Nationalisation Flashcards

Question

Visions of the people: industrial England and the question of class, 1848-1914 - Patrick Joyce 1991

Answer 1

custom has been seen as everywhere in retreat in the nineteenth century, dissolved from within by the subscription of working-class leaders and autodidacts to the canons of rational reform, progress and revealed religion, and from without by the increasing structural limitations on time and space as industry and towns grew.4 The growing significance of the regulative functions of an increasingly interventionist local and national state were important, as evident for instance in policing, the control of leisure and the provision of education. The confluence of utilitarianism and evangelicalism in upper-class attempts to reform popular manners also contributed much to the assault on custom. While there is much of value in this picture it does raise certain problems. The importance of regional factors will be evident from the treatment of unions. Like the cultural factors considered in the next section there is much evidence of the persistence of diversity until at least 1914 Turning more directly to custom, its presence in popular culture was more tenacious than is sometimes thought. One may certainly discern the two currents of outright suppression, and a more-or-less deliberate higher-class remodelling of custom. The latter may be seen in the nineteenth-century English countryside, farmers, landowners and the clergy remodelling older practices along neopaternalist lines as a means of handling agrarian social change.6 It was also the case that for a variety of reasons much of custom simply became obsolete. Equally, a surprising amount of custom continued in place: this was so in the area of workplace and trade custom, particularly outside the factory,7 but was evident too in the area of leisure, for example, the persistence of wakes and fairs Cultural adaptation The popularity of the broadside ballad continued much later than is commonly allowed. Far from being a hostile environment the industrial town seems if anything to have been congenial to the ballad. The banning of street music in 1860s' London hastened the ballad's decline there, but in regions such as industrial Lancashire one many note a living practice in the street ballad singing of out-of-work operatives in the 1860s Cotton Famine. Men toured Lancashire and Yorkshire singing traditional songs as well as songs especially composed and printed for the occasion. In normal times, too, as late as the 1870s and 80s, the streets of Lancashire mill towns were reported to be full of street singers. In 1879 the citizens of Oldham got up a petition against the ‘profane and debauched’ singing of ballads in the street, especially on Sunday and by women as well as men. Ballads were published and sung to aid the victims of industrial accidents in mid-1880s’ Bradford. Party political agitation relied on the ballad form to the end of the century. The proponents of the Manchester Ship Canal, advocates of economic modernity in the 1880s and 90s, turned with alacrity to the old established ballads in propagandising their case. The longevity, and something of the uses, of the ballad will be apparent. there was something like a fairly uniform 'national' ballad culture which was yet inflected in very important regional and local ways there is no doubting how profoundly important were regional and local differences in the work, culture and politics of the time. Because of the early formation and centralisation of the English state, this diversity is often lost to view. In the talismanic significance of figures like Gracie Fields one begins to appreciate something of this localism of spirit. Not that 'the north' or 'the industrial north' was all of one piece: the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire and the north-east were often profoundly different in their industrial histories and experiences. Lancashire towns were just not like Yorkshire ones: they had different sports, different sorts of architecture, different churches and chapels, different ways of speaking. in the north, the old localist message seems to have held into the inter-war years, despite changes of emphasis and changes in the material conditions of life and art. Performers were quick to respond to the expectations of audiences, inflecting their performance to meet local demand. Twentiethcentury accounts testify to the longevity of these characteristics. In inter-war Britain the renowned northern comic Sandy Powell adopted the manner and costume of the Scots when in Scotland, and of the miner when playing in the pit districts.15 Writing in 1925 on the patter comedians' 'poetry of the gutter' D. C. Calthorp noted this acute responsiveness to popular tastes, especially in the case of the perennially favoured dialect turn. These took the forms of Scots, Cockney, Irish, 'Mummerset' and 'Lancashire Lad'. The latter, invested with the cultural symbolism of football, clogs, and the whippet, was the very epitome of heartiness and honest forthrightness. There is no doubting the dialectal changes already mentioned; the greatly decreasing importance of dialect vocabularies, the erosion of local, rural dialects in favour of new, urban ones (especially the linguistic imperialism of cockney), and the rising importance of standard forms of pronunciation. The reasons for this undoubted decline of dialect are not far to find, among them increased migration and education, new and improved systems of transport and cultural communication, and the development of large-scale towns and industry. Changes in values and ideas were also significant, among them the decreasing hold of customary practices and beliefs. The period when dialects seem most quickly to have gone through this process of standardisation was that from the 1880s to about 1914 in the industrial districts of the time, dialect did not simply decline but took new forms based heavily on the experience of labour and common living in these new regions. It was standardised, but standardised around what were still powerfully regionalised and localised forms. The association of strong dialect attachments and thriving local cultures apparent in the case of Rochdale, and evident also in the sociolinguistic literature, is reflected in the other districts considered in the 1861 reports To this sense of local history they wedded a large sense of history, in both cases one derived from the Nonconformist vision of the Protestant heritage. The people's own English was in fact perhaps the chief sign that this tradition and history lived Class in England was largely built up out of the often ill-fitting bricks of these distinctive local and regional experiences, in which the parochial and the sectional were often finely balanced with the catholic and the solidaristic.

Answer 2

industrialisation, at least up to the last quarter of the century, actually increased the degree of economic and cultural distinctiveness.

Answer 3

Westminster's national party identities played a limited role in popular electoral politics local political organisations identified themselves with colours, individual leaders and even particular symbols like flowers. Prominence afforded to local political identities suggests deep-seated antipathy to the concept of party. persistence of 18th C creed of electoral Independency Up to 1860s elections dominated by uses of languages of colours. Colours firmly rooted in local political histories and cultures. Heathcote's Old Orange Cause was that of his Ancaster family's interest We should not assume that colours were local shorthand for national party allegiances, rather they cut across those allegiances and created their own local constituencies of support 1868 election - Liberals fought under blue in Grantham and Cambridgeshire, red and green in Burnley, yellow in Nottingham. Not until the formation of the Conservative Association in 1865 and the Liberal Registration Society in 1866 that national party-political organisations existed in Lewes. Individuals as likely to command popular constituencies of support as party organisations. Cobbett - populist, radical in 1852. Increasingly associated w the Conservatives during unsuccessful campaigns 1857, 1865, 1868. Movement across party boundaries by Cobbett reflects the fragility of party-political categories, demonstrating that they were not hermetically sealed categories w discreet ideological platforms. Competing groups tried to ascribe opponents perjorative party labels. As party organisations grew, so too did the perception of them as hierarchical and unaccountable bodies dominated by sinister individuals and agents lining their own pockets. Vilification of Meaburn Staniland, lawyer, agent, and leading activist for Boston's Blues, exemplified this fear of the manipulative self-serving party 'fixer'. Party as agent of social disruption. assertion of popular liberty, rights of freeborn Englishmen, in vein of pop constitutionalist discourse older 18th C political identities and organisational forms were most persistent in constituencies which ahd long electoral histories before 1832 - Boston, Lewes, Devon. Easier for national party organisations and identities to establish themselves in Oldham and Tower Hamlets, where they had no local

