The Twentieth Century – Votes for women at last – 1900 to
1928
Democracy is a system in which elites compete in open elections for the
right to rule and are then held under control by the threat that they may be
thrown out in the next election. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,
1942
The 20th
century started off with a General Election.
The Liberals were utterly demoralised by their split over Irish Home
Rule and failed to contest 163 Conservative and Liberal Unionist seats. Only 22 of their own seats were
uncontested. Having tied their hands
behind their back they did rather well in terms of the votes they obtained, but
once again we can see the distortion in the results caused by the First Past
the Post system of election.
The 1900 General Election
had - for those days - a relatively low turnout of 74.6%. The Conservatives and Liberal Unionists won
402 seats (60.1%) with 1,767,958 votes (50.3%). The Liberals got 184 (27.5%) seats with
1,578.746 votes (44.9%). The Liberals
failed to win a majority of Scottish seats for the first time since 1832.
Most extraordinary was
the result of the Irish Nationalists who got 82 seats (12.1%) with only 81,282
votes (2.3%) and the Labour Party for the first time got 2 seats (3.0%) with
62,698 votes (1.8%). In other words the
Conservatives got an MP for every 4,398 votes, Liberals got an MP for every
8,580 votes, the Irish Nationalists got a seat for every 991 votes and the
worst off Party – the new Labour Party got a seat for every 31,349 votes. Ireland was clearly vastly over-represented
in Parliament.
With an overall majority
of 134 seats the Conservatives under Salisbury were riding high, but as we
shall see pride comes before a fall for the Conservatives were out of office by
1906.
The Prime Minister, Lord
Salisbury demonstrated that nepotism was not dead with his Cabinet:
Salisbury’s nephew, Arthur
Balfour, was First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of
Commons. Another nephew, Gerald
Balfour, was President of the Board of Trade.
A third, Evelyn Cecil, became the Prime Minister’s parliamentary private
secretary. Salisbury’s nephew in law,
James Lowther, was Chairman of the Commons Ways and Means Committee. His son in law, Lord Selbourne, was First
Lord of the Admiralty and his eldest son, Lord Cranborne, was Under-Secretary
at the Foreign Office, which Hugh Cecil, another son and an MP, called “only a
stipendiary” but which was an acknowledged route to higher office. "Salisbury Victorian Titan" by A. Roberts
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“Stipendiary” is a salary so the comment included a touch of aristocratic
arrogance. The MP, G.C.T. Bartley
tabled a motion censuring the Prime Minister for nepotism. It was the first time the words “Prime Minister” appeared on a
parliamentary order paper. The phrase “Bob’s your uncle” emanates from Robert
Salisbury’s relationship with his nephew Arthur Balfour.
During the first decade
of the twentieth century the electorate increased by a million from 6.7 million
to 7.7 million men. The proportion of
the population registered to vote increased from 15% of the population to 17.5%
and in contested seats the number of votes cast went up by 25%. In the ballot box engagement was also
rising. In 1900 3,514,592 electors
voted. By 1910 this had risen to
6,643,139, a huge increase. In
percentage terms it went from 52% to 86%.
Democracy was increasing in popularity.
By 1910 we had more electors more likely to vote than ever before, all
achieved without any further legislation.
What happened was that there was an increase in the population, the
population was ageing and we had a period of economic inflation. Because the eligibility to vote was still
partly based on wealth, i.e. the level of annual rentals, inflation meant that
more people met this criterion. This
was all good news for democracy and added to the pressure for more of it. By 1918 when all adult males had the vote
there were 12.9 million male voters.
Available figures show that in the decade 1900 to 1910 the electorate
consisted of 60% of the male population.
What we do not know is how many eligible voters failed to register,
either deliberately or because they moved around a lot.
After Queen Victoria’s
death in January 1901 Lord Salisbury once again showed his rare libertarian
streak: On 14th February, the King had to make a declaration to
Parliament in a form prescribed by William and Mary, in which he renounced some
Catholic rites as “superstitious and
idolatrous”. According to Lady
Balfour, Salisbury considered this oath “scurrilous”
and “a stain on the Statute Book. He
unsuccessfully tried to get the Cabinet to abolish it. The Cabinet feared a Protestant backlash, so
it was allowed to stay there until 1910.
One
question was rising fast up the political agenda – votes for women. The campaign by Millicent Fawcett and the
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies formed in 1897 was beginning to
have an effect. The women campaigning
for this became known as the “suffragettes”
– a term first coined by the Daily Mail denoting
a female vote. The Mail
had intended it as an insult but the campaigners became proud of the title and
the name soon stuck.
In 1903 Emmeline
Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and
Political Union, with her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia. The organisation adopted the slogan “Deeds, not words”. Emmeline Pankhurst was the widow of a radical
Manchester barrister and she believed that only when women had the vote would
sufficient pressure be brought on governments to improve social conditions.
Up
to this time the suffrage had been a male domain. The suffragettes were females campaigning
for women to have the vote. They faced
strong and vehement opposition. One of
the most vociferous opponents was Henry Labouchere. Having voted for John Stuart Mill’s
amendment calling for votes for women in 1867, thereafter he made speech after
speech opposing it. In March 1904 the
old Etonian millionaire said:
“The mission of a working man’s wife is to look after the home, to mind
the baby, to cook the dinner and do the washing. She has no time for electioneering. The business of the husband is to take an
hour off, go to public meetings and, if he is a wise man, adopt the radical
principles addressed to him”.
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In 1905 Campbell-Bannerman became the first official
Prime Minister. The term “Prime Minister” had been employed
informally, but technically depended on the sinecure of “First Lord of the Treasury”.
On December 10th 1905, a Royal warrant placed the Prime
Minister, in the first use of the title, in the order of precedence immediately
after the Archbishop of York. In a narrow sense therefore,
Campbell-Bannerman, not Robert Walpole, was the first British Prime Minister.
In 1906, in one of many constitutional clashes with
the House of Commons, the House of Lords threw out a Bill to abolish plural
voting. Plural voting, by which one
individual had more then one vote, due to being registered in more than one
place, was still widespread. This was a
foretaste of the clashes to come. Lord
Rosebery recommended an elected upper House in a report published in 1907. Meanwhile in the same year a private members
Bill to give women the vote was heavily defeated in the House of Commons.
Faced
with the government’s stubbornness the suffragettes gradually became more
militant. Since 1905 they had been
disrupting meetings addressed by Liberal politicians; Christabel Pankhurst and
Annie Kenney, a Lancashire cotton worker, spent a week in gaol after being
ejected from the Manchester Free Trade hall where they had heckled Sir Edward
Grey. Now the WSPU members turned to
smashing windows, chaining themselves to the railings of Buckingham Palace and
Downing Street, kicking and scratching policemen who tried to move them on and
holding massive demonstrations and processions. "Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe
By
1907 the “suffragettes” had high hopes of the new Liberal government since it
was well known that, Lloyd George was sympathetic to their cause. Their hopes were further raised by the
passing of the Qualification of Women Act 1907 which allowed women to be
elected onto borough and county councils for the first time, and to act as
Mayors. The Act clarified the right of
women ratepayers to be elected to Borough and County Councils in England and
Wales. It also gave women the right to
stand anywhere in Local Government
The
Womens Social and Political Union, known as the WSPU was growing in strength
and beginning to attract a lot of support, so much so, that in 1906 the
Pankhursts moved the headquarters from Manchester to London. Within a year they had built up 58 branches
and donations were running at over £100 per week. It is no wonder that women, particularly the
middle class, were becoming more and more frustrated with the political
system. Many senior MPs held
extraordinary views when looked at from today.
A typical example was that of Sir William Brampton Gordon, the MP for
Norfolk North. In March 1907 he stated
that: “The more civilised man became, the
more he elevated woman until he himself did all the hard work and left her only
the lighter duties and the pleasures of life”.
