Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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Ritual is futile if its symbols contradict public perceptions. The increasing
vogue for civic ceremonial reflected, in part, compromises that upper-middle-
class and middle-middle-class leaders made with lower-middle-class and
working-class interests (and with partisan and religious minorities) on issues
ranging from gas rates to hospital admission tickets to pub licensing. Yet, while
generalisation is difficult,
116
evidently well-off leaders usually retained consider-
able influence. Their plans for new hospitals and sewers, for example, often were
adopted, and the greatly expanded public and private services they provided
reached large numbers of inhabitants, including many within the middle class
itself. Also, while the urban leaders of the Edwardian period had to take into
account a much wider range of interests than their early Victorian predecessors,
the civic decisions even of the often tense s commanded much wider legit-
imacy than had those of the tumultuous s.
117
(v) -
A survey of the various arenas of urban elite activity confirms these broad patterns
of middle-class public involvement. In the economic sphere, while the rising
numbers of middle-class rentiers were detached, top industrialists and merchants
were especially influential in bodies such as Chambers of Commerce and employ-
ers’ organisations. Also, prosperous doctors, lawyers and (increasingly) members
of the ‘new professions’ asserted themselves through local and regional profes-
sional organisations which protected standards while providing social activities
and professional development. Yet the resilient category of family manufacturing
firms retained considerable influence, retailers were able to make their mark
through Chambers of Trade, and even humble occupations such as commercial
travellers had organised pressure groups by the end of the nineteenth century. By
that time, too, broad middle-class opinion had become a constraint on the actions
of the largest employers, notably during strikes in industrial towns.
118
In any case,
such employers increasingly used conciliation boards and collective bargaining to
complement a modified ‘paternalistic’ approach to their own workforces.
119
Richard Trainor
116
For an emphasis on the limits to elite influence, see Garrard, Leadership and Power, which con-
centrates on the especially contested sphere of local government. A more positive assessment,
albeit complicated by an argument for the decline of ‘urban squires’, is in his ‘Urban elites,
–: the rule and decline of a new squirearchy?’, Albion (), –, e.g. .
117
On this paragraph generally, see Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, –; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp.
–.
118
J. Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain – (London, ), p. ; Trainor, Black
Country Elites, pp. –; M. W. Kirby and M. B. Rose, eds., Business Enterprise in Modern Britain
from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (London, ).
119
Cf. P. Joyce, ‘Work’, in Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, ; Trainor, Black Country Elites,
pp. –.
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Local government, meanwhile, provided many in the lower ranks of the
middle class with leadership posts in institutions such as Boards of Guardians and
school boards, even while the solid middle class retained (admittedly with
increasing difficulty) control of councils themselves in the face of the house
ownership and rates crisis of the turn of the twentieth century. This was an espe-
cially contentious area of elite activity – especially in protecting ‘law and order’
and dispensing poor relief – but also one which allowed middle-class activists
particular prominence and (subject to the attentions of Whitehall) influence.
120
The vast, heterogeneous array of voluntary societies did not depend on com-
pulsory rates and was largely free of central government interference. In further
contrast to local government leadership, its positions did not carry the same sym-
bolic weight for jealous partisans and sectarians, and its elections were seldom
raucous. Thus the voluntary sector was less crisis-prone than local government.
Also, while it provided outlets for large numbers of middle-class activists (includ-
ing women) of varying degrees of social substance, it allowed their social super-
iors comparatively tranquil roles in major institutions. Occasionally there were
disputes, as in the battle between the ‘struggling middle class’ and the ‘upper
middle class’ at Dudley Grammar School, but these tended to be transient.
121
Voluntary societies, therefore, provided the solid middle class with an ideal
medium for exercising leadership without partisan, religious and – to a
significant extent – social tensions. In addition, in London and in the provinces
voluntary societies were important sources of status for middle-class individuals
as well as being major outlets for middle-class leisure. Conspicuous philanthropic
service brought significant prestige, especially with the rank and file of the urban
middle class, many of whom were involved in local voluntary societies as
members and subscribers.
