Politics in the Victorian times.

I am currently attempting to write an Undergraduate essay on why the working class were so politically radical but I am unsure if my approach to the essay is correct and was wondering if anyone could help?

Also yes, ageshallnot is correct. You are focusing on 'causal' factors (those that encourage radicalism/political radicalism)

You need to address the 'so' by also discussing 'enabling' factors such as increased education by the end of the 19th century and the advances in technology; the railways and communication devices, which arguably increased the scale of working class political radicalism during the victorian era, as it allowed a more co-ordinated effort to be orchestrated.

You have done a TSR special here. TSR is littered with threads asking why some tendentious statement is true; "why do red-headed girls play hard to get" etc without ever seeking to prove the truth of the major premise. You are doing this in an academic context.

Were the working class politically radical? Arguably the British working class built Mechanics' Institutes not barricades. Workers of the World Unite...and set up a grocery store. Tens of thousands of working class men met every Saturday in late Victorian England...to watch 22 men kick a ball about. In 1848 there was armed revolt all over Europe with crowned heads falling like ninepins but in Britain we create a working class insurance company; the Pru.

You do not have to change your opinion, but you need to recognise in your essay that the radicalism of the working classes is not a self-evident proposition. The Victorian era ended with massive working class support for an Imperialist war in South Africa.

I've been very poorly. So it's been extended