The
suffragettes adopted a much more militant approach in their campaigning:
In
the year from the spring of 1907, suffragette demonstrators were sent to prison
for a total of 191 weeks. In the
following year, to the spring of 1909, suffragette imprisonments rose to 350
weeks. In the same period, membership
and funds of the WSPU doubled, and at the same time the constitutional activity
of the WSPU increased at a rate that defies belief. In the first six years of its existence, the
Union held more than 100,000 meetings.
The biggest meeting halls in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol,
Scotland and Wales were booked to overflowing.
In the same period, the Albert Hall, the biggest in the country, was
filled no less than 13 times by the WSPU, whose public meetings exceeded,
sometimes by three or four times the total number of meetings sponsored by all
other political organizations. "The Vote" by Paul Foot.
A
contrast with today’s level of political engagement could not be more stark.
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Asquith,
who became the Liberal Prime Minister in April 1908, just two weeks before
Campbell-Bannerman died, opposed votes for women. With the high level of activity in the
women’s movement it was likely that there would be clashes with the authorities. When the Prime Minister visited Bingley Hall
in 1909 eight women protesters were arrested and incarcerated in Winsome Green
prison in Birmingham. They immediately
went on hunger strike. On 24th
September the press reported that they had been force fed by tubes inserted
through their mouths or noses. This
treatment, instead of creating horror and concern in the House of Commons was
met with amusement. The medical
profession were not amused and pointed out the dangers of such behaviour.
Henry
Noel Brailsford a journalist, whose wife had been imprisoned for taking part in
a demonstration of the WSPU in October 1909, decided to take action:
“he put together what became known as
the Conciliation Committee composed of 36 MPs all in favour of some sort of
women’s enfranchisement. The Committee
cobbled together a Conciliation Bill that would grant the vote to some
women. Emmeline and Christabel
Pankhurst and the Pethick-Lawrences were suspicious of the new Bill but did not
oppose it. Reluctantly they agreed a
temporary truce in which all militant activities, including by-election
campaigning against Liberal candidates, would cease until the fate of the
Conciliation Bill was clear”. "The Vote" by Paul Foot.
In
the January 1910 General Election the Conservatives and the Liberals had almost
the same number of seats – 272 and 274.
The result was a hung Parliament.
In
July 1910 the Conciliation Bill was carried with a majority of 109 after a
two-day debate and was sent to committee for consideration. The Bill did not propose full
enfranchisement for women. Lodgers had
no vote and married women could not vote in the same constituency as their
husbands. With a parliamentary recess
and then no progress nothing happened before the second General election of the
year.
The Royal Commission on Electoral Reform
reported in 1910. It recommended that
the Alternative Vote system of voting be used for the House of Commons with the
Single Transferable Vote system being used at a local level.
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The second General Election of 1910
took place from the 3rd to the 19th of December. It was the last time a General Election was
held with balloting taking place over several days. A new Conciliation Bill was tabled. This time there was no £10 property
qualification as in the previous Bill.
Also dropped was the clause banning husbands and wives voting in the
same constituency. The second reading
of the Bill was passed with a majority of 167 on 5th May 1911. At this point party politics raised its ugly
head. The Liberal Lloyd George
convinced himself that if the Bill went through the main beneficiaries would be
the Tory Party for he believed they would attract the women’s vote. On November 11th he secretly
approached the Conciliation committee and told them that he would give them his
support if a different Bill to increase further the votes for men should
fail. Sure enough the next day Prime
Minister Asquith announced such a Bill, at the same time promising that it
could be amended to include women in it.
This was disingenuous for Asquith knew perfectly well that such an
amendment would never get through the House of Lords.
Rather
than be grateful for this seeming compromise the Pankhursts could hardly
contain their anger at what they thought was a stitch up. For over a year they had stopped campaigning
in the belief that they would get their own Bill, yet all they had got was the
possibility of an amendment to another Bill.
The truce was over.
Demonstrations took place all over London and many shop windows were
smashed. On 28 March 1912 the
Conciliation Bill was defeated in the House of Commons by 14 votes. The Irish Nationalists voted with the
Liberals to defeat it. They wanted to
stay in the good books of the Liberal government in the hope that it would keep
them in good stead for Home Rule. The
main argument against the Bill was a commitment by the government to introduce
a full franchise reform Bill that could be amended to include women.
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Whilst the battle for women’s votes took place, a
separate great clash between the House of Commons and the House of Lords had
commenced. The Commons were still
smarting from the clash of 1906. This
conflict had been brewing for several years in the Commons. The Liberals had been building their
enthusiasm for a big push as they were getting more and more frustrated. A. J. Balfour, the Conservative leader, in a
speech at Manchester in November 1909 said:
“The
object of a second chamber is not, and never has been, to prevent the people,
the electorate, determining what policy they should pursue; it exists for the
purpose of seeing that on great issues the policy which is pursued is not the
policy of a temporary majority elected for a different purpose, but carries the
conviction of the people for the few years in which it carries their mandate…
The object is to see that what concerns the people should be referred to the
people, and that the people shall not be betrayed by hasty legislation, having
perhaps some vindictive policy to carry out”. Edwardian Britain - Society in transition by K.Benning
In
his book The Conservative Party from Peel
to Thatcher Robert Blake says:
“Why did such a
balanced man as Balfour see nothing objectionable in this use of the House of
Lords”? Deep in the subconscious
mind of the party was a sense of prescriptive right to rule, inculcated by
twenty years of domination after 1886. This
was an error that neither Disraeli nor Derby would have committed. The most revealing remark of all was made by
Balfour just after his personal defeat in Manchester in 1906. It is the duty of everyone, he said, to
ensure that “the great Unionist
(Conservative) party should still control, whether in power or in opposition,
the destinies of this great Empire”.
If this proposition is taken literally, it is a denial of parliamentary
democracy. Indeed many Conservatives
behaved as if the verdict of 1906 was some freak mistake on the part of the
electorate, and that it was the Conservative’s duty, through the House of
Lords, to preserve the public from the consequences of its own folly till it
came to its senses. The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher by R. Blake.
The Conservatives of
1906 had not adjusted to the landscape of 1906 in the same way that the
Conservatives of 2005 had not adjusted to the landscape of 2005. They were stuck in a particular way of
operating.
The Conservative Party had suffered a heavy defeat by the
Liberals in the General Election of 1906.
Nevertheless the unelected House of Lords with its large built-in
Conservative majority ignored this fact and proceeded to reject many Bills
proposed and passed by the huge Liberal majority in the House of Commons. Some of the earlier reforms of
the Liberals had been obstructed, including an Education Bill (1906), a Plural
Voting Bill (1906), and a Licensing Bill (1908}. Perhaps in practice constitutional change happens in fits and
starts. The pressure builds and builds
before coming to a head.
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Was democracy to
prevail? This was the great-unanswered
question. A constitutional clash
between the two Houses was inevitable.
The spark that set the fire alight was the rejection by the Lords of
Lloyd George’s first budget in 1909.
This budget increased taxes particularly on the wealthy in order to pay
for Dreadnought battleships, a pension scheme and labour exchanges. These would cost £15 million. It was unprecedented that an entire budget
should be rejected. What were the Lords
thinking of? In introducing the budget
Lloyd George was certainly thinking of a crisis. For once and for all, the elected House of
Commons had to stamp its authority over the unelected House of Lords.
The budget was debated in the Commons
from April until November – much longer than usual. The Conservatives assaulted it viciously
both in the Commons and outside, forming a Budget Protest League. They complained that it was a deliberate
attack on the wealthy; especially on landowners and that it was the beginnings
of socialism: the new land tax would require all land to be valued, and this,
they feared, could be the preliminary to the nationalisation of land. The Duke of Beaufort said that he would like
to see Lloyd George and Churchill “in the middle of twenty couple of
foxhounds”; Lloyd George struck back with his famous Limehouse speech, accusing
the landlords of being selfish creatures whose sole function was “the stately
consumption of wealth produced by others”.
