Part 4: Politics

Political parties are today rather taken for granted, and with the exception of a particular, often cynical, and invariably hypocritical stance on whatever moral outrage is in fashion, are pretty much alike, or seem to be so on the surface    (although Barack Obama may, hopefully, change a few things), with all of them (having pretty much given up the ideologies of either the left or right) desperate to inhabit the so called middle ground of politics. They are also often dismissed as just another ancient tradition, especially by those who complain loudest but seldom vote. No, like everything else political parties are man made, not God-given.

In Britain the development of political parties as formal organizations with programmes and beliefs came about, as did the development of the office of prime minister, and the increasing power of the cabinet, through the decline in the political power of the Crown, which itself was not because of some inevitable wind of change, but through a lack of interest on the part of the monarchy; although the first minister, the prime minister, was still referred to as the King's Minister until well into the 19th century. But there can be no doubt that his relationship with the Crown was irrevocably changed by the rise of the party.

The prime minister (and I shall use that term for ease of recognition, although it was not used officially until the early 20th century) now had responsibilities not only to the Crown, and in a minimal way to the country, but also to his own party; and as the constitutional analyst of the day, Walter Bagehot, pointed out, the monarchy had now become the “dignified rather than the efficient part of the constitution, with the King's Minister and the cabinet now the efficient part[and that] a republic had somehow insinuated itself beneath the folds of a monarchy.”

Consequently, by the 1830s, and because of the lack of interest by the monarchy throughout the 18th century (although George III and George IVdid try and regain some political influence, but without success), the political power base had shifted to the prime minister and the cabinet, and inevitably ever so slightly closer to the people. Then, with the great reform act of 1832 (instigated and carried through by the Whigs) and the increased franchise that came about as a result, the power and profile of British political parties increased, creating a situation where - with new constituency boundaries in place that created an even wider franchise, albeit based around powerful county land owners - politics began to play (whether they wanted it or not) an increasing part in more and more peoples lives.

By the early 1840s, with the emergence of the reinvigorated Conservatives and the new Liberal Party (created from the ruins of the Whigs) – whose organisations were based upon the rules of the Reform and Carlton Clubs - and with the first real party programmes formulated, the influential old Tory politician, Sir John Benn Welsh (with an eye to the future), declared that the Conservative Party was wider than the old Tory Party, and that under Peel it sought to appeal to the new urban electors enfranchised by the 1832 reform act, and that it also sought to appeal to moderate Whigs and to rural interests, and “those attached to the defence of Church and State.”

The new Liberal Party tried desperately - by trying to encompass both Whigs and radicals within its ranks - to keep the argument now ablaze in Parliament as to whether there should be a real move toward genuine majority rule (an argument that continued in the years up to the short-lived revolutionary explosion of 1848, which did change a few things) where, to quote Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, it was asked if “the actual majority - being the most numerous and poorest classes - could be relied upon to safeguard freedom and to carry out the dictates of reason which coincided with the programme of middle-class Liberals?”

Naturally enough our old friend Sir John Benn Walsh stated that they – the masses - would not, and that the only way to prevent anarchy (which is how he saw the outcome of a bigger franchise) was to maintain a strong Conservative Party, and the lucrative status quo. Parliamentary argument had begun.

By comparison, many in the United States (although the new nation was called that until much later),after the War of Independence, thought the idea of the presidency and central government much too similar to the British system, which might lead to a disregard of the rights of the individual states, and the individual within those states. And hadn't they fought long and hard to destroy such an unfair system?

Consequently, the ideal of government in the United States was not originally built around the idea of political parties, but around the individual man of honesty and goodwill, with the original Constitution drawn-up by men (13 in all) who distrusted party;their ideal world was one where party and factions did not exist.

But like Britain, party and factions could not be kept out of the politics of the US, although in the early days the loser of a presidential election was automatically made vice-president - the ultimate coalition.This rather good idea didn't (couldn't) last, with the 1804 amendment - article XII - changing things so that the vice-president had to be elected by separate ballot. The same amendment also created the present day system whereby the president also had to be elected by a state ballot, which resulted in something close to a genuine election of the president by the people, and not by the members of state governments, which had hitherto been the case.

The 19th century American novelist and political commentator, James Fennimore Cooper, was no lover of political parties, and wrote that “the party is known to encourage prejudice, and to lead men astray in the judgement of character. Thus it is we see one half of the nation extolling those that the other half condemns and condemning those that the other half extols. Both cannot be right. It would be nearer the truth to say that both are wrong.”

Cooper was, nevertheless, in favour of political parties in Britain where he believed they were the only check against a threat to liberty, which, as an American, he believed would come from the monarchy. In Cooper's words, in regard to Britain, the “effect of party is always to supplant established power. In a monarchy it checks the king; in a democracy it controls the people.”

Cooper's view is understandable coming from a man who was a citizen of a new nation acting from first principles.

To Be Continued...