The 1892 General Election and the Eclipse of the Liberal Unionists

This article seeks to establish that the 1892 general election marked a major change in the relative positions of the parties in the Unionist alliance. Not only did it reveal the limitations of the Liberal Unionist Party's strategy and appeal in an age of increasingly organised, mass politics, but it also acted as a brake on the ambitions of the new leader of the Liberal Unionists in the house of commons, Joseph Chamberlain. It argues that the Liberal Unionist Party suffered a more severe setback in 1892 than has been recognized hitherto and that Chamberlain's attempts to revive his party both before and after the general election were now prescribed by the reality of the political position in which the party now found itself. Rather than regarding the fluid political circumstances of the 1890s as the outcome of an emerging struggle between increasingly polarised ideologies, it seeks to reinforce the significance of local political circumstances and the efficacy of party management in the growing dominance of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour and the Conservative central organisers.     

The Whips of the Liberal Unionist Party in the House of Commons

This note provides the most complete list of Liberal Unionist whips in the house of commons, thus contributing to our understanding of the history of the party in parliament over the entire period of its existence from 1886 to 1912, and charts the extent of the responsibility of the party whip for the organisation of the party outside the house of commons, which peaked during the tenure of Lord Wolmer as whip from 1888 to 1892. The note concludes by observing that the division of labour regarding organisation implemented in the Conservative Party in 1911 mirrors that adopted by the Liberal Unionist Party in 1892, and that this was likely the result of Wolmer, now 2nd earl of Selborne, serving on the committee that recommended the 1911 reforms.     

How Not to Run a Political Campaign: The Failure of the Unionist Free Traders 1903–6*

In 1903, Joseph Chamberlain launched a campaign aimed at the economic and political union of portions of the British empire behind a system of tariffs. The attack on Britain's 60‐year‐old system of free trade led to a polarising of opinion and sparked fierce controversy in the political sphere. It also shattered the unity of the Unionist Party, dividing it into three factions. One faction supported Chamberlain's policy, a second a more moderate policy proposed by party leader, Arthur Balfour, and a third – the smallest – the fiscal status quo. This article concerns this last faction, its motivations, actions and effectiveness. It argues that its concern with parliamentary alliances and methods, rather than the mass campaigns that were launched by its fellow opponents of Chamberlain, not only meant it was always bound to fail in its objectives, but made the problems of the Unionist Party far worse than they might otherwise have been. It concludes that the main reason why it failed to stop, or even delay Chamberlain's domination of the Unionist Party, not to mention suffering serious electoral losses, was largely due to its own incompetence in failing to grasp the new reality of mass politics and the need for new political approaches to deal with it.     

The Liberal Party,Free Trade and the 1841 Election

It is a paradox that the Liberal Party's electoral defeat in 1841 attested to its underlying strength and vitality. This article focuses on the impact on party unity of the free trade measures advocated by the ministry in the months preceding its fall. The Liberal Party's bold electoral platform antagonised its protectionist MPs, a group previously overlooked in the historiography, but fell short of the demands of its radical wing for political reform. While all the ingredients for fragmentation existed, unity prevailed. Protestations of loyalty to the leadership could be heard from the mouths of Liberal MPs of all shades, from stalwart protectionists who coalesced around the ministry on traditional foreign policy grounds through to the most fervent radicals who celebrated its ‘new’ direction. Such findings of cohesion contradict accounts which have hitherto viewed the 1841 electoral defeat as evidence of the party's inchoateness. Indeed, this article shifts the historiographical narrative away from addressing why the Liberals lost to the more pertinent issue of why the losses suffered were not greater. In answering that question, both the sensitivity with which the financial agenda was presented by ministers and the flexibility of different sections of the Liberal Party in interpreting and presenting the free trade measures to the electorate are underlined. Above all, Lord John Russell is rehabilitated as a ‘popular’ leader and his importance in the development of the nascent Liberal Party is unearthed.     

