Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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Leeds fulfilled similar functions in the West Riding, and Birmingham in the West
Midlands, for the woollen industry and small metal trades. These regions and
their ‘capitals’ developed distinctive cultural and political lives, which were
confident and powerful in the Victorian period, expressed through political
movements, local newspapers, distinctive patterns of recreation and dialect.
53
These regional urban systems were nevertheless part of a larger national urban
network which was, as Lees shows, shaped by the actions of the state.
The state needs to collect information and communicate resources, messages
or personnel across space; the geography of the state is therefore important. The
creation of systems of information-gathering, allocation and inspection was con-
tested, in a continuing process which never reached a settled form.
54
The New
Poor Law of , for example, grouped together medieval parishes into a new
administrative geography of unions, so enabling a more efficient transfer of stan-
dard procedures. Ideally, the unions were based on market towns but neat order
was subverted by the survival of existing ‘incorporations’ created by local initia-
tive before , and by the challenge of anti-poor law agitation. In
Huddersfield, for example, an alliance of radicals and Tories exploited a rheto-
ric of local autonomy; the central government countered by appointing new
magistrates. The tussle over the geography of the state did not end, for oppo-
nents of the poor law in Huddersfield side-stepped the Board of Guardians by
providing welfare through different institutions, whether charitable hospitals and
dispensaries or model lodging houses supplied by the town council.
55
The poor
law was merely the most contentious example of a wider process of monitoring
of administration by centrally-based inspectorates. Between and ,
more than twenty central inspectorates were created to enforce local administra-
tion of laws or standards.
56
Increasingly, control was also exercised through grants
paid to authorities on condition that certain standards of efficiency were
achieved, which raised a further question: how trustworthy were local author-
ities in spending the money of the central state?
57
Martin Daunton
53
J. Langton, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the regional geography of England’, Transaction of the
Institute of British Geographer, new series, (), ‒.
54
See M. Mann, ‘The autonomous power of the state’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, (),
–; M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. : The Rise of Classes and Nation States –
(Cambridge, ); A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, vol. : The Nation
State and Violence (Cambridge, ); M. Ogborn, ‘Local power and state regulation in nineteenth-
century Britain’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, (), –; R. Paddison,
The Fragmented State:The Political Geography of Power (Oxford, ). These ideas are applied to the
example of the poor law by F. Driver, Power and Pauperism (Cambridge, ).
55
See below, p. , on the development of voluntary hospitals in Huddersfield, citing H. Marland,
Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield – (Cambridge, ); the town was also
one of the main centres of opposition to compulsory vaccination against smallpox, and a pioneer
of infant welfare: see H. Marland, ‘A pioneer in infant welfare: the Huddersfield scheme,
–’, Social History of Medicine, (), ‒.
56
Driver, Power and Pauperism, pp. –, .
57
J. Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Manchester, ), pp. , –, –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
A continuing theme throughout the period covered by this volume was the
extent to which the central government should allow local authorities auton-
omy, and how far they should be controlled. This is the focus of John Davis’
chapter on central–local government relations, and it is also a significant issue in
Dupree’s analysis of welfare provision. On the one hand, granting local author-
ities discretion meant that the centre did not need to find revenue, so reducing
pressure on the Treasury and delegating potentially explosive issues to the local
arena where the central state would not be implicated. On the other hand, the
central government might wish to enforce the provision of certain services – an
efficient police force or poor law – which meant that it provided grants and
imposed control. Should the subventions be linked to local expenditure, meeting
a proportion of whatever the authority opted to spend, with the danger that
‘extravagant’ or progressive councils would place demands on central govern-
ment, regardless of the concerns of the chancellor for the national budget? Or
should subventions be tied to fixed grants which obliged urban authorities to
find the revenue for any new initiative? Such a policy was justified on the
grounds that it was safe to grant more autonomy to the localities, for additional
costs fell on local taxpayers and there was less need for constant government
inspection to protect its interests. It could also be justified as a means of redress-
ing inequalities within the urban system. The poorest areas, with the greatest
social problems, had the smallest local revenue and were therefore less likely to
benefit from grants proportionate to their own spending. Block grants could be
awarded according to a formula taking account of the fiscal resources of each
council and the demand for various services indicated by demographic meas-
ures. A related point was the appropriate tier of local government to provide ser-
vices: the central government might prefer larger authorities as more efficient
and trustworthy, and move responsibility up the hierarchy, against the wishes of
smaller bodies. The transfer or circulation of resources within the urban system
– the tension between local autonomy and redistribution – was a major theme
throughout the period.
