Political Communication: Mapping Free Trade, 1910

In the years before World War One, Free Trade was a crucial part of British culture. Yet we know little about it as a form of political communication. This has been partly because the records of the Free Trade Union did not survive, partly because until recently most historians were more interested in political leaders than political culture. The so-called Free Trade Lectures organisation, which was active throughout 1910, was a self-conscious exercise in modernising how political economy was communicated to different sections of the population.