“I don’t know exactly what democracy is.
But we need more of it.”
Margaret Thatcher
The
General Election of 1929 was the first election fought in Britain under
universal suffrage, men and women participating on an equal basis. The Tories had a small majority of votes –
8,656,228 to Labour’s 8,370,417, but due to our electoral system Labour had
more seats, 287 to the Tories 260. One
reason for this was a slight revival of the Liberal Party, which got 5,308,738
votes and 59 seats. Labour, under the
leadership of Ramsay MacDonald, formed the Government.
In the General Election of 1929 we saw once again the
distortion of our politics. There was
one Liberal MP for every 91,000 votes, one Conservative for every 34,000 and
one Labour member for every 28,000.
More than 5,000,000 electors voted for the Liberal Party, 23.4% of the
electorate, but they only had 59 MPs elected.
This is clearly unfair and unrepresentative. Labour improved its share of the poll at
every election between 1910 and May 1929, yet because of the distortions caused
by our electoral system there was a Labour Government in January 1924 but the
Party went into opposition again in the following October.
At the end of the 1920s the World was in serious
economic depression. By 1931 the Labour
government had reached deadlock over a response to the crisis. It was a crisis for which no Party had a
simple solution. The Labour Cabinet was
not willing to make the cuts that the Civil Service advised them to make. MacDonald was encouraged to form a National
Government including all three main political Parties to deal with the
financial crisis.
The decision of MacDonald to form a coalition with
the Conservative Party led Labour to expel him. Arthur Henderson replaced him as
leader. MacDonald and a small group of
supporters then formed the National Labour Party.
The split in the Labour party persuaded MacDonald
that a quick election was necessary.
The Liberal’s leader, David Lloyd George urged his colleagues to
withdraw from the National Government.
However, the majority of Liberals, led by Sir Herbert Samuel decided to
remain in the National government. One
of the main issues was the Conservatives’ wish to introduce protectionist trade
policies. This not only divided the
government from the opposition but also divided the parties in the National
government. The National Liberals were happy to support the Conservative trade
policies. The Liberals led by Lloyd
George preferred to campaign in defence of free trade.
In a desire for the new Government to have democratic
legitimacy the Conservatives argued that they should seek a mandate from the
electorate and MacDonald agreed with them.
The General Election held on Tuesday 27th
October 1931 was the last General Election not to be held on a Thursday. It was also the last General Election, and
the only one ever held under universal suffrage, where one party received an
absolute majority of the total number of votes cast. The King even intervened by calling for
members of his household to vote for the government – an unwise but successful
intervention. The distortion in the
result of this election caused by the First Past the Post system of voting was
greater than ever. The Conservatives
with 473 seats had 55% of the votes, but 76.4% of the seats. Labour with 52 seats had a miserly 8.5% of
the seats but received 30.8% of the votes.
The many other factions split the seats and votes between
themselves. Others got 90 seats being
14.6% of the seats with 13.1% of the votes.
The House of Commons now had 615 seats.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The miracle of this World economic crisis is that our
political system survived while most other European countries did not. The other interesting fact is that in two
major crises, World War I and the World economic crisis, coalition governments
were formed. In difficult times
everyone works together. The argument
that for strong government you need a First Past the Post system of election
does not stand up.
Due to the previous Labour government's failure to
tackle the economic crisis, the Labour vote fell sharply, and the
Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, won a huge majority, although by
agreement with the Conservatives the Prime Minister of the resulting National
Government was Ramsay MacDonald. Lloyd
George’s Liberals lacked the funds to contest their usual number of seats, but
won almost as many as the Labour Party.
The public response to the National Government demonstrates how bad the
crisis was thought to be and how they felt the Government deserved national backing.
There is always a danger that severe economic
problems will cause unrest and the Thirties were no exception in the United
Kingdom. The rise of Sir Oswald
Mosley’s black shirts could have been the start of a Fascist uprising. Although the law rightly protects freedom of
association, experience in Germany in the thirties showed that the processes of
democracy could be undermined with the help of the mob in the streets. Similar violent and provocative action in
England led to the passing of the Public Order Act, 1936, which makes it an
offence to carry any offensive or unauthorised weapon at any public meeting or
procession, bans political uniforms, and gives the chief of police power to
re-route a procession or to lay down certain conditions if he has reasonable
grounds for thinking that the procession can lead to serious public
disorder. This still applies. Democracy can only accommodate democratic
methods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A major constitutional crisis
developed in the 1930s. King George V
died in 1936 and was succeeded by his son Edward VIII. Edward wanted to marry Wallis Simpson, an
American, who had been divorced from her first husband and was married to a
London stockbroker. In October 1936
Mrs. Simpson was granted a divorce from her second husband.
It
was an agonising dilemma for the king, particularly when the whole affair was
reported in the papers on 3 December.
There was some support for him in the country; many people, including
Churchill and Mosley, and the powerful newspaper owners, Beaverbrook and
Rothermere, believed that he ought to be allowed to marry whoever he
wanted. But the majority opinion
supported Baldwin and the government; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Lang
was against the marriage on the grounds that the king, as Head of the Church of
England, ought not to marry a divorcee. "Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe.
