'Gender provides the key to understanding the history of the politics of disruption'. Discuss Flashcards

Question

Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence recalls how at the Peckham by-election of March 1908

Answer 1

Christabel Pankhurst on an improvised platform in centre of crowd of men was able to win crowd with her wit and perserverance

Answer 2

vs Churchill at Dundee by-election 1908. Found enough sympathizers among working men at open-air mtgs to prevent Liberal party stewards from silencing her. Turned up brandishing large railway-porter's bell, which she threatened to ring continuously until he issued an apology for allegedly insulting the WFL about its role in recent Peckham by-election

Answer 3

Mary Richardson account of being rescued by a vicious mob by a huge, coloured man, who then admonished the so-called gentlemen for their disgraceful behaviour

Answer 4

Men's League for Women's Suffrage Hannah Mitchell - ILP sympathisers in northwest 1890s would form bodyguard

Answer 5

after the first "truce" of 1910

Answer 6

Within a yr of Grey's Free Trade Hall mtg suffragettes, in dramatic break w trads of public politics, had extended campaign vs cabinet ministers into private lives, and also organized their first mass lobby of parliament

Answer 7

thoroughness of Liberal counter-measures Evelyn Sharp tells of a woman mistakenly thrown out of a meeting when she asked only for a window to be opened - story maybe apocryphal, but little reason to doubt polit mtgs became more male-dominated Ticketing oft stricter or blanket bans. Segregation of men and women became common

Answer 8

Sylvia Pankhurst, 1909 - "protest against violence done to women"

Answer 9

Dec 1908, to prevent disruption of set-piece meetings

Answer 10

Victorian and Edwardian customs that had legitimized an active, assertive popular presence in public politics fell rapidly into disrepute after 1918 plebeian traditions of heckling, disruption and disorder reproduced themselves in the forum of the election meeting, which grew rapidly in importance from the 1870s Two factors lay behind this rather liberal approach to public order test of a politician’s ‘character’ remained a strong sense, derived in part from classical thinking, that a healthy polity was one based upon a vigilant and assertive citizenry preferable to the sterility and ‘illegitimacy’ of holding closed meetings of the party faithful Even those prepared to concede that ‘oratory will change but few votes’ still believed meetings essential, partly because they were the best means of enthusing supporters, partly because even a few converts could easily decide a pre-war election, but mainly because electors expected and demanded them 1880s on the social background of candidates began to change with the emergence of Lib-Lab and then independent Labour politics, and with the Liberals’ growing reliance on professional, ‘carpet-bagger’ candidates Michael Dawson has argued that in rural Devon and Cornwall election meetings became decidedly more orderly after the First World War, However, in conurbations such as London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool, where pre-war traditions of disruption had been sustained more by popular custom than party cash, disorder appears to have remained a persistent feature of public politics between the wars. As the 1920s progressed, politicians gradually became more confident in their ability to mobilize the new voters. Canvassing techniques were refined to cope with a mass electorate, and many of the populist techniques of pre-war electoral politics were rediscovered. In part this was an economic story. Rapid deflation after 1920 meant that statutory election expenses (which remained unchanged) began to stretch further Thanks to the combined impact of the motor car and electric amplification (widely available from 1924), politicians expected to hold more election meetings, and reach more electors, than ever before The extension and feminization of the franchise, the collapse of ‘deferent practices’, and the proliferation of fears about ‘brutalization’, revolution and later fascism transformed the context of popular politics after 1918 and convinced the majority of politicians from all three main parties that the ‘old ways’ could no longer be tolerated.

Answer 11

Conservatives who did most to orchestrate the attacks on Labour ‘rowdyism’ during the general elections of 1923 and 1924. . At a Conservative meeting in Erith, south-east London, a local Labour leader was dragged from the platform when he tried to appeal for ‘fair play’ Labour still held revivalist-style meetings, and some of its key leaders, such as MacDonald and Philip Snowden, were amongst the greatest exponents of old-style public oratory, but this should not obscure the fact that the average election meeting was a rather humdrum affair in interwar Britain. In early 1922, the Labour Organiser went further in its critique of the old-style politics, claiming that the ‘printed word is fast assuming the power and importance enjoyed hitherto by the spoken word’. After 1918 men excluded from the franchise were termed ‘youths’ rather than ‘non-electors’

Answer 12

combined impact of legal changes to the conduct of elections and the expansion of the electorate under the ‘Fourth’ Reform Act significant reduction in election expenses allowed under the Corrupt Practices Act. This hit hardest in 1918, when wartime inflation meant that costs were running at more than twice their pre-war level. Michael Dawson, ‘Money and the Real Impact of the Fourth Reform Act’

Answer 13

the changed character of the electorate, especially the enfranchisement of women on a large scale and the elimination of the male ‘non-elector ``` low turnout (57.2%) in 1918, and at many subsequent by-elections, confirmed the impression that the 1918 act marked a great watershed in British politics, undermining old certainties about electioneering ``` Unaware that turnout had also been low for most of the nineteenth century (1885 marked a clear break here), political activists sought ways to energize the apathetic new voters feminization of the polity in 1918 transformed the context of public politics, greatly weakening the perceived legitimacy of old-style ‘macho’ electioneering. The Times warned that the public would not stand for women being ‘exposed to physical violence’ in this way,

Answer 14

the breakdown of ‘deferential practices’ and of belief in ‘natural’ social hierarchies under the strain of war and post-war transition

Answer 15

impact of post-war fears about revolution and ‘brutalization’ on notions of legitimate and illegitimate forms of popular involvement in politics Labour leaders were determined to portray themselves as the voice of an organized, self-disciplined and, above all, rational public sober, rational and essentially domestic ‘public opinion’ increasingly idealized in the rhetoric of interwar politics

Answer 16

‘deferent practices’, that is reciprocal social roles performed to smooth relations between individuals with different levels of power and social prestige, ‘cease[d] to be functional for either side’ in the years after 1914

Answer 17

despite politicians’ rhetorical appeals to a domesticated, ‘privatized’ public, in urban areas large sections of the British public remained stubbornly wedded to the ‘old ways’. Standing as a ‘National Labour’ candidate at Leicester West in 1935, Harold Nicolson recorded facing hostile meetings with ‘working men and women lowing in disgust and hatred at the end of such meetings ‘the people who had yelled loudest came up to me and said they hoped I hadn’t minded, and that they wished I was on their side’

