Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918: The Politics of Promises [1st ed.] 9783030466626, 9783030466633

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Introduction (David Thackeray, Richard Toye)....Pages 1-16
Election Promises and Anti-promises After the Great War (Luke Blaxill)....Pages 17-46
The ‘Woman’s Point of View’: Women Parliamentary Candidates, 1918–1919 (Lisa Berry-Waite)....Pages 47-69
‘A Fighting Man to Fight for You’: The Armed Forces, Ex-Servicemen, and British Electoral Politics in the Aftermath of Two World Wars (Matthew Johnson)....Pages 71-93
Broken Promises and the Remaking of Political Trust: Debating Reconstruction in Britain During the Second World War (Clare Griffiths)....Pages 95-115
Fiscal Promises: Tax and Spending in British General Elections Since 1964 (Aled Davies, Peter Sloman)....Pages 117-137
The Introduction of Race and Immigration in British Post-Imperial Politics: The General Elections of 1964 and 1966 (Emil Sokolov)....Pages 139-163
The Electoral Promises of Winston Churchill (Richard Toye)....Pages 165-184
‘I Promise You This. I Won’t Make Empty Promises’. The Election Manifestos of Margaret Thatcher (David Thackeray)....Pages 185-205
Custodians of the Manifesto: The Struggle over Labour’s Electoral Platforms, 1974–1983 (Mark Wickham-Jones)....Pages 207-230
Thatcherism, the SDP and Vernacular Politics on the Isle of Sheppey, c. 1978–83 (Jon Lawrence)....Pages 231-248
The Promise of ‘Liberal Democracy’, c. 1981–2010 (Mike Finn)....Pages 249-270
‘We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry’: The Liberal Democrats’ 2015 General Election Campaign and the Legacy of the Tuition Fees Debacle (Judi Atkins)....Pages 271-289
The Rhetorical Lives and Afterlives of Political Pledges in British Political Speech c. 2000–2013 (James Freeman)....Pages 291-314
Back Matter ....Pages 315-327

Citation preview

Electoral Pledges in Britain since 1918 The Politics of Promises Edited by David Thackeray Richard Toye

Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918

David Thackeray  •  Richard Toye Editors

Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918 The Politics of Promises

Editors David Thackeray Department of History University of Exeter Exeter, UK

Richard Toye Department of History Amory Building University of Exeter Exeter, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-46662-6    ISBN 978-3-030-46663-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Jeffrey Blackler / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Introduction  1 David Thackeray and Richard Toye  lection Promises and Anti-promises After the Great War 17 E Luke Blaxill  he ‘Woman’s Point of View’: Women Parliamentary T Candidates, 1918–1919 47 Lisa Berry-Waite ‘A Fighting Man to Fight for You’: The Armed Forces, Ex-Servicemen, and British Electoral Politics in the Aftermath of Two World Wars 71 Matthew Johnson  roken Promises and the Remaking of Political Trust: B Debating Reconstruction in Britain During the Second World War 95 Clare Griffiths  iscal Promises: Tax and Spending in British General Elections F Since 1964117 Aled Davies and Peter Sloman

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Contents

 he Introduction of Race and Immigration in British PostT Imperial Politics: The General Elections of 1964 and 1966139 Emil Sokolov  he Electoral Promises of Winston Churchill165 T Richard Toye ‘I Promise You This. I Won’t Make Empty Promises’. The Election Manifestos of Margaret Thatcher185 David Thackeray  ustodians of the Manifesto: The Struggle over Labour’s C Electoral Platforms, 1974–1983207 Mark Wickham-Jones  hatcherism, the SDP and Vernacular Politics on the Isle of T Sheppey, c. 1978–83231 Jon Lawrence  he Promise of ‘Liberal Democracy’, c. 1981–2010249 T Mike Finn ‘We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry’: The Liberal Democrats’ 2015 General Election Campaign and the Legacy of the Tuition Fees Debacle271 Judi Atkins  he Rhetorical Lives and Afterlives of Political Pledges in T British Political Speech c. 2000–2013291 James Freeman Index315

Notes on Contributors

Judi Atkins  is a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University. She has published widely on the relationship between rhetoric and ideology in British politics. Her latest book is Conflict, Co-operation and the Rhetoric of Coalition Government (2018). Lisa Berry-Waite  is a History PhD candidate at the University of Exeter and the recipient of a Leverhulme Trust studentship to work on the research project ‘The Age of Promises: manifestos, election addresses and political representation’. Her research explores the history of women parliamentary candidates in interwar Britain. Luke Blaxill  is a modern British political historian specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British politics, especially political parties, elections and psephology, ideology, and political language and communication. He is an expert in the Digital Humanities, especially in interdisciplinary ‘big data’ research methodologies such as text mining. He is the author of the forthcoming book The War of Words: The Language of British Elections, 1880–1914. Aled Davies  is a Career Development Fellow in Modern History at Jesus College, University of Oxford. His research focuses on the political economy of twentieth-century Britain, and his first book, The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Britain, 1959–1979, was published in 2017. Mike Finn  is a historian of post-war and contemporary Britain, with particular interests in British political culture and the history of education vii

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policy. He is based at the University of Exeter, and is the author of British Universities in the Brexit Moment: Political, Economic and Cultural Implications (2018). He has also worked in Westminster as a political adviser and speechwriter, and has appeared widely in national and international media as a commentator on British politics. James Freeman  is a lecturer in the Digital Humanities (History) at the University of Bristol. As a historian of contemporary British politics, his research brings together histories of political rhetoric, Conservatism and ‘neoliberalism’. Clare Griffiths  is Professor of Modern History at Cardiff University. She works on the political and cultural history of twentieth-century Britain, with particular interests in the history of the Labour Party, rural history and landscape. Her publications include Labour and the Countryside: The Politics of Rural Britain 1918–1939 (2007) and the edited volume Classes, Cultures, and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin (2011), and she is working on a biography of the artist Clare Leighton. Matthew  Johnson  is Associate Professor of Modern British History at Durham University. His work explores the impact of war on British politics and society, with a particular focus on militarism and military aspects to British political culture. He is the author of Militarism and the British Left 1902–1914 (2013), and is currently working on a book about military involvement in parliamentary and popular politics during the twentieth century. Jon Lawrence  is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Exeter and is a specialist in modern British social, cultural and political history. His latest book, Me, Me, Me? Individualism and the Search for Community in Post-war England, was published in 2019. His previous books include Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (1998) and Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (2009). Peter  Sloman is University Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College. He is the author of two books: The Liberal Party and the Economy, 1929–1964 (2015) and Transfer State: The Idea of a Guaranteed Income and the Politics of Redistribution in Modern Britain (2019).

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Emil Sokolov  is a History PhD candidate at the University of Exeter. He works on the research project ‘The Age of Promises: manifestos, election addresses and political representation’ which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. His research looks at the political language and electoral promises about race and immigration in Britain between 1964 and 1979. David Thackeray  is Associate Professor of History at the University of Exeter. His work focuses on British political culture and British world trade networks in the twentieth century. With Richard Toye, he is the author of The Age of Promises, a forthcoming history of the role of electoral pledges in twentieth-century British politics. Richard Toye  is Professor of Modern History at the University of Exeter and has published widely in the field of modern British political history. He is the author, with David Thackeray, of the forthcoming book The Age of Promises. Mark Wickham-Jones  is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bristol, with a long-standing interest in Labour politics.

List of Figures

‘A Fighting Man to Fight for You’: The Armed Forces, Ex-Servicemen, and British Electoral Politics in the Aftermath of Two World Wars Fig. 1 Maurice Alexander election address (Liberal, North Norfolk), 1924, NLC, DM668

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The Introduction of Race and Immigration in British PostImperial Politics: The General Elections of 1964 and 1966 Fig. 1 Election manifesto texts on immigration, 1964 Fig. 2 Election manifesto texts on immigration, 1966

145 154

The Rhetorical Lives and Afterlives of Political Pledges in British Political Speech c. 2000–2013 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Party representation in corpus Promise terms in British political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly) ‘we will’ in British political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly) Predicted promises in political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly)

297 298 299 312

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List of Tables

Election Promises and Anti-promises After the Great War Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6 Table 7

Promises and Pledge Analysis—1892, 1906, and 1918 elections Commitment Cluster Analysis—1892, 1906, and 1918 elections Concordance Analysis for Party Words, 1892–1918 Concordance Analysis for Pronouns, 1892–1918 Distinct Vocabulary Features by Party in 1918 Concordance Analysis for the Language of Gender Distinct Vocabulary Features for Demarcated Subsections aimed at Women in 1918

24 27 28 29 30 38 39

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Introduction David Thackeray and Richard Toye

In June 2019, three years after the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU), Conservative Party members in Bracknell passed a motion of no confidence in their MP, Philip Lee. Lee had backed calls for a second Brexit referendum and had previously resigned his ministerial post because he was unhappy with how the government was handling talks with the EU.  Interviewed on BBC radio, he was challenged by the interviewer, Nick Robinson: ‘you said one thing before the election and you did something different after the election, aren’t they entitled to get rid of you?’ Lee responded that, when he had stood as the Conservative Party candidate at the 2017 general election, ‘everybody in Bracknell knew what my position had been in the preceding referendum and I was selected as a candidate before the manifesto was published’. Asked by Robinson if he therefore did not consider himself bound by the manifesto, Lee argued that ‘that the Brexit that people are going to get is not the Brexit [that] was promised in the Vote Leave campaign in 2016’. Pressed further, he raised ‘a broader worry about representational democracy’, and although D. Thackeray (*) Department of History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Toye Department of History, Amory Building, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_1

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he did not have a chance to fully develop the thought, he reverted to his point that the EU negotiations bore ‘little relationship to what was promised the public’ and that it was thus right to seek their ‘further informed consent’.1 Feeling that his position was no longer tenable, Lee dramatically crossed the floor of the House of Commons in September 2019, during a speech by the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson removing the government’s majority in the process. Lee joined the Liberal Democrats who had called for a new people’s vote on EU membership in their 2017 election manifesto but was defeated when he stood for a neighbouring constituency at the general election of 2019. On the face of it, Lee and Robinson had been engaged in merely a workaday Today programme spat. Yet in fact, the exchange was highly revealing of conflicting beliefs about political promises, a problem which has been thrown into relief by the issue of Brexit, but which had much longer history. The conflict between the Tory activists and Lee was representative of two different schools of thought. The position of the first of these is straightforward: that the results of referenda should be implemented and that MPs are bound to support the party manifesto upon which they are elected. The other school advances a more complicated view. (1) If the promises of the winning side in an advisory referendum are not borne out, the voters’ decision should not be implemented come what may. (2) MPs have a broader representative role. This means that they are bound to act in the interests of their constituents and of the nation as a whole and therefore should not implement manifestos or referendum results willy-nilly. (3) An MP’s personal beliefs, as long as they are known to those who chose him or her as a candidate, can override any obligation to abide by his party’s manifesto. After all, most MPs have no hand in drawing manifestos up. The veteran Tory MP, Ken Clarke, summed up this approach well in a Commons debate in February 2019. Referring to claims that he was bound by the policies outlined in the most recent Conservative election manifesto, Clarke stated: I have never seen this document. It was produced some time during the campaign, rather obscurely…. I never met a constituent who bothered to read it…. There is another myth growing: a new constitutional convention that says that anyone who stands for a party and gets elected here is bound by some rubbishy document that somebody unknown in central office has produced.2 1 2

 Today, BBC R4, 3 June 2019, c. 06:50.  H.C. Deb. Vol.654, 14 February 2019, col.1094.

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The two differing positions are rarely, if ever, worked out or articulated in full, but they nonetheless form a fault line that runs through contemporary politics. Nobody doubts that politicians ought to fulfil their promises. What people cannot agree about is what this means in practice. The purpose of this book is to explore these issues through a series of case studies, from the period c. 1900 to the present day. Party manifestos and candidates’ individual election addresses (personal manifestos) form a core part of the evidence, but they are by no means the whole of it. Political promises are not only made in written documents but also can be given out casually on the platform or extracted by a terrier-like interviewer or a tenacious lobby group. Some politicians, however cautious they may be in doling out pledges, nonetheless succeed in evoking expectations that may in practice be very hard to fulfil.3 Such a ‘sense of promise’ is created through charisma and image-making as much as through the formal processes of bureaucratic policymaking. Although there have been many continuities in the culture of electoral promise-making over the last 120 years, the changes have been at least as significant. At the dawn of the Edwardian period, the British model of politics was, broadly speaking, based on the articulation of principles which, it was expected, might well be adapted in the face of contingency once the party or politician that promoted them took office. Individual candidates and MPs had considerable leeway to exercise independence from the central party machines. However, even by 1914, there were signs that a ‘more national, programmatic and truly “modern” politics’ was emerging, partly in response to the threat posed by Labour to the established Conservative and Liberal Parties.4 From then on, and especially after 1945, manifestos became increasingly central to electoral politics and to the practice of governing. Parties were expected not merely to outline in detail what they would do in office but to explain how the policies would be paid for. Election addresses—which played a crucial role in early twentieth-century campaigns—accordingly declined in significance, albeit not as fast or as completely as has sometimes been suggested.5 Equally,  See Tony Blair, A Journey (London: Hutchinson, 2010), Chapter 1.  Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language, and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 3. 5  For the idea that election addresses were a largely moribund form of campaigning, see David Butler, The British General Election of 1955 (London: Macmillan, 1955), p. 28; D.E. Butler and Richard Rose, The British General Election of 1959 (London: Macmillan, 1960), p. 133; D.E. Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1966 (London, 1966), p. 198. 3 4

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there was still room in manifestos for the articulation of principles, even as the numbers of specific policy pledges multiplied. It should also be noted that minor parties had to adopt somewhat different habits of promise-­ making from those parties which could credibly aspire to form governments in their own right. Over time, manifestos grew in length and, very probably, were less likely to be read by the voters as a result. This does not mean that they declined in moment. Waved from the platform, brandished at a press conference launch, or photographed in the hand of a minister in Downing Street, these hefty blueprints served as symbols of seriousness and purpose. They could also be printed in shorter, ‘popular’ editions or excerpted for use in candidates’ addresses or other leaflets. Addresses themselves, although primarily intended as reading matter targeted at individual voters, could be used in other ways as well. At the general election of 1900, Arthur Balfour addressed his constituents on social issues: ‘He read from his election address 1895 the list of subjects he was then in favour of, and showed that, in every case the Government had fulfilled their pledges’.6 In 1955, a Conservative Research Department memorandum noted the importance of analysing Opposition candidates’ addresses ‘for the purpose of debates in Parliament, printed propaganda and long-range investigations’.7 Of course, as the examples of Philip Lee and Ken Clarke suggest, there has always been a tension between the individual promises of politicians and the collective ones of the parties to which the candidates (mostly) belong. In the 1930s, Harold Macmillan outlined to his constituents his views on the ethical questions that this raised: Of course, no sensible candidate can do more than pledge himself. He cannot say, ‘If I am returned, such and such things will be done.’ He doesn’t even know, when he issues his address what party will be elected and what kind of Government it will be. But he can, and should pledge himself – that is to say, he can state what policy he supports, and work for that policy if he is returned. […] How much he attempts, and how honourably he carries out his own promises, depends on himself.8

 ‘Pith and Point’, Burnley Express, 29 September 1900.  ‘General Election: Election Addresses and Local Literature’, 25 April 1955, Conservative Party Archive (CPA), CRD 2/48/54, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 8  Macmillan’s Bulletin, January 1936, Harold Macmillan papers, MS.Macmillan dep.c.142 f.355, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 6 7

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Promise-making, then, was wrapped up with the question of honour. As David Butler noted in the 1950s: ‘Unlike most American party platforms, a British election manifesto is a significant historical document; for a victorious party to carry out the promises in its manifesto is put forward – and accepted – as a real sign of grace, and for it to depart from them is made a serious reproach’.9 It is important to pay attention, then, to moral arguments surrounding political promises. These often manifest themselves in the claim that opponents are making false or unrealistic pledges or that they have broken or betrayed commitments that they previously made. It is also necessary to note aspects of promise-making that are specific to the UK constitution and/or British political culture. The seminal statement on the relationship between an MP and his (or, post-1918, her) constituents is Edmund Burke’s speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774. Burke stated that although an MP should consider his constituents’ views, they could not issue ‘authoritative instructions’ or mandates ‘which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey’. Instead he should act on his judgement as to the best interests of the whole nation, after having engaged in reasoned deliberation in Parliament. In other words, although candidates might outline their principles and make generalised promises about their own future conduct, they were not to be slaves to the whims of those who had elected them.10 Burke’s argument in many ways appears compelling, and is still cited in political debate today, but it needs to be understood as one of the most important of a series of competing claims about an MP’s role rather than as a literal description of how the system has consistently worked. Furthermore, conditions have changed radically in the 250  years since Burke made his speech. Increasingly since World War I, MPs have been regarded less as independent persons selected on the basis of their character and sagacity than as standard-bearers of their parties committed to manifesto pledges which they have played no part in drawing up. Hence the frequent ­suggestion that MPs who leave or switch parties should resign and fight by-elections. The notion that victorious parties have ‘mandates’ to carry out their proposals cuts across the role of MPs as, notionally, independent Burkean figures. The concept of the mandate is well established. ‘The new  Butler, General Election of 1955, p. 17.  Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol, 3 November 1774, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, vol. I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), pp. 442–9. 9

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Government, of whatever complexion it may be, will claim that it has a mandate from the country’, noted one union journal in 1922.11 But the doctrine underwent significant modification in the late 1940s, with the birth of the so-called Salisbury-Addison convention. This was an agreement negotiated between the leaders of the Conservative and Labour Parties in the House of Lords during the period of the Attlee government, although it built on understandings that had developed from the late nineteenth century. It meant that the Lords would not attempt to block or wreck measures that the governing party had put forward in its election manifesto. Over time, practice evolved so that the Lords would usually not stop government bills, irrespective of whether or not they were the result of manifesto commitments.12 However, the convention does not have the force of law and there are a number of ambiguities. For example, what if the government does not have a Commons majority? Moreover, the repeated use of UK-wide referenda since 1975 have created another source of popular authority, with the potential to conflict with the will of the people as expressed through their quasi-Burkean representatives in the House of Commons. After the Brexit referendum of 2016, multiple actors made conflicting claims about the obligation, or otherwise, of Parliament to act upon the outcome. The results of the 2017 general election resulted in some politicians and commentators advocating a new theory, which gave moral force even to the manifesto of the losing party. Given that both Labour and Conservatives had pledged to leave the EU, it could be argued: ‘With more than 85 percent of the vote on a clear Brexit platform, promising to respect the Brexit referendum result, the new government and the entire new Parliament have a clear Brexit mandate’.13 This, of course, could be ­contested, as in this 2019 exchange between interviewer Andrew Marr and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage:

 ‘The General Election’, The Woman Teacher, 3 November 1922.  House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, 5th Report of Session 2017–19, ‘The Salisbury-Addison Convention’, 20 October 2017. 13  Annette Bongardt and Francisco Torres, ‘Parliament has a strong and clear mandate for Brexit, Remainers and EU politicians shouldn’t question it’, 20 June 2017, https://blogs. lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/06/20/parliament-has-a-strong-and-clear-mandate-for-brexit-remainers-and-eu-politicians-shouldnt-question-it/ (consulted 24 July 2019). 11 12

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Marr:

So you can accept that from the point of view of the referendum in 2016 there is no mandate for a no deal Brexit? Farage: I’m sorry, I couldn’t disagree more. We voted to leave. We didn’t vote for a deal. We voted to leave once with a referendum. The year after that both the Labour and Conservative parties promised us in their manifestos they would honour the result of the referendum and here we are, nearly three years on from that referendum, Brexit’s not been delivered, and frankly, given this government and given this parliament there is no prospect of these parties delivering a clean break Brexit.14 The notion of the manifesto mandate (although potentially conflicting with a referendum mandate) implies a particular kind of contractual relationship between the promise-making politician or party and the voter. MPs are simultaneously obliged and entitled to carry out the promises they have made, even if the majority of the electorate are unaware of a given manifesto commitment or even actively dislike it. Those who supported the winning party, then, are obliged to take the rough with the smooth: they may be forced to accept some policies they find unpalatable as the price of getting the government they want. This means that parties, or groups within them, may try to use manifestos as a means of gaining a ‘mandate’ for ideological or interest-driven goals that they suspect may actually be unpopular. Political parties are not wholly rational, vote-­ maximising machines. Instead, they sometimes use manifestos (and other forms of promises) as weapons in internal battles rather than, primarily, as tools to harvest electoral support. The culture of political promise-making evolved, it must also be remembered, in the light of changing rhetorical conventions as well as new electoral technologies and organisational techniques.15 Alongside film, TV and radio (and eventually social media), posters and print remained an important part of the ecosystem of political persuasion.16 Changing c­ oncepts of  The Marr Show, BBC1, 12 May 2019.  Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Andrew Thorpe, Parties at War: Political Organization in Second World War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 16  Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); James Thompson, ‘“Pictorial 14 15

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public opinion, and new techniques for researching it, ensured that parties were ever more attentive to the language in which they couched their promises.17 Parties carried out research to find out which phrases were most appealing. ‘“Honest Government” appeals to 36 percent of the electorate[,] more than any of the other five kinds of Government listed’, the Conservative Party discovered in 1965. ‘A “responsible Government” appeals most to 27 percent and “strong Government” to 13 percent. “Government with go” and “vigorous Government” appeal to only 6 percent and 5 percent respectively.’18 This was reminiscent of the marketing approach later parodied in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin: ‘71 percent of housewives in East Lancashire and 81 percent in Hertfordshire expressed an interest in the concept of exotic ice-creams. Only 8 percent in Hertfordshire and 14 percent in Lancashire expressed positive hostility, whilst 5 percent expressed latent hostility. […] 0.6 percent told us where we could put our exotic ice creams’.19 But it was not only how promises were made that changed. New intellectual currents, and global developments, influenced what politicians promised too. During the first part of the twentieth century, as statist solutions gained in popularity, Conservatives felt themselves on the back foot.20 The Liberal Party became increasingly depleted, in spite of the continued belief of its core supporters in old-style Gladstonianism.21 Labour’s 1945 manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, embodied the party’s confident commitment to a programme of planning, nationalisation, and lies”? Posters and politics in Britain c.1880–1914’, Past & Present, 197 (2007), pp. 177–210; Gary Love, ‘The periodical press and the intellectual culture of Conservatism in interwar Britain’, Historical Journal, 57 (2014), pp. 1027–56. 17  Laura Beers, ‘Whose opinion?: changing attitudes towards opinion polling in British politics, 1937–1964’, Twentieth Century British History, 17 (2006), pp. 177–205; Andrew J.  Taylor, ‘“The Record of the 1950s is irrelevant”: The Conservative Party, Electoral Strategy and Opinion Research, 1945–64’, Contemporary British History, 17 (2003), pp.  81–110; James Thompson, British Political Culture and the Idea of ‘Public Opinion’, 1867–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 18  See, for example, ‘Political Phraseology: Report on a Survey carried out by National Opinion Polls Limited for the Conservative Central Office’, September 1965, CPA, CCO 80/4/1/5. 19  Series 1, episode 1, first broadcast on BBC1 on 8 September 1976. 20  Clarisse Berthezène, Training Minds for the War of Ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party and the Cultural Politics of Britain, 1929–54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 21  Michael Dawson, ‘Liberalism in Devon and Cornwall, 1910–1931: “the old-time religion”’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), pp. 425–37.

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an expansive welfare state. By the 1970s, however, there was a growing sense that parties were promising too much. This, it was said, caused the problem of governmental ‘overload’. It was the political scientist Anthony King who offered the classic statement of this case. King argued that governments were expected to do more at the very same time that their capacity to deliver was decreasing, not least in the face of growing industrial militancy: Most of Let Us Face the Future reads like a prospective history of the immediate post-war period. Since about 1959, however, the fit has become less close. Not only do parties in office increasingly fail to do the things they said they were going to do: they increasingly do things that they pledged themselves specifically not to do.22

Yet although the advent of Margaret Thatcher government saw a radical rolling back of the state’s responsibilities in some areas, she was nonetheless an activist Prime Minister. Her programme of reform required a series of manifestos and mandates. According to Judith Bara’s calculation of the number of pledges offered by winning parties, the Conservatives made 50  in 1979, 33  in 1983, and 118  in 1987. (By contrast, Labour made 18 in 1945.) Thatcher’s successor, John Major, went even further, offering 452 promises in his victorious 1992 campaign. Bara also finds, it should be noted, that parties are not nearly as bad at keeping their promises as is popularly assumed: ‘Parties can be said to keep some of their important promises and these are related to the areas regarded as important by the public, notably concerning the economy, public services and law and order, but they make too many promises which cannot easily be traced through to implementation and are open to manipulation and false claims of success’.23 ‘Manifesto to me has a word association with lie’, Farage said in the interview quoted above, ‘because that’s what we’ve had in election after election’.24 Bara’s research shows this to be a hefty exaggeration although it is certainly true that some manifesto pledges are the product of deliberate obfuscation. For example, in 1979 Chancellor Denis Healey 22  Anthony King, ‘Overload: problems of governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, 23 (1975), pp. 284–96 at p. 285. 23  Judith Bara, ‘A question of trust: Implementing party manifestos’, Parliamentary Affairs 58 (2005), pp. 585–99, at pp. 588, 597. 24  The Marr Show, BBC1, 12 May 2019.

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acknowledged to Prime Minister James Callaghan that many of Labour’s manifesto commitments were ‘carefully phrased to avoid being too specific […] we do not want to commit ourselves to specific levels of expenditure where we have deliberately used words like “more” or “further”’.25 Yet ambiguity of this type paled into insignificance compared to the famous Brexit Bus of 2016. ‘We send the EU £350 million a week’, read the slogan on the side, ‘let’s fund our NHS instead’. Was this a concrete promise that the sum in question would be redirected to health care, or merely a suggestion? In addition to carrying the familiar NHS logo, the bus itself was painted red: a deliberate attempt to make voters think it was something to do with the Labour Party.26 The associations created by certain colours and typefaces can be as important as words in creating a ‘sense of promise’, just as gestures, facial expressions, body language, and accent/ tone of voice have an impact on how politicians’ promises are received and understood. This is important as we consider the large body of philosophical work which considers the act of promising. Hannah Arendt noted that ‘the great variety of contract theories since the Romans attests to the fact that the power of making promises has occupied the center of political thought over the centuries’.27 J.L. Austin, the founding father of speech act theory, gave considerable thought to the conditions that need to be in place for us to be able to say that a promise has been made.28 Particularly helpful, from our point of view, is Antonio Blanco Salgueiro’s argument that promises and threats are the counterparts of one another, that they are not necessarily verbal (either spoken or written), and that they need to be considered holistically. As he puts it, ‘promises and threats are constitutively intertwined, forming a single language game (or, more precisely, a family of games, each of which involves both promise and threat)’.29 For example, a commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy could be read as a promise by one section of the electorate and as a threat by another. 25  Denis Healey to James Callaghan, 8 April 1979, PREM16/2152, The National Archives, London. 26  Matthew Elliott (Chief Executive, Vote Leave), interviewed on Brexit: The Battle for Britain, BBC2, 25 August 2016. 27  Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 244. 28  J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 29  Antonio Blanco Salgueiro, ‘Promises, threats, and the foundations of Speech Act Theory’, Pragmatics, 20 (2010), pp. 213–28 at p. 226.

 INTRODUCTION 

11

Twenty years ago the New Labour strategist Philip Gould claimed that Tony Blair’s strategy of centring his recent election campaign around a small series of pledges would revolutionise politics. Not only had the ‘early manifesto’ New Labour, New Life for Britain been endorsed overwhelmingly by the party membership but also the pledges had been immortalised in a credit card-sized ‘pledge card’. Voters were instructed: ‘Keep this card, and see that we keep our promises’.30 According to Gould this approach to promise-making would change British politics: The pledges have established a new pattern which will not be broken: hard, concrete, accountable promises that are, effectively, a binding contract with the electorate; manifestos not just agreed by a few politicians in smoke-filled rooms but agreed by the party. This is the way of the future, it is the way trust in politics will be restored.31

Following the controversies surrounding the handling of the Iraq War, the Liberal Democrats’ decision to renege on their pledge to not raise university tuition fees, the MPs’ expenses scandal, and the claims and counterclaims about the government’s handling of Brexit, Gould’s claim certainly looks like wishful thinking. Get Brexit Done, the manifesto on which Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in 2019, was notable for its short-­term focus and—the promise in the title aside—its shortage of concrete pledges, a far cry from the New Labour approach of 1997. The slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ appeared no less than twenty-three times. Contentious issues such as social care and the likely shape of the next stage of Brexit negotiations were not discussed in detail. This was both an effort to distance the Conservatives from the disastrous pledges outlined in Theresa May’s 2017 manifesto and the ambitious and costly reforms championed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Jo Johnson, the Prime Minister’s brother, wrote about his experience of manifesto-writing for the Times the day before the launch of Get Brexit Done. He claimed that ‘if anyone is talking about’ the manifesto ‘more than 48 hours after it’s been released, you’re in serious trouble’.32 It was a mantra which the 30  Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Abacus, 1999), p. 271. 31  Ibid., p. 272. 32  Jo Johnson, ‘Election 2019: How to write a Tory manifesto’ Times, 22 November 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/election-2019-how-to-write-a-tory-manifestol66q3fxmk (accessed 23 November 2019).

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authors of Get Brexit Done appear to have taken to heart, with their reluctance to announce new spending commitments. Of course it could be argued that ‘get Brexit done’ has been a highly successful pledge (at least in the short term) because of its ambiguity and its ability to mean different things to different people. Above all, it offered the prospect of release from the post-2016 political stalemate, something that was potentially appealing even to Remainers. Political pledges are complex rhetorical constructs, and this book can be seen in part as a contribution to the growing body of work on modern British political rhetoric, cultures of public speaking, and audience reception.33 But primarily it is a response to the urgent, and insufficiently examined, question of how political promises should be made and how we should judge whether or not they have been fulfilled. The book begins with an exploration of the effects of the electoral reforms of 1918. It may have been expected that these reforms would have fundamentally transformed British political culture. After all, the Representation of the People Act 1918 increased the parliamentary electorate from 7 million to over 20 million, with women over thirty able to 33  A non-exhaustive list includes: Max Atkinson, Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics (London: Methuen, 1984); H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Rhetoric and politics in Britain, 1860–1950′, in P.J. Waller ed., Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain (Brighton: Harvester, 1987), pp. 34–58; Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Frank Myers, ‘Harold Macmillan’s “winds of change” speech: a case study in the rhetoric of policy change’, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 3 (2000), pp. 555–75; Joseph S. Meisel, Public Speech and the Culture of Public Life in the Age of Gladstone (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Jonathan Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Alan Finlayson and James Martin, ‘“It ain’t what you say …”: British political studies and the analysis of speech and rhetoric’, British Politics, 3 (2008), pp. 445–64; Lawrence, Electing Our Masters; Ben Jackson, ‘The rhetoric of redistribution’, in John Callaghan, Nina Fishman, Ben Jackson and Martin McIvor eds., In Search of Social Democracy: Responses to Crisis and Modernisation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 233–51; Christopher Reid, Imprison’d Wranglers: The Rhetorical Culture of the House of Commons 1760–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Dennis Grube, Prime Ministers and Rhetorical Governance (Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership) (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Richard Toye, ‘The rhetorical culture of the House of Commons after 1918’, History, 99 (2014), pp. 270–98; Judi Atkins, Alan Finlayson, Jonathan Martin and Nick Turnbull eds., Rhetoric in British Politics and Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Andrew S.  Crines, Timothy Heppell and Peter Dorey eds., The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Jens E.  Kjeldsen ed., Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric: Exploring Audiences Empirically (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

 INTRODUCTION 

13

vote for the first time providing they met a property qualification. However, as Luke Blaxill’s analysis of the 1918 election demonstrates, politicians greeted the advent of mass democracy with some trepidation. The experiences of war had both weakened existing ties to party politics and expanded membership of the labour movement. This led to a new caution about what promises politicians should make to the electorate and how appropriate it was to make pledges to sectional interests. ‘Anti-promises’, that is, pledges not to take particular courses of action, became more prominent in political rhetoric. Lisa Berry-Waite’s chapter indicates that the advent of women parliamentary candidates in 1918 did little to challenge existing assumptions about the kind of issues it was assumed would be of interest to female political activists and women voters. Indeed, the early women candidates commonly argued that female MPs were necessary so that ‘the woman’s point of view’ could be heard at Westminster, by which they meant a focus on social reform and the affairs of the home. Furthermore, their election addresses tended to play down their role as outsiders, frequently making reference to the political work of male relatives or supporters. While only one woman was elected at the 1918 election, Countess Markievwicz, a Sinn Fein representative who refused to take her seat, the first women parliamentary candidates nonetheless laid the ground for Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to sit at Westminster. The next section considers the effects of war and its aftermath on the British political system. After both of the world wars parliamentary candidates from armed service backgrounds sought to present themselves as representatives of ex-servicemen’s interests, but they also made wider claims about how their military status qualified them to represent the public. Matthew Johnson notes that while reference to ‘masculine’ values proved important to prospective candidates’ claims for office at the ‘Khaki Election’ of 1918, the emergence of women parliamentary candidates with service records at the 1945 election complicated the manner in which male candidates with armed forces backgrounds presented themselves to the electorate. Service and ex-service candidates made reference to their military experience to promote a variety of competing visions of the post-­ war order. In 1945, claims that the ‘People’s War’ needed to be followed by an expansion of state welfare competed with arguments that the war had been one waged in the name of ‘liberty’. As Clare Griffiths’ chapter demonstrates, the memory of the ‘broken promises’ of Lloyd George’s peacetime government of 1918–22 cast a long shadow over British politics and became especially pertinent as Britain faced the prospect of

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reconstruction after the devastation wrought during the Second World War. Griffiths explores how politicians sought to gain trust for their reconstruction plans during the war at a time when interest in party politics was waning and technocratic solutions to dealing with the problems of the ‘new Britain’ were growing in influence. Subsequent chapters, respectively, explore the importance of promises surrounding spending and immigration to post-war British elections. Peter Sloman and Aled Davies explore the changing ways in which fiscal promises have been made in election manifestos, focusing on the case studies of 1964, 1983, 1992, and 2010. While fiscal policy had long been a central issue in British elections, up to 1945 politicians were usually reluctant to make definite and quantifiable promises of action—rather they focused on the principles which would guide their actions in office. By contrast, as state spending rose after 1945 Labour and the Conservatives engaged in a ‘bidding war’ over the provision of social services, with spending plans usually carefully costed to reassure sceptical voters. However, the main political parties have proved more cautious about their fiscal promises since the 1980s, a situation which has been reinforced by government austerity following the 2008 financial crisis. Emil Sokolov analyses changing debates about race and immigration in British politics. While these issues did not feature prominently at elections in the 1950s, they developed a new prominence following the development of a restrictive immigration policy with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. Existing accounts have tended to stress the relative consensus between Labour and the Conservatives on matters of race and immigration and the parties’ concern with avoiding making this a contentious issue at elections. However, Sokolov’s study of manifesto drafts and individual candidates’ election addresses indicates that there were limits to the consensus over immigration policy. The sometimes fractious handling of race during the 1964 and 1966 elections laid the foundations for Enoch Powell’s controversial intervention during the 1970 general election, which led to immigration becoming one of the key issues of the campaign. The next section uses the careers of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to explore how cultures of promise-making evolved in twentieth-century British politics. Richard Toye demonstrates that Churchill’s approach to making political promises drew on his experiences as both a Liberal and Tory MP. While Churchill’s career as a leading politician was remarkably long-lasting (he resigned from the position of Prime Minister at the age of eighty in 1955), and he remained committed to an approach to promise-making formed in his early political career. This approach

 INTRODUCTION 

15

prized political independence and distrusted the development of programmatic politics. Following the success of Labour’s 1945 election manifesto Let Us Face the Future, it was an approach which was out of step with the prevailing culture of mid-twentieth-century British politics. David Thackeray explores the process of Conservative election manifesto production under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership between 1979 and 1987. Thatcher’s approach to manifestos was conditioned by a perception that trust in politicians had been eroded as the result of over-promises and unrealistic assumptions about how the state could intervene in public life. In response, she sought to centre her party’s manifestos around a limited series of pledges. Thatcher’s electoral success played an important role in encouraging parties to make more cautious fiscal promises from the 1980s onwards, a process explored in Sloman and Davies’ chapter. In particular, her focus on a small number of detailed manifesto pledges was imitated by New Labour. Thatcher’s focus on outlining a limited series of pledges in her election manifestos was conditioned by concerns with distancing the Conservatives from the factional disputes that plagued the Labour Party in the 1970s and early 1980s. As Mark Wickham-Jones’ chapter illustrates, the concept of acting as ‘custodians of the manifesto’ played a key role within Labour’s ideological disputes, with both the left and right claiming this role. Labour’s manifesto-making process was shaped by a wide range of concerns beyond seeking a mandate from voters. The manifesto came to be seen by the Labour left as a ‘battering ram’, based on policies agreed at the party’s annual conference, which would provide instructions to (sometimes recalcitrant) ministers and civil servants to undertake radical reform. The failure of the party to agree on a coherent and viable manifesto in 1983, which was itself a product of Labour’s civil war, undermined this ambitious strategy. Jon Lawrence’s chapter explores how the competing political languages of the time played out on the Isle of Sheppey, a deprived region in north Kent, through a re-examination of the field notes of the sociologist Ray Pahl. By the late 1970s this former Labour heartland had swung decisively to Conservatism and the island’s high levels of home ownership meant it proved receptive to Thatcherism. Labour’s position in Sheppey was further undermined by the creation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) by former Labour right-wingers in 1981. The SDP/Alliance made significant gains from both Labour and the Conservatives in local politics. However, it is questionable how viable the SDP’s challenge to the two main parties was in the longer term in this corner of Kent given that

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its local election literature sat uneasily with Sheppey’s strong traditions of independence and strong sense of community. Mike Finn and Judi Atkins explore the changing fortunes of the Liberal Democrats, a party formed in 1988 following the merger of the SDP and the Liberal Party, which became the junior partner in the Coalition government between 2010 and 2015. As Finn demonstrates, the party’s changing composition and relationship with the government of the day has led to a continual debate about the identity and purpose of ‘Liberal Democracy’ from the 1980s to the present. Throughout this period, the making of key promises has been central to the Liberal Democrats’ ability to forge an identity distinct from their key rivals but the party has arguably struggled to forge a coherent political vision and it has been too reliant on developing a ‘relational’ image based on the notion that it occupies a centre-ground between the two main parties. This chapter explores the changing promise of Liberal Democracy through an analysis of election communications, speeches, and interviews conducted with policymakers from the creation of the SDP-Liberal Alliance to the aftermath of the calamitous 2015 election. Judi Atkins considers the reasons for this collapse in the Liberal Democrats’ performance. Nick Clegg’s struggles to rationalise his party’s decision to renege on their pre-election pledge to not increase university tuition fees undermined public trust in the Liberal Democrats. Clegg sought to restore the party’s credibility by presenting their presence in the Coalition as a brake on the more hardline austerity policies of the Conservative Party and claiming that they had provided the responsible leadership which the previous Labour government had failed to achieve. However, Clegg failed to regain the party’s reputation for ‘fairness’. Ultimately, the failure of the tuition fee pledge proved so damaging because it was a key ‘Unique Selling Point’ for the Liberal Democrats and the party had fought the 2010 election on the slogan of ‘no more broken promises’. Finally, James Freeman analyses the act of pledge making in British political speech between 1997 and 2015. The chapter explores the rhetorical structures which underpin promise-making. While it may be tempting to see unkept promises, and public distrust of politicians’ promises, as an indication of the poor state of British democracy, Freeman argues that the act of promise-making plays a central role in political speech. Politicians often discuss or reinterpret pledges long after they have ceased to be key issues and their original authors have receded from the frontline of politics. This chapter, in keeping with the wider themes of Electoral Pledges in Britain since 1918, explores how political promises enable past, present, and future politicians to engage in a common debate.

Election Promises and Anti-promises After the Great War Luke Blaxill

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 contractual—and whether and to what extent promises made during campaigns should be part of that contract—was 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 promises—and the implicit or explicit contract they create—becoming as ubiquitous an aspect of electoral culture as speeches, ballot papers, and canvassers.

1

 See Thackeray and Toye, ‘Introduction’ in this volume.

L. Blaxill (*) Hertford College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_2

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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 promises—manifestoes—an inevitability. Accordingly, it was no surprise the first national manifesto (Joseph Chamberlain’s ‘Unauthorised Programme’) appeared in 1885: the first election fought after the political system had been democratically reforged by the 1883–85 reforms. Along similar lines, the political world ushered in by the twentieth century—dominated by a rapidly expanding state and the material tension between capital and labour—made 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 ‘pledge studies’ has been an established subfield in Political Science since the 1960s.3 This field—concerned with analysing how modern election commitments are judged by electors through objective ‘testability’ metrics of perceived fulfilment—does 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 made—on behalf of themselves or their party in word or in print—most 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 650–700 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 2  For an example of early scholarship, see Gerald Pomper, Elections in America: Control and Influence in Democratic Politics (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1968). 3  For an overview, see Elin Naurin, Election Promises, Party Behaviour and Voter Perceptions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 29–38.

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(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 these—and other—questions through a broad and macroscopic analysis of election promises from 1892, with a particular focus on the landmark ‘khaki’ election of 1918 held soon after armistice. Despite being the first election held under (near) universal suffrage, and producing a result which dramatically recast the political landscape, its campaign (especially in the constituencies) has received scant attention from historians.4 In particular, if post-war electoral culture was indeed ‘transformed’—with the 1918 campaign sounding the death knell for traditional bellicose electioneering styles as Jon Lawrence has argued— a natural follow-up question is to analyse how this transferred to language and whether and to what extent the political promise was affected?5 What exactly constitutes a political promise is of course open to debate. However, for parliamentary elections, there exists one almost ubiquitous document which captures them more explicitly than any other source: the humble election address. While hardly a celebrated constitutional tradition, these short printed manifestoes (typically appearing shortly in advance of the opening of a candidate’s constituency campaign) have existed since at least the Hanoverian period and continue to appear today. By long-established convention, addresses—explicitly issued by candidates to electors—would detail what policies he/she would support or oppose if elected. By 1918 they were becoming considerably more elaborate in presentation (e.g. being printed as free-standing booklets rather than as columns in local newspapers, containing photographs of candidates, and doubling-up as window posters) and were thus more likely to be kept by voters after the election.

4  Exceptions include Martin Farr, ‘Waging democracy. The British general election of 1918 reconsidered’, Cercles, 21 (2011), pp. 65–95; Stuart Ball, ‘Asquith’s decline and the general election of 1918’, Scottish Historical Review, 61 (1982), pp.  44–61; Roy Douglas, ‘The background to the ‘coupon’ election arrangements’, English Historical Review, 86 (1971), pp. 318–36; Trevor Wilson, Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (London, 1966), ch. 6. 5  Jon Lawrence, ‘The transformation of British public politics after the First World War’, Past & Present, 190 (2006), pp. 185–216.

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On the face of it, addresses are a wonderfully rich source for the study of election promises. Ironically though, their previous use by historians has overwhelmingly been for a quite different purpose: namely, to stand as proxies for the contents of nationwide speaking campaigns. Several labour-­ intensive manual studies have produced statistics showing the percentage of addresses that mentioned particular issues and in what order.6 For Neal Blewett, this ‘tell[s] us more conveniently than anything else…what questions figure most prominently in the constituency campaigns, and how such questions were tackled’.7 This claim is questionable, however, because addresses were documents outlining pledges and commitments which candidates may have thought the election should be about, but which were often sidelined or entirely forgotten when rival platforms clashed and carried the war of words into new rhetorical territory.8 The study of political promises, on the other hand, seems to represent an ideal opportunity to study election addresses in a new (and arguably more intuitive) manner as important documents in their own right. In this respect, it is hoped that this brief study can inspire others which begin to make full use of this extensive political corpus. Using election addresses to study political promises in even one national election campaign faces the obvious challenge of the enormous word count produced by 650–750 constituencies’ candidates. This chapter thus adopts a computerised ‘big data’ text mining methodology which analyses digitised machine-readable facsimiles of election addresses made available to me by the Bristol University Library.9 While this chapter focusses 6  See, for example, A.K. Russell, Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Newton Abbot; David Charles, 1973), pp. 64–94; N. Blewett, The Peers, the Parties and the People: the General Elections of 1910 (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 209–22; P. Readman, ‘The 1895 General Election and political change in late Victorian Britain’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp.  467–93 at pp.  471, 475; Naomi Lloyd-Jones, ‘A New British History of the Home Rule Crisis: Public Opinion, Representation and Organisation’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London, 2019), pp. 34–5, 106–8, 144. Addresses have also been used in a similar way in most post-1945 Nuffield studies: see, for example, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (New York: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 222–6. 7  Blewett, Peers, Parties and People, p. 316. 8  Luke Blaxill, The War of Words: The Language of British Elections, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2019). 9  The Bristol University Library special collection of election addresses was initially based on the National Liberal Club collection of elections covering 1892 to 1931 but has been expanded to include addresses from subsequent elections (up to present day).

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primarily on 1918, comparisons are made to two prior elections from the two previous decades: 1906 and 1892. While both these campaigns— featuring important issues such as Colonial Preference in the former and the Newcastle Programme in the latter—could in themselves be the subject of a dedicated study, their primary purpose here is to act as a comparative backdrop for 1918. In total, this chapter analyses 1,619,838 words of election addresses.10 Analysis is presented in three sections. The first begins by considering how to best investigate political promises and indeed how to do so through the medium of text mining. It begins with a direct analysis of explicitly defined promises in addresses to understand how candidates themselves employed this powerful political word, alongside its close synonym ‘pledge’. Finding (fairly predictably) that simply investigating the terms ‘promise’ and ‘pledge’ is unhelpfully narrow, this section develops a more holistic methodology through an analysis of ‘commitments’. This is the name we will give to candidates’ statements of what they would do (a ‘hard’ commitment) or would support (a ‘soft’ commitment) if elected. It begins with empirical concordance searching to find relevant sentences before manual categorisation with Key Word in Context (KWIC).11 The second section moves to a more general analysis of the addresses themselves in respect of the Conservative, Liberal, and Labour parties, in order to shed light on the broader promissory environment of 1918. In addition to close reading analysis of the addresses themselves, it uses several automated text mining techniques including empirical distinctive vocabulary features analyses and cluster analyses.12 This chapter’s final section assesses how candidates reacted to the 8.4 million women electors who were voting for the first time in 1918. It will explore how often and in 10  This ambitious study has naturally been conducted within certain constraints. The first being that it was only possible to gain funding (and permission) to digitise addresses from three election campaigns in total. The second was that the available runs of addresses available in the National Liberal Club Collection are not exhaustive. For 1892 and 1906, approximately 500 constituencies are included, with respective word counts of 646,063 and 638,896. For 1918, approximately 200 constituencies are included with a word count of 334,879. Clearly these gaps (especially for 1918) are inferior to an exhaustive corpus. However, each election’s claim to stand as representative for the complete run of addresses is strong both in terms of absolute word counts in the hundreds of thousands and also the diverse range of addresses from various parties, boroughs, and counties. 11  KWIC analyses list all words in their parent sentences, allowing each ‘hit’ to be manually checked and potentially categorised. 12  For a methodological discussion of these techniques, see Blaxill, War of Words.

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what contexts women voters were targeted, and by which parties, in order to ask whether the transformation of the electorate was matched by a transformation of the language of election addresses. The chapter is completed by a statistical appendix and brief methodical notes.

Promises and Commitments Empirically capturing political promises for the purposes of text mining in any context (modern or historical) is challenging due to the innumerable ways they can be expressed, caveated, and directed. Existing literature from the subfield of ‘pledge studies’—concerned exclusively with the present day or very recent past—is of limited use to a political historian looking to compose a robust definition, not least because he/she cannot assume temporal stability in how promises were expressed by politicians, or understood by voters. Different texts also represent subtly different contexts, with, for example, politicians’ written promises made in addresses or manifestos perhaps being judged to be more ‘binding’ than spoken promises made in debate. Nonetheless, existing literature produces a useful starting point. For Terry Royed, a political promise is ‘a commitment to carry out some action or produce some outcome, where an objective estimation can be made as to whether or not the action was indeed taken or the outcome produced’.13 This definition implies, as Elin Naurin suggests, a hierarchy between ‘hard’ commitments which are measurable by an action (e.g. ‘we will’, ‘I will’) and ‘soft’ commitments which are not (e.g. ‘we should’, ‘I want to’).14 John Searle meanwhile takes a quite different approach, studying promises as speech acts which should be analysed not so much in themselves but on the basis of what the promiser sought to achieve by making them.15 Explicitly linguistic analyses of promises however—that is, those concerned with politicians’ words as opposed to a pledge’s substance, testability, or outcomes—are rare, especially those utilising text mining or other distant reading approaches to study massive 13  Terry Royed, ‘Testing the mandate model in Britain and the United States: evidence from the Reagan and Thatcher eras’, British Journal of Political Science, 26 (1996), pp. 45–80 at p. 79. 14  Naurin, Election Promises, pp. 34–5. There are also commitments (also categorised as ‘soft’) which oblige a politician to perform an action only in a certain context, usually a bill being introduced (e.g. ‘I will support’, ‘we are in favour of’). 15  John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), ch. 3.

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political texts. One example is Roderick Hart’s Political Keywords which assesses presidential campaign promises through mapping ‘promissory tokens’ which he defines very simply as sentences containing the keywords ‘promise’ and ‘pledge’.16 We begin by copying the approach of Hart, performing a deliberately narrow analysis which captures only the word ‘promise’ alongside its close synonym ‘pledge’.17 Like Hart, we then manually classify each hit (using KWIC) into two obvious and naturally occurring groups: a candidate’s ‘own pledges’ (i.e. references to promises he or his own party are making or have previously made) and ‘opponent’s pledges’ (i.e. references to promises made—or allegedly made—by opponents).18 The results are shown in Table 1. Two immediately striking trends emerge. The first is the general growth in direct references to promises and pledges across our three elections (party averages rose from 68 in 1892, to 82 in 1906, to 109 in 1918). This finding gives prima facie corroboration to the general thesis that promises were becoming a more important feature of the language of electoral politics over these three decades. The second and more significant finding is that nearly two-thirds (65 percent average) of direct mentions to ‘promises’ and ‘pledges’ were not in fact promises made by candidates on behalf of themselves or their parties but were references to those made (or supposedly made) by their opponents which were, unsurprisingly, invariably negative. While the less robustly partisan atmosphere of the 1918 election saw this trend partially reversed (especially by the coalition parties who had less incentive to attack opponents), negative references to opponents’ promises remained most common. Interestingly, although Hart’s analysis is for modern American presidential elections, he also finds that nearly half (43.6 percent) the mentions of promises and pledges by Democrat and Republican nominees related to those of opponents.19 Three common tropes of ‘promise criticism’ were clearly in evidence. The first were complaints that opponents had broken promises, and so were not trustworthy. Examples included Brette Morgan (South Dorset, 16  Roderick Hart, Political Keywords: Using Language That Uses Us (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 209, 223. 17  Other synonyms were also examined by automated lexical attraction analyses (e.g. ‘guarantee’) but were so rare (and often ambiguous) that they were not worth including. In addition, very occasional occurrences of ‘promise’ and ‘pledge’ had to be excluded, for example, Henry Harris (South Paddington) who wrote in 1918 about ‘the promise of the Future’. 18  Hart, Political Keywords, p. 210. 19  Hart, Political Keywords, p. 210.

39 43 82 61 39

27 75 102 62 38

C.LIB 55 63 118 37 63

LIB

All scores per subcorpus weighted to 100,000 word ratios

Promise Pledge TOTAL Own Pledges (%) Opponent’s Pledges (%)

CON 64 48 112 41 59

LAB

1918 ELECTION

39 89 129 32 68

IND 29 119 148 40 60

WOM

Table 1  Promises and Pledge Analysis—1892, 1906, and 1918 elections

38.4 44.1 82 32 68

CON

44.2 39.8 84 19 81

LIB

30 49 79 34 66

LAB

1906 ELECTION

40 28 68 22 78

CON

22 43 65 24 76

LIB

18 54 72 18 82

LUS

1892 ELECTION

24  L. BLAXILL

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

25

Labour, 1918) who complained that ‘it is dishonest for Tories to promise Liberal measures like Disestablishment…and for Liberals to promise Tory measures like Tariff Reform’; George Shaw-Lefevre (Bradford, Liberal, 1892) who described out ‘the present Government has falsified every expectation and broken every promise’; Lionel Holland (Birmingham Edgbaston, Liberal, 1906) who stated that ‘the Tory Party comes before you, discredited and disunited, with a pitiful record of unfulfilled promises and broken pledges’; and Randolf Baker (North Dorset, Conservative, 1906) who cautioned that ‘I hope that North Dorset will remember how many Radical promises have failed’. The second trope was what might be termed the ‘anti promise’: namely, criticisms of opponents making implausible and irresponsible pledges. The Conservatives were undoubtedly most fond of those, with Bob Sievier (Shoreditch, 1918) cautioning his audience to ‘beware the “9d. for 4d.” politician…I do not promise a big loaf and not give it’; Robert Houston (West Toxteth, 1892) boasting that the outgoing Unionist government had been one of ‘performance, and not of broken promises’; Samuel Ridley (South-West Bethnal Green, 1906) stating that ‘I am no believer in making a lot of idle promises that cannot possibly be carried’; Bargrave Deane (Sheffield Brightside, 1892) complaining of the Liberals’ ‘many promises but no performance of such promises’; and finally Mancherjee Bhownaggree (North-East Bethnal Green, 1906) and Frederick Grotrian (Hull East, 1892) condemning ‘worthless promises’ and ‘lavish promises’, respectively. A third less common trope (which could reasonably be described as another species of ‘anti promise’) consisted of Burkean reassertions that candidates were not delegates. These included Horace Norton (Liberal, Brixton, 1918) who stated that he had ‘given no pledges on behalf of any Party or Party Leader. It is the business of a Member of Parliament to attend to his Parliamentary duties’ and Thomas Atholl Robertson (Liberal, Hammersmith, 1918) who declared ‘I shall go to Westminster as a free man, representing the community of Hammersmith. No mere Party puppet, no mere delegate’. While the above analysis is illuminating, its confinement to tracking direct ‘promissory tokens’ alone captures only a fraction of relevant content from the addresses. Deeper insights can be obtained by adopting Royed’s looser definition of politicians’ ‘commitments’ which need not include the keywords ‘promise’ or ‘pledge’ and can be categorised, as described above, as ‘hard’ or ‘soft’.20 Here, we use the corpus to perform an empirical ‘cluster analysis’ centred around the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘We’ to  Royed, ‘Testing the mandate model’, p. 79.

20

26 

L. BLAXILL

produce bigrams, trigrams, and quadgrams (i.e. two-, three-, and fourword clusters) to track commitments candidates made either on behalf of themselves (‘personal commitments’) or on behalf of their party or administration they would support (‘collective commitments’).21 This analysis is shown in Table 2. It suggests that candidates in 1918 made 24 percent fewer ‘hard commitments’ on behalf of themselves than they had in 1906 and 1892.22 They were, however, nearly four times likelier to make hard commitments collectively compared to these two earlier elections. As we shall explore in the following section, the most dramatic increase in hard collective commitments was amongst Conservatives making them on behalf of the governing coalition rather than on behalf of their party or themselves, with the opposite being true of the Asquithian Liberals. For soft commitments meanwhile, Table  2 suggests a similar picture: an average decrease of 35 percent for personal and an increase (albeit much less dramatic and from a much lower base) for collective.

Parties To develop this analysis further, we now investigate promises and commitments in respect of parties, while also broadening our study with several more holistic linguistic analyses of the election address corpora. We draw upon three further tables, reproduced in the Appendix: Table  3 is concerned with tracking party words, while Table  4 tracks pronouns.23 Table 5, meanwhile, is an automated ‘distinct vocabulary features’ analysis 21  ‘Hard’ personal commitments were tracked with the bigrams ‘I Shall’, ‘I will’, and ‘I intend’. ‘Soft’ personal commitments were tracked with the bigrams ‘I support’ and ‘I desire’, the trigrams ‘I stand for’ and ‘I want to’, and the quadgram ‘I am in favour’. Hard collective commitments were tracked with the bigrams ‘We must’, “We Shall’, and ‘We will’. ‘Soft’ collective commitments were considerably rarer and could be tracked only with the bigram ‘we should’. Negative commitments were also examined with the bigrams ‘I object’ and ‘I oppose’ and the trigrams ‘I am against’ and ‘we should not’. All tracker bigrams, trigrams, and quadgrams were manually checked using KWIC to ensure accuracy. Other word formations were investigated but were insufficiently common to merit inclusion. 22  Average scores here (and subsequently) are compiled for the four main parties plus independents in 1918; for the Conservatives, Liberals, and Labour in 1906; and for the Conservatives, Liberals, and Liberal Unionists in 1892. 23  Pronouns are a revealing, if understudied, focus for political language analysis. One text mining analysis which uses pronouns to study parliamentary debate is Kaspar Beelen, ‘Tussen ‘ik’ en ‘wij’: zelf-representaties in parlementaire vertogen’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Antwerp, 2014).

111 89 100 11 311

80 80 54 12 225

C.LIB 110 145 60 14 329

LIB

All scores per subcorpus weighted to 100,000 word ratios

Personal (Hard) Personal (Soft) Collective (Hard) Collective (Soft) [TOTAL]

CON 92 94 66 7 259

LAB

1918 ELECTION

126 99 48 11 285

IND 100 125 54 28 307

WOM 134 109 22 8 273

117 179 22 9 327

LIB

104 287 11 4 406

LAB

1906 ELECTION CON

Table 2  Commitment Cluster Analysis—1892, 1906, and 1918 elections

136 121 15 7 278

CON

128 173 15 7 322

LIB

133 147 5 5 289

LUS

1892 ELECTION

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

27

21 75 8 9 1 61 300 57

106 54 5 15 0 31 249 56

C.LIB 268 100 3 13 12 12 80 65

LIB 58 367 8 28 15 34 103 81

LAB 23 97 6 3 0 6 105 51

IND 42 28 0 0 0 0 56 42

WOM 52 53 3 49 9 181 0 75

CON 258 78 1 57 88 45 0 87

LIB 62 299 101 21 124 91 0 186

LAB

1906 ELECTION

67 0 1 50 4 194 1 150

CON

289 0 1 20 57 30 1 95

LIB

Initially, this study performed separate analyses for the minority of Conservative candidates who did not possess the ‘coupon’ in 1918. However, because it found very little difference between the readings returned for couponed and uncouponed Conservatives, the scores were aggregated

128 0 0 19 7 149 0 121

LUS

1892 ELECTION

CON Conservative, C.LIB Coalition Liberal, LIB Liberal, LAB Labour, LU Liberal Unionist, IND Independent, WOM Women Candidates

The word ‘class’ has also been included to supplement analysis

Liberal Labour Socialist Conservative Tory/Tories Unionist Coalition class

CON

1918 ELECTION

Table 3  Concordance Analysis for Party Words, 1892–1918

28  L. BLAXILL

478 1386 251 169 432 194 204

382 1376 198 128 300 347 241

C.LIB 311 1846 176 159 347 133 134

LIB 342 1287 358 148 315 160 172

LAB 334 1628 364 239 423 207 136

IND 305 1596 236 208 278 78 92

WOM 285 1939 192 142 349 90 99

CON 207 2301 241 133 376 80 110

LIB 232 2044 159 121 292 89 122

LAB

1906 ELECTION

199 1882 225 163 542 86 90

144 2488 195 156 461 68 88

LIB

99 2231 133 144 481 57 109

LUS

1892 ELECTION CON

The female pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’ were excluded from this analysis due to the obvious conflation with references to countries

we I they them you he his

CON

1918 ELECTION

Table 4  Concordance Analysis for Pronouns, 1892–1918

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

29

121.5 113.5 106.4 62.4 61.1 56.7 50.9 40.1 31.6 31.1 29.3 27.8 27.0 25.5 25.5

Empire Coalition Lloyd George Unionist our Bonar Law Government Germans enemy British Unity Dominions Country Ballot Imperial

Score CON

Score LAB

Score LIB

he 388.9 Labour 173.9 Liberal was 103.8 Party 92.2 should parties 93.8 workers 53.7 Free him 55.5 age 52.7 I Prime Minister 47.4 or 37.0 Liberalism minmum 43.9 she 35.2 be minmums 43.0 income 29.9 Schools troops 41.2 unions 29.4 Trade social 40.3 Old 28.7 Temperance coalition 37.2 rates 27.9 League received 36.9 taxation 27.8 principles new 36.6 Ward 26.6 Land united 35.6 unemplo 22.2 support Lloyd George 35.5 Council 21.9 State became 34.3 incomes 21.7 Reform

C.LIB 63.4 44.8 40.0 36.1 33.4 30.6 30.6 27.5 27.3 26.0 24.6 22.5 22.5 22.4 20.8

Independent or Enemy party men deprice foreigners ton goods German British deportation jobbery Aliens shall

Score IND 63.4 44.8 40.0 36.1 33.4 30.6 30.6 27.5 27.3 26.0 24.6 22.5 22.5 22.4 20.8

women Mrs children Miss brother Parliament woman babies uphold day supply Abroad plentiful me artifices

Score WOM

90.5 31.9 24.6 23.9 22.6 21.7 20.8 18.7 17.9 17.5 17.1 16.8 16.0 15.3 15.0

Score

Each party’s list of top-15 most distinct keywords is produced by comparing the subcorpus of that parties’ addresses to those of all the remaining parties using Antconc, which automatically generates a list of words which appear significantly more often, according to log-likelihood ratio, in that party’s subcorpus relative to the others. Candidates’ names and constituency names (which are entirely unrevealing vocabulary features) are excluded

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Rank

Table 5  Distinct Vocabulary Features by Party in 1918

30  L. BLAXILL

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

31

which empirically discovers the most-mentioned words by each party relative to its contemporaries in 1918. We begin by discussing the Conservatives who won the lion’s share (382) of the seats in the 1918 election, with most candidates endorsed by the Lloyd George-Bonar Law ‘coupon’.24 Turning first to Table  2, we observe that in all three elections, Conservative candidates were the most likely to make personal and collective ‘hard’ commitments.25 While this may be broadly reflective of the customary clarity of Tory rhetoric in this period, it also appears to have been because they were, in all three elections, the dominant part of a current (or in the case of 1906 a recent) governing coalition.26 Thus, a larger proportion of their candidates were existing MPs defending seats than new candidates attacking them, and such men may have been more liable to make more confident and firmer commitments. By far the most striking trend for Conservative candidates in 1918, however, is the extent to which they discarded traditional party labels and moved towards a new rhetoric of national coalition. As Table 3 shows, the Conservatives in 1918 almost ceased to style themselves as ‘Conservatives’. They did not simply adopt the substitute label ‘Unionist’ (as had been generally the case since 1892) because use of this moniker also declined to less than a third of what it had been in 1906 and 1892.27 While the Tories’ Coalition Liberal allies largely followed suit (with candidates halving their use of the term ‘Liberal’ compared to 1906), their Asquithian and Labour opponents continued to employ traditional party labels as frequently as they had previously. Table 5 suggests that this remarkable rhetorical rebranding can be explained by Conservative candidates presenting themselves as champions of bipartisan imperial unity which rose above party. ‘Empire’ is returned as the single most distinct Conservative keyword relative to all other parties, with ‘Coalition’ second, ‘British’ tenth, ‘Unity’ eleventh, ‘Dominion’ twelfth, ‘Country’ thirteenth, and ‘Imperial’ fifteenth. Although not reproduced in the interests of brevity, there are no words pertaining to 24  For more on the 1918 coupon, see Douglas, ‘Background to the ‘coupon’ election arrangements’. 25  Initially, this study performed separate analyses for the minority of Conservative candidates who did not possess the ‘coupon’ in 1918. However, because it found very little difference between the readings returned for couponed and uncouponed Conservatives, the scores were aggregated. 26  See Blaxill, War of Words, Conclusion. 27  For more on the Conservative switch to the label ‘Unionist’, see Blaxill, War of Words.

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Empire or nation in the top fifty distinct Conservative words for 1892. Even for 1906—the election made famous by Colonial Preference—only three imperial words (‘colonies’, ‘empire’, ‘imperial’) appear in the Unionists’ top twenty. Table 5 also reveals a subtler manifestation of this rhetorical shift in Tory candidates’ synsemantic vocabulary, with ‘our’ (often referencing ‘our country’, ‘our nation’, ‘our people’) returned as the fifth most distinct Conservative word relative to other parties.28 This finding is seemingly corroborated by the pronoun analysis in Table  4, which indicates a marked Unionist shift in 1918 away from using the pronoun ‘you’ (overwhelmingly used to address electors) and towards ‘we’. While candidates of all parties in 1918 exhibited this deep-seated linguistic shift, it was by far the most pronounced amongst Conservatives. Overall, this linguistic evidence strongly suggests that the Unionists presented themselves less as a party, but more as the dominant custodians of post-­ war national and imperial unity. William Gastrell (North Lambeth) presented himself ‘not as a Candidate making an appeal to any one Political Party, but rather as an Imperialist, placing the welfare of the Empire before personal ambition or party creed’, while Walter Preston (Mile End) denounced the prospect of ‘go[ing] back to pre-war conditions of party fighting party, labour fighting capital, rich versus poor’, and George Palmer (West Wiltshire) declared that ‘old shibboleths and party cries, equally with old prejudices, should be cast off’. Of course, candidates were not averse to using the cry for non-partisanship as a partisan weapon, as Hubert Carr-Gomm (Liberal, Rotherhithe) discovered when his Conservative opponent John Lort-Williams fumed that ‘Asquith has raised again the old party cries! Carr-Gomm supports him! Party has been our curse in the past! Stamp it out!’. While it would be unfair to argue that historians have failed to acknowledge the bi-partisan appeal of the coalition ticket in 1918, general accounts like those of Ball and Powell give scant indication of the extent to which Unionist party labels were not just muffled, but almost eliminated in this election. Other historians have more explicitly rejected the interpretation that 1918 was a bi-partisan result, with Robert Blake seeing it as ‘essentially a Conservative victory – they would have done even better but for the coupons allocated to Lloyd George’ and John Ramsden similarly suggesting that ‘the Coupon helped to limit the size of the Unionist victory

 Synsemantic: words which are meaningful only when accompanied by other words.

28

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

33

and to prolong the life of the Liberal party’.29 Contrary to these interpretations, this analysis suggests that the Conservatives (to a still greater extent that Coalition Liberals) presented themselves unashamedly in non-­ party terms as guardians of imperial unity in an uncertain world. If the coalition was—as John Burns believed—a Tory ‘masquerade’, it was an exceptionally good one.30 Liberal candidates’ addresses differed markedly from Conservatives’ in several important respects. As Table 2 shows, they were less likely to make hard commitments (especially collective hard commitments) but more likely—compared to all opposing parties in all three elections—to make soft personal ones, especially in 1918 where they led by an average margin of 61 percent. This trend is directly manifested in Table 5, where ‘should’ (a key linguistic marker of soft commitments) appears as the second most distinct Liberal word in 1918 relative to other parties (they in fact used this word more than twice as frequently as Conservatives and Coalition Liberals). Despite this, it is notable that Liberals were likelier than opposition parties to cite programmes and manifestos of promises and commitments.31 This was the case not only in 1892 (unsurprisingly on account of the Newcastle proposals) but also in 1906 and 1918, where the Liberals surprisingly lead even Labour (who were themselves hardly disinclined to programmatic approaches). One marked tendency Liberal candidates displayed in all three elections was to write both about themselves and about Liberalism. This is reflected in Table 7 that revealed that three of Liberal candidates’ five most distinct vocabulary features relative to other parties in 1918 were ‘Liberal’, ‘Liberalism’, and the pronoun ‘I’. They mentioned their own party 153 percent more frequently than Coalition Liberals and nearly three times as often as Conservatives employed ‘Conservative’, Unionist’, and ‘Tory’ combined. Regarding pronouns, they used ‘I’ 33 percent more frequently than Conservatives while at the same time employing ‘we’ 35 percent less 29  Robert Blake, The Decline of Power, 1915–1964 (London: Granada Publishers, 1985), p.  69; John Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1978), p. 141; David Powell, British Politics, 1910–35 (London: Routledge, 2004). p. 93; Stuart Ball, Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), passim. 30  Quoted in Farr, ‘Waging democracy’, p. 75. 31  The combined weighted scores for ‘programme’ and ‘manifesto’ are for 1918: CON (51); C.LIB (51); LIB (94); LAB (90); IND (45). For 1906 they are CON (19); LIB (73); LAB (64). For 1892 they are CON (18); LIB (116); LU (7).

34 

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frequently.32 That ‘principles’ was the Liberals’ eleventh most-distinct keyword seems quite in-keeping with this general picture, as did claims like that of Thomas Atholl Robertson (Liberal, Hammersmith) who declared himself ‘reared in Liberalism. From the old leaders of Liberalism…I learned my faith…even if I had the desire, I am too old now to change’; William Ellis (Evesham) who promised to support ‘measures which are conducive to the welfare of the Country and in harmony with the essential principles of Liberalism’; and Edward Thurston (Weston-super-Mare) who spoke ‘the principles of Liberalism…the right to freedom, the right to self-government…and the right of all to live under free conditions of moral, intellectual and physical wellbeing’. In addition to their high-­ minded focus on Liberalism (which was in 1918—in terms of word count—just as strong as it had been under Gladstone in 1892 or during the attack on Protectionism in 1906) candidates in the khaki election also prioritised traditional Liberal themes, with Table 5 revealing candidates’ particular emphasis on free trade, temperance, land reform, and education. Overall, it might reasonably be said that the politically confusing environment of 1918 was particularly challenging for uncouponed Asquithians because it was entirely unclear whether they would be tactically better served by standing clearly as Liberals—which effectively meant attacking opposing coalition candidates—or in downplaying their party affinity and quietly shadowing the Lloyd Georgities.33 This analysis confirms that most took the brave (if potentially fatal) decision to fight unambiguously as Liberals and to emphasise Liberal issues. An analysis of Liberalism in 1918 would be incomplete without an examination of their former colleagues, the Coalition Liberals. As Table 5 shows, the language of the Lloyd Georgites was remarkably indistinct compared to the other parties (even independents) with no clear theme emerging from their most emphasised keywords. Even a direct comparison between the Coalition Liberals and the Asquithians using the same methodology as Table 5 (results are not reproduced here in the interests of space) reveals little more than that Lloyd George’s followers emphasised the coalition, unity, and the leadership of the Prime Minister. Comparing the results of two distinctive features analyses—for Asquithians compared to Coalition Liberals and Asquithians compared to 32  Compared to the other opposition parties, Liberals used ‘I’ 38 percent more often and ‘we’ 33 percent less often. 33  Wilson, Downfall, pp. 165–6.

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35

Conservatives—also produces very similar vocabulary sets, suggesting that addresses of the followers of Lloyd George were much more similar in their core emphasis to those of their new Conservative allies than to those of their former Liberal colleagues. Indeed, Table  5 also shows that Coalition Liberals’ relative reluctance to mention ‘Liberal’ compared to Asquithians is strikingly reminiscent to Liberal Unionists’ equivalent reluctance compared to Gladstonians. The breakaway Liberal parties of 1918 and 1892 employed the label ‘Liberal’ in their addresses only 40 percent and 45 percent as frequently as their parent party did. Turning finally to Labour, Table 5 suggests that, in 1918, their candidates forwarded a very distinct set of keywords relative to their opponents which prominently featured many traditional Labour motifs, including trades unionism, workers, and redistributive economic policy. Candidates also exhibited a tendency—seen also in 1906—to emphasise local government (‘rates’, ‘Ward’, Councillor’), showcasing Labour’s greater connection with local and municipal grassroots. The most revealing analysis of Labour’s addresses in 1918 however is derived from a comparison with those from 1906, which suggests a change of emphasis rather than substance.34 While Table 2 reveals little change in 1918 Labour candidates’ proclivity to make hard commitments compared to their 1906 predecessors, it does show a very substantial change in the domain of soft commitments, with the Edwardian party making nearly triple the volume that their post-war successors made. This is mainly on account of a dramatic decline—of 90 percent—of candidates’ use of the quadgram ‘I am in favour’. Labour candidates’ seeming relative reluctance in 1918 to make soft commitments which clearly outlined their party’s platform is also reflected in Table 3, which suggests—in two important ways—that their addresses had mellowed ideologically compared with their Edwardian predecessors. First, they abandoned the term ‘Socialist’—which they employed 101 times in their 1906 subcorpus but just 8 times in 1918—and moved towards simply identifying as ‘Labour’. Second, they sidelined (albeit less dramatically) the term ‘class’, employing it less than half as frequently in 1918 compared to 1906. Put another way, Labour addresses mentioned the words ‘Socialist’ and ‘Class’ 238 percent more than their opponents in 1906, but only 46 percent more in 1918. It might be suggested, as 34  A distinctive vocabulary features analysis using the same methods as Table 7—not reproduced in the interests of space—reveals little difference between the policy contents of Labour’s 1906 and 1918 addresses.

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L. BLAXILL

discovered elsewhere in analyses of speeches, that Edwardian Labour’s status as a fringe challenger party made candidates keen to explain Socialism and how their particular class-driven social and economic analysis differed from Liberalism.35 Overall, Ross McKibbin may be overstating Labour’s post-war shift by describing them as ‘only notionally a Socialist party in 1918’ but they had clearly lost some of the ideological fire that defined their platform in 1906.36

Women in 1918 This final section examines the impact of the enfranchisement of women on election addresses, complementing Lisa Berry-Waite’s study of the appeals made by the first female parliamentary candidates, which appears in this volume. While a fascinating topic from the perspective of political culture in general, it also has implications for our understanding of how political parties adapted the substance and presentation of promises and commitments to meet this new challenge. It also allows us to explore appeals to women in the particular context of the 1918 election and thus to examine the popular argument that it was the Conservatives who were most successful in forging a comprehensive appeal to female voters in the interwar years. Mary Hilson argues that ‘a gendered language of patriotism was employed particularly successfully by the Coalition Conservatives in opposition to potentially fracturing languages of class and gender.’ While David Jarvis praises the party’s perceptive appeal throughout the 1920s to ‘family chancellors’…the mothers of the Empire [who] found political expression through their shopping baskets’.37 While similarly emphasising the Unionists’ success in forging targeted gendered political appeals, David Thackeray also shows how opposition parties responded more slowly and less comprehensively to the challenge of women’s suffrage. For Thackeray, this was particularly true of the Asquithian Liberals,  Blaxill, War of Words.  Ross McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party, 1910–1924 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 121. 37  David Jarvis, ‘Mrs Maggs and Betty: the Conservative appeal to women voters in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 5 (1994), pp. 129–52 at p. 151; Mary Hilson, ‘Women voters and the rhetoric of patriotism in the British General Election of 1918’, Women’s History Review, 10 (2001), pp. 325–47 at pp. 325, 340–1. More general accounts also often subscribe to this thesis. See Ball, Portrait of a Party, pp. 118–19; Powell, British Politics, p. 93. 35 36

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37

who were most sceptical that there was an identifiable ‘women’s vote’ and whose efforts at establishing comparable women’s organisations or founding popular women’s party magazines were comparatively anaemic.38 It is important here to also mention Martin Pugh’s manual analysis of interwar election addresses from 1918 to 1931 as part of his broader commentary on the impact of women’s suffrage on interwar politics.39 While he does not report party data for 1918, he finds—as a general rule in the elections of 1922, 1923, 1924, and 1929—that Conservative candidates’ addresses were least likely to mention women, and Labour candidates most likely.40 While Pugh’s finding seemingly stands at odds with the historians cited above, he does acknowledge that dividing addresses into which did and did not mention women is a relatively poor proxy for measuring substantive engagement with the new voters, writing that ‘even when a high proportion of candidates made an appeal to women it is fair to say that in most cases this amounted to a brief reference, sometimes a sentence or a line, towards the end of the election address’.41 To investigate appeals to women voters in addresses, we perform a number of text mining analyses which allow us to move significantly beyond Pugh’s study. The first is a concordance analysis for gendered vocabulary terms in 1918 compared to 1892 and 1906, subdivided by parties (Table  6). The second makes use of the admittedly small (7500 word) subsample of election addresses which were actually written by female candidates, allowing us to expand Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with an additional column for ‘Women Candidates’.42 The third, Table  7, is a 38  David Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age: Conservative Cultures and the Challenge of Mass Politics in Early Twentieth Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 145. Martin Pugh also takes a pessimistic view of Liberals’ limited interest in appealing to women in the interwar years, confining them to less than two pages while devoting more than eight to Labour. See Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain since 1914, 3rd edition (London: Palgrave, 2015), pp. 107–16. 39  Pugh, Women’s Movement, pp. 98–102. It is not entirely clear whether—to produce just a few pages of analysis—Pugh has performed the Herculean talk of manually reading the entire corpus of election addresses between 1918 and 1931 available through the National Liberal Club collection (an estimated 5–10 million words) or has instead performed some sort of sampling method, as implied, although not explained, on p. 99. 40  Pugh, Women’s Movement, p. 99. 41  Ibid., p. 101. 42  Owing to its extremely small size (and the fact it comprises just seven addresses) the readings generated from this subcorpus drawn from the National Liberal Club collection naturally must be interpreted with considerable caution.

woman/women ladies wile/mother/daughter widow [WOMEN TOTAL] gentleman men husband/father/son [MEN TOTAL] children families

179 100 47 18 345 92 383 21 496 64 25

CON 154 95 59 33 341 92 339 19 450 90 26

C.LIB 258 89 59 47 453 79 345 23 447 103 22

LIB 234 41 72 38 386 38 424 45 507 98 31

LAB

1918 ELECTION

276 54 105 45 480 63 619 23 705 170 23

IND

Table 6  Concordance Analysis for the Language of Gender

1152 83 319 83 1638 28 458 43 529 333 42

WOM 13 5 53 0 71 115 115 12 242 69 8

CON 23 2 24 0 50 101 153 11 265 32 13

LIB

116 7 95 0 218 54 211 34 300 153 11

LAB

1906 ELECTION

12 3 16 0 31 153 147 19 319 16 8

CON

17 1 14 0 33 144 203 16 363 16 10

LIB

19 2 33 0 54 128 137 8 273 14 9

LUS

1892 ELECTION

38  L. BLAXILL

  ELECTION PROMISES AND ANTI-PROMISES AFTER THE GREAT WAR 

Table 7  Distinct Vocabulary Features for Demarcated Subsections aimed at Women in 1918

39

Rank

Score

Word

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

508.3 251.1 185.7 107.8 93.3 70.8 68.2 67.6 63.6 63.1 47.6 44.4 40.5 39.8 38.6 36.1 34.6 33.7 29.9 29.8 28.8 26.8 26.6 26.3 25.7 25.7 25.5 24.7 24.6 23.7

women Women equal WOMEN She work her men vote children professions she laws Equal equality law Mrs sex sexes rights welcome Mothers inequalities them knows woman their divorce pay mothers

This table is based on a subcorpus of 10,458 words of demarcated appeals to female voters in addresses (3.12 percent of the total 1918 corpus). This is composed of 1777 words for the Conservatives, 685 words for Coalition Liberals, 5034 for the Liberals, and 2962 words for Labour. The methodology is identical to Table 5: in this case, the 3.12 percent of the 1918 corpus aimed at women is compared to the 96.88 percent which was not

distinct vocabulary features analysis, but targeted only to those sections of addresses which were specifically addressed to women (titled, e.g. ‘An Appeal to Women’, ‘A Message to Women’, ‘To Women Voters’, etc.). This, self-evidently, allows us to drill more deeply into candidates’ specific appeals and promises to female voters.