This issue highlights one of the dangers of having an
established Church. Religious
discrimination still existed in the United Kingdom. A similar situation arose in 2005 when
Prince Charles, heir to Queen Elizabeth II wished to marry Camilla
Parker-Bowles, who had been divorced from Andrew Parker-Bowles. Although divorce is legal within the United
Kingdom Prince Charles was in line to become King and Head of the Established
Church. The Church still had
influence. This time it was allowed – a
small, but important step forward to eliminating discrimination from our
democracy.
In Edward VIII’s case, he hoped that Mrs. Simpson could marry him and remain a private
citizen, without becoming Queen, a morganatic marriage. A morganatic marriage is that of a man of
high rank and a woman of low rank who retains her former status, their children
having no claim to the father’s possessions or title. This is so demeaning and sexually discriminating
as well. The cabinet refused this, so
Edward decided that he must abdicate the throne. On 11 December Edward VIII abdicated and was
succeeded by his brother George VI.
The big current question as yet unanswered is: When
Prince Charles takes the throne will Camilla become Queen? Lawyers will have a field day.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Democracy was put on hold in the Second World War, as
in the First World War, with the suspension of by-election contests, allowing
the incumbent Party to nominate a successor in the event of a parliamentary
vacancy. Was this really
necessary? Wars are notorious excuses
for restricting freedom and democracy.
It was therefore significant that in a speech in 1943 the Prime
Minister, Winston Churchill said:
“…the great
principles of habeas corpus and trial by jury… are the supreme protection by
the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man
into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly
to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest
degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments. Nothing can be more abhorrent to
democracy. This is really the test of
civilisation.”
Today, we would fail this test of civilisation. Under anti-terrorist legislation passed by
Tony Blair’s Labour government suspected terrorists can be held without charge
for up to 28 days. There were proposals
to extend this to 42 days. This is the
worst breach of habeas corpus of any
nation in the Western World. This
legislation was passed by Parliament and clearly demonstrates that we are
capable of voting our freedoms away. It
is argued that war is exceptional and we are currently in a war on terrorism
but if we give up the principles of our constitution they stop being principles
and start being expedients.
Changes in constituencies made necessary by shifts in
the population were allowed for by the House of Commons (Redistribution of
Seats) Act, 1944, which set up four Boundary Commissions to report
regularly. This followed The Speaker’s
Conference of 1944 which was crucial to the development of the territorial
representation in Westminster, as it led to the institutionalisation of the
over-representation of Scotland and Wales within the modern boundary review
system. This was an appalling attack on
democracy for it meant that the value of your vote depended on where you
lived. With the use of modern
technology such as the Internet, telephone, video conferencing etc., there is
no reason why constituencies should not be approximately equal in the number of
voters they have. After devolution the
over-representation of Scotland has been addressed but Wales is still
over-represented having 40 seats whereas its population only justifies 33 seats
on a proportionate basis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The General Election of 1945 produced a Labour
Government with a majority of 156 in the House of Commons. The House of Lords was still dominated by the Conservative
Party. Only a small number of peers took the Labour whip. Indeed, there were only
16 Labour peers out of a total of 831 voting peers. This imbalance posed a considerable strain
on the relationship between the two Houses.
During the Government of 1945-1951, the then Viscount Cranborne, Leader
of the Opposition in the House of Lords (and fifth Marquess of Salisbury from
1947) and Viscount Addison, the Labour Leader of the House of Lords, came to an
agreement on the passage of major pieces of Government legislation through the
House of Lords. Viscount Cranborne
described his perspective on the agreement in the House of Lords debate on the
King’s Speech of 1945, in which the Government’s legislative agenda was being
considered: “Whatever our personal views,
we should frankly recognise that these proposals were put before the country at
the recent General Election and that the people of this country, with full
knowledge of these proposals, returned the Labour Party to power. The Government may, therefore, I think,
fairly claim that they have a mandate to introduce these proposals. I believe that
it would be constitutionally wrong, when the country has so recently expressed
its view, for this House to oppose proposals which have been definitely put
before the electorate.”
Since that time, the doctrine known as the “Salisbury Convention” has come to imply
that the House of Lords should not reject at second or third reading an
intention to legislate mentioned in the Government’s election manifesto.
The Salisbury
Convention of 1945 prevents the second chamber from obstructing legislation
in the governing party’s manifesto. It
has much to commend it, but it is questionable whether it need always apply in
a situation where the second chamber is representative to a considerable degree
of public opinion. It seems desirable
to prevent circumstances developing where a government’s programme could be
held up for its first year of office.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United Nations was
formed in 1945.
In 1948 the United Nations approved the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, guaranteeing all people in all countries their
basic rights. The issue of human rights
and responsibilities is the subject of much debate today. Should they be part of a written
constitution or should we rely on Parliament to always take the necessary measures
to defend them? This is a major issue,
which still has to be resolved.
