Lord Falmouth and the Parallel Political Worlds of Ultra‐Toryism, 1826–32

The parallel political worlds of ultra‐toryism were those of Westminster and the provinces. Hoping to defend the protestant constitution from what they regarded as ruinous attacks, between 1826 and 1832 many ultra‐tories were unrelenting parliamentary opponents of constitutional change. However, far less is understood about their simultaneous involvement in the political world away from Westminster, apart from analysis of the duke of Newcastle's electoral activities and several county studies. This article examines the 1st earl of Falmouth's dogged ideological defence of the protestant constitution, as well as exposing his political pragmatism in Cornwall, thereby highlighting the lengths to which some ultras were prepared to go in pursuing their beliefs. Falmouth also exemplifies those ultras who, from March 1827 when Lord Liverpool resigned, became far more prominent in the struggle against ‘Revolution by due course of law’, beginning with their opposition to Canning becoming prime minister. Furthermore, a study of Falmouth's career between 1826 and 1832 at Westminster and in Cornwall, also highlights several of the ideological tensions within ultra‐toryism at this time.     

Richard Oastler,Toryism, Radicalism and the Limitations of Party,c.1807–46

Richard Oastler (1789–1861), the immensely popular and fiery orator who campaigned for factory reform and for the abolition of the new poor law in the 1830s and 1840s, has been relatively neglected by political historians. Few historians, however, have questioned his toryism. As this article suggests, labelling Oastler an ‘ultra‐tory’ or a ‘church and state tory’ obscures more than it reveals. There were also radical strands in Oastler's ideology. There has been a tendency among Oastler's biographers to treat him as unique. By comparing Oastler with other tories – Sadler, Southey, and the young Disraeli – as well as radicals like Cobbett, this article locates him much more securely among his contemporaries. His range of interests were much broader (and more radical) than the historiographical concentration on factory and poor law reform suggests. While there were periods when Oastler's toryism (or radicalism) was more apparent, one of the most consistent aspects of his political career was a distaste for party politics. Far from being unique or a maverick, Oastler personified the pervasive anti‐party sentiments held by the working classes, which for all the historiographical attention paid to popular radicalism and other non‐party movements still tends to get lost in narratives of the ‘rise of party’.     

Radicals,Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67*

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a ‘provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania’. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early‐ and mid‐Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the ‘People's Charter’. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the ‘Birmingham school’. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the ‘Manchester school’ and economic liberalism.     

Adjustment and Integration: The Scottish Representation in the British House of Commons, 1707–14*

The small minority of Scots who entered the house of commons in 1707 were slow to make their mark. Besides lack of numbers, they suffered several significant disadvantages. The Westminster scene was strange, and the style and tone of debate more vigorous and informal. Moreover, the aristocracy had dominated the unicameral Scottish parliament, and commoners found it difficult to emancipate themselves from noble tutelage. Most importantly, Scottish politics did not yet reflect the two‐party system dominant in England. Thus in the first sessions the Scots were unable to make headway in the essential business of parliament, legislation. Scotland suffered in comparison with the English provinces, and even the Irish, who were able to muster a more effective lobby. Soon, however, a new generation of debaters appeared, able to use their wit to discomfit English antagonists, and a new class of ‘men of business’ who grasped the rules of the legislative game. The fortuitous deaths of leading magnates and the polarisation of sectarian antagonisms in Scotland permitted the coalescence of the Scottish representation into two broad factions allied with the English parties. It was with English tory support that bills were passed to benefit the sectional concerns of Scottish episcopalians, accompanied by other measures of a more general nature. The combined attempt by Scottish peers and MPs in 1713 to secure the repeal of the union does not point to a lasting breakdown in Anglo‐Scottish relations, since it was also a manifestation of political opportunism by English whigs and discontented tories, and their Scottish allies. But the dawn of a party system in Scotland was dispelled by the death of Queen Anne and the ensuing jacobite rebellion. The complicity of tories in the Fifteen resulted in the destruction of the party in Scotland, and the construction of a whig hegemony.     

