The pageant of Parliament, vol. 1 of 2

CHAPTER II
WOOING OF THE ELECTORS

1

Party organization reached its highest point of perfection and influence before the outbreak of the World War in 1914. Yet even at that period it was remarkable how small both the Conservative Union and the Liberal Association were in actual membership. It was unusual to find among one’s acquaintances, however wide the circle, anyone who belonged to either organization. Their power lay in propaganda and direction. And if millions of voters acknowledged their sway, there were other millions, though not quite so many, perhaps, over whom they had no influence. At many General Elections before the War not more than 50 or 60 per cent. of the electors went to the polls. The absentees were equally numerous in electoral contests immediately after the War.

Who are they, these silent voters, who constitute so unknown a quantity, so sore a puzzle, to the Party managers, and sometimes confound their nicest calculations? A man’s politics depends upon his individual temperament and point of view, but, like his religion, it is largely the accident of his birth and home environment or early education. I have seen an election address in which the candidate said: “I was born a Conservative on August 29, 1848.” Another man is a Liberal because of the chance that it was Liberalism and not Conservatism which he unconsciously imbibed at his father’s knee. In fact, the sentry in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera was not far wrong in singing that every little boy or girl who’s born into the world alive—

But the silent voter seems to have disdained to adopt fixed and settled political opinions—like the generality of mankind—either by inheritance or by an effort of thought. It may be that he is ignorant of the object of politics, in the general sense of the word; it may be that he knows what it implies, but thinks it unimportant. At any rate, the cries of Party make no appeal to him. He owes allegiance to none of the three great political organizations, nor to any of the many smaller groups formed for the advancement of particular purposes. He is scornful of the mere Party man. “Hack,” indeed, is the word he contemptuously uses. In his opinion ordinary politicians are but gramophones which mechanically grind out echoes of the catch cries that emanate from the Party headquarters or the Party newspapers. Indeed, the Party system appears to him a thing eminently absurd. He sees nothing in it but three scolding political organizations condemning each other’s methods and belittling each other’s achievements, bent solely on the possession of office with its attendant prestige and benefits. In his self-righteousness he accounts himself the ideal elector who, animated by a high sense of public duty, refuses to espouse any side in the Party struggle, and, taking the welfare of the Nation as his guiding light, brings free and reasoned judgment to bear upon the rival political policies at issue in the General Election. On the other hand, the staunch Party adherent calls him a “wobbler”—a sort of backboneless creature who cannot stand steadily upon his legs, much less four square to all the winds that blow, and who, when he votes, is influenced by some petty mood of the moment.

But whatever he may be—whether the idealistic free and enlightened elector, or a creature of unstable mind, whether he represents a low standard of political intelligence, or the highest form of integrity applied to politics—undoubtedly he it is who swings the electoral pendulum. He is the human instrument for the working out of that curious law of electioneering by which, before the World War, with but little irregularity, one Party succeeded the other in office, since the first really democratic extension of the franchise by Disraeli’s Reform Act of 1867, when the principle of household suffrage was established. The “wobblers” are not organized. They have no newspapers. No common consciousness of similar aims unifies or unites them. They do not appear upon platforms nor in audiences, nor do they feel impelled to write to the Press. They keep their own counsel, and rarely talk politics even in their own circles. They are, in fact, ignorant of each other’s existence. Yet their political influence is immense. It is not that they succeed in having themselves largely represented in Parliament. A peer who sits on the “cross benches” in the House of Lords—right in the middle of the floor, unattached, between the Government and the Opposition—is the closest analogue of the “wobbler” to be found in Parliament. Nor are they successful in having their political views considered in legislation and administration. Indeed, it is likely that they are a very varied lot in ideas, sentiments, and tastes. Almost invariably non-politicians are dead against change. So long as things go on pretty much as usual they are content to stand aside. But if it were possible to hold a convention of “wobblers,” and they drew up a political programme, we should have, no doubt, a fearful mixture of Toryism, Liberalism, Socialism, of the principles of free trade and tariff reform, of open doors and closed ports, of loaves big and little, of nationalization and private enterprise, of the whole hog or none.