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We begin by qualifying and expanding Pugh’s observation—that nearly two-thirds of addresses in 1918 mentioned women—with Table 6, which emphatically demonstrates the scale of the transformation of candidates’ appeals from 1906 and 1892.43 Candidates on average mentioned women (or female synonyms such as ‘lady’, ‘mother’, ‘widow’, etc.) four times as often in 1918 as 1906 and twelve times as often as in 1892.44 Table 6 also suggests similarly dramatic rises for the keywords ‘family’ and ‘children’, which—perhaps unsurprisingly—tended overwhelmingly to be used when women were mentioned (see Table 7). Perhaps the most surprising revelation from Table 6 however is the increase in references to men in 1918 (94 percent and 64 percent rises compared to 1906 and 1892, respectively). Making targeted appeals to women voters evidently did not lead to a corresponding decline of such appeals to men, but seemingly quite the reverse. A cluster analysis reveals that much of this increase can be explained by references to soldiers (e.g. ‘fighting men’, ‘brave men’, discharged men’, ‘wounded men’) which comprise 38 percent of the total mentions. However, appeals to men alongside those to women—for example, Charles Rodwell’s (Limehouse, National Party) call to ‘Men and Women Voters!! New and Old Electors!!’; Alfred Salter’s (Bermondsey West, Labour) to ‘demobilized munition workers (men and women)’; and Henry Norris’ (Conservative, East Fulham) to ‘men and women of all political views who love their country’—had increased by more than 3000 percent compared to 1906 and 1892.45 Appeals to both sexes now constituted 16 percent of mentions of men and 20 percent of mentions of women. In the domain of election addresses at least, the advent of women’s suffrage led to a gendering of electoral language in general rather than its simple feminisation. This finding certainly seems to support Thackeray, who has emphasised the political centrality of masculine, as well as feminine, voter identities in the aftermath of the Great War.46  Pugh, Women’s Movement, p. 101.  The gap between 1918 and 1906 is narrowed significantly by Labour’s high score in the latter. If Labour are taken out and the ratios re-weighted, women are mentioned six times more often in 1918 than in 1906. 45  The aggregate scores for ‘men and women’ and ‘ladies and gentlemen’, respectively, between all parties were 195 and 228 in 1918, compared to 9 and 2 in 1906, and 6 and 0 in 1892. Readings weighted to the smallest corpus size (1918). 46  Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age, ch. 8. Further research into elections in the 1920s could investigate whether this striking trend was sustained beyond after the imme43 44

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Observing that women were more frequently mentioned in 1918 does not, of course, tell us much about the changing nature of candidates’ promises and commitments to female voters. As far as content is concerned, this chapter broadly corroborates the existing analysis of Pugh, who categorises mentions of women according to policy: these being equal pay (27 percent of instances), equal suffrage (18 percent), widow’s pensions (14 percent), equal entry to the professions (13 percent), and family allowances (7 percent). Further, it also corroborates his judgement that parties tended to display ‘a pronounced tendency to select the same issues for women’.47 What is more interesting, however, is the tone and presentation of appeals, which we investigate in Table 7. As may easily be observed, almost the entire distinct vocabulary set (expanded to thirty in this instance) consists either of gendered words or terms self-evidently associated with the small list of designated ‘women’s issues’ (as Berry-Waite notes in this volume, female candidates were also expected to concentrate their attention on such issues). The minority of words on this list which do not seem to fit either description (e.g. ‘welcome’ and ‘time’) do on closer inspection also conform to type: in these instances consisting of welcomes to the franchise and banal observations that women were voting for the first time. Even the word ‘their’ is part of the same sharply essentialised nexus of appeals, which on closer inspection consist overwhelmingly of such clusters as ‘their children’, ‘their work in the factories’, and ‘their homes and families’. This seems redolent of Elizabeth Vallance’s description of the careers of female MPs in the early to mid-twentieth century where she observes that it was difficult for them to avoid being pigeon-holed into a narrow focus on child welfare, home, and family due to ‘women’s problems and concerns [being] relegated to a kind of ghetto area’.48 Indeed, Table 6 confirms that the small number of women candidates that fought in 1918 chose, or felt compelled, to anchor their addresses firmly in this ghettoised domain. While few went so far as the self-styled ‘Woman Candidate for Chelsea’ Emily Phipps, their distinct vocabulary features (compared to male candidates) consisted overwhelmingly of words from diate aftermath of the ‘khaki election’. In this volume, Matthew Johnson’s chapter notes the ongoing importance of the ex-servicemen’s interest in elections after 1918. 47  Pugh, Women’s Movement, p. 101. 48  Elizabeth Vallance, Women in the House: A Study of Women Members of Parliament (London: Athlone, 1979), p. 84.

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the same domain of language, emphasising women, children, and babies. They also, perhaps unsurprisingly, mentioned women more than four times as often as male candidates (Table 6). One interesting manifestation of women being placed in this sharply essentialised linguistic ghetto was the implicit acceptance that female voters possessed interests and concerns that male representatives would struggle to embody. It is perhaps unsurprising that women candidates themselves found it advantageous to make such claims, with Phipps arguing that ‘women are needed to…help in making the plans of the houses, for women spend more time in them than men and know where the shoe pinches’ and Edith How-Martyn (Independent, Hendon) arguing that ‘the welfare of babies and children, the age of consent, reform of the drink trade by local option, equalising the divorce and inheritance laws, the social evils of prostitution and venereal diseases - all call for women’s experience directly in legislation’. Even former anti-suffragist Violet Markham (Liberal, Mansfield) subscribed to this underlying logic, writing that ‘Women…have a great part to play in the tasks of Reconstruction, and they represent a new moral force in the electorate’. What was less intuitive, however, was how many male candidates explicitly or implicitly acknowledged limitations in their facility, as men, to represent certain interests or understand particular problems as well as a women. Henry Beamish (Independent, Clapham) suggested ‘the formation of a Women’s Association, whose Committee could generally advise me as to their desires on the large number of subjects upon which they are best qualified to judge’, whereas William Burdett-Coutts (Westminster Abbey) wrote that ‘in many departments of the great task of Re-construction their insight, experience, and sympathy, will make them invaluable guides and counsellors’ and Alfred Newbould (Liberal, West Leyton) declared that he had ‘little faith in the ideas of the responsible officials as to the requirements of the people who are to live in these houses, and am strongly in favour of securing the advice of women on these home-planning schemes’. In some cases, women voters were imbued with an almost angelic moral virtue. Dennis Herbert (Hertfordshire Watford, Conservative) looked forward to them ‘supporting sound men and measures rather than Party Programmes, and social and industrial reforms based on justice rather than on personal or class interests’, while William Mann (East Ham North, National Party) was still more forthright, writing that ‘women have a

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glorious opportunity of helping to destroy for all time the old corrupt system of party politics, and to establish a new era of honest government by British patriots’. While there was naturally a bridge between rhetorical promises and concrete actions, these examples seem to run contrary to Hilson’s rather sweeping contention that ‘for women, voting for the first time, the experience of war was constructed only in terms of their relationships to men, not in terms of their independent experiences: as the heads of households, as consumers struggling with high food prices, or as workers’.49 We turn finally to the question of party, where this chapter can report two interesting findings. The first concerns Labour, who stand in second place amongst the parties in terms of the volume of mentions their candidates made to women in 1918 (Table 6). This is interesting because, while other parties’ references to women increased by nearly 600 percent between 1906 and 1918, Labour’s increased by only 56 percent. This was in large part because of the extraordinarily high reading returned by the Edwardian party compared to its Conservative and Liberal contemporaries. This seems significant because historians, in chronicling Labour’s shifting platform, have tended to see the rise of the party’s appeal to women as largely a post-war phenomenon, with the Edwardian party prioritising a relatively narrow focus on unionised male workers.50 This analysis instead suggests that pre-war Labour—largely due to its championing of the suffrage issue—was more of a trailblazer in its focus on women than it was a masculinist holdout, and the 1918 election represented the other parties catching up with it, rather than it simply evolving in tandem with them. The second and more surprising party finding concerns the Asquithian Liberals who historians generally agree were the slowest adapters to the challenge of women’s suffrage, due not least to Asquith’s famous anti-­ suffragism. However, rather than showing the Liberals trailing other parties in mentions of women, Table 6 in fact shows them leading all their rivals (including Coalition Liberals) by an average margin of around 35 percent. This is corroborated by a comparison of the word counts of demarcated women’s sections of addresses (used to generate Table  7)  Hilson, ‘Women voters’, p. 341.  Pamela Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working Class Politics, 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 7–15. 49 50

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which reveals that Asquithians dedicated 4.84 percent of their addresses to these sections; Labour 4.55 percent; the Conservatives 1.93 percent; and Coalition Liberals 1.76 percent. To shed light on the possible reasons for this, we perform a distinctive vocabulary features analysis for these Liberal demarcated appeals to women relative to those of their opponents.51 From this—and a close reading analysis—we find that Liberal candidates were considerably more likely than their rivals to focus on equality of the sexes, with, for example, Walter Meakin (Stafford) contending that ‘women have already been given the franchise, but there ought to be equality between men and women, and equal pay for equal work’ and Oscar Frederick Maclagan (Rugby) predicting that ‘with perfect freedom and equality a natural equilibrium will ensue, and there is no fear of mischievous results’. The second particular Asquithian feature was that their candidates seem to have been around twice as likely as their opponents to mention that they had previously advocated women’s suffrage. Beddoe Rees (Staffordshire Cannock, Liberal) wrote that ‘for years I supported the demand for Votes for Women’; Willoughby Dickinson (St Pancras North) professed himself ‘a life-long advocate of’ women’s suffrage’; Henry Chancellor (Shoreditch) congratulated women on ‘obtain[ing] the Vote, for which I worked hard many years before it became popular’; while Richard Reiss (St Pancras South-East) claimed that ‘before the war I was a consistent supporter of Votes for Women, and I spoke publicly in its favour, and gave it a prominent place in my Election Address in 1910’. Overall, this analysis suggests that the Asquithians were not slow to react to the enfranchisement of women and—at least in the domain of addresses—targeted female voters more frequently than their rivals.

Conclusion This text mining analysis has produced a number of potentially significant findings which, it is hoped, demonstrate both the utility of studying election promises purely linguistically and the power and potential of using addresses both to understand them and the wider political context they were made in. It should not surprise us that promises in the elections of 51  The top fifteen distinctive vocabulary features were (1–15): ‘of’; ‘problems’; ‘and’; ‘conditions’; ‘moral’; ‘tax’; ‘children’; ‘equal’; ‘relating’; ‘women’; ‘power’; ‘Voters’; ‘whose’; ‘advent’; ‘bodies’.

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1892, 1906, and 1918 represented, much like today, a rhetorical resource which politicians used flexibly and creatively. This has led to some unexpected findings, such as this chapter’s discovery that most direct references to promises and pledges were negative, consisting of attacks on opponents’ platforms or ‘anti-promises’. Broadening analysis beyond explicitly defined promises has similarly tended to shed most light on how candidates used hard or soft commitments to position themselves and their parties, most notably with the move in 1918 (especially by the coalition) away from the bilateral ‘I’ and ‘you’ and towards the communitarian ‘we’. Studying addresses more broadly as documents which (like national manifestos) in themselves represent promissory texts is still more revealing. For the 1918 election, this chapter has detected a number of underlying trends which historians have either hinted at or failed to detect at all. It finds that the Conservatives transformed their platform, with a monolithic and relentless focus on a nationalist and superficially non-partisan appeal that played the ‘country before party’ card as strongly as it could be played. The Liberals fractured, with Lloyd-Georgites partially taking the Unionist lead and Asquithians sticking doggedly to their traditional party platform which gave candidates space to talk more personally about Liberalism. Labour candidates fell somewhere in-between, voluntarily muffling their ideological drumbeat while still sticking unashamedly to the Labour Party label and a Labour programme. The study of appeals to female voters in 1918 meanwhile has, in evidencing the feminisation of electoral language ushered in by suffrage, also discovered a gendering of electoral language in general. It has demonstrated that all parties confined women to a sharply essentialised rhetorical space, while finding—somewhat surprisingly—that Liberal candidates gave the new voters most attention and coalition candidates least. This study has been limited, of course, by its focus on addresses from just three general elections. The underlying trends it has detected may have signalled the beginning of a broader transformation of political language at the dawn of the interwar era, but only further research into elections in the 1920s and beyond can corroborate this. More broadly, only the full digitisation of the election address archive will enable the still largely untapped potential of this enormous but neglected collection—for the study of political promises and beyond—to be fully realised. Such a move will benefit all historians of British elections, but perhaps particularly

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those wishing to use text mining and distant reading to analyse multi-­ million word sources in novel ways. While the jury remains out on the broader question of the utility of these approaches as a historical methodology, this chapter submits a practical example of the positive contribution they can make: in this case to understanding politicians’ reactions to a post-war political world turned upside down.

Statistical Appendix52 All concordance analyses presented here weighted to ratios of 100,000 words per corpus subsection. All text mining is performed using Antconc: a free open-source text-analysis programme. All concordance analyses (Tables 1, 3, 4, and 6 and throughout the chapter) use ‘lemmas’ for searching, that is, they show the aggregated scores for all lexical variations of a given word (e.g. Socialist, Socialists, socialism, socialistic, etc.).

52  For an accessible introduction to text mining, see Svenja Adolphs, Introducing Electronic Text Analysis: A Practical Guide for Language and Literary Students (London: Routledge, 2006). The methods used in this chapter are discussed and defended in Blaxill, War of Words.

The ‘Woman’s Point of View’: Women Parliamentary Candidates, 1918–1919 Lisa Berry-Waite

In a 1918 election speech, the coalition candidate for Brentford and Chiswick, Colonel Grant Morden, mocked his female opponent’s candidature and declared ‘I consider a woman’s place is to rule the home…How could women be expected to deal with great business and industrial problems in the House of Commons?’ Ray Strachey who stood as an Independent candidate against Morden replied the ‘predominant questions of the future…are social questions, and in their settlement the knowledge and experience of women are particularly needed’.1 Morden’s taunt was condemned by many in the audience and the incident sparked great sympathy towards Strachey. Despite Morden’s criticism of Strachey’s sex, women candidates generally faced little criticism on the grounds of their sex, as women’s special knowledge of the home and social reform were thought to be an asset in the new political climate. Indeed, the ‘woman’s point of view’ provided an avenue for women candidates to

1

 ‘Eggs At Brentford’, The Times, 12 December 1918, p. 10.

L. Berry-Waite (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_3

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exploit as they devised and articulated their electoral promises, offering them a potential advantage against their male opponents. Strachey’s argument represents the politicisation of the domestic sphere after the First World War; Britain’s reconstruction and the peace settlement were at the forefront of politics in the 1918 General Election, with domestic issues increasingly becoming part of public life. On 21 November 1918, the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed which enabled women over the age of twenty-one to stand in parliamentary elections. Seventeen women stood in the 1918 General Election which took place on 14 December, but only Constance Markievicz was successful. As Markievicz stood for Sinn Féin, she was not prepared to take the oath of allegiance to the British crown and, in common with the other Sinn Féin MPs, refused to take her seat in the Commons. The experiences of early women MPs and their contribution to political debates and legislation have been widely explored by historians, as has the political culture of Westminster and its masculine character.2 Yet while the centenary of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act in 2018 helped put a spotlight on the first women candidates, little has been written on their parliamentary elections and the promises they made to voters. Cheryl Law’s work examines the ways in which women’s societies supported women candidates, Pamela Brookes’ Women at Westminster offers some discussion of the first women candidates’ campaigns, and the work of Martin Pugh has outlined the difficulties women candidates faced in the interwar period and the election strategies they used.3 Likewise, Julie Gottlieb has explored the election campaigns of the women who stood in

2  For works on the first women MPs, see Brian Harrison, ‘Women in a men’s house the women M.P’s, 1919–1945’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986) pp. 623–54; Richard, Toye, ‘The House of Commons in the aftermath of suffrage’, in Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye, eds., The Aftermath of Suffrage: Women, Gender, and Politics in Britain, 1918–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp.  70–86; Krista Cowman, Women in British Politics, c.1689–1979 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 113–130; Laura Beers, ‘A model MP? Ellen Wilkinson, gender, politics and celebrity culture in interwar Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 10 (2013), pp. 231–50; Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement, 1914–1959 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992); Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power: The Women’s Movement, 1918–1928 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997). 3  Law, Suffrage and Power; Pamela Brookes, Women at Westminster: An Account of Women in the British Parliament, 1918–1966 (London: Peter Davies, 1967); Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement.

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the 1918 General Election in relation to suffrage and nationalism.4 Notable candidates have received scholarly attention; June Purvis’s work has shed light on the Women’s Party and Christabel Pankhurst’s candidature.5 Nonetheless, the election addresses of early women candidates are often only briefly referred to by historians, and even then, they tend to focus on the addresses of the relatively few women who became MPs. And yet, studying the election promises of both successful and unsuccessful women candidates is crucial in providing a comprehensive understanding of women’s candidatures and the changing nature of electoral politics after the First World War. Part of the reason why limited attention has been paid to the election addresses of the first women candidates is the difficulties involved in locating all seventeen election addresses for the 1918 election. Thus, this chapter’s exploration of all seventeen addresses is the first of its kind. Instead, historians have tended to focus on literature produced by women’s organisations and press coverage of the election to explore women’s candidatures.6 By contrast, Nancy Astor’s success, becoming the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons in 1919, has attracted great historical interest.7 Nonetheless, her entry into parliamentary politics has not been sufficiently explored in relation to the seventeen women who stood before her. Women’s efforts in 1918 cannot be written off as a failure as they paved the way for Astor’s success in 1919. Although parliamentary elections remained an inherently masculine space, the first women candidates increased women’s visibility in electoral politics and helped present female political voices to a national audience.8 4  Julie V. Gottlieb and Judith Szapor, ‘Suffrage and nationalism in comparative perspective: Britain, Hungary, Finland and the transnational experience of Rosika Schwimmer’ in Ingrid Sharp and Matthew Stibbe eds., Women Activists Between War and Peace: Europe, 1918–1923 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), pp. 29–76. 5  June Purvis, ‘The Women’s Party of Great Britain (1917–1919): a forgotten episode in British women’s political history’, Women’s History Review, 25 (2016), pp. 638–65. 6  Brookes, Women at Westminster; Law, Suffrage and Power. 7  Christopher Sykes, Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor (London: Panther, 1972); Karen J. Musolf, From Plymouth to Parliament: A Rhetorical History of Nancy Astor’s 1919 Campaign (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Adrian Fort, Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012); Brian Harrison, Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists Between the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). 8  Jon Lawrence and Kit Good discuss the masculine nature of parliamentary elections and the ways in which candidates aimed to prove their ‘manliness’, both in election literature and on the public platform, see Jon Lawrence, ‘The culture of elections in modern Britain’,

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The First Women Candidates and the Political Climate of 1918 After the Representation of the People Act was passed in February 1918, which enfranchised women over the age of thirty who met a property qualification, the question arose as to whether women were now eligible to stand in parliamentary elections. Nino Boyle, a member of the Women’s Freedom League (WFL), decided to stand as a candidate in the Keighley by-election in April 1918 to shed light on the issue. Her nomination papers were refused on a technicality, but the returning officer said he would have accepted them otherwise. After partial female suffrage was granted, a number of women were selected as parliamentary candidates. Violet Markham was asked to stand as a Liberal candidate in Mansfield at the end of February, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) added Ethel Snowden and Margaret Bondfield to their list of candidates in May, and Mary Macarthur was adopted as a Labour candidate in Stourbridge in August.9 Likewise, the Common Cause reported that Edith How-Martyn was invited to stand for Hendon by the Women’s Parliamentary League in August and had already released a preliminary election address.10 With confusion mounting over the issue and a general election on the horizon, the Liberal MP Herbert Samuel introduced a resolution on 23 October 1918 to make women eligible to become MPs. He declared ‘It is in the next Parliament especially—the Parliament of Reconstruction—the Parliament which will deal with so many of these questions of home policy and social reform, that the assistance of women would be of especial advantage’.11 By drawing on women’s knowledge of the home and social reform, Samuel’s argument reinforced stereotypical gender ideals, confirming there was an expectation that women should focus on ‘women’s issues’ and not intrude on a man’s sphere of influence. The House’s response was overwhelmingly positive; The Times reported ‘Mr. Herbert Samuel had not proceeded far with the opening speech in support of the proposal before it was obvious that he was preaching to the History, 96 (2011), pp. 459–76; Kit Good, “Quit ye like men’: platform manliness and electioneering, 1895–1939′, in Matthew McCormack ed., Public Men Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 143–64. 9  Mari Takayanagi, ‘Parliament and Women, c.1900–1945’ (PhD thesis, Kings College London, 2012), p. 22; Brookes, Women at Westminster, p. 4. 10  ‘A Woman Candidate for Hendon’, Common Cause, 2 August 1918, p. 205. 11  110.H.C. Deb 5s., 23 October 1918, col.819.

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converted’.12 A subsequent resolution passed by 274 votes to 25, a result which was met with ‘an involuntary burst of laughter from the Ladies Gallery’.13 Among the women present was How-Martyn, who stood as an Independent candidate at the December 1918 election.14 Interestingly, there was no age restriction for women standing as parliamentary candidates; from the age of twenty-one women could fight seats on the same terms as men, even though women aged under thirty remained disenfranchised under the terms of the 1918 Representation of the People Act. This resulted in numerous women standing for election before they could vote themselves, over the subsequent decade. The role of party drastically diminished during and after the war when politicians stressed the need to put ‘country before the party’. The Conservatives and Lloyd George Liberals subsequently decided to fight the 1918 General Election under the coalition banner, with ‘coupon’ candidates receiving an official endorsement from David Lloyd George and Andrew Bonar Law. At the time of the Coupon Election, it was unclear whether the political parties would revert back to pre-1914 patterns of politics, as candidates and voters appeared disillusioned with the existing party system.15 The nature of electioneering post 1918 was more muted than before the war, most notably due to the enfranchisement of previous ‘non-voters’ and women’s presence as both voters and candidates.16 David Jarvis argues politics became feminised after the passing of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, with the Conservative Party ‘adapt[ing] its ideology after 1918 in line with received assumptions about female political interests’.17 All parties aimed to appeal to the new female electorate, although the Asquith Liberals were slower than their rivals in developing a coherent  ‘WOMEN AS M.P.’S’, The Times, 24 October 1918, p. 7.  Ibid. 14  Brookes, Women at Westminster, p. 6. 15  David Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age: Conservative Cultures and the Challenge of Mass Politics in Early Twentieth Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 118. 16  For more information see Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) and Jon Lawrence, ‘The transformation of British public politics after the First World War’, Past & Present, 190 (2006), pp. 185–216. 17  David Jarvis, ‘Mrs Maggs and Betty: the Conservative appeal to women voters in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 5 (1994), pp. 129–52 at p. 131. 12 13

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appeal to women voters.18 Labour’s election manifesto stated that ‘the Labour Party is the Women’s Party. Woman is the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the home’, placing women within the domestic sphere and focusing on women’s intimate knowledge of the domestic economy.19 Parallels can be drawn between this type of rhetoric and the rhetoric of earlier political controversies, such as the Edwardian free trade debate. And yet, new policies and issues replaced pre-1914 concerns that were previously seen as pressing amongst politically active women, such as Irish home rule and tariff reform.20 Seventeen women stood in 1918 across the political spectrum: five as Independents, four each for Labour and the Liberals, and one woman, Alice Lucas, stood for the Conservatives. Lucas’ candidacy for Kennington was a late addition as she replaced her husband who died three days before the election. Two women stood for Sinn Féin, Winifred Carney and Constance Markievicz, and Christabel Pankhurst stood for the newly formed Women’s Party, which derived from the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). Markievicz was in prison at the time of the election for her involvement in anti-conscription activities and wrote her election address in prison. In a letter to her sister, Eva Gore-Booth, she wrote ‘I was actually allowed a big bit of paper to write an Election Address on! I wrote one in such a hurry that it’s probably not sense!’21 Pankhurst, who stood in Smethwick, was the only woman to receive the coalition ‘coupon’, losing to her Labour opponent by just 775 votes. Despite their gender, the first women candidates were not a homogenous group. They came from different professions, classes, and party affiliations. The Common Cause wrote they held different ‘political convictions…[and] resemble each other only in the fact that nearly all of them call themselves “Independent,” and preserve a certain detachment from the party system’.22 It is not surprising that five women stood as Independents; as the suffragist Eleanor Rathbone wrote, ‘women with strong political aptitudes and interests had absorbed themselves in the 18   Gavin Freeman, ‘The Liberal Party and the impact of the 1918 Reform Act’, Parliamentary History, 37 (2016), pp. 47–63 at p. 52. 19  Dennis Kavanagh and Iain Dale eds., The Labour Party General Election Manifestos, 1900–1997 (Abingdon: Politico’s, 2000), p. 18. 20  Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age, p. 126. 21  Letter from Constance Markievicz to Eva Gore-Booth, 12 December 1918, in Constance Markievicz, Prison letters of Countess Markievicz (London: Virago, 1987), pp. 197–8. 22  ‘Notes and news’, Common Cause, 13 December 1918, p. 409.

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s­uffrage movement’ and ‘had become more or less detached from party politics’.23 Fifteen out of the seventeen women who stood for election were involved in the suffrage movement; Charlotte Despard, the Labour candidate for Battersea North, one of the founders of the WFL, included a ‘word of greeting’ to her fellow suffrage ‘sisters’ in her election address.24 Moreover, party candidates such as Markham discussed the decline of party politics in their election addresses and their desire to maintain a degree of independence.25 As the general election was set for 14 December, historians have tended to reiterate the narrative that women candidates had just twenty-three days to prepare after the passing of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act. Nonetheless, Mari Takayanagi observes that at least some women were preparing before the act passed.26 This was certainly true for Markham, Macarthur, and How-Martyn. Despite this, women candidates still had limited time to organise themselves compared to their male opponents; Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), wrote that women had little time to nurse their constituencies.27 The Birmingham Mail reported that Margery Corbett Ashby, the Liberal candidate for Birmingham Ladywood, ‘is almost a stranger to Birmingham, and after…this electoral contest, will no doubt vanish back into the unknown’.28 Her Conservative opponent, Neville Chamberlain, who had spent most of his life in Birmingham and was a member of the Birmingham City Council, observed that her candidature ‘won’t go very far’.29 Jon Lawrence has shown the importance of nursing constituencies, whereby candidates would make donations to local charities, societies, and churches in the years between elections.30 The practice of nursing disadvantaged Independent and Labour ­candidates 23  Eleanor F. Rathbone, ‘Changes in public life’, in Ray Strachey ed., Our Freedom and Its Results (London: Hogarth Press, 1936), pp. 13–76 at p. 32. Rathbone became MP for the Combined Universities in 1929. 24  ‘Extracts from election addresses of women candidates’, Common Cause, 13 December 1918, p. 416. 25  Violet Markham’s 1918 election address, DM668/2/1/1, Papers of the National Liberal Club (NLC), Bristol University Library Special Collections. 26  Takayanagi, ‘Parliament and women, c.1900–1945’, p. 22. 27  ‘The defeat of the women candidates’, Common Cause, 3 January 1919, p. 450. 28  ‘The Birmingham constituencies’, Birmingham Mail, 5 December 1918, p. 2. 29  Letter from Neville Chamberlain to Ida Chamberlain, 1 December 1918, NC18/1/192, Neville Chamberlain Papers, Birmingham University Library Special Collections. 30  Lawrence, Electing Our Masters, p. 67.

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who lacked the financial support needed to do it successfully. Furthermore, seven women in 1918 stood in unfamiliar seats they had no prior connection to, therefore the timings of this election undoubtedly hindered their campaigns, given the limited time they had to establish themselves in their respective constituencies.

Political Promises The act of promise making was an important feature in women’s election addresses and was employed in various ways. Candidates made promises on specific issues and on broader themes, such as to work in the best interest of the constituency. They came in various linguistic forms; whilst ‘I promise’ and ‘I pledge’ represented a formal promise which made candidates more accountable to voters, phrases such as ‘I will’ and ‘I shall’ offered a more ambiguous form of promise making. Women candidates pledged to support the coalition government, champion the health and welfare of children, and work for increased maternity benefits and improved housing. Nine women declared their support for the coalition government with its programme of reconstruction; six of whom promised to support the coalition which offered a greater degree of accountability. Alison Garland, the Liberal candidate for Portsmouth South, wrote ‘I pledge myself to support a Coalition Government, led by Mr Lloyd George, in the settlement of the terms of Peace and any and every measure of Reconstruction on progressive democratic lines’.31 Other women such as Eunice Murray, the Independent candidate for Glasgow Bridgeton, made a more ambiguous promise. Murray noted ‘I will do my upmost to support the Government in its endeavour to make a just and sure peace and in its programme of social reform and industrial development’.32 Such promises show that women’s willingness to support the coalition government was based on their commitment to Britain’s reconstruction and future peace settlement. Even Millicent Hughes Mackenzie, the Labour candidate for the University of Wales, wrote ‘I should give my most hearty support to the Government in securing a just and lasting peace…and proper provision for those who have suffered in the defence of their country’. Although Mackenzie’s candidature was ‘supported by the Central  ‘Extracts from election addresses of women candidates’, Common Cause.  Eunice Murray’s 1918 election address, DM668/2/1/1, NLC.

31 32

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Labour Party’, her support for the coalition government demonstrates the ongoing appeal of the rhetoric of ‘country before party’ at the 1918 election.33 Promises made by the coalition government were reiterated by candidates; Markham and Janet McEwan, the Liberal candidate for Enfield, highlighted the government’s promise to trade unions to restore pre-war working conditions. The former noted that ‘the Prime Minister’s pledge to the Trade Unions as regards the restoration of pre-war conditions must be fulfilled in letter and spirit’.34 In March 1915, the Treasury Agreement was established by Lloyd George who persuaded trade union leaders to agree to suspend trade union regulations for the duration of the war. This allowed factories to maximise their outputs and enabled unskilled and female labourers to work in areas previously classed as skilled.35 Macarthur’s election address included the subheading ‘THE REDEMPTION OF PLEDGES’. Under this heading she stated: ‘Promises made by the Government must be kept. They must not be regarded as mere scraps of paper, as in the past. Nothing has reflected more discredit on our Statesmen than their disregard of promises’.36 One can infer here that the promise to trade unions was amongst these government promises she referred to. Macarthur’s rhetoric towards promises demonstrates her alienation towards politicians in the past who had failed to keep their promises and is reflective of a wider suspicion amongst her contemporaries with the act of promise making. Her ‘mere scraps of paper’ comment is a reference to Lloyd George’s 1914 Queen’s Hall landmark speech, in which he aimed to recruit civilians into the army and justify the war by utilising Liberal values.37 Norah Dacre Fox, the Independent candidate for Richmond, similarly referred to the throwaway nature of promises: ‘May I remind you that all the promises of reconstruction and the building up of the future of our 33  Millicent Mackenzie’s 1918 election address, D/79, Sir John Herbert Lewis Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. 34  Violet Markham’s 1918 election address, NLC. 35  Gerry R.  Rubin, ‘Law as a bargaining weapon: British Labour and the restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 925–45 at p. 927. 36  Mary Macarthur’s 1918 election address, Box 18, Reel 8, Gertrude Tuckwell Papers, Trade Union Congress Library Collections, London Metropolitan University. 37  ‘British honour: stirring speech by Mr. Lloyd George’, The Times, 20 September 1914, p. 3.

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national life, which are being so freely talked of by the party politicians, is mere political jargon’.38 Women’s organisations, such as the NUWSS, had long warned women voters against believing all the promises made by politicians. Given that several Conservative and Liberal MPs voted against measures for partial female enfranchisement, despite stating their support for votes for women at meetings and in their election addresses, the NUWSS decided to support Labour candidates after 1912, due to the party’s unequivocal commitment to universal suffrage. Fox’s distrust of party politics was also evident in her decision to stand as an Independent. Before the war, she was a militant suffragette who was imprisoned three times for her activities and went on hunger strike. Thus, her alienation towards party politics was to be expected. Given the distrust often associated with promises, the emergence of anti-promises came about. An anti-promise, as defined by Luke Blaxill in this volume, is when one promises not to do something. Markievicz, who stood for Dublin St Patrick’s, was the only woman to use an anti-promise in her election address in 1918, although this feature was employed more by women from 1922 onwards. She assured readers: ‘I will not follow the usual foolish precedent of making promises. Rather I say “Use your brains” and judge me. You’ve know me for a long time now, what I stand for and how far I would go for my principle’.39 Her reference to foolish promise making aimed to make a mockery of the Irish politicians who had believed Home Rule would be achieved through lawful means, who made promises they could never keep. By using an anti-promise, Markievicz set herself apart from these ‘untrustworthy’ politicians, who broke promises, and instead emphasised her past record and integrity to appeal to voters. Her reference to how far she would go for her principle refers to the death sentence she had received for her involvement in the Easter Rising (although this was commuted to life imprisonment due to her sex). By asking the electorate to ‘use your brains’, she passed on a level of agency to voters, suggesting they themselves could change the future of Ireland, and not just politicians. Interestingly, women made more promises (both formal and ambiguous promises) and discussed the act of promise making far more than their 38  Norah Dacre Fox’s 1918 election address, D/MAR/4/80, Catherine Marshall Papers, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle. 39  Postal Censorship, 4th Report, 1–15 December 1918, 12 December 1918, CO 904/164, The National Archives (TNA), London.

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male counterparts. Twelve out of the seventeen women referred to promises in their election addresses, ten of whom made promises to voters. As 1918 was the first time women could stand for parliamentary election, women candidates’ greater propensity to discuss promises may have been a function of their status as outsiders and need to gain credibility. Given the novelty of a woman candidate, women’s pledges to support the coalition government added a sense of security to their candidature and reassured voters of their intentions if successful. Parallels can be drawn between women’s outsider status and Labour’s adoption of a more pragmatic programme in 1918  in the form of Labour and the New Social Order.40 Labour’s leaders became increasingly concerned that the party needed to be seen as ‘fit to govern’ and appeal to non-traditional Labour voters, if it wanted to form a government.

Women’s ‘Special Knowledge’ and Justification for Standing Women justified their candidatures by drawing on gender ideals; they argued the ‘woman’s point of view’ was needed in Parliament on matters concerning women and children. Traditional gender roles legitimised this approach by drawing on women’s role in the domestic sphere and reinforced the notion that women possessed different characteristics and knowledge to men, particularly on the home and social reform. Garland spoke of women’s ‘special point of view in such questions as the upbringing and protection of children; the maintenance of a equal moral standard for men and women; the housing of the people; the formation of a Ministry of Health, and national Education’.41 She reiterated her intention to represent the ‘woman’s point of view’ in her election meetings and spoke of her life long dedication to women’s suffrage.42 Likewise, Murray stated ‘I am convinced that the country will benefit inestimably by the representation of the women’s point of view in Parliament’.43 Strachey boldly declared ‘I make no apology for asking you to vote for a woman. Women

40  Matthew Worley, ‘Introduction’, in Idem. ed., The Foundations of the British Labour Party (London: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1–12 at p. 4. 41  ‘Extracts from election addresses of women candidates’, Common Cause. 42  ‘The Portsmouth elections’, Hampshire Telegraph, 29 November 1918, p. 3. 43  Eunice Murray’s 1918 election address, NLC.

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have their contributions to make to public thought and public service’.44 Parallels can be drawn between these statements and the view of Herbert Samuel; both drew on gendered rhetoric surrounding women’s special knowledge to support the idea that they should play a more prominent political role. Samuel’s previous reference to women’s assistance in the politics of reconstruction is echoed by Emily Frost Phipps, the Independent candidate for Chelsea, who also drew on the idea that the ‘woman’s point of view’ needed to be represented in parliament. On the topic of ex-­ servicemen, her address read ‘We need women’s sympathetic consideration in the treatment of discharged and disabled soldiers’ and sailors’.45 Thus, social and cultural norms concerning women’s roles and caring nature were used to justify women’s candidatures, as candidates argued that politics had evolved to include a ‘woman’s sphere’, and thus the need to be represented in parliament. The concept of the ‘woman’s point of view’ was not new; it had long been used to justify women’s involvement in local government. In 1907, the Qualification of Women (County and Borough Councils) Act became law which allowed women ratepayers to contest borough and county council elections. Women’s knowledge of social reform and philanthropic experience on Poor Law and education boards were thought to be an asset, particularly as councils were now responsible for infant welfare, public health, housing, education, midwifery, and mental hospitals, issues that were seen as stereotypical female concerns.46 Local government was seen as an extension to women’s domestic role, as such issues became more prominent in political debates, blurring the boundary between the private and public sphere. The joint election address of Miss E. Fox and Captain C. J. Vasey who stood for West Marylebone in the 1913 London County Council election stated that ‘the Council has many branches of work which need a woman’s help. The care of women in asylums, of children in residential schools; the administration of the Midwives’ Act…are amongst those on which the cop-operation of women is necessary’.47 The gendered  ‘Mrs. Oliver Strachey’s election address’, Common Cause, 29 November 1918, p. 393.  Emily Frost Phipps 1918 election address, DM668/2/1/1, NLC. 46  Patricia Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 392–3. 47  Miss E. Fox and Captain C. J. Vasey’s 1913 London County Council election address, DM668/2/3, NLC. 44 45

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rhetoric emphasises the ways in which women candidates, both in  local and parliamentary elections, utilised their feminine qualities to justify their candidatures. Curiosity surrounded the outcome of the election and whether electorates would vote for a woman. The Grantham Journal called the election a ‘constitutional experiment’ and even Markham acknowledged it was a ‘new experiment to return women to Parliament’.48 Given the novelty of a female candidate, women placed great emphasis on their past record and decision to stand for election in their election addresses, highlighting to voters they were qualified to be MPs and possessed the relevant political knowledge needed to undertake such a role. Including a short biography of oneself was a common feature for both male and female candidates. Women’s previous experience and knowledge was emphasised and typically centred around candidates’ gendered public work. Thirteen women referred to their past record in their election addresses. Corbett Ashby informed voters that ‘as a Poor Law Guardian, Member of [an] Education Committee, Food Control Committee, etc., she knows the needs of men, women and children’.49 By referring to men’s interests also, this statement pushed against the boundaries of gendered representation to a certain extent. Nonetheless, Ashby’s biography also highlighted her maternal and domestic role: ‘Mrs. Ashby has one son born during the war. She likes cooking, embroidery, and household management, and has travelled all over Europe’.50 This combined with the image on the front of her election address where she was pictured with her son reinforced women’s roles as home-makers and child-rearers. Furthermore, Ashby’s stated interest in household management reinforces the notion that women, unlike male candidates, held a detailed understanding of the domestic economy which would benefit parliament. McEwan dedicated a long paragraph to her public work, stating ‘she has served on the Ladies’ Committee of the Enfield Cottage Hospital and is Chairman of the Children’s Care Committee and of the Maternity Centres Committee’.51 Such experience highlighted women’s supposedly ‘innate’ characteristics of compassion and selflessness. 48  ‘The women candidates’, Grantham Journal, 14 December 1918, p. 7; Violet Markham’s 1918 election address, NLC. 49  Margery Corbett Ashby’s 1918 election address, DM668/2/1/1, NLC. 50  Ibid. 51  Janet McEwan’s 1918 election address, D/MAR/4/80, Catherine Marshall Papers, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle.

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To a degree, party and class influenced the type of political experience women candidates gained prior to standing for election. Two out of the four Labour women who stood, Hughes Mackenzie and Macarthur, along with the two Sinn Féin candidates, Markievicz and Carney, had backgrounds in the trade union movement. This contrasted with the public work undertaken by Liberal and Independent women, with its focus on ‘doing good’ in the local community. Such work tended to be undertaken by middle and upper class women, who had both the time and financial security to do so. There was of course some overlap, the Independent candidate Phipps was the former president of the National Federation of Women Teachers (NFWT), which supported her candidacy. Macarthur, a prominent trade unionist, who founded the National Federation of Women Workers in 1906, said she intended to voice the interests of women workers ‘to whose cause I have been privileged to devote my life’.52 Nonetheless, although Macarthur championed working-class rights and fully supported the Labour Party’s manifesto, she was not working class herself. Working-class women did not begin to stand for election until the 1920s, although it is often difficult to define exactly who was working and middle class in this period.53 Carney who stood for Belfast Victoria is a prime example; Senia Pašeta describes Carney as lower-middle class, although ‘she identified with workers…[and] knew “as much about the spinning room as anyone”, she has “never worked in one”’.54 Carney referred extensively to her past record in her election address and her involvement in the Easter Rising. In a direct appeal to voters, she said ‘they will remember that my convictions, and the profession and practice of my convictions, are the same as those of their champion and my friend, the murdered James Connolly, who died for their sake’.55 Connolly was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising and a prominent figure in Irish republican circles. Carney had worked as Connolly’s private secretary and  Mary Macarthur’s 1918 election address, London Metropolitan University.  Margaret Bondfield was the first working-class woman to stand for election; she first stood as a Labour candidate in a 1920 by-election in Northampton. Although Phipps was the daughter of a coppersmith, it is difficult to define her as working class given her university education and successful career as a headteacher. 54  Senia Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 164. 55  ‘Bolshevik election address’, The Voice of Labour, 21 December 1918, The 1916 Relatives Association, p. 330. 52 53

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they became close friends. By invoking the memory of his actions, she may have hoped to harness support for her candidacy given the prejudice she faced as a woman. Belfast Victoria was a Unionist and Labour stronghold, and she received very little support from Sinn Féin. Although Carney tried to enlist friends of Connolly to support her, very few did due to her gender. The intersections between party, class, and gender, although visible in 1918, did not become prominent until Britain entered the 1920s, most notably as 1918 was seen as the ‘Women’s Election’. Female candidates encountered difficulties over their competing loyalties, particularly Labour women, who were expected to prioritise their party and class over their gender if they wanted to succeed within the Labour movement.56 Women candidates’ family connections played a prominent role in their election campaigns, particularly male relatives. Three women in 1918 stood in seats previously contested by a male relative, Lucas and McEwan stood in seats previously contested by their husbands and Markham stood in place of her late brother. Markham’s election address referred to the bereavement: ‘it is under the shadow of a great personal sorrow that at the request of his friends I have come forward as a candidate for the position he once filled’.57 These family connections offered a familiarity and credibility to voters, particularly at a time when women candidates were seen as outsiders. Thus, family networks played an important role in creating political opportunities for women. Seven women referred to either a male relative or an established male figure known to the electorate in their election addresses. Corbett Ashby included an image of her husband in military uniform on the back of her election address, with the slogan, ‘A Soldier’s Wife for Ladywood’, and highlighted that she was the daughter of a former MP.58 Harnessing the support of prominent male figures added a level of seriousness to women’s campaigns, given it was reported ‘the electorate does not take them as seriously as they take themselves’.59 Whilst Pankhurst did not refer to a male relative, the entire back page of her election address included a message from Smethwick’s town councillor Mr. Kesterton. He referred to ‘the work of yourself and your talented Mother 56  See Pamela Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Karen Hunt and June Hannam, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London: Routledge, 2002). 57  Violet Markham’s 1918 election address, NLC. 58  Margery Corbett Ashby’s 1918 election address, NLC. 59  ‘Notes and comments’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 13 December 1918, p. 6.

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during the War, [which] has been of the most valuable service to the Country’ and stated that both he and his soldier son would be voting for Pankhurst.60 Referring to prominent male figures helped to legitimise women’s candidatures and enabled them to appear less threatening to voters. This tactic, also apparent in local elections, is not surprising given the first women MPs inherited their seats from their husbands, with Brian Harrison referring to this practice as ‘male equivalence’.61

‘Women’s Issues’ There was an expectation that women candidates should focus on ‘women’s issues’, given their experience and knowledge on such matters. Herbert Samuel in his parliamentary speech in favour of women MPs noted ‘the politics of the future will more and more centre around the home, and that on these matters women are particularly qualified to speak’.62 The politicisation of the home was caused by a multitude of factors. During the First World War, and the immediate post-war years, Britain saw the growth of the co-operative movement, buoyed by its success in securing food rationing in 1917. The co-operative movement drew closer to the Labour Party during the war, which itself expanded beyond the concerns of its existing unionised male, working-class support base. For example, Labour was at the forefront of efforts to secure rent controls in several cities from 1915 onwards. Labour and the New Social Order outlined four key areas: securing a minimum standard of living for all, the public ownership of industry, revolutionising the country’s finances, and providing equality of opportunity.63 Its focus on social welfare aimed to broaden the party’s appeal to include the new female electorate. The war helped to solidify the state’s role in providing social welfare, leading to the passing of the 1918 Education Act and 1919 Housing Act. It is not surprising that welfare and the economy were the most prominent issues discussed in both male and female candidates’ election addresses, given welfare initiatives were linked to Britain’s recovery after 60  Christabel Pankhurst’s 1918 election address, LBY K. 93/1777, Imperial War Museum (IWM), London. 61  Harrison, Prudent Revolutionaries, p. 79. 62  110 H.C. Deb 5s., 23 October 1918, col.822. 63  Matthew Worley, Labour Inside the Gate: A History of the British Labour Party Between the Wars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 65–6.

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the war. Whilst women did focus on stereotypical female concerns, including food taxes, international peace, women’s rights, public health, education, suitable housing, and the welfare of children, male candidates also addressed such issues in their election addresses. The notion of ‘women’s issues’ assumed that male and female concerns were different, when in fact many of these issues directly impacted men too. Male candidates recognised that such issues were vital in rebuilding Britain after the war and were also important in appealing to the new female electorate. Nonetheless, women candidates’ rhetoric and approach to such issues differed from their male counterparts. For example, on the issue of housing, Pankhurst went into great detail on why housing affected women in particular. She argued ‘as a Woman Member of Parliament, I shall, if elected, give special attention to the Housing Question, because, as every woman knows, a good home is the foundation of all well being’.64 Likewise, Macarthur called for a million new houses to be built and declared ‘I DO NOT APOLOGISE FOR MY SEX. It takes a man and a woman to make THE IDEAL HOME…In the new Parliament, where laws affecting every household in the land will be framed, the point of view of THE MOTHER, AS WELL AS THE FATHER, should find expression’.65 Such statements support the notion that there was a distinct female language of politics. Women’s political language and commitment to such issues were based on their gendered life experiences and priorities. Thus, female candidates used gendered rhetoric to widen their political sphere of interest, aided by the election address which created a space for women to frame these arguments. Alongside references to ‘women’s issues’ were specific appeals directed at women voters; Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, the Labour candidate for Manchester Rusholme, included a special letter to women voters on the back of her election address. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and her husband, Frederick, were close friends of the Pankhursts and deeply involved in the WSPU; however, in 1912 they were ousted from the organisation over their disagreement with its more extreme form of militancy. Pethick-­ Lawrence called for ‘better houses, better food, pure milk, a public service of health, provision of midwives and also pensions for widowed

 Christabel Pankhurst’s 1918 election address, IWM.  Mary Macarthur’s 1918 election address, London Metropolitan University.

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mothers’.66 Despite her commitment to socialism, she recognised that many women voting for the first time may have never aligned themselves with a political party. Her address stated: ‘women, whether you belong to any of the political parties or whether you belong to none, let the election in the Rusholme Division be the women’s election’.67 This was a brave stance to take considering this appeal was not separate to her election address, but on the back where both male and female voters could see it. International peace was intrinsically linked with femininity as women were seen as ‘the world’s ‘natural pacifists’. Julie Gottlieb notes that ‘[m]uch hope was invested in women to heal a world profoundly wounded by a war…and to remake the world in their own feminine image and as an alternative to male aggression’.68 Pethick-Lawrence wrote in her autobiography that she accepted the Labour invitation to stand for election as it was an opportunity ‘to explain publicly the reasons why I believed that the only chance of permanent peace in Europe lay in a just settlement after the war’, but her position was nonetheless in keeping with other Labour candidates.69 The general election was characterised by slogans such as ‘Hang the Kaiser!’ and ‘Make Germany Pay!’, sparked by Lloyd George’s promises for German reparations in the peace settlement.70 As seven of the women candidates had been involved in working for peace and stood on a pacifist platform, it is no surprise that only Pankhurst received the coalition coupon.71 Although male candidates advocated peace, most women saw their commitment to peace through a feminine lens. How-Martyn noted in her address that she enthusiastically supported the League of Nations as ‘[w]omen especially should be insistent on this question. It would indeed be a worthy entrance into political life to make the world safe for their children’.72 By drawing on women’s supposed maternal instincts, How-­ Martyn not only justified her support for the League of Nations, but she 66   Emmeline Pethick Lawrence’s 1918 election address, D/MAR/4/80, Catherine Marshall Papers, Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle. 67  Ibid. 68  Julie V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 13. 69  Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World (London: Hyperion Press, 1938), p. 322. 70  Ibid. 71  Law, Suffrage and Power, p. 117. 72  Edith How-Martyn’s 1918 election address, NLC.

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framed foreign affairs, an issue that was previously seen as masculine, in a way that would appeal to women voters. As Helen McCarthy notes, ‘[b]y invoking women from the outset, the [League of Nations] helped to ensure that foreign affairs would be central to the “feminisation” of political life which took place after 1918’.73 This reinforced the idea that women’s voices were not only important on issues within the domestic sphere but also on matters on an international scale. Whilst the majority of women candidates expressed their support for international co-operation through the League of Nations, four women took a more aggressive and nationalistic stance; they called for a victorious peace and harsh demands to be placed on Germany. Pankhurst portrayed herself as a patriotic candidate who championed a ‘Victorious Peace’ and declared ‘the Germans must pay for the War’.74 Likewise, Lucas argued for ‘the Germans to pay the full cost of the war…[and] The Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and guilty Hun officials to be brought to trial’.75 This shows that not all women saw peace in conjunction with their feminine values, whilst women candidates tended to focus on international co-operation and the League of Nations, their relationship with peace was more nuanced. Those who advocated a just peace settlement encountered rough receptions during their election campaigns. They were criticised for their supposedly pro-German views; Strachey’s ‘meetings were disrupted and she was “greeted with hisses and cat calls”’.76 Similarly, Pethick-Lawrence in Rusholme ‘found war fever at its height’. Ironically, she said, it was the soldiers who supported her, not the women voters who ‘were all for “going over the top” to avenge their husbands and their sons’.77 Nonetheless, male candidates equally faced such prejudices for holding pacifist views. There was in fact little explicit hostility against women candidates from the electorate on the grounds of their sex. The overall response to ‘women candidates was said to be courteous and sympathetic’, although public opinion was as yet largely unable to accept women candidates as viable voting options.78

73  Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c. 1918–45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 183. 74  Christabel Pankhurst’s 1918 election address, IWM. 75  ‘Kennington election’, Lincolnshire Echo, 16 December 1918, p. 3. 76  Law, Suffrage and Power, p. 117. 77  Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, p. 323. 78  Brookes, Women at Westminster, p. 12.

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Such were the difficulties women faced in standing for parliament that the Liverpool Daily Post ran a story summarising their election results under the headline ‘WOMEN CANDIDATES FAIL’. 79 Curiosity surrounded Markievicz’s success as the only woman elected at the general election. The London editor of the Manchester Guardian wrote to the Home Secretary after the election and asked if Miss Evelyn Isitt, a representative of the newspaper, could visit Markievicz in prison. The letter stated that it was ‘not with the idea of interviewing her on political matters, but because she is the first woman in the British Isles to be elected to Parliament. The request is an unusual one, but the occasion is unprecedented’.80 Although the request was declined, it shows the interest that surrounded the first woman MP and her circumstances at the time.

Success in Plymouth for Nancy Astor Less than a year after the 1918 General Election, Astor won a Plymouth Sutton by-election for the Conservative Party, becoming the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. Astor was an unlikely first woman MP; known for her witty and outspoken nature, she was neither involved in the suffrage movement, nor was she British, but American. Her second husband Waldorf Astor was MP for Plymouth Sutton from 1910, but in 1919 he was elevated to the House of Lords after the death of his father, the first Viscount Astor. As a result, Astor was persuaded to stand for election by Waldorf, acting as a ‘warming pan’ whilst he tried to renounce his peerage and return to the Commons. Initially, the local constituency association was reluctant to select Astor as the Conservative candidate as they believed a woman would lose the seat, a common issue women candidates encountered. Furthermore, they questioned her suitability and whether she was a ‘fit and proper person’ for the job, reiterating the idea of acceptability with regards to women’s candidatures.81 However, it was agreed that if Astor was to stand as a ‘warming pan’, she would make an acceptable candidate. As an American divorcee who had married into the wealthy Astor family in 1906, Astor  ‘Women candidates fail’, Liverpool Daily Post, 30 December 1918, p. 5.  Letter from James Bone, London editor of Manchester Guardian to the Home Secretary, 30 December 1918, HO 144/1580/316818: Ireland: Activities of Countess Markievicz, TNA. 81  Fort, Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor, p. 160. 79 80

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was a celebrity figure and social hostess. She held a unique position which aided her election success in contrast to the women who stood in 1918. As part of the political establishment, she understood the election and parliamentary process and was established in political circles, as she later remarked ‘I knew nearly everybody’.82 From assisting Waldorf in his election campaigns, she was able to build a relationship with the electorate prior to her election campaign and was knowledgeable on constituency affairs. Her wealth and Conservative affiliation also aided her election success, given the Labour Party was still relatively new and the Liberals were in decline. Astor released her election address on 3 November 1919 and presented herself as a respectable and local figure, who understood the needs of the constituency. Similarly to the women who stood in 1918, she emphasised her past record and public work to appeal to the electorate, noting ‘During the war I worked for the soldiers and sailors, and their wives and children, as well as all the others who were serving at home and abroad’.83 Astor wrote ‘I believe I know the real Plymouth, its children and women, and its social problems better than any of the other candidates’.84 This highlighted her commitment to the city and her special knowledge of ‘women’s issues’. She also spoke of ‘the special responsibility which, under the circumstances, would rest upon me as regards Plymouth, womankind, and my husband’s past work’ if she was elected.85 Astor was conscious of the implications of her election if she was successful and the landmark it would be in history. Although she claimed not to be a sex candidate, it was unavoidable that she would become one. It is not surprising that she referred to Waldorf’s past work, as she was able to portray herself as a loyal wife by continuing his work in parliament. Although Astor drew on gender ideals in her election address, she challenged society’s perceptions of what a woman should be like through her electioneering, which was far from conventional. When interrupted by a heckler, she exclaimed ‘Don’t give me any of your sass. I shall come right down there to you. What you fellows want is to stop yelling and get to 82  BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour interview with Nancy Astor, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01lfw2p, 1956. 83  Nancy Astor’s 1919 election address, BRO/1, Ernest Brown Papers, Parliamentary Archives, London. 84  Ibid. 85  Ibid.

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work’.86 Her informal style puzzled a British society who were not used to the political elite acting in such a way; let alone from a woman. There were different expectations for British and American women which enabled Astor to get away with her outspoken behaviour. Such incidents were regularly reported in the press, the Common Cause in 1919 wrote ‘her jokes and her quickness of repartee are the delight even of her opponents, and her immense personal popularity is everywhere obvious’.87 Karen Musolf attributes Astor’s success to her rhetorical skills and ability to develop ‘an identifiable public persona’, although she acknowledges Astor’s political and economic advantages.88 Given Astor’s election address was only one page long and much of it was dedicated to her past record and decision to stand for election, little attention was paid to the political issues of the time. She noted that she intended ‘to work for the Peace, Progress and Prosperity of the Country’, key themes in the 1918 coalition manifesto, and intended to pay particular attention ‘to National Efficiency and Economy which women above all understand’, once again highlighting women’s stereotypical capabilities of managing household budgets.89 Comments on efficient spending were typical of the time given the increasing focus on anti-waste politics and the establishment of the Middle Classes Union in 1919. Similar to party candidates who stood in 1918, Astor did not refer to herself as a Conservative in her election address given the non-party atmosphere, but told the press she was a general supporter of the coalition. She polled more than her Liberal and Labour opponents combined and despite initially standing as a ‘warming pan’, she remained an MP until 1945.

Conclusion The 1918 Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act had a profound effect on British politics, but has often been overshadowed in historical memory by the 1918 Representation of the People Act. By granting women the right to be MPs, the act enabled women to directly influence parliamentary debates and voice their own views, instead of being represented by men. Although women’s entrance into the House of Commons was slow,  Fort, Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor, p. 166.  ‘Notes and news’, Common Cause, 14 November 1919, p. 389. 88  Musolf, From Plymouth to Parliament, p. 148. 89  Nancy Astor’s 1919 election address, Parliamentary Archives. 86 87

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they faced a magnitude of challenges which contemporaries did not fully acknowledge. The seventeen women who stood in 1918 cannot be written off as a failure as they paved the way for Astor’s success in 1919. They were the first of their kind and proved women were capable of standing for parliamentary election, a space they had previously been excluded from. Although it would be a long time until women candidates were accepted by the electorate and public opinion, the first women candidates instigated this change by simply standing. This examination of the election addresses of female candidates has illustrated how women presented themselves to the electorate and justified their candidatures. It has also addressed the issues they focused on and how they interacted with political promises. The first women candidates carved out a gendered space for themselves through their intention to represent the ‘woman’s point of view’, their gendered rhetoric and emphasis on ‘women’s issues’. The notion of women’s ‘special knowledge’ of the home and social reform provided an avenue for women candidates to utilise, meaning there was no real rejection of women candidates, or explicit hostility against them on the grounds of their sex. Women’s lived experiences and the political, economic, and social barriers they had encountered encouraged female candidates to champion policy issues that would have a positive and practical impact on women’s daily lives. Given the rushed and disorganised nature of the 1918 General Election, it is probable that a number of women candidates, most notably Pankhurst, would have polled better if they had had sufficient time to campaign. Nevertheless, none of the seats women stood for were classed as winnable and all of the women candidates bar Pankhurst faced couponed coalition opponents, which hindered their chances of success. Strachey, Corbett Ashby, and Garland stood in subsequent general elections without success and Markievicz was elected to the first Dáil Éireann in 1919. Other women continued their work in trade unionism, local government, and education and played a significant role in the interwar feminist campaigns. What would have happened if Pankhurst had been the first woman MP to take her seat and not Astor? Astor’s election to parliament represented a new era for women in politics, as she said herself, she ‘left the door wide open’ for other women to follow.

‘A Fighting Man to Fight for You’: The Armed Forces, Ex-Servicemen, and British Electoral Politics in the Aftermath of Two World Wars Matthew Johnson

Modern Britain has conventionally been regarded as a nation of ‘civilian’ political norms. In contrast to states such as Wilhelmine Germany before the Great War, or the militarised and authoritarian regimes which proliferated across much of Europe later in the twentieth century, Britain has been seen as a polity in which the armed forces were firmly subordinated to the constitutional authority of Parliament, and in which political movements organised around the values and aesthetics of war and martial aggression have been confined to the electoral margins.1 However, the 1  All references to NLC or CPA refer to election addresses unless otherwise stated. Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.  44–73; Stuart Ball, ‘Mosley and the Tories in 1930: the problem of generations’, Contemporary British History 23 (2009), pp. 445–59; Julie Gottlieb, ‘Britain’s new fascist men: The aestheticization of brutality in British fascist propaganda’, in Julie Gottlieb and

M. Johnson (*) Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_4

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parliamentary elite in Britain has never been a purely ‘civilian’ entity. Military and naval officers have maintained a sizeable presence in both Houses of Parliament since the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and never has this presence been larger than during the twentieth century.2 Unprecedented numbers of serving or recently demobilised soldiers, sailors, and airmen stood as parliamentary candidates in the general elections of 1918 and 1945. More than 250 were elected in 1918 alone, and ex-­ servicemen remained one of the best represented ‘occupational’ groups in the House of Commons throughout the decades following the world wars.3 Drawing on printed election addresses, the local and national press, and an assortment of other sources, this chapter explores the ways in which these service and ex-service politicians constructed their appeals to voters during and after the world wars. It examines the promises they made to different electoral constituencies and the more performative and presentational ways in which they sought to attract popular support, focusing in particular on how the self-fashioning of soldiers and ex-serviceman as parliamentary candidates evolved in response to changing popular attitudes towards war, military service, and martial masculinity. * * * The most immediately striking feature of the cohort of military veterans who sought to enter Parliament in the aftermath of the world wars is its diversity. Service and ex-service candidates spanned the ideological spectrum and could be found in every party. The Conservatives, who had long boasted links with the armed forces, fielded the largest cohort of ex-­service MPs during the inter-war years: between 113 and 221 were returned at every inter-war general election.4 But the decade following the end of the Thomas Linehan eds., The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 83–99. 2  Two hundred and sixty-four sitting MPs undertook service in the armed forces during the Great War, and 165 did so during the Second World War; see Matthew Johnson, ‘Leading from the front: the “service members” in parliament, the armed forces, and British politics during the Great War’, English Historical Review, 130 (2015), pp. 613–45; Andrew Thorpe, Parties at War: Political Organization in the Second World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 61; Strachan, Politics of the British Army, pp. 26–35. 3  Times, 20 January 1919. 4  Richard Carr, Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics in the Aftermath of the Great War: The Memory of All That (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 50.

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Great War also saw more than 100 ex-servicemen elected as Liberal MPs, and more than 150 members of forces stood as Liberal candidates in the 1945 election. Almost one-fifth of the new intake of Labour MPs in 1945 were servicemen.5 Service and ex-service candidates also stood as independents, and on behalf of new and minor parties such as the Silver Badge candidates, who stood in the 1918 election with support from the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers (NFDSS), and Common Wealth, which contested a series of by-elections against the Churchill coalition during the Second World War.6 These candidates included enlisted men and senior officers, long-serving professional soldiers, and wartime volunteers and conscripts. By 1945 they included women as well as men. They counted among their ranks backbenchers and cabinet ministers, including every man to hold the office of Prime Minister between 1940 and 1963, although many ex-service candidates never made it to Westminster at all. One thing that these candidates shared, regardless of their party affiliation, was a willingness to appeal directly for the votes of their comrades from the armed forces. In the general elections of 1918 and 1945 many candidates published special election addresses for distribution among serving soldiers, sailors, and airmen.7 Even those who did not take this step invariably dedicated a paragraph or more of their constituency addresses to soliciting the votes of members of the forces. Similar appeals were directed to ex-servicemen in electoral contests throughout the inter-­ war period and the years after 1945. Service and ex-service candidates used these addresses to promise to protect the interests of those who had fought for their country. Some committed themselves to advocating for specific reforms to pay, conditions of service, or the provision of benefits after demobilisation.8 Others merely pledged in general terms to protect  Thorpe, Parties at War, p. 84.  S.R. Ward, ‘The British veterans’ ticket of 1918’, Journal of British Studies, 8 (1968), pp. 155–69. 7  See, for example, the following election addresses: G. Howard, Westbury, 1918, National Liberal Club (NLC) papers, University of Bristol Special Collections, DM668/2; A.R.W. Low, Blackpool South, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.69; R. Robinson, Blackpool South, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.73; J.  Benn, Bradford North, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.94; G.J.M.  Longden, Conservative, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.43; J.  Beattie, Wolverhampton West, 1945, PUB229/8/8, fol.71, all Conservative Party Archive (CPA), Bodleian Library, Oxford. 8  L. Caplan, Hammersmith North, 1945, PUB229/8/1, fol.53; D. Moore, Manchester Moss Side, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.27; H.J. Hare, Romford, 1945 PUB229/8/7, fol.28; E.K. Martell, Mid Bedfordshire, 1945, PUB229/8/9, fol.8, all CPA. 5 6

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the wellbeing of soldiers and ex-servicemen, typically couching this in the emotive but vague language of securing ‘justice’ or a ‘fair deal’ for those who had served, or to resist the erosion of benefits already granted. In 1922, for example, many ex-service candidates vowed to resist the abolition of the Ministry of Pensions, which the government was rumoured to be contemplating.9 Of course, generalised declarations of support for service and ex-­ servicemen were widely repeated by parliamentary candidates of all stripes, including those who had not themselves undertaken military service. What set service and ex-service candidates apart from their civilian peers was the promise that they would act in the House of Commons not simply as advocates, but as delegates for members and former members of the armed forces. Candidates who had fought in the world wars presented themselves as possessing first-hand knowledge of the hopes, fears, and needs of voters who had served in the forces, and thus as uniquely qualified to give voice to their concerns in Parliament.10 As Major John Neal, the National Liberal candidate for Wansbeck, put it in 1922, ‘the cause of the Ex-Service man … is my own cause’.11 Some prospective MPs adopted informal labels such as ‘the ex-serviceman’s candidate’ in addition to their formal party affiliation, and many more emphasised their membership of ex-­servicemen’s organisations such as the NFDSS or the British Legion, seeking to persuade Britain’s military veterans that ‘their interests will be safer in the hands of one of themselves than in those of any other’.12 Underpinning these appeals was an assumption that members of the forces and ex-servicemen constituted a discrete ‘interest’ within the electorate, bound by a shared identity and a coherent set of political priorities. However, as the basis for a strategy of electoral mobilisation, this assumption proved highly questionable. Some candidates certainly claimed that it

9  G.G.  Jones, Bethnal Green North East, 1922, PUB229/2/1, fol.14; K.  VaughanMorgan, 1922, PUB229/2/1, fol.42; O.S.  Locker-Lampson, Handsworth, 1922, PUB229/2/3, fol.32; S.  McDonald, Edinburgh East, 1922, PUB229/2/16, fol.22, all CPA. 10  L.  Caplan, Hammersmith North, 1945, PUB229/8/1, fol.53; J.  Gross, Streatham, 1945, PUB 229/8/2, fol. 45; A. Moody, Birkenhead West, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.27, all CPA. 11  J. Neal, Barnsley, 1923, PUB229/3/1, fol.8, CPA (italics added). 12   J.P.  Dickie, Consett, 1929, DM668/2, NLC; M.  Archer-Shee, Peckham, 1924, PUB229/4/1, fol.25; J. Doran, Hanley, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.92, both CPA.

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yielded results at the ballot box.13 Yet there is little evidence that service or ex-service voters systemically favoured candidates who had worn uniform. The voting intentions of the armed forces represented a source of anxiety for all parties in 1918. Even the Conservatives, who had supported the extension of the franchise to all members of the forces during the Great War, expressed concern about the potential susceptibility of discharged servicemen to propagandist appeals by ‘Bolshevist sections’ of the Labour Party.14 In the event, turnout among voters from the forces in 1918 proved distinctly underwhelming, an outcome attributed by contemporaries variously to apathy on the part of soldiers and a failure by election authorities to ensure that men serving abroad received their ballot papers in good time.15 The ex-service vote proved, if anything, still more difficult to mobilise during the two decades following the Great War. The fundamental problem, as John Horne has noted, was that veterans of the 1914–1918 conflict constituted a coherent group ‘only in the sense that they shared an experience of war’.16 Moreover, even this ‘shared’ experience was in practice highly variegated, for example, between volunteers and conscripts or those who had served in different theatres. As ex-servicemen were reintegrated into civilian society their collective identity was further diluted within a broader range of overlapping peacetime identities, organised around familiar categories of class, religion, and place. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many election agents concluded that efforts to mobilise the ex-­ service vote as a discrete electoral constituency during the inter-war years were likely to prove futile.17 There is some evidence of a more coherent forces vote in 1945.18 As has often been remarked, this vote tended to the left, a consequence, it is 13  J.M.  Kenworthy, Sailors, Soldiers and Others. An Autobiography (London: Rich & Cowan, 1933), p. 150. 14  Conservative Agents’ Journal (1919), pp. 124–5; Nigel Keohane, The Party of Patriotism: The Conservative Party and the First World War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp.  133–7; Stuart Ball, ‘The Conservative Party and the impact of the 1918 Reform Act’, Parliamentary History, 37 (2018), pp. 23–46 at p. 25. 15  Conservative Agents’ Journal (1919), pp. 127–8. 16  John Horne, ‘Between cultures of victory and cultures of defeat? Inter-war veterans’ internationalism’, in Julia Eichenberg and J.P. Newman, eds., The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 210. 17  Liberal Agent, January 1920, p. 35; October 1920, p. 7. 18  As in 1918, this was on a comparatively low turnout: R.B.  McCallum and Alison Readman, The British General Election of 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 43, 153.

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claimed, of the comradeship, social cohesion, and collectivist (or at least anti-individualist) impulses fostered by the British experience of the Second World War.19 The wartime ‘political awakening’ within the forces was given shape and focus (though, despite Conservative suspicions, it was probably not actively conjured up) by military education schemes organised by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs.20 Again, however, there is little evidence that military voters substantially favoured candidates from the forces; most of the service vote in 1945 almost certainly went to Labour, despite the fact that the Conservatives boasted more candidates in uniform.21 Parliamentary candidates who had served in the world wars thus failed to systematically mobilise the service or ex-service vote, even in 1918 and 1945. However, the electoral pledges delivered by these candidates were not all directed at their comrades from the forces; they were also intended for a wider and more diverse audience of voters. The promises offered to this wider electorate were concerned less with what the candidates intended to do in Parliament than with what they would bring to Westminster. Prospective MPs presented their wartime service records as evidence of the values which would guide their behaviour in public life, promising, in effect, to bring the qualities of the fighting forces into Parliament.22 An association with the forces was frequently used to emphasise a candidate’s patriotism, honesty, and moral steadfastness. In 1918 Private Frank Gray presented himself to the voters of Watford as ‘Gray the Soldier: The man who will not barter his conscience for votes’.23 In Bootle in 1922 Major James Burnie promised to champion a return to ‘honest’ politics, implicitly drawing a contrast between the assumed moral directness of the soldier and the supposed duplicity of the civilian politician.24 In Kensington South in 1945 Flight-Lieutenant Francis Beaufort-Palmer

19  Jonathan Fennell, Fighting the People’s War: The British and Commonwealth Armies and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 634–5. 20  Fennell, Fighting the People’s War, pp.  635–9; J.  A. Crang, ‘Politics on parade: army education and the 1945 general election’, History, 81 (1996), pp. 215–27. 21  Fennell, Fighting the People’s War, p. 644; Thorpe, Parties at War, p. 84. 22  R.H. Hobart, Sheffield Hillsborough, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.59, CPA. 23  Election poster for Frank Gray, Watford, 1918, PST12185, Imperial War Museum (IWM), London. 24  J. Burnie, Bootle, 1922, PUB229/2/3, fol.59, CPA.

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promised voters, ‘I will keep faith with you’, noting that ‘from my work in the RAF I know what mutual faith and trust mean’.25 It was also common for candidates to deploy their war records as evidence of their energy, vigour, and ability to achieve results. More than a decade after the Great War, Captain Walter Dingley was still drawing on his service record in order to demonstrate to the voters of Warwick and Leamington that he was ‘a practical man  – not merely a maker of idle promises’.26 This rhetoric was particularly popular during the 1945 election, when many candidates invoked their war service in an attempt to claim the persona of the ‘man of action’.27 Colonel Alan Mais appealed to the voters of Orpington as ‘A fighting man’ who ‘is eager now to do a constructive job in peace’.28 Flight-Lieutenant Frederick Truman urged voters to elect ‘A Fighting Man to Win the Peace!’29 Lieutenant Adrian Liddell Hart presented himself to the voters of Blackpool South simply as ‘A Fighting Man to Fight for You’.30 Such appeals represented, in part, an attempt to present an idealised martial masculinity as a qualification for political office.31 This was embodied in a form of electoral politics which was performative and presentational as much as it was promissory. The portrait photographs of service and ex-service candidates which adorned the front covers of their election addresses almost invariably depicted the prospective MP in uniform. These images represented a simple and effective means of communicating a candidate’s military credentials to the dramatically expanded electorate in 1918. In Horsham and Worthing, for example, all 44,000 electors received a copy of the Earl Winterton’s address, fronted with a photo of the candidate in his Major’s uniform.32 Significantly, this visual device was widely used not only in the ‘khaki’ election of 1918 and the wartime contest of  F.N. Beaufort-Palmer, 1945, PUB229/8/1, fol.74, CPA.  W.L. Dingley, Warwick and Leamington, 1929, PUB229/5/3, fol.74, CPA. 27  H. Young, Harrow West, 1945, PUB229/8/4, fol.98; F. Sykes, Nottingham Central, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.67; E. Marples, Wallasey, 1945, PUB229/8.8, fol.18; J.J. Over, Wembley South, 1945, PUB229/8/8, fol.40, all CPA. 28  Daily Mirror, 7 June 1945. 29  F.C. Truman, Lincoln, 1945, PUB229/8/5, fol.82, CPA. 30  A.L. Hart, Blackpool South, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.75, CPA. 31  David Jarvis, ‘The Conservative Party and the politics of gender, 1900–1939’, in Martin Francis and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska eds., The Conservatives and British Society, 1880–1990 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 172–93 at pp. 183–4. 32  West Sussex County Times, 7 December 1918. 25 26

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Fig. 1  Maurice Alexander election address (Liberal, North Norfolk), 1924, NLC, DM668

1945, but for much of the 1920s (e.g. Fig. 1).33 These photographic representations were particularly useful because, under King’s Regulations, members of the armed forces were prohibited from wearing their uniforms when canvassing or on the hustings.34 In practice, however, this prohibition was not always enforced. In Mossley in 1918 the Coalition 33  Although still common in the general elections of 1922, 1923, and 1924, photographs of candidates in uniform were deployed far less frequently in addresses in the 1929 contest. Yet they had not disappeared completely; C.  Rudkin, Portsmouth South, 1929, PUB229/5/3, fol.10, CPA. 34  110.H.C. Deb. 5 s., 12 November 1918, cols.2479–80.

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Liberal candidate Austin Hopkinson addressed election crowds while dressed in his uniform as a trooper of the Royal Dragoons.35 In Dewsbury the Unionist candidate Colonel Pickering spent polling day parading the streets of the constituency in uniform and mounted on a charger.36 Military candidates also engaged in more conventional ‘manly’ displays at election time, including robust exchanges, sometimes extending to physical confrontation, with hecklers at public meetings. At one meeting in 1922, Captain Robert Gee, the Conservative MP for Woolwich who had won the Victoria Cross during the Great War, responded to a taunt from the audience by removing his coat and dashing into the crowd to tackle the heckler, prompting the meeting to descend into a free fight.37 As Jon Lawrence has observed, such displays from the platform were viewed with remarkable indulgence by the press, despite (or perhaps because of) heightened anxieties about popular ‘rowdiness’ at political meetings in the aftermath of the war.38 Of course, it was not only ex-service candidates who engaged in this sort of behaviour at election meetings.39 Nor were ex-service candidates always able to successfully master a hostile crowd. In October 1924 the Liberal MP for Barnstaple, Captain Tudor Rees, was forced to abandon a meeting after being shouted down by ‘rowdies’ in the audience; as he was being escorted to his car, Rees was pelted with projectiles and white powder.40 Nevertheless, a service record was typically regarded by the press as conferring a degree of authority on candidates on the stump. Beyond the familiar rituals of the hustings, some ex-service politicians found more unusual ways of performing their martial manliness. In 1923, two MPs who had served in the Great War–the Oxford Liberal Frank Gray and Captain Charles Ainsworth, the Conservative MP for Bury–took part in a widely-publicised walking race from Banbury to Oxford in full infantry kit, with rifle and pack.41

 Liverpool Echo, 11 December 1918.  Birmingham Daily Post, 16 December 1918. 37  Western Gazette, 10 November 1922. 38  Jon Lawrence, ‘The transformation of British public politics after the First World War’, Past and Present, 190 (2006), pp. 185–216, at p. 213; Carr, Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics, pp. 55–6. 39  See, for example, the confrontation between the music hall entrepreneur Walter de Frece and a heckler at a meeting in Ashton-Under-Lyme: Yorkshire Post, 11 November 1922. 40  Birmingham Daily Gazette, 25 October 1924. 41  Tamworth Herald, 1 September 1923. 35 36

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How effective was this performative electoral politics? One recent study has argued that the fielding of Great War veterans as parliamentary candidates formed a vital element in the Conservatives’ establishment of something approaching electoral hegemony during the inter-war period. The war, it is argued, had a profound effect on gender politics in Britain. ‘Manliness was in, effeteness out’, and the Conservatives recognised the electoral implications of this earlier and more comprehensively than their Liberal and Labour rivals. As a result, they were, it is claimed, uniquely successful at tapping into ‘the psychology of the masses who … lusted after heroes from a glorious past’.42 There is at least some truth to this. Certainly, the Conservatives were particularly keen to juxtapose an emphasis on the military service records of their parliamentary candidates with attacks on the supposedly ‘unmanly’ character of pacifists and conscientious objectors on the Labour and Liberal left. Conservative propaganda during the 1920s often depicted Ramsay MacDonald as an unattractive female figure.43 Similar attacks on the masculinity of Labour candidates were a feature of the 1945 general election. In Liverpool Walton, the Conservative Reginald Purbrick urged voters: ‘If you want a MAN to represent you, vote for me! If you want a CONCHIE PARTY HACK – sorry, I can’t oblige’.44 However, we should be careful about extrapolating too far from such examples, or accepting uncritically the narrative of a militarised, masculine Conservative Party sweeping its ‘effeminate’ opposition before it. As has already been noted, service and ex-service candidates hailed from all parties during this period. While the Conservative Party fielded the largest cohort of service and ex-service candidates over the two decades following the Great War, politicians from other parties were just as willing to invoke their Great War service records as evidence of their ‘manly’ virtue and their suitability for a parliamentary career.45 In 1945, moreover, it was not  Carr, Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics, pp. 47, 53–5.  Jarvis, ‘The Conservative Party and the politics of gender’, p. 184. 44  R. Purbrick, Liverpool Walton, 1945, PUB 229/8/6, fol.1, CPA. Purbrick had been too old to serve in the Second World War, but his election address featured photographs of his sons in military uniform. His Labour opponent, James Haworth, had applied for exemption from military service during the Great War and had been imprisoned. However, the ‘conchie’ label was not enough in 1945 to prevent Haworth from taking the seat which Purbrick had held continuously since 1929. 45  In addition to Frank Gray, James Burnie, and other Liberals already noted here, see, for example, J.E.B. Seely, Ilkeston, 1918, and A.E. Glassey, East Dorset, 1929, both DM668/2, 42 43

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the Conservatives but the Liberal Party who were able to boast the highest proportion of candidates in uniform.46 At the same time, it is important not to overstate the extent to which Conservatives framed (or regarded) martial prowess as the pre-eminent qualification for political office. Public performances of ‘manliness’ were hardly a novelty in British electoral politics at the conclusion of the Great War. On the contrary, displays of platform machismo had been a vital element in late Victorian and Edwardian electioneering, while the sheer physical ordeal of campaigning across large (especially rural) constituencies had been regarded as a test of a candidate’s endurance and character.47 Kit Good has drawn attention to a number of different ‘models’ of political manliness, rooted in a range of class and vocational identities, which were available to parliamentary candidates during the decades before 1918. These included not only the soldier-hero but the businessman and local employer, the ‘youthful champion’, elevated in manners and appearance, and the honest man of modest means, able to signal empathy for constituents in times of economic hardship.48 These established models of political manliness were not simply swept away by the Great War. Even in the ‘khaki’ election of 1918, local Conservative associations did not invariably regard the soldier as the ideal type of candidate, with some expressing a strong preference for ‘an educated business man’.49 Despite widespread wartime hostility to ‘profiteers’, many Conservative candidates continued to emphasise their business credentials as evidence of their suitability for political office.50 Guy Radford NLC; Election poster for Captain H. Higgins, Oxford, 1918, PST12200, IWM. 46  A fact which Liberals were quick to emphasise: B.  Wigoder, Bournemouth, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.86; J.M.  Toulmin, Preston, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.10; P.  Dew, Walthamstow East, 1945, PUB 229/8/8, fol.27; E. Dorman-Smith, Chester Wirral, 1945, PUB229/8/9, fol.60; T.R. Hill, Camborne, 1945, PUB229/8/9, fol.66, all CPA. 47  Kit Good, ‘“Quit ye like men”: Platform manliness and electioneering, 1895–1939’, in Mathew McCormack ed., Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 143–64 at pp. 144–7. 48  Good, ‘Quit ye like men’, pp. 152–61; On the construction and performance of a similar array of gendered identities within Parliament, see Ben Griffin, ‘Masculinities and parliamentary culture in modern Britain’, in Christopher Fletcher, Sean Brady, Rachel E. Moss, and Lucy Riall eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe (London, 2018), pp. 403–33. 49  Keohane, Party of Patriotism, pp. 127–8, 176. 50  For hostility towards profiteers see Jean-Louis Robert, ‘The image of the profiteer’, in Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert eds., Capital cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin,

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presented himself to the electors of North-West Camberwell ‘as a Business Man, who has the real interest of all classes at heart’; in East Leyton, Ernest Alexander put himself forward as ‘a business man’ who would see to ‘the business of the nation’.51 Stanley Baldwin, the political leader who more than anyone set the tone for the inter-war Conservative Party, comfortably inhabited the persona of the ‘modern businessman’ (as well as the pig-farming Worcestershire countryman of popular caricature).52 Indeed, as David Thackeray has argued, the Conservative Party of the early twentieth century, and especially in the years following the Great War, self-­ consciously embraced a culture of masculine politics which was ‘peaceable’ and ‘orderly’ rather than overtly militaristic.53 During the Second World War, Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook sought to encourage the adoption of more war heroes as Conservative candidates, but their efforts brought them into conflict with Conservative Central Office and with local Conservative Associations who often had one eye on the advantages offered by a candidate who could contribute towards their own election expenses.54 Of course, the experience of war did much to reorder hierarchies of social esteem in Britain, elevating certain conceptions of masculinity and diminishing others. Candidates who lacked a military service record sometimes felt moved to offer excuses or explanations as to why they had not worn uniform, especially in the elections of 1918 and 1945. Some pointed out that they had been too old to serve, or had attempted to enlist but been turned down on medical grounds.55 Others noted that they had sons or other relatives in the forces, or even that they had lost close family 1914–1919 (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997–2007), i. pp. 104–32; Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp.  136–47; Christine Grady, ‘“Avarice” and “Evil Doers”: profiteers, politicians, and popular fiction in the 1920s’, Journal of British Studies, 50 (2011), pp. 667–89. 51  G.  Radford, Camberwell North-West, 1918; E.  Alexander, Leyton East, 1918, both DM668/2, NLC. 52  Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 82, 189–90, 213–15. 53  David Thackeray, ‘Building a peaceable party: masculine identities in British Conservative politics, c. 1903–1924’, Historical Research, 85 (2012), pp. 651–73. 54  Thorpe, Parties at War, pp. 26, 248–50. 55   J.  Lort-Williams, Rotherhithe, 1918; C.F.  White, West Derbyshire, 1918, both DM668/2, NLC; K. Horne, Wimbledon, 1945, PUB229/8/8, fol.63; G. Newsom, West Dorset, 1945, PUB229/8/10, fol.36, both CPA.

