Introduction

Summary

The scholarly writing devoted to Victorian politics in the last twenty-five years has had one tendency in particular: to diminish our sense that ideological divisions underpinned political conflict at Westminster. This tendency has been especially noticeable in discussing parliamentary reform on the one hand, and state intervention in social questions on the other. It is now widely recognised that, whatever groupings may have been thrown up at particular times, parties did not consistently possess agreed and opposing attitudes to such matters, let alone conflicting policies about them. It has thus come to be seen as anachronistic to organise accounts of party politics between 1830 and 1890 around concepts of ‘interventionism’ or ‘laissez-faire’, ‘collectivism’ or ‘individualism’. Much state intervention in these years was uncontroversial and inspired by ad hoc responses to problems. The wisdom of other measures was disputed, but not, usually, because of a doctrinaire opposition to the propriety of government interference in its citizens' affairs. ‘Interventionist’ legislation was of many kinds: there were Factory and Licensing Acts; there were measures extending the state's role in the provision of education, abolishing the purchase system in the army, and redirecting the endowments of religious, educational or other corporate bodies. It was frequently the case that men who advocated one of these measures opposed others.