The power which is wielded by this silent reserve of voters, as opposed to the crowd who belong to organizations, or who go to meetings and make their opinions known, is this—that in many constituencies where the steadfast Liberal, Conservative, and Labour supporters are evenly balanced, they exercise, as it were, the casting vote. In them may be said to lie the decision of the fateful question of the General Election—Shall the Government of the British Empire be Conservative or Liberal or Labour for a term of years? In the mass they may be moved by opposing sentiments and motives, they may be pursuing widely different ends. Many of them, no doubt, are of the kind who can only support a cause so long as it is favoured by fortune. But, as a rule, they are friendly disposed towards the “outs.” “Let the ‘outs’ have a turn of office,” they say, as they place their cross on the ballot paper in the polling booth. Thus swings the electoral pendulum to and fro.

Occasionally there is a wave of national feeling—whether it be enthusiasm for the new cause, or absolute weariness of the old, which, as in the extraordinary General Election of 1906 that brought the Liberals back to power after many years in the wilderness, sweeps over the country like a tidal wave overthrowing the barriers set up by the Party organizations and obliterating the lines of orthodox Party politics. Then it is that the non-political electors who do not trouble to vote on ordinary occasions flock to the polls in their hundreds of thousands, that numbers of voters who held their opinions weakly go over to the other side, and that the candidates of the Party in power are made to feel the full weight of their combined wrath. But this rarely happens. In the periods of calm which more often mark the public life of England, when there are no really fundamental or vital differences between parties, and interest in politics is, therefore, at a low ebb, when the General Election means no more than a struggle to get one set of Ministers out and another set of Ministers in, victory for Liberalism, Conservatism, or Labour depends on organization and persistent urging during the actual contest, each on their own particular supporters, to fail not, on their Party allegiance, to go to the polling booths.

2

The contrast between elections in the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries is very striking and interesting. We see the good effects of Party in sweeping away electoral corruption, and also its drawbacks in limiting the scope of independent opinion and character. One of the most remarkable elections ever held was that which led to the return of John Stuart Mill for Westminster, as an independent Member, in 1865. Mill’s views were uncommon at the time. He held that a Member of Parliament should not have to incur one farthing of cost for undertaking a public duty. The expenses of an election ought, in his opinion, to be borne as a public charge, either by the State or by the locality. Mill also contended that the M.P. should not be expected to give any of his time or labour to the local interests. He declared that he himself had no desire to enter Parliament. He thought he could do more as a writer in the way of propagating his opinions. He declined to conduct a personal canvass of the constituency. Mill thus set at defiance all the accepted notions of right electioneering. A well-known literary man, he relates, was heard to say that the Almighty Himself would have no chance of being elected on such a programme. Yet Mill was returned by a majority of some hundreds over his “Conservative competitor,” as he calls his opponent. And all his expenses were paid by the constituency. It was impossible in the state of Party feeling even then existing that so independent a Member as Mill could be allowed to remain very long in Parliament. So Mill was thrown out at the General Election of 1868. “That I should not have been elected at all would not have required any explanation,” he writes in his Autobiography. “What excites curiosity is that I should have been elected the first time, or, having been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards.” The explanation was that his writings gave as much confidence to Conservatives as they did to the Liberals that he would be a supporter of their cause. The reason he was rejected was that in Parliament he pleased neither the one nor the other.

Macaulay, like Mill, was opposed to canvassing. He declared that an elector who surrendered his vote to supplication, or to the caresses of his baby, forgot his duty as much as if he sold it for a banknote. In his contest for the representation of Leeds, in 1832, he refrained from asking a single elector personally for his vote. He wrote:

Gladstone, on the other hand, nor only recognized that canvassing was essential to successful electioneering, but also positively enjoyed it. He, too, was a candidate in that General Election which followed the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832. He once said, towards the end of his long life, that in all the stirring and momentous political scenes in which he had been an actor—fighting for a seat in the House of Commons, making Cabinets, taking part in historic decisions on peace and war—there was nothing to compare for excitement with his first contest for Newark in 1832, out of which he came victorious. There were 2,000 houses in the borough. It was then the custom for the candidates in all elections personally to visit every house, whether occupied by a voter or not, to solicit the elector for his vote and the non-elector for his or her influence. Gladstone went five times to every house in Newark, thus making 10,000 calls in all. In the twentieth century most candidates are disposed to dispense with canvassing altogether. It must be repugnant to sensitive souls, or to those with a quick response to the ridiculous, to have to go from house to house following the traditionally seductive ways of the aspirant to a seat in the House of Commons. Perhaps the prettiest compliments that have ever been paid, outside those of the lover to his mistress, have been paid by candidates canvassing electors. Kissing even played a leading part in the art in the gallant days of old. The custom had its drawbacks. Did not the eloquent auctioneer who offered for sale the notorious borough of Gatton, in Surrey, with its estate and mansion as well as the power of electing two M.P.’s, set out, among its advantages: “No claims of insolent electors to evade; no impossible promises to make; no tinkers’ wives to kiss”! So kissing by candidates has fallen into disfavour, and the most candidates are expected to do is to pinch the cheeks of babies or chuck them under the chin, in the hope of inducing the parents to recognize the merits of the Unionist or Liberal or Labour cause. Perhaps canvassing ought to be included in the practices which are declared by statute to be illegal at elections. But its effect on the issue of the contest, especially in constituencies where the Parties are rather evenly divided, is sometimes decisive. The feeling of many electors is that in their votes they possess a favour to bestow. They like to be asked for it, and the candidate who comes to their houses, hat in hand, soliciting their support, usually gets it, at least from the non-party electors or the “wobblers.”

In days gone by, even candidates with the highest sense of virtue and honour, public and private, had to woo the electors by a lavish expenditure of money. Lord Cochrane stood as a Whig for Honiton at a by-election in the spring of 1806 against Augustus Cavendish Bradshaw, who sought “a renewal of the confidence of the constituency” on accepting a place in the Tory Government. Bradshaw had paid five guineas a vote at the former election, and on this occasion expected to get returned unopposed at the reduced rate of two guineas; but on the appearance of Cochrane in the field he was compelled to raise his bounty to the old figure. “You need not ask me, my lord, who I vote for,” said a burgess to Cochrane; “I always vote for Mister Most.” The gallant seaman, however, refused to bribe at all, and got well beaten in consequence. How he turned his defeat to account makes an amusing story. After the election he sent the bellman round the town, directing those who had voted for him to go to his agent, Mr. Townsend, and receive ten guineas. The novelty of a defeated candidate paying double the current price of a vote—or, indeed, paying anything at all—made a great sensation. Cochrane states in his Autobiography of a Seaman that his agent assured him he could have secured his return for less money. As the popular voice was in his favour a trifling judicious expenditure would have turned the scale. “I told Mr. Townsend,” he writes, “that such payment would have been bribery, which would not have accorded with my character as a reformer of abuses—a declaration which seemed highly to amuse him. Notwithstanding the explanation that the ten guineas was paid as a reward for having withstood the influence of bribery, the impression produced on the electoral mind by such unlooked-for liberality was simply this—that if I gave ten guineas for being beaten, my opponent had not paid half enough for being elected: a conclusion which, by a similar process of reasoning, was magnified into the conviction that each of his voters had been cheated out of five pounds five.” In the October following there was a General Election. Cochrane was again a candidate for Honiton, and, although he had said nothing about paying for his votes, was returned at the head of the poll. The burgesses were convinced that on this occasion he was “Mister Most.” Surely it was impossible to conceive any limits to the bounty of a successful candidate who in defeat was so generous as voluntarily to pay ten guineas a vote! They got—not a penny! Cochrane told them that bribery was against his principles. What the trustful electors said about their representative would not bear repetition here. But there was another dissolution a few months afterwards, and Cochrane did not dare to face outraged Honiton.

3

It was not often, however, that burgesses were outwitted by a candidate. A story that is told of the Irish borough of Cashel shows how the voters usually scored. The electors, locally known as “Commoners,” fourteen in number, were notoriously corrupt, and always sold their votes to the highest bidder. It was for this constituency, by the way, that that very prim and straight-laced man, Sir Robert Peel, was first returned to Parliament in 1809. The usual price of a vote in Cashel was £20. The popular candidate at one election, anxious to win the seat honestly and not to spend a penny in corruption, got the parish priest to preach a sermon at Mass, on the Sunday before the polling, against the immorality of trafficking in the franchise. The good man, indeed, went so far in the course of his impressive sermon as to declare that those who betrayed a public trust by selling their votes would go to hell. Next day the candidate met one of the electors and asked what was the effect of Sunday’s sermon. “Your honour,” said he, “votes have risen. We always got £20 for a vote before we knew it was a sin to sell it; but as his reverence tells us that we will be damned for selling our votes, we can’t for the future afford to take less than £40.” The borough was ultimately disfranchised for corruption.

