The electoral reforms of 1883–5 transformed the British political system. Politicians were confronted with the challenge of harnessing the support of a mass electorate both in boroughs and, after the extension of the franchise in 1884, in counties. The electoral map was completely redrawn, with redistribution into mainly single-member constituencies in 1885. The framework within which election campaigns were conducted was fundamentally remodelled by the more stringent corrupt practices legislation of 1883. The decades after 1880 also witnessed a major upheaval in local government, with county councils established in 1888 and parish and district councils in 1894. Central to politicians’ response to this new electoral landscape, in what has been described as ‘an age of transition’, was a dramatic increase in the activities of party organisation at national, regional and local level.

This book provides the first major study of a crucial component of this organisational expansion: the constituency agents of the Liberal and Conservative parties. In 1880 the typical agent was a solicitor, who undertook registration and electioneering work on a part-time basis in conjunction with his legal practice. Between 1880 and 1910 a significant shift took place, with solicitor agents being replaced by full-time professional agents. Although the electoral politics of this period have been the subject of numerous studies, historians have paid relatively little attention to the agents, despite the fact that their endeavours – in registering voters, managing the election campaign and superintending the social and educational activities of local party associations – were essential to the functioning of the late Victorian and Edwardian polity. Indeed the chairman of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations (NUCCA) lauded the agents in 1894 as ‘the foundation of our present electoral system’

The chief Liberal agent, Sir Robert Hudson, provided telling insights into the agents’ critical, but often overlooked, role in an after-dinner speech to the Newcastle upon Tyne Liberal Club in November 1909. Attending ‘as a representative of Liberal organisation and of Liberal Agents’, he observed that: