ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that a distinctive ‘business ideology’ played at least as important a part in determining the scope and nature of local decisions about housing, health and urban infrastructure as did political radicalism or religious zeal. In gaining and sustaining such influence over local public life, Birmingham businessmen can be said to have played a significant role in the shaping of urban policy. It is not being claimed that only economic considerations counted, however; rather that they have until now been relatively neglected and that this has resulted in an unbalanced and partial view of urban policy-making. The legacy of the Liberal businessmen who dominated the council in the later Victorian era was the result of an alliance between public regulation and private enterprise, but it operated largely in the interests of the business classes: the entrepreneurs, merchants, retailers, who made their gains as Birmingham began to become ‘the metropolis of the Midlands’.