In November 1909 the budget passed the Commons with a huge majority (379
– 149), but later the same month the Lords rejected it, even though Edward VII
was anxious for it to pass. Lord
Lansdowne, Conservative Leader in the Lords, justified this on the grounds that
such a revolutionary measure ought to be put before the public, in a general
election. Balfour said that the Lords
were merely carrying out their proper function as the “watchdog of the
constitution”, i.e. making sure that no irresponsible laws were passed. Lloyd George retorted that the Lords were
acting as if they were “Mr. Balfour’s poodle”. "Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe
In an
earlier speech on 9 October Lloyd George had a dig at the peerage. He said “A
fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and Dukes are
just as great a terror, and they last longer”. The Dreadnought was an expensive
battleship.
The
constitutional crisis caused by the rejection of the budget was not long
coming. Lloyd George spoke about
“revolution”. Should an elected body
have its decision overturned by an unelected body? The progress of democracy over several
hundred years had now hit the brick wall of the House of Lords. Prime Minister Asquith and the Liberal Party
prepared for battle. Lloyd George made
a mocking speech on the 9th of October 1909 at Newcastle implying
that the House of Lords were the unemployed.
"If they begin, issues will be raised that
they little dream of, questions will be asked that are now whispered in humble
voices. The question will be asked:
Should 500 men, ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed
over-ride the judgement – the deliberate judgement – of millions of people who
are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth of the country?…. Another
question will be: Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a
perquisite, who made 10,000 people owners of the soil, and the rest of us
trespassers in the land of our birth?… These are the questions that will be
asked. The answers are charged with
peril for the order of things the Peers represent; but they are fraught with
rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been
treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark
ages, which are now emerging into the light.”
Asquith
had no choice. Parliament was dissolved
and a General Election called in January 1910.
Astonishingly the Liberals did not get the anticipated landslide again –
perhaps the British have a deep sense of deference in their make-up, or more
likely the Labour Party took their votes.
The Liberals were the largest Party with 275 seats, not far behind were
the Conservatives and Unionists with 273 followed by the new upcoming Labour
Party with 40. The Irish Nationalists
with 82 seats held the balance of power.
Ironically the Conservatives got thirty of their seats through plural
voting which the Liberals had tried to abolish but had been defeated by the
House of Lords. Their campaign for “One Man, One Vote” was given a
boost in the arm by this result.
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The Irish Nationalists were sitting
pretty and their Leader, John Redmond took advantage of the situation by
agreeing to support Lloyd George’s budget and restriction of the power of the
House of Lords in exchange for an Irish Home Rule Bill.
Fairly
early in the new Parliament the Liberals presented a Parliament Bill
restricting the powers of the House of Lords and they also resurrected the
budget. Both went smoothly through the
Commons. In April 1910 the Lords passed
the budget without a division, but as for the Parliament Bill that was a
different case – do turkeys vote for Christmas? Not if they are in the House of Lords.
The
next step was somehow to manoeuvre the Lords into passing the Parliament
Bill. Asquith tried to persuade Edward
VII to create about 250 new Liberal peers, enough to defeat the Conservatives
in the Lords. The king would only agree
if the Liberals could win another election on the issue, but Asquith dare not
risk another one so soon. Edward died
suddenly in May, and the new king, George V, suggested a conference, which
discussed the situation for the next six months. A compromise solution was almost reached,
but the conference broke down over the problem of Ireland. The Conservatives wanted special loopholes
in any new bill, which would enable them to block Home Rule, but Asquith would
not agree. "Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe
With
the breakdown of talks Prime Minister Asquith decided to bring matters to a
head by sending the Parliament Bill to the House of Lords in November
1910. Once again it was rejected. Asquith then had a secret meeting with King
George V. George V promised Asquith
that if he called another General Election and formed the Government, he,
George V would create up to 500 new peers to enable the Bill to be passed by
the Lords. With this secret promise in
his pocket Asquith called another General Election in December 1910. The result was virtually the same as the
previous one. The Liberals got 272
seats; the Conservative and Unionists 272, Labour 42 and the Irish Nationalists
with 84 once again held the balance of power.
In May 1911 the House of Commons passed the Bill with a comfortable
majority.
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It was quite clear by now that the
government were determined to get the Parliament Bill passed come hell or high
water, whatever the cost. They had
decided that the power of the House of Lords had to be reduced. One
House had to be supreme and the government were determined that the
democratically elected House of Commons should have supremacy over the
unelected House of Lords. The Conservative
and Unionists in the House of Lords fought back and their fight-back became
increasingly bitter as they realised that they had no hope of winning. This was to be a fight to the bitter
end. There could be only one winner and
on 21st July the Shadow Cabinet made the first moves to save
themselves from what was now an impossible situation. The Conservative Leader Balfour, playing a
similar role to Wellington in 1832, had the difficult job of persuading a
majority of the Conservatives and Unionists to accept the Bill. Some of them though were prepared to go down
fighting to the end.
On 24th July there was uproar in the House
of Commons, with so much personal abuse hurled at Asquith that the session had
to be suspended.
Asquith
announced in the Commons that the king had promised to create as many as 500
Liberal peers if necessary, to get the bill through the Lords. The furious Conservatives led by Lord Hugh
Cecil (Salisbury’s son) howled Asquith down with shouts of “Traitor!” and he
was unable to complete his speech.
However the more moderate Conservative peers decided that it would be
better to accept a reduction of their powers, rather than find themselves
permanently swamped by the Liberals.
Balfour hoped he could persuade the King not
to use his power to create new peers, but it became increasingly clear that the
King would if necessary keep his promise to Asquith. The heat generated by the arguments
reflected the hot days of that summer as an unusual heat wave descended on
Britain. The choice was stark and
simple for the Conservatives and Unionists in the House of Lords – accept a
permanent dilution of their powers or face a huge permanent Liberal majority
that would immediately proceed to pass all the Liberal Bills, which they had
previously rejected. Home Rule for
Ireland, Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, an end to Plural Voting, all
these would hit the statute book. All
this they would lose, or they could accept a delaying power for two years. It would have been madness for them not to
accept the delay.
In a
thesis on the “Conservative Party” R.
B. Jones commented:
“Balfour announced on 25 July that the Lords
would be advised to pass the Bill, but on the following day a dinner was given
for Lord Halsbury by several hundred peers and MPs who were determined to carry
on the fight. Halsbury was accepted
leader of the ditchers in the House of Lords, but was supported by Milner,
Selborne, Carson, Smith, Austen Chamberlain and others in the shadow
cabinet. The dinner was a deliberate
slight to Balfour and the formation of a Halsbury Club afterwards was a sign
that the split would outlast the current debate.”
Roy
Jenkins in his book “Mr. Balfour’s Poodle”
set out what followed:
“Balfour, having given the Party his
advice and seen it widely rejected, left for Germany before the critical vote
was taken. On 10 August the peers
decided their fate; the bulk of the Unionist peers accepted Lansdowne’s advice,
sullenly abstained and challenged the government to find its own majority. However even this did not save the party
further embarrassment for 114 diehards kept up the opposition to the last; the
Bill was saved only by the votes of thirty-seven Unionists under Curzon who
voted for the Bill with the bishops and the Liberals. The outcome was thus that the Unionist peers
split three ways and that the Bill passed – despite all the sound and fury – by
Unionist votes”.
But,
in spite of all the pressures when the vote was taken it was a close run thing.
The bill passed by 131 votes to 114.
The Parliament Act, at last became law and the constitutional crisis was
over.
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The provisions of the Parliament Act
(1911) were as follow:
(1) A Money Bill became law within one
month of being sent up to the House of Lords, with or without their
agreement. It was to be left to the
discretion of the Speaker to certify what was a “Money Bill”, but it must be
one, the main object of which was financial.
In practice, Speakers have refrained from so certifying where any policy
change is involved.