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members who had been killed while serving their country.56 Walter Womersley’s address to the electors of Grimsby in 1945 included a photograph of his uniformed son, who had been killed in action, and an appeal from his wife to the women voters of the constituency: ‘As a woman who has lost her only son (John) in this terrible war, fighting for freedom, I appeal to every woman in this constituency to work and vote for my husband’.57 Such declarations offered a means of laying claim to a form of patriotism by proxy, but they also highlight the complexities within, and the tensions between, the wartime moral economy of service to the nation and the emotional economy of bereavement and loss.58 Despite their obvious resonance, attempts to frame military service as a qualification for election to Parliament did not always go unchallenged. Some critics, while paying tribute to the armed forces, argued that a service record was not something which a dignified candidate ‘ought to hawk about in a political campaign, and trade in exchange for votes’.59 In Rotherhithe in 1918 the Conservative candidate, John Lort-Williams, complained bitterly about the way his Liberal opponent, Hubert Carr-­ Gomm, had sought to exploit his war service for electoral gain. Lort-­ Williams accused Carr-Gomm of ‘avoid[ing] the great National Issues and engag[ing] in personalities’, and pleaded with voters: ‘cannot we be left to appreciate his “fighting” services without having them screamed at us from every poster?’ Interestingly, Lort-Williams successfully countered the Liberal candidate’s martial posturing by embracing an alternative model of political masculinity–that of the working man–and portraying his opponent as a ‘Ground Landlord and Lord of the Manor’.60 Politicians who had served in administrative or staff positions within the forces, rather than on the front lines, sometimes came in for particular criticism when seeking to highlight their service records at election time. In 1918 the Liberal candidate Charles White was careful to remind the voters of West Derbyshire that his Conservative opponent could boast only a ‘HOME SERVICE RECORD, in the War Office, London’, and that they should not therefore feel any obligation to support him as ‘a  H.W. Peel, Bradford South, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.98, CPA.  W. Womerlsey, Grimsby, 1945, PUB229/8/4, fol.87, CPA. 58  Lucy Noakes, ‘Gender, grief, and bereavement in Second World War Britain’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 8 (2015), pp. 72–85. 59  Burnley Express, 4 Dec. 1918. The criticism was levelled by the Labour candidate in Burnley, Dan Irving. 60  J. Lort-Williams, Rotherhithe, 1918, DM668/2, NLC. 56 57

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soldier’.61 The former Liberal cabinet minister Sir John Simon, who had served in the Royal Flying Corps on the staff of General Trenchard during the Great War, was mocked by critics for invoking his war service during the Spen Valley by-election in 1919. Newspapers sympathetic to his Coalition opponent accused Simon of having shirked the dangers of the firing line and now seeking to present himself as a soldier despite having waged war only in ‘an advisory capacity’.62 Complicating this picture further is the fact that popular attitudes towards war and military service did not remain constant over the course of the twentieth century. This had important implications for the social esteem enjoyed by members of the armed forces and, more broadly, for understandings of masculinity in British electoral politics. The Great War, at least in its opening stages, has often been seen as reinforcing an essential division between masculine (combatant) and feminine (non-combatant) roles in British society, and enhancing the prestige attached to a military uniform.63 But the encounter with industrialised warfare has also been widely regarded as provoking a ‘crisis’ in conventional notions of ‘heroic’ masculinity.64 As the 1920s progressed the triumphant mood of 1918 gave way to a sense of popular disillusionment with the war, and to an anxiety that the sacrifice of those who had fallen in the service of their country had been ‘futile’.65 One corollary of this trend was that military veterans were increasingly viewed by wider British society not only with admiration but

 C.F. White, West Derbyshire, 1918, DM668/2, NLC.  Press cuttings relating to Spen Valley by-election (1919), John Simon papers, MS Simon 152, fol.52, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 63  Margaret Randolph Higonnet and Patrice L.R.  Higonnet, ‘The double helix’, in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel and Margaret Collins Weitz eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 31–48. 64  Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Michael Roper, ‘Between manliness and masculinity: the “war generation” and the psychology of fear in Britain, 1914–1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 343–62; Martin Francis, ‘The domestication of the male? Recent research on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British masculinity’, Historical Journal, 45 (2002), pp. 637–52 at pp. 640–41; Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Inter-war Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 12–30. 65  For a recent critique of the ‘disillusionment’ school, see Gregory, The Last Great War, pp. 271–3; Rosa Maria Bracco, Merchants of Hope: British Middle-brow Writers and the First World War (Providence: Berg, 1993). 61 62

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with sympathy or even pity.66 Alison Light has argued that the ‘anti-heroic mood’ which seemingly pervaded inter-war Britain was manifest in a realignment of sexual identities, and in a broader redefinition of ‘Englishness’ itself. Compared with its Victorian and Edwardian forms, the Englishness of the 1930s was ‘less imperial and more inward-looking, more domestic and more private  – and, in terms of pre-war standards, more “feminine”’. The masculine ideal in this new order was not the warrior but ‘the little man’–‘the suburban husband pottering in his herbaceous borders’.67 The outbreak of the Second World War threw this new cultural configuration into flux once again. This was a new type of war, one in which personal danger, sacrifice, and loss were shared between the battlefront and the home front to a far greater extent than in 1914–1918. Roles such as fire-fighting during the Blitz and service in the merchant marine which braved the U-boat menace offered alternative models of masculine heroism outside the armed forces, while the process of wartime industrial mobilisation also reinvigorated older traditions of working-class masculinity.68 As Sonya Rose has observed, the hegemonic masculinity of the Second World War combined ‘two contradictory masculinities  – one exemplified by the soldier-hero, and the other generated from the anti-­ heroic mood of the inter-war period’, now reinforced and re-fashioned in opposition to the ‘hyper-masculine German other’. To perform this masculinity successfully, Rose argues, ‘men had to be in uniform’.69 Yet the correlation between war service, masculinity, and fitness for a ­parliamentary 66  J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), pp. 31–75; Samuel Haynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Pimlico, 1992), p.  215; Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 67  Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 8; Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 1–2. 68  Linsey Robb, Men at Work: The Working Man in British Culture, 1939–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 76–135; Lucy Noakes, ‘“Serve to save”: gender, citizenship and civil defence in Britain 1937–1941’, Journal of Contemporary History, 47 (2012), pp. 734–53 at pp. 751–2. 69  Sonya Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain 1939–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 195; Jessica Hammett, ‘“It’s in the blood, isn’t it?” The contested status of First World War veterans in Second World War civil defence’, Cultural and Social History, 14 (2017), pp. 343–61.

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career was further destabilised during the Second World War by the very conspicuous phenomenon of women in uniform.70 In this complex and shifting context, what is perhaps most striking about the electoral strategies adopted by ex-servicemen seeking to enter Parliament is just how nuanced and mutable their performative masculinity proved to be. Rather than clinging to a static model of martial masculinity, many of these candidates sought to incorporate their military credentials into a broader and overlapping web of gendered, professional, regional, and generational identities. Some used their military service to demonstrate their local connections or roots within a constituency, adopting labels such as the ‘Local Service Candidate’, or emphasising their wartime membership of a local regiment.71 Others embraced the dual identity of the British serviceman as a ‘citizen soldier’ by emphasising both their martial credentials and their ability to conform to alternative, civilian models of masculinity. In 1918 Alfred Raper pitched his appeal to voters in Islington East both ‘as a Soldier to Soldiers’ and ‘as a Business Man to Business Men and Women’.72 Lieutenant-Colonel John Norton-Griffiths, whose military career in Africa and Europe spanned more than two decades, presented himself to the voters of Wandsworth not only as a soldier but as a ‘level-headed Business Man’ (and well-paying employer).73 Algernon Moreing, who had previously sat as MP for Buckrose, introduced himself to his new constituency of Camborne in 1922 both as ‘an ex-Service man’ and as ‘a Mining man’ who wished to see ‘the old prosperity of Cornish Mining revived’.74 Some candidates offered a visual representation of their dual civil—military identity in their printed election addresses by including photographs of themselves both in khaki and in civilian attire.75 70  On the complexities of gender politics in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and Women’s Royal Naval Service, see for example, Gerard J. de Groot, ‘“I love the scent of cordite in your hair”: gender dynamics in mixed anti-aircraft batteries during the Second World War’, History, 82 (1997), pp.  73–92; Tessa Stone, ‘Creating a (gendered?) military identity: the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in Great Britain in the Second World War’, Women’s History Review, 8 (1999), pp. 605–24. 71  M.  Anderson, Balham and Tooting, 1918; H.  Webb, Forest of Dean, 1918, both DM668/2, NLC; J.M. Toulmin, Preston, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.10, CPA. 72  A.B. Raper, Islington East, 1918, DM668/2, NLC. 73  J. Norton-Griffiths, Wandsworth, 1918, DM668/2, NLC. 74  A.H. Moreing, Camborne, 1922, DM668/2, NLC. 75  F. Gray, Watford, 1918; G. Locker-Lampson, Wood Green, 1918, both DM668/2, NLC.

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Over the course of the 1920s, as ambivalence over the memory of the Great War deepened, both the meaning and the relative importance which parliamentary candidates sought to attach to their military service records evolved. This was evident in particular in the ways in which war wounds were represented and discussed. Evidence of physical wounds was rarely visible in the portrait photographs of candidates published in election addresses.76 Aspiring MPs frequently did, however, mention having been wounded in action when discussing their war experiences. In 1918, these wounds were typically used as physical markers of a candidate’s patriotism and willingness to brave the rigours of war. In South East St Pancras the Liberal candidate Lieutenant Richard Reiss mentioned having received two wounds while serving in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia as evidence that he had ‘done my bit’ during the war, reminding his audience that he was ‘The Only Soldier Candidate’ in the constituency.77 By the mid-1920s, however, the quality most strongly associated with a war wound was no longer patriotism or physical courage, but empathy, for the disabled veterans who had been let down by the government’s failure to honour its pledge to build a land fit for heroes. In 1924 Captain James Henderson-­ Stuart, the Liberal candidate for Derby, declared that, as ‘a wounded ex-­ Service man myself, I claim to understand something of the feelings and needs of my comrades, and I promise, if elected, to do all in my power to secure for them the justice of treatment which they so greatly deserve’.78 Wounds were also increasingly associated with a determination to avoid any repeat of the Great War, and with pacifist sentiment or a commitment to the cause of the League of Nations. In 1935 the Conservative candidate Sydney Hill promised the electors of Birkenhead East that ‘as an ex-­ serviceman who will feel the effects of my wounds throughout my life, I can assure you that there is no greater opponent of war than myself’.79 The ‘anti-heroic’ mood of the inter-war years was thus acknowledged and internalised even by those politicians who had served in the forces. By the 1930s, while parliamentary candidates still frequently identified themselves by their wartime rank, military uniforms had fallen out of use almost 76  One example was the Stourbridge Conservative MP Douglas Pielou, who had been severely wounded in the Battle of Loos in 1915. Pielou’s 1923 election address was fronted with a photo of the candidate in civilian dress but wearing military medals and on crutches, DM668/2, NLC. 77  Richard Reiss, South East St Pancras, 1918, DM668/2, NLC. 78  J. Henderson-Stewart, Derby, 1924, DM668/2, NLC. 79  S.J. Hill, Birkenhead East, 1935, PUB229/7/3, fol.15, CPA.

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entirely in printed election addresses. Despite having won the Military Cross, the Labour MP James Milner made no mention of his war service in his 1935 address, preferring instead to present himself simply as ‘A Leeds Man for Leeds!’80 Candidates who wished to demonstrate a more dynamic masculinity were as likely to do so through reference to their peacetime pursuits as by invoking their military service. Malcolm Campbell devoted more of his 1935 election address to his hobbies of motor racing and exploration than to his record during the Great War.81 Many of the visual and rhetorical military tropes which had characterised the general election of 1918 were resurrected in 1945. Uniforms once again became ubiquitous in printed election addresses, and candidates enthusiastically sought to present their service records as evidence of their fitness for political office. However, the ways in which these tropes were deployed differed in several important respects from the precedent which had been established at the end of the Great War. In the patriotic discourse which provided the context for the ‘khaki’ election of 1918, the experiences and contributions of the home front had been largely marginalised, while those of the armed forces were celebrated.82 This allowed parliamentary candidates who had worn uniform to invoke a sense of moral obligation or debt when appealing for the electoral support of civilian voters, women in particular, who had supposedly been kept safe by the heroic efforts of Britain’s soldiers, sailors, and airmen.83 During the Second World War, however, the experience of the Blitz (already in the process of becoming mythologised) meant that the rhetorical and physical markers of courage, patriotism, and sacrifice, including serious wounds and war injuries, were no longer the sole preserve of the armed forces. By 1945, a civilian parliamentary candidate such as Barnett Stross, who had worked during the war as a lecturer for the Ministry of Food, could declare: ‘I know what it means to lie buried and wounded with my face over a broken gas main, and a friend burning to death beneath my feet’.84 In this context, many candidates from the forces presented their service records, not as expressions of an exceptional form of heroic patriotism but as extensions of the collective contributions and sacrifices of British society as a  J. Milner, Leeds South East, 1935, PUB229/7/3, fol.15, CPA.  M. Campbell, Deptford, 1935, PUB229/7/1, fol.28, CPA. 82  Mary Hilson, ‘Women voters and the rhetoric of patriotism in the British general election of 1918’, Women’s History Review, 10 (2001), pp. 325–47. 83  A.H. Burgoyne, Kensington North, 1918; G. Gaunt, Leek, 1918, both DM668/2, NLC. 84  B. Stross, Hanley, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.93, CPA. 80 81

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whole. Commodore Augustus Agar, who had won the Victoria Cross during the Russian Civil War and spent three and a half years on active naval service during the Second World War, described himself as ‘privileged to share the common danger’ of war with the civilian voters of Greenwich who had braved the German Blitz.85 As has already been noted, the wartime blurring of the distinction between the battlefront and the home front was accompanied by a (limited) erosion of gender distinctions within the armed forces. The general election of 1945 was the first in Britain in which women serving in the armed forces offered themselves as parliamentary candidates. Like their male counterparts, these women used the imagery of military service, including uniforms, in their election addresses.86 However, they tended not to present their wartime service as a rejection of conventional gender norms. The Liberal candidate for Chelmsford, Hilda Buckmaster, who had served in the W.R.N.S. during both world wars and now held the rank of Chief Officer, presented herself as a candidate ‘who has practical knowledge of such domestic questions as housing, overcrowding, and the standard we require for the equipment of the Home, including water laid on, bath, w.c., a real LARDER, and a shed’.87 To some extent, the rhetorical and performative politics of military service in 1945 were generational as much as they were gendered. Forces candidates, and especially those seeking election for the first time, often framed their military service in terms not of masculinity but of youth, something which distinguished them from the members of ‘our now rather elderly Parliament’, most of whom had not faced the electorate for a decade.88 ‘Youth’ carried obvious connotations of vigour and vitality.89 But it could also be invoked as evidence of political independence. Young candidates from the forces, when introducing themselves to voters, often crafted narratives of a political awakening while on active service. Some presented the war as a radicalising experience; in Bromley the twenty-­ eight-­year-old Major Jaspar Sayer remarked that ‘after nearly six years of war I find myself in revolt against world society as we know it’.90 Others  A.W.S. Agar, Greenwich, 1945 (italics added), PUB229/8/1, fol.42, CPA.  P. Warner, Cheltenham, 1945, PUB229/8/4, fol.32, CPA. 87  H. Buckmaster, Chelmsford, 1945, PUB229/8/10, fol.62, CPA. 88  E. Marples, Wallasey, 1945, PUB229/8/8, fol.18, CPA. 89  J.R. Bevins, Liverpool West Toxteth, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.9; J. Haire, Wycombe, 1945, PUB229/8/9, fol.30; A. Fletcher, Macclesfield, 1945, PUB229/8/9, fol.51, all CPA. 90  J. Sayer, Bromley, 1945, PUB229/8/4, fol.19, CPA. 85 86

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claimed that war service had solidified pre-existing but vague instincts into coherent political conviction. As Lieutenant Gorley Putt informed the electors of Torquay: Before the war I was a Liberal by instinct, but like most people I concentrated on my own job and left politics to the professional politicians of Left and Right. These gentlemen eventually made it impossible for any of us to concentrate on our own jobs. During the war, as a seaman in a destroyer and later as an officer engaged in special Admiralty duties, I thought hard and long about the political background to the war and the prospects for peace. Long and hard thought confirmed my Liberal faith.91

Such narratives served multiple purposes. They helped to distance a candidate from negative associations with the career politician or the party machine, while simultaneously legitimising their politics as being rooted in lived experience rather than abstract thought or rigid dogma. With their emphasis on rejuvenation and their rejection of a political establishment dominated by an older generation, they also fed into a popular sense of the radical potential of the 1945 election as a moment of ‘democratic’ transformation. Indeed, it is striking, in comparison with 1918, how many candidates in 1945 emphasised the fact that they had served in the ranks rather than as officers, even if they had received commissions during the course of the war.92 In many respects, the various rhetorical uses to which military service records were put by parliamentary candidates in this period–as signifiers of patriotism, masculinity, local identity, political independence, or youth– echoed an earlier, more Victorian model of electoral politics, with its patchwork of local political cultures and the emphasis placed on the ‘character’ and local reputation of individual politicians.93 However, the framing of autobiographical narratives of political awakening in the armed forces also reflected the ways in which service records were increasingly used not simply to enhance the appeal of individual candidates but to  S.G. Putt, Torquay, 1945, PUB229/8/10, fol.21, CPA.  L. Gassman, Hastings, 1945, PUB229/8/5, fol.6; J.R. Bevins, Liverpool West Toxteth, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.9, both CPA. 93  Lawrence, ‘Transformation of British public politics’, pp.  186–8, 196; Kathryn Rix, Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England, 1880–1910 (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 172–98; uke. Blaxill, ‘Electioneering, the Third Reform Act, and political change in the 1880s’, Parliamentary History, 30 (2011), pp. 343–73. 91 92

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legitimise the programmes of political parties. In 1945 Labour candidates invoked their experiences in the forces to argue that an alternative to free market capitalism–one based on planning, efficiency, and comradeship– was both practicable and desirable. As Flight-Lieutenant Charles Hilditch put it to the electors of Blackpool South, ‘We beat Hitler. Let us Beat Poverty!’94 Conservative candidates from the forces, in contrast, frequently invoked the tedium and lack of autonomy in army life as a warning against the ‘regimentation’ that would be imposed by a socialist state.95 Major Frederic Bennett argued that no voter from the forces would ‘wish to exchange army discipline and the sergeant-major for a similar discipline in civil life, which would give a Socialist official the right to tell you what job you’ve got to take and where in Britain you’ve got to work’.96 Perhaps the most curious aspect of the parliamentary candidacies of veterans of the Second World War, however, was how quickly the visual and rhetorical markers of war and military service faded from prominence in electoral contests after 1945. Ex-service candidates continued to use their military rank and sometimes made mention of their service records. Yet, by the general election of 1950, the first since the conclusion of the war, military uniforms had once again disappeared almost completely from printed election addresses. Photographs of candidates were more likely to depict them in a domestic setting, surrounded by their family, than as warrior heroes. In this respect, the electoral contests of the early 1950s resembled those of the 1930s more closely than those of the years following the Great War. Standing in Merton and Morden in 1950, the Conservative candidate Robert Ryder eschewed his Royal Navy uniform and made no mention of having been awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in the St Nazaire Raid. Instead, his address included a testimonial from his wife, assuring voters that ‘above all things my husband is a family man and keeps in mind the simple fact that the home is the root and centre of our life’.97 The striking lack of emphasis on the military credentials of parliamentary candidates, so soon after the end of the Second World War, exemplifies the complexity in the electoral politics of military service. The very presence of so many veterans of the world wars in parliamentary elections  C.S. Hilditch, Blackpool South, 1945, PUB229/8/3, fol.74, CPA.  W.A. Steward, Southwark Central, 1945, PUB229/8/2, fol.15; J.R. Bevins, Liverpool West Toxteth, 1945, PUB229/8/6, fol.9, both CPA. 96  F. Bennett, Burslem, 1945, PUB229/8/7, fol.90, CPA. 97  R. Ryder, Merton and Morden, 1950 (italics added), PUB229/9/7, fol.45, CPA. 94 95

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during the twentieth century offers an important corrective to entrenched assumptions about the ‘civilian’ political culture of modern Britain. However, the performative politics of military service and martial identity drew on, and were circumscribed by, a broader cultural context in which understandings of masculinity were constantly in flux. The presentational strategies adopted by soldiers and ex-servicemen seeking election to Parliament are fascinating precisely because they reflect the tensions which existed in twentieth-century Britain between heroic/martial and civilian/ domestic masculine ideals. The continued prominence of military uniforms in election addresses into the mid-1920s suggests that, at least in the political arena, the ‘re-domestication’ of the male which is often supposed to have occurred in response to the trauma of the Great War was an equivocal and incomplete process.98 The absence of similar martial imagery by 1950 is in some respects more surprising. As Linsey Robb has observed, depictions of the Second World War in British cinema and television after 1945 tended to delegitimise the figure of the wartime male civilian, effectively emasculating even those who had performed jobs which had been regarded as vital during the war itself.99 However, the late 1940s and 1950s have also been regarded as the ‘apex of domesticity in modern Britain’. As Martin Francis notes, ‘the consolidation of family life after the disruption of wartime was one of the dominant motifs of social reconstruction in the years immediately after 1945’. Male pride in fatherhood and sentimental attachment to family underpinned a ‘reformed masculinity’ in the aftermath of the Second World War, one which resonated among both the middle and working classes, even if it was never unconditional or entirely secure.100 In this context, Robert Ryder’s decision to emphasise his identity as a family man and understate his martial credentials in 1950 was an entirely rational (and successful) electoral strategy. It was a strategy which was widely repeated by ex-servicemen over the years that followed. The major social and cultural trends of the later 1950s and 1960s–affluence, the growth of  Francis, ‘Domestication of the male?’, p. 643.  Linsey Robb, ‘“The cushy number”: civilian men in British post-war representations of the Second World War’ in Linsey Robb and Julie Pattinson eds., Men, Masculinities and Male Culture in the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 169–88. 100  Francis, ‘Domestication of the male?’, p. 644; Stephen Brooke, ‘Gender and workingclass identity in Britain during the 1950s’, Journal of Social History, 35 (2001), pp. 773–95; Laura King, ‘Hidden fathers? The significance of fatherhood in mid-twentieth-century Britain’, Contemporary British History, 26 (2012), pp. 25–46. 98 99

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consumerism, even Britain’s decline as an imperial power–did little to challenge the resonance of the essentially civilian and domestic post-war masculine ideal. Consequently, few parliamentary candidates embraced the performative politics of martial masculinity as their predecessors in the 1920s had done. Veterans of the Second World War would retain a significant presence in Parliament well into the second half of the twentieth century–including in the cabinets of Margaret Thatcher. But, at least in the realm of electoral politics, after 1945 their distinctive status as ‘soldiers’ or ‘ex-servicemen’ increasingly passed unremarked.

Broken Promises and the Remaking of Political Trust: Debating Reconstruction in Britain During the Second World War Clare Griffiths

The interwar years were littered with broken promises. Some of these became notorious, like Lloyd George’s ‘homes fit for heroes’ - a slogan that grew to be freighted with irony, seeming to epitomise the folly of trusting politicians and their commitments to building a better future. Some broken promises carried enduring resonance in particular sections of society as points of reference for years to come, like the ‘great betrayal’ of agriculture in 1921, when assurances about the continuance of wartime price supports and wage regulation for the industry had been suddenly withdrawn, shaking the financial viability of many British farms and threatening wage levels and working conditions in the industry. And, arguably, the whole interwar period was defined by the overarching question of whether promises of reconstruction and peacemaking after the Great War could be relied upon at all: from ‘The war to end all wars’ to ‘Peace in our time’.

C. Griffiths (*) Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_5

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This chapter explores the ways in which the legacy of broken promises shaped debates about reconstruction during the Second World War.1 Discussions on the subject of a post-war world made frequent reference to narratives about hopes betrayed in the 1920s and 1930s. This led to calls for reconstruction to be made part of parliament’s work during the war itself, rather than being postponed to peacetime when it risked being side-­ lined or diluted. Such anxieties were not only about practical matters of whether and how particular policies would be implemented. The climate of debate disclosed a widespread disenchantment with parties’ political records, and with the contract between politicians and the electorate. The disillusionments of the years following the First World War had encouraged a cynicism towards politicians, their relationship with the mass electorate, and their ability (and willingness) to deliver on their promises. This moved beyond a general scepticism about politicians and what they did, and was orchestrated by sections of the press, commentators, and by some politicians themselves, into a rhetoric about trust, character in public life, the commitment to enact reform, and accountability. It should be emphasised that this did not reach a level sufficient to shake a resilient consensus in support of parliamentary government in Britain. Indeed, in The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) George Orwell characterised a domestic politics in which there was a fundamental acceptance of the rules of the game, with most radicals content to work within those structures, rather than imposing a new design.2 Even so, the ways in which politics was being conducted in the 1920s and 1930s were heavily inflected by questions about how the post-war settlement was being implemented and by the scars of broken policy commitments and dubious political dealing that emerged under the leadership of ‘the man who won the war’. That great pre-war radical, Lloyd George, still conjuring up bold schemes for economic reconstruction in his wilderness years of the 1930s, had left a sour legacy from his time as Prime Minister between 1916 and 1922, given he had been unable to deliver on many of his programmes and was dogged by association with financial scandal and the selling of honours. In a period when party labels were 1  The topic of reconstruction is sometimes treated in the secondary literature as relating narrowly to town planning and rebuilding. This essay adopts the more expansive associations of the term at the time, as embodied in evocations of a broad platform for post-war reform. 2  George Orwell, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ (1941), The Penguin Essays of George Orwell (London: Penguin, 1994). See also Ross McKibbin, ‘Why was there no Marxism in Great Britain?’, English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 297–331.

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often confused and reconfigured during long periods of ‘National’ government and intra-party splintering, there were various experimentations with different groupings, including the Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction, which was Lloyd George’s own vehicle to attempt a resurrection of the non-conformist and progressive political agenda.3 Ideologically-heterodox organisations like Political and Economic Planning, as well as strategic alliances across party boundaries, notably the Popular Front and United Front, promoted themselves as answers to specific challenges—mechanisms for addressing the great problems of the time, be that the absence of coherent national economic planning, or the threat posed by fascism in mainland Europe. During the Second World War the landscape of party politics was further complicated with the creation of Churchill’s cross-party administration, the introduction of a party truce for elections during the conflict, the emergence of Common Wealth, and the practice of contesting by-­elections under an ‘Independent’ label. Despite some historians’ diagnoses of widespread ‘apathy’ amongst the wartime electorate, the dominant reading of the politics of the war years has been concerned rather with a shift in political sympathies: a popular movement leftwards, that swept the Labour party to its landslide majority at the 1945 general election.4 This has tended to be interpreted as a response to the collectivisation of the home front, the impact of equality of sacrifice, and increased consciousness of the reality of social problems, exposed through the evacuation schemes and the mingling of classes on war service. Ross McKibbin has commented that the 1945 election result was ‘undoubtedly a consequence of the radicalization of opinion: to deny that is to ignore the reality of the war’, though he argues that this shift in public opinion was in place from a much earlier date than is often assumed: from the summer of 1940.5

3  J. Graham Jones, ‘Lloyd George, the “New Deal” and the Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 5 (1999), pp. 80–109. 4  Richard Sibley, ‘The swing to Labour during the Second World War: when, why and how?’, Labour History Review, 55 (1990), pp. 23–34; James Hinton, ‘1945 and the Apathy School’ (review of Steve Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’ The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain), History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), pp. 266–73. 5  Ross McKibbin, Parties and People. England 1914–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 117–9.

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What might it look like to re-examine the domestic political culture of Britain during the Second World War through the theme of political trust? Within the vast literature on the history of the home front, political debate, post-war planning and the actions of the wartime government, the theme of reconstruction itself has received remarkably little attention. This chapter aims to refocus attention on the project of reconstruction as worthy of attention in its own right, in terms of how ideas about the peacetime future were imagined and articulated, the rhetorics deployed in these debates, and the conceptions about politics, change and democracy which the notion of the ‘new Britain’ embodied.6 The discussion here moves away from questions about the shifting political sympathies of the electorate, and from a focus on the power of particular domestic policies that emerged as key elements in the reconstruction platform during the war: the social insurance reforms of the Beveridge report, family allowances, full employment, measures to address the housing problem, access to secondary education. Arguments about reconstruction were not only about what should be done, but also about how this was to be achieved, and who could best be relied upon to deliver on these promises. Moreover, reconstruction was more than the sum of its parts. Through the notion of the ‘new Britain’, it was touted by many as a war aim in its own right: not just a vehicle for grouping together specific reforms, but a commitment to a more consolidated vision about the future of the country.7 The ambitions of reconstruction shone a spotlight on the workings of politics itself and raised questions about whether the existing mechanisms, personnel and institutions were up to the task of delivering this new Britain. The discussion which follows explores the legacy of broken promises and the shortcomings of attempts at reconstruction following the Great 6  For discussions addressing some of these themes, see John Stevenson, ‘Planners’ moon? The Second World War and the planning movement’, in H.L. Smith ed., War and Social Change: British society in the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), pp. 58–77; David Edgerton, ‘War, reconstruction, and the nationalization of Britain, 1939–1951’, Past and Present, supplement 6 (2011), pp. 29–46; Tom Allbeson, ‘Visualizing wartime destruction and postwar reconstruction: Herbert Mason’s photograph of St Paul’s reevaluated’, Journal of Modern History, 87 (2015), pp. 532–78; Matthew Hollow, ‘Utopian urges: visions for reconstruction in Britain, 1940–1950’, Planning Perspectives, 27 (2012), pp. 569–85; J. D. Tomlinson, ‘Planning: debate and policy in the 1940s’, Twentieth Century British History, 3 (1992), pp. 154–74. 7  See William Beveridge, ‘New Britain’, text of a speech given in Oxford, 6 December 1942, published in idem., The Pillars of Security and Other War-time Essays and Addresses (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1943), pp. 80–97.

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War as a way into providing a fresh examination of the political climate during the Second World War. It considers how these concerns shaped the debates, and how they help to explain some of the themes which emerged in the wartime discussions of reform. There are three core elements to the argument. The first section explores how a dominant narrative about the interwar years was mobilised as a key argument for greater levels of public control and social responsibility. This narrative about the failures of laissez-­ faire and the inadequacies of the peacetime world for which so much had been sacrificed was a prominent element in building the case for reconstruction and the importance of a full commitment to delivering it as promised. It highlighted particular areas of policy that were understood in part as examples of previous government failures. Accounts of past mistakes and the scandals of political neglect became part of a claim on the public’s attention, alongside more visceral demonstrations of the documented evils of poverty, poor housing, unemployment and ill health. The second section argues that concerns about broken promises in the past became part of the framing of reconstruction as a broader political platform. This encouraged an emphasis on the timing of legislation and its implementation, and on the need for assurances about the permanence of reforms. The final section sketches some of the ways in which concerns about previous political failings cast a spotlight on the broader issue of political trust, and who could best be relied upon to deliver reconstruction as promised. As part of the discussions about the practicalities of bringing reform from plans to reality, questions arose about the role of the existing political parties, their past records and their openness to the technical expertise on which so many areas of policy seemed to rest. Some of the promotion of reconstruction, meanwhile, emphasised its potential as a genuinely democratic exercise, an expression of ‘what the people want’, and which might itself be shaped by the general public and their own sense of what the future should be like. If politicians had failed to deliver the reconstruction they promised at the end of the First World War, who should be trusted with the fate of the ‘new Britain’ at the end of the Second?

I Historical narratives about the interwar years played an important part in wartime debates about the post-war future. Sombre panoramas of slums and poverty were contrasted with the sunny uplands of new housing estates and airy classrooms and playing fields, accompanied by reminders

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of the legacies of the pre-war failure to plan. Characterisations of dark and dismal legacies of neglect in key areas of social policy, juxtaposed with the prospect of a bright, modern future, appear starkly in Abram Games’s series of posters for the Army Bureau of Current Affairs in 1942, in the campaign ‘Your Britain: fight for it now’. The visions of a better Britain are presented as posters within a poster, colourful and unsullied, like optimistic projections rather than real buildings. The twist here was that the examples of the New Britain on display were vanguard projects, already in operation by the end of the 1930s, and serving as prophecies for the achievement of key planks in the reconstruction project: the Finsbury Health Centre (health care), the Village Colleges (education), modernist blocks of flats at Kensal Green (housing).8 The provocative contrasts in Games’s posters not only held out the prospect of what central elements of a reform programme might look like, in their physical, built form, but carried the further message that such transformations had indeed been possible before the war, where the political will to achieve them existed, within the forward-thinking local authorities responsible for these pioneering ventures. The fact that these futuristic visions were also celebrations of something already achieved may have passed much of the audience by at the time, though commentaries in small print to the side of each poster give details of the building being celebrated. More striking was the dismal and depressing image of the ruins of an unreformed country lurking in the background. Mythologies surrounding the social and economic experience of the 1930s have attracted considerable discussion in the secondary literature, and reflect what one commentator describes as ‘a propaganda victory the

8  Finsbury Health Centre, designed by Berthold Lubetkin, 1935–8: Peter Coe and Malcolm Reading, Lubetkin and Tecton: Architecture and Social Commitment. A Critical Study (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1981), pp. 140–4; and Peter Allan, Berthold Lubetkin. Architecture and the Tradition of Progress (London: RIBA Publications, 2016), pp.  337–48. Impington Village College, designed by Walter Gropius, 1939. Cf. Henry Morris’s original manifesto for the Colleges: The Village College: Being a Memorandum on the Provision of Educational and Social Facilities for the Countryside, With Special Reference to Cambridgeshire (Cambridge: University Press, 1924), and discussion in David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), pp.  238–41. Kensal House, designed by Maxwell Fry and Elizabeth Denby, 1938: Mark Llewellyn, ‘“Urban Village” or “White House”: envisioned spaces, experienced places, and everyday life at Kensal House, London in the 1930s’, Society and Space, 22 (2004), pp. 229–49.

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Left won not in the thirties but in the forties’.9 The resulting image of this decade as one defined by depression, poverty and mass unemployment has proved enduring, despite revisionist attempts to recast it as a period of leisure, consumption, house-building and the development of new industries. It is notable how prominent negative visions of the recent past were during the Second World War, having gravitated from campaigns by groups largely on the political left, to enter the mainstream, being presented as accepted wisdoms about the failures of housing, health and economic policy. One of the most explicit early evocations of a legacy of far-reaching failures of national politics between the wars came in January 1941, with the publication of Picture Post’s special issue: ‘Plan for Britain’.10 Articles detailed the woeful state of welfare, housing, the economy and employment, coalescing around the message that only a consensus in favour of planning and controls could ensure the reforms necessary for the country after the war. The lessons from history were made explicit in the various articles, as photographs documented ‘The Tragic Tale That Must Not Be Repeated. A Two-Minute History of the Years 1918-1939’– an account of political choices, in Britain but also in other countries, which had led to economic turmoil, mass unemployment and the descent into a second world war.11 Some of these areas of failed policy were associated explicitly with the unfulfilled promises of the reconstruction agenda at the end of the First World War. Housing had become a key issue by the time of the 1945 general election—indeed polling suggested that it was the most important issue for voters. And it was also an issue which could be linked directly to Lloyd George’s infamous commitment to provide ‘homes fit for heroes’. The shortcomings of that policy, overseen by Christopher Addison before his move from the Liberals into the Labour Party, were given rather more prominence than the record of what was actually achieved. The turn to austerity meant that only a fraction of the 500,000 homes that Lloyd George had promised were actually constructed, although historians find much to celebrate in this beginning of a new era of council housing, and 9  A. W. Purdue, ‘The myth of the Jarrow march’, New Society, 8 July 1982, p. 50, cited in Geoffrey K. Fry, ‘A reconsideration of the British general election of 1935 and the electoral revolution of 1945’, History, 76 (1991), p. 49. 10  Daniel Todman, Britain’s War. Into Battle 1937–1941 (London: Allen Lane, 2017), pp. 641–2; Stevenson, ‘Planners’ moon’, pp. 58–9. 11  Picture Post, 4 January 1941, pp. 12–15.

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in the quality of the homes that were built.12 In the midst of prominent exposures of poor housing conditions, from the 1935 documentary Housing Problems, interviewing residents of slums, to the condemnations of national policy between the wars in Paul Rotha’s 1946 film Land of Promise, it was easy to conflate the many problems of speculative commercial housing development and poor housing stock with the failures of the building programme that had been promised to the British people at the end of the First World War. The Labour candidate for St Ives at the 1945 general election reminded the electors that ‘the “homes for heroes” promised after the last war were never built by the Tory “Nationalists”. If they are returned to power now they will betray us again.’ By contrast, he pointed out, ‘The Labour Party will make housing one of its first concerns.’13 The lessons drawn from the immediate post-First World Wars years were not only in relation to particular political pledges, but also to a more general sense of opportunities for reform that had been squandered and a failure to prioritise the broader public interest. In the summer of 1943, H. J. Massingham chose to include a new preface to a second edition of his Chiltern Country, published in Batsford’s ‘The Face of Britain’ series, reinforcing his warnings against unplanned development and the spoliation of the rural landscape. ‘I can only hope,’ he wrote, ‘that bitter experience will have taught the Government not to repeat the shameful error of 1920 when the present war is over. Nations have their second and even third chances to retrieve their blunders, but no more.’14 In 1945, the Labour candidate for Merioneth used his election address to warn constituents against allowing ‘as [the country] did after 1919, a selfish group of hard-faced business-men to exploit and ravage the country for their own ends’.15 For some sections of the population, there were memories of specific broken promises. One of the most explicit examples was farming’s ‘great 12  Mark Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes: the Politics and Architecture of Early State Housing in Britain (London: Routledge, 2018) and Building the New Jerusalem: Architecture, Housing and Politics, 1900–1930 (Watford: IHS BRE Press, 2008), pp.  49–57; Alison Ravetz, Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 74–80. 13  Labour Party Archive (LPA), People’s History Museum, Manchester, LP/ELEC/1945, Henry Brinton, election address, St Ives, 1945. 14  H. J. Massingham, Chiltern Country (London: Batsford, 1943), p. v. 15  LPA, LP/ELEC/1945, Hugh Morris-Jones, ‘To the electors of Merioneth’, 1945.

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betrayal’.16 This evoked one element in the government’s retrenchments in the early 1920s. The state had encouraged expansions of agricultural production in the later stages of the First World War with guaranteed prices for home-grown cereals, coupled with the institution of wage boards to set minimum wage levels for agricultural workers, and these commitments were renewed in 1920, to maintain stability during the transition after the war. But in the late summer of 1921, the legislation was repealed as part of a more general removal of controls, and the attempt to reduce the government’s financial commitments. Although not unwelcomed by some farmers at the time, this was soon being mobilised as an example of political neglect of the rural interest, and associated directly with the financial hardships experienced by many farmers battling to maintain their businesses as going concerns in the face of cheap imports and low prices.17 By the Second World War, the ‘great betrayal’ was being used as an argument for the importance of binding commitments to support for British farming, preferably resting this time on a public consensus, rather than politicians’ promises. The non-party Council of Agriculture’s standing committee on ‘the principles and objectives of long-term agricultural policy’ referred to this context in setting out proposals in 1943: ‘The memory of the post-1918 years, when agriculture was left to sink or swim and found little hope of swimming, is still fresh in the countryside; and the fear of a repetition is the main obstacle to the growth of that full confidence which is essential alike to an all-out food production drive during the war and to the success of a constructive policy afterwards.’18 16  Edith H. Whetham, ‘The Agriculture Act and its repeal: the Great Betrayal’, Agricultural History Review, 22 (1974), pp.  36–49; E.  C. Penning-Rowsell, ‘Who “betrayed” whom? Power and politics in the 1920/1 agricultural crisis’, Agricultural History Review, 45 (1997), pp.  176–94. I discuss evocations of the ‘great betrayal’, by both farmers and workers, in Clare V. J. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 188, ‘Making farming pay: agricultural crisis and the politics of the national interest, 1930–1’, in John Shepherd, Jonathan Davis and Chris Wrigley eds., The Second Labour Government (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), pp. 133–49 at p. 136; and ‘Heroes of the reconstruction? Images of British farmers in war and peace’, in Paul Brassley, Yves Segers and Leen van Molle eds., War, Agriculture and Food. Rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s (New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 209–28. 17  Andrew F. Cooper, ‘Another look at the “Great Betrayal”: agrarian reformers and agricultural policy in Britain’, Agricultural History, 60, 3 (1986), pp. 81–104. 18  Council of Agriculture for England, Report of Standing Committee on the Principles and Objectives of Long-term Agricultural Policy (London: H.M.S.O., 1943), p. 1.

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Debates about the future of farming could thus draw on a specific example of how the actions of politicians had contributed to the industry’s economic travails. Controls had been put in place during a time of national emergency and assurances had been given (albeit only up until 1922 in the legislation as it stood), on the basis of which farmers had felt able to plan ahead. The sudden removal of these price supports then led to a collapse in farming incomes, and it was possible to argue that farmers might have been spared subsequent struggles to maintain the financial viability of domestic grain production if only the government had kept its word and continued a regime of agricultural support. Here was a lesson from the aftermath of one war, which might be taken up as a cautionary tale for farmers subject to government controls and direction during another war. Even whilst urging its readers to ‘do their damnedest’ for the war effort, Farmers Weekly noted that they might well feel some concerns that their commitment to expanding production would not receive the practical, and lasting, support that the government was promising: ‘The memory of the Corn Production Act dies hard.’19 Alun Howkins noted that the experience of the Second World War, accompanied once more by a regime of state subsidies for agriculture, seemed to give greater prominence to references to the ‘great betrayal’, and the ‘political treachery’ it was held to embody.20 Alongside the non-party conferences and talk of establishing an agreed national commitment to stability and prosperity for the agricultural sector post-war, the political parties were also keen to claim that they could be trusted with farming’s future. ‘The Conservative Party will be passing into law the long term policy, which is to prevent a decline in Agriculture such as happened after the last war,’ pledged the National candidate for the agricultural constituency of South West Norfolk, reinforcing this by repeating that the Conservatives promised to prevent ‘any repetition of the disastrous collapse in prices which occurred after the last war’.21 Memories of the ‘great betrayal’ were also being deployed as a warning in the Labour party’s campaigning at the 1945 general election. ‘There must  ‘To do our damnedest’, editorial, Farmers Weekly, 29 November 1940, p. 11.  Alun Howkins, ‘A lark arising: the rural past and urban histories 1881–2011’, Royal Historical Society/ Gresham College lecture, 16 November 2011, transcript at https:// www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/a-lark-arising-the-rural-past-and-urban-histories-1881-2011, p. 11. 21  LPA, LP/ELEC/1945, Election address for Captain Somerset de Chair, National candidate, South West Norfolk, 1945. 19 20

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be no repetition of the Corn Production Repeal Act!’ it exclaimed, stressing that only Labour could be trusted to keep ‘agriculture stable and the countryside prosperous.’22 ‘Remember the Corn Production Act’, Tom Williams warned his Don Valley constituents in 1945—many of whom were actually miners, rather than farmers, ‘and DON’T be confused by nicely turned phrases.’23 With the authority of his experience as a minister at the wartime Ministry of Agriculture, Williams assured them that only Labour was pledged to maintain agriculture’s stability. There was of course another promise central to so much of the immediate aftermath of the Great War: that this had been the war to end all wars. Neville Chamberlain’s mission to Munich in 1938 offered a further pledge that peace could yet be maintained and that appeasement was a just and sustainable policy. At the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1939, Charles Spencelayh’s fastidiously-detailed painting ‘Why War?’ (oil, 1938) was declared the visitors’ ‘picture of the year’: a picture in which an old soldier sits sadly at home, his new gas mask out on the table, and a newspaper cast aside, with Chamberlain’s photograph on the front page, on his way to meet Hitler. This was a still life filled with references to the past, reinforcing the poignancy and anxiety of the present. For any understanding of the historicised contexts of wartime debates on reconstruction, one must also consider the issue of appeasement, approaches to international relations and even arguments about the First World War itself. Issues about past handling of foreign policy, and the descent into a second world war, were more questions about competence and morality than about broken political promises as such. Guilty Men (1940) and Your MP (1944) respectively attacked the complacency which had left Britain poorly prepared for war and documented Conservative politicians’ voting records, on appeasement in particular.24 Scott Kelly has suggested that these narratives about Conservative foreign policy before the war proved to be ‘a major issue’ in the 1945 general election campaign, as the Labour and Conservative parties both issued pamphlets addressing the charges about who bore the ‘guilt’ for appeasement.25  Keep the Countryside Prosperous, Labour Party, election leaflet, June 1945.  LPA, LP/ELEC/1945, Tom Williams, election address, Don Valley, 1945. 24  ‘Cato’ (Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard), Guilty Men (1940); ‘Gracchus’ (Tom Wintringham), Your MP (1944). 25  Scott Kelly, ‘“The ghost of Neville Chamberlain” Guilty Men and the 1945 election’, Conservative History Journal, 5 (2005), pp. 18–24. 22 23

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Ultimately, these concerns contributed to a questioning about who could be trusted with the hard-won peace at the end of the Second World War. The cartoon that Philip Zec had drawn for the Daily Mirror to mark VE Day had a second outing on the paper’s front page for the day of the 1945 general election, adding a further interpretation to the message of a wounded soldier clambering out of the ruins and carnage of war with a laurel garland in his hand, labelled ‘Victory and Peace in Europe’. The caption read ‘Here you are – don’t lose it again’–a slogan given a different implication in the context of polling day. The message was reinforced in the Mirror’s endorsement of Labour, printed next to the cartoon: ‘Vote on behalf of the men who won the victory for you. You failed to do so in 1918. The result is known to all. The land “fit for heroes” did not come into existence. The dole did. Short-lived prosperity gave way to long, tragic years of poverty and unemployment. Make sure history does not repeat itself.’26 As Labour ‘faced the future’ in their 1945 manifesto, they also took the opportunity to talk about the past. ‘The people made tremendous efforts to win the last war also,’ they cautioned. ‘But when they had won it they lacked a lively interest in the social and economic problems of peace, and accepted the election promises of the leaders of the anti-Labour parties at their face value… The people lost that peace. And when we say “peace” we mean not only the Treaty, but the social and economic policy which followed the fighting.’27 Attempts by the later 1940s to continue to mobilise these readings of the political failures of the interwar years proved difficult to sustain.28 Nor is it clear how far memories of interwar broken promises actually influenced electors’ votes in 1945. Richard Sibley dismissed any significant impact of ‘the electorate’s memories of the 1920s and 1930s, memories both of unfulfilled pledges made during and immediately after the First World War […] and of the depression in the 1930s’, and cites a poll around the time of the general election in which ‘Memories of Lloyd George’s 1918 promises, or of Tory policies of the 1930s, were not

 Front page, Daily Mirror, 5 July 1945.  Labour Party, Let Us Face the Future. A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation (London: Labour Party, 1945). 28  See the discussion of Mass Observation’s study of the public response to Labour’s slogan ‘Ask your Dad’ in David Cowan, ‘The “progress of a slogan”: youth, culture and the shaping of everyday political languages in late 1940s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 29 (2018), pp. 435–58. 26 27

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mentioned.’29 Yet Mark Abrams pointed out that ‘Over half the 1945 electorate had left school after the outbreak of the First World War, and spent their first years of industrial life during that long stretch of British history when rarely less than 10 per cent of workers were unemployed and when often the rate reached 20 per cent.’ For these electors, the conditions of the post-war settlement had been their formative experience of politics.30 And for them, and others, the retelling of a particular version of the pre-­ war past in so many different media throughout the war years must have been difficult to ignore. That version of history was an inherent part of the ways in which reconstruction programmes were articulated and justified.

II How could one be sure that the peace would not be lost a second time? Woven closely into the wartime debates on reconstruction were questions of strategy for achieving reforms and plans for their implementation. The notion of achieving a common-sense consensus was a key element within this. In other words, reconstruction would be guaranteed not so much by choosing one group of politicians over another, as by building a solid base of public opinion convinced of the need for change. ‘One of the reasons why after winning the last war we lost all its fruits,’ explained Beveridge, ‘was that during the war itself, there wasn’t sufficient general discussion or forming of public opinion as to what should happen after. We all thought rather vaguely of going back to the good old days. This time we all know we can’t go back to the old days because they weren’t good enough…’.31 The Nuffield conferences, at which Beveridge made these comments, were one initiative to identify and develop points of common agreement, brokered from 1941 onwards by G. D. H. Cole as an attempt ‘to discover how far there exists…, irrespective of […] past social or political affiliations, anything in the nature of a common basic attitude to the underlying problems of social reconstruction.’32 The message of Picture Post’s special issue on the ‘Plan for Britain’ was, likewise, that salvation would come not through the choice of one party  Sibley, ‘The swing to Labour’, pp. 23, 28.  Mark Abrams, ‘The Labour vote in the general election’, Pilot Papers, 1, 1 (January 1946), p. 18. 31  Beveridge, Pillars of Security, p. 96. 32  Daniel Ritschel, ‘The making of consensus: the Nuffield College conferences during the Second World War’, Twentieth Century British History, 6 (1995), pp. 267–301, at pp. 272–3. 29 30

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programme over another, but through a national conversion to the principles of planning, and a willingness to begin to put this in place even whilst the war was still in progress. ‘We believe,’ explained the magazine’s editorial, ‘that, after this war, certain things will be common ground among all political parties… Let us agree now on the greatest possible amount of common ground, so that – when peace comes, or before – we can proceed wholeheartedly and at once to carry through at least so much of our plan.’33 The famously popular demand for copies of the Beveridge report on its publication in December 1942 suggests that there was both a curiosity about the possibilities offered by social reform and an interest in reading more about the case being made. The creation of an informed public consensus was envisaged as both a driver for reform and a guarantor that politicians would play fair and deliver reconstruction as promised. The early dissolution of the first Ministry for Reconstruction, in June 1919, had demonstrated how the practical machinery for delivering a better future might not always last long into the peace.34 ‘Peoples [sic] ideas about the post-war world and the problems which it will present cause many to have a very sober outlook on what will follow the peace,’ Mass Observers commented in a report on their enquiry into attitudes towards reconstruction in 1942, remarking that, ‘This “realistic” outlook’ was ‘based largely on what followed the 1914-18 war’.35 Their study found a gulf between hopes and expectations: ‘What people want and what they expect after the war are at present so much the opposite of one another that they scarcely coincide at any point…. Between expectation and hope should come the desire for action. But if people want jobs for everyone and assume there will be mass unemployment, there is little scope for action.’36 But if there was pessimism about whether the ‘people’s peace’ would actually be delivered the one potential safeguard was to get at least some of the reconstruction programme agreed and legislated for while the war was still in progress. Once the Beveridge report had captured the public’s enthusiasm it was a brave politician who would object to its proposals, though questions were raised about its affordability and the priority it  ‘Foreword’, Picture Post, 4 January 1941, p. 4.  Stevenson, ‘Planners’ moon?’, p. 61. 35  Mass Observation archive, file report 1364, ‘Report on Reconstruction’, 30 July 1942, p. 7. 36  Ibid., p. 23. 33 34

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should be given while the country was still at war, caveats that were greeted with cries of ‘Beveridge in full’ and ‘Beveridge now’. ‘It seemed all too good to be true,’ Picture Post observed ruefully, ‘Not the report itself, of course… But the idea that the Government would pass it into law, and get to work straightaway to carry out its recommendations. We know our Governments better than that.’37 Questions about whether talk of reconstruction was in fact a distraction from winning the war were addressed in part by claims that planning for the post-war years could play an important role in maintaining high morale, but the emphasis on implementing proposals while the war was still in progress was essentially pragmatic, taking advantage of supportive public opinion and avoiding trusting the future of the reforms to the uncertainties of peace.38 Issues of political trust and the cautionary example of stalled reforms after the First World War ensured that the approach to achieving reconstruction demanded attention, as well as the content of the plans themselves. With uncertainties about how far political parties could be trusted to deliver on the proposals, much of the emphasis was on establishing reconstruction as a matter of broad-based consensus—a mainstream common wisdom that need not be the exclusive province of one political party or another, albeit that some parties provided more natural homes for these ideas than others. Fears about the potential side-lining of social reform in the midst of pressures to manage the transition from the war economy to peace, also gave an urgency to questions of when reforms should be introduced. Despite Churchill’s concerns that it would take energy and resources away from the conduct of the war, critics increasingly insisted on the desirability of reconstruction being part of parliament’s agenda, and not left to be handled with whatever energy and funding was left over by the time Britain was once more at peace. Moreover, politicians had to manage popular expectations of how and to what extent reconstruction could be achieved, and at what price. As Stafford Cripps warned the Labour party conference, ‘We must not lead the people to believe that this is some easy Utopia into which we are inviting them to step.’39 Political parties that promised too much were bound to cause disappointment.

 Picture Post, 6 March 1943.  Mass Observation, ‘Social security and parliament’, Political Quarterly, 14, 3 (July 1943), pp. 245–55. 39  cited in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Pimlico, 1994), p. 262. 37 38

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III The Labour party assumed a mantle during the war as the most sympathetic of the main parties when it came to planning for reconstruction. The Conservatives, by contrast, seemed compromised by their interwar record as much as by their approach to questions about the role of the state. But debates about which party was most likely to deliver reconstruction in a sympathetic and committed manner were not the only ramifications of the issues about political trust that were being raised during the war. The dominant focus in the historiography on wartime politics and the interpretation of the 1945 general election has been on shifting political sympathies and levels of active political engagement amongst the electorate. But it is worth asking more fundamental questions about the reputation of traditional politics at the time, and about the problems of political trust that were exposed during the war and in the immediate pre-­war period. For some, the question was not so much which politicians were the more trustworthy, but whether plumping for one political party or another could deliver the policies they wanted. Amongst the groups of the disenchanted, many farmers—as a constituency and as organised interest groups—had been moving for some time to a position of frustration with party political programmes, hoping instead to find longer-term guarantees for stability in cross-party, ‘national’ agreements, based on understandings about the practical functioning of the industry and on the importance of its contribution. ‘[W]e want no politicians’ promises, as we have come to describe the mere vote-catching pledge,’ an editorial in Farmer and Stock-­ breeder explained. ‘We have had enough from all parties in the past, and the present will provide an opportunity to lift agriculture from the purely party atmosphere and give it a stable plan and policy which should only be varied on the arrival of new economic circumstances affecting the national industry, and not merely to attract the voter, whether rural or urban.’40 Critical accounts of the interwar years and of the failures of policy in that period were, on the whole, deployed to most effect against the Conservative party, which had been in office for most of that time. Labour, by dint of its long periods in opposition, had relatively clean hands in this regard, whilst some of its figures were able to claim positive credentials through the recent roles they had taken on in domestic affairs as part of the wartime coalition government. Churchill’s leadership made the  ‘Lift farming out of politics’, editorial, Farmer and Stock-breeder, 31 July 1945.

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association between the Conservative party of the 1940s and Conservative policy in the 1930s rather more complicated, given his own oppositional stance ‘in the wilderness’ before the war. Even so, the connections between the Conservative party and perceived incompetencies and culpabilities proved hard to counteract. In 1944, writing as ‘Celticus’, Aneurin Bevan produced a volume for Gollancz, billed as continuing their influential series of ‘Victory’ books, which had included such indictments from recent history as Guilty Men (1940) and Geoffrey Mander, We Were Not All Wrong (1941). Bevan’s Why Not Trust the Tories? set out to inform and warn a younger generation who might not be fully aware of the Conservative party’s pre-war record, lacking personal experience of the events which he went on to document. He observed that the Conservatives were trying to distance themselves from their record in office, building up the credentials of social reformers within their ranks ‘to delude our own generation’.41 He warned that the Tories’ new technique was to delay legislation whilst making fulsome promises, relying on the public’s short memory and distraction by other issues to avoid having to follow through on promised social reforms.42 But voters should not be fooled. ‘Honest politics and Tory politics are contradictions in terms,’ Bevan explained. ‘Lying is a necessary part of a Tory’s political equipment, for it is necessary to conceal his real intentions from the people.’43 In this setting, there seemed to be potential for less traditional political figures and groupings to capitalise on popular concerns. The trustworthiness of Beveridge as a man essentially outside the world of professional politics and truly dedicated to serving the public good was reinforced by how he and his plan were promoted on the airwaves and in the press.44 The war had thrown up new figures of authority, capturing the public’s attention. ‘It is a queer result of this strange and horrible war,’ confided Beatrice Webb to her diary in the final year of her life, ‘that Beveridge, whose career as a civil servant and as Director of the School of Economics was more or less a failure, should have risen suddenly into the limelight as an accepted designer of a New World Order.’45 Even so, it is notable that,  ‘Celticus’, Why Not Trust the Tories (London: Victor Gollancz, January 1945), p. 10.  Ibid., p. 27. 43  Ibid., p. 25. 44  For example, ‘The story of a thirty years’ fight’, BBC broadcast, 28 December 1942. 45  Beatrice Webb, entry for 19 December 1942, in Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie eds., The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4, 1924–1943, ‘The Wheel of Life’ (London: Virago, 1985), p. 491. 41 42

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for all the adulation the Beveridge report could command, its author was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain his parliamentary seat at the 1945 general election. Another response to criticisms of existing parties and their records, was the springing up of different political groupings and a new flowering of politicians standing as ‘independents’—a category which had seemed to be on the decline at parliamentary elections, but revived as a pragmatic response to constraints on the contesting of by-elections during the period of the wartime electoral truce. These by-elections became the subject of fascinated scrutiny, for the potential insights that they might offer into public opinion on the government’s record, and shifts in support between the major political parties. Interpretations on these points were, and are, difficult to reach, given the peculiarities of these contests and the artificialities imposed on the campaigns by the parties’ official line that they would not put up candidates to challenge the incumbent party. The by-­ elections did, however, become places for candidates to articulate their positions on the conduct of the war and on the issue of reconstruction, and they also offered a platform to one of the most interesting political developments of the war years: the Common Wealth party.46 In some ways, Common Wealth seemed the quintessential party to focus the hopes of reconstruction. It was prepared to think in radical terms, took much of its energy from the sense of the war years as a period of heightened political ideas and opportunity, and staked its claim on the public’s attention as being outside the usual political party structures. ‘The supply of promises is unrationed,’ the Conservative candidate warned electors at the Newark by-election in June 1943, where Common Wealth and two Independent candidates were standing against him. ‘“Common Wealth” can promise all, but you have to consider whether their promises are worthy of your confidence.’47 In fact, the electoral address from the Common Wealth candidate, the solicitor and RAF officer, Edward Moeran, had more to say about the demands that an active democracy placed on everyone, than about some promised land awaiting his electorate. ‘The foregoing Election Address deals with serious subjects,’ he 46  D.  L. Prynn, ‘Common Wealth  – a British “third party” of the 1940s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 7 (1972), pp.  169–79; Paul Addison, ‘By-elections of the Second World War’, in Chris Cook and John Ramsden, eds., By-elections in British politics (London: UCL Press, 1997), pp. 130–50. 47  ‘What is really important in this by-election?’, election leaflet from the Conservative candidate Sidney Shephard, Newark, June 1943, in Mass Observation archive, file report 1845.

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cautioned, ‘The problems are not to be dealt with lightly in a few easy phrases.’ He was also clearly keen to address the combination of policy and character that voters should look for in their candidate. ‘I am unknown to most of you,’ he commented, ‘I must seek your support on grounds primarily of the great issues which must now or shortly be decided. But you cannot judge my integrity and qualifications from the ideas I hold: that judgment can only be made by our getting to know each other personally, and I do sincerely ask you to do just that.’48 The Mass Observers who studied the by-election were clearly favourably impressed on that score: ‘In common with many C-W [Common Wealth] candidates, the most striking feature about the candidate was his evident sincerity,’ they noted with approval, ‘There could be no doubt that he really meant all he said.’49 The Conservatives retained this traditional Conservative seat, though with a reduced majority and only half the poll that they had achieved at the 1935 general election. In the end it was one of the Independents, Alan Dawrant, who came second, ahead of the Common Wealth candidate. A large part of Dawrant’s pitch was to emphasise his commitment to the reconstruction platform and the importance of getting on with planning for the future: ‘It is not enough to say these things will be looked into after the War. We must make a progressive beginning NOW. If we don’t we will never get it afterwards.’50 Jose Harris has commented that traditional forms of government were ‘strengthened’ by the war, and that parliament redeemed itself in public opinion during the war years as ‘one of the great representative symbols of liberty and the popular will.’51 But Mass Observation found more negative views of politicians in their surveying of the public during the 1945 general election campaign: that they were ‘an untrustworthy lot all round.’ Part of this was a response to the mudslinging of the campaign itself, but the report concluded that the issue went deeper than this. A poor response to the distribution of proxy voting forms to the armed forces in 1944 reflected ‘a distrust of politics in general and politicians in particular so 48  Flt. Lieut. Edward Moeran, Common Wealth candidate, election address, Newark parliamentary by-election, June 1943, in Mass Observation archive, file report 1845. 49  Mass Observation, ‘Report on the Newark by-election 8.6.1943’, p.  9, in Mass Observation file report 1845. 50  Alan L Dawrant, ‘A vote for me means a new deal for you Miss Vickers’, election leaflet, Newark by-election, June 1943 in Mass Observation archive, file report 1845. 51  Jose Harris, ‘War and social history: Britain and the Home Front during the Second World War’, Contemporary European History, 1 (1992), pp. 17–35 at p. 25.

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great that many simply did not feel it was worth-while registering their vote.’ For the Mass Observers, there had been ‘a steady growth of scepticism about all sorts of established institutions’ during the war, and they considered this to be ‘a democratic point of first importance.’52 The report warned that the turnout would tell a story about politicians’ standing in the eyes of the public, and that the parties should bear this in mind as an important indicator of the health of the democracy, and consider the impact of the way in which they fought the election. If politicians did not command respect and were suspected by the electorate as untrustworthy, one other option was for the public to take a more direct role in designing and delivering reform. A strong emphasis on the technocratic element in the planning of the new Britain was often counterpoised by the notion of this as a great democratic project, putting the people at the centre, as recipients, but also creators of this better future.53 ‘Planners are busy, but they alone cannot build the new world,’ advised the Target for Tomorrow series, ‘This is a task in which every citizen must take a hand.’54 ‘The experts can explain what could be done; but what do you and your neighbours want?’, an exhibition on ‘Rebuilding Britain’ asked, rhetorically, in 1943. ‘Ask the woman next door, ask the soldier, the munition worker, the farm worker and the bus conductor. They may not be clear about which sort of rebuilding they would like, but they do want something homely and human, something that gives comfort and privacy.’55 The rub came in that observation that the people could not be expected to provide clear guidance on the form that reconstruction should take, only its general principles.56 52  Mass Observation archive, file report 2260, ‘Politicians’ Prestige’, 25 June 1945, pp. 2–4. 53  Suzanne Cowan, ‘The people’s peace: the myth of wartime unity and public consent for town planning’, in Mark Clapson and Peter J.  Farnham, eds., The Blitz and its Legacy: Wartime Destruction to Post-war Reconstruction (London: Routledge, 2013), pp.  73–86; Tatsuya Tsubaki, ‘Planners and the public: British popular opinion on housing during the Second World War’, Contemporary British History, 14 (1999), pp. 81–98. 54  ‘The importance of the series: a statement’, text on book cover for Sir Ronald Davison, Remobilisation for Peace, ‘Target for Tomorrow’ series (London: Pilot Press, 1944). 55  Rebuilding Britain, exhibition organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects, February 1943–text from the accompanying brochure (London: Royal Institute of British Architects, 1943). 56  Hannah Lewi, ‘Plans on film: “Scene Five – cut to the professional smoking his pipe”’, Fabrications: the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, 24 (2014), pp. 268–89.

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Conclusion By the time of the 1945 general election, a programme of policies for the reconstruction had attracted a high degree of consensus across the country. Historians tend to emphasise the make-up of that programme: the focus on reform and debates about the mechanisms to put in place schemes for education, health, social security, industrial management and ownership and physical planning. Much analysis of the period has focused on tracking a leftward shift in public opinion, embracing the centrality of social welfare and greater state intervention. In consequence, discussion has been dominated by questions of how this mapped onto party politics: how the different political parties presented their credentials and aligned their principles, interests and records to demonstrate their fitness to meet the challenge of reconstruction. But debates about reconstruction during the Second World War were inherently bound up with anxieties about whether the ‘new Britain’ would be delivered as promised. These concerns were, to a large degree, orchestrated through the mobilisation of narratives about the practice of politics in the interwar years and the legacy of broken policy commitments. The presentation of these ideas, in print, in images and on film, began largely as a discourse on the left, in the form of normal political argument, building a case against the Conservative/ National incumbents who had been in government for most of the interwar period. During the war, however, such approaches acquired a more mainstream standing as accounts of the 1920s and 1930s, even turning up in official Ministry of Information-­ sponsored films, and being presented as a historical narrative, rather than overtly politicised interpretations. These accounts provided a context and a justification for the discussion of key areas of policy, and helped to shape articulations of the whole project of reconstruction. Parties’ ownership of the reconstruction platform by 1945 depended on their ability to reclaim a mantel of political trust—against a backdrop of questions about the value of conventional political parties and established professional politicians, the role of more technocratic approaches to reform, and the potential for more direct democracy and more active public engagement. All of this made the years of the Second World War an important chapter in the history of political trust and public attitudes towards politicians and their promises.

Fiscal Promises: Tax and Spending in British General Elections Since 1964 Aled Davies and Peter Sloman

On 12 September 1964, Sir Alec Douglas-Home launched the Conservative party’s election campaign with a withering assault on the cost of Labour policies. In a speech to a Tory rally in London—relayed by radio to twelve meetings across the country—the Prime Minister complained that Labour’s manifesto promised ‘something for all’ but said ‘not a word on where the money will come from, nor what the price of the article you buy will be’: ‘It is a menu without prices’. By contrast, the Conservative government had set out spending plans for the next five years in its 1963 Public Expenditure White Paper, including major capital investment in schools, hospitals, roads, universities, and housing.1 Shadow Chancellor James Callaghan retorted that the White Paper figures were dependent on achieving the government’s 4 per cent economic growth target and that 1

 The Times, 14 September 1964, p. 6.

A. Davies (*) Jesus College, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] P. Sloman Churchill College, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_6

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only a Labour government committed to indicative planning could sustain such rapid expansion. If growth fell back to 2.5 per cent a year—its average rate since the Tories took office in 1951—then by 1968 Home would be ‘£1,000m short of fulfilling his programme’.2 Despite a sustained Tory attack on ‘the price of Harold Wilson’, Labour squeaked into office with a majority of four seats.3 Fiscal promises lie at the heart of contemporary election campaigns in Britain and around the world. Parties compete for votes by promising to cut taxes or increase spending on public services, whilst warning that their opponents’ plans contain ‘black holes’ or ‘tax bombshells’. Policy costings are closely scrutinized by think-tanks and media commentators, which treat them as an important test of the parties’ credibility and, in turn, shape voters’ perceptions of their fitness to govern. This chapter examines how the nature and reception of fiscal promises has changed over time, through a close analysis of four post-war elections: the narrow Labour victory in 1964, the 1983 Conservative landslide, John Major’s unexpected 1992 triumph, and the 2010 austerity election. Taken together, these case studies allow us to explore how parties have deployed fiscal promises in different contexts and how the pursuit of fiscal credibility has contributed to the wider trend towards ‘programmatic politics’ which Richard Toye and David Thackeray have identified.4 Electoral debates over tax and spending are not, of course, unique to the post-Second World War period. As early as 1841, Lord John Russell declared in favour of Corn Law reform in an attempt to bolster the Whigs’ support among urban voters.5 Gladstone fought the 1874 election on a proposal to abolish the income tax, whilst the 1906 and 1910 campaigns were dominated by tariff reform and David Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’.6 Up to the middle of the twentieth century, however, the growth  The Times, 17 September 1964, p. 9.  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 124. 4  David Thackeray and Richard Toye, ‘An Age of Promises: British Election Manifestos and Addresses 1900–97’, Twentieth Century British History, 31 (2020), 1–26. 5  Jonathan Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 146–9. 6  H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone, 1809–1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 220–7; Bruce K. Murray, The People’s Budget, 1909/10: Lloyd George and Liberal Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Martin Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 330–74. 2 3

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of programmatic fiscal politics was constrained by the principle of ‘Treasury control’, which insulated the state from popular pressure by establishing budget-making as a strict Treasury prerogative.7 Even in the run-up to the 1950 election, Winston Churchill insisted that taxation was ‘a matter which should be studied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and not a subject for an election campaign’.8 The trend towards quantitative pledges and costed programmes, though visible in earlier decades, is thus largely a post-war phenomenon. The evolution of fiscal promises across our four case studies is perhaps best understood by posing three sets of questions. Firstly, how specific are parties’ tax and spending proposals? Many manifestos contain an eclectic mixture of long-term aspirations, medium-term targets, and short-term policy packages, often accompanied by carefully worded qualifiers (‘as resources permit’) and self-denying ordinances. Secondly, how do parties frame the purpose of fiscal policy? Are tax and spending changes desirable in their own right or justified by reference to wider economic goals (such as macroeconomic stimulus or supply-side reforms) or parties’ distributional objectives? Thirdly, what is the electoral impact of fiscal promises? Ultimately, of course, we are interested in how voters respond to promises—though the effects of individual policies are not always easy to isolate. At the same time, the reception of parties’ tax and spending plans is often mediated by the responses of other actors, including interest groups, press commentators, and economic analysts, who shape public perceptions of their credibility. A study of fiscal promises thus opens up a whole range of questions about the forces shaping electoral behaviour, the media’s role in framing policy choices, and the politics of expertise in modern Britain.

1964 The run-up to the 1964 general election is often seen as the high-water mark of post-war optimism about the capacity of the British state to promote modernization and growth. In the face of a wave of ‘declinism’, the Conservative government embarked on an ambitious attempt to raise the

7  G.  C. Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy, 1906–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 6–11. 8  Winston Churchill to Juliet Rhys-Williams, 17 January 1950, Rhys-Williams papers, J11/5, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London.

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UK’s growth rate through ‘Keynesian-plus’ policies.9 This ‘great reappraisal’ of economic policy was marked by the development of a raft of new institutions and techniques, including tripartite corporate bargaining through the National Economic Development Council (NEDC), indicative planning in pursuit of a 4 per cent growth target, and the creation of the Public Expenditure Scrutiny Committee (PESC) process for managing public spending allocations.10 With the benefit of hindsight, disillusioned officials such as Leo Pliatzky also came to see this as a moment when the parties stoked unrealistic expectations of what the state could achieve and the Treasury began to lose control of public spending.11 This sowed the seeds of the Wilson government’s balance of payments difficulties, the rise in the tax burden under Labour, and the wider problem of government ‘overload’ which Anthony King identified in the mid-1970s.12 The fiscal politics of the 1964 campaign can only be understood in the context of the programmatic competition between Labour and the Conservatives, which had developed during the previous decade. In the course of the 1950s, the Conservatives had developed a three-pronged approach to fiscal policy in their manifestos. Firstly, the party made a broad but unspecific commitment to reducing taxation by cutting out wasteful government expenditure, backed up (in 1955 and 1959) by reference to the income tax cuts which Tory Chancellors had made since 1951. Secondly, the Conservatives used defensive formulae to reassure voters about their intentions for the welfare state: the party would ‘maintain and improve the Health Service’ (1950), use ‘increases in family allowances, taxation changes and other methods’ to compensate the poorest households for any cuts in food subsidies (1951), and ‘ensure that pensioners continue to share in the good things which a steadily expanding economy will bring’ (1959). Thirdly, the party developed specific ‘retail’ policies which served as talking points for Tory candidates on the hustings. By far the most important of these was the target of building 300,000 houses a 9  Hugh Pemberton, Policy Learning and British Governance in the 1960s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Glen O’Hara, From Dreams to Disillusionment: Economic and Social Planning in 1960s Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 10  Samuel Brittain, The Treasury under the Tories, 1951–1964 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964), ch. 7. 11  Leo Pliatzky, Getting and Spending: Public Expenditure, Employment and Inflation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), pp. 56–61. 12  Anthony King, ‘Overload: problems of governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, 23 (1975), pp. 284–96.

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year, adopted (under pressure from backbench MPs and grassroots activists) at the October 1950 party conference.13 This target was central to the party’s 1951 campaign, though Churchill and others studiously avoided presenting it as a promise or setting a timescale for its achievement.14 In 1955 and 1959, the party made firmer commitments on education: to provide ‘at least another million new school places’ over the next five years (1955) and ‘spend some £400 million by 1965 to improve the quality of our school buildings’ (1959). Other pledges were often inexpensive ‘nuggets’ designed to signal priorities or appeal to particular groups, such as the promises to appoint a Minister for Science and provide ‘more suitable vehicles for the badly disabled’ in the 1959 manifesto.15 Labour’s instinct, of course, was to outbid the Tories on social welfare issues, especially since revisionists such as Tony Crosland and Hugh Gaitskell were determined to shift the party’s focus from ‘means’ such as nationalization to ‘ends’ such as social equality. The 1955 Labour manifesto promised to abolish the 11+ exam, remove NHS charges (including those that Gaitskell had introduced in his 1951 budget), and index pensions and other benefits to the retail price index; in 1959 the party proposed an ‘emergency’ 10s increase in the state pension, followed by the introduction of Richard Crossman’s ‘National Superannuation’ scheme which would provide ‘half-pay on retirement for the average wage-earner’. The Conservatives responded by costing Labour’s policies and casting doubt on their affordability. In 1955, for instance, the Conservative Research Department costed Labour’s programme at £1 billion a year, and Iain Macleod claimed that this would mean ‘on average another £2 per family per week in extra taxes’.16 This figure was highly tendentious, since it conflated capital and current expenditure and included £400 million of fiscal tightening, based on the belief that a Labour Chancellor would aim for an overall budget surplus in order to bring interest rates

13  Harriet Jones, ‘“This is magnificent!”: 300,000 houses a year and the Tory revival after 1945’, Contemporary British History, 14 (2000), pp. 99–121. 14  D.  E. Butler, The British General Election of 1951 (London: Macmillan, 1952), pp. 56–7, 102. 15  For the concept of policy ‘nuggets’, see ‘Tony Newton, The next manifesto – policy’, 17 March 1972, SC8, Conservative Party Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 16  Brendon Sewill (Conservative Research Department), ‘The Cost of Socialist Proposals. “Forward with Labour”’, 29 April 1955, T233/1153, fo. 2, The National Archives (TNA), London; The Times, 19 May 1955, p. 16.

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down.17 Even so, the charge gained wide traction and ‘may have helped to foster the image of the Labour party as wildly extravagant’.18 Hugh Gaitskell tried to pre-empt a similar attack in 1959 by pledging ‘no increase in the standard or other rates of income tax so long as normal peacetime conditions continue’, but this tactic backfired, especially after his Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson set out plans for removing purchase tax from essential goods.19 Harold Macmillan accused the Labour leaders of engaging in a ‘mock auction’ and dismissed the notion that the party could pay for its programme by raising the UK’s economic growth rate.20 In the Nuffield study of the 1959 election, David Butler and Richard Rose concluded that ‘the two tax pledges’ seemed to be ‘the turning point of the campaign’, bringing to the fore ‘latent doubts’ about Labour’s economic competence.21 By 1964, the Conservatives had firmly embraced the politics of growthmanship. Indeed, the government’s own Public Expenditure White Paper provided for real spending increases of 4.1 per cent a year between 1963/64 and 1967/68, marginally above the NEDC’s 4 per cent target for overall economic expansion.22 In the face of mid-term discontent and the early 1960s Liberal revival, Tory strategists concluded that many swing voters expected the government to deliver better public services as well as private ‘affluence’.23 Home and his colleagues claimed that Conservatives were ‘modernising’ Britain and that plans for spending 14 per cent more on health and welfare, 16 per cent more on housing, and 25 per cent more

17  Treasury officials thought a more plausible figure for Labour’s spending plans was £258 m, and the annual ‘burden on [the] Exchequer… in an early year’ about £80 m: Sir Herbert Brittain, ‘Comments on “The Cost of Socialist Proposals”’, 3 May 1955, T233/1153, fos. 15–16, and manuscript note for ‘Sir H. Brittain’, T233/1153, fos. 5–6, both TNA. 18  D. E. Butler, The British General Election of 1955 (London: Macmillan, 1955), p. 84. 19  D. E. Butler and Richard Rose, The British General Election of 1959 (London: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 59–60. 20  Ibid., p. 60. 21  Ibid., pp. 61, 62. 22  Pliatzky, Getting and Spending, p. 58. 23  Andrew J.  Taylor, ‘“The record of the 1950s is irrelevant”: The Conservative Party, electoral strategy and opinion research, 1945–64’, Contemporary British History, 17 (2003), pp.  81–110; Rodney Lowe, ‘The replanning of the welfare state, 1957–1964’, in Martin Francis and Ina Zwieniger-Bargielowska eds., The Conservatives and British Society, 1880–1990 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 110–35.

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on education by 1968 gave tangible meaning to the party’s slogan of ‘Prosperity with a Purpose’.24 The scale of the Conservatives’ investment plans—in both financial and real resource terms—put Labour in a bind as the election neared. James Callaghan conceded that the government’s school-, hospital-, and road-­ building programmes ‘could not be exceeded by any party with any degree of responsibility’: the question was which party could achieve the economic growth needed to deliver them.25 In line with this caution, the Labour manifesto explicitly declared that the party did not ‘intend to have an election auction on housing figures’, that detailed health and education plans would have to be worked out in government, and that social security improvements would depend on ‘the rate at which the British economy can advance’—with the exception of the party’s plans for an Income Guarantee for pensioners. As in 1955 and 1959, the Conservatives produced an elaborate costing of Labour’s plans, which Reginald Maudling estimated at between £900 million and £1.2 billion: the equivalent of 9d in the £ on income tax, 6d on a gallon of petrol, 4d on a packet of cigarettes, 1d on a pint of beer, 3s on a bottle of spirits, and 6s on the weekly National Insurance stamp.26 On this occasion, however, Home’s complaints about a ‘menu without prices’ did not stick. Wilson counter-attacked by challenging the prime minister to a televised debate on the cost of the two manifestos—an invitation which Home, never comfortable on economic policy, declined to take up.27 Labour also pressed for details of new proposals in the Conservative manifesto, such as the promise to ‘give preferential treatment to the older pensioners’, which the Tory leader condescendingly described as a ‘donation’.28 Above all, Wilson and Callaghan were able to blunt Tory criticism by pointing to the government’s ‘stop-go’ economic record and

24  Conservative party poster ‘Straight talk – on Prosperity’, reproduced in Butler and King, The British General Election of 1964, plates at pp. 166–7. 25  HC Deb, 5th series, 11 March 1964, vol. 691, col. 477. 26  Butler and King, The British General Election of 1964, pp. 118, 124. 27  The Times, 18 September 1964, p. 12. 28  Butler and King, The British General Election of 1964, p. 113. The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance estimated that giving pensioners aged 75 and over an extra 10s a week (single) or 16s a week (for married couples) would cost £71 m a year, of which £31 m would fall on the Exchequer and the rest on National Insurance contributions: ‘Benefit Cost in Full Year’, costing sent by D. Overend to Mr. Regan, 23 July 1964, BN72/173, TNA.

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arguing that Maudling’s ‘dash for growth’ was running into a balance of payments crisis. In the event, Labour’s victory was followed by significant tax increases: £215 million in November 1964, including £85 million to pay for increased pensions, and a further £346 million in Callaghan’s March 1965 budget, which introduced corporation tax.29 Callaghan’s corporate tax reforms reflected a vision of tax ‘fairness’ which Labour had articulated clearly in opposition, and Treasury officials believed that a Conservative government would also have had to raise taxes.30 Even so, Wilson soon found himself struggling to reconcile Labour’s promises of social expansion with his desire to demonstrate the party’s economic competence. The experience of 1964–70—and, still more, 1974–9—thus served to consolidate Labour’s reputation as a ‘tax and spend’ party.

1983 The general election held in 1983 took place against the background of mass unemployment. This was the product of the first Thatcher government’s attempt to control inflation through a radical ‘monetarist’ policy, which attributed inflation to excessive government expenditure. In his 1980 budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Geoffrey Howe, had set out the government’s Medium Term Financial Strategy. This outlined a series of yearly targets, over four years, for a reduction of the money supply and the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR).31 These targets were all subsequently missed, but the tight constraints on fiscal and monetary policy prevailed. This was a major departure from the 29  These figures are based on current prices in a full year and are taken from Treasury budget documents: see R. W. R. Price, ‘Budgetary policy’, in F. T. Blackaby ed., British Economic Policy, 1960–74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 135–217, at pp. 156–7. On the larger context of the 1965 budget, see Richard Whiting, The Labour Party and Taxation: Party Identity and Political Purpose in Twentieth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 130–72. 30  According to Wilson’s adviser Thomas Balogh, Treasury calculations suggested that the Conservatives would have had to raise an extra £490 million in taxes in 1965/66, even if economic growth had remained at 4 per cent: Thomas Balogh to Prime Minister, 27 October 1964, PREM13/787, TNA. 31  Jim Tomlinson, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s macroeconomic adventurism, 1979–81, and its political consequences’, British Politics, 2 (2007), pp. 3–19; Duncan Needham, UK Monetary Policy from Devaluation to Thatcher, 1967–82 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 134–68.