122
Admittedly, in towns such as Reading some wealthy
leaders withdrew before from philanthropy, which also suffered inroads by
the state. Yet in most respects urban charity flourished down to the First World
War, aided by innovations such as the Guilds of Help.
123
The middle class
120
Crossick and Haupt, Petite Bourgeoisie,pp., ; Trainor, Black Country Elites,pp.–.On
the crisis, see Daunton, ‘Housing’, pp. –;A.Offer, Property and Politics,– (Cambridge,
); R. Millward and S. Sheard, ‘The urban fiscal problem, –: government expendi-
ture and finances in England and Wales’, Ec.HR, nd series, (), –. For full treatment
of urban government, see above, pp. – and Trainor, Black Country Elites, ch. .
121
Dudley Herald, Aug. , quoted by J. G. Worpell, ‘The endowed school in society’ (CNAA
PhD thesis, ), p. .
122
R. J. Morris, ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, –: an analysis’, HJ, (),
–; Morris, Class, Sect and Party; R. J. Morris, ‘Clubs, societies and associations’, in
Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social History, , p. ; McLeod, Class and Religion, pp. –; P.
Shapely, ‘Charity, status and leadership: charitable service and the Manchester man’, Journal of
Social History, (), –.
123
Ye o , Religion and Voluntary Organisations, pp. , –, , ; Garrard, ‘Urban elites’; Doyle,
‘Structure of elite power’, –, and sources cited there. Also relevant to this paragraph is
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
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A strong rival to the voluntary sphere in terms of importance to the urban
middle class was religion. Especially at the start of the period, middle-class relig-
ious attendance, though generally lower than within the upper class, exceeded
(especially in the upper middle class) that of the working class. Quite apart from
concern for personal salvation and the close link between religion and better-off
Victorians’ approach to social issues, the urban middle class had strong practical
incentives to take religion seriously. As the daughter of a London architect put
it, ‘We had quite a lot of amusement out of our church activities’; ‘it was part
of . . . being . . . respectable and a pillar of the local society’. In turn-of-the-
century Glasgow, similarly, middle-class people were expected to be members of
a church and felt it ‘paid to join’.
124
Even for those middle-class people who did
not attend church, decorous behaviour on Sunday was de rigueur.
125
In the main
denominations, the solid middle class dominated key lay positions such as
churchwarden and trustee, but there was scope for activism by the lower middle
class, male and female, in other parts of the very complex structures of churches
and chapels.
126
Such involvement enhanced the legitimacy of participating
members of the middle class, notably West Bromwich ironfounder Charles
Bagnall, whose service as a ‘regular and laborious Sunday school teacher’was said
to be ‘far more to his honour’ than his social position and his secular public
role.
127
Moreover, religion inspired much middle-class involvement in public
affairs by lifting people’s attention above narrow concerns. During the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, religion – notably in the form of the ‘civic
gospel’ of towns such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton – went from being
the basis of strife to a support for civic cooperation.
128
The role played by partisan activity and affiliation in the life of the urban
middle class also deserves serious attention.
129
Between and the
middle class constituted the bulk of the urban electorate, for parliamentary as
well as municipal elections.
130
Although this middle-class role as the focus of
Richard Trainor
124
Mrs West, QD/FLWE/MUC/ C//–, , ; Robert Ferguson, QD/FLWE/
, .
125
McLeod, Class and Religion, pp. –, confirmed by examples from the Essex Archive.
126
McLeod, Class and Religion, p. ; J. Obelkevich, ‘Religion’, in Thompson, ed., Cambridge Social
History, , pp. –; C. G. Brown, ‘Did urbanisation secularise Britain?’, UHY (), –; J.
Seed, ‘Theologies of power: Unitarianism and the social relations of religious discourse,
–’, in Morris, ed., Class, Power and Social Structure, pp. –; Trainor, Black Country
Elites, pp. –.
127
Wolverhampton Chronicle, Apr. .
128
S. J. D. Green, ‘In search of bourgeois civilisation: institutions and ideals in nineteenth-century
Britain’, NHist., (), ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, –. See J. N.
Morris, Religion and Social Change (Woodbridge, ), for the declining importance for middle-
class leaders of the churches vis-à-vis municipal affairs and p. below for the fall in middle-
class attendances from the late nineteenth century.