(2) Other Public Bills could receive the
Royal Assent without the agreement of the Lords. Such a Bill must have been passed by the
Commons in three consecutive sessions (whether of the same Parliament or not),
and two years must have elapsed between the date of the second reading in the
House of Commons in the first session and the third reading in the third
session. This provision did not,
however, apply to a bill extending the maximum duration of Parliament beyond
five years or to a Provisional Order Confirmation Bill. It should also be noted that it did not
include private bills.
(3) The maximum duration of Parliament
was reduced from seven years to five years, the idea being to ensure that a
Commons which was over three years old, and thus possibly out of touch with the
wishes of the electorate, should not be able to pass a bill in defiance of the
Lords.
As regards a Money Bill, the Act really made legal
only what the Commons had secured in 1860.
But for other bills it marked a fundamental constitutional change,
making it possible to pass legislation without the consent of one House.
The
Act was of major importance in the development of the constitution. Democracy had been safeguarded – the Lords
had no control over the country’s finances, they could delay other legislation
for two years, but could not prevent it becoming law eventually, provided the
government remained in power long enough.
On the other hand the Lords still had the power, if they felt like using
it, to paralyse a government for the last two years of its five-year term. As for immediate results, the Lords were so
incensed at the Liberals, that they used to the full the powers they had left,
rejecting the Irish Home Rule Bill, a Welsh Disestablishment Bill, and another
Plural Voting Bill; not one of these perfectly reasonable bills had passed into
law when war broke out in 1914. The
Liberal Party itself therefore gained very little from the Parliament Act. Although they had emerged from the crisis
“flushed with one of the greatest victories of all time”, as Dangerfield puts
it, “from that victory they never recovered”. "Mastering Modern British History" by N. Lowe
Perhaps this was the climax of the Liberal Party’s
success. From here on their orbit was
downwards.
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The House of Lords has been an “interim” House since
1911, when it was intended that the Parliament Act 1911 would be followed
shortly by another Act replacing the Lords with an elected Second Chamber. The Preamble to the Parliament Act stated: “And whereas it is intended to substitute for
the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a
popular instead of a hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot immediately
be brought into operation”. For
almost a hundred years every attempt to make the House of Lords a democratic
body has been frustrated. Will it ever
succeed? There are those that argue No,
because an elected House of Lords would reflect the elected House of
Commons. If they disagreed, who would
represent the will of the people? We
shall see.
In 1911 the House of Commons settled a salary of £400
a year on MPs, thus enabling poor men to enter Parliament and exist without
outside help, reducing the possibility of bribery and corruption. This was the first stage to professionalising
the political classes. The salaries and
expenses of MPs is a controversial area, which lasts to today.
With the passing of the Parliament Act the Irish
Nationalists looked to Asquith to redeem his promise of Irish Home Rule for
their support in passing the Parliament Act.
Asquith kept his promise and introduced a Bill giving Home Rule to
Ireland. Three times it was passed by
the House of Commons and each time it was rejected by the House of Lords. The Liberals invoked the Parliament Act and
Home Rule was due to be implemented in 1914.
Unfortunately due the outbreak of the Great War the implementation was
postponed. An interesting aspect of the
Bill was that it contemplated the United Kingdom in a federalist structure with
separate Parliaments for England Scotland and Wales as well as Ireland.
The Home Rule Act 1914
had the following provisions:
·
A
bicameral Irish Parliament to be set up in Dublin (a 40-member Senate and a
164-member House of Commons) with powers to deal with most national affairs.
·
A
number of Irish MPs would continue to sit in the House of Commons in
Westminster (42 MPs, rather than 103).
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Another consequence of the passing of
the Parliament Act was the determination of the Liberals to abolish plural
voting. They were convinced that it
worked to their disadvantage and there was still some bitterness over their
defeat by the House of Lords in 1906 when they had tried to abolish it. Now, they wanted revenge. They therefore introduced the Franchise and
Registration Bill in 1912, designed to give full manhood suffrage. Also included in this Bill was a proposal to
abolish the University seats, which no Liberal had won a single seat in since
1886. The electorates of these seats
were graduates and the system of election used was that of proportional
representation. It is somewhat ironic
that the Liberals wanted to abolish a system of election which later they
campaigned hard to get the whole country to adopt.
The
other issue bubbling along unresolved was that of women’s suffrage. By November 1912 Asquith and the Liberals
had accepted the principle of women’s suffrage, so an amendment was made to the
Franchise and Registration Bill to give the vote to certain categories of
women. In January 1913 the Speaker of
the House, in a ruling of questionable merit ruled that the amendment could not
be allowed since it changed the whole nature of the Bill. The Speaker could not be challenged. This power remains unchanged today. The Bill was in serious trouble and the
Government decided that it was not worth pursuing, so dropped it. As a consequence three important measures to
improve our democracy were abandoned.
The
effect of dropping the Bill was catastrophic for it set off a wave of violence
by the suffragettes, who felt they had been betrayed. Lloyd George was about to move into a new
house, only to find that Mrs Pankhurst had bombed it, for which she was to
receive a sentence of three years in jail.
One of the most dramatic events occurred at the Derby in 1913 when Emily
Davidson threw herself in front of the King’s horse to try and trip it up and
was trampled to death. Mary Richardson,
a suffragette who was later to be sentenced to 18 moths hard labour for
damaging Velazquez’s “Rokeby Venus”
at the National Gallery described what happened:
“She stood alone there, close to the
white-painted rails where the course bends round at Tattenham Corner; she
looked absorbed and yet far away from everybody else and seemed to have no
interest in what was going on around her.
A minute before the race started she raised a paper of her own, or some
kind of card, before her eyes. I was
watching her hand. It did not
shake. Even when I heard the pounding
of the horses’ hooves moving closer I saw she was still smiling. And suddenly she slipped under the rail and
ran out into the middle of the racecourse.
It was all over so quickly.
Emily was under the hoofs of one of the horses and seemed to be hurled
for some distance across the grass. The
horse stumbled sideways and its jockey was thrown from its back. She lay very still”.
Asquith suffered several
attacks including being beaten over the head with dog whips. On one occasion when he was on the
Lossiemouth golf course some extremists tried to tear his clothes off. Churches and railway stations were set on
fire. This could not be allowed to
continue and there was bound to be an adverse reaction from the authorities.
As the suffragettes
became more militant, the government response became harsher. When suffragettes went on hunger strike in
prison, the government authorised them to be forcibly fed. This then provoked criticism, to which the
government responded with the ridiculous “Cat
and Mouse Act” of 1913; which is the usual name given to the Prisoners,
Temporary Discharge for Health Act.
This Act permitted the release from prison of women who were in a weak
physical state because they had been on hunger strike, and allowed them to be
re-arrested when they had recovered their health. The logic behind the Act was simple: a
Suffragette would be arrested; she would go on hunger strike; the authorities
would wait until she was too weak (through lack of food) to do any harm in
public. She would then be released ‘on licence’. Once out of prison, the former prisoner
would start to eat once again and re-gain her strength. If she committed an offence while out “on licence,” she would be immediately
re-arrested and returned to prison.
Here, she would then go back on hunger strike. The authorities would then wait until she
was too weak to cause trouble and then she would be re-released ‘on licence’.
The nickname of the Act came about because of a cat’s habit of
playing with its prey (a mouse) before finishing it off.
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On the question of the
Sovereign exercising his prerogative powers Lord Esher advised George V in 1913
“The Sovereign cannot act
unconstitutionally so long as he acts on the advice of a minister supported by
a majority in the House of Commons”.
Ministerial responsibility is the safeguard of the monarchy.” This precedent is relevant today.
In
1914 the Liberals tried to create the most favourable conditions for their next
appeal to the country, expected in 1915, by pushing through a Bill to abolish
plural voting. It was thought that this
anomaly had given an extra thirty seats to the Unionist’s in the General
Election of 1910. The Government’s
measure awaited its third and final reading when the coming of war disrupted
its planned legislative programme.
When
war broke out in 1914 the suffragettes abandoned their campaign and the women’s
efforts in supporting the war over the next four years repaired much of the
damage done by the violence. Women
during the War did many of the jobs previously done by men. By the end of the war the case for women’s
suffrage was unanswerable.