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­ acroeconomic policy norms that had characterised the post-war decades, m in which the priority goal of maximising employment had been achieved by fine-tuning levels of demand through fiscal and monetary policy (albeit within the limits of a fixed exchange rate).32 This break with post-war Keynesianism had begun following the 1976 sterling crisis and IMF bailout, which had forced the Labour government to adopt a ‘new realism’ in public expenditure.33 Yet this should not detract from the enthusiastic embrace of monetarism by the Thatcher government after 1979. As Jim Tomlinson has noted, monetarism came to serve as a highly effective form of ‘statecraft’, allowing the Conservatives to break decisively with Keynesian fine-tuning and to disclaim responsibility for rising unemployment—placing the onus on unemployed workers to ‘price themselves’ into jobs.34 As the claimant count rose from 1.3 million in May 1979 to more than 3 million in the run-up to the 1983 election, political debate came to focus on how far the state could bring unemployment down. Labour leader Michael Foot admitted that it would be a ‘cruel deceit to present … a plan for dealing with mass unemployment unless we had worked out the details’, and the Tory manifesto fastened on this statement—warning that unemployment could not be abolished simply ‘by printing or borrowing thousands of millions of pounds’.35 The Conservatives’ promise to voters (or at least to those with a job and a mortgage) was to ‘maintain firm control of public spending and borrowing’ because ‘if government borrows too much, interest rates rise, and so do mortgage payments. Less spending by Government leaves more room to reduce taxes on families and businesses’.36 Beyond this, the Conservatives offered almost no specifics on tax or spending in the manifesto, preferring instead to prioritise, in the view of 32  On the extent of post-war Keynesianism see Alan Booth, ‘New revisionists and the Keynesian era in British economic policy’, Economic History Review, 454 (2001), pp. 346–66. 33  Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1989), pp.  400–4; on Peter Jay’s description of the ‘new realism’ see Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies, (London: Faber, 2009), pp. 337–9. 34  Jim Tomlinson, ‘Monetarism and the politics of inflation’, in Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders eds., Making Thatcher’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 62–77. 35  ‘ITN News at Ten – 19th May, 1983. Mr Foot speaking in Oxford’, Adam Ridley papers, 3/2/5/1, Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Cambridge. 36  Conservative manifesto 1983.

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The Economist, ‘retrospective self-congratulation’.37 (This emphasis on the party’s past performance was reminiscent of campaigns in earlier decades.) The Tory record of ‘reducing and simplifying taxes’ was celebrated, but this was matched only by a statement that ‘further improvements in allowances and lower rates of income tax remain a high priority’.38 The only specific spending commitment was to protect the basic rate pension and other long-term benefits against inflation. This absence of explicit promises testifies to the government’s focus on reducing the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement and also to Margaret Thatcher’s belief that the party had given too many hostages to fortune in the 1979 election—for instance, by agreeing to honour the Clegg Commission’s public-sector pay proposals.39 In drafting the manifesto, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Leon Brittan, had checked all proposed policies to ensure that they did not break the public expenditure limits outlined in the White Paper. According to Butler and Kavanagh, ‘the proposals had been subject to perhaps the tightest degree of financial discipline ever imposed on a manifesto’.40 Where the Conservatives avoided tying themselves to specific tax and spending proposals, Labour’s manifesto claimed that ‘no party in opposition [had] ever stated its intentions so clearly and comprehensively’.41 The foundation of the party’s approach was the proposed adoption of a substantial Keynesian stimulus programme to end unemployment. This was the first time that such a sizeable stimulus had been advocated, or indeed deemed necessary, since Lloyd George had pledged to ‘conquer unemployment’ through loan-financed public works in 1929.42 The Labour manifesto promised an ‘Emergency Programme of Action’, which would consist of an £11 billion increase in expenditure. The manifesto’s pre-­ emptive response to the perennial question of how Labour would to fund this spending spree was to argue that it would pay for itself as tax revenues increased once growth was restored. The party also pointed to an estimate  ‘Election Britain’, The Economist, 21 May 1983.  Conservative manifesto 1983. 39  John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, Vol. II: The Iron Lady (London: Pimlico, 2004), p. 48. 40  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 41. 41  Labour manifesto 1983. 42  Peter Sloman, ‘Can we conquer unemployment? The Liberal Party, public works and the 1931 political crisis’, Historical Research, 88 (2015), pp. 161–84. 37 38

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by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that each unemployed person cost the Exchequer almost £5000 a year in social security benefits and lost tax revenues—implying a total cost of £17 billion.43 Labour was not alone in proposing a stimulus package: the SDP-Liberal Alliance also promised to boost public spending, albeit on a smaller scale of £3 billion.44 While the Conservative manifesto process was closely controlled by Thatcher through Sir Geoffrey Howe, Labour’s manifesto was strongly shaped by the extra-parliamentary party and reflected deep-seated tensions over the relationship between MPs and party members. (See Mark Wickham-Jones’ chapter in this volume.) The National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Labour Party Research Department were determined to produce a programme that could hold the party leadership to the radical socialist policies endorsed by the party conference. This drive towards programmatic policymaking had emerged in the 1960s but had been effectively managed and constrained under the leaderships of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan. Michael Foot was a less willing or effective bulwark against party policy activism.45 In 1980, a draft Labour manifesto was produced by the NEC that, among many other things, proposed to raise the state pension to half average earnings for married couples and one-third of average earnings for single people. Labour front-benchers struggled to row back from this ambitious ‘social programme’ as the election approached; for instance, the manifesto promised a 3 per cent real terms increase on health spending, a 4 per cent real terms increase in spending on personal social services, and an increase in child benefit of £2 per week. The Conservatives calculated that Labour’s commitments would amount to £36–43 billion in additional expenditure by the end of a full Parliament, and this immense cost became a key line of attack in the Tory assault on Labour’s credibility.46

43  Labour manifesto 1983; ‘Cost of Unemployment’, memorandum by the Treasury, n.d. [May 1983], Margaret Thatcher papers, 2/7/3/40, CAC. Thatcher strongly disputed this figure: see TV interview with Sir Robin Day for BBC Panorama, 31 May 1983, available online at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105155 44  Peter Jenkins, ‘Puncturing the mood of pessimism’, Guardian, 17 May 1983. 45  Mark Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party: Politics and PolicyMaking, 1970–83 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 158–82. 46  ‘Costing Labour’s manifesto promises.’ Press release by Conservative Central Office, 25 May 1983, Margaret Thatcher papers, 2/7/3/40, CAC.

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Where the Conservative manifesto spoke of vague commitments to cutting taxation, the Labour manifesto made a number of explicit promises to raise revenue and make the tax system more progressive. The manifesto admitted that, even though the revival of growth would boost the Exchequer’s tax take, ‘some taxes will have to be increased, both to shift the tax balance towards those who can best afford to pay, and to help finance [Labour’s] social programme’.47 The manifesto contained promises to remove the ceiling on National Insurance Contributions (NICs), lower the starting rate for the highest rate of income tax, introduce a wealth tax, clamp down on tax reliefs and avoidance, raise the personal allowance in real terms, and extend VAT zero-rating. Treasury officials, however, estimated that Labour’s revenue pledges would only cover a fraction of the cost of the party’s spending proposals.48 Howe claimed that, even on the most generous assumptions, Labour would need ‘to raise at least £22 billion a year in higher taxes’, and dismissed Labour’s programme as ‘a reckless rag-bag of extravagant promises which no responsible opposition would dare promise to the voter’.49 The extent and apparent specificity of Labour’s tax and spending plans enabled the Conservatives to deflect scrutiny from their own performance in office by turning ‘a searchlight on the credibility of Labour’s alternatives’.50 Commentators were unconvinced that the plans outlined in the Labour manifesto answered the fundamental question: ‘how would you pay for it?’51 Despite Labour’s efforts to focus attention on the regressive impact of the Conservative tax and benefit changes over the previous four years, and Denis Healey’s attempt to reveal the ‘real Tory manifesto’ plans for deep cuts to welfare spending (which he had derived from a leaked Central Policy Review Staff paper), the party was unable to change the terms of the debate. Margaret Thatcher was triumphantly re-elected with a majority of 144.

 Labour manifesto 1983.  For instance, abolishing the NIC ceiling would raise about £700 million a year: David Robinson to Ms. Seammen and Ms. Deyes, 11 April 1983, T545/541, TNA. 49  ‘What Will Labour’s Plans Cost You? Speech by the Rt. Hon. Sir Geoffrey Howe, QC’, at Lingfield, Surrey, 1 June 1983, Adam Ridley papers, 3/2/9/4, CAC. 50  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1983, p. 91. 51  Geoffrey Smith, ‘Comment’, The Times, 24 May 1983. 47 48

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1992 The 1987–92 Parliament witnessed the dramatic removal of Margaret Thatcher from Number 10 at the end of 1990  in the face of growing unpopularity. Thatcher’s premiership had been destabilised by a disastrous attempt to reform local taxation (the Community Charge or ‘Poll Tax’), and her position was further weakened by her conflict with senior Cabinet colleagues over the UK’s proposed membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). As Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major had persuaded Thatcher to enter into the ERM as a means to finally secure a macroeconomic framework that could control inflation after a decade of unsatisfactory experimentation.52 This commitment to pegging sterling to the Deutschmark—which had the support of the Labour opposition, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Trades Union Congress—provided a fundamental constraint on tax and spending in the run-up to the 1992 general election.53 The political costs of adhering to the discipline of the ERM were most immediately borne by the Conservative government, now led by John Major, which entered the election campaign burdened with rising unemployment and (more worryingly for a party that had made home ownership a central plank of its political appeal) a spike in mortgage repossessions to an all-time high of 75,000 in 1991.54 Later in 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist, James Carville, would coin the cliché ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ and cement the idea that incumbent governments will struggle to win re-election during a recession.55 Although the Conservatives were about to disprove this supposed law of politics, the party had delayed the general election until April 1992 in the hope that the ‘green shoots of recovery’ would finally start to come through. If the government was trapped by the constraints of ERM membership, however, so too was Neil Kinnock’s Labour party. The party’s tax and spending plans had largely been formulated before the recession began, 52  Helen Thompson, The British Conservative Government and the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, 1979–1994 (London: Pinter, 1996), pp. 148–80. 53  Steven Kettell, ‘Does depoliticisation work? Evidence from Britain’s membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, 1990–92’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 10 (2008), pp. 630–48. 54  Table 1300: number of outstanding mortgages, arrears and repossessions, United Kingdom, from 1969. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ live-tables-on-repossession-activity 55  The War Room, dir. D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (film, 1993).

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and Kinnock’s determination to demonstrate Labour’s economic credibility within the ERM meant that the scope for pursuing an economic stimulus was sharply curtailed. Furthermore, the most recent Treasury forecasts projected a £14 billion budget deficit in 1993, limiting the scope for any additional unfunded expenditure.56 The ‘Shadow Budget’ which John Smith produced at the start of the campaign was designed to prove to the electorate that Labour could be trusted with the public finances and focused on demonstrating Labour’s capacity to pay for increased spending through tax revenues rather than additional borrowing. The macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy were ignored or downplayed, though the National Institute for Economic and Social Research calculated that Labour policies were implicitly expansionary. The case for borrowing in a recession had been shelved, apparently placing the final nail in the coffin of post-war Keynesianism.57 Smith’s Shadow Budget set out plans to raise an extra £6.9 billion of revenue in a full year by abolishing the ceiling on NICs and introducing a new 50 per cent top rate of income tax, and to spend about half of this on improvements to social security—raising child benefit to £9.95 per week and the state pension by £5 for single pensioners and £8 for couples. This left Labour with about £3.5 billion a year to invest in public services: for instance, the party promised make an additional £1 billion available for the NHS over 22 months.58 However, Smith and Kinnock came under sustained criticism from the Conservative-supporting press, which complained (in an impressive feat of contortion) that Labour’s spending plans were simultaneously too big to be affordable and too small to deliver the social improvements which voters would expect from a Labour government. For instance, Peter Riddell of The Times complained that ‘The Labour manifesto is full of what may euphemistically be called aspirations, which are not only uncosted but which will also raise expectations’, and The Economist took the same view.59 Labour’s ‘various departmental spokesmen’ had made promises that, despite being ‘carefully qualified: “when circumstances allow”, and so forth’, had ‘created expectations that

 ‘The budget: no room, no room’, The Economist, 14 March 1992.  Anatole Kaletsky, ‘Labour “would boost jobs and inflation”’, The Times, 19 March 1992. 58  Evan Davis et al., Alternative Proposals on Tax and Social Security (London: Institute for Fiscal Studies, 1992), p. 40. 59  Peter Riddell, ‘Labour’s credibility gap’, The Times, 25 March 1992. 56 57

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will be hard to disappoint’.60 (‘Heads they win, tails we lose’, Kinnock lamented at a Shadow Cabinet away-day.)61 Labour made extensive use of tax and benefit models to simulate the distributional effects of its proposals, with help from academics such as Tony Atkinson and John Hills, and claimed that 80 per cent of taxpayers would benefit from Smith’s Shadow Budget—including every employee earning less than £22,000.62 However, Smith had been wrong-footed by Chancellor Norman Lamont’s decision to introduce a 20p lower rate of income tax in his final budget before the campaign.63 In order to match Lamont’s tax cuts for the low paid, Smith had to hit better-off workers harder than he had planned—allowing the Conservatives and press commentators to take aim at Labour’s ‘unashamedly redistributive’ fiscal package.64 In particular, Anatole Kaletsky of The Times pointed out that most winners would receive a ‘paltry’ benefit, while those required to pay more tax would face significant costs: Families with incomes between £150 and £400 a week gain an average of 85 pence a week. For the big losers, by contrast, the losses mount very rapidly, from £3.60 a week at incomes of £500, to £11 a week above £600, and £105 a week above £1,000.65

Even The Guardian condemned Labour’s commitment to ‘facile universality’ and argued instead for more targeted spending on the poorest, as the SDP had proposed in the 1980s.66 These relatively nuanced critiques of Labour’s fiscal proposals were nothing compared to the blunt simplicity of the Conservatives’ attack. In time-honoured fashion, the party had published a dossier in summer 1991 costing Labour’s spending commitments at £35 billion and followed this up in January 1992 with the famous ‘tax bombshell’ poster. Masterminded  ‘Labour’s shadow budget: red in tooth and claw’, The Economist, 21 March 1992.  ‘Opening Remarks to Shadow Cabinet.’ Speaking notes for Kinnock, with annotations by Kinnock, January 1992, in Neil Kinnock papers, 2/1/189, CAC. 62  Labour Party, Labour’s Budget Statement 1992–93 (London: Labour Party, 1992); interview with Holly Sutherland, 6 December 2018; see also correspondence and working papers in Neil Kinnock papers, 6/1/44 and 6/1/46, CAC. 63  Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Little, Brown, 1998), pp. 117–20. 64  ‘Britain this week’, The Economist, 21 March 1992. 65  Anatole Kaletsky, ‘Where the pips will squeak’, The Times, 18 March 1992. 66  ‘The time, and the price, of change’, The Guardian, 8 April 1992. 60 61

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by Saatchi & Saatchi, the campaign claimed that a Labour government would mean ‘£1,000 more tax a year for the average taxpayer’ (a figure subsequently revised up to £1250 during the election campaign itself).67 The Tories’ focus on tax in the six months prior to the election appears to have been extremely effective. Between November 1991 and January 1992 alone, Gallup polling revealed that the Tory lead over Labour as the party ‘best able to deal with taxes’ rose from 4 per cent to 18 per cent, and Labour’s private polling showed that three-quarters of respondents gave ‘taxation’ as a reason for not voting for the party.68 Conservative-­ supporting newspapers amplified this attack by publishing tables which purported to show the impact of Labour’s tax plans on families of different kinds: a voter in Bury, for instance, told one of Philip Gould’s focus groups that he had decided to vote Tory after ‘Labour published their tax plans in the Daily Mail’.69 As in 1964 and 1983, the Conservatives used the tax issue to activate and reinforce underlying fears about Labour’s economic credibility.70

2010 In contrast to the 1964, 1983, and 1992 elections, the 2010 contest saw Labour in office—after a decade in which it had neutralized many of its traditional weaknesses and learnt to exploit the benefits of incumbency. ‘Tax was central’ to Tony Blair’s ‘strategy of reassurance’, and New Labour pledged no increase in the basic or higher rates of income tax at the 1997, 2001, and 2005 general elections; indeed, Blair declared that he thought any government should seek ‘to lower rather than increase the tax burden on ordinary families’.71 As Chancellor, Gordon Brown cut the basic rate from 23p to 20p whilst abolishing the married couple’s allowance and tax relief on mortgage interest and raising NICs (by 1p) to help pay for

67  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1992 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 84–5, 105. 68  Ibid., 85–7. 69  ‘Election and post election polling. SCA 8th June 1992’, Neil Kinnock papers, 3/4/1/76, CAC. 70  Shaun Woodward, ‘The Conservative Party’s strategy’, in Ivor Crewe and Brian Gosschalk eds., Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1992 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 21–35. 71  Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, pp. 283, 284.

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increased spending on the NHS.72 Sustained economic growth, fiscal drag, and ‘stealth taxes’ lifted government receipts from 33.7 per cent of GDP in 1997 to 38.3 per cent in 2007, allowing the Labour government to invest large sums in health and education and to redistribute resources to lower-income families through the tax credits system. Gordon Brown ‘believed that people voted prospectively’—on the basis of future plans as well as the government’s past record—and used his position as Chancellor to draw dividing lines with the Conservatives.73 As David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh noted after the 2001 election, public support for investment in schools and hospitals meant that ‘Conservative tax cutters’ were now ‘on the defensive’ about where they would make spending cuts.74 During the 2001 campaign, William Hague and Michael Portillo promised to match Labour’s plans for spending on police, education, and the NHS whilst making £8 billion a year of tax cuts, including a 6p cut in fuel duty and a new married couple’s allowance. Four years later, Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin declared that the Conservatives would make £12 billion a year of efficiency savings by 2007/8, devoting £8 billion of this saving to paying down the national debt and £4 billion to tax cuts. On both occasions, Labour exploited incautious comments by Tory spokesmen (particularly Shadow Chief Secretary Oliver Letwin in 2001 and party vice-chairman Howard Flight in 2005) to allege that the party’s true intentions were much more radical and claim that the Conservatives’ numbers didn’t add up.75 In the wake of the 2005 election, David Cameron and George Osborne concluded that the Conservatives had to demonstrate their commitment to the public services before making the argument for lower taxes. Cameron thus promised to match Labour’s spending plans up to 2010/11 and then ‘share the proceeds of growth’ between spending increases and tax cuts.76

 Gordon Brown, My Life, Our Times (London: Vintage, 2017), pp. 139–56.  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2001 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p. 87. 74  Ibid., p. 26. 75  Oliver Letwin, Hearts and Minds: The Battle for the Conservative Party from Thatcher to the Present (London: Biteback Publishing, 2017), pp. 111–15, 135–40; Michael Howard, ‘Reflections on the election: Tax’, speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, 27 June 2005, available online at https://conservative-speeches.sayit.mysociety.org/speech/600328 76  Peter Dorey, ‘“Sharing the proceeds of growth”: Conservative Party economic policy under David Cameron’, Political Quarterly, 80 (2009), pp. 259–69. 72 73

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The 2008 financial crisis and the recession that followed thus blew both main parties off course. As tax revenues fell and the economy contracted, the Labour government effectively abandoned its fiscal rules and, along with most of the rest of the world, introduced stimulus measures (including a temporary cut in VAT) to help cushion the decline in consumer spending.77 Unsurprisingly, however, the government was soon faced with a rising deficit, which reached £155 billion—or 10 per cent of GDP—in 2009/10. Gordon Brown’s successor as Chancellor, Alistair Darling, sought to reassure the financial markets (and voters) by setting out deficit-­ reduction plans in his 2009 and 2010 budgets, including a new 50 per cent top rate of income tax (from April 2010) and a 1p increase in National Insurance contributions (from 2011). Although the new top rate breached a manifesto commitment, Brown and Darling felt it could be justified as a way of balancing the sacrifices which poorer citizens would make as a result of spending cuts, and so ensure that the deficit-reduction process was ‘fair’.78 In some ways, the recession was also problematic for the Conservatives. Cameron and Osborne could not pass up the chance to blame Labour for the UK’s fiscal problems, but talking about the need for austerity risked allowing Brown to frame the 2010 election as a choice between ‘Labour investment’ and ‘Tory cuts’. Indeed, the Conservatives fought the campaign on a rather familiar fiscal prospectus—promising to reduce the deficit more quickly than Labour whilst scrapping the planned increase in employers’ NICs (which Osborne labelled the ‘jobs tax’), removing tax credits from middle-income families, and raising the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million. Though Cameron promised to ring-fence spending on the NHS and schools, Labour sought to highlight the ‘risk’ which Conservative spending plans posed to voters at two levels. Firstly, Labour argued that Cameron and Osborne’s plans to cut government spending by £6bn in 2010/11 were irresponsible in macroeconomic terms, since ‘taking money out of the economy’ would derail the UK’s recovery from recession—a classic Keynesian argument which Brown pressed home in 77  Christopher Hood and Rozana Himaz, A Century of Fiscal Squeeze Politics: 100 Years of Austerity, Politics, and Bureaucracy in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 181–5; on the global response see Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (London: Allen Lane, 2018), pp. 239–90. 78  Jim Tomlinson, Managing the Economy, Managing the People: Narratives of Economic Life in Britain from Beveridge to Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 110–33.

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the televised debates with Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. Secondly, Labour focussed attention on what Tory cuts might mean for particular benefits and services, backed up with a direct mail campaign in marginal seats. Claims that the Conservatives would scrap waiting-time targets for cancer patients prompted accusations of scaremongering, but focus groups found that the threat to tax credits resonated with voters and became ‘a real problem for the Tories’.79 The Liberal Democrats also featured prominently in the 2010 campaign, especially after Nick Clegg’s performance in the first leadership debate gave the party a boost in the polls which fostered perceptions of a genuine ‘three-horse race’. The Liberal Democrat manifesto included an eight-page plan for ‘Credible and Responsible Finances’, complete with a photograph of a business-like Vince Cable, and set out a ‘working assumption that we will start to reduce the deficit from 2011–12 onwards’ with the goal of halving the budget deficit over three years. Yet the party’s costings document only outlined £16 billion of spending cuts by 2014/15, which would be offset by more than £5 billion of new commitments— including the £2.6 billion ‘pupil premium’ for disadvantaged children and £1.8 billion for phasing out university tuition fees. The party also sets out plans for £17 billion of tax rises and anti-avoidance measures, but this revenue would be required to pay for its headline pledge of raising the personal tax allowance to £10,000.80 Like the larger parties, the Liberal Democrats found it easier to set deficit-reduction targets than to prepare voters for the reality of austerity by showing them where the savings would be found.

Conclusion Taken together, these case studies powerfully illustrate the centrality of fiscal policy to British electoral politics. If anything, the salience of tax and spending plans has become more pronounced over the last half century. As the differences between Labour and the Conservatives on economic policy have narrowed—particularly in the 1990s and 2000s—disputes over tax 79  Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley, The British General Election of 2010 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 65, 170, 182, 232; Alastair Campbell, The Alastair Campbell Diaries: Volume 7, 2007–2010. From Crash to Defeat (London: Biteback Publishing, 2018), p. 715. 80  Liberal Democrat manifesto 2010.

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rises and spending cuts have come to serve as a proxy for the two parties’ visions of the state, inviting voters to face up to the trade-off between private consumption and investment in public services. Over time, fiscal promises have become more specific, though not necessarily more ambitious. Rather, parties have published detailed costings documents in an attempt to demonstrate the credibility of their proposals—especially in opposition—and to deal with the perennial question: ‘Where is the money coming from?’ On closer inspection, however, the apparent specificity of parties’ spending plans is often illusory. In recent elections, the range of policies which have been costed in detail has tended to be relatively narrow. Until 2017, the differences between parties’ plans were also relatively small in relation to the margin of error in Treasury forecasts and the overall size of the public sector.81 Fiscal promises have always been conditioned by the economic context and can only be understood in relation to the parties’ wider approaches to economic management. During the 1950s and 1960s, budgetary policy was primarily framed by the needs of Keynesian demand management, in which the Treasury’s ‘Budget judgment’, its analysis of the real resources available in the economy, and its efforts to maintain international confidence in sterling together defined the scope for increasing public spending.82 From the mid-1970s, tax and spending discussions within government were again conducted in cash terms, though in 1983 and 2010 Labour sought to develop an explicitly Keynesian argument for borrowing during a recession in order to stimulate aggregate demand. On both occasions, the Conservatives successfully rebutted this by deploying ‘the much older political rhetoric of the economy as a household’, insisting that the state should balance its books and that economic recovery would be threatened—not aided—by rising debt and the prospect of

81  This point was made forcefully by Andrew Dilnot during the 2005 election campaign: ‘More or Less’, BBC Radio 4, 26 April 2005. 82  As Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky pointed out, the annual budget was shaped by a ‘Keynesian assessment of how much … needs to be “given away” or taken back in tax changes in order to provide economic stability at a high level of employment’; the Cabinet made spending plans separately in the summer or autumn, but their choices were ‘heavily conditioned by the previous spring’s revenue decisions’: Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy inside British Politics (second edition, London: Macmillan, 1981), pp. 179–80.

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rising taxes.83 The primacy of this fiscal frame is perhaps not surprising, since the relationship between fiscal policy and macroeconomic outcomes is intrinsically complex and contested, and it is generally much easier for voters to grasp the impact which tax increases and spending cuts would have on their living standards. The cumulative effect of these trends—and declining confidence in the state’s ability to deliver economic growth—has been a shift away from the ‘bidding wars’ of the early post-war period towards a more cautious fiscal politics, in which parties have focussed on establishing their credibility. Conservative governments, in particular, have repeatedly used their control of the fiscal baseline to put Labour on the defensive about its plans and to warn voters of a ‘tax bombshell’ if Labour came to power. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown responded to the party’s bruising 1992 defeat by developing a new tax strategy, focussed on ‘reassurance’, and turning the tables on the Conservatives in office. Although Jeremy Corbyn’s strong performance in the 2017 campaign suggested that voters were becoming more receptive to radical spending plans, the 2019 general election marked a return to a more familiar dynamic. Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid sought to persuade voters that they had ‘turned the page on austerity’—for instance, by promising to recruit 20,000 more police officers and to launch the ‘biggest hospital building programme in a generation’—whilst costing Labour’s plans at £1.2 trillion over a five-year Parliament. The public response to Labour’s ambitious spending promises, such as free broadband and the abolition of student fees, is likely to be a major focus of the party’s inquest into its defeat. Whatever conclusions party strategists draw from the 2019 campaign, there is certainly no sign of fiscal questions receding from the foreground as Britain moves into a post-­Brexit era.

83  Andrew Gamble, ‘Austerity as statecraft’, Parliamentary Affairs, 68 (2015), pp. 42–57, at p. 50.

The Introduction of Race and Immigration in British Post-Imperial Politics: The General Elections of 1964 and 1966 Emil Sokolov

Having opposed line by line the Conservative immigration Control Bill and threatened to repeal it, they (Labour) now want the whole question of immigration, and the problems arising from it, hushed up very quietly for no other reason than political expedience. George Hawkins, 1966 election address (Conservative, West Bromwich). We can only view with contempt and the utmost disgust the split in local Tory ranks instigated by the militant Right. In this election let no thrust be given to racialists, supporters of Rhodesian rebellion, and to the advocates of nineteenth-century economic doctrine. Such people do British politics a gross disservice. David Owen, 1966 election special (Labour, Fylde South). (Election specials became common from the 1920s onwards and featured a mixture of locally produced content with material prepared by head office and/or a local newspaper. Sometimes they were published just for elections and mirrored the contents of candidates’ election addresses.)

E. Sokolov (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_7

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Despite the above quotations, which contain evidence of intensifying party competition over race and immigration, the existing scholarship has argued that the 1964 and 1966 elections were periods of consensus between the Conservative and Labour parties regarding these matters.1 Anthony Messina, Zig Layton-Henry, and Randall Hansen have all made comments about the similarity of the parties’ proposals.2 According to these authors, this was caused by an informal agreement between the Conservative and Labour parties to keep race and immigration out of electoral politics due to its controversial nature. This type of research has relied heavily on parliamentary debates, national legislation, and newspaper material, but election literature and addresses have been almost completely excluded from the analysis. The Nuffield Election Studies are the only notable exception, thus making them the go-to source for information about campaign materials. By collecting a 25 percent sample of addresses the authors found that 8 percent of Conservative and 14 percent of Labour candidates mentioned the issue in 1964.3 The figures for 1966, based on a 20 percent sample of addresses, were 11 percent and 0 percent respectively. In contrast, this chapter is based on an examination of 100 percent of the addresses issued by Labour and Conservative candidates in the two elections. This reveals that 14 percent of Tory and 15 percent of Labour contenders discussed immigration in 1964 and 18 percent and 4 percent correspondingly in 1966. Moreover, the promises, contents, and imagery included in the leaflets are also under-researched by the Nuffield studies. Apart from the infamous 1964 campaign in Smethwick where the Conservative candidate for Smethwick, Peter Griffiths, capitalised on the notorious slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbor, vote Labour’, very little is known about the promises made by individual candidates in other areas with a high number of immigrants.4 This chapter focuses 1  Although the Liberal party and its candidates referred to immigration in both years, their contribution to immigration debates remained marginal. 2  Detailed discussions can be found in Anthony Messina, Race and Party Competition in Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Zig Layton-Henry, The Politics of Immigration (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 3  D. E. Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 143; D. E. Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1966 (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 103. 4  Although Griffiths refused to disown the slogan which his supporters used, he did not use it himself. A detailed analysis of the campaign can be found in Rachel Yemm, ‘Immigration,

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­ redominantly on candidates and places whose political promises about p immigration did not fit the alleged consensus, thus offering new light on a phase of British racial politics which until now has been inadequately understood. Several scholars, including Paul Gilroy, Wendy Webster, and John Solomos, have tried and struggled to explain how Smethwick’s localised outburst of racism in 1964 spread nationwide after Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech in 1968.5 In his controversial speech, the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Defence warned that unless something was done about immigration urgently, race-induced violence might erupt across Britain. In response to the rise of Powellism, researchers have investigated how and why black and Asian immigrants were transformed into an ‘alien threat’ and became increasingly associated with national decline. So far, there has been little agreement as to when this process started and how the language of racial exclusion made its way into mainstream British politics. By focusing on the neglected arena of political promises and the qualitative and quantitative transformations which pledges underwent between 1964 and 1966, this chapter will highlight how race and immigration matters altered the type of Britain that was promised to voters. Most importantly, it will show the 1966 campaign to be the missing link between earlier rhetoric portraying immigrants as a burden on Britain’s social services and the rise of Powellite discourses which propagated the idea that different customs and habits ‘polluted’ the nation. This process raises important questions as to how postcolonial Britain negotiated who belonged to the nation and who remained on the outside, both literally and metaphorically. Although individual candidates were encouraged to repeat the moderate proposals outlined in the parties’ election manifestos, during the 1964 and 1966 general elections, a growing cohort of Conservative and Labour candidates emerged whose pledges were much more extreme. By engaging critically with their election addresses, this chapter will make two contributions to the scholarship. First, it will contribute to a new way of approaching political promises. The way in which candidates made and race and local media: Smethwick and the 1964 general election’, Contemporary British History, 33 (2019), pp. 98–122. 5  Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (London: Routledge, 2002); Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire: 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); John Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).

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contextualised their pledges ought to be understood not just as a means of expressing ideology, but also as a way of generating it. It will be shown that the act of constructing a written pledge was the key mechanism by which competing discourses about race and immigration were framed and communicated to the public for the first time during the 1964 and 1966 campaigns.6 Second, the chapter will highlight the steady politicisation of race and immigration between the two elections and how the conceptual grounds of the debate were moved further to the right of the political spectrum. For example, in 1964, Labour’s rhetoric emphasised the need for a ‘multi-racial partnership’ both at home and abroad, which helped portray immigration in a positive light. The Commonwealth’s declining popularity in British politics rendered the concept and the sentiment associated with it obsolete by 1966. This was followed by a profound right-­ wing turn in the Conservatives’ rhetorical devices. Whereas they referred to ‘overcrowded Britain’ as the main reason for restricting immigration in 1964, in 1966 their pledges were aimed at keeping ‘home intruders’ away. Between the campaigns perceptions of immigrants changed, and their presence became increasingly associated with the disruption of domestic life caused by different customs and habits that threatened the sanctity of the nation.7 Election addresses are particularly useful for addressing this transformation. The leaflets constitute a massive dataset of comparable material which enables one to examine the promises made by candidates from both parties, regardless of whether they won or lost their battles for seats. Nearly half of voters claimed to have read at least one election address at each election between 1964 and 1979.8 A 1964 pamphlet from the Conservative Research Department confirms the leaflets’ significance: ‘It is of great assistance to canvassers and other workers, as many electors prefer not to give a definite promise of support until they have seen the candidate’s

6  This argument has been inspired by Richard Toye, ‘Words of change: the rhetoric of Commonwealth, Common Market and Cold War, 1961–3’, in Larry Butler and Sarah Stockwell eds., The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 140–158 at p. 143. 7  Issues of Englishness and domesticity have been thoroughly investigated in Wendy Webster, Imagining Home: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945–1964: Gender, Race and National Identity, 1945–64 (London: Routledge, 1998). 8  Butler and King, British General Election of 1966, pp. 96–8.

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address.’9 The chapter consists of two sections, one for each general election between 1964 and 1966, followed by a conclusion. Although the parties’ manifestos and their implications for the election addresses will be briefly considered, the focus will be on candidates’ individual leaflets. The primary goal is to cast fresh light on the political promises and rhetorical devices which contenders used in order to convince voters that they possessed the solution to Britain’s ‘immigration problem’.

The 1964 General Election The 1964 Nuffield election study described that year’s campaign as rather dull.10 At the very least, however, there were powerful undercurrents of controversy. In his election address, Richard Thompson (Conservative, Croydon South) wrote: ‘I shall continue to support the present restrictions on unlimited immigration so bitterly opposed by the Socialists. While we welcome genuine students and those with an assured job waiting, we just cannot accept into this overcrowded island countless thousands of unskilled people with nowhere to go, and no means of support except the welfare state.’11 In 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act had been introduced. It was used to regulate the entry of New Commonwealth immigrants coming from countries with predominantly black populations.12 The Act had to be renewed each year, which laid the foundations for the ongoing electoral significance of race and immigration. The 1964 election was unique as the issue of immigration appeared for the first time in Conservative and Labour manifestos. Despite the implications of these developments, Anthony Messina has concluded that there was no competition between the two parties over race and immigration because they were afraid to upset the public who held very strong

9  Aids to Conservative and Unionist Candidates and Agents, July 1964, Archives of the British Conservative Party, Microfilm Series 1/Card 736/1964, 57–62, Bristol University Library. 10  Butler and King, British General Election of 1964, pp. 127–8. 11  Richard Thompson’s 1964 election address. All election addresses cited in this chapter are from DM668, Papers of the National Liberal Club, Bristol University Library Special Collections. 12  David Edgerton, The Fall and Rise of the British Nation: A Twentieth-century History (London: Allen Lane, 2018), pp. 257–8.

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views about these issues.13 This section will show that there was more division in Conservative and Labour approaches than the existing scholarship has recognised. Whereas the Tories emphasised control, Labour prioritised its pledge to outlaw racial discrimination. Attention will also be given to the parties’ election manifestos and their ability to set the general tone of the entire campaign. To illustrate this point, the majority of candidates copied the sections about immigration directly from the manifesto into their own addresses–half of the Tories and almost three quarters of Labour who mentioned immigration in their leaflets did this. The first draft of the Conservative manifesto was ready on 24 January 1964. In the section ‘Democracy and Law’ it promised to pass legislation against racial hatred and incitement to racial hatred. Thus it seems clear that those who wrote it were thinking of black and Asian immigration, and not, for example, white settlers from Ireland or the ‘old’ Dominions. By the time the third draft was in circulation in June 1964, the Conservatives were beginning to ask themselves some questions. Nigel Lawson, a prominent party member and city editor of the Sunday Telegraph, wrote to Sir Michael Fraser, Head of the Conservative Research Department, and complained that the manifesto was lacking in original content.14 According to Lawson there were not enough new policy ideas and the whole text needed to be redrafted in a much more urgent style, thus making up for the lack of concrete promises and proposals with harsher rhetoric. The most notable change that followed, in respect of immigration, was that instead of referring to ‘the numbers which this country can absorb’, the manifesto now pledged to exercise control according to ‘the numbers which our crowded country can absorb.’15 A memorandum attached to the draft warned that such an approach was disingenuous because Britain was in no way a crowded place. Moreover, the phrase implied that immigrants were a burden on Britain’s social services such as housing and employment. Nevertheless, the changes remained. This meant that the document was no longer being equally weighted between integration and control, but now favoured the latter. Ironically, the last version of the manifesto included a sentence promising to ensure that the working of the 13  A detailed discussion of this point can be found in Messina, Race and Party Competition in Britain, pp. 21–53. 14  Nigel Lawson to Sir Michael Fraser, Memorandum, 8 June 1964, Conservative Party Archive (CPA), CRD3/9/19, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 15  1964 General Election Manifesto (fifth draft), 27 July 1964, CPA, SC3 (64) 39.

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Election Manifestos 1964 Conservative Manifesto

Labour Manifesto

In the ‘Full Employment’ section A Conservative Government will continue to control immigration from overseas according to the numbers, which our crowded country and its industrial regions can absorb. We shall ensure that the working of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which we passed in 1962 against bitter Labour Party opposition, is fair and effective.

In the ‘A New role for Britain’ section …That is why a Labour Government will legislate against racial discrimination and incitement in public places and give special help to local authorities in areas where immigrants have settled. Labour accepts that the number of immigrants entering the United Kingdom must be limited. Until a satisfactory agreement covering this can be negotiated with the Commonwealth a Labour Government will retain immigration control.

Fig. 1  Election manifesto texts on immigration, 1964

1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act was going to be ‘fully fair and effective’. This, of course, was a poor attempt to compensate for the earlier pledges about tackling racial discrimination (see Fig. 1). On the other hand, when the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was announced in 1962, Labour’s leader, Hugh Gaitskell, had called it ‘cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation.’16 After Harold Wilson succeeded Gaitskell as party leader, he accepted the need for some immigration control, but the party’s focus remained on fighting racial discrimination. This measure was intended to guarantee harmony at home, but also to reassure Commonwealth countries that Britain was fit to lead such a multi-racial organisation. Surprisingly, Labour’s Campaign Committee minutes of 31 August 1964 recorded that the manifesto would not discuss immigration and instead a speech would be given during the campaign. At the same time, the Study Group on Commonwealth Immigrants and the Committee on Racial Discrimination of the Society of Labour Lawyers was preparing an anti-discrimination bill and their suggestions were summarised in a lengthy report.17 After a copy of the report was read in front of the Home 16  Kenneth Jackson, Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), p. 547. 17  Interim report on Bill to Outlaw Racial Discrimination in Public Places and Incitement to Racial Hatred or Contempt, RD 809/August 1964, 1964 General Election file, Labour Party Archive (LPA), People’s History Museum, Manchester.

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Policy Sub-committee on 8 September 1964, the committee decided that George Brown, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, was going to attend the National Executive Committee (NEC)’s meeting on the same day to present an oral report about the Home Sub-committee’s findings. Most importantly, the NEC minutes reveal that the decision to dedicate a section to immigration in the manifesto was taken on 8 September after George Brown’s presentation about the discrimination bill.18 Therefore, even though Labour promised both control and legislation against racial discrimination in its manifesto (see Fig. 1), it was the latter pledge that stood at the centre of the party’s immigration policy and perhaps also its Commonwealth policy. Labour’s notion of shared immigration control with the Commonwealth was just an idea at this stage, and there is no evidence to suggest that any serious thought had been given to the idea in advance. Furthermore, both parties’ central offices issued various resources showing candidates how to go about the preparation of their individual addresses. Various sample layouts, stock images, and manifesto summaries were made available to potential parliamentary candidates across the political spectrum, encouraging them to make use of these resources and to follow the party line outlined in the manifestos.19 Despite the growing bureaucratisation of campaigns, there were still some Conservative and Labour contenders who exhibited independent and original thinking on the topic of immigration. Such ‘original’ addresses differed significantly from the manifesto. The policy proposals found in these leaflets might not have been entirely dissimilar to those in the manifestos, but the rhetoric used to articulate them was noticeably different. To illustrate this point, of those Conservative addresses that discussed race and immigration, there were 43 (nearly half of all leaflets featuring immigration) which did so in a unique way. The average word count of the sections dedicated to immigration in the leaflets was 105 words and overall they featured 23 promises. Making specific policy promises to voters about immigration was not the goal for these candidates–convincing the electorate of immigrants’ detrimental effects on housing, the economy, health, and so on apparently was. Their messages were highly discursive and relied on various rhetorical 18  Minutes of the meeting of the National Executive Committee, 8 September 1964, 1964 General Election file, LPA. 19  A similar series was prepared for every election. For example, Aids to Conservative and Unionists Candidates and Agents, July 1964.

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devices centred around the harms which immigrants supposedly inflicted on British society. For example, the top ten words used in the leaflets included phrases such as ‘our people’ and ‘our country.’ These tropes were used to describe problems such as ‘ours is a small and crowded country’ and how ‘no responsible government could allow social problems like housing to become seriously aggravated by a fantastic flood of immigrants that could not be absorbed.’20 Tory candidates went further than this and issued grave warnings about the numerous dangers associated with race. Andrew Bowden (North Kensington), for instance, claimed that unlimited immigration would result in excessive competition for jobs and housing that could only lead to racial strife.21 Likewise, Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton South West) declared that ‘I am convinced that strict control must continue if we are to avoid the evils of a colour question in this country, for ourselves and for our children.’22 In addition, other candidates tried to stoke anxiety by playing the ‘numbers game’. Barbara Maddin (Southall) said: ‘It is officially estimated that there are today 7000 newcomers from the Commonwealth in this constituency – mostly Indians.’23 Similarly, Brian Keefe (Liverpool Scotland) warned that ‘Repealing the Immigrants Act would allow the 300,000 outstanding applicants and many more to come to Britain, without housing, employment and medical examination.’24 Still others, such as John Smyth (Norwood), tried to capitalise on deception and fear, and argued that if Labour ‘had had their way jobs and houses would now be much scarcer both for residents and immigrants than they are today.’25 Clearly, the rhetorical devices which these 43 candidates used in their addresses aimed to set up and strengthen a diverse set of negative associations between race and immigration and Britain’s social services. Moreover, this discourse about race sought to exploit the strong ­anti-­immigrant sentiments which large sections of the public held at the  Brian Keefe’s 1964 election address.  Andrew Bowden’s 1964 election address. 22  Enoch Powell’s 1964 election address. In her seminal book Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Camilla Schofield talks about the evolution of Powell’s ideas about immigration, but she does not discuss his 1964 election address where he issued one of his earliest ‘electoral warnings’ against the colour question. 23  Barbara Maddin’s 1964 election address. 24  Brian Keefe’s 1964 election address. 25  John Smyth’s 1964 election address. 20 21

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time.26 Like the manifesto, these leaflets featured an urgent rhetoric which portrayed immigrants as a burden, to conceal the fact that after 13 years in power the Conservatives were struggling to formulate a coherent policy about immigration. On the other hand, there were 22 Labour leaflets with unique messages about immigration. The sections dedicated to the issue consisted of 80 words on average and between them the addresses made 18 promises. The pledges which the Labour candidates made within their addresses were more complex than those proposed by their Conservative counterparts. Whereas the Tories promised immigration control in a highly discursive fashion, Labour candidates put forward complex promises envisioning several actions, such as the introduction of anti-discrimination legislation and strengthening Britain’s relationship with the Commonwealth. The strong programmatic character of Labour’s rhetoric resulted in the manifesto’s pledge to outlaw racial discrimination being the most frequently repeated promise across the 22 addresses. Despite Labour addresses featuring sections about immigration that were 25 words shorter on average compared to the Conservative leaflets, they packed a much more ‘promising’ punch. However, discursive language was not entirely absent. The second most popular word in the addresses was ‘Commonwealth’. The language of multi-racial cooperation was an example of Labour’s post-war imperial thinking.27 It was an attempt to renegotiate Britain’s waning hegemony and guarantee the rights and privileges of white settlers across its newly independent colonies in Africa and Asia. By tying its Commonwealth and immigration policies together, Labour offered voters a very positive outlook on Britain’s future. Unlike the Tories, whose discourse emphasised urgency and fear, Labour promised hope and opportunity. Candidates argued that ‘as the head of a multi-racial Commonwealth Britain can exert an influence in all five continents’, thus explaining why ‘within these islands and throughout the world racial and colour discrimination must be resisted.’28 The concept of a multi-racial partnership aimed 26  Donley T. Studlar, ‘Policy voting in Britain: The colored immigration issue in the 1964, 1966, and 1970 General Elections’, American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), pp. 46–64 at p. 53. Between 1964 and 1970 over 80 percent of people surveyed were convinced that too many immigrants were let into the country and over 50 percent of them felt very strongly about the issue. 27  Kathleen Paul, ‘“British subjects” and “British stock”: Labour’s postwar imperialism’, Journal of British Studies, 35 (1995), pp. 233–276 at p. 236. 28  Ron Huzzard’s 1964 election address.

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to convince the public that by banning racial discrimination at home, Britain could reinvent itself on the world stage. Albert Costain (Folkestone and Hythe) offered the clearest summary of the party’s approach: ‘Though Labour believes in closer links with Europe, the Commonwealth comes first. Under the Tories trade with them has fallen from 44 to 30 percent. Britain has a major part to play in ending wider inequalities that separate developed and undeveloped countries. With this spirit of human sympathy Labour will legislate against racial discrimination and incitement and give special help to local authorities in areas where immigrants have settled.’29 By structuring its discourse around the notions of aid, development, and peace, Labour was trying to incentivise its former colonies to participate in a much more equal relationship, but still one where Britain was on top. The exemplary and equal treatment of different ethnicities was meant to become a viable alternative to the no-­ longer-­possible economic, political, and military superiority which characterised British rule during the imperial era. The party feared that Britain would be judged by its partners based on its ability to integrate black and Asian Commonwealth citizens into Britain’s national life.30 Therefore, whereas more than a dozen Tories blamed immigrants for a lack of jobs and housing, their claims were questioned by Labour candidates such as Bill Dow (South Paddington): ‘It is an attempt by the Tories to blame coloured immigrants for the housing shortage, instead of placing the responsibility for this where it belongs – on the Government.’31 The perspective offered by John Dore (Heston and Isleworth) is also very striking: ‘Labour intends to outlaw racial prejudice and will not be panicked into introducing repressive measures against any group of people’.32 Throughout the 1964 campaign, Labour managed to reconcile its rhetorical commitment to racial equality and fair treatment of immigrants with the competitiveness of modern politics. But it only did so by perpetuating and reformulating traditional notions of British ‘prestige’. The last two issues to consider are geographical spread and electoral performance. There were 19 Conservative addresses (44 percent) in London, 10 (23 percent) in the West Midlands, and 14 (33 percent) did  Albert Costain’s 1964 election address.  Sheila Patterson, Dark Strangers: A Study of West Indians in London (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 401. 31  Bill Down’s 1964 election address. 32  John Dore’s 1964 election address. 29 30

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not share anything in common that becomes immediately apparent. Labour’s 22 unique leaflets were similarly distributed: 6 (27 percent) in London, 6 (27 percent) in the Midlands, 3 (14 percent) in Manchester, and the remaining 7 (32 percent) were randomly dispersed. New and original discourses about race and immigration were appearing predominantly in London and the West Midlands.33 However, the electoral significance of this language is hard to interpret as neither party was apparently very effective in turning ‘original’ immigration discourse into votes. The Conservatives were only successful in 16 out of the 43 constituencies where candidates made original comments about immigration. Likewise, Labour won 9 out of the 22 seats where it put forward unique proposals. Nevertheless, it is precisely the diversity and complexity of the immigration issue that should be recognised. The existing historiography has put too great an emphasis on Smethwick, where the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths, capitalised on a racial slur to win his seat. His campaign has been analysed in great detail by a number of scholars, but in the end it is just one intriguing case study, when there are dozens more to examine.34 To fully grasp immigration’s effects on the 1964 national campaign, serious attention must be given to other locations where race might not have been discussed so blatantly, but was still a critical issue. Such places are significant because they allow one to examine how issues of race and immigration corresponded with local factors, thus providing an invaluable insight into post-imperial British electioneering. The constituency of Southall is an excellent example of this. In 1964, the Conservative candidate, Barbara Maddin, dedicated her entire address to immigration.35 Throughout her leaflet she referred to a debate in parliament on 16 November 1961 when the Labour MP for Southall, George Pargiter, described complaints made by residents regarding immigration as ‘entirely unsocial’. Maddin accused Pargiter of advocating an ‘open-­ door policy’ towards immigrants despite the hardship it placed upon his 33  Other locations across England where immigration appeared as an issue included Manchester, Liverpool, and Bristol. 34  For example: Andy R. Brown, Political Languages of Race and the Politics of Exclusion (London: Ashgate, 1999); Elizabeth Buettner, “This is Staffordshire not Alabama’: racial geographies of Commonwealth immigration in early 1960s Britain’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 42 (2014), pp.  710–740; Paul Foot, Immigration and Race in British Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). 35  Barbara Maddin’s 1964 election address.

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constituents. Likewise, Maddin drew on wider evidence from newspaper articles to compile a portfolio which portrayed her opponent in a highly unfavourable light. She was also no stranger to racial references, and often used the words ‘colour’, ‘India’, and ‘Pakistan’ interchangeably in her leaflet. Conversely, her Labour counterpart Pargiter did not utilise his election address in such a way, but his response was firm: ‘Difficulties have arisen, because this Government failed to recognise the need for some sort of orderly reception of immigrants and their dispersal in such a way as to provide them with work and shelter. Labour will retain immigration control; wherever possible it will be by agreement with the Commonwealth countries on the numbers to come here each year.’36 At the end of his address, he also pledged to outlaw racial discrimination and warned that the route to concentration camps could be a very short one, a clear attempt to portray his opponent’s campaign as dangerous and reactionary.37 This resonated well with the Indian Workers’ Association and the 8000 immigrants living in the constituency who promised to firmly back Labour in the election.38 Therefore, despite the Conservative candidate’s severe attacks and innovative use of her election address, Pargiter’s robust stance on racial discrimination was undoubtedly a contributing factor in galvanising the immigrant vote and winning the seat in 1964. To conclude this section, the 1964 general election was the first time the Conservative and Labour parties discussed immigration substantively in their election manifestos and addresses. While the Tories emphasised immigration control because they perceived immigrants to be a burden on Britain’s social services, Labour focused on preventing racial discrimination. References to ‘overcrowded Britain’ and the ‘multi-racial partnership’ were just some of the rhetorical devices which the parties used to make their promises more appealing and convincing. The wider significance of these findings for the historiography can be summarised as follows. First, Paul Foot has argued that in 1964 the Labour Party collapsed in the face of what it believed to be public opinion and adopted a very tough line on immigration for fear of losing votes.39 This argument is  George Pargiter’s 1964 election address.  During the 1970 general election, Tony Benn used a similar reference to Nazism to discredit Enoch Powell’s campaign on immigration. Although race and immigration were widely believed to be prominent issues in 1970, they did not receive serious consideration in 1964. 38  The Daily Telegraph, 28 September 1964, p. 22. 39  Foot, Immigration and Race, pp. 192–3. 36 37

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inaccurate. Throughout the 1964 campaign, Labour’s proposals on immigration were part of a much larger plan to renegotiate British imperial power in a world where people of different races were increasingly expected to work together as equals. Preventing racial discrimination at home was a crucial step in achieving a multi-racial partnership which guaranteed Britain and its citizens abroad a privileged position in the new international order. Second, Anthony Messina’s argument that there was no competition between Conservative and Labour about race and immigration is also incorrect. Although original messages about the two issues were found in only 43 Conservative and 22 Labour leaflets, 1964 was still the first campaign in which both parties competed over race and immigration. Moreover, some local campaigns such as the one in Southall hinted at how profound the differences between the two parties’ approaches could really become. This process of differentiation continued during the 1966 general election, to which the chapter now turns.

The 1966 General Election Several important developments occurred after the 1964 campaign which altered ideas about race and immigration by the time of the next election. The new Labour government tried to negotiate shared immigration control between Britain and the Commonwealth but was unsuccessful. The failure of the Mountbatten mission was evidence of the decline of the Commonwealth ideal as a viable principle of British policy, and made it much more likely for purely national considerations to determine both foreign and domestic priorities.40 Evidence of this can be found in the government’s White Paper on immigration published in 1965 which excluded Irish citizens and targeted New Commonwealth immigrants.41 The controls that Labour subsequently imposed were clearly intended to curb black and Asian immigration. As previously discussed, scholars have concluded that throughout 1965 Conservative and Labour policy became increasingly similar. This subtle consensus, it is suggested, was aimed at keeping the issues of race and immigration out of electoral politics where they could inhibit both parties’ performance.

 Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration, pp. 146–8.  Zig Layton-Henry, The Politics of Race in Britain (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 61–3. 40 41

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However, the invention of the consensus was a rhetorical device which the Labour Party tried to use to outflank the Tories and prevent them from radicalising the debate.42 Due to the decline of the Commonwealth ideal, Labour turned to the language of consensus to advance its own ideas about how immigration should be dealt with. On the other hand, it will be shown that the Conservatives, frustrated by this strategy, pushed their immigration proposals even further to the right to differentiate themselves from their opponents. During the 1966 campaign, right-wing Tories focused on immigrants’ culture and habits and argued that alien cultures were incompatible with the British way of life. This initiated immigrants’ transformation from a societal ‘burden’ in 1964 to ‘home intruders’ in 1966. ‘The Commonwealth in the Next 5 Years’ was a document intended for the Labour Party’s 1966 annual conference. It reveals the changes that occurred within the party after the 1964 campaign.43 The corrections which Walter Padley, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Labour Party chairman, made to the memorandum were indicative of how the Commonwealth’s declining influence transformed debates about race and immigration in Britain. All references to a stronger multi-racial partnership and a more liberal immigration regime were crossed out from the draft. To a large extent, this was caused by Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965. Harold Wilson’s failure to negotiate a compromise with Rhodesia’ white-minority authoritarian regime revealed the fragility of British leadership and the Commonwealth’s political coherence.44 Thus, when Labour’s 1966 manifesto was announced, it promised equal measures of control and integration (see Fig. 2). The manifesto’s promise-making rhetoric emphasised compassion and the need for racial harmony to make up for the tough restrictions which the party introduced in 1965. Convinced that this strategy was

42  Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration, pp. 150–1. The argument about the rhetorical significance of consensus politics has been inspired by Richard Toye, ‘From ‘consensus’ to ‘common ground’: The rhetoric of the postwar settlement and its collapse’, Journal of Contemporary History, 48 (2013), pp. 3–23. 43  ‘The Commonwealth in the Next 5 Years’, 15 February 1966, 1966 General Election file, LPA. 44  Alice Ritscherle, ‘Disturbing the people’s peace: patriotism and “respectable” racism in British responses to Rhodesian independence’, in Philippa Levine and Susan Grayzel eds., Gender, Labour, War and Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 212–14.

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Election Manifestos 1966 Conservative Manifesto

In the ‘To deal with the problem of Immigration’ section Ensure that all immigrants living in Britain are treated in all respects as equal citizens and without discrimination. Introduce a conditional entry system which will control the initial time during which a new immigrant may stay, until permission is granted either permanently or for a further limited period. Strengthen the arrangements for health checks for immigrants. Require all immigrants to register the names of any dependants who might at any time wish to join them, so that their numbers will be known. In the case of new immigrants the number of dependants will be an important factor in deciding whether entry will be permitted. Help immigrants already here to re-join their families in their countries of origin, or to return with their families to these countries, if they so wish. Combine stricter control of entry with special help where necessary to those areas where immigrants are concentrated.

Labour Manifesto

In the ‘Wider Democracy in the New Britain’ section In the field of immigration, we shall continue realistic controls, flexibly administered, combined with an imaginative and determined programme to ensure racial equality. Incitement to racial hatred has been outlawed, and financial support given to the positive work of promoting racial harmony. A special committee is now studying the law relating to the position of aliens and Commonwealth immigrants who are refused entry or threatened with deportation.

Fig. 2  Election manifesto texts on immigration, 1966

successful, Roy Jenkins, Labour’s Home Secretary, said during a March 1966 press conference that: I do not think as I see it, that immigration is proving to be a great issue between the parties. Of course, it is a matter which people are interested in, which people are concerned about  – but as an issue influencing people’s vote, it seems that nearly everybody is seeing it in a great deal better proportion than they did at the last Election and I don’t see it being a major party issue.45

45  Roy Jenkins’s Press Conference 19 March 1966, 1966 General Election file, LPA. The 1966 Nuffield election study gives an overall impression that coincides with Jenkins’s interpretation.

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By invoking a subtly partisan interpretation of the consensus, Labour was implying that its immigration policy had put the issue to rest, thus making it hard for the Tories to exploit race for electoral advantage. Throughout the 1966 campaign, Edward Heath gave the impression that Labour’s tactic was working. For example, when appearing on the TV show Election Forum, he made a promise to sanction any of his parliamentary candidates who tried to turn race into an election issue. However, this was just on the surface. Recognising that immigration could figure decisively in the next general election campaign, Heath asked Selwyn Lloyd to be the chairman of a special Immigration Policy committee.46 The Policy Group, chaired by Lloyd, began work in February 1965 against a background of mounting Conservative demands for a tougher line on immigration. Most importantly, in a memorandum discussing the contents of the policy document which the group was preparing in 1965, one finds concerns about the resemblances between Conservative and Labour policy proposals. A sentence saying ‘We welcome the Labour’s Government’s belated conversation to this humane and socially responsible point of view’ was quickly removed from the draft because the Tories were reluctant to admit publicly that their proposals resembled those of Labour.47 In addition, the work of the Policy Group was extended to 1966 under the chairmanship of Peter Thorneycroft in order to prepare a new policy statement that would help create a meaningful difference between the two parties’ promises. Although the 1966 general election intervened before a new policy could be written, in a report after the election, the Tories proudly concluded that the 1966 Manifesto ‘contained all the proposals for restrictive controls on immigrants.’48 The manifesto pledges which 60 percent of candidates repeated in their addresses included stricter control of dependants and the introduction of voluntary repatriation (see Fig. 2). However, the party’s right-wing faction was much more extreme in its efforts to break the consensus. It is to their election addresses that we now must turn. There were 45 Conservative addresses which discussed immigration in a substantively different way from the manifesto. The average word count of the ‘original’ sections about immigration was 88 words and the 45  Yorkshire Post, 13 February 1965, in CPA, CRD3/16/2.  Second Draft of Policy Document, 9 September 1965, CPA, CRD3/9/28. 48   Party Policy on Immigration and Race Relations, undated memorandum, CPA, CRD3/16/2. 46 47

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candidates between them made 28 immigration-related pledges in total. Interestingly, in a marked change from the 1964 approach, the leaflets exhibited both programmatic and discursive elements. The top 10 words found in the ‘original’ sections included ‘immigration’, ‘country’, and ‘problems’. Considering the way in which ‘country’ was used is particularly useful for understanding the rhetorical devices which right-­wing candidates now utilised. Whereas in 1964 the Tories discussed how overcrowded Britain was, in 1966 they talked about ‘the native residents of this country’ and how in order to ‘prevent racialism in this country’ immigrants should ‘go back to their own countries and help with their development.’49 It is true that candidates in 1964 touched upon a similar issue of belonging, but two years later its significance appears to have grown exponentially. The same process occurred with the use of the word ‘problem’. Candidates in 1966 often discussed the ‘immigrant problem’ and the ‘difficult problem of immigration.’50 Areas with high immigrant populations were talked about in terms of having ‘special problems.’51 In contrast, throughout the 1964 campaign Conservatives discussed various faults with the social services, but immigration was never identified as the root cause for them that required separate policy solutions. With ‘strictest control’ being the most frequently repeated pledge in 1966, the Tories were trying to achieve two mutually constitutive goals. The first was to convince the public that their draconian proposals for immigration control were necessary. Second, they sought to challenge Labour’s consensus and differentiate themselves so that voters could identify with and vote for them. To illustrate this point, George Hawkins (West Bromwich) said the following in his address: ‘Having opposed line by line the Conservative immigration Control Bill and threatened to repeal it, they (Labour) now want the whole question of immigration, and the problems arising from it, hushed up very quietly for no other reason than political expedience.’52 This was a direct challenge to Labour’s partisan use of the consensus to silence the opposition and gain an electoral advantage. Following on from 49  Barbara Maddin’s 1966 election address; Edward Boyle’s 1966 election address; Richard Harris’ 1966 election address. 50  John Hollingworth’s 1966 election address. 51  John Harvey’s 1966 election address. 52  George Hawkins’s 1966 election address.

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this, the Tories outlined why immigration was such a fundamental electoral issue. As a result, the most profound qualitative change in Conservative rhetoric between the two elections took place–that of ‘othering’ immigrants. For example, Anthony Mitton (Nottingham Central) emphasised that ‘The Conservative Policy provides for stricter control over the entry of immigrants and their dependents. Overcrowding, bad housing and different customs create problems.’53 Similarly, Simon Digby (Dorset West) warned that ‘Colour prejudice is wrong, but differences of language and living standards cannot be ignored. In some schools up to half the children cannot speak English. How can this fail to hold back on our own children?’54 These leaflets confirmed a notable trend. First, black and Asian immigrants were increasingly portrayed as peoples with very different cultures, attitudes, and values which were most likely incompatible with those of the white majority.55 They were no longer presented as Commonwealth citizens who shared an unbreakable historical bond with Britain. Second, it was now widely accepted by Conservatives that race problems began with immigration. The resentment of unfamiliar neighbours was the beginning of a process which ended with alien cultures becoming symbols of the threat of national decline and weakness.56 It did not matter whether it was housing or children’s education that was being discussed, these were just symptoms of the underlying ‘race’ problem looming over Britain. Conversely, in 1966 only 4 percent of all Labour candidates referred to immigration in their addresses–an 11 percent reduction compared to 1964. This makes the 18 candidates who did not copy the wording of the manifesto (8 repeated it) very important for understanding ideological diversity and dissent within the party. The sections of addresses dedicated to immigration had an average word count of 55 and featured only 3 promises altogether. Labour’s almost total lack of concrete proposals seems rather atypical considering that the party’s approach to the 1964 campaign was explicitly programmatic. However, it is realistic to assume that the low number of references to immigration and absence of pledges might have been calculated steps aimed at distancing the party from the immigration issue and directing attention towards policy areas which  Anthony Mitton’s 1966 election address.  Simon Digby’s 1966 election address. 55  Robert Miles and Annie Phizacklea, White Man’s Country: Racism in British Politics (London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 53–5; Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, pp. 218–21. 56  Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, pp. 45–6. 53 54

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Labour thought were more deserving of public interest. Such a strategy would also have helped preserve the party consensus which Labour tried to use to silence the race issue as much as possible. To exemplify, the top 10 words found in the Labour addresses included ‘immigrants’, ‘government’, and ‘control’. The phrase ‘the Labour Government has sensibly brought immigration under control’ was indicative of the way in which candidates went about highlighting the party’s past achievements. Since Labour was the governing party in 1966, it made sense for them to alter their approach and focus on promoting their record. Thus, no promises for additional control were made, which was the party’s rhetorical way of signalling that the issue had been dealt with from its point of view. Maurice Foley’s address (West Bromwich) was very characteristic of this attitude. He confined his remarks to stating that he was ‘given a personal responsibility by the Prime Minister’ to assist with immigration-related matters.57 However, a closer look at the leaflets reveals how some Labour candidates turned the consensus into a rhetorical device which they attempted to use to their advantage by discrediting the Tories. David Owen (South Fylde) declared that ‘We can only view with contempt and the utmost disgust the split in local Tory ranks instigated by the militant Right. In this election let no thrust be given to racialists, supporters of Rhodesian rebellion.’58 Similarly, Sir Dingle Foot (Ipswich) argued that ‘nothing is more contemptible than race or colour prejudice.’59 Finally, Sydney Bidwell (Southall) fervently condemned the Tory candidate, Barbara Maddin, for advocating second-class treatment for immigrants. He even said that her position contradicted the Conservative manifesto, thus further undermining her proposals. These were all attacks against right-wing candidates whose messages did not fit Labour’s definition of the consensus, and they reveal the ways in which the notion was used to facilitate party competition rather than dismiss it. Whereas the Conservatives tried to portray immigrants as outsiders, Labour attempted to delegitimise their opponents’ rhetoric by portraying it as deplorable and at odds with fundamental British values. To illustrate this point, Christopher Walker (North Angus and Mearns) reminded voters that ‘Last year the Labour Government passed the Racial Discrimination Bill which outlaws those who incite racial or religious prejudice, and by so  Maurice Foley’s 1966 election address.  David Owen’s 1966 election address. 59  Sir Dingle Foot’s 1966 election address. 57 58

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doing, casts a slur on Britain’s reputation for tolerance and fair play.’60 Walker implicitly put forward the notion that anyone who compromised Britain’s reputation did not deserve to participate in its national life. Therefore, Labour really wanted to convince voters that it was not just the immigrants who were threatened by the Tories’ discriminatory rhetoric but that such language also put at risk the wellbeing of the British people in general. Finally, the geographical analysis shows that 52 percent of all 45 unique Conservative addresses in 1966 originated from the West Midlands and London (26 percent each). The rest were from places such as Essex, Yorkshire, Manchester, and Liverpool. London and the West Midlands again were the two hubs where unique discussions about race and immigration occurred the most. However, the success rate of Tory candidates using ‘original’ immigration language was very low. Only 13 out of 45 were victorious, which accounts for 29 percent against a national average of nearly 42 percent. Despite these being areas with high numbers of immigrants where race was widely believed to be an issue, the right-wing candidates who tried to break the consensus performed poorly. On the other hand, out of the 18 unique Labour addresses, 44 percent originated from London and the West Midlands (22 percent from each region). Furthermore, Labour’s performance in these constituencies was phenomenal. It won 14 seats and only lost 4–a 77.5 percent average compared to 48 percent nationally. According to the Labour Party’s 1966 general election report, the average swing to Labour in all constituencies where there was a significant immigration population was 3.8 percent–well above the national swing.61 Particularly good results were obtained in West Midlands, where it is generally agreed that immigration affected Labour adversely in 1964. To illustrate this point, Smethwick was regained on a swing of 7.7 percent. Maurice Foley also retained West Bromwich with a swing of 2.7 percent to Labour. Nonetheless, Labour acknowledged that there were attempts to make immigration into an issue in places such as Southall and Norwood where Conservative candidates adopted a distinctly ‘strong’ line on immigration. Therefore, one ought to examine the local dynamics of the 1966 campaign to understand its complexity and repercussions for the future.

 Christopher Walker’s 1966 election address.  General Election 1966: Report by the Secretary, p. 6, 1966 General Election file, LPA.

60 61

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The constituency of Norwood offers an invaluable insight into the workings of consensus politics. In 1966, the Conservative candidate, Douglas Wilson, issued a lengthy leaflet on immigration (separate from his election address) that claimed: ‘unless something is done, the people of Lambeth, who have paid their rates, taxes and national insurance stamps for years will find the facilities to which these payments entitle them swamped by newcomers who have hardly contributed a penny.’62 The Tory candidate was trying to foster an ‘us versus them’ mentality by saying that the arrival of any more immigrants in Lambeth would gravely damage the interests of local residents. He also attacked the existing status quo: ‘I have been asked more questions about immigration than all other issues together. You can’t bury your head in the sand on this.’63 In contrast, the Labour candidate, John Fraser, argued that the actions of his opponent were ‘out of character’ and reminded everyone of the benefits of the consensus: ‘Conservative and Labour on the borough council had been absolutely united in keeping the temperature down and making integration and absorption the objective.’64 Moreover, the party was so committed to upholding the unofficial agreement that a letter was sent personally to Edward Heath urging him to fulfil his promises about keeping race and immigration out of the election and sanction his candidate.65 Unsurprisingly, Heath denied the allegations and dismissed the whole case. However, since Wilson was contesting the seat for the first time, perhaps he lost because he could not utilise the ‘sitting member’s vote’ from which the previous Tory candidate who held the seat since 1950 had benefited.66 Nevertheless, the campaign in Norwood revealed the true extent of party competition in 1966 and just how shaky the foundations of the consensus were in practice. Altogether, several common themes emerge from the 1966 general election. The decline of the Commonwealth ideal forced Labour to come up with new rhetorical devices to counter the Conservatives. The most  Daily Express, 24 March 1966, in 1966 General Election file, LPA.  This prefigures Margaret Thatcher’s infamous use of the word ‘swamped’ in 1978 and shows that these tropes were in circulation much earlier than previously thought. 63  Ibid. 64  Ibid. 65  Letter from A. L. Williams to Edward Heath, 25 March 1966, 166 General Election file, LPA. 66  The Economist, 5 March 1966, p. 873. 62

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dominant trope which the party used was that of the consensus which was aimed at keeping race and immigration away from electoral politics. Moreover, Labour tried to convince voters that Conservative attempts to ruin the informal agreement were at odds with the wider interests of the nation. Conversely, the Tories, and especially the ring-wing faction of the party, were incredibly frustrated by this tactic, which prompted them to adopt a very tough line on immigration to try to break the silence. The language which they used to justify their promises highlighted immigrants’ incompatibility with British life, and foreign cultures and habits were increasingly associated with national decline. Both parties, however, had one thing in common–they perceived race as a problem that required its own separate solutions. This was a major shift in focus compared to 1964. The parties were more and more concerned with what pledges to make about race and immigration and how to articulate them so that they would not upset the electorate. The existing scholarship has interpreted the efforts to depoliticise immigration as evidence of this process taking place when in fact the exact opposite was happening. The period between the 1964 and 1966 campaigns was one defined by a growth in the political significance of race and immigration. The immigration issue was not dead but changed into the far larger and more complex issue of dealing with ‘intruders’ whose skin colour and culture was perceived as a threat. It was not a matter of whether the importance of these issues was going to manifest itself, but a question of when.

Conclusion In summary, this chapter has looked at the promises which the Conservative and Labour parties made about race and immigration during the 1964 and 1966 general elections. The 1964 campaign was the first time these issues appeared in both parties’ election manifestos. It has been shown that the themes and proposals which emerged throughout the drafting of the manifestos were used to set the general tone of each campaign. Likewise, a minority of candidates from each party developed these ideas further in their own election addresses, thus demonstrating how the rhetoric of promise-making was also used to generate ideology about race and immigration. These findings contradict the claims of the influential Nuffield studies which have been cited numerous times and have argued that addresses just repeated the manifestos. The figures which the Nuffield studies provided for the number of times immigration was referred to in

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addresses have also been corrected here. By performing a much more thorough and critical investigation into candidates’ election addresses, the chapter has outlined two significant discoveries about electioneering in twentieth-century Britain. First, it was demonstrated that discourses about race were to a large extent determined by geographical location. London and the West Midlands were where most ‘original’ discussions about race and immigration occurred in both 1964 and 1966.67 Second, electoral performance has been proven to rely heavily on local circumstances. For example, Labour’s candidates in Southall (1964) and Norwood (1966) won their party seats because the former had a sizeable immigrant community and the Tory candidate in the latter was a newcomer to the constituency. The chapter has looked extensively at the rhetorical devices which each party used to make and justify its pledges surrounding race and immigration. In 1964, the Conservatives emphasised immigration control and portrayed immigrants as a burden to an ‘overcrowded’ Britain and its social services. On the other hand, Labour tied its policy for the Commonwealth to its proposals for immigration and highlighted the need to treat immigrants fairly to convince Britain’s former colonies that the country was fit to lead a global multi-racial partnership of nations. Thus, the party’s foremost pledge was to outlaw racial discrimination by introducing a bill against it. Despite what Anthony Messina has argued about depoliticisation, candidates’ election addresses featured prominent signs of a developing party competition. Moreover, this process continued throughout the 1966 general election. With the Commonwealth ideal in decline, Labour developed a new tactic in 1966–it acted tough on immigration and spoke about a consensus between the two parties to outflank the Tories and prevent them from exploiting race and immigration for electoral gain. Conversely, the Conservatives developed a much more extreme language about race and immigration which questioned the overall place of race and immigrants in British society. This makes the 1966 campaign the missing link in explaining how right-wing discourse moved away from discussion of the simple ‘burden’ of immigration and increasingly fixated on blaming national decline on immigrants and their alien cultures. This shows that the growing differentiation between Conservatives 67  This builds on the works of Douglas Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (London: Macmillan, 1977) and Peter J.  Taylor and R.  J. Johnston, Geography of Elections (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).

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and Labour regarding the issues of race and immigration was not the doing of one person or party. Rather, it was the product of a wider trend in British party politics which significantly pre-dated the Rivers of Blood speech. Competition between the two main parties, driven in part by the agency of individual candidates, helped shape the origins of the debates about race and immigration that persist in British society to this day.

The Electoral Promises of Winston Churchill Richard Toye

During his exceedingly lengthy political career, Winston Churchill had a distinctly mixed record in terms of electoral success. Although he was first elected in 1900 and finally stood down as an MP in 1964, there were interruptions to his Commons service due to defeats, and he was forced to change constituency more than once. Of the three general elections he fought as leader of the Conservative Party, he won only the last, and even then he owed his majority to the vagaries of the First Past the Post system; Labour actually secured the most votes. On the other hand, he achieved the special feat of switching from the Tories to the Liberals and back again; he ultimately combined the ‘promising language’ of both into a rhetoric which combined vigorous anti-socialism with a broad commitment to social improvement. Although, to many, his changes of party appeared as fickleness, he can be seen more positively as one of the last custodians of an older model of political independence. During his 1930s wilderness years Churchill pitted himself ostentatiously against the leaders of his own party, to the displeasure of some of his own constituency activists. This raised questions about how far he, and others in similar positions, could

R. Toye (*) Department of History, Amory Building, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_8

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claim an individual mandate from the voters who had elected him, on the basis of his own promises and pledges, in possible contradiction of the commitments offered by his party as a whole. Finally, as Leader of the Opposition after 1945 he showed himself to be uncomfortable with the very concept of ‘programmes’ of the kind that modern parties were increasingly expected to provide. This was not a sign of hostility towards the ideology of Conservative reform as such but rather a difference of political method, the question of how to promise being as important to him as that of what to promise. David Thackeray and I have argued elsewhere that twentieth-century Britain saw a broad, gradual, and contested shift towards politics understood as a primarily programmatic rather than a discursive process.1 This chapter explores this theme via the electoral pledges that Churchill put before the voters across the course of his career, both as an individual candidate and, latterly, as leader of the Conservative Party. His political conduct over six decades serves as a useful prism through which to view the changing culture and expectations surrounding electoral promises. What was the relationship between Churchill’s pledges to his constituents on the promises and those that were made in the manifestos of the parties of which he was a member? Did his promises become more concrete and specific over time? What changed in terms of the kinds of things that he promised to do (or not do)? There is a rich variety of sources available to help address these questions. Although Churchill’s individual election addresses have received some attention from historians, they have not been investigated systematically across the course of his career.2 His voluminous personal papers and other archival sources can be read in combination with the enormous amount of media coverage that his electoral efforts garnered throughout his life. These materials illuminate the terrain on which he was operating, including contemporary understandings and expectations about promises and pledges.

1  David Thackeray and Richard Toye, ‘An Age of Promises: British election manifestos and addresses 1900–1997’, Twentieth Century British History, 31 (2020), pp. 1–26; See also Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language, and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1998, p. 227. 2  Andrew Roberts, for example, makes minor use of some of them: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (London: Allen Lane, 2018), pp. 307, 356, 375, 393. Note that many of them are not published in the documentary companion volumes to Randolph Churchill’s and Martin Gilbert’s official biography.

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Churchill described himself as ‘a child of the Victorian era’, and claimed to have taken his politics ‘almost unquestioningly’ from his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, to whom he sometimes referred in his election addresses.3 Although his views were certainly not set in aspic in 1900, and although his political positions actually differed in important respects from those of Lord Randolph, there is no denying the influence of the age on Winston’s conception of how politics should be conducted. At this time, following Gladstone’s lead, politicians were attempting to show charismatic leadership on the platform at mass meetings, at a time when the electorate was expanding rapidly.4 It was also a period which, together with new developments in party organisation, saw important moves towards a more programmatic form of politics. In 1874, the year of Winston’s birth, Benjamin Disraeli won a landslide election victory, but when it came to finding items to put in the Queen’s Speech, he was reduced to canvassing his colleagues for suggestions.5 By contrast, during the election of 1885, Joseph Chamberlain’s ‘Unauthorised Programme’ quickly gained traction with the electorate.6 For his part, during that same election, Conservative Prime Minister Lord Salisbury sketched out a series of policies that came to be known as the Newport Programme. Chamberlain argued that it was largely obscure, whereas other critics alleged that it had been ‘borrowed […] largely from Mr. Gladstone’s Manifesto.’7 After the election resulted in a hung parliament, Lord Randolph urged Salisbury to produce ‘a large, genuine and liberal programme’.8 Crucially, though, this was meant to be a programme which would win over moderate Liberal MPs to help sustain the government in office, not one that was targeted directly at the voters themselves. This made sense in a world where the boundaries between parties were somewhat fluid, party labels were fuzzy, and changes of government often 3  Winston Churchill [henceforward WSC], My Early Life: A Roving Commission (London: Macmillan, 1941, first published 1930), p.  9; WSC, Thoughts and Adventures (London: Odhams Press, London, 1947, first published 1932), p. 32 4  Jon Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics From Hogarth to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Chapter 2. 5  Robert Blake, Disraeli (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1966), p. 543. 6  Luke Blaxill, ‘Joseph Chamberlain and the Third Reform Act: A reassessment of the “Unauthorized Programme” of 1885’, Journal of British Studies 54 (2015), pp. 88–117. 7  ‘Mr. Chamberlain in Wiltshire’, Gloucester Citizen, 15 October 1885; ‘The Ministerial Programme’, Portsmouth Evening News, 8 December 1885; See also ‘Sir William Harcourt at Derby’, Gloucester Citizen, 24 October 1885. 8  WSC, Lord Randolph Churchill, Vol. II (London, Macmillan, 1906), p. 9.

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came about between elections when the balance of parliamentary forces shifted. This indeed was the route by which Salisbury had entered Downing Street in the first place, and it was soon to happen again, when Gladstone won the support of Irish nationalist MPs by flagging his support for Home Rule. Though he avidly followed his emotionally-distant father’s doings via the newspapers, young Winston cannot have grasped all such complexities at the time. However, as a youthful soldier in India, his programme of self-­ education involved reading old copies of the Annual Register.9 After Lord Randolph’s death, moreover, he gained yet more familiarity with the period by researching and writing a two-volume biography of him. Throughout his career, Winston continued to be influenced by the norms of Victorian political life. He long hankered after the creation of some form of Centre Party, favoured coalition as a route to this, and was willing to be flexible about labels.10 In 1924, as he inched his way back towards the Conservatives, The Star observed scornfully that ‘He has been in 20 years in turn: Unionist, Unionist Free Trader, Liberal, Coalition Liberal, Liberal Free Trader, Anti-Socialist, and “Constitutionalist”’.11 Each time that he switched party it was in the unrealised hope that he would bring a significant body of MPs with him.12 Politics for him was parliamentary as much as electoral. His constant supposition was that he needed to stand ready to take advantage if existing Commons alliances were to disintegrate and be replaced by others, as happened often within his own lifetime. Indeed he owed his elevation as Prime Minister in 1940 to a sudden collapse of support amongst MPs for Neville Chamberlain’s government. Because of his reputation for intrigue and his transparent hunger to seize whatever chances might be going, Churchill was frequently accused of opportunism, though in his own mind he was consistent. The Liverpool Post accurately gauged his mind-set when, commenting on his return to the Tory ranks, it said: ‘politics are essentially action, and action implies compromises of opinion. Consequently, it is of the first importance that 9  WSC, Comments on Annual Register (1874, 1875, and 1876), made early in 1897, in Randolph S.  Churchill ed., Winston S.  Churchill Vol. I Companion Part 2: 1896–1900 (London, Heinemann, 1967), pp. 757–68. 10  ‘Mr. Churchill on the Coalition’, Sunday Times, 5 March 1922. 11  ‘What we think’, The Star, 23 September 1924, copy in Churchill Press Cuttings, CHPC 5, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. 12  See, for example, ‘Mr. Winston Churchill’, Morning Advertiser, 23 September 1924, copy in CHPC 5.

