Digitalización de datos, Internet y Tecnología: Transformación de la economía

The local Distress Committee which v/as set up in accordance v/ith the Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905 v/as directed by the

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Lord Mayor. The Council of the Committee set up in 1909

was composed of four Lib-Lab Councillors and one Labour Council­ lorwhilst the remaining twenty were representatives of the local business community, including several of the leading

8i figures in the industrial and political elite.

The Advisory Committee of the Sheffield Labour Exchange as constituted in 1911 in accordance with the National

Insurance Act was directed by W.F.Beardshaw* and V/.H.Dixon , two leading manufacturers. This relationship, between local

authority and state power, was intensified and expanded in

scope during the war years. The local industrial and political elite took a controlling position in the local committees

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which were set up to monitor community life. H.Hughes

v/as chairman of the Sheffield Munitions Committee, organiser of the local recruiting campaign and organiser of the Special Committee on the National Reserve. Sir William Clegg v/as chairman of the Munitions Tribunal, the Pood Rationing Committee and National Insurance Committee. Clegg was also a Sub-Commissioner under the National Service Scheme and on the Special Committee on the National Reserve. A.J.Hobson

v/as a member of the Engineering Committee of the Board of Trade and was consulted by the government in his capacity as

chairman of the Corporation Finance Committee. In this role, he

•'induced the Chancellor to raise in the war loan all the money needed by local authorities for carrying out relief and other v/ork during the war" 83

The role of the local elite during the v/ar, in directing and controlkirg community life, served to amplify their

function in times of peace. The war revealed the interdependence of life in the community, in the v/ork place, and in politics. It also revealed the connected interests in each of these spheres which the local industrial and political elite

used so powerfully in ’normal1 times. It was their purpose to present these spheres of activity as distinct and separate while their war time function, in control!ing and commenting

on all areas of experience, and re-asserting dominant

values, revealed them, to certain sections of the organised labour movement, as intimately connected.^

2 (ii) The Political Organisation of Consent.

The authority of the industrial and political elite in Sheffield, created through industrial relations, social

philanthropy and civic service, was grounded in the organisation­ al tactics of Party politics* The dialogue between the Parties was,in its form and content, itself a kind of constraint on potential. It recognised the implicit class interests of the two Party system and provided a base from which to realise industrial and social ambitions*

Consideration of the local organisation and tactics adopted by the Conservative and Liberal Parties is important for any understanding of working class politics in this period; firstly

in its effect of grounding the form of activity and secondly, in its structuring the form and content of popular political discourse. The two Party dialogue structured and defined

mador issues of debate into an essentially dual nature. There was, for example, the choice between Tariff Reform and Free Trade, Fiscal Reform and Socialism, Social Reform and the

Defence of the Empire. The war-time political truce and post­ war coalition in Sheffield, expressed concretely the common

interests underlying the two Party system. The alternative challenge of a Labour Party, at the Parliamentary and Municipal levels, was unsustainable in the pre-war form of politics

which relied so firmly on the presentation of polarised issues. Conservative Party Strategy

The 1860’s was a key decade in the electoral history of Sheffield. The establishment of a local Conservative organis­ ation, supported by the more wealthy and influential families,

had its roots in these years. Between iSSk and 1902, the

Conservative Party in Sheffield was influenced by the politics

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and Journalism of W.E.Leng"”, proprietor of the Sheffield

Telegraph, Leng, and Party agent Christopher Porritt, created the structure of Party organisation in the period before 1902* Semi-autonomous organisations were built at polling district level while the public house became the basis of neighbourhood and street level organisation. It has been estimated that between fifteen and twenty district organisations were created

in each of the parliamentary divisions and almost all of the public houses in the city were tied to the Conservative Party

electoral machine.^

Conservative Working Men!s Associations were established during the 1 8 6 0 !s and 1 8 7 0ts under the direction of Leng but .

only one, at Walkley, survived into the 1890ts . ^ For the

middle classes, the West End Conservative Club and the Freemas­ onry Lodges provided for the important space of social communic­ ation. Later, two Conservative clubs were opened with the

specific object of promoting social communication between the

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classes. The Primrose League, the Sheffield Branch of which v/as founded in 1886, provided for the incorporation of Conservative women into the Party organisation. The League

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