The Representation of the People Act, 1948 abolished
the business premises qualification to vote and the university seats. Ironically if Labour had retained the
university seats today, they could have been very useful to them. Henceforth nobody could enjoy more than one
vote. The remaining double-member
constituencies were abolished. With the abolition of the University seats the
last remnants of proportional representation in the House of Commons
disappeared – a setback for democracy.
In his pamphlet “Fear
of Voting”, published in 1994, Jerry White showed that in the 1890s
Londoners elected 12,000 citizens to serve on councils, boards and
committees. They ran the capital’s
health, education, welfare and transport.
White says, “1946-48 represented
the most important reduction in local government functions in history and an
unparalleled centralisation of government power”. Health, electricity, gas and social security
were all removed from local government at that time. By 1994 a similar number of about 12,000 Londoners still sat on boards
administering local services in the capital, but in 1994 only 1,914, were
elected. The great majority of these were appointed, mostly
by central government. Democrats were
replaced by bureaucrats. Much of the
centralisation took place under the Thatcher government of the 1980s, including
the abolition of the Greater London Council.
With the Labour Party in power a bill was introduced
in 1947 to weaken the delaying power of the Lords. The Parliament Act 1949 simply reduced the
period of delay to one year spread over two sessions from the second reading in
the first session to the third reading in the second. Talks between the Party Leaders were held
over the composition and powers of the House of Lords, but they broke down
without agreement.
Doubts
have been expressed about the 1949 legislation because the 1911 Act was used to
push its successor through. Unlike the
1911 Act the later version was never agreed by the Lords.
Constitutional
experts such as Lord Donaldson, former Master of the Rolls, have questioned
whether the 1911 Act can be used to amend its own terms and so unilaterally
enlarge the powers of the Commons. The legal objection is that legislation passed
under the Parliament Acts is delegated, not primary legislation. It is recognised as a constitutional principle,
that a delegate cannot enlarge its power at the expense of the delegating
authority; in other words, the Commons cannot reduce the powers of the Lords on
its own.
The
1949 Act has been invoked four times: on fox hunting (2004), equalisation of
the age of consent (2001), proportional representation for the European
Parliament (1998) and the War Crimes Act (1991). On three of these occasions it was a Labour
government which invoked the Act. Its
predecessor the 1911 Parliament Act was only invoked three times, including
once to force through the 1949 Act.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Labour’s
Ireland Act (1949) established a separate Protestant State in the six counties
of the North, in spite of a mass revolt on the Labour benches and the sacking
by Attlee of four parliamentary private secretaries. The Act was passed in
response to the action in the Republic of Ireland to allow its membership of
the Commonwealth to lapse. The Act
allowed the citizens of the Republic not to be treated as foreigners. This was an extraordinary piece of
legislation, in effect giving foreigners votes in electing MPs to the United
Kingdom Parliament. This means that
foreigners can determine the legislation of the United Kingdom without having
any responsibility for the effect of that legislation. This electoral anomaly still exists
today. It is democracy gone mad and
needs to be changed.
In 1950 the Conservative Party looked at the
possibility of proportional representation.
Harold Macmillan in his book “Tides of Fortune” convinced of the need for an alliance with the
Liberals saw “a great deal to be said, in
principle, for an experiment in Proportional Representation, limited to the big
cities. It could do no harm and might
do good”. Churchill was favourably
disposed to it and, according to Nigel Fisher in his book Harold Macmillan, made a moving but unsuccessful appeal to the 1922
Committee to be allowed to pursue an agreement along these lines.
The Life Peerage Act, 1958 permitted men and women
Life Peers to be created on the advice of the Prime Minister (who consulted
with the Leader of the Opposition where appropriate). This was the first time women were allowed
to sit and vote in the House of Lords. From
the reign of James I to that of George II (between 1603 and 1760), 18 life
peerages were created for women. Women,
however, were incapable of sitting in the House of Lords, so it was unclear
whether or not a life peerage would entitle a man to do the same. Introducing
the Bill the Conservative Leader of the House raised a laugh when he said “taking women into parliamentary embrace is,
after all, only an extension of the normal privileges of a peer”. It was also suggested that expenses be paid
to peers. A daily allowance was
introduced.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1960, an incident happened which was, in a small
way, to change history. Tony Benn had
been a Labour MP for ten years when his father Viscount Stansgate died. Benn was debarred from the House of Commons
on succeeding to his father’s title. He
wanted to remain a member of the House of Commons. He did not want the title. A by-election was called in his constituency
of Bristol South-East which Tony Benn insisted on fighting. He won by a massive majority creating an
unprecedented constitutional position.
The Crown Office issued a statement saying “Member returned from Bristol South East, Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn”. With this statement in his hand Benn went to
the House of Commons where the doorkeeper held up his hand and said “You cannot enter, Sir”. So the people
were denied their representative.
However the publicity and support given to Benn meant that a change to
the law became inevitable.
