Comments on: Hey, Wait a Minute!!

By: Julian H

Julian H — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:17:13 +0000

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.

By: jd

jd — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:26:41 +0000

“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…)

By: Stu

Stu — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:10:37 +0000

“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…

By: Blackacre

Blackacre — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:11:38 +0000

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.

By: Man in a Shed

Man in a Shed — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:18:26 +0000

Still its better than the view out of the crashing aeroplane they started with, though that was perhaps most appropriate.

By: Letters From A Tory

Letters From A Tory — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:06:12 +0000

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.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:31:51 +0000

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.

By: patently

patently — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:39:21 +0000

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”.

By: jd

jd — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:41:33 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:41:51 +0000

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.