Answer 4

1880, Liskeard

Answer 5

Increasingly by the 1860s culture of national party politics had begun to dominate, until by 1880s it was these party-political cultures that defined the parameters of the public political sphere Tory association with beer and the politics of the good time became stronger 1870s and 1770s when many of its characteristics were institutionalised in the club movement. Radical uses of ticketing. From late 1830s ticketing increasingly became an exclusive, rather than an inclusive weapon New cultural styles and their role in the mid-Victorian invention of party were less marked in Devon and Tower Hamlets. Culture of Devon's county politics changed v little bc of Conservative domination feminisation of radical culture - meeting outside the pub, as well as using ticketing and social entertainments designed to attract family units. Reinforced primacy of their private roles as wives, mothers and sisters. Disciplining of popular politics critical to the mid-Victorian invention of party

Answer 6

by the social and religious cleavages left in the wake of the forward march of British history. 'broad church of Liberalism'. Sustained by increasingly assertive middle class through the vehicles of non-conformist religion and the provincial press. In response to these forces that Disraelian Conservatism organised itself Increasingly this account being questioned as historians have recognised that parties actually created their own identities and constituencies of support, rather than reflecting the identities of existing social groups emergence of provincial press following the repeal of the stamp duties in 1854 explaining the growth of party-political identities in the constituencies. Repeal of Stamp Act 1855 Invention of party reqorked the languages of the independent citizen in increasingly restrictive and masculine ways

Answer 7

beer, Britannia and bonhomie central to the style and appeal of popular Toryism in late Victorian Lancashire

Answer 8

est 1868 only room was a well-stocked library

Answer 9

Growth of nationally organised mass political parties irrevocably shifted the balance of power in favour of the leaders over the led

Answer 10

Decline of street lit - views of moral and political reformers and disapproving autodidacts slowly began to predominate, and these forms of printed media were increasingly deemed inappropriate to a political system which placed a premium on 'rational' debate between individuals. Proliferation of the penny press 1850s Unlike the popular, flexible and formulaic oral and visual uses of the past and present, print imposed fixed, verbatim meanings. Small group of people responsible for the production of the political uses of print e.g. Butterworth family of Oldham. Audiences divested of much of their power to lead and shape the direction of the speeches they heard by press. Growing use of ticketed media Secret ballot - legislated public nomination out of existence National political organisations dependent on print to break down the isolation of individuals within local communities through membership cards, rule books, correspondence, and press. These printed technologies enabled the creation of a nationally organised mass political democracy with the Reform Acts of 1884 and 1918. As politics became increasingly organised and national in character, ever greater distances placed between individuals and their political leaders. Political parties perceived as oligarchic cliques Far from representing a triumphant march towards the model parliamentary democracy, nineteenth-century English politics witnessed the gradual and uneven closure of the public political sphere.

Answer 11

The Left welcomed an experiment in public control w BBC monopoly firmly believed that broadcasting soothed public opinion Reith - "If there had been broadcasting at the time of the French Revolution, there might have been no French Revolution By 1929, daily service and weekly evensong Reithian ethos allowed the BBC to portray itself as the embodiment of British culture and tradition Increase in light entertainment 1930s in response to Radio Luxembourg and Radio Normandie competition - dance music and jazz 1933 separate variety dept. Systematic listener research. Hired an advertising expert to discover what the public wanted

Answer 12

high culture need only be made available for most people to embrace it

Answer 13

98% of the population had some access to programmes

Answer 14

almost general agreement, even in more recent 'revisionist' accounts of nineteenth-century politics, that, in the wake of the Second Reform Act of 1867, not only did political parties become firmly established as permanent organisations of mass mobilisation, but they exerted increasing control over the forms of popular political expression. the primary institutions 'socialising' the new mass electorate into the norms of the pre-existing political system. belief that new social and economic forces began to undermine the equilibrium of popular politics established during the 1860s and 1870s. This equilibrium, it is argued, had been rooted in the strength of non-class, and essentially local political loyalties. Denominational loyalties were perhaps pre-eminent, but partisanship was also cemented by broader civic loyalties - including loyalty to the powerful new provincial urban elites which had done so much to stamp their identities on the emerging industrial communities After 1867, it is suggested, these powerful elites were able to use their wealth and social prestige to establish political structures capable of integrating the new voters into established patterns of partisanship - plebeian politics were 'tamed' and a narrow partisanship instilled. Political parties came to 'manage' popular politics as never before, and continued to do so, it is suggested, long after the decline of the local elites which had created them.3 Parties evolved into primarily national organisations, dominated by professional politicians, and united around programmatic politics rooted in material (and at heart class) interests. The present chapter questions this orthodox account of the 'triumph of party relationship between 'party' and 'public' remained highly ambiguous down to 1914 Many Radicals were never wholly reconciled to the Liberal coalition, and they were often highly suspicious of attempts to control local politics through the machinery of 'the caucus' the late nineteenth-century 'triumph of party' was qualified firstly by electoral logic (which dictated that 'improving' voters must take a backseat to the more pressing need to win their allegiance), and secondly by the widespread belief that political legitimacy still rested, at least in part, in the open public meeting This belief placed a premium on the political occupation of public space, and helped sustain a continued role for disruption and physical force in English electoral politics. Connivance in the orchestration of popular disturbances inevitably involved some loss of 'elite' control over the political process, but it also legitimated a set of practices which 'subaltern' groups, such as the Radical and Irish activists of London's East End, could appropriate for their own purposes ambiguities of the 'politics of place' are further underlined by the fact that 'outsider' candidates often augmented the nursing of a constituency by taking a house in the district so that they could qualify as local burgesses with full voting rights - essential for any credible appeal to 'local' credentials Ernest Benn recalls his father renting a villa in Cable Street when he was nursing the East End seat of St George's-in-the East recent work of historians such as Eugenio Biagini important, underlining the extent to which nineteenthcentury popular politics were preoccupied with questions of state policy, rather than just with the resolution of local status conflicts political meetings were often highly controlled affairs by the late nineteenth century, not least thanks to the frequent use of'ticketing', hired party stewards and the services of the local constabulary, such control tended to break down at times of great political excitement such as elections. rational democracy described by Colin Matthew and others thus represented only one facet of Victorian party politics.80 Indeed if this were not so, it would be difficult to explain why so many Liberal intellectuals had become doubtful about the prospects of reconciling popular government with efficient government by the 1880s 'modernisation'. By imposing upon them sociological models such as 'modernisation', which assume a strictly linear course of development, we lose sight of this complexity. Seeing change as linear and progressive leads naturally to the assumption that inexorable external forces are at work, rooted in society and economy, and that the fortunes of political parties are determined largely by developments at this 'deeper' level.