The Peerage Act, 1963, allowed (a) peers and
peeresses in their own right to disclaim their titles for life and stand for
the House of Commons, and (b) Hereditary Peeresses in their own right to sit in
the House of Lords. This was a small
step on the road to equality. All
Scottish peers were allowed to sit in the House. This Act, together with the Life Peerage Act
of 1958 had huge implications for the House of Lords. Ironically, it was perhaps the beginning of
the end of the hereditary peerage.
Within forty years there would only be a nominal number of Hereditary
Peers. The House of Lords would consist
almost entirely of appointed Life Peers, the majority of which were appointed
by one Prime Minister.
The
Race Relations Act of 1965 made racial discrimination illegal.
The
Representation of the People Act 1969, which took effect from January 21 1970
lowered the age of voting from 21 to 18 years of age.
A
Select Committee on Member’s interests was set up in May 1969 under the
Chairmanship of Labour MP George Strauss.
It reported “That it is contrary
to the usage and derogatory to the dignity of this House that a Member should
bring forward by speech or question, or advocate in this House or among his
fellow Members any bill, motion, matter or cause for a fee, payment, retainer
or reward, direct or indirect which he has received, is receiving or expects to
receive.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Conservative Party won the General Election in 1970.
The Conservative Manifesto “A Better Tomorrow” said:
If we can
negotiate the right terms, we believe that it would be in the long-term
interest of the British people for Britain to join the European Economic
Community, and that it would make a major contribution to both the prosperity
and the security of our country. The
opportunities are immense. Economic
growth and a higher standard of living would result from having a larger
market.
But we must also
recognise the obstacles. There would be
short-term disadvantages in Britain going into the European Economic Community
which must be weighed against the long-term benefits. Obviously there is a price we would not be
prepared to pay. Only when we negotiate will it be possible to determine
whether the balance is a fair one, and in the interests of Britain.
Our sole commitment is to negotiate; no more, no less. As the negotiations proceed we will report
regularly through Parliament to the country.
A Conservative Government would not be prepared to recommend
to Parliament, nor would Members of Parliament approve, a settlement which was
unequal or unfair. In making this judgement, Ministers and
Members will listen to the views of their constituents and have in mind, as is
natural and legitimate, primarily the effect of entry upon the standard of
living of the individual citizens whom they represent.
The United Kingdom
applied to join the European Communities (often called the Common Market) in
1971. The Prime Minister Edward Heath
conducted the negotiations. The Treaty
signed by Heath committed the United Kingdom to comply with 13,000 pages of
legislation already enacted and to comply with all future legislation passed by
the European Communities. It also
subordinated the United Kingdom courts to a higher court in Europe against
which there was no appeal.
Following
the signing of the Treaty the government launched a huge propaganda exercise
and in July 1971 published a white paper called “The United Kingdom and the European Communities”. A shortened version of this was sent to
every household in the kingdom. The
paper stated that:
"There is no
question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty; what are proposed
are a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the
economic interest”.
Despite the ambiguous insertion of the word
“essential”, the government was fully aware that signing the treaty would
involve an immense diminution of Britain’s “sovereignty”. Among the documents, which came to light in
2001 under the 30-year rule, was a long confidential paper prepared for the
Foreign Office in 1971 analysing “the implications for British sovereignty of
entry into the European Communities”.
This concluded that entry would result in very substantial restraints on
Britain’s powers of self-government, and that over the years this would become
ever more obvious. Presciently, the
paper also predicted that people would become increasingly alienated from government
as it became more bureaucratic and remote, with ever more decisions being taken
in Brussels and ever more power being exercised by unelected officials. While recognising this, the paper’s chief
concern was with how these “public anxieties” masquerading as concern for “loss
of sovereignty” might be allayed.
Various remedies were suggested, such as giving more power to the
European Parliament, creating new mechanisms whereby Parliament could
scrutinise Community legislation, and strengthening “regional democratic
processes”. It was also suggested that
these problems would only become fully evident many years into the future,
possibly not until “the end of the century”. "The Great Deception" by C.Booker & R. North
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under the Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath,
the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community on 1st
January 1973. Support for membership
had grown within the Conservative Party and most daily newspapers favoured
entry. Within the Labour Party, however
there was threatening opposition. In
the House of Commons Harold Wilson opposed entry on the terms negotiated by the
Government.
The impact of joining the European Economic Community
had a huge impact on our democracy the effects of which only came to light as
the years passed. Our Constitution was
changed dramatically and yet the British people had no say in the matter. In spite of the Conservative manifesto
saying: Our sole commitment is to
negotiate; no more, no less, there was no referendum at which the people
would be consulted. It highlights the
dangers of an over powerful Prime Minister within the British constitution.
Meanwhile violence once again raised its ugly head in
the politics of Ireland. Many thought
that the Irish problem had been solved with partition in 1922. It had not.
At the end of the 1960s civil rights marches took place in Northern
Ireland organised by the Campaign for Social Justice. This Campaign grew into the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. Time and time again the minority Catholic
community found themselves discriminated against. They were subjugated by a Protestant
majority elected under First Past The Post which refused to recognise the
rights of a substantial minority. The
voting system left the Catholics under represented and out of power. It was the catalyst for a dramatic
rebellion. The consequence of
disempowering people was a generation of violence. Northern Ireland is a classic illustration
of what can happen when democracy fails.