Answer 18

Hedderwick’s 1892 description of posters as ‘weapons of the ancient electioneering hurly-burly’ highlights continuities in the politics of disruption in which posters continued to be ripped down or covered up Small-scale locally produced pictorial posters, drenched in highly particular allusions, mayhave been on the decline, in part usurped by the greater use of photographs, but window-postering remained popular and local letterpress posters abounded posters were part of the contest for public space, within the charged atmosphere of a political culture which acclaimed strong convictions, vigorously expressed

Answer 19

irreverent spirit of the hustings lived on long after the formal abolition of public nomination and open voting in 1872. Plebeian traditions of heckling, disruption, and mockery resurfaced in new contexts, most obviously in the election meeting, which grew massively in importance from the 1870s age-old contest between heckler and speaker at British elections can therefore be read as a highly developed manifestation of class war. On one level, heckling simply underscored the forced egalitarianism What changed after 1867 was not so much the level of disorder, as the political and social context in which disorder was understood. In many boroughs non-voters were for the first time in a minority after the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872, it became impossible to determine who was a bona fide party supporter—selection came to rest instead with party members, or, more often, with the ruling committees of local party organizations no accident that, alongside the Ballot Act, the government also introduced a bill to prohibit the use of public houses for election meetings or as committee rooms Act itself also introduced new powers to prevent disorderly behaviour in or around polling stations widespread fear of mob violence and intimidation henceforth no MP was to be unseated for intimidation, but it had always been notoriously difficult to prove intimidation even if electoral politics was not transformed overnight by the legislation of the 1870s, historians are right to see these changes as a deliberate attempt to tame the excesses of popular political culture all agreed that a closed meeting was next to useless as a propaganda tool. Instead, they were advised to secure adequate stewarding to control troublemakers. They were also told to encourage women to attend in large numbers, as this usually improved behaviour tendency for candidates to plough on with a speech despite such vociferous disruption that they would be inaudible even to the strategically placed press reporters. In part this was simply a displaying ‘pluck’, but it also reflected awareness of the customary belief that (p.62) a meeting had not been ‘broken up’ if it lasted more than an hour. any truly popular candidate would be able to rely on his friends and supporters to ensure a successful public meeting. True, organized disruption was generally deplored, but few candidates saw much to be gained by advertising the misdeeds of their opponents. When forced to explain the disruption of their meetings, they usually sought to portray the culprits as unsavoury hirelings from outside the constituency Politics as a whole was becoming more, rather than less, populist at the close of the nineteenth century, as the parties grappled with the challenges of the new mass politics. At Westminster politicians might seek to tame popular political customs through legislative reform, but in the constituencies they tended to bow to the logic of electoral necessity In an important sense Labour politics represented not the beginning but the end of class politics in Britain—henceforth it could no longer be assumed that a vast social and economic gulf separated the candidate from most ordinary voters. In consequence, rituals which fed off class distinction, and the symbolic disavowal of social difference through face-to-face public contact began to lose some of their cultural power vulgar populism characteristic of Edwardian elections was already losing favour before cinema or radio came on the scene. Three main factors were crucial here: the political and cultural lessons drawn from ‘total war’ and its chaotic aftermath, the impact of female enfranchisement in 1918, and reactions to Labour’s sudden post-war breakthrough—

Answer 20

advised candidates that there was no personal indignity that should not be borne with grim forbearance, or better still, with cheery goodwill, during a campaign. But above all, politicians were not to become ‘tainted’ by the crowd—they must not abandon the gentlemanly virtues of restraint and self-control

Answer 21

in terms both of language and actions ‘a special amount of latitude has always been allowed to the persons participating in [election meetings]’

Answer 22

the factor of violence disappeared almost entirely from electoral contests’ after the legislation of 1872

Answer 23

Even in 1874 Wolverhampton large gangs of workmen picketed polling stations and attacked Conservative committee rooms in industrial townships such as Wednesfield and Willenhall O’Leary identifies ten cases of serious rioting in 1874, but accepts the contemporary view of The Times that this still represented a significant diminution in electoral violence Many customs survived despite their technical illegality if intermediaries necessarily came to take more of the strain, this did little to alter the highly personalized nature of late Victorian and Edwardian electioneering, which continued to be perceived as much a test of the candidates’ character and fitness for office, as a test of national party programmes In 1880, a Liberal squib attacked Henry Allsopp, the Conservative candidate for East Worcestershire and a prominent brewer, as a poor speaker whose only hope of victory lay in ‘the beer tap’. But it also mocked his weak, ‘unmanly’ persona at meetings: Bags of soot, or worse cayenne pepper, would sometimes be thrown to make ‘speaking almost impossible’, or improvised musical instruments would be smuggled in to drown the speaker in a cacophony of ‘rough music’. 1884, at the height of the crisis over the Third Reform Act, Birmingham Radicals broke up a Conservative mass meeting at Aston, incensed at a ‘Tory ticket picnic being considered an expression of the voice of the Midlands’. In part legitimacy of disruption reflected the view that disruption represented non-voters having their ‘say’ according to the time-honoured traditions of the old hustings, but tolerance of disorder was also sustained by a widespread belief, derived in part from classical traditions of civic republicanism, that a healthy polity depended on an active, vigilant (and male) citizenry

Answer 24

If anything the 1880 (p.49) election witnessed an increase in disorder and intimidation, thanks in large measure to the fact that radical enthusiasm had returned to fill the Liberals’ sails One contemporary account records eleven English election riots, including allegations that at Bath and Leamington large gangs of ‘roughs’ paraded through the streets smashing windows

Answer 25

Between 1832 and 1872 almost all the traditional, ritualistic aspects of elections had been abolished. First the poll had been truncated to a single day, and dispersed by the need to institute multiple polling booths. Then, in the 1850s, Parliament began to chip away at the theatre surrounding electioneering by decreeing that both ‘marks of distinction’ (such as party cockades and ribbons), and all forms of music represented corrupt payments if financed by the candidate Finally, the reforms of 1872 eliminated most of the surviving rituals of Britain’s official election culture, including not only the open ballot and the nomination, but also, by default, the ceremonial procession to and from the hustings

