Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
of the seats.
66
Furthermore, despite some organisational benefits from anti-
socialist arrangements, Liberal representation also declined consistently in the
mid-s, as poor leadership, financial weakness and a range of polarising ten-
dencies weakened local parties.
The general strike and its aftermath had a deep effect on Liberal and Labour
municipal fortunes, the borough elections heralding the start of a period
of sustained Labour growth which saw them capture their first provincial
borough, Sheffield.
67
Yet despite this substantial advance Labour was still a long
way from municipal dominance in . Of the boroughs with more than
, inhabitants, Labour held , of the , seats (. per cent), the
Conservatives , (. per cent), coalitions and Independents (. per
cent), and the Liberals a sizeable (. per cent). Though severely weakened,
Liberals were still first or second in eighteen of the largest councils in England
and Wales, remaining particularly strong in the boroughs of the North-East.
However, as a result of more than one hundred gains a year between and
, Labour consolidated their position, capturing fifteen of the eighty major
boroughs, including Leeds, Bradford, Hull, Stoke and Derby, though they con-
tinued to struggle in Birmingham and Liverpool and towns like Leicester,
Manchester and Newcastle where Liberalism endured.
68
Labour experience in the s was equally erratic, polling badly in –
when as a result of the economic crisis, government unpopularity and anti-
socialist fightbacks they lost hundreds of seats and most of their councils. Full
recovery in London and the provinces came in and , which saw the
party recapture authorities lost in –, and make new gains, including
Willesden, Norwich, Glasgow and the prize of the LCC. But Labour remained
inconsistent, faltering somewhat from onwards, especially in the larger
urban areas like Leeds and Hull and remaining very weak in Liverpool and
Birmingham.
69
Anti-socialist resilience was based on greatly strengthened
municipal alliances, including a proliferation of merged parties, whilst indepen-
dent municipal Liberalism collapsed as the middle class rallied to the anti-socialist
cause, Liberal candidatures slipping to fewer than of almost , nominees
in . Liberal decline was matched by a growth of Independents and ‘Others’,
whose candidate percentage increased from . in to . in , and
settled around per cent in the later s.
70
As a result of these trends, a form
of two party voting emerged in most areas, as provincial England saw the eclipse
Barry M. Doyle
66
Cook, Alignment, p. ; Miller, ‘Politics in the Scottish city’, p. .
67
Mathers, ‘City of Sheffield’; M. Meadowcroft, ‘The years of political transition, –’, in
Fraser, ed., Leeds, pp. –; Miller, ‘Politics in the Scottish city’, p. .
68
Cook, Alignment, pp. –; C. Cook, ‘Liberals, Labour and local elections’, in G. Peele and C.
Cook, eds., The Politics of Reappraisal, – (London, ), pp. –.
69
Young, Rise of Party, pp. –, , , – and –; Cook, ‘Liberals, Labour and local
elections’, pp. –; P. J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism (Liverpool, ), pp. –.
70
Cook, ‘Liberals, Labour and local elections’, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
of Liberalism and the dominance of straight socialist/anti-socialist contests.
Thus, by the outbreak of the Second World War, Labour was the main party of
the left in municipal politics, securing enough councillors to control or domi-
nate about twenty of the largest authorities. Yet ironically, Labour’s importation
of national party politics into local elections created an avowedly non-party
response on the right, with middle-class municipal politics less governed by the
demands of national parties than at any time before or since.
The war ensured a further change in the structure and development of
municipal politics, confirming Labour’s dominant position in urban govern-
ment and accelerating the trend towards the nationalisation of local politics. The
municipal elections of saw a Labour landslide unlike anything since ,
the socialists gaining around , seats, almost wiping out the Liberals in the
process. In addition to winning of the metropolitan boroughs, Labour
captured of provincial borough councils, doing particularly well in
industrial towns and outer London boroughs, whilst anti-socialists – with the
exception of Conservative control in Liverpool and Birmingham – were
restricted to forty or so suburban and coastal towns.
71
Following further suc-
cesses in , including the routing of the beleaguered Conservatives in the
LCC elections, Labour could boast a majority of the members of the county
boroughs. The Conservatives responded by setting up a Local Government
Division whilst the diminishing need to court Liberal voters encouraged them
to intervene directly in local politics, and enforce Conservative identification,
if not discipline, at election times. Between and the Conservatives
pushed Labour back as a combination of better organisation, government
unpopularity and increased turnout led to substantial gains, so that by
November ‘almost the whole of the Labour victories of were wiped
out’.
