Corrupt Britain: Public Ethics in Practice and Thought Since the Magna Carta (Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology) 3031369335, 9783031369339

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Corruption: Concepts and Discourses
Philosophy: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance
Discourses
Public Life and Ethics
Governance, Trust and Legitimacy
Anthropology; Urban Ethnography and Moral Economy
Types of Corruption in Public Office
Etymology
Power, Polity and Constitution
Problems from a Historical Perspective
Whigs
Empire
Armaments
Populism
Urbanism and Urbanists
Chapter 2: Corruption in Medieval England c. 1215–1485
Monarchy Church and the Baronage
Monarchy, Court and the State
Magna Carta
Corruption of the King and Court
Religion, Culture and Money
Culture
Money
Courts and Justice
Parliament
Elections
Population and the Towns
Transition: From Medieval to Early Modernity
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Corruption in Early Modernity c. 1485–1688
Processes of Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy
Secular Ideas
Commonwealth
Restoration, War, Glorious Revolution and Act of Settlement
Towns and Cities
Chapter 4: The Old Corruption c. 1688–1832
Public Office, Monopolies and Making Money
Politics and the Managed State
Parliamentary Elections
Elections Oligarchy: Walpole and Newcastle
The Towns
Reformers and Empire
The Waning of the Old Corruption
Political Economy and Statistics
Ireland
Conclusions
Chapter 5: Reform of Parliament and Elections c. 1832–1912
Elections
Honours
Towns, Cities and Local Government
Chapter 6: Reform: Success and Failure, Civil Service and Conflict of Interest
Civil Service Reform
The Whig Interpretation of History
Towns and Cities
London
Provincial Towns
Conflict of Interest
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Politics Restructured and the Crisis of the Cities c. 1912–1988
The Crisis of the Cities: Glasgow, Belfast and Liverpool
Glasgow
The Touchable
Upward Social Mobility: Parvenus
The ‘Hard-Man’; and the Parvenu
Re-branding the City
Belfast
Ann Copeland
Liverpool: Machine Politics
Post-1945: The Collectivist Consensus, 1945–1979
Corruption and the Police
Chapter 8: Empire: From Corrupt Extraction to Civilising Mission c. 1757–1936
The Origins of British Imperialism in India
The Principal Delinquent
Civilising Mission and the Chosen People
The Great Paradox: Equality Before the Law
Towns and Cities
Subjects to Citizens
Legacy
War, Empire and Arms
Chapter 9: The Way We Live Now c. 1986–2023
Cultural Change and Contemporary History
Money Culture
The Political Context: The End of the Post-1945 Collective Consensus
The Big Bang
Making Money Versus Public Ethics
Sleaze
MPs’ Expenses Scandal
Governing London
Local Government Finance
London Docklands
The London Olympics 2012
Politics, 1997–2020
The New Corruption
From Political Spin to the Assault on Truth
From Brexit to the Pandemic
Coronavirus Pandemic
Repairing the Damage?
Corruption and the Pandemic
Corrupt Britain Assessment
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY

Corrupt Britain Public Ethics in Practice and Thought Since the Magna Carta

Peter Jones

Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology Series Editors

Italo Pardo School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury, Kent, UK Giuliana B. Prato School of Anthropology and Conservation University of Kent Canterbury, Kent, UK

Half of humanity lives in towns and cities and that proportion is expected to increase in the coming decades. Society, both Western and non-­Western, is fast becoming urban and mega-urban as existing cities and a growing number of smaller towns are set on a path of demographic and spatial expansion. Given the disciplinary commitment to an empirically-based analysis, anthropology has a unique contribution to make to our understanding of our evolving urban world. It is in such a belief that we have established the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology series. In the awareness of the unique contribution that ethnography offers for a better theoretical and practical grasp of our rapidly changing and increasingly complex cities, the series will seek high-quality contributions from anthropologists and other social scientists, such as geographers, political scientists, sociologists and others, engaged in empirical research in diverse ethnographic settings. Proposed topics should set the agenda concerning new debates and chart new theoretical directions, encouraging reflection on the significance of the anthropological paradigm in urban research and its centrality to mainstream academic debates and to society more broadly. The series aims to promote critical scholarship in international anthropology. Volumes published in the series should address theoretical and methodological issues, showing the relevance of ethnographic research in understanding the socio-cultural, demographic, economic and geo-­ political changes of contemporary society.

Peter Jones

Corrupt Britain Public Ethics in Practice and Thought Since the Magna Carta

Peter Jones Centre for Urban History University of Leicester Leicester, UK

ISSN 2946-2436    ISSN 2946-2444 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology ISBN 978-3-031-36933-9    ISBN 978-3-031-36934-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Alexander Shamraev / Alamy Stock Foto This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1900): ‘We in this country have been happily free for two or three generations from any imputation of mercenary, or corrupt motives on the part of our public men which is a thing that can be said of few other countries.’1 Lord Crewe (1935): ‘Through the history of all countries down to the most modern development of civilisation these days when the terms “graft” and “boodle” were brought us from overseas we could trace a perpetual existence of the taking of secret commissions.’ David Steel: ‘Financial Corruption is common place in the public life of many countries, not just in Africa, Asia or South America but also in Europe and even the United States… In Britain it is rare …’2 In May 2016 the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was caught on a highly sensitive microphone at a reception in the Palace of Westminster, explaining to the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury that the government was due to host an international summit on the matter of corruption. With the glee of a bright sixth former, Cameron went on to explain that the United Kingdom was taking the lead role hosting the summit and that there were indeed ‘some fantastically corrupt countries’ sending representatives. The Prime Minister cited Nigeria and Afghanistan as two such states that were sending representatives. The Archbishop looked extremely uncomfortable interjecting that the new government in Afghanistan was making important reforms to tackle the problem. The Queen looked politely engaged.3 In a sense this encounter presented an ideal triangle of constitutional stability: the Monarch, the Archbishop of v

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the Established Church and the Prime Minister in a civilised exchange of views. Indeed, the constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot would have remained at rest in his grave. At the same time, it suggested that Britain still held a brief for the imperial role of the civilising mission, providing guidance, at least, for nascent states to become independent secure states free from corruption. The BBC news report allowed us to eavesdrop on an important issue: corruption in a globalised world was a serious problem and it was a good thing that the British government was taking the lead on such an important matter. Cameron’s identification of Afghanistan and Nigeria was surely correct. The non-governmental research body, Transparency International, using sophisticated ‘perception data’ had identified Afghanistan and Nigeria close to the bottom of a league table of 176 states. Such a view was not uncommon, and Cameron’s glee that Afghanistan and Nigeria would be sending representatives was buttressed, further, when John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, joined the conversation with the quip that the representatives attending the summit were, he presumed, ‘coming at their own expense’. The BBC 24-hour news service beamed its live reportage around the world.4 The President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari said he was shocked and embarrassed when he heard the conversation. He was right to be embarrassed but perhaps naïve to be shocked as British politicians had frequently expressed views which chimed with those of Bercow and Cameron. Bercow’s remark was at least ironic given that he was one of the MPs identified by the Daily Telegraph in the House of Commons’ expenses scandal of May 2009. Bercow had been required to repay £978.51. Did he not recognise the contradiction between his status as Speaker of the House, responsible for the conduct of debates and the general administration of the House of Commons and its constitutional relationship with the monarchy? More than 220 MPs had made false claims of which more than half were Labour MPs, which was explicable given that Labour held a majority of the seats. Three Labour MPs—Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine—faced criminal charges for false accounting. They claimed that they were protected by parliamentary privilege. Chaytor had flipped his mortgage six times in five years (R. Winnett & G. Rayner, 2010).5 They each received an 18-month prison sentence. Even Gordon Brown, former Chancellor and Prime Minister, was required to repay £12,888,03.

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Despite these cases, just seven years prior to the Prime Minister’s assumption that Britain still held a brief for good governance even though it was evident that corruption was alive and well in the United Kingdom. It was all the more remarkable given that within living memory the United Kingdom had experienced corruption in many theatres of government. The ‘cash for questions’ scandal broke October 1994. It involved two Conservative MPs—Neil Hamilton and Timothy Smith—who had accepted money from the owner of the Harrods department store, Mohamed Al Fayed, who claimed that the charge was £2000 per question, and Ian Greer, a professional lobbyist had bribed Hamilton and Smith. Smith immediately resigned, but Greer and Hamilton issued libel writs against The Guardian newspaper only to withdraw their libel in September 1996. The Prime Minister, John Major, decided to appoint a Royal Commission chaired by Lord Nolan. It was the most thorough going investigation into matters of conduct in public life since Lord Salmon’s Commission in 1976. Major prorogued parliament and announced that a General Election would be held in May 1997. The election was a disaster for the Conservatives, and Labour’s young leader Tony Blair excoriated the Conservatives with jibes about ‘sleaze’. It was probably the first General Election of the twentieth century where the issue of corruption was so prominent that it determined the result. However, it is clear that Britain’s political class had failed to confront the issue of corruption and it is the purpose of this book to explain why that is the case. In the twentieth century Britain experienced two world wars, lost an Empire, joined the European Economic Community (EEC) and later left the European Union. General histories of that period have covered those tumultuous events and indeed all those events have been examined by political commentators, historians and politicians to make claims for both English and British identity. The history of the formation of the United Kingdom, too, has been written as a consensual union which in turn allowed the history of Empire to be regarded as a great civilising project. This in turn has underwritten the assumption that Britain’s unique constitution—unwritten—evolved silently and in an orderly fashion. Constitutionalists such as Walter Bagehot, A.V. Dicey and Henry Sumner Maine have attested to the notions of harmony, progress and precedent. Historians, too, have largely subscribed to this thesis but have qualified it by citing famous struggles and tests—Magna Carta, the execution of

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Charles I, the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867—which have become signposts that have guided us to the present constitutional and political settlement. Implicit in this version of British history is that Britain is not a corrupt state comparable with Italy, France and even the USA. Further, a consequence of such a historical evolution has been to blind the political class of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to the problem of corruption within the polity of the state. Where might we begin? In 1882 the British government following riots and attacks on British property in Alexandria prompted the British government to occupy Egypt and of course secure the defence of the Suez Canal. The Prime Minister, Gladstone, apparently expressed a regretful observation: ‘We have done our Egyptian business and now we are an Egyptian government.’ Gladstone, the great moralist and reformer, was keen to cite the occupation as an exceptional event out of step with moderate Liberal policy. This was not entirely the case. In 1875 Gladstone had bought for himself considerable sums of Egyptian stocks but did not, apparently, regard his ownership of shares as a conflict of interest with his government’s decision to pursue a military occupation of Egypt.6 The problem of conflict of interest was a growing concern in the newspaper press and which reached a crescendo with the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899. Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, was vilified in the press because of his connections with arms manufacture in Birmingham.7 In 1933 local councillors were required by law to declare their interests on relevant matters which meant they were not allowed to speak or vote. However, parliament did not take steps to confront the issue of MPs’ interests. In the 1950s Ernest Marples, when he was Minister of Transport, was challenged in the House of Commons concerning the Hammersmith Flyover, the contract for which was granted to the Marples Ridgway company of which Marples was a director. Marples business interests in London property were extensive, but by the 1970s he was discovered to have evaded income tax where upon he fled to Monaco. In 1972 the Home Secretary Reginald Maudling was forced to resign following the revelations of John Poulson’s bankruptcy. It was not until 1974 that parliament took steps to establish a Register of interests for MPs. Even then it was not until 1995, following the First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life (Nolan Committee, 1995).

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A prime impetus behind this book is to understand and explain the inability and reluctance of politicians to strenuously confront the challenge of corruption in its midst. At the same time, my purpose is to identify and explain corruption and its causes in numerous locations within the British state including national government and within local government, especially that of towns and cities. This does not mean that I will simply amass endless examples of corruption: major and minor, national and local, imperial and parochial but also to explain the cultural contexts which throw light on attitudes towards corruption. Leicester, UK

Peter Jones

Notes 1. Parliamentary Debates. Fourth Series, lxxxii, 1335-6 May 1900. Quoted in G. Searle. 2. The Times, 10 July 1972. 3. BBC News 10 May 2016. 4. Cameron, BBC News 10 May 2016. 5. R. Winnet and G. Rayner. No Expenses Spared (London, Corgi Books), p. 506. 6. G.  Searle, Corruption in British Politics 1895-1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987) pp. 52–54 and 56–56. 7. Cameron, BBC News 10 May 2016.

Acknowledgements

The research and writing for this book have incurred many debts. I thank the University of Leicester Centre for Urban History, particularly Professor Rosemary Sweet who supported my application for the Fellowship at the Centre. Additionally, Professor Simon Gun made the original suggestion that I should investigate corruption in the planning and building of the urban environment in post-1945 era which drew me to research John Poulson and T. Dan Smith and the interactions between builders, architects and local government officials. I would like to thank Professor Krista Cowman for arrangement of a sponsored workshop on Urban Governance and its disorders in April 2018, which generated many ideas for my subsequent research. This book goes beyond, specifically, urban history; and I thank Professor Mark Knights for his contribution to the workshop and his thoughts concerning trust and entrusted power which have influenced my thinking. I would like to thank the librarians at the Public Record of Northern Ireland, Belfast, whose diligence facilitated access to valuable materials. I would also thank Diana Jones who alerted me to the corruption of Edward II and Anthony Henley’s letter 1734 to the electors of Southampton. For this book the support and patience of Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato has been immense. Additionally, the forensic examination provided by Professor Alan Lessoff has made this a far better book than it might otherwise have been. Finally, I thank Susan Brookes, my wife, for her patience and support. Any shortcomings or errors are, of course, entirely my own.

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Contents

1 Corruption: Concepts and Discourses  1 2 Corruption in Medieval England c. 1215–1485 25 3 Corruption in Early Modernity c. 1485–1688 49 4 The Old Corruption c. 1688–1832 71 5 Reform of Parliament and Elections c. 1832–1912 99 6 Reform:  Success and Failure, Civil Service and Conflict of Interest111 7 Politics  Restructured and the Crisis of the Cities c. 1912–1988129 8 Empire:  From Corrupt Extraction to Civilising Mission c. 1757–1936165 9 The Way We Live Now c. 1986–2023187 Index217 xiii

Abbreviations

BCE CE ERG EU MBW NHS ODNB PPE IPSA PRONI UKIP

Before Current Era Current Era European Research Group European Union Metropolitan Board of Works National Health Service Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Personal Protective Equipment Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority Public Record Office Northern Ireland United Kingdom Independence Party

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CHAPTER 1

Corruption: Concepts and Discourses

Essentially, corruption is about power which in any given polity is unevenly distributed, but it is also about perception. For political science corruption is a matter of the abuse of power by a public office holder whether elected, inherited or appointed (Prato, 2004).1 That sounds simple enough but it ignores the wider use of the term which can also embrace the activity of an array of actors who seek to gain an advantage by means of bribes, deception or coercion. Within any particular polity the exercise of power requires authority and trust in order to be legitimate, which may be derived from tradition, charisma and/or rational legal principles, which establish an impersonal political order (Weber, 1923).2 However, there is also a tension between legality and legitimacy. For those who hold public office their actions must be seen to be legitimate and their actions cannot be capricious or self-interested. Moreover, corruption has a moral dimension whereby a corrupt actor corrupts others for advantage whether pecuniary or for some other personal gratification (Prato, 2004). In this sense corruption is also about moral choices (Pardo).3 If the concept of corruption is extended to encompass the idea of entrusted power, then corruption might involve the chairmen and chairwomen of major public companies who abuse their position of trust by the deliberate misuse of a company’s funds at the expense of shareholders and even employees. The pursuit of profit may also encourage cost-cutting typically in the construction industry with negative consequences for public safety. There is also a complexity of language when it comes to debate and analysis. Different societies and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_1

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states also hold different views of what is corruption and what are the policies or actions that attempt to remedy what is an elusive problem so much so that it requires an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, although this is a historical work it endeavours to employ the concepts of political science, sociology, anthropology and urban ethnography. Corruption is a many-­ headed hydra that manifests as bribery, extortion, illicit exchange of favours, coercion and even the bestowing of gifts which could be acceptable in some societies but perceived as corrupt in others (see, e.g., Pardo, 2004).4 In the early years of the foundation of the USA, for example, the framers of the constitution sought to reject the assumptions of the so-­ called Old World—Britain and Europe—and specify corrupt behaviour. For example, gifts were largely acceptable in Britain and France but unacceptable in America as instanced by the reaction of congressmen to Benjamin Franklin’s acceptance of a diamond-decorated snuff box from Louis XVI of France on the occasion of Franklin’s retirement as USA’s ambassador to France. For the congressmen the gift, potentially, compromised Franklin and the government of the USA. Was the gift made corruptly with intention and was Franklin corrupted as a consequence? Was there an implication that Franklin should reciprocate and if so would the USA be drawn back into the corruptions of the Old World? (Teachout, 2014)5 The gift raises questions of morality and the potential ‘danger’ because of its corruptive character (Pardo, 1996).6 The dichotomy suggested by ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds was cast in distinctly moral terms and as such poses a significant question: was the claim simply rhetoric as a means of establishing American virtue in contrast to Old World corruption or was it a just the claim that Franklin had been corrupted by acceptance of the gift? Was it just its extravagance that made it so distasteful? Clearly corruption does not translate ‘across cultures’ (I Pardo, 2004).7 For historians, the concepts of political science are essential but not necessarily complete, particularly, because of what may become regarded as corruption changes over time. Further, the case of Franklin’s snuff box shows that corruption discourse is highly nuanced. For some it is a ‘political pathology but, increasingly, other scholars with a background in cultural theory, especially anthropology, have argued that corruption has a wider remit than politics which includes, potentially, understanding moral choice and ethics’ (Pardo, 2004).8 Additionally, the vocabulary of corruption has evolved over time and political scientists and historians are indebted to each other in the exchange of concepts and analysis (Heidenheimer, 2002; Kroeze, 2018).9

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Philosophy: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance The writings of ancient philosophers such as Plato (BCE 429–347) expressed concern about morality and that corruption elicited perversion, decay and destruction. For Aristotle (384–322 BCE), corruption was the perversion of true monarchy into tyranny. Medieval religious thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas (1225 CE–1274) have also provided grist to the modern corruption mill of scholarship (Buchan and L Hill).10 Aquinas suggested that there were essential or cardinal virtues for those who held public trust which included prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. The absence of these virtues would, by implication, result in corruption. Renaissance thinkers, notably Machiavelli (CE 1469–1527), held that the ‘inevitably of corruption [was] the one great observable fact in human affairs’ (Machiavelli).11 Further, historians who seek to write histories of corruption have to tackle the issue of what is regarded as corruption now might not have been regarded then as corruption. However, the processes of political change can often invite embryonic perceptions of what might be regarded as corruption. This is particularly so when critics of power holders argue that a hitherto practice or conduct which was regarded as acceptable or normal has become a case of corruption. Shifts in attitudes over time are crucial matters that history must attempt to explain. Before examining the discourses it is useful to consider that corruption involves behaviours of office holders as well as those who have transactions with office holders. Thus certain behaviours are regarded as corrupt. For example, the purchase of office has generally, in modern times, been regarded as corrupt although in medieval and Early Modern times, this was not the case. Similarly, the purchase of votes had been regarded as corruption until arguments about political representation prevailed. Additionally, the purchase of the service of a judge in a court of law was deemed reasonable until the early seventeenth century. Thus Francis Bacon was accused of taking bribes in 1620 but was pardoned although he was publicly shamed (see Chap. 2 Early Modernity). However, there is a danger that definitions of corruption may be too prescriptive with the consequence that possible questions are blocked off or seem inadmissible. This is particularly the case when definitions are set out in binary opposition to one another such as corrupt versus virtuous. Definitions are not stand alone but are rather context determined and become part of the political vocabulary according to circumstance and the mores of a political culture.

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Discourses This takes us to the matter of discourses. Before this can be achieved it is valuable to show how these definitions and perceptions are embedded in generalised discourses. The World Bank’s definition of corruption, for example, concentrates on the individual—an individual is corrupt if he or she uses their public role for private advantage. Such a definition is based upon a notion of individual morality. Of itself it does not explain corruption at a societal level which is cast in the discourse of political economy and which, in turn, helps to explain the widespread movement in democratic states to root out corruption and eradicate it. The World Bank, the European Union; and the United Nations all promote reform agendas to tackle corruption. The supporting paradigms suggest that corruption resides in states where there are structural adjustments to be made. Such a generalising statement has been criticised in anthropology (see, e.g., Prato, 2004, Pardo, 2004, 2018).12 Thus the states of the post-Soviet world are expected to adjust to the values of the liberal democratic West if corruption is to be subdued and replaced by open transparent public life. Within the European Union the relative poverty of Portugal, Spain, Greece and even Italy and the prevalence of corruption in those states makes them, according to the structural reform model, suitable cases for treatment. Similarly post-colonial states in Africa, Latin America and Asia are exhorted to take steps leading to institutional development, good practices and general good governance. Such a discourse has its roots in European, particularly English, cultural assumptions that emanated from the experience of imperialism and colonialism. Thus the subjugation of Asian and African peoples confirmed European and English superiority over oriental peoples who were regarded as effete and corrupt (Macaulay, 1841).13 Moreover, it became clear in the eighteenth century that those East India Company men who returned home to England—the nabobs—having made their fortunes by corrupt means or who had in fact been corrupted by their interactions with oriental peoples. These perceptions, which were based on a purity-pollution nexus (Douglas, 1996),14 were deeply embedded so that at first sight they appear simply as irrational prejudices. These assumptions were present in the arguments put forward by Edmund Burke during the impeachments of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings who were both East India Company men. Similarly, they were accepted by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the great Whig historian whose account of the

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actions of Clive exonerated him on account of those that he duped, the Indian Nawabs (Mughal rulers) who were more corrupt (Said, 1978).15 The apparently virtuous states, particularly of north-west Europe and more broadly of the Anglo-phone world have advanced vast structures of banking, taxation and audit systems but the corrupt can hide their gains in off-shore accounts and tax havens. Such devices are not easily penetrable and so private gain at the expense of the ruled is the result. There is also a complacency which accepts the idea that corruption is simply a fact of life and nothing can be done. These discourses have been challenged by scholars who have used the idea that legitimate rule is the prime requirement to guard against predators who seek to extract benefits from the state at the expense of the ruled (I.  Pardo & Prato, 2019).16 Such an approach is based on the idea of realms of activity—a public realm and a private realm. How to separate these realms is the stuff of political and social theory and the separation of these realms varies over time. Thus in a medieval monarchy the King’s personal realm and his public realm were one and the same. In modern states those who hold public office should be impartial and there should be institutions that guarantee such impartiality. In such societies the effectiveness of civil society—clubs, societies, a free press, the capacity to organise resistance—is essential. However, civil society could wither and therefore result in the dissolution of the mores of civic virtues. Last it may be that a particular society that is prosperous could decline because of its luxury and wealth which can be corrosive of civic virtue (Putnam, 1994)17 leading to indolence and complacency which in turn may lead to oligarchy and therefore to rule that is not accountable to the citizenry.

Public Life and Ethics A crucial dimension of the intellectual understanding of corruption is that it is also necessary to appreciate that the notions of what constituted public service, as distinct from loyalty to a monarch or a prince, which have developed over time. In Britain’s case the notions of public service have been widened and codified. Thus the Seven Principles of Public Life parading at the beginning of Lord Nolan’s Report (Nolan, 1995)18: selflessness; integrity; objectivity; accountability; openness; honesty and leadership would not have been accepted or indeed understood by MPs in the House of Commons at the accession of George III in 1760. Some would say that

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MPs in the late twentieth century may have understood the principles but were not persuaded to act accordingly with their implications.

Governance, Trust and Legitimacy Since the 1990s historians and social scientists have eschewed ‘government’ for ‘governance’. This has arisen in order to understand the experience of the governed as distinct from the institutions of government. Thus political science, anthropology and urban ethnography have all sought to tease out the significance of corruption and its presence in that socio-­ political space between legality and morality. For historians the shift of focus stemmed from the deconstruction of the collectivist state which had endured from the Second World War until the 1980s. In part, this came about as a consequence of the concerns about state overload; and the cost of the state and its vast machinery which caused, possibly indirectly, inflation, inefficiency and a culture of dependency. The governments of Margaret Thatcher from 1979 to 1990 witnessed a deconstruction of the state as it had been understood in the years from the end of the Second World War to the end of the 1970s. The consequences were the denationalisation of former state industries to promote a culture of enterprise. In consequence a new differentiated polity emerged with former public services contracted out from the state to the market. Major economic projects were achieved via public-private partnerships. There was then a distinct blurring of the lines that separated the legal state from society. In such circumstances what was legal may not be moral or just or legitimate (Pardo, 2004). This demarcation of the official state from the rest of society, according to one historian and former MP, suggests that the population had lost faith in politicians (Marquand, 2014)19; and an IPSOS Mori poll found that only 19 per cent of voters thought that MPs could not be relied upon to tell the truth. Earlier still (Hoggart, 1957)20 ‘interviews of working class men in Yorkshire suggested that all politicians [were] crooked; [and] they were all on the fiddle’.21 The experience of governance raises questions of social justice, safety and trust (Fukuyama, 199622; Pardo & Prato, 2011).23 Can the government be trusted is an important question. Longer term, it also raises questions of the legitimacy of government (Prato, 2019).24 Such a situation might occur in extreme conditions if trust in government, in bureaucracy, in the law, could lead to state corruption and even revolution (Lipset).25 The links between state legitimacy and the citizenry can be tenuous but nonetheless important in the study

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of corruption. As Pardo (2004) explains, what is legal may not be perceived as moral or just or legitimate (Pardo, 2004).26 Moreover, governance is not just a post-modern concept. It can have application to the medieval period as Chaucer (1343–1400) used the term of ‘the governance of house and land’. Given that the subjects of the medieval state experienced competing sources of power and authority with rules emanating from the monarchy, the church, from local guilds as well as their town administration and local justice’s then governance is a potentially useful term to understand corruption in earlier periods of history (M.  Bevir, 2012).27

Anthropology; Urban Ethnography and Moral Economy During the 1990s history as an academic discipline was profoundly influenced by cultural theory (Gunn)28 and anthropology which produced a vast range of studies which eschewed traditional narrative and sought to understand, particularly pre-modern and early modern societies, by means of anthropological discourse to achieve an understanding of rituals, symbols, mentalities and much more. In some respects this so-called cultural turn was driven too by globalisation and decolonisation as well as subaltern history. Understanding the so-called common people had already deployed cultural theory especially amongst French historians (Ladurie, 1980).29 For a historical account of corruption across a long period of time which is the ambition here the potential of anthropology theory and urban ethnography to articulate meanings, behaviours, beliefs, fears and anxieties; and codes of communication such as satire and polemic are very powerful. More precisely, the specialist discipline of urban ethnography is especially relevant to this study not just because urban places are venues of a plethora of political conflicts and everyday transactions but they are also spatially defined territories of political allegiance which urban ethnographers have explained. This will be evident in the sections of the book which deal with Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool among others. The disciplines of urban ethnography, particularly immersive fieldwork in the anthropology tradition, can provide valuable insights that can alert historians to the complexity of corruption within the urban environment as exemplified by Pardo’s research in Naples (I.  Pardo, 2019)30 and

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particularly the factors which explain the dynamics of the city and especially corruption (Pardo & Prato, 2018).31 The relationship between morality and the economy has been analysed from different perspectives. For example, in the Marxist tradition, scholars such as E.P. Thompson and George Rude have used the term moral economy to explain rioting and other forms of public protest that may have been violent as a means of exacting some form of social justice (E.P. Thompson, 1966; G. Rude, 1966).32 Additionally, the concept has been used for the examination of group loyalty whereby corrupt actions appear to be legitimate as a means, for example, of gaining access to scarce public goods such as social housing, employment, social welfare benefits. It has also been applied to situations where enforcement of loyalty to a politico-religious group which also results in corruption, such as coercion. This is particularly the case where sectarian rivalries intensify strife making corrupt acts appear necessary to maintain sect discipline. From a non-­ Marxist perspective, anthropologists have looked at the complex relationship between morality and people’s economic and political actions. For example, with reference to his Naples ethnography, Italo Pardo has studied the moral aspects of economic exchanges, developing the concept of ‘strong continuous interaction between material and non-material’ (even spiritual) resources in people’s actions and choices (Pardo, 1996). Taken together these concepts can provide a platform from which the complex activities of urban life can be surveyed and deepen understanding of the dynamics of corruption in cities where class, ethnic or religious loyalties override all other potential loyalties.

Types of Corruption in Public Office Despite these qualifications it is essential to identify the most obvious types of corruption: first misuse of public office by the office holder for personal gain and or the benefit of his or her supporters or clients. Bribery is often involved in this case (J.T. Noonan, 1984)33: the office holder may use public funds to bribe supporters. The office holder may accept a bribe in return for the grant of a public or government contract. In these instances the bribe could be in the form of money, a gift or some other pleasure such as holiday, sexual favours or a day at major sporting event. A key facet of the bribe though is its coercive or inducement quality. The second most obvious example of corruption by public office holders is fraudulent behaviour such as fiddling expenses or taking trips apparently

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on government business but misused for personal pleasure. For those who hold a public office the problem of conflict of interest is a common hazard. Municipal councillors may approve a planning application as part of their duty on a committee, but if that application affects personal or business interests then there is clearly a conflict of interest.34 Other, usually more systemic actions, to determine a particular type of government or regime often affects the conduct of elections. This may involve, again, bribery, coercion and intimidation of voters. Ballot tampering and rigging the polls can take on byzantine complexity. Perhaps one of the most flagrant types of corruption in this context is gerrymandering whereby electoral boundaries are drawn in particular fashion to guarantee electoral victory for the party or group in power. It was most infamous in Boston Massachusetts in 1812, but versions have existed in the UK in Northern Ireland after 1921 and in the City of Westminster in the 1980s by the Council’s leader Dame Shirley Porter in the 1980s (Hosken, 2006).35 Voters themselves may not be supine in these matters; and they fight back. Sometimes this might involve personation whereby a voter votes multiple times often using disguise to avoid detection. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries voters were more than prepared to sell their vote to the candidate who offered the highest price. Nevertheless, they could be subject to pressure from above by a local magnate or his agent or indeed from below from those who did not hold the right to vote but would support their candidate by riot and threats of exclusive dealing or boycotting local shopkeepers or tradesmen. In Britain changing attitudes towards what constituted corruption in political affairs and government in the later eighteenth century became increasingly radical. Consequently it focussed on the prevalence of sinecures, perquisites, emoluments, pensions and reversions which later enabled a public office to be inherited, usually, by the son of the office holder. Radicals like Tom Paine and John Wade held that these indulgences were wrought at the expense of the rest of the population in the form of taxation. Moreover, the radicals regarded the privileges inherent in the sinecure-pension-system as parasitic. The Radicals believed that an extension of the franchise would sweep away the the Old Corruption and its parasitic features which had prevailed for so long (c.1680 to 1830). Further, because ideS nd perceptions of what constituted corruption the study of etymology is particularly important.

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Etymology As stated earlier, the language of corruption has evolved over time. There are key words that signify changes in broader apprehensions of what was regarded as corruption at particular times. For example, the metaphor of machine politics emerged in American municipal politics in the late nineteenth century but it was also imported to Britain early in the twentieth century. The word ‘graft’ has several meanings—to graft something onto another body or plant but also to imply hard work. Again in municipal politics graft pertains to working the system which usually involves extorting bribes from a contract tender and distributing the monies among members of the appropriate committee. Clearly the language of corruption is framed by the broader social context of political discourse (Knights, 2010).36 The adjective ‘Machiavellian’ is an obvious example to denote cynical ruthless manoeuvre in political life. The notoriety of Machiavelli was derived from his study of the use of power in The Prince (Machiavelli, 1532)37 and indeed, Shakespeare’s character, Shallow, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, who quips: ‘Am I Machiavel?’ The idea of the ‘body politic’ has ancient roots but it took on significant form in the later medieval period. The poet Christine Pisan borrowed the idea from Plutarch to produce her The Book of the Body Politic (CE 1407). In England the writings of John of Salisbury (c CE. 1110–1180) also alluded to the idea of the body politic. Further as medical knowledge expanded during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries so the analogy of the health of the state together with the idea of decay, putrefaction of the body was compressed into politics. For Sir John Fortescue (CE 1394–1479) the monarch had two bodies, a physical body and a heavenly body which legitimated the idea that the monarch’s power had divine authority. In the English case the language of political discourse and implicitly the language of corruption expanded significantly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the compression of the image of the decay and rottenness of the body also became conflated with idea of the decay, the degeneration of the body, its rottenness and corruption of the body politic. The transformation of language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a great upsurge in concerns with morality and the idea that the corruption of the state, the monarchy and the body politic itself. Thomas More retained his devout Catholicism and regarded the likes of Tyndale as heretics who should be cast out of the ‘holy body of the Church like a dead hand which should be cut off for fear of corruption of the remnant of the

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body’ (Buchan & Hill, 2014).38 The idea of decay and rot was formative to the etymology of corruption; but, so too, was the converse by implication in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). The idea of a perfect political society without blemish established a template for an ideal state that was healthy. More’s humanist discourse with his central character, Raphael Hythloday, extols the idyll of the island of Utopia (no place) where government was egalitarian and recognised religious freedom. More’s critique of Christian Europe owed much to Erasmus, with whom More corresponded. For More, Christian Europe displayed egoism, self-interest and greed. More had also written a biography of Richard the Third: A History of the King and it provided a basis for Shakespeare’s Play of Richard 111. However, Shakespearemay have derived knowledge of the work via Raphael Holinsgead but it was More who had first established the character of Richard as as devious, malign and corrupt. There were several stimuli at work: the Reformation and the protestant denial of papal authority especially Luther’s criticism of indulgencies such as the forgiveness of sin in exchange for a donation (simony) to the Church. The upheaval of the Reformation was facilitated by the translation of the Bible into vernaculars throughout Europe as well as in England and Scotland. The development of the technology of printing made the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments widely available. Indeed the Puritan political revolution of the 1640s would have been inexplicable without the translations from Latin into English and the medium of print which created access to something that had been mystical and interpreted by priests. The lessons of the scriptures could provide structures for new moral codes of good conduct and conversely misconduct. This perhaps can be appreciated by the upsurge in the use of such vocabulary as ‘degenerate’, which first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1545, ‘depraved’ in 1641, ‘defiled’ in 1571, ‘dissolute’ in 1513 and ‘rotten’ in 1607. In the nineteenth century new terms came into use. For example, the word loot was first used in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1839 although it almost certainly came into use earlier reflecting the manner in which the forces of the East India Company carried off treasures and the property of the Mughal in Bengal after the Battle of Plassey (1757) which was derived from Hindustani meaning to plunder. Critics of Empire used the word loot to describe the extraction of resources in an exploitative fashion. Later in the nineteenth century the language of corruption acquired ‘gerrymander’ from the USA. Originally the word was used in American newspapers in 1803–1816 to describe the manipulation of

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electoral boundaries to the advantage of the Democratic Party by the governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry. The term ‘gerrymander’ appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1859 and the import of other Americanisms, such as ‘graft’ in 1889 and ‘boodle’ in 1833, also signified attitudinal change. These emerging vocabularies were barometric indicators of cultural shifts in attitudes towards corruption and what was regarded as acceptable and conversely unacceptable conduct. That the language of corruption is often significantly nuanced by inference and innuendo is well known. So, too, particular types of corruption such as bribery have long been considered as the prime example of corruption although gifts imply reciprocity between the provider of the gift and the recipient. The question arises, how can we judge whether a gift is a bribe? Indeed those who are accused of bribery will claim that they were simply making a gift. Indeed it is often the case that an individual accused of bribery may claim that his bribe was not at all a bribe but rather a gift. The subtle use of language often frames the term corruption with other adjectives such as rapacity, cunning, cynical, unscrupulous and venal. Any behaviours regarded as deceitful or devious can attract the description ‘Machiavellian’ and thus imply corruption.

Power, Polity and Constitution Transnational studies of corruption make it important to study the idea of polity and particularly the institution of the constitution. Many states define rights such as freedom of speech and prescribe the parameters of the public realm. Britain’s political elites preen themselves in that the UK, alone among modern states, that a written constitution is unnecessary because of its apparently unique history: its political system evolved from precedent. This is not entirely true even though Bagehot suggested that the lack of a formal separation of the powers was unnecessary, and in England we have so few catastrophes since our Constitution attained maturity, that we hardly appreciate this latent excellence (Bagehot, 1867).39 There is, in this view of the British polity, the assumption that it evolved gradually and moved from a corrupt past—as suggested by the passing of the ‘Old Corruption’—to a virtuous and corruption-free present. Bagehot accepts that power is an essential ingredient of government but he claims that the English possessed ‘great qualities including the imperious will, the rapid energy; the eager nature fit for a great crisis’.40 Without power it would be impossible to govern. For those who are

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governed that power has to be legitimate. If legitimacy is not a manifest feature of a polity it may be a consequence of corruption. Lord Acton’s famous dictum: ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ written in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 was derived, no doubt, from his extensive studies of English and British history. British politicians are wont to extol the virtue of the British polity which according to the Whig version of history had developed, apparently, in an evolutionary manner. According to this view this is what distinguishes British government from that of other states which have written, formal constitutions that define and delimit powers and responsibilities; and also express ideals and aspirations for the governed. Perhaps the most famous version of this is to be found in the Constitution of the USA: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union establish Justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the General Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.41

The founders of the USA had broken from British despotism and, seemingly, via a new Constitution forestalled the fate that human beings were condemned to a life that was ‘solitary, nasty, brutish and short’42 (Hobbes, Leviathan CE (1651)).

Problems from a Historical Perspective As I have mentioned, the study of corruption straddles many academic disciplines: history; political science; economics; anthropology, urban ethnography; and sociology. What follows is a consideration of the problems faced by historians, particularly for those brought up in Britain. In this respect the legacy of the Whig interpretation lays heavily on traditional approaches to the study of political history; the constitution and, specifically, corruption. The study of corruption is often compromised by the lack of evidence, especially because corrupt acts are usually and deliberately hidden from view. At the same time contemporary printed or written observations of corruption may be subjective or motivated with intent to discredit other political actors. Nevertheless historians have to interpret such evidence. For example, Sir Francis Walsingham Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster wrote to William Cecil in a memorandum about trade stating:

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Merchants have grown so cunning in their trade of corrupting, and found it so sweet, that since the first year of Henry VIII there could never be won any good law or order which touched their liberty but they stayed it, either in the Commons, or Higher house of Parliament, or else by the Prince himself.43

Further, it is difficult to evaluate such evidence in terms of its typicality given the general explosion of pamphlet publications perceptions of the extent of corruption at any particular time can become amplified. Further, given the difficulty of precise definition, corruption is a useful term in political debate as it invites innuendo. Whigs The Whigs were one of the two main political parties in Britain from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The term Whig was derogatory, derived from Whiggamore, the Scots covenanters, and coined by the Tories to describe opponents of the Restoration of the monarchy in the personage of James, Duke of York, in the late seventeenth-­ century exclusion crisis. The Whigs, however, became dominant in Parliament in the eighteenth century as advocates of the idea a consensual contract between the monarchy and the people and a constitutional monarchy. They were supporters of William of Orange and the Settlement of 1689. The Whigs then were the victors of the contest between those who advocated Divine Right monarchy and those who supported constitutional monarchy. The Whig historians’ account is thus essentially progressive as it assumes progress towards an ideal constitution and polity. Historians are also wont to make judgements about the past. In so doing their prejudices and antipathies come into play. They are the dispensers of moral judgements which contribute to the version of history that is somehow standard fare. Further, the history of Britain, its achievements and its institutions is a mainstay of the educational curriculum especially in the schools and universities from which Britain’s political elites are recruited. In 1864 the Royal Commission reported on the Nine Public Schools asserting that these schools provided an education upon which Englishmen of the ruling class could be proud. Further the English people were indebted to them for their shaping of the ‘national character’ (Clarendon, 1864). Such an assumption was derived from the legacy of Britain’s great power status. The Whig historians of the nineteenth

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century had attributed the rise of British power and prosperity to the development of political institutions embodying the principles of constitutional liberty. Macaulay was the founder of this Whig tradition of historical writing and interpretation. The first two volumes of his History of England were published in December 1848. At the time the continent of Europe was ablaze with revolution in France, the German States, the Habsburg Empire and the Italian peninsula. Educated English men basked in the sunlight of its regime of stability and moderate timely reform. Macaulay’s History was a bestseller on a par with Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850) and Bleak House (1853). A gentleman in Lancashire invited his poorer neighbours to attend at his home every evening after their work and he read to them the History aloud from beginning to end (Hall, 2011).44 The Whigs tended to attribute historical change to particular individuals or a particular party. This tendency leads in turn to the assumption that change is brought about by great men [sic] and the constitution has been handed down to us by generations of Whig politicians and historians in spite of the obstructionism of tyrants and Tories. Seemingly, the Whig paradigm has produced a history that has an unfolding logic, a logic that assumes the banishment of corruption. Further, the popularisation of Whig history into textbooks and popular histories has consolidated such a view. In the textbooks and the popular histories the adoption of literary and narrative styles had further promoted the idea that the past may have been plagued by corruption but Whig reforms had delivered the nation to a corruption-­ free present. Additionally, the structure of historical knowledge chronologically confirmed the Whiggish conclusion.

Empire The second problem for the study of corruption in Britain is the role of empire which has also been cast in the Whig mould. For many the Empire was a force for good. In particular the adoption of the ‘civilising mission’ became a justification of Britain’s imperial mission. It is often cited on the grounds of its legacy facilitating self-government for former conquered peoples. Associated with this argument is the role of institutions in shaping economic development; and also the effective functioning of society as ‘institutions reduce uncertainty by providing a structure to everyday life and in so doing facilitate performative interaction accepted as good conduct’ (North, 1990).45 This idea has been extended to suggest that there are at least two key institutions which affect human behaviour: first,

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competition and the decentralisation of both political and economic life since such ideas enabled the creation of nation states and capitalism; and, second property rights were institutionalised so that property was personal and private. In relation to empire the British state granted monopoly rights to trading companies, the most famous or infamous being the East India Company (1602) but there were many others, the South Sea Company (1711) and the African Company of Merchants (1821). Such companies were private companies but licenced by the state. The East India Company was economically successful but it was also a source of corruption which by the late eighteenth century had become a site of corruption so much so that parliament attempted to impeach the governor of the Company, Warren Hastings. The second major problem of imperialism in relation to corruption is slavery. The role of slavery to the English and subsequently British trade was undoubtedly crucial to British economic growth. It was undoubtedly cruel and inhuman and there is a considerable literature on the subject. The simple ‘abuse of power’ argument of political science is surely an insufficient tool to examine slavery within the prevailing conceptualisation of corruption. Further, if the laws of private property are considered then slaves were the property of their owners. In this study therefore I am excluding the issue of slavery from the corruption analysis not because it is unimportant but because corruption committed by British agents was regarded as a legitimate concern of parliament and because the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the abolition of slavery as an institution in 833 was propelled by moral arguments. The force for ‘good’ has, not surprisingly, not been unchallenged by the subaltern historians particularly of modern India46 (Tharoor, 2017). The rapacious exploitation of Indian society is perhaps better understood by economic analysis rather than by corruption-political science theory. Nevertheless, the impeachments of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings represented the exercise of moral choice as a central issue for the conduct of agents of the British state.

Armaments There is a considerable literature on the connections between arms manufacture and sales and corruption. The ‘Merchants of Death’ debate became a prominent political and moral issue in the USA, in Britain and in Europe. This was no doubt a consequence of the public revulsion towards warfare

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following the horrors of the First World War. The reaction to the mass destruction was expressed, especially in literature: the war poets, such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and the novelist Edward Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), tapped deep emotional chords which, no doubt, promoted the active peace movements. The key question within the corruption frame is the apparent dissonance between a nation’s requirement to possess arms to protect its citizens and the free market argument that arms manufacturers should be able to sell their products—guns, ammunition and artillery—wherever there was a market. The issue had arisen in the later nineteenth century in respect of the Chamberlain family. Joseph Chamberlain was Colonial Secretary in numerous governments in the 1890s but his Birmingham business interests were closely tied to the arms industry. Further the egregious character, Andrew Undershaft, in Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) neatly exposed the conflict of interest that could exist if state interests—strategic and military—could be compromised if armourers sold weapons to states that were Britain’s enemies. The press had waged a vigorous campaign against the Chamberlain family as there had been numerous contracting scandals during the Boer War.47 The issue of armaments became a key area of concern in the UK during the 1930s. This was no doubt a public reaction to the horrors of the World War of 1914–1918. The key question within the corruption frame is the apparent dissonance between a nation’s requirement to possess arms to protect its citizens and the free market argument that arms manufacturers should be able to sell their products—guns, ammunition and artillery— where there was a market. The issue had arisen in Britain in the later nineteenth century in respect of the Chamberlain family. Joseph Chamberlain was Colonial Secretary in numerous governments in the 1890s, but his Birmingham business interests were closely tied to the arms industry. Further the egregious character, Andrew Undershaft, in George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara, 1905, neatly exposed the conflict of interest that could exist if state interests—strategic and military—could be compromised if British arms manufacturers sold weapons to states that were British enemies. The press had waged a vigorous campaign against Chamberlain and there had been numerous contracting scandals during the Boer War. Further, after 1918 the establishment of the League of Nations which endeavoured to preserve peace and control arms proliferation. In Britain government reluctantly established a Royal Commission to investigate the arms industry. In the USA the writings of Engelbrecht

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and Hanighen, The Merchants of Death,48 did much to prompt the establishment of a Senate Committee to investigate the arms industry. Further, the close relationship between state objectives and the legitimate use and sale of weaponry continues to be a concern in British politics and especially because of the close relations between Britain and the USA (Wright-­ Mills, 1956).49

Populism Populism is a potentially useful concept to develop a discourse about political corruption. In particular it is useful to examine the distinction between what populists claim and say as distinct from what they actually do by way of policy. They claim often to speak in the name of the real people. They also say that they alone speak for the real people; and they argue that they are the legitimate representatives of the people. By means of this discourse they aim to wrest power from the traditional entrenched elites. In some respects populism arises as a protest against political party machines (JW Muller, 2016).50 This was certainly the case in the USA where Western farmers established farmers’ alliances consisting of the Granger movement, the Greenbacks and others. They met in Cincinnati in 1889 where they established the People’s Party of the USA in 1889, and they opposed the political elites of the east coast and Washington. Elsewhere in Europe, for example, General Boulanger contested the elites of the French Third Republic in the 1870s and 1880s with a campaign to promote the needs of the peasantry and working class. This movement, referred to as Boulangism, marked the end of the older contest between monarchism and republicanism. Boulangism was a new movement which was anti-­ parliamentary, and plebiscitary, based on an appeal to the political left and the right and based focused on the cult of a man (Cobban, 1965).51 Similarly, in Russia the Narodniks were a group that claimed to speak for the peasantry. However, in the twentieth century Populism was distinctly right wing and authoritarian. Most notable was Juan Peron in Argentina. More recently, populism has been prominent in Venezuela and Brazil but also in Eastern Europe in the successor states after the collapse of the USSR. Arguably, now in the twenty-first century, populist-style politicians have captured established political parties or have been adopted as political figures for their political prowess and apparent election campaigning ability: Donald Trump in the USA and Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the UK are the two most obvious examples. For a detailed and forensic

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examination of populist rhetoric, political lying and policy failure, there is an emerging literature from journalists and historians (Oborne, 2021; Blick & Hennessy, 2022).52 Populist politicians in power claim to represent the common good and appeal to constituencies that have been forgotten or left behind. Thus in the UK Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling-up campaign’ was a direct appeal to voters in the north of England who had traditionally voted for the Labour Party and who he claimed had been forgotten. However, practical policies have often fallen by the wayside. Populists also claim that the civil service is an obstruction to policy execution. Hence they seek personal advisers and strategists. This makes populists in office vulnerable to misconduct and even corruption as they try to evade the rules, conventions and procedures. In the UK UKIP and the Referendum Party were distinctly populist and focussed on the single issue of UK membership of the European Union. The leading figure of UKIP was Nigel Farage a former Conservative MP. When celebrating the result of the Brexit Referendum he claimed that it was a ‘victory for the real people’ and therefore making the 48 per cent who voted to remain somehow less than real or not members of the political community. In the same vein, Donald Trump claimed at a campaign rally, ‘the only important thing is the unification of the people-because the other people don’t mean anything’. Populists are often able to tap into the grievance of the moment and capitalise on a range of discontents and energise those discontents by contrasting the ‘real people’ with the corrupt elites. If rhetoric is the strong point of the populists then policy and governance is the weak point. Again populists in power favour conspiracy theories to explain their failures claiming that the state is in a constant state of siege from external forces. Finally, the development of policy in detail is a distinct weakness Brexit has revealed and exemplified by the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Urbanism and Urbanists The city as a site of corruption has an ancient and traditional provenance dating back to antiquity. Indeed Babylon was the image of wickedness and sin and cited in the Old Testament. Edward Gibbon, the eighteenth-­ century historian explained the fall of Rome to moral turpitude and decadence among the Roman elites so much so that they were unable to defend themselves against barbarian invaders. The city is not just a physical structure; it is a cultural phenomenon which resides in the imagination

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(L.  Mumford, 1961). In Britain the city is perceived and imagined via journalism, literature, visual art and satire. Thus the cultural perspective can provide an alternative insight to that provided by political science (Berger, 1972).53 In Britain in the eighteenth century the city was a place of danger and corruption. The rapid growth of cities was the cause of a range of debilitating pathologies. Images of cesspools and sanitary failures were not just the physical pathologies of disease, high death rates and crime but metaphors used by reformers to purify both the city and the polity. John Wesley, the Christian evangelical reformer, referenced the Old Testament Leviticus concerning physical impurity and religious observance with the epithet ‘cleanliness is next to Godliness’ (H. McCleod).54 The civic leaders of the early nineteenth century in the emerging cities, particularly in the north of England, were recruited from the upper middle class—professionals lawyers, manufacturers and bankers—and they appropriated the aphorisms of popular religious non-conformity which enabled them to link with the lower middle class of shopkeepers and so make a sustained campaign against the Old Corruption (see Chap. 3). The attack on the Old Corruption focused and drew on on images of rotten boroughs evoked by the artist engraver, William Hogarth, depicted the squalid nature of electioneering in his Election Entertainment (1755). However, it was the novel that transmitted the moral critique of the city. Charles Dickens’ Bleak House (1852–1853) vividly evoked corruption in the city as it satirised the corruptive power of the city which was also the site of the institutions responsible for the law of the state but where lawyers obfuscated for self-gain at the expense of the citizen. Thus the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce was a metaphor of corruption in which its principal figures—Mr Tulkinghorn, Lord and Lady Dedlock—and their agents, Mr Krook and Mr Smallweed, symbolised avarice and corruption. Two innocent wards of the court find apparent safety in a rural location of Bleak House but their lives are blighted by lawyers in the Court of Chancery in the city of London. The city was also a venue for fraud and confidence tricksters or simply ambitious parvenus. Thus Anthony Trollope in The Way We Live Now (1875) depicts his central character, Augustus Melmotte of questionable credentials, possibly German or Jewish, beguiles a London society of leisured aristocrats with false prospectuses for investments in a Mexican railway project. Melmotte uses the financial advances to buy a country seat and seek to become an MP. His schemes were preposterous but nevertheless created the image of the city as a site of danger, deception, sharp

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practice and corruption. The countryside by contrast is an Arcadian idyll of innocent pleasure. However, when the city is conflated with the images of Empire and the assumed racial superiority of Europeans over oriental peoples the consequent images of stealth, ingratiation and duplicity are legion. Thus Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) assumes that Englishmen are honest whereas those that they ruled were corrupt.

Notes 1. There are numerous definitions and refinements but the definition provided by Transparency International is widely used by political scientists and historians. Given the definition of Transparency International on widely accepted definition of corruption, see also the definition provided by the European Union (see Prato, 2004). 2. M.  Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology (London 1923). 3. I.  Pardo. Between Morality and the Law: Corruption, Anthropology and Comparative Society (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004) chapters 1–3. 4. I. Pardo ed. Between Morality and the Law: Corruption, Anthropology and Comparative Society (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2004) chapters 1–3. 5. Zephyr Teachout, Corruption in America (Cambridge, Mass. London, 2014). 6. I. Pardo, Managing Existence in Naples (Cambridge CUP 1996) Chapters 2 and 6. 7. I. Pardo, ed. Op cit (Aldershot, Ashgate 2004). 8. I. Pardo, op cit. 9. H.J.  Heidenheimer & M.  Johnston, Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts 3rd edition (London, Transaction 2002); and Ronald Kroeze, Andre Vitoria and G. Geltner, Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Era (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2018). 10. Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill, An Intellectual History of Political Corruption (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 11. Niccolo, Machiavelli, The Discourses/(Edition?) see also Alexander Lee, Machiavelli: his Life and times (London, Picador: 2020) and J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 12. G. B Prato and I Pardo, Anthropology in the City: Methodology and Theory (2012) and, I Pardo. 13. T. B. Macaulay, Lord Macaulay’s Address to Parliament 1835. 14. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge 1966).

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15. For the generalised explanation of European superiority over oriental peoples, see Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978) pp 49–72. 16. I.  Pardo and G.  B. Prato, Debating Legitimacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 17. R. Putnam; R. Leonardi; and Y.N. Rafaella, Making Democracy Work: Civic Tradition in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); D. Triesman, ‘the causes of corruption: a cross national study’, Journal of Public Economics, 76 (2000) pp 339–457. 18. Lord Nolan, Standards in Public Life: First Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. 1 (London, HMSO, Cm 20-1, May 1995. 19. David Marquand Mammon’s Kingdom (London: Penguin, 2014). 20. D.  Butler and G.  Butler, British Political Facts 1900–1994 (Basingstoke: Macmillan) pp. 259–261. 21. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London, Penguin 1957) pp 79–80. 22. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Simon and Schuster 1996). 23. Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato, Citizenship and the Legitimacy of Governance: Anthropology in the Mediterranean Region (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2011) See also, F. Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 24. G.  Prato, ‘On the Legitimacy of Democratic Representation: Two Case Studies from Europe’ in I. Pardo and G. Prato (Eds) Legitimacy, Ethnographic and Theoretical Insights (New York, Palgrave Macmillan (2019). 25. S.M. Lipset, Political Man (London, Mercury Books 1959). 26. I. Pardo, op ci 2004. 27. M. Bevir, Governance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP 2012). 28. S. Gunn, History and Cultural Theory (Harlow, Pearson Longman 2006). 29. E.  Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans: A Peoples Uprising at Romans 1579–1580 Within the cultural anthropological (London: Penguin). 30. I. Pardo, ‘Embedding Corruption into Governance: The Graveyard affair in Naples and its Aftermath’, International Journal of Regional and Local History (November 2019) pp 110–125. 31. I Pardo and G.B.  Prato, The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 32. E.P.  Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Penguin) (1966); G. Rude, The Crowd in History (London Wiley, 1966). 33. John T. Noonan, Bribes (London: Macmillan 1984). 34. P.  Jones, From Virtue to Venality: Corruption in the city (Manchester University Press 2013). 35. Andrew Hosken, Nothing Like a Dame: The Scandals of Shirley Porter (London: Granta, 2006); Paul Dimoldenberg, The Westminster Whistle blowers (London: Politico’s 2006).

