Chapter 5

Forming the British Political State

In This Chapter

Building up the power of monarchy

Transferring power from the monarch to parliament

Looking at the forming of political parties and the role of the prime minister

Breaking with traditions: ending the power of the Lords, and giving votes to all

In this chapter I look at the big political events that have got us to where we are today – a democracy of some 60 million people with votes for the majority, a free press, an independent judiciary and civil liberties.

From monarchs to Machiavellian prime ministers, this is the chapter to look at for the lowdown on the key steps on the road to the British politics of today.

Getting to Grips with the Normans: From Conquest to Magna Carta

The date 1066 is etched into the history books of Britain – and throughout the world – because it’s the year William, Duke of Normandy, in one of the great big gambles of history, successfully invaded England and defeated the Saxon King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. William became known simply as the Conqueror (he’d previously been known as ‘the bastard’, so this must have been a welcome change). He gave tidy portions of England to the hundreds of French knights who’d helped him, for them to rule on his behalf.

Make no bones about it, the Norman invasion was brutal. The Saxon upper classes suffered the indignity of losing much of their own lands and having to submit to their new Norman rulers, who even spoke a different language. As Saxons slid further down the social scale, they not only saw much of their native culture and customs eradicated but also had to pay substantial taxes and live under a multitude of oppressive laws. All in all, post-Norman conquest England wasn’t a happy place. William and his descendants ruled over what was for much of the time a violent and totalitarian regime – no liberal democracy back then.

A succession of good, mediocre and downright rubbish kings led some of the descendants of the Norman knights and those Saxons who still had some land and money to question whether the king really should have total control over the country. In fact, in the reign of the particularly inept King John, in 1215, the great barons of the land rose up in mutiny and forced the king to sign an agreement called Magna Carta – meaning Great Charter – which limited (a little) the power of the king to go around killing or imprisoning those he didn’t like without first having them tried in a court of law.

In effect, Magna Carta was a statement of basic rights, which in theory bound the king to act within the law of the land. In particular it set up the right of habeas corpus, which means the right to appeal against imprisonment.

Magna Carta is widely seen as the first major constitutional document in the Western world – coming a whole five and a half centuries before the American Declaration of Independence.

Although Magna Carta was very important, it didn’t mean that everyone in England lived in peace without fear of being wrongly imprisoned or killed without due process. The monarch was still at the top of the tree and had enormous power for the next four and a half centuries and could do pretty much anything.

Doing the Splits: Church and State Clash

For the five centuries after the Norman conquest the monarch wasn’t the only powerbroker in the country. The Roman Catholic Church was also a big deal, with huge tracts of land, the right to raise taxes from the public and even its own system of courts to try people who’d broken its laws – called canon law. In effect, the Roman Catholic Church was a state within a state. For example, priests couldn’t be tried by the king’s courts but only by the Church courts.

Now for most of the time the monarch and the Church got on hunky dory. But when the pope refused to let Henry VIII divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, the monarch turned on the Church with a vengeance. He had Church lands seized, closed ancient monasteries, and melted the gold and silver they held for coins. What’s more, Henry had himself installed as head of the Church, which meant he no longer obeyed the pope.

The battle between Church and monarch was a major turning point in Britain’s history. It increased the power and wealth of the monarchy enormously, and because the Church land was sold to wealthy merchants, it also created a new group of landowners, who in time went into parliament and took part in government.

The break with the Roman Catholic Church and the construction of what’s called the Church of England, with the monarch as head of the Church, is called the Reformation.

The legal framework for the Church of England was set up in the 1530s and 40s, and most of the Church land seizures took place then. It wasn’t a straightforward transition; in fact, once Henry VIII died, his daughter Mary reversed the process and again England became a Catholic country. However she died soon after and younger sister (Elizabeth I) chose to break with the Roman Catholic Church once more.

The monarch is still head of the Church of England but nowadays the Church tends to play less of a role in public life, mainly due to a fall in religious observance by the UK population as a whole. At the start of the 20th century it was estimated that the majority of people attended a religious service at least once a week, whereas today fewer than one in ten do.