72
Labour had built their progress in urban politics, and to a great extent
their victory in , on their belief in municipal socialism, yet the actions of
the party in power nationally severely weakened Labour’s unique municipal
position and, in tandem with Conservative reinvigoration, produced widespread
defeat at the end of the period.
Although Labour had built their success, to some extent at least, on a coher-
ent policy of municipal socialism, for most of the period middle-class politicians
eschewed programmatic politics, continuously asserting that politics had no
place in the council chamber. Throughout the nineteenth century candidates in
municipal elections fought under party labels, but usually as individuals, whose
qualifications for office were based on their experience as businessmen, their
past record, their strong local ties or their bland assertions that they would
deliver economy with efficiency. Where divisions of policy did emerge they
The changing functions of urban government
71
Young, Rise of Party, p. ; Times, Nov. , p. .
72
J. Maud and S. E. Finer, Local Government in England and Wales, rev. nd edn (London, ), pp.
–.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
were invariably between economists and spenders; the former usually associated
with petit bourgeois elements, whilst the latter were often drawn from the ranks
of big business and the professions.
73
This situation did begin to change with
the appearance of Labour candidates from the mid-s. In some places
Liberals responded by producing their own ‘municipal programmes’ and occa-
sionally changing their names to Progressives
74
but this was short-lived, most
being abandoned after . From this point the Conservatives launched an
onslaught in municipal politics based upon a strong anti-socialist agenda which
increasingly drew in the Liberals.
75
Although cultural divisions between Liberal
and Conservative remained strong before , and whilst there is extensive evi-
dence of continuing bitter conflict between the two parties in middle-class
areas, in terms of municipal ideology the gap between the two had narrowed to
almost nothing in the face of the Labour alternative.
76
In these conditions
middle-class politicians drew closer together, reasserting their commitment to
non-party municipal politics, especially following the Labour breakthrough of
. Yet within the council chamber the anti-socialism of election time could
be severely tested, especially by sections of the Liberal party who showed a con-
sistent tendency to vote with Labour on many ‘big government’ issues. As the
Conservatives came increasingly under the control of small businessmen and
Labour demanded intervention and expenditure, a new division emerged on
spending issues in which it was often possible to find larger manufacturers and
professionals maintaining their faith in a more expansive form of local govern-
ment, often siding with Labour.
77
Thus, though the change to generalised ser-
vices was in part a response to the expansion of the franchise and the rise of
Labour, a substantial Labour presence was not required to ensure such services,
and in many places, not least Birmingham and Liverpool, the shift to general
services predated any substantial Labour breakthrough. In fact, the acquisition
of trading services and the aggrandisement of the local environment was invar-
iably the product of a business view of municipal administration rather than any
form of municipal socialism.
Furthermore, when assessing the link between service provision and politics,
it is important to note the limitations of Labour’s municipal advance in the
period –, not least the party’s inability to stamp its authority on the major
conurbations. At no time during the interwar period, and not even in , did
Labour win control of Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester or
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Their position in Leeds and Bradford was shaky for most
of the interwar period, whilst substantial Midland towns like Leicester,
Barry M. Doyle
73
Hennock, ‘Finance and politics’; M. J. Daunton, ‘Urban Britain’, in T. R. Gourvish and A.
O’Day, eds., Later Victorian Britain, – (Basingstoke, ), pp. –.
74
Bernstein, ‘Liberalism and the progressive alliance’.
75
Lawrence, ‘Class and gender’.
76
Doyle, ‘Conflict of interests?’, p. ; Cook, ‘Downfall’.
77
Doyle, ‘Structure of elite power’, –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Nottingham and Cardiff did not fall to them until .
78
As a result, places like
Norwich, Lincoln or Willesden were much more ‘solid Labour’ than Leeds or
Bradford, whilst enduring Liberal strength and a rejuvenated Conservatism
ensured that big city politics was not a Labour monopoly.
