This chapter explains how the Chilean right has been reconfigured due to the multidimensional crisis that has shaken Chile since the end of 2019. The authors analyze how tensions regarding competition and identity have affected relevant actors and structured their perceptions, calculations, and behaviors. They examine the ideational changes and continuities of the Chilean right’s road to moderation. They argue that the joint processes of liberalization and democratization gave rise to a gattopardista strategy of “changing so that things may remain the same.” This was characterized by the programmatic moderation of coalition candidates until the 2017 campaign, with traditional right-wing parties moving to the center to the extent that they did not threaten the pillars of the neoliberal model. However, when centrist and left-wing parties aimed to significantly reform the institutional core, the traditional right did react, and moved further to the right on the ideological continuum.

The twenty years following the ending of the Napoleonic Wars had seen a new town created. The economic structure, the community, the topography and the very character of Luton was altered irrevocably by new forces, new demands, new people. Chapter one has shown how the old market town elite of farmers and squirarchy largely disappeared from active involvement in local life. It was replaced in the mid-nineteenth century by a new society reflecting the economic life of Luton - vibrant, open and unstable. If not great fortunes, then certainly comfortable livings could be acquired through activity in the straw hat and building trades - and also swiftly lost.

This chapter will seek to investigate the manner in which physical change was matched by changes in belief. It will endeavour to pursue this by following a thread which begins with religion (which formed an undercurrent to so much of nineteenth century belief and behaviour), through leisure, self-help, perceptions of crime and anti-social conduct, temperance and, finally, education. The establishment of Luton's first School Board occurred two years before the town achieved borough status and the febrile bitterness experienced during the education debate doubtless influenced those promoting incorporation when formulating their tactics. This chapter is, therefore, concerned primarily with the ethics and conduct, less with the structure (political developments are dealt with in chapter four). The focus will be upon the preeminent social force created by the town's economic expansion, its middle classes of hat factory owners, workshop masters, shopkeepers, clergymen, publicans and so on. It will seek to analyse the changing morals and conflicting ideologies by highlighting the major concerns of the day.

Luton's aristocracy withdrew behind the walls of their estates. In particular, John Shaw Leigh, by far the richest man in the locality, wished to play little or no part in Luton's affairs.

Before incorporation in 1876 the most powerful of Luton's public institutions was the local Board of Health. General questions of power are dealt with separately, in chapter four, but the local Board's history forms an undercurrent to the development of the town in this period. In this respect it warrants a chronological account as the Board served as a bridge between the medieval and modern systems of local government for the town, beginning as a health authority but developing into Luton's ‘little parliament in Stuart Street’. It came to be regarded as a shadow town council, a role for which it was ill-equipped and for which it received more brickbats than bouquets. The more that the Board became involved in various areas of the town, the more was expected of it. The local Board of Health came, therefore, to exemplify Luton's inadequate administrative structure and political impotence: it became the focus for frustrated criticism for perceived failings in areas which were far beyond its remit. The Board also became a focal point of public debate, just one of the former functions of the Vestry, which it steadily superseded in relevance. The only other public body of similar significance was the Board of Guardians (see also chapter four).

A second distinctive feature punctuated the period in which the local Board was operational. This was the way in which it served as a vehicle for the promotion of the interests of certain sections of Luton's social structure - interests not always in harmony with those of their fellow citizens. As such, it became a forum for occasional power struggles between the new urban elite of professionals and bigger employers on the one hand and the old market town circles, such as the farmers (supported by smaller tradesmen) on the other. The occasional nature of these struggles must be stressed and the limitations of power and influence of each of the above groups were made apparent by the battles which were fought around and beyond the Boardroom.

The town of ‘Strawopolis’ appeared as a thinly disguised Luton in a slide illustrated temperance lecture written by a local campaigner, T.G. Hobbs, during the 1890s. Hobbs may have conceived of the title himself or he may have lifted it from an earlier designation. Either way, the label was apt and this ‘nest of freeholders’ had experienced a remarkable transformation during the middle part of the nineteenth century. This wholesale change embraced Luton's economy, its social composition and its institutions. The landscape of the town was a testimony to the small speculators who had laid out the streets that were teeming with small enterprises. Although the town's powerful association with Liberalism and nonconformity would fade in the first half of the twentieth century, Luton's defining characteristic - as a place of plentiful work and affordable homes-was set in the middle of the nineteenth century, and would last until the end of the next.

In other respects, Sir Robert Peel's sneer that its houses were ‘all built of straw’ was also well-suited. All that flourished in the town was dependent upon the good fortune of a seasonal trade, subject to fluctuations in fashion, disruptions in the supply of plait and even changes in the weather. It also required, in the main, female labour. At the time that Hobbs was first delivering ‘Strawopolis’, Asher Hucklesby, as Mayor of Luton, was referring darkly to ‘the hundreds of boys and men who wandered listlessly about the town for most of the year’. Thus, it was from the last decade of the nineteenth century that the second phase of Luton's transformation was set in place. Between this time and the end of the Great War, the town's dependence upon the straw hat trade was deliberately broken, and this was achieved in a very Lutonian manner. This conscious change involved the Borough Council and the Chamber of Commerce (the twin creations of William Bigg), bridged by a New Industries Committee. It also absorbed local public utilities, private landowners and syndicates created in order to speculate upon land. At no time, however, was there an all-encompassing strategy formulated and driven on by an over-arching single authority, or through a federation of interested parties. Instead, this metamorphosis was brought about, typically, through an amalgam of individuals and organisations each pursuing their own goals of public good and private profit.

