Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The changing electoral system
- 2 The rise of the professional agent
- 3 The agents as aspiring professionals
- 4 The agents in the constituencies: registration and political education
- 5 The Agents in the Constituencies: The Social Side of Politics
- 6 Electioneering: the candidates
- 7 Electioneering: the campaign
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Electioneering: the candidates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The changing electoral system
- 2 The rise of the professional agent
- 3 The agents as aspiring professionals
- 4 The agents in the constituencies: registration and political education
- 5 The Agents in the Constituencies: The Social Side of Politics
- 6 Electioneering: the candidates
- 7 Electioneering: the campaign
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For much of the nineteenth century, the framework within which elections were conducted was essentially local. In contrast, for much of the twentieth century election campaigns had a national focus and were increasingly directed by central party organisers. The ‘changing orientation of politics from the local to the national level’ and the corresponding decline of the ‘politics of place’ have been regarded by some historians as one of the major developments taking place after 1880 as part of the transition to the modern British political system. There is, however, as Mike Savage points out, a lack of consensus on when this shift from local to national took place. While both Peter Clarke and Jon Lawrence suggest that the First World War marked the real turning point in the ‘nationalisation’ of politics, they also point to changes occurring before this. Lawrence's research on Wolverhampton emphasises the dangers of using ‘dichotomous analytical categories’ such as national/local, official/ popular and centre/periphery, preferring to study ‘the mediation of local and national, formal and informal political practices, within the context of a particular locality’. This echoes Tanner's study of the Labour party, which argues that ‘national’ forces in politics must be studied with an eye to ‘local political cultures’. More recent works by Lynch on rural Liberalism and Windscheffel on metropolitan Conservatism have been influenced by these extremely useful lines of inquiry, seeking to understand what was distinctive about the political culture of these areas, while at the same time assessing their interactions with the central parties.
The analysis of the agents’ profession in earlier chapters has shown the growing importance of the ties being forged between the central, regional and local levels of party organisation, and the ways in which it was possible for developments in political work to be transmitted throughout the country by means of the agents’ professional networks, rather than as a process of top down direction from party headquarters. In this chapter and the next, this analysis of the dynamics of the relationship between the central, regional and local dimensions of politics will be extended to consider the culmination of the agents’ work: the election contest.
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- Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England, 1880-1910 , pp. 172 - 198Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016