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V. The Politics of the Establishment of County Councils

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. P. D. Dunbabin
J. P. D. Dunbabin
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
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Extract

‘I wish there was no such thing as Local Government’, wrote Lord Salisbury,1 exasperated by the difficulties of securing a measure his whole Cabinet could accept. Gladstone's second administration had already encountered difficulties in considering the question, and had not proceeded to legislation. The subject thus passed to the Conservatives. And, though Local Government was not considered an issue of the first importance, the fact that they were to some extent dependent upon the support, and therefore influenced by the wishes, of the Radical Unionists made for prolonged negotiations before County Councils were finally established in 1888. These negotiations and difficulties are principally interesting for the light they shed on the politics of the time. But, since they revolved around technicalities, they cannot be understood without some exposition of the possible courses open to a legislator.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 226 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

1 To Churchill, 29 November 1886 (Salisbury Papers).

2 It is not always realized that any person qualified to be a Councillor might be chosen as an Alderman, without necessarily having had any earlier connexion with the Council (Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, c. xxv). This freedom of choice was extensively used by County Councils, when first established, defeated candidates not infrequently benefiting from it.

3 Jubilee of County Councils, Huntingdonshire, 80; Jubilee of County Councils, Warwickshire, 80; Jubilee of County Councils, Gloucestershire, 73; Jubilee of County Councils, Somerset, 94.

4 These controlled most Poor Law expenditure. They were partly ex officio J.P.'s, and partly men elected by plural voting weighted by property—owners and occupiers of land assessed to the land tax at £250 enjoyed six votes in each capacity (Keith-Lucas, The English Local Government Franchise, 36).

5 Jubilee of County Councils, 60.

6 Victoria County History, Wiltshire, v, 263.

7 A. H. H. Matthews, Fifty Years of Agricultural Politics, 90. A number of other bills were also successfully opposed. The organ of this pressure, the Central Chamber of Agriculture, contended that real property was rated four times as heavily as personal, and hoped for an equalization of burdens. While predominantly, it was not entirely Conservative: its President of 1883 was the Liberal Thomas Duckham (of the Farmers’ Alliance), and it proved the breadth of its support by carrying measures hostile to the Government in 1872 and 1884; nor did it restrict its opposition to Liberal legislation. It was quite prepared for some reform of Local Government.

9 26 February 1878 (Chamberlain Papers).

10 9 March 1878.

11 To Dilke, 9 September 1881.

12 Dodson to Gladstone, 4 November 1880. Add. MSS. 44252.

13 Add. MSS. 44642, fo. 222.

14 With the cumulative vote each elector possessed votes to the number of vacancies to be filled and might distribute them as he pleased, even giving them all to one candidate. It was a tactless suggestion on Dodson's part, since Chamberlain had suffered at School Board elections from the exaggerated representation this device secured to minorities.

15 Dodson' Memorandum, November 1881. Add. MSS. 44252.

16 Ibid., marginal notes.

17 Add. MSS. 44643, 27 January 1882. (Gladstone' collection of Cabinet Minutes.)

18 Add. MSS. 46643, fo. 20.

19 To Gladstone, 25 February 1882.Also Add. MSS. 46643 (25 February), and a letter of Gladstone' to Queen Victoria of the same day. None of these passages explicitly affirms the acceptance of this proposal; the first and third merely mention the consideration of two unspecified proposals of Dodson', while the second records the acceptance of one but leaves blank the fate of the other. But I think it unlikely that this proposal, which we know to have been made to Gladstone and favoured by him, was not among the two; and, in the context, I think ‘considered’ has the force of ‘approved’ thus ‘The scheme of the Bill was considered and approved by the Committee of the Cabinet... and considered as to all its main features in February, and again, as to two points which I raised, at a recent Cabinet...’ (13 March).

20 To Gladstone, 7 November 1881.

21 To Gladstone, 23 November 1881.

22 Another part of this letter is printed in Keith-Lucas' English Local Government Franchise, 108. However, his narrative, like that of the Jubilee of County Councils, is perhaps misleading by reason of its brevity. A third account, that of Ensor in Politica, 1, 423, it will be convenient to discuss later.

