May 6, 2013

FINEST HOUR 146, SPRING 2010

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To say that the House of Commons needs strengthening is not necessarily to imply any censure upon its members. It is merely a recognition of the dangers in which our Parliamentary institutions stand and of the need for those who care about them, and about the life we have hitherto led in this country, to take effective steps in their defence.

The history of the last eleven years has consisted in alternative Governments of Mr. Baldwin^[1] and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald^[2] culminating in their joint association. Whenever the Socialists have come into office they have very speedily provoked a violent reaction in the country. Mr. Baldwin has always caught the ball from Mr. MacDonald, and on the last occasion has embraced not only the ball but its thrower as well.

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We now have a so-called National Government under which the proceedings of the House of Commons have sunk to the lowest ebb. Four-fifths of the members are Conservative supporters of the Administration. The two Oppositions make gestures and demonstrations to which the outside public pays scarcely any attention.

But this by no means implies a general contentment in the country. There is probably at this moment a definite majority of Socialists and Liberals over the whole Conservative and so-called National forces. This great mass of voters has no effective representation in the Chamber. They are completely unrepresented as far as Parliament is concerned. It must not be supposed, however, that the political life of the country is not proceeding All the powerful forces which have influenced our lives for so many years are alive and at work. At the next election there will probably be a very full swing of the pendulum away from the existing Ministers. It may well be that a majority of inexperienced and violent men will be returned. The responsible elements in the country will lose all control both of the House of Commons and of the executive. An immense disturbance will be caused to our agricultural, industrial and commercial life.

The Socialist Ministers will, as usual, have to choose between quarrelling with their followers and quarrelling with the nation. They will be impaled on this dilemma, and after a period of anxiety and possibly of disorder, a strong reversion will be made to government by the Right. Whether this reversion takes a constitutional or a Fascist form depends entirely upon what injury has been done to the country during the interval. Nothing is more certain than that the Socialist party is incapable of defending the old parliamentary liberties of England. The universal suffrage which has now been established deprives the House of Commons of the respect of the nation. The vote has lost its value to the voter. What everyone has, no one esteems. There are no longer eager political classes following keenly the progress of events. Nearly one-third of the electorate do not take the trouble to go to the poll. A large proportion of the others have to be dragged there upon some electioneering cry. There is a total lack of any continuity of political thought or discussion. All we have is vague mass-driftings interrupted from time to time by spasmodic mob-votes.

Anyone can see how impossible it would be for Parliament to command the interest of the nation under such conditions. The old life of the House of Commons is rapidly passing away. In its place we have a timid Caesarism refreshing itself by occasional plebiscites. At any moment a serious crisis may arise in which the differences which used to be settled by Parliamentary debate will be settled outside the walls of Parliament by the conflict of extremists. In any such conflict the Socialist or revolutionary forces will certainly be beaten. But the danger is that in the process of defeating them our ancient, free constitution and Parliamentary system will be destroyed.

Already the thoughts and interests of the younger generation are being attracted away from the scene where Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Baldwin doze so peacefully, to the kind of ideas which in one form or another have become dominant throughout Europe. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the next years may well see the end of the English Parliamentary system. A universal suffrage electorate will have shown themselves incapable of preserving those forms of government under which our country has grown great and from which all the dignity and tolerance of our present life arise.

It is for these reasons that I have long cast about for a means of strengthening the Parliamentary regime. I do not here speak of the necessary reform of the House of Lords or Second Chamber, for that is a well-known controversy. But the time has also come when we must definitely improve the franchise of the House of Commons so as to make the vote which returns a Parliament more truly representative of the strong, vital forces which make the country move and which cannot
be indefinitely disregarded.

The proposal which I have made is extremely simple. It raises no issue of rank or class, of party or wealth, of age or sex. It involves the disfranchisement, actual or prospective, of no class. It aims, however, at giving a greater weight to the more responsible citizens, to those who make the largest contribution to the nation’s well-being and those who bear the heaviest public burden. I propose that every householder, by which I mean the man or woman who pays the rent and the rates of any dwelling in which more than two persons habitually reside, should have a second or plural vote. This would certainly involve four or five million
persons. Many of them would be young persons: a proportion of them would be women.

They would all be persons who had to face the real problems of life in a manner quite different from lodgers of all kinds of both sexes, dependent or otherwise. We should to that extent have corrected the effects of throwing an enormous mass of irresponsible voters into the scales as was done during Mr. Baldwin’s last administration, and we should have infused into the franchise a new measure of stability.

If the principle of weighting the franchise were found acceptable there is no reason why it should not be further developed as time went on with the object of making the total vote at the poll representative of the pulling and driving power of the country, instead of its more dependent and more volatile elements.

