Mastering British Politics

F.N. Forman, Nicholas Baldwin

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780230000124
• Edition: 5
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350315105
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Containing all the information and analysis needed to understand the British system of Government and politics, Mastering British Politics is an essential text. This fifth edition has been fully revised and updated to reflect the results of and developments since the 2005 General Election.

The term ‘political culture’ is taken to mean the historical, cultural and attitudinal setting within which British political institutions have to function.¹ It is possible to identify a number of key characteristics which influence both the process and the outcome of politics in Britain.

1.1 key characteristics

The key characteristics of British political culture can be stated quite simply, but they need to be qualified and refined if they are to be useful to students of British politics. It has often been said that politics in Britain are influenced by the evolutionary adaptability of its political institutions, the notable continuity of its history, the concept of Parliamentary sovereignty, the unitary nature of the state, the underlying cohesion of the society and the degree of political agreement on fundamental issues. Traditionally, there has been considerable moderation in the policies pursued by successive Governments and this has been matched by a considerable degree of public detachment from the process of politics, except on occasions when political crises or closely fought elections heighten media and public interest.

General statements of this kind have often been made and sometimes in a rather complacent tone. Yet it would be unwise to accept them at face value and it is better to examine the extent to which they accord with political conditions today.

evolutionary adaptability

In Saxon times kings were guided by the ‘Witan’ or ‘Witenagemot’, an assembly of the most important men – lay and ecclesiastical – in the kingdom. The membership was not static and consisted of those individuals whom the King chose to summon to the three or four meetings held annually. As Ronald Butt put it, ‘his natural advisers were the elders; the men of strength, standing, influence, experience and knowledge’.² Those present included the chief officers of the Royal Household and others who held high state office, the ‘Earldormen’ who represented central Government in the shires, Bishops and other senior churchmen, and the principal men who held land directly from the King. The functions of the Witan were ill-defined, but included ‘discovering and declaring’ the law, in other words being a consultative and law-consenting assembly. In addition, the Witan sat as the King’s Supreme Court of Justice. Its actual power was inversely proportional to that of the King at any given time. Together the King and the Witan were the highest authority in the nation.

A new stage in the development of the nation’s political institutions was ushered in when Duke William of Normandy defeated Harold, the Saxon claimant to the throne, at the battle of Hastings in 1066. William the Conqueror (as he came to be known) launched a series of campaigns which, in the fullness of time, left him in undisputed control of the country. It was William’s claim that he had succeeded to the throne through inheritance. As a result he laid claim to an element of continuity and sought to maintain many of the laws of his Saxon predecessors. At the same time, however, he brought with him from Normandy a new approach to government, namely the feudal system, whereby the greater part of the country was governed by tenants-in-chief, or barons, who held their land directly from the King on condition that they defended the conquered territory for the King. By the time of the Domesday survey of 1085–86, only about eight per cent of the land remained in English hands; indeed, of the tenants-in-chief only two appear to have been English.

The Norman barons assembled in the Court of their sovereign to regulate the affairs of their tenancies, settle disputes between each other and organise the military subjection of the conquered lands. The tenants-in-chief thus assembled – both lay and ecclesiastical – became known as the Magnum Concilium or Great Council. This gathering assisted the King in determining state policy, supervised the work of public administration, acted as the highest Court of Justice, and made or modified the laws of the land. It met only three or four times a year, and then only for a matter of days at a time. For this reason there grew up the Curia Regis or ‘Court of the King’ – an inner circle of the Great Council – whose function it was to assist the sovereign on a day-to-day basis during the long periods when the Great Council was not assembled.

This system of government worked well for a while, but towards the end of the twelfth century tensions between the King and his ‘great men’ began to increase. Matters were brought to a head by the abuse of autocratic power by King John. Consequently the barons seized an opportunity in 1215, when the King’s position was weakened by war and misrule, to force him to sign a Magna Carta or Great Charter, setting out some clear principles and safeguards against further abuse of power by the Monarch. The intention of the barons was not to create a new system of government, but rather to ensure better government under the existing system. The agreement foreshadowed three of the main principles upon which the development of Parliament was later to be based, namely that:

The King himself was subject to the law

The King could only make law and levy taxation with the consent of the governed

The King’s subjects did not owe the King absolute or unconditional obedience.³

In short, it asserted the limited nature of kingship – the principle of conditional or ‘constitutional’ Monarchy which was to be the mainspring of Parliamentary action against the Crown in the seventeenth century.

Within three months of the King’s seal being affixed to Magna Carta, however, the concordat which it was supposed to symbolise broke down. John died in October 1216 to be succeeded by Henry III, then a boy of nine. Henry occupied the throne for the next 56 years during which time politics were dominated by the struggle between the Crown and the barons. The relationship between the King and the barons deteriorated eventually to the point of armed conflict in which the barons under Simon de Montfort were victorious. In 1265 de Montfort convened a Parliament (literally a ‘talking gathering’) which was attended not only by the barons, clergy and knights of the shires, but also by two burgesses from each of the boroughs known to be supportive of the baronial cause. This occasion has since been widely recognised as the real beginning of Parliament at Westminster, and it is the recognition of this date which allows the British Parliament to claim that it is one of the oldest Parliaments in the world.

During the decades and centuries which followed, the holding of ‘Parliaments’ containing representatives of the counties and towns became the accepted custom and practice and ‘Parliament’ itself became a feature of the governmental system. At no time was Parliament definitively established, it merely evolved as a consultative forum for the King and the politically important sections of his realm. By about 1485 – the beginning of the Tudor period – it may be said that the institutional foundations of Britain’s constitutional Monarchy had been laid.

