East London in the 1930s was on the surface a staunchly Labour area, yet the Labour Party's hold upon working class loyalties was a great deal more shaky than most people realize. In this book John Marriott examines why this was so and argues that working class politics do not necessarily mean the Labour Party, but very often relate to a much longer tradition of labourism. He traces the processes by which the Labour Party came to assume and subsequently maintain power in West Ham. He argues controversially that its success lay not in administrative improvements, or as an automatic response to social and economic grievances, but in the way the Party articulated and integrated lived experience within a defined political sphere.