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political leaders should constantly be ready, except at the most crucial moments, to waive their own preconceptions, and, so to speak, pool their judgements.’13 Churchill was happy to play the slashing fighter at election times, but his ideological commitment, notably to free trade, was always contingent on circumstance. Pragmatic concession might always be needed at some later stage, and the need to face up to reality need not be cloaked in fine sentiments.14 As he wrote in an essay on ‘Consistency in Politics’, ‘A Statesman should always try to do what he believes is best in the long view for his country, and he should not be dissuaded from so acting by having to divorce himself from a great body of doctrine to which he formerly sincerely adhered.’15 Churchill was therefore by no means wholly comfortable with the way that British politics developed over the course of his lifetime. In place of parliamentary deal-making by principled but far-­ sightedly expedient gentlemen (as he seemingly idealised it) there emerged, by 1951, an apparently rigid system in which the two main parties monopolised between them over 96 percent of the vote. These parties, moreover, were expected to produce manifestos full of detailed commitments that, if elected, they were supposed to implement come what may. As the leader of one of them, Churchill made clear his dislike of these prevailing mores, and did his best to play the new game by the old rules, perhaps not wholly without advantage. Of course, Churchill’s working assumptions and political habitus were not merely the product of the climate of his youth. They were developed over decades of hard-bought electoral experience, beginning with his failed fight as a tyro candidate at the 1899 Oldham by-election. It is striking that religious issues featured so prominently in Churchill’s election address, in spite of his own rather unconventional beliefs and his general lack of interest in religious politics.16 During the contest, moreover, Churchill was induced by pressure from within the constituency to pledge himself to oppose the Clerical Tithes Bill, which had been put forward by  ‘Politics and intellect’, Liverpool Post, 25 September 1924, copy in CHPC 5.  WSC to John Morley, Cabinet note, n.d. but marked ‘1909’, Morley Papers, MS Eng.d.3559, f.86, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 15  WSC, Thoughts and Adventures, p. 28. The essay was originally published in Nash’s and Pall Mall Magazine in July 1927. 16  Paul Addison, ‘Destiny, history and providence: the religion of Winston Churchill’, in Michael Bentley ed., Private and Public Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 236–50. For the text of the address, see ‘The Oldham Election’, Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1899. 13 14

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the Conservative government of which he was supposed to be a supporter. In response, Arthur Balfour dismissively remarked: ‘I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.’17 Churchill’s dilemma reflected the problems that could arise between candidates and parties when an individual’s pledges came into conflict with those of the party that he or she represented. Certainly it was a chastening experience for him. On the other hand, though, the episode illustrates the relative freedom that candidates had, at that time, to strike out on their own, in response to local conditions, taking positions contrary to those of their party leaders. The next year, following his dramatic exploits during the South African War, Churchill fought the seat again, as a ‘real khaki candidate’.18 The ‘just, righteous, and inevitable quarrel with Boers’ was naturally the main theme of his election address, but he also emphasised his support for army reform, the development of Britain’s world-wide trade, and the introduction of a Redistribution Bill that would give Oldham another MP.19 In spite of his victory, he ran into difficulties in the constituency after the so-called fiscal controversy broke out in 1903. After Joseph Chamberlain proposed a system of imperial tariff protection, and as Prime Minister Arthur Balfour havered, Churchill became a vocal advocate of the free trade cause. He thus faced the claim that, having been elected as a Conservative, he was being false to his principles by attacking the government, and had sacrificed the confidence that had been placed in him. He took his stand on the Burkean doctrine that he was ‘the representative of the borough as a whole’ and claimed that he was obliged by conscience and honour to oppose tariff reform.20 In 1904, Churchill formally crossed the floor, and chose to fight a different seat, North-West Manchester, at the next election. This took place in 1906, shortly after the Liberals had taken office, with Churchill himself being appointed as a junior minister at the Colonial Office. The Conservative Manchester Courier poured scorn on his election address,

 WSC, My Early Life, p. 240.  ‘Real khaki candidates’, Daily Mail, 28 September 1900. 19  WSC, ‘To the Electors of the Parliamentary Borough of Oldham’, 1900, Churchill Papers, CHAR 6/2/79. The address does not carry a precise date but it was published in the Oldham Evening Standard on 24 September 1900. 20  ‘Mr. Churchill and Oldham’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 28 November 1903. 17 18

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which, it said, should be compared to his earlier Oldham speeches and his just-published biography of his father: Readers will look in vain for one sentence of constructive statesmanship. He confuses Fiscal Reform with Protection, he shuffles with words in his comments on the Irish question, he avoids all reference to the triumphant foreign policy of the late Government, he conveniently forgets the support he gave it on the question of the Boer War. The rest is abuse. No single measure is advocated, no demand of the nation is met.21

Some of this was unfair. It is true that the question of Home Rule was problematic for Churchill, but the address was not devoid of policy in other fields.22 Churchill explicitly aligned himself with the goals that the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, had outlined in a major speech at the Albert Hall. He thereby committed himself to ‘The more strict observance in our educational system of the principles of religious equality and public control; a reduction of expenditure upon armaments; the assured supremacy of the civil power in India; the development of Inland waterways; the taxation of ground values; [and] the amendment of the law relating to licensing and to trade unions’.23 He had, however, watered down his commitment to put an end to Chinese indentured labour in South Africa–a hot election topic–after he ran a draft of the address past his ministerial chief, Lord Elgin.24 Although mere editorial fiddling could not put an end to the ‘Chinese slavery’ controversy, the episode is evidence of Churchill’s willingness, having taken a government job, to restrain himself from electioneering promises that might become hostages to fortune. By 1908, the government had suffered a series of setbacks, both through by-election losses and through the efforts of the House of Lords to frustrate its less popular policies. When H.H. Asquith replaced Campbell-Bannerman at No. 10 he appointed Churchill to the Cabinet as  Untitled, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 2 January 1906.  WSC to Morley, 27 Nov. 1905, Morley Papers, MS Eng.d.3559, f. 22. 23  ‘Mr. Churchill’s address’, Manchester Guardian, 1 January 1906. 24  Lord Elgin to WSC, 27 Dec. 1905, in Randolph S. Churchill ed., Winston S. Churchill Vol. II Companion Part 1, 1901–1907 (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 418. For the rather difficult relationship between the two men, see Ronald Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Office, 1905–1908: The Watershed of the Empire-Commonwealth (London: Macmillan, 1968). 21 22

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President of the Board of Trade. This, however, required him to fight a by-election himself. His address, which was publicised as far away as Australia, was substantially dedicated to defending the government’s record, including its unpopular Licensing Bill. This, he claimed, represented ‘a great forward heave in the temperance movement […] The health of English manhood, the happiness of English homes, the virtue and ascendancy of our race and age are involved in this tremendous effort.’25 One might suspect that Churchill’s heart wasn’t really in this, but the responsibilities of office meant that he was obliged to defend some causes to which he was, at best, indifferent. Notably absent from the address was a commitment to–or any mention of–Home Rule. Churchill announced his conversion to that cause during the course of the campaign; doubtless he was mindful of the significant body of Irish voters within the constituency.26 It wasn’t enough and he went down to defeat, although he quickly found a new seat at Dundee. This required a new address, which was sufficiently concise to be telegraphed to the Manchester Guardian in full. (The Conservative candidate’s address was also ‘a somewhat meagre document’.) ‘I do not mean in this letter to enter upon a catalogue of measures and issues’, Churchill wrote. ‘The policy of His Majesty’s Government is plain and published. My own personal views upon the great controverted questions of the day have been set forth abundantly during the strenuous election which has just been decided.’27 He also presented his selection by Dundee’s Liberals as a decision by them to strike a blow for the common good by favouring national rather than constituency interests. His handwritten amendments to his draft show the care he took about the phrasing of this: ‘It has been your choice to take a play a direct part in national rather than affairs rather than to seek that the special advancement gratification of your special local needs’.28 This reads almost as a conscious revolt by Churchill against ‘the politics of place’, whereby candidates often went to lengths to emphasise their local connections.29 25  ‘Mr. Churchill’s address’, Manchester Guardian, 13 April 1908; ‘Mr. Churchill’s Manifesto’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 April 1908. 26  Paul Addison, Churchill on the Home Front 1900–1955 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), p. 64. 27  ‘Dundee contest’, Manchester Guardian, 1 May 1908. 28  WSC, draft election address, n.d. but c. 30 April 1908, HC/LB/1/27, Parliamentary Archives, London. 29  See Lawrence, Speaking for the People.

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After the House of Lords vetoed Lloyd George’s People’s Budget in 1909, Churchill produced a weightier, highly argumentative address for the ensuing election. He portrayed the resurgence of the Lords and the prospect of Tariff Reform as interconnected threats: ‘The forces of reaction are out for a double event.’ More positively, in line with his existing work at the Board of Trade, he argued for Labour Exchanges and National Insurance as the remedies for poverty and unemployment. He reported that, on a recent visit to Germany, his heart had been ‘filled with admiration of the patient genius which had added these social bulwarks to the many glories of the German race’.30 With the question of the Lords’ veto still not settled, yet another election followed at the end of 1910. Churchill argued that no progress could be made on other issues until the veto was removed, and accordingly gave no specific pledges on questions such as social reform, temperance, and Home Rule, which he nonetheless mentioned. He also made clear that he would be campaigning nationally more than locally: ‘you will, I know, wish to set me free during the greater part of this brief election to aid your battle in other fields.’31 Seth Alexander Thévoz argues that Churchill was not neglectful of his constituency, but did a poor job of advertising the work he did on Dundee’s behalf; here we again see him boasting of his national role, in a way that risked creating the impression of absenteeism.32 In August 1914, Churchill was serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, but the vicissitudes of war and politics led first to his demotion and then to his decision to resign from the Cabinet altogether. After a spell serving as a soldier in France, he returned to active politics, and in mid-1917 Lloyd George courted controversy by appointing him Minister of Munitions. This required another by-election, and although the main parties were observing an electoral truce, Churchill was opposed by the prohibitionist candidate Edwin Scrymgeour. In his election address, Churchill lamented that ‘the constituency should have been put to the disturbance and exertion of a contest at a time when every ounce of strength should be concentrated on beating the enemy’. He offered some flattery of ‘the Scottish race’ in sustaining ‘this righteous conflict’ but made no concrete

 ‘Mr. Churchill’, Manchester Guardian, 29 December 1909.  ‘Mr. Churchill’s address’, Manchester Guardian, 24 November 1910. 32  Seth Alexander Thévoz, ‘Winston Churchill’s 1922 general election defeat in Dundee’, MA dissertation, King’s College, London, 2009, pp. 35–6. 30 31

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promises other than the relentless prosecution of the war.33 The addresses of both candidates appeared as paid advertisements in the Dundee Courier; Churchill’s carried the slogan ‘VOTE FOR CHURCHILL and Munitions for Our Fighting Men.’34 In his closing speech, Churchill highlighted Scrymgeour’s promise, in his address, to stop war credits. This, he said, was the same doctrine as that pursued by ‘the criminal agitator’ Lenin. (The by-election took place after the February Revolution in Russia but before the October one.)35 Churchill won comfortably, but this was due in part to the special conditions of the election, and Scrymgeour’s 2000 votes were an indication of his growing local following.36 At the 1918 general election, which took place just a few weeks after the Armistice, Churchill advised his constituents that ‘No one should expect to have immediately laid before them elaborate and detailed plans for meeting every difficulty and gratifying every hope.’ The general policy required should, however, be laid before them: ‘You should assure yourselves of the spirit and temper in which these problems will be dealt with, and the principles which will guide those whom you entrust with the responsibility.’37 This doubtless reflected a genuine distaste for excessively detailed commitments, but it cannot be taken wholly at face value. The Coalition manifesto, signed by Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law, was drafted by the Liberal MP H.A.L.  Fisher, and then subjected to minor amendment by Churchill. When Churchill returned the alterations to Lloyd George, he passed on Lord Rothermere’s concern ‘that your programme is not sufficiently advanced & that you are being held back by reactionary Tories.’ He also proposed including the

33  ‘Mr. Churchill’s Election Address’, 25 July 1917, National Liberal Club Papers, DM668/2, University of Bristol Special Collections. The address is reproduced in Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume IV, Part 1: January 1917–June 1919 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978), pp. 115–16, though dated 26 July. 34  The Courier (Dundee), 28 July 1917. Churchill’s campaign cost £578 of which £174 was spent on advertising. See P.F.  Husband to WSC, 21 August 1917, Churchill Papers, CHAR 5/19/24. 35  ‘Mr. Churchill on his opponent’, Manchester Guardian, 29 July 1917. 36  Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 147. 37  WSC, ‘To the Electors of Dundee’, The Courier, 28 November 1918. Emphasis in original. The address reproduced in Gilbert, Companion Volume IV, Part 1, pp. 424–6 would appear to be only a draft, but it is even more scathing than the published version about what it called ‘showy and specious plans for social re-organization’.

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idea of an enquiry into war fortunes.38 During the campaign he exceeded his brief when, in response to a question at a meeting, he declared that the government was in favour of the nationalisation of the railways.39 He later claimed that ‘Before he went to Dundee where the statement was made, he had been shown a memo in favour of it signed by Bonar Law & the PM: this was subsequently toned down but he was never told of the change.’40 Another possible explanation is that he had been goaded by the heckler into going beyond a vague manifesto phrase about ‘development and control in the best interests of the State’.41 What matters most is that he was prepared to contemplate dramatic policy announcements, and appeared to regard the Coalition document as somewhat too cautious. Therefore, his anti-programmatic rhetoric was in part a defensive move against an insurgent Labour Party that was trying to broaden its appeal by brandishing a lengthy list of reforms before the voters. In 1922 the Coalition fell and Bonar Law became Prime Minister at the head of a Conservative administration. Churchill’s campaign at the ensuing election was greatly hampered by a serious illness, and he struggled to meet the challenge posed by the ex-servicemen’s vote in Dundee at a time of high local unemployment.42 His election address reflected the difficulties that the former Coalition Liberals faced in establishing a sense of purpose and distinct identity. On the one hand, he favoured a politics of activism, attacking what he described as Bonar Law’s policy of ‘negation’, and pledged himself fully to social reform. On the other, he laid into ‘the destructive projects of the Labour programme’, in particular plans for a capital levy and for widespread nationalisation. He did go so far as to promise to devote more time to the constituency, now that he was free of

38  F. Russell Bryant ed., The Coalition Diaries and Letters of H.A.L. Fisher, 1916–1922: The Historian in Lloyd George’s Cabinet Volume I: 1916–1918 (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), p. 318; Churchill to David Lloyd George, 21 Nov. 1918, enclosing amended manifesto draft, Lloyd George papers, LG/F/8/2/42, Parliamentary Archives. The letter, but not the manifesto, can be found in Gilbert, Companion Volume IV, Part 1, pp. 421–2. 39  ‘Government and railways’, Manchester Guardian, 5 December 1918. 40  Almeric Fitzroy diary, 19 Feb 1921, British Library, MS Add 48380∗, f. 354. See also ‘Nationalisation of the Railways’, Manchester Guardian, 24 March 1924. 41  ‘The Railways and the Nation’, Manchester Guardian, 7 December 1918; ‘Manifesto of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law’, 1918, in F.W.S. Craig ed., British General Election Manifestos 1918–1966 (Chichester: Political Reference Publications, 1970), p. 4. 42  Thévoz, ‘Winston Churchill’s 1922 general election defeat’.

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ministerial office, but he still went down to defeat, his old adversary Scrymgeour topping the poll.43 The following year, Bonar Law’s successor, Stanley Baldwin, called a snap election, in the hope of securing a mandate for the introduction of protectionism. Fighting at West Leicester, and with the Liberals reunited in the face of the threat to free trade, Churchill was ably assisted by his wife Clementine. ‘The British fiscal system does not sound a bright topic for a woman speaker till Mrs. Churchill puts on her cooking-sleeves and begins to make rissoles of Mr. Baldwin’s programme’, commented a Daily Mail journalist.44 Churchill’s campaign was not purely negative, as he proposed large-scale temporary measures to revive the economy, including ‘the use of British credit to promote the development of our own island by increased provision of electric power, by the scientific treatment of our coal supply, by the electrification of our railways, the improvement of canals and extension of roads.’ But he devoted only one paragraph to the capital levy; he conceded that his Labour opponent, F.W. Pethick-­ Lawrence, was its most able exponent.45 As part of the wave that helped bring his party to power as a minority government, Pethick-Lawrence won the seat; Churchill never fought another campaign under the Liberal banner. Nevertheless, when fighting the Abbey Division of Westminster as a ‘Constitutionalist’ in the spring of 1924, he continued to assert that he was ‘a Liberal who wishes to work with the Conservative Party’ against the threat of socialism.46 Churchill was defeated by an official Conservative candidate but his strong performance made it clear that he would be an asset to the Tories. Later in the year, he was invited to contest Epping by the local Conservatives, even though he was not yet formally a member of the party. In his election address he committed himself to supporting Baldwin’s manifesto, which ‘unfolds a statesmanlike scheme of social improvement over the whole field of domestic affairs.’ On trade, he steered a careful balance. He emphasised the Conservative leaders’ pledges that they did not now plan a general protective tariff involving taxes on food and daily 43  WSC, ‘Address to the electors’, Courier and Argus (Dundee), 7 November 1922; On the politics of the capital levy see Martin Daunton, Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1914–1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), Chapter 3. 44  ‘Ideal election wife’, Daily Mail, 3 December 1923. 45  WSC, ‘To the Electors of West Leicester’, 1923, National Liberal Club Papers, DM668/2. 46  ‘Country before party’, Western Daily Press, 10 March 1924.

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necessities. However, he also offered assurances that he did ‘actively support the principle of the Safeguarding of Industries Act’–a more modest protectionist measure–‘and the cause of Imperial Preference.’47 These promises were probably aimed more at his new comrades in arms, many of whom were suspicious of his free trade background, than at ordinary voters. Churchill won the seat and Baldwin, having swept back to power in a landslide, took the surprise decision to appoint him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Over the next five years, in spite of the flawed decision to return Britain to the gold standard, and his wildly combative response to the general strike, he secured some modest achievements, although high unemployment persisted. One Conservative dictum of the time was ‘Judge a Man by his Character and his Party by its Record’.48 The 1929 manifesto bore the hallmarks of this approach, as it dwelt upon past success as much as or more than it gave pledges for the future.49 Lloyd George’s Liberals, with their bold plan to conquer unemployment, were a threat. They and the Labour Party were therefore to be branded as the peddlers of flashy and unrealistic promises. (On this type of rhetoric, see Luke Blaxill’s chapter on ‘anti-promises’ in this volume.) As Philip Williamson has noted, Churchill’s instinctive sympathy for working with the Liberals dropped away when it became clear that they were going to fight as many seats as possible rather than seek an electoral pact.50 Thus, in spite of his own willingness to put forward striking remedies a few years earlier, he now pushed the standard Baldwinite line with a typical Churchillian inflexion: ‘To settle the whole fortunes of the British Empire for four or five years in accordance with what ambitious politicians are prepared to promise the unemployed is not the best way to help our country to get through its difficulties, to preserve its world position, or to make our island a better home for all its people.’51 The 1929 Conservative defeat was followed, soon enough, by Churchill’s alienation from the party’s leaders over the issue of greater self-government for India. In the summer of 1931, the Labour  ‘Lure of Moscow’, Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1924.  Conservative Party calendar for 1929, R.A. Butler Papers, RAB J21/18, Trinity College, Cambridge. 49  ‘Mr. Stanley Baldwin’s election address’, 1929, in Craig ed., Election Manifestos, pp. 44–54. 50  Philip Williamson, ‘“Safety First”: Baldwin, the Conservative Party, and the 1929 General Election’, Historical Journal 25 (1982), pp. 385–409 at 401–2. 51  ‘Mr. Churchill’s Warning’, Daily Telegraph, 18 May 1929. 47 48

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government fell, in the face of financial crisis, to be replaced by a cross-­ party ‘National Government’. It was dominated by Tories but Ramsay MacDonald remained as Prime Minister (and was expelled from the Labour Party). Churchill, left without office, had little choice but to pledge his support to the new administration. At the election that took place in October, though, he was quick to link the country’s financial problems to the very different issues which were gripping his mind. ‘The doubting, incoherent policy of the Socialists in India has not only brought discord and suffering in India, but has impaired our own position in the eyes of the world’, he claimed in his election address. ‘One reason why our financial credit has deteriorated so is because foreign countries suppose that we have lost the gift of rulership and that we are morally incapable of maintaining our rights in the East.’52 By the time of the next election, in 1935, the Government of India Act had been passed in spite of Churchill’s efforts, and Baldwin had returned for his final spell as Prime Minister. The campaign was conducted in the wake of Mussolini’s brutal invasion of Abyssinia; the government had implied that it would take firm action via the League of Nations but in reality it only paid lip service to the ideal of collective security. Churchill, now fully concentrated on alerting the country to the dangers of the Nazis, had a difficult path to steer (just as the government had to balance building Britain’s armed strength with the avoidance of inflation).53 He still aspired to ministerial office and thus needed to present himself, so far as he could, as a loyal supporter of the National Government. Yet, he also wanted to draw attention to the deficiencies of its rearmament programme. In his election address he defended his criticisms of the government over India and armaments: ‘I have claimed and used a right to independent judgement based upon a lifetime of experience and twenty years of Cabinet service.’ At the same time, he praised Neville Chamberlain’s record as Chancellor of the Exchequer which would ensure, he argued, that rearmament need not be unduly economically burdensome or prevent progress to social betterment. He committed himself to a variety of policies, including public works and the raising of the school leaving-age: ‘The massive

 ‘Mr. Churchill on tariffs’, Daily Mail, 12 October 1931.  G.C.  Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Chapter 3. 52 53

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social programme of the National Government comprises all these fertile and hopeful schemes.’54 In the later 1930s, as his criticism of the government intensified, some of Churchill’s constituency activists began to express disquiet. Early in 1938, he drafted a missive to Sir James Hawkey, the Chairman of the Epping Conservative Association, upon whom he could rely.55 ‘In case some of our friends in the constituency are asking about my attitude towards our foreign policy, will you very kindly tell them that it is, and will be, in strict accordance with […] my election address in 1935’, he wrote. Moreover, ‘Nothing that has happened in the interval has led me in any way to modify these views which, as you may remember, were endorsed by an even larger majority than we had at the election in 1931.’56 It appears that the letter remained unsent, but it nonetheless illustrates the way in which an election address could be used to establish or claim a mandate for an MP’s individual freedom of action, in the face of heavy pressures to conform to the demands of party loyalty. After Churchill became leader of the Conservative Party in 1940 he continued to issue a personal address whenever a general election took place. This, though, was now something of a formality; much more important were the three manifestos that were issued under his leadership. Churchill laid some of the groundwork for the 1945 manifesto with his ‘Four Years’ Plan’ broadcast of 21 March 1943. However, the speech was a somewhat grudging response to the popular enthusiasm aroused by the Beveridge Report, and although he made clear his belief in social reform he avoided concrete policy commitments, as was his wont.57 The manifesto referred back to the plan, which it claimed had already borne fruit in the form of the wartime coalition’s 1944 Education Act. Moreover, following on from the famous 1944 Employment White Paper, the ­manifesto 54  WSC, ‘To the electors of the Epping Division of Essex’, 28 October 1935, Churchill Papers, CHAR 7/24/2. Note Churchill’s telling correction to the printed draft, at CHAR 7/24/8: ‘These measures will be costly; but they will not be more than we can bear throw an undue burden upon us’. 55  R.A.C. Parker, Churchill and Appeasement (London, Macmillan, 2000), p. 193. 56  WSC to James Hawkey, 26 February 1938, Churchill Papers, CHAR 7/46/20-1. Marked ‘Held back’. 57  Richard Toye, The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War II Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp.  203–6; Andrew Thorpe, Parties At War: Political Organization in Second World War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 20–4.

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included the pledge that ‘The Government accepts as one of its primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment.’ There was a specific building target of 200,000 temporary houses, and there were other concrete promises, for example that ‘New proposals for Civil Aviation, based broadly on the White Paper of 1945, will be adopted and speedily brought into operation.’58 The implications were clear: a post-war Churchill government would be the heir to the Churchill coalition. The document, moreover, was cast as ‘Mr. Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors’. This mimicked the older practice whereby a leader’s individual election address served as a manifesto for the entire party.59 This was not merely archaism; it was intended to ‘render the issue of a Conservative party manifesto unnecessary’.60 Churchill wanted to present himself as a ‘National’ leader, and his ‘Declaration of Policy’ deliberately made no mention of the Conservatives, who were widely considered discredited on account of their pre-war record.61 Labour’s landslide victory suggests that the strategy was a failure. Attlee’s party had certainly had a significant ‘imaginative and organizational edge over the Conservatives’, although its manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, did not immediately secure the iconic status it now holds.62 The Conservative Party, for its part, now began a period of introspection and renewal, but as its leader Churchill ‘had little respect for party political organization and regarded it as an instrument that would be ready to serve him whenever he wanted it.’63 Churchill, in Opposition, did not abandon his 1945 themes so much as rework them, and certainly would not have been bothered by the notion that he was stealing Liberal principles.64 In 58  ‘Mr. Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors’ (1945), in Craig ed., Election Manifestos, pp. 87–97. 59  As noted above, Churchill did issue a (much shorter) address to his own constituents separately. See ‘Premier fit as ever to shoulder burdens’, Daily Telegraph, 22 June 1945. 60  ‘Declaration by Premier’, Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1945. 61  Churchill to Ralph Assheton, 11 June 1945, Churchill papers, CHAR 2/554/14; Scott Kelly, ‘“The Ghost of Neville Chamberlain”: Guilty Men and the 1945 Election’, Conservative History Journal, 5, Autumn 2005, pp. 18–24. 62  Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 178. 63  Lord Woolton, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Woolton (London: Cassell, 1959), p. 348. 64  Leslie Illingworth, cartoon ILW 1245, Daily Mail, 14 May 1947, available at archive. cartoons.ac.uk, consulted 8 July 2019.

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fact, this suggestion was fully in line with the theme of ‘freedom’ that he and others within the party used as an organising rhetorical motif–although it is important not to conflate this with the neoliberal conceptions of liberty that were starting to develop at the same time.65 The Tories signalled their new approach with a series of policy ‘Charters’, the most famous of which was the Industrial Charter (1947). Intended to show that the party had made a clean break with the interwar era of mass unemployment, it was lacking in detail and made little impact on the public.66 Churchill was ambivalent, but was induced to give the Charter his endorsement in his annual conference speech. He was determined to make only broad, declarative statements of future policy.67 He even harked back to a slogan used by the National Government during the 1931 election: ‘we do not intend to prescribe before we are called in […] we shall ask for a “doctor’s mandate” to deal with the situation, whatever it may be, when the time comes’.68 As R.A.  Butler, then Chairman of the Conservative Research Department, later explained: On the home front he preferred to employ his formidable powers of exposition and debate to combat what he called ‘positive folly’ rather than to propound what I was merely the first of an increasing number of his colleagues to tell him was necessary, namely positive policy. This reference of Churchill’s was partly temperamental. But it stemmed also from his historical sense – a wish not to appear as ‘an old man in a hurry’, peddling nostrums in order to regain power, and a fear of ‘giving a hostage to fortune’ by promising now what could not be performed later.69

65  James Freeman, ‘Reconsidering “Set the People Free”: Neoliberalism and freedom rhetoric in Churchill’s Conservative Party’, Twentieth Century British History 29 (2018), pp. 522–46. 66  Andrew Taylor, ‘Speaking to democracy: The Conservative Party and mass opinion from the 1920s to the 1950s’, in Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday eds., Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public since the 1880s (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 78–99, at 85–8. 67  John Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 1940–1957 (London: Longman, 1995), Chapter 4. 68  WSC, speech of 26 June 1948, in Robert Rhodes James ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897–1963, Vol. VII: 1943–1949 (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 7676. 69  R.A.  Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler K.G., C.H. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 133.

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Nor was Churchill’s approach without its supporters. Harold Macmillan noted that many of his colleagues believed that the Tories should win back power ‘through the normal swing of the pendulum’, and were doubtful of the need to articulate new policies.70 In response to a major speech that Churchill gave in Manchester in December 1947, a Western Mail editorial praised him for giving ‘definition […] to the Tory programme’ but commended him for refusing to fill in the details. It noted that Labour ministers had been ‘trying to goad the Opposition into stating exactly how they would deal with this problem and that, and produce the notorious pamphlet “Let Us Face the Future” as an example of how a party should spread it cloth at the feet of the electors.’ This, it argued, was a trap. ‘The present government’s weakness comes largely from the handicaps of their own pre-election commitments, from which they cannot escape without losing face and votes.’71 The reaction of the Yorkshire Post was similar: ‘it is no longer possible to accuse Conservatism of being without a programme.’ The paper also made a comparison with Churchill’s 1943 ‘Four Years’ Plan’ broadcast: ‘Both are characterised by the wide vision which belongs peculiarly to their author. And both look at this country’s problems from the truly national point of view.’72 One does, however, get the sense that Churchill’s press backers were willing him to show greater dynamism and precision. Following some flattery from Macmillan–‘You can appeal to everything which your Father wanted to do and which you helped to accomplish in your Liberal days’– Churchill did deign to provide a preface to the 1949 party programme The Right Road for Britain.73 But even as he introduced it to the party faithful at Earl’s Court, he emphasised that ‘We are not going to try to get into office by offering bribes and promises of immediate material benefits to our people.’ He could of course trade on his reputation as the man who, in 1940, had offered the British people only blood and toil, tears and

 Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune 1945–1955 (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 299.  WSC, speech of 6 December 1947, in Rhodes James ed., Complete Speeches VII, pp. 7572–9; ‘Tory programme’, Western Mail, 8 December 1947, CHPC 26. 72  ‘Mr. Churchill shows the way’, Yorkshire Post, 8 December 1947, CHPC 26. 73  Harold Macmillan to WSC, 24 June 1949, Churchill Papers, CHUR 2/88/34-5; The Right Road for Britain: The Conservative Party’s Statement of Policy (London: Conservative and Unionist Central Office, 1949), p. 5. 70 71

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sweat. Indeed he explicitly referenced ‘the clear and faithful simplicity that we showed in the days of Dunkirk.’74 The Conservative manifesto for the election of 1950 was given the title This is the Road, to emphasise its connection to The Right Road for Britain. In contrast to the 1945 manifesto it was not presented as a personal document by Churchill, but he did involve himself heavily in its writing, ‘shredding to bits every discrepancy, ellipsis or muddled metaphor.’75 After the party’s narrow defeat, an internal analysis suggested that some Tory voters felt that the manifesto of that year ‘was not sufficiently explicit and that some of the wording appeared to be deliberately vague.’ It followed that future policy statements should be devised with attention to those ‘mistrustful and cynical’ electors who were on the alert ‘for sentences which they can construe as being intentionally vague.’ The document urged the use of specific formulations such as ‘We can and will …’ and ‘We are determined to …’ instead of ‘We want to see …’, ‘We would like to …’, and so on.76 The 1951 manifesto contained the eye-catching promise to build 300,000 homes a year, albeit this pledge was actually forced through at the 1950 party conference against the leadership’s better judgement.77 It also included a proposal for an Excess Profits Tax to operate during the period of Korean War rearmament. This had been dreamt up by Churchill and the presses had to be halted so that it could be added to the manifesto at the last moment.78 In her analysis of how many pledges winning manifestos contained, Judith Bara finds that the 1951 Conservative document included 15. (By comparison, Labour’s manifesto in 1945 had 18, the Conservative one in 1979 had 50, and the 1997 Labour manifesto had 177.)79 By hook or by 74  WSC, speech of 14 October 1949, in Rhodes James ed., Complete Speeches VII, p. 7863. The phrases quoted were included in the British Pathé newsreel coverage of the speech: https://www.britishpathe.com/video/right-road-for-britain-churchill (consulted 8 July 2019). 75  Butler, Art of the Possible, p. 152. 76  Public Opinion Research Department, ‘Confidential Supplement to Public Opinion Summary No. 14’, 5 March 1950, Conservative Party Archive, CCO 4/3/249, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 77  Harriet Jones, ‘“This is magnificent!”: 300,000 houses a year and the Tory revival after 1945’, Contemporary British History, 14 (2000), pp. 99–121. 78  Butler, Art of the Possible, pp. 154–5; Peter Catterall ed., The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 1950–1957 (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 101 (entry for 22 September 1951). 79  Judith Bara, ‘A question of trust: Implementing party manifestos’, Parliamentary Affairs 58 (2005), pp. 585–99 at p. 588.

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crook, it would seem, Churchill had been dragged into modernity, coming into office on a programme which in form, and partially in substance, imitated a model epitomised by Let Us Face the Future. Certainly, his reluctance to engage in policy- and promise-making in the new style was in part a product of his age. This was so both in that his formative experiences had taken place in a very different world and that, as he became increasingly frail, he had little enthusiasm for getting to grips with policy particulars. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss Churchill’s dislike for programmatic politics simply as a sign that he was a Victorian relic. As we have seen, at various times throughout his career he had made quite sweeping pledges; at others he had avoided them or poured scorn on the false promises of others. His taste, above all, was for grandiosity and drama, and it would have made little sense for him to reinvent himself as a master of policy minutiae.80 Just as the reformist ‘New Conservatism’ of the 1940s had strong connections with that of the Baldwin era, so Churchill’s anti-­ programmatic instincts provided a living link to an earlier generation.81 Although Churchill’s approach could easily be dismissed as an anachronism or throwback, his electoral success in 1951 points to the continued viability of an older model, albeit in a slightly uneasy combination with the ‘blueprint’ approach widely favoured in the new Age of Promises.

80  Jonathan Rose, The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 81  Clarisse Berthezène, Training Minds for the War of Ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party and the Cultural Politics of Britain, 1929–54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 223.

‘I Promise You This. I Won’t Make Empty Promises’. The Election Manifestos of Margaret Thatcher David Thackeray

On 16 February 1978 a group of Thatcherite MPs prepared a paper for discussion at shadow cabinet.1 Three days beforehand the Daily Mail had led with the headline ‘Maggie’s Got it Right’, a story which referred to Margaret Thatcher’s recent comments in a TV interview that the British people feared they might be ‘rather swamped by people of a different culture.’ Despite the controversy which ensued, the Daily Mail claimed that Thatcher’s statements on immigration had chimed with the public. The newspaper’s opinion poll put the Conservatives at an eleven-point lead.2 In keeping with the Mail’s claims about the apparent growth in antiimmigration sentiment, the authors of the discussion paper noted: ‘We believe people are fed up with change, and with new systems that don’t  Angus Maude, Rhodes Boyson, David Howell, Nigel Lawson and Norman Tebbit, ‘Themes’, 16 February 1978, Thatcher MSS, 2/6/1/233, https://www.margaretthatcher. org/document/109853 2  Daily Mail, 13 February 1978, p. 1. 1

D. Thackeray (*) Department of History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_9

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work. There is a deep nostalgia, in part for what is thought of as a comfortable past. Continuity is vital, and that is in tune with the Conservative approach.’ Furthermore, they argued that the public were wary of plans for radical upheaval: ‘People no longer believe politicians’ promises of better times ahead and the benefits of “change.”’3 The discussion paper provides us with an invaluable insight into the Conservative approach to manifesto-making under Thatcher’s leadership. Politicians had long criticised the apparent growth of reckless promises offered by their opponents, but Thatcher’s approach to manifesto production was distinct in focusing attention around a few detailed, costed pledges. This strategy was conditioned by three chief concerns: to support claims that government was being hampered by an ‘overload’ of responsibilities, to distance Thatcher from her rivals and predecessors, and as a means to make radical changes in government policy appear in line with ‘common sense’ thinking and the public interest. The Conservative 1979 election manifesto claimed that ‘we make no lavish promises. The repeated disappointment of rising expectations has led to a marked loss of faith in politicians’ promises.’4 This assertion can be seen as part of a wider critique of British political culture, which claimed that government had been encumbered by an apparent escalation of ‘electoral bribes’ during the 1960s and 1970s. In influential papers which appeared in 1975, Samuel Brittan and Anthony King argued that excessive expectations about the ability of governments to promote better conditions had created a crisis of ‘governability’ and a sense of ‘overload’ in Whitehall.5 Brittan claimed that ‘the temptation to encourage false expectations among the electorate becomes overwhelming to politicians. The opposition parties are bound to promise to do better and the government party must join in the auction.’ According to Brittan, voters were now cynical about the salience of political promises; he pointed to a summer 1974 opinion poll in which well over half of respondents thought that both main parties were ‘making promises which the country cannot

 ‘Themes’, 16 February 1978.   Conservative election manifesto, 1979, https://www.margarethatcher.org/ document/110858 5  Samuel Brittan, ‘The economic contradictions of democracy’, British Journal of Political Science, 5 (1975), pp.  129–59; Anthony King, ‘Overload: Problems of governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, 23 (1975), pp. 284–96. 3 4

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afford.’6 By focusing on a limited number of promises Thatcher sought to present an image of responsible leadership distinct from the failed pledges and ‘u-turns’ which had tarnished successive governments’ reputations. And yet, this was a strategy that sat uneasily with Thatcherite plans to undertake a radical programme of reform. The authors of the 1978 shadow cabinet paper noted that ‘of course we know we shall have to change many things, but this should be implicit rather than explicit in our presentation.’7 As such, Thatcherites’ adoption of a rhetoric which focused on promoting a limited range of promises can be seen as part of a strategy to present themselves as guardians of the public interest and common sense values while radically overhauling the structures of government. After 1979, critiques of Labour manifesto pledge-making played an important role in Conservative campaigning and were used to question their ability to handle the economy effectively. As Mark Wickham-Jones’ chapter in this volume indicates, debates about the production and delivery of manifestos were a major point of factional conflict within the Labour Party from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Significant attention has been paid to how Margaret Thatcher constructed her rhetoric in the form of parliamentary debate, speeches, interviews, and press conferences.8 Historians and political scientists have also explored the construction of key Thatcherite myths, which were used to justify policy reform. These include Heath’s supposed betrayal of the radical programme of ‘Selsdon Man’ after 1970, the use of the narrative of the ‘winter of discontent’ as a means to remember the industrial unrest of 1978–79, and the rhetorical construction of strikers as ‘the enemy within’ during the miners’ strike of 1984–85.9 This chapter builds on these 6  Brittan, ‘Economic contradictions of democracy’, p.  140; for a broader survey of the political science literature of the 1970s noting growing distrust of political promises see Wayne Parsons, ‘Politics without promises: the crisis of “overload” and governability’, Parliamentary Affairs, 35 (1982), pp. 421–35. 7  ‘Themes’, 16 February 1978. 8  Andrew Crines, Timothy Heppell and Peter Dorey, The Political Rhetoric and Oratory of Margaret Thatcher (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 9  E.H.H.  Green explores how Thatcherite memoirs constructed the idea that Heath betrayed the radical programme discussed at the Selsdon Park hotel in 1970 in his Thatcher (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006), pp. 35–7. See also Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon, ‘The Heath government in perspective’, in Idem. eds., The Heath Government 1970–74 (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 1–19 at p. 6; for the Thatcherite construction of the ‘winter of discontent’ see Robert Saunders, “Crisis? What crisis?’ Thatcherism and the seventies’, in Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders eds., Making Thatcher’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge

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approaches but shifts attention to the role that manifesto-making and the language of promises played in shaping the Thatcherite project. Thatcher’s criticisms of excessive manifesto pledges built on a Conservative tradition of attacking the apparent excesses of state intervention, albeit one which had often sat uneasily with the apparent need to compete with Labour’s plans for social reform. The Conservatives’ 1979 election strategy sought to break from these efforts to compete with their opponents’ plans for expanded state action. As the authors of the 1978 ‘Themes’ paper put it: ‘The conventional wisdom is that we must always appear forward-looking….[Yet] the ‘change’ that people want today is a change back to known standards’.10 However, while Thatcher managed to largely avoid offering detailed pledges for action and increased state spending during the 1979 and 1983 elections, this approach had its limits. She adopted a more radical strategy during 1987 out of a sense that the government needed to refresh its policies and offer a bolder programme, albeit still centred around a small number of detailed pledges. As such, her approach provided a precursor to the policies of both John Major, who built on the 1987 programme, but distanced himself from its more controversial policies, and Tony Blair, who centred the 1997 New Labour programme around half a dozen key pledges and sought to avoid making expensive promises of action, which would be difficult to keep.

Conservatism and Promises, from Baldwin to Heath Thatcher built on a tradition of anti-promise rhetoric amongst Conservative leaders which can be traced back to Stanley Baldwin in the 1920s. Her immediate predecessor as party leader, Edward Heath, sought to present himself as a vigorous opponent of Labour’s ‘empty promises’. And yet, in practice, Conservative leaders developed an increasingly programmatic style of politics over time, and this was reflected in their approach to manifesto production. Indeed, Heath combined his attacks on Labour promises with the adoption of a series of detailed pledges of his own. The policy failures and u-turns of the 1970–74 government, and the economic University Press, 2012), pp. 25–42; Colin Hay, ‘Narrating crisis: the discursive construction of the ‘winter of discontent’, Sociology, 30 (1996), pp. 253–77; for Thatcherite rhetoric during the miners’ strike see Martina Steber, ‘Fundamentals at stake: the Conservatives, industrial relations and the rhetorical framing of the miners’ strike in 1984/1985′, Contemporary British History, 32 (2018), pp. 60–77. 10  ‘Themes’, 16 February 1978.

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uncertainty which followed, led to a growing sense that this approach to manifesto-making was no longer viable, which in turn shaped Thatcher’s approach to the development of her party programme. Stanley Baldwin can be seen as the father of modern Conservative anti-­ promise rhetoric (to use Blaxill’s term, which refers to a pledge to avoid a certain course of action, or the criticism of unrealistic or irresponsible promises made by opponents). As party leader between 1923 and 1937 he regularly criticised the apparent escalation of election promises which had resulted from Labour’s development as a viable party of government, claiming that they acted as bribes designed to lure impressionable new voters, concerned with their material wellbeing.11 Nonetheless, there were limits to Baldwin’s anti-promise strategy. Critics argued that the Conservatives needed an appealing series of policy proposals to compete with Labour’s bold plans for social reform. Baldwin’s 1929 election address was a landmark in Conservative enthusiasm for programmatic politics, offering a substantially wider range of policy commitments than previous Conservative manifestos, including a detailed discussion of industrial and agricultural development and an extensive survey of ongoing social reforms.12 After 1945, there was often a tension between Conservative concerns over appearing to offer a credible and cautious approach to government focused on promoting personal freedom, and the need to offer detailed policy pledges which could respond to the challenges that resulted from the state’s growing intervention in industry and expanded welfare provision.13 Following Labour’s narrow election victory in 1950, a Conservative policy review claimed that party supporters felt that the wording of their election manifesto that year had been overly vague and that future policy statements needed to offer clearer objectives to win over ‘mistrustful and 11  Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 203, 226. 12  For discussions of the development of this approach see David Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age: Conservative Cultures and the Challenge of Mass Politics in Early Twentieth Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 142–4, 162, 171–7; Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, pp. 33, 150–1. 13  For the continuing salience of ‘freedom rhetoric’ to the Conservative Party’s public appeals from Baldwin to Heath see James Freeman, ‘Taking Liberties: The Rhetoric of Freedom in Post-War British Politics’, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 2014 and ‘Reconsidering ‘Set the People Free’: Neoliberalism and freedom rhetoric in Churchill’s Conservative Party’, Twentieth Century British History, 29 (2018), pp. 522–46.

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cynical’ voters.14 Thereafter, Conservative manifestos usually laid out a series of detailed policy pledges, and this was particularly the case after Edward Heath became party leader in 1965.15 The 1966 Conservative manifesto Action Not Words was one of the most detailed policy statements to have been published by the party. According to Iain Macleod, the shadow chancellor, it contained no less than 131 specific promises.16 As Heath explained to the authors of the Nuffield election study, he felt this approach was the best means to win the trust of voters: ‘people today are so cynical and sceptical about the whole machinery of government that detail is needed to convince them that you really intend to carry out your promises.’17 Heath’s approach to pledge-making was shaped by his belief that the Conservatives needed an appealing programme to compete with the Labour Party, which had been re-energised under Harold Wilson’s leadership. For Heath, the lack of positive thinking in the 1964 Conservative manifesto had been an important reason in explaining their loss of power that year.18 Brendon Sewill, Director of the Conservative Research Department, summed up the party leader’s position neatly in 1967: The Labour Party won the 1964 election by promising results; faster and steadier growth, more houses, lower interest rates, better social services etc. etc. this produced a natural reaction against talking about broad objectives. This was reinforced in the Conservative Party by the feeling that we had lost the confidence of the public because we had run out of ideas. Thus our natural reaction in recent years has been to seek ‘Action not words’, policies not aspirations, and to talk about means not ends.’19

14  Public Opinion Research Department, ‘Confidential Supplement to Public Opinion Summary No. 14’, 5 March 1950, Conservative Party Archive (CPA), CCO4/3/249, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 15  Jure Kosec notes that Heath was arguably exceptional amongst post-war Conservative leaders in his dedication to expressing specific commitments and pledges in policy documents. See his ‘Conservative Party General Election Manifesto: Objectives and Purposes 1945–1983’, MA dissertation, University of Leiden, 2014, p. 33. 16  John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London: Pimlico, 1993), p.  208; John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department since 1929 (London: Longman, 1980), p. 252. 17  David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 66. 18  Ramsden, Making of Conservative Party Policy, pp. 235–6. 19  Ibid., p. 236.

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However, the escalation of pledges of action by the two main parties caused unease. During the mid-1960s both Labour and the Conservatives accused their opponents of seeking to win votes by bribing voters with expensive promises, which had not been properly costed.20 Heath’s strategy during the 1970 election was centred around the idea that Wilson’s government had betrayed their manifesto promises. Leaflets claimed that ‘the last Conservative government [during 1959–64] had honoured 91 of its 92 Election promises’, whereas Labour had ‘broken every major election promise’ under Wilson (Heath had a particular enthusiasm for recording the fulfilment or failure of manifesto pledges).21 The Conservative manifesto of 1970 sought to present Wilson as prone to changing policy, motivated by short-term political gain, and lacking in principles. This was a theme which featured strongly in Heath’s foreword: ‘During the last six years we have suffered not only from bad policies, but from a cheap and trivial style of government. Decisions have been dictated simply by the desire to catch tomorrow’s headlines…the long-term objective has gone out the window….Decisions lightly entered into have been as lightly abandoned.’

Heath claimed he would offer a more consistent and principled form of leadership: ‘Once a decision is taken, once a policy is established, the Prime Minister and his colleagues should have the courage to stick to it. Nothing has done Britain more harm in the world than the endless backing and filling which we have seen in recent years.’22 Such claims would appear increasingly hollow after 1970 as the Heath government adapted policies to deal with a series of crises. It is now widely agreed that Thatcherite accusations that Heath had betrayed the radical ‘Selsdon’ agenda laid out at a shadow cabinet meeting in January 1970 are problematic, given that it was far from clear that he subscribed to an 20  ‘“Labour Offering Menu Without Prices”’, The Times, 14 September 1964; transcript of Conservative party broadcast, 21 March 1966, LIBERAL PARTY/9/10, Liberal Party Archive, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London; ‘Labour Condemns Promises As Vote-Catching Bribes’, The Times, 7 March 1966. 21  Claims made in the leaflets: ‘10 reasons for voting Conservative’ and’10 reasons for not voting Labour’, CCO500/24/295; for Heath’s concerns with recording the fulfilment of manifesto promises, see, for example, ‘Policy assets and liabilities’, Conservative Research Department memo, 16 March 1973, CRD4/30/4/4, both CPA. 22  F.W.S. Craig ed., British General Election Manifestos 1900–1974 (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. 325.

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unequivocal liberal market agenda.23 Nonetheless, Heath still had to perform a damaging series of policy u-turns. Early efforts to adopt a non-­ interventionist approach to industry were scuppered by rising unemployment. When Rolls-Royce got into financial trouble in 1971 it was taken into public ownership. Heath then introduced a compulsory prices and incomes policy in late 1972 in response to rising inflation and significantly increased public expenditure over the following year. Reflecting on his time as Heath’s political secretary, Douglas Hurd, who later became a prominent figure in Thatcher’s administration, argued that many of the Prime Minister’s problems had been exacerbated by the absolute and inflexible way in which Conservative policy had been phrased in the 1970 manifesto, containing as it did commitments such as ‘we utterly reject the philosophy of compulsory wage control’ and ‘there will be no further large-scale immigration’, which were not met.24 This was all the more galling since the section entitled ‘The Conservative Way’ had claimed that ‘our policies are not, like Labour’s, a collection of short lived devices…nor are they a set of promises made only to be broken.’25 Significantly, Hurd’s analysis of the 1970–74 government was titled An End to Promises and it sought to demonstrate how the chastening experiences of that administration had ushered in a new attitude to policy formulation amongst Conservatives. According to Hurd, the various obstacles which modern governments faced such as inflation, unemployment, industrial stagnation, overbearing trade union power, and Britain’s relative decline on the world stage hampered the ability of the state to intervene effectively in various areas of life. Political disillusionment was being driven by politicians fuelling expectations for change, promising voters reforms to better their social conditions which in many cases they could not deliver.26 These were lessons that leading figures in Thatcher’s inner circle took to heart.

23  E.H.H.  Green, Ideologies of Conservatism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 231; John Campbell, Edward Heath: a biography (London: Pimlico, 1993), pp. 233–5, 266. 24  Douglas Hurd, An End to Promises: Sketch of a Government 1970–74 (London: Collins, 1979), p. 21. 25  Craig ed., British General Election Manifestos 1900–1974, p. 328. 26  Hurd, An End to Promises, pp. 141–2, 152–3.

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The Road to 1979 April 1975 was not an easy time for policy-makers to be optimistic about the future. Unemployment had recently risen above 1 million and inflation had leapt to over 21 percent. Early that month a paper was circulated to the shadow cabinet, written by one of Thatcher’s closest confidants, Keith Joseph. Thatcher had only become Conservative leader eight weeks beforehand, and the paper sought to sketch out new policies for the party. Joseph wished to draw a line under the ambitious pledges and programmes adopted by previous Conservative leaders through commitments to full employment, rent controls, and expensive council building: ‘It is characteristic of the past two decades that almost exclusive obsession with economics by governments, and competitive claims to usher in utopia, have coincided with economic failure….Against our better judgment we competed with the Socialists in offering to perform what is in fact beyond the power of government.’ Joseph outlined a series of criticisms of the apparent failures of ‘over-government’ and stressed the need for greater self-­ reliance as a means to rebuild the economy.27 The same caution about outlining a detailed programme for reform was apparent in the major policy reviews The Right Approach (1976) and The Right Approach to the Economy (1977). The latter called for ‘a firm brake on legislation, control of money supply, and firm management of government expenditure’, as well as lowering taxation to encourage enterprise. However, plans for reform of existing practices were often left vague. For example, the report noted the need for ‘the encouragement of better methods of collective bargaining.’28 A similar spirit infused The Right Approach, which began by stressing the limits of what governments could do and their need to respond to a rapidly changing external environment: ‘[The document] contains neither popular promises designed to win elections nor a host of detailed proposals which rapidly changing circumstances might soon render irrelevant. A party which seeks to govern must set out realistically what is believes it is actually capable of achieving in government.’29 27  Keith Joseph, ‘Notes towards the definition of policy’, 4 April 1975, Thatcher MSS, 2/6/1/156, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110098 28  The Right Approach to the Economy (1977), p. 6, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/112551. The report was written by Geoffrey Howe, Keith Joseph, Jim Prior and David Howell. 29  The Right Approach (1976), https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/109439

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In proposing a limited series of reforms, leading Thatcherites sought to benefit from voters’ disillusionment with the record of the Labour government. As the ‘Themes’ paper produced in February 1978 put it: ‘We have to get them to the polls remembering the horrors of 1974–77…. Memories of 30 percent inflation, 15 percent interest rates, plummeting £, Mr. Healey’s absurd promises that all would work out well “next year.”’30 However, when Conservative party spokesmen submitted draft texts for a future election manifesto that spring their combined policy commitments added up to a net increase in public expenditure. A Conservative Research Department (CRD) memorandum from 12 April which survives in the Airey Neave papers noted that ‘this may not necessarily be a cause for concern. But at the very least it does raise presentational questions’ and sat uneasily with plans for tax cuts.31 The CRD produced an accompanying background brief which listed the specific pledges and proposals made in manifesto drafts and included a note on costing by Geoffrey Howe, outlining plans to reduce the next year’s probable spending by £2.5 bn and ruling out increases in expenditure expect for defence and law and order.32 The minutes of a discussion of manifesto themes at the shadow cabinet five days later noted the need to avoid implying that public spending would be increased, and stressed that existing manifesto drafts had paid insufficient attention to where spending could be cut.33 The discussion painted a gloomy picture as regards the economic outlook: ‘We should note that increases in world growth and world trade might be considerably less than in the ‘60s….People’s expectations were likely to be disappointed and therefore it was vital that we should not raise expectations too high.’ Given this, it was argued that the party should focus manifesto proposals on themes where they could make a difference without significant spending commitments, such as reducing immigration and cutting government ‘waste’.34 As to the most contentious issue of the day, industrial relations, the party leadership was reluctant to offer definite commitments for reform at this stage. Indeed, it was envisaged that the next manifesto  ‘Themes’, 16 February 1978.  ‘Manifesto drafts and their implications for legislation and spending’, CRD memo., 12 April 1978, Airey Neave papers, AN/318, Parliamentary Archives, London. 32   CRD, ‘Manifesto. Background Brief’, CRD memo., 12 April 1978  in Leaders Consultative Committee agenda (5254) Airey Neave papers, AN/318. 33  Leaders Consultative Committee minutes, 17 April 1978, pp.  1, 3, Thatcher papers, 2/6/1/162, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/109871 34  Ibid., p. 2. 30 31

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would involve less legislation relating to pay and employment than had been predicted at the October 1974 election. Accordingly, it was argued that the manifesto should note that any success in tackling the problems of industrial relations ‘was vulnerable to external factors such as commodity booms or trade recessions….We should emphasise that there was a limited amount that Governments could do to end restrictive practices.’35 Two drafts of a manifesto text were produced in July and August 1978 by Chris Patten and Angus Maude in readiness for a potential autumn election. The shadow cabinet minutes record Thatcher’s displeasure at the large number of pledges and promises which featured in the first draft. She ‘pointed out that because a large number of “nuggets” were being inserted in the Manifesto at the last minute we were in danger of losing our credibility on the issue of expenditure.’ Thatcher called for the next draft to focus on cutting taxes and strengthening defence, making the fulfilment of other spending pledges conditional on meeting their pledges in these areas.36 By and large, the subsequent changes did not meet Thatcher’s favour as her heavily annotated copy of the second draft of the manifesto makes clear. A note in the margin of the economic section stated ‘this is a goldmine of promises’ and various statements were qualified or were otherwise crossed out, such as the original text’s claims that taxes and spending would be cut ‘substantially.’37 However, manifesto planning became a less urgent concern thereafter, following James Callaghan’s announcement in a TV broadcast in early September that he would not be calling an autumn election. In her memoirs, Thatcher presents herself as seizing the initiative in drawing up the Conservative election programme in January 1979 when the country was embroiled in the ‘winter of discontent’, a series of strikes called by trade unions demanding larger pay rises in response to high inflation. According to Thatcher, growing public frustration with trade union militancy and the apparent failure of the government’s pay policy justified a significant rethinking of trade union policy. As a result the industrial  Leaders Consultative Committee minutes, 17 April 1978, pp. 2, 5.  Leaders Consultative Committee minutes, 31 July 1978, Thatcher papers, 2/6/1/163, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/109889; for Thatcher’s criticisms of the first manifesto draft see also Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (London: Harper Collins, 1995), pp. 410, 435. 37  Margaret Thatcher’s annotated copy of the 2nd draft of the 1978 Conservative manifesto, 30 August 1978, Thatcher papers, 2/6/1/163, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/110273 35 36

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policy section became significantly more confrontational, with greater focus on the obligations of trade unions, challenging the concept of the closed shop, and calling for secondary picketing to be made illegal.38 However, in other respects the 1979 manifesto is notable for its caution and focus on issues of governing philosophy rather than concrete proposals for reform. As Geoffrey Howe noted, aside from the introduction of more hostile proposals towards the trade unions, there were several similarities to the final manifesto text and the often vague proposals for reform apparent in The Right Approach to the Economy two years earlier.39 The party’s approach to the campaign was laid out in Thatcher’s TV broadcast in reply to James Callaghan following the dissolution of the government. She offered a declinist vision of an over-taxed Britain falling behind its rivals and racked by industrial strife, ending with the statement, ‘I promise you this. I won’t make empty promises…it will take time to re-build.’40 The 1979 Conservative manifesto was only 60 percent the length of the October 1974 document, whereas Labour’s manifesto increased in length. According to the Nuffield election study, the Conservatives cut the number of their election promises from 87 to 57 while Labour increased theirs from 72 to 77.41 Rather than offering a detailed programme for action, the Conservative manifesto focused its criticism on the excessive role of the state in public life and claimed that the Labour model of governance was not fit for the needs of a ‘free society and mixed economy’. Government needed to promote greater self-reliance and undo the damage to its authority which had resulted from it trying to do too much in the past.42 Radical measures which were later to become centrepieces of the Thatcher project were barely addressed in the manifesto. The nationalised industries were mentioned in one paragraph and there was no sense given that a future Conservative government would embark on a substantial programme of denationalisation. Indeed, the National Freight Corporation was the only candidate named as a potential target for privatisation.43 In 1979 Thatcher was not alone in her reluctance to promote specific pledges,  Thatcher, Path to Power, pp. 435–9.  Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (London: Pan, 1995), p. 114. 40  Margaret Thatcher TV broadcast in reply to the Prime Minister, 2 April 1979, https:// www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103993 41  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 144. 42  For the manifesto text see https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110858 43  Green, Thatcher, p. 83; 38 39

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which were likely to be distrusted by voters whose confidence in government action had been battered by experiences of industrial strife and inflation. The Chancellor Denis Healey admitted privately that many of Labour’s manifesto commitments were ‘carefully phrased to avoid being too specific….we do not want to commit ourselves to specific levels of expenditure where we have deliberately used words like “more” or “further.”’44 Yet in the end, it was the Conservatives who better suited the mood of the people, winning a 43-seat majority at the general election.

Manifesto-Making in Office Accounts of the 1983 election generally emphasise the caution of the Conservatives’ election strategy and their reluctance to unveil bold new reforms.45 At the first election strategy meeting held at Chequers that January the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi stressed the need for continuity, taking into account voters’ lowered expectations about what government could achieve.46 Tracing the development of the 1983 manifesto is more difficult than its predecessor, which went through various drafts over the course of 1978 and 1979. By contrast, the writing of the 1983 manifesto was a more intensive affair entrusted to a small team headed by Geoffrey Howe. Ferdinand Mount, the head of the Policy Unit, produced several drafts of the manifesto over the course of April and May, most of which do not appear to have survived.47 Mount’s ‘Draft Alpha’ opened with the claim that when Thatcher’s government took power in 1979 they found ‘a nation which was overtaxed, over-regulated and disastrously inefficient’, and yet, the British government could now ‘deliver [its] promises’ as a result of responsible spending. According to this first draft, Thatcher’s administration had ‘cut people loose from the 44  Denis Healey to James Callaghan, 8 April 1979, PREM 16/2152, The National Archives (TNA), London. 45  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 40; Nigel Lawson, The View From No. 11, p. 246. 46  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1983, p. 136. 47  The final manifesto text appears to have been signed off on 8 May, Ferdinand Mount, Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), pp. 333–4. Only a handful of senior party figures are said to have read the final text before it went to the printers, John Barnes and Richard Cockett, ‘The making of party policy’, in Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball eds., Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 347–82 at p. 357.

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crippling burdens of the state’ and in the future Britain could enjoy the rapid economic growth experienced by countries with low state spending such as Taiwan and Singapore.48 As Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite notes, there was a moral purpose behind Thatcherite claims that reliance on the state needed to be reduced as this would create thrift, hard work, and self-­ reliance.49 Mount’s draft reflected this thinking with its statement: ‘We believe that a society dominated by the state is irresponsible in the true sense….By returning more responsibility to individuals and their families we believe that standards will tend to rise, often without the intervention of politicians or Parliament.’50 While the final manifesto argued that denationalisation of industries would improve competition for the consumer, the more radical anti-statist statements which had dominated Mount’s initial draft did not survive in later iterations. This is likely to have been due to the influence of Geoffrey Howe, who was chiefly responsible for the final text. In his autobiography Howe sought to defend the manifesto from critics who presented it as ‘an unduly bland text, freer of radical promises than may have been expected.’51 While he acknowledged that the manifesto’s proposals for the reform of education and social services may have been unduly cautious, this owed much to the party leadership’s keenness to distance themselves from leaked discussions on radical cuts in public spending. When sections of a Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) memorandum prepared for the Cabinet were leaked to the press in September 1982 they were seen as a major challenge to existing social service provision.52 The CPRS paper stated that ‘it is worth considering whether over a period the health care for the bulk of the population could be shifted from the State to privately owned and run medical facilities’, with only those who could not afford to pay for treatment being reimbursed. Other proposals mooted included compulsory charges for state education and charging students for the full

48  Ferdinand Mount, ‘Draft Alpha’, n.d. [the document has been dated to 20 April 1983 by the Thatcher Foundation], pp.  1–2, Thatcher MSS, THCR1/5/9 part 2 f3, https:// www.margaretthatcher.org/document/131106 49  Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Class, Politics, and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 165. 50  Mount, ‘Draft Alpha’, p. 8. 51  Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (London: Pan, 1994), pp. 287–8. 52  For the work of the CPRS see Simon James, ‘The Central Policy Review Staff, 1970–1983’, Political Studies, 34 (1986), pp. 423–40.

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cost of university tuition.53 Thatcher used her speech at the party conference the following month to deny that she wished to privatise the NHS, pledging that ‘the National Health Service is safe in our hands.’54 The final manifesto text sought to challenge ‘the totally unfounded charge that we want to “dismantle the Welfare State.”’ Rather, it was noted that spending on state healthcare had risen since 1979 and the growth of private health insurance was presented as ‘lightening the load on the NHS.’55 The other key explanation for the differences between the original draft and the final text of Forward: The Test of Our Times rests in the Conservative response to Labour’s manifesto. Thatcher sought to highlight the extremism of Michael Foot’s proposals and present her government as the defender of moderate government. As she noted in her autobiography, ‘tactically I could see that it made sense for us to produce a tame manifesto and to concentrate on exposing Labour’s wildness.’56 This was a strategy which reached its apogee in a Saatchi & Saatchi poster which compared the Communist and Labour Party manifestos side by side, noting their identical commitments.57 One person who had been closely involved with the preparation of the Conservative manifesto claimed in an interview for the Nuffield study that ‘unlike previous governments we did not want to make lavish promises, raise expectations and then disappoint them.’ The Conservatives sought to build on their record which had been ‘not unreasonably successful in most areas and was what a good number of the electorate wanted. The very hostile reception given to the cornucopia of new ideas promised by Labour is one confirmation of the rightness of that judgment.’58 Labour’s manifesto was full of pledges, some of which sat uneasily with the statements of prominent figures within the party. For example, the manifesto appeared to commit a future Labour government to unilateral nuclear disarmament, even though James Callaghan openly attacked this policy. Furthermore, the Labour manifesto included pledges to renationalise industries, end the sale of council houses, and leave the European 53  Armstrong note circulated to the Cabinet, 6 September 1982, C(82) 31, ‘Longer-term Options’, CAB129/215 f230, TNA. 54  Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, p. 288. 55  Forward: The Challenge of Our Times (1983), https://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/110859 56  Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 285. 57  “Like your manifesto, comrade.”, CPA, Bodleian Library POSTER 1983–15. 58  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1983, p. 41.

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Economic Community. It proposed the creation of a National Economic Assessment, with government and industry co-operating to decide national economic priorities and organise pay bargaining.59 There were also more bizarre minor pledges such as the statement: ‘We will stop landed interests from preventing access for anglers.’60 The opening paragraph of the Conservative manifesto claimed that ‘the choice before the nation is stark: either to continue our present steadfast progress towards recovery, or to follow policies more extreme and damaging than those ever put forward by any previous Opposition.’ Moreover, it was argued that a Labour government would vastly increase taxation and create inflation. Geoffrey Howe’s analysis of Labour’s manifesto claimed that its plans would involve additional spending over the lifetime of the next parliament of between £36 and 43 billion, the latter figure at this time being close to the total revenue of income tax.61 By simultaneously distancing themselves from the drastic cuts to state provision outlined in the CPRS leaks and presenting Labour’s proposals as extreme and fiscally reckless, the Conservatives were able to make their programme appear moderate despite the radicalism of some of their proposals. Aside from the issue of local government reform, the final manifesto text’s most profound recommendations focused on the issue of denationalising industries and trade union reform. The government committed themselves to privatising British Telecom and British Airways and selling significant shares of British Steel, British Shipbuilders, British Leyland, and British Gas. Moreover, the manifesto laid out plans to introduce legislation requiring trade unions to ballot members for elections to their governing bodies and before strike action. The Conservatives sought to further their moderate credentials by stressing the need for stringent financial discipline and the control of inflation, offering few significant commitments to new public expenditure.62 Each proposal was examined by Leon Brittan, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, to ensure it was compatible with the public expenditure White Paper.63 In terms of social policy, the government’s programme of enabling tenants to purchase their council houses was presented as the flagship policy, a low-cost measure  Ibid., p. 63.   For the text of the manifesto see http://www.labour-party.org.uk/ manifestos/1983/1983-labour-manifesto.shtml 61  Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 297. 62  Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, p. 288. 63  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1983, p. 41. 59 60

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which could be seen as reducing the burden of the state in terms of welfare provision. Commentary from the time indicates that Labour’s key problem was that its plans for radical reform were seen by voters as lacking in credibility compared with the government’s manifesto proposals. At the start of the campaign 43 percent of respondents to private polls believed that Labour was making promises that the country could not afford. The release of the party manifesto did little to assuage these concerns. By the final week of the campaign this figure had risen to 53 percent. Moreover, only 17 percent of respondents believed that Labour was the best party for keeping its promises, as compared to 31 percent for the Conservatives.64 Labour’s difficulties in preparing its manifesto contributed to this credibility gap. Its internal crisis meant that it fell back on a previously prepared 22,000-word ‘Campaign Document’. As Denis Healey noted, the manifesto was ‘verbose, over-detailed, and badly argued, and more exploited by the Party’s enemies than its supporters.’65 In comparison with 1983, Margaret Thatcher took a much more direct interest in the preparation of the Conservative 1987 election manifesto, The Next Moves Forward, out of concern to re-energise the government after eight years in power. This owed much to the Westland Affair, the previous year, which had exposed significant divisions in Cabinet; in response Thatcher sought to offer a more radical programme to rally her supporters.66 The Conservative 1987 manifesto was forty percent longer than its predecessor. It was also around twice the length of both the Conservatives’ 1979 manifesto and Labour’s 1987 manifesto Britain Will Win With Labour, which sought to avoid the problems of 1983. The Next Moves Forward offered radical proposals, stripping local authorities of many of their powers. In education, a national curriculum would be introduced and inner city regeneration would be encouraged by Urban Development Corporations with the powers to take over derelict land. Further privatisation was mooted, particularly of water and  Ibid., p. 281.  Denis Healey, ‘The General Election of 1983’ memo. n.d. [c. July 1983], 1983 general election file, Labour Party Archive, People’s History Museum, Manchester; see also Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of 1983, pp. 61–2; Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: Methuen, 1989), p. 500. 66  Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 572; David Willetts, ‘Reflections on our conduct of the election campaign’, 2 July 1987, Thatcher MSS, THCR 2/7/7/72 f98, https://www. margaretthatcher.org/document/205224 64 65

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electricity provision, to encourage a ‘capital-owning democracy’. The most controversial proposal of all would prove to be the plan to replace domestic rates by a ‘community charge’, which led to the Poll Tax protests of 1989–90, a lead episode in Thatcher’s eventual resignation as Prime Minister in 1990. Despite the wider ambition of the 1987 manifesto it retained presentational similarities to its predecessors. Inflation was mentioned twenty-nine times in the text, and its ‘conquest’ through low public spending was presented as the government’s chief concern. Thatcher was also keen to avoid flooding the manifesto with a wide range of proposals. As she noted in retrospect on the 1987 manifesto planning process: ‘I like a manifesto which contains a limited number of radical and striking measures, rather than irritating clutches of minor ones.’67 In April 1986 Brian Griffiths of the No. 10 Policy Unit drew up a comparison of the 1979 and 1983 manifestos for a forthcoming Chequers meeting, to consider how the government could present a narrative of achievement when Thatcher ran for a third term. Griffiths noted that ‘by 1983 the strength of the leadership had been confirmed by the Falklands War, inflation had come down, the unions weakened, and there was also a strong sense that more time was needed to achieve the key objectives. We could then afford a manifesto rather short on commitments.’ While this was no longer the case, Griffiths felt they could draw on past experience: ‘the major lesson is that as in 1979, we need to develop specific policies to deal with the emerging concerns.’68 At the suggestion of David Young, a separate pamphlet, ‘Our First Eight Years’, was produced to accompany the manifesto, setting out the achievements of the government to date and making the case for more radical change. The core principles of government for Thatcher’s third term were condensed into six bullet points focused around sound financial management, greater consumer choice in public services, and enhanced commitments to law and order and improving the quality of life.69 Somewhat bizarrely, ‘Our First Eight Years’ mimicked the design of the then fashionable Filofax personal organiser. The greater detail surrounding Conservative manifesto proposals in 1987 was used to criticise Labour spending plans. Thatcher claimed that  Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 570.  Brian Griffiths minute for Chequers meeting, 11 April 1986, THCR2/7/5/1/f38, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/149582 69  Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 573. 67 68

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Neil Kinnock had produced an ‘iceberg manifesto- one-tenth of its socialism visible, nine-tenths below the surface.’70 A Conservative poster produced for the election questioned Labour’s trustworthiness, highlighting various left-wing motions which had been adopted at the party’s annual conference but did not feature in the manifesto, most likely because they had not received the two-thirds majority required to become part of the Labour programme.71 Critics attacked the Labour programme for its lack of detailed costings. According to Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Labour’s manifesto plans would require an additional £35 billion of spending.72 These criticisms appear to have worked. In a Mori poll published two weeks before the election 46 percent of respondents claimed that Labour was making promises the country could not afford, as opposed to 18 percent for the Conservatives and 16 percent for the Alliance.73

Thatcher’s Manifestos and Their Legacies As the various heavily annotated policy drafts in her archive make clear, Margaret Thatcher was particularly assiduous in the attention she gave to the drafting of election manifestos. This approach was based on an understanding that these documents are key to a government’s mandate and she needed to avoid giving hostages to fortune by making promises of action which could be impossible to keep due to external factors. The contrast between Edward Heath’s high-minded claims that he would raise the moral character of government in 1970 and his various u-turns in office provided a salutary reminder to Thatcherites of the problems of making excessive and inflexible manifesto pledges. In response, Thatcher adopted a cautious programme in 1979 and 1983 focused chiefly on outlining governing principles rather than offering a detailed series of comprehensive policies. As Andrew Gamble argues, ‘what distinguished the Thatcher government was its strategic sense of its long-term objectives and its pragmatism concerning the means to achieve them’, with policies often developed pragmatically in response to  Butler and Kavanagh, General Election of 1987, p. 99.  Butler and Kavanagh, General Election of 1987, p. 102; ‘These are all agreed policies of the Labour Party. Yet they are missing from their manifesto. Can you guess why?’, CPA, Bodleian Library POSTER 1987–25. 72  Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 580. 73  Butler and Kavanagh, General Election of 1987, p. 258. 70 71

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changing circumstances.74 A more radical approach was adopted in 1987 but there were presentational similarities with the earlier campaigns. Through the addition of a supplementary pamphlet to the manifesto, Our First Eight Years, the government sought to highlight the continuities between the party’s future programme and its achievements to date, centring the manifesto around a small number of key pledges building on existing legislation. It was an approach which the electorate appeared to take to heart: both the 1983 and 1987 opinion polls suggested they were significantly more likely to trust the Conservatives’ manifesto promises than Labour’s. On the face of it, John Major’s 1992 election manifesto The Best Future For Britain marked a significant change in approach. At nearly 30,000 words it was more than three times the size of Thatcher’s first election manifesto and the longest post-war manifesto produced by any of the three main parties. Major adopted a significantly more diffuse approach to pledge-making than Thatcher would have countenanced. The Independent counted 250 policy statements in the manifesto and Major’s autobiography claimed it contained 350 policy pledges.75 However, as the Independent noted, this was chiefly a ‘consolidating document’ building on the approach taken by Thatcher in The Next Moves Forward five years beforehand.76 Major sought to present Labour as untrustworthy, claiming its manifesto spending commitments would lead to significant tax increases. For example, one election poster claimed that ‘Labour has made billions of pounds of worth of promises. But they haven’t told you where the money is coming from.’77 Another showed a booklet marked ‘Labour Manifesto’ lying on a doormat. The slogan above read: ‘Oh no, it’s a tax demand.’78 Much like Thatcher, Major sought to present the Conservatives as the guardians of prudent government. After becoming Labour Party leader in 1994, Tony Blair took it upon himself to challenge long-standing claims that Labour could not be trusted to keep its promises.

74  Andrew Gamble, The Free State and the Strong Economy, 2nd edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1994), p. 6. 75  John Major, John Major: The Autobiography (London: Harper Collins, 1999), p.300; Independent, 19 March 1992, p. 28. 76  Independent, 19 March 1992, p. 28. 77  ‘In come Labour. Income Taxes’, Bodleian Library POSTER 1992–01; see also ‘Labour’s tax bombshell’, Bodleian Library POSTER 1992–15, both CPA. 78  ‘Oh no, it’s a tax demand’, CPA, Bodleian Library POSTER 1992–11.

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In focusing its campaigning around a small series of key pledges, New Labour drew inspiration from Thatcher’s election manifestos. Labour made ‘five early promises’ for government in a 1996 ‘draft manifesto’, New Labour, New Life for Britain, which subsequently featured heavily in campaign literature. During the 1997 election campaign the promises featured on a pledge card, which could easily fit in a wallet, and voters were asked to ‘keep this card and see that we keep our promises.’ The pledges were effectively presented as a contract between Tony Blair and the electorate, an idea which party strategist Philip Gould believed was vital to their appeal.79 Much as Thatcher had done in 1979, Blair sought to win votes by being realistic about the limits of what governments could achieve in office. As he put it in his introduction to the 1997 manifesto, he wanted to renew Britain ‘by making a limited set of important promises and achieving them.’80 New Labour’s emphasis on ‘small but basic pledges rather than grand overblown stuff’, as Alistair Campbell put it, sought to win back voters’ trust and challenge Conservative claims that the party’s plans were unaffordable.81 This was a strategy which had clear parallels with Thatcher’s efforts to draw a line under the policy u-turns and unrealistic promises which had hampered Edward Heath’s government. By centring the New Labour programme around a small series of policy pledges Tony Blair drew on Thatcher’s approach to manifesto-making and in the process ultimately ended eighteen years of Tory rule.

79  Philip Gould, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party (London: Abacus, 1998), p. 270. 80  Iain Dale ed., Labour Party General Election Manifestos 1900–1997 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 345. 81  Alastair Campbell, The Alastair Campbell Diaries Volume One: Prelude to Power 1994–1997 (London: Arrow Books, 2010), p. 459.

Custodians of the Manifesto: The Struggle over Labour’s Electoral Platforms, 1974–1983 Mark Wickham-Jones

Manifestos are obviously important documents, often seen as a programmatic means by which to appeal to voters. But, for some party figures, their value has not been simply as comprehensive statements designed to generate electoral support. In 1983, one internal Labour Party document noted, somewhat tersely, that they did not sell ‘in any quantity’ (a point made in several Nuffield election studies).1 At the same general election, a Sunday Times leader noted, ‘Not one in a thousand voters will wade through Labour’s 20,000 word election manifesto.’2 In outlining what a winner proposes to do in office, manifestos are also guides 1  ‘Campaign Document 1983,’ RD 2652/February 1983, p. 1. The prefixes RE and RD indicate internal Labour Party memoranda, Labour Party Archive (LPA), People’s History Museum, Manchester. My thanks to Richard Toye and David Thackeray for their extremely helpful comments on this chapter: responsibility is mine. 2  A Catalogue of Contradictions,’ Sunday Times, 22 May 1983, p. 16.

M. Wickham-Jones (*) University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_10

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to future intentions. It is partly on such a basis that “the doctrine of the mandate” developed in the UK whereby the detail mapped out allowed politicians to claim authority, given that such measures have been endorsed at the ballot box.3 In 1978, Geoff Bish, the Labour Party’s left-wing research secretary during much of the 1970s and 1980s, claimed that the purpose of a manifesto was not primarily electoral: ‘it is never, in practice, an important vehicle for getting across our message.’4 For Bish, the manifesto, provided ‘a basic working brief for ministers and Whitehall and a point of reference for the party and for the electorate.’5 It was ‘first and foremost a programme of action for a government.’6 Manifestos also signal the character of a party’s outlook and the nature of its political vision. It was especially important, Bish argued, that radical measures were laid out explicitly in such documents. In effect, the mandate represented a quasi-contract, a transparent statement of intent. The manifesto gave, Bish argued, ‘a clear unambiguous instruction to the civil servants concerned.’ Interestingly, for the Labour Party, Bish appears to have thought that the necessity of such a statement was more important than the electoral popularity of the document, which was the last issue he raised. When a policy was popular, he noted rather grudgingly, ‘We might as well mention it explicitly so as to get the credit for it.’7 Given the importance to many politicians of manifestos as contractual statements, the ideological contents of such documents have often had consequential significance, particularly for Labour, as Thackeray and Toye argue.8 In turn, this means that manifestos have an importance internally within any party. As ideological statements and signals of character, the contents matter to different sides across the party, particularly to factions—groupings that are defined in part by their political values. Manifestos become documents where disputes will be played out, quite often at some remove from the concerns of the wider electorate. The same Sunday Times leader noted above argued that Labour’s 1983 general  Richard Crossman, Inside View (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), p. 88.  Geoff Bish, ‘The manifesto: a progress report,’ RE1808/July 1978, p. 1. 5  Geoff Bish, Introduction, ‘Keep Britain Labour,’ RE1898/December 1978, p. 2. 6  Geoff Bish, ‘Campaign Document,’ RD2627/January 1983, p. 1. 7  Ibid., p. 2. 8  David Thackeray and Richard Toye, ‘An age of promises: British election manifestos and addresses 1900–1997’, Twentieth Century British History, 31 (2020), pp. 1–26); see also Lewis Minkin, The Labour Party Conference (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980), p. 327. 3 4

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e­ lection manifesto was ‘directed not at an external public audience but at an internal one.’9 Frequent reference can be made to manifestos’ contents as yardsticks by which a party’s performance in office, as well as its general position in policy discussion, can be judged. Such disputes will not necessarily be confined internally to the parties: they may include clashes with the state (note Bish’s comment about civil servants above). For Labour left-wingers, manifestos in the 1970s and early 1980s offered an opportunity to impose their agenda upon others within the party and upon state actors. The manifesto became, in Richard Crossman’s words, part of the ‘battering ram of change.’10 Writing about the October 1974 general election, David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh argued that in opposition at any rate, ‘many members of the party and the NEC came to regard the manifesto as a means of strengthening a minister’s hand against his [sic] civil servants and reminding them of the party’s socialist commitments.’11 But Labour’s right-wingers were equally concerned about the contents of a manifesto and prepared to use the document to shape their vision of the party. As such, the practical usage of a manifesto, at least for certain figures, may be as much political and ideological as electoral. In the case of Labour, during the 1970s, both its left-wing and its right-­ wing were quick to see themselves as “custodians of the manifesto.” Immediately, on becoming prime minister in March 1974, Harold Wilson, Labour’s moderate leader, offered the phrase to journalists, partly in an attempt to distance his new government from some of the party’s more radical plans.12 But Wilson’s claim did not go unchallenged as left-wingers also claimed the role. Less than a month later, criticising an alleged government departure from the manifesto, Ron Hayward, the party’s left-­wing general secretary, announced, ‘I am the custodian of the annual conference decisions.’13

 A Catalogue of Contradictions,’ Sunday Times, 22 May 1983, p. 16.  Crossman, Inside View, pp. 90–98. 11  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of October 1974 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1975), p. 57. 12  See Maurice Corina, ‘Labour’s long agenda for the Industry Department,’ The Times, 7 March 1974, p.  23; Michael Hatfield, ‘Labour “going to carry out the manifesto,”’ The Times, 7 March 1974, p.  1; Peter Jenkins, ‘Heat in the kitchen,’ The Guardian, 5 April 1974, p. 12. 13  Alan Hamilton, ‘Mr Hayward rebukes Cabinet on Chile ships,’ The Times, 19 April 1974, p. 1. 9

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In this chapter, I examine the feuds that surrounded Labour Party manifestos between 1974 and 1983. In a sense, all manifestos reflect the attempt to reconcile competing viewpoints, even if the conflict does not come into the open. Although they are not necessarily the location for significant internal party disputes and for conflicts with the state, this certainly can occur. Labour’s experience in the 1970s and early 1980s is a particularly prominent example of such conflicts: developments in the party in this period are illustrative in terms of the role that manifestos have played in the working-out of ideological conflicts. In Labour’s case, the degree to which a manifesto might be the subject of party disagreement is heightened by the rules under which the document is written. Under Clause V of Labour’s 1918 constitution, the party’s parliamentary committee (in effect, until the late 1990s, either the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet) meet with the National Executive Committee (NEC), whose members have authority outside of parliament, to agree the contents. This process provides direct access to the draft document for groups—parliamentarians and members of the NEC—with potentially diverging views. The parliamentary leadership (often broadly right-wing in outlook) meets with the constituency (and other) representatives of the NEC.  Moreover, such groups have little by way of a formal record of working together. Certainly, during the 1970s, meetings of the parliamentary leadership and the NEC were infrequent and ad hoc (though of course those concerned knew each other well). The norms by which agreement might be reached were poorly developed.