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36. Mark Knights, ‘Towards a social and cultural history of key words and concepts by the Early Modern Research Group, History of Political Thought’ 31, 3, autumn 2010. 37. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1532 (New York, Mentor 1935). 38. Quoted in, B .Buchan and L. Hill, op cit. p. 105. 39. W. Bagehot, The English Constitution: Introduction by Richard Crossman (London: Harper Collins] pp 80–81. 40. Bagehot, op cit, pp 80–81. 41. S.E. Morrison, H. S. Commager and W. Leuchtenburg, The Growth of the American Republic (Oxford: Oxford: University Press, 6th edition, 1969) p. 867. 42. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651 (New York, Oxford University Press 2008) pp. 269–271. 43. Quoted in Joel Hurstfield, History, 1967, 22,174 (1967) pp. 16–34. 44. Catharine Hall, ‘Macaulay: A Liberal Historian’, in S. Gunn and J. Vernon, The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (London: University of California Press, 2011) pp 19–36. 45. Douglass C.  North, Institutions (1990); N.  Fergusson, Civilisation: The West and the Rest (London, Penguin, 1973). 46. Sashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (London: Penguin, 2017). Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt against the West and the Remaking of Asia (London: Penguin 2017); and his Age of Anger (London: Penguin, 2017). See also Aaron Graham, ‘Towns, government, legislation and the police in Jamaica 1770–1805, Urban History 2019. 47. G.  Searle, Corruption in British Politics 1895–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press) pp 48–49. 48. H.C Engelbrecht & F. C. Hanighen, The Merchants of Death: A study of the international arms trade (1934). 49. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956). 50. Jan-Werner Muller, What is Populism? (London: Penguin 2017) pp 7–19. 51. A.  Cobban, A History of Modern France vol. 3 1871–1962 (London: Penguin) pp 33–35. 52. P.  Oborne, The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism (London: Simon and Schuster 2021); and A.  Blick and P.  Hennessey, The Bonfire of the Decencies: Repairing and Restoring the British Constitution (London: Haus Publishing). 53. J. Berger, Ways of Seeing (London, Penguin 1972). 54. H.  McCleod, Religion and the People of Western Europe 1790–1830 (Oxford: OUP 1981) pp 37–66.

CHAPTER 2

Corruption in Medieval England c. 1215–1485

Monarchy Church and the Baronage There were three sources of power in Medieval England: the monarchy, the Church and the Baronage. This chapter will examine specifically the importance of charters and oaths. Apprehension of corruption by the King or his agents was shaped by Christian and secular discourses. There were specific instances which shaped royal conduct as shown in the cases of King John (1199–1216) and Edward II (1307–1327). Monarchs were expected to seek wise counsel and avoid evil counsel. It followed therefore that Royal justice was seen to be fair and just. Bribery of judges and juries was a particular matter of concern; and specifically illegal influencing juries, known as embracery. At the beginning of the period the role of parliament was limited but it gradually became more important over time as it provided a link between the monarchy and the localities. The payment of MPs; and the holding of elections were also matters of dispute. Finally, the chapter sets out some of the issues that affected urban places as sites of corrupt transactions.

Monarchy, Court and the State Corruption in Medieval England revolved primarily around the nature of the power of the King and his responsibilities to his subjects which were proclaimed in Coronation oaths and charters. The assumptions which © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_2

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underpinned the power and responsibility of the king were framed by prevailing cultural norms which in turn were inflected by Christian teachings. Magna Carta was a landmark as it defined the powers of the King and his relations with the Baronage. Additionally, the royal court was a component within this power structure as the king was expected to take counsel and choose favourites who were wise. The king’s servants and office holders represented the king’s office to wider society and as such projected the power of the king into the public realm. Such a notion also meant that the King should provide justice via the courts. The institution of the Church was also a source of power within the state by virtue of its status as the source of Christian authority and morality. Additionally, its wealth from its landholdings and the collection of tithe (rent) meant it was a secular force to be with which to be reckoned. Although the king had absolute power it was prescribed by the constraints of the Baronage and the moral authority of the Church. Over the long duration of the medieval period demographic change and the growth of towns altered the dynamics of the English medieval polity with the establishment of parliament which was nominally an elected body albeit of limited significance. However, it became apparent that towards the end of the medieval period parliament and elections began to assume importance. Henry I, in his Coronation Charter of 1100, proclaimed that he recognised the ‘kingdom was “oppressed by wrongful exactions” and that he would seek the “common counsel of the barons”’ (Bagley & Rowley, 1966).1 Coupled with this consensual principle he asserted that he was, in effect, God’s Thegn or servant. There was nothing particularly new about the Charter and Henry was reaffirming a bond of faith between the ruler and the ruled. Indeed the Coronation oath of Edward the Confessor in 1046 was not dissimilar to that of the Norman kings after 1066. Henry’s Coronation Charter is significant as it anticipates implicitly adoption of the principles of Magna Carta (1215) and it acknowledged the presence of corruption within the political realm; and, importantly, it established the principle that the king should observe his own law as a prerequisite of royal conduct as it established the legitimacy of royal power. Deviation from accepted conduct was tyranny as the tyrant looked to secure his own advantage whereas the king should look to the well-­ being of his subjects. More emphatically the charter was ‘symbolic of royal subservience to law’ (Carpenter, 1983).2 However, ideal and reality did not always match. In some respects the piecemeal accretion of common law transformed laws into commodities which could be bought and sold.

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Magna Carta had prescribed the king’s power so that he could not use it as a political or financial weapon. Even so this still left a void between the King and his court on the one hand and the remainder of society on the other. In the latter the law was something to be bent and bought.

Magna Carta The case of King John and Magna Carta 1215 is relevant here not because it was a step on the road to democracy as has often been claimed but because it defined the interests and conduct as well as the obligations of the king and the barons. King John died only a year later and William Marshal, the Earl of Pembroke, took on the tutelage of the boy King, the future Henry III, and sustained the integrity of the Charter even though Marshal had already edited the initial version. The Charter was symbolic in that it posited the idea that the power of the king was not unlimited. Indeed it could be claimed that the medieval period’s political history was imprinted with the conflict between the King and the Baronage. The Charter, significantly, in clause 13 also acknowledged London’s ‘ancient privileges’ (1967).3 Clearly there was a recognition of the importance of towns and urban places some of which already possessed Royal Charters or had been granted privileges by Abbots or landed magnates. Thus there was a complex interaction between the state and the monarchy buttressed by the church on the one hand and shires, counties, towns, boroughs and parishes on the other. It should not be thought that these arrangements had come about simply because King John was a corrupt and tyrannical king which he most certainly was as Magna Carta simply acknowledged that the monarch was subject to law as were the barons, the Sheriffs and the burgesses of the towns and boroughs. Clearly the coronation ceremony proclaimed the obligations of the king and established modes of conduct. It also established the idea that corruption wrought tyranny and at least an abuse of power. The case of King John and Magna Carta 1215 is relevant here not because it was a step on the road to democracy as has often been claimed but rather for the fact that it defined the interests and conduct as well as the obligations of the king and the barons. In truth it merely reaffirmed the centrality of the Coronation oath. Nevertheless the integrity of the Charter was sustained, even though Marshal had already edited the initial version. The Charter was symbolic in that it posited the idea that the power of the king was not unlimited. Indeed it could be claimed that the medieval period’s political

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history was imprinted with the conflict between the King and the Baronage. The Charter, significantly, in clause 13 also acknowledged London’s ‘ancient privileges’ and extended those rights and privileges to other urban places: We also desire and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns and ports shall retain all their trading rights. (Bagley & Rowley, 1966)4

Clearly there was a recognition of the importance of towns and urban places some of which already possessed Royal Charters or had been granted privileges by Abbots or landed magnates. Thus there was a complex interaction between the state and the monarchy buttressed by the Church on the one hand and shires, counties, towns, boroughs and parishes on the other. It should not be thought that these arrangements had come about simply because King John was a corrupt and tyrannical king. Magna Carta simply acknowledged that the monarch was subject to law as were the barons, the sheriffs and the burgesses of the towns and boroughs. Further, between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries the scope of the English polity expanded as mechanisms for the collection of taxes; for administration; and for war grew in scale and importance. Thus governance was extended beyond the centre of royal power and into the localities. The three key institutions were Chancery which became the prime focus of English medieval litigants; Privy Seal; and Exchequer. These departments were also the principal writing institutions of the state. Historians have estimated that they produced 30,000 to 40,000 letters a year of which some were personal; many were in reference to appointments to public offices and or commissions; and some were records of payments, grants, dispensations and licences. Additionally, some were responses to subjects’ concerns and complaints. Thus there was an interaction and a tension between the institutions of the state and its subjects. These subjects may also have been acting on behalf of town governments and merchant guilds. These latter were using the machinery of the state to advance or protect their interests. In return the state responded with rebuttals or promissory notes (Harris, 1993).5 Clearly there was considerable interaction between the monarchy and his agents with his subjects. The consequence was the growth of a service sector of local lawyers, attorneys and petty officials. The scope for intrigue and corruption was considerable. Thus although there were measures to restrain the power of the monarch there was little to limit individual subjects and the pursuit of

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their own interests. However, that is not to say there was a state of perfect competition in the pursuit of favour as there were hierarchies of lordship with the king at its apex. He was expected to share power via justice, law making, fiscal measures, raising armies and representation and taking trusted counsel from those nearest to him. Those closest to the king in his court expected grace and favour. The relationship between the king and his advisers was not a relationship between equals but a king would be sensible not to alienate too many of the landed magnates. Monarchs that did so—King John and Edward II notably—found their position untenable. King John famously outraged the baronage and Edward, infamously, was accused of taking evil counsel. His actions certainly lacked legitimacy. The convention of taking counsel had been present with the later Anglo-­ Saxon kings and it was continued by the Normans in the form of a curia Regis or Privy Council. Invariably, the Privy Council became too large and unwieldy and was eventually reformed by Thomas Cromwell I in 1540 and reduced to 20 members. But of course monarchs would have their favourites and intimates within the court. Those courtiers who had the king’s ear were often resented by the magnates and those on the periphery of the court who might make claims of ‘evil counsel’ which was a potent accusation of abuse of power. Again the actions of the King lacked legitimacy. There grew up then, an environment of a competition for favours: subjects petitioned; officers in Chancery could assist a petitioner in his search for security and advantage. Such a regime was ripe for what might be considered corrupt transactions. Bribery and gifts were the lingua franca of the transactions between litigants and the state. Gifts reaffirmed social hierarchies between clients and patrons as they were regarded as legitimate. Moreover, the bureaucracy of the medieval state was ill-developed. The King relied on a semi-private delegation of public power to individuals and their networks. They were permitted to use their discretion and draw on their own private resources to enforce the King’s writ (Watts in Kroeze, 2018).6 Local sheriffs could often assume authority that they did not possess. Popular folklore demonised the Sheriff of Nottingham and cast his adversary, the outlaw Robin Hood as heroic. In essence the Sheriff’s abuse of power was illegitimate and therefore tyrannical. More often than not local sheriffs could be overworked, understaffed, inexperienced and so found it easier not to return writs at all. Additionally, it is important to appreciate that there were a number of processes at work which acted as stimuli in the development of a

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vocabulary of corruption: the word corrupt had a Latin source—corruptus. Educated men, often of the Christian Church, were aware of the language of corruption. Such a man was John of Salisbury, (CE 1120– d.1180) who provided an important example. He was secretary to Theobald the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1147 and 1171. Salisbury had been educated in Paris; and he travelled in Europe as part of his duties to the Archbishop. Salisbury became the Bishop of Chartres in 1176. His most important political writing was Policraticus: sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum, libri octo accedit huic editioni ejusdem metalogicu. In Salisbury’s view a monarch who is tyranical should be deposed: not only is it lawful to slay the tyrant, but it is right to do so. ‘He that takes the sword deserves to perish by the sword’ (Salisbury, in Bagley and Rowley).7 The traditional and prevailing view, until recently, has been that England was a realm beyond Europe, not just geographically, but also in terms of economy, politics and culture. The education of John of Salisbury would suggest otherwise.

Corruption of the King and Court The case of Edward II is pertinent here as his reign was punctuated by the problem of relations with the magnates prior to 1318. Secondly, the problems of finance of the Civil War of 1321–1322 drew Edward into questionable relations with the Despenser family and in particular Hugh Despenser. Edward had already been forced to give up his favourite, Piers Gaveston, because of imputations of evil counsel for which Gaveston was sent into exile and later executed in 1312. Between 1322 and 1327 the Despenser’s rapacious acquisition of lands and entitlements sowed the seeds of Edward’s downfall. The barons and especially Thomas Lancaster held the belief that Hugh Despenser was an evil influence upon the King: ‘no other royal favourite in English history was ever to take such liberties with the properties of the king’s subjects and with the laws of the realm’ (Fryde, 1979).8 Edward was consumed with greed and he surrounded himself with venal figures and Despenser was charged with ‘encroaching on royal power’ and there were countless petitions against them including the theft of goods worth £60,000 from two Italian merchant ships moored in the English Channel. The list of crimes included theft, torture and the breaking of the limbs of Lady Baret. At the subsequent trial of Despenser, the judge ruled that these actions contravened the ‘order of chivalry’. Thus there was an assumed code of conduct that befitted social rank.

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Additionally, Despenser was charged with crimes against the bishops of Hereford, Lincoln, Norwich and Ely. Despenser went to the gallows. His ‘evil counsel’ upon the King was widely regarded as corruption and an abuse of royal power. Subsequently, after his military defeat at Bannockburn in June 1314, Edward was removed from the throne by parliament and imprisoned in Berkeley Castle where he was later murdered (1327). Edward II’s travails were dramatically realised by Christopher Marlowe in his play Edward II in 1594. The period between Magna Carta and the death of Edward II witnessed great political turbulence in which the powers of the monarchy became increasingly defined not only by Magna Carta but also by moral codes and conventions. In Marlowe’s play Edward’s love for Piers Gaveston distracts him from his duties and encourages conspiracy against him. For Marlowe the play is a Machiavellian parable which illustrated the consequences of neglect of duty. Marlowe’s audience would have understood the lessons of Edward II but as we have seen corruption was not solely about monarchy and the court. Indeed, Edward’s conduct was contrary to accepted modes of legitimacy which justified his eventual imprisonment and murder. John of Salisbury’s dictum: ‘He that takes the sword deserves to perish by the sword’. Edward’s relations with Despenser were illegitimate making his fate just.

Religion, Culture and Money The medieval period then provides an important starting point for the study of corruption in England. Here we can see that modern conceptions of corruption differ from those of the ancients who saw corruption in terms of ‘decay’, ‘ruin’ and ‘perversion’ (Buchan & Hill, 2014).9 These notions were, in Europe and England, overlaid with Judeo-Christian pre-­ occupations between corruption and death. Concerns about degeneracy, moral decay and disintegration were on display in Christian texts, principally, the Bible, but also in Aquinas (1225–1274  CE) and Augustine (354–430  CE). According to these philosophers there would be a final reckoning, a day of judgement or a Babylonian event. Further, rulers should be virtuous and in England the King represented ‘God on Earth as God’s image [and] the King is worthy of love, reverence and worship’. In return the King should be considerate towards his subjects. Coronation oaths had a long history and can be found in Anglo-­Saxon times in the eighth century. The ceremony affirmed the monarch’s acceptance by the

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subjects; reminded subjects of their obedience; and, significantly, the subjects could record their claims although not their rights.

Culture The history of Magna Carta and its relevance to the issue of corruption can be illuminated perhaps more clearly by an examination of the literary-­ political genre of ‘Mirrors for Princes’. The ‘Mirrors’ were essentially advice books on how a prince or monarch should rule (Blaydes et  al., 2018).10 Indeed they provided, through the use of classical and scriptural writings, examples of sensible conduct and questionable conduct. The ‘Mirrors’ circulated widely in the Mediterranean world and included references to the writings of Seneca, Plutarch, Cicero and Aristotle. Additionally, Hebrew models of kingship were provided in the form of Solomon and David. Personal virtues such as the cultivation of personal and moral judgement, the acquisition of knowledge and the use of trusted advisors were regularly present in such advice. Related references to personal habits and conduct and the requirements for leading a morally good life were also figured.

Money The growth of a money economy, economics textbooks tell us, is that money is a medium of exchange and that it is more efficient than barter. But it is also a store of value that changes the nature of transactions between political and economic actors. Moreover, the nominal identification of those transactions has changed. Indeed gifts may have become bribes rather than offerings. The interaction between the writing institutions of the state—Chancery, Privy seal and Exchequer—and the state’s subjects was one of agent and litigant. The growth of money witnessed the re-denomination of patronal bond relations to one whereby the state agent, an officer of Chancery, for example, could obstruct a litigant or petitioner or could seek a reward for his assistance to the litigant. There were, too, as part of the liturgical calendar regular sermons on the dangers of bribery at Advent, Lent and Easter. Further, particular psalms warned of the danger of bribery: In whose hands is mischief, and their right hand is full of bribes. Psalms

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The evidence of contemporary culture suggests that concerns about bribery were present in the minds of medieval subjects. William Langland’s Piers the Plowman (c. 1377–1379) evoked a dream of the symbolic figure of Mede bedecked in gold and jewels. She was a familiar figure in Church teachings as she was a figure to be shunned because she was the personification of bribery (Noonan, 1984).11

Courts and Justice There was, too, a growing concern in the two centuries after Magna Carta of a growing lawlessness which impinged upon the justice system; but the idea of the king’s justice was an ideal rather than a reality. There were periodic crises in the administration of law and justice which were reflected in contemporary literature: The maze for a mene man though he mote evere. Lawe is so lordlich, and looth to maken ende: Without presents or pens he pleseth wel fewe. (Noonan)12

The issue of bribery persisted throughout the middle ages, especially as it related to the justice system: the bribery of judges, magistrates and juries was regarded as a major problem by the monarchy and the Church. Theologians regarded the issue of bribery as a moral question as suggested in William Langland’s Piers Plowman and John Gower’s Mirrours de l’Omme. Gower exhorted judges and magistrates to deliver God’s justice and referenced his case with biblical texts. Gower was also concerned with the dangers to juries and the possibility that they were often intimidated by the foreman of the jury or even bribed to return a particular verdict. Additionally he used the Ten Commandments—‘thou shall not bear falsewitness’—to press concerns about the reliability of witness testimony, and, indeed, to forestall that witnesses could be bribed to tell lies in exchange and give false evidence. This was a prime concern of Christian teaching with of course Judas’ betrayal of Christ for ‘thirty pieces of silver’. The monarchy and parliament did take steps to suppress bribery as it was thought that men of the poor were more likely to accept bribes than the more wealthy. The statute of 1285 required that justices to swear ‘to take neither robe nor accept commission’. Bribery persisted, however, and in 1388–1390 two statutes established payments for Justices of the Peace of four shillings per day if they were below the rank of baronet or knight.

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Similarly court clerks were to be paid two shillings per day. Judges were also forbidden to accept food and drink from litigants. Despite these measures the dangers of embracery persisted into the seventeenth century at least as the case of Sir Francis Bacon illustrated (see Chap. 2). Despite such measures the problem of corruption persisted so that by 1450 it was claimed England was out ‘of all good governance’ Chaucer quoted in Bevir (2012).13 The king was inaccessible as he was protected by his agents in whose interest it was to keep the King isolated unless bribes were forthcoming. Indeed one of the principal forms of corruption was that exercised by the king’s courtiers who secured offices for themselves, their relatives and their friends (Hole, 2020). At the same time the king did not always receive sound counsel. Claims of corruption arose when the state sought to fight war as taxation had to rise.

Parliament The medieval and early modern periods witnessed a gradual increase in the importance of parliament. Primarily it provided a potential check on monarchical power but it was not at this time a representative body. The convention that the monarch should seek counsel as we have seen dates back to early Norman times but after the fall of Edward II parliament became increasingly important. Significantly it provided a means whereby a man could pursue a political career. Boroughs and counties generally negotiated with potential candidates to represent their interests. The office of MP attracted ambitious men and their constituencies would often pay expenses and by 1327, after the fall of Edward II, payments to MPs were fixed at four shillings for county members and two shillings for borough members. The localities became increasingly reluctant to pay the full amounts as parliamentary business grew and parliament sat for longer periods of time. In fact there were often negotiated agreements between candidates and their potential constituencies. In some cases payment might have been in kind. Great Yarmouth, for instance, paid part of its MPs fees in fish (Seaward, 2010).14 Over time the office of MP was sought by wealthy and or ambitious men who scorned payment. Andrew Marvell, the poet, was the member for Hull from 1659 until his death in 1678 and he received wages for which he was derided by other members who regarded him as the slave of the borough of Hull (ibid.).15 Those who sought office did so because it conferred power and status. Additionally, the fact that the parliament sat in London also enabled members to

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conduct other business. This was particularly the case for lawyers and in 1372 an ordinance complained that lawyers were receiving wages as MPs whilst conducting business with their private clients from whom they also received payment.

Elections The regulation of election of Knights of the Shire was the responsibility of the Sheriffs and during the reign of Henry VI the rules of conduct of elections became more stringent as a consequence of a series of statutes in 1406, 1410 and 1413. The last of these statutes imposed fines on sheriffs who made inaccurate or fraudulent returns. Further, in 1429 the vote was confined to the 40 shilling freeholders in the shires whose level of wealth was thought to provide some insurance of good order. The elections were conducted in county towns and managed by the sheriffs. They were rowdy violent affairs where it was difficult and ensure that the ballots were secured in sealed envelopes. In Berkshire the elections were normally held at the county town of Abingdon but in 1453 such was the fear of unrest that the sheriff, John Roger, moved the election to Chipping Lambourn in his own house. He also made a false return that included his son, Thomas.16 Many of the other voters were also minors. Attempts to regulate the conduct of elections in the medieval period and beyond were difficult. This was due, primarily, to the complex of social and power relations between the county and urban elites. The conventions of county society entailed clientage which by the sixteenth century remained as a lingering vestige of feudalism. Men of moderate note such as country gentlemen eagerly sought the favour of the great men of the county. In Leicestershire, for example, George Belgrave Esquire sought the patronage of the Earl of Huntington to secure election to the borough of Leicester in 1601. Such was Belgrave’s ambition to secure election that he claimed that he had the support of the Earl of and he wore the colours of the Huntington interest—blue coat and bull’s head decoration on the sleeve. The Earl was outraged at the deceit but Belgrave had secured the seat. Huntington petitioned the Attorney General to take the case to the Court of Star Chamber. The matter was also discussed in the House of Commons but Belgrave retained his seat. In the commons one member concluded, ‘if we should punish him for coming indirectly to this place we should punish three parts of the House’. It was indeed expected that there would be negotiations even if they constituted corruption. One

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of the electors observed that the voters in Leicester ‘were both willing and worthy to be deceived’.17 In other words it was legitimate as both parties—candidate and electorate—were in agreement. In many places and especially those that had a small number of potential electors securing an MP was largely a bargaining process conducted between the heads of the prominent families. In Rutland, the Digby, Noel and Harington family patriarchs ensured that there were no contested elections after 1586. Such arrangements persisted so much so that it was not until 1601 that an election was contested. Given that the elections in Leicester and Rutland were regarded by the magnates, the electors and the candidates as negotiated bargains, which at first sight would now be regarded as corrupt, it is worth looking at a constituency that contemporaries regarded as corrupt. Perhaps Wallingford in Berkshire provides a notable example. It was apparently a ‘venal and expensive borough’ and even in the later period of the eighteenth century contemporaries knew that Wallingford would always be secured by ‘the highest bidder’. However, at the Port of Rye in Kent the MPs were effectively chosen by the Mayor and the members of the Common Council. At Kings Lynn and at Leicester it was the mayor and the aldermen who made the choice; whereas at Shrewsbury and Coventry there was a large electorate of freemen. At Shrewsbury in 1584 there were over 400 eligible voters and 3 candidates who secured 266, 299 and 176 votes which elected 2 members. At Coventry, too, which was a freeman borough there were 600 voters. These ad hoc arrangements were deemed legitimate as parliament at this time was not a representative body in the modern sense. Rather it sought to advocate interests and privileges—land, business, trade and professions.

Population and the Towns In the years immediately after the Norman Conquest, England had no large cities. London, the largest was comparable with Verona or Zurich. The greatest seaport in Europe was Venice which was also Europe’s banker. The Medici family had centres in Florence, Venice, Milan, Geneva, Avignon, Bruges and London, but it was clear that the Mediterranean was the motor of the European economy at this time. In a sense England was underdeveloped in economic terms. Admittedly, the north German ports of the Hanseatic League were important commercial centres and London and Amsterdam were outlying participants on the fringe. However,

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English exports of raw wool and finished cloth drew England more and more into the continental European networks. Between 1450s and the 1550s the export of English cloth grew threefold. Indeed a vital economic axis between southern England and the Netherlands had been established by the end of the medieval period if not earlier (Coleman D.C., 1977).18 The urban economy was undoubtedly important; and there was a recognition of the importance of towns and urban places some of which already possessed Royal Charters or had been granted privileges by Abbots or landed magnates. Thus there was a complex interaction between the state and the monarchy buttressed by the church on the one hand and shires, counties, towns, boroughs and parishes on the other. It should not be thought that these arrangements had come about simply because King John was a corrupt and tyrannical king which he certainly was as Magna Carta simply acknowledged that the monarch was subject to law as were the barons, the Sheriffs, the burgesses of the towns and boroughs. In order to understand the issue of corruption in towns and cities it is important to have some appreciation of the extent of urbanisation at particular times and periods of history. In the English and later the British polity the role of urban places evolved over time. Further, an attempt to understand the nature of corruption within urban society must begin with some cognisance of the changing significance and scale of urbanisation. For the medieval period our first port of call is the Domesday Book (1086) which quantified landholdings and places to establish some basis to levy taxation. It is thought that the population of England and Wales, between 1086 and 1300, doubled reaching about 3.0 million. Scotland’s population at this time was no more than half a million. For England pestilence and disease arrested population growth in the first two decades of the fourteenth century and it then began to recover until the Black Death of 1348 which produced a demographic crisis: population fell to about 2.5 million. Thereafter population growth slowly revived although it was not until the end of the fifteenth century that the population had recovered to its pre-plague level.19 By the end of the sixteenth century it had reached just over 4 million. This growth was sustained by increased food production and an increase in output per capita. It is safe to infer that this recovery encouraged urban growth. What was the position of towns and cities within this fragile demography? According to the Venerable Bede Canterbury was the most important place. Even so there were no large cities apart from London which had a population of 10,000–15,000 at the time of Domesday (1086).

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Nevertheless it was the largest city north of the Alps. Thereafter it would continue to grow but for the effects of the Black Death in 1348. By the beginning of the seventeenth century London’s population was about 200,000 having grown fourfold between 1500 and 1600. Between 1600 and 1800 it grew fourfold again reaching 890,000. In the provinces there were no large cities although Newcastle, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich and York were important regional centres but their populations were less than 10,000 each in the 1520s. Elsewhere Leicester, Lincoln and Gloucester were regarded as important places. Below London and these regional and local centres there were several hundred market-towns with populations of less than 2000. Throughout the period 1540–1700 urban population expanded absolutely and proportionately. Methods of calculating population, however, were tentative although many historians have pointed to the population estimates constructed by Gregory King for 1696. King used hearth tax returns to count the number of houses and reckoned ratios of inhabitants per dwelling to estimate town populations. After the Civil War and during the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell established the requirement that parishes were responsible for the registration of marriages, births and deaths. It was not until 1801 that the state established the system of the decadal census. However, prior to 1841 there were still some inaccuracies in the official state census. The Civil Registration Act 1837 made the registration of births, deaths and marriages obligatory. These measures are important in providing a major source of urban populations. Studying the nature of urban government in medieval times is nonetheless difficult even though there are numerous records relating urban government and administration studying the issue of corruption relies on cautious inference. Where did urban places fit within this complex array of laws, writs, customs and conventions? We have seen that towns were linked to the state via Royal Charter and borough status. Additionally, towns were often the venues for parliamentary elections; but in order that we can understand the manner in which towns were sites of corruption in the medieval period, it is essential to examine the political and social structures of towns in the period. The German sociologist, Max Weber, in 1921 claimed that towns and cities performed certain functions: as places of defence; as markets; as centres of ecclesiastical administration; as centres of association; and they were sites of a courts of law. It is important to recognise that towns and cities are located, usually, within states or within particular polities. In this sense the power and authority of towns and cities was circumscribed by

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the state but at the same time the city or the town may have had certain powers in relation to trade, markets; and tolls by which it could order its community. Our knowledge of the extent of urbanisation in the early middle ages is derived from the Domesday Book, 1086, which recorded some hundred places which might be considered to be urban places. However, historians who are medieval specialists have to rely on inference from such records to provide a picture of the extent and nature of urbanisation. The power and authority of urban places was shaped by centuries of political change from the late Saxon period and which established a gimcrack arrangement of rights and duties for the collection of taxes. The prime document of Burghal Hidage lists 33 places liable for hidage, the majority of which were in the Kingdom of Wessex. Thus, there appears to be a connection between the need for taxation for defence and military purposes; and towns or proto-towns. The provision for justice was located in the so-called hundred courts which dated from the reign of Edmund CE 939–946, and which met every three weeks and exercised local civil jurisdiction for minor issues relating to local disputes where suitors made their claims. In the area of the former Dane Law, England north of the River Trent, the equivalent bodies were the wapentakes later known as wards. The sheriff of the county attended the hundred Court twice yearly and so provided a link between the Crown and the localities. What were the main characteristics of the internal government of places of urban status? First, London possessed the greatest complexity and greatest autonomy. Second, between the Thames and the River Humber there were also a number of places that enjoyed privileged status and which were of economic and military importance: the boroughs of Derby, Lincoln, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham and Stamford, straddling the territory between the Dane Law to the north; and the former Anglo-­ Saxon territories to the south and east. Additionally, there were other places of economic importance—Norwich and Bristol, for example— which were royal mint centres for coinage ordered by Anglo-Saxon kings. In the south the Cinque Ports of Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover, Sandwich and Winchelsea enjoyed certain privileges in return for ship service, a type of tax in kind. The Warden of the ports was a royal office and a distinguished honour. In the north the ridings of Yorkshire centred on York and after the Conquest of 1066 the Norman kings granted chartered status to numerous places. These Charters were normally executed by royal writ and included Cambridge and Bury St Edmunds. There was then by the end of the thirteenth century a complex urban system shaped by

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military and defensive needs which established a fiscal nexus between the monarchy and the towns. This was overlaid by Royal Charters which established systems of privilege and exemptions in return for taxation. Moreover places of recognised importance such as boroughs or county towns may have been attended by royal agents such as reeves in the pre-­ conquest period and later, after the Conquest, by sheriffs who were charged with the collection of taxes. Such an arrangement created the potential for corruption as the practice of ‘tax farming’ encouraged speculation and coercion. In short the English polity as it had emerged by the end of the thirteenth century was a complex mesh in which the distribution of power between the monarchy and the towns was asymmetrical unless townsmen were able to secure privileges. The English polity then was characterised by a series of interconnected realms where political power was contested and exercised—the royal court, the shires and the towns—and which was understood by contemporaries as a body politic in which conduct was moderated by moral codes and status obligations. There were then a set of urban customs some of which many were unwritten but which were understood. In England and in other parts of Europe theologians were well versed in identification of corrupt action. The Catholic Church held a monopoly on salvation via Corpus Christi and provided scriptural authority for the conduct of public officers. The ‘body politic’ was vulnerable to a range of sins which had public or political implications and included bribery, simony and venality. If unchecked such behaviours were degenerative in their effect upon the ‘body politic’. The idea of infection of a single limb of the body was a powerful metaphor as it could endanger the rest of the body (Buchan and Hill).20 Although town status was made by royal writ we should not assume that towns were static entities. Indeed they were gradually transformed by economic dynamics. Thus beyond the central state, especially in the later middle ages, the processes of trade in wool and cloth accelerated urbanisation and the urban elites began to secure rights and status. By the end of the medieval period there were probably some 1400 towns in England of which around 450 were seigneurial towns dominated by a Lord or a Bishop or an Abbot. This was the case in Bury St Edmunds and St Albans. Elsewhere, such as at Westminster, the Church was content to allow greater latitude for its citizens to run their affairs. Elsewhere, towns may have acquired various privileges to appoint their own officers and hold regular court hearings in respect of the registration of debts and set

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arrangements for their collection. The government of the growing urban centres became marked by with ‘exclusivity and oligarchy’.21 In such circumstances corruption was ever present. The government of towns was not entirely independent as the towns remained subservient to the Crown because royal agents were often ensconced in the larger towns. The towns that did possess institutions such as common councils which were able to establish self-serving regimes which were essentially corrupt. In such cases the presence of corruption might lead to popular disorder. Nevertheless, the powers of town governments enabled those townsmen who were members of the Common Council to control the towns to their own benefit. They could appoint public officers, such as constables, tax-collectors, assessors and bailiffs. Such offices were lucrative to those who possessed them. At the same time, of course, the appointment to such positions enabled the exercise of patronage. There were sources of conflict especially in towns where there were competing sources of authority as at Lincoln, St Albans and Exeter and many others, making the experience of governance for town dwellers often confused and conflicted. Securing some form of public office was a distinct aspiration for the ambitious and a sure way of enhancing private interests. Some towns were granted county status enabling greater liberty to run their own affairs. In the later middle ages an increasing number of towns acquired corporate status such as Leicester, Northampton and York. This meant that the Corporation had legal status. The Corporation could sue and also be sued. Additionally, the corporations could buy and sell property which was the key nexus of corrupt dealing: members of the corporations enjoyed considerable advantages such as favourable leases for corporation lands. Members could also secure loans on favourable terms not only from the corporation itself but also from the charities that the corporation might control. Additionally speculation from the corporation’s cash account was, moreover, a common instance of corruption.22 Further, the fact that magistrates could control the issue of licences to set-up business and so exclude newcomers to the town was a constant source of conflict between the urban elite and the smaller tradesmen and artisans. Those townsmen that had the temerity to complain about magisterial chicanery were invariably ignored and, in some cases, principally in the smaller towns, such as High Wycombe, Woodstock and Wells, meetings were held in secret. There was then scant accountability that often led to public disorder which was compounded by other resentments such as tithe and simony. Even in the small towns such as Halesowen in the midlands there were conflicts, resentments and there

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was tough competition to obtain public office. Securing a position on the jury list was of crucial importance as it led to the potential of being nominated to the position of bailiff, ale taster and even catchpole which gave authority to collect monies from tolls, markets and fines and the right to report misconduct of other townsmen and women. It was an office open to abuse as it could be used to settle old scores or accept gifts in place of a more serious report and they could often comprise corrupt transactions and coercion. These positions were dominated by men from long-­ established families of the towns. In some senses, therefore, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was a misnomer. Although the rebellion started in the Essex village of Jobbing outbursts occurred in Bury St Edmunds, St Albans as well as London. The rebels captured the Archbishop of Canterbury and executed him. The prime source of resentment was an increase in the poll tax and a convergence of grievances against secular and ecclesiastical authority both of which were often seen as corrupt (Bateson)23 and lacking legitimacy. Those who held public office were often wealthy and able to devote time to public affairs as well as run their own businesses. The fact that public and private interests converged meant that corruption almost inevitably followed. Further, the multiple number of public bodies—the vestry, poor law guardians, street commissioners, quarter sessions—facilitated multiple office holding and with it opportunities for self-enhancement and corruption. At the same time it became increasingly apparent that many corporate bodies were inefficient and in debt. Just as the need for financial reform of the state and its taxation regime became apparent in the closing decades of the eighteenth century so too a demand for reform of local government became apparent as was the case at Plymouth which introduced a range of reforms which made it, in the eyes of the Municipal Commissioners a model corporation. It was clear that by the end of the thirteenth century towns had become increasingly exclusive and oligarchic which was a reflection of the power and tradition of established men and their families. These traditional worthies often provided stability and continuity of administration. In some towns such as York and Winchester the burgesses elected their mayor and bailiffs to govern the town. Additionally, there were a number of appointed officials including chamberlains, coroners, clerks, officers to regulate trade and market tolls and constables and tax-collectors. These offices were dispensed by patronage. Such practices were commonplace as the case of John of Ely of farming the offices of assayers of oysters at Queenhithe in

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London. Nevertheless, the towns remained subordinate to the Crown and in seigneurial towns the abbot or the bishop may have exercised a veto on appointments. This was often a source of dispute between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Even so town government remained exclusive, whether in chartered towns, seigneurial towns or incorporated towns. Only a small proportion of the towns’ populations were enfranchised. At Exeter only one in three adult males had a vote; and at York one in two had a vote. Public office remained a sought-after privilege rather than a right. Such privilege could only be obtained by inheritance, purchase or completion of apprenticeship. It was assumed that men of substance possessed the qualities—discretion and truthfulness at least—to hold public office. Moreover, public officers were expected to take an oath to uphold good government and take no personal reward. In this sense there may have been the exercise of moral choice in order that town government was perceived to be legitimate and based on ethical principles. The Crown reinforced this requirement as a royal writ to the mayor of Northampton illustrates: [Uphold]perfect rest, tranquillity, love, plenty, abundance and universal well-being would flourish [and] commotions, strife, debates, poverty, misery and many other inconveniences would be avoided.24

Office holders in the towns—constables, scavengers, bailiffs—were expected to swear an oath of office which suggests that there were expectations concerning their duties and conversely by implication what was contrary to the expected performance of the office.25

Transition: From Medieval to Early Modernity In early modern times civic office holders were frequently charged with ‘corruption and malfeasance’.26 There were, too, repeated accusations of peculation and the sale of offices. Later the Royal Commission which established the basis of the Municipal Corporations Act (1835) reported that the arrangements of government in many town corporations were not fit for purpose. Such a judgement was confirmed by Sidney and Beatrice Webb at the beginning of the twentieth century in their magisterial study of local government. What then were the main features of town government in early modern times? Towns remained subservient to the Crown as they had been in medieval times. At the same time historians have relied

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upon inference to ascertain the occurrence of corruption. The town of Gloucester provides a valuable example. Its government was exclusive and oligarchic. Between 1580 and 1800 there were 271 men who held the offices of councillors and aldermen. It was necessary to be a freeman to be able to hold public office which was a status that could only be achieved over a long period of time. Freeman’s status could be bought or inherited. Thus over a period of 220 years there was little turnover of membership with slightly more than one new member per year over that period. The acquisition of land whether freehold or leasehold was also a means of opening the door to public office. The second major feature was that civic office holders were drawn from a small group of established families and those that held office, especially aldermen served for a long period of time. It seems safe to say then that recruitment to the political elite was reliant on patronage and longevity. It was certainly the case that new arrivals to the town found it difficult to break into the illustrious circle. Those that were elected for the first time were required to be treasury stewards and pay a princely sum as a bond of good faith. But it was also a means of reducing the town’s debt. For the sons of existing members such a payment was invariably waived or reduced. In such conditions it would seem likely that members of the council were able to sell public offices such as bailiff, recorder and tax-collector. Additionally, the sale of alehouse licences was another income stream. For the mayor who was expected to perform ceremonial duties and entertain which was an undoubted expense the sale of offices and licences was an obvious way to offset those expenses. By the middle of the seventeenth century conflicts became shaped by the impact of puritan sympathies. Significantly when Gloucester received a new Royal Charter in 1672 the Royal Commissioners purged a number of the council members. It might be thought that given the pattern of recruitment that there would be little disagreement within the council. Not so, there were distinct factions. Professional men were often at loggerheads with the established families especially on matters of urban improvements including the town walls and street paving. Towards the end of the sixteenth century Thomas Macham and his son-in-law were at odds with Luke Garron and John Jones, the Diocesan Registrar over the appointment of a new Recorder. The dispute carried over into the matter of the election of Gloucester’s MPs in 1588. The improvement debate also brought to the fore the question of public accounts which had become a

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pressing matter. Indeed it came to light that there were rent arrears on town lands amounting to £2668. Some of the debts were more than 20 years old and a corporation charity account was completely depleted. The town treasurer was dismissed from office (Clark).27 These instances of misuse of public office may seem remarkable, but it was taken for granted that wealthy men would take up public office. Such men it was thought also possessed wisdom, experience and discretion. There was not an alternative source of legitimacy. The notion that councilmen were representatives did not figure. Moreover fear of public disorder and riot was a constant anxiety. Men who were regarded to be worthy provided the best insurance against disorder. Such assumptions were sustained by custom and practice. By the end of the medieval period and into the early modern period town governance was overwhelmingly oligarchic, exclusive and its officers—elected or appointed—sought to use their office for personal advantage. For many, public office was a calling or a duty to do good or maintain a family tradition. For others office was the key to status which in turn could lead to economic advantage such as loans at favourable rates of interest. The asymmetry of power within towns and cities at the end of the medieval period and into the early modern times unquestionably promoted exclusivity and frequently denied accountability.

Conclusion The study of corruption in Medieval England is fraught with difficulties, particularly for the fact that primary sources are often lacking and the question of interpreting them often rely on inference and conjecture. However, it is clear that there are a range of institutions and structures that have been examined: monarchy and the royal court; parliament and elections which merit examination. The significance of the moral teachings of Christianity and the literature and culture of the period often reflect contemporary anxieties about conduct and wrongdoing and moral conduct. Of course the medieval period was long and is remote from our vantage point. Nevertheless we can see that corruption is not a modern or post-modern phenomenon alone. However the sites of corruption were often in flux and also changed over time. We should be wary therefore of anachronistic interpretations and back projections of our own anxieties concerning politicians and public office holders.

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Notes 1. J.J. Bagley and P.B. Rowley, A Documentary History of England 1066–1540, Volume 1 (London: Penguin 1966) pp 91–113. 2. C. Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Land Owners in late medieval England’, Law and History Review (1983) pp. 205–237. 3. Magna Carta, J.J. Bagley and P.B. Rowley, op cit clause 3 pp. 102–103. 4. J. Bagley and P. Rowley, op cit. pp 91–1113. 5. G. Harris, ‘Political Society and the Growth of Government in Medieval England’, Past and Present (1993) pp. 28–57. 6. J.  Watts, ‘the problem of the personal: Tackling Corruption in later Medieval England 1250–1550’ in R. Kroeze, A. Victoria, and G. Geltner, Anticorruption in History (Oxford: OUP 2018) pp. 91–102. 7. ‘John of Salisbury’, Britannica: English Scholar (21 October 2022) pp. 21120–1180) 1; and J.J. Bagley and P.B. Rowley, op cit, p 36. 8. N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321–26. (Cambridge: CUP 1979) pp. 106–07. 9. B.  Buchan and L.  Hill, An Intellectual History of Political Corruption (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) pp. 46–51. 10. L.  Blaydes, J Grimmer, A.  McQueen, ‘Mirrors for Princes and Sultans: Advice on the art of governance in the Medieval and Christian worlds’, Journal of Politics, 80, (2018) pp. 1151–1165. 11. J.T. Noonan, Bribes (New York Macmillan 1984) pp 55–83. 12. Quoted in, Noonan op cit pp. 275–279. 13. G.  Chaucer, quoted in M.  Bevir Governance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP). 14. P. Seaward, ‘Sleaze Old Corruption and Reform: an Historical Perspective on the current crisis’, The Political Quarterly, 81, 1 (January–March 2010). 15. Ibid. 16. H. Kleineke, ‘Parliament, Politics and the People: Parliamentary Elections in the Reign of Henry VI’, History of Parliament on line.org, June 2021. 17. Quoted in J.E.  Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Penguin 1963) p. 22. 18. D.C.  Coleman, The Economy of England 1450–1750, (Oxford: OPUS, 1977) pp 48–49. 19. J.C.  Russell, ‘The Pre-plague population of England, Journal of British Studies, 5, 2 (January 2014) pp. 1–21. 20. Buchan and Hill, op cit pp. 46–67. 21. P.  Clark, English Towns in Transition 1500–1700 (Oxford: Opus 1976) pp. 152–4. 22. P.  Clark, and P.  Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500–1700 (Oxford: OUP 1976) pp. 132–34.

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23. M.  Bateson, Medieval England (London 1903). See also J.  Campbell, ‘Power and Authority’ in D.M.  Palliser the Cambridge Urban History of Britain 600–1540 Vol. 1 (Cambridge: CUP) pp. 51–69. 24. M. Bateson, Medieval England (London 2003). 25. Conal Condren, Argument and Authority in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 2006); The Book of Oaths and Several Forms thereof, Both Ancient and Modern, compiled by Robert Gosling, 1715 (Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections on line). 26. P Clark, The Transformation of English Provincial towns (London: Hutchinson 1984) p. 311. 27. Clark op cit p. 334.

CHAPTER 3

Corruption in Early Modernity c. 1485–1688

The Prince’s Court is like a common fountaine Whence should flow Pure silver droppes … But if chance Some curs’d example poyson’t neere the head Death and diseases through the whole land spread. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi 1623

Processes of Change and the Crisis of Legitimacy The fountain had long been a symbol from which a king’s bounty might flow. The idea that the stream could be poisoned was a powerful metaphor to denote the corruption of the Stuart State. Why were concerns about corruption so conspicuous in the first half of the seventeenth century? Was the Stuart monarchy more corrupt than had prevailed in the late Tudor state? There cannot be certain answers to these questions. However, there were many pressing factors which might suggest that the reigns of James I and Charles I were mired in a crisis of legitimacy signified by the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a Commonwealth headed by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. It is not intended here to write a history of the English Revolution of which there is a vast literature. Nevertheless, it is clear that growing concern about corruption was an associated factor of state legitimacy and with it political revolution. It is important,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_3

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therefore, to identify the key processes of change which brought ‘corruption’ to the forefront of political discourse. The late sixteenth century to the late seventeenth century was a pivotal phase for understanding the nature of what would become the British polity, and for the generation of ideas about corruption and more broadly misconduct in the political realm. Why was this so and what were the key developments of this process? First, England’s break with Rome following the pope’s refusal to approve Henry VIII’s divorce set England on a path outside the rest of continental Europe; and yet there were also significant interactions between England and the continental European states in terms of cultural interplay. Second, England and Scotland were both profoundly affected by Luther’s Reformation and the development of an independent-minded laity which was able, thanks to the development of printing technology and the printing of the Bible in vernacular form to participate in the humanist intellectual Renaissance which promoted new attitudes that challenged the existing order of the Church and the monarchy. Further, the ferment of ideas about the nature of the political realm and the conduct of political actors within that realm were formative in the construction of notions and understandings of what constituted legitimate government (Pardo, 2004)1 and political behaviour and what was regarded as corrupt behaviour (Pocock, 1975).2 Prior to the seventeenth century there had existed at least three broad types of corruption: patronage, gifts and venality. However, these phenomena were not necessarily regarded by contemporaries as corruption. Members of the political elite or those that performed some kind of public service would not have regarded patronage as corruption as the search for patronage enabled upward social mobility. For those that granted patronage the possibility of social control and/or political control was a prime motive. At the same time patronage provided opportunity to men of ability and talent. Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s minister after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, was a notable example. It was also then the principal cement of social cohesion. The gift was the essential nexus of patron-client relations: patronage and clientage were held together because the relationships were both symbiotic and symbolic. The relationship was essentially private and dependent on deference as it was designed to bring reward to the client and proof of the patron’s power. Such arrangements arose from existing familial and kinship connections, from neighbour proximity or from simple friendship. Further, the acceptance of gifts by office holders from supplicants was legitimate provided they were not

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excessive. There was of course some ambivalence here as instanced by the case of Francis Bacon, the Attorney General, who had accepted gifts from litigants in 1620. When he wrote to the King he showed contrition and claimed that although he had accepted payment from litigants they had not affected his judgements. However, he added that he was not an ‘avaricious man [and] his estate was so mean and poor, as my care is now chiefly to satisfy my debts’ for the bribery and gifts wherewith I am charged; and when the books of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain in depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice. Howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuse of the times’ (Peloton, 2004).3 Bacon was fined £40,000, barred from holding public office and forbidden to sit in parliament or come within 12 miles of the court. He was sent to the Tower where he remained for three days, but the fine was never collected. Bacon’s conduct is interesting as it reveals ambivalence about the conduct of a law officer. Perhaps public shame was thought to be sufficient punishment. Bacon’s apology is interesting as it is coupled with an observation on the times in which he lived and that it was regarded as reasonable as it reinforced and validated the existing social hierarchy. Lastly, making money from public office was regarded as entirely reasonable as offices were considered to be private property to be bought, sold, inherited and deployed to acquire wealth. However, the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century also witnessed a societal re-evaluation of such ideas. Why was this so? The Reformation as it affected England in material terms engendered significant upward social mobility as the dissolution of the monasteries set in motion a massive transfer of land from the Church to landed gentry and to men who had gained status and position via the professions and public office (Stone, 1986).4 For some, the confiscation of Church lands was of itself an act of grand corruption and plunder (Hoskins, 1975).5 Indeed Henry VIII’s principal agent was Thomas Cromwell, who it has been concluded was ‘rapacious, cynical, cunning and corrupt’ (Elton, 1993).6 Apparently, on his arrest he had hidden three purses and one glove containing altogether £270, which were thought to have been bribes that he had pocketed but which he had not been able to transfer to his accountant (Elton).7 Individual cases are important but they do not, of themselves, explain the structural shifts that dissolution of the monasteries had wrought. At the same time, traditional hierarchies which had, prior to the later sixteenth century, reflected God’s will were now challenged (Tillyard, 1943).8 The Reformation questioned

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the authority of the Church; and indirectly it secularised ideas about political power and its dispensation. By the second half of the seventeenth century the Divine Right of Kings had, apparently, been overturned with the execution of Charles I (Figgis),9 and state craft displaced traditional assumptions of duty, honour and fidelity (Skinner, 1981).10 A new order came into effect which was indebted in part to Christian teachings but which demonstrated that Protestantism could present itself as an earthly ecclesia. At the same time there was a secular shift of ideas which challenged traditional behaviours such as the conspicuous prevalence of bribery and blatant partisanship. Such thinking became part of the political assumptions of the Atlantic world in which Britain was a key agent (Pocock, 1986).11The end of the seventeenth century, with the accession of William of Orange and the Act of Settlement 1701, suggested that religious liberty and civil liberty were coterminous. Office holders whether monarchs, justices or ministers of the state became bound, increasingly, by codes of conduct that required accountability to the interests of society. This development was part of a broader reconstruction of society: peers and baronets remained substantially loyal to the monarch whose patronage provided them with Royal Charters, monopolies and offices of state. However, older practices of patronage persisted. Access to public office was not based on any clear rules of entry or promotion by merit or seniority. Personal and familial connections prevailed, creating scope for nepotism and corruption (Aylmer, 1963).12 These changes intensified the competition for places, honours, sinecures; and pensions, monopolies and patents which led inexorably to corruption. The patterns of social mobility which led to such conditions were an increase in the number of peers from about 60 prior to the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536–1540 to 160 by the end of the seventeenth century. Over the same period the number of baronets and knights grew from 500 to 1400 and squires from 800 to 3000. The numbers of clergy shrank although substantial numbers of clerics became lecturers and university men and later recovered. The number of lawyers expanded by 40 per cent between the 1590s and the 1630s, and by the 1680s Gregory King estimated that there were 10,000 members of the legal profession (Stone, 1958).13 The mobility described was not explicable only to the effects of the plundering of church lands and estates. It was also fuelled by a long period of price inflation which dated from the beginning of the sixteenth century and continued to the 1630s. Recruitment to public office was still based upon personal and familial contacts. There were in

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fact other processes in play here. Effectively, there were four discrete hierarchies of status in early modern English society: the peers of the realm, lawyers, clergy, public office holders. The peer hierarchy was the most stable as the legal practice of primogeniture ensured the continuation of land and title over time. However, younger sons had to seek other opportunities and were in effect downwardly mobile from the beginning of their adult lives and were required to move into the law, business, public office or politics. To rise up the social ladder it was essential to find a patron as the life of Samuel Pepys shows: find a wife or secure access to capital. There was then fierce competition to move up the social ladder and a search for desperate measures if the prospect of downward mobility loomed. At the same time the general status of the professions was rising relative to that of the landed classes, especially of the gentry. Further, conspicuous consumption was the great test of status, but it was not without opprobrium. In such an environment corrupt behaviour was a natural consequence. The dissolution of the monasteries and episcopal estates brought about an inflation of honours as the figures for peers, baronets and knights reveal. New habits of conspicuous consumption, too, promoted a buoyant market in land which was accompanied by an equally buoyant market in honours. The new upwardly mobile sought the ‘paraphernalia of status’ (Stone, 1985).14 Titles could be bought and, during the reign of James I when the government was desperately short of funds and knighthoods, sold for £25. This was much needed income given the state of the Royal finances: James I inherited an income of £350,000 a year when he became King of England. Following the succession of Charles I the King’s income had risen to 1 million pounds a year. Such funds were derived from Crown lands and feudal revenues as well as from prerogative rights. This income, however, was insufficient because of the costs of waging wars against the Dutch, against Spain, against Portugal and against France. This in turn led to the use of excise and customs duties. Fortunately, trade generated significant income. However, legal and administrative oversight was lax. Indeed, the number of paid officials in the 1630s was under 2000 with roughly half of that number being servants in the royal household. Civil servants or administrators made up the other half. The pressures on government to raise income and reward supporters with honours coupled with weak oversight and audit capacity served to create a perfect market for corruption as the new wealthy sought status recognition. Peers with long lineage looked upon the new parliamentarians with contempt as men

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of low social standing who were driven by envy and greed. In this sense corruption was perhaps a matter of perception as patronage came to be construed as malign where previously it had been considered to be valuable as it enabled men of talent to be recruited to the political elite. Given the complexity of these changes, it is difficult to assert that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed more corruption than had occurred in the middle ages, or that the Stuart regime was more corrupt than the reign of Elizabeth, but there is no doubt that attitudes towards corruption had certainly changed as the formation of the modern state ‘brought the ordinary man into much closer contact than ever before with the machinery and men of secular government’ (Hurstfield, 1973).15 This can be attributed to the growth of the state, the range of its activities, the increased size of the bureaucracy, the functions of the state including tax collection, the administration of justice and the waging of war. In crude terms the growth of bureaucracy meant ‘more jobs and with it more jobbery’ (Hurstfield, op cit).16 Moreover, the increase in revenues to enable the state to carry out its tasks was increasingly shown to be inefficient and methods of accounting proved inadequate. This was highlighted by the case of John Beaumont as Receiver General and his administration of the Court of Wards. He managed to syphon off considerable sums of money during the minority of Edward VI.  In many respects his case served to illustrate the decay of the centralised state created by Henry VIII.  The rapid expansion of the state, the weakness of administrative systems for revenue collection and the metamorphosis of patronage into favouritism created a regime that was potentially corrupt and which by the reign of Charles I faced a crisis of legitimacy. However, it is difficult to determine how corrupt the King’s servants had become given that Royal accounts were complex covering a vast range of transactions which included Chancery, Wards, Exchequer, Kings Bench and common pleas, regional courts and customs and monopolies (Aylmer).17 The descent from patronage to favouritism was a distinctive feature of the reign of James I. The reign of Elizabeth had kept these inherent tendencies in some check. William Lambarde, the Elizabethan antiquary, recorded a conversation that he had with Queen Elizabeth in 1601 and recalled that social conventions had kept corruption in check and that the Queen was saddened by the decline of valour, but in her own time ‘the wit of the fox is everywhere’ (Hurstfield, 1967).18 Under James corruption had become ubiquitous. Indeed, James told the Venetian Ambassador:

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If I were to imitate the conduct of your Republic and begin to punish those who took bribes I should not have a single subject left (Hurstfield).19

Secular Ideas In addition to the heightened sense of morality which had sprung from the Reformation, there also emerged secular and civic ideas which were attributable to the European Renaissance. In this respect it is important to consider the effect of the growing technology of printing which enabled the writings of philosophers, historians and political theorists to circulate widely. Additionally, we should note the emergence of numerous foreign language dictionaries such as Hollyband’s Dictionarie of French and English (1593). Anglo-Italian dictionaries had also been published in the sixteenth century such as Florio’s A World of Wordes or most copious and exact dictionarie in italiana (1598) and Richard Congreve’s Dictionarie of French and English Tongues (1611). Of course, English scholars were proficient in Latin and Henry Savile’s translation of the Roman Historian, Tacitus, which enabled new discourses for the purpose of political thought. Thus, English and Scottish thinkers were able to access the debates on the nature of polities. Machiavelli had published Arte Della Guerra in c. 1520, and it was published in English in 1562. Similarly, The Prince was first published in 1532 and appeared as an English version in 1640. Machiavelli’s ideas about the nature of state craft and corruption were also present in Elizabethan and early Stuart Drama so that for many in London, at least, exposure to humanist political ideas was perhaps the most accessible means to become aware of humanist political thought. Indeed, the Venetian Ambassador wrote that London’s theatres were frequented by all sorts including carters, apprentices, servants as well as merchants and noble people. In 1607 the Venetian Ambassador bought all the most expensive seats for a performance of Pericles. In the plays of Shakespeare Hamlet was first performed in 1602 and printed later first in 1603 and again later in 1623. The influence of Reformation thinking and humanist thought was readily apparent. Importantly, during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I the theatre companies were invited to perform at Whitehall Palace. Othello was performed first at Whitehall in 1604 and attended by James I.  John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi was first performed in 1623, in which the lead character’s, Antonio’s, pronouncements are pure Machiavelli:

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Though some of the court holds it presumption To instruct princes what they ought to do It is a noble duty to inform them What they ought to foresee (Webster, 1623).20 This was in a sense a continuation of the idea that monarchs should seek wise counsel and avoid evil counsel.