23 The two topics of Local Government and devolution seem to have been separated: on 7 February 1882 the Cabinet discussed the drafting of resolutions, and on 29 July the establishment of a committee to frame a plan, for devolution.

24 Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 268, col. 1301, etc.

25 To Gladstone, 6 December 1882.

26 Fitzmaurice, complimenting Dilke on his accession to the Local Government Board in a Cabinet reshuffle, trusted that they would be spared ‘the horrors of indirect elections which in the rural districts would mean the election with closed doors of the two biggest jobbers at every Board of Guardians’ (26 December; Add. MSS. 43882).

27 Add. MSS. 44235 (5 January 1883).

28 This would have resolved a dispute between himself and Fitzmaurice as to the suitability of Poor Law Unions as polling districts.

29 4 January 1883 (Chamberlain Papers).

30 18 January 1883 (Add. MSS. 44125, fo. 181).

31 9 January 1883 (Add. MSS. 43891, fo. 53).

32 Dilke' Memoir, printed in his biography by Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1, 517–18. This Memoir is the source of subsequent information where no reference is given.

33 Add. MSS. 43891, fo. 253.

34 Add. MSS. 43890 (3 February 1883)..

35 ‘London Correspondent’ in the Leeds Mercury, 3 February.

36 3 February.

37 Agatha, Ramm, Political Correspondence of Mr Gladstone and Lord Granville, 1876–1886, 11, 19.Google Scholar

38 Add. MSS. 44644, fo. 25.

39 Dilke to Chamberlain, 30 March 1883.

40 Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1, 525. Dilke had considered resigning in the summer, but Chamberlain dissuaded him.

41 The Times, 18 October 1883, p. 6. The accusation that J.P.' abused their position was common, and the system whereby they rated themselves was clearly liable to abuse. But the replacement of Quarter Sessions by the County Council merely transferred this power, and its temptations, to a different circle of people.

42 Add. MSS. 44483, fo. 266 (23 October).

43 Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1, 527. It had established District Councils, to which the control of the Poor Law was assigned. And it had made the owners liable to pay half rates (Add. MSS. 43923, fo. 49, etc.).

44 Add. MSS. 44644.

45 Bernard, Holland, Life of Spencer Compton, Eighth Duke of Devonshire, 1, 398–9.Google Scholar

46 Ibid. 402–4.

47 For instance the minimum population for county boroughs was to be 100,000 not 20,000. And Ely, Peterborough, and Ripon were to form counties (Add. MSS. 43923—26 January 1884).

48 The adherents of the Central Chamber of Agriculture.

49 To Gladstone, 11 January 1884 (Add. MSS. 44149).

50 To Gladstone, 3 April 1884.

51 At Halifax (The Times, 14 October 1885, p. 7).

52 They were not generally noticed. George Edwards, for instance, then an obscure Liberal supporter in Norfolk, understood the policy to involve ‘ransoming the land back to the people’ (From Crow Scaring to Westminster, p. 53).

53 The vital importance of compulsory powers is illustrated by the fate in Herefordshire of the 1892 Small Holdings Act. This was not welcome, but the County Council had, by law, to consider demands. Thirteen electors of one parish made a requisition but none could suggest any piece of land that could be adapted without unreasonable expense. Next year the Council proposed to purchase thirty acres in the parish, but the owners would not sell on the terms proposed, ‘the subject of small holdings was dropped and the Sub-Committee faded away’ (Jubilee of County Councils, Herefordshire, p. 73).

54 Schnadhorst had calculated that ‘a Liberal Govt. in 1886 without us would be an absolute impossibility’ (Chamberlain to Dilke, 7 February 1885). Chamberlain still thought on 23 December that, if Gladstone were discredited by the adoption of Home Rule, and if the Conservatives forced a dissolution, it ‘would probably unite the Liberals under Harrington’ (to Labouchere). He himself had told Labouchere that’ We must keep the Tories in for some time’ and that Churchill' best policy was ‘to leave us to deal with the Whigs and not compel us to unite the party against the Tories’ (4 December). That is, while in opposition, he proposed to fight for a control of the party that he did not yet possess. Then he wished, after a couple of years, to ‘go for the church’ (to Dilke, 29 November 1885), presumably as a drive to come to power.