Answer 26

1872, that the election meeting came into its own as the focal point for face-to-face interaction between politicians and public. In essence, the election meeting took over many of the functions of the old hustings

Answer 27

gave a great boost to the role of the volunteer in electoral politics By outlawing the payment of canvassers and public speakers, and by strictly limiting the number of campaign staff who could be employed, Act ensured that even the most reluctant candidate would have to cultivate a strong ‘voluntary party According to Cornelius O’Leary, the Corrupt Practices Act was responsible for a marked reduction in the level of disorder at British elections in the late nineteenth century seems doubtful whether any subsequent election ever witnessed disorder, or indeed corruption, on the scale of 1880 popular attitudes towards corruption were beginning to change. Historians have generally endorsed this view, although Hanham placed greater emphasis on the disfranchisement of notorious corrupt boroughs through the effects of redistribution, and Kathryn Rix has recently argued that the key factor was the gradual emergence of a new class of professional agent

Answer 28

Edwardian elections were more fiercely fought, more disorderly, and more shamelessly populist than those of either the late Victorian or the inter-war era 1910 elections most disorderly contests in living memory only one measure on which the January 1910 election appeared less intense than that of 1895—the propensity of candidates to take part in crowd events such as organized processions. torchlight processions, and similar events that brought crowd and candidate into close proximity, were already in decline by the 1900s.

Answer 29

eleven (p.73) English constituencies more than twice as many election meetings in January 1910 as in 1895