February 1974: Let Us Work Together—Labour’s Way Out of the Crisis After the party’s electoral defeat in June 1970, Labour’s policy programme shifted dramatically to the left and the manifesto for the next general election in February 1974 reflected this development. In a rhetorical flourish, it promised ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families.’14 For Tony Benn, perhaps the leading left-wing MP within the party at the time, the statement was an important signal of the party’s uncompromising intent, a goal to which he wanted to commit the party’s more right-wing and centrist parliamentary leadership: ‘This pledge will be the test of sincerity  Labour Party, Let Us Work Together – Labour’s Way Out of the Crisis (1974).

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of the next Labour Government.’15 The promise was taken directly from Labour’s Programme 1973, a controversial document that many politicians had distanced themselves from and that had been subject to prolonged argument within the party.16 To secure such an objective, Labour mapped out a far-reaching interventionist economic strategy (often called the Alternative Economic Strategy) in its manifesto that included sweeping nationalisation, planning agreements, and the creation of a new state holding company called the National Enterprise Board (NEB).17 There would also be a fundamental renegotiation of British membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). In May 1973, the NEC had met in London to discuss the draft of Labour’s Programme 1973. Moderates were concerned about a proposal to nationalise twenty-five of the top one hundred private companies in the UK (roughly one per sector). In slightly bizarre circumstances and with several members missing, the meeting voted narrowly in favour of the radical measure.18 Benn was triumphant at the outcome, although he accepted that there would be ‘some concessions made in the manifesto.’19 The next day, Wilson (who had strangely abstained in the vote) issued a strongly-worded statement: it was, he said ‘inconceivable that the party …would go into a general election on this proposal.’20 The Shadow Cabinet could, he insisted, veto any measure from inclusion in the manifesto. Wilson’s statement was problematic to the extent that Clause V of the party rulebook indicated that if an issue was passed at the annual conference by a recorded vote with a majority of two-thirds, it should be included in the party’s programme. The clause certainly did not say anything about a veto. In a classic “Old Labour” fix, at its annual meeting, the Conference Arrangements Committee composited a motion to nationalise the twenty-five with one that called for even more public ownership. It was duly rejected. At the same time, procedurally, the conference did not vote on Labour’s Programme 1973, so the proposal slipped out of the

 Tony Benn, Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–76 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), p. 66.  Labour Party, Labour’s Programme 1973 (1973), p. 7. 17  Mark Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996). 18  Michael Hatfield, The House the Left Built: Inside Labour Policy-Making, 1970–75 (London: Gollancz, 1978), pp. 195–200. 19  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 43. 20  Quoted in Hatfield, The House the Left Built, p. 199. 15 16

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party’s programme.21 (There were echoes here of the manner in which Labour’s Immediate Programme of 1937 omitted a commitment to nationalise the joint stocks banks, after the party’s 1932 conference had voted in favour.)22 Supporters of Harold Wilson pointed out that, in any case, a programme did not equate to a manifesto, but the leader’s stance outraged grassroots members of the party’s left. As a result, they established the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which included a demand that conference decisions should determine the party programme.23 While Labour’s February 1974 document did not include the proposal to nationalise the twenty-five, it was nonetheless far-reaching. There was an explicit commitment to the public ownership of profitable firms. Defence spending should be cut and American Polaris (nuclear weapons) bases should be removed from the UK. Tribune, the left-wing Labour newspaper, called it ‘a socialist advance.’24 In their account, Butler and Kavanagh note both the ‘private doubts’ of many Shadow Cabinet members about particular policies and the intent of some left-wingers to use such detailed commitments as a means to challenge reluctant civil servants.25 This manifesto was not simply electoral in its orientation. Labour scraped into office as a minority government following the general election. In such circumstances, the new administration did little to implement the more radical aspects of the industrial policy laid out in the manifesto, something that heightened tensions within the party (and so fuelled the fratricidal civil war that ultimately engulfed Labour).26 For  Minkin, The Labour Party Conference, p. 342.  Elizabeth Durbin, New Jerusalems The Labour Party and the Economics of Democratic Socialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 243–8. 23  ‘“No” to Wilson veto,’ Tribune, 5 October 1973, p. 6; and letters, Tribune, 21 and 28 September 1973, pp. 10–11, 13–14;‘Conference votes “must bind future ministers,”’ The Times, 1 October 1973, p. 2. 24  ‘A socialist advance  – but the rank and file must keep up the pressure,’ Tribune, 18 January 1974, p. 5. 25  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1974), p. 48. 26  Of course, there were different explanations concerning the government’s policy trajectory. Gerald Kaufman, who joined the Department of Industry in June 1975, emphasised the lack of practical detail concerning the development of policy by the party in opposition: Gerald Kaufman, How to be a Minister (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), pp.  38–40. Regarding North Sea Oil, Richard Toye charts the disconnect between party and government policy-making as well as developing economic circumstances: Richard Toye, ‘The new commanding height: Labour Party policy on North Sea oil and gas, 1964–74,’ Contemporary British History (2002), pp. 89–118. 21 22

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left-­wingers, the contents of the manifesto became an important indication of the extent of the party’s failure. Benn, at the Department of Industry between March 1974 and June 1975, was nominally in charge of legislating for the party’s interventionist strategy in the face of hostile colleagues and uncertain civil servants. Frequently, he would raise, quote from, or reference the manifesto as an indication of what the government should be doing: it is a constant theme in the abbreviated published version of his diary.27 Bernard Donoughue, head of the Downing Street policy unit, described him as ‘skilfully’ pointing out that ‘what he was proposing was in the manifesto.’28 But Benn was by no means the only left-winger to reference the manifesto. Eric Heffer, Minister of State at Industry, did so, as did Ian Mikardo, a backbench MP and member of the NEC.29 When James Callaghan complained about her spending demands, Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, reminded him that the funds were to meet a commitment from the manifesto which ‘he had helped draw up’ (her emphasis).30 In marked contrast to Wilson’s position, Heffer told a meeting in Liverpool that left-wing ministers were ‘custodians of the manifesto.’31 Other left-wingers also sought to present themselves in this role. More moderate figures within Labour responded to such jibes. Within weeks of taking office, Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, asked Donoughue to compile a checklist of Benn’s statements against party policy. Donoughue concluded, ‘The basic point [is] that Benn is carrying out the long Labour’s Programme and ignoring the milder manifesto.’32 Often, Wilson maintained that the government was implementing the manifesto, telling one audience in Leeds, ‘The wealth tax is coming. Have no doubt about that.’33 (As it happened, it never did.) In his progress report, he mentioned a new Industry Act and increased public ownership and control.

27  Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 182, 193–4, 209. See also Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary with Harold Wilson in No. 10 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), pp. 158, 171. 28  Donoughue, Downing Street Diary with Harold Wilson in No. 10, p. 150. 29  Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 171, 185. 30  Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries 1974–76 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), pp. 140–1. 31  David McKie, ‘Ministers urge nationalisation,’ The Guardian, 8 June 1974, p. 4. 32  Donoughue, Downing Street Diary with Harold Wilson in no. 10, p. 139. 33  Harold Wilson, draft speech, p. 3, 27 March 1974, T338/272, The National Archives (TNA), London.

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At one meeting, an exasperated Wilson indicated that he resented ‘other ministers saying they are custodians of the manifesto.’34 A month later, the Prime Minister repeated the phrase at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, going on to say that he was also ‘custodian of the constitutional position of the government’: no outside body (he meant Labour’s NEC) would dictate to it.35 In much the same manner, during the 1945 general election campaign, Clement Attlee had insisted that Harold Laski, as chair of the NEC, did not speak for the Parliamentary Labour Party, memorably later telling him, ‘a period of silence on your part would be welcome.’36 Meanwhile, in July 1974, Foreign Secretary James Callaghan insisted that the government should not be bound by the manifesto: ‘We’re now entirely free to do what we like.’37 Benn complained that critical comments from his colleagues about the industrial strategy ‘were an outright attack on the manifesto.’38 Butler and Kavanagh reported that Benn’s practice of quoting from the manifesto had not endeared him to his colleagues.39 Donoughue felt Benn was threatening colleagues with a backlash from the party and organised labour.40 Benn also took on his civil servants, distributing the manifesto around his department.41 In June 1974, he complained about the attitude of Anthony Part, his permanent secretary, concerning Labour’s manifesto commitment to the NEB.42 On another occasion, Benn got out a copy of the document and quoted to the senior official the fundamental and irreversible passage: it was ‘the first objective of the manifesto.’43

 Benn, Against the Tide, p. 188.  ‘Manifesto policy in few weeks,’ The Guardian, 31 July 1974, p. 6. 36  Henry Pelling, ‘The 1945 General Election Reconsidered,’ Historical Journal (June 1980), pp.  399–414 at p.  407; Kingsley Martin, Harold Laski: A Biography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 172. 37  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 194. 38  Ibid., p. 188. 39  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of October 1974, p. 34. 40  Donoughue, Downing Street Diary with Harold Wilson in No. 10, p. 150. 41  Eric Heffer, Never a Yes Man (London: Verso, 1991), p. 150. 42  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 169. 43  Ibid., p. 187. 34 35

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October 1974: Labour Party Manifesto October 1974 Six months later, Labour offered the electorate the rather unimaginatively titled Labour Party Manifesto October 1974. (The text was headed ‘Britain will win with Labour.’) Geoff Bish drafted the document in the summer and several joint Cabinet-NEC sessions took place to finalise it. Left-­ wingers were concerned that Wilson might use government white papers as a means of pre-empting the contents. The Prime Minister insisted that ‘we can’t have a situation where government stops and the party takes over.’44 But he agreed that those drafting the manifesto could see the relevant documentation. It contained a similar mix of interventionist measures to those of February, though it moderated some proposals. Castle felt that it was weak on planning agreements (the proposal that the state should enter into contracts with private firms regarding economic decisions).45 Benn, however, was reasonably pleased: ‘The industrial policy has remained in its entirety.’46 At the Clause V meeting, Frank Allaun, a left-wing MP, called for more cuts to defence, while Ian Mikardo managed to get an oblique reference included in the party’s unfinished plans for public ownership in banking and finance.47 The phrase concerning a fundamental and irreversible shift was retained (right at the end of the document). In the words of the trade union leader Jack Jones, it was ‘the most significant statement’ in the manifesto.48 Labour returned to office with a tiny majority in the House of Commons. Within months, Tribune was complaining that the government had broken with its manifesto commitments in its economic policy and in its defence review.49 Benn continued to raise the manifesto in conversations with colleagues and civil servants. On one occasion, he complained that his department’s attitude to the Common Market was ‘a plain breach of the manifesto commitment.’ Benn reported that Part had told him that the manifesto ‘had been badly written and was meaningless.’50 In  Ibid., p. 205.  Castle, Castle Diaries 1974–76, p. 182. 46  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 225. 47  Butler and Kavanagh, British General Election of October 1974, p. 59. 48  Jack Jones, ‘Forward to democratic socialism,’ Tribune, 4 October 1974, p. 1; Benn, Against the Tide, p. 225. 49  Richard Clements, ‘Who is putting the government in peril?’ Tribune, 20 December 1974, p. 1. 50  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 270. 44 45

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his memoir, Part appears to choose his words carefully, noting the difficulties of serving a minister so obviously at odds with the Prime Minister: his job was to realise the manifesto’s proposals but only ‘in so far as they were approved by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet as realistic in the circumstances in which the government took office.’51 In an interview, Part was equally forthright: ‘I would say [to Benn] that’s bloody nonsense.’52 Officials were bound to point out measures that were either impractical or incoherent. Over at the Department of Health and Social Security, Barbara Castle was involved in a battle with her civil servants over the manifesto’s commitment to phase out pay beds in public hospitals.53 At this point, right-wing Labour MPs responded to the conflict within the party through the formation of a new parliamentary faction, aimed at balancing the left-wing Tribune Group.54 They choose a striking and perhaps provocative title, ‘the Manifesto Group.’ In part, the label marked an attempt by the right to reclaim the manifesto on which the party had fought the October general election. Otherwise, in the words of moderate MP Bill Rodgers, ‘the future held far worse things.’55 In its objectives, the Group claimed to be working for the implementation of the October 1974 manifesto (and supporting the Wilson government). One member, Dickson Mabon, soon attacked Benn for ‘straying from our policy’ on Europe.56 John Street, the Tribune diarist, asked scathingly, ‘What are they [he meant right-wing members of the new grouping] going to do to defend the election manifesto?’57 Radhika Desai offers an alternative explanation of ‘despairing humour’ for the group’s title. She quotes David Marquand, a member, recounting that it was the idea of James Wellbeloved, another MP: ‘we don’t mean that we like the manifesto, what we mean is

 Anthony Part, The Making of a Mandarin (London: Deutsch, 1990), p. 171.  Interview used in ‘The Benn Tapes,’ Box of Broadcasts, 14 July 2010 (originally 1994). In the programme, Benn gives a graphic account of his struggle to implement Labour manifestos at the Department of Industry: ‘unhappily some of this opposition came from inside the Labour Cabinet itself.’ 53  David Owen, Time to Declare (London: Joseph, 1991) pp. 232–4. 54  Geoffrey Smith, ‘Labour moderates to decide form of Commons group,’ The Times, 18 April 1975, p. 2. 55  Bill Rodgers, Fourth Among Equals (London: Politico’s, 2000), p. 167. 56  ‘Mr Benn “seems to be straying from our policy,”’ The Times, 30 December 1974, p. 2. 57  John Street, ‘How is the so-called “Manifesto Group” going to defend the manifesto?’ Tribune, 27 December 1974, p. 4. 51 52

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that the manifesto is as far as we are prepared to bloody well go.’58 In all, about sixty backbenchers joined the group.59 Just how successful it was in living up to its name is questionable. Its most important publication, What We Must Do, offered a very bleak assessment of the options open to Labour and effectively marked a break with Keynesian social democracy. Nevertheless, taking over as chair of the group in November 1977, John Cartwright gave working on the forthcoming general election manifesto as one of his central aims.60 In early 1979, the group complained about the exclusion of the Parliamentary Labour Party from discussions around the party’s manifesto for the election to the European parliament.61 Discussing membership of the EEC in January 1975, Castle indicated that the renegotiated terms would not meet the objectives laid out in the party’s manifesto.62 Two months later, a Cabinet meeting examined the renegotiations explicitly on the basis of whether those goals had been attained.63 Taking each area in turn (the common agricultural policy, the community budget, economic and monetary union, regional policy, industrial policy, steel, fiscal policies, VAT, capital movements, and development aid), Callaghan insisted that the government had fulfilled the manifesto’s terms.64 Castle called it a ‘tedious charade.’65 The left-wing Michael Foot clashed with Wilson over which manifesto from 1974 had said exactly what about the authority of parliament.66 The dour Scottish secretary, Willie Ross, proclaimed, ‘we cannot ignore the manifesto.’67 Benn termed it ‘a tragic decision’: ‘the objectives set out in the February 1974 manifesto had not been achieved.’68 Castle maintained that the NEC could not be silenced in its role as ‘co-custodian of the manifesto.’69

 Radhika Desai, Intellectuals and Socialism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1994), p. 171.  Stephen Meredith, Labours Old and New (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 55–63. 60  Diane Hayter, Fightback! Labour’s Traditional Right in the 1970s and 1980s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 56. 61  Ibid, p. 57. 62  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 305. 63  Conclusions, cabinet meeting, 17 March 1975, p. 1, CAB 128/56, TNA. 64  Conclusions, cabinet meeting, 17 March 1975, pp. 2–10; Benn, Against the Tide, p. 341. 65  Castle, Castle Diaries 1974–76, p. 340. 66  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 343. 67  Ibid., p. 345. 68  Conclusions, cabinet meeting, 18 March 1975, p. 7, CAB 128/56. 69  Castle, Castle Diaries 1974–76, p. 347. 58 59

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Meanwhile, along with other members of the left, Benn’s assault on the government for its abandonment of the manifesto continued. In the summer of 1975, he made the manifesto (‘a socialist analysis’) the centrepiece of his speech to a conference on workers’ control in Sheffield, arguing that the June referendum on British membership of the EEC marked the ‘climax’ of an assault on the party’s programme.70 Following the referendum outcome to remain in the EEC, Wilson demoted Benn from Industry to the Department of Energy. Reluctantly accepting the shift, Benn raised the manifesto. ‘I am as keen on it as you are,’ Wilson countered.71 The Prime Minister had already sacked Heffer from the government over the issue of Europe. Now on the backbenches, Heffer repeatedly raised the party’s manifesto. As economic difficulties mounted, Tribune MPs reiterated their support for the 1974 documents.72 In a piece entitled ‘Lost: Two Manifestos,’ Ken Coates, at the Institute for Workers’ Control, complained about the administration’s betrayal and blackmail of the left: ‘this government has sold out.’73 When Labour introduced a formal pay policy, Benn was photographed entering a Cabinet meeting with a copy of the October 1974 document.74 (Benn’s use of the document in this manner, as well as his distribution of it to his civil servants, is an indication that manifestos were not merely collections of words but were tangible objects that could be used for symbolic purposes.) The Cabinet minutes recorded him criticising the administration’s proposals as putting ‘forward a strategy totally different from that on which the government had been elected.’75 In the House of Commons, Heffer interrupted Wilson’s announcement of new measures as a ‘real U-turn, a move away from our manifesto.’76 At the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool that autumn Harold Wilson opened his leader’s speech by noting, ‘We are all manifesto custodians now. Never has there been such unity in the history of the party in 70  Tony Benn, ‘Organise to Defeat the Crisis,’ Workers’ Control Bulletin, September 1975, no. 27, pp. 5–7. 71  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 394. 72  Tribune Group, ‘Back from the brink,’ Tribune, 27 June 1975, p. 1. 73  Ken Coates, ‘Lost: Two Manifestos  – and how much of a cause,’ Workers’ Control Bulletin, 19–20 July 1975, no 26, p. 2. 74  Benn, Against the Tide, p.  416; and Donoughue, Downing Street Diary with Harold Wilson in no. 10, p. 465. 75  Conclusions, cabinet meeting, 10 July 1975, CAB 128/57/3, p. 3. 76  HC Deb 11 July 1975, vol 895, col. 922.

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supporting the manifesto.’ He paused: ‘Or such diversity in its interpretation.’77 The line was greeted with laughter from his audience as he went on to detail what had been achieved. When a shift in industrial strategy towards a much more modest approach was laid out by the government in November, Benn, unsurprisingly once again, grumbled about the abandonment of the manifesto.78 In subsequent years, similar points were repeated about the 1974 manifestos and the trajectory that the government had taken.79 Bish put it thus: ‘during the lifetime of the Labour government numerous differences of view emerged between ministers and NEC members on the meaning of important manifesto commitments… sometimes ministers preferred to interpret the commitment in their own way because of a lack of sympathy on their part.’80

1979: The Labour Way Is the Better Way Five years after the October 1974 general election, Labour’s next manifesto proved extremely controversial. For the party’s left, it was imperative that the document restated the policies that had been laid out in such detail in successive policy statements, Labour’s Programme 1973 and Labour’s Programme 76 (the latter being passed overwhelmingly in a vote at conference). For the party’s right, and, James Callaghan (who had taken over as Prime Minister in April 1976), it was equally important that the document did not offer a yardstick that would allow the kind of steady stream of complaints that Benn and others had mobilised in the years since 1974. For a time, Callaghan resisted discussing the manifesto at all, presumably to try to avoid radical measures building up momentum.81 Benn anticipated that there would be ‘a tremendous battle.’82 In February 1977, the NEC and the Cabinet agreed that several joint policy groups should be set up.83 These did not start meeting until November that year. At this stage, the NEC was ‘sharply aware of the need  Labour Party, Annual Conference Report, 1975, p. 178.  Benn, Against the Tide, p. 455. 79  Ken Coates, ‘Wilson sets up a commission,’ Workers’ Control Bulletin, February/March 1976, no. 31, p. 1; and ‘Tribune Group reserve right to vote against,’ Tribune, 25 March 1977, p. 1. 80  Geoff Bish, ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ RD23/July 1979, pp. 2–3. 81  Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (London: Hutchinson, 1990), p. 45. 82  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 78. 83  Bish ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ p. 4. 77 78

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for the manifesto to be clear and unambiguous.’84 In January 1978, Benn publicly proclaimed that work needed to start.85 Months later, he and Callaghan skirmished around the issue, the latter making it clear that he did not want commitments to a wealth tax or abolition of the Lords.86 Soon afterwards, the TUC-Labour Party Liaison Committee met to finalise a new joint statement, Into the Eighties. Callaghan objected to the wording on the grounds that certain phrases would find their way into the manifesto: ‘I won’t have it,’ he said, ‘we’ll be tied to these words, later on Tony Benn will say I have betrayed the manifesto.’ Benn described the session as ‘the first real clash over the manifesto’: it was ‘a thrilling meeting.’87 By the spring of 1978, the party had established eight joint groups to work on the manifesto. A research department paper mapped out a radical agenda and Labour’s Home Policy Committee adopted Bish’s perspective that the manifesto should act as a guide for future action, once it was elected to office.88 Government ministers were less certain. In one briefing paper, Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, together with Eric Varley, at Industry, defended Sector Working Parties, the moderate approach that had been the basis of the government’s industrial strategy since 1975.89 In July 1978, a meeting of the working party on industrial policy, made up of left-wingers (Frank Allaun, Judith Hart, and Ian Mikardo) along with ministers (Merlyn Rees and Eric Varley), met at the House of Commons.90 They settled on a brief statement as the basis for the manifesto’s coverage on industrial strategy but were unable to reach agreement about either the extent of state powers needed or the wording that the party should adopt on the subject.91 There was similar disagreement in the working party on the economy over the question of an unemployment target.92 Shirley Williams, a moderate MP, complained about one draft on education: it was ‘too restrictive, statist and bureaucratic in  Ibid., pp. 2–3.  Tony Benn, ‘Tasks for 1978,’ Workers’ Control, 1978, no 1, p. 1. 86  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 305. 87  Ibid., p. 327. 88  Bish, ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ pp. 2–3. 89  Denis Healey and Eric Varley, ‘Industrial Strategy,’ RD1532/February 1978. 90  Judith Hart, ‘Draft for manifesto section on industry,’ RE1811/July 1978. 91  NEC/Cabinet Working Party on Industrial Policy, ‘Revised draft section in industry,’ RE1827/August 1978, 3. 92  ‘Manifesto Draft on the Economy,’ RE1834/September 1978. 84 85

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outlook: it exudes an air of official control that is at odds with the idea of widening democracy.’93 Meanwhile, in the working group on the machinery of government, Benn and Foot pushed for the abolition of the House of Lords.94 The Cabinet and the NEC, the two bodies that were to produce the manifesto, were, in the words of David Lipsey, political adviser to Callaghan at the time, ‘fundamentally at odds.’95 In November, Callaghan suggested that a single Cabinet/NEC group be launched to work on the manifesto.96 Taking the work of the existing joint party—government groups as well as other Labour publications, Bish fashioned a sixty-two-page draft manifesto, ‘Keep Britain Labour,’ as the basis for discussion.97 The new group would start with the relatively easy issues. (There was talk of a second committee to take on foreign policy.) A fractious meeting of the NEC in December, however, struggled to get things going at all. Instead, there was a prolonged argument between ministers and NEC representatives. Healey and Williams, among others, criticised the draft as ‘too long, too controversial and too ambitious for a single parliament.’ There was confusion over which parts of the text had already been amended.98 Some ministers wanted to start negotiations around the much briefer Liaison Committee document, Into the Eighties. Allaun, Benn, and Heffer resolutely opposed the proposal.99 The Cabinet/NEC group met on eleven occasions between December and March to work on Bish’s draft. It did not get around to discussing the economy, industry, or the EEC (in effect, some of the most contentious issues).100 Attendance at the sessions varied: for the NEC, the most regular attendees were Allaun, Heffer, and Benn (who acted as a party rather than a government representative) along with Joan Maynard; for the government it was Healey along with Williams. Bish was ever present. Two political advisers to Callaghan, David Lipsey and Derek Scott, attended almost 93  Shirley Williams to Ron Hayward, 12 December 1978, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137. 94  Minutes, 26 July 1978, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137. 95  David Lipsey, In the Corridors of Power (London: Biteback, 2012), p. 129. 96  ‘A Note on Progress for the PM,’ RE2057/February 1978, p. 1. 97  ‘Keep Britain Labour,’ RE1898/December 1978. 98  Minutes fragment, no date but December 1978, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137. 99  NEC-Cabinet minutes, 20 December 1978, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137. 100  ‘Draft speaking note for the prime minister for the Clause V meeting,’ PREM 16/2151, TNA.

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every session. Vince Cable, later the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was present at one meeting (as John Smith’s adviser). Lipsey complained about the timetabling of the sessions (which made it difficult for ministers to attend) and the quality of the minutes. He warned Bish that issues might have to be reopened ‘because we have not reached full agreement on what was said.’101 In his memoir, Lipsey conceded that ministers may have deliberately obfuscated issues to avoid making decisions.102 At any rate, numerous issues remained unresolved. The Guardian quoted one Labour figure, in scathing terms, about Bish’s document: ‘It includes everything except foreign relations with Tibet. And that’s probably in an appendix somewhere.’103 As a result of the government’s defeat in the House of Commons on 28 March 1979, matters came to a head. Callaghan told colleagues that he was not prepared ‘to be worn to a frazzle by an argument with the NEC.’104 He had decided to proceed with a new draft and accordingly instructed Lipsey, along with Tom McNally (another adviser), to put one together. Julia Langdon revealed its existence in The Guardian on 24 March 1979.105 Bernard Donoughue noted in his diary, ‘The Political Office has been working on a “secret” draft manifesto for weeks….so that the PM can have the manifesto he wants and not the Transport House document, which is full of lunatic left-wing policy proposals that would alienate the entire electorate.’106 Lipsey’s view was straightforward: ‘it was transparently clear that the Bennite forces were not prepared to compromise.’107 On 30 March 1979, an irritated Bish got hold of the new draft: ‘It was, in his view, appalling. Not only did it ignore entire chapters of party policy: it overturned and ignored many of the agreements which had been laboriously hammered out within the NEC-Cabinet group.’108 Quickly, he came up with an abridged version of the amended material that the Cabinet/ NEC group had worked on. At an NEC meeting, Callaghan announced  David Lipsey to Geoff Bish, 8 March 1979, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137.  Lipsey, In the Corridors of Power, pp. 130–1. 103  Julia Langdon, ‘The election manifesto gets the politicians’ final polish,’ The Guardian, 24 March 1979, p. 17. 104  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 478. 105  Langdon, ‘The election manifesto gets the politicians’ final polish.’ 106  Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary volume two with James Callaghan in No.10 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2008), pp. 475. 107  Lipsey, In the Corridors of Power, p. 129. 108  Bish, ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ p. 7. 101 102

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that he had authorised the new document to be the basis for discussion. The NEC session voted to establish a sub-committee to compare the two documents.109 (The original intention had been to spring Lipsey’s draft at the Clause V meeting later that week: the December document was around 30,000 words while Lipsey’s draft was 8500 and Bish’s revised version was 12,500 words.) The sub-group then met to work on the new version, with left-wingers trying to insert material from Bish’s version into Callaghan’s draft.110 Among other issues, participants argued over the statutory nature of planning agreements, abolition of the House of Lords, freedom of information, and the removal of US bases from the UK (all of which were Labour Party policy). But, refusing to accept several amendments and effectively claiming a right of veto, Callaghan ‘felt that he had the final word.’ Benn got something added on unemployment ‘but it was pretty meaningless.’111 Heffer had hoped to keep some sort of commitment to a publicly owned construction firm (Brian Abel-Smith, an economic adviser, subsequently wrote to Lipsey complaining about the proposed wording).112 Michael Foot pushed for abolition of the Lords.113 Lipsey responded by proposing a Commission to investigate and replace it, adopting Foot’s wording about its ‘baneful’ influence.114 The final manifesto simply argued that its powers to delay legislation should be abolished (though this proposal was not without difficulties).115 The document also reaffirmed a loose commitment to nationalising the ports (reflecting trade union pressure on Callaghan).116 The proposal attracted some civil service criticism as an expensive and complex measure.117 The Clause V meeting between the NEC and the Cabinet took place on 6 April 1979. Benn got a brief reference added that included back-up statutory powers for planning agreements. Reluctantly, Callaghan agreed to a reference to taking a public stake in exchange for financial assistance  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 480.  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 482; Bish, ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ p. 8. 111  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 482. 112  Brian Abel-Smith to David Lipsey, 5 April 1979, PREM 16/2151. 113  ‘The Lords,’ 4 April 1979, PREM 16/2151. 114  David Lipsey to James Callaghan, 5 April 1959, PREM 16/2151. 115  J. W. Stevens to Tim Lankester, 11 April 1979, PREM 16/2152, TNA. 116  ‘Note for the record,’ 4 April 1979, PREM 16/2151. 117  Notes by the Cabinet Office, April 1979, PREM 16/2151, 21: Genie Flanagan to Tim Lankester, 12 April 1979, PREM 16/2152. 109 110

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to firms. On industrial strategy and the House of Lords, he rejected more radical proposals. On the latter, Callaghan ignored a vote against him.118 As in October 1974, the manifesto ended with a promise that wealth and power would be redistributed. On this occasion, however, the shift would only be ‘fundamental’: ‘irreversible’ was dropped from the formula adopted in 1974. In his diary, Benn recorded, ‘It wasn’t too bad really. I thought we’d done rather well.’119 The next day he was less certain: ‘If we do lose the election, no one can say we lost it by forcing through a more radical manifesto than Jim [Callaghan] wanted. But the battle to democratise the party has to start now.’120 He concluded that party—government positions should have been mapped out more thoroughly and that internal party democracy needed to be developed: ‘I shall have to think very carefully about future manifestos.’121

1983: New Hope for Britain Following electoral defeat in May 1979, the manner in which James Callaghan as leader had been able to shape Labour’s manifesto became important evidence for left-wingers of the need to reform and democratise Labour’s structures. In a paper co-authored with Eric Heffer, Benn was clear that the influence of the parliamentary party over the manifesto must be reduced: ‘the Labour movement must be sure that the policies it has decided upon are, in fact, put before the nation at election time.’122 Among other issues, they particularly objected to having the manifesto forced on them at the last minute and to the capacity of the leadership to dictate its contents.123 Benn and Heffer demanded that Clause V be reformed to give control of the manifesto to the NEC alone.124 They proposed that a draft manifesto always be available mapping out the party’s policies. Bish was particularly aggrieved at how his preparatory work had been  Kenneth Morgan, Callaghan A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 688.  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 488. 120  Ibid., p. 488. 121  Ibid., p. 484. 122  Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, ‘The Labour Party: Unity through democracy,’ Workers’ Control, 1979: no 5, pp. 9–10; See also Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 513. 123  Tony Benn and Eric Heffer, ‘The Labour Party manifesto and how it should be prepared,’ Workers’ Control, 1979: no 5, pp. 12–13. 124  See Ken Flett, ‘Democracy in the Labour movement,’ Workers’ Control, 1979: no. 6, p. 2. 118 119

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undermined.125 Contrary to Lipsey (quoted above), he felt that the government had been unwilling to concede any ground to the NEC. Ministers had misled the party about the extent to which they were prepared to accept more radical measures. They had treated the NEC as an external pressure group.126 Central was Callaghan’s interpretation of Clause V of the party constitution. It stated that the NEC and the Cabinet should agree the manifesto. Callaghan insisted that ‘agree’ in this context meant he had to accept each and every position. It was not a matter of compromising, or of voting and going with majority opinion (which would have favoured the NEC). Rather, if he did not agree to the inclusion of a measure, it simply would not be included.127 The writing of the manifesto came up several times in debate at the 1979 Labour conference. Workers’ Control and Labour Weekly reproduced an internal paper listing issues (as voted on by the Labour conference) that had been left out of the manifesto, including economic and industrial policy, import controls, the nationalisation of banking and finance, a wealth tax, a new Industry Act, new public enterprise, price control, reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, public ownership of North Sea Oil, abolition of charitable status for private schools, and abolition of the House of Lords.128 By contrast, Michael Cocks, Labour’s chief whip, defended the manner in which the manifesto was drawn up. Following consultations, he asserted that many party policies were included in the document. The decision not to include abolition of the Lords simply reflected the practicalities of the issue (it would take too long to legislate).129 In July 1979, the NEC narrowly voted in favour of Benn and Heffer’s proposal to rewrite Clause V and take sole control of the manifesto.130 At the party’s Home Policy Committee, Benn argued in favour of a rolling  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 521; and Bish, ‘Drafting the manifesto,’ p. 10.  See Geoff Bish, ‘Working relations between government and party,’ in Ken Coates ed., What Went Wrong (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1979), pp. 163–9. 127  Dennis Kavanagh, ‘The politics of manifestos,’ Parliamentary Affairs, 34 (1981), pp. 7–27 at p. 18. 128  IWC Briefing, ‘Labour’s Manifesto what got left out,’ Workers Control, 1979: 5, pp. 14–16; ‘Missing manifesto,’ Labour Weekly, 28 September 1979, pp. 10–11; Geoff Bish, ‘Introduction. Manifesto, a note on some of the items missed out,’ RD58/September 1979. 129  Michael Cocks, ‘Preparation of the manifesto,’ no date but 1979, Election Manifesto 1979, LPA, box 137. 130  Benn, Conflicts of Interest, p. 523. 125 126

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manifesto, agreed by the conference each year.131 The 1979 conference voted for the change, but a year later that decision was narrowly reversed. One of the trade union leaders, Terry Duffy, pronounced that he was opposed to the NEC becoming ‘custodian of the manifesto.’132 In 1980, against the protests of the Shadow Cabinet, Labour did publish a draft manifesto. Bish argued that it ‘should become the focus for all serious policy-making in the party.’133 Although left-wingers had failed to push through the reform to Clause V, for much of the period after 1979, they continued to dominate the party’s policy-making structures. Labour’s right-wing Manifesto Group was weakened by the defection of twenty-eight moderate MPs to the newly-formed Social Democratic Party. Policy documents, most notably Labour’s Programme 1982, reiterated the left’s position. At the 1982 conference, however, elections to the NEC marked a shift towards the right. As a result, John Golding, a trade union leader and moderate MP, replaced Benn as chair of the Home Policy Committee. But the change had little impact on the party’s policy. Members of the Shadow Cabinet retained their hostility towards the Alternative Economic Strategy and other measures.134 But Golding disliked the propensity of parliamentarians to issue statements unilaterally and there was little interest in reopening detailed policy discussion after years of fratricidal conflict. Given the party’s parlous position in the opinion polls, Golding also took the view that Labour might as well lose with a radical programme: ‘I was determined that the left would get the blame for the certain defeat.’135 From his perspective, this manifesto was not a prospective programme for office: The Sunday Times noted, ‘The desire to saddle the left with blame should Labour lose outweighed the fear of what such a document would imply for government.’136 In November 1982, Bish proposed that the Policy Coordinating Committee, made up of shadow ministers and members of the NEC,

 Ibid., p. 532.  Ian Aitken and Rosemary Collins, ‘Callaghan set for long-term battle,’ The Guardian, 24 September 1979, p. 1. 133  ‘The Draft Manifesto,’ RD325/April 1980, p. 4. 134  ‘A catalogue of contradictions,’ Sunday Times, 22 May 1983, p. 16. 135  John Golding, Hammer of the Left (London: Politico’s, 2003), p.  289, see also pp. 253–66, 289–96. 136  ‘A Catalogue of Contradictions’, Sunday Times, 22 May 1983, p. 16. 131 132

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should discuss the next manifesto.137 In January 1983, the research ­department’s outline of a campaign document proclaimed, ‘we are a democratic socialist party,’ attacked the Conservative’s record, and outlined an emergency programme of action. Labour would maintain a competitive pound, reimpose exchange controls, and prevent imports undermining expansion.138 Six months later, the final version of Labour’s manifesto, New Hope for Britain, affirmed the left’s industrial strategy based around agreed development plans (as planning agreements were now labelled) and the expansion of public ownership.139 Going back to the debates of May 1973 over the extent of nationalisation, the January 1983 draft stated, ‘we will establish a significant public stake in each important sector.’140 The final version was slightly toned down but mentioned public ownership of electronics, pharmaceuticals, health equipment, and building materials, as well as ‘other important sectors, as required in the national interest.’141 One moderate frontbencher, Meryn Rees, denied the extent of nationalisation: ‘we are not talking about massive public ownership. We are talking about getting into manufacturing industry… getting investment funds into these industries.’142 Concerned by costings, Peter Shore as shadow chancellor asked colleagues to drop the detail of their proposed measures, thus sidestepping the question of exactly how much funding would be needed.143 The manifesto also promised that Labour would take the UK out of the EEC and would abolish the House of Lords. On 24 March 1983, the NEC and the Shadow Cabinet met to discuss the drafts. John Smith suggested two minor amendments on energy and NEC proposed around twenty pages of alterations and insertions, many clarifying and adding to the detail of policy.144 The thrust of the existing draft remained, though Benn got the section on the National Economic 137  Geoff Bish, ‘Procedure for preparing the campaign document,’ RD 2562/November 1982; Home Policy Committee, 2nd meeting, 6 December 1982. 138  ‘Campaign Document 1983,’ RD2600/January 1983, p. 7; Labour Party, New Hope for Britain (1983), p. 10. 139  Labour Party, New Hope for Britain, pp. 11–12. 140  ‘Campaign Document 1983,’ p. 9. 141  Labour Party, New Hope for Britain, p. 12. 142  Colin Brown, ‘Labour veils costs of its draft manifesto promises,’ The Guardian, 5 March 1983, p. 1. 143  Brown, ‘Labour veils costs of its draft manifesto promises.’ 144  ‘Campaign Document, 1983.’

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Assessment (an institutional arrangement to discuss the state of the economy) tightened up to reject past measures: ‘we will not, however, return to the old policies of government-imposed wage restraint.’145 There was some press speculation that MPs might try to moderate the document before it was finalised as a manifesto.146 It never happened. On 11 May 1983, the Clause V meeting lasted barely an hour.147 Some members of the Shadow Cabinet proposed that the existing campaign document should be shortened. Unlike in 1979, Bish successfully defended the draft: editing it down would, he argued, mean the omission of significant proposals. Peter Shore tried, without much success, to moderate the document. Benn reflected that the document ‘was the product of a lot of campaigning over an awfully long period, and although I know the Shadow Cabinet wouldn’t implement it if they were elected, at least we have got that as our commitment to the British people.’148 Of course, Labour went down to a catastrophic and crushing electoral defeat in June 1983, losing over fifty MPs in the House of Commons and winning well under 30 per cent of the vote. Many commentators and scholars alike quickly concluded that the party’s radical manifesto was intimately associated with that outcome. Gerald Kaufman, a moderate MP, characterised it as ‘The longest suicide note in history.’ David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh attribute the epithet to Shore: quite possibly the phrase was passed around by disaffected members of the Shadow Cabinet.149

Conclusions Following the June 1983 general election defeat, Tony Benn was unrepentant: getting 8.5 million people to vote for socialism was a ‘remarkable development.’150 Without the strength of the left, Labour would have been seen, he claimed, as ‘the custodian of the economic and military 145  Labour Party, New Hope for Britain, p. 9. See Martin Linton and Julia Langdon, ‘Foot wins manifesto pledge for EEC withdrawal,’ The Guardian, 22 March 1983, p. 8. 146  Anthony Bevins, ‘Labour set to soften foreign strategy,’ The Times, 7 April 1983, p. 4; Home Policy Committee, minutes, 11 April 1983, p. 1. 147  NEC and Shadow Cabinet, Clause V meeting, 11 May 1983. 148  Tony Benn, The End of an Era: Diaries 1980–90 (London: Hutchinson, 1992), pp. 286–7. 149  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 62. 150  Tony Benn, ‘Spirit of Labour reborn,’ The Guardian, 20 June 1983, p. 9.

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interests of top people in the Western world.’151 A socialist bridgehead had been established. By contrast, Geoff Bish backtracked concerning the apparent electoral irrelevance of manifestos. He now emphasised their importance in winning votes, something he accepted had been neglected. He lamented Labour’s ‘failure to prepare a manifesto, and a policy programme, which accurately reflected the concerns and needs of ordinary voters.’152 Proposals could no longer be placed before voters regardless of their popularity: ‘In the past we could assume that even if there were some particular policies that seemed unpopular the electorate would still be prepared to vote for us.’ It was also the case that policy-making had been too internalised. Disunity within the party had, he believed, been problematic: ‘The Shadow Cabinet clearly felt they had been bounced into accepting a document they did not want. They were bounced. They did not like the policies. And it showed.’153 Bish acknowledged that fundamental changes were needed, including a greater emphasis on campaigning. By 1987, Labour had adopted a very different approach to manifesto writing. In this chapter, I have argued that, between 1973 and 1983, electoral considerations were subordinate in the development of Labour manifestos. Alongside any electoral role, it is important to take note of the political and ideological character of these documents. For Geoff Bish, the internal and partisan significance of manifestos was straightforward: ‘the actual text being the touchstone against which the record of a reluctant minister, or a hostile department, is judged.’ Electors did not, he insisted, ‘absorb copy.’154 But, equally, Bernard Donoughue did not think manifestos mattered particularly in electoral terms. Concerning the final version in 1979, he told Callaghan, ‘I still think that your wife, children and grandchildren can win us more votes than most of the paragraphs in the manifesto.’155 Rather, in this period, these documents were at the centre of an internalised and ongoing struggle across the party about the kind of policies it should offer and what values should underpin those measures. Participants in this struggle, especially left-wingers, frequently referred to  Benn, ‘Spirit of Labour reborn.’  Geoff Bish, ‘The Failures: and some lessons,’ RD2808/July 1983, p. 1. 153  Ibid., p. 5. 154  Bish, ‘The manifesto: a progress report,’ p. 2. 155  Bernard Donoughue to James Callaghan, 6 April 1979, PREM 16/2151. 151 152

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the manifesto to claim legitimacy for policy proposals and to signal their identity as socialists of one form or another. The significance of manifestos lay in their meaning within such disputes, and hence the frequency with which competing politicians described themselves as custodians. That these documents deserved to be the subject of bitter battles was one rare thing upon which the fratricidal factions could agree.

Thatcherism, the SDP and Vernacular Politics on the Isle of Sheppey, c. 1978–83 Jon Lawrence

This chapter explores the relationship between the informal politics of everyday life and the formal, discursive politics of mainstream political parties through a case study of Kent’s Isle of Sheppey in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its focus is particularly on the intervention of the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in this historically Labour corner of South-East England and the challenges the new party faced in developing an electoral appeal that chimed with the political idioms of local, everyday speech (or ‘vernacular politics’). As nationally, local electoral politics swung decisively in favour of the Conservatives in the early 1980s, thanks in large part to the impact of the SDP on the historic Labour vote. As elsewhere in southern England, the SDP/Liberal Alliance swiftly established itself as the main challenger to Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party, but it did not secure a decisive electoral breakthrough. This chapter explores the reasons behind this failure and asks whether the fledgling party’s strong reliance on concrete policy pledges rather than looser, less contractual forms of political rhetoric may have contributed to its

J. Lawrence (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_11

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undoing. Was it undone by the culture of promises? Fortunately for us, this relatively remote island off the north Kent coast was studied extensively by the sociologist Ray Pahl at exactly this time, and his extensive research papers therefore allow us to place the formal language of party politics alongside the testimony of local people.1 With a population of over 30,000, the Isle of Sheppey had been self-­ governing in local politics until just before Pahl began his research, and many islanders still bitterly regretted being subsumed within the new Swale District Council under the local government reorganisation of 1974 (mainly because the new council had its headquarters ‘off island’ at Sittingbourne). In Parliamentary terms, Sheppey formed part of the Faversham constituency, which between the wars had been famous for boasting one of the largest Labour Parties in Britain.2 Between 1945 and 1970 the seat returned a Labour MP continuously, and as late as 1964 it remained the third largest constituency Labour Party in the country with 5629 members and 8 Labour Halls.3 But it was never safe Labour territory—in 1955 Percy Wells held the seat by a mere 59 votes, and in 1959 by a slightly better 253 (although to increase a Labour majority in 1959 was itself no mean achievement and spoke volumes about the strength of Labour organisation in the constituency). Labour membership continued to grow during this period, precisely because, as Lawrence Black has argued, the seat’s marginal status placed a heavy premium on organisation.4

1  C.D.  Wallace, R.E.  Pahl (2004). Social and Political Implications of Household Work Strategies, 1978–1983. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 4876, https://doi. org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-4876-1, Pahl Papers, Isle of Sheppey Collection (Sheppey Collection). For more on the study and its findings see Ray Pahl, Divisions of Labour (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1984) and Graham Crow and Jaimie Ellis eds., Divisions of Labour Revisited: the Impacts and Legacies of a Sociological Classic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). 2  Lawrence Black, ‘“The best organised constituency in Britain”: a short introduction to the records of the Faversham Labour Party (1918–1994)’, Origins and Development of the Labour Party in Britain at the Local Level: Series II (Wakefield: Microform Academic Publishers, 1998), pp. 1–10; see also Mike Savage, ‘The rise of the Labour Party in local perspective,’ The Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 10, 1 (1990), pp. 1–16 and more broadly his analysis in Michael Savage, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics: the Labour Movement n Preston, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), ch. 3. 3  Black, ‘Faversham Labour Party’, p. 1. 4  Ibid. pp. 2–3.

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But population change across north Kent, accelerated on Sheppey by the closure of the Royal Navy dockyard in 1960, gradually undermined Labour’s position in the constituency. This long-term process culminated in Roger Moate’s victory for the Conservatives by 3811 votes in a straight fight with Labour at the General Election of June 1970. By the time that Ray Pahl began investigating the island in the late 1970s, both the Swale Council and the Faversham constituency were firmly Conservative, although there was still a significant Labour vote on Sheppey, especially in the old dockyard town of Sheerness (the main settlement on the island). Pahl himself was struck by the vibrancy of working-class Conservatism, and even more of ‘small c’ conservatism, on the island. He noted that the Conservative Club represented the most successful of many social clubs on the island and argued that ‘there was a strong element of working-class individualism among our sample’.5 Indeed, in a theoretical essay on working-­class politics written with his co-researcher on the Sheppey project Claire Wallace, Pahl went further, writing of the ‘particularism of the individualistic English’ and arguing that Thatcherite rhetoric chimed with ‘the home-centred values of Sheppey’, particularly the ambition to own one’s own home.6 Pahl argued that local working-class Conservatism on Sheppey had its historic roots in the craft exclusivity and robust nationalism associated with the former Admiralty dockyard, but he also pointed to the high levels of home ownership characteristic of the island. Even before the Conservatives’ right-to-buy programme took effect in the early 1980s, more than 70 percent of islanders were homeowners (compared with 55 percent nationally) even though this was a strongly industrial and working-­ class district.7 The Labour Party continued to enjoy significant pockets of support on Sheppey after 1979, with the industrial ward of Sheerness West remaining firmly Labour throughout the Thatcher years. However, elsewhere on the island the party lost considerable ground to the SDP/Liberal Alliance after the breach of 1981 which led to the formation of Social Democratic Party by former Labour ministers Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David 5  R.E. Pahl and C.D. Wallace, ‘Neither angels in marble nor rebels in red: privatization and working-class consciousness’ in David Rose ed., Social Stratification and Economic Change (London, 1988), pp. 127–49 at p. 138; Pahl, Divisions of Labour, pp. 165–6. 6  Pahl and Wallace, ‘Neither angels’, pp. 145–7. 7  Pahl, Divisions of Labour, pp. 181–4, 320–1.

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Owen and Bill Rodgers. As nationally, this served mainly to make Sheppey safer for the Conservative party. In the 1983 local borough elections the Conservatives gained two Sheppey seats thanks largely to strong Alliance performances (at Queenborough & Halfway and Sheppey Central). Indeed, the SDP ended up out-polling Labour across Swale Borough in 1983 (29 to 25 percent).8 In subsequent years, the SDP did make gains on Sheppey, mostly in the island’s mixed suburban wards such as Minster Cliffs, but its main impact was always to make traditionally marginal wards on the island safer for the Conservatives. That said, across the wider Swale Borough the SDP/Liberal Alliance made more gains from the Conservatives than Labour during the mid-1980s, and by 1987 it held 17 of the Council’s 49 seats, compared to Labour’s 13.9 Most strikingly, at the Parliamentary level, Labour slumped to a poor third in the Faversham constituency at the General Election of 1983, with the SDP’s Mark Goyder securing a dramatic swing of over 17 percent from Labour, which saw its vote slump from a creditable 34.6 percent poll at the 1979 General Election to under 20 percent (although it is also striking that Roger Moate, the incumbent Conservative, still secured over half the poll).10 Faversham Result, 1983:11 Roger Moate (Con) 29,849 [53.1 percent] Mark Goyder (SDP) 15,252 [27.1 percent] Chris Bromley (Lab) 11,130 [19.8 percent] Con Majority 14,597 [26.0 percent] Moate, who had had a majority of under 3000 over Labour in October 1974, was dismissive of the SDP’s breakthrough, insisting that it was almost entirely ‘a protest vote against Labour,’ adding of his traditional foe: ‘They will recover’.12  Sheerness Times-Guardian, 13 May 1983, p. 6.  ‘Swale Borough Council Election Results, 7 May 1987 – Master Sheet’, in Faversham Liberal Party/SDP collection 1982–1988 (Faversham Liberal/SDP collection), uncatalogued, U2922 add, Acc. 7834, Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone. 10  Sheerness Times-Guardian, 17 June 1983, p. 36; Sheppey Gazette and North East Kent Times, 16 June 1983, p. 9. 11  http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/ge83/i09.htm and http://www.election. demon.co.uk/1983EC.html [last visited 4 October 2019]. 12  Sheppey Gazette and North East Kent Times, 16 June 1983, p. 9. 8 9

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Certainly, both he and Goyder found it relatively easy to brand Chris Bromley, Labour’s candidate in 1983, as a ‘Hard Left’ candidate.13 The 39 year old was a director of the Labour Left dominated Greater London Council’s newly created Enterprise Board, an Islington councillor and a member of the Islington North Labour Party that had recently selected left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as its parliamentary candidate.14 In 1983, he stood on a radical programme of job creation and expansion of the public services. He was undoubtedly broadly aligned to the metropolitan ‘New Left’, but his Fabian membership and his strong advocacy of decentralisation should warn us against simply accepting the labels that his opponents foisted upon him. Fortunately for us, most of Pahl’s sociological fieldwork on Sheppey was conducted in 1982–83, just as the SDP was beginning to mount a serious challenge on the island (although he also conducted a series of lengthy pilot interviews in 1978–79 which provide useful insights into popular attitudes on the eve of Thatcher’s breakthrough). Some of Pahl’s respondents explicitly commented on the ‘Social Democrat’ upsurge of 1981–82 and hinted at their willingness to break with past party allegiances.15 But was Moate right to see such sentiments as purely a question of protest politics, or can we see ways in which the wider outlook and values of Pahl’s Sheppey respondents aligned more closely with the nascent politics of the SDP than with either Labour or the Conservatives in the early 1980s? In short, does the testimony from Sheppey offer any support for the argument that the SDP, and its more established political allies the Liberals, might actually have been able to ‘break the mould’ of post-war party politics in the 1980s if they had played their cards differently? We are also fortunate in having an extensive collection of SDP/Liberal campaign literature and internal party documents from the Faversham constituency surviving from the 1980s.16 Combined with the still fairly extensive coverage of local party politics in the weekly Sheppey and Swale press, and more fragmentary material from the local Conservative and Labour parties, this can be used to begin to explore how far the ­SDP/

 Sheerness Times-Guardian, 27 May 1983, p. 36.  Sheppey Gazette and North Kent Times, 26 May 1983, p. 8. 15  ‘Mr. Chittenden’, p. 39, UKDA transcription, HWS-29-699a, Sheppey Collection. See also Sheppey Gazette and North Kent Times, 2 June 1983, p. 7 for local vox pop examples. 16  Faversham Liberal/SDP collection, U2922 add, Acc.7834. 13 14

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Liberal Alliance was able to construct a viable political appeal in this relatively favourable southern English constituency. Altogether I have been able to digitize more than half a million words of testimony from Pahl’s sociological interviews on Sheppey, mostly from typed transcripts of his recorded interviews. Although only a tiny fraction of this discourse directly addressed questions of party politics, Pahl’s central focus on the strategies households adopted to ‘get by’ in a tough economic environment ensured that, in a broader sense, his Sheppey interviews were often intensely political. In particular, the topics of unemployment and welfare loomed large in many interviews, regardless of whether the interviewees had themselves been touched directly by the sharp economic recession of 1980–81. Perhaps inevitably, the testimony Pahl collected suggests that Sheppey’s vernacular politics were messy and cannot be said to map neatly on to the political programmes of any party. One reason for this is that in their everyday lives people tend to accommodate ideological tensions and inconsistencies that party politicians would insist are wholly irreconcilable. This is what makes it so difficult to map informal against formal political discourse, and why it is naïve to imagine any direct relationship between party political appeals and vernacular politics.17 In particular, a characteristic feature running through much of the testimony from Sheppey is respondents’ presentation of themselves as, on the one hand, intensely independent and autonomous and, on the other hand, as deeply committed to ideas of community and social reciprocity. Similarly, we find a powerful tension between respondents’ harsh condemnation of government economic policies for causing (and tolerating) mass unemployment and their much more equivocal attitudes towards many of those in receipt of welfare benefits through unemployment. Exploring these complex, at times contradictory, popular attitudes does tend to suggest considerable scope for local SDP/Liberal activists to exploit the political middle ground between Conservative and Labour positions in the early 1980s. But, as we will see, in practice the SDP in particular was poorly adapted to exploiting 17  On which see Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Class Politics and the Decline of Deference, 1968–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), introduction and conclusion; Jon Lawrence, ‘The People’s history and the politics of everyday life since 1945’ in John Arnold, Matthew Hilton and Jan Rüger eds., History After Hobsbawm: Writing the Past for the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 272–91.

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the idioms of demotic politics in the early 1980s, remaining instead closely wedded to the policy-heavy, statist politics that had characterised British social democracy in preceding decades.

Vernacular Politics on Sheppey Elsewhere I have argued that the tension between self and society represents a characteristic feature of modern English popular culture, but there are grounds for arguing that on Sheppey personal autonomy and independence always came first for most residents.18 Mrs. Spillett, a senior nurse who had grown up in a Derbyshire mining community, had no doubt that it was easier to live as she chose on Sheppey than it was for those who had stayed living in her home village. She attributed her ability to combine a career and motherhood partly to her husband’s progressive views (and flexible job) but also to the lack of social pressure on the island to conform to the expectations of others. Her husband agreed, commenting that he could live as he chose on Sheppey, whereas in his wife’s home village men were expected to drink together and share the same interests: ‘You’ve got to fit in with that style of life up there […] I’d get my throat cut for doing the housework up there’. By contrast, on Sheppey, he insisted, ‘you can live your own way of life, the way you want to live it’.19 But the Spilletts were not narrow-minded individualists cut off from their neighbours. On the contrary, Mr. Spillett claimed regularly to do odd jobs for local people, many of whom were elderly, and he reported that in return the family received gifts of fruit and vegetables from their neighbours’ gardens and access to a network of free baby-sitters. The high and rising level of home ownership on the Isle of Sheppey almost certainly reinforced the island’s independent, individualist culture. Indeed, it was this strong culture of independent, family-centred domesticity that led Pahl to suggest that the Thatcherite Right, rather than the Left, best understood the ‘archetypal “respectable” values’ that he found flourishing on Sheppey in the 1980s.20 Barely a fifth of dwellings on the island had been built by the local authority, and many of these were now being bought by their tenants thanks to the generous discounts offered 18  Jon Lawrence, Me, Me, Me? The Search for Community on Post-war England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 19  Mrs. Z [‘Spillett’], pp. 36–8, UKDA transcription, HWS-26.084a, Sheppey Collection. 20  Pahl and Wallace, ‘Neither angels’, p. 145.

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under the Conservative Government’s Housing Act, 1980. Unusually, it was also fairly common on Sheppey for people to build, or part-built, their own homes on plots of land staked out along the private, unmade roads that snaked out from the island’s principal settlements. Ron Harris, a middle-­aged carpenter, was a classic example. Raised on a working-class, terraced street in Sheerness which he described as ‘like a Coronation Street set up’, he claimed to have wanted to ‘get away from that situation’ from his early teens. Initially this had meant moving to a newly built estate on marriage, but in the early 1960s he had built himself a large bungalow in a desirable suburban area with the help of friends in the trade.21 Harris spoke with pride about the sense of achievement this gave him: ‘it gives you a different attitude to a property than when you … [than] if you just went out and bought it … you know, you visualise it from when it was just a piece of field and … you’re starting from scratch, putting the first spade in!’22 Commenting that his son was still living on an estate of ‘ticky-tacky boxes’, Harris noted that he too was ‘looking for something a little bit more individual now’.23 Mr. Lewry, a widower in his late seventies, hadn’t built his own house, but he also still spoke with a strong sense of personal pride about having bought his own property in the 1930s despite earning only a labourer’s meagre wage: ‘it was really a wonderful achievement to do that’.24 Council tenants who had exercised the right to buy often expressed similar sentiments. Even after crippling mortgage rates had forced them to sell up and move to a holiday chalet, Linda and Jim, the couple Pahl came to know best on the island, still recalled the decision to buy their council house as ‘an investment’, pointing to the reassurance they had hoped to gain from ‘thinking that you’ve got something be’ind you, and you know, something for the kids’.25 With four full-time earners living at home, the Beerlings exercised the right to buy earlier than Linda and Jim, and unlike 21  ‘Mr. Harris’ (Tape), at 18 m 40 s; ‘Mr. Harris’, Report, p. 1 (punctuation added), both UKDA transcription, Box 10, HWS 8.328, Sheppey Collection. 22  ‘Mr. Harris’, p. 11, UKDA transcription, HWS-8.238, Sheppey Collection. 23  Ibid., pp. 17–18. 24  ‘Mr. Lewry’, pp. 5–6, UKDA transcription, HWS-12.385, Sheppey Collection. 25  ‘Linda and Jim’ Interview 9, 1992 (Tape), at 32 minutes 25 seconds, Box 6, Sheppey Collection. See Pahl, Divisions of Labour, ch. 11 (‘Polarization of Workers’ Lives: Jim and Linda; Beryl and George’), and Jane Elliott and Jon Lawrence, ‘Narrative, time and intimacy in social research: Linda and Jim revisited’ in Crow and Ellis, Revisiting Divisions of Labour, pp. 189–204.

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them also possessed the resources radically to improve their newly acquired property. Mrs. Beerling spoke of pride in having ‘a nice’ome and a nice garden’, including a new kitchen extension built by her husband.26 Mr. Beerling felt that many of his neighbours were ‘jealous’ of the improvements they had made and felt that they resented his family for wanting to stand out as different, but he was adamant that ‘we have worked for what we’ve done. We’ve worked for all of it’.27 It was an argument about individual effort that Pahl felt chimed especially strongly with the ‘aggressive meritocratic egalitarianism’ of the New Right.28 Certainly there were plenty of council tenants who saw the effects of the government’s ‘right-to-policy’ as locally divisive. Stacey Smith, a newcomer to the island, complained that families who bought their homes tended to ‘keep themselves off’ from their neighbours, ‘they just tend to think, you know, “We’ve bought our own house, we’re better off”’.29 Another felt that owner-occupiers ‘think they are better than you, but they are no better because they was in a council house too’.30 But not everyone saw things this way. Some were adamant that owning their council house was a purely pragmatic decision. As one woman put it: ‘I haven’t bought it so that I can say I’ve bought it. I mean, I’ve bought it so that we can live in it, really, because we’re fed up with the increase in the price of rents’.31 Close friends with their immediate neighbours, and regulars at the estate’s working-men’s club, Pahl was convinced that they remained unchanged by becoming homeowners.32 The self-isolating and apparently Conservative-leaning politics of home-owning were not automatic. Pahl’s Sheppey interviews also registered ambivalent feelings, with cross-cutting political implications, about the significant increase in self-­ employment that characterised the liberalised economy of 1980s Britain. For some, self-employment meant personal freedom and the chance to get on, but for others it was simply a last resort when good, dependable jobs proved hard to come by. A mother in her thirties, who was training to be an accountant, reported encouraging her lorry-driver boyfriend to become 26  ‘Mr. & Mrs. Beerling’ (Tape), at 85 m 20 s; see Claire Langhamer, ‘The meanings of home in postwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40 (2005), pp. 341–62. 27  ‘Mr. Beerling’, para 2.5, Box 7, HWS-83, Case 2, Sheppey Collection. 28  Pahl and Wallace, ‘Neither angels’, p. 145. 29  ‘Stacey Smith’, para. 7.2, Box 7, HWS-83, Case 7, Sheppey Collection. 30  ‘Cathy Taylor’, para 5.2 and 5.9, Box 7, HWS-83, Case 5, Sheppey Collection. 31  ‘Ogden’, pp. 31–2, 36, HWS-15.473, Sheppey Collection. 32  ‘Ogden’, Summary report, pp. 1–2, Box 10, HWS-15.473, Sheppey Collection.

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self-employed because ‘he worked so hard so he might as well work for himself’.33 She was not alone. Mrs. Brakefield commented that her husband much preferred working as a self-employed contractor, rather than an employee, ‘because of the freedom that he gains,’ and Helen Wood, who was already running her own business in her mid-twenties, insisted that there was ‘no future in working for somebody else’.34 Another woman told how her brother had recently used his redundancy pay-off to buy into a local double-glazing business and was now earning twice what he had brought home in his former job.35 But others told the same story with a different edge—reporting that they felt coerced into self-employment by the lack of more secure opportunities with local employers. A woman whose unemployed husband had taken out a large loan to buy a taxi complained that the Job Centre had nothing but self-employed positions, ‘which not many people wanna do’, and lamented the enormous risks her husband was taking: ‘It’s risky really, isn’t it, being self-employed. It’s risky in [husband name]‘s job. Very risky really, because there is so many taxis now on the Island’.36 Perhaps more than home ownership, the politics of self-employment cut both ways on Sheppey in the early 1980s. By contrast, the politics of unemployment ran in only one direction— almost everybody Pahl spoke to seemed to lament the way that unemployment had upturned household economies and blighted the lives of school-leavers and those older workers unlucky enough to lose their jobs in the recession. At the time when Pahl conducted the bulk of his interviews, in 1982–83, unemployment on the island stood at over 20 percent.37 In some cases, he came across whole families blighted by unemployment. Mrs. Brakefield reported how the whole family had been thrown onto the dole by the recession in her mother’s house: ‘my brother’s unemployed, my mum was [made] unemployed, well, she was made redundant, and her husband was made redundant, so that’s three, they’re all living on the dole, and she says, you know, “It’s unbelievable. Until it actually happens to you, you just cannot explain it to anyone … what you have to go through”’. As Mrs. Brakefield made clear, it was the sudden reversal of fortune, and loss of identity, that hurt families like hers: ‘It’s so  ‘Mrs. X’ [‘Pat Clark’], at 2 m 20 s, Box 6, HWS-24-391a (Tape), Sheppey Collection.  UKDA transcription, HWS-1.789a, p. 18, and HWS-23.210, p. 33, Sheppey Collection. 35  ‘Ogden’, pp. 30–31, UKDA transcription, HWS-15.473, Sheppey Collection. 36  ‘Cartlidge’, pp. 51–52, UKDA transcription, HWS-3.358, Sheppey Collection. 37  Claire Wallace, For Richer, For Poorer: Growing Up In and Out of Work (London: Tavistock, 1987), pp. 71–2 (Wallace was the principal researcher on Pahl’s project). 33 34

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degrading when you’ve been used to a good wage coming in, then ­suddenly it’s cut off altogether, you know’.38 Sometimes Pahl was interviewing people just days after they had lost their jobs, like Mr. Harris who told him that ‘the work situation is still far worse than it’s ever been, you know. In the past, I’ve always … you know, when one job has finished, within days I’ve always been able to get another job, and that situation doesn’t exist now. You know, I’ve got to be prepared to go further afield – London, Essex, anywhere like that, see’.39 Pahl had first visited Sheppey to conduct a series of pilot interviews in 1978–79, and even then he found many people telling stories about local school leavers’ hopeless search for work on the island. Mrs. Parsons told Pahl about a neighbour’s son who had ‘been for every interview for every job he’s wrote away about, he went for one a couple of days ago and still, nothing. But the boy has tried, you can’t say the boy hasn’t tried’.40 Similarly, Geoff Quayle reported how his younger sister, who had recently left school, found herself lined up with thirty or forty other people when she unsuccessfully applied for a job at a local supermarket. Although his wife corroborated the story, commenting that ‘[Sharon] has tried to get a job, she’s been round the factories, round the shops putting her name down here there and everywhere, but there’s just no sign of a job for her is there’, she still felt able to condemn the work-shy attitude of other teenagers: ‘I mean some of them don’t try to get a job, they’re just happy to sit back and get their dole money every week’.41 In an interview conducted just two days before the 1979 election, Pahl directly challenged a woman who claimed that ‘dole money doesn’t give them any incentive to go and find a job’, pointing out that earlier in the interview she had said that there were no jobs to be had on the island. Her answer did nothing to resolve the contradiction, but it did highlight the cross-cutting vernacular politics of unemployment and welfare that existed even before Margaret Thatcher took office: ‘No but there is if you look for them. They’re not much of a job, but they’re a job, they just won’t look for them. Of course they won’t all the time they’re getting paid that on the dole’.42 For some, even direct knowledge about the lack of local job  ‘Brakefield’, p. 54, UKDA transcription, HWS-1-789b, Sheppey Collection.  ‘Harris’, p. 34, UKDA transcription, HWS-8-329b, Sheppey Collection. 40  ‘Parsons’, p. 10, Box 5, PIL3, Sheppey Collection. 41  ‘Quayle’, p. 13, Box 5, PIL9, Sheppey Collection. 42  ‘Lawrenson’, p. 6, Box 5, PIL10, Sheppey Collection. 38 39

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opportunities was not enough to refute negative stereotypes about welfare claimants. Even during his pilot interviews in the late 1970s, Pahl found respondents happy to refute negative stereotypes about the unemployed. As postman Alan Parson, a former glass industry worker, put it ‘They say well there’s all these people on the dole that don’t want work, well alright, there are a certain number of them don’t want work, but there’s a hell of a lot of them would like to get a job, that’s the truth’.43 But when Pahl returned to the island to conduct his main survey in 1982–83 mass unemployment appeared to have softened attitudes, with most people convinced that even if some did abuse the system, the vast majority were genuinely unemployed and desperate for work. Indeed, it is striking that some who had been at the sharp end of unemployment, like Mrs. Cartlidge, reported that public attitudes were shifting in the face of mass unemployment. Mrs. Cartlidge told Pahl that ‘people were more spiteful and nasty a couple of years ago, about people on the dole … you know, they’d turn round and say, “Oh well, they don’t wanna work”, or, “They can get a job”, well, now, even people that are in work realise how hard it is to actually stay in work’. She candidly told Pahl that this had made some local people more willing to overlook her husband doing odd cash-in-hand jobs like painting and decorating without declaring them when he had been on the dole.44 But she still felt she had been judged (and resented) by many of her neighbours, commenting: ‘the majority of them still think that the dole give you a lot of money, and they are jealous, because their husbands have to go out to work and earn it, and they see someone else that’s not working—especially in the summer, when they see them walking around, getting a sun tan, and they think, “Look at that lazy so and so! He doesn’t wanna work”, you know’.45 In fact, Pahl’s research found that even many welfare claimants were deeply ambivalent about the welfare system and/or judgemental about other claimants. For instance Stan Cummings, who lived in an area of high unemployment and relied on invalidity benefits himself, claimed that ‘half of them round here wouldn’t want a job if it was offered to them’.46  ‘Parsons’, p. 10, Box 5, PIL3, Sheppey Collection.  ‘Cartlidge’, p. 40, UKDA transcription, HWS-3.358, Sheppey Collection. 45  Ibid., p. 41. 46  The Urban Peasant (‘Stan Cummings’), Interview Transcript, p.  7, Box 7, HWS-83 Case 29, Sheppey Collection. 43 44

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Similarly, in December 1983, when her husband Jim had been out of work for over three years, Linda Sellers launched into a fierce attack on the people who used Sheppey’s unemployed centre, calling them ‘yobs’ and ‘bums’ who had ‘never done a day’s work – never wanted to go to work – lived off the State all their lives’.47 But then when Mrs. Simpson told Pahl, in 1978, that her husband had not worked for a year and had apparently given up looking for a job, she added: ‘Since they keep putting the dole up, or the social security or whatever, they’re not giving anybody the incentive to work quite honestly. I dread every time they put it up really’.48 Perhaps her comments should not be taken literally, but even so they spoke volumes about the ambivalence towards welfare payments in late twentieth-century popular culture. At the same time, however, welfare claimants were often remarkably frank about their willingness to cheat the benefits system in order to survive (critical comments about benefits were not simply the product of performative respectability). Linda Sellers might denounce the ‘yobs’ and ‘bums’ at the local unemployed centre, but both she and her husband Jim displayed few qualms outlining their various sources of undisclosed income that alone made it possible for them to pay their bills and feed and clothe their children adequately.49 Similarly, when Mrs. Cartlidge described how she had taken in piece-rate electrical assembly work to supplement the family’s benefit payments during her husband’s prolonged unemployment, telling Pahl: ‘I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t consider myself being a criminal over it, because all I done it for was to pay my bills, and it was only £10 a week I was actually getting out of it, and that paid my electric. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not a criminal, not for doing that! (LAUGHS) No way!’50 Mrs. Simpson, the woman who reported that her husband had given up looking for work, took in piece-work from the same local firm and took solace from knowing that she was far from alone: ‘There’s a lot of people do it, we’re not the only ones that are out of work and do it. I can tell you what it’s paying for – washing machine, it pays my 47  ‘Linda and Jim’, Interview 7, pp. 25–6, Box 5, Sheppey Collection; Jane Elliott and Jon Lawrence, ‘The emotional economy of unemployment: a re-analysis of testimony from a Sheppey family, 1978–1983,’ UK Data Archive Special Edition ‘Digital Representations: Re-Using and Publishing Digital Qualitative Data,’ Sage Open (December 2016), p. 6 (at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016669517).. 48  ‘Simpson’, p. 3, Box 5, PIL6b, Sheppey Collection. 49  Elliott and Lawrence, ‘Emotional economy of unemployment’, p. 5. 50  ‘Cartlidge’, p. 41, UKDA transcription, HWS-3.358, Sheppey Collection.

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gas, my electric, it helps to buy things for the kids’.51 Interestingly, she justified her actions by saying that she preferred to do cash-in-hand piece-­ work than to make claims for discretionary welfare payments: ‘a lot of people go to the social security for money for shoes and rig their kids out and that, I don’t do that, and I would [not] do it … that’s why I do the other bits’. When Pahl probed her further, Mrs. Simpson confessed to feeling ‘guilty because I know I’m doing wrong’, and when asked ‘Who do you think you’re doing wrong to?’ she replied: ‘The country I suppose really. Sort of keep saying about the social security spongers’.52 Such comments certainly speak to the power of populist, mass media tropes demonising the recipients of social welfare, but they also remind us how difficult it had become to defend aspects of the post-war social democratic settlement by the late 1970s. And since a large part of the SDP’s political offer was its claim to transcend the post-war politics of left versus right, collectivist socialism versus free market individualism, there is therefore reason to imagine that it might have been well placed to exploit the hybrid vernacular politics of Sheppey in the early 1980s. Like the people of Sheppey, the SDP deplored the mass unemployment associated with the Conservatives’ radical economic experiments, but at the same time sought to distance itself from Labour’s support for nationalisation and its supposed indifference to the idea of preserving the incentive to hard work.

SDP Politics in North Kent Echoing the rhetoric of his party’s national leaders, Mark Goyder, the SDP’s candidate for the Faversham constituency in 1983, told readers of the Sheppey Gazette that Britain would only prosper when it put an end to the old ‘see-saw’ politics of ‘governments that swing from extreme to extreme’.53 Similarly, at a meeting of the Sheppey Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), held in the village of Halfway, he declared that the SDP ‘offer ourselves to the electorate as a halfway house between two extremes, but we have an identity and a place of our own on the political map, as a force which will unite the country behind common-sense and

 ‘Simpson’, p. 1, Box 5, PIL6b, Sheppey Collection.  Ibid., p. 8. 53  Sheppey Gazette and North Kent Times, 2 June 1983, p. 7. 51 52

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partnership’ (the venue was a gift for SDP publicity and may explain the unlikely choice of audience).54 But in his election address he presented a more sophisticated critique of the old politics which focused on the damaging polarisation of politics by class. The 29-year-old former President of the Cambridge Union said he had broken with Labour because of its ‘extremism and outdated class mentality’, while he denounced the Conservatives for ‘sowing the seeds of new class hatred by their divisive approach’.55 Here too his arguments could be said to chime with vernacular sentiment on the island; Pahl was frequently struck by Sheppey respondents’ reluctance to voice the language of class and their insistence that community trumped class on the island.56 There are exceptions to this pattern, but it is a fair assessment of the dominant ethos of islanders’ testimony, even if this may in part have been a product of the class-freighted, inter-personal dynamics of the interviews themselves.57 The teacher who declared ‘there’s no snobbery on Sheppey. It doesn’t make any difference whether you meet your dustman or the Mayor … in fact the dustman could be the Mayor’, spoke for many of her fellow islanders.58 One can also find examples of the SDP/Liberal Alliance’s national propaganda echoing the distinctive idioms of Sheppey’s vernacular politics, although mostly when they chose to drop the ubiquitous politico talking heads of most party election broadcasts in favour of ‘vox pop’ condemnations of the Conservative Government, such as housewife Alaine Hopkins who lamented young lives blighted by ‘insecurity’ and a sense that ‘there’s just no future at the moment’.59 As we have seen, many of Pahl’s Sheppey respondents used almost the same language to articulate their sense of frustration that the post-war dream of progress seemed to have come to halt for the next generation.60 But the propaganda disseminated locally by the SDP/Liberal Alliance generally made few concessions to such popular idioms or ways of conceptualising politics. In fact, what is most striking about the party’s local  Sheerness Times-Guardian, 20 May 1983, p. 7.  Mark Goyder election address, 1983, Faversham Liberal/SDP collection. 56  Pahl, Divisions of Labour, p. 197. 57  Jon Lawrence, ‘Social-science encounters and the negotiation of difference in early 1960s England’, History Workshop Journal, 77 (2014), pp. 215–39. 58  ‘Jebb’, pp. 33–34, UKDA transcription, HWS-10.620, Sheppey Collection. 59  SDP/Liberal Alliance Party Election Broadcast, 31 May 1983. 60  See Lawrence, ‘The People’s history’. 54 55

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propaganda is how detailed and policy-heavy it could be in the early 1980s. Yes, there was usually a bit of Labour Left bashing, and strategic claims about retention of the nuclear deterrent designed to exploit Labour’s perceived weakness on defence (though not, interestingly, the under-writing of the Government’s new Trident missile programme),61 but these often sat alongside detailed policies for industrial co-partnership, the integration of the country’s tax and benefits systems and the state regulation of pay and prices. Though in many respects an insurgent party seeking to destabilise the established party system, the SDP proved to be strongly committed to the culture of electoral promises. It saw itself more as a government in waiting than as a populist insurgency. In his 1983 election address, Mark Goyder’s main political strap lines included ‘An incomes strategy that will stick’, ‘A stable climate of partnership’ and ‘Working together for economic recovery’.62 All laudable aspirations, but hardly designed to capture vernacular political sentiment (although one strap line, ‘Our children are our future,’ was undoubtedly better judged in this respect). When Goyder, like the other candidates, was given a column in the local Sheppey Gazette to set out his platform for the election, the tone was similar. After advocating electoral reform (proportional representation) and the reform of adversarial Parliamentary procedures, Goyder’s third policy was ‘A national economic forum to bring all concerned together to determine pay targets and back their decision by a Price Commission and inflation tax’, and his fourth was ‘Legislation for industrial partnership’. It was perfectly consistent with the party’s analysis of all that was wrong in the Thatcherites’ lurch to free market economics and Labour’s apparent rejection of corporatist solutions to economic management, but the language was far distant from the normal fare of the Sheppey Gazette, let alone the everyday language of Sheppey itself. Again, there were pithier phrases that came a little closer to vernacular political speech, notably: ‘Government should heal divisions not deepen them. Every government has a duty to all its citizens’. But overall the tone was again dry and policy-heavy. The urge to ‘heal divisions’ was followed by three lengthy examples of policies that the SDP proposed as part of its ‘thorough overhaul of the tax/benefit

 Sheerness Times-Guardian, 20 May 1983, p. 7.  Mark Goyder election address, 1983, Faversham Liberal/SDP collection.

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system’.63 Concrete promises rather than broad principles were the order of the day. We also have copies of many of the national SDP leaflets distributed in the Faversham constituency in the early 1980s collected with the party’s local papers. Again, these were often strongly skewed towards detailed policy proposals in key areas of state action. Our Children Are Our Future, the SDP’s leaflet on education policy, did include commitments that chimed as closely with local sentiment as the leaflet’s title, notably that the party would ‘ensure no 16 year old is forced onto the dole’, but it was nonetheless a dense, text-heavy A4 document outlining twenty different SDP education policies.64 The party’s leaflet on industrial policy was smaller (A5), but it still outlined eight different policy commitments, many decidedly technical in nature.65 Perhaps most significantly, the SDP leaflet on social welfare that was distributed to Faversham voters in 1983, called Attacking Poverty: Overhauling the Welfare State, was not only equally policy-heavy, but also demonstrated that the SDP remained strongly committed to expanding the post-war social welfare settlement. The party promised to ‘provide more support for one parent families, poor pensioners, the unemployed, sick and disabled’ including raising unemployment and sickness benefits by 10 percent. True, their focus on ending the poverty trap by introducing ‘more incentives’ and ‘ensuing that people will be better off working than not working’ did chime with local sentiment, but the overall approach nonetheless represented a classic example of state-centred, social democratic welfare reform at odds with many of the sentiments to be heard in Pahl’s contemporary fieldwork on Sheppey.66 The SDP’s tactic, at least in this corner of Kent, appears to have been to present itself as a government in waiting, rather than as a popular insurgency determined to break the mould of party politics. Hence, each of the national leaflets ended with a plug for the related ‘Green paper’ which the voter was told could be obtained from the SDP’s Policy Department in London, ‘price £1 including postage and packing’. We sometimes forget how, beyond the rhetoric about triangulating the extremes of Conservative 63  Mark Goyder, ‘A new, constructive voice’, Sheppey Gazette and North Kent Times, 2 June 1983, p. 7. 64  Our Children Are Our Future (SDP leaflet, 1983), Faversham Liberal/SDP collection. 65  Putting Industry First (SDP leaflet, 1983), Faversham Liberal/SDP collection. 66  Attacking Poverty: Overhauling the Welfare State (SDP leaflet, 1983), Faversham Liberal/SDP collection.

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monetarism and Labour socialism, the SDP in the early 1980s was not only a classic, state-centred social democratic party, but also one that continued to think like a state and see itself as an official opposition waiting to return to government. This was why its electoral appeal focused more on concrete policy commitments than on broad principles. By the late 1980s, this mind-set had largely past, and the party’s local propaganda came to echo the populist, pavement politics style of their Liberal party allies, but arguably by then any chance the party may have had to profit decisively from the vulnerabilities of the two main parties had long since evaporated.67 Whether Goyder, and indeed other SDP candidates, could have been more successful pursuing a different, more overtly popular strategy in the early 1980s remains unknowable. However, revisiting Pahl’s contemporary field notes from the Isle of Sheppey does offer grounds for believing that there was untapped potential for a centrist, cross-class politics of reform in the early 1980s if the SDP had been willing to abandon its policy-­heavy, patrician instincts; its commitment to politics as a check-list of legislative promises. And since mixed suburban/industrial seats like Faversham could be found across large swathes of southern England and the Midlands, had it done so perhaps its national fortunes would also have been different. We cannot sustain the claim that Sheppey’s vernacular politics were somehow naturally social democratic, any more than they were naturally Conservative (despite Pahl’s suggestions to the contrary), but they did offer the raw material from which a more demotic, social democratic appeal might have been constructed than the one placed before voters by Goyder and his supporters in the early 1980s.

67  For instance, Mark Goyder’s 1987 General Election leaflet ‘Get Things Done’ and the eve of poll leaflet ‘I need your vote’, Faversham Liberal/SDP collection.