The reign of James I saw numerous developments that are important for our understanding of corruption. His accession to the throne was made on the basis of inheritance and was therefore legitimate. The King James Bible would seem to have been a major cultural, religious and political achievement which would also legitimate the Divine Right of Kingship. However, his new court in London was noted for its extravagance and decadence. In some senses though, such a judgement was questionable. James was generous if not profligate, and the cost of the court rose inexorably over a short period and was exacerbated by the effects of inflation. However, the preservation of social hierarchy flowed from the King’s bounty. Ideal kingship was generous as shown in the Mirrors for Princes genre of literature, and James was true to that long-lived tradition (Erasmus, 1597).21 Admittedly, James brought with him courtiers from Scotland so that the cost of the new Royal household increased markedly (Levy-Peck, 1984).22 Further, and more significantly, patronage became a vehicle to promote favouritism. James’ choice of favourites has been questioned by some historians,23 and the failure of the Duke of Buckingham to steer policy but spend money extravagantly and procure offices for friends and relatives certainly demonstrated James’ poor judgement. Buckingham was active, too, in the sale of offices and the approval of patents. The application for a patent for gold and silver thread by Sir Giles Mompesson, for example, in 1620 illustrates well the ambivalent attitudes towards personal conduct: the patent was perused by Buckingham and the King who divided between them the profits which had accrued by the approval of the patent. Mompesson had also been the recipient of a number of monopolies which were of doubtful veracity, particularly when he fled the country pending the new parliament. Significantly, it was against this background that James called parliament for the first time in seven years. Traditionally parliament would hear grievances and the parliament of 1621 heard an extensive number of cases. For the most part they were about bribery as it affected the justice system, but they were also concerned with monopolies,

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patents and the sale of honours and offices. Such were the cases in question that parliament revived the procedure of impeachment which had not been used since the fourteenth century. Traditionally historians have viewed the parliament of 1621 in terms of a campaign for liberty and the protection of property. In this sense it was an antecedent to the Revolution of 1649. It has also been suggested that the parliament of 1621 was a manifestation of factionalism within the King’s court. Here we are concerned with demonstrating the way in which parliament expressed its concern about corruption and how it attempted, unsuccessfully, to introduce legislation to control and contain corruption. The most notable case was that of Sir Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor, who had accepted bribes from two suitors. It transpired also that Theophilus Field, bishop of Llandaff, had acted as a broker for Bacon and was open about the fact that he had accepted gifts but in doing so claimed they had not affected his judgement. Later he would confess that he was guilty of corruption. He said it was known that he was ‘not an avaricious man’ and that he needed to settle his debts. He was tried, fined £40,000 and imprisoned in the Tower of London for three days. The fine was never collected (M. Peloton).24 James pardoned him and he retained his titles, privileges and pension (J.T. Noonan op cit).25 The leading figure in the impeachment process of Sir Francis Bacon was Sir Edward Coke, and it was significant that Coke attacked what he called the ‘luxuriant authority of the Court of Chancery’ and accused it of a ‘great bribery and corruption committed by him, Bacon, in this eminent place’. It was evident in Coke’s use of language that ideas of luxury and excess were more significant perhaps than the act itself. Further, we should note, too, the speech of the King himself that the state was ‘like his own coppice, the outside well grown and making a good show but inwardly rotten and spoiled. His government [was] well fenced with laws, judges and other magistrates and yet his people, by secret corruptions and projectures, [and] bills of conformity had taken profit.’ Given James’ handling of Mompesson’s application for a patent, such speech smacked of hypocrisy. In addition to the impeachment of Bacon, there were numerous other cases: Sir John Bennett, Judge of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, was impeached for accepting and procuring bribes and that he had taken for himself £200,000 in coin. Once again Sir Edward Coke captured the collective disdain for Bennett, claiming ‘If fountains are corrupted, look for no health in anything that comes from them.’ Bennett did not fare so

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well as Bacon and James regarded Bennett’s corruption as a ‘black’ case and showed no mercy (L. Levy-Peck).26 The extent of corruption had percolated through numerous offices of the state. Sir Francis Mitchell, J.  P. for Clerkenwell, was charged with extracting bonds from London merchants and for extortion of money from ale house keepers; and Alexander Harris, a gaoler, was accused of extorting money from prisoners. With the weight of this evidence parliament resolved to legislate with a bill outlawing bribery, but it did not pass. It is interesting again that the language of debate borrowed from classical antiquity, notably Aristotle’s idea of the body politic. Thus, Samuel Sandys cried that ‘the whole kingdom had been scandalised [and] there is a disease that needs Aesculapius (Roman God of medicine) to stop the fountain head and the rivers will run dry’. Sir William Cope, himself a doctor, suggested that ‘as physicians look at the bodies of men how the disease came can give rules to prevent the like, so that I desire that this committee consider the causes thereof and make some law to prevent bribery’. The range of cases prompted satirical pamphlets such as those by Thomas John Scott: Have we not married sin and honour? What will you give me? And you shall be a parson, a dean, a bishop. (Quoted in Levy-Peck op cit).27

But of course the problem of corruption was intertwined with other state failings such as foreign policy and the King’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. The latter was particularly loathed. John Pym claimed that Buckingham had extracted for himself £62,992 over ten years as well as syphoned off money from the customs’ account and that ‘he had served himself before he served the state’ and should face ‘the high court of Parliament [which] is the great eye of the kingdom, to find out offences and punish them’ (quoted in Russell, 2009)28. In the late 1620s the English state faced a crisis of legitimacy. Buckingham’s wars with France and Spain had proved a disaster: soldiers were quartered in citizens’ dwellings, martial law prevailed and debts had mounted. Charles’ ‘levy of forced loan’ was designed to secure funds to offset the costs of the wars. Those that refused were imprisoned. Sir Edward Coke’s speech referring to Buckingham as ‘the grievance of grievances’ turned the ‘levy’ into the centre piece of his argument that taxation could not be levied without the consent of parliament. He went on to observe that Medieval Parliaments had not hesitated to criticise ministers of the Crown and that the King could not imprison a freeman without cause. From this parliament framed what would become known as the

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Petition of Right which linked liberty and property. Charles at first attempted to disregard it claiming that he would veto any bill that exceeded Magna Carta. Buckingham’s involvement in the ‘shady underworld of monopolists, financiers and projectors … explains why he became for many members of the political nation the embodiment of corruption’ (R. Lockyer, 2004).29 Buckingham’s political failure brought popular condemnation and ultimately led to his assassination: John Felton, a disillusioned naval officer, who engaged a scrivener, George Willoughby, to draw up a number of petitions to various privy councillors pleading for his back pay and promotion. His pleas were unsuccessful, but Willoughby showed him a remonstrance to be presented to parliament claiming Buckingham’s ‘wicked and treacherous rule’ (A. Bellany, 2008).30 Felton decided to act and assassinated Buckingham in Portsmouth 23 August 1628. Felton claimed that he had acted for his God, King and Country. He was hanged at Tyburn but deemed a folk hero—a David against Goliath—and numerous poems celebrated his actions: Stout Macabee thy most mighty arm, With zeal and justice armed, hath in truth won The prize of patriot to a British son (Exodus).

Significantly, those that lauded Felton referenced the books of the Old Testament calling Felton a new Phineas another Ehud. The politicising of the Old Testament text was a key feature of revolutionary thinking in the 1640s and the World Turned Upside Down provides the most extensive account of these changes (C.  Hill, 1972).31 At the same time Old Testament language came into play in the debate about corruption. During the trial of Charles I the King’s claim of Divine Right and that he was answerable to God only was refuted by Sir Edward Coke, arguing that the King’s power was entrusted by parliament and therefore the King was accountable to parliament. Indeed, the study of medieval kingship reveals a consistency of obligation for the monarch to fulfil the coronation oath (A.  Boyer, 2009).32 Charles had abused his power and acted corruptly. Corruption was surrounded by many metaphors such as ‘the canker of corruption’, whereas the metaphor of ‘clean hands’ was derived from a biblical psalm. By contrast, the idea of a ‘polluted stream’ was a scriptural metaphor for corruption. The working out of these ideas would become apparent in the Commonwealth.

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Commonwealth Following the execution of Charles I the Commonwealth was established and Oliver Cromwell deployed a political rhetoric drenched in biblical allusion. He claimed that England was an elect nation destined to lead; the English were the ‘people of god’. Cromwell saw himself as a ‘Moses leading God’s people to the promised-land’: the Commonwealth demonstrated the idea of the state and the ‘public’ as well as the notion of state power reflected by the influence of Renaissance republicans. Further, parliament had been transformed from a council to a legislature. In essence, the powers of the state had been separated. Significantly justice was the King’s justice and subjects had recourse to law to seek remedy for a wrong. These arrangements, at least in theory, although not always in practice, meant that officers of the state who had behaved improperly could be charged with misconduct in public office whether because of bribery, extortion or omission as the Bembridge case in 1783 would demonstrate. The moral climate, however, had been established by Cromwell with lasting effect: That this has been a nation of blessings … who can deny? England thou art my first born, my delight among nations, under the whole heavens the Lord hath not dealt with any of the people round about us. (UKPP, 1654).33

The alignment of religion with patriotism is certainly clear, but it also implies virtue: We were a redeemed people, when first God was pleased to look favourably upon us, and to bring us out of the hands of Popery, in that never to be forgotten Reformation.

Such rhetoric also evoked conversely the opposite, namely corruption. The papacy was seen as corrupt. England had been delivered from Catholic evils such as simony. They would be replaced by good governance: What so ever is done without the authority of Parliament … will neither be very honest, nor to me very comprehensible. (op cit 1657)34

The principle of parliamentary sovereignty was clear and so too was the idea of entrusted power and by implication, conversely, the abuse of power. Taken in the round, Cromwell’s beliefs were of course framed by

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the Reformation and therefore laden with moral rectitude. It aspired to a new legitimacy to replace the loss of the validity of Divine Right monarchy. However, there were other processes at work which brought a secular dimension to the way in which contemporaries understood and defined corruption. The development of printing technology has already been mentioned, and its importance for the printing of the Bible and prayer books was also important for the circulation of the ideas of the ancient philosophers, particularly Seneca and Polybius. Classical historians such as Livy and Thucydides also provided significant lessons about the potential for corruption within states. In these writings accusations carried a moral weight and suggest that state failure can be explained by understanding that individual failings—hubris, ambition, the search for glory—can have moral consequences. Indeed, corruption represented moral flaw and the acts of individuals can taint the wider polity. The suggestion of moral taint was indicative of the degeneration of society more broadly. ‘Degenerative’ was a conceptual staple for the ancients as the consequences of that degenerations were tyranny. Aristotle likened the polity to the human body and in so doing suggested that the state should be balanced as it was prone to sickness and decay. In addition to the heightened sense of morality which had sprung from the Reformation, there had emerged secular and civic ideas which were part of the European Renaissance. In this respect it is important again to consider the effect of the growing technology of printing which enabled the writings of philosophers, historians and political theorists to circulate widely.

Restoration, War, Glorious Revolution and Act of Settlement Traditionally, histories of the post-Commonwealth experiment are typified as a phase of stabilisation and consolidation of the polity. If that was so, the persistence of corruption was a case of business as usual. In 1667, for example, John Ashburnham was expelled from the House of Commons for accepting a bribe of £500 to secure a licence for the import of French wine. In 1677 the Earl of Danby was impeached for his part in negotiating a treaty with France. Additionally, he had circulated papers and reports of questionable content. He was impeached and dismissed from office and

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imprisoned in the Tower of London. Nevertheless, the legacy of the Commonwealth was significant as it conflated biblical narrative with concerns about corruption. Secondly, the idea of virtue was set alongside patriotism and the notion of the chosen people. Even though there was perhaps a normalisation of social mores suggesting that corruption was a ubiquitous phenomenon, it is useful to consider the defences of those who were accused of corruption as they frequently sought to mitigate their offences by claiming that they had not acted selfishly but were helping a friend or advancing some kind of public good. Thus, the apparent illicit acceptance of a gift was often claimed to be the custom in particular social or bureaucratic transactions. This was particularly so when public office holders were unsalaried or only minimally so. In such cases the procurement of a fee or the extortion of a bribe is difficult to differentiate. It is clear that the later seventeenth century was a period of gestation for the emergence of clearer formulations of what constituted corruption and how it could be legislated against. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 witnessed important shifts in public thinking. The idea of representation of public opinion quickened after 1660, and it was encouraged by the frequency of elections after the Restoration until the reign of Queen Ann. Alongside this there was a remarkable growth of the publication of political tracts and pamphlets. These developments encouraged the ideas of representation but also misrepresentation. The consumption of print promoted debates about political economy, stocks and trade and political affairs. Much of the print was partisan and polemical. Consequently, there arose concern that the public was exposed to misrepresentation of politics (M Knights, 2005).35 In particular, the political polemics of much of the pamphlet press raised concern about the validity and truthfulness and the reliability of the claims of the pamphleteers. In this respect the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are valuable to consider. Thomas Hobbes’ argument that human beings were born in ‘state of nature’ and were therefore free to defend themselves against danger was instrumental in establishing the idea of social contract between the ruled and the ruler of the state. In this sense the sovereign was the agent of the people’s will. Further his assertion that the lives of men were ‘brutish and short’ implied constraints and limitations on men in a just polity. It was the ideas of John Locke that provided a potential ideological framework to signal how legislation might define and limit corruption. Locke’s legislative ideas were formulated with members of his ‘college’ as he referred to them. Thus, in his correspondence with Edward Clarke and

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John Freke, Locke found political activists whose campaigns for reform he was able to influence. Indeed, Clarke, an MP, was Locke’s ‘voice in parliament’ (M. Goldie).36 Locke was also, via John Freke, to communicate his ideas for reform to the Lord Chancellor, John Somers. All this was part of the refreshment of the coffee houses in London, which were venues for the discussion of political ideas and reform programmes in the 1670s. The Grecian Coffee House was the haunt of old Commonwealth men and old Whigs. These men also placed great value on ‘active public duty’, and Locke and his college were keen to regulate the conduct of elections as a means of curbing the corruption of parliament. Such moves, following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, were given greater traction by the ‘Williamite state’, which ensured that Protestantism and parliamentary government were in the ascendant. In particular, the Dutch connection established an Anglo-Dutch axis against a Catholic and absolutist France. Such a dynamic ensured the commercial interests of England’s burgeoning maritime interests. In this sense the beginnings of the regulation of elections were a twin cause alongside modernisation of banking and customs and excise. Thus, the impetus for reform which had first established the idea of morality was now coupled to finance and elections to complete a virtuous circle for reform. Further, the elections of the early 1660s had been especially alarming establishing a concern that the corruptions of elections—bribery, excessive drinking and eating—in turn promoted further vices including violence and fraud. It was against this background that putative drafts for electoral reform began to take shape. The reform agenda was pragmatic because England’s maritime trade brought the country into conflict with other states—France, Spain and the Netherlands—making it imperative to fund war. Financial reform was then nested in a range of principles including the preservation of liberty, property, Protestantism, religious toleration, a free press and even the reform of poor relief. Further, the danger that James II could pack parliament with court loyalists was a very real threat during the succession crisis prior to the Glorious Revolution and the accession of William and Mary. The Revolution of 1689 quickened the pace, apparently, to secure parliamentary reform. The Earl Shaftesbury’s pamphlet Some Observations Concerning the Regulating of Elections was published in 1689 in which he argued for a standard borough franchise; an increase in the county qualification of 40 shillings first established in 1440. Additionally, he advocated a parish-based system whereby all parishioners could elect representatives who owned property worth £40 or more. These representatives in turn

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would elect county gentry with estates of £10,000 or more to sit in parliament. On 26 February 1689 shortly before Willian accepted the Crown, John Hampden and Edward Harley were nominated to draw up draft bill for the regulation of elections. However, the election for the Convention Parliament in 1689 displayed corruption at the expense of the reformers: Edward Clarke was defeated in Taunton where his opponents deployed violence and intimidation. The same tactics applied again in the election of 1698 with treating of the electorate. Despite these setbacks Locke and hi circle continued their campaign. Correspondence between Locke and Clarke revealed measures to stop sheriffs and mayors from procuring votes and other irregularities. Subsequent drafts for county elections had clauses stipulating that sheriffs had to appoint poll clerks chosen from a pool of 24 were chosen. Election polling should be open and free and forbidding any voter coming to the poll carrying arms. Additionally, there were to be penalties attached to any abuse of procedures and any MP judged to have been elected improperly was to be declared a ‘usurper’ and required to forfeit all his goods and chattels. Similarly electors who had accepted bribes would be disenfranchised. The emergence of these draft bills was significant in that they represented an embryonic agenda for electoral reform which would pursue during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its focus was on electoral corruption particularly to produce order and administrative supervision of electoral procedures. Arguably, it was a slow burn campaign that did not generate sufficient energy until the effects of demographic change and urbanisation rendered the so-called Old Corruption less tenable. Towns and Cities The early modern period was undoubtedly a time of flux and change. New notions concerning the exercise of political power and the crisis of the Stuart monarchy signified the political turbulence of the time. It is in this context that it is valuable to consider the role of towns in promoting political changes. Additionally, it is valuable to consider some of the broader issues which generated economic and societal change. For those who lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there was apprehension and regret about the changes that were afoot in society at large. Sir Thomas More in Utopia37 observed via his authorial persona, Raphael Hythloday, the economy of England had been undergoing significant changes. He noted that there had been considerable change in the countryside because

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of the enclosure of common ploughed lands which had been turned over to pasture and the grazing of sheep. Such was the consequence of the export of woollen cloth which had pushed peasants and cottagers off the land to vagrancy or migration to towns. Sir Thomas Smith in Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549) also identified these changes. Other writers observed population growth and trade, commercial farming and more brutal forms of estate management by landowners.38 In the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Wilson commented on the growing prosperity of yeoman farmers and a relative decline of the wealth of the nobility and the gentry. He might have thought, too, that these shifts were due in part to the effects of the dissolution of the monasteries and the sale of church lands to those who supported Henry VIII. A significant consequence of this policy was inflation which promoted corruption by means of the sale of offices and monopolies. Sir Francis Bacon suggested that these changes contributed to the crisis of monarchy and the Civil War as new aspiring men came to the fore in political life. The radical thinker James Harrington in his Oceana (1656) in which he posited the principle that property was power. The search for power and influence was accompanied with a desire for opulence and luxury. Wilson and Harrison were conscious that the order of society had undergone transformative change. By the eighteenth century the observations of More, Smith, Wilson and Harrington were taken up by the luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment. David Hume in his Essay of Commerce (1752) and his History of England (1754) opined that medieval society had been marked by ‘indolence’ and that the changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries encouraged the behaviours of ‘industriousness’. These changes had been prefixed by the growth of overseas trade and the desire for luxury goods—tea and spices; those who became rich coveted splendour. It could also have been that office holders would not have wanted to be excluded from opulence and sought to gain rewards from the sale of offices, monopolies and patents and the acceptance of bribes. Further, if the habits of industry brought success, there might follow the chance to join the social and political elite. Moreover, wealth and success had to be paraded whether by the purchase of a country house, parading in London or Bath. The Scottish puritan, David Hume claimed that men were consumed by ‘the spirit of avarice and industry’. If this was so, then by the eighteenth century, the founding of new financial instruments numerous means of credit

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and overseas trade in North America, India and China, then also the opportunities for corruption to become a central feature of the British state. The later middle ages and the Tudor monarchy saw a remarkable concentration of power in the monarchy. Indeed, the Act of Supremacy (1534) established an absolutist state. England was not as yet an urban society. In 1500 probably 10 per cent of the population of England lived in towns; and by 1700 it is thought that 20 per cent did so. However, this change of proportion was not uniform as it was the growth of London that prompted the change. Towns remained vulnerable to periodic disaster such as fire, disease and intermittent harvest failures. The fire of London (1666) is famous, but it should be noted that provincial towns were more vulnerable to calamity from whatever source: Norwich lost a third of its population to disease in 1579, and Northampton was laid waste by fire in 1575. Moreover, many provincial towns lacked administrative resources to rejuvenate themselves at any significant pace. There was also the question of corruption as many office holders sought to enrich themselves in an environment where ideals of public duty were weakly developed. London had a population of 75,000 at the end of the seventeenth century. Norwich had a population just shy of 30,000 and Bristol’s population was just over 20,000. In short, provincial urban society was distinctly fragile. There were accusations of corruption, but historians have to rely on inference and generalisations on the matter of corruption are always open to qualification. London was not only the largest city but also the political capital and a veritable hot house of cultural and intellectual activity. Live theatre, poetry, pamphlets, addresses and petitions together with the growth of ideas about politics and particularly political representation were important indicators of political change. Additionally, the technology of printing fostered a lively pamphlet culture of petitions and satires. Coffee houses and ale houses were venues of political debate and in particular a broadening apprehension of the meaning of political corruption. Evidence of such activity is now readily available to historians. In particular, the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) reveals that there was a vigorous debate about political corruption and its significance. The Civil War, the execution of Charles I and the period of the Commonwealth had undoubtedly politicised London society. In the plethora of news-sheets, handbills and pamphlets, the frequency of references to corruption peaked shortly after the end of the Commonwealth and again after the Restoration in 1660. The election to the Convention Parliament in 1660 marked the beginning

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of a particularly intense phase of politics which was acted out in London. The Restoration saw the revival of the traditional state—King, Lords and Commons—and the new parliament quickly re-imposed the necessity for print licences, but this, probably, had little effect on the pamphlet press. Indeed, it was the social media of its time. Elections to the City of London Corporation also generated significant political heat, especially because of the exclusion of religious dissenters from holding public office. Further, there arose disputes over the longevity of parliaments: there were three general elections between 1690 and 1708; and there were elections in 1688, 1690 and 1695. Further, elections were increasingly contested. The pamphleteers had a field day. Much of this print was satirical and scurrilous, but it also highlighted the idea of political representation. The mushroom growth of print also raised concern about misrepresentation. Indeed, there was growing concern in elite circles about the reliability and veracity of the new print culture, and with it anxieties about the credulity of the voters. Even so the frequency of elections, the increased the volume of legislation tied together national politics and the civic politics of the towns ever more closely. This print culture was polemical and partisan, but it elaborated the idea of representation and therefore that office holders were accountable to those they represented. Admittedly, such a notion was still weakly developed, but nevertheless, it was becoming apparent that political participation was widening in its scope especially in the towns, boroughs and cities, and in the county militias. In short, there emerged a proto-civil society most apparent in London but also in the provinces. In such circumstances claims of corruption became more frequent and costly to those seeking election. Given that voting was by public declaration it was thought that a man could declare his vote free from pressure. Such an assumption proved to be mistaken as the costs of campaigning and especially treating the voters grew exponentially.

Notes 1. I.  Pardo, Corruption, Morality and the Law in Morality and the Law, London, Routledge, 2004) pp 2006. 2. J.G.A.  Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton 1975). 3. M.  Peloten, ‘Bacon, Francis, Viscount St. Alban 1561–1626.’ ODNB October 2004.

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4. L.  Stone and J.F.  Stone, An Open Elite England 1540–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198). 5. W.G.  Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII (Aspire, 1975). 6. Lawrence Stone (source?). See also Geoffrey Elton, ‘How Corrupt was Thomas Cromwell?’ The Historical Journal, 36, 4 (1993) 905–908. This view is questioned by Diarmaid MacCulloch Thomas Crowell: A Life (London, Random House 2018). 7. G.R. Elton, op cit. 8. E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (1943). 9. Sir Robert Filmer J.R. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (London, 1914). 10. Quenten Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1981). 11. J.G.A.  Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 12. G.E. Aylmer, The Struggle for the Constitution (London, Blandford, 1963). 13. Lawrence Stone, ‘The inflation of honours 1558–1641’, Past and Present, 14, (1958) 45–70. Gregory King, Natural and political observations and conclusions of the state and the condition of England (1696) version ed. P Laslett. 14. Stone, ‘The Bourgeois Revolution of the Seventeenth Century Revisited’ Past and Present. 109 (1985) 44–54; and ‘The inflation of Honours 1558–1641’ Past & Present, 14 (1958) 45–70. 15. J. Hurstfield, Freedom Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (London, Jonathan Cape, 1973) p, Ibid. 269. 16. Ibid. 17. G. Aylmer, The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul (1961) pp. 18. Quoted in J.  Hurstfield, ‘Political Corruption in Modern England: The Historian’s problem’ History, vol 52, No. 174 (1967) pp. 16–34. 19. Quoted in Hurstfield, op cit. 20. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi (1623). 21. Erasmus The Education of a Christian Prince (1503) and James VI and 1, Basilikon Doron 1597. 22. Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption. (London: Routledge, 1993); John T. Noonan, Bribes (New York, Macmillan, 1984) pp 342–45. 23. Aylmer, the Struggle for the Constitution (London, Blandford Press 1971) 30–33. 24. M. Peltonen, ‘Sir Francis Bacon’, (ODNB). 25. J.T. Noonan, op cit. 345, 705–755. 26. L. Levy-Peck, op cit. 27. Quoted in Levy Peck, op cit. 28. Quoted in Conrad Russell, ‘John Pym 1584–1643’ ODNB, May 2009.

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29. Roger Lockyer, ‘Villiers, George, First Duke of Buckingham 1592–1628’ ODNB, September 2004. 30. Alistair Bellany, ‘Felton’, John, ODNB, January 2008. 31. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down; radical ideas during the English Revolution (London, Penguin 1972); and God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970). 32. A. Boyer, ‘Coke, Sir Edward’, ODNB, 8 January 2009. See also Mirrors for Princes. 33. Cromwell’s declaration to Parliament, 9 May 1654 UK Parliamentary Papers. 34. Op cit April 657. 35. M. Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2005). 36. Mark Goldie ODNB. 37. Thomas More, Utopia (15–16). 38. William, Description of England (1577).

CHAPTER 4

The Old Corruption c. 1688–1832

The ‘Old corruption’ presents the historian with numerous difficulties: When did it begin? When did it end? What were its salient features? How have historians sought to explain it? John Wade’s The Black Book: Corruption Unmasked provides, perhaps, a useful starting point along with William Cobbett and Henry Hunt, who were the most articulate critics of effects of corruption; Wade provides the largest repository of the scale of the system of benefits even if it was not completely accurate.1 Even so historians have relied upon it, but it is important to contextualise Wade’s assertions within the discourse of radicalism as it was articulated in the period c. 1790–1835. The radicals argued that the ‘Old Corruption’ was a regime of greed sustained by political elites whose lust for office and reward established a parasitic system which lived off the backs of the poor. The radical solution was franchise reform which would secure wider political representation and so establish a more equitable society. Wade’s Black Book was in essence polemical but at the same time, apparently, scientific and statistical: From the large emolument of sinecures, and the granting of them in reversion, have originated some ludicrous incongruities. Many noble lords and their sons, right honourable and honourable gentlemen, fill the offices of the state as clerks, tide-waiters, harbour masters, searchers, guagers, packers, craners, wharfingers, protonotaries, and other degrading situations. Some of these offices are filled by women and some by children. … Then of noble © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_4

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Lords; the Beresfords hold the appropriate offices of wine tasters, packers and craners in Ireland (Wade, 1832).2

The ‘Old Corruption’ had many components: offices without duties, the establishment of a fiscal system to wage war for long periods and the creation of an array of public offices and monopolies. This in turn shaped the politics of the managed state, principally parliamentary elections and the Newcastle-Walpole system which produced a regime of oligarchy. In the towns and cities local government was also, essentially, oligarchic. Even after the waning of the ‘Old Corruption’, its residues remained evident in Ireland into the nineteenth century and beyond. In order to explain the durability of the Old Corruption, it is useful to outline its broad dimensions which included the phenomenon of offices without duties or sinecures. Secondly, it is important to consider the fiscal-­ military imperatives that shaped the emerging British state during the long eighteenth century c. 1688–1815. Third, it is valuable to examine the nature of public office, the granting of monopolies and the making money culture. Fourth, the establishment of political stability after the turmoil of the seventeenth century necessitated rewards, patronage, inducements and coercion. Fifth, an examination of parliamentary elections and the Walpole-Newcastle system provides a valuable analysis of the conduct of politics. The prevalence of oligarchy in the state was also mirrored in the government of towns and cities. Last, the expansion of the British polity to include Ireland and India and the transatlantic world generated new attitudes concerning public office holding. The term ‘old corruption’ encapsulated an array of issues including the political influence of the Crown by means of patronage, bribery and reward. It also signified an acceptance of sinecures and that it was possible to use public office as a means of securing lucrative rewards. Moreover, offices were regarded as private property to be bought and sold, the corollary of which was that men could be bought or coerced. The practice of corruption was not solely a function of political or parliamentary politics but also a wide gathering net which captured Anglican clerics especially bishops, soldiers, judges, civil servants, excise men and many others. Indeed, as Montesquieu had pertinently observed, corruption ‘begins with gentlemen’ not the ‘common people’. There had been some reforms between 1783 and 1832, but radicals still railed against the inequalities of the system of rewards and the practice of ‘reversions’ whereby public offices could be inherited. At the same time, it is important to recognise

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that prior to 1832 reform of the ‘Old Corruption’ was piecemeal and sluggish. John Wade’s The Black Book, first published in 1816 but repeatedly updated, consisted of over 680 pages and listed in detail 83 pages of government placemen. The 1820 edition of The Black Book identified that Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, received a salary of £8000 a year and at the same time procured gifts and perquisites amounting to £42,000 per annum. Additionally, Eldon’s brother earned £6740 as a judge in the Admiralty Court. Eldon’s son received £7000 for two posts granted by reversion. Wade and his supporters were clear that the French Wars had exacerbated the system of rewards (Rubinstein, 1983).3 Indeed, the Public Expenditure Accounts of 1809 revealed that the principal sinecures amounted to £356,000 a year. Seventy-six MPs received £164,000 in salaries and pensions. In 1820 John Wade recorded 1109 persons had received £642,621  in pensions and grants. This included pensions to 47 retired ambassadors. Wade also included royal dukes and cabinet members. Most notably, Lord Arden had a gross income of £38,574 a year, the equivalent to £3.9 million today. More importantly, these salaries, fees, perquisites connected with public duties were not structured according to merit, responsibility or longevity of service. Indeed, some of the most lucrative offices had the least responsibility. This was certainly the case in respect of governorships of colonial places. For example, Charles Wyndham in 1763 was appointed as Secretary and Clerk of Emoluments in Jamaica, for which he was paid £7000 per annum. His brother Percy, too, inherited the post, and according to William Cobbett the brothers had amassed £649,000 although neither of them had ever been to Jamaica (Rubinstein, 1983). However, it should not be thought that corruption and its exposure was solely the agenda of the radicals. Indeed, Henry Brougham MP regaled parliament with a six-hour speech on the abuses of the judiciary. The evangelicals, principally William Wilberforce and his followers, known as the ‘Saints’, were especially critical of Lord Liverpool and his governments, and it was Wilberforce’s speech in the House of Commons which was instrumental in the instigation of impeachment proceedings against Henry Dundas, the First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1805 (Harling, 1995).4 One of the puzzles of the so-called Old Corruption5 (Cobbett, 1833) was its longevity, lasting more than a century from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. The mid-seventeenth century was apparently dynamic in that it saw the abolition of the monarchy and the execution of Charles I. It might be thought that the principle of Divine Right of Kings had ended with that execution and that a new principle of

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entrusted power had come into play by means of accountability to parliament (Boyer, 2009 and Figgis).6 However, the durability of Divine Right persisted, but it had long been qualified by Sir Edward Coke, former Chief Justice of Common Pleas, who had asserted that the royal prerogative was set down in law and could not be arbitrarily extended. Even with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the subsequent Glorious Revolution of 1688 which brought the Dutch Prince, William of Orange, to England, the power of parliament might suggest that entrusted power would have eliminated the practices of regal manipulation and patronage. Not so, despite the stricture of Sir Edward Coke, there persisted a permanent tension between the court and parliament. The country Whigs who believed that influence of the Crown and the court was certainly evident of that tension. The achievement of political stability since the death of Sir Robert Cecil had eluded James I, Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II and James II. The Glorious Revolution which brought William of Orange to the throne did not immediately establish stability and it was not a forgone conclusion that William would survive. Parliament remained truculent and obstructive. However, the growth of trade and economic innovation—the draining of the fens of East Anglia—promoted agricultural innovation and pacified the rural squires. Cheap water transport integrated the agricultural economy with the trade of London in particular. Further, the institutions of local government, the City of London, the boroughs and incorporated towns, the sheriffs and magistrates of the counties served as a political ballast which worked to establish some kind of stability. Wthout the financial resources of the City hope to survive; but the relationship was ambivalent, subject to suspicion and extortion (Plumb, 1967).7 The system of sinecures and pensions quantified in Wade’s Black Book was then a product of the long eighteenth century which legitimated the politics of the fiscal-military state. In the so-called long eighteenth century (O’Gorman, 2016)8 England and later Britain became a military fiscal state: between 1688 and 1832 Britain was at war for more than a hundred of those 145 years. The warfare state witnessed an increasingly centralised system of power and patronage, so much so, that the techniques of political and especially electoral management (Langford, 1988)9 of the state prevailed over any idea of a Commonwealth or even representative government. For those who were part of the political nation, the system of sinecures and pensions was an entirely legitimate arrangement that provided political stability. Indeed, the theory of the Divine Right of Kings persisted even if in a less confident

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form (Figgis).10 However, the processes that were in play were complex and intertwined. At first sight the Glorious Revolution, so-called, which had brought the Dutch Prince, William of Orange and Queen Mary to the throne, signalled the acceptance of the concept of the sovereignty of parliament. Further, Queen Ann’s ascent to the throne (1702) and George I’s succession in 1715 enabled a consolidation of the power of parliament and, it should be remembered, the Revolution was not just a political event but it also signalled a financial revolution. William III and his entourage brought with them new ideas and also were able to develop new institutions, most notably, the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694. Although, the Royal Mint had been established in the sixteenth century, it was limited to the issue of coin and promissory notes. The cost of William’s venture to secure the English Crown had been an expensive affair. The Dutch wars with Spain had been pursued by virtue of a financial revolution as the Dutch were able to establish Amsterdam as a financial centre for the issue of a range of securities including perpetual annuities and lottery loans. Dutch rentiers were able then to develop debt financing (Fergusson, 2009),11 which enabled novel forms of transaction between men of financial substance and the state. The Netherlands had been able to wage war for a long period, whereas Spain had not been able to fund its war effort, which was an advantage not lost on English and Scots political elites. Debt financing was an essential component of state building and imperial policy. The Dutch model then was adopted by England. Arguably, such a development was crucial to England’s trading and colonial expansion. Indeed, such new financial devices were essential to the transatlantic economy and of course the empire. At the same time, it also facilitated corruption as overseas trade witnessed the growth of tax collection and the appointment of excise men with their associated habits of peculation. The British sugar trade and debt financing established a new empire of credit in the West Indies, which facilitated urbanisation especially in Jamaica, and it followed that Britain exported administration and policing methods to safeguard the properties of the sugar barons (Graham, 2018).12 Most of all the opportunities of advancement for contractors in the West Indies and North America by means of government backed Bills of exchange could be bought for cash. Rates of exchange fluctuated, which enabled contractors to make quick rewards for supplying food and equipment for British troops. However, poor accountancy and weak audit arrangements made it relatively easy to pay bribes and commit other corrupt acts. Importantly, the costs of warfare rose inexorably over the ‘Long eighteenth century’.

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This in turn generated pressure to reform the system of taxation which had become so pressing by the later eighteenth century. Additionally, debt financing enabled England to wage war sometimes by proxy with loans to allies. It is often claimed that war is the midwife of change and this was certainly so because the American Revolution of 1776 and subsequent War of Independence resulted in England’s forfeiture of the American colonies. It was a bitter blow, but it also stimulated reform at home and in so doing sharpened the arguments of those who were critical of the centralised state and its use of corrupt patronage. The French Wars after 1792, too, underscored the criticisms of those who argued the case against corruption and the need for reform. The case for the reform of the electoral system revolved on the issue of legitimacy and representation. Were the offices without duties legitimate? Who sought to enter the political nation? The system of sinecures and pensions was seen by the emergent commercial classes and legal professions as a drain on the public finances. Further, the commercial, trading and manufacturing developments meant that many localities were promoting a range of improvement bills. Workhouse bills, harbour bills, enclosure bills, bridge bills consumed excessive time in parliamentary business. Between 1689 and 1760 there were 16 improvement acts for provincial towns and similarly for 21 parishes and townships in the London area alone. Between 1760 and 1789 there were 56 provincial improvement acts and 41 improvement acts for the surrounding parishes and townships of London. MPs voted from a wide range of motives including influence, pressures from ministers and party leaders, friends, relations and patrons. Such activity threw into high relief the dissonance between parliamentary business of legislation and the people and places which were unrepresented in the House of Commons. Oldfield’s History of the Borough (Oldfield, 1792)13 and the anonymous author of Facts: or a comparative view of the population and representation of England and Wales (1774–05). Further, the growth of statistical societies gave impetus to pamphlet publications revealing the apparent absurdities of electoral geography. The distribution of boroughs and populous counties and the distribution of parliamentary seats did not match. However, the prevailing belief remained that the ownership of property was the key to ‘civic virtue and political responsibility’ (Langford op).14 Further, the fact that those who became MPs did not always reside in the place that they represented had also become a political issue and questioned the legitimacy of the existing system. In Dorset which had 20 MPs,

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only 11 were resident in the county. Sussex had 28 MPs of which only 15 resided in the county. These anomalies were the product of history reflecting traditional assumptions about social rank which were, increasingly, towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, at odds with new assertions that representation was a political right. MPs claimed that they held office to discharge their duty for the public good.

Public Office, Monopolies and Making Money A key feature of the eighteenth-century state was the growth of bureaucracy although it did not resemble bureaucracy in the modern sense. Indeed, it was some distance away from the civil service of the nineteenth century following the Northcote Trevelyan Reforms after the Crimean War. Nevertheless, warfare, money and the public debt required a vast army of public officials. Tax collection gradually became more efficient, and the growth of international trade provided a crucial income stream via tax collection. Additionally, the acquisition of colonies secured yet further funds which passed through the Board of Trade. It was a rich stream of income that financed patronage even to the most humble of offices: clerkships, controllerships and cashiers. By 1718 there were 521 full-time customs officers and 1000 part-time customs officers in the Port of London. Opportunities to increase salaries could double via fees, perquisites and bribes (Porter).15 Additionally, the long period from the reign of Elizabeth I to the South Sea Bubble in 1720 had promoted the joint stock principle and enabling speculative investments. Making a fortune was the essential paradigm of the long eighteenth century as shown by the deceptions of Henry Fauntleroy (Davenport-Hines),16 which came to light in 1824 when he was arrested for fraud. The press had a field day and Fauntleroy was found guilty of fraud and embezzlement. Whether men sought fortune in commerce and trade, whether in India, whether from speculative investments as illustrated by the South Sea Bubble, fortune was the key to a political career. Fauntleroy’s case was not unique, but it nevertheless reflected much about London at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was the centre of a great emporium of trade, hot money, vanity and voracious ambition. The case of Henry Fauntleroy is illustrative of the point. Fauntleroy became a clerk in the bank of Sibbald and Co. in 1800. His family connections were located in St. Kitts and he had pretentions to be a man about town. He became involved in numerous love affairs which were expensive. In particular, he

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bought a Grecian style villa in Brighton. He was adept with figures and he was able to forge convincingly. He also fraudulently invested in house building projects in Lord Portman’s London estate (Cannadine, 1980).17 He was able to forge powers of attorney and sell consoles, annuities, navy loans and other government stock. He was arrested in September 1824 and tried and convicted at the Old Bailey. The newspaper press was able to sell extensive copy on Fauntleroy’s life. He admitted his guilt and was hanged at Newgate Prison in November 1824 before a crowd estimated to be 100,000. A similar case helps to illustrate the point: Alexander Fordyce progressed from the post of clerk for the bank of Boldero and Company and his proficiency in such work drew attention and he became a partner in the bank of Roffey Neale and Fordyce in 1759. He speculated in shares on the stock market, initially with great success particularly because of investments in the East India Company. He also sought to enter parliament and secure a seat at Colchester in 1768 on which he spent £14,000, but he was unsuccessful. In 1770–1771 he lost heavily on the stock market and was forced into bankruptcy. These cases attracted considerable newspaper press, but not all money cases were so audacious as those of Fauntleroy and Fordyce.

Politics and the Managed State In May 1703 Daniel Defoe, the author of The Shortest Way with Dissenters, an ironic satire which proposed the total and savage suppression of religious dissent, was arrested, fined and imprisoned. On his release Defoe was engaged by Robert Harley, a leading country Whig of the anti-court interest, to act as a secret agent. The result was A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, in which Defoe provided detailed accounts of places throughout the land: From Aldeburgh to Dunwich there are no towns of note; even this town [Dunwich] seems to be in danger of being swallowed up [by the sea]; for fame reports, they once had fifty churches in the town; I saw but one left, and that not half full of people This town is a is a testimony of the decay of public things, things of the most durable nature. (Defoe, 1726)

Such intelligence was useful to the politicians of the manged state. Dunwich remained controlled by two patrons who commanded no more than 80 ‘out sitters’ (voters); and Dunwich ‘was as snug a nomination

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borough as any’ (Brock, 1973).18 It was by such places—Dunwich, Old Sarum and Shaftesbury—that the management of elections was sustained. The eighteenth-century state became a managed state: traditionally servants of the Crown had been called managers of the King’s business or the King’s affairs or public business. The warfare state witnessed not only centralisation but also an ever widening of that business so that the managers became the principal members the Boards of the Treasury, Trade, Admiralty, or India. Lesser bodies were called commissioners or trustees. That the secretaries of state and their ministers were drawn from landed families was perhaps natural that as a business approach was applied to the offices of state: it was a system of stewardship which assumed that those who held such offices were at least competent but also virtuous and could be trusted (Langford, 2002).19 It was also natural that patronage was the prime determinant of appointment to the myriad of public offices. Assumption and reality, however, were often, and increasingly over time, at odds with ideas of entrusted power and accountability. The persistence of corruption in the eighteenth century can be explained in part by the rapid expansion of the state’s interests—foreign affairs and warfare which engendered the so-called fiscal-military state (Brewer).20 Sustenance of this warfare state provided two principal consequences: employment and tasks of state on the one hand and growing taxation to fund warfare on the other. Particular responsibilities were granted to men of lineage and/or of property who had a vested interest in the state. In this sense the sinecures, pensions and emoluments were natural outcomes. Over the long term—in this case the better part of a century—the system was eventually exposed for its gimcrack character and inefficiency. The French Wars had exposed Britain’s state of indebtedness which required increased taxation. The MPs Robert Myddleton and Robert Biddulph, on the Whig side, claimed that there was a compelling need to act against ‘sinecures and other useless places’ to appease war-time taxpayers. The Bembridge case in 1783 compromised Charles James Fox, the Royal Army Paymaster, when it came to light that Charles Bembridge was indicted ‘for misbehaviour in his office’ and suspected of financial irregularities and even embezzlement, The Accounts’ committee concluded that there had been wrong doing, but that oversight was weak. Even Edmund Burke was compromised. In the event Bembridge was fined and imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Bembridge case was soon followed by further procedures, most notably the impeachment of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings (Langford, 1990; Fry, 1992).21 A Parliamentary Select Committee on Public Expenditure in

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1783 provided further evidence of the extent of corruption and would later emphasise the case for ‘economical’ reform of the public finances. In the short run, the Bembridge case and the cases of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings were symbolic in that they exemplified the prime assumptions of the elite: public office was a trust and individuals that offended that trust merited punishment. Clive was quizzed by a Select Committee of the House of Commons 1772, and although exonerated he committed suicide two years later. The impeachment of Warren Hastings was a grand theatre with Edmund Burke prosecuting and initially attracting an interested crowd in Westminster Hall. Proceedings commenced in 1788 and were not completed until 1795. Hastings was acquitted but impoverished. The seventeenth-century revolution had asserted the primacy of parliament in that its members believed that it represented an interest that the Crown could not. Further, it established the nascent idea that Crown-­ ministers were accountable not only to the Crown but also to parliament. In some respects this principle had been asserted long before the Clive and Hastings affairs. For example, in 1677 the House of Commons had impeached the Earl of Danby for negotiating a peace treaty with France without reference to parliament. The Commons initiated the impeachment process and Danby was tried for crimes and misdemeanours in the House of Lords. He was dismissed from office and imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years. Similarly, in 1718 the Earl of Macclesfield, Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, was impeached for peculation and forced to resign. Recent scholarship on the question of anti-corruption22 has provided an important perspective on the question of what contemporaries regarded as corruption. This is important as it enables explanatory frameworks which avoid declamatory observations, such as the sale of office as it was not regarded by contemporaries as corruption. The view that the eighteenth-­century state was a managed state suggests perhaps a static state. This was not entirely so and it is important to recognise the role of dynamic change. Indeed, there were a number of converging processes at work: first, the power and influence of the Crown remained and its apparently malign influence was unfinished business from the trial and execution of Charles I. Second, the cost burden of military action throughout the century provided impetus to economic reform, particularly after the American War of Independence (1776–1783). Third, there emerged, especially after defeat in the American War, a new agenda concerning

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freedom of worship, ideas about rights, the morality of slavery and the conduct of the officers of the East India Company. The conflation of these issues provided new arguments about entrusted power and a growing anxiety about the resurgence of royal power and the court which was seen as a threat to the sovereignty of parliament: Lord Ashburn’s observation that the ‘influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished’ in 1780 is well known. He made an additional point that because of this resurgence of monarchical influence, then ‘it is competent to this house to examine and correct abuses of the civil list revenues, as well as every other branch of the public revenue whenever it shall appear expedient of the house to do’.23 Thus, Sir Edward Coke’s argument was extended and reinforced. More radical critics claimed that the Crown was misusing taxation revenue to subvert the independence of parliament (R. Porter).24The issue of economic reform was given a sharper cutting edge with practical coherence for the need of reform of administration by Edmund Burke. The Crown’s ancient administration was inefficient and costly. Eventually, these ‘economical’ arguments persuaded the Prime Minister, Lord North, to establish a public accounts commission. However, Burke offended some for his intemperate language: The King was only a trustee for the public. ‘Property and subjects existed before Kings were elected’ (Burke, House of Commons Debates).25 This was pure Sir Edward Coke who had used such terminology to challenge Charles I and the Divine Right of Kings (Figgis).26

Parliamentary Elections The Glorious Revolution, the arrival of William of Orange and the subsequent smooth succession of Queen Ann despite the Jacobite scare of 1715 demonstrated that the government was secure. Elections from the accession of Queen Ann in 1702 are a useful starting point to survey the nature of political management of the state. Between 1702 and 1714 the consolidation of the state was secured. Sir Robert Walpole was the prime figure in this part of the process. The Septennial Act (1716) superseded the former Triennial Act (1694) establishing the life of a parliament from 3 years to 7 years, the effect being to entrench the Whig interest for the next 60 years. Indeed, Walpole after 1721 was the dominant figure until his downfall in 1742. He died in 1745. Notwithstanding Walpole’s considerable political skills, the enterprise of the early eighteenth-century state was ‘lubricated by that potent mixture of money and patronage’

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(Hennessey, 1998).27 Walpole had a ‘deep understanding of human motive, amounting almost to genius’ (Plumb, 1956),28 and in particular the aspiration to office which drove men in search of status, power and of course money. The Duke of Newcastle managed the byzantine appointments system. Thus, in 1721 seven bishoprics had fallen vacant which were filled by churchmen loyal to the Whig cause. Walpole’s policy at the beginning of the 1720s was one of retrenchment after a long period of warfare. Reduction of the public debt was deemed essential and Walpole’s first step increased excise duties, but this was met with considerable opposition and was abandoned. Nevertheless, collection of the existing excise became more critical. Royal officials were not professional in the modern sense. Rather, they were ‘thugs and brutes who beat-up their victims without compunction’ (Plumb).29 The detailed management of elections and the work of the Duke of Newcastle and his agents reveal the nature of corruption. Newcastle’s wealth and connexions placed him at the centre of an aristocratic ring which ruled England and Scotland for 40 years. His rapacious appetite for patronage enabled him to be the dispenser-in-chief of places, contracts, offices and titles (Williams, 1939).30 The election of 1734 is a typical example of the range of practices deployed. Primarily, however, we should consider the motives of those who sought a place in parliament. It should be noted that would-be MPs were not especially minded to represent the concerns of those that elected them. What then were the motives of those men who sought a place in parliament? There were, first, those who pursued election who did so to cut a figure for themselves. Second, there were the men who came from aristocratic families where a career in politics was a natural and expected ambition such as the Pelham, Walpole and Hardwicke families. These men sought a position, very often on the Treasury Bench which would provide a route to the highest offices of state. Thus, the idea of representing places and their constituents figured only coincidentally. In some instances, the relationship between an MP and the place for which they stood was openly hostile. The case of Anthony Henley MP for Southampton between 1727 and 1734 is revealed in a letter to his constituents: Gentlemen, I received yours and am surprised by your insolence in troubling me about the Excise. You know, what I very well know that I bought you. And I know, what perhaps you think I don’t know, you are now selling yourselves to Somebody Else; and I know, what you do not know, that I am buying

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another borough. May God’s cursed light upon you all: may your houses be as open and common to all Excise Officers as your wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for your scoundrel-corporation? Yours, etc. Anthony Henley (Weekly Register).31

There were too the social climbers whose correspondence with the Duke of Newcastle who controlled the candidate lists of the Whig interest. For instance, Sir John Rushout wrote to Newcastle on 24 January 1756: I have never troubled your Grace for any great, much less for any lucrative employment … for my fortune is sufficient for me, in any station of life, but my whole ambition centres on the hopes of a peerage for my family. (B. quoted in Williams)32

Former East India men who had made their fortunes in India and who had returned to England sought to make their way into society and buy an estate. East India Company nabobs were part of a number of social climbers and election to the House of Commons was a stepping stone to a title and a place in the House of Lords. Securing an income by acquiring a government place or public contract made parliament a favoured route. Professional men such as lawyers sought membership of the House to be in London, where their opportunities for career advancement were greater than in the provinces. Retired soldiers of rank and naval men, particularly, if their former careers had been famous or especially heroic, were also attracted to parliament. In addition, those who needed immunity from prosecution for some crime or who were bankrupt sought refuge under the guise of parliamentary privilege. Aristocrats wanted to secure a place for their illegitimate sons as their illegitimate status precluded them from particular offices of state such as that of diplomat (L. Namier, 1961).33

Elections Oligarchy: Walpole and Newcastle The early eighteenth-century state was an oligarchical state with office holders inhabiting a self-perpetuating elite. Although the Duke of Newcastle was an insignificant debater in parliament, he was adept at back-­ handed intrigue. Further, his widespread connections with the great families gave him unrivalled opportunities to employ his influence. He was the son of the first Baron Pelham, and when he was created Duke of Newcastle

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was at the ‘centre of the aristocratic ring which governed England for the first sixty years of the century’ (Williams op cit).34 His management of elections secured the right men as candidates. His agents on the ground worked the voters and made him an essential figure for the Whig cause. His apparent immovability from office and his ‘rapacity for patronage, which was so great that few of his colleagues cared to enter into competition with him for the disposal of places, caused him to be regarded as the chief dispenser of places by the swarm of officials whose numbers alone made them of importance in any election’ (Williams).35 Even in the apparently free corporations, the favours were showered upon voters for their ‘personal gratification to avarice or vanity was satisfied by emoluments and honours’ (Burke, 1770).36 The election of 1734 has been studied at great length and correspondence reveals the extent of his influence. For example, Sir William Chapple, in exceedingly deferential terms, wrote to Newcastle to ask for the Duke’s permission to stand again for Dorchester and asked that the Duke could urge his steward and tenants to vote for him. In Sussex the Duke’s voluminous correspondence the many constituencies 28 county seats, 18 boroughs and large numbers of 40 Shilling freeholders who could vote-reveals the range of interest that were in his gift. Such was the certainty of Newcastle’s grip that many seats were not contested. Nevertheless, Lewes was fiercely contested. At Lewes the government candidates—Thomas Pelham of Stanmer and Thomas Pelham of Lewes—were opposed by Mr. Garland, a dissenter, and Mr. T. Sergison—both of Lewes. The Duke of Newcastle’s correspondence shows that the range of people with whom he corresponded included bishops, clergy, peers, custom house officials, innkeepers, estate agents, lawyers, tradesmen, small farmers and even a smuggler. Elsewhere such as at Seaford which was a Treasury Borough it was easier to manipulate. The Duke’s correspondence with the bailiff, jurors, freemen and other inhabitants at Seaford suggests that it was essentially a docile place with the only alarm being a rumour that an opponent had been found to stand against the Treasury candidate, Sir Philip Yorke, who was nonetheless duly elected and appointed Lord Chief Justice of England and elevated to the peerage. Electors and candidates knew that elections were boisterous affairs with entertainments, free beer, feasting and money gifts which the local residents expected. The local agents also expected some additional payment because they were required to consort in ‘disagreeable compliance with the low habits of venal wretches’ (Williams).37 Some voters travelled

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considerable distances in order to vote with the expectation that they would receive overnight accommodation and breakfast. Local intelligence was important to the Duke prior to the election. The agents were obviously key figures in this respect, but so too were local clergy. Thomas Hurdis, the vicar of Ringmer, reported that he attended local cricket matches to collect local gossip and discovered that a rival agent had plans for corrupting the voters but assured the Duke that within his own parish all voters could be relied upon except for two freeholders who he referred to as ‘toads’ (Williams).38 Clergy were often well paced to seek positions for their sons and other relatives. Despite these negotiated forms favour, sometimes pressure was exerted by supporters of the Duke in the localities. For example, Doctor Hargreaves at Ticehurst delighted in the fact that Mrs. Brewer, a small landowner with a few tenants, claimed that she would burn the cottages of tenant farmers if they failed to vote for the Duke’s candidates. Mr. Barker, the parson at Woodmancote, was a keen supporter of the Duke and actively took part in a brawl against would-be opponents. The clergy were to-a-man keen supporters of the Whig cause, but there were forms of corruption in which they did not take part. Sussex has a long shoreline along the English Channel which meant that smuggling was one of the most significant crimes. It was perhaps no surprise then that smugglers who were imprisoned could be vital voters if they were released from gaol. The rich pickings of smuggled goods were attractive to non-smugglers alike. Local justices were often subject to pressure in order to release smugglers on threat of voting for opposition candidates. The most common form of corruption, though, was cheap bribery usually in the form of acquiring a place or position such as an excise man. Even though the excise men were unpopular, there remained many who sought such a position. Indeed, there was almost a universal acceptance of the system. The inhabitants of Shoreham petitioned the Duke to appoint Mr. Clarke a collector of customs, claiming that he would make an ‘agreeable neighbour’. Perhaps the residents of Shoreham expected Clarke to be pliant and not too vigilant? Customs men could also recruit seaman in their harbours to vote if the poll looked extremely tight. Alongside bribes the costs of treating were immense and fell, principally, on the Duke. Should the election coincide with other national events or celebrations such as the anniversary of the Wedding of the Prince William and the Princess Royal, then the costs of the election soared. Agents and voters were often quite brazen:

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As to Collyer you can’t do too much, for if I can judge that town [Hastings] absolutely depends on him and perhaps if he were cool, would leave you. I desire therefore, you will from me tell Sir Robert Walpole from me, if he has a desire to have two Whigs chosen at Hastings he must provide handsomely for Collyer (Williams).39

The Towns The picture of corruption in the long eighteenth century would not be complete without some account of the urban dimension of England and other parts of the British Isles. The processes of industrialisation and the growth of commerce and imperial trade meant that new and larger urban centres struggled to achieve good governance for their growing populations. Simply put urban growth outstripped existing local government institutional capacity. The burgeoning growth of London, in particular, caused new forms of corruption which were a function of upward social mobility as various parvenu groups made their way into political society. This trend formed a new layer over the existing patterns of corruption. Throughout the eighteenth century there had been concern about public morality insofar as it reflected upon the poor, the conduct of women and the effects of luxury, particularly on the weak-willed (Sweet, 2007).40 The conduct of political elites at national and local levels remained insulated from public opprobrium. The tendency towards oligarchy that was present in medieval and early modern times was especially emphasised. In their magisterial history of English Local Government, Sidney and Beatrice Webb documented a complex system of local government (Webb & Webb, 1908).41 What became evident was that control of local vestries in urban places was the key to power. Joseph Merceron became the personification of the corrupt political boss. His stronghold was Bethnal Green on London’s eastern fringe where he became a vestry man in 1787, and he promptly secured the position of tax commissioner which enabled him to control the issue of licences for the numerous public houses and beer shops in Bethnal Green. London’s eastern parishes lacked a local squire class enabling local offices to be secured by tradesmen, publicans and innkeepers. According to Daniel Defoe the vestrymen were ‘blood suckers who feasted at public expense’ (Defoe).42 Further, the local economy was characterised by casual trades and underemployment (Marriot, 2011).43 Merceron was certainly able and he became treasurer of the parish accounts at the age of 23.

