The Tyranny of Shams

by Joseph McCabe

The electoral system and the procedure of the House of Commons are designed to protect this monstrous scheme. The large fee which is exacted of candidates and the very large sums which wealthy men are allowed to spend on elections intimidate able and independent, but impecunious, men. The election is spread over a week or two in order to give wealthy men, who may be relied upon to support the constitutional parties, an opportunity of voting in several constituencies, and in order that Ministers may give more aid to their weaker supporters. For the polling-day Saturday is avoided as much as possible, because on that day a larger percentage of the workers would vote, and they are apt to vote against the constitutional parties. Cars and carriages are permitted because the candidates of the workers will easily be surpassed in this well-known advantage by candidates of the great parties. Minorities are hopelessly excluded from representation, such as they would have under a system of proportional representation, because they would send to the House a number of independent Members who would disturb all the calculations of the Whip and all the tricks of party-government. Under a system of proportional representation it would be quite easy for some scores of able and earnest men to secure election at very small cost, by merely circulating declarations of their views; but this, or a grave increase of the Labour Members, would wreck the party-system, and therefore the most democratic of our orthodox politicians maintain all the abuses and injustices of our system.

The division of constituencies is further designed to protect this iniquitous and corrupt scheme. Universities, the City of London, and boroughs like Durham, Bury St. Edmunds, and Montgomery—each of which has a population of less than 17,000 souls—have an equal right to one unit of representation in Parliament with Wandsworth, the Romford division of Essex, or the Harrow division of Middlesex, each of which has more than a quarter of a million inhabitants. Eighty-three constituencies, most of them having a large proportion of the more intelligent workers, have a population of more than 100,000 each: forty-four constituencies have a population of less than 40,000 each. In other words, half the people of England and Wales elect 167 Members of Parliament: the other, and notoriously less intelligent half, elect 323 Members of Parliament.

From Gladstone downwards even our most “democratic” statesmen have acquiesced in these enormities of our electoral system; and they have meantime expended much eloquence on the injustice of the Prussian system, and have expressed ardent hopes for the emancipation of the people of Italy, or Bulgaria, or Persia, or some other remote land. Yet these features of our electoral scheme are retained solely in order to protect the party-system: to keep in the hands of a group, which is largely hereditary and is at all events a small and jealous caste, all the prestige and emoluments of the higher positions. Even the grave peril of a national catastrophe, owing to this restriction of power and responsibility to a group of moderate talent, does not shake their tradition. We shall, when this war is over, see them resist reform as energetically as ever.

Within the House of Commons itself a mass of old rules and customs are maintained for the same purpose. The hours of work are still arranged on the old supposition, that a Member of Parliament is a man who, with great self-sacrifice, devotes a large part of his time gratuitously to the service of his country. The most important work in the nation’s economy is relegated to the hours when every healthy man is disposed to rest and recreate himself: indeed, the more important the issue at stake, the more certain it is to be discussed during the worst working hours out of the twenty-four. One has only to glance at our legislators on their benches after dinner to realise the significance of it. The majority of them are plainly reconciled to the theory that the heads of the party have done the necessary work during the day: their business is to keep sufficiently awake to vote correctly.

The arrangement of business is not less iniquitous. The Ministry decides that certain measures of reform are needed, either in the interest of the people or in their own interest, and, since they have an assured majority of “Ayes,” the lengthy debate is almost superfluous. The passing of the measure has been secured in advance, or it would not be put forward. The rare event of miscalculation, and the still rarer event of independent action, need not be regarded. No Member is, even in these cases, influenced by the long and tiring speeches which are made about the matter. At one time the debates had a certain elocutionary elegance, at least; now they represent an unattractive sham-fight, and abuse is being increasingly substituted for rhetoric. The most paltry trickery is employed on both sides, because every man is aware that his speech is really addressed to his followers outside the House, and he must, in the House, rely on quite other devices than eloquence. Yet all this pseudo-gravity is lightened occasionally by sittings in which some measure of the greatest importance, but not introduced by the Government, is treated as flippantly as it would be in a humorous debate during a long sea-voyage.

