Agricultural History Review, Volume 51 Part 2 (2003), p. 236

Studies of political change after the Third Reform Act have tended to focus on urban areas. Despite the extension of the franchise to agricultural labourers, there has been a lack of detailed work on the politics of the English countryside. Patricia Lynch’s revision of her doctoral thesis (‘Popular Liberalism in the English counties, 1885–1906’) goes some way towards filling this historiographical gap.

The book focuses on three county constituencies: North Essex, South Oxfordshire and the Holmfirth division of Yorkshire. Using these case studies, Lynch charts the changing character of Liberal politics in rural England between 1885 and 1910. An opening chapter on the 1885 election shows how pressure from newly enfranchised voters radicalized Liberal rural politics. Candidates often found themselves compelled to make appeals conforming to pre-existing traditions of popular radicalism (e.g. Chartism in Holmfirth, agricultural trade unionism in North Essex). It was where these traditions were strong, Lynch concludes, that the Liberals tended to do best at the polls; where they were weak (as in South Oxfordshire), they did less well.

Liberal success in rural and semi-rural constituencies in 1885 was not repeated in the four subsequent general elections. Lynch finds two major reasons for this. One was the ‘abandonment, on a national level, of the language of rural reform that helped them win victory in 1885’ (p.118). The other was a tension between Liberal political culture and the rural ‘culture of community’. This helps explain, Lynch suggests, why Liberal party organization was often weak, especially in predominantly agrarian constituencies like North Essex. According to Lynch, the political culture of Liberal activism conflicted with the prevailing ideal of a harmonious, organic rural community, while that of the Conservatives did not. With their emphasis on partisanship and debate, Liberal clubs and associations were seen as divisive in rural villages: hence they often failed to take root. The Primrose League, by contrast, proved far more successful, as its inclusive yet hierarchical ethos and stress on local sociability conformed to the rural community ideal.

Furthermore, in a chapter on local government, Lynch suggests that this community ideal explains why partisan, ideological, campaigns were rarely seen in parish, district and county council elections. It also informed a strong desire for cross-class representation on councils, so acting to stymie working-class radical ambitions to gain a controlling influence over local politics.

In her final two chapters, Lynch argues that the constraints limiting Liberal success in the countryside were lifted. By the 1906 election, the Liberals had returned to the radicalism of 1885. But they combined this revival of radical agrarianism with an emphasis on community. A reformist, anti-aristocratic agenda fused with a defence of the national community against the sectional claims of Unionists (especially tariff reformers). This, Lynch says, was a winning combination, being a key factor behind Liberal electoral success before 1914.

Scholars will find much of use in Lynch’s book. It provides valuable insight into the texture of Liberal county politics, with the attention paid to political culture and language being especially welcome. In addition, the chapter on local government provides a bridgehead for future research into a neglected subject. One quibble would be the choice of Holmfirth as a case study: it is easy to see how a constituency where 92 per cent of people lived in towns of over 1,000 inhabitants is a fit subject for a PhD thesis on English county politics, but its appropriateness in a monograph on the politics of ‘rural England’ is a moot point.

The book’s arguments are also questionable. Quite possibly, Lynch exaggerates the extent to which the post- 1886 Liberal party withdrew its support for agrarian radicalism. Land reform figured prominently in the 1891 ‘Newcastle Programme’ and in the 1892 election. And even at the next two general elections, agrarian radicalism occupied a significant place on the national platform. In 1895 and 1900 land reform appeared in over forty per cent (1895) and over sixty per cent (1900) of the addresses of Liberal candidates standing for English borough constituencies. By comparison, at the 1906 election, two thirds of candidates for English seats – both counties and boroughs – made reference to land reform in their addresses. This does not reflect any very dramatic rediscovery of agrarian radicalism.

What, then, of the argument that Liberals were constrained by a rural ‘culture of community’ before 1900? This is certainly suggestive, but it is not conclusively proven. Lynch might have provided more documentary evidence of the purchase of the village community ideal, to which she attaches such interpretative weight. Moreover, if this harmonious, hierarchical ideal was so pervasive, why didn’t it restrain the vigorously, even violently anti-aristocratic appeal that paid such dividends in 1885? And what happened to this ideal after 1900? We are told that Edwardian Liberals mixed traditional radicalism with the language of community, to great electoral effect. But the Edwardian Liberal language of national community was not the same as the ‘resolutely apolitical ideal of the harmonious village community’ (p.220) of Lynch’s account. This conservative ideal certainly existed (particularly in the fantasies of agrarian Tories), but so did very different alternatives. Lynch pays insufficient attention to the democratic Liberal vision of a village community of self-sufficient, independent cultivators. This vision, which drew upon the Anglo-Saxon and pre-enclosure past for inspiration, informed Liberal local government reform proposals, and also those for land reform (smallholdings legislation especially). It was a vision wholly consonant with long-running traditions of agrarian radicalism, but also – in its unimpeachable 238 the agricultural Englishness – with the national, patriotic turn taken by Liberal reformist discourse after 1900.