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According to the Webbs, ‘Merceron amassed a considerable fortune which he invested in public houses and cottage properties.’ His wealth at death in 1839 was £300,000, equivalent to £3.1 million today. Merceron was thought to be the son of Huguenot parents whose forbearers had emigrated from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His career was remarkable as he was to hold multiple offices including the position of magistrate for the Middlesex bench where his connections with William Mainwaring enabled him to extend his network with other corrupt figures including Mainwaring who was found to have been involved in treating the electorate in his contest against Francis Burdett in 1802. But it was the link with Mainwaring which brought him into contact with the London Board of Docks, which was responsible for administering the dock building programme at the Isle of Dogs and the London Dock at Wapping. In all, some 54 acres of properties had to be razed to the ground. Merceron was able to secure a position on the Board and he was appointed to oversee the compensation scheme (Woodford, 2016),44 which was rather like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. However, it was his earlier career as a vestry man which caught up with him and almost terminated his political life following an audit of the parish vestry accounts. Merceron resigned in 1804, but he secured re-election in 1805 for lack of another candidate to contest the position. In 1809 a new rector, Joshua King, represented a sterner test, but Merceron was able to cling on. However, King’s evidence to parliament in 1816 revealed that Merceron had appropriated £925 of parish funds from the liquor licencing account. He was voted off the vestry in 1818, convicted and imprisoned for 18 months. On his death in 1839 he left £300,000. London’s growth in the eighteenth century and its status as a great entrepot meant that it was always in search of investment in public utilities, for example London Bridge which was managed by the Bridge House whose officers were unpaid but who had the backing of the investors who had funded the building of the bridge. The Bridge Master was a prestigious office with responsibility to oversee the work of master workmen. The minute books and accounts of the Bridge House Committee were ill-kept and the London Corporation found that money had been used to repair the dwellings of the bridge master himself and the workmen, which should have been spent on bridge repairs (Latham, 2015).45 The use of public funds for private use was a typical feature of sinecures and the Bridge Master was no exception.

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In the provinces local government in the towns was invariably dominated by local oligarchies. Local business interests controlled entry to the urban elites. Some were dependent on aristocratic patronage which persisted beyond the eighteenth century and even into the early twentieth century. However, the capture of parochial institutions such as the vestry, as the case of Merceron demonstrated, enabled the exertion of arbitrary and sometimes corrupt power. Those who held public office were often wealthy and able to devote time to public affairs as well as run their own businesses. The fact that public and personal interests converged almost seamlessly meant that corruption almost inevitably followed. Further, the multiple number of public bodies—the vestry, poor law guardians, street commissioners, quarter sessions—facilitated multiple office holding and with it opportunities for self-enhancement and corruption. At the same time, it became increasingly apparent that many corporate bodies were inefficient and in debt. Just as the need for financial reform of the state and its taxation regime became apparent in the closing decades of the eighteenth century so too a demand for reform of local government became apparent as was the case at Plymouth which introduced a range of reforms which made it in the eyes of the Municipal Commissioners a model corporation (Innes & Rogers, 2000).46

Reformers and Empire By the later eighteenth century the case for reform was beginning to gain impetus. There were a number of converging strands which contributed to this development. First, there was a growing criticism of the fiscal-­ military state. The fact that the state military budget consumed such a large portion of the national income generated support for reform of the taxation system. Fighting wars on an unprecedented scale required a more efficient taxation system. Second, growing imperial and trading interests generated a demand for a more efficient, professional and modernised state bureaucracy. Third, the growing significance of imperial governance generated concerns about misconduct or indeed corruption by state actors. Although inconclusive, the impeachments of Warren Hastings and Robert Clive generated a new moral vocabulary to explain the requirements of public office. Fourth, long-run trends in social mobility had brought fierce competition for places in parliament and the state bureaucracy. Opportunities for the new men to rise in status were to be found in land particularly aided and abetted by strategic marriage, in the law, in

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banking, in government service and overseas in India and in the West Indies. Resentment from established elites towards the East India nabobs who returned rich and prosperous but who were also corrupted by their oriental experience was the cause of considerable moral apprehension. Finally, there was a growing angst in educated circles of which Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1779–1781) was the touchstone for those public men who expressed aversion to empire as a political form. The financial problems of the East India Company became apparent in the 1760s when parliament sought to bring the company under its control. Additionally, the ravages of the Bengal famine prompted critics of the company, which was on the verge of bankruptcy in the summer of 1772, to bring forward a bill. Much criticism fell upon Lord Clive of Plassey. The effect was to establish a Select Committee chaired by General John Burgoyne. The reformers claimed that Clive was corrupt. Burgoyne asserted that Clive was ‘the principal delinquent’ in the case of the Company. The committee reported that Clive and other nabobs had obtained £234,000 after the Battle of Plassey even but concluded that Clive performed meritorious service for his country (HC Papers, 1771).47 Subsequently, Lord North’s government passed the Regulating Act (1773). Clive accepted the fact that the Company would be brought under parliamentary control. He then departed to Italy where he sojourned until the following year, 1774. He returned to England and quickly became ill with a heavy fever and developed convulsions. His doctor treated him with laudanum, but Clive committed suicide. It should not be thought, however, that Clive was a lone wolf in the affairs of empire. ‘No man ever went to the East Indies with good intention’, claimed Horace Walpole. In essence, the venture to India was to make a fortune, return to England, purchase a country estate, seek the patronage of a magnate and secure election to a pocket borough. Sir Francis Sykes was a typical example who gained control of the pocket boroughs of Shaftesbury and Wallingford. Others were less virtuous than Sykes. For example, William Hickey was expelled from Westminster School and his father shipped him off to India because of his general indolence. Appointment as a cadet with the East India Company was the favoured route for the reform of delinquent sons. Not all could be rehabilitated. John St. Ledger, for instance, who had been groom of the bedchamber for the Prince of Wales, ventured to India to escape creditors. Admittedly, some of the exiles were able to establish creditable businesses in India as it was a land for ambitious men, particularly Scots. The policy of the East India Company was to pay its

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cadets and officers little by way of salary in the knowledge that they would be able to supplement their wages with perquisites and bribes. If all else failed engagement as a mercenary was a possibility. A similar pattern was evident for the sugar barons who made their fortunes in the West Indies and returned to England as wealthy parvenus and made their way into politics. William Beckford secured the parliamentary seat of Shaftesbury in 1747 and later for the City of London. In 1762 he became Lord Mayor of the City of London. Beckford was the most prominent MP of the West Indian interest which promoted military defence of the colonies and matters of trade and shipping as well as private and public finance (Parker, 2004).48 Of course, the West Indian interest became the object of vilification when the anti-slavery campaign became more prominent, but at the mid-eighteenth century it was the abuse of the political system that was significant. It was the East India Company; however, that was the prominent focus of interest in the minds of the reformers. The government set Warren Hastings to work for the East India Company. Hastings later would also come under scrutiny for his conduct and was impeached in 1785 for crimes and misdemeanours, but in 1795 he was acquitted. The two cases of Clive and Hastings were especially important in respect of the manner in which corruption was perceived and regarded. The self-confidence of British governments to pursue an imperial role had clearly been established despite the casualties of Clive and Hastings. The governance of empire had to be ethical as well as profitable. The late nineteenth-century justification of the civilising mission was a long way off, but the arguments put forward by Burgoyne and later Edmund Burke set important precedents for public officers whether in the far reaches of the empire or in localities of parochial administration.

The Waning of the Old Corruption The period from 1792 to 1832 is conventionally regarded as period which saw the onset of the first phase in a history of Britain’s journey towards a parliamentary democracy. The impact of the American Revolution and the French Revolution is often cited. The growth of political radicalism and civil society associations such as the London Corresponding Society and similar provincial organisations in Manchester, Norwich, Sheffield and Stockport is identified as the agents of change. Such a progressive paradigm is linked with the exposure of corruption by William Cobbett, John Wade and Henry Hunt. However, there was also a more conservative

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approach that recognised the inefficiency of the state in terms of its taxation system. These views were expressed particularly by Christopher Wyvill and the Yorkshire Association which was active, especially, on the question of wasteful public expenditure together with the myriad of sinecures and reversions which constituted a quasi-bureaucracy. Ultimately, these arrangements were managed by influential patrons who took lucrative emoluments and assigned them to deputies. Further, the system of reversions meant that these sinecures could be inherited by relatives in the form of pensions and government contracts. Thus, places and rotten boroughs enabled the House of Commons to be packed indebted supporters. A key figure in that respect was Henry Dundas whose power base was in Scotland, but he became indispensable to William Pitt the Younger by securing 36 out of 45 seats in Scotland in the general election of 1796. He also became a key figure south of the Tweed securing control for the Pitt interest in Berwick and Carlisle. His influence was also felt in the English west country securing Totnes, Taunton, Bodmin and Launceston (Fry, 1992).49 The waning was then a slow process, and although by 1850 accusations of corruption had diminished, the same narrow largely landed gentlemen constituted the political elite. This transformation which had been characterised as a corrupt, venal elite became the impartial guardians of private property (Harling, 1996; Vincent, 1972).50 Although elections have been the focus of much of the historiography that explains the end of the Old Corruption, we should not overlook the fact that the elections were of significant interest even for those who did not have the vote. Elections were part of a vital and exciting public ritual both before and after 1832 (O’Gorman, 1992).51 There was in fact an extensive participation in parliamentary elections in processions and elaborate dress, banners and cockades. Assemblies at important locations such as the town hall, the marketplace, town walls and gates and the principal inns. There was a vibrant interaction between the candidates and the town’s population. The candidates would arrive at a designated point of arrival to be led in by a procession. At Norwich in 1830, R.H. Gurney was greeted by 15,000 people. The election could last for several days starting with the nomination of the candidates. Normal social restraints of decorum gave the crowd the opportunity to cheer or heckle the candidates. The candidates’ managers would also canvass throughout the duration of the election whilst counting carried on. Such arrangements also provided opportunities for treating the voters and non-voters alike. Vast election breakfasts and suppers were considered a natural reward. The climax, of

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course, was the declaration of the vote. The King’s Lynn by-election of 1824 saw the victorious candidate, Sir William Foulkes, cheered and carried aloft in a chair. Elections then were boisterous affairs rich in symbolism and even for the non-voters the celebrations. The election could also provide work and business for glaziers, builders, carpenters and even doctors. Importantly, the election ritual reaffirmed social and political order but also suggested that the town’s interests as a whole could participate in the political process. These arrangements persisted in many places even after 1832. It was not until the reforms of the 1870s and 1880s that the rituals and ceremonies declined. Nevertheless, the intensity of elections and political life in general persisted as did corruption. For the managers of the political system elections to parliament did not signify a democratic or representative quality. Rather elections were expected to legitimate an existing system of interests. The nexus of patronage that existed between the magnates and their mangers, on the one hand, and the aspirant MPs, on the other hand, meant that there was no relationship between electoral constituencies and population distribution. The reformers were keen to point out the apparent absurdities of the system. Thus, Old Sarum in Wiltshire sent two MPs to parliament even though the place had been deserted since Tudor times. Dunwich in Suffolk also sent members to parliament even though it had fallen into the sea due to coastal erosion (Brock).52 Elsewhere in England there were 56 boroughs with electorates of fewer than 50 voters. Older towns with historic rights but with small populations were over-represented and urban places in the midlands and the north of England were under-represented. The disparities of the system were exposed by reformers and seem comical almost to today’s readers. Its anomalies had long been recognised and the reforms of the 1830s were hard won, but we should not conclude that they were the first steps on a road to democracy.

Political Economy and Statistics In the 1790s John Wade, author of The Black Book or Corruption Unmasked, calculated that 487 out of 658 MPs were returned to the House of Commons by nominations. More precisely, only about 200 MPs were directly dependent on aristocratic patronage and a further 50–60 were dependent on ministerial influence. The nomination boroughs were regarded as ‘nurseries of talent’ by the political elites. However, the overall tenor of Wade’s studies sat well with the growing importance of statistics

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in the political movement to bring about reform of the electoral system. The later eighteenth century occasioned an upsurge in the growth of what might be called civil society or civic culture. Such a development was a product of the European enlightenment which in Britain cultivated a tradition of political economy. Given that Britain was being transformed by economic change, it followed perhaps that describing, accounting and explaining economic change were central to the discourse of political economy. From Sir William Petty via Adam Smith to J.S.  Mill, political economy evolved as a practical science of economic and political behaviour and policy. Additionally, these concerns generated the establishment of statistical societies and political constitutional societies. By 1834 the cultural phenomenon of scientific statistics was to see the establishment of the Royal Statistical Society. Its founders were Charles Babbage, Thomas Malthus and Richard Jones. In essence, these thinkers established the science of statistics and its application to state policy. Further, as public interest in the nature of political economy and its relevance in the period c. 1790–1834 witnessed the establishment of a plethora of civil society organisations: in London Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society (1792). In Sheffield the Constitutional Society had already been established in November 1791. It claimed 2500 members having waived membership fees. A notably focused organisation was the Constitutional Information Society which attracted high-minded men of economic substance. Elsewhere, perhaps surprisingly, in Norwich the Revolutionary Society made contact with the French Envoy Chauvelin in November 1792. However, the real political ballast of these civil society organisations such as the London Independent Whigs was their organisational capacity at elections (Hilton, 2008).53 These serious-minded organisations were the essence of an incipient civil society who sought to establish a stable state and expose corruption. It was an important tradition that was not revolutionary but established the concept of accountability.

Ireland The long eighteenth century is obviously a crucial phase in Britain’s corruption history. The establishment of political stability after the upheavals of the seventeenth century was achieved but not without cost. The forging of the UK so often presented as a consensual union is an essentially Anglo-­ centric version of history in the Whig tradition. In reality it was forged by war and corruption. Moreover, the problem of Ireland and the rebellion

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of 1798 and its brutal repression signified a counter claim to the consensual argument: We entertain a persuasion that a completed and entire union between Great Britain founded on equal and liberal principles, on the similarity of laws, constitution and government by providing security, wealth and commerce of the respective kingdoms, and by allaying the distinctions which have unhappily prevailed in Ireland, must afford fresh means of opposing at all times an effectual resistance to the destructive projects of our foreign and domestic enemies and must tend to confirm and augment the stability, power and resources of the Empire.(H. Parnell, 1789).54

These sentiments echoed William Pitt’s claim that ‘two unconquered nations’ would come together in ‘perpetual accord’.55 The sentiments expressed in these two speeches demonstrate, neatly, the case for consensual union. Indeed, the war against the ‘implacable enemy’, France, as Pitt argued and the unhappy effects of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 demonstrated the strategic importance to England and its wider Empire, but that it was possible to come together in ‘perpetual concord’. In reality, the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800, after the suppression of the rebellion, was achieved by the traditional methods of the ‘Old corruption’. Such was the pressure to conclude a settlement with Ireland that Lord Cornwallis, who had been appointed Lord Lieutenant for Ireland in June 1799, wrote to Lord Castlereagh complaining that his tasks were ‘of the most unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most corrupt people under heaven. He added that Ireland is a corrupt country’ in which support for the Union was ‘considered simply as a means of securing’ private objects of ambition or avarice; ‘and I despise and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work and I am supported only by the reflection that without a union the British Empire must be dissolved’ (Wilkinson, 1997).56 The solution came by the siphon off money from the Home Office secret service account, from which Castlereagh had secured £5000. The funds were used by the traditional reward of honours including peerages, places, ecclesiastical and military appointments and of course pensions. There was nothing unusual about these rewards. It was a common place to reward supporters of the government but in the circumstances the manipulation of finances including from the King’s Privy Purse at a time when his illness was in extremis. Further, the sums of money were so large that the Chief Clerk of the Home Office, William Pollock, manipulated

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department accounts. These actions were in contravention of the Civil List Acts of 1782 and 1793, which were part of the programme of ‘economical’ reforms that had been stimulated as a consequence of the loss of the American colonies.

Conclusions By the late eighteenth century the towns and cities of England at least had been integrated into the English political nation. The towns and cities of Wales, Scotland and Ireland had also become part of a greater Britain. Cardiff was under the control of the Marquess of Bute (Jones, 2019), a Scots nobleman. Henry Dundas had controlled elections in Scotland and had been brought to England to manage elections for William Pitt, the younger (McAdam, 1973; Fry, 1992).57 Ireland was more problematic although Belfast was part of the English orbit of influence and Dublin had effectively been bought by British secret service money after the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Bew, 1997).58 The Old Corruption had many facets— patronage, a parasitic system of rewards and privileges which were all part of a managed regime. Its legitimacy was secure until the later eighteenth century when the American and French Revolutions generated new ideas in the Atlantic world of which the emergent UK became a part. Further, the costs of warfare, despite the effectiveness of debt financing, propelled politicians and activists towards a reformed system which, it was hoped, would achieve political legitimacy, greater social cohesion and a more efficient state.

Notes 1. P. Harling, ‘Wade, John 1788–1875’, ODNB 23 September 2004. 2. John Wade, The Extraordinary Black Book (London, 1832) pp.  488–9, quoted by W. D. Rubinstein in, ‘The end of the Old Corruption in Britain, 1880–1860’, Past and Present, 101 (Nov. 1983) pp. 55–86. 3. W. D. Rubinstein, op cit 1983. 4. P.  Harling, ‘Rethinking the “Old Corruption”’, Past and Present, 147, May 1995, pp 127–158. 5. The term was coined by William Cobbett after the Reform Act of 1832. 6. A, Boyer, ‘Coke, Sir Edward 1552–1634’, ODNB January 2009; see also J.R. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (London, 1914). 7. J.H.  Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London: Macmillan, 1967).

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8. F.  O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History 1688–1832. (London: Bloomsbury, 2016, second edition). 9. P.  Langford, ‘Property and “Virtual Representation” in Eighteenth Century England’, Historical Journal 31, 1 (March 1980) pp. 83–115. 10. J.R. Figgis, op cit. 11. N. Fergusson, The Ascent of Money (London, Penguin, 2009) pp. 75–77. 12. Aaron Graham, ‘Towns, government and the police in Jamaica and the British Atlantic 1770–1805’ Urban History (2019) pp. 1–22; and Graham, ‘The British financial revolution and the empire of credit in St Kitts and Nevis, 1706–21’, Historical Research: Institute of Historical Research, 91, 254 (November 2018); and ‘Corruption and Contractors in the Atlantic World, 1754–1763’, English Historical Review 564 (September 2018) 1093–1119. 13. T. Oldfield, An Entire and Complete History, Political and Personal, of the Boroughs of Great Britain, together with the Cinque Ports; which is prefixed an original Sketch of the constitutional rights from the earliest Period until the Present Time (London 1792). 14. P. Langford, ‘Property and Virtual Representation in Eighteenth Century England’ Historical Journal, 03, 31, (1988) pp.  83–115. See also M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, Hutchinson, 1973). 15. R.  Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, Penguin) p. 123. 16. R. Davenport-Hines, Henry Fauntleroy ODNB. 17. D. Cannadine, Lords and Landlords: the aristocracy and the towns 1774–1967 (Leicester: Leicester University Press: 1980). 18. M Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, Hutchinson 1973) pp 23–24. 19. P.  Langford, ‘The management of the eighteenth century state: perceptions and implications’, Journal of Historical Sociology. 15, 1 (2002) pp. 102–106. 20. J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power, War Money and the English State 1688–1783 (London and Boston, 1989) p. vii, and Philip Harling and P.  Mandler ‘Fiscal Military State to Laissez Faire State, 1760–1850’ Journal of British Studies, 32, 1 (Jan. 1993) pp. 44–70. 21. P.  Langford, Writings and speeches of Edmund Burke; see also Michael Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, 1992). 22. R. Kroeze. Anti-Corruption in in History (Oxford, 2018). 23. HC Debates 1780. 24. R. Porter op cit. p. 51. 25. HC Debates and Burke Speeches. 26. J.N. R. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (London, 1914). 27. P. Hennessey, The Prime Minister (London, Penguin) p. 40. 28. J. H. Plumb, Walpole p. 59.

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29. Ibid p 66. 30. B. Williams, ‘The Duke of Newcastle and the Election of 1834’. English Historical Review, 12(1939) pp. 448–488. 31. Letter 1734 published by the Weekly Register. 32. Quoted by B. Williams, op cit. 33. L. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, Macmillan 1961) pp 7–61. 34. Williams’ op cit 448–488. 35. Ibid. 36. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the causes of our present discontents. 37. Bubb Dodington’s diary at election time quoted by Williams op cit. p. 464. 38. ibid. 39. Letter to the Duke of Newcastle quoted in Williams’ op cit. 40. R. Sweet, ‘Corrupt and corporate bodies: attitudes to corruption in eighteenth century and early nineteenth century towns’, in J.  Moore and J.  Smith, Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950. (Aldershot, Ashgate 2007) pp. 41–56. 41. S.  Webb and B.  Webb, The Manor and the Borough (London 1908); R.  Sweet, The English Town 1680–1840 (London: Pearson Longman 1999); and J. Woodford, The Boss of Bethnal Green: Joseph Merceron, The God Father of Regency London (London: Spital Fields Life Books, 2016): and Ian Doolittle, ‘Merceron, Joseph c.1764–1839, Parochial Politician’ ODNB (revised edition September 2004). 42. Daniel Defoe, Parochial Tyranny quoted in Woodford op cit p. 57. 43. J.  Marriott, Beyond the Tower, A History of East London (Newhaven and London, Yale University Press, 2011) pp. 129–130. 44. J. Woodford, The Boss of Bethnal Green: Joseph Merceron, the Godfather of Regency (London: Spitalfields’ Life Books, 2016) pp 134–135. 45. M. Latham, ‘The City has been wronged and abused’, Economic History Review, 68, 3 (2015) pp. 1038–1061. 46. J.  Innes and N.  Rogers in P.  Clark, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain vol. 2 p. 567. 47. HC Papers, 34, 331 (1773) and W. Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The relentless Rise of the East India Company (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) pp  64–65 and H.V.  Bowen, ‘Clive, Robert, first Baron Clive of Plassey 1725–1774’ ODNB 23 September 2004. 48. M.  Parker, The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire and War (London: Hutchinson 2011); and R.B.  Sheridan, ‘Beckford, William 1709–1770,’ ODNB (September 2004). 49. M.  Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2004)

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50. P. Harling, The Waning of the Old Corruption: The politics of economical reform in Britain 1779–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996). See also John Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party 1857–68 (London: Penguin 1972). 51. F. O’Gorman, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The social meaning of elections in England 1780–1860’, Past and Present, 135 (May 1992) pp 79–115. 52. M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London: Hutchinson). 53. B. Hilton, A Mad Bad and Dangerous People: England 1783–1846 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2008. [pp 65–7]). 54. Sir Henry Parnell, House of Commons, 24 June 1823 quoted in P. Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006 (Oxford: OUP) p. 54. 55. William Pitt, the Younger, H.C. Debates quoted by Paul Bew op cit p. 55. 56. Quoted by D. Wilkinson, ‘How Did They Pass the Union?: Secret Service Expenditure in Ireland, 1799–1804’ History of Parliament: (Historical Association, 1997) pp. 223–251. 57. M.  Fry, the Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh: John McDonald, 1992). Donald R.  McAdams, ‘Henry Dundas and Election Management in England’ Quarterly Journal concerned with British Studies, 5, 4 (1973) 355–358. 58. Paul Bew, Ireland: the politics of enmity 1798–2006 (Oxford: OUP 2007) pp.  49–86, David Wilkinson, ‘How did they pass the Union?: Secret Service expenditure in Ireland, 1799–1704’, History of Parliament, Historical Association (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

CHAPTER 5

Reform of Parliament and Elections c. 1832–1912

Elections The Reform Act of 1832 has totemic status in the general histories of the nineteenth century and there is a vast literature on the subject.1 It was not, however, a final settlement as far as the study of electoral corruption was concerned. Indeed corruption persisted as an electoral practice. Bribery, treating, coercion and intimidation endured. Between 1832 and the Second Reform Act of 1867 the number of cases of corruption in parliamentary elections did not diminish and it may even have increased. Many towns and counties remained the fiefs of landed aristocrats. In Peterborough, for example, the influence of the Earl Fitzwilliam was writ large across the political landscape of the town. In the parliamentary elections of 1852 the local newspaper claimed the town was ‘in the hands of a peer’.2 In that election there were 532 registered voters, half of whom were tenants of the Earl Fitzwilliam. The involvement of aristocrats in the electoral politics of urban places was not simply a matter of sustaining traditional patterns of coercion and deference. Fitzwilliam’s interest was no doubt traditional but it was also motivated by economic innovation and in particular the building of a railway to transport coal from his Yorkshire coalfields to London. However, he also needed to sustain his support from the traders, publicans and hoteliers in the older centre of the town and so the railway skirted the west of the town leaving the central fabric of the town intact.3 Elsewhere, in south Wales, for example, the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_5

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Marquess of Bute financed the building of the Cardiff dock and controlled the politics of Cardiff as a landlord by means of coercion and intimidation. The Beaufort family, too, exerted similar influence in the small market town of Usk (E. Fayer-Jones, 2019).4 The Second Reform Act whereby the electorate was expanded to include the respectable working classes is generally reckoned to be a step on the road to democracy. The Whig historians certainly see the measure in such terms. In urban areas all those men who paid rates in person obtained the vote but it excluded compounders. Such a dividing line was intended to admit the respectable working class into the political nation but exclude the very poor, the so-called residuum and criminal classes. There were also a series of amendments including the granting of a second vote to university graduates, to professional men and to those who had £50 invested in a savings bank. In this sense the reform debate in parliament sought to balance interests and reward the virtues of thrift, education and general social improvement.5 In the event the Bill passed without these additional ‘fancy franchises’ but the measure was nevertheless designed to balance interests: the landed classes, the middle classes and the respectable working classes. The election of 1868 was the first under the terms of a wider franchise and it produced in all 45 petitions. Twenty-five petitions went to trial and fifteen were successful on grounds of corruption. The majority of the petitions cited bribery as the grounds for the claims. The implications were serious as 12 constituencies were declared void. Additionally, there were a range of other types of corruption including ‘treating’, coercion, assault and the employment of a prize fighter; intimidation; undue influence; scrutiny of votes; disqualified voters and personation. For the study of corruption the subsequent reforms of the 1870s and 1880s are of greater interest. Admittedly, when Disraeli introduced the Reform Bill in February 1867 he stressed another important issue: ‘Any ministry, of whatever party it might be formed, would not be doing his duty … if it did not attempt vigorously to grapple with this question of bribery and corruption’. There was persistent concern about corruption at elections as well as the rising costs of electoral administration. Additionally politicians were becoming mindful of the costs of elections. The expenses of returning officers had risen threefold from £31,621  in 1841 to £95,130 in 1868. Moreover, the expenditures of the candidates had risen from £493 per candidate in 1857 to ££1239 per candidate in 1868.6 Thus part of the Reform package had included an attempt not only to reduce

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corruption at elections but also to reduce the costs of election in administration as well as candidates’ expenses. The Ballot Act 1872 was introduced by the Liberals but it did not produce the outcome intended as the General Election of 1880 revealed. The average cost per candidate had risen to £1472. Indeed there had been 12 General Elections between 1832 and 1880, and 118 elections were declared void as a consequence of election petitions. Almost half of these were concentrated in four regions of the UK and included Ireland, south-west England, East Anglia and south-east England. It should also be noted that particular constituencies of Ireland were repeat offenders in this respect and included Carrick Fergus, Drogheda and Galway. Further, between 1832 and 1885 12 boroughs were disenfranchised because of corruption including St. Albans, Great Yarmouth, Totnes and Bridgewater.7 The election of 1880 was especially disappointing for the reformers as there were 126 petitions tabled after the elections. The Corrupt Practices Elections Act according to Cornelius O’Leary’s research concluded that the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act swept away ‘traditions that were centuries old’.8 This was perhaps so but it was a rather longer term trend than his conclusion suggests.9 Between 1868 and 1886 there were 5 General Elections which produced 126 petitions, suggesting that the Ballot Act alone had not removed the possibility of corruption, especially bribery and coercion. Nor had it necessarily eliminated personation. There were constituencies where corrupt practices were systemic. Broadly speaking Ireland was especially prone. In 1868 there were petitions in Belfast, Carrick Fergus, Drogheda, Galway Borough, Limerick, Londonderry, Sligo Borough, Wexford Borough, Waterford City and Tipperary. There were also 15 petitions in Ireland during the time period. Bribery, personation, assault and undue influence were the principal hallmarks of Irish elections.10 In England the prevalence of corruption was apparent in the towns of the south-west including Bristol, Taunton, Salisbury, Penryn, Falmouth, Bridgewater and Bodmin. Such a geographical distribution suggested the Old Corruption took a long time to die. The newspaper press claimed that there were certain notorious boroughs and that disenfranchising them would help to solve the problem. The election of 1880 was particularly troublesome to the Liberals as they had hoped that by introducing the secret ballot electors would be free to exercise their vote rationally and dispassionately. The debate about election expenses generated divergent views among MPs. It was argued that the spending limits were unworkable. Gladstone had spent £2495 in the 1880 election which would have

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been disallowed if the proposal in the Bill of 1883 had been enacted. Nevertheless, it has to be accepted that the measures of the 1880s did have an effect. Over the period 1885–1910 there were eight general elections and the average cost per vote polled fell from 18s.9p. in 1880 to 4s.5d in 1885 which was a fall of 75 per cent. In the second general election of 1910 the cost per vote polled had fallen to 3s.8d. In part this may have been attributable to the fact that 1885–1895 was marked by falling prices but this alone would not explain such a dramatic fall in real terms. Perhaps the most important consequence of the legislation was that election candidates had now to employ agents to deal with the legislative complexities of electoral law.11 Candidates had traditionally employed local attorneys or solicitors but now it was clear that there was a special role for Parliamentary Election Agents and they were to become increasingly professionalised. Further, it may well have been that party funds—subscriptions and donations—enabled candidates to be served with greater financial support given that treating had been outlawed. With the growth of national and regional organisations political parties were able to provide financial support to their candidates. In 1885 political parties spent £243,285 on printing, advertising, stationery, postage and telegrams. Such funds amounted to between a third and almost a half of campaign costs. The costs per voter in both boroughs and counties remained more or less constant at around one shilling. Further the growth of the popular press from around 1900 also enabled voters to read about party programmes at a relatively low cost. Nevertheless, corruption at elections remained, although much subdued; but the focus of press and public interest in respect of politics shifted from elections, specifically, to the question of conflict of interest. This was apparent in the cases of contracting; share dealing and the sale of honours. After the First World War the issue of party funding would raise its head again. At the same time there arose growing concerns about Empire, arms manufacture and sales, war profiteering and the conduct of trade. Additionally, the widening scope of the state and its imperial role created new opportunities for corruption as instanced by the contracting scandals surrounding the second Boer War and the Marconi affair immediately before the First World War when members of the cabinet were found to have purchased shares in the Marconi Company prior to the conclusion of a government contract with the Marconi Company. Such ‘insider trading’ was perhaps an automatic corollary as the scope of the state’s expansion. Moreover, the convergence of public institutions with private business interests meant that profit did

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not sit comfortably with disinterested public service. The period from 1832 to 1884 then had been characterised by reform of elections and the reform of local government; and of the reform of the civil service following the Northcote-Trevelyan Report 1855 which established the principle that civil servants should be disinterested guardians of public service. Finally, Edward Cardwell’s army reforms (1868) were perhaps famous for the abolition of flogging in the army, but also for the abolition of the purchase of commissions. This latter was blocked by the Lords but was put into effect by Royal Warrant.

Honours The reforms of the 1880s presented a raft of new challenges for political party managers. Principally, the limits placed on election expenses meant that new sources of funding election campaigns had to be found. Further, it was also necessary to insulate the prime minister of the day from claims of corruption should they become too involved in the matter. Nevertheless prime ministers were certainly consulted on the question of recipients of titles—peers, baronets and knights. Indeed in 1891 Gladstone, apparently, agreed to two peerage nominations on condition that the men in question made donations to Liberal Party funds.12 There was no shortage of candidates seeking titles as new men—industrialists, financiers, brewers and businessmen—who had performed public duties craved status recognition. The key figures who managed the system were the party whips and treasurers of party funds. Landed magnates continued to be the recipients of peerages as they remained able to exert influence in county constituencies and they could also be valuable to the government of the day if they were placed in the House of Lords. Additionally peers were expected to have substantial landholdings or gilt-edged securities worth of at least £5000 a year. Between 1885 and 1914, 225 peers, 455 baronetcies and 4005 knighthoods were awarded. Many of the baronetcies and knighthoods were conferred upon former ministers, admirals, generals, judges, ambassadors and colonial administrators. It remained the case, however, that the honours system was a useful arrangement to define and manage access to the social and political elite. The post-reform period after the 1880s witnessed remarkable upward social mobility. The 1890s was a decade increasingly dominated by issues of Empire and a growing market for overseas investment. The period from c. 1873 to 1896 has been dubbed the Great Depression because it was a

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period of stable or falling prices and a period of a slow-down in the rate of growth of profits.13 Nevertheless there were profits to be had. Further, Britain was faced with new competition in economic terms from the USA, from Germany and from Japan. A significant consequence of these circumstances was that British investors looked for new opportunities in the Empire and elsewhere, in South America, Africa and China. Indeed Britain was the leading exporter of capital from c. 1890 to 1914.14 This trend had the effect of insulating Britain from new competition for manufactured goods from the USA, Germany and Japan. The result was a rapid growth of the stock market and the emergence of a new breed of brokers and financiers, bankers, stockjobbers, insurance agents and of course men of dubious reputation. The opportunity to make money quickly had magnetic power and attracted men from all walks of life. Moreover, there was, as J.A. Hobson has claimed ‘excess capital in search of investment’.15 Ernest Tera Hooley was a stockjobber of questionable moral integrity who duped many of polite London society by bogus share offers. Hooley had promoted a range of share flotations which included Dunlop, Schweppes and a number of cycle manufacturers. He produced simple brochures outlining the shares on offer and the profits that could be made. He bribed journalists and solicitors who would vouch for him. He also led the high life—race horses, yachts and even buying the Royal Yacht from the Prince of Wales. He bought Papworth Hall in Cambridgeshire and made his way into landed society as Deputy Lieutenant for both Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Rather like Trollope’s Augustus Melmotte of The Way We Live Now (1875) he was able to dupe gullible aristocrats and get them to invest in his schemes. He sued for bankruptcy in 1899. It transpired that he had bought admission to the Carlton Club and tried to purchase a baronetcy by making donations to Conservative Party funds. Hooley was not an isolated example. Indeed there were legions of men on the make. Horatio Bottomley, a newspaper editor and Liberal Party MP, was initially prosecuted in 1893 for fraud although found not guilty. He paraded himself as a great patriot but his issue of Victory Bonds at the end of the First World War was a fraudulent scam. On this occasion he was found guilty and imprisoned for seven years. Of equal notoriety, Horace Farquhar who insinuated himself into the life of the Royal Court of Edward V11 and he became Master of the Royal Household. He also secured membership of the Carlton Club and was treasurer for the Conservative Party. Farquhar pursued a range of money-­ making schemes. In 1889 he joined the board of the British South Africa

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Company which was a rather disreputable agent of the Empire. Nonetheless it served Farquhar’s purpose. His contacts with the monarchy enabled him to sell shares to courtiers of the Royal household to invest in a Siberian gold mining venture. He made £70,000 from the scheme. Farquhar’s prime motive was a title and in 1898 Lord Salisbury reluctantly agreed to raise him to the peerage. Farquhar was brazen about his triumph claiming that he had paid more than the normal fee for the privilege.16 He was now able, although without political conviction to become involved in London municipal politics and fundraising for the Conservatives. He was able, too, during the years of the Lloyd George Coalition 1916–1922, to make even more money for the Conservative Party and for himself. He also diverted money to Lloyd George’s fund. In January 1923 Bonar Law wrote to Farquhar demanding to see the accounts to discover that funds had been diverted not only to Lloyd George but also to charity funds. It was not until his death in August 1923 that the true picture became apparent. He had personal wealth of £400,000 but this was wiped out because of his debts and the provisions in his will to Princess Louise could not be met. Parliament demanded an investigation; and a Royal Commission was established under the chairmanship of Lord Dunedin. The Commissioners expressed concern that the honours regime had given rise to widespread suspicions about the integrity of the existing system and accepted that the existing arrangements were open to abuse. It accepted that party managers and patronage secretaries had a difficult task but asserted that, ‘it is repugnant to honest feeling that a person otherwise undeserving of an honour should get it simply because he promised to pay so much to party funds’.17 The Report recommended that there should be a small committee of Privy Councillors who were men ‘of well-known character and position’. This scrutiny committee should only approve or decline nominations and should not amend the list with alternative nominees. Further the patronage secretary had to confirm that nominations were not being made because of a payment or promise of a payment. Concern about honours’ touts—the likes of Maundy Gregory and Freddy Guest—required that the identities of the proposers of men to receive an honour. The Commissioners therefore believed that they had brought more rigour to the system. Additionally, they proposed an act of parliament which would impose penalties on any ‘person instrumental in securing the honour for another’. This was an attempt to outlaw touting. ‘The very existence of such persons is a blot upon the honourable life of any community.’18 Arthur Henderson, the Labour MP recorded a note of

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dissent to the Report and asked that known touts should have been interviewed by the commission. Additionally he observed that the prime minister of the day appointed the Privy Councillors and therefore there would be party bias.19

Towns, Cities and Local Government In the late nineteenth century local government, particularly in the towns and cities was held in high esteem. In the cities of the provinces and in Scotland contemporary observers were impressed with what they saw. For example, Albert Shaw, a journalist on the Minneapolis Tribune, decided to take a sabbatical from his employment and travel to Europe. It might be thought that he was embarking an American version of the Grand Tour of Europe which was the habit of many wealthy Americans. Apart from a visit to Paris the resemblance to the fashionable Grand Tour was minimal. Shaw visited Liverpool, Edinburgh, Nottingham and Glasgow. Shaw was part of a scholarly network of urbanists which included Lincoln Steffens whose Shame of the Cities was highly critical of American urban governance. Shaw lauded what he found in Britain’s cities and especially Glasgow. Its plan for tramways, he thought, was especially advantageous. Further, Glasgow’s public men were held in high esteem unlike their counterparts in American cities who were perceived to be venal and corrupt. Shaw’s account was no doubt somewhat optimistic as there were many instances of corruption in Britain’s towns and cities in the later. In the later nineteenth century in London the Metropolitan Board of Works was not held in high esteem. However it was in all truth a gimcrack body responsible for diverse range of geographical areas. Moreover the burgeoning growth of the metropolis and so many divergent interests made for mischief and corruption. London had not been affected by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 and so in 1855 the Metropolis Management Act established the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Board took on the task of coordinating a vast range of responsibilities including sewage, streets and bridges, the embankment, fire brigade as well as parks and open spaces. Its membership was drawn from propertied interests and it was exposed to accusations of patronage. It was also prey to private interests and lobby groups who sought to win lucrative construction projects. For example, Francis Hayman Fowler, a Board Member and an architect, was found guilty of corruption along with Ebenezer Saunders.20 The 1880s was a crucial decade in respect of political

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corruption and the Metropolitan Board of Works. The interim report of Lord Herschell in 1888 revealed that the Board was unable to unify its administration. It faced stiff opposition from parochial interests and especially the vestries. The system of indirect elections favoured those with property interests. Its recruitment of employees and professional staff was frequently biased and exhibited favouritism. There were also embarrassing scandals including the case of the Board’s accountant, Edward Hughes who had stolen from the accounts over £2000. He was dismissed and arrested. The London press seized upon such cases as evidence of systemic corruption and waged war on an unpopular public body. However, the case of Edward Hughes was perhaps inflated in its importance. Of more significance was the fact that the Board was responsible for major structural developments: the Victoria Embankment; street improvements and the sale of disused land by means of temporary leases which were attractive to entrepreneurs who sought to make quick profits from auctions of land pending their later planned use. The case of James Robertson, an MBW surveyor, his brothers; and the company of F.W. Goddard and Sons was investigated; and an interim report was published report in 1886. Goddard and sons had secured temporary licences for public houses pending demolition and planning approval. The subsequent press campaign did much to bring about a Royal Commission led by Lord Herschell.21 The Report revealed that Goddard had secured additional payments between £500 and £600. It also emerged that another MBW employee, John Hebb, had secured free theatre tickets for himself and his family for approving fire certificates. In the provinces there were cases of corruption in Wolverhampton, Leicester and Liverpool. In Wolverhampton it emerged that an accounts clerk, Jesse Varley, had defrauded Wolverhampton Corporation of more than £84,000 between 1905 and 1917. It was remarkable that his activities took so long to uncover. The Local Government Board appointed Sir Harry Haward as the financial Comptroller of the London County Council who described Varley’s scheme as ‘ingenious and daring’ (J.  Moore & J. Smith, 2007).22 It was clear, however, that the accounting system of the Corporation was in need of reform as Varley had been able to carry out functions that were above his status and responsibility. The Corporation subsequently reorganised its accounts systems. After the First World War the issues of corruption emerged yet again. The peace created new problems for government. Lloyd George’s electoral promise of a land fit for heroes to live in would signal new

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opportunities for corruption. In the first instance the franchise was expanded to include all adult males. The limitations of the 1867 were cast aside. However, there remained a concern to balance interests as well as appease the Conservative Party which had supported the war-time coalition after 1916. In order to balance interests democracy was denied as the reform of elections granted the vote to married women and women property owners. The reasoning behind such a measure was based on the assumption that such women would vote for Conservative Party candidates. A second factor which impinged upon electoral behaviour was the Treaty with Ireland of 1921. In the wake of the Easter Rising of 1916 the British government was forced to concede the Irish Free State which would be governed from Dublin and included the catholic territory to the south and west of the island of Ireland. The province of Ulster to the north-east would remain within the Union with its major city of Belfast. Ulster was a Protestant stronghold and would in effect produce a protestant political ascendancy. The drawing of the political boundary between Ulster and the Irish Free State in such a way was in effect a gerrymander to guarantee a majority for the Ulster Unionists. There were provisions within the Treaty of 1921 for a limited concession of proportional representation in local government elections to allow the catholic minority in Ulster access to the new polity. Thus the UK had shrunk to be The UK of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. What had been secured by purchase and bribery in 1801 was returned, in part at least, to the Irish. In Ulster and in Belfast particularly protestant politicians determined to sustain their grip on power. Ulster politics from 1921 until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 would be mired in sectarian strife and with it corruption. Indeed every aspect of life was determined by sectarian loyalties. In England and Scotland there was perhaps some dividend on Lloyd George’s homes for hero’s pledge. Indeed there was a substantial house-­ building programme in towns and cities in England, Wales and Scotland. In Ulster and specifically in Belfast the building programme was minimal and it was also subject to maladministration. The Belfast Corporation was dominated by Protestants in the Council Chamber. Additionally those who held administrative posts in  local government were drawn overwhelmingly from the protestant population. Partiality and prejudice marked every principal agent encounter with the citizenry. There were similar patterns in Liverpool and Glasgow.

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Notes 1. M. Brock, the Great Reform Act (London, Hutchinson, 1973). 2. Peterborough Advertiser, 26th September 1868. 3. P. Jones, ‘Perspective, sources and methodology in a comparative study of the middle classes in nineteenth century Leicester and Peterborough’, Urban History Year Book (University of Leicester Press 1987) pp 22–32. See also P. Jones, ‘Urban Governance and its Disorders: Corruption in the Cities’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 2, 14 November (2019) pp. 55–59. 4. E. Fayrer-Jones, ‘Make him an offer he can’t refuse: Corruption, coercion and aristocratic landowners in nineteenth century Urban Wales’. International Journal of Regional and Local History, 14, 2 November, (2019) pp 62–75. 5. Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (London: Longman, 1959) pp. 416–417. 6. F.W.S. Craig, British Electoral Facts 1832–1987 (Dartmouth: Parliamentary Research Services, Fifth Edition 1989). 7. F.W.S. Craig, British Electoral Facts 1832–1987 (Aldershot: Parliamentary Research Services, 1985) pp. 200–2003. 8. C.  O’Leary, The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections 1868–1911 (Oxford, 1962) p. 281. 9. K. Rix, ‘The Second Reform Act and the Problem of Electoral Corruption’, Parliamentary History Year Book Trust (2017). 10. Election Petitions: Return of all election petitions Tried in England, Scotland and Ireland, respectively by Election Judges or decided by the Court on special Parliamentary Elections Acts 1808, 1874 and 1883. Ordered by the House of Commons 20 August 1883. 11. K. Rix, Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England 1880–1910 (Royal Historical Society, London, Boydell Press 2016). 12. H.J. Hanham, ‘The sale of honours in Late Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 3, 3 (March 1960) 277–289. 13. S.B.  Saul, The Myth of the Great Depression 1873–1896 (London: Macmillan 1979). 14. P.J. Cain, Economic Foundations of British Overseas Expansion 1815–1914 (London Macmillan, 1980). See also P.J.  Cain and A.G.  Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Overseas Expansion’, New Imperialism 1850-1945’ Economic History Review, 40, 1 ((1987) pp. 1–26. 15. J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study London, (1902). 16. A.  Lexden’, The Man who -Enriched-and Robbed-the Tories’, Parliamentary History, 40, 2 (2021) pp. 378–390. 17. Royal Commission on Honours, (December 1922), Cmd. 1789. para 22.

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18. Royal Commission, op cit. para 31. 19. Ibid, Note of Dissent. 20. D. Owen, the Government of Victorian London 1855–1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works, Vestries and City Corporation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 21. Interim Report of the Royal Commissioners to Inquire into certain matters with the working of the Metropolitan Board of Works, October 18868 C. 35560. 22. J. Smith in J. Moore and J. Smith (eds.) Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) p. 114.

CHAPTER 6

Reform: Success and Failure, Civil Service and Conflict of Interest

Civil Service Reform The traditions of the civil service had originated in medieval times with the public officers who managed the King’s business and acted as the first port of call for supplicants to the state. Public officials acted according to principal-­agent assumptions: protect or insulate the king from vexation; or facilitate access by extraction of a gift or a bribe. Notions of probity and impartiality remained unknown precepts even into the eighteenth century as the Bembridge case and many others have illustrated. Again, just as the reforms of the civil service were quickened by the demands of the fiscal military state, so too in the nineteenth century the Crimean War (1854–1856) exposed the inefficiencies of the civil service. It might be thought that reform of the civil service is a strange place to start an examination of corruption but as we have seen for many citizens encounters with the state were often marked with obstruction and obfuscation. Indeed Charles Dickens’ portrayal of the ‘circumlocution office’ in Little Dorrit (1855–1858) would have resonated with many of his readers. Thomas Carlyle, the acerbic sage of the early Victorian period; and Anthony Trollope in the Three Clerks (1858) were in tune with Dickens. In Carlyle’s correspondence, he observed: ‘our present methods of appointing civil servants are not good. … They are men of genteel breeding: [they show] courtesy in speech and demeanour. But many exhibit sham talent.’ Carlyle thought that reform might eliminate patronage and favouritism but that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_6

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competitive examination might simply reinforce existing patterns of recruitment: ‘I foresee that our Etons and Oxfords with their nonsense verses, college logics and broken crumbs of mere speech would still be advantaged’ (D.K.  Fielding, 1989).1 Nevertheless, the Northcote-­ Trevelyan (1854) Report was well received and legislation followed. In essence, the Report which was both brief and blunt, recommended competitive examination, promotion according to years of service, a superannuation scheme, and pensions. The latter measures were designed to eliminate the procurement of bribes and other payments which stemmed from low pay; and had been one of the hallmarks of the ‘Old Corruption’. Increasing salary by annual increments was also designed to attract more ambitious men of ability: The civil service attracted those whose abilities do not warrant the expectation that they will succeed in open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries and those whom indolence of temperament or physical infirmities that make them unfit for active exertions are placed in the Civil Service. (Northcote-Trevelyan, 1855)2

Between 1853 and 1855 the Northcote-Trevelyan Commission brought forward a series of reforms that modernised the civil service (Northcote-­ Trevelyan).3 The introduction of competitive examinations to recruit civil servants on merit was a vital step to bring about greater efficiency. Perhaps more important though were the recommendations around ethical principles of integrity, propriety and objectivity. The principles of probity and objectivity were also set out. Thus the state had achieved, apparently a remarkable reform which also recognised the ambitions of the upwardly mobile social groups who could afford private education. Such an interpretation, however, needs qualification: the publication of the Northcote-­ Trevelyan Report was keenly awaited in political and intellectual circles. The great thinker of Victorian culture, Thomas Carlyle, wrote to James Booth, Secretary of the Board of Trade; to Sir James Stephen, former Under Secretary for the Colonies; and to Alexander Duff Gordon, Senior Clerk to the Treasury. ‘I wish you could tell me something definite about the grand proposal for manning the civil service by persons chosen according to their merit.’ Carlyle favoured reform but he was worried that the report would be met with determined opposition in parliament (Fielding).4 Why was this so? First, Trevelyan had been extremely abrasive in his criticisms of the civil service which had aroused considerable resentment.