Answer 30

``` when Churchill and Chamberlain found their carriage trapped ‘in an immense hostile crowd’ at Oldham in 1900, both were confident that they were in no physical danger. ```

Answer 31

From the 1880s, the need to reach out to the new voters also fuelled a revolution in the printing operations undertaken at party headquarters. Three main factors drove this propaganda revolution: first, technical innovations such as offset lithography and rotogravure second, the so-called ‘yellow press’ revolution on Fleet Street associated with titles such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express third, the growth of commercial advertising

Answer 32

In his 1908 study Human Nature in Politics, Graham Wallas laid great emphasis on the irrational factors underpinning the electoral process. Rejecting the tendency of the nineteenth-century Liberal intelligentsia to celebrate an idealized democracy of rational individualism, Wallas insisted that politicians had to engage with the people as they were, rather than as they should be. This meant accepting that ‘most of the political opinions of most men are the result, not of reasoning tested by experience, but of unconscious or half-conscious inference fixed by habit’. Wallas’s work was immensely influential, and is often taken as signalling a decisive shift towards a more consciously manipulative style of electioneering. However, it is important to recognize that Wallas saw himself not as a new Machiavelli, but as a clear-sighted critic of present tendencies. He wrote the book against the backdrop of ‘Chinese slavery’, dump shops, and the big loaf, and in the light of his own grim experiences as a Progressive candidate for the LCC in 1907

Answer 33

1909 study The Condition of England, the Liberal junior minister C. F. G. Masterman, suggested that the by-elections of 1908, which had gone so badly for the Government, had witnessed the birth of a new politics of ‘the crowd’ Leaning heavily on contemporary fascination with so-called ‘crowd psychology’ and the mass mind, and borrowing freely from Hobson’s 1901 critique of Jingoism, Masterman painted a bleak picture in which ‘Humanity has become the Mob’—brought into the streets to do the bidding of ‘the strong man’

Answer 34

heyday of the election meeting thanks to technological innovations such as amplification, instantaneous relay, and more reliable modes of transport allowed candidates to address multiple meetings more easily, and it became common for politicians to address six or more meetings in an evening. Writing in 1930, Ramsay Muir, the former Liberal MP for Rochdale, argued that the number of meetings and speeches had ‘enormously increased' Frank Gray, briefly a maverick Liberal MP, claimed to have held sixteen large open-air meetings across Oxford on the eve of poll in 1922. In five strenuous hours he reckoned to have addressed 12,000 voters politicians increasingly began to doubt their efficacy as a means of reaching the all important uncommitted voter. The growth of open-air meetings was directly linked to the recognition that most electors would never be persuaded to venture inside a conventional meeting hall. With the average constituency boasting almost 50,000 voters by 1929 it was obvious that even intensive public speaking, both indoor and out, would probably reach only a minority of the electorate While the total number of meetings changed little across the period, by the 1930s they were generally simpler, shorter affairs Set-piece election rallies remained an important feature of local campaigns but they became rarer partly because election expenses had been severely squeezed by the 1918 ‘Fourth’ Reform Act, partly because candidates now had a legal right to the free use of local elementary schoolrooms during the sixteen days between writ and poll.

Answer 35

gag of ‘rowdyism’ only worked because disorder persisted at elections. But for all that, the trend was towards quieter, more orderly contests where the clash of rival bands of partisans became the exception rather than the rule (unlike before the war). Michael Dawson has shown that elections became markedly more orderly in the rural south-west after 1918, and contemporary newspapers can be found making similar claims for many parts of Britain, including Labour strongholds such as central Scotland and south Wales. My study of elections in eleven English constituencies between 1895 and 1935 drew similar conclusions. elections appear to have become quieter, less disorderly affairs before either radio or cinema had emerged as significant players in electoral politics

Answer 36

he had ‘never before had such crowds to address nor so little interruption…even the Socialists remain quiet and subdued’,

Answer 37

recalled the ‘apathy and | listlessness of the electors’ at Stockton when he lost in 1929

Answer 38

declared that | ‘women have sounded the death-knell of mud-slinging and unfair tactics in elections

Answer 39

In the early 1920., all parties went to extraordinary lengths to try and reach out to women voters: holding regular women-only public meetings, ensuring that women played a prominent role in all their public activities, Writing in the Sunday Graphic during the 1929 election, Baldwin celebrated the fact that the contest was ‘being conducted with a sanity and an absence of emotion influence of the women electors’ that had created this ‘absence of excitement

Answer 40

‘rowdyism’ was not simply a myth Even in 1935 there was serious disorder, although it was mostly confined to contests involving the hated champions of ‘National Labour’ including MacDonald himself, who had a gruelling time in the process of losing his Durham mining seat of Seaham to Manny Shinwell.

Answer 41

1924, Neville Chamberlain was locked in a bitter struggle for Ladywood with Oswald Mosley. Mosley, who would go on to raise political force to an art form in the 1930. as leader first of the New Party (with its notorious Biff Boys) and then the British Union of Fascists, appears to have been the chief instigator of disorder

Answer 42

always a strong premium on boorish masculinity at the old hustings, while even the wittiest, most decorous exchange between heckler and politician rarely managed to elevate debate much above the level of the modern sound bite. since the restrained gentlemanly ideal of platform masculinity had always defined itself against the crowd, the shift to a mass electorate demanded less a change of political style than a subtle recalibration of politicians’ expectations about the crowd. Now that all men (and most women) were citizens there was less need to tolerate the voluble and sometimes boorish behaviour of the excluded during an election. FEMALE ENFRANCHISEMENT WAS NOT ESSENTIAL TO THIS SHIFT in sensibilities, but it did reinforce the trend towards a more restrained model of citizenship, which came to mirror the restrained codes governing political leadership Candidates continued to hold multiple daily election meetings throughout a campaign, and down to 1945 they continued to draw large audiences

Answer 43

Recalled a burly navvy whacking his tearful infant son at the front of a disorderly Islington election meeting in the 1930s and shouting: ‘What’s the matter with you? Isn’t this better than a cinema?’

Answer 44

class (and gender) dynamics of elections were destabilized after Elections could no longer be about the symbolic, if temporary, disavowal of class difference when almost every contest involved a Labour candidate (60 per cent in 1918, 85 per cent in 1924 and 94 per cent in 1929). True, few Labour candidates were still at the work-bench by the time they entered politics, but even fewer had been to the manor born

Answer 45

