ABSTRACT
The attempt of a whole generation of London Radical leaders to secure a representative Municipal Council with wide powers for the entire capital produced, in 1888, the very limited concession of the London County Council. The London School Board also retained its entire powers, and so the London County Council seemed, to be offered very little more than the duties of deposed Metropolitan Board of Works. The result had always been a “reaction”, persuading new classes to look to Conservatism for salvation, and “reaction” might become more pronounced if the London County Council should assume more extremist “progressive” tone than had customarily reigned at the London School Board. There was much to justify this Conservative confidence in some of the difficulties which the apostles of “progress” on the London County Council speedily encountered. The London Government Act, which the Conservatives took to the Statute Book in 1899, was certainly much less objectionable than the one Progressive had feared in 1898.