129
For the role of party politics in urban government see above, pp. –.
130
For particular working-class strength in the electorates for guardians and school boards see
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
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urban electoral attention proved transient, the group – particularly in the form
of the burgeoning lower middle class – remained a substantial minority of
borough and parliamentary electorates, even in industrial towns.
131
Moreover,
the middle class assumed key roles in mounting urban election campaigns. As
first Liberal and then Unionist organisations became more elaborate from the
s, a division of labour evolved in which upper-middle-class worthies (some-
times in collaboration with neighbouring aristocrats and gentry) became officers
of local associations, middle-middle-class citizens served on committees, and
lower-middle-class (and, increasingly, working-class) individuals acted as foot
soldiers and loyal members of party clubs. Also, as in the religious sphere there
were active partisan roles for some middle-class women, notably in the Primrose
League.
132
Well-off urban businessmen often did much to select candidates for
their parties and sometimes stood themselves. During the last third of the nine-
teenth century some urban middle-class voters evidently shifted toward the
Conservatives, particularly in areas with high proportions of middle-class resi-
dents. Reinforced by the subdivision of urban constituencies and the Liberal
Unionist breakaway from Gladstonianism, this trend resulted in a rising number
of middle-class Unionist MPs. Yet many middle-class voters, especially noncon-
formists, remained Liberals down to , and a significant minority persisted as
Liberal party activists as well.
133
While each sphere of urban public life drew on the middle class in a distinct
way, then, there were broad similarities, especially diversity balanced by
influential roles for the well-to-do. Appropriately, there was also close collabo-
ration, within particular towns, among the elites of these various arenas, espe-
cially the well-off leaders who held major posts in both the local government
and the voluntary sectors. A classic case was the Kenrick family, which played
key roles in the voluntary associations as well as the Councils of Birmingham
and West Bromwich.
134
In some situations, especially when controversial
employers simultaneously maintained high profiles in other spheres of urban
public life, the interaction among different areas of leadership could be counter-
productive. Yet, as the ‘civic’ emphasis of urban public affairs increasingly rele-
The middle class
131
M. Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics –, nd edn (Oxford, ), pp. –.
132
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –. Cf. J. Garrard, ‘Parties, members and voters after :
a local study’, HJ, (), –.
133
J. Cornford, ‘The transformation of Conservatism in the late nineteenth century’, Victorian
Studies, (), –; J. Cornford, ‘The parliamentary foundations of the Hotel Cecil’, in R.
Robson, ed., Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (London, ), pp. –; Trainor, Black
Country Elites, p. ; B. Doyle, ‘Urban Liberalism and the “Lost Generation”: politics and
middle class culture in Norwich, –’, HJ, (), –; J. Lawrence, ‘Popular pol-
itics and the limitations of party: Wolverhampton, –’, in E. F. Biagini and A. J. Reid,
eds., Currents of Radicalism (Cambridge, ), p. ; Pugh, Modern British Politics, pp. –.
134
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. , , , , ; R. A. Church, Kenricks in Hardware:A
Family Business – (Newton Abbot, ).
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gated the unpleasantness of strikes, prosecutions and ‘callovers’ of paupers to the
margins of public attention, ‘overlapping’ evidently did more to reinforce the
position of middle-class leaders, and of the urban middle class as a whole, than
to detract from it.
135
More generally, large employers could have particular
impact, even when they were not the wealthiest members of urban elites,
because of their perceived economic and social importance.
136
Of course, middle-class leaders did not operate in a civic vacuum. Urban elites
had to cope with a variety of ‘outside’ interests – notably aristocrats, large firms,
neighbouring localities (including, for smaller towns, regional capitals) and
central government – each of which limited their autonomy.
137
The extent of
these constraints, with the possible exception of Whitehall, varied – generally to
the disadvantage of smaller towns. Yet the socially substantial, interconnected
nature of most urban elites enabled them to neutralise many of these threats,
turning some into civic advantages. Relations with the landed elite, for example,
were softened by adapted behaviour on both sides. Except in towns such as
Eastbourne where aristocratic property dominated, the peers’ interaction with
middle-class elites was increasingly on the latter’s terms. While the upper class
gained support for its urban economic activities – and the occasional parliamen-
tary seat – middle-class leaders even in medium-sized towns secured cash, pres-
tige and, in many cases, land for civic projects.
