(Something I've been playing with. It's cheerier than recent posts, but unfinished and unpublishable, so more will come as I work on it. Just a bit of harmless tomfoolery...)
The History of PR Britain
part 1: Pitt the Younger to Palmerston
It has been speculated by several academics who play with
the notions of Alternative History, that if the UK had not decided upon the use
of Proportional Representation (PR) for elections in 1800, then some of our
finest Labour Prime Ministers – Maxton, Wilson, Benn – might have never led the
country. In fact, one rather fanciful such History I read recently postulated
that under a voting method known as First Past The Post (briefly used in
Australia during the 1950s) that Margaret Thatcher and the ideas of monetarism,
rather than being a cursory political footnote, could in fact have changed the
agenda of politics from the 1979 election onwards. We are not, however, interested in such
Alternative potentialities here, so this essay shall not focus on the possible
alternative timeline leaderships of John Major or a Tony Blair. Instead, we
shall look at modern political history from 1800 onwards, and how our
Proportional elections shaped our own history.
So lets look at the start, when all the combined kingdoms of
the land came together.
1800 Pitt the Younger
Pitt the Younger had been Prime Minister since the mid 1780s
when, through clever thinking and a way with the King, had usurped his rival,
Fox, for the role. Of course, it wasn’t called Prime Minister back then, except
in the satires of the day. With his diplomacy in Paris during the French
Revolution, and keeping Napoleon at bay, Pitt was seen as the obvious choice in
the 1800 election. His main opposition, Charles Fox, had drinking issues and
other vices, which were held against him.
Pitt’s use of sinking funds to demolish the nation debt were
widely praised, but unknown to the voters at large, his drinking was as serious
as Fox’s, and having as bad an effect on his health. When Charles Fox died in
1805, the Whigs saw William Wilberforce supporting Lord Grenville’s bid to
replace the fallen leader. Grenville’s oratory, regarded as one of the finest
in an era of brilliant orators, soon cut through a rapidly ailing Pitt. After
23 years of Tory government, not even a late bid by Henry Addington to steal
the Premiership could prevent a change of parties. The country said thank you,
but goodnight, to Pitt the Younger. Not that he time to be bitter over his
exit, for he died six weeks after the election.
A sizeable piece of luck for Pitt’s legacy is that the
disaster of Austerlitz has been placed solely on the shoulders of Addington.
With his failure at Amiens and Austerlitz, failed coup in December 1805 and his
slapdash full-hearted support for some of the less savoury of the Canning
Administration's policies, we can be thankful, perhaps, that Henry Addington
remains a nearly man footnote in history, and not a leader, nor did he retain
any real power after 1806. It might have been disastrous to the country.
1806 William Grenville
Grenville is today remembered for his role in the abolition
of the slave trade in the United Kingdom, if he is remembered at all. Sadly a
forgotten figure in British history despite this historic role. This is what
happens when history prefers to focus on one heroic underdog figure and not
take in the whole cast of characters involved in a historic moment. For
example, see all the other military leaders who fought Napoleon who weren’t
named Wellington or Nelson.
For Wilberforce was an important figure in the abolition
movement, but you need people to listen to those voices. Wildernesses, as the
20th century pointed out time and time again, aren’t the best places
for political voices. They tend to be ignored as much as they echo.
Grenville had an extraordinary time of it while PM. He held
the post for only one parliamentary term, and spent it besieged by opponents
who refused to back down or even meet halfway. Grandiose plans for Catholic
emancipation were blocked entirely. Grenville focused on the slave issue, and
went to work like a man possessed, bringing it up in parliament time and again.
Finally, at the decisive vote, a year and a half into his premiership, he made
one of the longest speeches in parliament history, tearing into the trade, its
supporters, and all of their reasons for supporting it.
He finished:
“This trade was contrary to the principles of justice,
humanity and sound policy. My only regret in ending it is that we had no done
so many years ago.”
The vote was won by the margin of 1 vote, and Grenville and
Wilberforce had their place in history by the slimmest of margins.
It has been argued that Grenville’s administration might
have achieved far more were it not for the incredible circumstances of the
time. They were, in fact, fighting a four front war. First they had the
opposition benches, rarely moving from the spirit of opposing. Secondly, the
Kings health had deteriorated quickly, causing a constitutional crisis.
Thirdly, the Industrial Revolution had sprung forth thousands of Luddites,
taken to violence across the country. And fourthly, there was still that pesky
Napoleon, still intent on putting Britain out of the way after Addingtons
bumbling of the Amiens treaty.