Disturbances
continued in Ireland where the British army soon found itself in the impossible
situation of trying to prevent Catholics and Protestants slaughtering each
other while at the same time having to endure attacks from the IRA and another
group calling itself the Provisional IRA.
The government decided to suspend the Northern Ireland parliament and
bring the province under direct rule at Westminster. When early in 1974 a new coalition
government was set up in which the Catholics had more say than ever before,
Protestant extremists organised massive strikes which quickly paralysed the
country; after only a few weeks parliament was again suspended."Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe.
The Ulster Unionists broke away from the Conservative
Party and when the General Election was called stood on their own platform.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The General Election of
February 1974 once again highlighted the distortion of the electoral
system. With a poll in excess of 6
million votes and more than 19 per cent of the total votes cast, the Liberal
Party had only 14 MPs elected. It took
432,000 votes to elect each Liberal MP, but just 40,000 and 39,000 respectively
for each Conservative and Labour MP.
With 200,000 more votes than Labour, the Conservatives had four fewer
MPs. The final figures were Labour 301
seats (47.4%) votes cast 37.2%, Conservatives 297 (46.8%) votes cast 37.9%, and
Liberals 14 (2.2%) votes cast 19.3%, Nationalists and others 23.
The Conservative Government fell and the Labour Party
with Harold Wilson as Prime Minister took office. A referendum was held (5th June
1975) to find out whether the British people wished to remain in the Common
Market. The result was decisive: 67.2
per cent of those who voted favoured continued membership – 17,378,571 votes
for and 8,470,073 votes against. This
was an exercise in democracy although the difference in the amount of funds
which the different campaigns had to spend was very large, with the “Yes” campaign better funded. The European Movement in favour of remaining
in the Common Market spent £1,850,000.
The “No” campaign spent
£133,000. This discrepancy was to lead
later to reform in the conduct of referendums to make them fairer.
In 1977 the Liberal Party and the Labour Party formed
a pact which lasted for eighteen months.
But when:
Labour
MPs declined to back proportional representation for the European Elections,
many Liberals, who had regarded this as the one tangible prize within their
grasp, felt bitterly let down. There
was now no prospect of continuing the pact into a third session of parliament
in the autumn of 1978. "A History of the Liberal Party" by D. Dutton
The pact was terminated.
In 1979 The Conservative Party won the General
Election and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. She was unpopular at first, but after
winning the Falklands War her popularity improved.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the General Election of June 1983:
The
Conservative vote fell from the 1979 figure (from 13.68 million to 13.01
million), suggesting not that there was a great surge of enthusiasm for Mrs.
Thatcher, but rather that the electors decidedly did not want a Labour
government (Labour’s vote fell from 11.5 million to 8.5 million). Many Labour voters and some disillusioned
Tory supporters switched to the Liberal/SDP Alliance, whose 7.8 million poll
was one of the most striking features of the election. This revealed more clearly than ever before
the unfairness of the British electoral system. Labour’s 27.6 per cent of total votes cast entitled them to 209 seats;
but the Alliance, not so very far behind with 25.4 per cent secured only 23
seats. It was the old story of the
single-vote; single-member constituency system working to the disadvantage of a
party which came second in a large number of constituencies. The demand for proportional representation
revived but there was little prospect of its introduction, since the
Conservative government, not unnaturally, was happy with the existing system. "Mastering Modern British History" by N.Lowe.
The Conservative Party had a massive 144-seat
majority over all other parties combined winning 397 seats (61.1%) with only
42.4% of the votes. Labour got 209
seats (32.2%) with 27.6% of the votes whilst the Liberal/SDP Alliance ended up
with a miserly 23 seats (3.5%) with 25.4% of the votes. On a strict proportionate basis the
Liberal/SDP Alliance would have won 160 seats.
It is said that we live in a representative democracy but it is quite clear
that Parliament does not represent the political parties in a fair way so can
hardly be representative of the people.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During the 1980s it gradually began to dawn on the
United Kingdom Parliament and the people just what it was they had signed up to
when they joined the Common Market in 1972.
To
reduce the advantages exploited by the Spanish, and to safeguard the quotas for
the domestic fishing fleet, the Government brought in what became the Merchant
Shipping Act 1988, which altered the registration rules to require a far higher
level of British involvement in the owners or managers of a ship. Factortame, an affected company, claimed
that the 1988 Act was incompatible with European law. In June 1990 the House of Lords ruled in the
company’s favour and granted an injunction ignoring or “disapplying” the 1988
Act, even though it had been passed by the British Parliament. The ruling caused a sensation, leading
Margaret Thatcher to claim that the decision “was a novel and dangerous
invasion by a Community institution of the sovereignty of the UK Parliament”. "Parliament under Blair" by P. Riddell
The 1972 Act required the domestic courts to respect
the supremacy of European law. It can be argued that the Act had been entered
into voluntarily, so it had not ended the sovereignty of Parliament. This could only be properly tested if the
United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union.