138
Large firms proved more
awkward, especially as increasingly they could close local plants and move else-
where, but even so local leaders did not always treat them with kid gloves.
Similarly, while nearby large cities often overshadowed small and medium-sized
towns – as Manchester did Salford – smaller authorities sometimes combined
with each other to prevent intimidation, as in the Black Country towns’ gas war
with Birmingham. Central government was a more formidable adversary, but it
supplied local leaders with encouragement, expertise and – increasingly – cash
for major projects.
139
More generally, middle-class leaders helped themselves, and their localities,
significantly through external connections. For notables from smaller towns,
these links often took the form of involvements at the district or regional level
– in mayors’conferences, religious and political coordinating bodies and employ-
ers’ organisations. As the disparate cases of the West Midlands and west central
Scotland demonstrate, the top leaders of lesser towns, like many of their counter-
parts from regional capitals, also had active ties to London in business, in civic
Richard Trainor
135
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
136
S. Nenadic, ‘Businessmen, the urban middle classes, and the “dominance” of manufacturers in
nineteenth-century Britain’, Ec.HR, nd series, (), –.
137
Cf. Garrard, ‘Local political power’.
138
D. Cannadine, ed., Patricians, Power and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester, ),
including Trainor, ‘Peers on an industrial frontier’, pp. –; Trainor, ‘Gentrification’; Trainor,
Black Country Elites, pp. –, –.
139
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, –. Cf. Garrard, Leadership and Power.
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work, in ‘Society’ and as MPs.
140
There were also many useful contacts among
provincial cities, assisted by the especially great physical mobility of the urban
middle class.
141
In these contexts the broader geographical scope of upper-
middle-class leaders more than compensated their localities for the usually mild
effects of ‘gentrification’.
142
Even at more modest social levels, public involve-
ments by urban middle-class individuals often drew them, sometimes
influentially, into national networks based for example on religious denomina-
tions, charities and the emerging profession of local government service.
143
Key
provincial urban dwellers may have remained ‘semi-detached’ from the metro-
politan elite even in , but they had behind them influential bodies such as
Glasgow’s Chamber of Commerce, an important vehicle for regional interests in
the thirty years preceding the First World War.
144
Also, effective interventions
outside urban regions drew on the decreasing gap, within the upper middle class
in particular, between ‘the provinces’ and ‘the metropolis’.
145
Middle-class urban social strategies, motivated by a mixture of fear and benev-
olence, tended to focus on the working class.
146
The approach urban middle-
class leaders adopted combined elements both of paternalism and of
individualism.
147
Two dilemmas presented themselves, between coercion and
conciliation, and between direction from above and collaboration. Within a
pattern of broadened social provision each was eventually largely resolved in
favour of the latter alternative.
148
Did these strategies have much success with
the working class? There were many respects in which they did not, as indicated
by instrumental working-class attitudes to middle-class projects, and sheer
The middle class
140
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, –; Trainor, ‘Glasgow’s elite’, pp. –; and (on
the paragraph generally) Trainor, ‘Urban elites’, –.
141
Burnett, Housing, p. . For its increase during the interwar years see McKibbin, Classes and
Cultures, pp. , .
142
Cf. Howe, Cotton Masters; Trainor, ‘Gentrification’.
143
R. Gray, ‘The platform and the pulpit: cultural networks and civic identities in industrial towns,
c. –’, in Kidd and Nicholls, eds., Making, pp. –. Cf. Morris, ‘Clubs, societies and
associations’, p. ; H. L. Malchow, Gentleman Capitalists (London, ).
144
E. Gordon and R. Trainor, ‘Employers and policymaking: Scotland and Northern Ireland, c.
–’, in S. Connolly et al., eds., Conflict and Identity (Preston, ), pp. –. On the
question of integration, see Berghoff, ‘Businessmen’, and, more positively, his ‘Regional varia-
tions’; for a less enthusiastic view of provincial impact in the twentieth century, see D. Read, The
English Provinces c. –:A Study in Influence (London, ), ch. .