An economic depression in 1810 killed off all chances of
Grenvilles re-election.
In better times, might have been a better Premiership, like
as we say with Baldwin. Still, times make the man. Better yet, some men are men
for all seasons. Some are a man for one season. In the abolition of the slave
trade, Grenville was that man, and better we had him than not.
1812 George Canning
In another life, Lord Liverpool might have taken the role of
Prime Minister. Canning had four strokes of luck eliminating his rivals. The
first was a stroke, taking Lord Liverpool, an ardent drinker, out of the
picture. The second was a terrible
speech by Henry Addington, who had tried to sound statesman like but had
instead sounded like an East End bawdy comic. The third was the increasing
worrying qualities of his biggest rival in personal times, Castlereagh, not yet
to end in his suicide, but enough to worry enough people away from giving him
the leadership. And fourth, but of the most tragic nature, the able minded
Spencer Perceval was murdered in the halls of Westminster by a mad man who
thought him Napoleon, before the final decision on who was to be First Lord of
the Treasury.
Perhaps Perceval could
have been PM, perhaps he could have deal with the madness of King George
better. But George Canning, the ablest and, more importantly, shrewdest man of
his generation, was left a clear ascension to the title. By hook or by crook,
he held it for the next eighteen years until his death, and it is his reign
which is the first epoch creating one in modern British history.
Your view on its success depends on your definition of
Habeas Corpus. Ah well, Habeas Corpus, who needed it anyway? Apart from those
who did.
Canning’s career as PM got off to two unfortunate starts.
First, owing to the health of the King, he had to wait to be asked to take
office for some time. Second, he was three days into his office when a mad man
shot him. He survived this, barely, while the press spoke of the eerie
parallels with Perceval three months earlier. The incident certainly couldn’t
have helped the man’s paranoia, which historians have analysed for nigh on two
centuries, and was to shape the things that followed.
His legacy is hard to explain. On the one hand, he takes
responsibility for the end of Napoleon’s threat, as he was in charge when it
happened. He also, in his late leadership U-turn, emancipated the Catholics. On
the other hand, he responded to the Luddite problem by having them shot,
instituted the Corn Laws, allowed the troops to fire on innocent civilians and
suspended the Habeas Corpus. Rumours still persist that the death of Castlereagh
was a little bit too convenient, and that his sudden suicide after years of
recovered mental health was a useful way of stopping his charge to the
leadership around 1820. However, without a smoking gun which seems unlikely to
ever be found, that must been taken as whimsical speculation.
What can’t be denied is his ability to survive. Earl Grey’s early shot in the 1818 election,
on a righteous fury over the Corn Laws, was narrowly beaten by a 2% margin, the
first time since 1800 that a party had retained office in an election. And
certainly few tears were shed when Henry Addington lost his seat. Earl Grey’s second shot at winning in 1824
went to a recount in several key seats, and Canning needed three recounts to be
sure of his own seat, but with a majority of 3 he limped onwards. A
relationship with his chancellor, Vansittart, which modern scholars have
suggested mirror our current day Brown/Blair conundrum, threatened to tear the
Tory party apart from Castlereagh’s death onwards. The funereal atmosphere of
the final two years of the Canning administration didn’t help matters, as the
public mourned the passing between 1828 and 1830 of Lord Grenville, William
Wilberforce, the invalided Lord Liverpool, and even Henry Addington, whose
position was reappraised by contemporary politicians wary of Canning.
Then in
October 1828, the King himself died, having outlived the Prince Regent, and the
throne moving to William IV. Finally, in January 1829, Canning collapsed,
diagnosed with a severe stroke. He would live another decade, though was of
substantially diminished prospects. Despite this, and an inability to travel to
the Commons, Canning refused to resign in favour of his only successor,
Vansittart, and so held onto power. Maybe he believed it was better for the
party to be defeated than for the party to go on without him as leader? No one
put their foot down soon enough, however, and on this third go, the Earl Grey
was PM.
Did I say only successor? Well, there was one man waiting in
the wings, but we’ll get to him.
1830 Earl Grey
Earl Grey's ministry included the first great reform act,
and the first liberalization of laws, yet today many people only remember him
as a tea.
Not that it was easy. His chief opponent for the first few
years in Office was a legit war hero. The Duke of Wellington was perhaps too
unstable to be Prime Minister – his duels over Catholic emancipation were
legendary – but he added colour to the Commons proceedings. Wellington was not
beyond listening to a four hour speech and replying it with a succinct:
“rubbish!” Grey's administration was also not helped by the fact the House of
Commons itself burned to the ground in 1834.
