Living Politics: The Professional Agents and Party Organisation, 1880–1914*

Abstract This article focuses on a relatively understudied group within modern British political history, the professional constituency agents of the Liberal and Conservative parties, who made a crucial contribution to the workings of party organisation and the operation of the representative system between 1880 and 1914. Reflecting the recent historiographical emphasis on studying everyday political practices, it examines the activities of agents in English constituencies between elections, assessing how they became embedded in local life not only through party organisational work such as registration and political education, but also in a variety of other public roles. It discusses how the agents’ often surprisingly humble backgrounds could help them to be more in touch with ordinary voters than MPs or other leading politicians were. It also explores the agents’ professional bodies and their perennial struggles to improve the status of this profession. These status anxieties illuminate not only the diversity of constituency organisation, but also the lived experiences of this key group of political activists. Rather than seeing party agents as set apart from ‘the people’, this article argues that their activities need to be integrated into the wider history of British political culture.