145
R. H. Trainor, ‘Neither metropolitan nor provincial: the interwar middle class’, in Kidd and
Nicholls, eds., Making, pp. –. Cf. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, who argues (pp. , ,
–, ) for persisting North–South tensions and for a shift of the balance of the middle class
toward the South but also suggests (pp. , ff, ) an increasing unity, based more on occu-
pation than on region.
146
Cf. V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Crime, authority and the policeman-state’, in Thompson, ed., Cambridge
Social History, , p. .
147
J. Seed, ‘Unitarianism, political economy and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester,
–’, Soc. Hist., (), –; Joyce, ‘Work’, p. .
148
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –.
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avoidance of them.
149
Paradoxically, the more coercive strategies of urban
middle-class leaders – notably in law enforcement and poor relief – achieved
many of their objectives while the relatively positive initiatives – recreational
reform and the social outreach of organised religion, for example – had much
more mixed results. Still, churches and chapels attracted many to societies if not
always to services, and socially progressive policies in both major parties suc-
ceeded in mobilising large numbers of working-class electors down to in
a controlled competition compatible with the pursuit of shared social ideals.
150
More generally, urban civic life, by bringing large numbers of working-class
people into contact with middle-class leaders in relatively benign modes, may
have done much to promote the emergence of ‘viable class relations’ in Britain’s
towns and cities.
151
(vi)
The interwar years – with the increasing geographical mobility of middle-class
managers, accelerated suburbanisation, industrial depression and the further rise
of Labour – disrupted middle-class urban leadership more than had even the
Edwardian period. Yet it is easy to exaggerate the decline in the public role of
the middle class which occurred during the s and s. Wealthy business-
men continued to prize service to the community even as their enthusiasm for
particular elite roles diminished.
152
Also, some of the middle-class activism
which was ‘lost’ to cities and towns resurfaced in nearby suburbs. Thus, although
there was some fall in the social standing of middle-class urban leaders, there was
as much a reshaping as a diminution of public involvement by the urban middle
class in the interwar years.
153
Richard Trainor
149
See in particular Thompson, ‘Social control’. With regard to philanthropy, its impact tended to
vary with the scale of the resources inherited from the past and the scope of current problems –
thus in the late Victorian period Bristol was far better placed in both respects than was Cardiff.
See Meller, Leisure; N. Evans, ‘Urbanisation, elite attitudes and philanthropy: Cardiff,
–’, International Review of Social History, (), –.
150
H. McLeod, ‘New perspectives on Victorian working class religion . . .’, Oral History, (),
–; J. Lawrence, ‘Class and gender in the making of urban Toryism, –’, English
Historical Review, (), , ; Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –, –, –,
; H. Perkin, ‘The development of modern Glossop’, in A. H. Birch, Small-Town Politics
(Oxford, ), p. ; J. M. Lee, Social Leaders and Public Persons (Oxford, ), p. . For the
significant extent to which parties, rather than simply social structures, shape electoral behavi-
our, see J. Lawrence and M. Taylor, eds., Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Britain since
(Aldershot, ).
151
Trainor, Black Country Elites, pp. –. Cf. Perkin, Origins, ch. , passim.
152
M. Dintenfass, ‘Coal masters and the culture of the middle class, c. –’, in Kidd and
Nicholls, eds., Making, pp. –.
153
Cf. Rubinstein, ‘Britain’s elites in the interwar period’, whose section (pp. –) on the ‘col-
lapse’ of the provincial elites notes the reduction in wealthy councillors and the waning of
Liberalism and dissent within elites.
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This balance between change and stability characterised middle-class involve-
ments in both local government and the voluntary sector. In the former,
‘decline’ came mainly from the s and even then usually was not drastic.
Partly enforced by the rise of Labour, this change shifted the balance of leader-
ship from the upper to the lower echelons of the middle class.
154
In part because
of significant continuities in voluntary as well as local government leadership
civic pageantry remained strong in many towns, attracting broad public atten-
tion to middle-class elites.