Gearing Up for Revolution: Parliament Takes on the King and Wins

The English parliament was set up by Henry II in the 12th century as a means by which to more effectively govern the country and raise taxes. Over the next few centuries the power of parliament gradually increased because the monarch needed the help of its members to raise more taxes to run the government.

Working hand in hand

Most of the time the monarch and parliament worked well together, pursuing policies that were widely agreed, particularly over the break with the Roman Catholic religion and its replacement with a Protestant one, with the monarch as head not just of the state but the Church too. Elections to the House of Commons – although not the Lords – were held regularly but only landowners got to vote (a very far cry from the liberal democracy of today). But apart from sporadic rebellions and the nasty Wars of the Roses in the late 15th century (between rival claimants for the English throne), the country was at peace and government worked well.

Chafing under Charles I and enduring Cromwell

Then along came the diminutive, lisping and rather useless Charles I. He hated ruling with the agreement of parliament and tried to go it alone; at the same time, he raised what were seen as punitive and potentially illegal taxes and even flirted with the Catholic faith, which didn’t go down well with Protestants in parliament. The Members of Parliament, many of whom were also rich and powerful merchants and landowners, became increasingly fed up with Charles’s style of kingship. Eventually, in 1642, civil war broke out. In 1649, Charles, having been defeated in the Civil War, was executed and the country became a republic (without a monarchy) for 11 years under the austere Oliver Cromwell.

Oliver Cromwell was a great general who’d risen through the ranks of the parliamentary army and ultimately swept to power as a military dictator. He fought wars on the Continent and in Scotland and Ireland. He was devoutly religious, even banning some Christmas festivities – bah humbug!

When old Scrooge Cromwell died he was replaced by Charles II, who was more politically astute than his father, Charles I. Charles II for a time restored the powers of the monarchy, but after he popped his clogs another short, useless rule, this time by James II, meant another civil war was in the offing. However, James was replaced in a relatively bloodless coup in 1688 by the Dutch King William of Orange.

Reaping the benefits of the Glorious Revolution

But the real result of the Glorious Revolution, as it became known, was that parliament was able to wrest control of the levers of state from the monarch. The Glorious Revolution came about after the unpopular Catholic king, James II, was overthrown in a coup led by leading landowners and parliamentarians. They offered William of Orange – a Dutch Protestant ruler – the English throne and he became King William III. The fact that a monarch had been deposed and a new one installed, in effect by parliament, was crucial, because it showed where the political power now lay. In future, although monarchs would at times have real power, they would govern the country only with the agreement of parliament. In effect, power shifted from a single monarch to the members of an elected parliament and the unelected House of Lords.

By the reign of Charles I (1625–49), England had swallowed up Wales and, although Scotland still had its own parliament, Charles was king of both England and Scotland, which was a big step towards the eventual union of the old enemies.

Scotland joined with England and Wales to form the United Kingdom in 1707. In the run-up to the signing of the Act of Union many people in Scotland were bankrupted by a failed attempt to establish a colony in North America. In return for the English government paying off the nation’s debt, the Scottish parliament agreed to vote for the Act of Union, and itself out of existence. Scotland didn’t have its own parliament again until 1999 (see Chapters 17 and 18 for more).

Throwing Political Parties into the Mix

From the Glorious Revolution to the forming of political parties wasn’t a great leap. As power became concentrated in parliament, factions arose behind certain policies and certain individuals.

These early political parties weren’t parties as you’d recognise them today. They were more a matter of powerful Members of Parliament and wealthy lords coming together, either to push through a piece of legislation or because they shared some common interests. Over time, these fluid factions started to form into what we’d call parties.

