Monday 14 December 2015

History shows that centre/left politics changes every quarter of a century or so.

Just as the Liberal party came from the Tories so Labour emerged from the Liberals and gradually over the last 100 years social liberals and social democrats merged.

Last week I spoke at the Colwinston Philosophical Society - the subject was intended to be the ‘Gang of Four’, the founders of the SDP. Although I was quite close to the action in relation to how it all came about in the 1970’s and what happened in the 80’s I still did quite a lot of background research for accuracy sake.  In fact I was taken aback how much I had forgotten with the passage of time.

The more I delved into the events of the 1970s the more I got dragged back into the events of the 1960s and discovered that although March 1981 is the date of the establishment of the Social Democratic Party in actual fact its historical lineage went back to the end of the 1950’s – so it took well over twenty years for the party to come to fruition.

Noting that fact I then started looking into the datelines of the Labour and Liberal parties and I found myself preparing a different topic matter for the evening, giving it a much wider political and historical perspective.  The address was 55 mins long! And is all on video and will be uploaded as a series on to my YouTube channel covering appropriate time periods – each of some 15 minutes or so.

The reaction was so favourable that I received a request to go back on St David’s Day 2016 to complete the story as it were and was very pleased to have been informed that ‘It was an absolutely excellent evening, one of the best we have had in our (almost) fourteen years'. I was pleased because for the last 23 years I did hardly any public speaking and  am only slowly going back to how I used to be in the 70’s/80s – being somewhat ‘rusty’ at the moment!. 

So on March 1st I will follow the course of events from 1981-2016 for the SDP, Liberals and of course the Liberal Democrats. Concentrating on the highlights, the many successes and inevitably what went wrong in the Clegg years that culminated in the debacle of May 2015 and the challenges the party faces to be taken seriously since then.   

The historical timeline of the political parties greatly interests me because it teaches us so much about where we are and what is taking place these days. It is always the case that when we are too close to the action there is a tendency to miss the key signs. The fact is that where it is today the Labour party has been there before and indeed one can say the same about the Liberal Democrats (Liberal party).  

Generally it is considered that the Liberal Party was established June 6 1859 and the election of the Gladstone’s first Liberal Government. But in fact the Liberals were spawned at the time of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 when the Tory party split over the issue. Until then Gladstone had been a Conservative. Also the election of Richard Cobden in the late 1840s was another significant event in Liberal history.
  
Of course the Liberal party changed considerably over the following decades and in 1886 some 100 Liberals joined with Joseph Chamberlain in rebelling against Gladstone over Home Rule for Ireland and they also did not care much for his radicalism and anti-imperialist stance. So then was the final secession of the Whigs from the Liberal Party.
One could go on when further divisions appeared between Lloyd George and Asquith both with rival candidates in the 1918 and 1922 elections.  Lloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge changed the party into a ‘social liberal party’ – although many Liberals in today’s Liberal Democratic Party fail to fully appreciate the implications of that.

The Liberal Party was created from splitting with the Tory party, the onset of the first stage of the industrial revolution and the increasing demands for workers’ rights and universal suffrage – Peterloo, Tolpuddle and the Chartists.  Labour appeared during the second stage of the industrial revolution with the growth of a class conscious trade union movement and the emergence of socialism as the challenge to liberalism in Europe.

So just as the Liberals emerged from the Tory party so Labour emerged from the Liberal party.  Many cite the start of the Labour party as Jan 27 1900 with the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee but that is just a convenient signpost. Indeed there was the Independent Labour Party formed in 1893 and affiliated to the Labour Party until 1932.

Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson, the three leading lights of the Labour movement at the time - tried to become Liberal Party candidates in the late 1880/early 90’s but were not accepted because of their socialism and working class roots. Indeed Hardie whilst working as a Gladstonian Liberal and trade union organiser in the Lanarkshire Coalfield being convinced of the need for a more independent labour politics was instrumental in the foundation of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888.  It must also be remembered that the TUC was established in 1886 as well.

Interestingly just as it took the best part of twenty years for the emergence of a Liberal Government from the embryo of the party so it took Labour a similar period to become the main opposition to the Tories in 1922 when it returned 142 MPs to the Liberals 115.

The purpose of this brief historical perspective is to highlight how the political parties of the centre/left have evolved, divided and changed. Interestingly there has only been one constant for 200 years and more – yes the Tory Party. True it has had its moments of division, problems with a handful of MPs leaving the party to join Labour or the SDP but in essence it has remained largely unscathed – the establishment holding together!

Space does not allow me to examine the implications of the events that happened in the Liberal and Labour parties from 1922–1960 but they were momentous if not tumultuous times indeed.  History teaches us that over the last 200 years every 20 – 30 years or so there are there significant changes taking place. Since the Second World War the pattern has continued with the Labour party splitting in 1981 and I believe we are at present at the beginnings of another re-alignment that will, if the pattern continues, take some years to come to fruition.


So back to the proposed topic for Colwinston what of the Gang of Four and the SDP?  If March 1981 is only a signpost why and where did it come from?, how did it come about? and what of Labour and the Liberal Democrats now?  Next couple of posts – very soon!