The Tudor Monarchs found that there was political advantage for them in having their national policies – such as Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church or Elizabeth I’s determination to oppose the Spanish kings – supported and endorsed by the people’s representatives in Acts of Parliament. For this reason no Tudor Monarch sought to dispense with Parliament and each member of the dynasty in turn put its support to good use. However, sessions of Parliament were infrequent and brief. Even during the 45-year reign of Elizabeth I, when Parliament counted for more than had previously been the case, the two Houses (Lords and Commons) were in session on average for little more than three weeks a year. During this period, the House of Lords became predominantly a secular body, while the House of Commons increased in size by more than a third to about 300 members. By the end of the sixteenth century Parliament had become second only to the Monarch as a power in the land.

Constitutional tensions came to the fore under the Stuarts, especially James I and Charles I, who laid claim to the ‘divine right of kings’ and sought to reduce or deny the privileges acquired by Parliament under the Tudors. The mounting disagreements between Crown and Parliament eventually led to the Civil War (1642–49), the triumph of the Parliamentary forces, the execution of Charles I and the abolition of the Monarchy itself. For the next few years the country was ruled by Oliver Cromwell in what was called a Protectorate. It was not until after Cromwell’s death in 1658 that the Monarchy was restored, Charles II reclaiming the throne for the Stuarts in 1660. However, the relationship between the Monarch and Parliament was not a great deal better than before the Civil War and matters worsened under James II as he sought to reassert the divine right of kings. The eventual result was that Parliament and people combined against the King who fled the country in 1688 and was replaced by William of Orange (from Holland) and his English wife Mary – daughter of James II – in 1689. This peaceful transfer of constitutional power from one Monarch to another – but actually from the Monarchy to Parliament – has been described by Whig historians as ‘the Glorious Revolution’. The new constitutional settlement was given statutory recognition in the 1689 Bill of Rights. The ‘pretended power’ of the Crown to suspend or dispense laws, or to govern without the consent of Parliament was declared illegal, as was the levying of taxation by Royal prerogative without the authority of Parliament. The 1689 Bill of Rights and the 1701 Act of Settlement confirmed the victory of Parliament in the struggle against the Crown. Constitutional Monarchy was developed in place of the unfettered rights of Kings and Queens, and Parliamentary supremacy in the government of the country was well and truly established.

From the beginning of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714, the role of the Monarch was reduced still further. George I (1714–1727) was a German, speaking no English and knowing nothing of English ideas and ways. George II (1727–1760), although more interested in his adopted land, lacked the ability to make himself felt in government affairs. In these circumstances the powers which their predecessors had so jealously sought to preserve fell into disuse or into the hands of the English aristocracy who effectively ran the country throughout the eighteenth century. George III (1760–1820), perhaps more English than Hanoverian, tried to recapture the Royal position that had been lost. His influence on Government and politics was far greater than that of his two predecessors to the extent that in 1780 the House of Commons felt driven to declare that the ‘influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’.⁴

After the resignation of Lord North as Prime Minister in 1782, the tide turned back in favour of Parliament, and, during the last decades of his reign, the King was discredited by madness. By then a satisfactory way of running the Government without the active participation of the Monarch had been developed. This fact, soon to be buttressed by successive extensions of the franchise in the nineteenth century, meant that no Monarch could turn back the clock.

creating a united kingdom

There has been notable continuity in the history of the British Isles and the country is one of the oldest nation states in Europe. Although there have also been some notable discontinuities in Britain’s national history, such as the Civil War and the Cromwellian Interregnum in the mid-seventeenth century, the country has not been invaded successfully against the popular will since 1066 and the only successful revolution since the Civil War was the political coup of 1688–89 when James II fled the throne and William of Orange and his wife Mary were invited by Parliament from Holland to take his place. This historical continuity applies, to a greater or lesser extent, to all parts of the United Kingdom.

Wales was the first part of the British Isles to be politically joined to England by Edward I and other warrior kings in the fourteenth century. The link was later reinforced and personified by the victory of Henry Tudor, a Welsh warlord, at the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and subsequently ratified by Act of Parliament in 1536 at the behest of his son, Henry VIII.

The monarchical bond with Scotland was first established in 1603 when James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I of England and so became James I of England. The constitutional bond was later sealed by the Act of Union in 1707 which abolished the Scottish Parliament and incorporated Scottish representatives into the British Parliament at Westminster.

The troubled relationship between Ireland and England can be traced back at least to the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169–71. For centuries thereafter Ireland and England were periodically at loggerheads and it was the fate of the Irish people to be intermittently subdued and then ignored by the British. Eventually, Britain and Ireland were constitutionally united by the Act of Union in 1800. This was by no means a stable political settlement and the mainly Catholic Irish resented their treatment at the hands of the mainly Protestant British, some of whose kith and kin had been firmly settled in Ulster since the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding several unsuccessful attempts by Gladstone to legislate for Irish Home Rule in the second half of the nineteenth century, the constitutional link with Britain was challenged by the Irish nationalist uprising in 1916 and subsequently ruptured by the partition of Ireland in 1921–22 and the creation of Northern Irela...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1: the political and electoral context
• Part 2: sources of power, pressure and opinion
• Part 3: Parliament
• Part 4: central Government
• Part 5: the changing role of the state
• Part 6: democracy in Britain
• Notes
• Further reading
• Index