Bribery did not always mean the direct purchase of votes for money down. Many whimsical dodges were adopted to influence voters without running any great risk from the law. Cheap articles were bought from the voters at fancy prices, or a valuable commodity was sold to them at a fraction of its value. At an election at Sudbury in 1826 a candidate purchased from a greengrocer two cabbages for £10 and a plate of gooseberries for £25. He paid the butcher, the grocer, the baker, the tailor, the printer, the billsticker, at equally extravagant rates. At Great Marlow an elector got a sow and a litter of nine for a penny. Candidates also suddenly developed hobbies for buying birds, animals, and articles of various kinds which caught their eye during the house-to-house canvass. Some were enthusiastic collectors of old almanacs; others were passionately fond of children’s white mice. “Name your price,” said the candidate. “Is a pound too much?” replied the voter. “Nonsense, man,” said the candidate; “here are two guineas.” Rivers of beer were also set flowing in the constituencies. The experience of the Earl of Shaftesbury (the philanthropist and friend of the working classes) was common. As Lord Ashley he contested Dorset in the anti-Reform interest at the General Election of 1831, which followed the rejection of the first Reform Bill, and was defeated. His expenses amounted to £15,600, of which £12,525 was paid to the owners of inns and public-houses for refreshments—“free drinks” to the people. In those days some of the most respectable as well as renowned of parliamentarians got their chance by means of a judicious distribution of five-pound notes among the electors.

When bribery was thus avowed and flagrant, no limit could be placed to the possible cost of a seat in the House of Commons. Success was won, or defeat sustained, in many an election at the price of bankruptcy and ruin. The most expensive contest in the annals of electioneering was the fight in 1807 for the representation of Yorkshire. The candidates were Lord Milton, son of Earl Fitzwilliam (Whig); the Hon. Henry Lascelles, son of Lord Harewood (Tory); and William Wilberforce, the famous advocate of the abolition of slavery (Independent). The poll was taken in the Castle yard at York in thirteen booths, which, in accordance with the existing law, were kept open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for fifteen days. Wilberforce and Milton were returned. The total number of electors polled was 23,007, and the three candidates spent between them £300,000, or about £13 for each vote polled. Wilberforce’s bill ran into £58,000, which had to be defrayed by public subscription. A good deal of this money went into the pockets of the electors. Therefore it is hardly surprising to read in the debates on the Reform Bill of 1832 the contention advanced that a seat in the House was private property, that the possession of a vote was a source of income, and consequently that to take one or the other from a man without compensation, by the abolition of small boroughs and fancy franchises, was as much robbery as to deprive a fundholder of his dividends, or a landlord of his rents.

4

All this but emphasizes the purity of the wooing of the electors to-day. The various stringent Acts against bribery and corruption carried in the latter half of the nineteenth century have not been passed in vain. In 1854 bribery was made a criminal offence by the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act. Election petitions by defeated candidates claiming seats on the ground that there had been corrupt practices were formerly tried by committees of the House of Commons. Often the decisions were partisan, and directly in the teeth of the evidence. Yet the House of Commons for centuries so jealously guarded its own jurisdiction over all matters relating to the election of its members that it rejected proposals of a judicial tribunal. At length in 1868 the Parliamentary Elections Act was passed, and since then two Judges of the King’s Bench Division try petitions, and report the result to the Speaker. After the General Election of 1880 there were no fewer than ninety-five petitions impugning returns on various grounds, including bribery, intimidation, personation of dead or absent voters, and most of them were sustained. After the General Election of 1885 there was not a single petition. Between these electoral contests a statute was passed—the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act of 1883—which has done much to make parliamentary elections pure. Its main purpose was the fixing of a maximum scale of electioneering expenditure, varying in amount according to the character and extent of the constituency, and each candidate was required to make a statement of his expenses to the returning officer within thirty-five days after the contest. The expenditure of an election—other than the personal expenses of the candidate and the returning officers’ charges—was limited by this Act in England and Scotland to £350 for the first 2,000 electors in boroughs, and £650 for the first 2,000 electors in counties, with accretions of £30 in the case of boroughs, and £60 in the case of counties, for every additional 1,000 electors. The personal expenses of a candidate were confined to £100. The General Election of 1880—the last election in which expenditure within the law was practically unlimited, and, as the disclosures in the hearing of the petitions showed, was most excessive—cost the candidates over £2,000,000, or about 15s. for each vote polled. The General Election of 1885, the first held under the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, cost only £1,026,646, or 4s. 5d. per vote. The tendency of the expenditure is still downwards. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1918, the expenses of a candidate must not exceed an amount equal to 7d. for each elector on the register, in the case of counties, and 5d. in the case of boroughs, exclusive of personal expenses. The fee paid to the election agent must not exceed £75 in counties and £50 in boroughs.