Answer 15

made great capital out of the fact that the Unionist owners of the Patent-Axle Box works at Wednesfield chose to march their employees en masse to the poll

Answer 16

because the 'nursing' of a constituency had become such a widespread custom, it could easily be understood by the electors, not as a gift enshrining unspoken assumptions of reciprocity on the part of recipients, but as a form of popular taxation exacted on the politically ambitious As Willy Gladstone found at Whitby, declining to 'play the game' of cultivating a local presence could involve a candidate in endless conflicts both with his local party, and with the wider electorate since all candidates were expected to act as benefactors, it is far from clear that such displays of paternalism did much to influence party allegiance at elections

Answer 17

tend to underestimate the antagonism that often existed within local Liberal and Tory organisations between factions with very different political agendas they tend to underestimate the extent to which, even in the nineteenth century, popular partisanship was shaped by national rather than local political struggles, and was rooted in a welldeveloped sense of both Toryism and especially Liberalism as national political movements

Answer 18

September 1867 one finds The Bee-Hive lamenting the recent failure to secure full manhood suffrage in the Reform Act The Bee-Hive, like many of the radical activists who bought it, remained strongly committed to the goal of independent political representation, advocating that the working classes should select representatives 'wherever practicable from the ranks of labour If, Radical inclusion within the Liberal coalition was always partial and conditional, then it becomes easier to understand the strong Radical contribution to late Victorian Labour politics without resorting to models of class polarisation. The Radical press of the 1870s and 1880s repeatedly attacked local Liberal parties for conspiring to block Radical and Labour candidates

Answer 19

well-to-do local Liberals and the Dewsbury Trades Council selected rival Liberal candidates to contest the new borough.43 The Trades Council denounced the selection of the west country coal owner Handel Cossham by a self-appointed committee of prominent Liberals, and upheld the principle of selection by open public meeting. Their chosen candidate, the Chartist veteran Ernest Jones, overwhelmingly won the support of the 15,000 towns-folk who gathered in Dewsbury Market Place for a special selection meeting, but the Cossham camp refused to accept the decision. Jones withdrew to concentrate on his Manchester candidacy, but his supporters refused to give up. Instead they persuaded local Conservative leaders to back John Simon, the radical Jewish lawyer, as an alternative 'independent Liberal' candidate. Simon portrayed himself as the working-man's champion against the power and wealth of the town's Liberal elite Only after this third contest was a reconciliation finally brokered between the MP, his diverse supporters, and the powerful Liberal leadership which dominated municipal life in Dewsbury inherent ambiguity of many 'democratic' innovations in party organisation after 1867. L. A. Atherley Jones, one of the politicians interviewed by the Dewsbury 'Liberal 300' before the 1880 General Election, later lamented that local politicians had sought to unseat Simon 'because he was not sufficiently submissive to the will of the local Liberal Caucus'.51 At issue were two contrasting conceptions of democratic representation. Simon, like other Liberal opponents of the 'Caucus', upheld the importance of a direct relationship between politician and constituents, rather than one mediated through party organisations Simon continued to hold an annual open public meeting where as many as 10,000 people, voters and non-voters, men and women, might attend to hear an account of his work as borough MPs

Answer 20

successor to The Bee-Hive, was perhaps predictably critical of the caucus in the wake of the editor's rejection by the Liberal Hundred at the Peterborough by-election of 1878, but many trade union leaders shared the belief that 'caucus' organisation would make Radical and Labour candidatures more difficult in most constituencies

Answer 21

trade union leaders who were strongly Liberal in their sympathies, none the less sought to organise a Labour association, and run their own independent Labour candidates in order to preserve some independence from Chamberlain's powerful political machine

Answer 22

decision to establish the Democratic Federation in 1881 (forerunner of the socialist SDF) was in large part a reaction against Chamberlain and the new Caucus politics which were coming to dominate Radicalism - hence Cowen's prominent role in the early stages Lawrence --> On the other hand… also many Radicals who saw the new constituency organisations as a means of undermining the political power of the shadowy, self-nominated 'Liberal Committees' which had traditionally controlled the representation of many constituencies

Answer 23

those who stress how the growth of formal party organisation completed the 'taming' of popular politics,63 and those who stress how party organisation was able to integrate the new electors of 1867 and 1885, so that they posed little threat to the existing political and social status quo. two sides of the same story, though the first approach undoubtedly lays greater emphasis on the highly developed political traditions of non-electors before 1867

Answer 24

Throughout this period party elites were obliged to engage with, and adapt to, aspects of popular culture but dimly understood, and in some measure feared. Most political leaders had read their Bagehot - they knew that they were meant to be moulding the new democracy Shouldn't take them at their word as John Garrard appears to do in his influential article 'Parties, members and voters'

Answer 25

when the Wolverhampton Tories opened the town's first Working Men's Conservative Club in 1884, local leaders spoke of the valuable contribution the club would make to the education and 'improvement' of the working classes. In contrast, however, contemporary accounts of the working-men's clubs set up in the 1880s stress their fine surroundings, excellent facilities for billiards and other games, and the ready-supply of good cheap beer

Answer 26

acknowledged immediately after the Act was passed, the new conditions made it imperative that in future local politicians should be able to call on the services of volunteer workers. This, the report concluded, meant setting up new mass organizations, regardless of the consequent danger of encouraging an 'abundance of zeal' among the rank and file which might challenge traditional party structures

Answer 27

metropolitan police went to great lengths to curtail the right of socialist agitators, and their libertarian supporters, from holding political meetings in public places such as Dodd Street in the East End, and most controversially, Trafalgar Square in the West End Both in 1885 and 1887 Initiative from the police themselves Home Office, under first Cross and later Matthews, was decidedly reluctant to give the police full backing in their attempts to stop the socialist gatherings - primarily because of its greater sensitivity to issues of free speech and the right to public meeting.