58
One possible outcome was to transfer responsibility for social services away
from the localities and pass them directly to the central government, as in the
provision of old-age pensions in or the National Health Service in .
The justification could be equity: national taxation allowed redistribution both
between income levels and between parts of the country, unlike local, regressive
rates. But it might arise from a desire to impose control from Whitehall. In ,
the creation of poor law unions in place of parishes was intended to prevent deci-
sions on relief being ‘warped by private interests’. The creation of plural voting
for large ratepayers was designed to take control away from the beneficiaries and
Introduction
58
C. Bellamy, Administering Central–Local Relations, – (Manchester, ); Bulpitt, Territory
and Power. These issues were fought out at the time of the reconstruction of local government in
: see below, p. .
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transfer it to those who provided tax revenues.
59
However, central government
confidence in the local system was weakened in the early twentieth century. In
, multiple votes for Boards of Guardians were abolished and the beneficiaries
might have a larger say than taxpayers in local policy, especially with the exten-
sion of the franchise in and the rise of Labour. The response of the govern-
ment was to pass control of the poor law to larger, more ‘responsible’,
multi-function local authorities, and then in to transfer relief payments to
non-elected, government-appointed bodies.
60
This loss of local responsibility for
relief could be seen as an attack on the autonomy of urban authorities, but
Dupree suggests it could be seen in a more positive light. By passing the costs of
unemployment from the poorest areas to the centre, local authorities were then
free to provide better hospitals or infant and maternity care. Local authority
spending on welfare was still per cent of government spending on social ser-
vices between the wars, with wide variations in provision. For example, the pro-
vision of infant and maternal care varied between local authorities, reflecting
different political decisions and cultural attitudes with clear consequences for
patterns of infant and maternal mortality.
61
Similarly, the geography of voluntary hospitals reflected the assumptions of
the local middle class as much as the need for treatment, as Dupree indicates in
her comparison of Wakefield and Huddersfield.
62
The geography of health pro-
vision remained a contentious issue, fought over by local authorities and the
medical profession. A wider regional coordination of hospital services made
sense, as did a comprehensive system of local medical services within each dis-
trict. Should this be achieved by bringing together all health services under the
control of the local authority, as many argued in the s? But doctors were
fearful of local political control, and preferred a national hospital system which
gave them more freedom, and left other medical services to the localities. The
tussle over the political geography of health services ran from the end of the First
World War to and the creation of the National Health Service.
63
The map
of urban welfare remained highly differentiated up to and well beyond, for
the construction of new hospitals from the late s only slowly removed the
long-standing discrepancies of charitable and poor law provision.
Martin Daunton
59
Driver, Power and Pauperism, p. , quoting the Poor Law Report of and the First Annual
Report of the Poor Law Commission.
60
M. A. Crowther, British Social Policy, – (Basingstoke, ), pp. –, –.
61
Below, pp. ‒, ‒; see L. Marks, Metropolitan Maternity (Amsterdam and Atlanta, ); E.
P. Peretz, ‘A maternity service for England and Wales: local authority maternity care in the inter-
war period in Oxfordshire and Tottenham’, in J. Garcia, R. Kilpatrick and M. Richards, eds., The
Politics of Maternity Care (Oxford, ), pp. –.
62
Below, p. , citing Marland, Medicine and Society; for similar contrasts in Lancashire, see J. V.
Pickstone, Medicine and Industrial Society (Manchester, ), and M. Powell, ‘Hospital provision
before the NHS: territorial justice or inverse care law?’, Journal of Social Policy, (), –.
63
On debates over regional control and the tussle between different authorities and the profession,
see C. Webster, ‘Conflict and consensus: explaining the British health service’, Twentieth Century
British History, (), –.
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The circulation of resources for welfare is a central theme in the urban history
of Britain, and the terms on which welfare was provided had an immediate
effect on another process of circulation: migration within the urban network,
as discussed by David Feldman. Whether people could respond to the lure of
the urban labour market depended on weakening their attachment to the land.
In Britain, the demise of small occupiers or peasants was in strong contrast to
France where the Revolution entrenched peasants and urban growth was much
slower.
64
Changes in land tenure and the adoption of free trade surrendered the
countryside, making it the ‘lost domain’ for consumption by town dwellers
rather than a powerful political presence.
65
In Scotland, large landowners had
greater power to clear tenants from their land, forcing them to migrate to the
growing towns or to emigrate.