The Promise of ‘Liberal Democracy’, c. 1981–2010 Mike Finn

If you want to know whether to vote for a political party – even more if you want to join one – it is more important to know something about its underlying beliefs than to know about its policies for this year or next. The policies will almost certainly change, and if there is no underlying framework of belief or philosophy, the direction in which they may change is unpredictable.1

Thus did former Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats Alan Beith begin his foreword to a 2002 party policy paper, It’s About Freedom. It sought to tackle the fundamental question of Liberal Democrat party The author would like to express his thanks to participants at the 2018 Age of Promises workshop at the University of Exeter for feedback on an earlier version of this chapter. He would also like to thank the University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives and Lord Owen for permission to quote from the Owen Papers. 1  Alan Beith MP, ‘Foreword’ in It’s About Freedom: The Report of the Liberal Democracy Working Group, Liberal Democrat Policy Paper No. 50 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2002), p. 5.

M. Finn (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_12

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‘philosophy’, in short, as Beith noted, the promise ‘Liberal Democracy’ offered to voters and to party members. This question of philosophy was perhaps of greater importance for the Liberal Democrats than for any of the other parties enjoying significant national representation in Britain at that time. The Liberal Democrat Party was then only 14 years old, the result of a 1988 merger between the old Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) who had broken away from Labour in 1981.2 They drew on two distinct, yet related, ideological traditions, namely those of liberalism and social democracy, and counted former members of the Labour, Liberal, and Conservative parties amongst their representatives in Westminster and Brussels.3 As such, questions of ideology and values became constant anxieties for the Liberal Democrats. As Judi Atkins notes, ‘ideologies are not simply systems of ideas that shape political thinking’, they also ‘[supply] a set of criteria for evaluating whether an argument is good or bad.’4 The party needed a popularly-held understanding of what they stood for if they were to be electorally successful in the longer term–in short, a less ephemeral sense of the ‘promise of Liberal Democracy’. This chapter surveys that promise (or lack thereof) from the foundation of the SDP to the arrival of the coalition government. In that period the Liberal Democrats came into being as a political force, and established themselves as the third party at Westminster, growing incrementally in parliamentary representation until 2006, before entering government in coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 and suffering a consequent electoral backlash.5 In 2015 the Liberal Democrats were reduced to just eight seats at Westminster, losing their status as the third party.6 While they enjoyed a slight recovery in terms of seats (rising to twelve MPs), this was accompanied by further declines in both the Liberal Democrats’ share of 2  For accounts of the alliance between the Liberal Party and the SDP and the subsequent merger see David Dutton, A History of the Liberal Party in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 235–93; Roy Douglas, Liberals: A History of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat Parties (London: Hambledon & London, 2005), pp. 285–302; Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 3  Richard S. Grayson, ‘Social democracy or social liberalism: Ideological sources of Liberal Democrat policy’, Political Quarterly, 78 (2007), pp. 32–39. 4  Judi Atkins, Conflict, Co-operation and the Rhetoric of Coalition Government (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2018), p. 6. 5  2006 is cited here as it was following a by-election in Dunfermline and West Fife that the party reached its high-water mark, Chris Cook, A Short History of the Liberal Party (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), p. 285. 6  Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2015 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015), p. 434.

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the vote and in the number of votes cast for the party.7 The central ­question which the chapter seeks to address then is the extent to which the new party was able to develop a coherent and popularly-understood ‘promise’ of Liberal Democracy. This is a question of profound significance for understanding the development of the party and its successes and failures—as protagonists such as Beith knew at the time. Implicit in some political science explanations of the development of the Liberal Democrats is a teleological emphasis on ‘professionalisation’ and ‘maturity’, which Emma Sanderson-Nash argues was integral to the Liberal Democrats being able to take office in 2010.8 Such narratives are typically framed in a conventional political science paradigm which regards the politics of the 1990s as normative, and which has recently come under heavy criticism.9 This is not to say that actors did not themselves regard the politics of the 1990s as normative—this was certainly true of Nick Clegg and his ‘new generation’ of Liberal Democrats as they sought to remake the party in the period 2004–2010—but the task of the historian must be to disentangle actors’ self-mythologies and constructed ideas about the past from narratives which stand up to more substantive analytical scrutiny. Here the emphasis lies on ideological contest and contingency, and the ways in which the ‘promise of Liberal Democracy’ drew on older discourses and vocabularies of liberalism and social democracy, often decentring and remaking them according to electoral context and calculation. As Peter Sloman has shown in a historical investigation of the development of Liberal Party economic policy in mid-century, the influences on political liberalism were diverse and far from uniform in their views of society and economics.10 Jo Grimond was the famed proponent of a ‘realignment of the left’, but he was also influenced by Friedrich von Hayek’s economic thought and in his turn influenced Arthur Seldon, the editorial director of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which provided much of the intellectual ballast for Thatcherism.11 The mythologies of Liberal Democracy—that the party was a broadly left one until the  Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2017 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017). 8  Elizabeth Evans and Emma Sanderson-Nash, ‘From sandals to suits: professionalisation, coalition and the Liberal Democrats’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 13 (2011), pp. 459–473. 9  Mike Finn, ‘Paradigm shift’, Political Insight, 7:3 (2016), pp. 22–24. 10  Peter Sloman, The Liberal Party and the Economy, 1929–1964 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 11  Sloman, Liberal Party and the Economy; John Meadowcroft and Jamie Reynolds, ‘Liberals and the New Right’, Journal of Liberal History, 47 (2005), pp. 45–51. 7

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disjuncture of the Orange Book in 2004 and the rise of Clegg—are shown here to be precisely that, but rather than replace one teleology with another this chapter seeks to deconstruct these mythologies and the events which shaped them to better interrogate the evolving ‘promise’ of Liberal Democracy. It focuses initially on the foundation and ‘promise’ of the SDP, which in itself created the possibility of first the Alliance and then the ultimate fusion of the SDP and the Liberal Party, which resulted in the Liberal Democrats. It then turns to the development of the Liberal Democrats under their first two leaders, Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy. During this time the party sought to define itself in a coherent and consistent way whilst being the legatee of two divergent traditions, often against the background of vocal calls by party elites and members for a clearer enunciation of ‘liberalism’. It concludes in the recent past, looking at the efforts of Nick Clegg and other ‘first generation Liberal Democrats’ to shape a promise of Liberal Democracy in and out of government. This study is inevitably partial; it assesses the ‘promise’ of Liberal Democracy only through the views and interventions of party elites and their reception. Though partial, it aims not merely to address the Liberal Democrats themselves but to explore the construction of party political ideological ‘promise’ at Westminster in the past forty years more broadly.

The Promise of the Alliance, 1981–1987 When the SDP was launched in 1981 to ‘break the mould of British politics’, it was firmly rooted in the political culture of the Labour Party.12 All of its architects, ‘the Gang of Four’—Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen, and Bill Rodgers—were former Labour cabinet ministers.13 Their decision to leave Labour stemmed from a shared view that the party was moving radically to the left, breaking with what they saw as the social democratic tradition which had underpinned the party since its foundation, thereby making it unelectable. In an open letter published in August 1980, Owen, Williams, and Rodgers wrote that they were ‘not prepared 12   David Kogan and Maurice Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 13  All have offered autobiographies: Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991); Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography of Shirley Williams (London: Little, Brown, 2009); David Owen, Time to Declare (London: Michael Joseph, 1991) and William Rodgers, Fourth Among Equals (London: Biteback Publishing, 2000).

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to abandon Britain to divisive and often cruel Tory policies because electors do not have an opportunity to vote for an acceptable socialist alternative.’14 Following Labour’s Wembley conference decision to adopt new rules for electing the leader in January 1981, the ‘Gang of Three’ joined with Roy Jenkins and issued the Limehouse Declaration inaugurating the Council for Social Democracy, which ultimately led to the launch of the SDP two months later.15 Jenkins’ role in these developments is seldom underplayed, but it is often misunderstood, and this is significant for considering how the ‘promise’ of the SDP evolved. Jenkins had been associated with the Gaitskellite ‘revisionist’ wing of Labour since the 1950s, along with his old friend Anthony Crosland.16 Yet the true complexity of revisionism— and the significant divides between those who believed themselves to be revisionists—has often been obscured.17 Jenkins and Crosland did indeed differ significantly on the nature of social democracy and socialism more broadly. As McKee puts it, ‘neither agreed the same agenda’.18 Crosland identified as a socialist to the last; Jenkins later described himself as a liberal.19 The intellectual divides which had separated Crosland and Jenkins as early as the 1950s would also separate Jenkins from other members of the Gang of Four, notably David Owen, but also Shirley Williams—who in 1980–81 at least still saw themselves as socialists. When what was then in summer 1980 still the ‘Gang of Three’ came under fire for ‘betray[ing] their tradition’ in a Guardian article penned by Jack Straw, Frank Field, and Stuart Holland, it was the Crosland ‘tradition’ that was at the heart of the matter.20 14  David Owen, William Rodgers, and Shirley Williams, ‘We are not prepared to abandon Britain to divisive and often cruel Tory policies because electors do not have an opportunity to vote for an acceptable socialist alternative’, Guardian, 1 August 1980. 15   Gerard Daly, ‘The Campaign for Labour Victory and the origins of the SDP’, Contemporary British History, 7 (1993), pp. 282–305 at pp. 300–1. 16  Giles Radice, Friends & Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins, and Healey (London: Abacus, 2003). 17  See Mike Finn, Socialism, Education and Equal Opportunity: The Contemporary Legacy of Anthony Crosland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2021). 18  Vincent McKee, ‘Fragmentation on the Labour Right 1975–87’, Politics, 11 (1991), pp. 23–29 at p. 25. 19  In his autobiography Jenkins was open that he had stopped ‘describing myself as a socialist for several years before I left the Labour Party’, A Life at the Centre, p. 617. 20  Frank Field, Stuart Holland, and Jack Straw, ‘Why the Gang of Three betray their tradition’, Guardian, 10 August 1980, cutting in the papers of Lord David Owen (Owen papers), D709 3/1/1/1, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives.

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The Gang’s open letter reflected tensions which would divide the later, expanded, ‘Gang’, since they would ‘not support a Centre Party for it would lack roots and a coherent philosophy’ and they believed that ‘there can be no compromise with those who share neither the values nor the philosophy of democratic socialism.’21 Owen’s book, Face the Future, published in 1981, argued for ‘a fresh and valid socialist alternative.’22 He was clear: ‘I will not become a Liberal, or join a rootless centre party that means abandoning my socialist convictions’. Instead he supported the development of ‘another democratic socialist party.’23 As one journalist noted, this was not a desire shared by all its ‘supporters’, given the ‘clear dichotomy between those who want it to be a brand-new, radical centre party...and those who see it rather as a Mark II Labour Party.’24 For their part, Field, Straw, and Holland invoked Susan Crosland’s 1978 assessment of Jenkinsites in their attack on the Gang: ‘either they never accepted or else with advancing middle age rejected, what underpinned Crosland revisionism: “Socialism is basically about equality.”’25 The secretary of Owen’s Constituency Labour Party (CLP) drafted a letter to the Guardian in his defence, repudiating the idea that he and the Gang ignored equality.26 Owen described Crosland as the ‘most stimulating writer on socialism in the 1950s’, though not uncritically, claiming that Crosland’s ‘analysis was surprisingly centralist in concept’.27 Jenkins by contrast was not a libertarian socialist, nor was it obvious he ever had been. His 1979 Dimbleby lecture offered a declinist vision arguing that political crisis had led Britain to economic crisis and that there needed to be ‘a strengthening of the radical centre’.28 Jenkins traced the crisis to ‘two major events…the first, short and sharp, was Suez. The second was the formation of the European Economic Community without  Ibid.  David Owen, Face the Future (London: Jonathan Cape, 1981) cited in Dutton, A History of the Liberal Party, p. 244. 23  Untitled draft standard letter, late 1980, D709 3/1/1/3, Owen papers. 24  Ian Bradley, Breaking the Mould? The Birth and Prospects of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p. 6. 25  Field, Holland, and Straw, ‘Why the Gang of Three betray their tradition’, p. 7. 26  Draft letter from Barbara Furzeman to the Guardian, n.d. [1980], D709 3/1/1/1, Owen papers. 27  Owen, Face the Future, p. 34. 28  Roy Jenkins, ‘Home thoughts from abroad: The 1979 Dimbleby Lecture’ in Wayland Kennet ed., The Rebirth of Britain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), pp.  13–29 at p. 21. 21 22

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our participation.’ He noted that Britain’s economic performance when compared with that of the inaugural members of the EEC had been poor, ‘[a]nd this came on top of the bumpy psychological adjustment to the loss of an empire and a world role.’29 Jenkins advocated for proportional representation and moderation against the ‘extremes’, strengthening the ‘radical centre.’30 The Limehouse Declaration was broad enough to incorporate the differing perspectives of the Gang, rejecting an ‘inert centre’, but allowing for a radical one.31 Jenkins had met with David Steel, the Leader of the Liberal Party, in June 1980 and considered returning from Brussels as a ‘nominal Liberal’.32 Rodgers put it more strongly: ‘when provoked, Roy did not disown the description that he was more of an Asquithian liberal than a contemporary social democrat.’33 The divisions within the SDP at its outset were to be of great significance for the subsequent Alliance with the Liberal Party, and the development of the Liberal Democrats which ultimately resulted from it. As two scholars involved in the formation of the party put it, ‘The SDP, at its very heart, was a muddle – and by and large was allowed to remain so.’34 By the 1983 General Election the party had 29 MPs, including the two members of the Gang who had begun the parliament outside it, Williams and Jenkins, who won by-election victories at Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead respectively. In September 1981 the Liberal Assembly agreed to an Alliance between the two parties to contest the next general election; the Alliance ultimately survived until the aftermath of the 1987 election. The Liberals for their part had mixed views on it, but Steel had planned for a Labour breakaway and sought eagerly to co-operate with the new SDP.35 Michael Young, who had joined the SDP on its formation, wrote to Jenkins offering his help in party co-operation, having held a meeting  Ibid., p. 17.  Ibid, p. 29. 31  Shirley Williams, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins, ‘Statement to the Press Association’ [Limehouse Declaration], 25 January 1981, reprinted as ‘The Declaration of Social Democracy’ in Roy Jenkins, Partnership of Principle (London: Radical Centre/Secker & Warburg, 1985), p. 28. 32  Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, pp. 512, 514. 33  Bill Rodgers, ‘SDP’, in Andrew Adonis and Keith Thomas eds., Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 220. 34  Crewe and King, SDP, p. 125. 35  Ibid., pp. 170–1, 173, 177. 29 30

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with the Liberals’ Head of Policy, and supplied a briefing note on the Liberal Party’s structures ahead of the SDP’s own policy conference.36 The SDP would subsequently agree a joint policy statement with the Liberals in June 1981.37 Young noted that ‘community politics’ was the Liberals’ ‘most interesting development.’38 In 1970 the Liberal Assembly had adopted a resolution endorsing ‘community politics’ as a strategy, which derived initially from the enthusiasm of the Young Liberals for the grassroots, participative emphasis of New Left radicalism.39 But whilst there was also, as Joyce notes, ‘an orientation towards local government...this brand of community politics involved party activists taking a prominent interest in those issues which were genuinely of concern to local people.’40 This was the ‘pavement politics’ for which party organisers like Trevor Jones and Chris Rennard would become renowned (and, in the eyes of some, infamous). But in its emphasis on local issues against any centralised understanding of what the party was for, it reinforced the view that the Liberal Party could be all things to all people, depending on where in the country a voter found themselves. Rennard would later become director of campaigns and chief executive of the merged Liberal Democrat Party.41 The 1983 Alliance manifesto set out a vision that was anchored in the challenges of the present and the immediate future rather than a coherent set of values, focusing on Britain’s economic difficulties, with a particular emphasis on unemployment.42 It recognised the disparity in the traditions of the two parties; in the words of Steel and Jenkins, one had ‘a proud history’, the other ‘born only two years ago out of a frustration with the old system of politics.’43 They sought to model ‘co-operation’ for society

36  Michael Young letter to Roy Jenkins, 24 April 1981; Michael Young, ‘Note on Liberal Party Research: Informal talk by Michael Young with Peter Knowlson’, both D709 3/1/1/10, Owen papers. 37  SDP and Liberal Party, A Fresh Start for Britain (London: SDP/Liberal Party, 1981). 38  Michael Young to Roy Jenkins, 24 April 1981, D 709 3/1/1/10, Owen papers. 39  Peter Joyce, Realignment of the Left? A History of the Relationship Between the Liberal Democrat and Labour Parties (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 171–83. 40  Ibid., p. 182. 41  Chris Rennard, Winning Here – My Campaigning Life: Memoirs vol. 1 (London: Biteback Publishing, 2018). 42  SDP-Liberal Alliance, Working Together for Britain: Joint Programme for Government (London: SDP-Liberal Alliance, 1983). 43  Roy Jenkins and David Steel, ‘Introduction’, in Working Together for Britain, p. 3.

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as a whole, no ‘prisoners of ideology’ in hock to ‘vested interests’.44 The economic policies it argued for—increased borrowing to fund investment, incomes policies, public works programmes, expansion of the Youth Training Scheme—amounted to reheated Keynesianism, though the rhetoric was also strong on the importance of the private sector and the need for free enterprise.45 At face value, it is hard not to concur with an SDP intellectual’s view that what the party wanted at the outset was ‘the policies that have failed before.’46 The Express reiterated the shared verdict of Aneurin Bevan and Margaret Thatcher: ‘The trouble with being a middle-­ of-­the-road party is that you risk being knocked down.’47 A later Liberal account of the manifesto was equally critical: ‘there was a wide range of policies, most of which looked like short-term expedients rather than a long-term vision of a new society.’48 The SDP was almost annihilated (down from twenty-nine seats to six). Worse still, there was a fundamental shallowness of Alliance support. Crewe and King note the weakness of Alliance ‘identifiers’ in both 1983 and 1987, and the churn in the vote. On both occasions, the Alliance vote was made up in large part of those who would return to the Labour or Conservative folds once they had registered their protest. By 1987 there had been radical changes in the Alliance. Jenkins was gone as SDP leader, replaced by Owen following the 1983 General Election. Much of the rhetoric in the 1987 Alliance manifesto, however, remained the same, railing against ‘outdated battles of class and ideology’ and ‘the extremists of the Left’.49 The Express called it a ‘pick ‘n’ mix election barrel’, offering ‘something for everyone, and something for nothing’.50 Jo Grimond, writing in The Times, ignored the SDP altogether and conflated the two parties, arguing that what they should be doing was making a positive case for ‘Liberalism’, and that its ‘main pillars’ should become visible through ‘a  SDP-Liberal Alliance, Working Together for Britain, pp. 4, 10.  Ibid., passim. 46  The historian Peter Clarke, quoted in E. H. H. Green, ‘Thatcherism: An historical perspective’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 9 (1999), pp. 17–42 at p. 42. 47  ‘Zero-rated alliance’, Daily Express, 13 May 1983. 48  Douglas, Liberals, p. 291. 49  SDP-Liberal Alliance, Britain United  – The Time Has Come [SDP-Liberal Alliance General Election Manifesto 1987] (London: SDP-Liberal Alliance, 1987); Duncan Brack notes that Owen’s concept of the ‘social market economy’ didn’t get a look in, despite it being a consistent feature of his public statements since 1983, Duncan Brack, ‘David Owen and the social market economy’, Journal of Liberal History, 47 (2005), pp. 52–59. 50  Robert Gibson, ‘The Davids’ double act’, Daily Express, 19 May 1987. 44 45

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fog of electioneering’.51 The outcome was similar to 1983. The Alliance share of the vote dropped nearly 3%, which amounted to a loss of one seat net. In Dutton’s verdict, the Alliance had ultimately ‘failed to remedy the weaknesses from which the Liberal party had long suffered.’52

Liberals and Social Democrats, 1988–2005 The two parties entered merger talks in September 1987 leading to amalgamation in March 1988.53 The new party was known as the Social and Liberal Democrats, but in practice often—and mockingly—‘Salads’.54 As the party’s new leader from July 1988, Paddy Ashdown, put it, ‘the debate, which on the surface was about the name, was, in reality, about our identity and both dominated and disrupted the first year of the new Party’.55 Ashdown had been a Liberal; his task now was to bring Liberals and Social Democrats together. Ashdown later set out what he had felt his ambitions to be on assuming the leadership: ‘There was a desire to build something new.’ He believed that he ‘got on with people who believed that past differences didn’t matter and that we had to get to a position where everyone believed they didn’t matter’. Ashdown’s project was the ‘realignment of the left’—which he dated back to Grimond. But he was also critical of what he saw as ‘soggy corporatism’—and claimed ‘we shifted the economic policy deliberately quite strongly to the right’.56 The Liberal Democrats’ (renamed in 1989) first general election campaign in 1992 was governed by the policy of ‘equidistance’. This correlated with how the party had been perceived by the electorate during the Alliance years—neither left nor right but firmly in the centre—but it meant the party was perceived purely in relational terms, and was ridiculed for it. Ashdown was lampooned on Spitting Image! with the catchphrase ‘neither one thing, or other, but somewhere in between’.57 The party’s 1992 manifesto retained the declinist themes which had characterised the two  Jo Grimond, ‘Winning over the floaters’, The Times, 20 May 1987.  Dutton, A Short History of the Liberal Party, pp. 262–3. 53  Ibid. 54  Paddy Ashdown, The Ashdown Diaries, Volume I: 1988–1997 (London: Allen Lane, 2000), p. 11. 55  Ibid. 56  Paddy Ashdown, cited in Andrew Rawnsley, Duncan Brack and Harriet Smith, ‘Ashdown as leader’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History, 30 (2001), pp. 4–5. 57  ‘Liberal Democrats: Deal or no deal?’ Guardian, 13 March 2010. 51 52

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Alliance manifestos, condemning Britain’s ‘failure to adjust to the modern world.’58 This ‘challenge’ was followed by a section on values, entitled ‘What Liberal Democrats stand for’. It was an unambiguously pro-­ globalisation document that echoed neoliberal themes on the priority of the free market, and which vowed that the Liberal Democrats sought to ‘strengthen international cooperation’, arguing against ‘outdated notions of national sovereignty’. However, the manifesto also set out clearly the limits on the market—specifically in terms of the need for public rather than private investment in health, transport, and education.59 It also included, for the first time, a policy which would survive through several elections and become an iconic ‘USP’: the promise to put 1p in the pound on to the basic rate of income tax, thus raising £2 billion of additional revenue for education.60 This helped emphasise the Liberal Democrats’ nominally ‘left’ credentials, but it also represented an attempt at retail politics to develop a core vote amongst public service professionals.61 However, the manifesto was also strong on encouraging free-market competition, and conceived of education primarily in terms of the knowledge economy discourse which New Labour would soon make its own. Meanwhile, the attack on national pay bargaining in favour of local settlements was an attack on trade unionism. Social democracy was on the run; as Jones has shown, in the wake of merger, Liberal critics argued (as Jenkins had done previously) that ‘everything important in social democratic ideas’ is contained within modern liberalism’, and that Ashdown needed to lead the party in a reengagement with Liberal ideas.62 Internal party debate would increasingly be enunciated in terms of the ‘liberal tradition’ rather than the social democratic one. As Brack put it later, ‘In most matters, the Liberal Democrats can be seen as a modernised Liberal 58  Liberal Democrats, Changing Britain for Good: The Liberal Democrat Manifesto 1992 (London: Liberal Democrats, 1992), p. 3. 59  Ibid., p. 7. 60  ‘USP’ refers to ‘unique selling point’. Mike Finn, ‘The coalition and the Liberal Democrats’ in Anthony Seldon and Mike Finn eds., The Coalition Effect, 2010–2015 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 504–5. 61  As Andrew Russell, Ed Fieldhouse and Iain MacAllister show, ‘the party won over a third of this group in the elections of 1983 and 1987 and 27 per cent in 1997’. Andrew Russell, Ed Fieldhouse and Iain MacAllister, ‘The anatomy of Liberal support in Britain, 1974–1997’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4 (2002), pp. 49–74 at p. 53. 62  Gordon Lishman cited in Tudor Jones, The Revival of British Liberalism: From Grimond to Clegg (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 151–2.

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Party, with a platform built around Liberalism. The legacy of the SDP lay primarily in organisation.’63 The Liberal Democrats polled only 17.8% of the vote in 1992 but this was considered a good result given the lows to which poll ratings had fallen in the course of the parliament.64 But in 1994 the party leadership had to readjust to the reality of a changed Labour Party when Tony Blair was elected leader following the death of John Smith. Ashdown began to assert his ambitions for ‘a non-socialist alternative to the Tories’ in his Chard speech a month after the 1992 election, but the decision to formally abandon equidistance was ratified in 1995.65 It was in private where the most profound developments were taking place, with Ashdown involved in what he described as ‘the project’—clandestine negotiations with the Labour leadership about Liberal Democrat participation in government and, in Ashdown’s mind at least, a possible merger of the two parties. When Kennedy became leader in 1999 he remarked with some surprise as to the depth of the talks that had taken place. Ashdown believed that ‘Blair was heading to be, broadly, a Liberal.’66 The 1997 Liberal Democrat manifesto turned its fire squarely on the Conservatives. In Ashdown’s introduction, he condemned ‘eighteen years of Conservative government which have left our society divided, our public services run down, our sense of community fractured and our economy under-performing.’67 The manifesto prioritised education, listing it first in the policy sections—as did the Labour Party’s manifesto—and restated the party’s commitment to a 1p increase on basic rate. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats argued for ‘standards’, and called for ‘increas[ing] the role for parents in education’ as the Liberal Democrat manifesto put it.68 63  Duncan Brack, ‘Introduction’, in Iain Dale ed., Liberal Party General Election Manifestos, 1900–1997 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), p. 13. 64  Dale ed., Liberal Party General Election Manifestos, p. 281. 65  Paddy Ashdown, Speech at the Guildhall, Chard, 9 May 1992, reprinted as ‘A broader movement dedicated to winning the battle of ideas’, in Duncan Brack and Tony Little eds., Great Liberal Speeches (London: Politico’s, 2001), pp. 423–7; Alan Leaman, ‘Ending equidistance’, Political Quarterly, 69 (1998), pp. 160–169. 66  Iain Dale, ‘From the archives - my long read: “In conversation” with Paddy Ashdown’ [2009], iaindale.com, 23 December 2018 [accessed at https://www.iaindale.com/articles/ from-the-archives-my-long-read-in-conversation-with-paddy-ashdown, 30 September 2019]. 67  Liberal Democrats, Make the Difference: Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 1997 (London: Liberal Democrats, 1997), reprinted in Dale ed., Liberal Party General Election Manifestos, p. 323. 68  Ibid., p. 326.

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Both parties sought to scrap Assisted Places, though the Liberal Democrats allowed leeway for local authorities to spend the redistributed funds on local schemes if they so wished.69 Both the Liberal Democrats and Labour spoke of ‘partnership’ in the workplace and the latter explicitly rejected a return to the pre-Thatcher legislative framework for trade unions.70 The Liberal Democrats secured 16.8% of the vote, but they doubled their representation to 46 seats.71 This represented a significant breakthrough. They had still not been able to shore up a core vote, as the fall in the share of the vote indicated. The campaign was heavily reliant on tactical voting against the Conservatives. It was still unclear, despite the party’s success, what the promise of the Liberal Democrats was—other than not being the Conservatives in seats where it was important for tactical voters to have a viable non-Conservative alternative. Ashdown was replaced by Kennedy in 1999. Kennedy’s bid for the leadership was built on his public profile, though his manifesto and campaign worked hard to compensate for the ‘Chatshow Charlie’ image he had developed. Kennedy was far more suspicious of Labour than Ashdown. Mechanisms of party co-operation developed under Ashdown’s leadership were dismantled.72 This allowed the Liberal Democrats to position themselves to Labour’s left. The 2001 General Election manifesto reflected this, with a Guardian editorial trumpeting the credentials of ‘Britain’s left-wing party’.73 This approach had a meaningful impact: ‘the election was a qualified success for the Liberal Democrats’ both in terms of numbers of MPs and share of the vote, which had increased to 52 and 18.3% respectively. The party retained a ‘geographical and social profile more similar to that of the Conservatives than that of Labour’, however, and this was to be of significance in subsequent elections.74 In 2003 under Kennedy’s leadership, and against the wishes of Ashdown, the party opposed Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq without an authorising UN resolution, and Kennedy  Ibid., p. 327.  Dale ed., Liberal Party General Election Manifestos, p. 330; Labour Party, New Labour, New Life for Britain (London: Labour Party, 1997). 71  David Butler and David Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997), p. 254. 72  Andrew Russell and Edward Fieldhouse, Neither Left Nor Right: The Liberal Democrats and the Electorate (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 195. 73  ‘Leaders of the left’, Guardian, 16 May 2001. 74  Russell and Fieldhouse, Neither Left Nor Right, pp. 195, 198. 69 70

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spoke at the Stop the War Coalition’s march in London.75 This further differentiated the party from Labour, and ensured Kennedy was placed firmly in the media spotlight. The 2005 manifesto emphasised the party’s opposition to tuition fees in higher education, and noted the ‘green thread of environmental awareness’ throughout the party’s policy platform.76

Liberal Democrats, 2005–2017: ‘Classical Liberalism in a Modern Setting’? In 2010, the Liberal Democrats entered government for the first time since the merger in 1988 as part of a coalition government with the Conservative Party. On 12 May, Shirley Williams, now in the House of Lords, reflected on their leader, and now Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, as representing a generational shift. ‘He is first-generation Liberal Democrat, neither a Liberal nor a Social Democrat, but something new.’77 Significantly, Williams noted her opposition to a coalition with the Conservatives. Clegg, elected party leader on the departure of Sir Menzies Campbell in 2007, was formed as a politician in the post-merger Liberal Democrats. As an MEP prior to his election to Westminster in 2005, he had been a member of the Liberal Democracy Working Group which had produced It’s About Freedom in 2002, which sought to codify the party’s ‘core values’.78 He had been involved as an author in both of the controversial Orange Books, co-edited by his patron Paul Marshall and his ally David Laws. In Clegg’s own words, ‘the potential realignment of the centre-left was not the great debate of my political life’.79 In 1999 according to one MP’s account, he told new members seeking a left-wing alternative to Labour in the form of the Liberal Democrats they should be ‘joining the Socialist Workers’ Party.’80 Clegg acknowledged that for his ‘generation of Liberal Democrats  – Danny Alexander, David Laws, Norman Lamb, Jo 75  Andrew Murray and Lindsay German, Stop the War: The Story of Britain’s Biggest Mass Movement (London: Bookmarks, 2005). 76  Liberal Democrats, The Real Alternative: General Election Manifesto 2005 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2005), p. 2. 77  Alyssa McDonald, ‘The NS interview: Shirley Williams’, New Statesman, 12 May 2010. 78  Liberal Democracy Working Group, It’s About Freedom, p. 7. 79  Nick Clegg, Politics: Between the Extremes (London: Vintage, 2016), p. 174. 80  Richard Allan, Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam (1997–2005) quoting Clegg in Chris Bowers, Nick Clegg: The Biography (London: Biteback Publishing, 2011), p. 129.

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Swinson, Lynne Featherstone, Ed Davey’, their ‘views were formed not just by the harsh injustices of 1980s Conservatism, but by the rise and fall of New Labour between 1997 and 2010.’81 It was in the context of the Orange Book that a fracture within the party was increasingly discussed, that of the divide between ‘social liberals’ and ‘economic liberals’. This saw the party ostensibly split between those who believed in an interventionist role for the state who identified strongly with the purported ‘left’ orientation of the Liberal Party and it successors after Grimond, and those who felt that the market should hold primacy and the role of the state was to secure the effective functioning of the market and promote the interests of trade and business. Neil Stockley was representative of many Liberal Democrats when he characterised the divide as a ‘comic book clash…sometimes presented by the media’.82 Nonetheless, the party had been consistent in its espousal of market primacy in its policy orientation after Ashdown’s self-described shift ‘to the right’ in economic policy. Whilst the usual caveats regarding market failure were still present, the swathe of policy papers that were produced by the party in the early twenty-first century were anchored in the market’s centrality and the dominance of the globalisation paradigm. In the 2003 policy paper Setting Business Free, the party set out its intention to abolish the Department for Trade and Industry and appoint instead a ‘Department for the Consumer’ which would be ‘much smaller’ and have responsibility for ‘competition issues.’ It was stridently anti-regulation, describing regulation as ‘a heavy burden on business.’83 The introduction to the policy paper was titled ‘Taking pride in economic liberalism’, which made explicit reference to the party’s history in connection with Free Trade. It was uncomplimentary about the economic policies of mid-century, noting that ‘economic liberalism took a battering in Britain’ with ‘direct state intervention through nationalisation’. But it continued: ‘we have however gone through nearly a full circle…economic liberalism has its day again’. Even when noting the ‘costs’ of the rolling back of the state, the paper used highly-loaded language, describing the  Clegg, Politics, p. 169.  Neil Stockley, ‘Social liberalism’ [review of Duncan Brack, Richard S. Grayson and David Howarth MP (eds.), Reinventing the State: Social Liberalism for the twenty-first Century (London: Methuen, 2007)], Journal of Liberal History, 60 (2008), p. 52. 83  Liberal Democrats, Setting Business Free, Policy Paper no. 59 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2003), p. 5. 81 82

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problems facing regions suffering in the wake of ‘liberalisation’ as a form of dependency.84 What was distinct about the Orange Book, then, was not the singularity of its ideas, but the determination of its proponents to cause a stir. Vince Cable, future Business Secretary and later party leader in addition to longtime Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, was one of the authors, producing a chapter on ‘Liberal economics and social justice’.85 Cable also chaired the group which developed Setting Business Free (whose members included Clegg).86 In his Orange Book essay, Cable argued that ‘There is now a reasonably settled consensus that the task of modern government is to manage an open market economy.’87 He sought ‘choice and plurality in public services’; in doing so he considered the use of vouchers, though he thought them unsatisfactory on economic grounds in some policy areas, but thought ‘further education and vocational education are areas where vouchers might work better.’88 Cable preferred, on balance, ‘a plurality of providers’, ‘where a mixture of public sector, private and mutually owned enterprises compete to provide mainstream services.’ The state’s ‘central function’, he felt, was merely that of ‘standard setting and testing…there is no overriding reason why the state itself should provide the service.’89 This was in stark contrast to the manifesto on which he had been elected which said that ‘the state must provide these basic public services to allow all its citizens to achieve their full potential.’90 In one sense, Cable agreed with the social liberals: economic liberals were social liberals, but only because social justice was impossible without macroeconomic stability and wealth creation. As he noted later, Grimond had been ‘a strong advocate of such ideas as education and health vouchers.’ What was needed, Cable felt, was ‘classical liberalism in a modern setting.’91  Ibid., pp. 5, 7.  Vince Cable MP, ‘Liberal economic and social justice’, in Marshall and Laws eds., Orange Book, pp. 132–73. 86  Setting Business Free, p. 36. 87  Cable, ‘Liberal economics and social justice’, p. 132. 88  Ibid., p. 159. 89  Ibid., pp. 160–1. 90  Charles Kennedy MP, ‘A real chance for real change’, in Liberal Democrats, Freedom, Justice, Honesty: Liberal Democrat General Election Manifesto 2001 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2001), p. 2. 91  Vincent Cable MP, ‘Classical liberalism in a modern setting’, in Kevin Hickson ed., The Political Thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 165–72 at p. 165. 84 85

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With the election of Clegg, this arrived. The period 2007–2010 represented a persistent series of assaults on ‘legacy’ social liberal policies. Clegg attempted ‘a Clause IV moment’ with repeated attempts to abandon the tuition fees policy, though this was frustrated by activists.92 In 2009, the party’s pre-manifesto, A Fresh Start for Britain, sought to circumvent this by relegating the status of many ‘social liberal’ policies to that of aspirations, using the impact of the financial crisis as a justification. The specific caveat read that new spending commitments ‘will only be introduced as and when resources can be identified by cutting public spending elsewhere.’ It continued that ‘the manifesto will be a fully-costed programme for government, so any policy for which resources cannot be identified will be excluded.’93 Elsewhere the message was still more succinct: ‘cuts will be necessary to deliver any priorities.’94 The 2009 pre-manifesto summed up the dilemmas of the ‘promise’ of Liberal Democracy in one sense, for here were laid out the things the party might do, not what they would do. The problem with the language of liberalism Clegg sought to assert was that it could mean all things to all people, but central to its economic framing was the assumption of market primacy. In this, Clegg did aspire to restate ‘classical liberalism in a modern setting’ as Cable had enjoined, often under the intellectual influence of David Laws, the party’s short-lived Chief Secretary to the Treasury who returned to the coalition later in its life. When the 2010 General Election resulted in a hung parliament, Clegg had laid the ground for negotiations with the Conservatives through repeatedly stating that he would negotiate with the party with the ‘most votes and the most seats’, which in practice was always likely to mean the Tories, overturning the constitutional norm that the sitting Prime Minister should be the first to be consulted.95 A Fresh Start for Britain had cleared the ground for a manifesto which would make working with the Conservatives possible. Entitled Change That Works For You: Building a Fairer Britain, it espoused the desire to ‘hard-wire fairness back into national life’.96 When a hung parliament came, and the Liberal Democrats negotiated the coalition agreement with  Finn, ‘Coming of the coalition’.  Liberal Democrats, A Fresh Start for Britain: Choosing a Different, Better Future (London: Liberal Democrats, 2009), p. 10. 94  A Fresh Start for Britain, p. 7. 95  For a detailed analysis of the coalition negotiations, see Finn, ‘Coming of the coalition’. 96  Liberal Democrats, Change That Works For You: General Election Manifesto 2010 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2010). 92 93

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their new partners in the Conservative Party, they claimed they had gotten a good deal, with ‘75 percent of the manifesto’ making it into the final document. However, what was lost was all that mattered. Though the agreement gave leeway for Liberal Democrats to abstain on the Browne Review’s recommendations on higher education finance should these prove to be unacceptable given the party’s commitment to abolish tuition fees, in practice Clegg and Cable decided, in the end, to vote for fee increases and the extension of marketisation into the university. This was coherent with the economic liberalism they shared, but it was not consonant with the manifesto, or the pledge MPs and candidates had signed to vote against any further rises. The party split three ways on the tuition fee issue, but the abandonment of the manifesto pledge went to the heart of what the Liberal Democrats, in the eyes of their voters, were supposed to stand for—as Atkins discusses elsewhere in this volume. More than that, the party reneged on longstanding commitments to prevent further development of nuclear power, and, even more fundamental to liberalism, supported the extension of ‘closed material procedures’ in the judicial framework, better known as secret courts. The 75% of individual ‘promises’ did not matter to the Liberal Democrats’ electoral constituency; as had been the case in the era of the Alliance, many voters did not know what many of those policies were. The ones that did have widespread public resonance were, however, the ones that were dropped.

Conclusion: Promise, Coalition, Aftermath Michael Freeden has written of the ‘naïve myths of political pragmatism’ which characterise ‘the Anglo-American world’ and which regard ‘ideology as all too often an alien implant’.97 As we have seen, for the SDP, questions of ideology were central to the split with Labour in 1981, albeit that these questions were confused and vaguely formulated. In the course of the 1980s and 1990s, neoliberal political economy in the form of Thatcherism became political common sense, with the Blairite project in the Labour Party seeking to move New Labour into a post-ideological ‘third way’, ‘beyond left and right’ as Anthony Giddens described it. The Alliance and then the Liberal Democrats were keen to distinguish themselves as modern parties who were no ‘prisoners of ideology.’ New Labour, 97  Michael Freeden, ‘Ideology and political theory’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 11 (2006), pp. 3–22 at p. 4.

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and its attitude to the past, represented a reification of this self-­ understanding, and having failed to ‘break the mould’ in the 1980s as the Alliance, the Liberal Democrats spent the 1990s running to catch up. The Alliance had been born in a declinist political paradigm, and their promises in the 1980s reflected this. But the Liberal Democrats came of age in the wake of Thatcherism, and the acceptance of its economic framework by Labour. Those elites which came to dominate the party after 2005, as Clegg claimed, were formed politically in the context of New Labour as much as by Thatcherism itself, if not more so. They were beholden to different mythologies of politics; for them, there was no usable past of post-war social democracy or Gaitskellite revisionism. Rather, they came of age themselves politically in an era when the virtues of the market stood unquestioned. This led to a generational fissure in the party; Kennedy, ousted in 2006, had been elected in 1983. Despite the brief interregnum of Ming Campbell, less than two years later he would be followed as leader by Clegg, who had been elected in 2005. And while Campbell claimed to be of ‘the centre-left’, his version of leftism was Grimond liberalism; and Grimond had been much more enthusiastic about markets, vouchers, and a radically different attitude to the state than, for example, Steel. Campbell was the exception that proved the rule in the enunciation of the ‘promise of Liberal Democracy’ in terms of a modernised classical liberalism. In his first party conference speech he asserted his opposition to technocratic politics and reasserted his credentials as a man of the left, emphasising the need for social justice. He claimed he did not want to lead ‘a third managerial party.’98 But at the same conference, the party passed a policy motion committing it to part-­privatisation of the Royal Mail, which Campbell’s speech celebrated. The promise of Liberal Democracy had evolved, but in economic terms there would be no significant attempt to redraw the boundaries of state and market or to reject the Thatcherite consensus. As the 1990s wore on, the declinist framing of Alliance policy documents which saw the essential question as the weakness of the British state gave way to a more emphatically neoliberal emphasis on globalisation and the need to serve international market demand, and promote the competitiveness of the British economy. There is little to distinguish Liberal Democrat political economy from that of New Labour in this period; whilst in the 1992 and 1997 98  Sir Menzies Campbell MP, Speech to the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, Harrogate, 2 March 2006.

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General Elections differentiation had been sought in the form of ‘USP’ policies which would focus attention on the party’s progressive character (notably the education tax pledge), these were not deeply rooted in a meaningfully distinct policy framework. It is possible, reviewing the development of the ‘promise of Liberal Democracy’, to agree ultimately with Rentoul’s comment on ‘soggy social democracy’ and Ashdown’s own reflection on ‘soggy corporatism’ persisting within the party, but without agreeing with their broader evaluation. The issue was not that social democratic tendencies and policies persisted within the party—they did—but that they lost the struggle to define the party’s direction, not least through their own intellectually lightweight attempts to define it and through their own desire for partisan reasons to seek identification as liberals. By the mid-1990s the party was emphatically rejecting the language of social democracy as that of a bygone age, and redefining itself exclusively in ‘liberal’ terms. The failure of the ‘social liberals’ to be able to define their agenda in a compelling way and maintain control of the party leadership—and the success of their opponents on the ‘economic liberal’ side—ultimately meant that, in terms of the ideological debate, the ‘liberal tradition’ was increasingly that of ‘classical liberalism’, which, reimagined in the course of the party’s development in the 1990s and 2000s, essentially amounted to an acceptance of neoliberal political economy. Even if one were to accept the claim that those under discussion here were no ‘prisoners of ideology’—and that would be unwise—they assuredly were ‘prisoners of the past’, to borrow a phrase from Richard Jobson’s innovative study of the Labour Party.99 As Sloman argues, in relation to the mid-twentieth century, ‘Liberal ideas did not derive from a fixed ideology, as Marxian socialism was often (rightly or wrongly) believed to, but nor was Liberalism wholly open-ended; rather, Liberals tended to define their creed historically.’100 When they did so, they regularly cited Hobhouse, Hobson, and the ‘New Liberalism’ of the Edwardian period, but this was a genuflection, and in the case of the Orange Book, the Edwardian ‘welfare state’ was the high point. The welfare state of the Attlee era, of which the SDP had once been proud, and to which the Liberals had at times tried to lay claim through invoking Beveridge and Keynes, was encapsulated in the 99  Richard Jobson, Nostalgia and the Post-War Labour Party: Prisoners of the Past (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018). 100  Sloman, Liberal Party and the Economy, 1929–1964, p. 10.

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phrase ‘the state socialism that disfigured British politics in the twentieth century’.101 Sloman’s point is correct: the Liberals, and later the Liberal Democrats, did not consistently adhere to a fixed ideology, but their historical self-understanding amounted to (to rephrase Jon Lawrence on Labour) the ‘myths the Liberals had lived by’. By the 1990s the most viable myth, it seemed to many party elites (if not members), was that of ‘classical liberalism’. When the party entered in coalition in 2010 much depended on political manouevre and contingency. Nonetheless, it is a contention here that the instability of the Liberal Democrats’ broader philosophical promise represented a key issue in terms of their failure to deliver a distinctive agenda in the coalition government. Notwithstanding real successes such as gay marriage, the party’s performance as a whole was difficult to identify as distinctive, nor was it clear what the broader ‘Liberal’ legacy of coalition was, other than to have facilitated a Conservative austerity agenda. During coalition, Clegg, responding to his party’s waning electoral fortunes, attempted to revive the concept of the ‘radical centre’ in a series of party conference speeches. But it clearly meant different things to Nick Clegg than it had to Roy Jenkins, who Clegg in a later book openly admitted he did not identify with politically. Even Charles Kennedy, who confessed to me in the leader’s office in 2005 that he had been switched on to politics by Jenkins’ Dimbleby lecture, meant different things by it than either Clegg or Jenkins. The Liberal Democrats had not developed a coherent ‘promise of Liberal Democracy’ by the advent of coalition. There was no way to know which way the party would go for the average voter who did not engage substantively with the minutiae of intra-party factionalism. But in terms of that factionalism, it also presented problems for the embattled social liberals, who founded a Social Liberal Forum in 2009 and attempted a rearguard action against the economic liberal conception of the party’s identity and policies. The problem they faced was after 2010 those who might have supported them in large part simply deserted the Liberal Democrats. The Alliance had been, in the end, a marriage of convenience—split even within its constituent parties, let alone between them. It never offered a coherent ‘promise’. The synthesis which followed in the merged party under Ashdown and Kennedy, of signpost policies representing higher public spending, was still framed in terms of the broader context of  Paul Marshall, ‘Introduction’, in Marshall and Laws eds., Orange Book, p. 2.

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neoliberal political economy. And the ease with which these commitments were shed highlighted how little they were integrated into a clear sense of Liberal Democrat philosophy. It’s About Freedom had attempted to sketch out ‘core values’. But as Richard Toye has shown in the case of Labour, ‘core values’ can be a movable feast.102 For a party which relied on at times highly-specious framings of history, which was not, in truth, fighting a national campaign but a series of local campaigns anchored in an acceptance of a market consensus, such core values were ever more pliable. As the activist magazine Liberator lamented in 2005, policy often seemed to be made without reference to core values in any event. In the end, the discursive landscape of Liberal Democracy was both too broad—in terms of policies—and too narrow, in terms of the consistent prioritisation of the market. The party never ceased to be other than a reactive, tactical force at elite level. The ‘ultra-Remain’ position in response to the issue of Brexit adopted by new party leader Jo Swinson needs to be seen in this light: as a differentiator which is not rooted in a particular set of Liberal Democrat values, notwithstanding their pro-Europeanism. The party had, after all, under Clegg’s leadership sought an in/out referendum to create problems for Cameron over the Lisbon Treaty. Liberal Democracy now has a singular ‘promise’, a ‘USP’ if you will (‘bollocks to Brexit’), but the legacy of five years of coalition is evidence that the party has failed to deliver a coherent vernacular understanding of its broader ‘promise’ amongst a wide public. Insofar as it did, ‘classical liberalism in a modern setting’ has been seen as simply an apologia for Conservative cuts.

102  Richard Toye, ‘“The smallest party in history”: New Labour in historical perspective’; Labour History Review, 69 (2004), pp. 83–103.

‘We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry’: The Liberal Democrats’ 2015 General Election Campaign and the Legacy of the Tuition Fees Debacle Judi Atkins

This chapter examines the impact of a broken pledge on subsequent attempts at promise-making. It proceeds from Eric Schniter et al.’s observation that, ‘to restore damaged trust, promise-breakers [use] apologies and upgraded promises,’ and it will assess these strategies through the lens of rhetorical analysis.1 This approach is well suited to the task because, as Jonathan Charteris-Black puts it, rhetoric is ‘a crucial means by which [a 1  Eric Schniter, Roman M. Sheremeta and Daniel Sznycer, ‘Building and rebuilding trust with promises and apologies,’ Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 94 (2013), pp. 242–56, at p. 242.

Nick Clegg, Nick Clegg’s tuition fees apology, 20 September 2012 http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/09/20/ watch-nick-clegg-s-tuition-fees-apology J. Atkins (*) Aston University, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_13

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politician can] create and restore’ their image.2 The analysis is founded on the three modes of persuasion identified by Aristotle, namely the character of the speaker (ethos), the emotions of an audience (pathos) and factual evidence (logos). It takes as its case study the UK Liberal Democrats, who made a commitment to abolish university tuition fees while in opposition but reneged on it in government, and considers the effects of this broken promise on the Party’s general election campaign in 2015. To this end, it examines two keynote speeches delivered by the Party Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, as well as the two televised debates in which he and Prime Minister David Cameron participated, and the Liberal Democrats’ 2015 manifesto. The chapter begins with an overview of the Liberal Democrats’ approach to university funding between 2010 and 2015. Next, it examines the rhetorical strategies that Clegg employed in his efforts to restore his credibility during the 2015 general election campaign. The chapter then considers the language of the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto promises, revealing that Clegg frequently employed the rhetorical technique of antithesis to undermine his opponents while explaining what his party would bring to a possible second coalition. However, after five years of austerity, his criticisms of the Conservatives’ economic policy appeared disingenuous, while the revival of ‘fairness’ as a guiding principle similarly lacked plausibility. This inability to restore public trust proved costly, as the Liberal Democrats would lose 49 of their 57 parliamentary seats. The chapter proceeds to reflect on why the broken promise on tuition fees proved so disastrous for the Liberal Democrats, before concluding that the episode has become a contemporary iteration of the ‘betrayal myth,’ a warning to politicians against making promises on which they cannot deliver.

The Liberal Democrats and Higher Education Funding, 2010–15 With Lord Browne’s report on university funding due after the 2010 general election, the Liberal Democrat leadership faced a dilemma. On the one hand, they were keen to maximize their electoral impact in university towns but, on the other, they wished to present themselves as a 2  Jonathan Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edn., 2011), p. 221.

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prospective party of government.3 Given that Browne was expected to recommend a graduate tax or an increase in tuition fees, Clegg and Vince Cable, the Party’s then Deputy Leader and Treasury Spokesperson, urged the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Policy Committee to ‘embrace fiscal realism and concentrate on assistance for less affluent students rather than to persist in outright opposition to tuition charges of any sort.’4 After considerable debate the Committee accepted that some spending discipline was necessary, and it was thus that the Party’s 2010 manifesto included a promise to ‘scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree.’ They bolstered this pledge with an appeal to logos, saying: ‘We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income.’5 Although senior Liberal Democrats concurred that tuition fees would not be one of the Party’s key manifesto pledges,6 they became headline news during the campaign. In anticipation of their likely increase, the National Union of Students (NUS) asked parliamentary candidates from all parties to sign its ‘Funding our Future’ pledge, which stated that: ‘I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the Government to introduce a fairer alternative.’7 Many Liberal Democrat MPs were photographed holding their signed pledges, including Clegg, Cable and the former party leaders Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy. Indeed, Clegg reinforced his commitment with the words: ‘Not only will we oppose any raising of the cap, we will scrap tuition fees for good, including for part-time students … Students can make the difference in countless seats in this election. Use your vote to block those unfair tuition fees and get them scrapped once and for all.’8 In 3  Matthew d’Ancona, In It Together: The Inside Story of the Coalition Government (London: Penguin 2013), p. 60. 4  d’Ancona, In It Together, pp. 60–1; see also David Laws, Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government (London: Biteback Publishing, 2016), p. 55. 5  Laws, Coalition, pp.  55–6; Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2010 (London: Liberal Democrats, 2010), p. 33. 6  d’Ancona, In It Together, p. 61. 7  NUS, 1000 candidates sign Vote for Students pledge to oppose tuition fee hike, 26 April 2010 https://www.nus.org.uk/en/news/lib-dem-and-labour-mps-would-vote-together-tooppose-tuition-fee-rise/ 8  d’Ancona, In It Together, p. 61.

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the event, a total of 1477 parliamentary candidates endorsed the NUS campaign and all of the 57 elected Liberal Democrat MPs had signed the pledge.9 Following an inconclusive general election result, the Liberal Democrats entered into a full coalition with the Conservative Party. The Browne Report was published five months later, in response to which the Coalition proposed an absolute cap on fees of £9000 per annum. In practice, however, it anticipated that the majority of universities would charge £6000, with a requirement that those exceeding this figure would contribute to a National Scholarship Programme to support students from poorer backgrounds.10 Despite this commitment to widening participation, many Liberal Democrats opposed the policy and, in the December 2010 parliamentary vote, the Party split down the middle. Instead of exercising their option to abstain, 28 Liberal Democrat MPs supported the government.11 As a result, writes David Laws, ‘“broken promises”, “tuition fees”, “Liberal Democrats” and “Nick Clegg” [became] closely tied together in the public mind.’12 Clegg sought to sever this connection in September 2012 by issuing an apology for the U-turn on tuition fees, which took the form of a party political broadcast.13 He began by acknowledging that although many people were glad the Liberal Democrats had entered into coalition to give the country stable leadership in uncertain times, others were ‘disappointed and angry that we couldn’t keep all our promises – above all our promise not to raise tuition fees.’14 Addressing the latter group directly, Clegg said: ‘We made a promise before the election that we would vote against any rise in fees under any circumstances. But that was a mistake. It was a pledge made with the best of intentions – but we shouldn’t have made a promise we weren’t absolutely sure we could deliver.’15 This assertion is ambiguous, as Clegg also told his audience that: ‘There’s no easy way to say this: 9  NUS, MPs who broke the NUS ‘Funding Our Future’ Pledge, 16 April 2015 https://www. nus.org.uk/en/news/nus-funding-our-future-pledge/ 10  Judi Atkins, Conflict, Co-operation and the Rhetoric of Coalition Government (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), p. 47. 11  Robert Hazell and Ben Yong, The Politics of Coalition: How the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government Works (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012), p. 175. 12  Laws, Coalition, p. 62. 13  Ibid., p. 205. 14  Clegg, Tuition fees apology. 15  Ibid.

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we made a pledge, we didn’t stick to it – and for that I am sorry.’16 If we take these statements together, it seems that he was apologizing for making the pledge in the first place, rather than for breaking it in government. As such, it was perhaps unsurprising that despite the fact that the speech had been ‘set to music and posted on YouTube as a dance remix within hours’—and ultimately went viral17—the apology was not enough; trust would remain a significant challenge for the Liberal Democrats. We now consider the strategies that Clegg employed in his efforts to rebuild his party’s credibility in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

The 2015 General Election Campaign: Restoring the Liberal Democrats’ Public Image In a bid to repair the Liberal Democrats’ image, Clegg first reminded his audience of the circumstances surrounding the formation of the Coalition. Thus, he claimed that: ‘The only way we could create a stable government at a time of an economic firestorm, which could’ve engulfed this country, we could’ve been the next domino to fall after Greece and Portugal and Spain, was the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.’18 Specifically, the concern in 2010 was that the bond markets might trigger a sovereign debt crisis if the government failed to devise a convincing economic strategy. However, Clegg’s definition of the situation is contestable, as ‘British bonds were still long-dated, in sharp contrast to the terms offered to Greece and other struggling economies in the eurozone.’19 In short, the UK economy was not on the brink of collapse. Nevertheless, Clegg used this economic narrative, with its vivid metaphor of fire and destruction, to evoke feelings of relief (pathos) that disaster was averted. In turn, by claiming the credit for the Liberal Democrats, he sought to construct an ethos of statesmanship and thus show the electorate that his party was fit to be in government. To reinforce this argument, Clegg pointed out that the Liberal Democrats could have taken the easy option and refused to enter into a  Ibid.  d’Ancona, In It Together, p. 291. 18  BBC, Question Time – Election Leaders Special, 30 April 2015 https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=VE5HFj-qCdg 19  Andrew Gamble, ‘Economic policy,’ in Timothy Heppell and David Seawright, eds., Cameron and the Conservatives: The Transition to Coalition Government (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 59–73 at p. 69. 16 17

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coalition with the Conservatives. However, he continued, ‘We did the responsible thing. We did the fair thing. We did the gutsy thing. We stepped up to the plate and put the good of the country first even though it meant working with people we disagreed with.’20 By cultivating an ethos of courage and moral rectitude he sought to counter the accusation that the Liberal Democrats had compromised their integrity, while simultaneously distancing them from their governing partner. Furthermore, Clegg portrayed himself as a conviction politician, asserting that ‘I will never apologize, never apologize, whatever the short-term political effects on the Liberal Democrats,’ for placing the national interest over that of his party.21 Here, he created a ‘subliminal association’ between the Liberal Democrats and patriotism,22 presenting his party as the nation’s saviour at its time of crisis and himself as a strong, principled leader. Meanwhile, the second strand of Clegg’s rhetoric of image restoration comprised an acknowledgement of, and an apology for, the tuition fees debacle. On the BBC’s Question Time Special, for instance, he responded to a question from an audience member with the words: ‘I got it wrong, I said sorry – musically, no less. When you make a mistake … in politics just as in life, sometimes you can’t do exactly what you want. I was absolutely between a rock and a hard place five years ago on that particular policy.’23 In this extract, Clegg’s joke about his 2012 apology ‘participates in the pathos appeal inasmuch as it stirs an audience’s emotions to laughter – but more importantly, it participates in the ethos appeal inasmuch as laughter is based on a set of common assumptions’ or, in this case, shared knowledge of a past event.24 However, there was a risk of Clegg’s use of humour backfiring, as it could have been interpreted as insincerity or an attempt to make light of the issue. For students facing the prospect of 30  years of debt, it was clearly no laughing matter.25

20  Nick Clegg, Speech Launching the Liberal Democrat Manifesto, 15 April 2015 http:// www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/04/15/nick-clegg-manifesto-speech-in-full 21  BBC, Question Time. 22  Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric, p. 196. 23  BBC, Question Time. 24  Sam Leith, You Talkin’ to Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama (London: Profile Books, 2011), p. 70. 25  Simon Griffiths, ‘Education policy: consumerism and competition,’ in Matt Beech and Simon Lee, eds., The Conservative-Liberal Coalition: Examining the Cameron-Clegg Government (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 36–49 at p. 44.

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By (appearing to) admit that he had erred, Clegg used the rhetorical technique of paromologia—that is, conceding a weaker point in order to advance a stronger one. This allowed him to construct an ethos of honesty while seeking to engender empathy (pathos) for his apparently impossible predicament. The figure of paromologia also permits a speaker to ‘shift the emphasis of the argument in a way finally favourable to [them].’26 So, to this end, Clegg employed logos to highlight the benefits of the Coalition’s policy, saying: ‘We did the next-best thing, got the fairest deal possible, and thankfully now there are more young people going to university than ever before on full-time courses, and there are more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.’27 However, this argument did not persuade the then Labour leader, Ed Miliband, who criticized Clegg for ‘describing a broken promise as the next-best thing’ and, by implication, for seeking to downplay his party’s breach of the electorate’s good faith.28 In response Clegg deployed the rhetorical technique of antithesis, or contrast, to attack Miliband’s ethos. Thus, he drew on the Coalition’s economic narrative, according to which the previous Labour government’s overspending had caused the UK’s structural deficit, to assert that: ‘I’ve apologized, I’ve taken responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made. Why don’t you, in front of the British people, Ed Miliband, apologize for your role in crashing … the British economy?’29 In short, Clegg tried to seize the moral high ground from his opponent and, at the same time, to convey an ethos of statesmanship. Clegg’s third image restoration strategy was similarly designed to project an ethos of governing competence, as it called attention to the Liberal Democrats’ achievements in the previous parliament. In particular, he reminded his audience that, ‘When we formed the Coalition in 2010, three quarters of our manifesto became part of the government’s agenda. The priorities on its front page: Fairer taxes; investment in the poorest children in schools; fixing the economy; and political reform, became central to what the coalition government did.’30 To support this statement Clegg appealed to logos, listing key Liberal Democrat policies that had been implemented under the Coalition. Among these were the raising of the income tax threshold, a ‘bold, liberal reform of our pensions system,’  Leith, You Talkin’ to Me?, pp. 70, 124.  ITV, The ITV Leaders’ Debate (UK General Election 2015), 2 April 2015 https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=2oLlD2WXsYY; see also BBC, Question Time. 28  ITV, Leaders’ Debate. 29  ITV, Leaders’ Debate; Atkins, The Rhetoric of Coalition Government, pp. 36–9. 30  Clegg, Manifesto Launch Speech. 26 27

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and legislation to ensure that ‘all love – gay or straight – is valued equally.’31 Clegg thereby sought to rebuild credibility by claiming the Coalition’s successes for his own party. In practice, however, these initiatives had not attained ‘sufficient visibility to be strongly associated with the Liberal Democrats,’ and indeed, the Conservatives had tried to take all the credit for equal marriage for David Cameron.32 Instead, the Liberal Democrats were linked most closely with their broken pledges on deficit reduction and tuition fees, as well as the failure of the referendum on the Alternative Vote in 2011–three damaging associations that they were unable to shake off.33 The same problem befell Clegg’s attempts to challenge the public perception that the Liberal Democrats had little—if any—influence over the direction of Coalition policy. Drawing on his party’s commitment to fairness, he explained that ‘I’ve always tried to take decisions where we spread the burden as fairly as possible … I’ve resisted time and time again much, much deeper cuts to benefits, to the help given to the most vulnerable, those who’ve fallen on hard times, as advocated by the Conservatives in government.’34 However, Clegg’s case failed to convince because, as the smaller party, the Liberal Democrats’ role in the coalition was less visible to the electorate.35 Not only that, but his claims had to be taken on trust at a time when his credibility was low; as one audience member at the BBC debate put it, ‘Your promise on student fees has destroyed your reputation. Why would we believe anything you said?’36 Despite this considerable challenge, Clegg continued to depict the Liberal Democrats as a moderating force by drawing on their record in office. His efforts to enhance ethos are clearly evident in his contention that ‘The only way to continue the balanced approach that the Coalition has taken is to put Liberal Democrats in government again.’37 We examine further Clegg’s claim to the centre ground of British politics in the following section.  Ibid.  Hazell and Yong, The Politics of Coalition, p. 203; Laws, Coalition, p. 108. 33  Hazell and Yong, The Politics of Coalition, p. 203. 34  BBC, Question Time. 35  Atkins, The Rhetoric of Coalition Government, p. 133. 36  Quoted in Hugh Muir, ‘Nick Clegg makes the best of a bad job,’ in Gaby Hinsliff, Anne Perkins and Hugh Muir, ‘Question Time leaders’ performances: Guardian columnists give their verdict,’ Guardian, 30 April 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/ apr/30/camerons-question-time-performance-smooth-smiley-but-unconvincing 37  Nick Clegg, We don’t think it’s fair to make the poorest pay for the wealthiest, 12 April 2015 https://www.libdemvoice.org/nick-clegg-we-dont-think-its-fair-to-make-the-poorest-pay-for-the-wealthiest-45442.html 31 32

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The Rhetoric of the Liberal Democrats’ 2015 Election Promises In his speech at the launch of the Liberal Democrat manifesto, Clegg described this document as ‘a plan to finish the job of balancing the books, and to do so fairly by protecting our schools, hospitals and public services.’ Once again he sought to project an ethos of statesmanship based on his party’s achievements, and he told his listeners that the manifesto ‘is not a shopping list of pie in the sky ideas, but a set of proposals that builds on our record of action in government.’38 Clegg’s assertion that the Liberal Democrats had delivered on key commitments while in office also represented an attempt to cultivate an ethos of governing competence and restore public trust. This is made explicit in the following extract: We can say we will cut taxes for millions of working people because that is what we have done every year in government. We can say we will invest in education because we have protected schools funding and created the Pupil Premium in government. We can say we will properly fund the NHS [National Health Service] and ensure equality for mental health because we have increased health spending and directed hundreds of millions of pounds to mental health treatment in government.39

In turn, the logos appeal based on promises fulfilled provided Clegg with a starting point for making new pledges. Thus, he continued, the Liberal Democrats in government would increase the tax-free Personal Allowance to £12,500; provide ‘opportunity for every child, with guaranteed funding from nursery to 19’ and invest an additional £8 billion in the NHS.40 These promises, together with commitments to eliminate the deficit fairly and protect the environment, were the Liberal Democrats’ top five priorities for government, and indeed Clegg asserted that they would ‘fight tooth and nail for [them] in the next parliament.’ Again drawing on the Liberal Democrats’ record, Clegg sought to reassure both his party and the electorate that he could be trusted on this, saying: ‘I would not have recommended to the Liberal Democrats that we join the Coalition in 2010 if our front page priorities were not included in the Coalition

 Clegg, Manifesto Launch Speech.  Clegg, Manifesto Launch Speech. 40  Ibid. 38 39

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Agreement. And I will take the same approach this time.’41 It is worth noting here that the opinion polls were pointing to a second hung parliament and, as a result, the Liberal Democrats believed their messaging ‘needed to reflect what [they] would bring to a coalition government.’42 It was perhaps with this in mind that Clegg characterized the manifesto as ‘an insurance policy against a government lurching off to the extremes,’ with the Liberal Democrats acting as a counterweight to the ideological ‘excesses’ of Labour and the Conservative Party alike.43 By positioning themselves as a centrist party, the Liberal Democrats opened up the possibility of making pledges through antithesis. In other words, they attempted to distinguish their approach from that of Labour and the Conservatives, and then to use these points of contrast as a basis for setting out their own commitments. To achieve the first of these goals Clegg called attention to the supposed deficiencies of his rivals, claiming that ‘the Liberal Democrats will add a heart to a Conservative government and a brain to a Labour one.’44 There are echoes here of the SDP-Liberal Alliance’s 1987 general election campaign, which featured the slogan ‘Only the Alliance can satisfy your head and your heart.’45 However, Clegg adopted a rather different strategy and depicted his party as analogous to the Wizard of Oz; after all, it was only the Liberal Democrats who could give their (potential) partners the qualities they needed to govern well. This is an example of personification, through which Clegg conferred a positive evaluation on his party as a powerful but benevolent wizard, or kingmaker. By contrast, Labour and the Conservatives were negatively evaluated in this strategy of ‘depersonification.’46 That is, they were portrayed as incomplete human beings who, respectively, lacked responsibility and a sense of fairness, and therefore could not be trusted to run the country alone.

 Ibid.  Olly Grender, ‘Chill wind: The Liberal Democrat campaign,’ in Dominic Wring, Roger Mortimore and Simon Atkinson, eds., Political Communication in Britain: Polling, Campaigning and Media in the 2015 General Election (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 151–60 at p. 154. 43  Clegg, Manifesto Launch Speech. 44  Ibid. 45  David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1987 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), p. 178. 46  Charteris-Black, Politicians and Rhetoric, p. 257. 41 42

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However, opponents could respond that, like the Great and Powerful Oz, the Liberal Democrats were nothing more than con artists. Their apparent capitulation to the Conservatives while in coalition had shown the nation ‘the man behind the curtain,’ and the electorate were unlikely to suspend their disbelief for a second time. This again highlights the scale of the problem of trust confronting the Liberal Democrats, but it did not deter Clegg from making further promises through antithesis as the following statement shows: ‘I will always act responsibly. I’ll never let anyone else borrow money that we don’t have and jeopardize your … jobs and your economy. And above all, I will always act fairly, I won’t let anyone else impose ideological cuts on your hospitals and your schools. And I will always serve the whole of our country … our wonderful United Kingdom.’47 In rejecting the alleged sectionalism of the two main parties, Clegg again cultivated the ethos of a patriotic leader who would uphold the interests of the entire nation while in government. He also sought to project the image of a principled statesman, who had the strength to keep the impulses of his prospective coalition partner(s) under control. The Liberal Democrats elaborated their deficit reduction strategy in the 2015 manifesto. Whereas Labour would ‘borrow too much money and expect our children to pay it back’48 and the Conservatives ‘appear to believe in making the poorest and the most vulnerable in our society pay for the wealthiest,’49 the Liberal Democrats would instead ‘use taxes on the wealthiest, on banks and big business and on polluters, and … bear down on tax avoidance, to limit the impact of deficit reduction on public services.’50 The antithesis between the Liberal Democrats’ pledges and Labour’s approach was relatively uncontested, due to the continued dominance of the Coalition’s narrative that their predecessors’ fiscal irresponsibility had caused the nation’s structural deficit.51 However, the criticism of their erstwhile governing partner’s ‘ideological cuts’ was problematic. After all, the Liberal Democrats had signed up to the Conservatives’ austerity programme during the coalition negotiations and, moreover, had broadly supported most of the government’s welfare reforms—including  ITV, Leaders’ Debate.  Liberal Democrats, Manifesto 2015: Stronger Economy. Fairer Society. Opportunity for Everyone (London: Liberal Democrats, 2015), p. 18. 49  Clegg, We don’t think it’s fair. 50  Liberal Democrats, Manifesto 2015, p. 19. 51  Atkins, The Rhetoric of Coalition Government, p. 151. 47 48

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‘those identified as causing hardship’52 such as the under-occupancy penalty (the so-called bedroom tax). As demonstrated below, this aspect of their record would undermine their efforts to ground key policy pledges in their ideological commitment to fairness. At the core of the Liberal Democrats’ case for their deficit reduction strategy was the concept of fairness. As Clegg put it: ‘The only way we’re going to instil optimism is if we wipe the slate clean for the next generation. We have to release [the younger generation] of the debt and the deficit of this generation … I don’t want any of our children to pay the price for this generation’s mistakes.’53 With these words, Clegg created an antithesis between his party’s approach and that of Labour. However, in promising to eliminate the deficit for the sake of inter-generational fairness, he also used pathos to invoke a sense of justice and responsibility in his audience. The belief that the innocent should not be punished for the wrongdoing of others has widespread resonance, and Clegg appealed to this moral intuition in a bid to present himself as a principled politician who was prepared to put the Liberal Democrats’ values into practice. Fairness also came to the fore in the inter-party debates over education policy. The Liberal Democrat manifesto contained pledges to protect at least the Pupil Premium—if not the education budget—in real terms, to ‘consider carefully the merits of extending the Premium, and introduce a fair National Funding Formula.’54 By contrast, Cameron had admitted that the Conservatives ‘could not promise to inflation-proof education funding,’ which would entail a real-term budget cut of approximately ten per cent for England’s schools.55 This reduction was worth over £3 billion and, for Clegg, it was ‘no way to guarantee fairness.’56 Indeed, he stated categorically that ‘the Liberal Democrats will not go into any coalition, any government, we won’t sign a coalition agreement if either of those parties insist on those cuts to our education system.’57 This assertion was 52  Libby McEnhill, ‘Unity and distinctiveness in UK Coalition Government: lessons for junior partners,’ The Political Quarterly, 86 (2015), pp. 101–09 at p. 108. 53  ITV, Leaders’ Debate. 54  Liberal Democrats, Manifesto 2015, p. 57. 55  Sally Weale, Frances Perraudin and Patrick Wintour, ‘Conservatives to cut school funding by 10% if they win general election,’ Guardian, 2 February 2015 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/feb/02/conservatives-cut-school-funding-david-cameroneducation-budget 56  ITV, Leaders’ Debate. 57  BBC, Question Time.

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intended to contribute to an ethos of moral conviction, while reminding the two main parties of the Liberal Democrats’ potential role as kingmaker in a subsequent hung parliament. However, with the memory of the tuition fees episode still fresh in the minds of his rivals and the electorate, Clegg’s promise to safeguard education funding as a matter of principle rang somewhat hollow. The Liberal Democrats’ record in office further undermined their efforts to use their belief in fairness as a basis for making new promises. In the ITV Leaders’ Debate, for instance, Clegg attacked the Conservatives’ ‘ideologically driven cuts’ to the education budget and told Cameron that: ‘I remember vividly when your party wanted to cut spending for schools at the beginning of the last Parliament, and I said “No” because you don’t make society fairer by cutting the money that goes to nurseries, colleges and schools.’ Cameron retaliated by reminding Clegg that ‘we sat in the Cabinet room together, we took difficult decisions together. Nick, I defend all of the decisions we took, and I think your … pick-n-mix approach really is not going to convince anyone.’58 This counter-attack enabled Cameron to retake the moral high ground from Clegg, while undermining the former Deputy Prime Minister’s efforts to project a principled ethos. Not only that, but Clegg’s efforts to invoke pathos by appealing to his audience’s sense of fairness appeared insincere and opportunistic. There was a widespread perception that the Coalition’s austerity measures were hitting the most vulnerable members of society the hardest, the result of which was that ‘no amount of effort on the part of Liberal Democrat ministers to bolt “fairness” onto each and every cut in public expenditure [seemed to work] with the electorate.’59 Contrary to expectations, the 2015 general election produced a decisive outcome. While the Conservatives won a parliamentary majority of 12, the Liberal Democrats lost 49 seats and finished with only eight MPs.60 A number of factors contributed to this poor performance, among which were ‘the loss of trust and competence, the failings of leadership, the focus on issues which lacked salience with voters, the incoherent presentation of the party’s role in the Coalition and the party’s attempts to rectify the  ITV, Leaders’ Debate.  Mark Stuart, ‘The formation of the Coalition,’ in Simon Lee and Matt Beech, eds., The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 38–55 at p. 53. 60  Atkins, The Rhetoric of Coalition Government, p. 151. 58 59

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problems by adopting the failed equidistance stance of the early 1990s.’61 We can add to this list the inability of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to deploy an effective rhetorical strategy of image restoration, which would have increased their credibility and thus provided a stronger foundation for their manifesto promises. As a consequence of this failure the electorate focused not on their plans for the future, but on their broken pledges and the U-turns they had made in the past. This raises the question of why the tuition fees episode caused such grave damage to the Liberal Democrats, given that the breaking of promises is an occupational hazard for governments of all stripes, and we consider this below.

Why the Broken Pledge on Tuition Fees Was So Detrimental to the Liberal Democrats A partial explanation for the negative impact of the Liberal Democrats’ broken promise is the mismatch between the Party’s priorities and those of the electorate. As Robert Hazell and Ben Yong explain, ‘constitutional reform and climate change are close to the hearts of the Lib Dems, but the polls have long shown they are less of a concern to the general public.’62 Indeed, the four top priorities in the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 manifesto were: ‘Fair taxes that put money back in your pocket. A fair chance for every child. A fair future, creating jobs by making Britain greener. A fair deal for you from politicians’; the pledge on tuition fees was conspicuous by its absence.63 Similarly, in March 2010, senior party figures had agreed that the latter policy should not be a ‘red line’ in any subsequent coalition negotiations, though at the time they continued to adhere to the underlying assumption that they would ‘resist raising the tuition fee cap.’64 During the 2010 campaign, the Liberal Democrat leadership found themselves defending a policy commitment they not only had ceased to believe in, but also had tried to amend. On this basis, the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson, suggested that they ‘probably thought the public already knew they had no intention of [abolishing tuition fees] and didn’t 61  David Cutts and Andrew Russell, ‘From coalition to catastrophe: the electoral meltdown of the Liberal Democrats,’ Parliamentary Affairs, 68 (2015), pp. 70–87 at p. 84. 62  Hazell and Yong, The Politics of Coalition, p. 202. 63  Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat Manifesto, p.  9; see also Nick Clegg, Politics: Between the Extremes (London: Vintage, 2016), p. 28. 64  Laws, Coalition, p. 57.

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really believe in it. But the public didn’t know that.’65 If Robinson is correct, senior party figures had seriously misread the mood of the electorate, as for many people the pledge on student fees was the Liberal Democrats’ ‘unique selling point.’ In Mike Finn’s words, it was not simply ‘an outdated sectional issue which could be used to mobilize a target group in marginal seats’; rather, it was a totemic commitment that was vital in distinguishing them from the two main parties.66 Reinforcing this contrast were the Liberal Democrats’ other strategies for differentiation, which centred on their ‘outsider’ status and the claim that they were ‘not like the other parties.’ As noted above, the Liberal Democrats emblazoned their commitment to give the electorate ‘a fair deal by cleaning up politics’ on the front of the 2010 manifesto.67 To this end, they promised to ‘stamp out corruption and abuse by giving people power to sack corrupt MPs,’ which resonated strongly with voters in the aftermath of the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal.68 Their intention to restore public trust in politics was equally evident in their campaign slogan ‘No more broken promises,’ while ‘the very first image in the Liberal Democrat general election broadcast (entitled Say Goodbye to Broken Promises [and televised on 13 April 2010]) was a shot of a Labour pledge, stating “no student tuition fees.”’69 Through these differentiation strategies the Liberal Democrats cultivated an ethos of integrity, which contrasted starkly with the alleged sleaze and dishonesty they associated with their opponents. Perhaps as a result of this, the electorate had high expectations of the Party as it entered government with promises of delivering a ‘new politics.’70 The university funding debacle would destroy this carefully constructed ethos, which had been a cornerstone of the 2010 campaign. Here, the problem was not merely that the Liberal Democrats had broken their 65  Quoted by Brian Walker, ‘The Coalition and the media,’ in Hazell and Yong, The Politics of Coalition, p. 143. 66  Mike Finn, ‘The Coalition and the Liberal Democrats,’ in Anthony Seldon and Mike Finn, eds., The Coalition Effect 2010–2015 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 492–519 at p. 502. 67  Liberal Democrats, Liberal Democrat Manifesto. 68  Ibid., p. 10. 69  Finn, ‘The Coalition and the Liberal Democrats,’ p. 500. 70  Nick Clegg, Theresa May, Vince Cable, George Osborne and David Cameron, Press Conference on The Coalition: Our Programme for Government, 20 May 2010 https://www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/press-conference-on-the-coalition-our-programme-for-government

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promises on abolishing tuition fees and preventing them from rising further. More seriously, the issue ‘came to be seen as the “proof” of betrayal by voters who were already unhappy to see the Liberal Democrats in coalition with the Conservatives on any terms. It became both an issue of “trust,” and a symbol of the “betrayal” of coalition.’71 In rhetorical terms, the tuition fees controversy functioned as a synecdoche, whereby a ‘part’ (i.e. the broken promise) came to stand for the ‘whole’ (i.e. the ‘treachery’ of their decision to govern with the Conservatives).72 Although it could be argued that another policy, such as the Coalition’s NHS reforms, could equally have performed this role, Clegg believed this was a moot point. After all, he claimed, ‘it was the tuition fees decision that came to symbolize the growing narrative about [the Liberal Democrats]: that our behaviour in the Coalition was one of weakness and loss of principle.’73 However, this was only part of the story because, ‘as Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg himself seemed increasingly toxic. The tuition fees issue rather than being the source of the problem became a symbol of his personal failure.’74 Through a form of personification the Liberal Democrats’ ‘betrayal’ had come to be embodied in the figure of Clegg, thereby conferring a negative evaluation on both his character and his leadership. Once again, the hostility of this response can be traced back to the 2010 general election campaign, where Clegg had ‘personally highlighted the “broken promises” of others’75 and so laid claim to the moral high ground. But, with the U-turn on tuition fees, he was transformed into a leader who was ‘just like the rest,’ one who was willing to sacrifice his party’s values on the altar of power. In effect he was guilty of a double betrayal, having broken his pledges on delivering a new, cleaner politics and on university funding. The depth of public disappointment in Clegg was evident in the Question Time Special where, Hugh Muir writes, ‘Cameron and Miliband face[d] partisan probing and disbelief, but Clegg [met] disdain. The two other leaders saw their policies pulled apart. Once Clegg stepped out, the target was him.’76

 Laws, Coalition, p. 50.  See Richard A.  Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2nd edn., 1991), p. 148. 73  Clegg, Politics, p. 33. See also Grender, ‘Chill wind,’ p. 159. 74  Cutts and Russell, ‘From coalition to catastrophe,’ p. 72. 75  Ibid. 76  Muir, ‘Nick Clegg makes the best of a bad job.’ 71 72

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Reflecting on his time in office, Clegg described the decision to sign the NUS pledge as a ‘terrible misjudgement.’77 A refusal would have been difficult given the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto commitment to scrap tuition fees,78 but he rightly identified the media spectacle that surrounded the pledge as the main cause of his subsequent image problem. In Matthew d’Ancona’s words, Clegg told colleagues that ‘the greatest mistake was, in a single photo op, to provide his enemies with such a vivid image of the promise he would go on to break.’79 It is noteworthy that the pledge was a softer version of Liberal Democrat policy, given that it was a promise not to abolish fees but to oppose raising them.80 However, d’Ancona observes, this detail ‘was lost in this moment of political theatre as the beaming Clegg knelt to sign the NUS pledge: as it would later seem, treachery with a smile on its face.’81 The importance of the symbolism attached to the physical representation of the NUS pledge cannot be understated. After all, every elected Liberal Democrat MP had signed the card and several leading party figures had done so in public. In this respect, comparisons can readily be drawn with legal documents, many of which require the person’s signature to be witnessed by at least one independent party. Consequently, a written promise is perceived as carrying more weight than the spoken word; as Samuel Goldwyn is famously quoted as saying, ‘a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’82 It is worth emphasizing that ‘neither words nor actions in and of themselves convey a promise, but rather the words or actions taken in context signal that a commitment is made. This connection between context, words, and actions creates meaning.’83 So, if we continue the legal analogy, it can be said that—alongside the members of live audiences—the public witnessed the signatures of Liberal Democrat candidates via the newspapers, television or online videos. It was the Party’s reneging on a written promise which ensured that the sting of betrayal was more keenly felt.  Clegg, Politics, p. 28.  Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2015 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 104. 79  d’Ancona, In It Together, p. 61. 80  Laws, Coalition, p. 56. 81  d’Ancona, In It Together, p. 61. 82  Quoted in Denise M. Rousseau, ‘Schema, promise and mutuality: The building blocks of the psychological contract,’ Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74 (2001), pp. 511–41, at p. 526. 83  Rousseau, ‘Schema, promise and mutuality,’ p. 526. 77 78

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Conclusion This chapter has examined the Liberal Democrats’ rhetoric of image restoration in the 2015 general election campaign. It demonstrated that, in seeking to rebuild trust following their U-turn on tuition fees, the Party utilized a two-pronged strategy that consisted of self-justification and apologies, together with the making of new promises. Both elements ultimately proved ineffective, however, as the Liberal Democrats were unable to neutralize the dominant narrative of their time in coalition. With regard to the first strand, the Party’s self-proclaimed courage in forming a government with the Conservatives was overshadowed by the public perception that they had compromised their principles for power, which later would be crystallized in their broken promise on university funding. This, in conjunction with their relative lack of visibility within the Coalition, ensured that the electorate primarily associated the Liberal Democrats with betrayal and failure; Clegg’s apologies for the tuition fees U-turn would go unheeded. Meanwhile, the Party’s failure to restore its credibility created a weak foundation for its subsequent promises. The junior partner’s desire to maintain a united front in government was re-narrativised as complicity with the Conservatives’ austerity measures, the result of which was that Clegg’s efforts to present the Liberal Democrats as both a moderating force and the ‘party of fairness’ were greeted with widespread scepticism. The case of the Liberal Democrats calls attention to the different rhetorical opportunities available to opposition and smaller parties. While they have considerably more scope than the governing party vis-à-vis committing themselves to radical change or cultivating their ‘outsider’ status, both of these tactics must be used with caution. In particular, minor parties need to be alert to the danger of promising ‘distinctive or populist policies which may simply not be deliverable in government’84 and, relatedly, of overstating their ability to change the conduct of politics itself. Should they unexpectedly become partners in a coalition, then sooner or later they will face accusations of ‘“selling out” and compromising on too much.’85 The electoral consequences of these ‘betrayals’ can be devastating, and indeed the spectre of the broken pledges on tuition fees and austerity continue to haunt the Liberal Democrats nine years later. This  Hazell and Yong, The Politics of Coalition, p. 176.  Laws, Coalition, p. 63.