55 Chamberlain to Harcourt, 9 October 1885. It was embodied in the Local Government bill, drafted for him by Dilke (Gwynn and Tuckwell, 1, 518), but never brought before Gladstone' 1886 Cabinet (A Political Memoir, p. 193).

56 In the light of communication with Granville and Gladstone he gathered that’ there is no intention to quarrel with us this time and a modus vivendi is to be discovered’ (Chamberlain to Morley, 5 November 1885).

57 Gladstone to Harrington, 10 November (printed in Holland, 11, 92).

58 Chamberlain to Morley, 15 December.

59 Labouchere to Chamberlain, 18 October.

60 Printed in (Sir) Winston Churchill' Life of Lord Randolph Churchill (1907 edition), p. 431. The date comes from an endorsement.

61 Or’moderate Liberals’.

62 Also printed by Churchill.

63 9 December, ibid.

64 There are frequent vague references in Lewis Harcourt' Journals to disputes in the Cabinet over Local Government, and their existence must therefore have been common knowledge. Churchill was said to be maintaining his former position, and insisting that the Conservatives should show themselves as competent to legislate as the Liberals. And, as late as 18 January, Lewis Harcourt could report Stanhope, the President of the Board of Trade, as saying ‘they had had another Cabinet today on Local Govt. at which they did not come to any settlement’. But that Hicks Beach' contention secured general acceptance seems certain; for Salisbury categorically asserted this to Churchill in a letter of 7 November 1886, and no denial was forthcoming.

65 Beach, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had hoped to provide extensive relief for real property, either by replacing the county rate by additions to the income tax, or by supplementing it with a ‘profits rate’. But, after much discussion, the whole question was referred to a committee, which decided both schemes to be impracticable: the former would dissociate many electors from all financial contribution to the new bodies and the latter was ruled out, partly for technical reasons, and partly because it would amount to a heavy ‘differential income tax’. Moreover, any assignment of the income tax to local taxation would affect its position as ‘a special tax to which in times of emergency all citizens are called upon to contribute to in proportion to...income’. The committee recommended the cession of the proceeds of certain licences to the local authorities, a course said to have been favoured by many members of the Liberal Government as an expedient for ending the system of grants in aid; and finally, on 1 March 1886, the division of rates between owner and occupier was suggested together with the compulsory classification, presumably for differential rating, of the occupiers’ share. The committee' terms of reference (21 December) suggest that County Councils were to be made responsible for the raising and expending of ‘a large proportion of the cost of the maintenance of the indoor poor’ (St Aldwyn Papers, PCC/59). But at a later date Iddesleigh had still not seen the ‘general local government scheme’ (PCC/77).

66 Keith-Lucas, English Local Government Franchise, 109—11.

67 Ensor, in Politico, 1, 425 ff. This article, an attempt to smear English Local Government by recounting its origins, provides no evidence for its attribution to the Liberals of such a genesis of the Conservation bill, it will convenient to describe briefly the political scene.

68 ‘Randolph can always put before us the dilemma of accepting his views or endangering the Union with Ireland’ (Salisbury to Henry Manners, 28 November 1886).

69 To Salisbury, 21 December 1886.

70 To Salisbury, 25 December 1886.

71 Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Biographical Studies of the Life and Political Character of Robert Third Marquis of Salisbury, 91–2 (privately printed—Christ Church Library, Oxford).

72 1888, 11, 429 ff.

73 The 1888 (English and Welsh) Local Government Act.

74 To Balfour, 6 February 1889.

75 Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury, IV, 401–2. She continues, ‘He attributed the loss of’ the 1892 ‘election as a whole largely to that cause’, and mentions as electorally damaging in this way the Local Government and the Free Education Acts. But that these were so damaging seems unlikely. It is usually accepted that a General Election at any time between 1887 and the fall of Parnell would have returned the Liberals by a triumphant majority. And it seems that up to and including the year 1892 the most important electoral factor was the fluctuation in the strength of the Liberals. For the total of votes cast in Great Britain was:

1885 1886 1892 1895

2,186,918 L. 1,236,471 L. 2,105,589 L. 2,012,583 L.