66
In Ireland, landowners failed to ‘rationalise’
agriculture and the population grew until mass migration after the catastrophe
of the potato famine of .
67
Migrants into English towns from Scotland and
Ireland – and indeed from other parishes in England – did not have any abso-
lute right to poor relief. At the beginning of the period, entitlement to welfare
was ‘policed’ by the local parish or union through the laws of settlement: access
to welfare was determined locally rather than nationally, and migration within
the country could lead to a loss of entitlement. The result, in the opinion of
many political economists, was a ‘blockage’ in circulation.
68
The laws of settle-
ment were reformed and abolished in the course of the nineteenth century, and
in the twentieth century a new pattern emerged. Welfare entitlement came to
depend on entry into the country rather than a parish settlement, with the result
that circulation within Britain was freer but entry into Britain was controlled.
69
The process did not run in one direction. Circulation of labour was also
affected by the housing market, which in some respects became more rigid. In
England, working-class housing was held on short lets up to , usually for
one week, and movement was endemic. In Scottish cities, the housing market
was less flexible, with all except the poorest houses held on long lets with fixed
dates of entry. In , the Scottish system was brought more into line with
that of England, but flexibility proved to be short-lived. The introduction of
rent controls and security of tenure in made it difficult for migrants to
find accommodation in the free market. This was compounded by access to
Introduction
64
See P. K. O’Brien and C. Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France,– (London, ).
65
P. Mandler, ‘Against “Englishness”: English culture and the limits to rural nostalgia, –’,
TRHS, th series, (), –; J. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit:A Social History of Britain,
– (Oxford, ), pp. –.
66
T. M. Devine, ‘Social responses to agrarian “improvement”: the Highland and Lowland clear-
ances in Scotland’, in R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte, eds., Scottish Society, – (Cambridge,
), pp. –.
67
C. O’Gráda, Ireland:A New Economic History, – (Cambridge, ), pp. –, –.
68
J. S. Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement, –’, P&P, (), –.
69
D. Feldman, Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, – (London, );
and below, pp. , .
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public housing, where entitlement remained local. Changes in the housing
market could therefore frustrate labour mobility and tie people to areas of
deprivation.
70
Urban networks were partly created by the state in a contested process, which
shaped the circulation of resources and labour. They were affected by changes
in technology, which were themselves influenced by patterns of political control
over railways, telegraphs or roads. The structure of businesses also influenced the
circulation of capital, credit and profits within the urban hierarchy. In the early
nineteenth century, most businessmen still relied on local sources of capital and
credit, but these local and regional networks could only function effectively as
part of a wider national network. Lancashire needed an inflow of credit; East
Anglia had a surplus after the harvest. They were connected through the bankers
of the City of London.
71
Scotland had its own distinct banking system, with
Edinburgh fulfilling the same functions as London.
72
At least until the mergers
of the s, banks had a strong regional identity with local branch networks.
The mergers transferred more power to London, and industrial concerns were
floated on the Stock Exchange with a loss of control from the localities.
73
Lees
follows the Marxian analysis of David Harvey in suggesting a shift of control over
capital and profits to the centre and away from the provinces, so leading to a
weakening of provincial cities and a loss of their proud independence. The
changing geography of capitalism – the control over retail distribution, banking,
insurance and industry – is a vital theme, both within Britain and the interna-
tional economy.
74
Here is one of the important points in Richard Dennis’ account of London,
the largest city in the world at the beginning of the period and still the largest
city in Europe at the end. London was the apex of the British urban hierarchy
with a vital role in coordinating credit systems, and was increasingly important
in control over the media and entertainment. It had an unrivalled position within
the international urban system as a port and financial and commercial centre,
providing capital, insurance and banking and mercantile services for the rest of
the world. Similarly, Liverpool should be located within an Atlantic urban
Martin Daunton
70
D. Englander, Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain, – (Oxford, ); Daunton, House and
Home; on council house building in declining areas, see R. Ryder, ‘Council house building in
County Durham, –: the local implementation of national policy’, in M. J. Daunton, ed.,
Councillors and Tenants (Leicester, ), pp. –.
71
I. S. Black, ‘Geography, political economy and the circulation of finance capital in early indus-
trial England’, Journal of Historical Geography, (), –, and ‘Money, information and
space: banking in early nineteenth-century England and Wales’, Journal of Historical Geography,
(), –.
72
S. G. Checkland, Scottish Banking: A History, – (Glasgow, ); R. Saville, Bank of
Scotland:A History, – (Edinburgh, ).