Political histories of masculinity also suggest that the idea of a late Victorian ‘flight from domesticity’ followed by redomestication after the First World War is overly simplistic. Rather than distancing themselves from home life, late Victorian politicians sought to expand their appeal by working with organizations such as the Primrose League and Women’s Liberal Federation, which celebrated values of domesticity and cross-class harmony. This increasing focus on domestic life was driven by the growing visibility of women in public politics and parties’ increasing reliance on them as canvassers and voluntary workers from the eighteen-eighties onwards. Ideas about expected male behaviour appear to have been recast. Rowdyism at public meetings, which had been tolerated before the First World War, now came under attack, and a tempered form of masculinity was encouraged in its place.7 Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative party leader between 1923 and 1937, has been seen as an exemplar of the ‘Little Man’, whose domesticated and consensual values offered a popular image of national character between the wars historians have exaggerated the centrality of the female vote to the Conservatives’ success after 1918, and neglected the role that masculine identities played in shaping electoral politics. After all, several party organizers put part of the blame for their defeat at the 1923 and 1929 elections down to women defecting to Labour or the Liberal There was no straightforward feminization of British politics after 1918 and ideas about manly control of the platform remained important throughout this period. The first part of this article explores the popular culture of the Edwardian tariff reform campaign, which played a vital role in widening women’s participation in Conservative politics. Through promoting an orderly culture and values of restrained masculinity this movement helped Conservative activism to flourish among both sexes in party heartlands. By 1914 the branches of theWomen’s Unionist and Tariff Reform Association provided the most vibrant and well-supported Conservative auxiliary organization in many constituencies. presenting Labour policies as a threat to the ex-soldier’s welfare played an important part in the Conservatives’ anti-socialist programme. As recent cultural histories have demonstrated, the ex-serviceman’s war experience was lauded in Britain during the early years of the peace and increasingly became privileged over that of women and male non-combatants Wartime service was commonly highlighted in election literature and 200 Conservative M.P.s who won seats at the 1924 election had undertaken uniformed service during the First World War, as opposed to only thirteen Liberal and fourteen Labour M.P.s. Building on the culture of the Edwardian tariff leagues, post-war Conservatives sought to present themselves as the party of orderliness. In turn, they claimed that the rowdiness of Labour militants was an affront to the patriotism and discipline of servicemen. This strategy helped to lay the basis for Baldwinite Conservatism, with its focus on presenting the Conservatives as the party of civic responsibility and the national interest After the war all parties responded to their alarm at the challenges posed by Britain’s new democracy by seeking to fashion new appeals to masculine identities. The party’s association with the servicemen’s movement played an important role in enabling it to widen the cultural purchase of its politics. First, it helped to neutralize the threat of the violent radical right, which had emerged during the war. In the early years of the conflict the British Workers’ League and British Empire Union had justified their violence against meetings held by supporters of a negotiated peace by claiming that they represented the patriotic will of the serviceman. However, such links were eroded by the emergence of the Comrades of the GreatWar, a serviceman’s organization with links to the Conservative party, which distanced itself from violent street politics More importantly, the claim to represent the ex-serviceman held an important function in Conservative efforts to challenge the advances that Labour had made in the months after the end of the FirstWorldWar.The serviceman was supposed to embody patriotism, self-restraint and discipline. By implying that Labour endangered the serviceman’s interests and could not control unruly militants, Conservatives challenged trade union claims to uphold the just demands of working families. Violence by ‘socialist rowdies’ at public meetings was used to suggest that Labour hampered female political participation and remained a refuge for disreputable, masculine street politics. Conservatives were able to lay claim to be a party with an attachment to the interests of poor working families affected by the onset of economic depression after 1920. This was particularly important, as it enabled the party to retain, and develop, constituencies of working-class support at a time in which deflationary government was becoming enshrined Conservative anti-socialist strategies were likely to have more effect in the early nineteen-twenties than previously, given that the onset of recession increased middle class animosities towards the concessions which the labour movement had won during the First World War and its aftermath. The gendered identities described in this article were important as they provided the Conservative party with an alternative anti-socialist politics, and arguably one with a more universal appeal

Answer 46

Jon Lawrence argued that the Conservatives’ late Victorian ascendancy was aided by their identification with the respectable man who enjoyed the occasional pint and took pride in the successes of local sports teams. Nonetheless, women came to play an increasingly important role within Conservative activism after 1883 through the auspices of the Primrose League. In response, Tory politicians shifted away from beer-barrel politics and encouraged a more domesticated culture According to Lawrence, this transformation meant that the Conservatives were well suited to dealing with the challenge of female enfranchisement after 1918

Answer 47

, in the one substantial analysis of Conservative appeals to masculine identities in inter-war Britain which has appeared to date, David Jarvis argues that male activists reacted ambivalently towards the growing influence of women within the Conservative party during the nineteen-twenties. While it was common for activists to celebrate the organizational vitality of women’s constituency associations, men were also alarmed by the increasing feminization of the party’s grassroots organization and complained of the passing of traditions of boisterous and manly forms of public politics

Answer 48

focus on educating the housewife, the family’s principal consumer, was important as it encouraged a more ideologically committed, activist mentality among Conservative women

Answer 49

300,000 the backbone of the Conservative women’s organization after the FirstWorld War.

Answer 50

In some respects tariff reformers’ attitudes towards public politics reflected existing conventions. Leaders supported open-air meetings as they were seen as an opportunity for the local public to engage vigorously with politics, with interruptions forming part of a legitimate sporting combat between speaker and audience In another continuation of earlier cultures, tariff reformers presented their command of the platform as a sign of manly vigour.21 Rather than glorying in the rowdy traditions of the Victorian hustings, the tariff leagues’ leaders portrayed themselves as respectable politicians, who were nonetheless willing to engage with mass politics. The Tariff Reform League regularly criticized Liberal ‘rowdyism’ by claiming that it was being organized by outside auxiliary groups rather than reflecting local opinion. Following a disrupted meeting, Exeter tariff reformers claimed that if such scenes were repeated they would ‘procure the arrest and prosecution of the ringleaders of the “Free Trade” rowdies very few of these incidents led to major breaches of the peace. In contrast to the sometimes turbulent atmosphere of elections, ordinary Tariff Reform League gatherings were characterized by their orderliness. Edwardian tariff reformers’ concern with taming the rougher elements of public politics resulted partly from the need to integrate women more thoroughly into day-to-day Conservative activism The volatile politics of 1917 and 1918 challenged traditional ideas about ‘manly’ politics which legitimated unruly and rowdy behaviour at public meetings.

Answer 51

accused the Brighton branch of the Tariff Reform League of organizing interruptions at free trade demonstrations on the city’s beachfront

Answer 52

encouraged women to take a more active part in their fight to change Britain’s fiscal system. By 1911 the Mid-Devon Women’s Tariff Association had 4,600 members and was organizing over a dozen meetings a month. As a local newspaper noted: ‘in most cases these are addressed by ladies, who are well able to hold their own in the heckling encounters’,

Answer 53

