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By contrast, the three monographs reprinted in the latest addition to the Harvester Press series of reprints, 'Society and the Victorians', seem the very model of unscientific socialism. They were all originally published in 1907 in George Allen's series 'The Labour Ideal'. They comprise Keir Hardie's statement on the ethical basis of socialism, From Serfdom to Socialism; Ramsay MacDonald's Labour and the Empire; and Philip Snowden's The Socialist Budget. Each is open to attack as a statement of political doctrine. Hardie has nothing to say on either the economic or the institutional base of the future socialist society. MacDonald never discusses the ultimate form that the imperial relationship may take. Snowden's finance is little different from that of Asquith and Lloyd George; his reluctance to impose higher income taxes on earned, as opposed to unearned, incomes strikes one as simply quaint. All three authors borrow heavily from the conventional Liberalism of the time. Yet they are all worth far closer examination than Dr. Robert Dowse suggests in a singularly unhelpful introduction. To condemn them for their lack of 'a consistent and articulated ideology' or to dismiss them as 'an extremely loose collection of ideas' largely misses the point. Hardie, MacDonald and Snowden were not contributing to a university seminar. They were striving to adapt the new and struggling Labour Party to a specific political and ideological framework in 1907, and to the British radical tradition. They were, no doubt, weak on doctrine, but strong in realism and commonsense. They prevented the Labour Party from becoming an introspective sect on the lines of Hyndman's S.D.F., and made it instead a wide-ranging alliance. They enabled their Labour coalition to increase and multiply, while so many of the fringe radical movements recorded in the Dictionary of Labour Biography simply withered away. KENNETH O. MORGAN The Queen's College Oxford RHONDDA PAST AND FUTURE. Edited by K. S. Hopkins. W. T. Maddock and Co., 1975. Pp. 272. £ 3.00. This volume consists of 'a representative selection of some of the lectures' delivered under a scheme sponsored by the Rhondda Education Committee during the winter of 1972 and 1973, and their publication, in the words of the Mayor, is an expression of his determination, and that of his Council, 'to retain the quality of that community spirit which was so strong in our time of trial'. Such a high purpose merits every praise. Responsibility for selection and arranging the contents of the volume was assumed by its editor, Mr. K. S. Hopkins, one-time borough education officer of Rhondda. He has also contributed a revealing intro- duction which limits 'Rhondda's past to the recent (sic) century', and a concluding cri de coeur in the form of a letter, addressed to the Secretary of State for Wales in 1974, pleading for his dramatic intervention to rehabilitate the valleys. His intentions are elaborated in a press release which accompanied publication. There he states that 'the book tries to