1,823,834 c. 1,316,893 U. 2,139,502 U. 2,267,555 U.

(The figures are from the Annual Registers of 1886 and 1895. Those for 1895 are swollen by the inclusion of the most recent polling figures for the numerous uncontested seats.) And the same picture emerges from the number of unopposed returns—those English county constituencies that were uncontested in 1895 returned unopposed:

1885 1886 1892 1895

1 C. 1 L. 51 U. 3 L. 9 U. 1 L. 71 U. 6 L.

Yet one might expect Conservative disaffection engendered by progressive legislation to show itself in the counties if anywhere.

It is, then, psychologically interesting that Lord Salisbury should, while reiterating his approval of these measures, yet turn to them to explain his electoral defeat. But the explanation itself is not convincing.

76 Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Biographical Studies, 90 ff.

77 23 November 1886 (printed in the Life of Lord Salisbury,111, 327).

78 Salisbury to Churchill, 7 November. The abandoned scheme was that ‘if owners are to have half the taxation they should have half the representation too.’

79 Sir Charles Petrie, Walter Long and his times, p. 45.

80 To the Queen, 26 November.

81 Churchill' acceptance may have been determined by Salisbury' letter to him of 28 November threatening to restore precedence to the Irish bill were the Cabinet to reject his scheme.

82 I adopt here the reading of the telegram, not of the covering letter from which the rest of the quotation is taken, since it is closer to Salisbury' letter of the 28th to Churchill, is more grammatical, and makes better sense.

83 Salisbury to Beach, 29 November.

87 Smith' position on Local Government appears somewhat ambiguous. For the natural interpretation of his letter of 24 December to Akers Douglas (printed in Lord Chilston' Chief Whip, 100) is that he had inclined towards Churchill in wishing for ‘a more Liberal Local Government Bill’.(The letter is indeed odd, for it opines that an alliance with Harrington would induce Salisbury to swallow this!) Yet we have Salisbury' word for it that Smith accepted the modus vivendi (as did Churchill), and that earlier Churchill had been alone in the Cabinet in wishing immediately to replace the Guardians by democratically elected District Councils. And, in response to Cranbrook' fears of a breakdown over Local Government, Salisbury compared the Government to ‘an orchestra in which the first fiddle plays one tune and everybody else, including myself, wishes to play another’ (25 November, printed in James' Churchill, 277). Moreover, Smith only once mentioned the question in his letters to

61 Salisbury to Churchill, 7 November 1886.

62 My italics.

87 29 November.

88 25 July.

89 Garvin' Chamberlain, II, 272.

90 Churchill to Salisbury, 15 December.

91 Gwynn and Tuckwell, II, 265. Chamberlain did however express himself as satisfied with the Government' foreign and Irish policies, even though they differed from those Churchill had promised him.

92 Smith mentions the dinner in his letter to Akers Douglas of 24 December. For Churchill' intimation of the imminence of a Cabinet crisis, see his letter to Chamberlain of the same date in Garvin, II, 275.

93 Rothschild to Chamberlain, 19 December.

94 Chamberlain' endorsement of Rothschild' letter.

95 To Chamberlain, 22 December.

96 Brett was on close terms with Churchill (see James' Churchill, 300–1). Brett' letter to Chamberlain mentions the Budget proposals for local taxation, saying that ‘Ld. Salisbury is not aware that any one outside the Cabinet knows’ of them. And Churchill had earlier told Chamberlain that ‘Only one other person outside the Government has any inkling of them’, and had requested him to preserve absolute secrecy (19 December).

97 Rothschild to Chamberlain, 19 December. It may be remarked that for a long time rates did not approach this level—in Oxfordshire not until after the First World War, having remained at approximately 8d. in the £ (inclusive of police rate) until the County Council' responsibilities were greatly enlarged by the transfer to it of the management of elementary education. In 1907–8 (i.e. after this change) the Buckinghamshire rate of is. 6½d. was approximately the median of England and Wales. It had been:

1889–90 1890–3 1903–4

4½d. + 3d. 10–11d.