Militarist organizations like the National Service League, which restricted female participation, provided a precursor to wartime radical right leagues such as the British Empire Union (B.E.U.) and British Workers’ League (B.W.L.). These groups promoted a politics of machismo, which threatened to undermine Edwardian Conservatives’ efforts to fashion an orderly and peaceable politics that could appeal to both sexes. The British Workers’ League was founded in March 1916 as a ‘patriotic labour’ organization to attract working men away from the Labour party, Patriot violence peaked in summer 1917 when pacifists attempted to hold a series of meetings across the country to inaugurate regional workers’ and soldiers’ councils. Several of these gatherings were broken up after B.E.U. and B.W.L. agitators inflamed opposition against a meeting at the Brotherhood church in Hackney, east London why was patriot violence initially condoned, or even supported, by Conservatives? The most obvious explanation is that radical right groups provided an outlet for popular frustrations with the stalemate on the Western Front The B.W.L. also appealed to Tories because it claimed to represent ‘patriotic labour’ The B.W.L.’s rhetoric promoted a hierarchy of masculinity based around war service, with the soldier and sailor as hegemon Pacifists were their antithesis and not true men. Conservative newspapers colluded with the radical right in legitimating patriot violence by claiming that it was supported, but also controlled, by servicemen. Papers stressed the ability of soldiers to curb the unruly excesses of the inflamed crowd which had rioted at the Brotherhood church in Hackney Daily Express focused on the gallantry of the soldiers in quelling violence. When a woman threatened to drag a female peace delegate into the street the paper observed that she was persuaded to leave by another Canadian soldier. clear that as summer 1917 progressed, the rowdy street politics of the radical right and their opponents increasingly came to be seen as a threat to patriotic unity. Liberal newspapers widely criticized patriot violence Conservatives grew uncomfortable with violent street politics in part as a result of the left-wing National Federation of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers’ utilization of this form of activism to protest at existing provision for ex-servicemen many of the complaints about growing female influence within the party came from conservative organizations with a strong tradition of homosocial association such as the Junior Imperial League and Conservative Club movement 110Women’s encroachment into party club life became a less pressing issue over the course of the nineteen-twenties as new Conservative organizations emerged such as the Unionist Women’s Institutes and Fuschia Clubs

Answer 54

Having been created in April 1917, the federation | grew rapidly, claiming 100,000 members by July

Answer 55

Comrades of the Great War, est July 1917

Answer 56

By the end of 1917 there were only two constituencies in the Liverpool area which had no war aims committee.67 Formed in August 1917 the government-sponsored NationalWar Aims Committee (N.W.A.C.) played a central role in encouraging the public to mobilize peacefully in support of Britain’s democratic war aims

Answer 57

expressed concerns for the new democracy born out | of the Representation of the People Bill

Answer 58

Laura Beers has persuasively demonstrated that trade unions were able to counteract right-wing claims that industrial action was inspired by unruly, Bolshevik elements in 1919.When a rail strike was called that autumn, the National Union of Railwaymen launched a massive publicity campaign to educate the public on the reasons behind their action. Whereas papers such as the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Times initially presented the workers’ action in hostile terms, their line moderated over the course of the strike due to the effectiveness of the trade union campaign. The most successful poster produced during the strike, ‘Is this man an anarchist?’, presented an image of a dignified trade unionist and his poverty-stricken family. Far from being an unpatriotic plot, it was argued that the strike was forced by the worker’s need to secure a living wage for his family

Answer 59

, celebrated the man who ‘measures his success by his home’ and encouraged both sexes to recognize the value of women’s labour as housewives

Answer 60

Throughout the early nineteentwenties ex-servicemen made up the majority of the long-term unemployed, so by questioning Labour’s claim to represent this group, the Conservatives challenged its wider claim to protect the interests of poor working families

Answer 61

term Poplarism is used to refer to the policy of giving out-relief on an illegal scale by boards of guardians. In March 1921 Poplar’s Labour-dominated council, led by George Lansbury, decided to levy an illegal rate to cover the costs of providing relief to the district’s many unemployed and under-employed families. Poplarism became a cause célèbre, with the arrest of thirty Poplar councillors who were imprisoned for up to six weeks in September and October 1921. Lansbury-edited Daily Herald procession of 8,000 unemployed Shoreditch workers anti-socialist papers were able effectively to challenge the legitimacy of the Poplar councillors’ movement from a variety of angles, portraying it as a ‘Bolshevik’ threat to the power of democratic government. On the first day of the arrests the Daily Mail stated that the councillors’ apparent prodigal spending was ‘The outcome of a definite policy of redistributing the national wealth London’s Labour guardians supposedly provided over-generous relief while ‘thousands of poor but employed ratepayers are struggling to keep a roof over their heads’. march of unemployed men onTrafalgar Square shortly before the release of the Poplar councillors, where demonstrators broke through a police cordon, was portrayed as unrepresentative of the mass of unemployed workers.8 For The Times the Trafalgar Square riot demonstrated that the Poplar councillors’ values were the antithesis of the ex-servicemen’s movement, which was committed to patriotic, community-building activities The Conservative party periodical the Popular View argued that the creation of the British Legion demonstrated that ‘ex-servicemen know no politics’; it was now impossible for their activities to be exploited ‘for mere party purposes The divisive policies of the London Labour guardians appeared to be endangering efforts to bring servicemen to work together in a spirit of non-partisanship.

Answer 62

created in summer 1921 amalgamation of the leading ex-servicemen’s organizations 1922 the British Legion raised £321,000 (around £8 million in current prices) to support benevolent work

Answer 63

Captain Erskine-Bolst, Coalition candidate for South Hackney at the August 1922 by-election, played up his heroic war record and attacked the claims of his Labour opponent Holford Knight, who had been a conscientious objector, to have local support from the British Legion Erskine-Bolst made much of the apparent rowdyism at his meetings, some of which were broken up to the strains of the ‘Red Flag’

Answer 64

In Leeds the Conservative Woman made much of the violence by young men at public meetings in the run up to the 1924 election, publishing an appeal from the wife of Charles Wilson, Conservative M.P. for Leeds Central. She called the ‘Bolshevik’ methods of Labour rowdies ‘a disgrace to our city’.

Answer 65

demonstrated that Conservatives sought to challenge the advances that the labour movement had made during the First World War and its immediate aftermath. From the early nineteen-twenties onwards, the Conservative party claimed that it promoted the ‘public’ interest against the sectional class interests of Labour. Thackeray: In many ways, the party’s reformation of its gendered identities described in this article complemented the class-based stereotypes which McKibbin outlines. By pursuing an unruly, and in the case of the Poplar guardians illegal, politics it was suggested that Labour insulted the orderly and patriotic values of the serviceman. Moreover, incidents of apparent rowdiness at Conservative meetings were used to suggest that Labour lacked respect for constitutional values and hampered women’s engagement in public politics.

Answer 66

Given the fractured nature of the anti-waste movement, the Conservatives’ critique of masculine Labour politics widened the cultural purchase of the party’s anti-socialist politics Given the fractured nature of the anti-waste movement, the Conservatives’ critique of masculine Labour politics widened the cultural purchase of the party’s anti-socialist politics either complemented the class-based discourses which McKibbin describes or acted as an alternative appeal in regions where such conventional wisdoms did not appear fully plausible. serviceman’s interest appears to be have been of particular utility in industrial, working-class areas like Hackney and Leeds Central, where it provided them with a means to challenge Labour claims to represent poor, working-class communities suffering from mass unemployment

Answer 67

government policies of providing preferential treatment for the ex-serviceman came under challenge, especially after 1921. The issue of marital status complicated attitudes towards the perceived worthiness of male unemployment claimants. In some contexts, the married civilian man, who was assumed to act as his family’s ‘breadwinner’, could be seen as having more of a right to participate in relief work than the single ex-serviceman cabinet decision in March 1921 meant that while government relief schemes maintained a principle of preferential employment for ex-servicemen, married civilians could make up to 25 per cent of the total workforce on these projects.

Answer 68

