Editing George Lansbury (section)

==Radical Liberal==

===First campaigns===
On his return to London, Lansbury took a job in Brine's timber business. In his spare time he campaigned against the false prospectuses offered by colonial emigration agents. His speech at an emigration conference at [[King's College London|King's College]] in London in April 1886 impressed delegates; shortly afterwards, the government established an Emigration Information Bureau under the [[Colonial Office]]. This body was required to provide accurate information on the state of labour markets in all the government's overseas possessions.<ref>Shepherd 2002, pp. 16–17</ref>

Having joined the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] shortly after his return from Australia, Lansbury became first a ward secretary and then general secretary for the [[Bow and Bromley]] Liberal and Radical Association.<ref>Postgate, p. 31</ref> His effective campaigning skills had been noted by leading Liberals, including [[Samuel Montagu]], the Liberal [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]] for [[Whitechapel (UK Parliament constituency)|Whitechapel]], who persuaded the young activist to be his agent in the [[1885 United Kingdom general election|1885 general election]].<ref name= S19>Shepherd 2002, pp. 19–20</ref> Lansbury's handling of this election campaign prompted Montagu to urge him to stand for parliament himself.<ref>Lansbury, p. 75</ref> Lansbury declined this, partly on practical grounds (MPs were then unpaid and he had to provide for his family), and partly on principle; he was becoming increasingly convinced that his future lay not as a radical Liberal but as a [[socialist]].<ref name= S19/> He continued to serve the Liberals, as an agent and local secretary, while expressing his socialism in a short-lived monthly radical journal, ''Coming Times'', which he founded and co-edited with a fellow-dissident, William Hoffman.<ref>Schneer 1990, pp. 16–17</ref>

===London County Council elections, 1889===
[[File:Metropolitan Board of Works in Spring Gardens 1860 ILN.jpg|thumb|left|The Metropolitan Board of Works building in [[Spring Gardens]] near [[Trafalgar Square]], original headquarters of the London County Council]]
In 1888 Lansbury agreed to act as election agent for [[Jane Cobden]], who was contesting the first elections for the newly formed [[London County Council]] (LCC) as Liberal candidate for the Bow and Bromley division.<ref>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), p. 67</ref> Cobden, an early supporter of women's suffrage, was the fourth child of the Victorian radical statesman [[Richard Cobden]].<ref>{{cite ODNB|last= Howe|first= A.C.|title= Unwin, (Emma) Jane Catherine Cobden|url= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38683?docPos=1|date= May 2006|doi= 10.1093/ref:odnb/38683|access-date= 8 February 2013}} {{subscription required}}</ref> The Society for Promoting Women as County Councillors (SPWCC), a new women's rights group, had proposed Cobden as the candidate for Bow and Bromley and [[Margaret Sandhurst]] for Brixton.<ref name= S63/>{{refn|At that time women, although denied votes in parliamentary elections, had limited rights to vote in municipal elections, although whether they could stand as candidates, or serve if elected, was not legally clear.<ref name= S63>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), pp. 63–65</ref>|group= n}} Lansbury counselled Cobden in the issues of greatest concern to the East End electorate: housing for the poor, ending of [[sweated labour]], rights of public assembly, and control of the police. Specific questions of women's rights were largely avoided during the campaign.<ref>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), p. 68</ref> On 19 January 1889 both women were elected; these triumphs were, however, short-lived. Sandhurst's qualification to serve as a county councillor was successfully challenged in the courts by her [[Conservative party (UK)|Conservative Party]] opponents on the grounds of her sex, and her subsequent appeal was dismissed. Cobden was not immediately challenged, but in April 1891, after a series of legal actions, she was effectively neutered as a councillor by being prevented from voting on pain of severe financial penalties.<ref>Hollis, pp. 310–16</ref> Lansbury urged her, during the hearings, to "go to prison and let the Council back you up by refusing to declare your seat vacant".<ref>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), p. 75</ref> Cobden did not follow this path. A Bill introduced in the House of Commons in May 1891 permitting women to serve as county councillors found little support among MPs of any party; women were not granted this right until 1907.<ref>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), p. 77</ref>

Lansbury was offended by his party's lukewarm support for women's rights. In a letter published in the ''[[Pall Mall Gazette]]'' he made an open call to Bow and Bromley's Liberals to "shake themselves free of party feeling and throw the energy and ability they are now wasting on minor questions into&nbsp;... securing the full rights of citizenship to every woman in the land".<ref>Schneer ("Politics and Feminism"), pp. 79–80</ref> He was further disillusioned by his party's failure to endorse the eight-hour maximum working day. Lansbury had formed the view, expressed some years later, that "Liberalism would progress just as far as the great money bags of capitalism would allow it to progress".<ref>Lansbury article in ''Labour Leader'', 17 May 1912, quoted in Shepherd 2002, p. 26</ref> By 1892 the Liberals no longer felt like Lansbury's political home; most of his current associates were avowed socialists: [[William Morris]], [[Eleanor Marx]], [[John Burns]] and [[Henry Hyndman]], founder of the [[Social Democratic Federation]] (SDF).<ref>Shepherd 2002, p. 26</ref> Nevertheless, Lansbury did not resign from the Liberals until he had fulfilled a commitment to act as election agent for [[John Macdonald (British politician, born 1854)|John Murray MacDonald]], the prospective Liberal candidate for Bow and Bromley. He saw his candidate victorious in the [[1892 United Kingdom general election|July 1892 general election]]; as soon as the result was declared, Lansbury resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the SDF.<ref>Shepherd 2002, pp. 32–33</ref>