Rationalising Decline

Of particular note is alleged acceleration of business disengagement. Manufactures were fated as both natural and superior local leaders, in demand because of their connections, business accruement and prestige (Nenadic, 1995; Garrard, 1995). The argument for disengagment is constructed around contrasts. Thus, in the nineteenth century manufacturing had strong local representation within civil society. In the twentieth century, however, prominent local industrialists and leading professionals withdrew (Gunn, 2004). The ‘family’ business was increasingly run by the ‘rootless managers’ of corporate capitalism, who held no spatial allegiance to any one city or its institutions. Industry became more pan-national, where the epicentre of control (and the elites themselves) physically moved to London, and many of the staple industries owned by elites declined in importance (Daunton, 1996; Stacey, 1960 ).
‘Excessive calls on time’ remained the strongest disincentive to volunteering among higher socio-economic elites (and particularly those involved in manufacturing who faced hard economic times after 1918). All but the most honorific posts required a significant investment in time and frequently cash; indeed some executive posts constituted an alternative, unpaid job (Garrard, 1995; Clements, 1969). . Others feared that domestic staff shortages and the diminution of the ‘leisured class would further reduce the propensity for volunteering (Beveridge and Wells, 1949).
Certainly cities became larger and more diffused - surrounded by mile after square mile of suburban estates. Arguably in itself this promoted a sense of middle-class semi-detachment, while physically making inner urban centres increasingly work-class spaces (Savage,1993; Gunn, 2004) . It’s argued, too, that culturally localism became less attractive: that the upper middle and middle middle classes increasingly identified instead with a broader homogenised national culture. Thus, activities that had previously cemented spatial association while conferred local status and obligation – like philanthropic welfare – became less central to middle-class urban identity (Rubenstein, 1998; Trainor, 1998; Gunn, 2000).
Yet a negative painting of the past is always liable to objection. Hennock reminds us that, in supposedly civic minded nineteenth-century Birmingham, a common complaint then was that the right type of people – that is prominent city businessmen – were not putting themselves forwards as they ought (Hennock, 1975). Indeed contemporaneous constructs of what constituted an ‘ideal’ civic leadership had, by 1900, already changed to incorporate the large numbers of professionals being recruited to civic office. Indeed, if we broaden our definition of elites to include also those respected and moderately affluent men and women of ‘social substance’ already holding ‘influential leadership within towns’, then the argument for disengagement becomes much less persuasive (Trainor, 2000b).



Structurally, too, it is certainly true that cities increasingly relied on block grants from the central state, rather than locally raised tax and other revenues, to fund their expenditure. Yet it is equally possible to view the first half of the twentieth century as a period of relative advance, not decline, for local government. a time of renewed urban vitality and increased responsibilities in areas like social housing and welfare where frequently local authorities drove forward a reform agenda (Stevenson, 1984, Hayes, 2007). Moreover, if a younger generation saw themselves as part of a broader eclectic national elite by the 1930s, frequently their parents remained politically and culturally wedded to a pre-war culture of ‘active’ civic engagement through ‘closed’ social networks centred on kinship, religious and political affiliation, charities and business organisations (Doyle, 1997).

The data that exists to confirm the withdrawal of socio-economic elites from leadership roles in voluntary organisations is even less convincing. Certainly some traditional charities faltered, but others flourished, responding to new social circumstances and expectations (Finlayson, 1994). Within this, charitable benevolence by the wealthy or moderately wealthy was still ‘expected’, even as middle-class identity took an increasingly national persona (Doyle, 1997; Trainor, 1998). Perhaps volunteering demanded less ‘raw’ commitment, making it less ‘crisis-prone’ than local government or poor law administration, with its public scrutiny, electioneering, or bellicose nature (Trainor, 2000a; Braithwaite, 1938).

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