The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party*

Abstract

Abstract The literature on the rise and fall of the Liberal Party is voluminous and inconclusive. We believe it is inconclusive because it usually assumes British politics to be structurally static. We wish to suggest that changes in the structure of British politics are at least as significant as chronological developments: in other words, that the changes in the franchise are at least as significant as the effects of the First World War. On the evidence presented to date, after all, the post-war difficulties of the Liberal Party are paradoxical and difficult to explain. In practice, the problems are such that nearly all historians are forced to argue that the First World War was decisive in fragmenting the Liberal Party’s support and in leaving the way clear for Labour. But the ‘war’ argument has never been satisfactorily demonstrated. Undoubtedly it is not easy to compare the pre- and post-war electoral situations, but we should at least attempt such a comparison: to argue that, since comparison is difficult, historians must resort to inference and guess is clearly absurd. In this article we will suggest that too little attention has been given to the size of the Edwardian electorate, and the effect which it had on the form and nature of Edwardian politics. Furthermore, this electorate, created in two stages by the Reform and Redistribution Acts of 1867-8 and 1884-5 and by a number of ancillary minor Acts, has not adequately been compared with its successor, a product of the ‘Fourth’ Reform Act of 1918. Such a comparison may provide the necessary data to explain the Liberal Party’s decline. We will also suggest that the Liberals were wedded to the forms of the 1867-1914 political community as their opponents were not, that the ideologies of both the Labour and Conservative Parties made them better able to exploit a fully democratic franchise, and that these things were true before 1914 as well as after the war.