The
Great War changed the whole approach to politics and led to immense change in
the political landscape. A General
Election was due in 1915, the outcome of which neither Conservatives nor
Liberals were confident of winning. In
the event it was never held – General Elections were suspended during the
War. What was to happen to legislation
going through Parliament?
The
Home Rule Bill and the Welsh Disestablishment Bill became law in the Autumn of
1914, but were then suspended for the duration of the war. It was agreed between the parties, and a
pact was entered into on 6th August, that there would be no
contested by-elections, the first casualty of democracy.
The waging of war perhaps understandably brought with
it a curtailment of freedoms and liberty.
Restrictions were placed on the freedom of the press. There was the internment of enemy
aliens. The Defence of the Realm Act,
wiped out Magna Carta, The Bill of Rights, etc., in a few lines, curtailing
traditional liberties. Even so, voices
of caution were heard. Politics did not
stand still during the war. In 1916 the
House of Commons voted with a majority of 330 to give votes to wives over
thirty years of age.
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In August 1916 the Tory Local Government Board
Minister Walter Long proposed:
a “representative conference of
earnest men holding strong views, bitterly opposed to each other” which could
thrash out a “lasting settlement” for the future of the franchise. This became known as the Speaker’s
Conference. The Speaker took the chair,
and the membership of the committee included a string of lords, knights and
dignitaries from the great and good in the Commons. The original list included such bitter
opponents of franchise extension as the Marquis of Salisbury and Sir Frederick
Banbury – though these two resigned (presumably in protest at the pro-suffrage
balance in the committee) on the day of its first meeting, 12 October 1916. The Conference sat 26 times until 26 January
1917, and debated 37 resolutions of which 34 were passed unanimously. Not unanimous was a decision to extend the
vote to women, though not to all women, for some reason young women were deemed
a greater threat to the established order than older women. The Conference was undecided as to the age
at which the vote should be extended to women – some thought 30, some thought
35, but no one argued against votes for women in principle. "The Vote" by Paul Foot.
The
Speaker’s Conference came up with a number of recommendations after much
wheeling and dealing in smoke filled rooms.
It had originally been prompted by the Conservatives demanding that the
franchise should be extended by giving votes to the servicemen serving in the
armed forces. The deal that was
hammered out was that the Conservatives would accept a widening of the
franchise if the Liberals accepted some plural votes and a redistribution of
seats. As the Liberals had wanted a
wider franchise and the Tories redistribution for some years both sides
accepted the deal. There was another
problem though – the Labour Party had made considerable headway in recent times
and they needed to be brought on board.
The answer was proportional representation, which would enable them to
consolidate their position. Everybody
attending the Conference seemed to be satisfied, but when their proposals were
published they met with a hostile reaction from the Unionists. The penny had dropped that with a
redistribution anything could happen, and it was by no means certain that the
Unionists would benefit.
In the first decade of the century the population had
increased in Unionist areas, whereas in Liberal and Nationalist areas it was
static. The population of Ireland had
fallen by 2%. The middle class were
moving to the suburbs and out of the city centres. Before the war there was a feeling that
redistribution would benefit the Unionists but now they were not so sure. Ireland was clearly over-represented, but
when redistribution eventually took place Ireland retained the same number of
seats. Nevertheless the Unionists
gained about thirty seats, a useful addition to their numbers.
It was clear that the First Past
the Post system of elections was distorting democracy. With the advent of the third Party (Irish
Nationalists) representation in Parliament had become haphazard. Now there was another Party in the frame –
the Labour Party. After winning two
seats in the General Election of 1900 they went on to win 29 seats in 1906 and
42 seats in the General Election of December 1910. Together with the Irish Nationalists, the
Labour Party had become the swing vote, but unlike the Irish they fundamentally
threatened the Liberal Party and in the eyes of the Conservatives threatened
the country. Revolution was on the
agenda in Russia so how far could the working-class be appeased? All of this was happening whilst some MPs
were fighting on the front line. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The recommendations from
the Speaker’s Conference lead to a new Representation of the People Bill. In May 1917 the Bill was tabled in the House
of Commons by the Home Secretary, Sir George Cave. Cave believed that the War had brought an
end to class divisions and that the contribution that women had made to the
work necessary to carry on the War justified them having a voice in the future
of the country. In spite of some
opposition on 22 May the Bill got a huge majority on second reading, 341 votes
in favour with only 62 against. It then
went into a committee of the whole House that went on for some months. Many Unionists felt strongly about
individual clauses in the Bill but could not bring themselves to oppose the
principle. In principle they were in favour
of extending the franchise, particularly in relation to servicemen, after all
this had been their original concern.
They wanted an equitable scheme for redistribution, but as we know the
devil is in the detail. They wanted the
registration of voters to be simplified, the powers of the second chamber to be
examined. Finally they wanted the
proposals to be applicable to the whole of the United Kingdom. This was particularly important because
Ireland was grossly over-represented in Parliament. Sooner or later this had to be
rectified. Summing up, the Conservative
and Unionist Party wanted electoral reform but it had to be comprehensive and
done at the right time.
Passage of the Bill was lengthy,
with many amendments being made by the Unionists. The Boundaries Commission remit was altered
so that not only did they have to consider population in drawing up the
constituency boundaries they also had to consider economic interests. The Unionists were worried about the
agricultural seats. The rules on plural
voting were altered to the advantage of the Unionists giving them thousands of
extra votes.
Not resolved in the smoke filled
room was the issue of proportional representation and even today we are still
searching for a solution. In the
original Bill presented in 1917 it was proposed that Proportional Representation
should be used for voting in the Cities.
The Commons could not reach agreement.
One day they voted in favour only for it to be overturned the next. In the end the vested interests of the
sitting MPs dominated.
The 1918 Representation of the People Bill was passed
in the Commons with 385 votes for and 55 against. The Bill went on to the House of Lords
where, by one of those ironic twists of fate, the Government spokesman was Lord
Curzon – President the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. Surprisingly the Conservative Lords were in
favour of proportional representation, but pragmatism ruled the day and in the
end the status quo prevailed.
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The House of Lords were strongly in favour of
Proportional Representation. They saw
it as a way of preventing extreme legislation being forced through the House of
Commons. A compromise was suggested
that the electoral system to be used should be the Alternative Vote, but this
compromise failed also to get agreement.
The two Houses were divided. Almost inevitably the end result was
stalemate, but in the end no new voting system was introduced with a minor
exception being that Proportional Representation was kept in the university
seats. With a touch of arrogance
Parliament thought that university graduates would understand the complexities
of Proportional Representation, whereas the rest of the population would not.
The Representation of the People Act received the
Royal Assent and thus became law in February 1918. As a result the electorate was increased from
the 7.7 million in 1910 to 21.4 million in 1918. Allowing for deaths in the intervening
period and for those too young to vote in 1910, only about a quarter of the
electorate of 1918 had entered a polling booth before. Women now made up 39.6% of the
electorate. If women had been
enfranchised on the same basis as men they would have been in a majority due to
the large number of men killed in the war.
The
Representation of the People Act, 1918, carried out far reaching reforms:
(1) It
substituted a simple qualification to vote, instead of the numerous
qualifications, which then existed; henceforth all that was necessary was 6
months’ residence or the occupation of business premises. Effectively the vote was given to all males over the age of 21.
(2) The
vote was given to women over 30 years of age, provided she or her husband was
qualified to vote at local government elections. This enfranchised 8,479,156 women. Excluded were those women under 30 and of
those over 30, 22% did not meet the property qualification. Women were still not treated on an equal
basis.
(3) It
removed the disqualification of receipt of poor relief.
(4) It
provided that, at a general election, all elections were to be held on the same
day and that no elector could vote in more than two constituencies.
(5) It
introduced the requirement that a candidate should deposit £150 with the
returning Officer, to be forfeited if he does not poll one-eighth of the total
votes cast.