Domestic troubles,national identity discourse,and China's attitude towards the West, 2003–2012

Prior to its recent, much discussed international ‘assertiveness’, China's attitude to the West had deteriorated, as reflected in official discourse of national identity. Drawing from political science and social psychology literature on identity studies, I argue that the discursive pattern of national identity can shift as a function of an elite strategy to exclude internal others through opposition to foreign others. Internally exclusionary nationalism, often employed by elites during major crises, is instrumental to consolidating control and maintaining order. But when targeting internal opponents alone is politically inconvenient or lacks public resonance, elites will accentuate ethnocentric national identity discourse vis‐a‐vis foreign nations in order to reinforce internal battles and divert popular discontent externally. An interpretive analysis of the official texts of Chinese national identity discourse during the Hu Jintao decade, supplemented by quantitative data, shows a significant correlation between the regime's fear of internal instability and bottom‐up political opposition on the one hand and the timing and intensity of ethnocentric identity discourse regarding the West on the other. The party‐state negatively framed the West in order to shift the blame for domestic troubles onto foreigners and discredit internal resistance.     

‘Attaque and Break Through a Phalanx of Corruption . . . the Court Party!’ The Scottish Representative Peers' Election and the Opposition, 1733–5: Three New Division Lists of the House of Lords of 1735*

In the early 1730s, Archibald Campbell, the earl of Ilay, gained a dominant position in Scotland, and Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, entrusted him with the distribution of patronage there. Ilay took full advantage of this power, and controlled the votes of the financially weak Scottish peers in the election of 16 representative peers. The excise crisis of 1733–4, however, changed the political scene in Scotland. Although they had been chosen as supporters of the court party, some of the Squadrone Volante members (the duke of Montrose and the marquess of Tweeddale) and two courtiers (the earls of Marchmont and Stair) raised a standard of revolt against Walpole and Ilay. The Scottish opposition co‐operated with the English country party (‘the Patriots’) and such Scottish tories as the duke of Hamilton. In the 1734 peers' election they launched a challenge to the ministry, but the opposition was crushed by a bankrolled election campaign organised by the court party. Although the English and Scottish opposition petitioned in the house of lords to criticize the ‘undue practices’ of Walpole and Ilay at the election, the ministry was backed up by English and Scottish courtiers and bishops, and overwhelmed the opposition. Three new division lists related to the aftermath of the Scottish election shed much light upon the party alignment of the upper House in the middle of the 1730s.     

‘The Costly Luxury of Protesting’: The Deselection of J.M. Maclean,MP

With the increase in the electorate as the result of the Second and Third Reform Acts in the latter half of the 19th century came a corresponding increase in the importance of political parties. With this increase in the importance of party came the fear that the Burkean definition of the MP as a representative, owing his electorate his judgment as well as his industry would be replaced by a narrower conception of the MP as a delegate, returned to vote according to the dictates of party or ‘caucus’, subject to rejection by his party prior to an election, rather than the electorate as a whole at an election. This article examines the case of J.M. Maclean, Conservative MP for Cardiff 1895–1900, deselected by his constituency executive for his opposition to the Boer War, using it to shed light on the reaction of constituency parties in instances where MPs were felt to have overstepped the proper bounds of party discipline. The article concentrates on the relations between Maclean and his constituency party, crucial in Maclean's deselection. The limits of political dissent in time of war are examined, and the limitations placed by party on the freedom of action of individual MPs. In addition, the article gives glimpses of the tensions present in the Conservative‐Liberal Unionist coalition which governed Britain between 1895 and 1906, particularly on perceptions of the controversial figure of Joseph Chamberlain among Conservative back benchers.     

