Entrepreneurial Politics in Mid-Victorian Britain [Hardcover]

Historians have long debated the issue of why Britain did not experience a middle-class revolution. In the mid-Victorian years, in the aftermath of the Great Reform Act and the repeal of the Corn Laws, it seemed that a decisive shift of power from the aristocracy to the middle class might take place. In this perceptive and original book, G. R. Searle shows how many MPs from business backgrounds, the so-called entrepreneurial Radicals, came to Westminster determined to impose their own values and priorities on national life. Some wanted to return public manufacturing establishments to private ownership; others hoped to create an educational market. Nearly all of them worried about how best to safeguard the truths of political economy should the franchise be extended to the propertyless masses. Their partial successes and many failures helped determine the political culture of modern Britain.

A well-controlled, deeply informed study characterized by balanced and judicious argument. It is a model of its kind and will be widely consulted as a sound source on an important subject. --American Historical Review

An original and significant contribution to understanding British politics betwen the repeal of the Corn Laws and the passage of the second Reform Bill....Searle is sophisticated, always taking the broad view, and significantly enhances knowledge of the mid-Victorian era. --CHOICE

This fine book...sheds much valuable light on the complex connections between businessmen and politics in modern Britain. --The Observer

Searle's delineation of the tensions that divided Victorian industrialists from each other and from those above them makes an important contribution to the historiography of class relations in the Victorian age. --Journal of Modern History