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Additionally, Trevelyan had written to the editor of The Times, John Delane in February 1854 before the official report had been published. Trevelyan’s provocative comment that the civil service was set aside to provide employment for illegitimate children of the Dukes of Norfolk’ [adding that] ‘one of them is the most notorious idler and jobber’ (Trevelyan, 1854). 5 The Report when it was published resonated favourably in intellectual and political circles alike. The recommendations around ethical principles and objectivity in particular were welcome to the educated middle classes. Thus the state had achieved, it might be claimed, a remarkable reform which also recognised the ambitions of the upwardly mobile social groups who could afford private education. Such an interpretation, however, needs qualification: the publication of the Northcote-­ Trevelyan Report had been keenly awaited in political and intellectual society. Carlyle wrote to James Booth, Secretary of the Board of Trade; to Sir James Stephen, former Under Secretary for the Colonies; to Alexander Duff Gordon, Senior Clerk to the Treasury; and to Moncton Mills, MP: ‘I wish you could tell me something definite about the grand proposal for manning the civil service by persons chosen according to their merit’. Carlyle favoured reform but he was worried that the report would be met with determined opposition in parliament. Why was this so? Trevelyan had been extremely abrasive in his criticisms of the civil service which had aroused considerable resentment. Additionally, Trevelyan had written to the editor of The Times, John Delane in February 1854 before the official report had been published. Trevelyan’s provocative comment concerning the Duke of Norfolk’s illegitimate children was offensive and could prompt opposition to the reforms. In the event this was not so. Indeed the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms signified a progressive measure which completed the tumultuous reforms of earlier decades. Thus the principle of recruitment by examination; promotion by merit and greater unification of the Service were the watchwords. However, implementation of the new arrangements was slow and between 1855 and 1870 70 per cent of appointments were still made without examination. Further, civil service performance during the Crimean War was lamentable with failures to provide adequate ammunition, food and medical supplies. The Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen, resigned to be succeeded by Lord Palmerston who immediately accepted a Royal Commission, which although much vaunted as the harbinger of the reform and modernisation of the civil service was in fact a damp squib. Northcote’s bluster was certainly amusing, but in the context of the growth of the state and its range

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of responsibilities—law and order, trade, customs, education and poor law—the civil service grew slowly in size and changed only marginally in temperament. The debacle of the Crimean War prompted the establishment of the Administrative Reform Association which counted, among its supporters, members of parliament and Charles Dickens who wrote to the secretary of the Association: ‘I believe it to be impossible for England to hold her place in the world or long to be at rest … unless the present system of mismanaging the public affairs and misspending the public money be altogether changed’ (Dickens, 1855).6 The government agreed to establish a permanent commission effectively to superintend the working of the civil service. Nevertheless the implementation of the reforms remained painfully slow. Some departments, especially the Treasury, were highly resistant; and in 1870 Gladstone and Robert Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, forced the issue by means of an Order in Council. Even so the McDonnell Commission which reported in 1915 reported that of the 60,000 appointments made before 1910 only a third were recruited by competitive examination. This was in spite of the fact that the scope of government expanded greatly between 1880 and 1910. Why was this change so tardy? First, there was continued resistance especially from the heads of departments who claimed that they could recruit suitable candidates by recommendation and interview which naturally led critics to claim that patronage continued. Second, it was also asserted that the education provided in the great Public Schools was in itself an ideal preparation for those who were recruited to government and public office as they provided: A system of government and discipline for boys, the excellence of which has been universally recognised, and which is admitted to have been most important in its effects on national character and social life. It is not easy to estimate the degree to which the English people are indebted to these schools for the qualities on which they pique themselves most—for their capacity to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude to for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigour and manliness of character, their strong but not slavish respect for public opinion, their love of healthy sports and exercise. These schools have been the chief nurseries of our statesmen. (Clarendon, 1864)7

We may question such assumptions but they were at the time, deeply held; and they may go some way to explain the resistance to the Northcote-­ Trevelyan recommendations. The persistence of patronage sustained family honour within the aristocracy and apparently ensured that those

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appointed to the service were of sound moral character. Further, it was also apparent that men and women of ability and expertise could be employed almost by invitation. Trevelyan himself had first been employed as a writer in the East India Company in 826. He was subsequently appointed as assistant secretary to the Treasury in 1840 at the age of 33. Notwithstanding his ability he was a clear beneficiary of the patronage system. Much later Winston Churchill appointed William Beveridge to the Board of Trade in 1908 as a senior civil servant because of his knowledge of the economics of labour markets. Critics of the system claimed that such patronage appointments were part of a compensation system for the landed and rentier classes whose economic power was in retreat after the long-run depression of agriculture after the 1880s which had impacted negatively upon rural and agricultural rents. It remained the case however that patronage prevailed and that the institutional citadels of social and political order, the great public schools—Eton, Harrow, Rugby and others—should be sustained as recruiting grounds for the civil service and more broadly the political class: We may be sceptical of such a rationalisation and commentary now but they were beliefs that were deeply felt and they may go some way to explain the stasis of the state in respect of the reform of the permanent civil service. Further, it was also apparent that men and women of ability and expertise could be employed almost by invitation. However, there remained a deep-seated resistance in some civil service departments including the Treasury which was notably obstructive; and in 1870 Gladstone and Robert Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had forced the issue by means of an Order in Council. Implementation of the new arrangements was slow and between 1855 and 1870 70 per cent of appointments were made without examination. Nevertheless, the principle of a career open to talent that might meet the aspirations of an emergent middle class seemed to have been established, and to that end reform of the civil service was crucial to such ambition. However, it is necessary to question the traditional historiography of the reform years. The implication of these reforms was clear—the state and its bureaucracy expanded which in turn generated, as we have seen, promoted demands for reform of the civil service and careers open to talent that might meet the aspirations of an emergent middle class. To that end reform of the civil service was crucial to such ambition. However, it is necessary at this point to question the traditional historiography of the reform years.

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The Whig Interpretation of History It is over 80 years since Sir Ernest Llewellyn Woodward published The Age of Reform 1815–1870 in the Oxford History of England series. It is almost a 100 years ago that Elie Halevy published, The Triumph of Reform, 1830–1941: English People in the Nineteenth Century. Woodward’s career as a historian was interrupted by the two world wars of the twentieth century. According to his biographers he made a ‘false start’ as a history master at Eton College and returned to Keble College in Oxford. His major studies prior to the Oxford History had focussed on European conservatism—Metternich, Guizot and the Catholic Church. Despite or because of this interest in conservatism he ‘retained a faith in the idea of progress’ and was dismayed by ‘the pygmies who seemed to control politics’. During the Second World War he was seconded to Political Intelligence and then to the Foreign Office where he was charged by Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, with editing the official documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939. He was knighted in 1952; and he produced a second edition of The Age of Reform in 1962. In the preface to the second edition he acknowledged that more recent research had prompted him to add such works in the bibliography and footnotes but that he ‘had not found it necessary to recast the book as a whole or to alter the arrangement of the chapters’ (Wenham & Chamberlain, 2006).8 This second edition became the staple historical account of reform and progress. It remained an example of the Whig tradition which eschewed the persistence of political corruption. Halevy was first a philosopher who sought to use history to refute Marxist materialist concepts to explain historical change. He sought to explain Britain’s political stability by arguing that the philosophic radicals had imbibed the tenets of dissenting Christianity. They were motivated towards social reform including the abolition of slavery, factory reform and removal of Anglican privilege. Halevy moved comfortably in British intellectual circles and he knew the Webbs, Graham, Wallas and H.A.L. Fisher (H.S. Jones, 2004; F.S.W. Craig).9 Woodward’s Age of Reform was the staple diet for students of the history of the nineteenth century and sold over 10 million copies. Woodward’s work is distinctly within the Whig tradition suggesting progress towards a political state marked by stability and an expanding polity that allowed the participation of gradually widening social groups within the political nation. His observation on pocket boroughs that were controlled by

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landed magnates was that they were ‘a peculiar character of English politics’ (E.L. Woodward, 1962). Essentially, the patrons of the boroughs acted in a beneficial manner to introduce young men of talent into parliament. Their actions were benign and beneficent. Halevy, too, no doubt because of the experience of France and its seismic revolutionary upheavals was struck by Britain’s gradualist political progress. Neither of them sought to explain corruption and its persistence. Rather, their works suggested, by implication, the transformation of the British polity from a corrupt past to a virtuous present. Despite this cautionary comment it is undoubtedly the case that there were significant steps to root out corrupt practices in the decades after 1832. Between 1837 and 1865 around one-fifth of contested elections were subject to petitions and 47 of those were declared void. Further, between 1844 and 1868 Sudbury in Suffolk, St Albans in Hertfordshire and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk were disenfranchised because of persistent corruption. Further, between 1835 and 1852 40 elections were declared void as a result of petitions (F. Craig, 1989).10 The concern about corruption persisted with the result that in 1854 the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act came into effect and specified bribery, treating, undue influence and intimidation but the penalties laid down were minimal. Perhaps, more importantly election expense accounts were to be scrutinised by independent auditors. However, it is important to recognise that the political reforms that were introduced were made, only, partially, in response to claims of corruption. Rather the political nation was forced to admit new interest groups and to open up the political state to careers open to talent. The £10 household voting qualification established in 1832 admitted men of the middle class including merchants, manufacturers and professional men into the political state.

Towns and Cities The towns and cities vulnerable to charges of corruption lay particularly in the smaller towns because the powers of the vestry to levy local taxation meant that it remained an important institution. Consent of ratepayers to payment of taxes enabled relief of the poor, maintenance of the church buildings, maintenance of highways, scavenging and water supply was vital. Vestry meetings were turbulent and raucous affairs. The spectre of Joseph Merceron who had dominated the vestry of Bethnal Green prior 1818 could still haunt the post-1835 local political bodies. Additionally,

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where towns had established improvement commissions they could quickly become self-perpetuating oligarchies. Moreover, notions of public service remained weakly developed. In 1835–1840 the number of public office places—councillors, poor law guardians and magistrates—was limited and the number of office holders too was relatively small as some men held two or more public positions. This continued to be the case even into the later nineteenth century. For example, in Leicester, in the 1860s there were around 106 places including the Town Council, the Magistrates’ bench and the Board of Guardians but there were less than a 100 men who held office (P. Jones, 1981–1982). The tendency of multiple office-holding sustained oligarchy and sometimes corruption. In Leeds elections for the Board of Guardians were vigorously contested so much so that sharp practice came into play. The Vestry elected its own churchwardens and the magistrates in turn nominated which churchwardens should sit on the Board of Guardians. Given that the Corporation was dominated by the Liberals, the Conservatives sought to rig the elections by tampering with ballot papers and in the 1845 election the Conservatives secretly gained access to the poor law rates return and identified which ratepayers were in arrears with their rates who would be disqualified from voting. The Conservatives, from party funds, then paid the rates with the clear inducement to vote for the Conservative candidates. In Manchester Richard Cobden justified resorting to corrupt tactics as the Conservatives were already resorting to corrupt measures: ‘We shall have much trouble over this dirty odious business. It is this kind of work which makes public matters about as unpleasant as scavenging and not so cleanly either’ (D. Fraser, 1976).11 Further the drafters of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act 1835 held a jaundiced view of local government and in particular saw town clerks as obstructive, venal and corrupt. The Town Clerk of Bootle in Lancashire, Thomas Pierce was found to have embezzled £24,000 of corporation money and had escaped to Monte Carlo before he could be brought to justice. The Municipal Corporations Act (1835) enabled local urban elites to take two decades to secure a grip on party organisation; and so later, from the 1870s onwards this control became firmer as local party managers developed organisation to make for disciplined working men to vote for their party of allegiance. This was already evident in Birmingham from the

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1860s where the Birmingham Liberal Association was able to penetrate and control the town council via domination of electoral wards which in turn nominated men to the general committee of the Liberal Association. In this way political control was wrest from traditional elites who had relied on deference and oligarchy to control the city. Although the party machine was instrumental in promoting political participation, it also substituted traditional coercion by inherited status elites for another type of coercion from the caucus. In Liverpool where Archibald Salvidge became the chairman of the Working Men’s Conservative Association new forms of electoral management emerged. He had succeeded Sir Edward Lawrence, T.P. Boyden and Sir Charles Petrie. It was a sectarian political machine which recruited protestant working men and excluded immigrant Catholic Irish. Salvidge was regarded by contemporaries as a party political boss akin to William Tweed in the USA. The Association was able to use working-class resentment of Irish immigration to cement working-class men to the Conservative cause. Salvidge did not become chairman of the Association until 1919 but in reality he had been the prime mover in the Association from the 1890s (P. Waller, 1983).12 He was a wine and spirits merchant but he was able to distance himself from the ‘drink interest’. This was important because of the preponderance of working-class men who were non-conformist chapelgoers who advocated abstinence from alcoholic drink. Salvidge was careful not to offend this temperance group. He insisted that members should be ‘sound Protestants’. Superficially the Association appeared to be democratic but its structure was rigid and authoritarian. Salvidge was in effect the boss. The MPs who were elected to represent the Liverpool constituencies were dependent on Salvidge’s patronage. Those who were out of step with Salvidge were de-selected. This applied to Walter Long in 1899. Although Salvidge wielded great power he was not without his critics. The Reverend John Wakeford wrote to the Liverpool press claiming that Working Men’s Conservative Association (WMCA) did not represent the true interest of the working men adding that the organisation was dominated by ‘rascality’ and he urged the overthrow of the ‘workingmen’s boss’ (J. Wakeford, 1903).13

London London was a special case and its problems of governance persisted until at least 1888 with the Local Government Act which established the London County Council (L.C.C.). Although the Great Reform Act of

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1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act (1835) had brought some rationality to provincial urban political representation and local urban government London defied any rational legislative measures. Historians are agreed that London was impossible to govern (R. Porter, 1994).14 Its population at the time of those two momentous reforms was around 1.5 million. It stretched six miles from east to west from Limehouse to Paddington, a distance of eight miles. From north to south it stretched from the Regent Canal to Clapham and Camberwell. At the time of the Municipal Corporations Act London was governed by 90 parishes via their vestries. These ancient bodies pre-dated the extraordinary growth of London during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The parish of St George and Hanover Square alone had a population of 60,000 in 1848. The parish vestries were responsible for paving and streets, lighting, poor relief, vagrants and public order. Additionally, there were numerous private companies which provided water and sanitation as well as charities which made provision for the insane such as the Asylum at Bedlam. The politics of the vestries were characterised by small-mindedness, pettifogging and corruption. The vestrymen were drawn from shopkeepers, publicans and speculative builders who for the most part were concerned to keep the parish rates as low as possible. Some parishes also had aristocrats as members of the vestry. The parish of St Pancras was notable and it was also a closed vestry whereby vacancies were selected by the existing members. Applicants were also required to own property valued to at least £1000. Attempts to reform were invariably obstructed but in 1855 following the ‘great stink’ because sewage effluent discharged into the Thames disrupted the business of the House of Commons so much so that curtains had to be soaked in chloride of lime. There were, more tragically, 10,000 cases of cholera, as water supply was contaminated with sewage. The case for reform now gained traction and Sir Benjamin Hall’s Bill was passed into law: the Metropolis Local Management Act (1855) established the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW). The Board had a notable number of achievements including the construction of the Thames embankment. It also built a new sewage system that enabled effluent to be deposited further east and into the sea at Barking. However, the Metropolitan Board of Works was never a popular body. Its members were elected indirectly by means of nominations from the vestries so it was never truly accountable. Moreover its programmes of slum clearance were regarded as brutal and callous. In the later nineteenth century it would become mired in corruption scandals and it was not held in high esteem.

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However it was in all truth a gimcrack body responsible for a diverse range of geographical locations. Moreover the burgeoning growth of the metropolis and so many divergent interests made for mischief and corruption. The task of coordinating a vast range of responsibilities including sewage, streets and bridges, the embankment, fire brigade as well as parks and open spaces was a challenge beyond its resources and expertise. Its membership was drawn from propertied interests and it was exposed to accusations of patronage. It was also prey to private interests and lobby groups who sought to win lucrative construction projects. For example, Francis Hayman Fowler, a Board Member and an architect, was found guilty of corruption along with Ebenezer Saunders. The 1880s was a crucial decade in respect of political corruption and the Metropolitan Board of Works. The interim report of Lord Herschell in 1888 revealed that the Board was unable to unify its administration. It faced stiff opposition from parochial interests and especially the vestries. The system of indirect elections favoured those with property interests. Its recruitment of employees and professional staff was frequently biased and exhibited favouritism. There were also embarrassing scandals including the case of the Board’s accountant, Edward Hughes who had stolen from the accounts over £2000. He was dismissed and arrested. The London press seized upon such cases as evidence of systemic corruption and waged war on an unpopular public body. However, the case of Edward Hughes was perhaps inflated in its importance. Of more significance was the fact that the Board was responsible for major structural developments: the Victoria embankment, street improvements and the sale of disused land by means of temporary leases which were attractive to entrepreneurs who sought to make quick profits from auctions of land pending their later planned use. The case of James Robertson, an MBW surveyor, his brothers; and the company of F.W. Goddard and Sons was investigated; and an interim report was published report in 1886. Goddard and sons had secured temporary licences for public houses pending demolition and planning approval. The subsequent press campaign did much to bring about a Royal Commission led by Lord Herschell. The Report revealed that Goddard had secured additional payments between £500 and £600. It also emerged that another MBW employee, John Hebb, had secured free theatre tickets for himself and his family for approving fire certificates. It also emerged that another MBW employee, John Hebb, had secured free theatre tickets for himself and his family for approving fire certificates. However, we should also remember that London’s sprawl had spread beyond the jurisdiction of the

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MBW and speculative builders were often able to secure building permits by questionable means (H.J. Dyos, 1961).15

Provincial Towns In the provinces there were cases of corruption in Wolverhampton, Leicester and Liverpool. In Wolverhampton it emerged that an accounts clerk, Jesse Varley had defrauded Wolverhampton Corporation of more than £84,000 between 1905 and 1917. It was remarkable that his activities took so long to uncover. The Local Government Board appointed Sir Harry Howard, financial Comptroller of the London County Council, who described Varley’s scheme as ‘ingenious and daring’.16 It was clear, however, that the accounting system of the Corporation was in need of reform as Varley had been able carry out functions that were above his status and responsibility. The Corporation subsequently reorganised its accounts systems. The extent of urbanisation and the demands placed on administration in respect of accounts, audits and the development of the appropriate standards of conduct for employees and public office holders generally taxed the resources of urban government. This matter is evident in London, Wolverhampton and Leicester and no doubt in other places. In Leicester the growth of the town’s population and its suburban growth prompted the Corporation to seek a boundary extension by Act of Parliament. As early as 1880 the Corporation had initiated the scheme although the extension was not achieved until 1891. The effect was to encourage speculative builders to buy up land in anticipation of building opportunities and increased land values. Arthur Wakerley, a local councillor and a builder, was one such individual whose knowledge of the Corporation’s plans gave him insider knowledge of the plan and he was able to develop plans to buy up land on the eastern side of the city. He faced down accusations of corruption claiming that such an allegation was ‘a black and cruel falsehood’. The three cases—the Metropolitan Board of Works, the Wolverhampton case and the Leicester case—show that in the later nineteenth century and the early twentieth century before the First World War that local government expanded its role and ambition and that in some respects the expanded role created opportunities for corruption which demonstrated the outdated systems of control and governance. These shortcomings were just becoming apparent before 1914 but which after 1918 would be exposed more starkly.

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Of greater significance perhaps was the organisation of political parties in local politics. This was certainly the case in Birmingham where Joseph Chamberlain had established a caucus-style organisation. In Liverpool the Working Men’s Conservative Association brought political discipline amongst protestant men. Its chairman, Archibald Salvidge, was often accused of corruption which he denied, but there is no doubt that he capitalised on sectarian conflict and religious bigotry. Such religious enmity also of course fuelled local politics in Belfast where a protestant oligarchy dominated the politics of the city. However, a visitor to Britain in the late nineteenth century, Albert Shaw, an American journalist for the Minneapolis Tribune took leave from his employment with the newspaper to travel in Europe. Shaw was impressed with what he found. In particular he enthused about the ‘Glasgow Plan’ for a tramway system. Moreover he observed that Corporation was efficient and its officers were prudent and careful with the public accounts. Indeed he was struck by the high regard in which public office holders were held. Indeed he was surprised that this was the case as local politicians in the USA were reviled for their venality and corrupt machine politics (A. Shaw, 1889).17 Indeed he seemed surprised that mayors and councillors were regarded as honourable. He was also impressed with what he found in Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham and Leicester. Taking the issue of elections first it is apparent that characteristics of the ‘Old Corruption’ were still evident in the election of 1868. The number and pattern of election petitions in the 1968 general election were remarkably similar to those that had prevailed before 1832. There were nine cases of bribery and at least eight cases of treating. In Munster there was also a case of ‘undue influence’ by clergy. The administration of the election was evident in respect of the counting of votes of votes cast; of ballot tampering; and transportation of the ballot boxes to the count. Geographically the places that had been prominent in the Old Corruption were prominent again: the south-west of England including Somerset, Gloucester, Herefordshire, Taunton, Wiltshire, Bodmin in Cornwall. Ireland, too, was a prominent region—with petitions presented in Belfast, Cashel, Drogheda, Limerick, Sligo, Dublin, Galway and Londerry. Like many reform measures it may be that the reform made explicit a state of affairs that was already well known. Corruption in elections persisted in 1874 the first general election to be held after the reform of 1872. There were petitions in 28 constituencies of which a fifth were in Ireland. In English constituencies the majority of petitions were made in market towns,

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Norwich, Kidderminster, St Ives and Boston. Again the south-west of England remained prominent. The south-west in particular seemed to be resistant to reform as there were petitions in Barnstaple, Launceston, Poole and Stroud. In the 1884 general election there were 29 petitions with petitions at Athlone, Carrick Fergus and Dungannon. Elsewhere the south-west of England remained recalcitrant with petitions at Cheltenham, Gloucester, Plymouth and Westbury. Nevertheless the reforms of the 1880s are generally thought to have marked a decisive step in the elimination of corruption at elections notwithstanding the critique of O’Leary’s work by Kathryn Rix.18

Conflict of Interest William Gladstone, late in 1875, acquired £45,000 (nominal) of the Ottoman Egyptian tribute loan of 1871 at a price of just 38 per cent of par (£17,100). He added a further £5000 (nominal) by 187; and in 1879 a further £15,000 of the 1854 Ottoman debt which was also secured on the Egyptian tribute. By 1882 these shares amounted to 37 per cent of his entire portfolio and after the occupation of Egypt in 1882 to protect the Suez Canal. Gladstone profited to the tune of £20,000 on the initial investment and £12,785 on the decision to occupy Egypt. At today’s prices Gladstone had made £7.5 million.19 Whether this counts as corruption is uncertain. It was certainly a conflict of interest. Joseph Chamberlain would be accused of conflict of interest when he was Colonial Secretary and his pro-war policy in South Africa given that his Birmingham-based companies were arms manufacturers. In 1892 Gladstone’s fourth and final ministry he required all cabinet members to surrender all directorships of Public Companies. The Khaki election 1900 brought the issue of conflict of interest to the surface once again and in 1900 a Select Committee produced a disturbing report about War Office contracts Principally cordite contracts awarded to Kynoch and Company of Birmingham whose Chairman was Arthur Chamberlain, brother of the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary. There were numerous irregularities concerning the award of the contract. Further, the Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, William, McCartney claimed that he had never discussed contracts with Neville Chamberlain, First Lord of the Admiralty. Even the Speaker of the House of Commons remarked that the fortunes of Kynoch had taken an upturn after 1897. Chamberlain family had financial interests in Tubes which made ship’s boilers; in Elliott’s Metal Company; and

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preference shares held by several members of the Chamberlain family. The Morning Leader newspaper asserted that ‘Joseph made war for which Arthur supplied ammunition’ (G. Searle, 1987).20 Further the British government had purchased the shares of the Royal Niger Company, of which Joseph Chamberlain was a shareholder and a beneficiary of the purchase. Chamberlain had wanted to sue the papers but was advised against it by his lawyers. It was left to Arthur who sued for defamation of character for which he received £300. Criticism of Chamberlain was no doubt fuelled by Chamberlain’s defection from the Liberal Party in 1886 on the matter of Irish Home Rule. Lloyd George was the principal critic of Chamberlain and dramatically wrapped himself in the shibboleth of radicalism. It was ironic as Lloyd George himself had been a shareholder in a company involved in the Patagonian goldfields debacle. Lloyd George kept quiet about his involvement in the Patagonian matter. However, he was unable to do so over the Marconi shares scandal which broke in 1912. The government have entered into a contract with the Marconi Company to supply telegraph equipment. The matter was discussed in the cabinet before the share release was made public. Lloyd George, Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General and the Liberal Party Chief whip, Alexander Murray, had bought shares before they went on public sale. It was insider trading and certainly corrupt. It transpired that Murray had transferred the shares to the Liberal Party account although he had not recorded it.21 The Marconi affair immediately before the First World War when members of the cabinet were found to have purchased shares in the Marconi Company prior to their release for public sale compromised the Liberal government of the day. It transpired that Rufus Isaacs, Attorney General; Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Alexander Murray, Chief Whip and Liberal Party fundraiser had all profited from the purchase of the shares.

Conclusion The reforms of the nineteenth century were significant and hard-won. The state had expanded dramatically and elections had seemingly become more orderly. These changes were not spread evenly across the polity of the UK. Ireland remained a significant problem as British rule from London lacked legitimacy at least for the catholic majority. This problem would escalate in significance during the First World War as exemplified by the Eater Rising of 1916. The subsequent arrangements following the

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Treaty of 1921 did not solve the problem of legitimacy and indeed corruption at elections was both a tool of the protestant ascendancy and catholic resistance. The War would also impact upon the civil service especially because of the allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Munitions after 1918 which prompted the establishment of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921. It established system to investigate at speed, matters of importance in respect of governance, policing and local government bodies and notably the Corporation of Glasgow. Concerns about police corruption also surfaced as exemplified by the investigations of chief constable of the Metropolitan Police (1925), and the Chief Constables of Kilmarnock (1925) and St Helens (1928). The transformation of the polity after 1918 with the expansion of the franchise brought new problems for towns and cities especially those riven with sectarian conflict. In particular Belfast and Glasgow would be subject to investigation because of bribery and corruption.

Notes 1. Quoted in D.K.  Fielding, ‘Carlyle’s unpublished comments on the Northcote Trevelyan Report’, Carlyle Annual, 10, 1989, pp. 5–13. 2. Northcote Trevelyan Report of the Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service (1854) Cmd. 1870. 3. Ibid. 4. Fielding, op cit. 5. The Times 24 March 1864. 6. Charles Dickens, The Examiner, 16 June, Issue No. 2472 (1855). Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Revenues and Management of certain Colleges and Schools, and the studies pursued and instruction is given therein (The Clarendon Report 1864) Cmd. 3288. 7. op cit it is Dickens in the Examiner. 8. R.B.  Wenham and revised by M.  Chamberlain, ‘Woodward, Sir Ernest Llewellyn, 1890–1971) ODNB 25 May 2006. 9. H.S. Jones, ‘Halevy, Elie 1870–1937’, ODNB, 23 September 2004. 10. F.W.S. Craig, British Electoral Facts 1832–1987, Parliamentary Research Services, Dartmouth,1989. 11. Quoted in D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (Leicester, Leicester University Press 1976). 12. Philip J.  Waller, Town City and Nation 1850–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). See also M.  Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties (London: Macmillan 1910).

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13. Rev. John Wakeford, Liverpool Echo, 25 August 1903). 14. R.  Porter London: A Social History (London: Penguin 1994) and Jerry White, London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God (London: Jonathan Cape 2007). 15. H. J. Dyos, Victorian Suburb (Leicester: Leicester University Press 1961). 16. John Smith in J. Moore and J, Smith, Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 20070 p. 113. 17. A.  Shaw, ‘Municipal Government in Great Britain’, Political Science Quarterly, 4, 2 (1889) pp. 197–229. 18. C. O’Leary, The Elimination of Corruption in British Elections 1886–1911 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); K.  Rix, Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England 1880–1910 (Royal Historical Society, Boydell, 2016 Kathryn Rix, ‘The Second Reform Act and the Problem of Electoral Corruption’, Parliamentary History Year Book (2017) 64–81. Kathryn Rix, ‘The elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections? Reassessing the Corrupt Practices Act’, English Historical Review, 123 (2008) 65–69. 19. N. Fergusson, Niall Fergusson, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World (London, Allen Lane, 2001). See also A.  B. Cooke and J. Vincent, The Governing Passion: Cabinet Government and Party politics 1885–86 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1974) pp 173–174. 20. Quoted in G. R. Searle, Corruption in British Politics 1895–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press p. 56. 21. G. R. Searle, op cit pp. 56–65.

CHAPTER 7

Politics Restructured and the Crisis of the Cities c. 1912–1988

In aristocratic governments, those who are placed at the head of affairs are rich men, who are desirous only of power. In democracies, statesmen are poor and have their fortunes to make. The consequence is that in aristocratic states the rulers are rarely accessible to corruption and have little craving for money while the reverse is the case in democratic nations. (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835)1

In the aftermath of the Great War the Liberals were divided between those led by Asquith and those who aligned with Lloyd George who in turn depended on the Conservatives. The Irish Treaty of 1921 granted Home Rule to Ireland although Ulster remained within the UK as the Protestant majority would not accept Catholic rule from Dublin. At local level Labour politicians secured control of urban municipal government in Scotland and industrial cities of the north of England. De Tocqueville’s epithet, written following his visit to the USA, contrasted with the politics of Europe and specifically with France and England. However, the essence of his observation was that those who lived for politics and who had sufficient wealth sought only power whereas those who lived by politics needed an income which made them more likely to be corrupt. It was an acute observation which has relevance to British politics after 1918 and especially in municipal politics where working-­class men who were members of the Labour Party and secured public office as Members of Parliament, town councillors aldermen and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_7

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mayors. This became particularly apparent in Glasgow, Belfast, Liverpool, Newcastle and other industrial cities. It is important then to explain the prevalence of corruption especially in those four cities in the first instance against a background of restructured politics after 1918. Politics Restructured, 1911–1945 The end of the First World War in November 1918 and the Peace Settlement suggested that the British state and its Empire were still in good shape. The continental powers had been diminished by revolutions in Russia (1917) and in Germany (1918). The Habsburg Empire was dismembered as a consequence of the adoption of the principle of self-determination with the creation of new states in Central and Eastern Europe. At first sight Britain had strengthened its international position as it had acquired the mandates of Palestine at the expense of the Ottoman Empire and Tanganyika at the expense of Germany. However, the World War had cast a long shadow on British society; and the question of arms manufacture and trade had been drawn into anti-corruption discourse. In other respects elite politicians sought to ‘get back to normal’. Evidently, the return of sterling to the gold standard at its pre-1914 level was an indicator of the attempt to get back to normality; but it was a mistaken policy. Further the Great War had transformed the international credit markets: before 1914 Britain was the pre-eminent creditor in the world economy, but after the War Britain was a net debtor and Wall Street had replaced London as the world’s financial capital. The War, too, had transformed Britain’s domestic politics as the Military Service Act and conscription changed, fundamentally, the balance of interests in the British state. Conscription of all adult males meant that it was no longer possible to deny a democratic franchise. Thus all adult males gained the right to vote in 1918 with the consequence that the Labour Party would displace the Liberals as the party of reform. However, the Conservatives had been able to amend the Bill to allow married women and women property owners the vote. Such an amendment was motivated by a belief that such women would vote for the Conservative Party. Further, the Easter Uprising in Ireland in 1916 forced the Coalition government to concede an element of self-government but within the Empire affording to Ireland a similar status to that of Canada and Australia. However, the north-east of Ireland including Ulster would remain within the UK as the Protestant majority would not be ruled by Catholics in Dublin. The redrawing of the boundary based on a Protestant majority in Northern Ireland guaranteed a Protestant political ascendancy and

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condemned the Catholic population to the condition of permanent minority. It would form the underlying basis of the politics of enmity which would be sustained until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (Bew, 2009).2 Significantly, these developments created a phase of political instability and flux. The War had begun in 1914 with a Liberal government in office and Herbert Asquith as prime minister but with support from Labour MPs and Irish Home Rule supporters. However, the decision in 1913 to suspend the progress of the Irish Home Rule Bill, for fear that an independent Ireland could ally with Germany, meant that Asquith had lost the support of the Irish MPs. Further, the shells crisis of 1916 had forced the Liberals into a coalition with the Conservative Party and with Lloyd George as prime minister, but he was dependent on Conservative support in the House of Commons. This arrangement lasted until 1922 when the Conservatives withdrew their support for Lloyd George which left the Liberals mortally wounded, with the party split between traditional Liberals led by Asquith and the National Liberals led by Lloyd George. It was against this background that the issue of party funding and the costs of elections surfaced again (Royal Commission).3 Lloyd George had anticipated these challenges and sought to secure new support by granting honours for, a fee. Even more questionably he deployed Maundy Gregory, a theatre producer; and Frederick Guest, the former Patronage Secretary to the treasury. Revelations about the Lloyd George election fund sent ripples across the political spectrum. It was clear by 1921–1922 that Lloyd George was no longer an electoral asset for the Conservatives. Indeed the Chanak crisis sparked-off a rebellion of Conservative backbenchers. Austen Chamberlain asserted that the honours matter revealed ‘the defects of Lloyd George’s character’ suggesting that Lloyd George was corrupt and unfit to remain in office (Searle, 1987).4 More importantly, the trafficking of honours had been a concern before the War but after 1918 with, apparently, a democratic electorate it was untenable. Moreover, the establishment of the tribunal system as a consequence of Charles Loseby’s claims of wrongdoing in the Ministry of Munitions had provided the state with a powerful tool with which to investigate misconduct and potential corruption. Indeed, the Tribunal system proved to be an effective tool to investigate the institutions of local government and local police forces, especially the conduct of chief constables and their relations with the local watch committees.  Prior to 1914 local government was held in high esteem but during the inter-war years 1918–1939 the reputations of Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool were severely damaged. Indeed before 1914 Liverpool and

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Glasgow had vied for the status of Second City of Empire after London. However, in the new political environment, the House of Commons was drawn into a framework of three-party politics with a reduced Liberal party and an emergent Labour Party; but a dominant Conservative party. Corruption scandals created considerable political turbulence and the Honours scandal, as we have seen, brought to an end to the career of Lloyd George although it was not immediately obvious. The Fund which he had created by the sale of honours was thought to have amounted to £1.5 million which would potentially enable him to re-launch his political career but it remained a stain on his reputation. The newspaper press had become highly sensitised to the matter of corruption and newspaper editors became powerful political figures in their own right such as William Maxwell-Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) and Harold Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere). These so-called Press Barons had begun to wield great influence from before the First World War and it is thought that Lord Northcliffe’s The Times was instrumental in forcing the resignation of Asquith in 1916. If James Ramsey MacDonald did not appreciate the power of the press when he became prime minister in 1923 he would soon discover that the press was the principal instrument of corruption exposure. His recommendation was that Alexander Grant, the owner of McVitie’s biscuit manufacturer, be given a baronetcy produced acritical press coverage. Moreover, Grant’s gift to MacDonald of a Daimler motor car and of £30,000 preference shares in McVitie’s Biscuits was certainly excessive if not corrupt. MacDonald said that he had been reluctant to accept as the ‘Daimler was against the simplicity [of [[his] habits’ and that he and Grant had been boyhood friends (Searle, 1987).5 If MacDonald had been naïve in respect of the power of the press he would soon discover otherwise when the Daily Mail published the so-called Zinoviev Letter which purported to be a letter from the President of the Communist International, Grigori Zinoviev to the British Communist Party outlining tactics to pursue in the event of a revolution in the UK. It was possible that the Letter was a forgery or more likely a leak by the British secret service. Secrecy was avital condition after the Revolution in Russia in 1917 which could also subvert democratic politics; and Labour lost 50 seats in the 1924 election and would remain out of office until 1929. In this febrile atmosphere corruption within the institutions of local government became not surprisingly a prominent issue. The Zinoviev letter appeared to have credibility as Glasgow had erupted into a city of protest and enjoyed the

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epithet ‘Red Clydeside’ owing to social and political unrest immediately after the war with a rent strike led primarily by women. The government in London probably overreacted and sent troops to Glasgow and tanks were deployed on the streets. Lenin proclaimed Glasgow to be the ‘Petrograd of the West’. However, it was corruption rather than revolution that became the more salient feature of Glasgow’s political culture.

The Crisis of the Cities: Glasgow, Belfast and Liverpool Glasgow Revelations of corruption in the three cities of Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool caused considerable alarm. Glasgow was subject to an inquiry using the tribunal system in 1933 although revelations in the local newspaper press had surfaced earlier. The historic links between the three cities are perhaps, familiar—shipping, casual dock labour; migratory flows; and of course sectarian conflict. All three cities were and remain markedly segregated along ethno-religious lines. Belfast represents the most extreme example. The vigour of political-religious loyalties in all three cities overrode all other considerations such as civic duty, probity and corporate spirit. Loyalty to the rival causes of Protestantism and Catholicism promoted political cultures in all three cities that used corruption including bribery, favouritism; abuse of power in public office; gerrymandering; personation at elections; and the development of the discipline of machine politics. Consequently, it is often claimed that the three cities were exceptional or odd cities out of step with the orthodox paradigm of modern British urbanism: industrialisation, class formation and class consciousness, civic pride and secularisation. Thus A.J.P.  Taylor in 1981,6 reviewing Phillip Waller’s Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool 1868–1939, claimed Liverpool has always been a special case in British Politics. In the same vein, Frank McAveety, member of the Scottish Parliament; and former Glasgow city Councillor giving evidence to the Scottish Standards Commissioner in 1997 asserted ‘Glasgow’s not like other British cities, it’s more like Chicago’.7 The towns and cities of the UK also experienced mixed fortunes after 1918 but for the most part their reputations remained respectable. There

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was, apparently, no case as yet to jettison the assessments of Albert Shaw, the American journalist (889).8 Left-wing intellectuals, such as Harold Laski and William A.  Robson, held English Local Government in high regard. However, economic fortunes were mixed. London and the south-­ east of England remained buoyant but the towns and cities of the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were struggling in economic terms. Towns and cities reliant on coal mining and heavy industries such as shipbuilding and engineering found that the terms of trade had moved against them which affected, negatively, Glasgow and the smaller towns of the Clyde estuary: Greenock, Kilmarnock and Dumbarton.9 In Northern Ireland Belfast remained the pre-eminent economic centre. However, Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool all faced crises of governance because of religious sectarian rivalries between the Protestant and Catholic communities. During the inter-war years Glasgow forfeited its previously established reputation for civic probity and municipal efficiency. Indeed, it came to be regarded as the British Chicago, an image that would linger until, at least, the final decade of the twentieth century. Glasgow’s earlier reputation as a model of good governance owed much to Albert Shaw, an American journalist, who visited Glasgow as part of a European tour in the 1880s. Shaw’s image of good governance was dismantled between 1918 and 1939 when the city became embroiled in a series of corruption scandals. Politicians, public officials and policemen were all tainted by corruption which affected elections, public housing, food markets and drink licences. These scandals exploded against a background of class conflict and sectarian strife. However, it was the apparent Chicago connection that proved so enduring. Indeed, it had been a British journalist (Stead 1894),10 who had drawn a lurid picture of Chicago in the 1890s. Thus there was a symbiotic relationship between the two cities cultivated by journalists, film-makers, social Darwinist thinkers, churchmen, temperance reformers and British cabinet members. Additionally, ideological rifts within the British Labour movement; and Ramsay MacDonald’s so-called betrayal in 1931 when he formed a National coalition government that included Conservatives and Liberals all contributed to Glasgow’s image as a city divided, crime-ridden and corruption-prone. Further, within the Labour movement it also meant accusations of corruption became a standard part of the political contest between the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and mainstream Labour as each faction sought to occupy the moral high ground. Glasgow’s loss of reputation during the inter-war years left an

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indelible stain on Glasgow’s reputation into the 1990s and in the General Election of 1997 in particular. During the inter-war years Glasgow forfeited its previously held reputation for civic probity and municipal efficiency. The epithet: ‘The Venerable Corporation of the Clyde’ resided in the public imagination and it was used by politicians in the inter-war years to lament the loss of that reputation. As we have seen it came to be regarded as the British Chicago, an image that would linger until, at least, the final decade of the twentieth century. Shaw’s previous image of Glasgow’s good governance was dismantled between 1918 and 1939 when the city became embroiled in a series of corruption scandals. Politicians, public officials and policemen were all tainted by corruption which affected elections, public housing, food markets and drink licences. It was subject to a Tribunal investigation in 1933 that exposed a culture of graft, bribery and corruption amongst Glasgow’s Labour Party politicians. These scandals exploded against a background of class conflict and sectarian strife. The apparent Chicago connection lingered casting a dark shadow even by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Thus there was a symbiotic relationship between the two cities cultivated by journalists, film-makers, social Darwinist thinkers, churchmen, temperance reformers and British cabinet members. All this served to create a negative image of Glasgow. Such a turn of events also provoked a long-running battle for the ideological soul of the Labour Party. Critics of Ramsay MacDonald within the Glasgow Labour Party presented themselves as ideologically pure—not collaborators with Conservatives—and morally pure which contributed to Glasgow’s image as a city divided. Additionally, the press presented the city as crime-ridden and corruption-prone. Further, within the Glasgow Labour movement it also meant accusations of corruption became a standard part of the political contest between the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and mainstream Labour as each faction sought to occupy the moral high ground. Glasgow’s loss of reputation during the inter-war years left an indelible stain on Glasgow’s reputation into the 1990s and in the General Election of 1997 in particular. The investigation of corruption in 1933 by Tribunal found that there was widespread corruption in the granting of market licences and the allocation of stances and stalls at the city’s meat market.11 At the centre of the scheme was the Labour Party Baillie (Alderman) James Strain and councillor Alexander Ritchie both of whom had been prosecuted earlier at the Glasgow High Court under the terms of the Public Bodies (Corrupt

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Practices) Act, 1889. Strain was found guilty, fined £50 and forbidden to hold public office for three years. The case against Ritchie was dropped. At first glance it might be thought that the meat market case was a trivial episode but it exposed an acute rift within the Labour movement. Specifically there was a sharp divide between the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Labour Party. The ILP councillor John McGovern was at the forefront of criticism of mainstream Labour led by Ramsay MacDonald. The ILP regarded the decision of MacDonald to form a National Coalition Government with Conservatives and Liberals in 1931 as a betrayal of Labour’s cause. McGovern was a supporter of Jimmy Maxton who led a campaign to disaffiliate the ILP from the Labour Party. Strain and Ritchie were not members of the ILP whereas Maxton and McGovern sought to establish the ILP as both ideologically and morally ‘pure’. The vigour of McGovern’s campaign may have been, simply, opportunism. However, the consequence was clear as the Tribunal Report cited corruption in the housing department and the extraction of bribes from those seeking a council house. Additionally, there was favouritism in respect of Corporation employment in education, swimming pool attendants; and electric tram services. The range of transactions that can be deemed corrupt was extensive and was exacerbated by the long-run economic difficulties that Glasgow faced between 1918 and 1939. Every human transaction—a sale of goods, a liquor licence application, an application for a council house, the renting of a market pitch and tendering for a Corporation contract—was bounded by a series of social and cultural parameters. These included the powerful forces of sectarian allegiance which commanded unquestioned loyalty. The structures of political patronage which flowed from these circumstances produced a command and control system which meant that political activists came to regard bribes, grafts and rewards as legitimate tools for the exercise of power and the sustenance of loyalty from various client groups. These in turn were determined by class, religion and ethnicity. Further, the briber secured a council house and the councillor secured expenses that could be spread among his faction and therefore live by politics. It is important to recognise that the emergence of Labour as a political force brought new men into public life. In effect these new politicians were social parvenus enamoured with their new lifestyles. Herbert Morrison, the prominent Labour politician on the London County Council recommended Labour councillors to avoid excessive eating and drinking at public events lest claims of misconduct were made against them. In Glasgow the alcoholic drink

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culture could make public hospitality events fraught due to the possibility of misbehaviour among councillors. Indeed alcohol consumption was an acute problem for Glasgow and the Labour Party’s relations with the drink interest were certainly problematic in terms of Labour’s reputation. The Touchable At a Glasgow Corporation meeting in October 1941, John McSkimming, leader of the Progressive Party (Scottish Conservatives), claimed: ‘I have more than a suspicion that there is a permanent organization existing in Glasgow with contacts in this Chamber, and the function of that organization is to ascertain quietly and subtly whether new councillors and new magistrates who come on the scene are touchable or are not touchable’.12 The allusion to Chicago was telling as the efforts to clear Chicago of crime and corruption by Elliot Ness and his ‘untouchables’, a contingent of policemen who were immune to bribery and corruption, was certainly widely reported in the British press. The ‘drink interest’ was able to compensate landlords who lost their licences and no doubt pressure members of the Licencing Bench to approve drink licence applications and renewals. Indeed the issue of drink licences had long been a problem. In 1909 Samuel Chisholm, a former Lord Provost of the Glasgow Corporation had given a lecture at the United Free Church Assembly in which he regaled his audience of the evils of the drink habit and the drink trade. He told his audience about his experience on the Licencing Bench. He was offered bribes sometimes up to £600; but as he was known to be immune to bribery he was regularly invited to go on holiday in April when the bench met to approve new licences for the following year. The holiday suggestions were obviously intended to cancel-out his potential negative vote.13 Such was the problem of drink that he advocated the removal of licencing from local government control as the drink issue made municipal elections rancorous affairs on account of the clash of interests between the temperance movement and the drink interest (Jones, 2013).14 The findings of the Tribunal of 1933 damaged even further Glasgow’s reputation. Consequently, Glasgow’s application to establish a municipal bank and to establish its own tram and motor body manufacturing company was easily dismissed by First Secretary to the Treasury, Duff-Cooper: We all recognised and admire that civic spirit, but there is nothing more unfortunate when the civic spirit of a great city is misled because that may

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lead to disaster. Anybody who studies history, not the ancient history but the recent history of other countries, say of France and America, know the awful misfortunes which have befallen great cities owing to bad administration which creeps more easily into municipal government than the government of a great State. It is therefore dangerous to rely too much upon the civic spirit of a community to support their elected governors—temporally elected governors—and to give powers which may not in the long run, be used for peoples good. (1935)15

Duff-Cooper’s observations were important, coming as they did, after the Tribunal’s Report as there were clearly issues of public trust in Glasgow’s administration. Additionally he expressed a view which would become commonplace that other countries—France and the USA—were more prone to corruption than was Britain. Ultimately, however, Glasgow’s Corporation failed to adapt to new circumstances, especially in respect of the post-1918 arrangements for governance. The revelations of corruption in a wide range of areas including elections, the conduct of councillors, officials, policemen, municipal employment and contracts, markets, drink licencing and housing served to draw up an inventory of failed governance. First, it is important to recognise that the overall structure of municipal governance in Great Britain of which Glasgow was a part had been transformed by the Tribunals of Evidence Act (1921) which had been introduced following allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Munitions. The Westminster government had long deployed the instrument of the Royal Commission as a necessary precursor to legislation. The Tribunal of Inquiry was a new device to investigate realms of governance where there was already an assumption of, among other things, failure, neglect, wrongdoing and/or corruption and malfeasance. This was a new intrusion by the central state into devolved matters that included almost any area or issue that parliament wished whether the honours system, the management of lunatic asylums, juvenile courts of justice, policing and the conduct of Chief Constables and of course local government. It was John McGovern, a member of the ILP who led the crusade against, ostensibly, his own party. He waged a vigorous campaign to secure a Tribunal of Inquiry to investigate allegations of bribery and corruption first raised in 1929 by the Glasgow Evening News: ‘Alleged Irregularities in Glasgow Corporation’; ‘Sinister Rumours that must be laid’ and ‘Glasgow’s Reputation at Stake’ rang the headlines. Labour Baillie James Strain and Councillor Alexander Ritchie had been

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arrested. They went to trial. Ritchie was acquitted on this occasion but he would be caught later for soliciting bribes for the provision of cooking ovens in Corporation houses in September 1941. The Inquiry of 1933 had ranged widely over Corporation Contracts; Licencing Administration, the letting of Corporation houses, the Markets Committee and the Valuation Department. Despite the legacy of civic probity the Inquiry’s level of scrutiny was more than the Corporation could stand. Scotland’s Depute Procurator Fiscal wrote to the Chairman of the Inquiry: Whoever is to be the new Lord Provost [of the Glasgow Corporation], his task will be immeasurably more difficult unless he can enter into a period of service confident that the Town Council as a whole is freed from the aspersions that are floating about.

The failures of governance were in turn compounded by their interaction with the activities and conflicts within and between the political parties. Glasgow’s political debates were charged with a high-energy partisan rhetoric probably only out-flanked by the debates in Belfast Corporation and at Stormont, the Northern Ireland Parliament established in 1921. Glasgow’s politics were also articulated by highly active pressure groups that were the instruments of wider religious interests—Protestantism and Catholicism, Orange and Green. The Labour Party was sharply divided in the inter-war years. At national level its performance has often been characterised by failure: a short-lived minority government in 1923–1924; the failure to carry its programme after 1929 following the Wall Street crash; and Ramsay MacDonald’s ‘betrayal’ of the cause of the working class by forming a National Coalition Government with Conservatives and Liberals in 1931. The debate about ‘betrayal’ within the Labour Party was bitter and conducted between National Labour, led by MacDonald representing the centre-right of the party and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) which was markedly to the left and especially strong in Glasgow. The leading figures of the ILP in Glasgow resented the ‘betrayal’ and were able to adopt a puritanical stance over the revelations of corruption involving other Labour councillors. The charge of ‘class traitor’ was one of the most damaging allegations that could be asserted in Labour’s debates in these years. It certainly served to enhance the growing image of corruption and it would leave Labour tainted beyond the inter-war years even down to the 1990s. Ironically, McGovern would be expelled from his constituency party, Glasgow-Shettleston, when it was discovered that trade union

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delegates had forged their credentials, during his nomination procedure to be a Labour Parliamentary candidate in the general election of 1935. Governance was also adversely affected because of the contests between pressure groups to influence the administration of drink licences. The drink interest and the temperance movement organisations were powerful, resourceful and in the case of the temperance reformers, noisy. At the same time these contests revealed that religious loyalty outweighed civic culture. In 1925, for example, at the Annual Assembly of the Baptist Union of Scotland, the Reverend James Scott attacked Glasgow Corporation for its failure to stop street gambling which he claimed had ‘grown to gigantic proportions that it threatened to destroy public morals’.16 The Baptist Union sought temperance legislation to curb gambling and Sunday observance as essential to guarantee public morality. This was at odds with the growing secular outlook of the ILP which employed legal counsel to contest Glasgow magistrates’ bench which had banned the holding of public meetings on Sundays. The issue of gambling also encouraged bribery in football and in 1926 Donald Douglas was arrested for attempting to bribe the Stenhousemuir goalkeeper with £50 to ‘let his team down’ so that he could get the better of a local betting ring. Scottish Labour MPs were also disciplined by the House of Commons Privileges Committee for being drunk which led Neil MacLean, Socialist MP for Glasgow Govan, to claim that the House of Commons event revealed that there was a ‘new type of Labour member who is a drunken blackguard [who] turns the House of Commons into a bear garden’. James Strain and Alexander Ritchie were at the heart of the 1930s Glasgow corruption scandal. They were classic examples of de Tocqueville’s adage that those who lived by politics rather than for politics were often corrupt. Indeed corruption involving expense claims and hospitality would be the bete noire of campaigners and watchdogs of corruption. Herbert Morrison the London Labour politician had given specific advice on such matters in his aide memoire to Labour councillors on the London County Council and later published as, How London is Governed (1949). He warned them of the dangers of being seen to enjoy themselves at public events where public money provided refreshments; and more seriously perhaps not to be involved in influencing public employments. Should this advice be ignored, he warned, they would ‘imperil the good name of the Labour Party’. Such advice went unheeded in Glasgow. Labour councillors sought to influence appointments of all kinds, from swimming pool attendants, to school teachers, to tramway attendants and market

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inspectors. The economic crisis of the west of Scotland and Glasgow especially determined that every human transaction whether a liquor licence application; an application for a council house; the renting of a market pitch; tendering for a Corporation contract was circumscribed by a series of social and cultural parameters. These included the powerful forces of sectarianism, which commanded such loyalty. The structures of political patronage which flowed from these circumstances produced a command and control system which meant that political activists came to regard bribes and rewards as legitimate tools for the exercise of power and the sustenance of loyalty from various client groups. The bribes system helped to cement a series of allegiances to the political constituency without and to the members of the political class within. Strain’s downfall was heaven-sent as far as Labour’s opponents were concerned. They now had the all-clear to excoriate Labour at every turn. For example, a favoured tactic of the ‘drink interest’ was to assert that professed teetotallers had been seen drunk in public. Conversely, temperance reformers would claim with glee that Labour councillors had been seen drinking out of licenced hours. It should be noted, too, the position of the temperance reformers in Glasgow had been strengthened by War-­ time policy of the Defence of the Realm Act (1914), which gave central government extraordinary powers and which were delegated to the War Office and the Admiralty to close public houses near ports and harbours which might need to be defended. These apparently fortuitous gains for the temperance movement would be vigorously defended during Glasgow’s inter-war years often consuming many hours of debate in the council chamber. By the 1930s, however, the nature of the conduct of the debate changed so that McGovern’s campaign became a cause celebre that polarised opinion in a new and dramatic way. The sense of outrage from social and political leaders was characterised by a stern anxiety: ‘The affairs and administration of the city are doomed to disaster unless corruption is banished from it’ claimed Lord Morrison, ‘and it is the duty of every citizen to report at once any attempt at bribery and corruption’. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bourne, went further in his Lenten Pastorals in 1934 saying, ‘We used to pride ourselves upon the purity and incorruptibility of our public life and those entrusted with its guardianship. What we have learnt recently gives reason to fear that such pride is no longer justified.’17 The spirit of municipal socialism was retreating in the face of a more determined and centralised state and to establish

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its own tram and motor body manufacturing company were easily rebuffed by the government. First Secretary to the Treasury, Duff-Cooper, was dismissive of the proposal damning the Corporation’s plans with faint praise: We all recognised and admire that civic spirit, but there is nothing more unfortunate than when the civic spirit of a great city is misled because that may lead to disaster. Anybody who studies history, not the ancient history but the recent history, of other countries, say of France and America, know the awful misfortunes which have befallen great cities owing to bad administration which creeps more easily into municipal government, than into the government of a great State. It is therefore dangerous to rely too much upon the civic spirit of a community to support … their elected governors— temporarily elected governors—and to give powers which may not, in the long run, be used for people’s good.18

Duff-Cooper’s remarks were part of a transatlantic discourse as signified in the writings of Lincoln Steffens who had published his Shame of the Cities in 1904  in which he castigated the citizens of Philadelphia, St. Louis, Minneapolis and more. Like an Old Testament Prophet he accused the citizens of these cities of shame for not exercising their civic responsibilities. Indeed he claimed that their failings had allowed big business to capture and manipulate corrupt politicians. In Britain the Bribery and Secret Commissions Prevention League was founded in 1907 and its leading spokesmen—Lord Crewe and Lord Inchcape—were versed in Steffens’ work and Crewe used the terms ‘graft’ and ‘boodle’ when he spoke to League members at the Savoy hotel in 1929: ‘the terms graft and boodle were brought to us from overseas [but] we could trace a perpetual existence of the taking of secret commissions’.19 Duff-Cooper would almost certainly have known of the campaign of Lords Crewe and Inchcape. The failure to secure the municipal bank almost certainly signified an emphatic denunciation of Glasgow’s governance capability. The precedents set in the 1930s have proved remarkably difficult to dislodge. Indeed, since the Second World War there have been three distinct corruption episodes: first in 1945–1968 in respect of drink licences, housing tenancies, employment, planning applications as well as numerous instances of councillors failing to declare their interests even though this had been a requirement since 1933. In 1974–1989 there were numerous instances of councillors accepting hospitality and holidays from construction firms. In 1990, however, Glasgow secured the European Union’s award of European City of Culture. Had Glasgow managed to salvage its

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lost image of civic probity? Unfortunately, it had not as it transpired that Glasgow councillors exploited the application for the award by means of ‘junkets for votes’—holidays and tickets for the Edinburgh Tattoo in exchange for their voting support in the Council Chamber.20 The city’s reputation as a Labour fiefdom was a constant factor for those who sought to explain the persistent reputation for corruption. The continued manifestation of crime, violence and sectarian conflict was often linked at this time with the problems of de-industrialisation. Such an explanation had undoubted merit but it was the long-run legacy that was so difficult to negate. Thus it was no surprise when the Lord Provost, Pat Lally, was suspended from the Labour Party in 1997 for alleged corruption wrongdoing. The district of Govan was described as a ‘midden’ (dirty untidy space)—a clear conflation of its previous status as a slum and its modern association with electoral corruption and the return of Mohammed Sarwar at the 1997 General Election. He, too, was suspended but acquitted in 1999. Even so, Glasgow was still the British Chicago. In 1997 New Labour under the leadership of Tony Blair triumphed in the General Election. Significantly the Party’s Manifesto had pledged to clean up government and bring an end to ‘sleaze’ which had entered New Labour’s lexicon of political campaigning. The circumstances were heaven-­ sent for Blair and New Labour as John Major’s government had been mired in cases of corruption and misconduct since 1992 so-much-so that he had been forced to concede the establishment of the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1995 chaired by the steely Lord Nolan. The Commission would become a Standing Committee investigating corruption and misconduct cases in all walks of public life. Blair was able to seize the anticorruption moment by claiming at the Party Conference in 1996 that he would re-establish the ‘bond of trust between the British people and the Government’ and be ‘tough on sleaze and tough on the causes of sleaze’. Once in power, however, this claim was revealed to be nothing more than a vapid sound bite. The New Labour government itself became mired in scandal and sleaze with a range of questionable donations from wealthy men who sought something in return—Bernie Ecclestone, Lakshmi Mittal, Richard Desmond and David Abrahams. Nevertheless, the government legislated by passing the Political Parties and Referendums (2000) Act, which established rules of disclosure concerning donations to political parties. The donations cases did not damage the government in any lasting way enabling attention to be focused elsewhere. Once able to pride itself as the Second City of Empire and the dynamo of industrial growth

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in the nineteenth century it was now a pale imitation of its former self. It was at the centre of traditional Labour electoral heartland in the lowland central belt of Scotland. Indeed to take action in Glasgow and other Labour strongholds in industrial Scotland enabled the government to be seen to be ‘tough on sleaze’ but pay only a small price in terms of self-­ inflicted political damage. This may suffice for contemporary political explanation but historical investigation shows that the causes of corruption in Glasgow reside in a complex set of economic, political, social religious and cultural conditions. Glasgow had many identities: Workers City; Merchant City; Second City of Empire; but it was also a city of graft and corruption. Additionally the process of de-industrialisation post-1945 was as painful as it was rapid: between 1952 and 1991 manufacturing employment in the Glasgow conurbation declined from 424,000 to 121,000. Moreover, the growth of the service sector did not compensate for the loss of manufacturing jobs so that the overall employed workforce for the Glasgow conurbation shrank by a quarter over that same period. These changes were part of the deindustrialisation of Britain accelerated by the oil shocks of the early 1970s, which saw an overall decline in manufacture; a shift in population from north to south; and in Glasgow’s case a draining of population from the core to the periphery. Glasgow and the Clyde Valley became heavily dependent on inward investment, a trend perhaps that had been present since the 1930s but which was now more evident. Indeed by 1987–1988 only one-third of industrial plants and factories were independently owned and controlled from within Scotland and the remainder were foreign-­ owned or managed remotely from London. The decline of manufacture and weak ability to diversify also witnessed a decline in Glasgow’s independence and status within the local government domain. These factors combined to encourage Glasgow’s political elite to re-invent the city as a city of tourism and the Garden City were part of a public relations initiative to transform the public image of the city with ‘miles better’ campaign. The slogan ‘miles better’ implied better than Edinburgh. However the older realities of corruption persisted. Local politicians in Glasgow and the wider Clyde region were still embroiled in corruption, but for them graft was a type of altruism which in turn legitimated rewards in a city dominated by sectarian tension—between Orange and Green—which transcended political parties and societal notions of public probity. Loyalty and reward were cemented into the system of political transactions by bribes, favours and rewards. Membership of Orange Lodges and Hibernian

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Societies has established a network of mutuality and patronage which invites corrupt activity. Additionally, the processes of de-industrialisation and de-colonisation brought new communities to Glasgow, particularly from the Indian sub-continent but also from eastern Europe. Consequently, new forms of ethnic and religious loyalty became superimposed over the traditional sectarianism of Orange and Green. This would appear to have been the case with the case of Mohamed Sarwar whose involvement in electoral bribery in 1997 collided with New Labour’s crackdown on corruption in areas that were tactically convenient even though it transpired that Sarwar was blameless and had done nothing wrong. Glasgow’s size and the Glasgow Corporation’s range of goods and services have created a large bureaucratic market and historically rationed and controlled involving markets, drink licences, council house tenancies, council contracts for building and construction as well as jobs. Post-war building programmes represented massive opportunities for developers, builders and politicians. The Planning Committee was critical not only for the provision of council services but also for the fact that it was the key committee which could affect property values. Failure to declare an interest but vote according to interest was a typical form of corruption and misconduct.