Answer 28

Taken together, the work of Howell and Tanner suggests that one facet of the call for independent labour representation was a conscious revolt against the nationalisation of politics in the late Victorian and Edwardian period local Labour politicians did frequently espouse what might be termed a politics of community Howkins has argued that one of Labour's greatest strengths before the First World War was that its political leaders tended to be rooted in the communities they represented, whereas the champions of the 'New Liberalism' were often carpet-baggers foisted on constituencies they hardly knew.9 This whole emphasis on the 'politics of locality' must not, however, be pushed too far. From the outset many Labour politicians believed that the local and the particular must be transcended, not championed, if Labour was to transform politics and break the hold of the old parties. The strongest proponent of this argument was probably Ramsay MacDonald, Even if the cultural and physical gulf between Labour activists and the mass of the working population did not undermine the project from the outset,14 the financial and organisational frailties of local Labour parties could make it very difficult for them to mount a credible campaign from their own resources Labour activists generally cherished their links to national organisations with national political agendas By selecting the nominee of a powerful national trade union a local party might hope to cover the cost, not simply of the election itself, but of a full-time election agent, Overall just over half the twenty-two trade-union sponsored Labour (LRC) MPs elected in 1906 lived either in their constituency, or in a neighbouring constituency (see table 9.1) figures for MPs sponsored by ILP branches and local Labour Representation Committees are broadly similar - exactly half lived locally, departure from earlier practice. During the 1890s, ILP branches had shown a strong tendency to prefer well-known national celebrities as candidates rather than local political Hardie’s wanderings When Freddie Richards spoke out in Parliament against the appalling slums of Wolverhampton, local Tories condemned him as an outsider who had insulted the town and its people before the nation. most successful exponents of'localist' Labour politics appear to have embraced two quite distinct, but complementary, political roles: within their communities they were political trouble-shooters on the national stage they were the lone figures defending their communities against the ignorance and hostility of malign outside forces. Ben Tillett recalls Crooks as a Londoner straight out of Dickens - born and brought up in Poplar, where he continued to live, Crooks was probably as close to being an 'organic' Labour leader as England has come Crooks' Poplar home was the first port-of-call for any local resident in trouble mid 1900s he felt obliged to turn down the chance to move to a larger, more comfortable house because he knew that, '[m]y friends among the working people would fear I was deserting their class Lansbury was renowned for keeping an open-door for those in need. in most cities and towns Labour politicians found that political success depended partly on brokering alliances between diverse and potentially antagonistic groups, and partly on the painstaking process of constructing a sense of shared political identity. It was not a case simply of articulating a pre-existing 'Labourist' consciousness within the community Labour's fortune^ in a sense3 was that a second global war allowed it to 'nationalise' its politics in a way that the first most definitely had not. During the First World War Labour's influence over the management of the home front was partial at best3 and trade unionists remained suspicious of the state and unconvinced about the practicality of defending their members through political as opposed to industrial strategies James Mawdsley, the Tory cotton spinners' leader, argued that, it was time they showed they were neither a Labour Electoral Congress, nor an Independent Labour Party Congress, nor a Liberal nor a Conservative Congress, but a Labour Congress (Applause). socialist opponents like Tillett actually welcomed the exclusion of 'mere professional politicians' such as Burns, Broadhurst and Hardie - their primary objection was to the unconstitutional methods used by the Parliamentary Committee to introduce the new procedures in his election address at Leeds South in 1895 Arthur Shaw, the ILP candidate, "Party!", "Party"! has broken down, and against that I raise the cry of "Principle!"'. Such anti-party rhetoric became more difficult to sustain after the formation of the LRC in 1900. Gradually, but inexorably, 'Labour' became more and more clearly the label of a political party, Edwardian Labour party was emerging as a highly centralised, and increasingly disciplined organisation. It was also emerging as a party more determined than any before to reshape popular politics - to reform 'the Democracy' through education Socialists such as Hardie and MacDonald had long argued that what Britain needed was not more democracy, but more education - why, they suggested, prioritize the creation of yet more ignorant, frivolous electors, surely it would be better to focus energy on securing the social reforms, and the cultural enlightenment, necessary for the growth of a truly 'rational' democracy. MacDonald In 1919 he described how 'the governing classes' had come to understand the weakness of democracy, namely that 'the masses' could be stirred into passion by things which were trivia

Answer 29

Based on the evidence of Devon and Cornwall, politicians continued to regard the provincial press as highly influential in determining their readers' party political affiliations well into the twentieth century. Until at least 1914, many of the leading local and regional newspapers were owned by prominent local politicians. After 1918, especially following the amalgamation of the two main Conservative and Liberal papers, local politicians felt keenly their lack of a reliable source of press support. The cost of funding a party political newspaper became too high for all but the richest politicians. Moreover, the status of the provincial press was increasingly undermined by improved rail communications, allowing the national press to compete even in farthest Cornwall. The wireless also reduced the importance of the provincial press from the late 1920s.

Answer 30

1880 general election 1st modern one: 5/6 of constituencies actually contested. Produced national campaign as distinct from the sporadic, localized contests typical of mid-Victorian elections hitherto leaders had usually avoided speaking in other men's constituencies after nominations lest seen to interfere in community's private affair. Gladstone pioneered nearest approach to a whistle-stop tour as journeyed up to Edinburgh, descending from train at Grantham, Yorka nd Newcastle to deliver short harangues, up and down the country elections characterized by popular participation. Attendant disorder obliged authorities to extend the poll over two to three weeks. Not until 1918 did they feel confident enough to risk one-day polling Ribbons and rosettes in party colour - worn by millions. Primroses on Disraeli's birthday

Answer 31

1870, 1874, 1882

Answer 32

despite the effect of the 1885 redistribution in correcting the historic over-representation of the South and South-West Ireland, 103 mems repd an average electorate of 6,700 by contrast with English average of 13,000

Answer 33

striking feature of mid-Victorian elections - barely half constituencies actually experienced a contest. Where seats contested a third or more of voters normally split their two votes across party lines - indication that Whig and Tory were not sharp political divisions but amorphous and overlapping groupings After 1885 single-member constituencies eliminated traditional Whig-Tory collusion, and the advance of formal party organization, stimulated by the franchise extensions, may be measured from the decline in unopposed returns. Professional party agent began to displace the solicitor for whom electoral work was just a sideline. Responsibility = to ensure party's supporters appeared on the preliminary list of voters in May, to put in further claims and defend them before the revising barristers in the autumn, and particularly to lodge objections against the names of known opponents

Answer 34

333, 1857 43, 1885 63, 1892

Answer 35

population rose by 16% 1885-1891, but electorate dropped by 301

Answer 36

Keighly 13 Conservative clubs 1907

Answer 37

Representative constituency bodies pioneered by radical Liberals 'caucus' system. Central institutional form given in National Liberal Federation (NLF) by mid-1880s few candidates stood w/o the benefit of an agent, a permanent organisation

Answer 38

attained official approval and spawned affiliated associations across the country during the mid-1880s.

Answer 39

centralization of power in the Cabinet and corresponding decline in the authority and independence of the House of Commons

Answer 40

drew attention to what he saw as the debilitating effects of caucus politics upon Parliament

Answer 41

despite the pretensions of Victorian party organisations in 1870s, by 1900 both Liberal and Conservative parliamentary leaders had harnessed their extra-parliamentary forces to serve their ends. Appealed directly to voters over the heads of their critics for the 'mandate' Chamberlain and Churchill merely toyed w party organization before reverting to playing the game by the existing rules

Answer 42

under Gladstone and successors parliamentary year grew longer than August-Feb. Pressure upon govt business caused by regular Irish Nationalist obstructionism prompted Gladstone in 1882 to pioneer the procedure for closure of debate by simple majority vote - a practice ritually condemned but nonetheless adopted by all govts anxious to squeeze legislation through. Lengthier and more complex legislation 1850s govts - 10 to 15 defeats a year. 1900s, only one per session on average Growth of disciplined party behaviour After 1886 govts ceased to be able to rely upon support from oppositions which now criticized everything but without prospect of defeating anything. All now turned upon maintaining the allegiance of one's own party majority. Older traditions of cross-bench voting by a large proportion of members gradually died out Party loyalty now demanded that aspiring members should first tackle one or two hopeless or marginal constituencies before being nominated for a safe seat for life. Politician's essential lifeline lay through his party rather than in his roots in his locality