The first two great political parties were the Whigs and the Tories – the forerunners of today’s Liberal Democrats and Conservatives. In the 18th and 19th centuries they became bitter rivals, but when one of the parties came to power they had to share out government jobs and privileged positions. Why were the Whigs and Tories at such loggerheads? Well, mainly it was because of big religious differences. The Tories were generally Catholic or Anglican and the Whigs were from a more Calvinist or radical Protestant tradition. Religion in the 18th and 19th centuries was a big deal and it was the root of the enmity between the two parties. (Turn to Chapter 8 for more on the formation and evolution of Britain’s political parties.)

Ending the Power of the Lords

Back in 1908 Lloyd George – later a prime minister – was chancellor of the exchequer. He announced a radical budget that for the first time paid people an old-age pension and guaranteed some limited welfare payments for those less fortunate.

The bigwigs in the House of Lords hated this budget and blocked it. At the time, the House of Lords could in effect veto any laws drawn up by the House of Commons. But the Liberal government was having none of this and introduced the Parliament Act in 1911, which did away with the veto power the House of Lords enjoyed. As a result of the Parliament Act, the House of Lords has the right to scrutinise proposed laws drawn up in the Commons and to ask members of that house to think again three times. If the Lords rejects a law a third time, the House of Commons can say enough is enough and the proposed Act passes into law despite opposition from the Lords. The Parliament Act was a big deal because it finally established the primacy of the House of Commons over the House of Lords as the key legislative body. Any party holding a majority of seats in that house has huge power.

The retreat of the Lords has continued, and now it’s little more than a debating chamber. Even its membership has changed: the Labour government of Tony Blair removed many of the hereditary lords – people whose right to sit in the Lords is passed down from parents and not through being appointed by the monarch. See Chapter 13 for how the House of Lords works and what role it plays in the day-to-day government of the UK.

A member of the House of Lords is often referred to as a peer, and no, it has nothing to do with your mates.

Expanding the Franchise: Democracy Arrives in Britain

In many people’s eyes Britain didn’t become a fully fledged democracy until after the second decade of the 20th century when the government finally granted half the population, women, the vote. Prior to this date only men were able to vote, and turning the clock back even further into the 19th century, only men who owned property in the form of a house or land. The overwhelming majority of the population didn’t have a say in who governed them.

Before the expansion of the franchise, the right to vote, the number of people who actually had a vote in some parliamentary constituencies was relatively small. Whereas these days some seats have 60,000 to 70,000 electors, back in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries elections involving a few hundred people were commonplace because the population was much smaller and only property owners could vote. Having such a small electorate meant that the ballots were open to being rigged, with wealthy landowners bribing electors to vote for their candidates. This phenomenon became known as the rotten boroughs, and a lot of them existed.

Earning a stake

The reasoning behind limiting voting just to property owners went that only they had an interest, or stake, in the country – merely being born British and living in Britain didn’t give you a stake.

Overcoming this idea of only those with an interest being entitled to vote involved a long struggle. A host of political thinkers put forth the idea that all men – rarely back then did anyone say women as well – had the right to cast a vote.

As the population grew and the economy moved from being agricultural and rural to industrial and urban, what would be recognised as the working class formed. But despite their importance to the wider economy and their numerical superiority to the landowning class, they had no voting power and therefore no representation in parliament until 1884.

Mass movements of people, drawn largely from the working and to a lesser extent middle classes, in the middle of the 19th century called for more people to get the vote as well as a written bill of rights for each individual. Soon after, trade unionism started to take hold in the working classes and they too wanted votes for all. The politicians, worried about the potential for revolution, as had happened half a century earlier in France, started to make concessions to the working class, and slowly but surely the government extended the right to vote to all men, regardless of whether they were property owners or not. Simply being a male British citizen brought with it the right to vote.

Recognising the rights of women

Votes for women took longer, and many mid-Victorian politicians dismissed the idea as madness. But as the male franchise expanded and women’s suffrage movements formed, a groundswell of support for votes for women took place too. However, it wasn’t until after the First World War, during which women did difficult and dirty work on the home front while men were fighting in the trenches, that the majority of politicians came around to the idea of votes for women. And even then equality in the voting booth wasn’t yet in place, because only women over 30 got the vote in 1918. Only in 1928 did the government grant women the vote on the same terms as men, from age 21.

