History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0075/00756.txt

Text File | 1992-10-11 | 13KB | 229 lines

$Unique_ID{how00756}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Civilizations Past And Present
Britain And Democracy}
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$Author{Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett}
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$Subject{gladstone
irish
political
reform
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disraeli
vote
workers
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$Date{1992}
$Log{See Gladstone, Disraeli*0075601.scf
}
Title:       Civilizations Past And Present
Book:        Chapter 25: Society, Politics, And Culture, 1871-1914
Author:      Wallbank;Taylor;Bailkey;Jewsbury;Lewis;Hackett
Date:        1992

Britain And Democracy

     Blessed by its wealth and adaptability, Britain built a truly democratic
political structure by 1914. The state continued to support business even as
it became more intimately involved in matters affecting the welfare of its
citizens. Two great statesmen, William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), a Liberal,
and Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), a Conservative, dominated the first part of
this period with their policies of gradual reform. They alternated as prime
minister from 1867 to 1880. After Disraeli's death, Gladstone prevailed until
he retired in 1894.

Gladstone And Disraeli

     The two leaders came from sharply contrasting backgrounds. The son of a
rich Liverpool merchant, Gladstone had every advantage that wealth and good
social position could give him. He entered Parliament in 1833 and quickly
became one of the greatest orators of his day. He began as a Conservative,
working in the tradition of the Tory reformer, Robert Peel. Gradually he
shifted his alliance to the newly formed Liberal party in the 1850s and became
a strong supporter of laissez-faire economics and worked to keep government
from interfering in business. He was a far more effective political than
social or economic reformer.

     Disraeli had few of Gladstone's advantages. The son of a Jew who became a
naturalized British subject in 1801, Disraeli was baptized an Anglican. He
first made a name for himself as the author of the novel Vivian Grey (1826).
In contrast to Gladstone, Disraeli went from liberalism to conservatism in his
philosophy. He stood for office as a Conservative throughout his career and
became the leader of the party.

     Both Liberals and Conservatives had to face the fact that the complacency
of government during the "Victorian Compromise" from 1850 to 1865 could not
continue. The alliance of landed gentry and middle classes may have
successfully kept the lower classes "in their stations" but serious problems
plagued the country. Only one adult male in six was entitled to vote. Both
parties felt the pressure to make the political system more representative.
Both parties also knew that reform must come, and each hoped to gain the
credit and resultant strength for extending the vote.

     The Liberals' turn came first. In 1866 they introduced a moderate reform
bill enfranchising city workers. Some conservatives opposed it, fearful that
increasing the franchise would bring the day of revolution closer. When the
proposal failed to pass, political agitation and riots rocked the country. The
outbreaks evidently impressed the members of Parliament and when the
Conservatives came to power in 1867, Disraeli successfully sponsored the
Second Reform Bill that added more than a million city workers to the voting
rolls. The measure increased the electorate by 88 percent, although women and
farm laborers were still denied the vote.

     Even though the Conservatives passed the voter reform, the new elections
in 1868 brought the Liberals back to power and Gladstone began his so-called
Glorious Ministry, which lasted until 1874. With the granting of the vote to
the urban masses it became imperative to educate their children. The Education
Act of 1870 promoted the establishment of local school boards to build and
maintain state schools. Private schools received governmental subsidies if
they could meet certain minimal standards. Elementary school attendance, which
was compulsory between the ages of five and fourteen, jumped from 1 to 4
million in ten years.

     Other reforms included a complete overhaul of the civil service system.
Previously, in both the government and military, appointments and promotions
depended on patronage and favoritism. But in 1870, this method was replaced by
open examinations. The government also improved the military by shortening
enlistment terms, abolishing flogging, and stopping the sale of officers'
rank. Gladstone's government successfully revamped the justice system and
introduced the secret ballot. Finally, some restrictions on labor unions'
activities were removed. By 1872 the Glorious Ministry had exhausted itself,
and Disraeli referred to Gladstone and his colleagues in the House of Commons
as a "range of exhausted volcanoes."

     Disraeli's government succeeded the Glorious Ministry in 1874, and he
stated that he was going to "give the country a rest." He was no stand-pat
conservative, however. He supported an approach known as Tory democracy that
attempted to weld an alliance between the landed gentry and the workers
against the middle class. Even during this "time of rest" Disraeli's
government pushed through important reforms in public housing, food and drug
legislation, and union rights to strike and picket peacefully.

     Gladstone returned to power in 1880 and continued the stream of reforms
with the Third Reform Bill that extended the vote to agricultural workers.
This act brought Britain to the verge of universal male suffrage. Gladstone
also secured passage of the Employers' Liability Act, which gave workers
rights of compensation in case of accidents on the job.

[See Gladstone, Disraeli: In this Punch cartoon, political rivals William
Gladstone (left) and Benjamin Disraeli(right) are ready to sling mud at each
other. the cartoon's caption reads, "A Bad Example."]

