FOREWORD 
The Poplar Labour Movement has added a new word to the 
English language—‘‘ Poplarism.” This word has been heard 
of in the remotest corners of the earth. Some people look on 
the word and those whose work it represents with scorn and 
contempt. Many Labour leaders, and some who style them- 
selves intellectuals and socialists, are at great pains to 
disassociate themselves from the ‘‘ unholy ’’ thing. On the other 
hand, this Poplar movement has rallied millions of workers 
in all parts of our land in a determined fight to use all the 
law gives us on behalf of the poor and down-trodden. Ours 
has been a class movement simply because only our class remains 
in Poplar. - 
Editors and Press men generally write in disparaging tones 
about ‘‘ frenzied Poplar financiers’ and the degradation of 
the people who dwell on the marshlands surrounded by the 
River Thames, the River Lea, and intersected by innumerable 
railways, canals and docks. Yet the Movement goes placidly 
on. Employers, foremen, directors, shareholders, shopkeepers, 
some doctors, and even some clergy refuse to live in the 
borough, finding its atmosphere and general condition quite 
healthy as a money-making centre, but a totally unfit place 
wherein the general body of Mammon worshippers should 
spend their leisure and sleeping time. It is often said that 
though Poplar has made fortunes for thousands of such people, 
none of them would of their own choice be found dead there. 
In Poplar we are divided into two parts—Bow and Bromley 
on one side and Poplar on the other. Up till recent years 
Bow and Bromley was the left wing and Poplar the right. 
To-day all the muddle-headed Fabian intellectualism which 
caused the old Poplar Labour League to unite itself with 
Liberalism masquerading as Progressivism, has been swept 
away and there is now neither right nor left wing. We are all 
clear class-conscious Socialists working together, using the 
whole machinery of local government and Parliament for the 
transformation of Capitalist Society into Socialism. We are 
under no delusions about our day by day work. We are only 
patching up and making good some of the evils of Capitalism. 
But tens of thousands of sick and aged, widows and orphans, 
infirm and decrepit people are receiving from the community, 
hecause of our work. the means of a decent subsistence. and