"Generally speaking, anyone who expressed any desire to improve the lot of the exploited and injured, or proposed any remedy for the mortal sickness of acquisitive society, was regarded by the Conservative class as the vilest of criminals, an untouchable, an outcast, in short—a "Bolshevik." George [Lansbury] himself, had been imprisoned by the Tories in the days when he was a Poplar Guardian, and therefore, like so many heroes of the class-struggle, a "gaol-bird.""