Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England, 1880–1910, by Kathryn Rix

Kathryn Rix’s introduction promises us the first major study of the party agent in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Full-time agents assumed responsibility over this period for a growing range of political work in the constituencies, from voter registration to campaign logistics to the distribution of electoral propaganda. The reasons behind historians’ neglect of this category of political functionaries are clearly explained, and we are led to expect a thorough analysis of the agents’ evolving responsibilities, professional aspirations and institutional attachments. On these points, the book unquestionably delivers. But its appeal to a broader readership will rest on its second half, for large chunks of which its advertised protagonists are treated only as a source of information, or left behind entirely. Here the book offers an exceptionally rich array of information about the dynamics of turn-of-the-century political culture and electioneering, with important consequences for how we should think about the wider political history of the era. Taken as a whole, and whatever the blurb says, this is less a study of a profession than a meditation on the structure of politics.

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