Robert Blatchford serialised his book Merrie England in the paper, and also published work by a variety of writers, including George Bernard Shaw, and artwork by Walter Crane.

It was Julia Dawson who pioneered the Clarion Vans, which toured small towns and villages throughout England and Scotland from 1896 until 1929, spreading socialist messages.

On 27 June 1904, three weeks before the King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra opened Liverpool Cathedral, Jim Larkin and Fred Bower, workmen on the site, composed a message "from the wage slaves employed on the erection of this cathedral" to a future socialist society, and, along with a copy of the Clarion and the Labour Leader, placed it in a biscuit tin deep inside the brickwork and covered it.

Emil Robert Voigt (1883–1973), an English-born engineer and former activist in the Clarion movement in Manchester, was one of the pioneers of the Australian broadcasting industry in the early 1920s and the man behind the birth of the progressive radio station 2KY.

The paper enjoyed sales of around 30,000 copies a week for many years, but some readers gave it up after it argued in favour of the Second Boer War and against even limited women's suffrage.