The expansion of party organisation during the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a significant change in the figure of the party agent: ‘the agents, who only devoted a portion of their spare time to political work, gradually gave place to men who made political organisation, registration work and electioneering, a profession’. This chapter analyses how the reform of the electoral system stimulated the development of party organisation after 1880, focusing in particular on why the employment of full-time professional agents rather than part-time solicitor agents became increasingly desirable.

Political organisation in the constituencies was not a new phenomenon, as Frank O'Gorman's work on the Hanoverian electorate indicates. However, the establishment of permanent local party associations with a broad membership base was rare prior to the Second Reform Act. The extension of the borough franchise in 1867 encouraged party organisation in urban areas, with the formation of party associations and political clubs. These were involved with registration work, as well as providing political education, social activities and auxiliary bodies such as benefit societies. In the counties, party organisation was rather more limited before 1885. The National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations (NUCCA), established in 1867 with the aim of encouraging local organisation, got off to a slow start, but by 1877 there were reportedly 791 Conservative associations in existence. Electoral defeat in 1880 spurred the Conservative leadership to take a greater interest in local organisation. The National Liberal Federation (NLF) was formed in 1877 to promote the establishment of representative constituency associations along the lines of the Birmingham Liberal Association. Although William Gladstone's speech to the inaugural conference conferred a degree of official party approval on the NLF from the start, by 1880 political associations on the Birmingham model were found in only sixty-seven boroughs and ten county constituencies.

So far as the appointment of agents in the constituencies was concerned, it was solicitors who formed ‘the most numerous class of political organisers’ before 1885, undertaking registration work and managing elections. While lists of voters were compiled before 1832, it was the First Reform Act which inaugurated the electoral register.