Upward Social Mobility: Parvenus Given general levels of wealth and income becoming a councillor and possibly a bailie represented significant upward social mobility and new lifestyle—expenses, public receptions, dinners, drinking and of course particular Scottish celebrations in which public figures would be expected to participate but which also served to be a venue for deals and the re-­ enforcement of patron-client relations. Expenses scams are frequent and in the age of culture they were transformed into payments in kind including overseas trips, junkets, tickets to the Edinburgh Tattoo and so on in return for votes.

The ‘Hard-Man’; and the Parvenu The culture of work and the rhetoric of Labour politics invested a special cachet in the macho-tough guy. Fights, assaults, threats and intimidation were frequent in Glasgow politics which exhibited numerous anti-social pathologies including bribery and corruption.

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These ideas are not full proof but they enable us to step outside the legal straitjacket of binary opposites legal-illegal, within the rules-broken the rules, good-bad, corrupt-virtuous but rather to see corrupt behaviour in terms of thresholds of societal tolerance. In Glasgow’s case in the post-­ war period the nature of corrupt activity changed over time. In the period 1945–1968 the stock-in trades were drink licences, council house tenancies, planning applications and failures to declare interests. After 1974–1975 until 1988–1989 there was a shift towards fraudulent expenses claims; acceptance of free holidays and other payments in kind. Older-style corruption persisted particularly in construction projects including council house development such as the Darnley housing development.

Re-branding the City Glasgow politicians by the 1980s were faced with acute economic challenges as a post-industrial city. The city sought a cultural strategy the emphasis of which was to market the city as a cultural heritage venue which had served other cities with success. However in Glasgow it produced misconduct and scandal as councillors milked expenses accounts. These included ‘junkets for votes’ claims, sometimes known as ‘travel gate’. The city of culture image enhanced the ceremonial role of the council particularly for the Lord Provost which included civic receptions connected with the European City of Culture year (1990), the City of Architecture and Design (1999) year and the application for the Commonwealth Games (2014). We should not think that Glasgow was the sole nest of corruption in Scotland. It manifested itself elsewhere. In Monklands it appeared to be old-style employment patronage although the subsequent inquiry found insufficient evidence. In Edinburgh it revolved around building contract scams in the conservation areas of the city. We need of course to look elsewhere including Aberdeen, Dundee, Dumbarton and Clydebank.

Belfast Ireland has two principal historic communities. In very general terms they are characterised by religion. Catholics compose the vast majority of the Republic of Ireland and around 30 per cent of the population of Northern Ireland (Ulster), whereas Protestants make up the balance at 70 per cent

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of Northern Ireland. From the great famine of the 1840s until the 1990s Northern Ireland has been politically unstable. Belfast was the most important city in Northern Ireland and after the Treaty of 1921 its political significance within the polity of the UK should not be underestimated. Following the Easter Rebellion 1916 it had become clear that the retention of Ireland in its entirety within the Union was untenable; and it was also clear that the Protestant majority in the Province of Ulster would not accept rule from Catholic Dublin. Indeed in 1913 when the Irish Home Rule Bill was progressing through the House of Commons, Protestant loyalists formed the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) under the skilful leadership of Edward Carson. This para-military organisation demonstrated unquestionable Protestant loyalty to the Union. Thus when the Treaty of 1921 was negotiated the political boundary between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland was drawn in such a way as to guarantee a Protestant majority in elections for the House of Commons at Westminster. Further there would be a Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont. Belfast would have its own Municipal Corporation which would be elected on a rate payers’ franchise but also with an element of proportional representation with the intention of giving some voice to the Catholic minority. However, the first elections for the Belfast Corporation produced as expected a Protestant majority. Further the Assembly at Stormont also elected a Protestant majority and the Stormont government quickly abolished the proportional representation facility for the Catholic minority in 1922. Additionally Stormont passed a Bill to extend the boundary of the town of Londonderry which would incorporate a Protestant majority for elections to Stormont. The politics of Belfast were shaped by sectarian loyalties and rivalry. The enmities that flowed from these conditions were intransigent and visceral. Underlying this polarity were two competing moral economies—one Protestant and the other Catholic—which legitimated the actions of the rival communities no matter how extreme. However, the arrangements for self-government enabled the protestant community to establish itself as a self-perpetuating oligarchy in Belfast which encouraged complacency and self-­congratulation. For example, when Sir William Turner celebrated his sixth successive year as Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1928 he claimed that the city was as well managed as most cities on the other side of the [Irish] Channel and better than many.21 This did not square with the facts but Turner’s complacency was indicative of the inertia that would follow during the mayoralty of Crawford McCullagh. Turner’s complacency stemmed from the condition

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of oligarchy that prevailed in Belfast politics. Three men, between them, held the mayoralty for 30 years out of a possible 44 years between 1900 and 1943. The Mayoralties of Sir William Turner (1923–1929) and Crawford McCullagh (1931–1946) neatly demonstrate the durability of the oligarchic regime. They were especially brazen as to the effectiveness of the Corporation and its council house building programme. But this did not square with the facts. Further the allocation of council houses was open to prejudice and bias. Initially, it was in housing that the opportunities for corruption were most apparent. Ulster’s record in public sector housing was especially poor. For the whole of the province of Ulster some 50,000 houses were built between 1919 and 1939 but only 3839 were built by local authorities. In this sense Belfast was not alone and it was clear that urban authorities had failed conspicuously to tackle housing problems (D. Field).22 The reasons for this were complex: first, speculative builders were able to secure Exchequer subsidies at the same rate as local authorities. Second, although the housing subsidy had the effect of depressing rent levels Ulster was a low-wage economy and rent, as a proportion of wages, remained artificially high. Local government’s record on planning and slum clearance was also poor and local authorities did not enjoy the same planning powers as those in England and Wales. Belfast itself was also mired in corruption and in 1925 the Northern Ireland Government set up the Megaw Inquiry. Robert Megaw’s findings were highly critical of the Corporation asserting negligence and maladministration, poor accounting and the purchase of low-quality building materials. He also concluded that the allocation of contracts had involved collusion between members of the Housing Committee, the City Surveyor and various builders. In conducting the Inquiry he had also faced obstruction, a failure to produce documents, a failure of members to attend interviews; and Megaw also accused the Chairman of the Housing Committee, Sir Crawford McCullagh, of complacency. Allegations of maladministration also arose concerning the White Abbey Sanatorium with complaints about irregularities for the purchase of land and the tendering process for the building contract. The subsequent inquiry did not however confront the issue of corruption. The matter was left with the Attorney General of Northern Ireland; but criminal charges were never made as one of the suspects was out of the country. The issue also revealed the rift within Unionism. John Nixon, a member of the Stormont Assembly and an independent Unionist, asserted that the Belfast Corporation was ‘corrupt and dangerous’. Nixon, a former policeman and hard line Unionist had been

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dismissed from his position for a political speech he had made at an Orange Lodge in 1924. He was also suspected of leading a secret section of the constabulary known as the Cromwell Club. He typified the uncompromising views and machismo of the extreme Unionist position. The two salient features of Belfast politics were the visceral conflict between the two religious communities and corruption. The Protestant Unionist elite had used patronage and corruption to preserve its hold over Belfast society. Patronage cemented loyalty between the political elite and the Protestant working class. For example, ‘sanitary officials were not always selected for their technical competence, but rather because they held a prominent position in church or chapel and had been able to render eminent service at election times’ (Baker, 1973).23 After 1921 the range of corrupt practices was writ large across the province of Ulster. It included gerrymandering—the manipulation of electoral boundaries for party advantage—of which the most flagrant example occurred in Londonderry. The broad arrangements of the Treaty of 1921 secured a Protestant majority in both parliamentary and local elections. In parliamentary elections Londonderry had two seats—Foyle which was Catholic and the City which was Protestant. The Stormont Parliament extended the City boundary eastwards deep into the countryside of Lough Nagh to include Protestant loyalist voters. Additionally, there were allegations that Unionist candidates in elections hired motor vehicles and taxis to take voters to the polls. Further, the shifts in the political environment after 1945 prompted even more audacious changes that effectively rigged elections in the Unionists’ favour. The Westminster House of Commons had established completely democratic elections in all areas—parliamentary and local government. In Ulster, however, the Unionist Minister for Home Affairs, Edward Warnock, introduced a measure to consolidate Unionist power. Warnock’s measures perpetuated the rateable value business vote; and men and women who had served in the armed forces would immediately go on to the local government electoral register. This would favour the Protestant community. A significant side effect of these arrangements was ‘personation’ whereby voters sought to vote as many times as possible. This was an activity that involved all religious communities and confirmed the adage, ‘vote early and vote often’. The Northern Ireland MP, William McCullan, had claimed in 1928 there was ‘shameful personation’ in Belfast elections. In the General Election in 1951 eight women were charged with personation in the West Belfast Constituency. They were mill workers

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and weavers and when charged, Elizabeth Brennan responded saying, ‘there are thousands doing it today as well as me’ (Stormont Papers).24 The Belfast Chamber of Commerce also complained about personation asserting that Belfast’s magistrates were too lenient in their response to the problem. The Chamber maintained it was practised by Unionists and Nationalists alike although not by the Irish Labour Party. The issue of personation consumed considerable debating time in the Northern Ireland Assembly. For example, Robert Getgood of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and MP for Belfast Old Park division claimed that ‘personation’ was a ‘shameful’ practice and he pointed out that second-hand clothes stores near polling stations were particularly convenient in this respect: I have seen with my own eyes an old woman going to one of these [second hand stores], taking off her hat, taking out her teeth, and going back again to vote.25

In this hot-house environment, politicians from the minority parties, principally the Northern Ireland Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party as well as nationalists and independents vociferously rounded on Warnock with endless challenges concerning the security of ballot boxes; and falsification of the electoral register; improper conduct by returning officers; the unreliability of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in transporting ballot boxes from polling stations to the venue for the count. But perhaps the gravest problem was intimidation. For example, Jack Beattie brought to the attention of the Assembly, that one of his constituents had received a letter from the Duncairn Orange Lodge asking him to attend a meeting at the lodge where he was warned about his voting intention. The envelope containing the invitation bore the symbols of a horse, William of Orange and the skull and cross bones (Stormont Papers).26 The Corporation’s housing schemes were of special concern to Megaw since it was thought that many houses had been built using poor-quality materials. Additionally, there had been irregularities in the tendering processes and payments to contractors. His final report was highly critical of the Corporation’s Housing Committee asserting that its members had acted with ‘bias and impropriety in dealing with the investigation’. Moreover, the City Surveyor had misled the committee and had shown favour to a particular timber merchant. Alongside particular instances of corruption the Belfast Corporation also exhibited systemic inefficiencies that it failed to remedy. In 1927, Sir William Turner, the Lord Mayor,

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forced the Corporation to establish a special Economy Committee to investigate wages and salaries with a view to making savings. However, the fact that the electoral ward committees of the Unionist Party were frequently dominated by municipal employees paralysed the Corporation as it sought to implement savings. The Economy Committee then exhorted the spending committees of the council to come forward with their own savings plans but these came to nought because of Unionist filibustering tactics. The savings plan was still being debated two years on in 1929 when the Corporation commissioned Arthur Collins, Financial Controller of the Audit Commission, to investigate. This time Nationalists wrecked the process claiming that the recommendations would act ‘unfairly against the nationalist minority’ and that they would be ‘a charter for corruption’. The Corporation’s politics were characterised by much rhetorical flourish but more importantly they were marked not only by Unionist and Nationalist intransigence but also by a dysfunctional equilibrium that produced the conditions of inertia and stasis. Thus, in 1941 alongside particular instances of corruption the Belfast Corporation also exhibited systemic inefficiencies that it failed to remedy. In 1927, Sir William Turner, the Lord Mayor, forced the Corporation to establish a special Economy Committee to investigate wages and salaries with a view to making savings. However, the fact that the electoral ward committees of the Unionist Party were frequently dominated by municipal employees paralysed the Corporation as it sought to implement savings. The Economy Committee then exhorted the spending committees of the council to come forward with their own savings plans but these came to nought because of Unionist filibustering tactics. The savings plan was still being debated two years on in 1929 when the Corporation commissioned Arthur Collins, Financial Controller of the Audit Commission, to investigate. This time Nationalists wrecked the process claiming that the recommendations would act ‘unfairly against the nationalist minority’ and that they would be ‘a charter for corruption’. The Corporation’s politics were characterised by much rhetorical flourish but more importantly they were marked not only by Unionist and Nationalist intransigence but also by a dysfunctional equilibrium that produced the conditions of inertia and stasis. Thus, in 1941 the Northern Ireland Government appointed John Dunlop, from the Ministry of Home Affairs, to investigate the matter of Belfast Corporation’s administration of the White Abbey sanatorium. Dunlop’s inquiry lasted 34 days. He faced constant resistance from councillors but Dunlop found maladministration in the Treasurer’s Department and that the Tuberculosis

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Committee had purchased the White Abbey sanatorium at an exorbitant price. Consequently, Dunlop recommended that the Corporation should be relieved of its responsibilities under the powers of the Tuberculosis Prevention Acts and in 1942 the Northern Ireland Government appointed three Commissioners to take charge of the Corporation’s affairs. Dunlop became acting town clerk. The Corporation’s reputation was one of ‘waste, nepotism and inefficiency’. According to Jack Beattie of the Northern Ireland Labour Party who represented Belfast’s Pottinger constituency, the problems at White Abbey had arisen because of ‘the cliques and caucuses’ of the Unionist Party. The matter polarised with nationalist and Labour politicians endeavouring to expose corruption within the Unionist ranks. The Corporation was defended by William Lowry, the Unionist member for the City of Londonderry. His language is instructive There was a Judas among the Twelve Apostles. If there is a coterie of men in the Belfast Corporation who, forgetful of their honour and their duty to those they represent, seek and to misbehave themselves for their own profit the entire Corporation should not be judged by its worst members. There are upright, honourable men in the Belfast Corporation who are capable of administering the affairs of the city with distinction to themselves and with benefit to the community. Those men should be given a chance.

The Dunlop Inquiry into the matter of the White Abbey sanatorium did not, however, confront the issue of corruption and it was left to the Attorney General of Northern Ireland but charges were never made as one of the suspects was out of the country. The issue also revealed the tensions within Unionism and one of the fiercest critics of the Belfast Corporation was John Nixon, an Independent Unionist. Nixon asserted that the Belfast Corporation was ‘corrupt and dangerous’. He typified the uncompromising views of the extreme Unionist position; and on one occasion he threatened the Minister of Finance, Major Sinclair, bellowing, ‘I will go out of my way to lash you’.27 Violence was also a significant feature of Belfast life. In 1935 a Protestant attack on a catholic enclave of streets in the dock area witnessed rioting and burning. The Protestants had been reinforced by other Protestant youths from Glasgow and 56 Catholic houses were wrecked and burned.28 The struggle for space and control of territory within the city was sustained by the notion of moral economy but living on the frontier of the Catholic-Protestant divide was exceedingly dangerous. The search for urban living space was exacerbated by the effects of German bombing in

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the Second World War. Thus in the post-war house building programme the competition for living space resulted in corruption and manipulation by the Housing Department of the Belfast Corporation. Protestants dominated the officialdom of the Corporation. Protestants were favoured in the administration of the new housing schemes by virtue of the fact that military service in the British state during the War was used to put Protestant families at the top of the waiting list for a new council house. Additionally, suffering from tuberculosis was also given priority status. This situation led to numerous schemes to secure a house. It was in this situation that Ann Copeland secured medical certificates of tuberculosis for a fee and she would obtain medical certificates from doctors who were willing to sign. The blitz of Belfast in 1943 wrought significant damage to the city’s housing stock. The Corporation’s record on council house building between 1922 and 1939 had been poor and the effects of bombing compounded an already dire situation. The working-class population was already in a poor state of health and this was no doubt a consequence of the high incidence of tuberculosis in the city. The incidence of tuberculosis which was 175 per 100,000 of population in Ulster was the highest rate for the whole of the British Isles and even higher than the Republic of Ireland. Further, the rate of council house building after 1945 remained painfully slow and the competition to secure a new house was especially intense. The Belfast Corporation sought to ration public housing and give priority to certain groups—those who had served in the War which de facto gave priority to Protestants and those who were suffering from tuberculosis. This was not only a simple matter of inadequate supply and excessive demand. Sectarian tensions drove the separate sectarian groups to seek locations with neighbours of their ‘own persuasion’. The riots and house burnings in the dock area of the city in 1935 still hung in the collective memory.

Ann Copeland It was in this environment that Ann Copeland who lived on the Protestant frontier of Newtownards Road was arrested and charged with corruption. The scheme was exposed by two Labour Councillors, T. O’Sullivan and Leo Presley as part of their local election campaign in May 1953. She had claimed that she had influence at City Hall and that she could secure a house particularly if applicants had tuberculosis. Leo Presley claimed that

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the fee was £40 for a certificate. She would secure medical certificates from sympathetic doctors. It transpired that corruption ring was dominated by women: Sarah Madden, Copeland’s niece; Mary Valente and Meta Donnan, the wife of a prominent Orangeman. Ann Copeland, however, was unable to attend the subsequent Inquiry due to illness. She was portrayed in the press as a ‘sickly spider’29 at the centre of a ‘web of corruption’. Crucially, she had provided this service to both Protestants and Catholics alike. This was the defining act of disloyalty to the Protestant community and contrary to the demands of the moral economy. The Inquiry met for ten days.30 Seventy-one witnesses had addresses in West Belfast which was a predominantly Catholic area. Of those 71 52 lived in frontline locations. There were eleven witnesses from Protestant East Belfast of whom eight lived on the frontline. Additionally three doctors who had provided medical certificates for would-be applicants gave evidence who later be disciplined by the General Medical Council. The full force of Protestant power prevailed upon Ann Copeland. The police inquiry was apparently making slow progress prompting the Belfast Corporation to set up a Public Inquiry. She was subsequently demonized in the Irish press and portrayed as a ‘sickly spider weaving a web of corruption’. In the event the Inquiry did not produce any substantive recommendations. On the other hand, Robert Young, the Head of the Housing Department, spent more time in the witness box than anyone else, and the Chairman, Bradley McCall, said that he was not entirely satisfied with his account. No charges were made. However, the Corporation took steps to evict Copeland from her home and remove her to the city hospital. She was herself suffering from tuberculosis. Nevertheless, she had broken the rules of the moral economy by helping Catholics and became a victim of the politics of disloyalty. Nineteen tenants who had obtained a house via Copeland’s scheme were also evicted. Meta Donnan avoided punishment, no doubt because of her husband’s connections within the Orange Lodge and her own membership of the Pottinger Women’s Unionist Association. She could not though avoid opprobrium as she was jeered when she left the courthouse. Bradley McCall revealed his partiality when he summarised the case Donnan had been involved in ‘genuine philanthropic activity’. Mary Valente, however, was ‘stupid’ and Sarah Madden was a ‘foolish and unhappy woman’. Clearly the Ann Copeland case is illustrative of a systemic failure of governance, official bias and partiality and of course the wider contest for space and safety in a bitterly divided society.

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It was against this background that the case of Ann Copeland came to the forefront of the corruption agenda that the Labour Party sought to highlight. What follows is a partial vignette of the life and actions of an unmarried woman in a divided city.31 She was no doubt devious and plausible: she used the aliases, Miss Bruce and Miss Nelson; but her case exemplifies the ethno-nationalist crisis of a segregated city that would eventually descend into sectarian warfare by the end of the 1960s. So, during the election campaign for the Belfast Corporation in May 1953 Timothy O’Sullivan, an Irish Labour candidate, claimed there was widespread corruption in the allocation of council housing by the Corporation. Housing officials were, according to O’Sullivan, providing fake medical certificates denoting tuberculosis to enable would-be applicants to secure council houses.32 Such evidence, the presentation of which to the Estates Department met the criterion of acute housing need and made an applicant a priority. Belfast Corporation was so concerned by these claims it asked the Royal Ulster Constabulary to investigate the allegations. The police dragged their feet and there was no report forthcoming or prosecutions in late September 1953. Whether this was deliberate to avoid the possibility of charges against Corporation officials is not known. At a public meeting held in St Mary’s Hall attended by some 2000 people. O’Sullivan spoke out again asserting that the bogus medical certificates were ‘the most blatant instance of unadulterated corruption in a city in Ireland or in Great Britain’. According to O’Sullivan Corporation Officials were charging up to £40 for such certificates; and there were doctors willing to supply certificates without seeing the applicants. Given that there were some 20,000 people in need of council housing it was a ‘well thought out scheme by a ring of racketeers—making good at the expense of ratepayers and at the expense of homeless people’. O’Sullivan’s estimated 2000 houses had been allocated by this means and the racket had made £60,000. This was an exaggeration as the subsequent inquiry identified only 20 people who had paid bribes. Nevertheless the calls for a public inquiry became intense and the Northern Ireland Government Minister for Health and Local Government, Dame Dehra Parker, acceded in October 1953. The claims made by O’Sullivan suggested a distinctly criminal activity but it transpired that at the centre of the scheme was Ann Copeland, a spinster and probably, a protestant. Essentially she claimed to be able to secure a council house for people who had a tuberculosis member of the family. Priorities for council housing had initially cited those who had war

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service which automatically prioritised Protestants because of the structure of Northern Ireland regiments. Thus Copeland’s scheme sought to secure a council house using the tuberculosis criterion which could secure, potentially, a dwelling for a Catholic family. Copeland took a fee or accepted gifts and approached doctors to sign medical certificates. The network included Sarah Madden who was Copeland’s niece and Mary Valente and Meta Donnan, a Protestant and the wife of a prominent member of the Orange Order. Madden recruited potential applicants and Copeland would contact GPs who were prepared to sign the certificates. Prior to an inquiry Copeland was demonised in the press. The subsequent Public Inquiry aroused great interest but Copeland was too ill to attend and the Chairman’s conclusions displayed distinct partiality. Her absence enabled the solicitor representing Belfast Corporation, Hugh McVeigh, to caricature her as a ‘sickly influential spider weaving a poisoned web over the City of Belfast’.33 It was clear that Copeland had broken the rules of the unspoken moral economy—serve the Protestant community alone. She was subsequently evicted from her council house even though she was not in arrears with rent. She was later admitted to the White Abbey Sanatorium. The Chairman of the Inquiry, Bradley McCall, showed blatant partiality in his summing-up: Sarah Madden was a ‘foolish and unhappy woman’; Mary Valente was ‘stupid’ whereas Meta Donnan was a member of the Pottinger Women’s Unionist Association and had been involved in ‘genuine philanthropic activity’. Donnan went unpunished but could not avoid opprobrium: she was jeered when she left the courthouse. The 19 families that had obtained a council house by Copeland’s scheme were evicted. Three doctors were reported to the General Medical Council.34 Copeland’s case highlighted a range of issues concerning housing as well as a systemic failure of governance. There was an acute shortage and demand outstripped supply. The shortage had been exacerbated by German bombing raids in April and May 1941 which had destroyed 3200 houses and damaged 56,000. Additionally as new housing estates were built, a process of ethno-sectarian sorting took place as people strived to move to a neighbourhood of their own co-religionists. At the same time Catholics sought to move out of the Docks where Orange men invaded the area and promoted what had amounted to a pogrom burning houses in six streets which caused the eviction of 47 families.35 On her departure from White Abbey she was charged with obtaining money under false pretences and bound over. The case is important as it illustrates the essential condition of the Protestant Unionist majority which required

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unquestioning loyalty. In this sense what might be considered corruption in any other polity was in Belfast simply the discipline determined by the moral economy of the group.

Liverpool: Machine Politics Liverpool and Glasgow had vied with each other to claim the status of Second City of Empire. Both were port cities. Both had established urban patriciates in the nineteenth century. Both cities’ politics were shaped as much by religious sectarianism as by social class. At the end of the nineteenth century Liverpool’s political elite basked in its status as an imperial city. It was a great seaport and the home of some of the great capitalist dynasties—Leverhulme, Beecham and Brunner. Its working population was recruited from the wider Merseyside-Manchester conurbation and of course from Northern Ireland and Wales. Politics was dominated by the Working Men’s Conservative Association which had been established in the 1860s. By the 1870s its dominant figure was Arthur Forwood who came from a mercantile cotton family. He was succeeded by Sir Edward Lawrence, T.P. Boyden and Sir Charles Petrie. The WMCA was not at this moment a political ‘machine’. But it sought to align working-class men with the Conservative Party.36 As such it owed its purpose to the example of Joseph Chamberlain’s organisation of the Liberal caucus in Birmingham. In the 1880s the prominence of the Irish question and Gladstone’s attempts to introduce Home Rule for Ireland energised politics in Liverpool and in wider Lancashire; and it aroused resentment towards Irish immigration. At the same time immigration of working men from north Wales contributed to increasing sectarian conflict. The key figure of the WMCA by the 1890s was Archibald Salvidge, a brewer and a wines and spirits merchant. Salvidge himself came from a Wesleyan non-conformist background. He was not an Orangeman but he insisted that members of the WMCA should be ‘sound Protestants’. By 1914 the WMCA had 6 branches and 8000 members.37 At first sight the Association appeared democratic but in reality its structure was rigid and authoritarian. Indeed it displayed the characteristics of machine politics and yet another facet of the Transatlantic connection. Salvidge was the Boss. MPs who were elected to the Liverpool Merseyside constituencies were dependent on Salvidge’s patronage. Those who were out of step with Salvidge suffered de-selection. Such was the case for Walter Long in 1899. Although Salvidge wielded great power he was not without his critics. The

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Reverend John Wakeford wrote to the Liverpool press claiming that the WMCA did not serve the interest of working men as it was dominated by ‘rascality’ and ‘Salvidge’s Tammany practices’.38 He urged the overthrow of the ‘working men’s boss’. The growing power of the party organisation was most clearly set out by Moisey Ostrogorski, the Russian political scientist who travelled to Britain in 1902. He would have been aware of the power of the parties as instanced by Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham and Salvidge in Liverpool. Where used the Working Men’s Conservative Association to secure a Protestant dominance both before and after the First World War. In both cities machine politics prevailed where voting discipline was secured via clientism and favour and in Belfast certainly by fear and intimidation. Its greatest exponent was the ‘Tammany Hall’ machine in New York which was itself a by-product of the Irish diaspora after the 1840s. It points, significantly, to the argument that Belfast, Liverpool and Glasgow were not exceptional but part of a wider political culture fed by a transatlantic exchange of ideas and political methods.39 These political and cultural tensions were exacerbated by the pressures of the Second World War in Liverpool where Archibald Salvidge had used the Working Men’s Conservative Association to secure a Protestant dominance both before and after the First World War. In both cities machine politics prevailed where voting discipline was secured via clientism and favour and in Belfast certainly by fear and intimidation. Its greatest exponent was the ‘Tammany Hall’ machine in New  York which was itself a by-product of the Irish diaspora after the 1840s. It points, significantly, to the argument that Belfast, Liverpool and Glasgow were not exceptional but part of a wider political culture fed by a transatlantic exchange of ideas and political methods.40 These political and cultural tensions were exacerbated by the pressures of the Second World War. It was during the First World War that Salvidge’s grip on power became so apparent. He succeeded in securing two additional parliamentary constituencies for Liverpool when the Boundary Commission made its recommendations. At the same time he resisted proposals to adopt proportional representation for municipal elections fearing that Liverpool, like Belfast would be forced to accommodate Catholics. In the post-war politics the balance of power between the parties at Westminster was finely poised. F.E. Smith told Lloyd George that Salvidge and the Liverpool WMCA were so important to the Conservative Party that it could not refuse candidates endorsed by Salvidge and the WMCA.

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When Salvidge died in 1928 the Chairman of the Conservative Party J.C. Davidson claimed that ‘Salvidge was unscrupulous leader in Liverpool and in Lancashire and that he had taken funds from the Liverpool Conservative Association’ [and] ‘when I accused him of this he broke down on one occasion’.41 ‘He was really nothing more than a Tammany boss in Liverpool, corrupt in operations for his friends and manoeuvring against the government.’42 It was perhaps ironic that Lloyd George, too, asserted that Salvidge was the (Waller 1998) ‘nearest to a Tammany Boss that we have in this country’ (quoted in Waller, 1998).43 Whether this was praise or criticism is unclear given Lloyd George’s own activities in relation to the purchase of Marconi shares and his own involvement in the sale of honours. Salvidge’s estate when he died was stated to be £14,385. This was an illusion as his debts were far greater. Lord Derby established a ‘testimonial fund to, provide for Salvidge’s widow and his son’. Despite Salvidge’s personal failings he had established a formidable political machine but it was by the promotion44 of fear and prejudice. Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 regarded the strength of Orangeism as the key to the power of the WMCA adding that Labour could not achieve electoral success in Liverpool: We [labour] will never do any good until that power is broken.45

It was not until 1955 that Labour secured a majority of the seats in municipal elections in Liverpool. Labour had begun the process of electoral discipline in the 1930s although it was not until 1963 that Jack Braddock became the Labour Leader.46 Braddock adopted the style of the boss but he never secured the control that Salvidge had secured. Liverpool, like Glasgow became a city of graft. Luke Hogan a prominent Labour Alderman and George Holm, Chairman of the Parks and Gardens Committee and a local contractor had improperly fixed contracts. The matter was investigated by the Finance Committee of the Corporation and concluded that there was no corrupt motive but added that the ‘Committee strongly deprecated the character of the transactions under consideration’. Hogan vigorously denied the inference of corruption. This was meat and drink to the Conservatives who had the backing of various ratepayer groups wand who sought a response from the Town Clerk. Apparently Hogan had borrowed money from the gardens contract but had repaid the sum. Hogan became Lord Mayor (1945–1946) but his political career was tarnished. It seemed that the Hogan family did live by

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graft as Hogan’s son Francis Hogan had spent £500 to bribe members of the Planning Committee. Hogan junior was prosecuted and imprisoned for nine months and forbidden to hold public office for five years. The spirit of Salvidge lived on and it is claimed that Jack Braddock was Labour’s answer to Salvidge. Braddock did have an autocratic style and appeared, superficially at least to be an American-style boss. He was certainly combative and resilient and according to a Labour admirer he was ‘like a prize fighter who always managed to knock down any contender for his title’.47 The extent of his power did not match that exerted by Salvidge. Neither did he possess Salvidge’s organising zeal. Further he resisted the recommendations of the Boundary Commission to change municipal ward boundaries. He held on to inner city ward with dwindling populations so that Labour could sustain the number of councillors on the Liverpool Corporation but for fewer votes. This would have grave consequences for Labour which became a soft target for ‘entryism’ by the hard left group, Militant. Again the capture of the party machine was the key in Liverpool.

Post-1945: The Collectivist Consensus, 1945–1979 The period immediately after the Second World War occasioned extensive building programmes. Much of this was a consequence of aerial bombing of London, Portsmouth Hull and Newcastle. As we have seen much of the damage had been inflicted on strategic targets, but the post-war Labour government was keen to improve the general housing stock of northern and midlands towns and cities. New ideas about town planning and the creation of a green belt around London existed alongside new towns: Harlow, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Hatfield, Basildon and Crawley, for example. Additionally, war-damaged cities such as Liverpool and Newcastle also benefitted from peripheral new towns such as Runcorn and Skelmersdale for Liverpool; and Peter Lee and Aycliffe for Newcastle. The sheer scale of these developments followed from the New Towns Act (1948) which enabled former inner city populations to be decanted into new homes. The subsequent building programmes witnessed numerous interactions between public-funded agents such as local government authorities with planners, architects and builders. John Poulson was especially successful with substantial plans and contracts, especially in the north of England. In Bradford alone he had 17 plans as well as contracts in Leeds, Sheffield, Pontefract and Wakefield. Across many parts of Britain

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there were Poulson built shops, hospitals, schools and council houses.48 The interaction between local authorities and private sector markets created very specific opportunities for bribery, gifts and general corruption. During the Second World War, Poulson secured contracts with central government departments, principally the Ministry of Defence and so he was well placed to profit from the interaction between public and private markets. However, the cycles of activity for building were often volatile; and in 1972 Poulson sued for bankruptcy. His case opened in Wakefield but given the revelations of the initial hearing his case was transferred to Leeds Crown Court. Poulson’s evidence resulted in a corruption trial including Poulson and 21 others. The prosecuting Barrister described Poulson as ‘an ambitious, ruthless and friendless man’ whose object in life was to get as much work and money as he could by bribery and corruption. The Judge sentenced him to seven years in jail and called Poulson, ‘incalculably evil’. Poulson had been able to secure planning approval for numerous contracts in the north of England because of his relationship with T.  Dan Smith, the charismatic Labour Leader of Newcastle City Council. He secured a ring of councillors throughout the north of England that he called consultants. Their purpose was to approve planning permissions for Poulson’s schemes. This was a direct contravention of the 1933 Local Government Act as they had voted for government spending but had not declared their interests.49 Late in his career Poulson had sought to diversify his plans and it was to that end that he had that end that Poulson secured Reginald Maudling, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, to become a director of his company. Poulson’s UK contracts were drying up and he hoped that Maudling would enable the acquisition of new contracts in the Mediterranean (Malta) and Africa. However, Maudling was lazy and Poulson was forced into bankruptcy. Poulson, throughout his trial and after his release, claimed that he had been duped and ‘surrounded by a pack of leeches’. He was especially angry with T. Dan Smith but also added that the provision of gifts, holidays, new suits or a day at the races was normal practice. Nevertheless the fall-out of Poulson’s case was considerable: the prime minister asked Lord Salmon to conduct an inquiry and his subsequent report cited bribery and corruption; and T. Dan Smith went to jail. Salmon’s Report concluded that there were vulnerabilities in local government when considering large-scale contracts and that local councillors were ill-equipped to manage such contracts. In some respects then the Poulson case was perhaps an early but crucial factor which initiated the eventual dissolution of

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the post-1945 consensus. In particular the corruption of Reginald Maudling was shocking but his colleagues rallied around him. Further, Maudling was able to resist requests from the television company, Granada to release correspondence and other files connected to the Poulson contract in Malta. When the Cabinet met the Attorney General, Sir Peter Rawlinson, asserted that there was no impropriety Maudling’s dealings with Poulson. This was a convenient conclusion but the implication of conflict of interest was certainly present and the role of newspaper journalism including the satirical magazine, Private Eye, echoed eighteenth-century lampooning of political life.

Corruption and the Police In many respects the history of corruption in cities would not be complete without some reference to the place of policing within the city together with some explanation of the causes of corruption in urban context. In 1829 Robert Peel promoted the Police Act for London which would have a Commissioner and an Assistant Commissioner. It would have its headquarters at Scotland Yard. Further the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act required that all towns and cities appointed Watch Committees although many towns already had such committees. The civil societies in many towns and cities welcomed the measure as the Watch Committee was symbolic of the town’s independence and status. Further the prime consideration of Robert Peel was that policing should be based on the consent of the citizenry. However by the late twentieth century policing in urban places often faced accusations of bias racial prejudice, misogyny, brutality and corruption. On 19 September 2012 Andrew Mitchell the Chief Whip for the Conservative-Liberal Coalition arrived at the Gates of Downing Street on his bicycle in order to attend a Cabinet Meeting. The police security denied his entry and bad-tempered altercation took place. The police officers complained to the Police Federation.

Notes 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835) p. 225. 2. P.  Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007). 3. Royal Commission on Honours (December 1922) Cmd.1789.

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4. G.  Searle, Corruption in British Politics 1895–1930 (Cambridge, CUP 1987 pp. 130–132. 5. G. Searle, ibid., p. 430. 6. A.J.P. Taylor, London Review of Books, 1981. 7. Scottish Standards Commission National Records of Scotland (1997) FileSOE14. 8. A.  Shaw, ‘Municipal Government in Great Britain’, Political Science Quarterly, 4, 2 June (1889) pp 197–229. 9. Reports of the Special Areas of Scotland (1935–38) Cmd. 589–905. 10. W.T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago (London 1894). 11. ‘Allegations of Bribery and Corruption’, Inquiry held under the Tribunals (Evidence) Act, Cmd.4361. 12. The Scotsman 28 October 1941. 13. The Scotsman 9 November 1909. 14. P.  Jones, From Virtue to Venality: Corruption in the City (Manchester, Manchester 2013 University Press) pp 55–58. 15. The Scotsman, 27 March 1935. 16. The Scotsman, 11 February 1942. 17. The Times 12 February 1934. 18. The Scotsman, ibid. 19. The Times, 19 December 1929. 20. The Glasgow Herald 9 June 1997. 21. Sir William Turner quoted in the Irish Times 24 January 1928. 22. D. Field, A survey of new housing estates in Belfast (19954). 23. S.  Baker, ‘Orange and Green: Belfast 1832–1912’, in H.J.  Dyos and M.  Wolff, eds. Victorian Cities: Images and Realities, vol. 2 (London: Routledge) 1972. 24. Stormont Papers, vol. 38, 2890 (1956). 25. Stormont Papers, vol 30, 25 June, (1946) cc. 406–407. 26. Stormont Papers 6 October 1945.vol. 29 cc 658–659. 27. Stormont Papers 30.25 June 1946.cc. 406–407. 28. A.  C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’ Social History, 151(1990) pp 75–96. 29. Hugh McVeigh, Solicitor for Belfast Corporation, quoted in Irish Times, 23 January 1954. 30. Inspector’s Report on Belfast Housing Allocations Inquiry (HMSO 22 January 1954) Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, HE1/2B/2 31. The Belfast Post. 32. The Irish Times 25 August 1953. 33. Irish Times 7September 1953. 34. 25 August 1903. 35. Liverpool Echo 25 August 1603.

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36. P.  Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political and Social History of Liverpool 1868–1939. 37. Ibid. 38. J. Wakeford, Liverpool Echo 25 August 1903. 39. Lessoff, A., ‘James Bryce, William T. Stead and the Trans-Atlantic Meaning of the American City’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, (2019); Connolly, J., “From Political Insult to Political Theory: ‘The Boss, the Machine, and the Pluralist City,” Journal of Policy History 25, n. 2 (Spring 2013): 139–172. 40. A. Lessoff, ‘James Bryce, William T. Stead and the Trans-Atlantic Meaning of the American City’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, (2; Connolly, J., “From Political Insult to Political Theory: ‘The Boss, the Machine, and the Pluralist City”, Journal of Policy History 25, n. 2 (Spring 2013): 139–172. 41. P.  Waller, ‘Archibald’, Tutton James Salvidge, 1863–1928, ODNB September 2004. 42. P. Jones, From Virtue to Venality: Corruption in the City (Manchester Manchester University Press) p.30 and p.47. 43. Searle, p. 351. 44. Searle, op cit. p. 397. 45. Stanley Salvidge, quoted in Salvidge of Liverpool: Behind the political scene 1880–1948 (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1934) 46. R. Hattersley, ‘Jack Braddock: Skipper of the Scousers’, the Guardian 15 December 1972. 47. P. Waller optic (1998). 48. P.  Jones, From Virtue to Venality: Corruption in the City (Manchester, Manchester University Press (2008). 49. P.  Jones, ‘Re-thinking corruption in post-1950 urban Britain: the Poulsonaffair’, 19 (‘Urban History (Cambridge University Press). 39(2012) pp. 510–528.

CHAPTER 8

Empire: From Corrupt Extraction to Civilising Mission c. 1757–1936

This chapter commences from the standpoint of cultural history for the phenomenon that the British acquisition of colonies on a world scale was not driven solely by economic considerations or strategic imperatives but assumed that Britain provided good government for the people that it conquered. Nevertheless it is clear that the granting of a monopoly by the English Crown to the East India Company in 1600 was a vehicle to enable enterprise and trade. However, it becomes clear that by the end of the eighteenth century the EIC had become a de facto government of the territories of South India. Thus economic and political considerations converged, which led to growing concerns within the English state about the government, the conduct of EIC men and their exercise of political power and with it matters of misconduct and corruption. The notion that the English were ‘God’s Chosen People’ which had been proclaimed by Oliver Crowell during the Commonwealth apparently legitimated a policy of overseas expansion. However, transgressions of conduct and corruption of EIC officials brought about the revival of the instrument of impeachment of East India men, principally, Robert Clive and Warren Hastings. The good government agenda demanded probity and virtue. By the later nineteenth century the idea of the civilising mission had provided a moral case for Empire. However, there existed a paradox. Britain provided the rule of law although it was not always equitably administered. Horace Walpole’s neat observation of the late eighteenth century was apparently replaced by

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_8

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an ethical foreign policy bolstered by notions of moral and cultural superiority. Horace Walpole: ‘No man ever went to the East Indies with good intentions’ (17831)’I Rudyard Kipling (1899) : ‘Take up the white man’s burden2 Send forth the best ye breedGo bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wildYour new-caught sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child (1897) Mary Frances Leslie An ABC for baby patriots: ‘I is for India our land in the east where everyone goes to shoot tigers and feast … ‘F’ is the flag, which wherever you see You know that beneath it you’re happy and free. (18993)

The sentiments and claims made in these writings spanning a period of over 100 years suggest a transformation of purpose about British imperialism from an exploitative profiteering venture to an evangelical missionary policy which was nonetheless characterised by an expression of entitlement. If this transformation of the character of the Empire is valid, we need to set the elements of profiteering, and responsibility and civilising alongside other observations and insights. Indeed such a description was thought doubtful by John Robert Seeley, Regis Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, 1889–1895: ‘we seem as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absent mind’.4 Such a comment was no doubt, at the time, regarded as a clever and adroit. However, we should note that Seeley was firmly in the Whig tradition. Seeley’s view has fallen by the wayside and has been refuted by the Marxist school, principally, Eric Hobsbawm.5 Additionally, the subaltern school of Asian historians such as Ranjit Guha have sought to rewrite the history of empire from the viewpoint of the governed rather than from the euro-centric actions of the governors. For both the Marxists and the subalterns Empire is essentially a corrupt enterprise because for Hobsbawm capitalism is essentially exploitative. For Guha and others they have sought to write histories of subject peoples in which the treatment of those

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subject peoples is crucial to their histories. So where does the issue of corruption sit in these contested interpretations? In order to answer such a question it is necessary to give some account of the initial impetus behind empire and consider what were the political and cultural assumptions of the British, specifically in India but also in the West Indies. What were the assumptions in play for British merchants, politicians, soldiers, lawyers and missionaries? The cultural assumptions of the English with respect to the peoples of the Orient and which included India were derived from scholars of the Orient such as Ernest Renan and Karl Marx; James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay. In essence these authors regarded the Orient as backward, decadent and corrupt. Implicit in these views was a deep-rooted belief that European civilisation was superior to those of the Orient. It also engendered claims of racial superiority of Europeans over Oriental people. In France such assumptions took on a pseudo-scientific character as in Georges Cuvier’s Le Regne animal (1829–1830) and Arthur de Gobineau’s Essai surl’inegalite des races humaines. Moreover, Robert Knox published The Races of Men (1850) which was based on his lecture tour of 1846 when he visited Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Liverpool and Manchester. Knox established a racial typology concluding: [The] black man] ‘is no more a white man than an ass is a horse or a zebra’.6 ‘The assertions of these writers facilitated and legitimated European predation on Oriental polities. This asymmetry had, as we shall see, powerful implications for the European conquest of India in particular. These racial theories were of special significance as they legitimated European conquest; established a hegemonic dominance; and justified the nature of that subjugation of Oriental peoples and with it he condescension implicit in the civilising mission. The sense of entitlement that followed meant, too, that Europeans were blind to their own acts of corruption. Conversely and perversely European peoples’ contact with Oriental peoples would corrupt the imperialists themselves.

The Origins of British Imperialism in India In 1600 Queen Elizabeth I granted the East India Company a charter which established its monopoly rights of trade in India. The device of the trading company was the standard model deployed not only in England but also in France and the Netherlands. The subsequent growth of trade for the East India Company (EIC) was phenomenal and by the beginning

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of the eighteenth century India accounted for 23 per cent of world GDP (A. Maddison, 2000).7 The Company established a number of outposts and forts known as factories in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. However, England was only one of the predators that sought rich pickings in India. It is important to recognise that an essential function of the state(s) is to protect its territories and its people from external incursion. The case of India is salutary in this respect: the collapse of the Mughal empires was a complex process whereby they became prey to Persian ambition in the early eighteenth century and in 1739 Delhi was sacked by the Persian King Nadir Shah who looted Delhi for its treasures including gold and silver worth over 500,000 rupees. Shah had appointed local satraps or governors who were often corrupt and tyrannical; but their military capability was no match for the armed forces of the European powers; and England, Netherlands and France all sought to capitalise on this situation. Robert Clive’s defeat of the French at Plassey (1757) was decisive and it signalled the ascendancy of British power in Bengal; and eventually the whole of the Indian sub-continent of South Asia. In this sense it was clear that the Indian states of the Mughals were failed states (Acemogllu, 2013).8 There is no doubt that the activities of the East India Company were, increasingly, over time to be regarded as corrupt. The East India Company became in effect a quasi-government deploying armed force; negotiating treaties with the satraps and Nawabs. However, the EIC officers were also able to pursue independent trade for their own profit; and its high-ranking officers could also accept gifts. The Select Committee of the House of Commons estimated that between 1757 and 1765 almost ££2.2 million had been distributed in the form of gifts.9 Thus the epithet, the looting of India, characterised the conduct of EIC men in Bengal and the wider sub-­ continent. Ancient and medieval warfare had been marked by the activity of plundering the resources of the defeated state of which there is a rich vocabulary—booty, to sack, for example—to which was added ‘loot’, from Hindi and recorded in the OED in 1839. As such it signified corruption. John Johnstone, a Scottish merchant, for example, amassed a personal fortune, of £300,000, second only to that of Lord Clive. When Johnstone returned to Scotland he bought three estates which enabled him to secure control of a number of parliamentary seats in Scotland (Devine, 2003).10 The most significant feature of the British Empire in India was not just looting but rather degradation of the Indian economy, which was stripped bare by the EIC and its merchants, with the political system of the managed state and the ‘Old Corruption’. Indeed, the chief exponent of this

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system was Henry Dundas, Solicitor General of Scotland in 1766 and Lord Advocate in 1775. To these multiple offices he also added membership of EIC Board of Control in 1784. By this time he controlled 22 of the 41 parliamentary seats in Scotland, and by 1790 he controlled 34 seats of the 41 seats. ‘The cement of political stability was patronage and the keystone of that system was the power of appointment to the government and imperial posts.’ Such was his mastery of the system of patronage that he became indispensable to William Pitt, the Younger. Dundas dispensed the places, sinecures, pensions, colonial and excise offices which secured loyalty and obedience. One commentator observed, ‘So long as he is in office, the Scotch may beget younger sons with the most perfect impunity. He sends them by loads to the East Indies and all over the world.’11 By 1800 Scotsmen enjoyed around a third of all state sinecures which was far greater than the size of Scotland’s population would have merited. Clearly the decision of the Scottish political and economic elites to accept the terms of the Act of Union with England in 1707 was financially rewarding at least for those that participated in what amounted to a system of spoils.

The Principal Delinquent Horace Walpole’s pithy aphorism neatly encapsulated the motives of many of those who sought a position in the East India Company. Indeed those who went to India often returned to England with their fortunes made. They were often regarded with suspicion and disdain. Moreover the parliamentary disapproval of Robert Clive (1772) and the later impeachment of Warren Hastings (1778–1795) for corruption posited the idea that residence in India meant they had either been corrupted by oriental decadence or been perpetrated corruption by their actions. The cases of Clive and Hastings have long been prime examples of ‘delinquency’. However, their cases were preceded by other cases which contemporaries cited to question the status of the East India Company in relation to the British state and specifically the role of parliament. Indeed in February 1785 Edmund Burke, the scourge of all things improper, expounded on the matter of the EIC and its board of directors. In essence he argued that the Company was a vehicle which promoted the private interests of a group of individuals in the name of the state and which promoted the ‘diversion of millions of pounds of public money’ [from] the ‘public treasury to a private purse’. He decried the Company’s preference for secrecy when its actions were a ‘matter of account to Parliament’. Further, the ‘Company’s

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system of concealment had fostered falsehoods, false names of persons and false things’ (E. Burke, 1785).12 Burke was meticulous in his exposition and focussed, specifically, on the city of Madras and the activity of Sir Thomas Rumbold who was instrumental in the diverting of public money and the raising of huge loans granted to Indian Nawabs at exorbitant rates of interest. The revenues from these loans were siphoned off to English merchants in Canton, China. Nevertheless he was able to sustain his career in India but he was subject to investigation by parliament. Just as the impeachments of Clive and Hastings fell into abeyance so too did the inquiry into Rumbold’s activities. Despite these failures public perceptions began to shift in a direction that would be receptive to reform. However, despite the recognition of the reputation of the EIC following the cases of Clive and Hastings it would be another half-century before any serious steps were taken to promote reform and then only because of the Revolt of 1857. Interestingly Macaulay’s Essay on Clive first published in 1840 reveals an explicit assertion of English superiority over Orientals which in turn justified English conquest of Mughal India: There is little doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous empire was … even in its best days, far worst governed than the worst governed parts of Europe now are [and] following the death of the Mughal emperor Aurungzebe (1707). Mughal administration sunk into indolence and debauchery. … The Mughal princes ‘sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines and listening to buffoons. (T.B. Macaulay)13

Macaulay’s view was that those who had followed Edmund Burke who led the process of impeachment against Clive were simply envious. Moreover, subsequent to Clive’s victory at Plassey and his trickery in the negotiations with Dowlah and Omichund was excused by Macaulay. Clive had drawn up two treaties—the first on white paper and the second on red paper. The first was authentic whereas the second was a fake which Omichund signed fully believing that he would be rewarded. However, he had been duped and had signed away his reward. Macaulay concluded that Clive was wrong as it was dishonest and a blunder because England’s great strength was honest dealing: English valour and English intelligence have done less to extend and preserve the Oriental Empire than English veracity.

