Before the Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893, working-class radicals and socialists in the main focused on influencing the Liberal Party, the Lib-Lab period.
One of those who did was William Morris who later became a socialist and revolutionary socialist.
By 1881 there was a National Liberal League (a successor to the Labour Representation League) which was designed to pressure and influence the Liberal Government.
William Morris was briefly Treasurer and in early 1881 a programme for reform was issued*. The demands included:
Electoral reform
Shorter Parliaments
Abolition of paid canvassing
Reform of the Land Laws
An elected House of Lords
In his utopian novel William Morris noted that Parliament had been replaced with a (more useful) dung heap but in the light of the current debate and protests around Parliament and prorogation perhaps the demands of the 1880s still have interest
- See E P Thompson. William Morris from Romantic to Revolutionary
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