The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0051/00515.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 34KB | 570 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00515}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{United Kingdom
Organisation of Political Parties in Britain}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC}
$Affiliation{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC}
$Subject{party
parties
constituency
labour
liberal
members
election
parliament
conservative
general
see
tables
}
$Date{1990}
$Log{See Table 1.*0051501.tab
See Table 2.*0051502.tab
}
Title:       United Kingdom
Book:        Organisation of Political Parties in Britain
Author:      Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC
Affiliation: Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC
Date:        1990

Organisation of Political Parties in Britain

Introduction

     The British system of parliamentary democracy is based on the party
system, in which office is sought by organised political parties able to
form and support a stable government. The party system itself rests on the
assumption that there are at least two parties in the House of Commons, each
of which is sufficiently united on matters of policy and principle to be
able to form a government at any time. The parties are not registered or
formally recognised in law, but in practice most candidates in elections,
and almost all winning candidates, belong to one of the main political
parties.

     After a brief historical background of the origins of the major parties
represented in the British Parliament and an outline of the modern party
system, this pamphlet describes the organisation - both inside and outside
Parliament - of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. (The
Liberal Democrats, whose formal title is the 'Social & Liberal Democrats',
were formed following the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social
Democratic Party in 1988.) The organisation of the two nationalist
parties - the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalist
Party) - and that of the main political parties in Northern Ireland - Ulster
Unionist, Democratic Unionist, Social Democratic and Labour, Sinn Fein and
Alliance - is considered in separate chapters.

Historical Background

     For over 150 years British parliamentary democracy has been based on a
predominantly two-party system: with first Whigs and Tories, then Liberals
and Conservatives, and most recently Labour and Conservatives alternating in
power.

     Associations of like-minded people inevitably occur in any organised
society when the principles and practices of government are open to public
debate and discussion. In England they have existed in one form or another at
least since medieval times. Yet for centuries, and long after the real power
in the State has passed from the Crown to Parliament, such associations were
loosely knit and short lived. They were usually formed to achieve some
particular purpose, and afterwards came to an end, perhaps regrouping for
some other cause. The origins of organised political parties in Britain are
comparatively recent. Before 1832 - the date of the first parliamentary
Reform Act - there was no clear-cut division in the House of Commons along
modern party lines. The terms 'Whig' and 'Tory' had been in use for about 150
years to describe certain political leanings, but there was no party
organisation of any sort outside Parliament. Even within Parliament no strong
party discipline existed.

     The reason for this lack of organisation lay, to a great extent, in the
comparatively small size and exclusive nature of the electorate. In 1830 there
were 656 Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons, slightly more
than there are today, but they were returned by an electorate of only about
500,000 out of a total adult population of some 10 million. Many of the
growing industrial areas were not represented in Parliament, while ancient
country towns sometimes sent two members. The outcome of elections was decided
by a small number of influential citizens, and not by the public at large. The
personal influence of a candidate counted for more than the policy of a party;
and, once elected, an MP did not have to follow a party line.

     The growth of the modern party system was brought about by parliamentary
reform and the gradual extension of voting rights to the whole adult
population. Corrupt election practices were gradually brought to an end,
representation in Parliament became more fairly distributed throughout the
country, and the social composition of the electorate changed. As a result it
became difficult for candidates to offer themselves as individuals to the
voters. Politicians, as the representatives of millions of voters able to take
part in elections for the first time, began to form organised parties
promising to carry out policies which their supporters were prepared to
endorse.

Establishment of National Party Organisations

     In these circumstances it became obvious that some form of political
organisation outside Parliament, as well as within it, was essential if votes
were to be won and support maintained. The first organised political parties
on the modern pattern - the Conservative and Liberal parties - were, broadly
speaking, successors to the Tories and Whigs of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The word 'Conservative' in its modern political sense
first came into use after about 1830 and gradually became a normal expression
to describe the successors of the Tories. The Liberal Party was formed towards
the end of the 1850s with the support of former Whigs and other political
groups.

     Both the Liberals and the Conservatives created national headquarters
in the 1860s. The Liberal Party central organisation began in 1860 when some
Liberal MPs established the Liberal Registration Association, designed to
encourage the registration of voters and the growth of constituency
associations. Further steps to strengthen Liberal organisations came after a
heavy defeat of the Party in the 1874 general election. In 1877 a large
meeting in Birmingham (then the centre of Joseph Chamberlain's successful
Liberal association) established the National Liberal Federation, with the
aim of forming Liberal constituency associations. Under the Federation's
rules, affiliated associations could send representatives to an annual meeting
of the Federation's council, a forerunner of the annual party conference.

     The Conservative Party founded the National Union of Conservative and
Constitutional Associations in 1867, the year of the second Reform Act which
considerably enlarged the number of voters able to take part in a
parliamentary election. The National Union became the national organisation of
the Conservative constituency associations, designed to increase popular
support for the Party outside Parliament. After the Conservative defeat in the
1868 general election, the Party under the leadership of Benjamin Disraeli
created the Conservative Central Office to encourage the organisation of
constituency associations and to register candidates for elections.

The Emergence of the Labour Party

     As the number of voters increased, a third party came into existence with
the aim of representing working men in Parliament. As with the Liberal Party
50 to 60 years earlier, the Labour Party was the product both of a new body of
voters created by legislation and of the growth of a new ideology.

     The earlier parties began as parliamentary groups within Parliament and
established organisations outside it in order to gain support and so achieve
re-election. In contrast, the Labour Party began as a movement outside
Parliament, seeking representation within it in order to further the aims of
party policy. In 1893 an Independent Labour Party was formed in Bradford and,
following a meeting in 1900 with some trade unions and socialist societies, a
Labour Representation Committee was established to co-ordinate plans for
Labour representation in Parliament. After the 1906 election the Committee
became the Labour Party. Local committees were established at constituency
level, but there was no indiv