ABSTRACT

For Manchester's Liberal municipal leadership the achievements of their party in promoting schemes of public health and social improvement were a matter of considerable pride. A social investigator for the Manchester Statistical Society estimated that as many as 40 per cent of the city's 'wage-earning' classes were found to rely on poor relief at some point during the year. Liberals had been in a numerical majority on the council since incorporation of the city in 1839. Progressivism is traditionally associated with the success of the Progressives on London County Council in 1889, although by the early 1890s language of municipal Progressivism and its associated policies was being moulded into a new official Liberal Party approach to local government. Despite the scandals of the 1880s, the resultant hostility to senior members of the council and the overwhelming damage to the prestige of the corporation, the decade was not without some policy achievements.