Answer 43

landowners 46% to 26% among Conservatives and 26% to 7% among Liberals industry and trade, 31% to 53% of Conservatives and 50% to 66% of Liberals Dominance of lawyers at cabinet level noticeable feature of Liberal govts 1906-14

Answer 44

1880s and 1890s - 2x that of the 1830-60 period

Answer 45

News of the World, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper and the Weekly Times began publication in October 1843, January 1843 and January 1847, r all aimed at a broadly artisan market. Similarly, the more expensive 6d. Illustrated London News began its influential life in May 1842 changes in print culture became bound up with a new style of monarchy symbiotic relationship between the civic publicness of Victoria and the extensive royal reportage Reynolds’s Newspaper and the Northern Star explicitly sought to challenge the populist discourse dominating the media coverage of Victoria’s tours and visits. progressive royal role public duties undertaken by Victoria and Albert also mitigated utilitarian inspired demands that call into question David Cannadine’s argument that the British monarchy reinvented its popularity in the late nineteenth century through the organization of large-scale pageants [10]. Cannadine’s claim ignores the abiding memory of George IV’s expensive love of pomp and circumstance. Victoria’s first tours were so successful because she adopted an active role that was devoid of ceremony Most metropolitan and provincial newspapers cast Victoria’s tours as her recognition of her reliance on the approval of her subjects, a celebration of the inclusivity and participation of the People in the political nation. Natural feminine sympathy for her subjects, one of the most prominent features in Victoria’s portrayal, faithful belief in her agency Victoria’s visit to Napoleon III in August 1855 Whereas periodicals like the Illustrated London News sought to place Victoria at the heart of the imagined community of the nation by imagining her place in the hearts of the nation, Reynolds’s Newspaper sought to factionalize and deride her appeal. sustained critique of the diverting role of the Queen’s public figuring. Here, we can see the emergence of the notion of monarchy as harmless entertainment Reynolds’s Newspaper derided the language of royal reporting and the royalist news-values of the press. During the 1840s and 1850s, attacks on the intrusion and deference of royal journalism were commonplace. Punch , now in its most radical period, frequently parodied the official language of the Court Circular During Victoria’s reign, this traditional radical concern with the imaginative enchantment, fictionality, and, ultimately, emptiness of the monarchy, metamorphosed into critiques of the way it was fabricated through the newspaper and periodical press.

Answer 46

WUTRA central role in advancing women's position within Conservative politics Uses case studies of women's activism in Birmingham and Leeds to challenge McKibbin's claim that Conservative success after the war relied on fostering conventional wisdoms adverse to the culture of organized labor WUO able to expand significantly in industrial areas after 1918 through championing the Conservatives' progressive record in municipal politics and by expressing empathy with working women's social cultures. Through its attempts to create a more consensual ethos of activism that could appeal to all classes, the women's Conservative organization played a pivotal role in establishing and advancing the discourse of Baldwinite Conservatism in the localities WUTRA offered more substantial opportunities for female leadership than Primrose League Chairman = Mary Maxse - keen believer in letting the local branches of the association act as the female voice of tariff reform in their localities WUTRA - tariff reform = housewife's question. By taking intelligent interest in fiscal q, women could play significant role in political life WUTRA defence of Ulster following introduction of the Third Irish Home Rule Bill, "Help the Ulster Women and Children" campaign. British women encouraged to offer promises of shelter to potential Ulster refugees. (Later provided nucleus for Belgian Refugee Committee) Strength of women's tariff organisation concentrated in county and suburban seats of southern England and West Midlands. Largest branch Mid-Devon (4,800 mems) Edwardian period, Conservative women managed to establish a more politically effective form of female Tory activism during Edwardian period. Women's Institutes of WW1, patriotic war work, less hierarchical WUTRA presented socialism as one of the many threats to the home that Conservative women needed to counteract Early 1920s characterised by proliferation of localized antisocialist discourses. Local dimension remained vital to British politics in this decade. Not until 1930s that newsreels and radio came to play key part in the election campaigns. Labour's substantial breakthroughs at the 1919 municipal elections, on the back of a low turnout, demonstrated to Conservatives that they needed to enthuse the public with an interest in local affairs to avoid socialists taking control of municipal govt as the result of popular apathy. WUO encouraged branches to produce localized versions of its journal Home and Politics so that women could keep up-to-date with party activities and thereby canvass effectively. By 1926, 39 local editions of Home and Politics. Nationally produced antisocialist propaganda limited influence in shaping the party's electoral appeal during the early 1920s. Labour great lengths to counteract hostile antisocialist propaganda. Promotion of "mass canvassing" early 1920s emblematic of its vigorous attempts to engage w the daily life of working women and overcome their oppenents' antisocialist slurs. Involved holding open-air meetings in residential streets and distributing literature to house-bound women. WUO's most significant growth in immediate postwar years was concentrated in urban seats w large w-c populations Leeds, periodical The Conservative Woman (1921) - attention to work of party's fem mems on Board of Guardians Annie Chamberlain at forefront of Birmingham Conservatives' response to rise of Labour in the city. Unionist Women's Institutes in deprived Ladywood in 1919. Social centre for women along w talks on citizenship. At least 115 mems canvassed for Conservatives during 1923 election. Historians of Conservatism during this period have tended to view the party through its national appeals. Yet the women's Conservative organizations encouraged a highly localized politics, especially after 1918 when the WUO came to focus on municipal affairs. Thus, party's identity and social culture varied across the country Popular following enjoyed by the WUO during the 1920s helped to give Baldwin's rather abstract discourse a coherence and meaningful ident on the ground

Answer 47

Conservatives able to steal a lead on the other parties in appealing to women by portraying their interests as antithetical to the masculine culture of the organised working class. Development of Conservative organization in 1920s chiefly concentrated in the suburbs and nurtured by a nationally produced antisocialist propaganda

Answer 48

ideological stereotypes promoted by Conservatives during the 1920s were by no means hostile to the organized working class. Baldwin's leadership key to Conservative success After 1923 Baldwin reformed the party by promoting a consensual language, which celebrated commonsensical, decent, self-reliant, contented working men and women nationally produced appeals key to Conservatives' success after 1918, revitalizing a party grassroots that had become demoralized by the traumas of three consecutive election defeats during the Edwardian era

Answer 49

Warwickshire Conservative activist. Parody of a free trade film produced for previous year's elections Bill, firm struggling to compete against tariff-protected German rival, confronted by canvasser working on behalf of Liberal candidate, Karl Schutzman

Answer 50

nonparty organisations were keen to establish a space in British political life where issues could be discussed free from acrimonious party debates

Answer 51

nearly 1 million. WUO membership around 4x size of Labour rival, dwarfed WNLF w fewer than 100,000 mems

