So thick and fast have the historical anniversaries been coming – Flodden, the First World War, Magna Carta, Waterloo – that one of them might easily have escaped public notice. 2 July 2014 marked the centenary of the death of Joseph Chamberlain.

Chamberlain is probably best remembered as the Colonial Secretary at the time of the Boer War, for his reputation as ‘the best prime minister we never had’, or as the founder and driving force of the Liberal Unionist Party. If the current Coalition government has a back story, then Joseph Chamberlain is one of its founding fathers.

We may also remember Joe as the first of a family who came to dominate British politics in the first half of the 20th Century. On the ladder of political office, his sons Austen and Neville climbed higher, though never escaping entirely their father’s shadow. All three held seats in the city of Birmingham, which became the Chamberlains’ personal fiefdom.

It was the concern that Chamberlain’s anniversary might slip past unnoticed that led to the staging of a conference at Newman University Birmingham and the Library of Birmingham at the beginning of July. As conferences go it was an unusual affair. Alongside the usual academic papers, modern day politicians reflected on the legacy of the man who, in Churchill’s words, ‘made the weather’.

Inevitably for a politician with a tendency to switch sides, all three of the main parties claimed something of the man for themselves: Greg Clark, the Cabinet Minister for Cities, and Lord Carrington of Fulham for the Conservatives; Gisela Stuart MP for Labour; Sir Alan Beith MP and Michael Meadowcroft for the Liberal Democrats. The current leader of Birmingham City Council, Sir Albert Bore, also addressed the audience.

But at the heart of this debate was the thorny issue of local government. During his three-year spell as Mayor of Birmingham in the 1870s, and prior to his elevation to the Commons, Joseph Chamberlain created a framework for municipal government which survived intact into the later years of the 20th Century. How is Joe’s legacy shaping up ?

What drove Chamberlain’s vision was a rejection of the old ‘economist’ model of local government, one of low rates and even lower expenditure. If councils were to provide the range of services a growing electorate demanded – libraries and baths, schools and parks – then the economics needed to be re-configured.

By taking into municipal ownership the public utilities, and then running them at a profit, Birmingham’s reputation for sound finances allowed the city to borrow yet more, and thereby to create the raft of services we associate with local government. They called it gas-and-water socialism; Sir Albert Bore described it more accurately as ‘municipal capitalism’.

All of this was only possible because of the relative economic independence of the Victorian city state, which raised its own revenues and directed them where it wished. As Professor Peter Marsh pointed out in his key-note address, Chamberlain’s background and training as an industrialist was crucial to the way he turned Birmingham into a kind of ‘municipal company’.

In our present cash-strapped times, when local councils struggle to provide anything like the range of services once taken as standard, we may well wonder where the Chamberlain model went.

Both Peter Marsh and Sir Albert Bore were quick to point the finger. The growing and centralising power of Whitehall has left the country’s town halls with little money, and even less freedom of movement. As Sir Albert pointed out, local government’s share of total state revenue fell from 51% in 1905 to 24% in 1999, and it has dropped further since.

No one political party is entirely to blame for this. Both Labour and Conservative governments have contributed to the drift towards centralisation. The creation of Labour’s Welfare State after 1945 swallowed up much that had previously been run locally. And the Conservative governments after 1979 have sought to cap local spending and divert the public utilities into the private sector. Chamberlain’s gas and water have long since ceased to be locally owned or locally accountable.

The leaders of all three parties have recently stressed the importance of localism, and the power of our cities as centres of regeneration and wealth production, yet such promises run counter to the trend of ever expanding control from Whitehall.

As the delegates dispersed at the close of the conference, we were all left in that uneasy middle ground that lies between history and politics. Is Joseph Chamberlain’s municipal model now to be safely confined to historians, or is it a plan of action momentarily set aside by politicians ?

Dr Chris Upton is reader in public history, Newman University Birmingham