Grey's views were revolutionary for the time (although, it
has to be said, contemporary historians slam him, perhaps unfairly, for not
ending the Corn Laws). When it came to political reform, he had no equal. By
1832, PR was a system the country was begrudgingly getting used to. Only, it
was PR in name only as we’d know it today. The rotten boroughs of pre-1800
still existed, and one man could still have ten thousand votes, his votes
(usually for the same candidate) would merely be counted proportionately. The
big industrial cities lacked MPs. Only
10% of the population could actually vote. Strangely, this involved women:
female land owners could vote.
Grey's Reform Act, which he managed to pass by promising it
would be the Reform Act to end all reforms (a neat promise to make when you
don’t need to keep it, such is the succession of office). It begrudgingly, like
most political reform, was passed by the odd vote in the commons. It introduced
MPs to Manchester, axed the rotten
boroughs (pity, I could have stood in one) and increased the electorate by a
staggering 80% up on what it was previously.
It also disenfranchised women once and for all, for which
leading female writers of the time like Mary Shelley attacked the government.
“In doing this, we have been set back a hundred years.” She wrote. She was
pessimistic, it only set them back ninety...
Not a man who particularly enjoyed the trappings of office,
Earl Grey often offered to resign and sod back to Trinity College every chance
he got. His party refused him, but at the first time of asking, the public
granted his request, as the Tory party won the subsequent election in a
landslide. Tory votes were particularly strong in the newly franchised
industrial cities, where the new PM, Sir Robert Peel, had great popularity.
There might be something ironic in Grey being undone by his
own reforms. But then again, it might be like rain on your wedding day...
Grey’s place in history all the stranger for his failings.
Three lost elections out of four, and his flaws were attacked then as they are
now. Yet, for all the problems that arose out of the Reform Act, it paved the
way to greater enfranchisement, and indeed, the PR system as we know it to work
today.
And he also did tea.
1836 Sir Robert Peel
1836 was famous for many things. Benjamin Disraeli published
his first novel, The Melbourne Papers, a savage satire and an instant best
seller. (He would of course go onto become the man synonymous with Victorian
literature, before a twist of fate sent him HoC bound.) Charles Dickens, the
great social reformer, won his parliamentary seat in Portsmouth. William IV
died on May 25th, a day after his niece Victoria turned eighteen,
meaning she could take over the throne and not have it fall to her mother’s
schemes. Charles Darwin went on his trip
with the Beagle. And, in a November election, Robert Peel became Prime
Minister. It was an office, not that he knew it at the time, that he would hold
for the next sixteen years.
Robert Peel had been previously known as a liberal Home
Secretary, where he halved the number of capital offences, and introduced a
police force to mainland Britain. His reign as Prime Minister, by hook or by
crook, lasted seventeen years and saw the transfer into the Victorian era.
Despite a slump mid way when his government seemed destined to fall in an
argument about the Corn Laws, he is still seen as one of the more progressive
PMs of the 19th Century.
Part of his success for survival came from his art of
compromise, or more specifically, the art of making every man in a compromise
feel like they came out with the best stake.
He established his status quickly, reducing the number of capital
offences in the country. He also caused a bit of a stir, appointing Charles
Dickens, the baby of the house, into the Home Office after less than two years
in parliament. This unexpected move turned out to be a master stroke, as the
speeches Dickens wrote against compulsory workhouses – a poor law proposal left
over from the previous government – were vital in killing it off in parliament.
Dickens had seen his family placed in debtors prison for his fathers debts when
he was a child, it was an event that seemed to galvanise his efforts.
The Peel/Dickens partnership went onwards. The newly created
police force, established while Peel himself was Home Secretary in the dying
days of Canning's government, was expanded rapidly. They restricted the hours children would be
allowed to work, and passed another law preventing them going down mines. An
economic recession in 1840 was seen off at the pass. And, in a move I am
particularly grateful for, opened Samuel Clegg’s propulsion energy rail network
in 1839. Now, it would be foolish to say the green energy craze started then,
but it certainly helped matters.
What Peel did have was a streak of recklessness. He damn
near lost his office over the Corn Laws, which he was determined to be rid of.
Trouble was, his party wasn’t. In the end, the Chief Whip, William Huskisson (a
loud man in his early 70s with an inexplicable phobia of trains) warned Peel
that the government could well fall if the Corn Laws went. Peel’s response has
gone done in legend:
“Let it fall then.”
In the subsequent election, however, Peel beat Lord Russell,
and held onto power. (It has been argued, with some justification, that Peel
had some fondness for Ireland, having spent so much time there growing up,
hence his furious fighting for Corn Law repeal.)