can be explained by Stanley Baldwin’s repositioning of Conservative politics. As Philip Williamson demonstrates, Baldwin placed the concept of service at the heart of his public identity.129 Recognizing the sacrifices made by the men who had fought in the war, and protecting their interests, played a key role in this creed. But Baldwin elucidated a much wider understanding of what the politics of service meant In Baldwin’s understanding, the development of vibrant civil society institutions would delegitimize revolutionary forms of political change, thereby providing ‘a non-socialist reconciliation between the individual and the community Baldwin should not be seen as making a clean break with the past. In fact, in his efforts to reposition Conservative politics to appeal to values of domesticity he built on the various efforts which had been made to refashion the party’s gendered identities since the Edwardian period

Answer 69

refashioned political debate in Edwardian Britain; each side focused attention on the effects that fiscal policy had on domestic life and claimed to represent the housewife. This meant that they had to encourage women to play a prominent role in their campaigns as activists. Organizations such as the Tariff Reform League and Free Trade Union sought to do this by distancing themselves from rowdy politics. Nonetheless, women’s growing influence in some spheres of political life was still keenly resisted before 1914

Answer 70

Male rowdiness at public meetings had been tolerated during peacetime as this forum was seen as providing a vital opportunity for political engagement, especially for the non-voter. But as the war progressed there was an increasing sense across the political mainstream that the demotic politics of the street had been pushed too far and would pose a threat to the stability of Britain’s post-war democracy, which already appeared vulnerable as a result of the influx of new voters, and the threat of revolutionary dissent spreading from Europe in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Answer 71

Some politicians, such as the Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson, collaborated with the press to increase their media exposure and promote an image of themselves as political ‘celebrities’. In so doing, they simultaneously perpetuated and destabilized assumptions about women as frivolous, superficial and uninterested in serious political debate From her election in 1924, Wilkinson was catapulted into the media spotlight to a degree almost unprecedented amongst backbench MPs. Her near instant media ‘notoriety’ was, I will argue, attributable to gendered assumptions held by a commercial media that saw a profit to be made from spotlighting female politicians. I would argue that the attention given by the media to Ellen Wilkinson is indicative of a shift in British political culture towards a more intimate and affective relationship between politicians and voters – mediated by the press, and later radio and television – and that this shift had its origins in the enfranchisement of women and the emergence of the female politician onto the national scene. The first decades of the twentieth century saw a revolution in the style and content of the popular press that was closely tied to the growth of female readership. Between 1900 and 1945 women’s share of the national newspaper market rose rapidly, until by 1939 nearly as many women read a national paper as men. In an industry increasingly reliant on advertising revenue, these women readers were even more important than their growing proportion of the total readership suggests, as 80 per cent of household purchases were made by women trend towards a more personal visual appeal and the women’s vote is underscored by several candidates’ inclusion in their election addresses not only of their own head shots but also of photographs of their wives and families, occasionally accompanied by a special appeal to women voters written by the candidate’s wife.39 underscore the persistent gender conservatism within interwar political culture

Answer 72

the kind of ‘public’ examined by McKibbin depended upon the inclusion of women for its political salience. The contrast he draws between a disruptive unionised working class and the respectable public portrays the former as essentially masculine. Political ‘public’ was not necessarily an all-male preserve. Education more generally has often been seen as integral to enlightenment visions of the public.12 Literacy became increasingly prevalent in this period, and the related expansion of education was frequently assumed to have swelled the public. This argument was often made in relation to the perceived emergence of a more popular press in the 1890s.13 Respectability, importantly distinct from class, was crucial to the franchise debate which culminated in the reform act of 1867 stereotypes. man on the omnibus’ came into general use earlier, but never attained the currency of ‘the man in the street’ in its heyday of the 1890s and 1900s. It seems sensible to examine the former first An obvious continuity is provided by the gender of the stereotype. Militant suffragists, such as Teresa Billington-Greig, used the more pejorative associations of ‘the man in the street’ in their analysis of the gendered character of public opposition to female enfranchisement notion of the newspaper-reading public, it will be argued later, would lead in time to an increasing emphasis on the female presence in the public man in the street could be less warmly regarded, but his identification with ‘public opinion’ was also weaker. Not infrequently, the man in the street was taken as a synecdoche for the opinion of the debased ‘mass’ rather than the more enlightened ‘public as Hutton suggests, that individuals could be regarded as members of the public when considered as consumers, but excluded from its ranks when viewed as producers struggle of the miners for ‘a living wage’ in the autumn of 1893 equation of the ‘public’ and the ‘community’ was absolute, and the interests of consumers foremost public’s centre of gravity was held to lie towards its upper social end. Political parties were unsurprisingly more concerned to appeal to women after 1918, but Edwardian debates about tariff reform and the franchise frequently portrayed women as members of the public The category of the ‘public’ was highly contested, progressive Cambridge economists Charles Watney and James A. Little considered solutions to Industrial Warfare from the perspectives of worker, employer and public, devoting a separate section to each.92 Their public was dominated by reasonable working-class consumers. Reynolds’s Newspaper paper’s cartoons are particularly revealing. In one a stout, prosperous ‘John Bull’ addresses an eminently respectable miner The thinking public: The English Constitution, Walter Bagehot working classes contribute almost nothing to our corporate public opinion’ but he was careful not to impose overly stringent intellectual requirements on membership. The public should not be too clever, otherwise England might become France Gladstonians leant towards a more inclusive account of the public, but preferred a populist language that upheld the moral goodness of the people. inclusiveness of the public, and yet its weighting towards the middle class. ``` restrictive character of much mainstream intellectualist invocation of the public was evident in the recurrent suspicion in labour ranks that appeals to ‘public opinion’ were really a cloak for class opinion ``` Institution of the secret ballot in 1872 and alterations in property law combined with the growth of the electorate to leave the principle of virtual representation increasingly beleaguered. Deeply held beliefs were accorded a special significance in Victorian political culture debate of 1908 on votes for women, Herbert Gladstone ‘members of the House reflect the opinions of the country not only in regard to the numbers outside, but with regard to the intensity of the feeling in support of a movement’ politics of disruption’ did much to make political violence less acceptable.1 intellectualist conception of the public preserved an attachment to intensity of belief that supported a political culture more unruly than is occasionally implied typical, however, to argue, as The Times did in 1912, that rejection of militancy met with ‘the cordial sympathy of the general public’.

Answer 73

the reform act created the middle class more than the middle class created the reform act

Answer 74

Mill proposed that ‘the working classes are now part of the public’ in referring to the working classes Mill was primarily thinking of the urban artisans emphasis on the impact of the press growth of ‘public opinion’ related to the rise of civilisation,

Answer 75