Effectively the United Kingdom Parliament delegated
law making in certain matters to an independent body over which it had no
direct control or even a formal or informal relationship. It was able to do this on the grounds that
it could repeal the Act of Parliament (the 1972 Act) that delegated the law
making in the first place. Is this
democratic?
The
European Commission, the Council of Ministers and in some cases the European
Parliament can now make laws affecting the people of the United Kingdom which
the United Kingdom Parliament has bound itself to accept, yet none of these
bodies are democratically accountable to the people of the United Kingdom. This is a bizarre arrangement, which is
unsustainable in the long term in a democracy.
At some point this arrangement will fail because the people will
understand what has happened demand their democratic rights. The European Union now produces four major
pieces of legislation every week, and a tide of other documentation affecting
every aspect of our lives: from the way we do business to the price we pay for
our food.
In
a parliamentary democracy like Britain, we expect our elected MPs at Westminster
to hold the Government to account, and to influence the shape of its
legislation. However, when it comes to
EU legislation – which now accounts for at least half of all new laws – our
Parliament has no power to affect these decisions in any meaningful way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Representation of the
People Act 1985 extended the franchise to British citizens resident outside the
United Kingdom to qualify as “overseas
voters” in the constituency for which they were last registered. This was initially for a period of 5 years
but was later extended to 20 years by the Representation of the People Act 1989
and then reduced to 15 years by the Political Parties Elections and Referendums
Act 2000.
In 1996 the Conservative
Government allowed a change to the defamation laws which allowed Neil Hamilton
MP to sue The Guardian during the
cash for questions affair. In a free
vote the Commons amended the 1689 Bill of Rights so that MPs could waive
privilege to sue newspapers over reports of their parliamentary activities.
Labour’s General Election manifesto of 1997 promised
to remove the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords
as the first stage in a process of reform to make the House of Lords more “democratic and representative”.
In the first stage of reform – The House of Lords Act
1999 removed some 750 hereditary peers from the second chamber. During the Committee Stage of the Bill
however, the Government accepted a crossbench amendment to include 92
hereditary peers in a transitional House until such time as stage two reform
had been completed.
On
House of Lords reform:
The leaders of the Tory peers knew
they would lose the battle, but were determined to obtain the best terms. Lord Cranborne, leader of the Conservative
peers until November 1998 and a former Leader of the Lords, has seen himself in
the Cecil family tradition of trying to defend the aristocratic interest for as
long as possible. He saw longer–term
reform as being some uncertain time in the future and came up with a plan to
retain a sizeable number of the active hereditary peers in the interim House,
between the removal of the hereditaries and any later stage of reform. In talks with Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Weatherill, the former Speaker of the Commons and then convenor
of the cross-bench peers, a scheme was devised which preserved the core of
active hereditary peers for the interim or transitional phase. The original figure was 75, roughly a tenth
of the total, but this was supplemented by sixteen officers of the House,
chairmen of committees and the like.
The latter group were elected by all peers, while the 75 were elected by
hereditaries in party and cross-bench groups according to their existing
strengths. In addition, all surviving
former Leaders of the House who had been hereditary peers were made life peers,
and other former hereditaries later returned in lists of working life
peers. The result was a classic British
fudge, a change which left an institution looking remarkably as it had
before. Lord Cranborne’s negotiations
with Lord Irvine, also involving visits to Downing Street, went well beyond
what the Conservative shadow cabinet had agreed and Lord Cranborne was sacked
for insubordination. However, Lord
Strathclyde, his successor and a former Chief Whip in the Lords, honoured the
spirit of the deal which kept so many of his active hereditary colleagues in
the upper House for an indefinite period. "Parliament under Blair" by P. Riddell
The then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg,
described the agreement on reform as “binding
in honour”. So far there has been
no stage two leaving Britain with an almost wholly appointed second
Chamber. By the end of his Premiership
Tony Blair had appointed over half the members of the House of Lords.
Over the last 100 years the powers of the House of
Lords have been reduced. In 1911 they
lost power over money Bills. In 1945
the Salisbury Convention was introduced implying that they should not reject
legislation mentioned in the governing party’s manifesto. The Parliament Act 1949 reduced the delaying
powers of the Lords to one year. As the
House of Lords is an undemocratic body, this reduction in power was good for
democracy. However, the fundamental undemocratic
principle behind the unelected House of Lords has not changed for the
better. From a hereditary situation we
have moved to an almost wholly appointed House of Lords, with all the trappings
of patronage that this entails. This is
worse for democracy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In October 1998 the House of Lords voted for the Open
List system of proportional representation for elections to the European
Parliament. The Labour government
wanted a Closed List. The Bill was then
subjected to “Ping-Pong” between the
Houses, until on 19th November the Lords refused to back down for a
third time, and the Bill was lost.
However the Leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Jay, told Peers that
the Bill would be introduced in the next session of 1998-1999 under the
Parliament Acts. It had to achieve
Royal Assent by mid-January 1999 in order for the new system to be implemented
in time for the 1999 European Elections.
