ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the development and meanings of civic ritual in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester between municipal reform in 1835 and the First World War. Serving as the industrial hubs of more extended 'manufacturing districts', it became increasingly difficult to define their boundaries, to say precisely what 'Birmingham' or 'Manchester' was. The chapter examines civic ritual in these novel and amorphous urban centres. It analyses the specific form and composition of civic and other parades, emphasising the connections between visibility, authority and identity within a larger politics of public performance. The chapter examines the evidence for the decline of civic ritual before the First World War, pointing to changes in the visual representation of authority as well as to wider shifts in the social and political landscape. Liberalism provided the political creed which infused much of civic ritual, transcribing it into the familiar language of municipal pride and progress.