Still, the question is sometimes asked in all seriousness: Is electioneering really any purer now than it was in the days before the first Reform Act? It is admitted that seats in the House of Commons are no longer openly purchased, that individual voters are no longer directly bribed. But it is said that the old blunt and barefaced forms of corruption have simply given place to newer and subtler methods of bribery, which are just as dishonourable to those who give and those who take. A candidate does not now buy a constituency; he “nurses” it. In other words, he tries to secure the good will and support of the electors by subscriptions and donations for various local objects. Against this practice, with its many by-ways of expenditure, there is no law. The objects for which money is thus spent divide themselves into two classes—religion and philanthropy, sport and amusements. Is a peal of bells required for the parish church? Does the chapel aspire to a steeple? Is a billiard-table wanted by the young men’s society? Are coal and blankets needed by the poor during the winter? The open-handed candidate is only waiting for a hint in order to supply the necessary cheque. Then there are football and cricket clubs to which the candidate is expected to give financial assistance. And give it he does gladly, for, as he says, it is the duty of public men to encourage national sports and pastimes. If the stories one hears be true, it would seem, indeed, as if the old tradition that a vote is a saleable commodity, and that parliamentary elections are held, not so much that the country may be governed in accordance with the wishes of the people as that the constituency may profit financially in one way or another by the return of a representative, still to some extent survives. It is even said that impudent individual demands are made on the purse of the candidate. They range from five shillings for getting a voter’s clothes or tools out of pawn to a five-pound note for sending an invalid supporter to the seaside.

But these attempts to blackmail the candidate are, when all is said and done, exceedingly rare. According as the franchise has been broadened, as the property qualification for the vote has been reduced, the purer have elections become. This is due to some extent partly to the fear of the law against corrupt and illegal practices, and partly to the size of the constituencies, which are now so large that the purchase of a sufficient number of votes to decide the issue is beyond the capacity of most purses. But I think it is more due to the sturdy pride and self-respect of the new electors, the working classes generally, as well as their sense of public duty, which have put an end to the old petitional extension of hands for doles in return for votes. Happily, there is no gainsaying the seriousness and responsibility with which, on the whole, the franchise is now exercised. Taking them all in all, the voters go to the polling booths animated by a fine public spirit—respect for the Constitution, devotion to the State—which it is not too much to say is aroused and kept purely aflame by their different political convictions, anti without a thought of individual gain.

Moreover, Party organization makes a representative largely independent, not only of the local whims and caprices of his constituency, but of any section of the electors who may look for favours in return for their support. The representative may occasionally be hard pressed by local interests, but as a rule these are regarded as subsidiary to Party considerations, to the supreme purpose of each Party to obtain control of the machinery of Government. Therefore the secret of success in the wooing of the electors to-day is not the distribution of blankets or billiard-tables. It might perhaps be said that it is not even wit, wisdom and eloquence in the candidate—though, of course, these possessions greatly count—much less complete independence of Party in public affairs. It is adherence to one Party ticket or the other; it is agreement with the Party opinions of the majority of the constituency. The victorious candidate does not always owe his election to his personal success in turning the majority of the voters round to his side. As a rule, his election means simply that he has had the good fortune to present himself to a constituency which, in the main, was already in agreement with his political opinions. And instead of five-pound notes, he is expected to distribute only Party promises and pledges.