THOSE who vote for Reform have mixed reasons. Some are hardcore racists, others, despairing of getting a change in their lives for the better, look to Nigel Farage’s political business vehicle for improvements.

Historically, as Raymond Williams noted in Keywords, this is not what the word “reform” meant. First appearing in the 14th century, it was often used to mean restoring something to its previous state — in Farage’s case at least the Britain of the 1950s — more than positive change and innovation.

As Williams suggests, reformism came into use from the 1870s when organised labour began to press for parliamentary representation.

EP Thompson argued that after the Chartist challenge in the 1840s, by the 1860s the working class had moved away from revolution and instead looked to warren capitalism from end to end, with institutions which remain very familiar today.

Trade unions, trades councils, co-ops. The controversy was whether this reformist approach could actually achieve meaningful and lasting change.

In the mid-1860s there were a series of small scale inter-union disputes in Sheffield that however got media attention. A royal commission was set up in 1867 to look at the issue of unions. It was the minority of the commission that won the day when the matter was debated in the Commons. The result was the 1871 Trade Union Act.

For the first time trade unions were recognised as existing in law. That meant that union funds now had legal protection against anyone seeking to make off with them. Other provisions had wider importance. Union activity including strikes could not be regarded as “restraint of trade,” meaning neither employers or scabs could pursue unions for damages.

Further union organisation could not be regarded as a conspiracy, a point going back to the Tolpuddle Martyrs 35 years before.

The 1871 Act was a key part of putting unions and union members on a legal footing but there was more to do.

The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 addressed further key issues, in particular it made picketing in disputes legal. The Employers and Workmen Act also of 1875 made all disputes between employers and employees civil matters.

Previously under the Master and Servant Acts workers who left employment before the end of their contract could be pursued by the boss and fined or jailed.

All this was achieved by the strength of organised labour making a political impact. In effect pressure from outside of Parliament.

These important changes however were far from set in stone and were challenged by employers. Taff Vale is the most well-known case. A court judgement in 1901 found that the rail workers’ union in south Wales was liable to pay the employment damages for money lost in a strike.

The issue of parliamentary representation for workers became key, Labour MPs were elected for the first time in 1906 and in the same year the Trades Disputes Act restored union immunity from prosecution.

The lesson of this period is that while reforms could be achieved by pressure from outside Parliament, to protect them required representation in it. This was part of the raison d’etre of the Labour Representation Committee, formed in 1900.

If we fast forward more than a hundred years the 2025 Employment Relations Act underlines that the relationship remains partly in place. However there are also independent socialists and Greens in Parliament who will go in to bat for workers. Here the relationship between organised labour and MPs is central. Individual MPs may be sympathetic but the institutional structure to hold them to account, and hence where unions political links are, is central.

How effective reformism is remains a live debate. Reform in its historical meaning is not the way forward.