155
Yet there was less ‘overlapping’ than before
between councillors and the leaders of voluntary societies. Also, cracks had
begun to emerge in the previous predominance of the well-off middle class in
the voluntary sphere.
156
The truly dynamic areas of interwar voluntary activity
focused either on social distress – as in prominently-led bodies coordinating local
charities – or on entertainment, notably the myriad dramatic societies run by
‘small businessmen, teachers, clerks, [and] artisans’.
157
Likewise, there was change, but not collapse, in middle-class involvement in
urban religion and politics. In the former, where a falling-off in middle-class
attendance at church and chapel had set in from the late nineteenth century,
there was a further interwar decline in middle-class fervour, perhaps especially
among upper-middle-class men. John Clough, for example, never attended after
the war; he played golf instead, taking advantage of a significant relaxation of
taboos concerning Sunday behaviour.
158
In Preston, the elite left church leader-
ship to the lower middle class, which at St Philip’s Leicester used church prem-
ises every night for ‘the various guilds, dramatic society, badminton club, cricket
club, cubs, brownies, scouts, guides, whist-drives, dances, bring-and-buys, [and]
jumble sales’.
159
In places such as Norwich it was only from the s that such
vitality began significantly to drain away, especially from dissent.
160
Yet persist-
ing religious feeling was a two-edged sword: religious affiliation continued to
complicate middle-class social life in provincial towns, as did the related issue of
drink, though neutral socialising in settings such as Conservative organisations
helped to promote collaboration. Likewise, new types of middle-class social
The middle class
154
Doyle, ‘Structure of elite power’. Cf. Savage, The Dynamics; and Savage, ‘Urban history’.
155
Cannadine, ‘Transformation’, ; M. Dickie, ‘Town patriotism in Northampton, –:
an invented tradition?’, Midland History, (), –.
156
Savage, The Dynamics; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures; M. Stacey, Tradition and Change (London,
).
157
Priestley, English Journey, pp. , . For the renewed role of voluntary societies in Lancashire
and their survival elsewhere despite crisis, see Savage, The Dynamics, p. ; and Morris, ‘Clubs,
societies and associations’, p. .
158
QD/FLWE/. On males generally see Cobb, Still Life, p. ; on the complex process of
decline see J. Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society (New York and Oxford, ); and
S. J. D. Green, Religion in the Age of Decline (Cambridge, ).
159
Savage, The Dynamics, pp. –; J. F. C. Harrison, Scholarship Boy, p. .
160
Doyle, ‘Structure of elite power’, –; Obelkevich, ‘Religion’, p. ; Priestley, English
Journey, pp. –.
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organisation such as Rotary, which drew distinctions on grounds of modern
status rather than traditional allegiances, rapidly increased their membership in
response to the rootlessness of many middle-class residents.
161
In party politics,
after a protracted transition, especially in parliamentary voting and in areas with
strong dissenting traditions, the long-standing bifurcation of middle-class poli-
tical allegiance weakened in response to the rise of organised labour. By the
s, although the Conservatives needed significant urban working-class
support in order to win elections, they were especially likely to secure urban seats
where the middle-class vote was large. The middle class, moreover, became the
backbone of the livelier Tory organisations which developed during the inter-
war years.
162
In politics, as in religion, as consensus replaced traditional middle-
class rivalries, some dynamism and inspiration may have been lost to public
life.
163
Yet if so this diminution was only a partial falling-off from the very high
standards of the pre- period.
(vii) :
The outbreak of the Second World War brought many changes to the urban
middle class. While the dramatic uprooting of large numbers proved transient,
other novelties – sharp rises in taxation and in fertility and the disappearance of
domestic servants, for example – proved both long-lasting and unsettling.
164
Ye t
on the whole these disruptions tended to accelerate the long-developing inte-
gration of the various strata and factions of the urban middle class, which may
well have been more of a coherent social entity in the s than before or
since.
165
For the most part change in the early post-war period built on forces
that had been shaping urban middle-class private and public existence before
. As J. F. C. Harrison suggests, ‘in the s the pattern of middle-class life
Richard Trainor
161
McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, pp. –, .