73
P. L. Cottrell, Industrial Finance – (London, ), ch. .
74
D. Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Oxford, ), and A. D. King, Global Cities (London, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
system of Boston, Baltimore, New York and New Orleans, symbolised by the
offices of Cunard or the great merchant house of Brown Brothers.
75
By the First
World War, Liverpool was already losing its position relative to the American
cities, and the status of the City of London was increasingly hampered by the
loss of Britain’s financial dominance to the United States.
76
Sarah Palmer con-
siders the history of ports, liminal cities linking regional urban networks within
Britain to their suppliers of raw material and markets, connecting flows of
migration within the country to immigration and emigration.
The country was criss-crossed by many geographies, creating different maps
in the minds of different people. Judges and barristers travelled around circuits
based on assize towns. The ancient dioceses of the Church of England were reor-
dered, creating issues of regional identity. The Catholic Church reinstated its
diocesan structure in with its own geography in part reflecting the pattern
of Irish immigration, and the Methodists and other nonconformists had their
circuits. The geography of sporting and cultural events – rugby, cricket, foot-
ball, brass bands and choirs – both defined local loyalties and created a national
framework for competition, as shown by Reid.
The boundaries of local government posed major issues for utilities such as
water, gas and electricity, so that the geography of the state impacted on tech-
nological change. A number of authorities might share a single natural area for
water, with all the difficulties that implied for ensuring that one town did not
pollute another’s water supply with sewage or industrial wastes. The technical
solution to sewage disposal was highly politicised: a town might prefer to use
rivers to carry away wastes, so polluting the next community downstream or
provoking local landowners to secure an injunction. Conflicts arose over the
exploitation of water resources. In textile districts, dyers needed soft water from
rivers which might be polluted and unfit for consumption; sanitary reformers
preferred water from wells, which was hard and unsuitable for dyeing.
Neighbouring towns might compete for access to water supplies, or might be
able to sell surplus capacity to other authorities. Should new regional authorities
be created to handle these conflicting demands, based on the river systems and
possibly free from immediate democratic control?
77
The control – and often
ownership – of gas and electricity were the responsibility of boroughs, which
Introduction
75
A. Ellis, Heir of Adventure:The Story of Brown, Shipley and Co.,Merchant Bankers,– (London,
).
76
D. Kynaston, The City of London, vol. : Golden Years, – (London, ), R. C. Michie,
The City of London (London, ).
77
Hamlin, ‘Muddling in bumbledom’; C. Hamlin, A Science of Impurity (Bristol, ); J. A. Hassan,
‘The water industry, –: a failure of public policy?’, in R. Millward and J. Singleton, eds.,
The Political Economic of Nationalisation, – (Cambridge, ), pp. –; J. A. Hassan,
‘The growth and impact of the British water industry in the nineteenth century’, Ec.HR, nd
series, (), –; J. Sheail, ‘Planning, water supplies and ministerial power in inter-war
Britain’, Public Administration, (), –; below, pp. , .
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might create difficulties where the economies of scale outstripped the limits of
a single authority. As Robert Millward shows in his chapter, municipalisation of
gas companies in part depended on the identity between the boundaries of a
borough and the limits of a company’s supply. By the interwar period, falling
profits increased the case for regionalisation to secure greater economies of scale.
This was achieved to some extent by private producers, coming together in
holding companies, but progress was limited in the industry as a whole by the
jealous independence of local authorities. Although the Gas Regulation Act,
, allowed neighbouring municipalities to merge their systems, only five
joint bodies were created. The answer was nationalisation in to force
through rationalisation, the creation of regional gas boards by fiat from above
rather than local initiative.
78
In the case of electricity, the discrepancy between
local authority units and the scale of efficient generating plant created even
greater problems, for it was easier to distribute electricity over long distances
than low-pressure town gas, and the economic scale of generating plant
increased. Yet in , London had sixty-five electricity suppliers and seventy
generating stations, with forty-nine different supply systems, ten frequencies and
twenty-four voltage levels for distribution. Responsibility was left to each met-
ropolitan borough in London to provide its own supply or to license a private
concern. At a time of bitter hostility between the LCC and the metropolitan
boroughs, and Conservative fear of the progressives, cooperation was scarcely
feasible. A similar pattern applied in the provinces, with each urban authority
responsible for its own supply. When private companies were given the right to
cover wider areas, they were barred from the territory of urban authorities and
from any district with an existing distributor. Consequently, most urban-indus-
trial districts repeated the pattern of London, with a plethora of suppliers in each
town, and a larger private concern in the surrounding district. The solitary
exception was the North-East of England; a large private concern did cover most
of the area. Otherwise, private companies were unable to operate over a large
area, unlike in America or Germany. The eventual resolution to these
inefficiencies was to create a national body, the Central Electricity Board.
