirm the hypotheses, so perhaps it is best avoided. Alternatively, at least some concluding attempt at formulating tentative hypotheses about the key emergence-of-parties issue could have crowned the study. Hilson does indeed introduce (pp. 68–9) detailed questions about what form the movement for independent labour representation took in each case. But how should the answers be interpreted? For instance, in what way did the fact that the co-operative movement was so strong in Plymouth contribute to the formation of a national Labour Party? What if there had been only a weak co-op organization, as indeed was the case in Karlskrona (though Sweden still produced a strong Social Democratic Party)? This book seems a little undecided as to whether to focus on explaining why social democratic labour parties emerged or on why they emerged as different political entities across Europe. Helpful analytical tools to discuss these matters could perhaps have been found in for example the introductory chapter by Lipset and Rokkan on ‘Cleavage structure’, in their volume on the emergence of parties, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York, 1967). Central to their analysis, although never properly defined, is the ‘social cleavage’ concept, devised to capture local feelings of ‘us and them’, with an ensuing impetus for political organization against the ruling elite. Using Bartolini and Mair's later definition in Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability (Cambridge, 1990, pp. 212ff), social cleavages can gauge the confluence of three elements: (1) objectively identifiable social groups, (2) subjective cultural feelings in accordance with the objective traits, and (3) organizational activity along the subjective and objective lines. On all three counts, Hilson's data actually show how in both countries those denied full formal political influence, i.e. in a very broad sense the working class, were increasingly exposed to economic and urban change and – with local variations – how they began to feel culturally distinctive from the elite classes, with organizational forces developing to help them discover that distinctiveness and to mobilize politically.
My perhaps overly square-minded objections aside, Mary Hilson has managed to write a highly commendable book for anyone interested in labour history as well as in more general party history, democratic transition history and urban history. Moreover, Hilson's work corroborates earlier research views on how comparatively slow but gradually developing steps towards democracy contribute to a stable democratic transition. Even during hard times of hunger riots these roots of democracy held their ground. Hilson helps us understand why.
