Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Industrialisation and war, 1776–1815
- Part II Assimilating the industrial revolution, 1815–51
- Part III The Victorian apogee, 1851–74
- Part IV Industrial maturity and the ending of pre-eminence, 1874–1914
- 9 The continued freedom of the market mechanism; the state-induced changes in its operating conditions
- 10 Land and rule in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
- 11 The emergence of a public sector, chiefly at the local government level
- 12 The assertion of the power of labour in industry and politics
- 13 Welfare and the social democratic urge
- Part V Total war and troubled peace, 1914–39
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Land and rule in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Industrialisation and war, 1776–1815
- Part II Assimilating the industrial revolution, 1815–51
- Part III The Victorian apogee, 1851–74
- Part IV Industrial maturity and the ending of pre-eminence, 1874–1914
- 9 The continued freedom of the market mechanism; the state-induced changes in its operating conditions
- 10 Land and rule in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
- 11 The emergence of a public sector, chiefly at the local government level
- 12 The assertion of the power of labour in industry and politics
- 13 Welfare and the social democratic urge
- Part V Total war and troubled peace, 1914–39
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The divisive issues: the land, class interests and nationalism
The question of national identity scarcely arose in England; the Englishman, secure in his own country's dominance, tended to see the nationalism of others in the British Isles as a manifestation of irrationality, likely to bring barriers and conflict. In Wales nationalism began to revive in the 1860s; in Scotland it accelerated in the 1880s. In Ireland it was to become the most difficult of all issues, confounding the entire British system of politics.
The land question in England
There had for generations been a tradition in England of radical attack on the landed interest, that embodiment of the principle of private property; indeed it went back to the Levellers of the seventeenth century if not earlier. By the later 1870s the question of ‘landed monopoly’ was moving forward again on the political scene. There was a demand for ‘free trade in land’, namely that the legal constraints on the land market should be removed. By a range of devices the landed families had secured and indeed strengthened their position. The ‘New Domesday Book’ of 1876 suggested that some 4,200 men owned half the land of England. The reformers believed that a change at this level would bring about a better political and social structure. England was virtually without peasant proprietors. There were enough landed estates badly run to justify the charge of inefficiency and idleness.
- Type
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- Information
- British and Public Policy 1776–1939An Economic, Social and Political Perspective, pp. 185 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983