Drink becomes a Party Political Issue, 1870–95

Abstract

After 1870, the democratic reform of local government held centre stage.¹ Radicals favoured the creation of democratic local bodies. Joseph Chamberlain, for example, maintained that great social questions would best be settled by participation of the people in the great urban centres. Similarly, John Morley considered that local bodies might be safely entrusted with powers that would be dangerous in the hands of the central government: ‘Municipal and local bodies know the conditions with which they have to deal. They understand local necessities, and they are better able to try local experiments without possible mischievous results.’² Even moderate Liberal leaders had come around to favouring sensible, democratic decentralisation. Thus, in 1882, Gladstone impressed on Dodson, the President of the Local Government Board, the necessity of passing not only ‘a great Local Government Bill, but a great decentralisation Bill’.³ A decade later his final ministry aimed to establish ‘local parliaments’ in every village by virtue of its Parish Council Act. Nor were the majority of Conservatives necessarily averse to the idea of local devolution. Many disliked the growth of the central bureaucracy and wished to strengthen local administration in order to safeguard the position of traditional institutions and values.⁴