The twin spectres of degeneration and apocalypse haunted the final years of the nineteenth century. Whilst traditionally characterized as Britain's' Age of Empire';'a time when Britain ruled the world, the economic boom years of the mid-Victorian age had come to an abrupt end with the slump of the 1880s. Increasing competition from abroad meant that Britain no longer dominated world marketplaces with the ease which had been accomplished earlier in Victoria's reign. Twentieth-century historians of the turn-of-the-century in Britain have generally identified the period as one of instability, of social and economic turbulence. Eric Hobsbawm typically evokes the'uneasiness... disorientation... tension'of these'years of political breakdown'; 2 Gareth Stedman Jones regards the political crisis of the 1880s as more'deep-rooted and comprehensive'than the crisis provoked by the Reform Billsof the mid-cenrury.! and Raymond Williams has remarked on the way in which during this period being'English', sharing any sense of a national identity, became problematic as increasing numbers of immigrants settled in Britain's cities. t The resurgence of the women's movement towards the end of the nineteenth century has been well documented. t and the 1880s also witnessed the formation of the first, tiny Marxist parties in England (the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League), with the Independent Labour Party establishing itself in 1900, and the great Dockers' Strike of 1889 leading the unionization of unskilled workers. f Just at the moment that feminism and socialism began to grow in strength, Britain's hegemony as a global economic power began to falter, now rivalled by Germany