The Lost Leader: Sir Stafford Northcote and the Leadership of the Conservative Party, 1876–85*

Sir Stafford Northcote has gone down in history as a man who fell short of the ultimate achievement of being prime minister largely because of personal weakness, and lack of political virility and drive. The picture painted by Northcote's political enemies – most notably the Fourth Party – has been accepted uncritically. Yet, political motives lay behind the actions of these supporters, and their harsh black and white portrait is not illustrative of the complexity of the situation in which Northcote found himself. Although individual characteristics undoubtedly played a part in his final political failure, underlying dynamics and structural transformations in politics and political life were more significant. It was more than simply the misfortune in succeeding the exceptionally charismatic Disraeli as leader. Northcote was faced with unparalleled disruption in parliament from Irish Nationalist MPs; the starkly polarised debate on the eastern question left him detached as a moderate. His temperament was better suited to constructive government rather than to opposition. However, following general election defeat in 1880, Northcote was denied this opportunity. Equally, his position in the lower House denied him the capacity to define a clear political critique of the Liberal government. Northcote's leadership of the party reflected the changing nature of British politics as radicals, tories, Irish Nationalists and Unionists increasingly contested the consensual style more appropriate to the political world of Palmerston and the 14th earl of Derby.     

One Party,Two Traditions: Radicalism and Pragmatism in the Australian Greens

The 2004 Australian federal election established the Australian Greens (Greens) as the third largest political force in the country behind the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party in electoral terms. Despite the Greens’ electoral achievements, the party has been largely dismissed as a radical single-issue political party. This paper will argue that while radicalism is an institutionally entrenched feature of the Greens in both organisational and programmatic terms, there are also strongly pragmatic aspects to the party's modus operandi. It suggests that the Greens are astute political operators who use radicalism in a highly pragmatic way to achieve their political objectives.     

‘Today is the Dawn’: The Labour Party and the 1929 General Election

This article treats three themes: how Labour planned and fought the 1929 election, to whom it appealed and the results. It draws upon the MacDonald Papers, National Executive Committee minutes, the Daily Herald, London News, Labour sources in book form, electoral materials and secondary sources. It discusses the party's tactics and strategy for progress, funding and influences on its campaign. Such influences included the 1927 Trade Union Act, the Cheltenham agreement (1927) with the Co-operative Party and the appearance of the Liberal counter-cyclical economics proposals. The article argues that Labour's perceived base was wider than expected. Women and the rural classes, including farmers, were emphasized as target groups. Labour thought the key to a majority lay in the countryside. An investigation of the results from 1929 seems to imply this was not strictly the case, but there was a number of such constituencies which Labour was close to gaining. The Liberal revival helped Labour in the rural areas. Central planning was a light touch in 1929. It did, however, involve setting the framework for the campaign and making policy on all of the matters referred to above.     

A Call to Action: New Party Candidates and the 1931 General Election*

Sir Oswald Mosley established his New Party in early 1931. It proposed to cut across the party and class divides, with the objective of providing a ‘national’ solution to the economic crisis of the time. According to Mosley, the ‘old parties’– meaning the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties – had revealed themselves unable to adapt to the post‐war age. In their place, he argued, a modern organisation, based on youth, vitality and a scientifically reasoned economic plan, was needed to save Britain from terminal decline. Few heeded his call, and the party ultimately paved the way for the British Union of Fascists to emerge in 1932. Nevertheless, the New Party fought the general election of 1931, offering an unsuccessful but suitably intriguing challenge to the National coalition and Labour Party. This article will assess the New Party's election campaign, concentrating on those who briefly rallied to Mosley's appeal only to fall foul of the ballot box. In other words, it provides a case study of those who contributed to a dramatic electoral failure, and traces a significant stage along Mosley's journey to fascism.     