79
Similar issues arose with telephones. The government initially granted national
licences to private companies, but the Post Office subsequently took over the
long-distance trunk lines and encouraged urban authorities to provide local ser-
vices in competition. But in , the postmaster general felt that the result
Martin Daunton
78
J. F. Wilson, ‘The motives for gas nationalisation: practicality or ideology?’, in Millward and
Singleton, eds., Political Economy of Nationalisation, pp. –; below, pp. –.
79
T. P. Hughes, Networks of Power (Baltimore, ), ch. on London and see pp. – on the
North-East Supply Company. L. Hannah, ‘Public policy and the advent of large-scale technology:
the case of electricity supply in the USA, Germany and Britain’, in N. Horn and J. Kocka, eds.,
Law and the Formation of Big Enterprises in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Göttingen,
), pp. –; L. Hannah, Electricity before Nationalisation (London, ); below, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
would simply be friction and inefficiency because of divided responsibility.
Above all, he pointed out that the municipality was not the natural area for a
telephone service, which covered the town, its suburbs and the surrounding dis-
trict. The answer was to concentrate services in the hands of a single national –
and nationalised – monopoly in , and only one local authority (Hull)
managed to cling on to its independence.
80
The mapping of these and many
other geographies on to the urban system was a constant process of political con-
testation, technological change and cultural identities.
Issues of governance were vitally important in resolving the problems created
by low levels of investment in the urban infrastructure, and in dealing with the
difficulties of transferring resources within urban networks. The creation of
strong municipalities might solve one difficulty by permitting higher levels of
investment, only to create another by erecting political obstacles to a wider,
regional, approach to the provision of water, electricity or transport. A funda-
mental question, to which the contributors to Part II of this volume of the
Cambridge Urban History provide an answer, is: how were cities able to invest large
sums in the urban infrastructure after the shortcomings at the start of our period?
(iii)
At the outbreak of the Second World War, John Betjeman gently mocked the
congregation praying at Westminster Abbey for protection of everything sacred
to middle-class respectability. Democracy and good drains were high on the list
of the blessings of Englishness. But, as with most ancient traditions, they were
newly created in the second half of the nineteenth century. Early Victorian
Britain was an undemocratic nation with bad drains, and reform of the politi-
cal system in the s hindered rather than assisted investment in sewers and
sanitation. One of the major concerns of economists and political scientists is
to understand the circumstances in which individual rationality gives way to
collective action.
81
The problem was particularly acute in British cities in the
early Victorian period: how to secure collective action to control pollution of
the water or air; how to make sure that if drains were supplied, that some indus-
trialists were not ‘free-riders’ who took the benefits without paying; how to
secure financial resources without inspiring a taxpayers’ revolt? What was
needed was the creation of a sense of trust both between taxpayers and between
taxpayers and local government, so that taxpayers had a credible commitment
Introduction
80
C. R. Perry, The Victorian Post Office: The Growth of a Bureaucracy (Woodbridge, ); M. J.
Daunton, ‘The material politics of natural monopoly: gas in Britain, –’, in Daunton and
M. Hilton, eds., The Politics of Consumption (forthcoming).
81
For example, E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons:The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
(Cambridge, ), and D. C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
(Cambridge, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
to municipal enterprise. Taxpayers needed to accept that each was paying a fair
amount, for any suggestion that others were free-riders would justify non-
payment, and create problems of compliance. It was also necessary to create a
general assumption that local government would deliver what it promised. The
story of British cities in the mid-Victorian period is how these problems of col-
lective action were resolved, and large-scale investment made possible in the
later nineteenth century.
Many of the great cities of England suffered from political and administrative
paralysis in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Scotland was, at least
to some extent, an exception, for the strong burghal tradition meant that coun-
cils still had considerable control over commerce, prices, building standards and
work. The Merchants’ House and Traders’ House – a form of corporate guild –
had ex officio representation, and the councils often had assets which gave them
more financial freedom. Scottish cities therefore had a greater continuity of
effective municipal activity than their English counterparts. In Glasgow, for
example, divisive partisanship was short-lived with a powerful professional cadre
to drive through policy, and a ‘close-knit fraternity’ of leading councillors.