Playing with Fire: The 4th Duke of Hamilton's Jacobite Politics and the Union

James Hamilton, duke of Hamilton and the Scots jacobites are generally linked in analyses of the final years of the Scots polity. Indeed, Hamilton is often presented as the leader of the jacobite party in the Scottish parliament. Yet both contemporaries and historians have been unsure what to make of his on-again, off-again, conduct with respect to the exiled Stuarts and France. This has fuelled an ongoing debate about Hamilton's erratic and highly enigmatic behaviour during the winter of 1706–7, when the Union was passing the Scottish parliament. Was he genuinely opposing the Union? Was he duped by the court? Or was he, ‘bought and sold for English gold ’? This essay takes a fresh look at the duke and his part in the Union crisis in the light of new and previously underused jacobite sources with a view to better understanding Hamilton's aims, objectives, and influence with this crucial group. Only the jacobites and the Cameronians were potentially willing to take their opposition to the Union to God's Acre. But neither party immediately flew to arms in response to passage of a union they both believed was a betrayal of everything they held dear, and Hamilton was a major factor in their failure to do so. This essay thus takes a close look at the duke's part in preventing a major national uprising against the Union in the winter of 1706–7 and advances a new interpretation of his conduct and significance throughout the Union crisis.     

‘Too Wild to Succeed’: The Occasional Conformity Bills and the Attempts by the House of Lords to Outlaw the Tack in the Reign of Anne*

By the late 17th century it had been largely established as a part of the ‘constitution’ that the house of commons played the leading role in proposing financial legislation and that the house of lords by convention could not amend such bills, but only accept or reject them. From the late 1670s, the practice developed of the Commons ‘tacking’ money or supply bills to other, controversial legislation, to try to ensure that the Lords would pass the whole bill. This underhand proceeding sometimes worked, but at other times the Lords amended the non‐monetary parts in such a way as to render the bill unacceptable to the Commons, but such actions sometimes resulted in the loss of financial legislation necessary for the king's government. From the 1690s, the whig‐dominated Lords attempted to ‘outlaw’ tory‐backed tacking by protesting at its unparliamentary nature. This culminated in a formal declaration by the House in 1702 of the unconstitutionality of tacking. The last major attempt at tacking took place over the Occasional Conformity Bills of 1702–4. The final bill of 1704 essentially failed, however, because of the party strengths in the Lords when the tories were outvoted by the whigs. The Lords, however, continued to condemn tacking until at least 1709.     

The politics of being Norman in the reign of Richard the Fearless,Duke of Normandy (r. 942–996)

In 966, by the end of the reign of its third duke, Richard I, Normandy had overcome the crises that had beset it in the middle of the century. Much of this success came from the coherence of its ruling group, which expressed itself partly in terms of ‘Norman’ identity. This article uses Dudo's history of the dukes and Richard's charters to argue that ‘Norman’ as a political identity was a deliberate creation of the court of Richard I in the 960s, following the perceived failure of his and his father's policies of assimilation into Frankish culture.     

The British Parliamentary Labour Party and the Government of Ireland Act 1920

Immediately after the First World War the British Labour Party was forced to reconsider its relationship with an increasingly militant Irish nationalism. This reassessment occurred at the same time as it was becoming a major political and electoral force in post‐war Britain. The political imperative from the party's perspective was to portray itself as a responsible, moderate and patriotic alternative governing party. Thus it was fearful of the potential negative impact of too close an association with, and perceived sympathy for, extreme Irish nationalism. This explains the party's often bewildering changes in policy on Ireland at various party conferences in 1919 and 1920, ranging from support for home rule to federalism throughout the United Kingdom to ‘dominion home rule’ as part of a wider evolving British Commonwealth to adopting outright ‘ self‐determination’ for a completely independent Ireland outside both United Kingdom and empire. On one aspect of its Irish policy, however, the party was adamant and united – its opposition to the partition of Ireland, which was the fundamental principle of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Bill of 1920 which established Northern Ireland. Curiously, that aspect of Labour's Irish policy was never discussed in the party at large. All the running was made by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the house of commons in 1920. The PLP's outright opposition to the bill acted as balm throughout the wider party, binding together the confusing, and often contradictory, positions promulgated on the long‐term constitutional future of Ireland and its relationship with Britain.     