A battle in the Bush: Some lessons from liberal‐national rivalry in Warrnambool

An intriguing aspect of rural Australian politics has been the occasional capacity of one of the conservative parties to make sudden, substantial electoral gains at the other's expense. C.A. Hughes (1985:53) has suggested that, in order to understand Liberal‐National rivalry, we ought not dwell upon demographic variables but need undertake detailed electoral studies and draw out the importance of ‘the personalities and local popularity of candidates’. Such a micro‐level of political examination, he laments, is rarely attempted in Australia. Ours is a micro‐level study of the one‐time safe Liberal Victorian state seat of Warrnambool in which, in recent elections (1985 and 1988), the National Party has decisively wrested control. Certainly the local popularity of the National Party candidates contributed in no small way to the switch in conservative allegiance which has occurred in Warrnambool. However, contra Hughes, we also identify an important demographic explanatory variable in Catholicism.     

The Democratic Party and the restructuring of the Italian party system

Abstract

Out of a quickly performed merger between the Left Democrats and the Daisy, a new party has made its appearance in Italy: the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico – PD). In the summer of 2007 three candidates, Walter Veltroni, Rosy Bindi and Enrico Letta campaigned in order to convince sympathizers and supporters of that, yet non-existing party, that they were worthy of the office of Secretary of the PD. The election of Veltroni contributed to the already existing tensions within the centre-left governmental coalition that led to the demise of Prodi's government and to early elections. In April 2008, though receiving 33 per cent of the vote, the Democratic Party suffered a serious defeat. This article explores the reasons of the defeat and analyses its consequences on the restructuring of the Italian party system and the future of the Italian political system. Unless the Democratic Party is capable of finding an adequate organizational model and of expanding its electoral support beyond the areas of the traditional entrenchment of the former Communist party, the centre-right seems destined to guide Italian politics for some time to come.     

The Archbishop of Canterbury,the Episcopal Bench,and the Passage of the 1911 Parliament Act

The passage of the 1911 Parliament Bill ended the power of the British house of lords to veto any legislation passed by the house of commons. Henceforth, it could only delay the passage of a measure. The bill was carried by a mere 17 votes and friction between Unionists who took up die‐hard opposition, advised abstention, or actively sought to aid passage was bitter. The role which the archbishop of Canterbury played in canvassing the episcopal bench and helping to ensure final passage of the bill has not attracted much attention. Prior to the debate, the archbishop advised abstention but did not dissuade others from encouraging bishops to support the bill to help ensure passage. Before the vote, therefore, ‘die‐hards’ opposing any concession to the government, ‘hedgers’ advising Unionist abstention in the vote, and ‘rats’, Unionists willing to vote for the bill to ensure passage despite personal reservations, attempted to sound out and pressure the bishops in their direction. At the debate, the archbishop changed his mind and decided he must support the bill in order to avoid a greater crisis, and 12 other bishops joined him in the government lobby, helping to create the final majority of 17 by which the measure passed. Consideration of the role of the bishops adds to the understanding of the mechanics by which the bill passed, amidst considerable intrigue, pressure and acrimony, as well as further illuminating the extent and intensity of the divisions within the Unionist party at this critical moment.     

The Ulster Women's Declaration and the Passion of Women in the Campaign against Home Rule,c.1886–1912*

On Ulster Day, 28 September 1912, Unionist leaders orchestrated the mass signing of the Ulster Covenant and the Women's Declaration against Irish home rule. These were highly emotive documents and the ‘passion’ expressed by women contrasted with the men, as the Covenant implied a pact with God while the Women's Declaration promised to support their male counterparts. The Declaration, with 234,046 signatures, was one of the largest petitions ever organised by Irish (and British women) in this period and expressed the desire of many Ulsterwomen to defend their identities as Unionists and Protestants. This article breaks new ground by examining the Declaration as a form of petitioning culture. It will analyse Unionist women's petitioning through the lens of ‘passion’ and argue that petitioning offered women a way to express their feelings on this important issue. This will be done by analysing the Declaration and the Unionist women's earlier petitioning campaigns to reveal what motivated Unionist women to protest and their political practice. Another perspective is provided by the contemporary criticisms of the Declaration made by suffrage activists. This shows that while ‘passion’ could mobilise women, it could also cause friction. This article will also consider the gendered coverage of Ulsterwomen's political participation by the press. Overall, this article reappraises the political activism of Ulsterwomen from the perspective of petitioning and the power of ideological passion in politics.     

