Promises made at election time are fascinating because they are the most explicitly contractual. Electors are asked to give votes to politicians in exchange for commitments (defined, vague, caveated, or otherwise) that are to be carried out in the coming elective term. The long-running debate on whether electoral mandates should be regarded as contractualâand whether and to what extent promises made during campaigns should be part of that contractâwas arguably begun by Edmund Burke in his famous address to the electors of Bristol in 1774.1 In the course of the last two centuries, the expansion of the franchise from a tiny elite to universal suffrage has been accompanied by promisesâand the implicit or explicit contract they createâbecoming as ubiquitous an aspect of electoral culture as speeches, ballot papers, and canvassers.
While the growth of a culture of election promises has been noted by scholars, it has received little direct attention from historians.2 Most general accounts see the advent of modern political parties and keenly fought election campaigns as developments that made the explicit publication of menus of political promisesâmanifestoesâan inevitability. Accordingly, it was no surprise the first national manifesto (Joseph Chamberlainâs âUnauthorised Programmeâ) appeared in 1885: the first election fought after the political system had been democratically reforged by the 1883â85 reforms. Along similar lines, the political world ushered in by the twentieth centuryâdominated by a rapidly expanding state and the material tension between capital and labourâmade it almost inconceivable by the mid-1920s that elections would not be dominated by promises of what rival parties would give and do if returned to office. This vague and generalised understanding of the origin and development of modern election promises seems particularly unsatisfactory when one considers that âpledge studiesâ has been an established subfield in Political Science since the 1960s.3 This fieldâconcerned with analysing how modern election commitments are judged by electors through objective âtestabilityâ metrics of perceived fulfilmentâdoes not consider when, or how, promises became part of the electoral landscape. Insofar as more general histories of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century politics do discuss them, they do so overwhelmingly through the lens of national election campaigns and frontbench politicians. As a consequence, they overlook or entirely ignore the hundreds of constituency candidates up and down the country who almost certainly madeâon behalf of themselves or their party in word or in printâmost of the actual election promises.
In considering both the origin and development of the modern election promise in this key period of political change between 1885 and 1924, and the greater campaign in the 650â700 constituencies across the United Kingdom, it is easy to list numerous intriguing historical questions. For example, when did constituency candidates begin to make more political promises? Did the type of promises change, perhaps with a move away from softer commitments (indicating intent) to harder commitments (pledging action)? Were promises targeted at different groups of voters, particularly newly enfranchised groups such as agricultural labourers after 1885 or women after 1918? Was there a distinction between parties, perhaps with Labour candidates making more extensive promises, and Conservatives complaining that their opponents were making unrealistic and undeliverable pledges?
This study aims to shed light on some of theseâand otherâquestions through a broad and macroscopic analysis of election promises from 1892, with a particular focus on the landmark âkhakiâ election of 1918 held soon after armistice. Despite being the first election h...