Another advantage should be noted. The new class of plural voters, numbering millions—with whom anyone may rank himself in the ordinary processes of life—would be a class bearing special political responsibilities. They would in consequence tend to follow public affairs with more seriousness than at present. They would feel that there rested upon them in a marked degree the duty of caring for the interests of the State. If their extra vote was envied or even resented by the other classes, that very feeling would restore to the franchise some of the value it has lost by being made universal.

We should have taken the first step of moving back to a foundation for Parliament composed of electors who really take an interest in public affairs, and as a result Parliament would continue to be the forum of national discussions and the college from which Cabinets are chosen.

We should not in the least be deterred by catch phrases such as “fancy franchises,” nor by the fate which has overtaken fancy franchises in so many European countries. All experience goes to show that once the vote has been extended to everyone, and what is called full democracy has been achieved, the whole system is very speedily broken up and swept away. A true democracy involves a much more refined process than the mere counting of noses. If that is to be the method by which we are to be ruled, then it is not a Parliament but quite different organizations which under modern conditions will marshal the noses and do the counting. There is one other reform in the franchise which should be made by the present Parliament and should become operative at the next election. I mean the institution of Proportional Representation for the great cities.

The lack of influence on affairs of our great cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds and many others is deplorable. As political entities they are already moribund. They had more influence in the old days when they only had a couple of members than they have now that they are each sliced up into ten or a dozen constituencies. There is no collective voice from any of them.

Leading politicians in every party avoid such fickle and changeable areas, and seek in county seats or smaller boroughs a trustworthy resting-place. When one sees how, for instance, the interests of Manchester and Liverpool are ignored in the whole march of public events, and how little they count in public discussion, it is surely time a change was made.

On the other hand, the introduction of Proportional Representation in the counties would be a great mistake. Whereas in the cities Proportional Representation would focus the personality of the citizens, the same system in the counties would destroy the personal contacts and collective identities which exist.

Now is the time for action. It is always difficult for the House of Commons to deal with matters affecting the position of so many of its own members; but the conditions of the present Parliament are favourable as they have never been before and may not be again for many years. Both the reforms I have mentioned would have the effect of helping rather than hurting the existing personnel. Nothing will prevent the swing of the pendulum, but it would be to some extent moderated.

The Liberals would be well advised to support the additional vote for householders, if it were part of a Bill in which Proportional Representation was established in the great cities. Of course, there would be a violent controversy, but one of the greatest delusions in politics is to suppose that it is desirable always to please everybody.

And what is the alternative? I have no hesitation in saying that unless the reform and strengthening of our Parliamentary institution is actively undertaken without delay we shall see ourselves involved in a succession of disastrous fluctuations attended by continued constitutional decay, and that the regeneration of the country and the establishment of sincere and vigorous government will be achieved through agencies very different from those which have hitherto been the peculiar glory and achievement of our island.

“LOST GLORY”: MODERN REFLECTIONS

I’m not sure that “Lost Glory” is Churchill at his best. It veers from sounding like a Rush Limbaugh rant to exaggerated images of fascism. As always, buried beneath the rhetorical excesses are both wit and good sense, but this time they are buried a bit deeper than usual.

Still, the description of a government caught between its own supporters and a broader public does resonate in today’s world, though I looked in vain for some explanation of how a voting majority in Parliament consisted of 60 percent of its members, as it seems to do in one branch of the U.S. Congress. And I do find it interesting, in an antic way.

—Warren F. Kimball

I found this essay tremendously interesting, particularly because Churchill links voting (representation) with contributing to the social safety net (taxation): “giving a greater weight to the more responsible citizens, to those who make the largest contribution to the nation’s well-being and those who bear the heaviest public burden.”

Whereas Americans once fought a revolution over “taxation without representation,” they and others are now faced with fellow citizens who ask for “representation without taxation”: fewer and fewer pay income tax, but may vote for candidates who promise to redistribute ever more to them. Some even receive refundable tax credits. Surely if that number becomes the majority (recent reports have it as high as 47 percent in the U.S.), democracy as we know it would be challenged.

Of course there are other, “flat” taxes. Social security and property taxes (rates) raised to compensate for declining values are both burdensome on the working poor. Should they be “progressive”? Where will it all lead? Do the British, American, Canadian and other constitutions protect us from an economic “tyranny of the majority”? How do we organize our
countries so that poor can become more prosperous?

Churchill always inspires us to think.

—Suzanne Sigman 

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ENDNOTES

1. Stanley Baldwin KG PC, later The Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (1867-1947), Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister 1924-29, 1935-37; Lord President of the Council in Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, 1931-35.

2. James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Party leader, Labour Prime Minister 1929-31; Prime Minister in a National Government with Conservative support, 1931-35.