(6) It
redistributed seats on the basis of one member to every 70,000 of the
population. This was the first time an
attempt had been made to create equal size constituencies.
In effect the Act
increased the electorate by 13.7 million. The political impact of it was not
just to empower Labour. It is wrong to assume
that all vote-less males prior to 1918 were working class and therefore natural
Labour supporters. Because the existing
franchise favoured householders and against lodgers many middle class men could
not or did not vote because their work made them mobile or the difficulty of
qualifying as a lodger was too great to overcome.
The Representation of the
People Act 1918 did not make votes of equal value. 7% of the suffrage still had plural
votes.
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The Reform Acts of the nineteenth century fell short of creating universal manhood suffrage. The franchise was significantly limited by difficult residence qualifications, which meant that only about 60 per cent of adult males were on the electoral register. Only about 12 per cent were formally excluded by the residence qualification. The remainder changed residence too regularly or merely failed to register. The restricted pre-war franchise left about half the working class without the vote. Although there were working class Conservatives and Liberals the main impact was to limit Labour’s ability to tap into its natural source of support. When full male suffrage was achieved in 1918 a working class electorate turned to Labour. How many votes the introduction of universal franchise was worth to Labour we do not know, but it was a critical element in the emergence of the Party as a major political force.
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The Reform Acts of the nineteenth century fell short of creating universal manhood suffrage. The franchise was significantly limited by difficult residence qualifications, which meant that only about 60 per cent of adult males were on the electoral register. Only about 12 per cent were formally excluded by the residence qualification. The remainder changed residence too regularly or merely failed to register. The restricted pre-war franchise left about half the working class without the vote. Although there were working class Conservatives and Liberals the main impact was to limit Labour’s ability to tap into its natural source of support. When full male suffrage was achieved in 1918 a working class electorate turned to Labour. How many votes the introduction of universal franchise was worth to Labour we do not know, but it was a critical element in the emergence of the Party as a major political force.
The biggest impact of the Representation of the
People Act 1918 was the enfranchisement of women. At last it had happened. They were not fully enfranchised but a major
breakthrough had been made.
At the same time as the Representation of the People
Act 1918 was passed the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed
by 274 votes to 25, making women eligible to become Members of Parliament. The Act received the Royal Assent on 21st
November 1918, the same day that Parliament was dissolved for the General
Election. It enabled Constance,
Countess Markiewicz to be elected, as the first woman MP, but in common with
other members of Sinn Fein she did not take her seat which was St. Patrick’s,
Dublin. She contested her seat from a
cell in Holloway prison where she was being held under suspicion of conspiring
with Germany during the War. In the
General Election of 1918 out of 1,600 candidates 17 were women. In November 1919 at a by-election in the
Plymouth Sutton division Nancy, Viscountess Astor, who was American born,
became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. Her husband had created the by-election
vacancy on his accession to the peerage on the death of his father. Two years later, after the death of her
husband Tom, who had held the seat, Margaret Wintringham contested the Louth
by-election and became the first British born female to sit as an MP. The first three women MPs to take the oath
were all elected for seats which had been held by their husbands. By one of those quirks of law if a woman was
over twenty-one she could now stand for parliament but unless she was over
thirty she could not vote for herself.
This had to change.
To remedy the problem of multi-size seats, the
Redistribution Act passed in the same year increased the House of Commons to
707 seats and adopted the principle of equal constituency sizes. At the same time, other elements of the
political system which we have today appeared.
In 1918 Postal voting in the United Kingdom was first introduced for
people with a physical incapacity and for those required to undertake a journey
by sea or air, and has continued. The
prompt for this was the number of servicemen who had not returned from the
First World War in time to vote in the 1918 general election.
The
natural minority of Unionist MPs perhaps created fears that they would never
get back into power in the House of Commons.
This could explain their behaviour in the House of Lords, which might
have been their only bastion. Of course
matters would change in 1928 when women at last got the full franchise.
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The
post-war election was held in great haste within a few weeks of the Armistice,
and even before the votes of the armed forces could properly be canvassed or
even registered. Just 57 per cent of
those entitled to do so cast their vote.
Many seats were uncontested. Once again we can see a distortion in the
votes. The Labour Party got 21% of the
votes but only 57 MPs (8.1% of the seats).
Compare this with the Election of 1910 when they got 42 MPs with only 6%
of the vote. In spite of all the
electoral reform much was left to do.
75% of the newly enfranchised male voters could not vote in Municipal
elections, reversing the previous position whereby more men and some women
could vote locally but were not enfranchised nationally.
The
General Election was held on December 14th 1918. It was the first since December 1910. It is remembered as the “coupon election” so-called because those candidates for the
Liberal Party who had supported the coalition government of Lloyd George during
World War One were issued with a letter of support signed by both Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar
Law, leader of the Conservative Party to show the electorate who were genuine
coalition candidates. Herbert Asquith,
the official leader of the Liberals, referred to the letter as a “coupon” and the title stuck with regards
to the name of the election. “Coupons” were issued to 159 Liberal
candidates and 364 Conservatives. Where
a ‘Coupon’ Liberal stood for
election, no Conservative challenged him.
Where a Conservative stood, no ‘Coupon’
Liberal challenged him. Therefore there
was no chance of coalition candidates competing against each other.
Those
Liberals not issued with the “coupon”
were faced with a huge political mountain to climb and only 26 Liberals who
supported Asquith won a seat. Even
Asquith lost his place in the Commons when he lost his seat for East Fife The result of the election was difficult to
predict because of the large number of extra voters – six million women and two
million men – enfranchised by the Representation of the People Act 1918. In the event the coalition won easily mainly
because of Lloyd George’s great popularity as the man who had led Britain to victory,
and his promises to create a “country fit
for heroes” and to make Germany pay “the
whole cost of the war”.
The
Election was also known as the khaki election, due to the immediate post-war
setting and the role of the demobilised soldiers. Making Germany pay “the whole cost of the war” was popular but in the end it bankrupted
Germany with fateful results.
In spite of all the electoral reform the House of
Commons was clearly not representative of the people. The coalition Conservatives with 332 seats
secured 47% of the seats on 33.3% of the votes, the coalition Liberals 127
seats (18%) with 13.4% of the votes.
The Liberal Party with almost the same number of votes (13.3%) got only
36 seats. Ireland was again distorted
with Sinn Fein getting 73 seats (10.3%) with only 4.8% of the votes. Of the 73 Sinn Fein MPs elected 47 of them
were in jail at the time of the election!
None of Sinn Fein’s (Ourselves Alone – founded in 1904 by Arthur
Griffith) MPs took their seats at Westminster.
Instead they issued a proclamation that there was now an Irish Republic
with its own Parliament (Dail Eirann – Assembly of Ireland) in Dublin. They elected Eamonn de Valera as
Leader. You can still be elected if you
are in jail, but of course you cannot take your seat! The Unionists did not stand as a separate
party.
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No
sooner was the Great War over and the General Election held before the problems
of Home Rule jumped to the forefront of politics. Wales was easily sorted out. They wanted the Church of Wales to be
disestablished and Lloyd George duly disestablished it in 1920. This was followed by a Church of Scotland
Act in 1921, which gave self-government to the Church in Scotland. Ireland was not so simple and was to prove
the most divisive issue. Trouble flared up in Ireland immediately after the
1918 general election. The 73 Sinn Fein
MPs, out of a 105 total Irish seats, who wanted Ireland to be independent from
Britain, set up their own Parliament (Dail Eirann – Assembly of Ireland) in
Dublin and proclaimed the Republic of Ireland.
Eamonn
de Valera, the Leader of Sinn Fein had survived the Easter Rising in Dublin
when Irish Nationalists seized control of the centre of Dublin in 1916. After much bitter fighting they were
suppressed by the British army.