The new Bill, identical to its predecessor passed all its Commons stages
on 2nd December. The Bill
was then rejected outright by the House of Lords on 15th December
and so in accordance with the Parliament Act became law in January 1999. The new closed regional list system was used
for the first time in the European Parliament elections of 1999.
Democracy was the loser in this episode. No longer did a voter have the right through
their vote to be able to elect an individual to represent him or her, or to get
rid of a representative he or she no longer wished to support. Now the only vote was effectively for a
Party, and a candidate at the top of the Party list was almost certain to be
elected no matter whether they were good, bad or indifferent.
For the European Elections Northern Ireland was
treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. It elects its representatives to the
European Parliament using the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional
representation. It is extraordinary and
certainly undemocratic that two different systems of election are used for
election to the same Parliament.
The Human Rights Act was passed in 1998. This Act made the European Convention on
Human Rights enforceable in UK courts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 1st July 1999 extensive powers were
devolved to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Devolution to the Northern Ireland Assembly
and Executive took place on December 2nd 1999.
The devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament
created the “West Lothian Question”. This results in Scottish MPs continuing to
vote on legislation that affects England and Wales, and on which English, Welsh
and Scottish MPs no longer have any say in Scotland. This had immense constitutional importance. Many believe that it was the first step to
the creation of a Federal United Kingdom or even to a break-up of the United
Kingdom.
The problems were highlighted during the votes on
Foundation Hospitals in November 2003 and on university top-up fees in January
2004 when the Prime Minister used Scottish MPs to force through unpopular
policies for England for which there was no majority among English MPs. This was despite the fact that these were
devolved issues in Scotland and the Scottish Parliament had made clear that it
had no intention of following the English legislation.
The Conservative Party proposed that, following a
resolution of the House of Commons, the Speaker should have the power to
designate Bills or Clauses “England and
Wales only” after which only MPs representing English constituencies should
be able to vote on them.
With devolution the case for Scotland to have a
higher proportion of seats per population than England disappeared. The Boundary Commission for Scotland
therefore produced a plan in 2003 in which there would be 59 constituencies,
reduced from 72. In 2004, the
Government passed the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 which instituted
these changes. This took effect in the General Election of
2005.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Postal voting had been introduced in 1918 to allow
the servicemen returning from the war in Europe to vote. Over the years it was extended to people who
were unable to vote at polling stations because of poor health or disability,
absences for work reasons, and from 1985, even absences on holiday. However up until 2000 postal voting was only
an option for those who could give a reason for not being able to vote in
person at a polling station.
This changed with the Representation of the People
Act 2000. A change in postal voting was
introduced before the 2001 general election.
Rather than an applicant needing to give a reason for requiring a postal
vote, postal votes were made available on request, no questions asked.
There is no doubt that postal voting increased the
turnout in the local elections in June 2004, even if questions remain over the
size of the increases, but the major concern was the number of allegations of
fraud and the intimidation of voters.
The problems in postal voting in 2004 were not new –
electoral fraud has a long history and many had predicted that a change to
postal voting would increase the risk of things going wrong and people doing
wrong. These risks fall into three
categories:
1. The
risk of reliance on the postal service.
2. The
risk that a ballot paper, by accident or design, gets into the hands of, and is
used by, someone other than the elector for whom it was intended. Often a householder fills in the forms for
all the voters in the house; and
3. The
risk that the secrecy of the ballot might be compromised.
A few weeks before the 2004 elections it was reported
that 6 million letters or packages are stolen or damaged each year and 8.5
million are lost or delivered late.
However while lapses by the postal service are unlikely to be
politically motivated, the same cannot be said about the second category of
risk, i.e. that of a ballot paper being used by someone other than its rightful
owner. Even in a polling station there
is some danger of “personation”, but
each fraudulent vote requires the offender to visit the polling station with
the risk of being identified as an impostor.
But if the fraudulent vote is cast by post the chances of the culprit
being identified are very slim.
At one end of the scale of gravity, a member of a
household might decide to be “helpful”
in completing the ballot papers of others who are away from home or simply not
interested in voting. In other cases
use might be made of ballot papers sent to people who have recently died or
moved home. More serious offences can
arise when bundles of ballot mailings are pushed into the communal letterbox of
a block of flats and gathered up by the first person that finds them.
The third category of risk – that the secrecy of the
ballot might be compromised – is however a much more difficult one to deal
with. Voters who do not vote in the
privacy of polling booths may vote in the presence of a dominant family member
who can exert undue pressure on the voter, or of an enthusiastic canvasser who
goes well beyond acceptable persuasion in showing an elector how to vote. At the more sinister end of the scale, there
is a danger of voters being intimidated and threatened with violence or other
retribution unless they voted as directed.
No longer can we be certain that the voter has been able to freely cast
their vote.
