I return to a subject I glossed over a week ago – the rather unfortunate choice of the Houses of Parliament in the banner of Labourhome’s redesign. I still think, symbolically, it’s the wrong imagery sending the wrong message.
Alex Hilton replied:
I’m really sorry Charlotte but one of the greatest achievement of the Labour movement was getting the working class into parliament, something quite unpopular with the liberals at that time.
Of course, after 100 years, I’m not associating you with the attitudes of your predecessors.
I thought that was interesting (in an ‘understanding what’s going through people’s heads’) sort of way. Well, tonight I had a quick look on the internet to discover a bit more about the history of universal suffrage in the UK, and was surprised to discover that it was a Liberal that gave us the 1918 Representation of the People Act, the one that extended voting rights to all adult males (and women over 30 with appropriate property rights) and a Conservative, Stanley Baldwin, that gave us the 1928 Representation of the People Act that extended voting rights to all adults, male and female.
Going back a little earlier, it was Gladstone – another Liberal Prime Minister – that got us the 1884 Reform Act that added another 6 million to the number who could vote.
It’s funny, when I try to think where Labour has empowered anyone but themselves and those that fund them (including trade unions and all the other rubbish) I come up blank.
Pity really. The true measure of the quality of liberalism was the way that it did, in fact, give power away – which it never got back again. Turns out the trick is to f**k your opponents over as hard as possible… who knew?
John said...
28 May 09 at 2:41 am
Alex is full of puff. To claim credit to get ‘the working class’ into parliament suggests that the Labour party was founded on a revolution.
Parliament has always been democratising incrementally – and in 1918 it was the Liberal/Tory coalition who decided to extend the vote to the working classes, as Alex would put it (OK there were restrictions on women still etc).
To claim credit “one of the greatest acheivement” (sic) for something that was inevitable and in fact brought on by your opponents is laughable.
jd said...
28 May 09 at 5:41 am
I guess you’ll find Alex would/will argue that the only reason the Liberals and Tories extended the franchise was fear of revolution, and protests on the street.
He’d have a point, particularly with the earlier 1832 and 1867 Reform Acts, but even so the role of the Labour movement does tend to get overstated – take the completely ineffectual Chartist movement which ultimately had little causally to do with the development or success of the 1918 Reforms, but which the Left like to shout about because it was pushing for similar-style refirms 70 years earlier.
patently said...
28 May 09 at 8:39 am
Turns out the trick is to f**k your opponents over as hard as possible…
You missed out “while dressing up your actions as being done from the moral high ground”.
Tristan said...
28 May 09 at 9:31 am
A little lacking in his history then.
Much of the labour movement was at various times allied with the Liberals, even after the formation of the Labour Party (in its various forms) there were miners unions which were predominantly Liberal supporting.
And the first working class MPs were Liberal too (which is largely why the NLC was built – to provide them with accommodation).
Again it was Liberals who pushed through paying MPs to make it easier for working class MPs.
The Labour Party was possibly one of the worst things to happen to the labour movement. Its state socialism subsumed the unions into the state and all but destroyed the independent, anti-state socialist movement.
The resultant unions are run more for their leaders and the state than for workers.
Letters From A Tory said...
28 May 09 at 10:06 am
Regardless of historical traditions, Labour have devalued the power and standing of Parliament more than any other party in history so to use that logo is crass and dishonest.
Man in a Shed said...
28 May 09 at 12:18 pm
Still its better than the view out of the crashing aeroplane they started with, though that was perhaps most appropriate.
Blackacre said...
28 May 09 at 1:11 pm
It would have been difficult for the Labour Party to do these reforms as it had no power early on. When it did in the early 1920s, they should perhaps have done the final change, but I suspect that minority government had more important things on its mind.
Credit for universal suffrage as a campaign ought to go to the Chartists of course.
Stu said...
28 May 09 at 2:10 pm
“It would have been difficult for the Labour Party to do these reforms as it had no power early on”
The French and the Russians might disagree with that one, actually…
jd said...
28 May 09 at 5:26 pm
“Credit for universal suffrage as a campaign ought to go to the Chartists of course.”
Not really. Chartism was effectively finished in 1848 and dead and buried as a movement by 1858, whimpering out inbetween. It’s impact prior to that can largely be summarised as one of violence and unrest, if you ask me.
I know the usual claim seems to be that it ‘left a mark’, a desire for suffrage, but the suffrage campaign can easily trace its roots pre-Chartism, and into more middle-class campaigners (take Henry Hunt who was campaigning for universal suffrage in 1818, or Major John Cartwright in 1776).
I’d also suggest that the more influential impact on parliamentary reform came, not from the Chartists, but the liberal tradition leading from Hunt through that other campaign organisation, the Anti-Corn Law League, up to Bright and Gladstone.
(Sorry.. I have a particular bugbear about the Left’s canonisation of the Chartists.. Not as bad as their love of Che Guevara admittedly…)
Julian H said...
28 May 09 at 8:17 pm
Charlotte, you’re missing the point entirely. It’s not enough to give poor people the opportunity to succeed at something. Rather, you have to give them the success. From your ivory tower. Which you build by saying you’ll make them better off.
Sheeesh.
Next thing you’ll be saying that wealth generation can happen without massive transfers of taxpayers’ cash to dodgy kleptocrats.