Aristocracy or the people? Radical constitutionalism and the progressive alliance in Edwardian Britain

Abstract

The view that there existed a ‘progressive alliance’ between radical liberalism, labourism and socialism (and between the Liberal and Labour parties) during the Edwardian period has become a landmark of modern British historiography. However, the reconstruction of the ideas which cemented the alliance has focused on how radical liberalism became more concerned with social and economic issues during the period, and, in the guise of the ‘new liberalism’, shifted towards the core concern of socialists: the positive role of the state. Reconstructions of the progressive alliance, though certainly convincing, have ignored the importance of an ‘old’ discourse, which I term ‘radical constitutionalism’, the main object of which was democratic constitutional reform. This article attempts to go some way towards remedying this deficiency. The concept of the ‘progressive alliance’ must be broadened, to acknowledge the role of ‘radical constitutionalism’ in determining its nature. Focusing on the background to the House of Lords’ rejection of the Liberal government's ‘People's Budget’ in 1909, I reinterpret this in the context of a broad, ‘anti‐Lords alliance’, which existed among radicals, labourists and socialists. In their public political discourse these groups identified the object of their oppression in remarkably similar ways, through constructing a collection of shared meanings in the multiple and overlapping public spheres of Edwardian oppositional politics.