Summarising the influence of various controllers of estates in England and Wales, David Cannadine wrote that ”… generalising about Victorian landowners is almost as hazardous as generalising about Victorian cities: there is a constant need to do full justice to the local, the particular, the individual and the idiosyncratic’. In Luton, a town shorn of the influence of concentrated estate and economic interests, the significance of the individual, even the idiosyncratic, was given sharper focus. No group or class controlled the town and consideration of the various factors which influenced Luton's internal politics must always bear in mind the absence of a manifested awareness of collective identity.

Only in relations with Bedfordshire, as represented by the Russells or the influence of the county through the magistracy, was there any sign of a desire to assert a collective or specifically Lutonian will, and even here there is doubt as to how far beyond the confines of a section of the upper middle class this motivation really went. The primary influence over the successive drives for borough status appears neither to be a desire for Luton to assert itself positively as a distinctive entity nor a desire on the part of a section of its society to assume control over the town. Instead negative feelings provided the imperative - dissatisfaction with the grip which Bedfordshire still held on a town with which it increasingly had little in common, and displeasure at the performance of the assortment of local boards which administered some aspects of Luton's affairs.

Part One. Internal Relations

The failure of institutions

The character, economy and social composition of the early market town had been shattered by a phenomenal transformation. An echo of the old rural links remained, such as the Corn Exchange, but its market town functions were swiftly diminishing. The new Corn Exchange served primarily as a meeting hall; the Plait Halls were to hold a decreasing proportion of local plait as the twentieth century approached; manorial functions, such as the Court Leet, were already anachronisms.

Luton is one of a number of towns and cities, mostly located in the south-eastern quarter of England and including Oxford, Slough and Coventry, which experienced rapid economic expansion during the first half of the twentieth century. In fact, it is little exaggeration to claim that in the last two centuries Luton has twice undergone a profound economic and social transformation. The second industrial revolution, accelerating from the Edwardian era onwards, was sustained through the inter-war period when the town became a magnet for migrating workers, many of whom came from the depressed regions of Britain. Dominated by the large Vauxhall car manufacturing plant, Luton became the home of ‘the affluent worker’, a specimen worthy of sociological study. In parliamentary terms it became a barometer seat: since 1918 by and large the party which gained the constituency containing the bulk of the Luton urban area also won the country.

This volume, however, is concerned with the first transformation of industrial Luton during the middle of the nineteenth century. Apart from its staple industry, the hat trade, this has been a relatively neglected period, a possible reason being that in many respects this is a difficult subject for assessment. For a start there still remains insufficient published work on the smaller cities and towns of mid-nineteenth century England which would allow appropriate comparative study. Most effort carried out has been digging along the richer seams presented by London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham, with more occasional studies of places such as Newcastle, Bradford, Nottingham or Bristol. For example, during an era distinguished by volunteerism, there would be few spheres of activity more conducive to parochial enterprise and originality than philanthropy. F.K. Prochaska's study of this in The Cambridge Social History, for example, cites 44 post-war titles in its bibliography. Setting aside the ten devoted to London and two on Scotland, there are just three drawn from studies of a defined locality. W.D. Rubinstein's recently published general history of nineteenth century Britain also reflects this imbalance. The second part of the volume is devoted to social and cultural history, citing 97 texts in its bibliography. Seven of these are based upon analyses of specific localities, five of them concentrated within the capital?

In the middle of the nineteenth century Luton experienced a transformation from a slightly shabby market town, where hats were made, to principally a manufacturing centre. Land was the key to this physical growth, a development which was accompanied by profound social change. This small Bedfordshire town possessed few advantages which predestined its status as the centre of the straw hat trade, and it certainly achieved its dominance without the benefit of a good communications network. A unique blend of factors removed its rather typical market town social elite whilst Luton was simultaneously expanding. These two factors assisted and hastened a metamorphosis already under way in the first third of the nineteenth century.

Compartmentalising a process spanning forty years, one which dictated the pattern, quality and fortunes of thousands of lives, has its drawbacks. Luton's physical, economic and demographic revolution comprised numerous strands which intertwined in a nature which was as complex as a length of straw plait. Nonetheless, for the sake of clarity it is necessary to draw distinct threads from the myriad personal ambitions, activities and experiences which collectively built Luton. The logical starting point for this lies with Luton's position, established by the end of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as the principal centre for the manufacture of straw hats. The supply and demand relationship between the hat trade and land development is of central importance in plotting the progress of a town which developed its own variation of the cottage economy. In Luton's case there was a mixture of small, independent masters and artisans, an extensive putting out system and a significant proportion of property owners in all but the poorest sector of the population. The answer to why this should be so lies with the approach which principal local landowners had towards their holdings: it was here that the stage was set for change.