Commonweal was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 socialist

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 founded in 1885 by the newborn Socialist League

Socialist League (UK, 1885)

The Socialist League was an early revolutionary socialist organisation in the United Kingdom. The organisation began as a dissident offshoot of the Social Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman at the end of 1884. Never an ideologically harmonious group, by the 1890s the group had turned from...

. Its aims were to spread socialistic views and to win over new recruits.

William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

, founder of the League, was its chief writer, money finder and "responsible head". John Turner

John Turner (anarchist)

John Turner was an English-born anarcho-communist shop steward. He referred to himself as "of semi-Quaker descent."Turner was the first person to be ordered deported from the United States for violation of the 1903 Anarchist Exclusion Act...

, Ernest Belfort Bax

Ernest Belfort Bax

Ernest Belfort Bax was a British socialist journalist and philosopher, associated with the Social Democratic Federation ....

 and Eleanor Marx

Eleanor Marx

Jenny Julia Eleanor "Tussy" Marx , also known as Eleanor Marx Aveling, was the English-born youngest daughter of Karl Marx. She was herself a socialist activist, who sometimes worked as a literary translator...

 also regularly contributed articles. Its publishing office was at Great Queen Street, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

In 1890, Morris resigned as editor and was replaced by the anarchist David Nicoll. Nicoll published an article on the Walsall Anarchists

Walsall Anarchists

The Walsall Anarchists were a group of anarchists arrested on explosive charges in Walsall in 1892.Although the British Home Office and the Metropolitan Police attempted to conceal the evidence for over 80 years, recent research into police files has revealed that the bombings were instigated by...

, and in May 1892 was sentenced to eighteen months hard labour. H. B. Samuels then became acting editor. On Nicoll's release, the paper was closed and replaced by The Anarchist.

Historian Alex Butterworth believes that the staff of Commonweal "may have consisted entirely of informants, unbeknownst to each other," although "[e]ven today, with unprecedented access to police files, Butterworth is often unsure who was reporting back to the cops."