“Outlandish ‘ISMS’ in the city” : how Madame Sorgue contaminated Hull with the virus of direct action

The Great Labour Unrest that shook British society between 1910 and 1914 was remarkable insofar as it developed not in any cities, but mainly in ports. This gave it an international dimension which has too often been reduced to the importation of syndicalist ideas from the USA and France over to Britain by Tom Mann. But whatever influence syndicalism managed to exert in the British Isles was in fact the result of collective efforts to create international networks. The study of Madame Sorgue s visit to Hull in May 1911 provides an interesting case in point. The French activists stay in the city was at the time quite an event, and while many contemporary observers blamed her for poisoning the healthy minds of Hull workers with “outlandish ‘ISMS’”, this article argues that no political contamination would have been possible if the working population of the city had not been ready to adopt the virus in the first place.