As a result of that success, and in one of the more
surprising political appointments in history, the Duke of Wellington, the Iron
Duke himself, became the first Education Secretary. Let it not be said Peel
didn’t have a sense of humour. Coaxing the Duke with tales of how great his
legacy would be, Wellingtons short run in office (this was near the end of his
life after all) had one lasting monument to him. Yes, Wellington beat Napoleon,
dueled for the Catholics, and in political office, became the first man to pay
teachers. He soon after retired from
public office, but was often heard making caustic remarks in the pauses of
speeches till his death in 1852.
The great Tory Chief Whip Huskisson died in 1849. It was a
peculiar event. I’ve mentioned his phobia of trains before. He claimed to have
had recurring dreams of being run over by a train since a grand fete opening of
a line was canceled at short notice in 1830. On the first of May, 1849,
William Huskisson had been up in Manchester on party business, when he found he
had to be in London that evening for a division. Tiring – he was seventy-nine
years old, and had already told Peel of his intention to retire completely
during that years summer recess – he boarded the 17.45 Manchester express to
London. And somewhere near Crewe, promptly collapsed and died of a heart
attack.
Maybe those trains were out to get him after all.
The fall of Peel was a near literal one. He was thrown from
his horse riding at Hyde Park Corner in July 1850, and though he was not
killed, he was badly injured and never fully recovered.
The young William Gladstone, a man swiftly
rising in the House, stepped in to replace Peel while his injuries made him
unable to attend Parliament. An eye was
kept on the situation in the Crimea, which threatened to break into war, and
various attempts were made to keep it from becoming full scale war, a war the
UK would certainly have been dragged into.
As one of the last throws of the dice, the aging Wellington traveled to
Caen to meet Napoleon III, Nicholas I and Iskender Pasha for the last moment
talks. The need for other nations to access the Danube was a matter of
economics as well as national pride. Many Alternate Histories have been written
about how the Russians were steadfast at these talks, and as a result, the
Crimea exploded into war. A countless
many lives would have been lost, undoubtedly, making it a murky thing to look
into. The result, as we all know, was much happier: the Russians conceded, and
war was avoided.
The ramifications of that are difficult to comprehend even
now. A leading historian, Trevelyan, notes that had the Russians fallen into
this war against three empires, then the inevitable defeat may have lead to the
end of serfdom itself within the Victorian era, and that, coupled with a
growing popularity of the socialist writings of Dostoyevsky, may even have led
to the fall of the Tsar entirely. Given
how important an ally Tsar Nicholas III has been to the UK in the latter half
of the 20th Century, that may have changed history entirely.
1852 Lord Palmerston
Palmerston's victory was stunning on face value, but the
tiring of Peel played a large role in his victory.
His reign was almost entirely forgetful, had it not been
during his reign that the British had obtained India.
The battle over who was to succeed Robert Peel (who died in
1853) raged on for a full year. Gladstone himself thought he was the prime
choice to take over, given how he had been de facto leader for the last two
years of the premiership. Unfortunately for him, this gave him the immediate
blame for losing the election in the eyes of two many prominent party members. Charles Pelham Villiers put his name in the hat to test his
luck. Yet the winner was the man who had been Home Secretary from 1838 to 1852,
Charles Dickens. Despite press misgivings at his wife, Florence (nee
Nightingale, who had studied under Mary Seacole, and towards the end of a long
life, was to win one of the first Nobel Prizes in 1903) whose views were
challenging to the politic elite of the day, Dickens won the leadership.
And helped by party issues, won the next election.
Party issues? Well, it turns out that the Whig party were
fed up being in opposition, but self-destructed soon after entering under
Palmerston. The Tory party itself was held together by Peel and Wellington, and
their demise split the party in two, with Peelites absorbing into the Whig
party, and Whigs splitting off from their party and finding common ground with
the Tories. Which is how we came to know the modern Conservative party under
the Earl of Derby, and how Palmerston became the first PM undone between
elections. For Dickens wound up elected leader of the Whigs themselves.
Confused? Imagine how people who lived through these times
felt. This was a rare complete realignment of British politics, and many Tory
historians placed the blame solely on Sir Peel, which is why he never shows up
in the Tory histories despite being, to all intents and purposes, the first
proper Tory PM.
As for Palmerston? He was 74 when he was unseated by these
party shenanigans, and losing interest in front row politics. He retired to the
House of Lords, stirring infrequently to attempt a call to arms in some foreign
war or other. He died in 1865.
to be continued.