He
was one of the few surviving leaders of the Easter Rising and became the symbol
of Irish republicanism. Together with
Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, he organised an effective government,
which ignored the British and ran the country in its own way, collecting taxes
and setting up law courts. The British
Prime Minister, Lloyd George, hoped that the Government of Ireland Act
(February 1920) would win moderate support back to the British. This was a revised version of the original
Home Rule Bill of 1912, delayed by the Lords and then by the war; this time
Ireland was partitioned, with one parliament for the South at Dublin and
another for the six counties of Ulster at Belfast. The Belfast parliament was for the benefit
of Ulster Protestants, who still refused to be ruled by a Dublin-based Roman
Catholic government. Although Ulster
reluctantly accepted their parliament, Sinn Fein rejected the entire act,
because it gave them control only of certain domestic matters, whereas they
were determined on a complete break with Britain; also they wanted control of
Ulster. Mastering Modern British History by N. Lowe
Vicious
and bloody violence now erupted in Ireland.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) began a campaign of terrorism against
the police. Of course the Irish Republicans
would call themselves freedom fighters.
The IRA (Nationalists) attacked the Royal Irish Constabulary (Government
forces) mercilessly. To try and balance
up the forces Lloyd George sent in the Black and Tans. They consisted mainly of ex-soldiers that
had fought in the Great War. They had
no qualms about taking on the IRA. Both
sides committed atrocities. The
situation could not be allowed to continue.
The violence was escalating.
Politically and militarily it was a disaster exhausting both sides. Pressure was growing on the Prime Minister
from the Labour and Liberal Parties to enter into negotiations with Sinn Fein;
even King George V made a plea for peace.
In the summer of 1921 the IRA agreed to enter into talks and sent a high-level
delegation lead by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins to London. With the agreement of all parties including
the Conservatives a Treaty was signed in December 1921.
The
Treaty partitioned Ireland and set up the Irish Free State with a Parliament in
Dublin and a Parliament for Northern Ireland at Stormont in Belfast. Ulster remained part of the United
Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland was
given a similar status to that of Canada as a dominion within the British
Empire.
Lloyd George thought he had
found a settlement of the Irish problem by partitioning Ireland, but in doing
so he made many enemies. The Liberals
resented his use of the Black and Tans. The Conservatives were angered because
the union between Britain and Ireland had been destroyed. These were not the only reasons for Lloyd
George’s unpopularity. Fundamentally
the Liberals had collapsed and the Conservatives wanted to run the country.
Collins and his
colleagues went back to Ireland thinking that they had triumphed in the
negotiations, only to be met by outright hostility and opposition by the Sinn
Fein Leader, Eamonn de Valera. He
would have none of it. He blankly
refused to ratify the Treaty. His main
grievances were the exclusion of Ulster and he wanted full republican rights
without any strings attached.
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In March 1922 Parliament passed an
Act setting up the Irish Free State excluding the six counties of Ulster, the
Free State to be effective from December 1922.
The Treaty agreeing to the setting up the Irish Free State
said:
1) Ireland shall have the same
constitutional status in the British Empire as a self governing Dominion, with
a parliament having the power to make laws; it shall be known as the Irish Free
State.
2) As with the other dominions, the
British monarch would be the head of state of the Irish Free State (Saorstát
Éireann) and would be represented by a Governor General
3) The oath to be taken by MPs of the
Irish Free State shall be in the following form:
I,…………….., do solemnly
swear allegiance to the constitution of the Irish Free State, and that I will
be faithful to HM King George V his heirs and successors by law, in virtue of
the common citizenship".
4) The government of the Irish Free
State shall allow His Majesty’s Imperial forces:
(a) In time of peace such harbour and
other facilities as may be agreed….
(b) In time of war or of strained
relations with a Foreign Power such harbour and other facilities as the British
Government may require.
(c) British forces would withdraw from
most of Ireland.
5) If an address is presented to His Majesty by
the Parliament of Northern Ireland to that effect, the powers of the Irish Free
State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland.
6) Northern Ireland, which had been
created earlier by the Government of Ireland Act would have the option of
withdrawing from the Irish Free State within one month of the Treaty coming
into effect.
7) If Northern Ireland chose to
withdraw, a Boundary Commission would be constituted to draw the boundary
between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.
8) It was agreed that the British navy
could have three naval bases.
9) The Irish Free State would assume
responsibility for its part of the Imperial debt.
10) The Treaty would have superior status
in Irish law, i.e., in the event of a conflict between it and the new 1922
Constitution of the Irish Free State, the treaty would take precedence.
11) Neither the Parliament of the Irish Free State
nor the Parliament of Northern Ireland shall make any law to prohibit or restrict
the free exercise of any religion, or impose any disability on account of
religious belief.
In 1922 all Irish MPs withdrew from the House of
Commons except 12 from Northern Ireland.
By moving out the Irish MPs the Unionists gained about seventy seats. With the thirty they had gained as a result
of the Redistribution Act they now had a hundred extra seats. In a three party Parliament this was almost
unassailable. King George V opened the
Belfast Parliament in person. Ulster
members still, however sat in the Westminster Parliament in order to maintain a
close connection with Britain. This was
an illogical position. Ulster members
could vote on domestic matters effecting Great Britain but not those of
Northern Ireland, which were now dealt with by the Belfast Parliament. We have the same illogical position today
regarding the relationship of Scotland with its own Parliament and
Westminster. Perhaps the “West Lothian” question should have been
named the “West Belfast”
question.
The Irish Free State came into existence officially
in December 1922.
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However, the disagreement between de Valera and
Collins led to civil war between the two factions of Sinn Fein, which
continued, until in 1923 the supporters of the Treaty claimed victory, but not
before Michael Collins, the hero of Sinn Fein, and many other leading Irishmen
had been killed.
The relationship between Britain and
the Irish Free State after 1923 continued to change gradually. De Valera formed a new party, Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny) which
won the election of 1932, mainly because the slump and unemployment had made
the government of William Cosgrave highly unpopular. De Valera, Prime Minister for the next 16
years, set about destroying the links with Britain, though without taking the
final step of declaring a republic. The
oath of allegiance to the British monarch was ignored and in 1937 the Irish
seized the chance offered by the recent abdication of Edward VIII to introduce
a new constitution, making Eire completely independent in practise. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime
Minister, made concessions in the hope of winning Eire’s friendship. Debts amounting to £100 million still owing
by Eire were written off, and the three naval bases handed back. However, Eire remained unco-operative: de
Valera would never be satisfied until he controlled Ulster. Consequently Eire took no part in the
Commonwealth, remained neutral during the Second World War, and in 1949 finally
declared itself an independent republic. "Mastering Modern British History" by N.Lowe
William Cosgrave was the first President of the Irish Free
State. He had taken part in the “Easter Rising”.
Of course the Irish question was not just a political
one. The impact on the people of the
affected areas was immense. In the
fifteen years to 1926, but especially after the withdrawal of the British Army
and disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary in early 1922, the twenty-six
counties that became the Irish Free State witnessed the exodus of no less than
34 per cent of their Protestant population.
A large part of the Protestant population of the Free State was
effectively ethnically cleansed out of the Irish Republic and their property
grabbed. Between 1910 and 1925 the
Protestant population in the Irish Republic declined from 10% to 7%.
Protestant
homes, churches and public buildings were burnt down, as were many great
houses, such as Palmerston in County Kildare, Castle Boro in County Wexford and
Desart Court in County Kilkenny.
Massacres took place, for example fourteen Protestants were killed in
West Cork on a single day in April 1922 and there was a flood of refugees."Salisbury Victorian Titan" by A. Roberts
Many Catholics left the North of Ireland. This was the price paid by many for Irish
freedom.
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In November 1922 there
was a General Election. The Conservative
and Unionists convincingly won it with 344 seats but once again we saw the
distortion in our electoral system. The
Conservatives won 38.5% of the votes.