CBC News Coverage of Canada's 2006 Liberal Party Leadership Candidates

Content-coded CBC evening newscasts are used in this article to examine reports on the eight candidates for Liberal Party leader in the weeks before the party's 2006 convention. In a sharp contrast to news reports on US presidential nominations, The National provided coverage balanced between the horse race and more substantive matters, including policy discussions and a candidate's personality and leadership qualities. But as with US nomination coverage, The National largely ignored trailing candidates, focusing nearly all its attention on the likely and plausible nominees. In terms of tone, The National provided “compensatory coverage,” where front-runners were treated more negatively than the candidates who were further back in the field.     

The Political Importance of Provincial Newspapers, 1903-1945: The Rowntrees and the Liberal Press

This article argues that the political importance of provincialnewspapers run by the Rowntree family in the Liberal cause declinedbetween 1903 and 1945. This decline is identified in changingattitudes to the funding of newspapers, and in the reasons forthose changes. Before the Second World War the Rowntrees consideredsubsidies to provincial newspapers vital, to keep the pressat the forefront of partisan campaigning, until at last it beganto pay its way. Yet such newspapers' eventually strong financescontrasted with their political weakness, as they appeared helplessto prevent the Liberal Party's electoral decline. After 1945the Rowntrees, in contrast to their earlier strategy, no longerconsidered the funding of newspapers a priority. Instead, theytargeted money directly at the strengthening of the LiberalParty, both in Parliament and in the party organization, insteadof at the press. This switch of strategy was the earliest exampleof a wider Liberal emphasis, from the 1940s, on improving parliamentaryrecruitment and party organization. The fading political importanceof the Rowntrees' newspapers and of the wider Liberal presswould lead to loss-making Liberal papers closing, while survivingones ceased to support the Liberal Party. Instead, the Liberalscame to depend on television and community politics.     

‘With All My Oldest and Native Friends’. Joseph Parkes: Warwickshire Solicitor and Electoral Agent in the Age of Reform1

Joseph Parkes, Birmingham solicitor, electoral agent, whig party advisor and secretary to the Parliamentary Municipal Corporation Commission was a modern master of exposing corrupt and fraudulent electioneering and using it as a catalyst for the election of reform and Liberal politicians immediately following the 1832 Reform Act. Warwickshire's own political and legal history was the foundation for Parkes's understanding of how politics worked in Britain and what was wrong with it, and helped forge his vision for an effective reform in parliamentary and local government. This essay examines Joseph Parkes's understanding of national electoral politics, informed by his work in Warwickshire. As a local solicitor, Parkes gained the wisdom of controlling electoral registration, canvassing in a routine and orderly manner and establishing a network of professionals to secure that registrations turned into votes at elections. This experience would culminate in the formation of the Reform Club, a national organisation of whigs, Liberals and radicals, that would, eventually, become the base of the Liberal Party in modern British politics. In short, Joseph Parkes was a man who could not, and did not wish to, escape where he came from, at least in terms of his political education. His Warwickshire experiences and lessons learned, solidified a series of political reform goals that he pragmatically approached as a political advisor, operative and attorney, rather than an elected public servant, and marked the direction of politics for the rest of the century.     

Fighting over friends and neighbors: The effect of inter-candidate geographic distance on intra-party competition