Radical narratives of constitutional politics focused more upon the platform than the petition. The genre is epitomised by Jephson’s twovolume study of The Platform . Political meetings were not, of course, necessarily ‘open to the public’. Ticketing became increasingly common at the end of the century, particularly at the prestigious gatherings attended by national figures Vernon, Politics and the People, pp. 225–30 emphasises the rise of ticketing as part of the taming of popular politics. A more sceptical view of its prevalence, particularly at the local level, is provided in Lawrence, Speaking for the People, pp. 182–4, which, nonetheless, acknowledges its growth at the national level. Closed meetings were more easily managed than open meetings, but were liable to be disparaged as mere preaching to the converted. The emotions carried at open meetings possessed a greater legitimacy interaction between speaker and audience, along with contests within the audience, gave them greater status as expressions of ‘public opinion’. Respect for open meetings, not confined to liberals, stemmed from an inclusive conception of the limits of the public.

Answer 76

that the act of newspaper reading | was constitutive of the Victorian public

Answer 77

particularly capacious vision of the possibilities of the press. Education Act has practically created a new reading public, for which the morning daily, as we have it, makes no provision.

Answer 78

idea that the Education Act of 1870 permitted the emergence of the mass press has been subject to much criticism by recent, and not so recent, studies of the nineteenth-century press.145 It was, however, as Stead’s remarks suggest, conventional turn-of-the century wisdom. Emphasis upon the impact of the 1870 Act was blind to the vibrant tradition of the popular weekly press.

Answer 79

Much of the reaction to the so-called Northcliffe Revolution can only be understood as a response to the perceived feminisation of the newspaper-reading public

Answer 80

By the 1900s, suffragists had been petitioning parliament for forty years, submission of petitions signed by women on both sides of the debate reflected and reinvigorated women’s claims as members of the public

Answer 81

After 1900 particularly, supporters of women’s suffrage made considerable use of public meetings, and of more theatrical devices like processions. means through which the struggle was conducted tend to suggest that women were considered to be members of the public. nineteenth-century debate Much of the dispute, however, revolved around the narrower question of the rights of female property owners. The resonant cry of ‘no taxation without representation’ was adopted to advance the claims of propertied women.152 New infusions of male voters into the electorate ensured that the rights of property were displaced from the centre of debate. Changes in themale suffrage also served to reduce the currency of arguments based upon the principle of virtual representation.153 Nonetheless, ideas of virtual representation continued to play an important role in the opposition to women’s suffrage. The claim that women were virtually represented by male electors could be seen as a subspecies of the more general argument that nonvoters were virtually represented by electors ‘independence’, particularly as embodied in the second reform act, was importantly related to the notion of manliness.156 Women’s dependent status was a consequence of their gender which went beyond questions of property ownership evolution of the idea of ‘character’ towards a more strenuous, manly and masculine idea Virtual representation also licensed the view that women were incorporated in the polity through their participation in the formation of public opinion, and so had no need of the vote Women had already received, without much controversy, the municipal vote in 1869. The politics of parishes, school boards and localities could be cast as an extension of the domestic concerns of the home which were presumed to be the proper province of women. However, the end of the century saw social issues assuming an unprecedented prominence in national debate, which made the supposed virtues of the gentler sex appear more relevant to Westminster politics Arguments about women’s membership of the public were mostly conducted within the terms of the intellectualist conception of the public. Bertrand Russell suggested that ‘the strongest argument against women’s suffrage is the argument that all government is based, in the last resort, on force Suffragette autobiographers argued that more strident forms of political expression, such as heckling, traditional amongst men, were not extended to women. Emmeline Pankhurst regretted this departure from ‘the time-honoured, almost sacred English privilege of interrupting’. By 1914, women’s position within the public, if not the polity, was more secure than it had been previously 1886 Trafalgar Square riot distinction between the public and the residuum was made evident Pall Mall Gazette reflected mordantly on the implications of events for the manliness of the nation. Echo underlined the difference between the unemployed and the public by smugly suggesting that ‘it may be presumed that those who attended themeeting are not readers of daily newspapers’.207 limits of the public

Answer 82

vote was a small matter compared to ‘the power of speaking, of canvassing, of influencing a constituency one way or another, of writing to the newspapers or the magazines – all of which powers women now exercise as well as men’ Women already had ‘powers far more considerable and more important to the community’ than those conferred by the vote

Answer 83

many politicians in the 1880s sought to discredit platform meetings that opposed their views by portraying them as the product of shadowy organisations Lawrence has stressed radical suspicion of the caucus as an exclusionary form of politics that distanced decision making from the people and the locality. Biagini has investigated the rhetoric of the Natural Liberal Federation (NLF), emphasising its self-image as an inclusive parliament of the rank-and-file. Both note liberal realism about the uses of organisation. Lawrence acknowledges the tradition of the political committee within radicalism, while Biagini recognises the existence and resonance of anti-caucus arguments. Biagini’s NLF apologists did not defend the creation of a party bureaucracy – they denied the NLF was a party machine, insisting instead on its inclusive and participatory character While anti-caucus language was a persistent feature of British political debate, it was at its most topical in the 1880s.156 more general charge of fabrication remained a standard trope of debate about public meetings, contributing to attachment to open meetings and recognition among at least some politicians that their presence at meetings could compromise the non-partisan credentials of platform campaigns need to demonstrate earnestness ensured the resilience of the platform as a locus for public opinion throughout the period. scale and requisite organisation of the mass meeting made it harder to present as an example of public deliberation Yet size mattered in assessments of meetings as expressions of ‘public opinion’, and processing did not necessarily jeopardise the representative status of a gathering. As the debates of the mid 1880s suggest, the currency of more activist readings of ‘public opinion’ empowered platform politics in these years. Salisbury certainly rejected radical open-air agitation as giving ‘no indication whatever of the real opinion of the majority of the constituencies, which is the only opinion for which we care, and by which we are bound’, but this should not be confused with wholesale dismissal of the platform or a failure to recognise the symbolic value of open meetings. Salisbury was in fact quick to note that he had received ‘communications from every part of the country, from the largest and most populous communities, and from open meetings where workmen were represented and voted in large numbers’ rhetorical struggles of 1884–5 clearly reveal the resonance of open meetings as an indicator of public opinion South African war of 1899–1902 directed renewed attention towards the relationship between public meetings, disruption and public opinion. Liberals and radicals were quick to claim that rowdy demonstrations in favour of the war were organised by shadowy leagues and incited by the press, particularly the local press. The conservative Bartley objected that ‘I have very often seen a great row at meetings’. He urged further that ‘we are delighted at this exhibition of feeling liberal triumph of 1906 raised serious questions about the representativeness of press opinion.

Answer 84

provided a decidedly positive account of the workings of the platform Except for a few important utterances, the debates in Parliament are not very widely read; editorials in the press are read solely by the members of one political faith; the remarks of private members to their constituents are published only in the local papers; but public speeches by the chief ministers, and to a lesser extent those by the principal leaders of the Opposition, are printed at great length by the newspapers of both parties, and are read everywhere.

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