‘Giving stability to popular opinion’? Radicalism and the caucus in Britain and Ireland

Abstract

There is nothing incongruous in the union of [classical] democratic doctrines with representative institutions. Ancient order and modern progress are not incompatible. Those which are ineffective without each other must be united … [The caucus] appears to be a necessary outcome of democracy. In a small community, such as the Canton of Uri, all the freemen may meet in a meadow to pass laws. In larger societies direct government by the people gives place to representative government; and when constituencies consist of thousands, associations which aid the birth of popular opinion and give it strength, stability and homogeneity seem indispensable. ‘Athenian democracy’ or ‘American caucus’? After Gladstone's retirement, the last bastion of the alliance between the Nationalists and the Liberals was the National Liberal Federation (NLF). The Irish perceived the NLF as embodying the solidarity between ‘the peoples’ of Britain and Ireland, allegedly united in their support for ‘the cause of democratic reform’. Yet, as both contemporaries and modern historians have always pointed out, the democratic legitimacy and the popularity of the ‘caucus’ were questionable. While in popular circles ‘suspicion of party ran deep’, politicians earnestly debated whether the ‘machines’ were at all compatible with either liberalism or parliamentary government. By contrast with the intellectual debate generated by the NLF from the 1880s, there was little theoretical preparation for its establishment in 1877: no blueprint had been drawn up by ‘the lights of liberalism’.