Clyve Jones and Parliamentary History

The ‘constitutional revolution’ which occurred in Ireland after 1691 meant that parliamentary management became one of the prime functions of the viceroyalty. Interest focused on the Commons, where supply legislation was drafted. But the upper House, though smaller, less busy, and on the whole more easily managed, could not be ignored, since it could still cause major problems for government. The situation for the incoming ministers in 1714 was problematic, since the Lords had been a tory stronghold, and the ‘Church party’, buttressed by the bishops, remained powerful. The situation was a mirror image of Westminster in 1710, when Robert Harley's tory ministry had to cope with a whig-dominated house of lords. This essay analyses the means by which Lord Lieutenant Sunderland (1714–15), and his successors, Lords Justices Grafton and Galway, brought the Irish upper House under control, constructing a court party with some of the elements which Clyve Jones has identified as having been crucial to Harley's strategy in 1710–14: moderate or non-party men, pensioners and placemen depending on government largess, new episcopal appointments and a block creation of peerages. In Ireland it was the new peers who played the most important part. The whigs were able to make some inroads into the episcopal bench, previously a stronghold of toryism, until the issue of relief for dissenters rekindled anxiety over the maintenance of the ecclesiastical establishment, prefiguring future problems.     

Currency Culture: Australian Identity and Nationalism in New South Wales before the Gold Rushes

This article examines the white, native-born population of New South Wales, known as ‘the currency’, between the 1820s and the discovery of gold in the 1850s. While Britishness was the dominant cultural influence before, and after, the gold rushes, the ‘currency lads and lasses’ often found their identity in opposition to British-born colonists, known as ‘the sterling’. This early incarnation of Australian nationalism is significant, it will be argued, as it reveals how quickly indigenous roots were claimed at the expense of Aboriginal Australians. Further, rather than a sense of Australianness within a larger British identity, the currency community held Britishness as part of their larger Australian identity. Drawing on examples of popular culture from the theatre, the press, and the sporting arena, this article explores the nature of this unique community who held Britishness as a secular religion but identified most strongly as white Australians.     

Parties in Parliament in the 18th Century: The Demolition of Robert Walcott and its Consequences*

The failure of Robert Walcott's attempted ‘Namierisation’ of Queen Anne's house of commons in the 1950s is now an accepted historiographical fact. Scholars working on late Stuart politics inevitably dismiss Walcott's work as misguided and misleading, and instead take as a given the existence of a two‐party structure as delineated by the standard authority on the subject, Geoffrey Holmes. This article returns to the controversy over ‘party’ in the 1960s, which reached a climax in 1967 with the publication of Holmes's magnum opus and J.H. Plumb's Ford Lectures. The purpose is not to revisit the debate, which was decided conclusively at the time, but to explore the context in which Walcott and his critics were writing; more specifically the connection between Walcott's work and the approach to 18th‐century political history pioneered by Sir Lewis Namier. Using private correspondence between the principals, it argues that Walcott did not properly follow Namier's methods, and was identified as a Namierite largely because Namier was unwilling, for personal reasons, to disown him. In the long run, this reluctance proved damaging, accelerating the decline in Namier's reputation in the 1960s and the shift towards different forms of political history.     