82
In
the case of English cities, the ‘disruption’ of governance in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century was more marked. It could be argued that the unre-
formed municipal corporations of English towns in the eighteenth century were
more capable of responding to the problems of towns, and that reform in the
s weakened the long-established basis for civic identity without as yet creat-
ing a new sense of municipal dignity.
The point is made by Szreter and Hardy that the ‘four Ds’ of death, disease,
deprivation and disruption marked the s and s. The reform movement
of the s – the revision of the franchise in , the creation of the New
Poor Law in and a new form of municipal corporation in – under-
mined the responsiveness of towns to environmental problems by driving a
wedge between urban employers and propertyless workers.
83
We have noted that
reform of the poor law shifted control to larger owners and occupiers. Similarly,
the Reform Act of created a more exclusive franchise which reduced the
proportion of electors drawn from the ranks of craftsmen and labourers, and
confined the vote to men with modest amounts of property. At the local level,
the franchise was dependent on the prompt payment of rates, so that securing
the vote was a financial transaction which potential voters might decide to
Martin Daunton
82
W. H. Fraser and I. Maver, ‘Tackling the problems’, in Fraser and Maver, eds., Glasgow, , p. ;
the remainder of the chapter provides a good account of the efforts to tackle major problems of
public health in Glasgow in the mid-Victorian period; for the lack of partisanship, see I. Maver,
‘Glasgow’s civic government’, in Fraser and Maver, eds., Glasgow, , pp. –.
83
Szreter, ‘Economic growth’; on the divisions within local politics, see E. P. Hennock, Fit and
Proper Persons (London, ); E. P. Hennock, ‘Finance and politics in urban local government
in England, –’, HJ, (), –; D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England
(Leicester, ), pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
forego. The size of the electorate was also influenced by how the rates were fixed
by the local council, for they could control whether any particular property
exceeded the threshold for the vote. The franchise was therefore actively con-
stituted rather than passively granted.
84
The result was to create debilitating internal divisions within towns, and to
create the circumstances for dominance by small property owners who were con-
cerned with economy. It was in the interest of small property owners to control
local government, and to hold down rates which would fall on their assets and
profits. Reform might replace a patrician oligarchy of local gentry and urban
merchants who were willing to embark on collective spending on urban improve-
ments; it might weaken collective action and undermine the older civic or cor-
porate culture of the towns. By the late s, patrician ascendancy was toppled,
and there was no clear consensus about priorities. As Szreter puts it, ‘It was much
easier to agree to disagree, and for each to get on with minding his own business,
in accordance with the liberal and libertarian precepts of the age.’ The emphasis
was on retrenchment in both central and local government, and it was more
difficult to negotiate a political bargain to promote expensive investment.
85
In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the ability of urban authorities
to respond to problems was transformed, with a greater sense of trust between
taxpayers and in the virtues of public action. One Glaswegian was able to claim
that the council did far more than maintain order and preserve property; it pro-
vided citizens with services they were unable to undertake for themselves, and
ensured that they performed duties in the interests of the community. ‘[T]he
general result seems, without exaggeration, to be that the modern City is revert-
ing in importance to the position of the City-state in classical antiquity.’
86
Urban
politics and the increasing role of the municipality are explored by Davis, Barry
Doyle and R. J. Morris. The hold of ratepayers’ retrenchment was broken with
the extension of the franchise by the Second Reform Act of and the
Municipal Franchise and Assessed Rates Acts of . The result was that the
local electorate quadrupled, bringing in per cent of working-class men, most
of whom did not pay their rates in person but as part of their rent through the
landlord. As a result, the electorate was less sensitive to costs than the narrow,
Introduction
84
F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England,
– (Oxford, ); for the contestation of this definition of property by artisans, see C.
Behagg, Politics and Production in the Early Nineteenth Century (London, ); P. Salmon, ‘Electoral
reform at work: local politics and national politics, –’ (DPhil., University of Oxford, );
Szreter, ‘Economic growth’, –; Williamson, Coping with City Growth. On the local response
to the Municipal Corporation Act, and the nature of pre-reform government, see E. J. Dawson,
‘Finance and the unreformed borough: a critical appraisal of corporate finance, –, with
special reference to the boroughs of Nottingham, York and Boston’ (PhD thesis, University of
Hull, ).
85
Szreter, ‘Economic growth’; Hennock, ‘Finance and politics’.
86
J. H. Muir, Glasgow in (Glasgow and Edinburgh, ), quoted in I. Maver, ‘Glasgow’s city
government’, in Fraser and Maver, eds., Glasgow, , p. .
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