(v) : ,
The enduring absence of party discipline from municipal government for most
of the period was partly a result of the importance of pressure groups who were
intimately bound up with the whole fabric of city politics. In a system of vol-
untary government, voluntary bodies provided both a complementary and a
competitive element. In the nineteenth century the boundaries between the
local state, the voluntary sector and the market were blurred if not invisible. Each
element encroached on the other, each assisted the other in an effort to provide
a complete service. As the period progressed, the local authority took over more
responsibility for the provision of services from commercial and voluntary pro-
viders, yet right through to the Second World War it was still apparent that the
efficient provision of a whole range of services, from education to town plan-
ning, depended on tripartite partnerships between public, private and voluntary
bodies. This system was underpinned by the interconnected nature of urban
elites, whether middle class or working class, whose common membership of
the organs of local government and the pressure groups and voluntary associa-
tions of their class ensured a continuity and community of interests in the overall
sphere of urban governance.
79
Certainly the broad range of influences of the
middle class on the one hand and labour on the other were often in conflict, if
not antithetical, between and , but dissent was incorporated largely
within the bounds of ‘party’ as each camp remained able and willing to repre-
sent a broad range of interests rather than simply promote a party line.
Prior to corporation reform, local government itself was the result of pressure
group activity, and even after the absence of any clear indication of what
the corporations were supposed to do left enormous space for influence and pres-
sure. Although landowners and employers continued to command immense
power and authority for most of the period,
80
it was the various business, labour,
religious, moral, recreational and planning organisations which wielded the
greatest influence and shaped the form of municipal provision for most of the
period. The interests of property were served by business, property owners’ and
The changing functions of urban government
78
Cook, ‘Liberals, Labour and local elections’, p. and passim.
79
Garrard, ‘Urban elites’; Trainor, ‘Urban elites’; Jones, Borough Politics, pp. –; M. Savage,
‘Urban history and social class: two paradigms’, UH, (), –.
80
Garrard, ‘Urban elites’, ; D. Cannadine, ed., Patricians, Power and Politics in Nineteenth-Century
Towns (Leicester, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
ratepayers’ associations, which flourished in the period of substantial local
government expansion between and , often sharing common mem-
berships and aims. Strongest when threatened by novel forms of competition
from state or working class, they aimed to restrain local authority expenditure,
and to use the local state to restrict its own powers and those of competitors,
tenants, consumers and employees. In addition to urging economy and demand-
ing inquiries into expenditure, they could also be effective in halting or limiting
the expansion of local authority powers through the use of local polls.
81
Landlords, who owned per cent of all housing in and were thus the
main source of council income, formed a vocal and well-organised pressure
group, which often worked together with ratepayers’ associations, whilst busi-
ness organisations were slower to develop, becoming more stable and permanent
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Originally Liberal or Radical – rate-
payers in particular, playing on working-class resentment of the aggrandisement
of the environment for the benefit of the middle classes – they were usually asso-
ciated with the economist party (though their prominence in such movements
may have been exaggerated).
82
They shifted to the right and became more active
in the s and s as expenditure rose and tenants and councils placed
increasing burdens on their members’ often precarious financial situation.
However, whilst the landlords’ crisis of the Edwardian period
83
led to a marked
decline in the influence of property owners, the rising rate bill, reduction in
business representation on the council and growth of owner-occupation raised
the profile of building societies, chambers of commerce and ratepayers’ associa-
tions between the wars. Building societies and business organisations entered
local politics after either by developing close links with middle-class parties,
or by intervening directly in local politics, but state control of the building
process, industrial derating and Labour’s municipal dominance after forced
them to employ more conventional forms of influence, many ending direct links
with council members.
84
Ratepayers also benefited briefly from the substantial
disaffection among the growing ranks of lower-middle-class owner-occupiers,
but their influence peaked in the early s, declining with rating reform,
increasing Labour success and the decision of the National Union of Ratepayers’
Associations to go independent in .
85
Whilst business and property dominated the nineteenth-century town, in the
twentieth century this role was increasingly occupied by labour whose main
Barry M. Doyle
81
For two such polls in Norwich see Doyle, ‘Structure of elite power’, –.
82
Hennock, ‘Finance and politics’, ; F. Carr, ‘Municipal socialism: Labour’s rise to power’ in B.
Lancaster and T. Mason, eds., Life and Labour in a Twentieth-Century City (Coventry, ), pp.