Epitomising the Modern Spanish Nation through Popular Music: Coplas from La Caramba to Concha Piquer, 1750–1990

Music is an important language of the emotions and can often arouse strong passions in its performance and representation, both from the individual's perspective of personal identity and for the individual's sense of identity and of belonging to a given community. Likewise, music can serve to whip up and reinforce nationalism and national chauvinism against the ‘other’ as well as serving as a badge of identity. In this article I explore a musical form, a song that has been defined as ‘Spanish’ and as the ‘national’ song: la copla. Copla is rooted in the past and first appeared as both a poetic and a theatrical form, but always accompanied by music. It was, however, during the eighteenth century, when nationalism made its appearance as a ‘concern’ in the Spanish political‐cultural arena, when coplas would be used as a mark of Spanish identity. Copla is a women's song. Although it has been interpreted by men, some of them internationally renowned like Miguel de Molina, the most famous performers have been and still are women. That is why perhaps a recurrent theme of coplas is unrequited love, whereby love and passion play an important role, either with regard to the individual or the community from which the individual hails. But there are also other themes such as the longing stimulated by alien rule, which is reflected by cultural opposition and resistance to discourses of power, not only in terms of open opposition, but in a more subtle form of resistance, particularly in gender terms. I claim that it is precisely this resistance to fixed discourses of gender that have made coplas excellent negotiators with the different musical, social and political contexts and in this way have made them an icon of the invented tradition that is fundamental in the creation of a nation.     

Churchill's ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech in Context: The Attempt to Achieve a ‘Good Understanding on All Points’ with Stalin's Soviet Union

More than 70 years ago, on 5 March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton. The speech immediately attracted worldwide attention and proved to be highly controversial. Most contemporaries in East and West and the vast majority of subsequent historians interpreted the speech as Churchill's call for western resistance to Stalin's expansionist policies and the continuation of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between Washington and London. This article argues, however, that Churchill's speech has been misunderstood. When set in the context of Churchill's other pronouncements on world affairs during his time as leader of the opposition between 1945 and 1951 and in view of his vigorously pursued ‘Big Three’ ‘summit diplomacy’ with Moscow and Washington after he returned as Prime Minister in 1951, the ‘iron curtain’ speech must be seen in a different light. It becomes clear that this famous speech was not Churchill's sabre-rattling call for commencing or energizing the East--West conflict with the Soviet Union. Quite to the contrary, his speech was meant to prevent the escalation of this conflict and avoid the dangerous clash between the world's greatest powers that soon became known as the Cold War.     

Brewarrina: An Australian Story

This short paper discusses Barry Morris's account of the ‘riot’ at Brewarrina, New South Wales, in 1987 and its legal aftermath, which continued for some years. An iconic event in Australian race relations, much can be learnt from its various dimensions, a fact that Morris amply demonstrates. Notwithstanding, this discussion questions a related narrative in his book, which interprets capitalism's impact on self‐determination simply in terms of neoliberalism's ‘political effects’. The paper seeks to broaden the discussion of the relations between the state and self‐determination, and between capitalism and race.     

Devolution and Parliamentary Representation: The Case of the Scotland and Wales Bill, 1976–7

For as long as devolution has been debated in the UK, there has been fierce discussion as to the representation of the would‐be affected areas at Westminster. That this has been the case is a consequence of Westminster's dual remit as both a state‐wide and a sub‐state legislature. While this dual remit was relatively straightforward when applied to all nations of the UK, it does, however, raise serious questions about the equality of MPs at Westminster in the face of asymmetric devolution that would carve out parliament's remit in some, but not all, parts of the UK. These questions bedevilled Gladstone's Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century and have been a recurrent feature of debate following New Labour's devolution programme in the late 1990s, culminating in the adoption of a system of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ by the house of commons in October 2015. This article looks at this issue through the lens of the ill‐fated Scotland and Wales Bill introduced by the Callaghan government in 1976. It explores the roots of the bill and how, and why, the idea of referring the question of territorial representation, post‐devolution, to a Speaker's conference, came to secure the initial support of cabinet as the best answer to this problem, and why the government swiftly changed its mind. Parliamentary statecraft considerations served to push a Speaker's conference onto the institutional agenda, before ultimately dooming it to failure.     

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.