ABSTRACT
Many threads can be discerned running through the lively politics of the United Kingdom and Ireland between the mid-nineteenth century and the Second World War. There was the endeavour to come to terms with the economic and social transformations consequent upon industrialization and urbanization; and the related question of the balance of political influence between social groups and classes, reflected in the nineteenth century in debates over the reform of the Parliamentary franchise, and in the twentieth century in the growing political influence of the labour movement. A further interconnected problem was the role of the state, as the characteristic Victorian preference for limited activity, minimal intervention and fiscal restraint gradually gave way to more expansionist visions of welfare provision, closer regulation and higher taxation. Such domestic issues, moreover, were discussed against the backdrop of sometimes intense engagement with the international scene, the responsibilities of Britain as an imperial power and its interests as a European one.