The Irish Problem

     One dilemma escaped and continues to escape the solutions of well-meaning
reformers in Britain, that of British rule in Ireland. The present-day crisis
in Northern Ireland originated in the seventeenth century. The British placed
large numbers of Scottish emigrants in the province of Ulster, in northern
Ireland, building a strong colony of Protestants - the so-called Orangemen, or
Scotch-Irish. In the eighteenth century the British passed a number of
oppressive laws against the Irish Catholics, restricting their political,
economic, and religious freedom and effectively taking their lands. Passage of
the Act of Union in 1801 forced the Irish to send their representatives to the
Parliament in London. A large part of the Irish farmland passed into the hands
of parasitic landlords who leased their newly gained lands in increasingly
smaller plots to more and more people. Many peasants could not pay their rent
and were evicted from the land. The Irish lost both their representation and
their livelihood.

     In 1845 the potato crop, the main staple of diet, failed and a terrible
famine ensued, which led to a tremendous decline in population. Hundreds of
thousands emigrated to the United States; perhaps as many as 500,000 people
died. Between 1841 and 1891 the population fell by more than 40 percent, from
8,770,000 to less than 5,000,000.

     The Irish gained a few concessions from the British during the century in
the form of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829) and protection from arbitrary
eviction for tenants, during the Glorious Ministry. The Irish Anglican Church
lost its favored position when Roman Catholics were freed of the obligation to
pay tax support to a church they did not attend. In 1881 Gladstone pushed
through an act that allowed the Irish peasants the chance gradually to regain
land that had once been theirs.

     None of these concessions made up for the lack of home rule and in 1874
the Irish patriot Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) began to work actively
to force the issue through Parliament.

     Gladstone introduced home rule bills in 1886 and 1893, but both were
defeated. A home rule bill was finally passed in 1914, but by this time the
Ulsterites strongly opposed the measure and prepared to resist by force
incorporation into Catholic Ireland. The outbreak of war with Germany
postponed civil strife, but this was only a two-year delay until the Easter
Uprising of 1916. Not until 1921 did southern Ireland finally gain the status
of a British dominion. The home rule bill never went into effect.

The New Liberals

     Gladstone's fight for Irish home rule split his party and paved the way
for a decade of Conservative rule in Britain (1895-1905). Partly because of
foreign and imperial affairs, the Conservatives departed from the reformist
traditions of Tory democracy. By 1905 the need for social and political reform
again claimed the attention of the parties.

     Over 30 percent of the adult male laborers made the unacceptably low wage
of less than seven dollars a week. It was impossible to save for periods of
unemployment and emergencies. Workers demonstrated their discontent in a
number of strikes. Partially in response to the workers' needs and at the
prompting of the Fabian Socialists the Labour party was founded in 1900, under
the leadership of J. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), a self-made intellectual
who had risen from humble status, and the Scottish miner Keir Hardie
(1856-1915). The liberals found themselves threatened on both their left and
right flanks. They decided to abandon their laissez-faire economic concepts
and embrace a bold program of social legislation. The radical Welsh lawyer
Lloyd George portrayed their program. "Four spectres haunt the poor: Old Age,
Accident, Sickness, and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them." ^7

[Footnote 7: Quoted in F. Owen, Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George, His Life
and Times (London: Hutchinson, 1954), p. 186.]

     Led by prime minister Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, and the young
Winston Churchill who had defected from the Conservatives, the Liberal party -
with the aid of the Labour bloc - put through a broad program. It provided for
old-age pensions, national employment bureaus, workers' compensation
protection, and sickness, accident, and unemployment insurance. In addition,
labor unions were relieved of financial responsibility for losses caused by
strikes. Members of the House of Commons, until that time unpaid, were granted
a moderate salary. This last act allowed an individual without independent
wealth to pursue a political career.

     The House of Lords tried to block the Liberal reform plan by not passing
the 1909-1910 budget, which laid new tax burdens, including an income tax, on
the richer classes in order to pay for the new programs. The Liberals and
Labour fought back by directly attacking the rationale for the Lords'
existence. They argued that a hereditary, irresponsible upper house was an
anachronism in a democracy. The result was the Parliament Bill of 1911 that
took away the Lords' power of absolute veto. Asquith announced that the king
had promised to create enough new peers to pass the bill if needed (a tactic
used with the 1832 Reform Bill). The Lords had to approve and thereafter could
only delay and force reconsideration of legislation.

     By 1914 the evolutionary path to democracy and a modern democratic state
structure had been largely completed, except for women's suffrage. In the
previous generation some effort had been put in to gain the vote for women,
but by and large the effort had been unsuccessful. Women's suffrage was not a
major concern for the major parties, most of whom felt that women's proper
place was in the home. At the turn of the century the most effective group to
work for women's rights was the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU),
whose members were the first to be known as suffragettes. Its founder,
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928), first agitated, then disturbed, and then
challenged the order and stability of England in the decade before World War
I. Pankhurst and her colleagues traveled and worked constantly to make the
case for the vote for women, and to 1910 the WPSU abandoned traditional
rhetoric in favor of mass marches, hunger strikes, and property damage. In
1913 a young suffragette martyred herself by running in front of the king's
horse at the Derby. ^8 With the outbreak of the war, the WPSU backed the
national effort against the Germans, and finally in 1918 women age thirty and
over were granted the vote. Ten years later, they gained equal voting rights
with men.

[Footnote 8: Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (New York: Source Book Press,
1970), passim.]