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Macaulay then exonerated Clive by asserting that Clive had not dishonoured the Crown as he was employed as a servant of the EIC and notions of conduct could not be stricter than the codes of conduct held by his masters. Moreover Clive’s defiance in the House of Commons against accusations of plundering India was remarkable: ‘I stand astonished at my own moderation [and] A great prince was dependent upon my pleasure, an opulent city lay at my mercy [and] I walked through vaults thrown open to me alone, piled on either side with gold and jewels’. His final retort was made with hubris and contempt stating that he had been enriched but that the surprise was that he had not come home to England even richer. Clive was not alone in holding such a view. Sir John Shore, a revenue collector in India, claimed, ‘If I had been half the knave everyone is supposed by the patriots of England I might have secured £40,000 or £50,0per annum for the last four years’ (Knights, 2021).14 In the end the attempt to impeach Clive did not proceed although the three reports of the subsequent Select Committee of Inquiry did not exonerate Clive’s conduct but parliament thanked him for his ‘meritorious service’ (M.  Olmert, 2001).15 However, such was the concern about the East India Company that parliament ordered a Select Committee chaired by General Burgoyne which concluded that Clive’s share dealings in the company and the dispersal valuable jewels and money among his attorneys was irregular. Burgoyne concluded that Clive was ‘the principal delinquent’. In what amounted to an embezzlement scheme and that between 1757 and 1765 vast sums in excess of £2 million had been taken by Clive and his assistants (W. Dalrymple, 201916). Clive was at this point a broken and exhausted man. He had suffered many bouts of depression and was a frequent user of laudanum. He committed suicide, so it is thought, on 22 November 1774. The upshot of Burgoyne’s reports demonstrated that the government of India was not tenable by the Company alone. The appointment of Warren Hastings as Governor of Bengal in 1772 was a critical step and his attempt to reform the regime of tax collection was a bold move as the existing regime was open to abuse and was almost certainly corrupt. Indeed the image of the looting of India has been central to the subaltern view of Britain’s empire in India (S.  Tharoor, 201717). Hastings determined to replace the existing British tax-collectors who were regarded as ignorant and corrupt. He began to appoint Indian collectors who it was thought would have better local knowledge; but by the time Hastings left India in 1785 the tax regime was still reckoned to be inefficient and open to abuse. Nevertheless, the Regulation Act (1773)

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and the India Act (1784) brought the company more directly under the control of parliament making it effectively a quasi-department of the British state and theoretically therefore more accountable. Indeed Edmund Burke initiated impeachment procedures against Warren Hastings in 1787 for having enriched himself at India’s expense. The process proved longwinded and largely inconclusive although Burke used the word delinquent to describe Hastings. Although the impeachment process was unsuccessful, it was significant for the construction of what behaviours might be considered corrupt. Additionally, it asserted the authority of parliament. The Indian experience of British governance, however, remained a tax extractive regime of impoverishment. It would survive until the India Revolt (1857) when it was abolished. Its powers were vested in Secretary of State for India. This meant direct rule with a viceroy in Delhi. It was clear then that India would not enjoy the autonomy of the white settlements in Australia, Canada and New Zealand which were already enjoying the institutions of representative and even democratic government. In Australia the state of Victoria had secured a secret ballot from 1856 and adult male vote from 1757 and the payment of MPs from 1870. In 1911 the separate states of Australia formed a federation of states. Canada had achieved self-government within the Empire by 1867. New Zealand achieved self-government status in 1852. South Africa remained an intransigent problem because of conflicts between white Afrikaners and English-­ speaking settlers.

Civilising Mission and the Chosen People Kipling’s famous poem published in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee captured a mood of the times that the British Empire was a force for good and a destination for Christian religious missionaries such as the Scot, David Livingstone, who arrived in South Africa in 1841. He was also an explorer and his expedition north and west to the Atlantic coast did much to create the image of darkest Africa as a place to be ‘civilised’. Subsequent missions to central Africa were supported by the Royal Geographical Society which helped to reinforce the idea of the civilising mission. We have already noted the early nineteenth-century notions of European superiority in the writings of Knox and Cuvier but it is also important to recognise that such theories took on greater agency in the second half of the nineteenth century. Further, the convergence of religion with science was augmented by Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species

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(1859) which when adopted by the so-called Social Darwinists, such as Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton it cemented the idea of racial superiority of European peoples over non-Europeans. Such assumptions legitimated the civilising mission and by implication created the idea of a virtuous British state that was free from corruption. The sense of superiority that English men held of themselves in was neatly captured in the so-­ called Balliol masques of which that attributed to Lord Curzon was a notable example: My name is George Nathanial Curzon I am a most superior person. My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek I dine at Blenheim once a week.

Moreover, these notions of superiority were inculcated by means of the education received by the offspring of the political elite in the great public schools. Further, the literary works of Rudyard Kipling, Rider Haggard and G. A. Henty whose novels and stories of imperial adventure and courage did much to glamorise Empire as they were salient factors in redacting corruption as perpetrated by the British from the public consciousness.

The Great Paradox: Equality Before the Law English jurists including Walter Bagehot, Henry Sumner Maine; and James Fitz James Stephen have extolled the virtues of the English constitution and its wider legal system. A key tenet was that of equality before the law. The idea that state justice was administered in an even-handed fashion without fear or favour became a key theme in the development of the British Empire in its high noon c. 1880–1930. The idea of the rule of law was central to the civilising mission whether in Canada, Australia, the West Indies or in India. Again the British elite could preen itself in the belief that it brought the rule of law to India. However, it was clear that India’s experience was less than happy. Such a belief though was sorely tested because of the assumptions of the white English residents that they were superior to Indian people. This was manifest in the English contempt for those they called ‘niggers’. This was not just a matter of racial slurs of speech. Indeed the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal in the 1870s, Sir Richard Temple, lamented that ‘the greatest difficulty which the administrators of this country had to meet was that involved in keeping their own

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countrymen under proper control and if the English were ever to lose India, it would be through the vanity and high-handed conduct of their own countrymen’. European beatings of their Indian employees were commonplace. Interracial murder was also if not common, then certainly frequent enough to cause concern. Indian newspapers published accounts of European assaults and killings of Indians; and shootings were often passed off as accidents. Between 1880 and 1900 there were 81 shooting accidents that resulted in Indian deaths (Wiener, 2009).18 These cases rarely came to court and even if they did they invariably led to no more than a fine. However, the steady politicisation of Indian lawyers trained in the British tradition of the law began to challenge what was regarded as the corrupt administration of the law and the penal code. Racial tensions were especially manifest in the capital, Calcutta, and in the province of Bengal which were more likely to attract newspaper accounts. The British claim of equality before the law began to look like a rather feeble refrain. Further, the European sense of being outnumbered and under siege fomented an underlying anxiety and memories of the 1857 Revolt (Anderson).19 White English men and women also held their belief of superiority so much so that any form of disobedience and or insolence was countered with violence. English soldiers were the principal agents of violence whether on official duty or on leave and out on the town fuelled with drink, especially grog, and armed were especially dangerous men. Cases of soldiers killing Indians rarely came to court. In such circumstances equality before the law was rarely if ever achieved. Most striking was the fact that the conviction rate for murder declined over the last decades of the nineteenth century. Why was this so? First judges and magistrates became increasingly suspicious of police-generated confessions. Moreover it was claimed that Indians perverted the law by bribery, extortion, perjury and excessive litigation. The penal code, too, was not equitable in that magistrates were unable to hand down a sentence of no more than three months to Europeans. English lawyers were also able to contest jury membership so that Europeans enjoyed an all-white jury. The trial of a British soldier, O’Hara, who had broken into a shop in the night after a grog-fuelled night on the town and in search of more alcohol. O’Hara beat the shopkeeper to death. Two other soldiers were charged with aiding and abetting. O’Hara was found guilty but his friends petitioned the Advocate General of Bengal claiming that the Judge of the trial had made procedural errors. O’Hara was acquitted but subsequently faced a court-­ martial (Wiener, 2008).20

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However, there are numerous critiques of imperialism which are important to consider. Additionally, we need to ask whether the British Empire was itself a corrupt enterprise or whether instances of corruption in particular locations in India, in Africa and in the West Indies can be attributed to the conduct of particular errant individuals. An early critique of Empire was that of J.  A. Hobson (1858–1940) writing at the turn of the twentieth century. He argued that the free-­ market economy was prone to the phenomenon of ‘under consumption’ which would later inform his study of imperialism: principally, that imperialism was caused by ‘excess capital in search of investment’. Hobson also held a brief for ethical values and was a member of the London Ethical Society. He visited South Africa as a special correspondent for the Guardian Newspaper and in his reports on the war he attributed its causes to a ‘confederacy of international financiers and capitalists who controlled the press’.21 Essentially, Hobson’s argument was derived from the exploitative characteristic of capitalism. Indeed, it informed Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (April 201722); but whether capitalism of itself can be a cause of corruption remains an open question. The second critique is that provided by Edward W. Said in his Orientalism (1978) which is a seminal work within post-colonial cultural theory in which he argued that the European view of the east—the orient—is portrayed as alien, exotic and inferior. Said’s work has also been influential on subaltern perspectives of the experience of imperial governance, principally Ranjit Guha, which has also drawn on Gramsci and Eric Hobsbawm to write the forgotten back into history. In these writings economic exploitation and political oppression are conflated into corruption which has then been fired by moral anger but nonetheless provides an important dimension to the study of corruption (Tharoor, 2017).23 There is no doubt that empire was secured by military force and often brutality. This was exemplified in the numerous wars between the European states as they fought to secure control of far-flung territories in North and Latin America and in the Caribbean and in Asia. Indeed Robert Clive was ennobled for his victory at Plassey (1757) but later criticised for his corrupt dealings and his administration of the EIC (1772).24 In the western hemisphere Britain’s adventures in the Atlantic world were also achieved by military force, piracy and questionable dealings, but for contemporaries the exploits in the Caribbean—war with Spain and with the Netherlands—were normal statecraft. The development of an international trade in slaves, cotton, tobacco and sugar is now regarded

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with moral repugnance but as such does not enable analysis of corruption. Given this it is worth considering that Britain colonised these overseas places—Bengal, Jamaica, Virginia—and established towns and other settlements which became political spaces which provide a route into some explanation of the nature of governance in the Empire.

Towns and Cities The process of imperialism witnessed a vast diaspora of peoples from the British Isles and other parts of Europe around the globe. Some of this migration was attributable to economic push and pull factors as was the case with Irish migration after the famine of the 1840s and the highland and island clearances in Scotland in the later eighteenth century. The use of the system of transportation of convicts from England to Australia and from British India to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and other places in the Indian and Pacific Oceans were cruel acts which do not stand up to legal scrutiny. The tentacles of the Empire spread far and wide. Wherever colonisation was established too British political forms followed especially those that entailed financial transactions and interactions with proto-state organisations. The building of docks, ports and defence fortifications carried with it interactions with private contractors who sought to profit from the imperial enterprise. Invariably state agents sought commissions for the granting of contracts. The Audit office based in London began to examine contractors’ accounts at the end of the Seven Years’ War in North America (1756–1763) to find exorbitant commissions and ‘padded invoices with unnecessary sub-agents’ (Graham, 2018).25 In the West Indies urban elites began to adopt police powers. Anxieties about law and order and the potential of a slave rebellion were an ever-present concern. It became necessary in Kingston Jamaica to establish a night watch system and curfew between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. Unsupervised slaves would be arrested and in Bridgetown in Barbados they were caged in the town centre. In India the centres established by the EIC would in the nineteenth century become burgeoning entrepôt. Further, the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) accentuated the urban growth of the west and east coast of India. Bombay’s growth was astounding. In 1889 its population was 748,309 and by 1916 it had risen to almost a million. It was a city of opportunity, just as London had been in the eighteenth century. Bombay attracted migrants from Europe including from Portugal as well as from

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Britain, Armenia, China and Japan. The city also attracted different religious groups—Muslims and Hindus—from other parts of South Asia. The competition for livelihood was a vital impetus which would sometimes result in corruption. As we have seen corruption had been ever present in the late eighteenth century as signified by the politics of plunder as perpetrated by the EIC. Even then there was a secondary dimension of corruption by means of auction sales of properties, furnishings and works-­ of-­art, watches, clocks and ornaments. The auctioneers were often unscrupulous and defrauded many purchasers by means of false prospectuses. In the later nineteenth century Bombay had like London become a great financial centre and Roychand Premchand became a notorious figure dealing in gold and silver bullion. By 1865 he effectively controlled Bombay and influenced the British policymakers. He controlled banks and influenced Bombay Municipal Corporation, but his share speculation schemes were very often on borrowed money. Alongside this business career he was also a philanthropist making donations to schools and providing a scholarship scheme for the University of Calcutta.

Subjects to Citizens After the abolition of the EIC and the transfer of the government of India to the Secretary of State in 1857 British rule in India remained a challenge for the government. The need to preserve the Empire as a whole took on strategic dimensions particularly after the opening of the Suez Canal and Britain’s acquisition of a majority shareholding of the Canal Company in 1875. Such was the importance of the Canal and Britain’s growing interests in Asia so the government sought to develop interests in eastern Africa. Thus the British East Africa Association which had been trading in East Africa since the 1840s negotiated a lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar of a coastal strip of territory along the Indian Ocean coast. By 1896 Britain established the British East Africa Protectorate in response to Germany’s declaration of a German Protectorate which included Tanganyika and Nyasaland which was seen as a threat to the British interest in Zanzibar. The overarching sphere of influence took on greater proportions with the idea of building a railway from the Cape to Cairo. In all respects the rivalry of the European powers in Africa emphasised the symbolic significance of India. Disraeli’s creation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877 was designed to give British rule of India greater legitimacy. If this was so it also made sense to widen the polity of Empire to grant some Indians

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more say in Indian affairs. Just as in Britain the political elites sought to liberalise the polity with the Reform Act of 1867 which admitted the respectable working classes into the political nation so too the British mirrored this development in India by means of municipal reform. The example of Bombay serves to illustrate this point. By the later nineteenth century Bombay had become the most important economic centre in British India and the Westminster Parliament resolved to establish elements of municipal government in Bombay and other large cities. The trauma of the Great Revolt had at first created a disincentive for investment, but cities were in need of improvement including sanitary improvements, policing, markets and street lighting. By establishing municipal government the British had established a vehicle to raise investment in urban infrastructure and services (P.  Kidambi).26 Moreover, the poorer districts were prone to plagues and fevers. Thus the establishment of an element of local government but sustaining British rule was the driving imperative. The Election Act of 1888 enfranchised those who owned property and who paid rates. It was a successful move. Disraeli’s suggestion in the Westminster debates for the so-called fancy franchises of additional votes for university graduates or a sum of money in savings. The motivation behind the so-called fancy franchises was to reward the virtues of education and thrift. Although the measure did not apply in Britain the measure was adopted in India where university fellows were enfranchised to vote in municipal elections. By 1883 the University Fellows in Bombay were the majority of qualified voters in the municipal elections. By 1889 the population of Bombay had risen to 748,000 and there were 7469 voters. Progress on the matter of municipal governance, however, was slow and haphazard; and there was considerable criticism in the Indian newspaper press, principally, The Times of India and the Journal of Commerce. Elsewhere, the establishment of a Municipality in Calcutta had not been successful and had been rife with the ‘greatest corruption and jobbery’.27 The British believed that they had provided the basis of good governance. This was the ambition but it was not always the reality as there were numerous sources of authority at local level including the District Officers of the Raj who were responsible for a wide range of matters including tax assessment and collection; and responsibility for disasters including fire, flood, famine and plague epidemics. Magistrates also made interventions on matters of law and order and policing. The potential for confusion and inertia was great, and lack of investment in urban infrastructure compounded the challenges facing imperial administration (Kidambi, 2013).28

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Elsewhere in the Empire British administrators adopted sanitary boards and police forces as the prime instruments of government. This had been the case in the West Indies earlier in the nineteenth century (Graham29), and it was adopted in Malayan Towns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.30 After the collapse of the Mughal empires political power had become more widely defused and India’s position in a global network of trade revived former Mughal centres such as Delhi and Agra; and smaller centres such as Hyderabad and Lucknow became significant centres. But it was the great cities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras that typified the Indian city as a ‘heaving undisciplined monster, the site of a corrupting modernity’ (Nair, 2009).31

Legacy British historians have observed that Britain’s imperial rule was benign which made possible for former subject people to rule themselves. This may have been the case for the white dominions—Canada, Australia and New Zealand—but it was not so for South Africa and indeed Ireland. Elsewhere, in India, Palestine, Egypt and Kenya the immediate post-­ colonial regimes were often dysfunctional and bloody. Perhaps the most striking example of failure was India where the consequences of partition and the establishment of West and East Pakistan was a traumatic humanitarian disaster. Arguably the British policy towards Indian governmental reform produced gimcrack arrangements which attempted to reconcile the disparate elements of Indian Society.

War, Empire and Arms Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, justified a declaration of war on Germany in August 1914 in a rather understated fashion: ‘If Germany came to dominate the Continent of Europe it would be disagreeable to us as well as to others’. Britain had long promoted a policy which secured a balance of power on the Continent which enabled Britain to secure its extra-European interests—international trade and, of course, empire. What was special about the First World War was that it was total war that engaged the whole of British society. Total War is a supreme test of a state’s armed forces, weaponry, of its institutions and the resilience of its citizens. Second, total war is supremely destructive and requires special

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measures to build, to repair infrastructure, buildings and warships. Total war also requires participation of its citizenry some of whom make gains as a consequence of that participation whereas others lose out because of the disruptive effects of war. War on such a scale may also promote innovation of technology. Last, war may have psychological consequences for population, soldiers and non-combatants alike (Marwick, 1968).32 What then might be the consequences of total war for the incidence of corruption? Did the British state become more or less corrupt as a consequence of war? Following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany the government passed a special measure, the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), which enabled the state to introduce import controls on certain luxury items— gold watches and Hollywood films, for example. At the beginning of the War Britain was the only state that had a volunteer army. Germany, France and Russia all had conscript armies. It was not until 1916 that Britain passed the Military Service Act. We can see superficially that the state was intervening in matters which had previously been left to the forces of the market and the long-held preference for laissez-faire economics. The control on imports saw an upsurge in smuggling and black market cases. Even where, Britain had followed a limited measure, such as the Military Service Act (1916). Which conscripted all unmarried men over the age of 16 but it proved an insufficient measure which meant that the rate of marriage rose sharply. It then became necessary to conscript all men. The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) placed strictures on licencing laws for the sale of alcoholic drink and the opening hours of public houses. This was good news to the temperance movement which had long campaigned to strengthen the licencing laws. The measure affected, particularly, ports and garrison towns such as Aldershot where alcohol and firearms were considered to be a dangerous combination. Clearly, whatever the justification for the measure publicans lost out. These steps brought about instances of corruption such as bribing an army recruiting officer to report a bogus reason such as medical unfitness to be exempt from military service. The problem of bribery had been a concern even before 1914. Indeed the Bribery and Secret Commissions Prevention League had campaigned against the practice of commissions for a host of transactions. It attracted aristocrats and businessmen. Lord Inchcape a shipping magnate was a leading figure and the League had 370 members in 1913 and Inchcape sat on the first Tribunal that investigated the claims of corruption in the Ministry of Munitions in 1921. The League

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was still active after 1918 and Lord Crewe, a former Secretary of State for India speaking at a luncheon at the Savoy hotel, suggested that ‘even in the most civilised of states that there w a perpetual taking of bribes and secret commissions’. He did not refer to the arms industry specifically but his listeners would have recognised Crewe’s rather opaque language. These examples may seem trivial or even amusing but they illustrate the point that because of total war the state became more interventionist. More significantly, the state had a heightened level of interaction with arms manufacturers and arms dealers. Early on in the War there was a shortage of shells for artillery which was an acute crisis. The government established a special Ministry of Munitions of which Lloyd George was put in charge. The shells crisis was abated but at what cost? Problems concerning payment of suppliers and the auditing of accounts became an issue of corruption after the end of the War and parliament established the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921. The adoption of the Act was promoted by Charles Loseby M.P. for Bradford East. The House of Commons was alarmed by the fact that there were 58,000 accounts still not settled. Further a Sheffield arms manufacturer—Murex-Limited— announced its intention to take legal election. Loseby questioned whether ‘purity’ prevailed in the ministry claiming that the Head of the civil service department had authorised the destruction of a number of account records. The Ministry of Munitions was then investigated by Tribunal. It concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing. Nevertheless the case set a precedent which enabled the tribunal system to be used repeatedly between 1921 and 1948 to investigate cases of suspected corruption in local government, in police forces as well as lunatic asylums and hospitals. It becomes clearer then that the World War by its special nature a total war which had created opportunities for wrongdoing. However, there were other implications: as the geographical scale of the war widened so the state interacted with independent arms dealers. In terms of corruption this was undoubtedly a risky business. In particular, Lloyd George’s dealings with Basil Zaharoff merit attention. Zaharoff was a mystery figure and was demonised in the popular newspaper press. However, his links with states of the eastern Mediterranean—Greece and the Ottoman Empire—made him potentially valuable to the British government. This was certainly the case when Britain chose to open-up a second war front against the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, his connections with arms manufacturers and dealers made him especially useful. However, he personified everything that was regarded as wicked about the arms

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dealer in the public imagination, the so-called merchant of death. The image of the arms dealer had been presented by the playwright, George Bernard Shaw in Major Barbara (1907) in which the egregious character, Andrew Undershaft, extolled the virtues of free-market capitalism claiming that arms were like any other commodity to be bought and sold. As the political temperature began to rise Karl Liebknecht, a leading German socialist, claimed in the Reichstag in 1913 that there existed an international Armaments Trust dictating the policies of the European states. In Britain the claim was taken-up by anti-war groups, radicals and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Notable publications included George Herbert Perris’ War Traders: An Exposure (1913). It claimed that the Trust had fomented the war scares and arms race between Britain and Germany. Further, it inspired the idea of conscientious objection which would become significant once the Government adopted conscription in 1916. Newbold claimed that members of the political elite including bishops, MPs and peers had substantial share-holdings in the seven largest armaments firms. Walton Newbold followed up Perris’ claims with his The Arms Trust Exposed (1916). The sheer destruction of the First World War and the huge loss of life was grist-to-the-mill of the peace campaigners. Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) and the poetry of Robert Owen provided emotional power to the peace movement as did H F. Engelbrecht and. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death (1934). In essence the attacks on the arms trade signalled a potentially new anti-corruption discourse that argued that the arms trade was not only immoral but should at least be taken out of the free-market operation and controlled by the state. It had widespread implications. Imperial policy had already compromised cabinet ministers before the First World War as the South African policy had compromised Joseph Chamberlain when he was Colonial Secretary; but the aftermath of the World War added a distinct moral fervour to existing concerns such as conflict of interest, secret commissions, bribes and arms dealing so much so that in 1935 parliament ordered a Royal Commission to investigate the manufacture and the trading of arms.33 The Commission met in a febrile atmosphere with the peace movement campaigning against the British arms company, Vickers and European manufacturers such as Schneider, Krupp and Skoda. The campaign was supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury who asserted that ‘profit from arms was morally repugnant’. The newspaper press had fulminated at Zaharoff and his suspected involvement in the Chanak crisis in 1922. The Daily Mail claimed that the

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Turkish-Greek war was being ‘fomented by Greek intriguers and Greek influences’. Additionally, it was asserted that ‘Zaharoff does seem to have some mysterious influence with the government’.34 Further, the newspaper claimed that Zaharoff was the largest shareholder in the British arms company, Vickers; and exhorted the British government to tell the Greeks not to rely on British military support. At the same time it should be noted that the USA and Britain had taken prominent roles in the League of Nations’ attempts to limit the proliferation of arms on a worldwide basis. This idealism, however, did not last and Germany’s withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference in 1933 had provoked an even greater alarm in the peace movement groups. The Royal Commission heard a wide range of views. For example, Henry McGowan, the chairman of ICI: ‘I have no objection selling arms to both sides. I am not a purist in these things.’ Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretary, spoke for the Government and he defended the sale of arms to Turkey even though they were probably used against British and ANZAC troops at Gallipoli in 1915–1916. He alluded to the break-up of the Disarmament Conference and added that, ‘a unilateral prohibition of private manufacture would be detrimental to the nation’s security’. The Commission’s final report rejected the establishment of a state monopoly and that any ‘and that any action now [1936] would be dangerous given the fragile state of international relations’.

Notes 1. Walpole, Horace, W.S. Lewis et al., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven 1937). 2. Kipling, R, Selected Poems (London: Penguin 1994). 3. Leslie, Mary Frances, An ABC for baby patriots (1899). 4. J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (Lectures 1881–1882). 5. Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Capital (London) and Age of Empire (London). 6. Quoted in Clare L. Taylor, Robert Knox, Robert (1791–1862) ODNB) 23 September 2004. 7. A. Maddison, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective) OECD, 2001). 8. D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (London: Penguin, 2013) pp. 247–50; 369. 9. House of Commons Sect Committee: Clive’s Fund. Paper 548. 10. T.M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire: The origins of the global diaspora (London: Penguin 2003) p. 336.

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11. Sydney Smith quoted in T.M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire the Origins of a Global Diaspora (London: Penguin) p. 336. 12. Edmund Burke, Parliamentary Papers House of Commons 28 February 1785) pp 1785-04-07; 1785-08-02. 13. T.B.  Macaulay, Essay on Clive first published in 1840. This version Edinburgh: Harrap 1910 pp. 48–49. 14. Sir John Shore, quoted by M. Knights (Oxford OUP 2021). 15. M. Olmer, ‘Clive of India: He conquered Bengal, Drove the French from India send Built a Civil Service. But was he a Saviour or a Plunderer’, Smithsonian, 11, 31 (Feb. 2001). 16. W. Dalrymple, the Anarchy: The relentless Rise of the East India Company (London: Bloomsbury 2019) pp.  231–232. See also Select Committee appointed to Inquire into the Nature, State and Condition of the British Affairs in the East India Company by General Burgoyne, 8 April 1773. HCPP. 17. S.  Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (London: Penguin, 2017) pp. 1–16. 18. M. J Wiener, An Empire on Trial Race, Murder and Justice under British Rule 1870–1935 (Cambridge CUP, 2009). 19. C.  Anderson, Subaltern Lives\; \biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World 1790–1920 (Cambridge CUP 2012). Traditionally this event was recorded as the Indian Mutiny as it originated among Indian soldiers. The wider term revolt seeks to identify its wider implications which have been identified by the subaltern historical perspective. 20. M.J. An Empire on Trial (Cambridge UP 2008). 21. Michael Freeden, Hobson, John Atkinson’ ODNB 23 September 2004. 22. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (London: Wellred Books) 2017). See also The Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation in K.  Marx and F.  Engels, Selected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968) pp 233–60. 23. Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India (London Penguin 2017) pp.  5–16. See also Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia (London: Penguin, 2013); and his Age of Anger (2017). 24. General Burgoyne, Select Committee of Inquiry into the operations of the East India Company). 25. A. Graham, ‘Corruption and Contractors in the Atlantic World 1754–1763, English Historical Review, 123,564 (September 2018) pp 1093–1119. 26. P.  Kidambi, ‘Urban South Asia under the Raj: Trends and Patterns of Urbanization’, in P. Clark, The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: OUP, 2013) pp. 561–580. 27. Journal of Commerce 13 June 1859.

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28. P.  Kidambi, ‘Urban South Asia under the Raj’ in P.  Clark, The Oxford Hand Book of Cities in World History (Oxford, 2013) pp 561–579. 29. A.  Graham, ‘Corruption and Contractors in the Atlantic World 1754–1763’, EHR, 564 September 2018 pp  1093–1119; and Towns, Government, legislation and the police in Jamaica and the British Atlantic 1770–1805, Urban History (2020), 47, pp 41–62. 30. Lynn Hollen Lees, Discipline and delegation in Malayan Towns 1880–1930′, Urban History 38 (2011) pp. 48–64. 31. J.  Nair, Beyond Nationalism: modernity, and a new urban history of or India’, Urban History, 36, 2(2009) pp. 327–341. 32. A. Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War 1900–1967War, Peace and Social Change 1900–1967 (London, Penguin, 1968). 33. D.G.  Anderson, ‘British rearmament and The Merchants of Death: The Royal Commission on the Manufacture and Trade in Armaments’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29, 1 (Jan 1994) pp. 5–37. 34. Daily Mail, 4 October 1922.

CHAPTER 9

The Way We Live Now c. 1986–2023

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. (J.K. Galbraith, 1999)1 Who is society? There is no such thing. There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. (Margaret Thatcher, 1987)2

Cultural Change and Contemporary History Contemporary history or the history of the recent past invariably presents problems for historians. There is an abundance of information but placing that information into context and deciding what is important and for the study of corruption in political life it is more problematic as society’s definitions of corruption are often in a state of flux and seemingly, expanding. Older or traditional concepts—patronage, bribery, graft, gerrymandering—are well known but for the recent past certain behaviours may be questionable but whether they are corrupt, according to established definitions, is not always certain. These problems may be overcome by resorting to the general term, misconduct in a public office but this can be difficult to pin down. However, in Britain, with its tradition of investigative journalism there are often, detailed accounts of wrongdoing by politicians and other office holders. These may have been scandals which met © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6_9

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the prurient interests of newspaper readerships. In these cases the exposure of reprehensible behaviours are reflections of the views of editors and their readers. Such views are products of cultural values, attitudes and mores; but one thing was certain: scandal sells newspapers.

Money Culture Anthony Trollope in The Way We Live Now (1875) depicted his principal character Augustus Melmotte as a most dangerous parvenu of dubious credentials—possibly German, possibly Jewish—who duped gullible aristocrats to invest in bogus money-making schemes.3 Melmotte was of course a fictional character and an archetype of the confidence trickster. Ernest Terah Hooley was company promoter who petitioned for bankruptcy in 1898. He had duped a range of aristocrats including the Earl de la Warr, Lord Albemale, the Duke of Somerset and Lord Winchelsea securing funds from them and attaching their names to fake company prospectuses (Searle, 1987).4 Hooley was able, like Melmotte, to buy his way into High Society. Eventually, Hooley over-reached and his company crashed ruining not only himself but all those who had fallen for his money-making schemes. If Melmotte and Hooley were to visit London in the last decade of the twentieth century in that mythical time machine they would have found themselves in familiar territory. Indeed the derivatives trader, Nick Leeson, defrauded Barings Bank resulting in its collapse. We have seen, earlier, that money-making schemes such as the South Sea Company which had been founded by Lord Harley in 1711 also had political as well as financial consequences. The subsequent proposal to buy— up to three-fifths portion of the National Debt—triggered a frenzy of speculation causing the share price to rocket before a collapse in 1719 which ruined investors.

The Political Context: The End of the Post-1945 Collective Consensus We have seen earlier (Chap. 4) that the Old Corruption of the eighteenth century was based on patronage, sinecures and the pursuit of self-interest which was achieved by private and pecuniary transactions between men of power and men who aspired to power (Namier, 1961).5 What had changed between the middle of the eighteenth century and the early twenty-first century? It would be tempting to suggest very little.

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The victory of Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party in the 1979 General Election was a momentous event which transformed politics and in many respects changed society in a way as radical as the transformation wrought by the Second World War and the post-war government of Clement Attlee (1945–1951). The post-1945 settlement was essentially a collective and consensual bargain. However, after 1979 the bargain came to an end. Arguably, it was already breaking-up as during the 1970s when the country experienced industrial unrest in the wake of the of the actions of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) which blocked oil exports plunging Britain and other European states into a phase of ‘stagflation’—rising prices and falling output. Moreover, public perceptions suggested that Labour governments were unable to control the Trade Unions. Indeed, the ‘winter of discontent’ (1978–1979) was instrumental in James Callaghan’s decision to call a General Election which presaged a sea change in that it brought to an end the post-1945 consensus. Subsequently Conservative governments of the 1980s pursued a policy of government withdrawal from management of the economy. Thatcher abandoned the consensual bargain and pursued an acutely divisive policy in the name of free market competition and enterprise. There was, indeed, a marked ideological shift, the impetus of which was derived from the Austrian economist, Friedrich Hayek, particularly his The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which he argued that government control of the economy (1944) led, inexorably, to tyranny. Hayek was an advocate of classical economic liberalism which meant that the state should provide the rule of law but should not use its powers to redistribute wealth which, he claimed, was an incursion upon individual freedom. The Conservative Party think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies had, prior to 1979, set out its ideological stall which owed much to Hayek’s thinking: The Centre will state the case for a social market economy—that is a free market economy operating within a humane system of laws and institutions. This case will be presented in moral as well as in social and economic terms emphasising the links between freedom, the standard of living and a market economy based on private enterprise and the profit discipline.6

The Centre for Policy Studies had, essentially, set out a manifesto that was overtly ideological which would legitimate making money and the pursuit of profit. Margaret Thatcher’s claim that there was, ‘no such thing as society’ may seem banal, crass even, but her subsequent rationale was loaded

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with puritanical zeal: ‘many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system: when people come and say, what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole.’7 The practical policies that ensued involved dismantling nationalised industries and turning them over to private enterprise. The policy of privatisation of public utilities was extensive: railways, gas, electricity, telecommunications, water supply and many more were sold off. The rationale appeared to be that these public services were inefficient and unable to raise sufficient funds for future investment. Council houses, too, were to be offered for sale, in the first instance, to existing tenants by means of the ‘right-to-buy’ scheme. Britain would, it seemed, become a property-­ owning democracy; but it was also partisan as its creators sought to attract traditional Labour voters and bring them into the Conservative Party’s orbit. Additionally, public institutions including hospitals, schools and universities were pressured to contract-out basic services such as cleaning, refectory services and property maintenance by means of competitive tendering processes in the name of efficiency. Additionally, the contraction, in real terms, of central government’s rate support funding for local government was cut back by a policy of ‘rate capping’ whereby profligate local authorities, predominantly Labour controlled, were financially penalised. Local authorities and other public bodies such as the National Health Service (NHS) that required major construction programmes were funded by the private finance initiative (PFI) the most important feature of these new corporate bodies was their interaction with central government by lobbying and financial donations to political parties. The capture of public officials by the corporate private enterprise sector encouraged politicians and civil servants to seek consultancies with private companies. Consequently, corruption followed as politicians and other public office holders were compromised in respect of their public duties.

The Big Bang Thatcher’s most radical act was the deregulation of the London Stock Exchange—the so-called Big Bang in October 1986 as the government forced the Stock Exchange to open its doors to foreign traders. It was now the International Stock Exchange and London had reasserted its place as a major financial capital alongside New York and Frankfurt and located at the mid-point between Asian markets and Wall Street. The initial

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consequences were dramatic and the internationalisation of money markets meant that money in all its forms flooded into London. Credit boomed and investment in infrastructure followed. The Docklands development symbolised the new dynamism of Britain’s economy. Admittedly the initial boom was followed by a dramatic crash in October 1987 and unemployment in the financial services sector grew. However, recovery arrived quickly. What were the consequences of these developments for London society and also national political institutions? Before that question can be answered it is important to recognise that the creation of the money culture and the apparent dynamism of London’s financial service sector existed alongside a restructuring and de-industrialisation process for other parts of the economy. Between 1976 and 1986 production outputs of industrial products shrank: coal and solid fuels fell by 21 per cent; oil and gas grew 13.8 per cent; iron and steel production declined by 15 per cent; ship building and repairs declined by 24 per cent; and motor vehicle and engine production fell by 47 per cent. But the processing of plastics grew by 83 per cent, and the manufacture of computers grew 89 per cent (Marwick, 1982).8 These structural changes—the decline of industrial manufacture and the growth of new technology production for the service sector economy—were geographically located. The revitalisation of London and the south-east of England had its converse in the Midlands and the North of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland; and Wales, too, faced de-industrialisation and with it economic deprivation for large swathes of the population. These stark divisions served to emphasise economic inequality but also to focus on London where fortunes were being made and politicians were seen to be beneficiaries of the political transformation. Moreover, Margaret Thatcher’s pithy observation, ‘you can’t buck the market’ displayed a callous indifference to the plight of citizens beyond London.

Making Money Versus Public Ethics Thatcher’s claim that there was ‘no such thing as society’ concealed a strategy to transform Britain which included dissolving the collectivist co-­ operation and establishing a vibrant-free enterprise culture where making money became a creed (D. Marquand, 2014).9 There was, indeed, a cultural revolution signified by linguistic change: for example, ‘Yuppie’ (young upwardly urban professional person) signified a new social type

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whose work and lifestyle attracted satirical derision in which making money and spending it ostentatiously were its hallmarks. London has always enjoyed the status of the capital city of England and the UK; and it has always been the hothouse of the UK’s polity. Margaret Thatcher’s repudiation of the post-war consensus witnessed a new phase in the history of political corruption in national as well as London politics. Making money was of course not an end itself but a means to secure a lifestyle; and London after the ‘big bang’ was transformed as it became the epicentre of the new money culture. However John Major who succeeded Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1990 inherited a series of problems concerning political corruption: the first was the District Auditor’s Report (1994) on the conduct of Shirley Porter, the Conservative Party Leader of the London Borough of Westminster, and her housing scheme: ‘Building stable communities’ (Jones, 2013).10 Second two Conservative MPs, Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith, had accepted money to ask questions in the House of Commons on behalf of Mohamed Al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store which became known as the ‘cash for questions’ scandal (October 1994). Apparently, the two MPs were paid £2000 per question via a lobbyist, Ian Greer, of Greer Associates. The House of Commons Privileges Committee had already begun to investigate Hamilton and Smith; but it soon became apparent that the public had little confidence that the Privileges Committee would be able to take action against one of its own. The third case was that of Jonathan Aitken who had accepted hospitality from two Arab businessmen as part of an armaments deal. He had been Minister of State for Defence Procurement in John Major’s Government since 1992 having previously been a Director of the British Arms Manufacturing and Research Company’ (BMARC) which had illegally supplied arms to Iran despite the arms embargo imposed on Iran and Iraq. At that time Aitken had controversially signed a Public Interest Immunity Certificate in 1992. Significantly, Aitken’s inability to tell the truth was already well known when the Guardian newspaper’s reports about Aitken and the Granada Television Company broadcast its World in Action Programme, ‘Jonathan of Arabia’, captured the public imagination. Nevertheless, John Major in an extraordinary lack of judgement had, previously, appointed Aitken as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1994. However, Aitken resigned when it transpired that he had broken ministerial rules. His response to the Guardian’s reporting was brazen, maintaining that he was the victim of ‘deliberate misrepresentations, falsehoods and lies’. Rather flamboyantly, he announced that he

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would cut out the ‘cancer’ within the British newspaper press with his ‘sword of truth and the trusty shield of British f fair play’. He had also enjoyed hospitality at the Ritz Hotel in Paris at the behest of foreign businessmen. Aitken had also procured prostitutes for the two Saudi Arabian businessmen when they visited London. Aitken said that he had issued a writ against the Guardian for defamation of character. He went on: ‘[T]here were falsehoods, misrepresentations and lies as part of a campaign to discredit me’. Audaciously, he pursued a libel action against the Guardian but the case collapsed. Subsequently, Aitken was prosecuted for perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to jail for 18 months. He had also coerced his wife and daughter to give false statements. The Judge, in his summing-up said: For nearly four years you wove a web of deceit in which you entangled yourself and from which there was no way out unless you were prepared to come clean and tell the truth. Unfortunately, you were not.

Later in an act of apparent contrition he became a prison chaplain and Anglican priest. Further, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robin Butler was publicly embarrassed as his perfunctory investigation had cleared Aitken of any wrongdoing. The subsequent clamour in parliament forced John Major to establish, in October 1994, the Committee of Standards in Public Life to investigate the whole range of issues that had come to light concerning the conduct of MPs and ministers. The Committee was chaired by Lord Nolan and it produced extensive reports between 1994 and 1997. The consequences of these cases were significant. Increasingly, the Conservative Party was seen to be mired in corruption.

Sleaze The leader of the Labour opposition was able to dub the Conservatives as the Party of ‘sleaze’. The word had dated back to the seventeenth century and usually referred to ‘disorderly’ houses, illicit liquor or drug dens, low dives or questionable night clubs and other disreputable premises (Ridley & Doig, 1995). The use of the word was deployed skilfully by Tony Blair and echoed the spivs and their black market operations during and immediately after the Second World War. Significantly, Blair had rebranded Labour as New Labour in an attempt to suggest that the Labour Party had modernised itself and was no longer the slave of the trade unions. The

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travails of John Major—sleazy MPs and rebellious Euro-sceptics, who were not appeased by the Maastricht Treaty (1992)—prompted Major to call them the ‘bastards’. The phenomenon of sleaze gifted New Labour’s election campaign and Blair was able to adopt the moral high ground; but he was also pragmatic and New Labour and the Liberal Democrats entered into an agreement brokered by Alistair Campbell with Martin Bell, the BBC journalist who announced his intention to contest the parliamentary constituency of Tatton in Cheshire which was occupied by Neil Hamilton who had been embroiled in the ‘cash for questions’ affair. New Labour and the Liberal Democrats withdrew their candidates so that Bell had a free run against Hamilton. It proved a success and Bell secured Tatton with a majority of 11,007 votes. It was a symbolic victory; and Bell was famed as the ‘man in the white suit’ and champion for the ethical conduct of public office holders. Bell had stated that he would stand for one parliament term only. Thus he contested Brentwood and Ongar in Essex which was held by Eric Pickles, Secretary of State Communities and Local Government for the Conservatives. A pact with Labour and the Liberal Democrats was not forthcoming and Bell came second but had reduced Pickles’ 9690 votes majority to 2821 votes. Bell’s foray to national politics was undoubtedly significant as it moved the anticorruption discourse away from local government to the national stage. Additionally, it exposed a growing and widespread lack of trust in politicians. Lord Nolan’s starting-point had emphasised the problem of public perceptions; and that public confidence in the financial probity of MPs had fallen below acceptable levels. Essentially, there were a number of elements in play: many MPs held paid consultancies that related, possibly, to their Parliamentary duties. Nolan estimated that around a third of back bench MPs held paid consultancies but he did not consider that they were, necessarily, to the detriment of their performance as MPs. However, he did think that selling their services—asking parliamentary questions via lobbyists—reduced the reputation and authority of Parliament; and ‘should be banned. Additionally, he thought that holding multiple consultancies was questionable as it raised the possibility of conflicts of interest. Moreover, the public needed to know that the rules of conduct of MPs were being enforced; but he was against putting these rules in statute law. Rather, he thought the House of Commons ‘should continue to be responsible for enforcing its own rules but that improved arrangements of scrutiny were required’. As the work of Nolan’s committee progressed its reports were prefaced by the Seven Principles of Public Life:

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1. Selflessness and those decisions should always be made in the public interest; 2.  Integrity which meant that public office-holders should not place themselves under any financial obligation to outside individuals or organisations; 3. Objectivity, which would ensure that the awarding of contracts, making appointments should be made on merit alone; 4. Accountability for their actions decisions and submits to whatever scrutiny was appropriate to their office; 5. Openness: to be open and provide reasons and explanation for decisions and only restrict information where the public interest demands; 6. Honesty: office holders have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties; 7. Leadership: public office holders should promote the principles of public life and support those principles and lead by example.

In many respects these principles were nothing new as they echoed the concerns of late nineteenth-century gentlemanly MPs who set great store around the virtues of honesty, self-discipline and a degree of independence of mind (Doig, 1990).11 Nolan in his correspondence with the Prime Minister expressed concern about the appointment of special advisers who should be subject to the Principles of Public Life and should uphold the political impartiality of the civil service. Clearly, Nolan regarded the Seven Principles as an educational vehicle to promote acceptable standards of conduct. Whether this was realistic it was certainly idealistic. Martin Bell, the journalist who had contested the parliamentary seat of Tatton in 1997 and defeated Neil Hamilton, recorded that on becoming an MP he, along with all MPs, signed-up to the Seven Principles. He added with an element of mischief: ‘We were even given them on a little wallet-sized card to remind us of them in case we had forgotten’. They were, Bell quipped, a ‘sort of ethical credit card’. Many, however, did choose to forget (M. Bell, 2010).12 Indeed, between c.1994 and 2010 there had been a growing concern in government circles concerning the venality of MPs. Seemingly the labours of Lord Nolan and his successors on the standing committee on Standards in Public Life had come to nought. The political journalist, Peter Oborne, in his evidence to the Committee now chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly, opined that the Seven Principles had been negated as there had been the opposite: dishonesty, secrecy and grotesque lack of leadership on ethical matters and partiality.13

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The attempts to reform the conduct of MPs following the Reports of the Standards Committee were slow and protracted. Nolan had observed that there was a need for greater scrutiny of MPs’ expenses and a special committee was established to that end and it met between 1997 and 20. It investigated MPs’ expenses but it met with obstruction from the two main parties, Conservative and Labour who politicised the situation using it to discredit each other in a series of exchanges of sleaze allegations. In 1998 a new Commissioner was appointed, Elizabeth Filkin, who had been Adjudicator of the Inland Revenue. She met with obstruction and ill-will and was thought to be too zealous, MPs claimed. Despite the Committee of Standards’ recommendations MPs continued to extract as much as they could from the expenses account: ‘The culture was pernicious. The House of Commons behaved like a company that certified its own accounts or hired a hole-in-the-wall firm of book keepers’ (M. Bell, 2010).14

MPs’ Expenses Scandal The consequences of the Committee of Standards and the subsequent reports of Elizabeth Filkin, the second Commissioner, after Sir Gordon Downey, was scrupulous and forensic in her examination of the evidence but she faced obstruction, bullying and deception among ministers, ordinary MPs and leading members of the Conservative opposition. Both Labour and Conservatives colluded when they deployed the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee to negate her recommendations. However, it was clear that leading politicians were ‘corrupt, liars and cheats who covered up their own wrong doing’ (Bell, 2010). Filkin discovered that Mo Mowlam, Minister for Northern Ireland, had accepted but failed to declare a donation of £5000 to her research fund. Similarly, Bob Wareing a backbench Labour MP and opponent of the Iraq war had also failed to declare a donation but the Privileges Committee inflicted punishment by suspension from the House of Commons. Teresa Gorman, a Conservative MP and Geoffrey Robinson, a Labour Minister, were both found to have invested in an offshore trust. The Privileges Committee suspended Gorman from the House of Commons for a month but Robinson was cleared (Oborne, 2008).15 The disparities of treatment were impossible to justify but were indicative of partiality and favouritism. The expenses scandal of 2008 was surely clear evidence of the venality of MPs. Journalists at the Daily Telegraph had uncovered information that a computer disk containing the expenses details of all 640 MPs had gone

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missing. As we have seen the MPs had fought a rear guard action in the High Court to prevent publication of their expenses over a four-year period. Extraordinarily, it transpired that a journalist at the Daily Telegraph was in possession of the computer disk. It provided the information for a classic news scoop. It also provides comprehensive source of evidence which is invaluable to historians. Publication of the expenses files revealed extravagance, grasping penny-pinching and comic absurdity. More importantly it reflected a sense of entitlement. Many MPs claimed that their expenses claims were within the rules but public perceptions concluded that using public money in such an excessive way was illegitimate. Moreover, politicians were not to be trusted. For example, Elliot Morley (Lab. Scunthorpe) claimed £16,000 for a mortgage that had already been paid off. He was arrested and charged with fraud. Similarly, David Chaytor (Lab. Bury North) had claimed £13,000 for a property that he owned outright. Margaret Moran (Lab. Luton South) renovated three properties including £2250 for the treatment of dry rot at a seaside house a 100 miles away from her constituency by repeated changes to her designated home. This was so-called flipping of which many MPs practised. Douglas Hog, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, had claimed £2115 for clearing a moat in the garden of his country estate. Additionally he had claimed £18,000 for a full-time gardener and £671 for a mole catcher and £200 a year for maintenance of an Aga oven. Sir Peter Viggers attempted to claim £1645 for a floating house for the ducks on his pond but this was refused by the fees office. Sir Gerald Kauffman (Labour MP) claimed £ 6685 for a Bang and Olufsen television. However, there were 29 MPs who did not claim any expenses even though they were entitled to do so. The systemic issue of second homes allowance revealed the abuse of ‘flipping’ the reality of which meant that public funds were used, repeatedly, to buy a new property often in London as a second home to enable MPs to live in London for their duties in Parliament. The property could be sold, invariably for a profit and so allow a more valuable property to be purchased. It was in effect profiteering and public funds were being used for personal gain by MPs. The greed of MPs was revealed against a backdrop of financial turbulence in the wake of the credit crunch that had begun in the USA in 2006. It was clear that there had been excessive risk-taking, principally by means of mortgage-backed securities (mbs). House prices had risen steadily and expectations that house prices would continue rising which encouraged households to accumulate debt via mortgage loans; and many households

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were encouraged to borrow to the limits of their ability to repay. Much of the borrowing was risky causing subprime borrowers to default, forcing banks and other lenders to foreclose. In Britain the revelations concerning MPs’ expenses became inflamed by the credit crunch which began in Wall Street when it became clear that a vast range of debt had accumulated in the housing markets of Britain and other European states. There were at least two basic dimensions to this occurrence: mortgages had been advanced to people whose ability to maintain their payments was doubtful with the consequence that financial institutions were holding vast sums of toxic assets largely in the form of derivatives. In Britain, too, there had, since the early 1990s, been a rapid growth of a number of banks, principally the Royal Bank of Scotland which had grown dramatically as it bought up a number of smaller financial institutions. The Director of RBS, Fred Goodwin, ambitious and driven, secured the take-over of the Dutch Bank AMRO. It was a step too far and RBS crashed unable to honour its debts. Appropriate due-diligence had been lacking. Further the marketisation of the British state since the ‘big bang’ had witnessed a dramatic expansion of the financial economy. Former building societies had been transformed into banks again deploying new financial instruments to raise credit. Northern Rock was a notable example; and when it collapsed its customers were to be found queuing around the streets of their Northern Rock local branch seeking to withdraw their cash. In some respects the concurrence of the MPs’ expenses scandal and the hyper-inflation which had begun in the USA and which compromised the British financial institutions was a perfect storm which amplified public dismay at the conduct of its politicians. In many respects the revelations concerning politicians and bankers were part of the overarching effect of globalisation of which the international status of the London Stock Exchange was a key component. In many respects globalisation enabled money to move faster. Hedge-fund managers moved ‘hot money’ around the globe. Plutocrats and Russian oligarchs set up home in London. Ostentatious consumption was writ large across the capital. MPs living and working in London were not immune to the hothouse conditions of London life; and many were seduced by its glamour. Moreover, London was an expensive place to live. Thus MPs often sought consultancies to boost their salaries and to speculate in the property market by means of ‘flipping’ which was a form of property speculation pump primed by public money from the House of Commons expense account.

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Governing London We have seen, already, that governing London had long been problematic. Its sheer size and its myriad of public bodies had long presented challenges to politicians whether civic or parliamentary. The later nineteenth century had seen the establishment of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) which proved effective in terms of infrastructural development but was unpopular because it lacked accountability and was prone to corruption scandals. In the later twentieth century the notorious case of Westminster City Council leader, Dame Shirley Porter, the Tesco heiress, moved the District Auditor, to conclude: ‘My provisional view is that the council was involved in gerrymandering which I am minded to find is a disgraceful and improper purpose and not a purpose for which a local authority may act’ (J. Magill).16 It was not gerrymandering in the technical sense as it did not involve the redrawing of electoral boundaries as had originally been the case in Massachusetts where the governor, Elbridge Gerry, redrew electoral boundaries (1812) to the benefit of the Democratic Party. In the UK, similarly, the Protestant dominated Unionist Party in Ulster who had extended the electoral boundaries of London Derry so that Protestants would outnumber Catholics in the centre of the town. Additionally, the Ulster Unionist Party would dominate the Assembly at Stormont. Rather, Porter’s scheme would gentrify the Borough of Westminster as it was intended to secure a Conservative control by social-geo-political engineering. Additionally, Magill stated that, as District Auditor, he was required, under the terms of the Local Government Finance Act (1982), to recover losses or deficiency caused by the wilful misconduct of any person. Porter claimed that she was a victim of a vendetta which had overtones of anti-­ Semitism. She went to live in Israel. Nevertheless Westminster City Council succeeded in freezing her assets located in Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands. Porter’s motive was not money for personal gain. Rather she was driven to sustain the London Borough of Westminster as a Conservative held place for the sake of prestige. However, there were claims that Magill had been overzealous in his approach; and in 2010 Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary announced that the Audit Commission would be scrapped as it no longer served its prime purpose of ensuring that ratepayers’ money was spent appropriately. This was an extraordinary decision given the revelations about Shirley Porter. What had motivated Porter? Essentially, she was afraid that the Conservatives would lose

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control of the City of Westminster in the next round of municipal elections. She sought therefore to change the social demography of Westminster Borough by evicting poorer tenants from the City and offering the vacant dwellings for sale to wealthier social types who she believed would be potential Conservative voters. It was presented under the banner ‘Building Stable Communities’. It was gentrification by stealth. It was also clear that she was often outmanoeuvred by Ken Livingstone, the Labour Leader of the Greater London Council, who had used Millennium GLC funds to promote the Westminster Registration Project to encourage ethnic minorities to register to vote in the belief that they would vote for Labour candidates. This was regarded by some as using public funds for political party advantage. This was no doubt the case but it was not on the scale of Shirley Porter’s scheme. However, the contest for the Borough of Westminster was fierce as it would be a prestigious political prize.

Local Government Finance How should local finance operate? Traditionally local authorities raised revenue via the collection of rates on property. Increasingly, after the Municipal Corporations Act (1835) central government provided the Rate Support Grant, which was then topped-up by local revenues derived from the collection of rates. The issue of rates and interest groups— domestic ratepayers and business ratepayers—was often fraught. Indeed the introduction of a new rates system—the so-called Community Charge—met with fierce opposition in Scotland and in England. Opponents dubbed the Community Charge as the Poll tax which had originally been a significant grievance and cause of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. In the last decade of the twentieth century it lacked legitimacy and was a contributory factor in the downfall of Margaret Thatcher.