Switching Parties: The Ebb and Flow of Party Influence

The government reflects the ideals of whichever party is in power at the time.

Both of the main UK political parties – Labour and Conservative – have what is called a core vote that turns out and votes for their chosen party election after election. The key to winning an election for either the Conservative or Labour parties is appealing outside this core vote to what’s called Middle Britain because their votes swing the poll, particularly bearing in mind the UK’s first-past-the-post system (where candidates have only to win the largest number of votes, rather than a majority, to win the seat they’re standing for).

Making a play for power: The Labour Party is born and thrives

Looking back from the early 21st century and gauging exactly how momentous and fast-changing the world of the Victorians was is difficult. In the 19th century the UK population nearly trebled and new industries rose and fell as millions migrated from the countryside to the towns and cities. Probably the closest parallel for Britain’s industrialisation and modernisation is what’s going on in China right now! But such massive changes inevitably bring about political change too.

In the same way that monarchs eventually found that they couldn’t hold absolute power over thousands of landowners and rich merchants, those self-same landowners and rich merchants found that they couldn’t hold the millions of new working class created in Victorian England in thrall.

The working classes started to become politically active, with shared ambitions and objectives such as increased pay, better working conditions, the vote, and health care and education. To help achieve some of these ambitions, workers formed unions, and from these unions came the Labour Party.

The Labour Party started to field candidates for seats in parliamentary and local government elections in the early 1900s. They didn’t do well at first, but gradually more Labour MPs and councillors started to be elected, and once in office they could change things. By the 1920s the old Liberal Party was in decline and many voters had switched allegiance to Labour, so much so that in the 1928 election they won a majority of seats in the House of Commons and formed the government under their leader, Ramsay McDonald.

The first majority Labour government wasn’t successful because it was soon hit with the economic cataclysm of the Great Depression of 1929–32 during which millions lost their jobs.

In fact, the Labour Party split for a while (the leadership disagreed over government spending cuts). Its leader, Ramsay McDonald, left to form a National Government made up of his supporters in the Labour Party and leading members of the Conservative Party. The big idea of the National Government was that in a time of crisis – such as the Depression and later the Second World War under Winston Churchill – politicians from all parties should come together for the greater good. However, the result was to split the Labour party in two for over a decade and make McDonald’s name a byword among some in the Labour Party for treachery. But after the Second World War, with the sweet scent of military victory in the air, Labour won a landslide on the promise to provide more houses, schools, hospitals and jobs.

Playing musical chairs: Labour and the Tories swap power

As far as government power since the Second World War goes, the Labour and Conservative (Tory) parties have been playing their own version of the hokey cokey – one minute one party is in (power), the next they’re out. In fact, during the 60 plus years since the end of the Second World War, the Labour and Conservative parties have spent relatively equal time in power.

In the mid-20th century the country switched from Conservative to Labour and back again every few years. More recently, from the 1980s on, Britain had first a long spell of Conservative government followed by a long spell of Labour. Some of the reasons for this slight slowing in the game of musical chairs include

• During the 1950s to the 1970s, the UK economy did badly, which always reflects on the government in power. So electors voted the current government out fairly regularly, which meant the parties traded being in power.
• After the Second World War, the Conservative and Labour parties seemed to represent very different ideologies, both of which had wide appeal and offered voters a real choice. Labour won the election in a massive landslide because it offered the voters a new vision for Britain based around the creation of a welfare state, and during the next six years the Labour prime minister Clement Attlee went about constructing the National Health Service and nationalising key industries.
• From the 1980s until the global recession of the late 2000s, the UK economy fared much better, which reflects positively on the government and encourages electors to stick with the party in power.

Over time, the Conservative and Labour parties have come together on many policies. Such consensus makes many voters wonder whether the parties differ at all and offer any real choice. When voters feel they don’t really have a choice, they can become apathetic towards voting, an issue I explore in more depth in Chapter 7.