162
Ibid., pp. –, , –, –; B. M. Doyle, ‘A conflict of interests? The local and national
dimensions of middle class Liberalism, –’, in D. Dean and C. Jones, eds., Parliament and
Locality – (Edinburgh, ), pp. , ; Pugh, Modern British Politics, p. ; S. Ball,
‘The national and regional party structure’, in A. Seldon and Ball, eds., The Conservative Century
(Oxford, ), pp. , .
163
Cf. the uneasiness felt by the ‘provincial lady’ at the assumption, both in Devon and in London,
that everyone ‘in civilised circles’ was Conservative – E. M. Delafield, The Provincial Lady Goes
Further (London, ), p. .
164
For example, the ‘baby boom’ complicated access to the Butler Act’s grammar schools, exacer-
bating regional anomalies (Sutherland, ‘Education’, p. ). Those middle-class families which
opted, for these or more snobbish reasons, for prep and boarding schools often faced major
financial strains in postwar circumstances; see, for example, R. M. Dashwood, Provincial Daughter
(New York, ), pp. , , .
165
But the middle class had certainly not become a homogeneous entity, as indicated by the pro-
found differences in life style and cultural orientation even within its upper echelons between,
say, Richard Titmuss and Evelyn Waugh: A. Oakley, Man and Wife – Richard and Kay Titmuss: My
Parents’ Early Years (London, ); M. Davie, ed., The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
was still much the same as earlier’.
166
There was little further falling off in church
attendance during the decade, for example. Also, while Labour secured unprec-
edented middle-class support in in urban areas such as Lewisham, even in
that dismal year for Tories two-thirds of middle-class voters stayed loyal.
Conservative membership leapt in the s in the face of the perceived acute
threat from ‘socialism’, and middle-class support for the Tories rose significantly
in the s.
167
In addition, there was considerable continuity, albeit on the
pattern of the s rather than of the pre- period, in middle-class involve-
ment in urban voluntary societies and statutory bodies.
168
Thus the urban middle class of the s resembled – in many aspects of its
social structure, its life style and its mores as well as its public involvements – its
interwar counterpart and, in important respects, its Victorian and Edwardian
predecessors. In the early s forces which would complicate the coherence
of the middle class during the last third of the century – such as the explosive
growth in white-collar employment and the blurring of the distinction between
middle-class and working-class leisure patterns – were still largely in the
future.
169
Also still mostly to come were factors which would propel a significant
further slice of the middle class outside towns (and even suburbs) and their public
affairs: accelerated outward movement, often into distant rural areas;
170
dramatic
deindustrialisation north of Watford during the s; the radical centralisation
of government during the same decade; and the sharp decline of Conservatism
in many urban areas, especially in Scotland and Wales. In a sense this watershed
was symbolically appropriate. For it was only as the widespread urban clearance
and redevelopment schemes of the s, s and s destroyed much of
the physical legacy of the Victorian city that the social descendants of the nine-
teenth-century middle class decisively turned their backs on the remnants of the
urban communities they had done so much to create.
The middle class
166
Harrison, Scholarship Boy, p. .
167
Morris, ‘Clubs, societies and associations’, p. ; Obelkevich, ‘Religion’, p. ; T. Jeffery, ‘The
suburban nation: politics and class in Lewisham’, in D. Feldman and G. Stedman Jones, eds.,
Metropolis London (London, ), p. ; J. Bonham, The Middle-Class Vote (London, ), p.
; McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. . For a classic example of the fears aroused in the middle
class by the Attlee government, see Lewis and Maude, English Middle Classes.
168
This point is developed in R. Trainor, ‘“Decline” in British urban governance –: a
reassessment’, in Morris and Trainor, eds., Urban Governance.
169
For the persistence of a broad middle-class self-identification into the s see A. Marwick, The
Sixties (Oxford, ), pp. –; for leisure separation of the classes at mid-century see Stacey,
Tradition and Change, p. .
170
Thompson, ‘Town and city’, , pp. –; Morris, ‘Clubs, societies and associations, p. .
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