London Docklands The London Docklands project was perhaps the most prominent physical symbol of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, was the prime mover in setting up the London Docklands Development Corporation. He had, before pursuing a life in politics been a successful property developer. Moreover, his experience in Liverpool following riots in the city in 1981 convinced him that investment in deindustrialised city centres could bring about urban renewal

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and social harmony. Moreover the Development Corporation model was a good fit for Thatcher’s general contempt of local government institutions especially if they were Labour controlled. We have seen already that London was a difficult city to govern with its myriad of authorities and of course its sheer size. The Docklands covered an area of some 470 acres and stretched out and across a number of municipalities. The London Docks had fallen into decline as the new technology of containerships had caused the relocation of the docks further east to Barking in the Thames estuary. The rationale for the Development Corporation model was powerful. The Conservative government had little difficulty in passing the appropriate legislation. In the House of Lords Baroness Birks objected, arguing that it was undemocratic and arbitrary in its imposition on the people of London but her argument carried little weight. The promoters of the measure were confident that it was the largest development in any European city at that time. For the Prime Minister it was a prestige project that was consistent with enterprise culture that she wished to promote. The ambition was clear although some of the consequences were not. London sucked in funds from overseas and the opening-up of the London Stock Exchange became a magnet for dirty money as well as for money that had been laundered elsewhere before arriving in London (Knowles, 2017).17 When British police officers investigating the Brinks Mat £26 million Gold Bullion robbery went to Miami, they discovered that the Brinks Mat money had been taken by a drugs ring and distributed to various banks in the Caribbean before making a sanitised reappearance in London for numerous development schemes in. What were the consequences of these events? Most notably London continued to be the destination of laundered money and within London local citizens were priced out of the domestic housing market an investigation by Transparency International reported that 40 per cent out of a total £6 billion of domestic dwellings were purchased by overseas companies or overseas individuals. David Hames, Director of Policy for Transparency International, reported that in the Borough of Westminster 10 per cent of domestic dwellings were foreign-owned. Additionally, Hames claimed he had identified 40 dwellings worth a total of £4.2 billion and that a high proportion of the purchasers were traced to ‘high risk money laundering states’. However, it was often difficult to identify individuals as much of the purchase documentation was signed by solicitors. Nevertheless, a number of individuals had supplied information to Hames including estate agents and property developers. Property developers also reported that

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they had agreed with the then-Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on a ‘loose’ set of guidelines that UK citizens should be given first opportunity to purchase but there was little detail on how this might work. After Johnson the new Mayor, Sadiq Khan, had commissioned a further investigation which found that of 299 new homes in Baltimore Wharf that 87 per cent of the purchasers were located overseas. Additionally, Hames claimed that a high proportion of those were located in China and Singapore. How should we interpret this account in relation to the study of corruption in the UK? First, Transparency International is widely respected for its work on corruption. Second the globalisation of money transfer makes for considerable difficulties when trying to trace transactions. The observation that there was a ‘loose’ set of guidelines provided by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London fits with his generally casual approach to the detail of an agreement. Overall, the history of the Docklands development shows that it was a product of its time: the money culture created by the ‘big bang’ and the exhortation to liberate enterprise produces inequalities and illegitimate use of power. The development of the Docklands continued even after Boris Johnson had become Prime Minister. For example, Richard Desmond, a property developer sought approval for a contract at the West Ferry Print Works on the Isle of Dogs. However, Lord Adonis, a Labour Peer raised questions in the House of Lords suggesting impropriety in the granting of the contract. Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for housing, approved the project which saved Desmond £4.5 million in local taxes and Desmond reciprocated by making a donation to Conservative Party funds. Jenrick subsequently admitted that he had acted improperly. In a subsequent Cabinet reshuffle Boris Johnson relieved Jenrick of his post probably as much for Jenrick’s protection rather than punishment. Johnson has often claimed that he is making financial sacrifices by pursuing a life in politics (Maddox, 2021).18

The London Olympics 2012 The search for prestige has been a significant ambition of London’s politicians in the post-Thatcher years. Securing its bid for the Summer Olympic Games in 2005 to be held in 2012 stimulated a vast array of public works. The International Olympic Committee had long insisted that in the granting of the Games to a particular city required the provision of facilities that constituted a legacy. For London the chosen site for the Games in East

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London was at Stratford. As we have seen major infrastructural and building projects generate fierce competition between bidders which necessitates interaction between public and private markets. Indeed, Transport for London was able to complete the Docklands Light Railway project which connected Canary Wharf to the old city.

Politics, 1997–2020 The Nolan commission had, originally, been established in 1994  in the wake of the cash for questions scandal and the Aitken case. The Election of 1997 was significant in that the issue of corruption was a notable element of the contest especially with Blair’s accusations of sleaze against the Conservatives. New Labour it seemed was clean and would be the ‘Servants of the People’. However, there were certain contradictions underlying such a claim. Diminishing New Labour’s reliance on trade union funding and promoting the idea that Labour would be friendly to business was a dangerous step in this context. This was soon exemplified when Blair met with Bernie Ecclestone, the formula one motor racing impresario, who sought to gain exemption from the government’s intention to ban tobacco advertising at sporting events. At prime minister’s questions, 13 November 1997 Blair was forced to concede he would meet with the heads of other sports—rugby, cricket, snooker—to consider their claims. This was a spectacular own goal and the Conservatives delighted in Blair’s discomfort. William Hague, the new leader of the Conservatives, exulted in the assertion that Labour was in ‘turmoil and chaos’. Significantly, Blair did not repudiate Thatcher’s doctrine about free markets as he sought to sever Labour’s dependence on trade union funding. Martin Bell suggested that Blair’s meeting with Ecclestone was unwise. Subsequently, Bell advocated a tougher system of discipline in order to punish the ‘creeps, crooks and careerists’ (Bell, 2007).19 He singled out Peter Mandelson, David Blunket and John Prescott as serial offenders of the parliamentary expenses system. Indeed, a significant feature of the post-modern political class was its avarice and venality with the Conservatives and New Labour equally involved in milking the system. In the furore over Ecclestone it was imperative that Blair and New Labour had to be seen to be taking steps to root out corruption within its own ranks. Blair chose a soft target: Mohamed Sarwar who had been elected Labour MP for Glasgow Govan constituency in May 1997. Claims of irregularities in that election and Glasgow’s pervasive corrupt reputation and the suspension of Pat Lally as Glasgow’s Lord

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Provost enabled Blair and New Labour to adopt, if not the moral high ground, then at least being seen to have taken action in respect of corruption.

The New Corruption In 1944 a Gallop Opinion poll recorded that 35 per cent of voters thought that politicians were out for themselves, but 36 per cent thought that politicians were selfless and committed to advance the good of the country. However 22 per cent of those questioned thought that politicians put the interest of their political party first. By 2014, of those asked 48 per cent thought that politicians pursued their own interests first and only 5 per cent thought that politicians acted for the good of the country. By 2023 of those asked 63 per cent thought that politicians pursued their own interests first. Lack of trust and numerous scandals, particularly Owen Paterson’s earnings for consultancy work outside his Parliamentary duties which were in breach of lobbying rules, was the most notable example. Additionally, David Cameron’s lobbying on behalf of Green sill Capital bank in 2020 was widely regarded as inappropriate behaviour for a former prime minister. Moreover, when Cameron was interviewed by the House of Commons’ Standards and Privileges Committee his responses were less than convincing. The government had established a scheme known as the Covid Corporate Financing Facility to help companies affected by the economic recession caused by the pandemic. William Crothers had been the UK Government’s Chief Financial Officer from 2012 to 2015 and he was instrumental in introducing Lex Greensill to the government which gave him access to the government’s procurement procedures. Crothers, whilst still a civil servant, became a director of Greensill Capital whilst still a civil servant and he did not declare his association to the Civil Service Ethics Commission and nor did declare his association with Greensill to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. The Greensill affair revealed that the ‘revolving door’ (S.  Wilks-Heed, 2015)20 practice of senior civil servants taking up appointments in the private sector was still active. Jeremy Heywood, former Cabinet Secretary, was also implicated as he had taken-up a directorship with Green Sill whilst still a civil servant. The early part of the twenty-first century has witnessed a resurgence of corruption and politicians’ reputations had sunk to an all-time low. This

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was due to the fact that the political class had become increasingly remote from the citizens that it should serve. Traditionally, the ruling class, in the UK, drew its members from individuals whose status had already been manifest because of their position in society: landowners who relied on their existing inherited wealth which enabled them to pursue a public ruling role. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the increasing importance of trade, empire and industry brought new men into the political life of the state. The principal vehicle for the recruitment of these emerging elites was not only derived from their wealth and status but also to the emergence of political parties which, essentially represented interests (Vincent, 1966).21 Traditionally, this has shaped many historical accounts of change with successive power bases—land, business, labour—but more recently the political class has been made up, increasingly, of individuals who have pursued no other career than politics. In consequence the political class—those that rule—has become increasingly detached from the society that they govern. The prime consequence of this development has been that the political class is not only remote but it has also become unaccountable. Invariably this leads to corruption. Indeed in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic the UK’s Political Class have become mired in a new Corruption.

From Political Spin to the Assault on Truth A significant feature of the remoteness of the political class from the citizenry at large is the emergence of press secretaries along with strategists and election campaign directors. This had been evident in the recent past. For example, Bernard Ingham, who was the Press Secretary for Margaret Thatcher throughout her premiership (1979–1990). Ingham’s abrasive style was notorious and he had developed, to a high level, the art of political spin. Indeed he was the ‘first spin doctor’ with his ability to turn bad news into good news by news management. If Ingham was the founder of spin then Alistair Campbell, press secretary and campaign director for Tony Blair from 1997, continued the fine art of political spin. There are a number of issues that result from the strategies of news management. The first is the election campaign: it is essential to get the party’s election programme into the public domain including the newspaper press and other media; principally television and digital communication. The second issue relates to protecting the prime minister from rough handling by news reporters and other inquisitors. There were numerous

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pitfalls: first when does spin become a lie? The prime minister should not lie; and constitutionally cannot lie. Perhaps the most noteworthy case of this arose over the Alistair Campbell’s report regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. The Report popularly referred to as the ‘dodgy dossier’ (February 2003) which claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; and that Iraq had the capability to attack British military bases in Cyprus within 45 minutes. Had it been ‘sexed-up’? Was it instrumental in the suicide of the government scientist, David Kelly? The Chilcot Inquiry concluded that the original intelligence was incorrect (2009). Further, the Labour Government pursued a rear guard action to delay the publication of the report; and the Foreign Office successfully overturned a High Court judgement concerning the publication of correspondence between Tony Blair and George W. Bush. This brings us to the broader issue of trust. Can the art of spin and the political lie explain why there is a lack of trust in politicians? Public opinion polls and surveys, not just of voting intentions but whether politicians can be relied upon to tell the truth is a useful starting point. Trust is a vital component of a healthy polity. In the British case it would reach a stage of crisis during the Brexit campaign and the General Election of 2019 which had cemented Boris Johnson’s hold on the office of Prime Minister until the fall-out that commenced with the so-called Party Gate scandal.

From Brexit to the Pandemic The Conservative Party had been fractious and divided despite the opt-­ out clauses that John Major had been able to secure in the Maastricht Treaty. On the right wing of the Conservative Party there was a group of MPs, known as Euro-sceptics, who became increasingly strident in their criticism of UK membership of the European Union and they coalesced around the European Research Group (ERG) which was founded by Sir Michael Spicer in 1993. The ERG attracted MPs who were wedded to the principle of the sovereignty of Parliament. Further, a consequence of the MPs’ expenses scandal was the Parliamentary Standards Act (2009) had established the Independent Standards Authority (IPSA) which established a source of income for the ERG and the administration of MPs’ subscriptions to pooled services. This enabled the ERG as an un-­ incorporated association to fund research and establish a social media network at taxpayers’ expense. Further, its un-incorporated status meant that

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there was no obligation to publish accounts. This seems remarkable given the, potentially, far-reaching aim of the ERG. The campaign to secure a referendum on the matter of the UK’s membership of the European Union was finally conceded by the Prime Minister, David Cameron in 2016. The vote leave pressure group consisted of the constitutional purists such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Steve Baker and William Cash; the Populists most notably, Nigel Farage; and a number of wealthy businessmen including Aaron Banks who had been a Conservative Party donor but in 2014 he decided to donate £100,000 to UKIP and a further £1 million in 2016. He had numerous offshore accounts; and a diamond mine in South Africa and a licence to mine for diamonds in Lesotho. Additionally, Banks, Richard Tice and Andrew Wigmore donated £4.3 million to the vote leave campaign. Wigmore had significant property interests and a diplomat role in Belize from which he was dismissed for misconduct in January 2017 as he had met Donald Trump, the then-­ President Elect of the USA, in contravention of Wigmore’s duties ‘not to interfere in the internal affairs of another country’. Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the vote leave campaign, was also the founder of the ‘Conservative Friends of Russia’ and the Tax payers Alliance, an opaquely funded organisation, which attracted many plutocrats including Aaron Banks and Wigmore who persuaded Robert Mercer, chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, to donate data capture service for the forthcoming referendum. Additionally, there were, outside the House of Commons, two single-issue parties: the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Referendum Party—both of which campaigned for the UK to withdraw from membership of the European Union. The extra-­ parliamentary groups—UKIP and the Referendum Party—were populist organisations which sought to appeal to the silent majority and those who felt abandoned by the existing state. In particular the European Union’s insistence that the European market should become increasingly integrated by means of the free movement of goods and the free movement of labour was supported by a range of societal groups. In essence UKIP, the Referendum Party and the right wing of the Conservative Party were able to stage an assault on the European Union. The personification of UKIP was Nigel Farage, a journalist and radio broadcaster and former member of the Conservative Party which he left in 1992. The Conservative Party had been riven with disagreement on the question of UK membership of the European Union. At first sight it might be thought that this was a matter of parliamentary sovereignty but the leave campaign was also able to

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tap into anti-immigration sentiments with calls to reassert ‘control of our borders’. Within the Conservative Party the constitutional discourse that revolved around sovereignty of Parliament and lawmaking underpinned the Conservative case to depart from the European Union. Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century increasing disenchantment with politicians grew steadily and voters looked to UKIP and the Referendum Party. The credit crunch and the MPs’ expenses scandal fed growing disillusion with established political parties. We have seen that the Old Corruption of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries revolved around patronage and the management of the electoral system. The reforms of the electoral system, the civil service and the establishment of Municipal Corporations (1835) established institutions which were accountable not only to central government but also to ratepayers. Further, the subsequent civilising mission during the age of high imperialism has been as much a part of our national story as the two World Wars of the twentieth century. Moreover, incidents of corruption have been perceived as exceptional; but since the latter years of the twentieth century corruption has become more pervasive and the political class has become increasingly remote and unaccountable. Additionally, the British political system enabled a political party that secured 40 per cent of the vote in a General Election to form a government has established a regime of stability. However, it has led also to the popular observation that the UK, despite devolved powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is an elected dictatorship. Additionally, since the Blair government more power has been concentrated within the Cabinet by means of the Prime Minister’s appointments of personal advisers, strategists and other aides (Powell’ 2011).22 This has emasculated the civil service but at great cost to the matter of public trust government (Oborne, 2008).23 Traditionally, the Cabinet Secretary, together with other civil servants, supplied wise counsel to the Prime Minister so that he or she might avoid constitutional mishaps or worse, illegality. The Cabinet Secretary is the head of the civil service and as such he or she should, ideally, personify trust in government. However, trust in government, generally, has been eroded. Indeed there has been a return to patronage and cronyism; and that Downing Street houses a regime of courtiers. This had been apparent with Blair’s government and has become markedly present with Johnson.

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Coronavirus Pandemic The pandemic was in a sense rather like total war in that it was a test of the resilience of its people; and a test of the effectiveness of its government. Perhaps though it also raised questions related to trust and the legitimacy of its policies. The regular refrain that the government would be ‘guided by the science’ wore thin as the pandemic persisted for so long. However, the science of the advanced Western world was defined by cognitive bias which produced an expectation that the next infectious pandemic was likely to be a new strain of influenza (Hart, 2006).24 The duty of care of a government is to protect its citizens whether in war or in health and well-­ being. But other questions arise concerning the ethical basis of governance. First, can the government be trusted? Has government taken all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of the citizenry? Arguably Boris Johnson as Prime Minister failed the trust test. Why was this? The Conservative Party and, specifically, the MPs using the mechanism of the 1922 Committee is concerned with, who can we have as Party Leader and win a General Election? After the end of the First World War the Parliamentary Conservatives were content to sustain the Coalition with the Liberals confident that Lloyd George could win the so-called Coupon Election in 1918. He had won the War and secured the peace and argued for heavy reparations from Germany, ‘We will squeeze the German Orange until the pips squeak’. He duly won the election of 1918. However, by 1922 Conservative MPs turned against him because they thought he could not win a General Election. The scandal around the sale of honours via intermediaries; and no doubt his open public relationship with Frances Stevenson as his mistress were prime factors that determined the decision. Thus, the 1922 Committee was established as an essential provision for Conservative MPs to decide who would be the leader of the Parliamentary Conservative Party. It became a powerful instrument whereby backbenchers could make their voice heard. After the fall of Margaret Thatcher in November 1990 the Conservative Party has had nine leaders suggesting that an individual serving more than four years was a significant achievement. The longest-serving leaders in the period were John Major (7 years) and David Cameron (11 years). The rest served for much shorter durations and included William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. None of these served as leaders again. Theresa May served as leader and Prime Minister following Brexit and lasted slightly less than four years. She was succeeded by Boris Johnson in July 2019 and he

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secured a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats. Johnson fell in May 2022 in the wake of the so-called Party Gate scandal. How can we explain these tumultuous events? Johnson was perhaps the most notable populist-style politician to become prime minister since Lloyd George. Such a statement requires some explanation. Populism has become of late a useful term to explain how a politician can secure political support from those sections of the population whose voice has not been heard by existing party machines. Populists claim to speak for the forgotten. Their political rhetoric promises a new dawn. Donald Trump in the USA can certainly be regarded in this light. Narendra Modi in India and Victor Orban in Hungary come to mind. Populists tend to make grand claims about what they can achieve. Thus Donald Trump’s claim to build a wall to keep out immigrants from Mexico is one example. Whether Boris Johnson fits this type is a matter of debate. In some respects yes he did fit the typology: during the Brexit campaign Johnson deployed the use of red Battle bus which had posters claiming that the UK transferred £350 million a week to the European Union and therefore by leaving the EU would enable the same amount of money could be transferred to the NHS. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) refuted the claim reporting that it was around a net contribution £199 million. This is significant as it illustrates Johnson’s propensity to lie which was already well known and documented by Ken Livingston during the election campaign for the Mayoralty of London (Livingstone, 2011).25 Indeed it was a significant ‘assault on truth’ (Oborne, 2021).26 In the January 2019 General Election Campaign in Oldham Johnson Live on Sky News claimed that a government led by him would build 40 new hospitals. This was not true and the government had only allocated funds for six hospitals between 2020 and 2025. Further, funding for upgrading existing hospitals would not come on stream until 2025–2030. Whether this was a lie or confusion about budgets remains to be seen. More dangerously Johnson claimed that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had made a speech saying that a Labour government would abolish the armed forces. This was not true. Populist politicians are wont to make grand claims with rhetorical flourish; but often their performance in office fails to steer actual policy. Conventional wisdom suggests that populists cannot govern and become disenchanted by the drudgery of everyday parliamentary procedures. For Johnson the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a lucky break as it enabled him to strut on the world stage deploying, again, grand

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claims by means of rhetoric and bluster. At the same time it enabled him to escape from growing discontent with his failures at home. The notion that populists are bound to fail may bring some comfort but the damage left behind can be significant (Werner Muller, 2016).

Repairing the Damage? There is no escape from the fact that ‘Johnson was a source of serious disruption even from the outset and throughout his tenure’ (Blick & Hennessy, 2022).27 Even the end of his time in office has left significant uncertainties about the legitimacy of parliament which he had mislead. Further his departure from office raises questions about the Conservative Party and the expediency of thought displayed by the 1922 Committee. Now in the twenty-first century we have seen the 1922 Committee exert its power again, first supporting Theresa May but then rejecting her because she had been unable to secure arrangements with the European Union that were acceptable to the party following the vote leave result of the Referendum. The 1922 Committee then chose Boris Johnson, as the man to win a General Election. After all he had secured Brexit. However, the Conservative MPs were forced to dispose of him in the wake of the Party Gate scandal. Johnson had failed the test of the pandemic for rule breaking and not telling the truth. Further, the convergence of the special conditions of the pandemic; and the Owen Paterson affair concerning his consultancy fees even though he was still an MP exposed Johnson’s limitations. The attempted cover-up of Paterson’s extra-parliamentary earnings was the last straw. Johnson’s fall was both a failure of policy and a failure of character. In particular his statements to the House of Commons following reportage of social gatherings in Downing Street in December 2020 had been misleading. The Daily Mirror Report, November 2021 claimed that the Prime Minister and his staff had broken lockdown rules at ‘a packed leaving-do when the rest of the country was in lockdown’; and the Queen sat alone in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle grieving the death of her husband, Prince Phillip. The symbolism was certainly powerful. Additionally, Johnson had been advised by government scientists that a new variant of Covid pandemic-Omicron-was likely to spread rapidly. Clearly, the public health challenge was still on the table which meant that the rules about social distancing should still have been observed.

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The furore following the Daily Mirror Report forced the prime minister to concede an investigation which would be conducted by the Second Cabinet Secretary, Sue Gray. Her report was a forensic investigation of the parties held at Downing Street against the backdrop of the pandemic when the government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions to their lives when some of the behaviour surrounding the gatherings was ‘difficult to justify’. Some of the behaviour represented a serious failure to ‘observe the high standards of those working at the heart of government’. Additionally, there were failures of ‘leadership’ and ‘judgement’. She added that some of the events should not have taken place and some should not have been allowed to develop as they did. She also said that there had been excessive consumption of alcohol and that the consumption of alcohol was not ‘appropriate in a professional work place at any time’. Her conclusion was critical as she reported that a number of the staff that she interviewed raised concerns about the behaviours they ‘witnessed at work but felt unable to do so’. She added, ‘no member of staff should feel unable to challenge poor conduct where they witness it’ (S. Gray, 2022).28 In addition to Gray’s examination of 62 events, observation of lockdown rules was also subject to police investigation—operation Hillman. The Metropolitan Police also issued 126 fixed penalty notices on eight dates between 13 November and 1 April 2021. It was clear that the culture in 10 Downing Street was, at least, unprofessional and would not have been acceptable in any places of work elsewhere in the public sector. Whether it constituted corruption is questionable but it was certainly misconduct in public office. Johnson’s statement to the House of Commons was misleading even though he claimed that it was made in ‘good faith’. He was required to give evidence to the House of Commons Privileges Committee on 22 March 2023. The deliberations of the Committee are still to be completed.

Corruption and the Pandemic Just as war creates opportunities for corrupt tendering for weaponry and equipment or profiteering for goods in short supply so the pandemic created opportunities for corrupt tendering. Transparency International UK identified 73 questionable contracts worth more than £3.7 billion. Most of these were for personal protective equipment (PPE). The 73 contracts represented a fifth of all the contracts. Further, 30 contracts were made to companies with connections to the Conservative Party.

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Corrupt Britain Assessment We have seen, previously, how the reforms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries together with cultural factors such as the Whig interpretation of history which implanted the idea of gradual improvement and the virtue of an unwritten constitution served to make the UK, apparently, unblemished by corruption. Further, because of Empire and the civilising mission that went with it UK political elites have persisted in the view that if corruption is a problem then it is much worse in other countries. This view has recently been challenged by Transparency International: ‘discussion in the UK about the problem of corruption still holds to the view, rather complacently that corruption is unfortunate but it is something that happens elsewhere’.29 The pandemic was in many respects a revelatory moment concerning the probity and honesty of many sectors of society including the NHS, the police and the prison service (Whyte, 2015). In particular the tendering process for personal protective equipment (PPE) was open to abuse because of lax governance; insufficient checks which meant that ‘the door was open to unscrupulous individuals who sought to profit at public expense’.30 Politics, too, had become increasingly corrupt since c. 1990. In particular there was open soliciting of access to ministers and civil servants pursued by the wealthy for their own advantage; and a search for honours and titles. Further, democracy is at risk and vulnerable to manipulation. Indeed money has penetrated politics perhaps as never before. Indeed the referendum campaign revealed that more than half of the donation funds, £125 million for the vote leave campaign were supplied by a mere ten donors. Public opinion surveys suggested that 76 per cent of those asked thought that financial interests were too great and had an adverse consequence for the country. Again 59 per cent of those asked thought that donations from private companies should be banned and 28 per cent of those asked thought that most MPs were corrupt. The Electoral Commission’s findings on the referendum found that 52 individuals made donations amounting to £135 million. The 52 donors made up less than 1 per cent of all those qualified to vote and the 52 accounted for 16 per cent of all donations. The dangers of donation are clear: reliance on very wealthy donors raises the spectre of state capture which can also mean that policy determination stems from unaccountable individuals who are seeking to promote their own interests. The regime of donations to political parties is also

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linked to the granting of honours, peerages and knighthoods. For example, the custom that retiring prime ministers issue a resignation list of recipients of honours is open to abuse. Thus in 2016 David Cameron nominated Ian Taylor, a wealthy oil magnate who had operations in Serbia, Libya, Iran and Iraq could potentially run the risk of conflict of interest. Finally, the Conservative Party operates a Leaders’ group and solicits donations of £250,000 specifically to fund the Conservative Party Leader given that the Leader of the Party is regarded as a crucial figure in any election campaign. The Johnson case exposed gaps in the much-vaunted British Constitution which still remain open to unscrupulous men and women. The requirement to ensure good behaviour remains a challenge for the British State. We began this study of corruption in the medieval period and cited Magna Carta as a decisive statement to check abuse of power by the king. Now in 2023 the legitimacy of the parliamentary system is under the microscope and will surely need reform.

Notes 1. J.K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society. 2. Margaret Thatcher, 1987, Interview for Woman’s own magazine, in Margaret Thatcher Foundation: speeches, interviews and other Statements. 3. A. Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1875). 4. Press G.R.  Searle, Corruption in British Politics and Society 1895–1930 (Oxford, Clarendon 1987) pp. 9–12. 5. L. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (London, Macmillan, Second Edition, pp. 1–61 (1961). 6. Centre for Policy Studies, September 1975, Margaret Thatcher Foundation.org.uk 7. M.  Thatcher, ‘Interview with Jenny Murray, Woman’s Hour’, Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 8. A.  Marwick, British Society since 1945 (London, Penguin 1982) pp 308–324. 9. D. Marquand, Mammon’s Kingdom: An Essay on Britain Now (London, Penguin 2014). 10. P.  Jones, From Virtue to Venality: Corruption in the City (Manchester, MUP 2013) pp. 95–111. 11. A.  Doig, Westminster Babylon: Sex Money and Scandal in British Politics (London, Allison and Busby 1990) p. 27. 12. M. Bella Very British Revolution: The Expenses scandal and how to save our Democracy (London Icon Books) 2010.

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13. Committee of Standards and M. Bell p 29. 14. Ibid. p 3. 15. Peter Oborne, The Triumph of the Political Class (London, Simon and Schuster 2008) pp. 215–. 16. In 1994 after the cases of Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith had accepted money to ask questions in the House of Commons on behalf of Mohamed El fayed. The consequence of the cash for questions had forced John Major, the prime minister, to initiate an investigation chaired by Lord Nolan on the matter of standards of conduct in public life. L, Final Report for Westminster City Council’, Audit Commission (May 1996). 17. T. Knowles, the Times 4 March 2017. 18. B. Maddox, Financial Times, 6 August 2021. 19. M. Bell, The Truth Sticks (London, Icon Books, 2008) p 266. 20. S.  Wicks-Heed’ in D.  Whyte, How Corrupt is Britain? (London, Pluto Press, 2015). 21. J. Vincent, The formation of the British Liberal Party 1857–1868 (London, Penguin, 1972). 22. J. Powell, The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World (London: Random House 2011). 23. P.  Oborne, The Triumph of the Political Class (London, Pocket Books, 2008). 24. J.T. Hart, the Political Economy of Health Care (2006). 25. K.  Livingstone, You can’t say that: Memoirs (London, Faber and Faber 2011) pp 585–589. See also S. Payne, The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story (London: Macmillan 2022). 26. P. Oborne, The Assault on Truth (New York: Simon and Schuster (2008) pp 53–65. 27. A.  Blick and P.  Hennessy, The Bonfire of the Decencies: Repairing and Restoring the British Constitution (London: Haus Publishing, 2022) pp 5–9. 28. S.  Gray ‘Findings of Second Permanent Secretary’ Investigation into Alleged Gatherings on Government Premises during Covid restrictions, 25 May 2022. Cabinet Office. 29. Transparency International Report UK, Take Back Control-how Big Money undermines trust in Politics’ (October 2016). 30. Transparency International: “For Whose benefit?’ ‘Transparency and the development and procurement of Covid-19 Vaccines’.

Index1

A Abbots, 27, 28, 37, 40, 43 Acton, Sir John, 13 Admiralty Court, 73 African Company of Merchants, 16 Afrikaners, 172 Aitken, Jonathan, 132, 192, 193, 203 Albemale, Earl de la Warr Duke of Somerset, 188 Americanisms, 12 America, War of Independence, 80 Andaman islands, 176 Ann, Queen, 62, 75, 81 Anthropology, 2, 4, 6–8, 13 Anti-Semitism, 199 Aquinas, Thomas, 3, 31 Aristotle, 3, 32, 58, 61 Armaments Trust, 182 Armenia, 177 Arms, munitions, viii, 16–18, 23n48, 64, 102, 124, 130, 179–183, 192 Ashburn, Lord, 81

Asquith, Herbert, 129, 131, 132 Attlee, Clement, 189 Attorneys, 28, 78, 102, 171 Auctions, 107, 121, 177 Aurungzebe, 170 Australia, 130, 172, 173, 176, 179 Austen, 131 B Bagehot, Walter, vi, vii, 12, 173 Bailiffs, 41–44, 84 Baker, Steve, 149, 207 Balliol masques, 173 Ballot Act (1872), 101 Bang, 170 Banks, Aaron, 207 Barings’ Bank, 188 Baronage, 25–29 Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, 100 Beaverbrook, 132 Beckford, William, 90

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Jones, Corrupt Britain, Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36934-6

217

218 

INDEX

Belfast, 7, 95, 101, 108, 123, 126, 130, 131, 133–137, 146–153, 156–158 Belfast house building, 148, 153 Bell, Martin, 194–196, 203 Bembridge, Charles, 60, 79, 80, 111 Bengal Famine, 89 Beresford, Lords of, 72 Berwick, 91 Bethnal Green, 86, 117 Beveridge, William, 115 Biddulph, Robert, 79 Big bang, 190–192, 198, 202 Birmingham, viii, 17, 118, 123, 124, 157, 158 Black Book, The, 71, 73, 74, 92 Black Death, 37, 38 Black market, 180, 193 Blair, Tony, vii, 143, 193, 194, 203–206, 208 Blitz of Belfast (1943), 153 Blunket, David, 203 Body politic, 10, 40, 58 Boer War, viii, 17, 102 Bombay, 168, 176–179 Booth, James, 112, 113 Bootle, Lancashire, 118 Bottomley, Horatio, 104 Boundary Extension, 122 Londonderry, 147, 149 Bourne, Cardinal, 141 Brennan, Elizabeth, 150 The Bribery and Secret Commissions Prevention League, 142, 180 Bribes Duke of Buckingham, 56, 58 Bridgewater, 101 Brinks mat bullion robbery, 201 Bristol, 38, 39, 66, 101 British South Africa company, 104–105 Buffoons, 170 Burgesses, 27, 28, 37, 42 Burghal Hidage, 39

Burgoyne, John, 89, 90, 171 Burke, Edmund, 4, 79–81, 84, 90, 169, 170, 172 Bury St. Edmunds, 39, 40, 42 Bute, Marquess of, 95, 100 Butler, Robin, 193 C Cadets, 89, 90 Calcutta, Madras, 168, 170, 174, 178, 179 Callaghan, James, 189 Cambridge, 39 Cameron, David, v, vi, 204, 207, 209, 214 Campbell, Alistair, 194, 205, 206 Canterbury, 37, 57 Cardiff, 95, 100 Cardwell, army reforms, 103 Carlisle, 91 Carlton Club, 104 Carlyle, Thomas, 111–113 Carrick Fergus, 101, 124 Carson, Edward, 147 Ulster Volunteer Force, 147 Cash, William, 207 Cash for questions, vii, 192, 194, 203, 215n16 Catholicism, 10, 133, 139 Centre for Policy studies, 189 Chamberlain, Austen, 131 Chamberlain, Joseph, viii, 17, 123–125, 157, 158, 182 Charles I, viii, 49, 52–54, 58–60, 66, 73, 74, 80, 81 Charles II, 74 Chaytor, David, vi, 197 Chicago, 133–135, 137 Chicanery, 41 Chief Constables, 126, 131, 138 Church, 7, 10, 11, 25–28, 33, 37, 40, 50–52, 65, 78, 117, 149

 INDEX 

Churchill, Winston, 115 Cinque Ports, 39 City of Architecture and Design (1999), 146 Civil service, 19, 77, 111–126, 181, 195, 208 Civil Service Reform, 103, 111–115 Clarendon (1864 Report), 14, 114, 126n6 Clergy, 52, 53, 84, 85, 123 Clive, Lord of Plassey, 4, 5, 16, 79, 80, 88–90, 165, 168–171, 175 Clyde Estuary Towns, 134, 144 Cobbett, William, 71, 73, 90, 95n5 Coffee houses, London, 63, 66 Coke, Sir Edward, 57–59, 74, 81 Committee on Standards in Public Life (Lord Nolan), viii, 143, 193 Commonwealth Games (2014), 146 Concubines, 170 Conflict of interest, viii, 9, 17, 102, 111–126, 162, 182, 214 Conrad, Joseph, 21 Conscription, 130, 182 Copeland, Ann, 153–157 Coronation Charters, oaths, 25–27, 31 Corporation, 41–43, 45, 83, 84, 88, 107, 118, 122, 123, 126, 136, 139, 141, 142, 148, 150–155, 159 Corrupt Practices (1854) Act, 117 Corrupt Practices Prevention (1883) Act, 101 Cotton, 157, 175 Council housing, 155 Coupon Election, 209 Court, 3, 20, 25–27, 29–31, 33–34, 38–40, 45, 49, 51, 54, 56–58, 63, 74, 81, 174 Courts of justice, 138 Coventry, 36 Credit crunch, 197, 198, 208 Crewe, Lord Robert, v, 142, 181

219

Crimean War 1853–56, 77, 111, 113, 114 Criminal classes, 100 Cromwell, Oliver, 38, 49, 60, 74 Cromwell, Thomas, 29, 50, 51 Cromwell Club, 149 Cronyism, 208 Crothers, William, 204 Curzon, George, 173 Cuvier, Georges, 167, 172 D Danby, Thomas, Earl of, 61, 80 Dane Law, 39 Darwin, Charles, 172 Debauchery, 170 Decadence, 19, 56, 169 Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) 1914, 141, 180 Defoe, Daniel, 78, 86 Delane, John, 113 Delhi, 168, 172, 179 Delinquency, 169 Democracy, 27, 90, 92, 100, 108, 129, 190, 213 Demography, 37, 200 Desmond, Richard, 143, 202 Despenser, Hugh, 30, 31 Dickens, Charles, 15, 20, 111, 114 Disarmament Conference, 183 District Officers, 178 Divine Right, 14, 52, 56, 59, 61, 73, 74, 81 Dodgy dossier, 206 Dole, 190 Domesday Book 1086, 37, 39 Donnan, Meta, 154, 156 Dorset, 76 Drink Licensing, 134, 135, 137, 138, 140 Drogheda, 101, 123 Duff Gordon, Alexander, 112, 113

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INDEX

Duncairn Orange Lodge, 150 Dundas, Henry, 73, 91, 95, 169 Dunedin, Lord, 105 Dunlop, John, 104, 151, 152 Dunwich, 78, 79, 92 E Easter Rising (1916), 108 East India Company (EIC), 4, 11, 16, 78, 81, 83, 89, 90, 115, 165, 167–171, 175–177 Ecclestone, Bernie, 143, 203 Eden, Anthony, 116 Edinburgh, 106, 144, 146 Education, 14, 30, 100, 112–114, 136, 173, 178 Edward II, 25, 29–31, 34 Edward the Confessor, 26 Egypt, viii, 124, 179 Election Agents, 102 Election petitions, 101, 123 Elections, vii, 9, 18, 25, 26, 35–36, 38, 44, 45, 62–64, 66, 67, 72, 79, 81–85, 89, 91, 92, 95, 99–108, 117, 118, 121, 123–126, 131–135, 137, 138, 140, 147, 149, 153, 155, 158, 159, 178, 181, 194, 200, 203, 205, 209, 210, 214 campaign costs, 102 costs, 100, 101, 131 regulation of, 35, 63, 64 Elizabeth I, 55, 77, 167 Emoluments, 9, 71, 79, 84, 91 Empire, vii, 15–16, 21, 75, 88–90, 94, 102–105, 130, 165–183, 205, 213 Etymology, 9–12 European City of Culture (1990), 142, 146 European Research Group (ERG), 206, 207

European Union (EU), vii, 4, 19, 21n1, 142, 206–208, 210, 211 Euro-sceptics, European Union, 194 Evil counsel, 25, 29–31, 56 Exchequer, 28, 32, 54, 114, 115, 125, 148, 161 Exeter, 38, 41, 43 Expenses scandal, vi, 196–198, 206, 208 F Falmouth, 101 Fancy franchises, 100, 178 Farage, Nigel, 18, 19, 207 Farquhar, Horace, 104, 105 Fauntleroy, Henry, 77, 78 Al Fayed, Mohamed, vii, 192, 215n16 Felton, John, 59 Filkin, Elizabeth, 196 Financial services, 191 Fiscal system, 72 Fitz, James, 173 Fitzwilliam, Earl, 99 Flipping, 197, 198 Fordyce, Alexander, 78 Forty shilling freeholders, 35, 84 Foulkes, Sir William, 92 Fox, Charles James, 79 Franchise act 1918, 126 Franklin, Benjamin, 2 French Wars, 73, 76, 79 F.W. Goddard and Sons Company, 107, 121 G Gallipoli, 183 Gallop Opinion poll, 204 Galton, Francis, 173 Galway, 101 Gerrymander, 11, 12, 108 Getgood, Robert, 150

 INDEX 

Gibbon, Edward, 19, 89 Gifts, 2, 8, 12, 29, 32, 42, 50, 51, 57, 62, 73, 84, 111, 132, 156, 161, 168 Gladstone, William, viii, 101, 103, 114, 115, 124, 157 Glasgow, 7, 106, 108, 126, 130–146, 152, 157–159, 203 Glorious Revolution, 61–64, 74, 75, 81 Gloucester, 38, 44, 123, 124 Gobineau, Arthur, 167 Gold, 33, 56, 105, 168, 171, 177, 180 Gold standard, 130 Good Friday Agreement (1998), 108, 131 Goodwin, Fred, 198 Gorman, Teresa, 196 Governance, vii, 4, 6–7, 19, 28, 34, 41, 45, 60, 86, 88, 90, 106, 119, 122, 126, 134, 135, 138–140, 142, 154, 156, 172, 175, 176, 178, 209, 213 Gower, John, 33 Graft, v, 10, 12, 135, 136, 142, 144, 159, 160, 187 Gray, Susan, 212 Great Reform Act (1832), 119 Great stink, 120 Great Yarmouth, 34, 101, 117 Greece, 4, 181 Greer Associates, 192 Gregory, Maundy, 105, 131 Grey, Sir Edward, 179 Guest, Freddy, 105 H Haggard, Rider, 173 Hague, William, 203, 209 Halevy, E, 116, 117 Hames, David, 201, 202 Hamilton, Neil, vii, 192, 194, 195, 215n16

221

Hampden, John, 64 Hanseatic League, 36 Harley, Edward, 64 Hastings, Warren, 4, 16, 79, 80, 86, 88, 90, 165, 169–172 Hayek, Friedrich, 189 Hayman Fowler, Francis, 106, 121 Hebb, John, 107, 121 Hedge-fund managers, 198 Henderson, Arthur, 105 Henley, Anthony, 82, 83 Henry I, 26 Henry III, 27 Henry VIII, 14, 50, 51, 54, 65 Henty, G.A., 173 Herschell (1888) Report, 107, 121 Hickey, William, 89 Hindus, 177 Hobbes, Thomas, 13, 62 Hobson, J.A., 104, 175 Hog, Douglas, 197 Hogan, Luke, 159, 160 Honesty, 5, 195, 213 Honours, 39, 52, 53, 58, 84, 94, 103–106, 114, 131, 132, 138, 152, 198, 213, 214 Honours, sale of, 57, 102, 132, 159, 209 Hooley, Ernest Tera, 104, 188 House building, 78, 108, 148, 153 House of Commons Privileges Committee, 140, 192, 212 Howard, Sir Harry, 122 Hume, David, 65 Hunt, Henry, 71, 90 Hurdis, Thomas, 85 I Impeachment, 4, 16, 57, 73, 79, 80, 88, 165, 169, 170, 172 Improvement bills, 76 Inchcape, 142, 180

222 

INDEX

India, 16, 66, 72, 77, 79, 83, 89, 166–179, 210 Indolence, 5, 65, 89, 112, 170 Ingham, Bernard, 205 Intelligence, 78, 85, 170, 206 International Stock Exchange, 190 Ireland, 72, 93–95, 101, 108, 123, 125, 129–131, 146, 147, 155, 157, 179 Irish Treaty (1921), 129 J Jamaica, 73, 75, 176 James I, 49, 53–56, 74 James II, 63, 74 Jenrick, Robert, 202 John, King, 25, 27–29, 37, 42 Johnson, Boris, 18, 19, 202, 206, 208–212, 214 Johnstone, John, 168 Junkets for votes, 143, 146 Justice, 3, 6–8, 13, 25, 26, 29, 33–34, 39, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 85, 118, 173, 193 K Kauffman, Gerald, 197 Kelly, David, 206 Kenya, 179 Khaki election, 124 King, Gregory, 38, 52 Kings Lynn, 36 Kipling, Rudyard, 166, 172, 173 Knox, Robert, 167, 172 Krupp, 182 Kynoch and Company, 124 L Lally, Patrick, 143, 203 Landed magnates, 27–29, 37, 103, 117

Langland, William, 33 Launceston, 91, 124 Leeson, Nick, 188 Legitimacy, 1, 6–7, 13, 26, 29, 31, 42, 45, 49–54, 58, 61, 76, 95, 125, 126, 177, 200, 209, 211, 214 Leicester, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41, 107, 118, 122, 123 Lenin, V.I., 133, 175 Lewes, 84 Liberal Democrats, 194 Liberals, viii, 4, 94, 101, 103, 118, 125, 129–132, 157, 209 Limerick, 101, 123 Liverpool, 7, 106–108, 119, 122, 130, 131, 133–137, 157–160, 167, 200 Livingston, David, 172 Livingston, Ken, 200, 210 Lloyd George, David, 105, 107, 108, 125, 129, 131, 132, 158, 159, 181, 209, 210 Lobbyists, vii, 192, 194 Locke, John, 62–64 London, Board of Docks, 87 London Bridge, 87 Londonderry, 101, 147, 149, 152 London, privileges, 27, 28 London, Tower of, 57, 62, 79, 80 Looting, 168, 171 Lord Provost, 137, 139, 143, 146, 203–204 Loseby, Charles MP, 131, 181 M Maastricht Treaty (1992), 194 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 4, 15, 167, 170, 171 MacDonald, James Ramsey, 132, 134–136, 139, 159 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 3, 10, 55 Madden, Sarah, 154, 156

 INDEX 

Magill, John, 199 Magna Carta, vii, 26–33, 37, 59, 214 Maine, Henry Sumner, vii, 173 Mainwaring, William, 87 Major, John, vii, 143, 192–194, 206, 209, 215n16 Malayan Towns, 179 Manchester, 90, 118, 123, 157, 167 Mandelson, Peter, 203 Marconi scandal, 125 Markets, 6, 17, 38, 39, 42, 53, 78, 100, 103, 104, 115, 123, 130, 134–136, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 161, 178, 180, 189–191, 193, 198, 201, 203, 207 Marlowe, Christopher, 31 Marvell, Andrew, 34 Marxists, 8, 166 Maxton, James, 136 May, Theresa, 209, 211 McAveety, Frank, 133 McCullagh, Crawford, 147, 148 McDonnell Commission (1915) report, 114 McGovern, John, 136, 138, 139, 141 McGowan, Henry, 183 McSkimming, John, 137 Mede, 33 Mediterranean, 32, 36, 161, 181 Members of Parliament (MPs), payment of, 25, 34, 172 Mercer, Robert, 207 Merceron, Joseph, 86–88, 117 Merchants of Death, 16, 18, 182 Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), 106, 107, 120–122, 199 Middle classes, 20, 100, 113, 115, 117 Mill, James, 167 Ministry of Munitions, 126, 131, 138, 180, 181 Mirrors for Princes, genre, 32 Misconduct in public office, 60, 212 Mittal, Lakshmi, 143

223

Modernity, 43–45, 49–67 Mompesson, Giles, 56 Monarchy, vi, 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, 25–27, 31, 33, 37, 40, 45, 49, 50, 61, 62, 64–66, 73, 74, 105 Monasteries, 51–53, 65 Moncton Mills MP, 113 Monklands, 146 Monopolies, 16, 40, 52, 54, 56, 65, 72, 77–78, 165, 167, 183 Moral economy, 7–8, 147, 152, 154, 156, 157 Morality, 2–4, 6, 8, 10, 26, 55, 61, 63, 81, 86, 140 More, Sir Thomas, 10, 11, 64, 65 Morley, Eliot, vi, 197 Morrison, Herbert, 136, 140 Mortgage-backed securities (mbs), 197 Mowlam, Mo, 196 Mughals, 5, 11, 168, 170, 179 Municipal bank, 137, 142 Murex Limited, arms manufacturers, 181 Murray, Alexander, 125 Muslims, 177 N Nabobs, 4, 83, 89 Naples, 8 Nationalised industries, 190 Netherlands, 37, 63, 75, 167, 168, 175 Newcastle, Duke of, 82–84 New Labour, 143, 145, 193, 194, 203, 204 New Zealand, 172, 179 Nicobar Islands, 176 Nixon, John, 148, 152 Nolan, Lord, vii, 5, 143, 193–196, 203, 215n16 Norfolk, Dukes of, 113

224 

INDEX

North, Lord, 81 Northampton, 39, 41, 43, 66 Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, 77, 113 Northcote-Trevelyan Report, 103, 112, 113 Northern Ireland, 9, 108, 130, 134, 146, 147, 149, 152, 156, 157, 191, 196, 208 Northern Rock, 198 Norwich, 31, 38, 39, 66, 90, 91, 93, 124 Nottingham, 29, 39, 106, 123 O O’Hara, British soldier, 174 Old Sarum, 79, 92 Oligarchy, 5, 41, 72, 83–86, 88, 118, 119, 123, 147, 148 Omichund, 170 Orientalism, 175 O’Sullivan, Timothy, 153, 155 Ottoman Empire, 130, 181 P Palestine, 130, 179 Palmerston, Lord, 113 Pandemic, 204–213 Parliament, vii, viii, 14, 16, 25, 26, 31, 33–36, 45, 51, 56–60, 63, 64, 67, 73–75, 78, 80–83, 87–89, 92, 99–108, 112–114, 117, 138, 169–172, 181, 182, 193, 194, 197, 208, 211 Partition of India, 179 Party Gate scandal, 206, 210, 211 Parvenus, 20, 86, 90, 136, 145–146, 188 Patagonian goldfields, 125 Patents, 52, 56, 57, 65 Paterson, Owen, 204, 211

Patronage, 35, 41, 42, 44, 50, 52, 54, 56, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 88, 89, 92, 95, 105, 106, 112, 114, 115, 121, 136, 141, 145, 146, 149, 157, 169, 187, 188, 208 Peasants Revolt (1381), 42, 200 Peculation, 43, 75, 80 Pelham, Thomas, 84 Penryn, 101 Personation, 9, 100, 101, 133, 149, 150 Peterborough, 99 Pickles, Eric, 194, 199 Pitt, William the Younger, 91, 94, 95, 169 Plassey, 168, 170, 175 Plato, 3 Plutarch, 10, 32 Plymouth, 42, 88, 124 Police, 126, 131, 155, 162, 176, 179, 181, 201, 212, 213 Poll tax, 42, 200 Poor law guardians, 42, 88, 118 Population, 6, 9, 36–43, 65, 66, 76, 86, 92, 108, 120, 131, 144, 146, 153, 157, 160, 169, 176, 178, 180, 191, 210 Populism, 18–19, 210 Porter, Dame Shirley, 9, 192, 199, 200 Portugal, 4, 53, 176 Post-war consensus, 192 Poulson, John, viii, 160–162 Power, 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12–13, 15, 18–20, 25–31, 34, 35, 38–42, 45, 52, 59, 60, 64–66, 74, 75, 78–82, 86, 88, 91, 94, 104, 108, 115, 117, 119, 129, 130, 132, 133, 136, 138, 141–143, 148, 149, 152, 154, 157–160, 165, 168, 169, 172, 176, 177, 179, 188, 189, 202, 205, 208, 211, 214

 INDEX 

Prescott, John, 203 Presley, Leo, 153 Press secretaries, 205 Printing technology, 50, 61 Private finance initiative (PFI), 190 Privy Seal, 28, 32 Protestantism, 52, 63, 133, 139 Public Interest Immunity Certificate, 192 Public utilities, 87, 190 Puritan, 11, 44, 65 Pym, John, 58 Q Queen Elizabeth I, 13, 54, 55, 77, 167 Queen Victoria, Empress of India, 172, 177 R Racial typology, 167 Raj, 178 Rate Support Grant, 200 Rees-Mogg, Jacob, 207 Referendum Party, 19, 207, 208 Regulating India (1784) Act, 172 Renan, Ernest, 167 Revolt India 1857, 170, 172, 174 Rewards, 32, 43, 50, 51, 53, 65, 71–73, 75, 91, 94, 95, 100, 136, 141, 144, 170, 178 Right-to-buy, 190 Riots (1935), 152 Ritchie, Alexander, 135, 136, 138–140 Ritz Hotel, Paris, 193 Robin Hood, 29 Robinson, Geoffrey, 196 Rothermere, 132 Royal Bank of Scotland, 198 Royal Statistical Society, 93

225

Roychand Premchand, 177 Rumbold, Thomas, 170 Russian oligarchs, 198 Rutland, 36 S Said, E., 5, 175 St Albans, 40–42, 101, 117 Salisbury, John of, 10, 30, 31 Salvidge, Archibald, 119, 123, 157–160 Sarwar, Mohamed, 143, 145, 203 Satraps, 168 Saunders, Ebenezer, 106, 121 Schneider, 182 Scotland, 11, 37, 50, 56, 82, 91, 95, 106, 108, 129, 134, 139, 141, 144, 146, 162, 168, 169, 176, 191, 200, 208 Secret commissions, v, 142, 181, 182 Sectarianism, 141, 145, 157 Secular, 25, 26, 42, 43, 52, 54–59, 61, 140 Seeley, John Robert, 166 Seigneurial towns, 40, 43 Septennial (1716) Act, 81 Seven Principles of Public Life, 5, 194 Seven Years War (1756–63), 176 Shakespeare, William, 55 Shaw, Albert, 106, 123, 134, 135 Shaw, George Bernard, 17, 182 Sheffield, 90, 93, 123, 160, 181 Sheriffs, 27–29, 35, 37, 39, 40, 64, 74 Shore, Sir John, 171 Shoreham, 85 Shrewsbury, 36 Silver, 33, 49, 56, 168, 177 Simony, 40, 41, 60 Sinecures, 9, 52, 71–74, 76, 79, 87, 91, 169, 188 Skoda, 182

226 

INDEX

Slavery, 16, 81, 116 Sleaze, vii, 143, 144, 193–196, 203 Sligo Borough, 101 Smith, T. Dan, 161 Smith, Tim, vii, 65, 192, 215n16 Smuggling, 85, 180 Social mobility, 50–52, 86, 88, 103, 145 Solicitors, 102, 104, 156, 169, 201 South Africa, 124, 172, 175, 179, 207 South Sea Company, Bubble, 77 Special advisers, 195 Spencer, Herbert, 173 Spin doctors, 205 Stagflation, 189 Statistics, 92–93 Stead, W.T., 134 Steffens, Lincoln, 106, 142 Stephen, James, 112, 113 Stock market, 78, 104 Stockport, 90 Strain, James, 135, 136, 138, 140, 141 Subalterns, 7, 16, 166, 171, 175, 184n19 Suez Canal, viii, 124, 176, 177 Sugar barons, 75, 90 trade, 75 Sussex, 77, 84, 85 T Tanganyika, 130, 177 Tatton, 194, 195 Taunton, 64, 91, 101, 123 Taxation, 5, 9, 34, 37, 39, 40, 42, 58, 76, 79, 81, 88, 91, 117 Taylor, A.J.P., 133 Temperance movement, 137, 140, 141, 180 Temple, Richard, 173

Thatcher, Margaret, 6, 189–192, 200, 201, 203, 205, 209 Thrift, 100, 178 Tice, Richard, 207 Tobacco, 175, 203 Totnes, 91, 101 Touchable, untouchable, 137–145 Towns, ix, 7, 26–28, 35–45, 64–67, 72, 74, 76–78, 86–88, 91, 92, 95, 99–101, 106–108, 117–119, 122–124, 126, 129, 133, 134, 147, 152, 160, 162, 174, 176–177, 180, 199 Trade Unions, 139, 189, 193, 203 Transparency International, vi, 21n1, 201, 202, 212, 213 Transportation of convicts, 176 Tribunal of Inquiry, 81, 138 Triennial (1694) Act, 81 Trollope, Anthony, 20, 104, 111, 188 Trump, Donald, 18, 19, 207, 210 Trust/entrust/trusted/mistrust, 1, 3, 6–7, 29, 32, 80, 138, 143, 194, 196, 204, 206, 208, 209 Tuberculosis, 153–156 Turner, Sir William, 147, 148, 150, 151 U United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP), 19, 207, 208 United Nations, 4 Urban ethnography, 2, 6–8, 13 V Varley, Jesse, 107, 122 Venality, 40, 50, 123, 195, 196, 203 Venetian ambassador, 54, 55 Vickers arms company, 182, 183 Viggers, Sir Peter, 197

 INDEX 

Virtues, 2, 3, 5, 13, 26, 32, 60, 62, 75, 76, 100, 153, 165, 173, 178, 182, 195, 213 W Wade, John, 9, 71–74, 90, 92 Wakerley, Arthur, 122 Wallingford, 36, 89 Walpole, Horace, 89, 165, 166, 169 Walpole, Sir Robert, 81–85 Walsingham, Francis, 13 Wareing, Bob, 196 Warnock, Edward, 149, 150 Waterford City, 101 Webster, John, 49, 55, 56 Wells, 41 Westminster, v, 9, 40, 138, 147, 158, 178 Wexford Borough, 101 Whigs, 4, 13–15, 63, 74, 78, 79, 81–86, 100, 116–117, 213 Whig tradition, 15, 93, 116, 166 White Abbey sanatorium, 148, 151, 152, 156 Wigmore, Andrew, 207

227

William of Orange, 14, 52, 74, 75, 81, 150 Winchester, 42 Wolverhampton, 107, 122 Woodstock, 41 Woodward, E.F. L, 116, 117 Working classes, 6, 18, 100, 119, 129, 139, 149, 153, 157, 178 Working Men’s Conservative Association, 119, 123, 157, 158 World Bank, 4 Wycombe, 41 Wyndham, Charles, 73 Wyvill, Christopher, 91 Y York, 14, 38, 39, 41–43 Yorkshire Association, 91 Young, Robert, 154 Yuppie, 191 Z Zaharoff, Basil, 181–183 Zinoviev Letter, 132