Answer 52

By the 1930s some felt that the spread of radio was making it harder to draw an audience, and that voters paid more attention to broadcasts by national leaders than they did to candidates’ speeches, but we should not exaggerate the extent of change.55 Only in 1935, the last election of the interwar period, did a majority of British homes possess a radio, and even then they were barred from using it to follow the election because the BBC maintained a moratorium on election news both to placate Fleet Street and to protect itself from charges of partisanship Both local and national election campaigns continued to be shaped largely by speech-making at public meetings. The balance of power between local and national campaigns gradually shifted to the centre as the readership of the London dailies grew, and as radio and cinema created the illusion of a more personal, even intimate, connection between voters and party leaders.56 But national leaders had loomed large in British politics since the days of Gladstone and Disraeli, and their increased media exposure as yet did little to diminish the centrality of the public meeting to electoral politics. Candidates continued to hold multiple daily election meetings throughout a campaign, and down to 1945 they continued to draw large audiences

Answer 53

1930s the large newspaper conglomerates began hiring research agencies to study how men and women of different age groups and different social classes consumed the news – which papers they read, which sections of the paper they preferred, and even what order they read those sections in Readers – both men and women – were found to prefer human-interest stories and celebrity gossip over any other sections of the paper, but women professed even less interest in domestic and foreign news than men, and more interest in fashion and celebrity. shift in the style and content of campaign literature does suggest that they believed that women were more interested than men in seeing who they were going to vote for. only became common practice to run campaign photographs in 1918. The link between this trend towards a more personal visual appeal and the women’s vote is underscored by several candidates’ inclusion in their election addresses not only of their own head shots but also of photographs of their wives and families, occasionally accompanied by a special appeal to women voters written by the candidate’s wife.39 also identifiable. Those female politicians, such as Susan Lawrence, who could not be represented as feminine garnered less press scrutiny than those, like Wilkinson, who exhibited more stereotypically ‘womanly’ behaviour – behaviour with which female readers could easily identify, Her early work as a speaker for the Manchester branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies had never brought her a national profile. Camrose newspapers headlined ‘Ginger for Pluck’ Wilkinson’s politics have been described as ‘Red like her hair’ … [which] does some injustice to Miss Wilkinson’s views as well as her hair. The latter is of a really attractive shade, and the former may be less impracticable than some of her colleagues She has a sense of humour Her hair, in particular, remained a popular press topic. When, in February 1925, Wilkinson decided to shingle her long locks, the ‘story’ received coverage not only in the national press but also in provincial papers such as the Liverpool Echo, fashion choices Evening Standard, and the pictorial Daily Sketch. Thus, we learn that in March 1923 Miss Wilkinson appeared in the House sporting a ‘gipsy scarf when Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill imposed a tax on artificial silk in his 1925 budget, she was able to command press attention when she spoke out for the interests of working girls whose wardrobes consisted largely of that fabric.77 In November 1927 a judge in a debt dispute pronounced it ‘shocking and scandalous’ that a working girl had paid a milliner £13 8s for clothes ‘No working girl’, he declared, ‘should wear clothes which cost such scandalous money.’ Singled out by the press to comment on the case, Wilkinson let loose: The demand of the modern working girl is for a decent standard of life and dress She cultivated a close relationship with the Beaverbrook press, and her articles frequently appeared in the Daily Express and the Evening Standard. Her two novels, Clash and The Division Bell Mystery, were both serialized in the Express. Wilkinson’s sex initially struck editors and journalists as a way to make politics accessible to women readers. During the Jarrow Crusade in October 1936, she exploited her own ‘newsworthiness’ to keep the marchers in the public eye, writing articles and posing for photographs. Although the march was organized by local leaders of all political parties, and remained ostensibly non-party-political, Wilkinson proved remarkably successful in identifying the march both with her own personality and with her party’s campaign for relief of the distressed areas; newsreel footage as well as press coverage identified her as the political face of the marchers

Answer 54

Harrison’s contribution to this special issue of the HJFRT provides a sharp reminder of how far the military authorities were prepared to go in sanitising the bloody consequences of modern warfare. Her inquiry into cinematic representation of British and imperial ambulance trains constitutes a persuasive argument for revisiting films which were strikingly sophisticated in projecting an artificial – indeed downright deceitful – narrative of how well the wounded were treated between casualty station and hospital ward. Harrison demonstrates how newspapers and magazines, not least the Illustrated London News, conspired to reinforce the illusion that casualties were carried home in a suitably clean and sterile environment: skilled manipulation of monochrome film facilitated an intensity of light such that the overwhelming whiteness of the carriage interiors blocked out in the viewer’s mind any disturbing images of disfigurement and dismemberment. The Battle of the Somme Shocking reality of the scenes number of civilians – many not regular cinema-goers – who viewed the film following its release in August 1916.1 Equally striking is the number that returned for a second or even third screening . In an age of silent cinema visual comedy cut across barriers of culture and language, reinforcing bonds of kith, kin and alliance, and even surmounting deep political and military divide The war’s legacy for the commercial film industry seems primarily to have been to usher in social acceptance of cinema as a modern mode of entertainment and information; and increasingly once the war was over, as a means of memory and myth making. Cinema’s ability to depict apparently realistic images contrasts with its almost limitless plasticity and capacity for manipulation. That paradox was premiered emphatically with the coming of the Great War.

Answer 55

WLL membership 5,000 till 1918, when disbanded and replaced by women's sections affiliated to local parties 1922 - 100,000 women joined women's sections Average interwar female party membership = >250,000 1930s - Elen Wilkinson Lucy Cox, Leah Manning prominent in campaigns to support the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War National lvl, Edwardian era - Fabian Women's Group and key individuals such as Margaret MacD, Margaret Macmillan and Mary Macarthur had considerable impact on the development of the party's policies in relation to education, children and social services. This was reproduced at local level. Edwardian Wolverhampton - leading Labour activists had shown little stomach for campaigning among the slum dwellers of the city's 'east end', regarding them as intellectually stunted and morally degraded. However, the local WLL and Co-operative Women's Guild in 1913-14 demanded the introduction of free baby clinics and free school meals in the poorest districts of the city, and urged the party hierarchy to be more sensitive towards, and less judgemental about, the least fortunate stratum of the w-c. In doing so they redefined Labour politics so as to be less exclusory, based on a broader conception of the working class than the archetype of the 'respectable' artisan Pressure from Labour women widened Labour's welfare agenda. Women little evd that poverty they saw in their neighbourhoods and homes could be alleviated by trade-union action alone In the years immediately after 1918 the Labour Party in Preston education and nurseries became central to Labour's campaign strategies after 1925 and helped generate unprecedented level of electoral support, culminating in the party' impressive performance in Preston in the 1929 election 1918 Labour constitution treated women as distinct interest group, recognising their desire for their own local sections and annual conference. However, these institutions were marginalised from the party's real centres of power, the annual party conference and the National Executive Committee (NEC) under-rep in elected office But in inter-war yrs hundreds of Labour women elected to local councils and Boards of Guardians a quarter of the newly elected Labour councillors who took their seats on the LCC in 1934 were women But post-war decline in the status and responsibility of local government Feminist issues rarely registered in isolation in the Labour Party, and were enmeshed in a rich and complex web of interlocking dialogues Friction in WLL over dispute between equal and universal franchise proposals - Selina Cooper vs Margaret Bondfield. McD's opinion - contrib to premature death of his wife long-term consequences of the suffrage campaign - Labour deeply hostile to issues which might encourage 'sex antagonism' Male breadwinner, not the citizen mother, was at the centre of Labour's conception of family endowment in the 1920s. Labour policy-makers felt that, given the limited public funds available, expenditure on social services such as housing and healthcare was more likely to be implemented, and was more likely to improve the lives of w-c women (esp the v poor) than the payment of allowances Labour frequently responded w impatience, if not hostility, towards those women who dared to complain about the burdens of austerity. Labour Party's attitude, from the beginning, dominated by traditions of working-class moralism and Fabian puritanism Party's women's conferences frequently urged the party to make birth control a national issue, but the national conference insisted that such subjects were a 'private' rather than a 'public' matter Masculinism fairly constant, but masculinity divergent, competing and changing forms ``` LP oft vested the strength and hope of the working class in the female rather than the male. 1920s, despite ambivalence about issues such as family allowances, party's campaign posters frequently deployed visual images of the w-c mother. Dominant image of working women became that of sweated labour, the shame of capitalism W-c 'Mam'. Import demonstrated that Labour was willing to see its essential values represented in femenine as well as masculine terms, but the party's conception of acceptable womanhood ultimately proved to be relatively narrow, especially when compared to the various genres of manliness permitted to men. ``` Partly as a result of female activism that Labour became the party of social welfare

