From virtue to venality examines the problem of corruption in British urban society and politics between 1930 and 1995. It is not a conventional study of the politics of local government since it seeks to place corruption in urban societies in a wider cultural context. The accounts of corruption in Glasgow – a British Chicago – as well as the major corruption scandals of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith show how Labour-controlled towns and cities were especially vulnerable to corrupt dealings. By contrast the case of Dame Shirley Porter in the City of Westminster in the late 1980s reveals that Conservative-controlled councils were also vulnerable since in London the stakes of the political struggle were especially intense. This book will be of special interest to students of history and politics and those who are concerned about the growth of corruption in British political culture.

This title examines the problem of corruption in British urban society and politics between 1930 and 1995. It is not a conventional study of the politics of local government since it seeks to place corruption in urban societies in a wider cultural context. It reclaims the study of corruption from political scientists and sociologists for historians but provides theoretical explanations of the causes of corruption testing them against real cases.--Résumé de l'éditeur.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution, royal centralisation had so weakened the feudal power of the nobles that their remaining privileges became glaringly intolerable to commoners. This book challenges the theory by showing that when Louis XVI convened assemblies of landowners in the late 1770s and 1780s to discuss policies needed to resolve the budgetary crisis, he faced widespread opposition from lords and office holders. These elites regarded the assemblies as a challenge to their hereditary power over commoners. The king’s government comprised seigneurial jurisdictions and venal offices. Lordships and offices upheld inequality on behalf of the nobility and bred the discontent motivating the people to make the French Revolution.

Virtue to Venality examines the problem of corruption in British urban society and politics between 1930 and 1995. It is not a conventional study of the politics of local government since it seeks to place corruption in urban societies in a wider cultural context. The accounts of corruption in Glasgow – a British Chicago – as well as the major corruption scandals of John Poulson and T. Dan Smith show how Labour-controlled towns and cities were especially vulnerable to corrupt dealings. By contrast the case of Dame Shirley Porter in the City of Westminster in the late 1980s reveals that Conservative-controlled councils were also vulnerable since in London the stakes of the political struggle were especially intense. This book will be of special interest to students of history and politics and those who are concerned about the growth of corruption in British political culture.