Welsh Journals

of municipal government in a small Welsh town, and as such should be warmly welcomed by all those who have concern for the political history of urban Wales. As one might expect, the author presents a detailed and energetic case in defence of the efforts of mayors and councillors to address serious and long-established social problems, including those relating to public health, education and housing. But the scope of the book is considerably wider that this. Jones is concerned also with the long-term development of the settlement of Bangor, its changing morphology and the growth of religious, educational, and political organisations. It is much more than a study of council administration as perceived in a narrow, institutional sense, and the strength of the approach is precisely the way in which the author has attempted to synthesise these themes into a single, coherent analysis of the operation of local government. In the course of this intensive study, based on the author's Ph.D. thesis, a rich variety of local sources have been consulted, including private papers, official reports and newspapers, but the most impressive and significant references are those which are made to the writings of a young merchant, Henry Lewis, whose keen observations on Bangor social life in the early 1880s are a delight to read. From its origins until the second world war, the council unambiguously represented the city's male 'shopocracy', a lively and enthusiastic local bourgeoisie which projected its self- image on to Bangor's townscape through its power to devise and control architectural and other planning policies. The important roles performed by such intellectuals and administrators as Ambrose Bebb and Elias Henry Jones are justly emphasized, and the ambitions of other council leaders are discussed at length. The civic pride of these doughty councillors, easily hurt by such memories as the cholera epidemic of the 1880s, was not always shared by the public, and the author concludes rather sadly that many of the council's efforts to improve the condition of the city were greeted with indifference by the inhabitants. The past forty years have witnessed many changes, not all of them for the better. After 1945, political and linguistic divisions within the council chamber intensified, reflecting the new conflicts which were disturbing Welsh society as a whole, and the restructuring of local goverment in 1974 changed radically the older methods of administering the city. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Jones regards the late Victorian and Edwardian years to be Bangor's heyday. In 1851, Bangor was content to aspire to be a Welsh Brighton: by 1888 it proudly regarded itself as the Welsh Athens, an ancient and learned place, enlightened and prosperous. But, for this reviewer, Bangor's finest moment came in 1939 when, as Britain prepared for war against Fascism, the city's electors voted into office Isodore Wartski, their first Jewish mayor. Peter Ellis Jones writes with evident affection about the people and the councillors of Bangor. But his account lacks a certain lightness of touch, and the text is too often weighed down with details, some of which might have been better deployed in appendices and footnotes. The brief biographies of mayors and other key personnel, for example, would be more accessible as separate entries in an appendix. But the