Answer 56

National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) - did support Labour parliamentary candidates financially

Answer 57

Election cartoons did more than simply visualize the written and spoken word. They were an important, distinctive medium for political communication in their own right, and a study of them suggests that the character and conduct of later Victorian electoral politics was far from being the elevated, sanitized and dispassionate affair that conventional accounts have often suggested. Initially a demotic and locally produced form of political communication, by the 1890s the election cartoon had been subordinated to the centralizing and controlling forces of national party politics. Enquiries further afield (for Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, Manchester and Norwich) also suggest that local election cartoons took off in the late 1860s and declined in the 1880s local election cartoons were primarily urban phenomena, a reflection – it could be argued – of the more vibrant public spheres of the large towns with their larger, more concentrated populations and greater numbers of resident artists, printers and publishers.2 Most local election cartoons were black-and-white pen-and-ink sketches Several newspapers make reference to cartoons being displayed in the windows of bookshops, stationers and news-vendors. not uncommon for crowds to assemble around these shops to view cartoons conceivable that this public and shared viewing of cartoons worked in a similar way to the collective reading of radical newspapers earlier in the century: those who were literate read aloud to those who were not,37 a reminder, contrary to the claims of Vernon, that rational political debate could take place in the ‘passionate and emotive public arena of the streets’. At the end of a contest election cartoons were often collected together and sold as a complete set and marketed as souvenirs, and in some cases reissued years later.42 The election cartoon, then, was not only a form of visual political communication but also an article of popular consumption As Vernon has argued, the ‘views of moral and political reformers and disapproving autodidacts slowly began to predominate’.49 Bawdy street literature was increasingly deemed inappropriate; rational debate was to be the order of the day yet the election cartoons of the Victorian period bore some similarity to the caricatures which they had replaced. Both, by definition, focused on individuals – cartoons even more so Very few featured electors cartoons were media for turning the spotlight on politicians, not the electorate Like some of the caricatures of the late eighteenth century, part of this was the playing out of fears of mob rule,53 and of the need to draw safe boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the political nation Yet next to nothing like this is registered in election cartoons directed at a broader audience which included the working class, a growing number of whom now had the vote. Like Punch, but unlike earlier caricatures, election cartoons chastised politicians for ‘public faults not their private vices The development of photography and the popularization of photographic images in the mid-Victorian decades fuelled the demand for true likenesses of famous people. Political cartoonists strove increasingly to make their subjects instantly recognizable At the time of the 1886 general election the Pall Mall Gazette writer was struck by the paucity of visual propaganda in central London your correspondent was a provincial, accustomed to the turbulent furies, the fierce personalities, the din of diatribes, the paper war, and the campaign of cartoons sheer size of London not conducive to locally produced and tailored cartoons Leafleting and door-to-door canvassing were apparently more effective tools for voter mobilization in London Reporting on the 1868 general election campaign in East Derbyshire, the Daily News noted how a series of cartoons issued by the local Liberal Association had ‘agreeably relieved the weariness of a long contest’ cartoons began to take off just at the moment when the more traditional, festive and raucous aspects of electoral culture were in decline. What, then, was it about election cartoons that made them so popular with the electorate? Part of the answer has to be the ease with which they linked aspects of popular culture with formal politics – a linkage that was central to the process by which political parties adapted themselves to mass politics.77 ‘As a general rule, the successful political cartoonist takes some passing incident in our humdrum life which has excited popular feeling or laughter and applies it to a political situation.’ The likening of the election to a horse race was the most ubiquitous device, On the other hand, sporting analogies could be used to lampoon the masculinity of politicians centrality of the individual candidates themselves.While conventional accounts presented elections as expressive of underlying social cleavages, notably class conflict, revisionist interpretations have tended to emphasize the role of issues, policies and rhetoric. Neither of these models leaves much room for the role of personality, and yet during an election contest it was arguably the candidates that assumed central importance One of the most important functions of election cartoons was to humble politicians, Cartoons could be made to serve the politics of disruption. One of the ways that the crowd made its presence felt at meetings was by displaying cartoons and other visual material. cartoon representing Roebuck at the bottom of the poll.88 Passing round a cartoon or displaying other visual material provided members of the audience with the means to interrupt speakers and to subvert what was being said. Over the Pennines, at the Birkenhead nomination in 1868, the assembled crowds created such a furore hoisting effigies and passing around cartoons that ‘it was utterly impossible to hear the candidates and their movers’.89 Here displaying of cartoons became part of a political battle for the control of public space cartoon served to initiate a new generation of voters into the political process.

