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Liberalism and Local Government in Early Victorian London, by Benjamin Weinstein; pp. xi + 204. Woodbridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2011, £50.00, $90.00.
This study of post-1832 Reform Act political culture fills a void in the historiography of electoral politics in London, the development of Victorian liberal and radical ideological identification, and the nascent Liberal Party. By examining the relationship between Russellite Whigs and vestry-based radicals in London, Benjamin Weinstein demonstrates that the political creed of Whiggery-that of centralized government, with policies grounded in professional expertise, not populism-was an important factor in defining the character and political culture of metropolitan radicalism. This book traces the reorientation of early Victorian liberalism and its political culture away from "older narratives of 'constitutional purification' and 're-balance within London,'" toward "the cause of local self-government" (4). Weinstein argues that an anti-aristocratic tone that characterized London radicalism, specifically voiced by the vestry ratepayers in the early nineteenth-century capital, played a significant role in the formation of liberal ideology. Competing with Whiggery for ideological domination among nineteenth-century reformers, these London radicals ran both propaganda and parliamentary campaigns based on local control and self-representation, against Whig political candidates and Whig legislation. Resenting the great Whig landlords, ratepayers in metropolitan London became increasingly militant in their rejection of administrative centralization and laws which imposed its authority over local tax rates, poor relief, and public health reforms from the 1830s through the 1850s. By rejecting party placemen, new radical-and liberal-identities were constructed and the new so-called popular liberalism of London in the 1840s marked the dominant political culture of the Victorian age.