With a two Party election First Past the Post can produce a
representative Parliament, but once you get three or more Parties we have
frequently got a large proportion of MPs returned on a minority vote with a
consequent distortion. The Liberals
were at a disadvantage; many Liberals came second and their votes were not
reflected in the Commons. In 1922
Liberals polled slightly more votes than Labour, yet won only 117 seats with
over 29% of the votes, to Labour’s 142 seats, having risen from 57 seats, with
a similar % of the votes. The real
winner was the Labour Party, whose vote nearly doubled – from 2,245,777 to
4,237,349.
The
Labour Party had become the second largest Party in the country and for the
Liberals the 1922 result started their long campaign to change the electoral
system to one of proportional representation.
Just as the Liberals favoured proportional representation the
Conservatives and the Labour Party moved to an anti-position and this hardened
with time, as they were the beneficiaries.
Taken together the old unofficial alliance of Labour
and Liberal parties, captured 58.6 % of the popular vote, but the Liberals were
split between the Liberals and the National Liberals. The latter were a substantial beneficiary of
no opposition from the Conservatives.
The Conservatives with just 38.5% won a majority of seats. With the exclusion of the Irish
Nationalists the House of Commons now consisted of 615 seats in total, a
reduction of 92 seats from the 707 seats in the General election of 1918.
The
Tories had not been in office for much longer than a year before their leader
Stanley Baldwin called another General Election. The election was held on 6 December
1923. The result came as a shock to
everyone, but highlighted the vagaries of our electoral system. The Tory vote went up slightly, from
5,502,298 to 5,514,541. Labour’s rose
from 4,237,349 to 4,439,780. The
Liberals, including the National Liberals also gained a few votes – up from
4,139,400 to 4,301,481. These small
changes produced a very different House of Commons – 258 Tories (down from
344), 159 Liberals (up from 115) and 191 Labour (up from 142). This time the distortion between the number
of seats and votes cast was not so great.
The Conservatives with 38% of the votes got 42% of the seats, Labour
with 30.7% of the votes got 31% of the seats, whilst the combined Liberals with
29.7% of the votes got 25.9% of the seats.
In spite of being the largest Party in the Commons the Conservatives
left it to the Labour Party to form a minority Government.
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Once
Labour had formed a government in 1924 without the expected social revolution,
Liberal prospects faded, largely through the quarrel between Asquith and Lloyd
George. Anti Conservatives began to
vote Labour as the only way to keep Tories out. It is argued that Baldwin calculated that by
putting Labour into power it would either soften them or demonstrate that they
were extreme – at which point they could be thrown out by the Liberals and
Conservatives acting together.
Within less than a decade the Liberal Party had moved
from being the Party of Government to being the third Party in British
politics, and at the same time watched the Labour Party overtake them in public
support. They have stayed in this
position ever since. The major problem
for a third Party under our electoral system is that the electorate wants to
vote for a Party, which has a realistic chance of forming a Government. Once a Party is seen to be a third Party it
is very hard to escape from that self-perpetuating trap. In recent years third parties have got more
votes from the electorate and the Labour Party has demonstrated that it is
possible to move from being a minor to a major Party. What all this really shows is that once you
have three or more parties, the voting system becomes unstable and then
substantial, even seismic change is possible.
During
its brief period in office in 1924 the Labour Government proposed the abolition
of the second votes for business proprietors – a move that would have seriously
affected the Conservative Party.
Unfortunately, the Labour Party could not get their Bill through
Parliament. These undemocratic second
votes persisted in our electoral system until the Labour Government abolished
them after the Second World War – a move that kept Labour in power after the
General Election of 1950. These votes
were particularly helpful to the Tories in city centre seats.
At
the end of 1924 in yet another General Election Labour were thrown out of
office. The Labour vote increased by
over a million votes though they lost 40 seats. The chief reason for their defeat and the
huge increase in Tory seats – to 412 – was the final demise of the Liberal
Party, which lost 118 seats leaving it with a rump of 40 seats. The Conservatives got 7,854,523 votes, a
staggering increase, yet the distortion in our electoral system was as great as
ever. With 46.8% of the votes the
Conservatives got a massive 67% of the seats.
Labour were not too badly off getting 24.6% of the seats with 33.3% of
the votes, but the poor old Liberal Party were decimated only receiving 6.5% of
the seats, although they had 17.8% of the votes. General Elections were now clearly a lottery
and have remained so since.
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After
the General Election pressure began to build to complete the unfinished
business of reform of the House of Lords.
During an unguarded moment Lord Birkenhead, who was in the Cabinet
committed the Government to bring in a Bill to reform the Lords. It proved impossible on this occasion as on
many other occasions in the future to agree a consensus on any scheme.
Over
one hundred Conservative MPs opposed the Bill.
Conservative MPs often saw themselves as retiring to the House of
Lords. It was regarded as a great
club. The opposition to the Bill was
lead by the newly elected MP John Buchan in his maiden speech. He argued for the status quo saying that
when the people wanted constitutional reform they would demand it. The Bill fell.
1925
brought one of those quirks in British history, which have a profound
effect. During a debate on a private
member’s Bill to give the vote to women at the age of 21 the Conservative Home
Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks responded to an interruption by Lady Astor who
was a passionate supporter of reform, with a pledge to introduce the reform at
the next election. What is more, he
used a quotation by the Prime Minister in support of the pledge. Although there had been no discussion in
Cabinet, because Joynson-Hicks had used the Prime Minister’s name the Cabinet
felt obliged to honour the pledge. So,
history is made. As Winston Churchill
wrote of Joynson-Hicks “Never was so
great a change in our electorate achieved so incontinently. For good or ill he should always be
remembered for that”.
The Honours (Prevention
of Abuses) Act 1925 made the purchase of honours a criminal offence. This helped to prevent the purchase of
peerages, but in practise it continued, but with a little more subtlety. Under Lloyd George the selling of honours
had been rife. The press baron Alfred
Harmsworth half jested “When I want a
peerage, I shall buy one, like an honest man”. He later became Lord Northcliffe!
The sudden death of Sir
Henry Craik, who held one of the university seats, in March 1927, had given
John Buchan, the author of “The Thirty-nine
Steps” the opportunity to enter public life. There were twelve university seats in total
and graduates of their respective universities elected their members in a
postal ballot with what was in effect a second vote. University members tended to sit loose to
party affiliation and take an interest in educational matters. There was little electioneering and few
constituency engagements. It was less
physically demanding than a more conventional seat. Buchan was raised to the peerage in 1935.
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Under the Representation
of the People (Equal Franchise) Act passed in 1928 women were given the vote on
equal terms as men and the electorate rose to 28 million. There was little opposition in Parliament to
the bill and it became law on 2nd July 1928. All men and women over the age of 21 now had
the vote. This was a triumph for
democracy. After all the pain and hard
work at last women were now treated as the equals of men in our electoral
system. By one of those strange touches
of irony, 1928 was also the year in which that great suffragette Emily
Pankhurst, latterly a respected Tory MP, died, just one month before the Bill
she had campaigned for, was passed.
By
a touch of irony, Janet 'Jennie' Lee (1904-1988) was elected to Parliament as
Labour MP for North Lanarkshire at a by-election in March 1929 when she was
twenty-four years old. She was unable to vote for herself, as she was too
young: the Equal Franchise Act, which had lifted the 30-year age restriction
for women to vote, had not yet come into force.
Much progress on the road to democracy had been
made. All adults over the age of
twenty-one now have the vote, but a flaw has appeared in the system used for
electing our representatives.
Representation has become distorted with the use of the First Past the
Post system of election. With a two
Party state representation is reasonably accurate, but with first of all the
rise of the Irish Nationalists and then the Labour Party, Parliament was no
longer representative of the people.
The necessity for proportional representation had arisen.
Religious discrimination still existed. The established Church no longer represented
the whole of the United Kingdom yet it still had 25 Bishops in the House of
Lords. In Northern Ireland having
abandoned proportional representation, the establishment of Stormont using
First Past the Post brought with it no protection for the Catholic minority
with tragic consequences for the next 75 years.
The search for real democracy continued.
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