ABSTRACT
The New Liberalism that was to typify the most Radical and controversial Liberal government of all – that of 1906–10 – was fostered not in the Edwardian period, but in the two decades before when Radical, Progressive and collectivist influences gradually took control of the party caucuses, municipalities and expanding suburbia. The Progressive municipal programmes that developed in the mid-1890s were in part a by-product of these new demands. The politics of Westminster are often the focus for research, with local and regional politics largely neglected. The limitations of this Westminster-dominated approach have unwittingly been highlighted by recent work on Victorian Liberalism and the Home Rule crisis. The Liberal Party was dependent on industrial towns and cities for its national electoral position. In Leicester the crisis broke at a time when the local Liberal Association was preoccupied with the issue of compulsory vaccination. Radical progress in local Liberal politics was no doubt assisted by rapid urban economic change.