–. For the contrary position see Daunton, Coal Metropolis, ch. .
83
A. Offer, Property and Politics, – (Cambridge, ); D. Englander, Landlord and Tenant in
Urban Britain, – (Oxford, ).
84
Carr, ‘Municipal socialism’, p. ; Jones, Borough Politics, pp. –; Doyle, ‘Structure of elite
power’, –.
85
Young, Rise of Party, pp. –.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
pressure groups – trade unions, cooperative societies and tenants’ associations –
with their interlocking memberships mirrored those of the middle class. From
the mid-nineteenth century, working-class groups, often assisted by middle-class
sympathisers, struggled to defend their rights in the face of local state encroach-
ment, especially improvement schemes, subsequently pressuring councils to
improve employment conditions, demanding union rates and minimum stan-
dards for council employees and those working on council contracts. Assisted by
the growth of a unionised municipal workforce, fair wages clauses were widely
adopted by , although these could prove difficult to police, especially in
councils without Labour majorities.
86
Labour pressure was also felt in housing,
working-class politicians often in alliance with tenants’ associations, demanding
cheap fares, slum clearance, rent restrictions and limitations on eviction. Tenants’
associations, particularly prominent in London and Glasgow, were radicalised
during the Great War, leading to rent strikes in Glasgow and other areas, whilst
municipal tenants’ associations developed close links with the Labour party.
87
Municipal associations demanded improved facilities for the new estates, ensured
adequate repairs, fought rent rises, enforced compliance with the estates’ strict
codes of conduct and opposed the rehousing of slum clearance families on their
estates. Although these associations remained important after , they were
increasingly distant from the Labour parties that controlled the council. Similarly,
the Co-operative movement became directly involved in politics between
and , pressuring councils on conventional trading issues such as shop hours
and food quality, and more radical concerns driven by a commitment to social-
ism in consumption. From the Co-op supported candidates in municipal
elections, these sympathetic councillors proving vital in the contest for retailing
sites on the new council estates, and though the political impact of the Co-op
declined after the Second World War, controversy could still occur as late as the
s.
88
The influence of organised religion was felt most strongly in education,
morality and, to a lesser extent, social reform. Sectarianism was initially kept
from the borough council by school boards where elections were fought on
religious lines with denominational activists keen to ensure equal treatment and
root out ritualism. However, with the Education Act of nonconformist
‘passive resistance’ organisations were formed, dedicated to the non-payment of
the portion of the rates destined for Anglican schools, and when the non-
payment campaign fizzled out after ,
89
the religious issue switched to the
treatment of Catholic schools, dominating local politics in Liverpool and
Glasgow. Catholic leaders campaigned for improved provision and resourcing of
The changing functions of urban government
86
Labour Year Book (London, ), pp. –; Jones, Borough Politics, p. .
87
Englander, Landlord and Tenant, parts and .
88
Adams, ‘Labour and the First World War’, –; Jones, Borough Politics, pp. –.
89
D. Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, – (London, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
their schools, urging support for sympathetic candidates – Labour in Glasgow,
Irish Nationalists in Liverpool until the s – whilst militant Protestants
responded with their own parties in Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Balancing these competing interests was extremely difficult for local officials and
politicians as evidenced by Labour’s inability to overcome sectarianism in
Liverpool until after .
90
Religion’s hold over public morality and leisure activities was equally endur-
ing. From early in the period, evangelical pressure groups lobbied local watch
committees and chief constables, who often shared similar views on drink,
public morality and leisure pursuits.
91
Temperance groups – often opposed by
equally well-organised associations of brewers and licensed victuallers – urged
strict application of drink laws, sabbatarians prevented the liberalising of park
and museum opening hours, purity and vigilance bodies attempted to regulate
sexuality, prostitution and the content of entertainments whilst others cam-
paigned against gambling. The parliamentary success of evangelical morality
between and produced new laws controlling drinking, prostitution,
gambling and sexual behaviour, creating tensions between public moralists and
the police who often found the laws difficult or distasteful to enforce.