In 1889–90 the Gloucestershire rate (inclusive of police) had been 10d., and those of Cumberland, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, and Cornwall between 7d. and 4d. (The figures are from the Jubilee of County Councils for the counties concerned, other than Oxfordshire, where I draw on a typescript history written and very kindly made available to me by Mr H. M. Walton, Clerk to the Council.)

98 Both by direct grants and by the transfer of some taxes, including liquor licences (Winston Churchill, op. cit. 580, 594–5). Salisbury was not convinced that the Budget would in fact bring any financial relief to the country gentlemen (ibid. 614–15). In the event some £3 m. were transferred to local authorities at the time of the 1888 Act.

99 24 December (printed by James, p. 300). Unfortunately, Brett does not seem to have sent the letter describing the proposed settlement.

100 Gwynn and Tuckwell, 11, 265; Garvin, 11, 272.

101 James, op. cit. 272–4.

102 See Labouchere' letters of 3 December to Herbert Gladstone (Add. MSS. 46015) and Chamberlain (Thorold' Life of Labouchere, 245).

103 James, op. cit. 272–4.

104 See his letter of 19 December to Chamberlain in Garvin, 11, 275.

105 P. 280. (This passage was written in 1892—ibid. p. xvii).

106 Printed by James, p. 292.

107 James, p. 300.

108 To Sir James Stephen in answer to an attempt to mediate, 30 December, printed by James, 303–4.

109 A Political Memoir, p. 279.

110 This suggests that his new position (willingness to postpone the Poor Law) had been arrived at rather by discussions in London at the beginning of the month than as a result of any intervention of Chamberlain'. None of his letters mention the change.

111 James, 304–5.

112 The Attorney-General declared that one function of the office was to make possible the participation in the Council of men of more experience and ability than popularity (Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 324, 1165, etc.). The majority of the aldermen chosen in 1889 were in fact magistrates.

113 11 November 1887.

114 According to a Mr Stuart-Wortley, M.P., in the early spring of 1887 ‘a meeting of the Tory party had given Lord Salisbury the fullest encouragement to proceed in the spirit which the’ Local Government ‘Bill displayed’ (The Times, 8 April 1888, p. 5). I have not found any trace of this meeting. But it must have been either less important, or less encouraging to Lord Salisbury, than Stuart-Wortley represented. For, had Salisbury already secured the sanction of his party, he would undoubtedly have mentioned the fact in his Caernarvon speech of 1888, which was designed to reassure Conservative hesitations. A letter of Ritchie' to Salisbury of 11 November 1887 suggests that the bill had recently been broadened. Neither the nature of the change nor its inspiration is clear. But it cannot have been due to any intervention of Chamberlain' since he was crossing the Atlantic from the last Saturday of October until 7 November.

115 To Salisbury, 13 January 1888.

116 Printed in Garvin, 11, 417.

117 To Chamberlain, 11 March 1888.

118 The bill' provision for District Councils antagonized the Liberals by erecting organizations too dependent on the County Council, and was therefore dropped. Except in so far as they concerned the Poor Law, District Councils had not engaged politicians’ attention. The Government promised to establish them next year, and, in debate, W. H. Smith admitted the necessity for the reform of parish vestries (Hansard, 7 June 1888, 1489): but both were in fact left to the succeeding Liberal Government.

119 To Churchill, 7 November 1886 (printed by Winston Churchill, 606–7). This letter was typical of Salisbury' whole political attitude. Years later he was to warn Milner of the Conservative party, ‘It is a Party shackled by tradition; all the cautious people, all the timid, all the unimaginative, belong to it. It stumbles slowly and painfully from precedent to precedent with its eyes fixed on the ground. Yet the Conservative Party is the Imperial Party. I must work with it—who indeed am just such an one myself—but you must work with it if you are to achieve even a part of your object’ (9 May 1907, box XLIII, Milner MSS., New College, Oxford). I owe this quotation to Mr M. G. Brock, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from whom, as from Mr P. M. Williams of Nuffield College, I have received a very great deal of help with this article.