If a man is instructed by his constituents to represent in the House some special need of theirs, or some public reform which has millions to support it, he finds that “the rules of the House,” or the rules of the oligarchy, will not allow him to introduce it. A very small fraction of the time of the House is granted for the discussion of such proposals; but the debate is farcical, and is often looked forward to in advance as such, because everybody knows what will be the issue, even if a majority of the House really favours the proposal. Measures of grave social importance, like women-suffrage, have been arbitrarily crushed by the oligarchs for thirty years,—as early as 1886 women-suffrage had 343 supporters on the benches,—and this tyranny and injustice of a few ministers have led to the most violent and bitter recrimination.

This is the political machinery to which we entrust the most dedicate and momentous issues of our national life, and to which we have to look for the realisation of our most treasured hopes of reform. The impartial critic will not question that there are men in the political world as eager for reform as he, or that during the last half-century some excellent social legislation has been passed. These measures are, however, due in great part to a studied endeavour to retain or gain support in the country,—the Insurance Act, for instance,—and many of them—relating to the sale of cigarettes, to the admission of children into public-houses, to the flogging of procurers—are small sentimental reforms which occupy time that could be better employed. We think that we open a new epoch of civilisation when we give a very small pension to a very aged worker, but the problem of the roots of poverty or the abolition of warfare does not enter the party-programme. Our bishops enthuse over their success in inducing a complaisant Home Secretary to lay the lash on the backs of a sordid little group of criminals, and even offer to roll up their own lawn sleeves for the job; but they are indifferent, or hostile, when other people would induce our Ministers to amend those brutalities of our marriage-laws which tend to foster prostitution.

This political machine must be radically and comprehensively reformed before it can be a fit instrument for the reform of the nation. All the pyrotechnic distractions and gross irregularities of an election must be suppressed: all plural voting must be abolished: the comedy of cars for feeble voters must be forbidden: all indirect bribery, either of voters or candidates, must be rigorously punished. Candidates must put a simple and sober statement of their views and proposals before the electorate, and no further expense should be permitted. Some system of proportional representation and secondary elections should ensure that large minorities would not be entirely without representation. The election should be confined to one day, preferably a Sunday, and stripped of all melodramatic nonsense and occasion for corruption.

The party-system will, no doubt, long survive in English political life. Within twenty years or so the word “Conservative” will, as in other countries, pass out of use, and the Conservative elements will unite under the banner of “Liberalism,” in opposition to “Labour.” It is, of course, the dread of this issue which at present unites the constitutional parties in opposing reform. One can, by studying advancing countries, even foresee a next phase. The Conservative elements will unite in a “Labour” party against the Socialists; and in the dim future we may, like Anatole France, foresee a Socialist commonwealth established and an Anarchist party furiously assailing it.

But, though the party-system be retained (very much modified by proportional representation), this disgusting sale of honours and offices, this oligarchic tyranny over the House and the constituencies, will not survive. Reform of the electoral procedure will enable a large group of independent men—independent of the large parties—to enter Parliament, and the removal of the Irish and other Members, who concentrate on a single issue and are willing to traffic on other issues, will reduce the old majorities. I do not doubt that fresh complications will arise. The weakness of proportional representation is that it will certainly lead to a number of sectarian groups. “We Catholics” will, of course, return Catholic Members, ready to sell their votes on various issues in the interest of the sect; and the Baptists and Methodists, and so on, will be tempted to retort. We shall have a teetotal group, and a Puritan group, and an anti-wallpaper group, etc. We must hope that the sterner education of the electorate will secure that these trivialities do not endanger grave national interests. The dissolution of the old Conservative party will leave the Liberal party unable to defend its abuses; it will have no opportunity of collusion or retaliation. So we may have in time a political machine—a body of men, appointing their own leaders, soberly chosen by each 100,000 of the population, regarding Parliament as a grave national council, not a theatre for the display, of wit and rhetoric—which will effectively carry out the will of an advancing people and enlist the interest of the most thoughtful.