92
Morality
groups began to lose their power after , though their impact could still be
felt in areas like gambling and the Sunday opening of cinemas, whilst Catholics
became more active in social issues, especially birth control. Religious groups
also campaigned on social issues, especially housing, poverty and unemploy-
ment, with Protestant ministers leading many local charities. Clergymen were
particularly prominent in the Charity Organisation Society (COS), with many
COS principles and personnel migrating to the Edwardian Guild of Help, a
movement dedicated to developing ‘both a civic consciousness and a new type
of partnership with public bodies’.
93
Intensely local, Guilds of Help worked with
the municipalities to provide relief rather than charity, often operating as a
council auxiliary, as with school meals in Bradford.
94
Religious activism in social
affairs diminished between the wars, though it continued to assist the long-term
unemployed, providing drop-in centres and lobbying the council to secure
public works.
Barry M. Doyle
90
T. Gallagher, ‘Protestant extremism in urban Scotland –’, SHR, (); Waller, Democracy
and Sectarianism, esp. pp. – and –.
91
For close links between the chief constable in Leeds and various temperance and morality groups
see Storch, ‘Domestic missionary’, p. .
92
A. Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty (Buckingham, ), pp. –; M. Clapson, ‘Playing the
system: the world of organised street betting in Manchester, Salford and Bolton, c. to ’,
in A. Davies and S. Fielding, eds., Workers’Worlds (Manchester, ), esp. pp. –; S. Petrow,
Policing Morals (Oxford, ), for problems with policing these activities in the capital; D. W.
Gutzke, Protecting the Pub: Brewers and Publicans against Temperance (Woodbridge, ).
93
K. Laybourn, ‘The Guild of Help and the changing face of Edwardian philanthropy’, UH,
(), .
94
Ibid., and .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Closely connected with the work of the churches was the vast array of vol-
untary initiatives, some providing services in alliance with the local state.
Philanthropic individuals bequeathed millions of pounds in cash and property to
local governments, especially in the fields of recreation and culture, often
making a difference to the ability or willingness of councils to provide a service.
Thus, Andrew Carnegie ensured the opening of public libraries across the
country, local benefactors in Bristol donated a museum, art gallery and improved
library, whilst elsewhere the rich presented parks and gardens not always wel-
comed by economy conscious local councillors.
95
The growth of sporting and
leisure associations stimulated local authority provision of swimming pools and
football pitches, whilst groups like the Parks and Open Spaces Society pressed
councils to acquire and make use of various types of land. But sport and leisure
could also be sites of conflict as evidenced by the opposition to the LCC’s ambi-
tion to build on Hackney Marshes in the s.
96
A mixed economy of provi-
sion was also apparent in the fields of education, child care and health. Many
educational services, such as continuation classes and careers advice, were deliv-
ered by council/voluntary partnerships, while voluntary initiatives like the
‘Children’s Care Committee’ supervised physically weak children and managed
the supply of meals.
97
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children (NSPCC) and the National Children’s Homes worked with local
authorities to protect and give refuge to neglected children, and in health pro-
vision, charities assisted medical officers of health with health visiting, the care
of unmarried mothers and the provision of milk. This merging of state and phil-
anthropic services gathered pace after , remaining a major feature of the per-
sonal social services.
Planning provides a further example of the merger between public and vol-
untary activities. The Garden City Association, which brought together a diverse
band of enthusiastic amateurs and secured some success with the permissive
Town Planning Act, developed a more professional image after through
their journal and university courses.
98
Yet planning in the interwar period was
still a partnership, with women’s groups helping to shape the new estates, whilst
social welfare bodies, like the Coventry City Guild, set up committees, con-
ducted surveys and lobbied local government.
99
Yet the zeal of local authorities
to modernise their localities, often under the influence of professional planners,
led to conflict and the development of environmental pressure groups such as
The changing functions of urban government
95
Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, pp. –; Garrard, ‘Urban elites’, .
96
Jones, Workers at Play, p. .
97
Labour Year Book (), p. .
98
H. E. Meller, Towns, Plans and Society in Modern Britain (Cambridge, ), p. ; H. E. Meller,
‘Urban renewal and citizenship: the quality of life in British cities, –’, UH, (),
–.
99
A. Hughes and K. Hunt, ‘A culture transformed? Women’s lives in Wythenshawe in the s’,
in Davies and Fielding, eds., Workers’Worlds, pp. –; N. Tiratsoo, Reconstruction, Affluence and
Labour Politics (London, ), p. , n. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
the Georgian Society, which sought to humanise the modernisation process.