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was in evidence after the election of Jo Swinson to the Liberal Democrat leadership in July 2019, when the Labour Party chair, Ian Lavery, argued that: ‘Austerity couldn’t have happened without Liberal Democrats  – leading to shocking levels of child poverty, the tripling of tuition fees, a homelessness crisis and rising food bank use.’86 Overall, the analysis offered in this chapter reveals that the tuition fees disaster became an iteration of the ‘betrayal myth.’ This populist trope has also gained traction since the vote to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum, as the practicalities of implementing the result delayed the UK’s departure. For the advocates of Brexit, the ‘stab-in-the back’ myth is exemplified by the failure of the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, to keep her promise of withdrawing the UK from the EU on 29 March 2019. Here, the story goes, the ‘will of the British people’ was ‘thwarted by feckless and self-serving MPs, by the political class, by the liberal elite, by the BBC, by the universities, by Brussels bureaucrats, by the corporations, by the Germans, by the hidden forces of darkness who together conspired against the hardworking men and women of this country.’87 However, should the UK leave the EU without a deal or fail to agree a free trade deal before the end of the transition period, currently scheduled for December 2020—an outcome that looks increasingly possible at the time of writing—the Leave side’s promise that Brexit will be ‘quick and easy’ will be tested to destruction.88 In such a scenario, the Brexiters’ broken pledges are likely to have incalculable consequences for individuals and businesses, not to mention for the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Cabinet of Leave supporters.

86  Rowena Mason, ‘Jo Swinson rules out Lib Dem pact with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn,’ Guardian, 23 July 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/ jo-swinson-rules-out-lib-dem-pact-with-labour-under-jeremy-corbyn 87  Jonathan Freedland, ‘Beware the great betrayal myth. This debacle is the work of hard Brexiters,’ Guardian, 29 March 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/29/brexit-betrayal-myth-hardcore-brexiters 88  Peter Walker, ‘No-deal Brexit: how likely is it and what would be the impact?’ Guardian, 30 July 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/30/no-deal-brexit-howlikely-is-it-what-would-be-impact; David Davis, quoted in Jon Henley and Dan Roberts, ‘11 Brexit promises the government quietly dropped,’ Guardian, 28 March 2018 https://www. theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2018/mar/28/11-brexit-promises-leaversquietly-dropped

The Rhetorical Lives and Afterlives of Political Pledges in British Political Speech c. 2000–2013 James Freeman

Analyses of political pledges usually focus on moments of ‘birth’ or ‘judgement’. Studies of election campaigns and wider political histories tend to trace how promises came to be made, when a controversial policy was drafted and agreed, and which policies and promises made it onto the party’s posters or into its candidates’ election leaflets.1 Others, especially political scientists, hone in on the opposite end of a pledge’s lifecycle by taking a retrospective view of a government’s performance against its stated commitments.2 These streams of work have given us two ways of thinking about the functions and importance of promises. Those seeking   For example, John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy (London: Longman, 1980); on manifestos see the Nuffield series of election studies. 2   Most famously: Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition, 1984); Lucy Mansergh and Robert Thomson, ‘Election pledges, party competition, and policymaking’, Comparative Politics, 39 (2007), pp. 311–29. 1

J. Freeman (*) University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3_14

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to understand the process of pledge-making usually imply that pledges throw light on a party’s ideological positioning, whereas assessments of pledge-fulfilment typically speak to the wider health or otherwise of representative democracies. Less attention has been paid, however, to the fuller rhetorical lives of pledges, especially in those moments between a promise’s formulation, its detailing in a manifesto, and when it is widely deemed broken or kept. We know little about the longer-lasting resonances of pledges beyond their immediate contexts, and a broader swathe of smaller acts of commitment have escaped historical attention entirely. Indeed, despite being one of the most obviously rhetorical acts, analyses of pledges have generally lacked the perspective that the revival in rhetorical studies has brought to other areas of political life. Rather than any single promise, election, or manifesto, then, this chapter examines pledges as a subspecies of rhetoric over a longer period, in a manner akin to how Judi Atkins and Alan Finlayson have thought about anecdotes and quotations.3 In particular, it recovers the speeches each party published online in the 2000s and uses this new corpus to explore the rhetorical lives and afterlives of pledges made when New Labour held power and shortly after. Crucially, my approach brings qualitative and quantitative methods together, moving between each to explore the rhetoric of commitments at different scales. The resulting chapter splits into four stages: one detailing the process of recovery used to build the corpus and three others that deploy text analysis, manual tagging, and deep learning techniques. Over these stages, I pursue several lines of investigation. The first concerns some basic questions about how frequently and when commitments are made. Is our intuition correct that pledges (and attacks on past pledges) become more frequent in pre-election periods? Were there differences between the parties’ or spokespersons’ roles? A second set of questions seeks to better understand how pledges were made. Unlike studies of ‘framing’ or ‘priming’, the chapter foregrounds the rhetorical structures that underpin commitment-making rather than the words chosen to 3  Judi Atkins and Alan Finlayson, ‘“…A 40-year-old black man made the point to me”: Anecdotes, everyday knowledge and the performance of leadership in British politics’, Political Studies, 61 (2013), pp. 161–77; Judi Atkins, ‘As Shakespeare so memorably said…’: Quotation, rhetoric, and the performance of politics’, Political Studies, 64 (2016), pp. 164–81.

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describe individual policies. What were the most common rhetorical structures co-occurring with pledges? Which appeals did pledges contribute to? What were the dominant ways of championing a party’s own past pledges or attacking an opponent’s? Finally, the chapter explores the role and functions of commitment-making in democratic rhetoric: beyond individual advantage or accountability what does commitment rhetoric outside the manifesto contribute to our democratic culture? What does it tell us about rhetoric as a system and its utility for understanding early twenty-first-­ century argument? The resulting analysis is experimental rather than conclusive, and deliberately highlights the new selection biases and challenges arising from attempts to study the first decade of a truly digital rhetorical culture. Nevertheless, the emerging picture both confirms some intuitions and points to some blind spots. The evidence does suggest that some forms of pledge-making are cyclical. But I also argue that the archetypal policy promise represents just one region of a much wider landscape of commitment rhetoric and that the different parts of this rhetoric have developed almost symbiotic relationships with certain rhetorical structures. The findings also confirm that, once made, commitments can become rhetorical weapons, weaknesses, and battlefields, as opposing camps challenge the feasibility of each other’s promises, defend their record, or attack their opponent’s credibility. In the process, though, they indulge in a less well-­ recognised genre of political oratory that fuses deliberative, forensic, and epideictic styles and which drives the structure of some speeches. Stepping back, this approach highlights the importance of pledges within a rhetorical culture. Like quotations, pledges perform some of the inter-textuality that binds political debate together, not least by encouraging speakers to engage with each other’s words or build links between things said at different times. Perhaps more fundamentally, though, the making, recalling, and critiquing of commitments are rhetorical acts which bind different elements of the abstract rhetorical system together in particular configurations.

Recovery In retrospect, the mid-2000s were a golden age for public access to rhetoric. All three of Britain’s major parties had established websites in the 1990s, and as these sites developed they came to host a large number of interviews, comments, and speeches. Unlike the hard-copy releases handed

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out to the Lobby, these websites enabled anyone with an internet connection to see what the parties were saying and search an extensive back-­ catalogue. Even though some of the material was still excerpted, neither before nor since has the public had such unmediated access. Today the parties carefully manage their online holdings. Less material is made available, and none of the parties’ news or press pages stretch back to cover historic material.4 This apparent erasure has occasionally attracted wider attention, such as in 2013 when David Cameron’s Conservatives appeared to remove speeches given in opposition. It is easy to read cynical motivations into the removal of this material. But more often erasure is the result of a complex interplay between changing technologies and the redesigns that accompany leadership contests or elections. When Gordon Brown took over as leader of the Labour Party in 2007, for example, the redesign that followed saw the end of the website’s main ‘speeches’ subsection, obliterating masses of his own and Tony Blair’s speeches. Web archiving has proven a very leaky life-boat for some of this rhetoric. In response to the (short-lived) outcry over the Conservative Party’s actions, we were reassured that web archiving services had saved this material and the party even added a link to one on its website. That was true to some extent. But the UK Web Archive’s coverage was limited and uneven, with many files unavailable or inaccessible without expertise. More troublingly from a transparency perspective, the British Library has recently made the legal deposit captures from the parties’ sites accessible only via linked computers. Web archiving is also an imperfect technology. It relies upon crawlers, programs which follow links across the web capturing snapshots of the pages they come across. This raises several problems. First, crawlers do not capture everything: some resources were missed or were already unavailable at crawl time. In early websites, images suffer heavily from this limitation. Ironically, though, as websites did more to help their contemporary users navigate their material, it became more likely they would be preserved in zombified form, halfway between a live, dynamic site and a dead, static one. Their content is theoretically preserved, but it is trapped behind broken navigation systems. Furthermore, developments in web design made loss of material more likely. For example, Labour’s move away from an archive of html files to dynamically populated pages (where hyperlinks 4   Extent of archive (as of October 2019): Conservatives: 2014; Labour: 2017; LibDems: 2014.

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are queries to a server-side database) meant that crawlers not only had to find a speech’s query URL but also successfully request a page populated with content. A second problem is that crawlers do not visit constantly. Especially before the mid-2000s, we are reliant on infrequent visits from a few crawlers. This is important because some parties operated ‘moving walls’, with speeches only temporarily linked from a ‘Latest News’ or ‘Recent Speeches’ pages. If a speech was pushed off these pages before a crawler reached them, it was unlikely to survive unless it happened to be linked elsewhere. Third, even where material was crawled, if the site navigation system is broken or the URL/site structure is not consistent, the material can survive without anyone knowing what or where it is. Some of the most damaging practices for preservation have not been conscious political ‘erasures’ but decisions to do away with hierarchical structures in favour of flatter structures and obscure URLs (i.e. labour.org.uk/example-link-withoutheirarchy or labour.org.uk/as202039294). The sheer volume of files makes a manual survey prohibitive, but it is also difficult to confidently sift speeches from other content automatically. Fourth, whilst the recoverable text is much less prone to errors than OCR’d hardcopies, the files are nevertheless challenging to extract data from. Reflecting the fluid technologies and cultures of the juvenile web, loose html practices and evolving ideas about whether content should be presented as an electronic reproduction or something with its own design conventions meant that even when the basic design remained stable, the html behind particular pages changed frequently. Together, these problems create new factors of inclusion and exclusion. In addition to the internal party hierarchies enforced by Press Office operations, crawlers were more likely to have visited speeches linked to in more than one place. This means that we are likely to see: a) a party-sanctioned subset of total rhetorical output and b) one potentially skewed towards material linked to by media outlets or across the party’s own site. Both factors favour the party’s leadership. The grim reality is that historians of early twenty-first-century Britain may have fewer sources available than was the case for either contemporaries or historians of previous decades. This project’s most basic aim, then, was to see how many of these challenges could be overcome. With few other options, recovering these speeches represented the best chance of understanding the rhetoric each party chose to share. Given space constraints, a high-level explanation of the methods used must suffice. First, I created a roster of all speeches

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available online at some point. No one way of creating that roster was sufficient: the best strategy lay in understanding each party’s websites and their development, and then recreating the ‘moving wall’. Next, surviving material was retrieved automatically with custom parsing tools designed to recover structured data, including the speech’s date and title, the speaker, and the text itself. Doing this at scale necessitated a heuristic approach: the software moved from the simplest, most reliable techniques for extracting information to more complex, less precise ones. For example, in many cases Labour speeches included an image with an ‘alt-text’ that reliably identified the speaker. But when this historic-html piggy-backing was exhausted, the software used machine-learning tools to detect ‘entities’ in the first line of text to make an educated guess. Similar strategies were applied to extract dates and titles and to separate the speech from the webpage. Finally, each record’s basic data was checked manually, before a series of ‘cleaners’ normalised the texts and tokenisers split these into words and sentences.

The Corpus and Frequency Analysis The resulting corpus of 5603 records totals nearly 8 million words. Putting aside the issue of those which left no trace, this represents the recovery of 71 percent of the roster. That headline hides considerable variation. Ninety-eight and 96 percent of Conservative and Liberal Democrat entries were recovered respectively, against only 55 percent of Labour entries. However, this itself hides a stronger recovery rate for Labour entries pre-­ dating 2008 (approximately 85 percent) and is partly due to the greater number of Labour speeches identified for the later period. Although imperfect, then, the resulting corpus represents a good proportion of the rhetoric known to have been uploaded. The corpus is not balanced, though. As Fig. 1 shows, it contains fewer Liberal speeches, and the chronological coverage detailed obscures weaknesses at either end of the timeframes and blackspots like that for Labour in 2006/7. As expected, the party sub-corpora favour the leadership: party leaders gave 32 percent of recorded Conservative speeches, with 20 percent and 25 percent the equivalent figures for Labour and Liberal leaders. Each sub-corpus also contains a mix of conference speeches, addresses to think tanks, charities, and industry bodies, and a small amount of

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Sub-Corpora Conservative

Records 2,076

Word Count 4,311,014 (Avg. 2,077)

Coverage 2000-2013

Speakers 158

Labour

2,780

2,567,584 (Avg. 924)

2001-2013

206

Liberal Democrat 747

1,023,346 (Avg. 1,370)

2000-2010

137

Corpus

7,901,944 (Avg. 1410)

5,603

297

Fig. 1  Party representation in corpus

Parliamentary speech.5 It is impossible to rebalance these without knowing their real proportions. Whilst not balanced, though, the corpus gives us access to types of oratory not recorded elsewhere and substantial collections of second-tier elite oratory (with figures like Liam Fox, Simon Hughes, and Rachel Reeves contributing 30–50 speeches each) and a wider insight into around 500 speakers. The higher average word count for Conservative speeches reflects another limitation, namely that Labour and the Liberals maintained less strict distinctions between press releases and transcripts. This is a tricky distinction to reimpose, and so the approach here is to refer to all rhetoric recorded as ‘speeches’ but apply specific exclusion principles as appropriate.6 Certainly, we should remain cautious about the kinds of questions the corpus can answer. Nevertheless, it represents the best means available to answer basic questions about pledge-making at scale. Word frequency analysis, for example, is one way to track the distribution of promise-­ making across time.7 Word frequencies are a blunt instrument, given that they are blind to word senses without additional processing, but they can indicate general patterns. Figure 2 shows the collective track for a basket of promise terms (‘promise’, ‘promised’, ‘pledge’, ‘pledged’) that might reflect promises being made or discussed.8 Broadly, the data suggests that the intuition that promises are not evenly distributed is well founded: use of promise terms increases before elections and often drops off quickly 5  Whilst there is overlap, the party sites published more ‘party political’ content whilst government sites (not included) were restricted to speeches given in capacity of the minister. 6  Removing the text of press releases that have no implied speaker and considering texts with 50 lines in some analyses. 7  Such techniques have well-established roots in political science and corpus linguistics but have also been used to study the visibility of terms and concepts in political history. 8  One reason for excluding others like ‘committed’ is discussed below.

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100

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Fig. 2  Promise terms in British political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly)

afterwards. There are other local maxima, though, and some of these correspond to local elections (such as that in May 2009) or party conferences. In the later period, especially, care is needed in reading the data: the surges in 2011, for example, are likely products of the smaller amounts of data available. Of course, there are many ways to make commitments without using the above terms, most obviously the phrases ‘we will’ or ‘we shall’. Figure 3 shows the former’s bigram. Again, what is most apparent are the peaks and troughs broadly tuned to the election cycle. The 12-month moving average makes the medium-term trend of a gradual build towards election years, then a sharp fall away after, before recovery begins one or two years later. Yet the percentage datapoints tell a seasonal story: most years without a general election, especially earlier in the decade, experience two seasonal peaks in line with the spring and autumn conferences. Wider analysis also reveals the relationship between these formulations associated with promise-making and structures and other future-facing rhetoric. The 12-month moving average for ‘we need’, for example, does not share the electoral cycle track but instead is at its height mid-term. There is not much evidence of any overall differences between the parties. However, some interesting distinctions between speakers appear when the promise term data is filtered to speakers for whom we have a significant sub-corpus (40,000 words). In terms of raw frequencies, party

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GE 2001

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Fig. 3  ‘we will’ in British political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly)

leaders top the table. This is largely reflective of their over-representation, though. Once normalised, many of the highest users are senior ministers or spokespeople. This could reflect a higher threshold for publication (i.e. speeches making significant announcements are more likely to be publicised) but it could also reflect the rhetorical constraints of narrower briefs in contrast to leaders who can talk in general terms and perform several different types of oratory. It is notable that Labour ministers who remained prominent in opposition after 2010 record higher figures, whereas others like Jack Straw sit lower down the table alongside Blair, Brown, and David Miliband. This hints at a wider trend that those spending more time in opposition record higher figures. Smith, Howard, and Hague used these terms proportionately more than Brown or Blair, for example, and although Cameron had the highest frequency in raw terms (247), proportionately he sits 18 places below Ed Miliband. Frequencies alone do not tell us very much about how this rhetoric was used, though. To better understand the linguistic context at scale we instead need to rely on collocations (sets of words which appear together more than chance alone would suggest). Pointwise Mutual Information is a useful measure of association, and applied to the parties’ sub-corpora it

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reveals something of how promise terms are used.9 Some associations indicate that opponents’ promises are what is under discussion, such as the link between promise words and ‘Tony’ and ‘Blair’ in the Liberal and Conservative corpora. Other associations reveal the vocabulary used to discuss the status of a promise (‘delivered’, ‘failed’, ‘remember’, ‘reaffirmed’, ‘broke’, ‘hollow’, ‘misleading’, ‘fulfilled’, ‘betrayed’, ‘honour’), the speaker’s strength of commitment (‘unswerving’, ‘remain’, ‘totally’), or the typical actions (‘revaluation’, ‘cuts’, ‘creation’, ‘scrapped’, ‘ensuring’) or things pledged (‘teachers’, ‘police’, ‘income’, ‘tuition’). Many of the strongest associations, though, are between one pledge term and another, suggesting that they may cluster together in speeches, but perhaps surprisingly there are small negative associations with other future-­ facing terms (must, could, need, want).

Qualitative Analysis These quantitative techniques provide a useful backdrop, but closer analysis is needed to understand the varied rhetorical roles played by promises. To that end, I analysed 26,302 lines from three random samples of 100 speeches (one for each party). Each line containing a commitment was tagged as concerning the speaker’s own commitment or an opponent’s (distinguishing also between past and present). These commitments were further subdivided to deal with the vexed question of ‘What makes a commitment?’ Rather than attempt to rate the ‘strength’ of a commitment, its concreteness, or achievability, tagging focussed on distinguishing between linguistic structures that define the boundary between promises and other future-orientated discourse. For example, one category captures lines that contain a first-party actor committing to do something (‘The next Labour Government will…’ or ‘Our pledge is to…’), whereas other categories cover lines that are only identifiable as promises in the context of those preceding them, promises made about a second party (‘Government quango x will’), or the promised effects of a policy. Taking just those we can be most confident about (first-party actors promising), around 5 percent of lines feature speakers making their own commitments (1285), with 9  Here ‘committed’, ‘commit’, and ‘commitment’ are added to the list. Because this revealed they were associated with crime in the corpus they were removed from the frequency analysis. A window of 20 words captures bigram associations with intervening words. Most reported associations are 4–8 PMI. For context, ‘Star Trek’ PMI is 8 in Wikipedia corpus.

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a smaller number seeing speakers recall their own past commitments (78) or discuss their opponent’s current (88) or past promises (106).10 A larger sample would be needed to generalise quantitatively. Nevertheless, the real importance of this exercise is what the mass of commitments tells us about the range of possible rhetorical uses to which commitments were put. Fundamentally, the findings suggest that pledges relating to specific policies sit within a much wider scheme of commitment rhetoric. Beyond the classic policy pledge, commitments can perform some quite specialist rhetorical acts. They can, for example, be used not to divulge any new action but to reassure. Thus when Tony Blair told the Commons ‘We will not desert the Afghan people’ or Jack Straw prefaced his case for negotiating a new EU Treaty with the promise that ‘nothing will be agreed in Brussels’ that would remove the Queen as head of state, the rhetorical import lay not in the commitments themselves, but in their providing the reassurance needed to bring an audience around to other proposals.11 Other promises have a specialised role in the political performance of contrition: having become leader, David Cameron reflected on the economic failures of the early 1990s, promising, ‘We’ve learned our lesson. We’ll never again put your home, your business, your future at risk by undermining economic stability.’12 A further set of specialised commitments concern the speech itself. These might appear to be performing an outlining function, but in some contexts are intended to set an audience’s expectations, and when not fulfilled morph into the status of a commitment betrayed (such as when an interviewee claims they will come to an opponent’s point in a moment but then don’t). As well as these very specialised functions, though, commitments play a much wider range of roles in relation to the rhetorical framework of ethos, logos, pathos, audience, and arrangement. Ethos Many of the commitments tagged were related to ethos appeals. In some cases, promises are part of speakers’ attempts to persuade the audience they are a credible candidate by describing how they would act in Office

 In the sense of something is promised, not how easy it would be to test fulfilment.  Tony Blair, 24 September 2002; Jack Straw, 09 December 2003. 12  David Cameron, 14 December 2005. 10 11

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as Chancellor or Home Secretary.13 In other cases, the commitment is subservient to the overarching ethos appeal: when David Cameron said ‘I promise you this: I will take no risks with British Security’, the commitment itself is so broad as to be meaningless; its purpose was to establish a contrast between himself as trustworthy and his opponents as reckless.14 Slightly reconfigured, in the form of ‘as long as I am Chancellor’ this appeal was also available to incumbents like Gordon Brown who could use a commitment not to do something (‘abandon fiscal responsibility’) as a means of fleshing out their character as an office holder.15 Commitments also act as proof of the wider party’s character. The promise act can itself be about identifying the audience’s values with the party’s, as when Ed Miliband launched his Shadow Cabinet by declaring, ‘our values are those of the British people, and this shadow cabinet will ensure that the hopes and concerns of working families are at the heart of our offer to the country’.16 But more usually the adjacency of promises and explicit ethos appeals leads the former to act as a kind of proof of the latter. In the midst of a stream of promises to cut regulation, George Osborne added: ‘Trust me, our Conservative Business Secretary can’t wait to unleash hell on red tape’ before returning to promise more cuts to bureaucracy.17 In other contexts, the ethos claim is supported by not merely promising to do something but committing to making it a ‘top priority’ or by reminding the audience that the party was the first to make a commitment.18 The latter is one example of commitment rhetoric that attempts to give the audience an additional sense of sincerity about the pledge, a subspecies of ethos appeals which Nick Clegg mastered in the late 2000s (it now seems ironically). The Liberal Democrat leader’s pre-2010 election oratory developed an anti-pledge strain, in which he made explicit commitments but coupled these with an ethos of being a sceptic about irresponsible, unrealistic pledges by talking about what his party could not promise, stressing the relatively small number of costed

13  Chris Grayling, 23 February 2009; George Osbourne, 7 April 2006; Jack McConnell, 22 October 2001. 14  Cameron, 5 October 2010. 15  Gordon Brown, 29 September 2003. 16  Ed Miliband, 8 October 2010. 17  Osbourne, 19 March 2010. 18  Michael Howard, 11 March 2005; Blair, 24 April 2001; Michael German, 24 September 2002; Mathew Taylor, Western Morning News, 11 September 2000.

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pledges made, repeating a pledge multiple times for emphasis, and even claiming after a list of commitments that ‘This isn’t a promise, it’s a plan’.19 But just as the rhetoric of pledge-making plays into ethos so too does the rhetoric of pledges fulfilled. Some basic structures simply assert that ‘[we] are delivering’ and evidence this through a list of policies and gestures to past commitments.20 Other structures use promise recounting as the basis for a wider ethos claim like David Cameron’s line: ‘This is what Conservatives do in government. We roll our sleeves up. We get stuck in. And we deliver.’21 Indeed, there are techniques for enhancing this rhetoric of fulfilment. For example, some speakers draw upon techniques for epideictic oratory to heighten their achievement by highlighting the fact that they kept a promise in difficult circumstances.22 For others, the enhancing factor is the audience’s goodwill towards those promised something. In part of a 2001 speech, for example, Tony Blair recounted promises about gun control that he made to the community of Dunblane after a mass shooting in 1996.23 The section’s concluding line, ‘promise made, promise fulfilled’, spoke to the wider ethos built throughout the speech, but it owed much of its rhetorical impact to the importance the audience was expected to attach to keeping this particular promise. Much of this rhetoric has a natural counterpart: undermining an opponent’s ethos by reviewing their commitments. In some situations, the orator’s focus is simply on establishing that a promise has been broken before connecting similar instances to describe the opponent as ‘all promises and little delivery’.24 Here the worthiness of the promise is not questioned, merely the opponent’s competence. In some instances, this rhetoric unfolds at the level of the speech. Launching a poster campaign in 2001, William Hague’s opening lines ‘four years ago Tony Blair promised a new life for Britain’ and closing promise to be a party ‘that will deliver’ bookended a series of negative comparisons between life in 1997 and life in 2001.25 Further techniques are designed to heighten the audience’s response to the breach of faith. Opposition speakers can use rhetorical  Nick Clegg, Spring Conference, 2010; 14 April 2010.  Danny Alexander, Conference 2010. 21  Cameron, 20 April 2011. 22  Patricia Hewitt, 1 October 2001. 23  Blair, 9 March 2001. 24  For quote: Alan Cairns, 4 March 2007; Willie Bain, 30 March 2011; Rachel Reeves, 12 September 2012. 25  William Hague, 9 May 2001; 21 May 2001. 19 20

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questions to explore why a Government failed to meet its promises or pivot from a highly-politicised diagnosis of why their opponents failed to advocacy of their own policies.26 Others attempt to raise the stakes by suggesting the Government had failed despite having the means available to it. For example, by prefacing his attack with a list of tax rises, Michael Howard’s attack that ‘despite all these tax rises, Labour hasn’t delivered the improvements to our public services that they promised’ implies that the electorate had been not only let down but short-changed.27 The discussion of opponents’ pledges regularly reaches beyond mere failure, though, into attacks on their sincerity. After forming the Coalition Government in 2010, Danny Alexander indulged in a classic post-election attack on his opponents, in which he claimed that Labour had made ‘expensive promises’ it knew it could not fund.28 In a different context, the Conservative’s leader in Wales, Nick Bourne, accused the Welsh First Minister in 2005 of misleading voters by making a promise for all primary school children to receive free breakfasts but subsequently costing the policy on the basis of minimal take-up.29 Speakers achieve a similar effect by highlighting contradictions either between their opponent’s past promises and actions or between stated beliefs and pledges. The former was a bedrock of Conservative attacks on New Labour’s ‘stealth taxes’,30 but the latter was used against the Conservatives by Liberal Democrat spokespersons in attempts to claim sole ownership of liberalism, such as when Chris Huhne asked, ‘If the Conservatives are really against the surveillance state, why do they promise to remove the current checks on police surveillance?’31 A related line of attack is to question what an opponent’s promises really mean. Francis Maude, for instance, described Tony Blair’s promise of a referendum on the euro as meaningless unless he also gave a series of further more specific commitments.32 This in turn can feed into a series of rhetorical questions in which speakers challenge their opponents to promise or not promise something, with the hope that a failure to reply (even if

26   Rhetorical questions: Cameron, 15 August 2006. Diagnosis: Michael Portillo, 7 November 2003. 27  Michael Howard, 15 May 2004. 28  Alexander, Conference, 2010. 29  Nick Bourne, 6 September 2005. 30  Portillo, 5 June 2001; Howard, 15 May 2004. 31  Chris Huhne, Conference, 2009; Charles Kennedy, 14 October 2002. 32  Francis Maude, 20 Mau 2001.

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only because not present) will cast doubt in the audience’s mind.33 Another variation is to instead welcome the opponent’s promise as superficially attractive, but then describe it as a ‘gimmick’ in not going far enough. More aggressively, the inadequacy of an opponent’s promise can be used to show them as out of touch, as when during a petrol crisis in 2000 Michael Portillo attacked Labour’s promise not to raise fuel duty as ‘no answer’ for ‘real people’ for whom ‘the car is a necessity and not a luxury’.34 Perhaps the most mischievous of these techniques, though, is each party’s redescription of the others’ positions as unpopular pledges. For example, Conservative speakers accused Gordon Brown of promising to raise taxes, whilst  he himself encouraged electors to ‘think of [the Conservatives] pledge card: to sack nurses, to sack doctors, to axe schools, to remove the child and pensioner credits’.35 Logos Beyond ethos, many of the tagged commitments were linked to, or embedded within, logos appeals. Most obviously, the promised effects of policies can form part of the logical case to support such measures.36 However, the reverse is also possible: in 2008, for example, David Cameron made a series of promises not to ‘walk on by while people lose their jobs’ and then made three separate logos appeals as to why his party should make that commitment.37 In these cases the commitment sits before or after related logos appeals, but they can also be more deeply integrated into enthymeme-like structures in which the audience supply one of the argument’s terms. Amongst the most typical of these is a problem-­ solution structure, whereby a promise follows on from a negative description of the situation (usually advanced with reference to statistics and other forms of evidence).38 In the crucial moment of transition from narrative to commitment, the audience is frequently left to supply the connecting premise: ‘policy X will alleviate situation Y’. Other variations instead deduce a commitment like the abolition of ‘Prescott’s unelected,  Hague, 21 May 2001; Portillo, 5 June 2001.  Portillo, 7 November 2000. 35  Portillo, 5 June 2001; Cameron, 14 December 2005; Gordon Brown, 1 July 2003. 36  Charles Clarke, 11 December 2002; George Osbourne, 19 March 2010. 37  Cameron, 10 November 2008; For similar: Stephen Twigg, 14 April 2013; Cameron, 15 July 2008. 38  Andrew Lansley, 21 November 2008; Maria Miller, 30 April 2009. 33 34

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unaccountable and unwanted Regional Assemblies’ from more general claims that ‘Localism gives power to local people. Regionalism takes it away’.39 Of course, these evidence/principle structures can be skilfully combined. In promising to ‘give head teachers back control’, for example, Michael Howard first referenced ‘stories of ill-discipline’ and linked these to an abstract claim (‘if children don’t learn respect for authority in class they’re much less likely to respect others when they grow up’) before making the pledge.40 This can also happen at the level of a speech, whereby a long narration of damning evidence is followed by sections that pair guiding principles with pledges.41 This problem-solution structure is suited to Opposition speakers, but for Governments a past commitment can also become part of a quasi-­ logical argument about why present actions are justified. In 2011, for example, David Cameron justified his drive to cut regulation by referring to the promise he made to ‘young graduates’, a ‘printer in Prestwick’, and a ‘shopkeeper in Stranraer’ to ‘be on their side, not on their backs’.42 The audience is expected to supply the missing terms of arguments like these, namely that ‘governments should keep their promises’ or that ‘actions are rightful when promised’. Once in Office, speakers like Tony Blair could also refer to a past principle (‘I have always said: tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’) and use this to derive a pledge that was not a new policy as such but a series of promised impacts (‘That is why we are introducing Criminal Justice reforms which will rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim and the community to reduce crime and bring more offenders to justice’).43 In these ways, then, commitments not only sit alongside appeals to logos, but can themselves become terms in a process of rhetorical reasoning. Pathos Commitment-making can also attempt to alter, heighten, or respond to an audience’s emotional state. The announcement of new commitments can be a tool for creating positivity or even pride if the speaker is delivering the  Oliver Heald, 12 October 2006.  Michael Howard, 14 April 2005. 41  Chris Grayling, 23 February 2009. 42  Cameron, 20 April 2011. 43  Blair, 18 September 2002. 39 40

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news to their supporters. Announcing these commitments has its own subset of common practices in which an announcement might be trialled early in the speech, a puzzle built up for satisfactory resolution,44 or the announcement might be made as part of a ‘you/they said: we did’ format.45 Similarly, promises of future gains can be strategically used to balance a speech’s negative pronouncements, as when David Cameron balanced the announcement of cuts with the commitment: ‘And I promise you this: that if we pull together to deal with these debts today, just a few years down the line the rewards will be felt by everyone in our country.’46 Yet commitments also depend on and craft more complex emotional appeals. Sometimes a commitment is so ritualised that its primary purpose is to signal an appropriate emotional state. This is most obvious in Remembrance Sunday speeches. The line ‘we will remember’ would not usually be treated as a pledge, but when made specific to an individual, as Gordon Brown did in making this commitment to Harry Patch (‘the last Tommy’), the rhetorical force of a sombre collective commitment is more obviously powerful.47 Indeed, promise rhetoric often sits alongside requests for the audience to reflect. The peroration of Tony Blair’s 2005 speech to the World Economic Forum defended his doctrine of internationalism by reminding his audience that it was ‘60 years ago tomorrow that Russian troops liberated Auschwitz’ and contrasted this, ‘Europe’s lowest point’, with the ‘450 million Europeans [now] enjoying peace, freedom and democracy’. This memory rhetoric set the stage for his personal commitment on leadership: We should never underestimate the capacity of people to make a difference and rise to new challenges. The question is whether the hopes of the people are matched by the will of their leaders. I will do my best to ensure it is. I trust you will join me in that challenge.48

On its own, the commitment here is not an especially meaningful one; it relies upon the context of an appeal to pathos generated through reflection to become a more profound rhetorical act of leadership.

 Brown, 31 May 2001.  Alan Milburn, Conference, 17 February 2001. 46  Cameron, 8 October 2012. 47  Brown, 8 November 2009; John Prescott, 30 September 2001. 48  Blair, 26 January 2005. 44 45

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Indeed, the final line of Blair’s speech speaks to another key relationship between pathos and commitments: their use to instil unity, determination, and certainty. There are examples of this beyond party-political debate, such as commitments to ‘never surrender’ or ‘rise to [the challenge]’ after terrorist attacks or indeed a direct promise to those responsible that ‘we will not rest until we find you.’49 Lacking the immediate possibility of action, though, Opposition parties expend considerable rhetorical energy in instilling this sense of certainty in the audience’s mind, not least in that of their own activists. One means of doing so is to build pledges around the phrases ‘the next Conservative Government will…’ or ‘under the Liberal Democrats…’ but it is also a typical function of perorations. For example, Nick Clegg ended his 2010 manifesto launch on precisely this note: ‘If you’ve ever looked at the Liberal Democrats and thought: They’ve got the right ideas, but can they deliver? This manifesto is your answer. We can: we will.’50 The final line can be dismissed as merely emphatic, relying entirely on previous lines for its meaning. But similar formulations appear as the final lines of impassioned speeches by Francis Maude, Chris Huhne, and David Cameron where the effect is to act as an applause line intended to instil determination.51 Through their interaction with stylistic structures, then, commitments can play important roles in crafting a speech’s overall emotional appeal. Audience A promise’s rhetorical role is also determined by its relation to the audience. When used to list achievements or lay out a new programme to a conference hall of grassroots supporters, commitments enable speakers to demonstrate their common cause with the hall and to construct that group’s sense of shared identity and values. Blair’s, Kennedy’s, and Cameron’s conference speeches are notable for using commitments (past and present) to perform their party leadership role in setting a collective direction. But there are other more specialist cases where the audience context shapes the rhetorical act. In 2001, for example, William Hague followed up a general commitment to an audience in St Ives that he ‘will never forget you during this election or after it’ with a series of lines that  Bill Morris, 30 September 2001; David Davis, 26 October 2005; Blair, 2 October 2001.  Clegg, 14 April 2010. 51  Maude, 6 June 2001; Chris Huhne, 16 September 2008; Cameron, 29 September 2005. 49 50

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combined evidence of his having previously acted in the interests of rural communities with new pledges. In this and cases like it, part of the pledge’s rhetorical force comes from its being given directly to the audience–other audiences are supposed to experience it as a pledge made to others. The same kind of distinction between first- and second-hand audiences also shapes how commitments are used in speeches delivered to potentially hostile audiences. Occasionally, commitments can become threats, as when Ruth Kelly warned the Local Government Association that she did not want to be ‘forced to use capping powers but you can be sure that I won’t hesitate to if I think they are needed’.52 The nature of this rhetorical act is slightly different when the audience threatened is not that present: Chris Grayling, for example, promised his audience that ‘I will expect [police chiefs] to deliver real improvements…and if they don’t there’ll be all hell to pay’, in much the same rhetorical mode as Luciana Berger promised that there would be a ‘price to pay’ if energy companies did not meet their obligations.53 Others break away from addressing the audience in front of them to promise an imagined external audience for rhetorical effect, the clearest example being David Cameron’s promise to those on benefits: ‘If you really cannot work, we will always look after you. But if you can work, and refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others’.54 Here the rhetorical work of the commitment is less to make a commitment to its apparent audience and more to channel what the in-hall audience would like to say to a group. Arrangement Commitment-making also shapes the broader organisation of a speech. Most straight-forwardly, some speeches are explicit lists of promises discussed in turn.55 More typically, introductions and perorations bookend sections made up of commitment blocks, each of which is headlined by a general promise like ‘the next Conservative Government will be a liberalising Government’ that is then followed up by related narrative and sub-­ commitments. Others invert this structure. With his party defeated in the 2010 election, Labour’s Douglas Alexander built his address to the  Ruth Kelly, 5 June 2006.  Grayling, 23 February 2009; Luciana Berger, 1 May 2013. 54  Cameron, 6 October 2010. 55  Peter Ainsworth, 16 May 2007; Andrew Lansley, 21 November 2008. 52 53

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Institute for Public Policy Research out of blocks that reviewed areas of Coalition policy, ending each with a commitment to either support or challenge the Government’s early actions.56 There are also two common variations on these headline/bottom-line structures. The first uses a puzzle-solution format. Vince Cable’s 2009 conference address on the economic crisis is a classic example of a speech which divides its material between a long narration that diagnoses failings and/or needs and a shorter section that makes commitments as solutions.57 This diagnostic format suits the needs of Opposition, but speakers like Tony Blair adapted it in Government to focus the narration on achievements before defining a still-work-to-be-done problem to be solved via fresh commitments.58 Often this format incorporates a ‘hinge’ principle or aim that guides the transition from puzzle to promise, with the overarching structure running over many lines if not the entire speech. But it can also be miniaturised: speakers as different as Grant Shapps and David Lammy, for example, condensed versions of this puzzle-solution format into two or three lines.59 A second ‘elaboration’ variation omits the narrative element of the puzzle and instead takes an aim or ambition as a departure point for a list of promises directed at achieving this. Indeed, the aim is sometimes itself expressed as a commitment. Tony Blair, for example, reminded his audience that Labour was ‘committed to abolishing child poverty in 20 years’ before launching into a list of planned measures. In a speech to the Institute of Civil Engineers, Michael Howard followed a similar pattern, with five specific commitments fleshing out the headline promise of a ‘new approach to public services’ and proclaimed ‘ambition… to give everyone the kind of choice in health and education that today only people with money can buy’. In all these speeches, the classical distinctions between the different parts of  a speech are in play; yet, promise structures are both  independent of any one of those parts and organise the relations between them, commitments, and other species of future-orientated rhetoric.

 Douglas Alexander, 5 November 2010; Similar: Maude, 26 January 2009.  Vince Cable, Conference, 2009. 58  Blair, 24 April 2001. 59  Grant Shapps, 29 September 2008; David Lammy, 15 April 2004. 56 57

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Deep Learning The message from a detailed qualitative analysis, then, is that the rhetorical lives of pledges are much more complex than a single type of commitment act; the act of promising and talking about others’ promises interacts with many elements of the rhetorical framework to produce different effects. But what does this look like at scale? This final section reports experiments with training a neural network to automatically identify commitments in the wider corpus. Neural networks are a class of machine learning algorithm that has gained a great deal of attention recently, chiefly for their ability to classify pictures. This is not the place to detail the vector maths central to neural networks, but it is worth briefly distinguishing them from other machine learning algorithms that have been used to examine political speech. Neural networks are a means of conducting supervised machine learning, whereby the network is trained on manually-tagged cases. Whereas other species of algorithm attempt to apply a series of ‘rules’ to make a prediction, neural networks assign each input (a pixel or word frequency) a random weight and attempt to make a prediction. Using a loss function, the network adjusts its weights over many cycles until it finds those which minimise the loss function. What makes neural networks unique is the use of many different ‘nodes’, each of which weights inputs, and the layering of these so that the predictions of lower layers feed higher ones (deep learning denotes this complex layering). The result is a form of learning-by-example that requires no explicit rules. The approach adopted here was to use the outputs from  the manual tagging exercise to develop a dataset of lines containing (and not containing) commitments that could be used to train a neural network.60 In particular, randomised cases (the line plus its promise/not promise label) were assigned one of three roles: ‘training data’ (from which the model would learn), ‘validation data’ (on which its performance can be evaluated and its parameters adjusted to prevent overfitting), and ‘test data’ (which is used to judge the final model’s ability to predict unseen cases). The model used below achieved 81 percent accuracy: shown 500 random examples (half of which were promises, half of which were not) it classified 405 correctly. With more data, this accuracy rate could be improved and a further layer of neural networks could be deployed to distinguish between speakers making their own promises and talking about those of their opponent.  For replicability, I used the Keras library: https://keras.io/. Technical: http://jamesfreemanhistorian.org 60

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Whilst still experimental, the advantages of this approach over keyword searching are considerable, not least because it offers a known accuracy rate and the ability to make decisions probabilistically, and it encapsulates a much fuller notion of a promise’s linguistic trace. For example, despite including ‘we will’, the model awards the sentence ‘We will need to find out what could be done to build more housing’ a 35 percent likelihood of being a promise, but assigns increasingly higher scores to more promise-­ like sentences, such as ‘We will find out what we could do to build more housing’ (73 percent). We can, then, choose to only classify as promise-­ lines those sentences reaching a threshold, whilst acknowledging that this likely means others will be missed. The choice made here, though, was that under-representation was more defensible than over-representation. Using this model, 13,086 likely promise-lines (70 percent+threshold) were identified in a corpus of 340,000+ lines taken from speeches over 50 lines long.61 The data should be interpreted cautiously given the 19 percent error rate.62 However, Fig.  4’s timeseries bears an uncanny resemblance to the trends seen in Figs.  2 and 3, despite many more promise 14%

% of Lines in Corpus

12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2%

Jan 2000 Jun 2000 Nov 2000 Apr 2001 Sep 2001 Feb 2002 Jul 2002 Dec 2002 May 2003 Oct 2003 Mar 2004 Aug 2004 Jan 2005 Jun 2005 Nov 2005 Apr 2006 Sep 2006 Feb 2007 Jul 2007 Dec 2007 May 2008 Oct 2008 Mar 2009 Aug 2009 Jan 2010 Jun 2010 Nov 2010 Apr 2011 Sep 2011 Feb 2012 Jul 2012 Dec 2012 May 2013

0%

% of Lines

12 per. Mov. Avg. (% of Lines)

Fig. 4  Predicted promises in political speeches 2000–2013 (monthly)

61  The network does not distinguish multiple promises within a line. ‘Promise-lines’ include speakers making promises and discussing opponents’ past or present pledges. 62  This error rate generalises beyond test data.

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formulations being considered (‘we will’ features in fewer than 5000). The same election cycle peaks and troughs are present, as is seasonality. That a model trained on a corpus of just 300 speeches can make decisions accurately enough to preserve that trend amongst the potential noise (and without any explicit rules as to what a promise looks like) indicates both the power of neural networks and the strength of the signal. Despite its risks, the ability to identify promises at scale is important because it opens other analyses that would otherwise be difficult. The data suggests, for example, that promises are increasingly likely to occur after the first 25 percent of a speech, peaking at roughly two-thirds of the way through, before dropping rapidly in the final few percentage points. The data’s scale is hard to visualise in print, but the image available at jamesfreemanhistorian.org/promises provides a heatmap representation of the distribution of likely promise-lines over time (vertically) and within speeches (horizontally). As well as showing banding associated with the election cycle, it suggests patterns consistent with the qualitative analysis above: some speeches feature comparatively few promise-lines, peppered throughout. Others are characterised by several intense blocks of activity, whereas others see prolonged sequences of promise-lines from beginning to end.

Conclusion The individual pieces of quantitative analysis above are presented cautiously: just as word frequencies are an imperfect tool, so too is the data produced by neural networks. Yet, together with close reading, they can both confirm long-standing–but untested–intuitions and push us towards a more complex understanding of commitments’ rhetorical roles. In particular, they reveal a rhetorical genre that, whilst cyclical, certainly had life outside of elections. Much of how politicians talked about pledges broken or fulfilled was as you might expect, but on closer examination it is clear that this rhetoric sat alongside, and indeed was the route through which orators performed, many different rhetorical appeals. Commitment rhetoric not only performed a binding function between past and present political discourse or the speeches of different actors; it also bound together aspects of the rhetorical toolkit. In a sense, then, it is much more meaningful to ask how Blair and Brown’s commitment rhetoric differed than it is to ask how they used ethos differently; what separated their rhetorical styles most clearly was how they typically integrated elements to perform the same rhetorical acts quite idiosyncratically. At scale, this is reflected

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in the fact that whilst no two speeches exhibit exactly the same distribution of promise-lines there is nevertheless structure and patterning across time. Zooming out still further, the process of recovery also suggests an early outline of the forces that shaped the 2000s into a distinctive period in Britain’s rhetorical culture, and recovering commitments made in that culture has an importance beyond this research. To have rhetorical impact, promises must place the promise-maker in jeopardy; commitments carry weight because the speaker knows their ethos could be damaged if they do not deliver and the audience is supposed to give lines bearing this promise status extra credence. Quite apart from the impact of breaches of faith on democracy, the rhetorical force of promises therefore relies upon their being recorded. Whilst the data underlying this chapter cannot be reproduced in full, the very knowledge that it is still recoverable should be enough to maintain the jeopardy necessary for promises to function.

Index1

A Abbey (Westminster) by-election 1924, 42, 176 Abel-Smith, Brian, 223 Abrams, Mark, 107 Addison, Christopher, 101 Admiralty, 90, 173, 233 Agricultural labourers, 19 Ainsworth, Charles, 79 Alexander, Danny, 262, 303 Alexander, Douglas, 309 Alexander, Ernest, 82 Allaun, Frank, 215, 220, 221 Alternative Economic Strategy, 211 Annual Register, 168 ‘Anti-promises,’ 13, 17–39, 56, 177 Anti-socialism, 165 Appeasement, 105 Arendt, Hannah, 10, 10n27 Army Bureau of Current Affairs, 76, 100 Ashby, Margery Corbett, 53, 59, 61, 69

Ashdown, Paddy, 252, 258–261, 258n54, 260n65, 260n66, 269 Asquith, Herbert Henry, 32, 51, 171 Asquithian (Independent) Liberals, 26, 31, 34–36, 43, 255 Astor, Nancy, 13, 49, 66–69, 68n89 Astor, Waldorf, 66, 67 Atkins, Judi, 12n33, 16, 250, 250n4, 266, 274n10, 278n35, 281n51, 283n60, 292, 292n3 Atkinson, Tony, 131 Attlee, Clement, 6, 180, 214, 268 Austerity, 14, 16, 101, 118, 134, 135, 137, 269, 272, 281, 283, 288, 289 Austin, J.L., 10, 10n28, 79 B Baker, Randolf, 25 Baldwin, Stanley, 82, 176–178, 177n49, 177n50, 184, 188–192 Balfour, Arthur, 4, 170

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 D. Thackeray, R. Toye (eds.), Electoral Pledges in Britain Since 1918, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46663-3

315

316 

INDEX

Ball, Stuart, 19n4, 32, 33n29, 71n1, 75n14 Bara, Judith, 9, 9n23, 183 BBC, 1, 67n82, 127n43, 275n18, 276, 278, 284, 289 Beamish, Henry, 42 Beaufort-Palmer, Francis, 76 Beaverbrook, Lord, 82 Beith, Alan, 249–251, 249n1 Benn, Tony, 151n37, 210, 211, 213–221, 216n52, 223–228 Bennett, Frederic, 91 Berger, Luciana, 308 Berry-Waite, Lisa, 13, 41 Bevan, Aneurin, 111, 257 Beveridge, William, 98n7, 107, 109, 111, 268 Beveridge report, 98, 108, 112, 179 Bevins, J.R., 89n89 Bhownaggree, Mancherjee, 25 Bidwell, Sydney, 158 Big data, 20 Birmingham Mail, 53 Bish, Geoff, 208, 209, 215, 219–224, 226, 228, 229 Black, Lawrence, 232, 232n2 Blair, Tony, 11, 132, 137, 188, 204, 205, 260, 294, 299, 300, 302–304, 306–310, 313 Blake, Robert, 32, 33n29 Blaxill, Luke, 13, 17–39, 20n8, 46n52, 56, 90n92, 177, 189 Blewett, Neal, 20, 20n6, 20n7 Blitz, The, 85, 88 Board of Trade, 172, 173 Boer War, see South African War 1899-1902 Bonar Law, Andrew, 51, 174–176 Bondfield, Margaret, 50, 60n53 Bourne, Nick, 303 Bowden, Andrew, 147, 147n21 Boyle, Edward, 156n49 Boyle, Nino, 50

Brack, Duncan, 1, 257n49, 259, 260n63, 260n65 Brexit, 1, 11, 12, 2, 270, 289, 289n88, 6, 6n13, 7 Brexit Bus of 2016, 10 Brexit Party, 6 Brexit referendum 2016, 6 Brinton, Henry, 102n13 Brittan, Leon, 126, 200 Brittan, Samuel, 186, 187n6 Bromley, Chris, 89, 234, 235 Brookes, Pamela, 48, 48n3 Brown, George, 146 Brown, Gordon, 132–134, 137, 294, 301, 304, 306, 313 Browne Review of Higher Education Funding, 266 Buckmaster, Hilda, 89 Burdett-Coutts, William, 42 Burke, Edmund, 5, 5n10, 17 Burnie, James, 76, 80n45 Burns, John, 33 Butler, David, 3n5, 5, 122, 123n28, 126, 133, 140n3, 209, 212, 214, 228 Butler, R.A., 181 C Cable, Vince, 135, 222, 264–266, 264n85, 264n91, 273, 309 Callaghan, James, 10, 117, 123, 124, 195, 196, 199, 213, 214, 217, 219–225, 229 Cameron, David, 133–135, 270, 272, 278, 282, 283, 285n70, 286, 294, 299, 301, 305–308 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 244 Campbell, Alistair, 205 Campbell, Malcolm, 88 Campbell, Menzies (Ming), 262, 267, 267n98, 273 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 171

 INDEX 

Carney, Winifred, 52, 60, 61 Carr-Gomm, Hubert, 32, 83 Cartwright, John, 217 Carville, James, 129 Castle, Barbara, 213, 216, 217 ‘Cato’, Guilty Men (1940), 105, 106, 111 Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), 128, 198, 200 Centre Party, 168, 254 Chamberlain, Joseph, 18, 167, 170 Chamberlain, Neville, 53, 53n29, 105, 168, 178 Chancellor, Henry, 44, 52 Chancellor of the Exchequer, 119, 124, 129, 177, 178, 203, 220 Charteris-Black, Jonathan, 12n33, 271, 272n2 ‘Chinese slavery,’ 171 Churchill, Clementine, 176 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 166n2 Churchill, Winston, 14, 73, 82, 97, 109, 110, 119, 121, 165–184 Civil service, 208, 223 Clarke, Kenneth, 2, 4 Clause V, 210, 211, 215, 223–226, 228 Clegg, Nick, 126, 135, 16, 251, 252, 262, 262n80, 264–267, 269, 272–284, 278n36, 285n70, 286, 287, 302, 307 Clegg Commission, 126 Clerical Tithes Bill, 169 Clinton, Bill, 129 Coalition government (Cameron), 133–135, 272, 278, 294, 302, 303, 306, 307, 309 Coalition government (Churchill), 110 Coalition government (Lloyd George), 54 Coalition Liberals (1916-22), 28, 31, 33–35, 39, 43, 44, 51, 78, 168, 175, 177 Coates, Ken, 218

317

Cocks, Michael, 225 Cole, G. D. H., 107 Colonial Office, 170 Colonial Preference, see Imperial Preference Colonies, 32, 148, 149, 162 Common agricultural policy, 217, 225 Common Cause, 52, 68, 308 Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, 14, 143, 145 Common Wealth (political party), 112 Commonwealth, The, 14, 142, 146–149, 151–153, 160, 162 Communist Party, 199 Community Charge, see Poll Tax Community politics, 256 Confederation of British Industry, 129 Connolly, James, 60, 61 Conservative Party, 1, 4n7, 7, 8, 16, 51, 66, 80, 82, 104, 105, 110, 111, 117, 165, 166, 176, 179, 180, 189n13, 190, 194, 231, 234, 250, 262, 266, 274, 280, 294 Conservative Research Department (CRD), 4, 121, 142, 144, 181, 190, 194 Corbyn, Jeremy, 11, 137, 235 Corn Laws, 118 Corn Production Repeal Act (1921), 105 Corpus linguistics, 297n7 Costain, Albert, 149 Council for Social Democracy, 253 Council of Action for Peace and Reconstruction, 97, 97n3 Council of Agriculture, 103 ‘Coupon’ (1918), 28, 31n25 Crewe, Ivor, 257 Cripps, Stafford, 109 Crosland, Susan, 254 Crosland, Tony, 121 Crossman, Richard, 209

318 

INDEX

D Dáil Éireann, 69 Daily Express, 160n62 Daily Mail, 132, 176, 185 Daily Mirror, 106 D’ Ancona, Matthew, 273n3, 273n4, 287 Darling, Alistair, 134 Davey, Ed, 263 Davies, Aled, 14, 15 Dawrant, Alan, 113, 113n50 Deane, Bargrave, 25 Declinism, 119 Desai, Radhika, 216 Despard, Charlotte, 53 Dew, P., 81n46 Dickinson, Willoughby, 44 Digby, Simon, 157 Dingley, Walter, 77 Disestablishment, 25 Disraeli, Benjamin, 167 Donoughue, Bernard, 213, 214, 222, 229 Dore, John, 149 Dorman-Smith, E., 81n46 Douglas-Home, Alec, 117 Dow, Bill, 149 Duffy, Terry, 226 Dundee by-election 1908, 171 Dundee by-election 1917, 173 Dundee Courier, 174 Dutton, David, 258 E Easter Rising (1916), 56, 60 The Economist, 126, 130 Education Act (1918), 62 Education Act (1944), 179 EEC membership referendum 1975, 217

Election addresses, 102, 112, 13, 113n48, 14, 141–143, 143n11, 147n22, 151, 155, 160–162, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 175, 176, 178–180, 189, 19–22, 20n9, 245, 246, 26, 3, 36, 37, 37n39, 3n5, 4, 40, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52–64, 53n24, 53n25, 54n31, 54n32, 55n33, 55n36, 56n38, 57n41, 58n44, 59n48, 59n51, 60n52, 60n55, 62n60, 63n65, 64n66, 67–69, 67n83, 71n1, 72, 73, 77, 80n44, 86, 87n76, 88, 89, 91, 92 Elgin, Lord, 171 Ellis, William, 34 Empire, 31, 32, 36, 177 European Economic Community (EEC)/ European Union, 211, 217, 255 Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 129, 129n53 Expenses scandal (2009), 11, 285 F Face the Future (1981), 254 Falklands War, 202 The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, 8 Farage, Nigel, 6, 7, 9 Farmer and Stock-breeder, 110 Farmers Weekly, 104 Fawcett, Millicent, 53 Featherstone, Lynne, 263 Field, Frank, 253, 253n20, 254 Finlayson, Alan, 12n33, 292, 292n3 Finn, Mike, 16, 249–270, 285 Finsbury Health Centre, 100 First World War, see World War I Fisher, H.A.L., 174 Fletcher, A., 89n89 Flight, Howard, 133

 INDEX 

Foley, Maurice, 158, 159 Foot, Dingle, 158 Foot, Michael, 125, 127, 199, 217, 221, 223 Foot, Paul, 151 Fox, E., 58 Fox, Liam, 297 Fox, Norah Dacre, 55, 56, 56n38 Francis, Martin, 77n31, 92, 122n23, 304, 307 Fraser, John, 160 Fraser, Michael, 144, 144n14 Freeden, Michael, 266, 266n97 Freeman, James, 16, 181n65 Free trade, 34, 52, 169, 170, 176, 177, 263, 289 G Gaitskell, Hugh, 121, 122, 145 Gamble, Andrew, 203 Games, Abram, 100 Garland, Alison, 54, 57, 69 Gassman, L., 90n92 Gastrell, William, 32 Gee, Robert, 79 General elections 1892, 19, 20n9, 21, 21n10, 23, 24, 26–29, 26n22, 33, 40, 45, 40n45 1900, 4 1906, 21, 21n10, 23, 24, 26–29, 26n22, 33, 35, 40, 40n44, 45, 40n45 1910 (January-February), 173 1910 (December), 173 1918, 174, 19n4, 23, 24, 26–29, 26n22, 33, 35, 36n37, 40, 40n44, 45, 40n45, 48, 49, 51, 66, 69, 72, 73, 88, 88n82 1922, 37, 78n33 1923, 37, 78n33, 87n76

319

1924, 37, 78n33 1929, 37, 78n33 1931, 20n9, 37, 37n39, 179, 181 1935, 88, 101n9, 113, 178, 179 1945, 72, 73, 80, 88, 89, 97, 101, 102, 104–106, 110, 112, 113, 115, 214 1950, 14, 91, 119, 183 1951, 183 1955, 120–121, 123 1959, 122, 232 1964, 14, 117–137, 140–163, 190 1966, 14, 140–163 1970, 14, 148n26, 151n37, 186, 191, 233 1974 (February), 210 1974 (October), 195, 196, 209, 215–219 1979, 126, 142, 186, 188, 234, 241 1983, 14, 124–128, 132, 197, 201n65, 208, 228, 234, 255, 257, 259n61 1987, 201, 255, 259n61, 280 1992, 14, 129–132, 204, 258, 260, 267, 268 1997, 132, 205, 268 2001, 132, 133, 261 2005, 132, 133, 136n81 2010, 14, 16, 132–135, 265, 272, 286, 309 2015, 16, 271–289 2017, 1, 2, 6 2019, 2, 137 Germany, 65, 71, 173 Giddens, Anthony, 266 Gilroy, Paul, 141 Gladstone, W.E., 34, 118, 167, 168 Glassey, A.E., 80n45 Global Financial Crisis 2008, 14, 134 Golding, John, 226 Good, Kit, 49n8, 50n8, 81

320 

INDEX

Gore-Booth, Eva, 52, 52n21 Gottlieb, Julie, 48, 48n2, 64, 71n1 Gould, Philip, 11, 132, 205 Goyder, Mark, 234, 235, 244, 246, 248, 248n67 ‘Gracchus’, Your MP (1944), 105n24 Grantham Journal, 59 Gray, Frank, 76, 79, 80n45 Grayling, Chris, 308 ‘Great betrayal’ (agriculture), 103, 103n16, 103n17, 104, 289n87, 95 Great War, see World War I Griffiths, Brian, 202 Griffiths, Clare, 13, 14 Griffiths, Peter, 140, 150 Grimond, Jo, 251, 257, 258, 263, 264, 267 Grotrian, Frederick, 25 Guardian, 187, 204, 253, 253n20, 254, 254n26, 261, 278n36, 289n88, 33, 59, 66n80 H Hague, William, 133, 299, 303, 308 Haire, J., 89n89 Hansen, Randall, 140 Harris, Jose, 113 Harris, Richard, 156n49 Harrison, Brian, 62 Hart, Adrian Liddell, 77 Hart, Judith, 220 Hart, Roderick, 23 Harvey, John, 156n51 Hawkey, Sir James, 179 Hawkins, George, 156 Haworth, James, 80n44 Hayek, Friedrich von, 251 Hayward, Ron, 209

Healey, Denis, 9, 128, 197, 201, 220, 221 Heath, Edward, 155, 160, 187–192, 203, 205 Heffer, Eric, 213, 218, 221, 223–225 Henderson-Stuart, James, 87 Herbert, Dennis, 42 Higgins, H., 81n45 Hill, T.R., 81n46 Hills, John, 131 Hilson, Mary, 36, 36n37, 43 Hobhouse, Charles, 268 Hobson, J. A., 268 Holland, Lionel, 25 Holland, Stuart, 253, 253n20 Hollingworth, John, 156n50 Home ownership, 15, 129, 233, 237, 240 Home Rule, see Irish home rule ‘Homes fit for heroes,’ 95, 101 Honours scandal (1922), 96 Hopkinson, Austin, 79 Horne, John, 75, 75n16 Horne, K., 82n55 House of Commons, 2, 6, 12n33, 47, 49, 66, 68, 72, 74, 215, 218, 220, 222, 228 House of Lords, 6, 66, 171, 173, 221, 223–225, 227, 262 Housing Act (1919), 62 Housing Problems (documentary), 98, 102 Houston, Robert, 25 Howard, Michael, 133, 303, 305, 310 Howe, Geoffrey, 124, 127, 128, 194, 196–198 Howkins, Alun, 104 How-Martyn, Edith, 42, 50, 51, 53, 64

 INDEX 

Hughes, Simon, 297 Huhne, Chris, 304, 307 Hurd, Douglas, 192 Huzzard, Ron, 148n28 I Immigration, 14, 140–163, 185, 192, 194 See also Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 Imperial Preference, 32 See also Tariff reform The Independent, 54, 55, 58, 60, 113, 204 India, 151, 168, 171, 177, 178 Industrial Charter, 1947, 181 Industrial relations, 188n9, 194, 195 Industrial strategy, 214, 219, 220, 224, 227 Institute for Economic Affairs, 251 Iraq War (2003), 11 Irish home rule, 52, 56, 168, 171–173 Irish nationalism, 168 Irving, Dan, 83n59 Isle of Sheppey, 15, 231–248 It’s About Freedom, 249, 262, 270 J Jarvis, David, 36, 51 Javid, Sajid, 137 Jenkins, Roy, 154, 154n45, 233, 252–257, 259, 269 Jobson, Richard, 268 Johnson, Boris, 2, 11, 137, 289 Johnson, Matthew, 13 Jones, Jack, 215 Jones, Trevor, 256 Jones, Tudor, 259n62 Joseph, Keith, 193

321

K Kaletsky, Anatole, 131 Kaufman, Gerald, 212n26, 228 Kavanagh, Dennis, 20n6, 126, 133, 209, 212, 214, 228 Keefe, Brian, 147 Keighley by-election (1918), 50 Kelly, Ruth, 308 Kelly, Scott, 105 Kennedy, Charles, 252, 260–262, 267, 269, 273, 308 Keynesianism, 125, 125n32, 130, 257 Key Word in Context (KWIC), 21, 21n11, 23, 26n21 Khaki Election, see General election, 1918 King, Anthony, 9, 120, 140n3, 186 Kinnock, Neil, 129–131, 203 L Labour and the New Social Order (1918), 57, 62 Labour Party, 6, 10, 15, 21, 45, 52, 55, 60, 62, 67, 75, 97, 101, 102, 104, 109, 110, 122, 129, 140, 146, 151, 153, 159, 161, 175, 177, 178, 187, 190, 199, 204, 207, 208, 210, 215–219, 223, 232, 233, 235, 252, 254, 260, 266, 268, 289, 294 Labour Party Research Department, 127 Labour’s Immediate Programme (1937), 212 Labour’s Programme 1973, 211, 213, 219 Labour’s Programme 1982, 226 Labour Weekly, 225 Lamb, Norman, 262 Lammy, David, 309 Lamont, Norman, 131

322 

INDEX

Land of Promise, 102 Land reform, 34 Langdon, Julia, 222 Laski, Harold, 214 Lavery, Ian, 289 Law, Cheryl, 48n2 Lawrence, Jon, 15, 19, 49n8, 51n16, 53, 79, 231, 269 Laws, David, 262, 265, 274 Lawson, Nigel, 144, 144n14, 203 Layton-Henry, Zig, 140 Lee, Philip, 1, 2, 4 Lenin, Vladimir, 174 Let Us Face the Future, 8, 9, 15, 180, 182, 184 Letwin, Oliver, 133 Liberal Democrats, 2, 11, 16, 135, 222, 249–252, 251n8, 255, 258–289, 258n57, 259n60, 260n67, 267n98, 296, 302, 304, 307 Liberalism, 33, 34, 36, 45, 250–252, 257, 259, 260, 262–268, 270, 304 Liberal Party, 3, 8, 16, 33, 35, 81, 126n42, 140n1, 248, 250–252, 250n2, 255, 256, 258, 263 Licensing Bill, 1908, 172 Light, Alison, 85, 85n67 Limehouse Declaration, 253, 255, 255n31 Lipsey, David, 221–223, 225 Liverpool Daily Post, 66 Lloyd, Selwyn, 155 Lloyd George, David, 13, 31, 32, 34, 35, 51, 54, 55, 64, 95–97, 101, 106, 118, 126, 173, 174 Lloyd George-ites/Lloyd George Liberals, see Coalition Liberals (1916-22)

Local government, 35, 58, 69, 200, 232, 256, 308 London County Council, 58 Lort-Williams, John, 32, 83 Lucas, Alice, 52, 61, 65 M Mabon, Dickson, 216 Macarthur, Mary, 50, 53, 55, 60, 63 MacDonald, Ramsay, 80, 178 Mackenzie, Millicent Hughes, 54, 60 Maclagan, Oscar Frederick, 44 Macleod, Iain, 121, 190 Macmillan, Harold, 4, 4n8 Maddin, Barbara, 147, 150, 151, 158 Mais, Alan, 77 Major, John, 9, 74, 118, 129, 188, 204 Manchester Courier, 170 Manchester Guardian, 66, 172 Mandate, 5–7, 6n13, 9, 15, 17, 166, 176, 179, 181, 203, 208 Manifesto Group, 216, 226 Manifestos Conservative Party, 2, 3, 6–8, 17, 128, 131, 134, 136, 150, 153, 162, 175, 193, 194, 209, 301 Labour Party, 6, 17, 56, 65, 162, 202, 215, 223, 225, 231–235, 279 Liberal Democrat, 144, 279, 280, 285, 291, 292, 299, 301, 302, 305, 307, 309, 332 Liberal Party, 3, 276, 278 SDP-Liberal Alliance, 135 Markham, Violet, 42, 50, 53, 53n25, 55, 59, 61 Markievicz, Constance, 48, 52, 60, 66, 69 Marples, Ernest, 77n27

 INDEX 

Marquand, David, 216 Marr, Andrew, 6, 7 Marshall, Paul, 262 Massingham, H.J., Chiltern Country, 102 Mass Observation, 106n28, 112n47, 113, 113n50 Maude, Angus, 195 Maude, Francis, 304, 307 Maudling, Reginald, 123, 124 May, Theresa, 285n70, 289 Maynard, John, 221 McCarthy, Helen, 65 McEwan, Janet, 55, 59, 61 McKee, Vincent, 253, 253n18 McKibbin, Ross, 36, 96n2, 97 McNally, Tom, 222 Meakin, Walter, 44 Medium Term Financial Strategy, 124 Messina, Anthony, 140, 140n2, 143, 144n13, 152, 162 Mikardo, Ian, 213, 215, 220 Miliband, David, 299 Miliband, Ed, 277, 286, 299, 301 Milner, James, 88 Miners’ strike 1984-85, 187, 188n9 Ministry for Reconstruction (World War I), 108 Ministry of Munitions, 173 Mitton, Anthony, 157 Moate, Roger, 233–235 Moeran, Edward, 112, 113n48 Monetarism, 125, 248 Morden, Grant, 47, 91 Moreing, Algernon, 86 Morgan, Brette, 23 Mount, Ferdinand, 197, 198 Mountbatten mission, 152 Muir, Hugh, 278n36, 286 Murray, Eunice, 54, 54n32, 57, 57n43 Musolf, Karen, 49n7, 68

323

Mussolini, Benito, 178 Myth, political, 266 N National Economic Development Council (NEDC), 120, 122 National Executive Committee (Labour Party), 127, 210 National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers (NFDSS), 73, 74 National Federation of Women Teachers (NFWT), 60 National Federation of Women Workers, 60 National Government (1931-40), 178, 181 National Health Service (NHS), 10, 121, 130, 133, 134, 199, 279, 286 National Institute for Economic and Social Research, 130 National insurance, 123, 123n28, 134, 160 Nationalised industries, 196 See also Privatisation National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 53, 56 Naurin, Elin, 22, 22n14 Neal, John, 74 Neave, Airey, 194 Newark by-election 1943, 112, 113n48 Newbould, Alfred, 42 Newcastle Programme (1891), 21 New Labour, 11, 15, 132, 152, 188, 205, 259, 263, 266, 267, 292, 304 New Labour, New Life for Britain, 11, 205

324 

INDEX

Newport Programme (1885), 167 Newsom, G., 82n55 Norris, Henry, 40 Norton, Horace, 25 Norton-Griffiths, John, 86 Nuffield conferences, 107 Nuffield election studies, 140, 207 O Oldham by-election 1899, 169 Optical Character Recognition (OCR), 295 Orange Book (2004), 252, 262–264, 268 Orwell, George, 96, 96n2 Osborne, George, 133, 134, 285n70, 302 ‘Overload,’ 9, 120, 186, 187n6 Owen, David, 158, 233–234, 252–254, 252n13, 253n14, 253n20, 257 P Padley, Walter, 153 Pahl, Ray, 15, 232, 233, 235–245, 247, 248 Palmer, George, 32 Pankhurst, Christabel, 49, 52, 62–65, 69 Pargiter, George, 150, 151 Parliament, 113, 127, 129, 137, 150, 167, 200, 210, 217, 221, 255, 260, 265, 273, 277, 279, 280, 283, 48, 50, 53, 5–7, 57–59, 66–69, 6n13, 71, 72, 72n2, 74, 76, 83, 86, 89, 92, 93 See also House of Commons; House of Lords Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act (1918), 48 Part, Anthony, 214–216 Party election broadcasts, 245

Pašeta, Senia, 60 Patch, Harry, 306 Patten, Chris, 195 Pavement politics, see Community politics Peel, H.W., 83n56 ‘People’s Budget’ (1909), 118, 173 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, 63, 65 Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick, 176 Phipps, Emily, 41, 42, 60 Picture Post, 107, 109 Pledge card, 11, 205, 304 Pledge studies, 18, 22 Pliatzky, Leo, 120 Plymouth (Sutton) by-election 1919, 66 Political and Economic Planning, 97 Poll Tax, 129, 202 Popular Front, 97 Portillo, Michael, 133, 304 Powell, David, 33n29 Powell, Enoch, 14, 141, 147, 147n22, 151n37, 32 Prescott, John, 305 Preston, Walter, 32 Privatisation, 196, 201 Programme, 100, 100n8, 102, 107, 108, 110, 115, 118, 119, 121–123, 126–128, 137, 166–168, 174, 178, 179, 182, 184, 187–190, 187n9, 193, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204, 208, 210–212, 218, 226, 227, 229, 233, 235, 236, 246, 257, 265, 281, 308, 33, 42, 46, 54, 57, 8, 9, 91, 96 See also Newcastle Programme (1891); Newport Programme (1885); ‘Unauthorised Programme’ (1885) Public Expenditure Scrutiny Committee (PESC), 120

 INDEX 

Public Expenditure White Paper (1963), 117 Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR), 124, 126 Public spending, 120, 125, 127, 136, 194, 198, 202, 265, 269 Pugh, Martin, 37, 37n38, 41, 48 Purbrick, Reginald, 80, 80n44 Purvis, June, 49 Putt, Gorley, 90 Q Qualification of Women (County and Borough Councils) Act (1907), 58 Question Time, 276, 286 R Radford, Guy, 81 Ramsden, John, 32, 33n29 Raper, Alfred, 86 Rathbone, Eleanor, 52 Rees, Beddoe, 44 Rees, Merlyn, 220 Rees, Tudor, 79 Reeves, Rachel, 297 Reiss, Richard, 44, 87 Rennard, Chris, 256 Rentoul, John, 268 Rhetoric, 12, 12n33, 13, 136, 141, 142, 144, 146, 148, 153, 153n42, 157–159, 161, 165, 175, 177, 187–189, 189n13, 231, 233, 244, 247, 257, 271, 276, 279–284, 288, 292–300, 292n3, 302, 303, 306, 307, 31, 310, 313, 52, 55, 58, 59, 63, 69, 77, 96 Rhodesia, 153 Riddell, Peter, 130

325

Ridley, Samuel, 25 The Right Approach (1976), 193 The Right Approach to the Economy (1977), 193, 196 The Right Road for Britain (1949), 182 Robertson, Thomas Atholl, 25, 34 Robinson, Nick, 1, 2, 284, 285 Rodgers, Bill, 216, 234, 252, 253, 255 Rodwell, Charles, 40 Rose, Richard, 122 Rose, Sonya, 85 Ross, Willie, 217 Rothermere, Lord, 174 Royal Dragoons, 79 Royal Flying Corps, 84 Royed, Terry, 22, 22n13, 25 Russell, Lord John, 118 Ryder, Robert, 91, 92 S Saatchi & Saatchi, 132, 197 Safeguarding of Industries, 177 Salgueiro, Antonio Blanco, 10, 10n29 Salisbury, Lord (Robert Gascoyne-­ Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury), 167, 168 Salisbury-Addison convention, 6 Salter, Alfred, 40 Samuel, Herbert, 50, 58, 62 Sanderson-Nash, Emma, 251, 251n8 Sayer, Jaspar, 89 Schniter, Eric, 271, 271n1 Schofield, Camilla, 147n22 Scott, Derek, 221 Scrymgeour, Edwin, 173, 174, 176 Searle, John, 22 Second World War, see World War II Seely, J.E.B., 80n45 Seldon, Arthur, 251 Selsdon Park conference, 1970, 187n9

326 

INDEX

Service and ex-service candidates, 13, 72–74, 77, 80 Setting Business Free, 263, 264 Sewill, Brendon, 190 Shapps, Grant, 309 Shaw-Lefevre, George, 25 Shephard, Sidney, 112n47 Shore, Peter, 227, 228 Sibley, Richard, 106 Sievier, Bob, 25 Silver Badge candidates (1918), 73 Simon, John, 84 Sinn Fein, 13, 48, 52, 60, 61 Sloman, Peter, 14, 15, 117–137, 251, 268, 269 Smith, John, 130, 222, 227, 260 Smyth, John, 147 Snowden, Ethel, 50 Social Democratic Party(SDP)/ SDP-Liberal Alliance, 16, 127, 226, 231, 233, 234, 236, 245, 248, 250, 280 Society of Labour Lawyers, 145 Sokolov, Emil, 14, 140–163 Solomos, John, 141 South African War, 1899-1902 (Boer War), 170 Speech acts, 22 Spencelayh, Charles, 105 Spen Valley by-election 1919, 84, 84n62 Spitting Image!, 258 The Star, 168 Steel, David, 255 Steward, W.A., 91n95 Stockley, Neil, 263 Strachey, Ray, 47, 48, 57 Straw, Jack, 253, 254, 299, 300 Street, John, 216 Stross, Barnett, 88 Sunday Times, 207, 208, 226 Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Florence, 198 Swinson, Jo, 262–263, 270, 289 Sydney Hill, 87

T Takayanagi, Mari, 53 Target for Tomorrow, 114, 114n54 Tariff reform, 25, 52, 118, 170, 173 Tax, 117–137, 194, 200, 204, 213, 220, 225, 246, 259, 268, 273, 277, 281, 282, 303 Temperance, 34, 172, 173 Text mining, 20–22, 26n23, 44, 46, 46n52 Thackeray, David, 1–16, 36, 40, 82, 118, 166, 185–205 Thatcher, Margaret, 9, 14, 15, 93, 126–129, 160n62, 185–205, 231, 233, 235, 241, 257 Thatcherism, 15, 187n9, 231–248, 251, 266, 267 Thévoz, Seth Alexander, 173 Thompson, Richard, 143 Thorneycroft, Peter, 155 Thurston, Edward, 34 Times, 11, 50, 130, 131 Tomlinson, Jim, 125 Toulmin, J.M., 81n46, 86n71 Toye, Richard, 1–16, 118, 142n6, 165–184, 208, 212n26, 270 Trades Union Congress, 129 Trade unionism, 69, 259 Treasury, 119, 120, 122n17, 124, 124n29, 124n30, 126, 128, 130, 136, 200, 265 Treasury Agreement (1915), 55 Trenchard, Hugh, 84 Tribune, 212, 215, 216 Truman, Frederick, 77 U UK Web Archive, 294 ‘Unauthorised Programme’ (1885), 167 Unemployment, 99, 101, 106, 108, 124–126, 129, 173, 175, 177,

 INDEX 

181, 192, 193, 220, 223, 236, 240–244, 243n47, 247, 256 Unionists, 31–33, 36, 60, 61, 79 See also Conservative Party United Front, 97, 288 University tuition fees, 11, 16, 135, 272, 273 V Vallance, Elizabeth, 41 Varley, Eric, 220 Vasey, C. J., 58 VE Day, 106 Vernacular politics, 231–248 Village Colleges, 100, 100n8 Vote Leave, 1 W Walker, Christopher, 158, 159 Wallace, Claire, 233 Web Archiving, 294 Webb, Beatrice, 111 Webster, Wendy, 141, 142n7 Wellbeloved, James, 216 Wells, Percy, 232 Westland Affair, 201 Western Mail, 182 What We Must Do, 217 Whigs, 118 White, C.F., 82n55 White, Charles, 83 Whitehall, see Civil service Wickham-Jones, Mark, 15, 127, 187, 207 Wigoder, B., 81n46 Williams, Shirley, 220, 233, 252, 252n13, 253, 253n14, 255, 262 Williams, Tom, 105 Williamson, Philip, 177 Wilson, Douglas, 160

327

Wilson, Harold, 118, 122, 127, 145, 153, 190, 209, 211–218 ‘Winter of discontent’ 1978-79, 187, 195 Winterton, Earl, 77 Wintringham, Tom, 105n24 Women MPs, 48, 48n2, 62 Women parliamentary candidates, 13, 47–69 Women’s Freedom League (WFL), 50, 53 Women’s Parliamentary League, 50 Women’s Party, 37, 49, 52 Women’s Royal Naval Service, 86n70 Women’s Social and Political Union, 52 Women voters, 13, 22, 36n37, 37, 42, 51n17, 52, 56, 63, 65, 83 Womersley, Walter, 83 Workers control, 218 World War I, 5, 48, 49, 51n16, 62, 71, 72n2, 73, 75, 77, 79–82, 80n44, 84, 85n69, 87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 96, 98, 101–103, 105–107, 109 World War II, 14, 72n2, 73, 76, 80n44, 82, 85, 85n69, 86, 86n70, 88, 91–93, 92n99, 95–115 Wrens, see Women’s Royal Naval Service Y Yong, Ben, 284 Yorkshire Post, 182 Young, David, 202 Young, Michael, 255, 256 Z Zec, Philip, 106