Evans - Political Parties in Britain 1783-1867

People living in Britain in the last quarter of the twentieth century are accustomed to a political system in which power is exercised by the leaders of that political party which currently holds the greatest number of seats in the House of Commons. These seats are contested, usually at four- or five-year intervals, in general elections at which almost all persons of eighteen years and over are entitled to vote. The general election selects individuals. However, political party organization and discipline are so extensive that it is almost impossible for a candidate to be elected who does not represent a major party. In effect, individuals are elected in a party, not a personal capacity. When they get to Westminster they are expected to vote according to party loyalty rather than personal preference or conviction when these clash. A highly developed system of party whips ensures that, in most instances, the Commons votes on party lines. Thus effective power is vested in the party rather than in a collection of individuals. Political parties are all-important. We even speak of a two-party system of government, implying that the struggle for power is between two leading parties in the state who alternate in government. Since the 1920s these have been the Conservative and Labour parties. Such a description might seem ill suited to a situation in which the electorate spreads nearly all its votes between three parties not two. Yet the first-past-the-post system, in which the successful candidate needs only one more vote than his nearest rival, however many candidates there may be, greatly advantages the two largest parties at the expense of the third. Thus, in the 1983 general election, the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance achieved 26 per cent of the popular vote which, evenly spread across the constituencies, won only 23 seats. The Labour party, with 28 per cent of the total vote, heavily concentrated in areas of its greatest support, won 209 seats. Somewhat precariously, therefore, the two-party system of government survived into the mid-1980s expressed in terms of influence in the Commons. Such a system was a recognizable feature of British political life in 1867.

This pamphlet seeks to explain how a recognizably modern system of government emerged between 1783 and 1867. In strict constitutional theory, power is shared between three elements monarchy, Lords and Commons and at the beginning of our period the first two of these elements had a larger role to play. In some instances this old system still impinges on the new. Parliamentary bills require passage by the House of Lords and ratification by the monarch before they carry the force of law. The powers of the upper House have been severely circumscribed in the twentieth century. It can now delay legislation but not permanently reject it. Few ministers of consequence, except the Lord Chancellor who presides over the judiciary, sit in it and the granting of a peerage to a senior politician usually indicates retirement from active politics. The House of Lords is an elegant talking shop. It sometimes improves parliamentary bills by revising them, but it lacks real power.

The same can be said of the monarchy. The monarch still retains a theoretical right to reject legislation passed by parliament. Since no king or queen in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries has been foolish enough to exercise this right, it has not been necessary to remove a sanction considered essential in late Stuart England but not actually used since 1708. The monarch also retains the right to appoint ministers they are still called ministers of the crown to dissolve parliament and to call a general election. In practice, the monarch chooses as prime minister the leader of that party with a Commons majority and invariably accepts the advice of the outgoing prime minister about the timing of a dissolution, thus giving the party in power the substantial advantage of choosing the most favourable date for the next general election. The monarchy is now valued not for its power but for the exercise of its dignified and ceremonial functions.