After , however, ‘Pride in one’s city and citizenship was measured . . . not
by the actions of volunteers and private philanthropists, but by the actions of
professionals and local government administrators empowered by the new leg-
islation to redevelop city centres.’
100
In such an environment pressure became
negative, expressed as opposition to further development or complaint about bad
design and inadequate amenities.
The ‘nationalisation’of local politics after , combined with the capture of
the councils by Labour and the immense restructuring of local government func-
tions and powers between and , which ‘based . . . welfare socialism on
the bureaucracy of the national and local state, rather than upon the labour
movement or the wider range of working-class organisations’,
101
alienated many
of the interests which had flourished in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
urban governance. Enthusiastic middle-class amateurs were no longer required,
businessmen and property owners looked outwards to the corporatist state, or
inwards to an economistic Conservative party, whilst the infrastructure of local
socialism – Co-op, friendly society – began to break up under the dual pressure
of affluence and state welfare. As a result, when pressure groups began to reap-
pear in local politics in the later s – anti-dampness campaigners, environ-
mental protesters – they were single issue movements, largely unconnected with
the structures of ‘politics’.
102
(vi)
Between and the functions, structure and politics of local government
changed dramatically as municipal service provision became both more exten-
sive and more inclusive. In the early nineteenth century a limited middle-class
electorate had demanded the policing of the urban environment and its inhab-
itants for their own protection. However, as the electorate grew and towns
became more complex and mature, so the emphasis shifted to the delivery of
more inclusive services such as education, leisure and housing, whilst the rising
cost of infrastructure modernisation and more and better services forced local-
ities to seek alternative sources of finance and develop a bureaucracy to deliver
these services efficiently. As a result, councils expanded into trading, borrowing
heavily to cover set up costs, central government increased its financial input
through grants and subsidised loans, whilst municipal officials consolidated their
power, as the increasing size and complexity of local government overwhelmed
the amateur councillor. Yet up to the management of the urban environ-
ment remained the privilege of the middle class through their control of the
Barry M. Doyle
100
Meller, ‘Urban renewal’, –.
101
R. J. Morris, ‘Clubs, societies and associations’, in Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, ,
p. .
102
Ibid.; Gyford, Local Politics, p. .
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
council, the bureaucracy and most of the pressure groups. This situation did
change after the First World War as the Labour party made headway in council
elections, working-class pressure groups asserted their power, municipal profes-
sionals became more autonomous and mobile, certain sections of the middle
class withdrew from their controlling interest in the city and increasingly large-
scale businesses provided services independently which had previously been the
province of the municipality. But we must be wary of overestimating the extent
of these developments, for up to the middle class remained largely in
control of urban government, whilst Labour’s rise to power, though spectacular,
was by no means complete. Certainly Labour played a significant part in encour-
aging the further diversification of local government into housing and health,
but in most cases, and especially in the big cities, the bulk of the new services
were sanctioned and delivered by non-socialist administrations.
Furthermore, Labour’s final capture of municipal government in was
something of a Pyrrhic victory as the party’s term in office nationally marked
the passing of local autonomy. The nationalisation of gas, electricity and hospi-
tals, a raft of prescriptive legislation in areas like health, child care and planning,
and the shifting emphasis of financing away from rates and trading incomes to
government grants undermined the financial independence of the municipal-
ities and placed them much more firmly under central government control. This
process of centralisation is usually seen as part of a drive to provide uniform,
efficient services, something the local state was felt to have signally failed to do
in the interwar period. Yet whilst the municipalities may have failed in certain
areas to live up to the expectations of the post-war welfare state, it is clear from
this survey that they did achieve an enormous amount in one hundred years,
very often shaping local services to local needs in a way the central state could
never manage. Nor was this transformation the prerogative of any one type of
place: social group or political party, small and large towns, workers, petite bour-
geoisie and big business, Liberal, Conservative and Labour shared in a process
which at times was near universal. This was possible because local government
was a partnership between the municipality, the private sector and voluntary pro-
viders working together to meet the needs of the local community. Politicians,
officials and pressure groups frequently shared membership and common values
and whilst the balance of power and the nature of alliances shifted over time,
ultimately this was a community response which owed little to party ideology
or external intervention.
The changing functions of urban government
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008