The results of the London Borough Council elections may best
be gathered from a classified comparison of the members with those who were returned at the previous election. The new Councils are thus composed :—Municipal Reformers, 959; Progressives, 272; Independents, 97; Labour and Socialist, 34. At the last election the figures were :—Conservatives, 587; Progressives, 634; Independents, 86; Independent Conserva- tives, 9; Labour, 40. Of all the Metropolitan boroughs, there are now only three in which the Progressives retain a majority; in Fulham and Wandsworth all the Progressives were dis- lodged; and in Wandsworth, Lewisham, and Woolwich the Mayors were unseated. It is easy to attach an exaggerated significance to these figures, but that they indicate a strong reaction against municipal extravagance, as illustrated by the methods of the Poplar Guardians on the one hand and by such ill-advised schemes as the Thames steamboat service on the other, is beyond question. They illustrate also—what, however, was patent enough before—the fact that the British people are at heart profoundly anti-Socialist.
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