Leaving out the Lib Dems

You may have noticed that (until now) I’ve left out the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems). That’s because they haven’t gained enough seats to form the government on their own since just after the First World War. In fact, for a large part of the post-war years they’ve had only a handful of MPs.

In recent elections the Lib Dems have fared better, but they’re still very much the country’s third biggest party and quite a long way behind the Conservative and Labour parties in terms of membership and influence. The UK electoral system doesn’t favour whatever party is in third place in the polls. The Lib Dems regularly attain over 20 per cent of total votes in a general election but win under 10 per cent of the seats.

However, in 2010 the fortunes of the Lib Dems suddenly changed when neither the Conservative nor Labour party gained enough seats in the House of Commons to form a government. As a result, the Lib Dems negotiated with both the big two parties to see which one they’d like to form a coalition government with. Eventually, after five long days of tortuous negotiations, the Lib Dems chose to form a government with the Conservatives. This meant that the Lib Dems were in the big time! (See Chapter 6 for more on voting systems and why the Lib Dems lose out.)

The main advantage of a coalition government is that people from different backgrounds and representing a wide group of electors work together for the greater good. However, often coalition government can be short-lived and acrimonious. For example, the Lib–Lab pact of the mid-1970s lasted only a couple of years and senior figures from the two parties were often at loggerheads.

Concentrating Power in the Hands of the Prime Minister

The British, it seems, love having a head honcho, someone they can focus on when they think of government. In the six centuries after the Norman conquest the role was performed by the monarch. However, as parliament took over many of the powers of the monarch, prominent figures within the House of Commons or Lords became very important. Groupings that formed in parliament under these figures were the early incarnation of the Whig and Tory parties, and the leading figures in these groupings acquired jobs within government.

Although no one used the phrase prime minister (PM) officially until the 19th century, from the early 18th century onwards the person who led the biggest grouping of MPs or the leader of the party holding the most seats in the House of Commons was effectively the prime minister. Like most things in Britain’s unwritten constitution, the role of prime minister evolved over a long period of time rather than being created on a specific day.

The prime minister forms a cabinet drawn from members of the party she represents to head up the government and divvy out jobs and titles. The post of PM has been at the top of the political tree for around 300 years. Over that time more and more power has centred on 10 Downing Street – the official home of the prime minister.

Within the cabinet the prime minister is supposed to be the ‘first among equals’, meaning that the PM is a member of the cabinet where each minister’s views have equal weight. However, the PM is the leader of the group and in big matters the final decision rests with her.

It’s hard to understate the power of the prime minister within the current political system. The incumbent gets to make appointments throughout government and largely forms government policy. That’s not to say that the PM can be dictatorial or govern without consent. The PM relies on the support of cabinet members and MPs sitting in the House of Commons.

One of the biggest powers the prime minister has is to appoint members of the cabinet; in effect, the big decision-making jobs in government. Every so often the PM has a cabinet reshuffle, which involves the hiring and firing of ministers. See Chapter 14 for more on the cabinet and reshuffles.

Robert Walpole (1676–1745) is seen as Britain’s first prime minister, although he wouldn’t have recognised the phrase at the time. Walpole was the most prominent figure in the Whig party in the House of Commons and he was enormously powerful, acquiring jobs, titles and cash during his long career. At the height of his power he controlled the government, making appointments and handing out favours to friends and allies. He was the leader of the Whigs from 1721 to 1742, when he fell from power after a British military defeat.

Breaking Up the Union: Scotland and Wales to Go It Alone?

For much of its history the British Isles has been split into distinctive, separate and independent nations, namely, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. As one of these nations – England – became more powerful in terms of trade and military, the other countries, through a combination of imperialism and persuasion, joined in a political union. Four nations in effect became one. This is why Britain is also referred to as the United Kingdom.

