In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Liberalism and Local Government in Early Victorian London by Benjamin Weinstein
  • Nancy LoPatin-Lummis (bio)
Liberalism and Local Government in Early Victorian London, by Benjamin Weinstein ; pp. xi + 204. Woodbridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2011, £50.00, $90.00.

This study of post-1832 Reform Act political culture fills a void in the historiography of electoral politics in London, the development of Victorian liberal and radical ideological identification, and the nascent Liberal Party. By examining the relationship between Russellite Whigs and vestry-based radicals in London, Benjamin Weinstein demonstrates that the political creed of Whiggery—that of centralized government, with policies grounded in professional expertise, not populism—was an important [End Page 508] factor in defining the character and political culture of metropolitan radicalism. This book traces the reorientation of early Victorian liberalism and its political culture away from “older narratives of ‘constitutional purification’ and ‘re-balance within London,’” toward “the cause of local self-government” (4). Weinstein argues that an anti-aristocratic tone that characterized London radicalism, specifically voiced by the vestry ratepayers in the early nineteenth-century capital, played a significant role in the formation of liberal ideology. Competing with Whiggery for ideological domination among nineteenth-century reformers, these London radicals ran both propaganda and parliamentary campaigns based on local control and self-representation, against Whig political candidates and Whig legislation. Resenting the great Whig landlords, ratepayers in metropolitan London became increasingly militant in their rejection of administrative centralization and laws which imposed its authority over local tax rates, poor relief, and public health reforms from the 1830s through the 1850s. By rejecting party placemen, new radical—and liberal—identities were constructed and the new so-called popular liberalism of London in the 1840s marked the dominant political culture of the Victorian age.

Weinstein begins this study by looking at unreformed metropolitan London, where Whigs and radicals shared an agenda: constitutional reform. The passage of the 1832 Reform Act had little effect, he argues, on the young aristocratic Foxite Whigs. They continued to exert influence in the parliamentary boroughs throughout metropolitan London, aided by the club culture in Whig politics. But, after 1834, the unpopularity of the Whigs created a new class of politicians, who rejected “titled radicalism” and its associations with the great Whig landlords, and rather emerged as independent local leaders (58). These leaders fought for the next two decades to gain control of local boards, arguing for local self-determination, autonomy, and fairness for all ratepayers throughout England.

The issue which divided London radicals from the Whigs most fiercely was that of church rates and assessed taxes. Radicals argued that both were the tools of local administration and that any centralized assessment plan, including the power to refuse to set a church rate, whatever the local population, was clear proof of the Whigs’ goal of government centralization in aristocratic hands. Vestry radicals took over the political conversation, focusing attention on issues that showcased the debate over centralized versus local government. Vestry rebellions began early in 1834, and as the 1835 Municipal Reform Bill failed to include London in the church-rate repeal for Non-Conformists, this was the key issue which would rally radicals behind the “dual goals of local self-government and rate abolition,” neither a part of Whiggish political culture (103).

Further polarization, Weinstein argues, occurred between 1843 and 1855. The politics of metropolitan London was, in large part, the battle ground for the larger ideological shift in socioeconomic, as well as governmental, control and leadership. Focused upon Edwin Chadwick’s Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain (1842), the new metropolitan reform agenda further split local vestry leaders and the paternalistic plans of the Russell government: interventionist politicians versus the artisans and workers whose lives would be turned upside down by a centralized government council of health. The creation of the Chadwick commission, appointed by the government with no local input, seemed proof that only local reformers were willing “to advance a democratic reform agenda informed by an ideological [End Page 509] opposition to both landowner and state paternalism” (117). Conflict only sharpened as provincial cities in Britain expanded and incorporated, drawing an indisputable...

pdf

Share