Chiswickite - formerly The Croydonian

That, in essence, is what a paper from the ippr is suggesting, and it takes Liberal rule from 1906-1914 as its starting point.

While a little hesitant to go mano a mano with a professor of politics, referring to the 1911 Parliament act (which broke the Lords), and the Government of Ireland Act 1914 (which would have given home rule, and never came into force) as 'the two most important constitutional changes in the history of the United Kingdom' is not very far away from nonsense on stilts. For starters, Magna Carta, Cromwell, the Glorious Revolution have rather better claims....

The paper hails "‘new liberalism’ of Edwardian England sought to recast the laissez-faire and individualistic liberalism of the 19th century so that it was more compatible with the ambitions of social democracy. This enabled a workable consensus between Liberal and Labour MPs. Indeed, the lack of significant ideological difference between the two is one of the reasons why the alliance was so effective". Not really 'liberalism' at all then, but rather slightly muted collectivism.

So what were the 'achievements' of this 'progressive alliance'?

Reversal of the Taff Vale railway judgment, whereby trade unions could not be sued for losses occasioned to a company by a strike , and "gave trade unions complete legal immunity from tort actions".

And "Lloyd George introduced what propagandists soon labelled the ‘People’s Budget’, which set out to pay for both social reform and naval rearmament through a system of progressive taxation, that is, through a system that explicitly set out to redistribute income from the rich to the poor. It represented an unprecedented attack upon privilege". Hmm, so existing rights under the law are privileges, are they?

And national insurance: "Virtue meant establishing an actuarially sound fund, in which present contributions by young and healthy workers, their employers, and the state, were invested, to be paid out in future when the workers were old and sick. Actually, however, the fund was never actuarially sound, and every extension of coverage downwards in the social scale meant that it became (actuarially) more unsound still".

And some of the lessons drawn from the marriage of convenience between Libs, Labour and the Irish party?

1 - Electoral reform. The writers seem to think that there really is an in built majority for leftism, not that they actually articulate much by way of supporting evidence.
2 - Never underestimate your class enemies. Yes, it really does say that. "The House of Lords’ fight for the privileges of the landed interest was bitter and partly successful – it stymied land tax in 1909 and 1914, although it did lead to the Parliament Act”. Same question about what constitutes 'privilege'....

“Who are the modern equivalents of the House of Lords in 1909 and King George V in 1914? Progressives do not have naked class enemies as they did then. But undoubtedly there remain forces of reaction determined to resist progressive advances. They exist in the right-wing media and within the Conservative Party". I tend to cast progressive and reaction in a rather different way...

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 at 1:35 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.