As far as the English were concerned this union worked pretty well – although some people in the other nations may have disagreed. Great Britain, remarkably, became the most powerful nation on the globe in the 19th century, with an enormous empire. However, the Irish wanted out, and, after years of political and sometimes violent wrangling, in 1922 Ireland became independent but for the six counties in the north of Ireland, which remained within the union. Winding the clock forward about 90 years to now shows growing signs that the Scots and, to a lesser extent, the Welsh also want out of the union so as to become independent nations again.

Since 1999 the Scots and Welsh have had devolution, which means that they created a local parliament (Scotland) or assembly (Wales) in order to make laws that apply just to their countries.

Some say that devolution will help the union stay together, because the Scots and Welsh now have more control over their own lives and governance so they don’t need complete independence. Others, though, believe that devolution is merely a prelude to independence, and that as people in Scotland and Wales get used to exercising their own power they and their elected politicians will want to go a stage further and try for full independence.

As an indicator that the latter may be true, at the 2007 Scottish general election the Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants independence, became the biggest party in the Scottish parliament and formed the Scottish government. Sure enough, in 2014 the Scots voted in a referendum over whether or not to go independent. A close-fought and often bitter campaign followed between those against and for independence. In the end Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. However, many observers believe that Scotland will be independent within a generation. See Chapter 18 for more on the great Scottish independence debate.

Alex Salmond became first minister of Scotland in April 2007 when the SNP won the highest number of seats in the Scottish general election. Salmond is considered a very capable communicator and has a large personal following, even among electors who wouldn’t usually vote SNP. Salmond has been a long-time proponent of Scottish independence and is the prime mover towards that goal. In Wales the main nationalist party Plaid Cymru has also made great strides, but support among the Welsh for independence as yet is weaker than the Scots’ desire to go their own way. See Chapter 8 for more on the Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties.

As for the English, growing signs exist that many people there are becoming disillusioned by the union and a system that they see as unfair, where more government spending per head goes to the Scots and Welsh than to the English.

Like the rest of the British constitution, the relationship between England and its smaller neighbours, Scotland and Wales, inevitably changes over time. Since the Norman conquest there have been periods when they’ve been closer together and others when they’ve been further apart; such ebb and flow is bound to mark all these countries’ histories.

Encroaching on Britain’s Turf: The European Union

Britain has been a member of the European Union since 1973. At that time the EU was called the European Economic Community and, yes, you guessed it, it was all about promoting economic growth in Europe. But since Britain joined the EEC it’s increased its remit to include setting out a series of laws and rules that all members must abide by. Some senior European politicians have talked about EU member states joining together in some sort of federal European super-state. The EU itself has massively expanded its civil service and institutions and raises money from donations from its member states. Meanwhile, the EU has also become a big club, now covering 28 countries and over 400 million people from Ireland to the borders of Turkey. The EU is made up of a parliament, a commission and a council of ministers; it’s a really complex setup, with hundreds of politicians and thousands of civil servants. (Chapter 21 gives you a full rundown on how the EU goes about its business.)

Gradually, the growing importance of the EU has caused major waves in British politics and is likely to do so for a long time to come. The EU is now virtually a super-state that has legal powers within the UK. In addition, some Britons looking for justice take their cases not only to UK courts but also to the European Court in Strasbourg. In short, for the first time since the Reformation and the break with the Roman Catholic Church, foreigners now have real sway over legal matters in the UK. Some welcome this move and think that many good laws come from the EU, which has helped bring about economic growth and enshrine more rights for citizens.

In 1985, the British parliament ratified the Single European Act. At the time this didn’t cause much of a stir but it was hugely significant because the act gave laws drawn up by EU legislators equal power to those drawn up by the UK parliament.

Many within UK politics are opposed to the idea of a European super-state and want to see the UK either leave the EU or say clearly that it doesn’t want to join any sort of political union. These people are Eurosceptics.

Britons get to vote for Members of the European Parliament in what are called European elections. Experts estimate that nearly two thirds of new laws affecting the lives of Britons result from legislation drawn up by the EU rather than the UK parliament in Westminster.