Previous studies on intra-party competition have largely neglected the role played by geographic distance between co-partisan candidates. In this study, we argue that candidates who live further away from intra-party competitors on the same party list benefit electorally from their remoteness. Moreover, we contend that the electoral effectiveness of exhibiting local personal vote attributes – a theoretically and empirically well-established candidate strategy to cultivate personal votes – also depends on the geographical proximity of localized co-partisan candidates. Using a unique and untapped dataset of more than 5,000 Finnish election candidates' home address coordinates over four consecutive parliamentary elections (1999–2011), we run beta regression models to examine the effects of candidate remoteness and nearest candidates' local characteristics on intra-party vote shares. To measure the remoteness of a particular candidate, we develop a novel index based on the distribution of co-partisans over concentric circles around that candidate. The empirical analyses show that the effect of geographic remoteness depends on local party strength and the degree of urbanization: candidates particularly benefit from more distant co-partisans in party strongholds and rural and suburban municipalities. Moreover, all models confirm that nearby located localized co-partisans decrease a candidate's own vote share. These findings have important implications for politicians' careers, party nomination strategies and future empirical research on intra-party competition.     

Teaching Canadian Literature

Abstract

Canada and the United States are two democracies on the North American continent sharing a common border, common British heritage, and for the most part a common language. At the same time, the two political systems abound with structural differences. Canadians, unlike voters in the U.S., cannot split their votes among various parties and candidates, and the single house Parliamentary system with tight party discipline renders an individual back-bench MP relatively powerless. The questions addressed by this article concern similarities and differences of Canadian and U.S. urban voters as they make electoral selections in these similar cultures and dissimilar, yet democratic, political systems. First, do social factors such as class, ethnicity, and religion provide similar bases for cleavage in Canada and the U.S.? Canadian society supposedly has a more easily defined class structure than the U.S. Does this difference carry over into the area of electoral choice? Do ethnicity and religion, as reported, differentiate party support in both countries? Second, individual factors such as the voter's party identification and impression of the party leaders (or presidential candidates) have been shown in the U.S. to be of dominant importance in predicting an individual's vote. What is the relative importance of these factors in determining voting choice in the two countries? The three-party Canadian context renders difficult any clear-cut comparisons to the two-party U.S., but useful avenues of speculation emerge. The NDP has a working-class base, but cannot attract the poor. Class does not significantly distinguish PC's and Liberals, the dominant parties, and on ethnicity and religion PC and NDP supporters bear a strong resemblance to each other. In the U.S. the expected associations obtain between Democratic vote and working class, Catholic religion, and foreign-born parentage. Party identification and attractiveness of the party leader, long recognized as important influences on voters in the U.S., seem from these data to play a similar role in Canada. Consequently, the individual electoral decision is dominated by more similarities than might be suggested from observing the differences in electoral and decision-making structures. Perhaps culture rather than political structure is dominant (within certain limits) in a voter's electoral decisions.     

The 2013 elections and the Italian political system

The February 2013 Italian general elections were characterized by the highest volatility to date. Although, thanks to the majority bonus, the Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) obtained the absolute majority of seats in the House of Deputies, it could not be considered the winner of the elections. Lacking a majority in the Senate, it was obliged to form a government with Silvio Berlusconi's party and with the rather small number of parliamentarians elected in former Prime Minister Mario Monti's list. In spite of his last-minute surge, Berlusconi was a clear loser, having lost almost six million votes in respect of his 2008 victory. Comedian Beppe Grillo's Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Stars Movement) received the highest-ever number of votes for a new entry into any post-war European general election. Unwilling to play the coalitional game and made up of inexperienced and incompetent parliamentarians, Grillo's party has remained isolated and ineffective. The present Italian party system consists of three poles, the Movimento Cinque Stelle playing the role of anti-system party. Institutional reforms and especially reform of the electoral system, which has been struck down by the Constitutional Court, are again the focus of debate. Restructuring of the Italian political system is yet to come.     

Continuity or Discontinuity in the Recent History of the Australian Labor Party?

Recent characterisations of the Australian Labor Party as a ‘cartel party’ suggest that there was, after the 1970s, a fundamental discontinuity in Labor's history. We assess this contention not only in terms of the ALP's policies but also the mechanisms which link it with different classes and social groups: Labor's electoral support, membership and local branches, the backgrounds of the Party's parliamentarians and leaders, the role of trade unions inside the ALP, and its sources of funding. While there have been some quantitative changes in these characteristics, we conclude that Labor remains, on balance, a ‘capitalist workers party.’