Answer 58

recalled that the election cartoons in the late 1860s and 1870s ‘were not published in newspapers, nor … were they promoted by the candidates themselves’. Rather, the cartoons were ‘the speculative enterprises of various local printers

Answer 59

emphasizes the electoral vulnerability of Roebuck, who had represented the borough since 1849. The cartoon is an instance of how dissonance between text and image works to produce meaning: Roebuck appears all the more vulnerable precisely because the cartoonist refers to him by his popular nickname ‘Tear’em symbolized Roebuck’s renowned independent and belligerent political style.83 Despite his ferocious reputation, ‘Tear’em’ is in danger of drowning in a sea of hazardous issues fallen out of favour with the workers due to his aggressive and accusatory questioning of trade unionists and what appeared to be his growing support for capital against labour, Roebuck’s undue favouring of capital has made him dangerously over-reliant on the support of one class: the rod of ‘class interest’ is in danger of breaking under the weight. Roebuck further damaged his popular credibility by resorting to ticketed (as opposed to open) meetings as a means to rescue his candidature from abusive heckling; hence the reference to ‘ticket meetings’ on the brim of the floating hat Roebuck’s two faithful supporters are not confident that they can save him. The figure undressing is W.C. Leng, editor of the Tory Sheffield Daily Telegraph (transliterated into the life-ring), who in the early stages of the campaign, when there had been no Tory candidate, had come out in support of Roebuck.8

Answer 60

Mundella’s enemies in Sheffield alleged that he employed cheap foreign labour from Saxony, thus taking work away from the British working class – hence the reference in the cartoon to foreign competition.92 Under Roebuck’s regime the workers are wellclothed, well-fed and there is full employment

Answer 61

and popularize the issue by arguing that the state church belonged to the people of the nation, a claim made frequently by the Church and its defenders. Here we see Edward Miall, the advanced LiberalMP for Bradford and leading figure in the disestablishment campaign, reduced to the instantly recognizable figure of the common robber who is attempting to steal from the people who are personified by John Bull The ability of cartoonists to simplify issues such as ‘Church in Danger’ did lead some political commentators to voice concern that cartoons were indicative of a new sensationalized and obtuse popular political culture

Answer 62

local election cartoons that have been the focus of this article flourished only for a relatively short period of time – from the late 1860s through to the 1880s significant increase in the number of cartoons from the late 1860s, and not just in the West Riding. Technological advances in printing from the 1850s, with the development of steam-driven presses, facilitated the largescale lithographic reproduction of local election cartoons more satisfactory explanation for the proliferation of cartoons from 1867 is to be found in political developments, and in the commercial response to those developments. In 1867 Disraeli’s Conservative government passed the Second Reform Act. This gave the vote to many urban working men, and in doing so increased the size of the electorate by 88 per cent. Both the Liberal and Conservative parties quickly realized that they were facing a daunting new electoral world in which new means would have to be employed to appeal to the ‘ordinary elector’. One of the first elections to be held after the Reform Act was the Bradford by-election of 1867 – the first contest in the West Riding in which the press made reference to election cartoons some evidence to suggest that the rise of election cartoons was, at least in part, a commercial venture. With so many people now in possession of the vote, politics had the potential to be big business Mass politics and mass consumerism were now working in tandem. The more difficult question to answer is why local election cartoons went into rapid decline from the 1880s what was once produced locally was increasingly produced nationally. Kathryn Rix has argued that centrally produced visual propaganda on a mass scale was apparent from the time of the 1885 general election.108 The case study of election cartoons in the West Riding suggests that the 1880 general election was the turning point, which suggests that one should not put too much emphasis on the impact of the 1883–5 electoral reforms as national influences were already exerting considerable pressure Huddersfield most of the cartoons had been national in focus with only ‘a few of a local character’.111 The discernible shift towards national cartoons lends support to Martin Pugh’s argument that the 1880 general election was the first ‘modern election … in that it produced a national campaign as distinct from the sporadic, localized contests typical of mid-Victorian elections’.112 The locally produced election cartoon had been a medium par excellence for registering this sporadic and localized electoral culture, but its days were now numbered. The extension of the franchise under the terms of the Third Reform Act to agricultural labourers and village artisans led to a further expansion of all kinds of political communication as the propaganda drive of organizations such as the National Reform Union and the National Liberal Federation testifies. Although some cartoons had circulated in county constituencies prior to the Third Reform Act, it is surely no coincidence that there seems to have been fewer of them Nationally produced cartoons were noticeably different from those produced locally. focus was now more on the conflict between the national party leaders,116 shift that was being actively promoted by some national figures. Not only Gladstone but a younger generation of politicians, notably Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill, were increasingly image-conscious and so began to court the provincial press. This new visual politics of national celebrity began to overshadow the local candidates who had formed the staple of local election cartooning. By the time of the 1885 and 1886 general election the balance had shifted even further towards nationally focused and produced cartoons. The Tories had recently established a Conservative News Agency whose functions included the production and dissemination of ‘tracts, leaflets, cartoons, and pictorial productions’.117 In addition, the new stringent limits placed on the amount of money candidates could spend on elections meant that there was a greater need for cheaper, mass produced material.118 By the 1890s advertisements began to appear in the provincial press for nationally produced cartoons, for which there was clearly a growing demand One of the major differences between national election cartoons and the older local ones centred on their respective stance towards partisanship. Whereas local cartoons had often been ambiguous and circumspect in their partisan affiliation, the party loyalties of national cartoons were almost always recognizably clear-cut. The trend towards national cartoons also received a boost from the arrival of the Independent Labour Party. nature of the election cartoon had thus begun to change by the mid-1890s. What had once been part of an autonomous local political culture was now increasingly under the control of centralized party bureaucracies and newspaper editors rather than local cartoonists and printers enhanced the sense of membership of a local political community.124 The local election cartoon not merely been passive reflectors of electoral culture, they had been part of that culture As the focus and production shifted from the local to the national, something of this local autonomous political culture was lost in this respect the decline of local election cartoons supports Vernon’s argument that with the rise of professionalized party politics power shifted from the localities to the national centre Whereas local election cartoons had formed part of a vibrant inclusive street politics, epitomized by crowds viewing them in shop windows, national cartoons were far more likely to be consumed privately in one’s home 1860s and 1870s local election cartoons had been one of the few virtual means through which the people had been able to view their political leaders. By the 1890s this was no longer the case as it was becoming standard practice for candidates to issue photographs of themselves, Local election cartoons had been one of the few pictorial forms of political communication in the 1860s and 1870s. Yet by the 1890s they were competing with a whole range of pictorial material Even polling cards and other electioneering ephemera were adorned with illustrations. As newspaper and centralized party-political bureaucracies assumed more control over the production and dissemination of election cartoons from the 1880s, they lost some of their potency – much of which had lain in their partisan ambiguity, local spontaneity and festivity. rise of election cartoons was a response to mass enfranchisement, the view that they were indicative of a ‘dumbing down’ approach to politics cannot be sustained. Cartoons could be quite sophisticated and convey complex messages, or at the very least function as an aid to the furtherance of political knowledge, and, as we have seen, election cartoons and the press enjoyed something of a symbiotic relationship proliferation of election cartoons after 1867 was part cause and part consequence of the politicization of the people . Contrary to Vernon’s claims, printed forms of communication, especially those that contain both image and word, do not necessarily impose fixed verbatim meanings.129 While the present article supports Vernon’s argument that there was a shift from the local to the national as party bureaucracies sought to control the political message, the initial rise of election cartoons in the 1860s cannot be interpreted as part of the transition to centralized party control of print, a conclusion that Vernon implies by lumping election cartoons in with the rise of other forms of printed political communication from the 1830s. As far as election cartoons are concerned, that transition dates from the 1880s

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