There is also a danger of votes becoming saleable
commodities. There is little point in
bribing a voter who can take the money and do as he or she pleases in the
privacy of a polling booth, but it is another matter when the act of voting can
be observed. When local elections can
be won with relatively small numbers of votes and the rewards of office are not
inconsiderable, the temptations of corruption pose a real threat to the
integrity of our elections. There have
recently been major cases of postal vote frauds in Birmingham and in Slough
There
was a small but important Act passed in 2001, which said that a person is not
disqualified from being or being elected as a member of the House of Commons
merely because he has been ordained or is a minister of any religious
denomination. The House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Act 2001,
reduced religious discrimination; a welcome development.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the 2005 General
Election Labour won an overall majority of 66 seats, or 55.1% of seats with
35.2% of the vote. No majority
government in history has ever rested on a flimsier base of public support. A Commons majority has enormous power. For almost a hundred years the case for
electoral reform has become stronger with each successive election.
Labour’s
share of the vote in 2005 can be compared unfavourably to the support enjoyed
in past elections by losing parties.
Attlee’s share of the vote in 1955 when Eden’s Conservatives won a
majority of 58, comparable to Blair’s majority in 2005, was an amazing
46.4%. Blair’s winning 35.2% in 2005 is
scarcely higher than Neil Kinnock’s share of the vote in 1992 (34.4%) and less
than Jim Callaghan scored in 1979 in his unsuccessful bid for a third Labour
term (36.9%)
The government’s level of support among
voters is therefore small. But
taking the electorate as a whole, the proportion of eligible people who cast a
vote to return the government is extremely small – only 21.6%, or 9.6 million
out of an electorate of 44.4 million.
In terms of votes actually cast for Labour, this is the lowest total of
any post-1945 election with the single exception of 1983. The
Government in the United Kingdom has a lower share of the vote of the
electorate than any country in Europe with the exception of the Baltic States.
Turnout
at 61.3% recovered a little from the depths it had reached in 2001 in spite of
the wide extension of postal voting.
But there is little consolation in this being the second worst turnout
since 1918, when many seats were uncontested.
In
2005 the Conservatives with 198 seats were slightly under represented, in that
if they had won seats exactly in proportion to their total vote they would have
won 208. The Liberal Democrats had many
fewer seats (62) than their share of the vote among the electorate justified –
an exactly proportional distribution would have given them 142. Labour was massively over-represented: a
proportional allocation would have given them 227 seats rather than 356.
In
terms of votes per MP, Labour required 26,877, Conservative 44,521 and the
Liberal Democrats a massive 96,378.
Even worse than the Liberal Democrats the Ulster Unionists only got 1 MP
for the 127,414 votes cast for them.
Only 34% of MPs were elected with over half
the vote in their own constituencies, the lowest proportion in
history. Nine MPs were elected with
less than 35% of the vote in their constituency.
Because
of the generally low turnout no MPs polled a majority of the electorate in
their own constituency or even came particularly close. Only three polled more than 4 voters out of
every ten registered. At the other end
of the scale three MPs had less than 20% of the electorate. In Poplar and Canning Town the winning
Labour candidate polled just 18.36% votes of the electorate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In England Labour have 92 more seats than the Conservatives in spite of them polling over 60,000 fewer votes in England. The Conservatives suffered even worse treatment in Scotland than they did in England. They polled nearly a sixth of the vote but had only one MP out of 59 to show for their pains.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In England Labour have 92 more seats than the Conservatives in spite of them polling over 60,000 fewer votes in England. The Conservatives suffered even worse treatment in Scotland than they did in England. They polled nearly a sixth of the vote but had only one MP out of 59 to show for their pains.
In
several regions of England the results were extremely unrepresentative. The worst case is probably the 1.1 million
Conservative voters in the metropolitan counties outside London who elected
only 5 MPs.
On
the basis of the 2005 results if 14,367 voters in the most marginal
constituencies switched from Labour to their nearest competitor, Labour would
lose its majority in the House of Commons.
The figure is put in context when you consider that over 400,000
citizens of the Irish Republic have a vote in a United Kingdom General
Election.
In the 2005 General Election the
total number of ethnic minority MPs rose to fourteen, twelve of whom were
Labour and two Conservative. The first
ethnic minority MP to be elected was Dadabhai Naoroji, who was the Liberal MP
for Finsbury Central from 1892 to 1895.
The first Conservative ethnic minority MP to be elected was Mancherjee
Bhownaggree (later Sir Mancherjee) who was Member for Bethnal Green North-East
from 1895 to 1905. They were followed by Shapurji Saklatvala who was a Parsi
born in Bombay, and represented Battersea North for Labour in 1922 - 1923 and
as a Communist 1924 – 1929.
It is extraordinary that since 1945 the first MPs from
ethnic minorities were not elected until 1987: Diane Abbott (Hackney North
& Stoke Newington), Paul Boateng (Brent South), Bernie Grant (Tottenham)
and Keith Vaz (Leicester East). Diane
Abbott was the first black woman MP.
Ethnic minorities make up about 7% of the population, yet within the
House of Commons they are only 1.8% of the House.
In
order to overcome the clear unrepresentative nature of the House of Commons it
has been suggested that an MP’s vote in the House of Commons should be weighted
according to how many votes he or she got.
However such a system could turn into a bureaucratic nightmare.
No comments:
Post a Comment