The crisis damaged the credibility of the second Major ministry in handling of economic matters. The ruling Conservative Party suffered a landslide defeat five years later at the 1997 general election and did not return to power until 2010. The rebounding of the UK economy in the years following Black Wednesday has been attributed to the depreciation of sterling and the replacement of its currency tracking policy with an inflation targeting monetary stability policy.
When the ERM was set up in 1979, the United Kingdom declined to join. This was a controversial decision, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Geoffrey Howe, was staunchly pro-European. His successor, Nigel Lawson, whilst not at all advocating a fixed exchange rate system, nevertheless so admired the low inflationary record of West Germany
as to become, by the mid-eighties, a self-styled "exchange-rate
monetarist", one viewing the sterling–Deutschmark exchange rate as at
least as reliable a guide to domestic inflation – and hence to the
setting of interest rates – as any of the various M0-M3 measures beloved of those he labelled as "Simon Pure" monetarists. He justified this by pointing to the dependable strength of the Deutsche Mark and the reliably anti-inflationary management of the Mark by the Bundesbank, both of which he explained by citing the lasting impact in Germany of the disastrous hyperinflation of the inter-war Weimar Republic. Thus, although the UK had not joined the ERM, at Lawson's direction (and with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's
reluctant acquiescence), from early 1987 to March 1988 the Treasury
followed a semi-official policy of "shadowing" the Deutsche Mark. Matters came to a head in a clash between Lawson and Thatcher's economic adviser Alan Walters, when Walters claimed that the Exchange Rate Mechanism was "half baked".
This led to Lawson's resignation as Chancellor; he was replaced by former Treasury Chief Secretary John Major who, with Douglas Hurd, the then Foreign Secretary,
convinced the Cabinet to sign Britain up to the ERM in October 1990,
effectively guaranteeing that the UK Government would follow an economic
and monetary policy preventing the exchange rate
between the pound and other member currencies from fluctuating by more
than 6%. On 8 October 1990, Thatcher entered the pound into the ERM at DM2.95 to £1. Hence, if the exchange rate ever neared the bottom of its permitted range, DM2.773
(€1.4178 at the DM/Euro conversion rate), the government would be
obliged to intervene. In 1989, the UK had inflation three times the rate
of Germany, higher interest rates at 15%, and much lower labour
productivity than France and Germany, which indicated the UK's different
economic state in comparison to other ERM countries.
From the beginning of the 1990s, high German interest rates, set
by the Bundesbank to counteract inflationary effects related to excess
expenditure on German reunification, caused significant stress across the whole of the ERM. The UK and Italy had additional difficulties with their double deficits,
while the UK was also hurt by the rapid depreciation of the United
States dollar – a currency in which many British exports were priced –
that summer. Issues of national prestige and the commitment to a
doctrine that the fixing of exchange rates within the ERM was a pathway
to a single European currency inhibited the adjustment of exchange
rates. In the wake of the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by the Danish electorate in a referendum in the spring of 1992, and an announcement that there would be a referendum in France
as well, those ERM currencies that were trading close to the bottom of
their ERM bands came under pressure from foreign exchange traders.
In the months leading up to Black Wednesday, among many other currency traders, George Soros had been building a huge short position
in sterling that would become immensely profitable if the currency fell
below the lower band of the ERM. Soros believed the rate at which the
United Kingdom was brought into the Exchange Rate Mechanism was too
high, inflation was too high (triple the German rate), and British
interest rates were hurting their asset prices.
The currency traders act
The
UK government attempted to prop up the depreciating pound to avoid
withdrawal from the monetary system the country had joined only two
years earlier. John Major
authorised the spending of billions of pounds worth of foreign currency
reserves to buy up sterling being sold on the currency markets. These
measures failed to prevent the pound falling below its minimum level in
the ERM. The Treasury took the decision to defend sterling's position,
believing that to devalue would promote inflation.
Remarks by Bundesbank President Helmut Schlesinger triggered the attack on the pound. An interview of Schlesinger by the Wall Street Journal was reported by the German financial paper Handelsblatt.
On the evening of Tuesday, 15 September 1992, the headline was already
circulating. Schlesinger said he thought he was speaking off the record.
He told the journalist that "a more comprehensive realignment" of
currencies would be needed, following a recent devaluation of the
Italian lira. Schlesinger later wrote that he stated a fact and this could not have triggered the crisis. This remark hugely increased pressure on the pound leading to large sterling sales.
Currency traders began a massive sell-off of pounds on Wednesday, 16 September 1992. The Exchange Rate Mechanism required the Bank of England
to accept any offers to sell pounds. However, the Bank of England only
accepted orders during the trading day. When the markets opened in
London the next morning, the Bank of England began their attempt to prop
up their currency, as decided by Norman Lamont, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Robin Leigh-Pemberton, governor of the Bank of England. They began accepting orders of £300 million twice before 8:30 am, but to little effect.
The Bank of England's intervention was ineffective because traders were
dumping pounds far faster. The Bank of England continued to buy, and
traders continued to sell, until Lamont told Prime Minister John Major that their pound purchasing was failing to produce results.
At 10:30 am on 16 September, the British government announced an increase in the base interest rate,
from an already high 10%, to 12% to tempt speculators to buy pounds.
Despite this and a promise later the same day to raise base rates again
to 15%, dealers kept selling pounds, convinced that the government would
not keep its promise. By 7:00 pm that evening, Lamont announced Britain
would leave the ERM and rates would remain at the new level of 12%;
however, on the next day the interest rate was back to 10%.
It was later revealed that the decision to withdraw had been
agreed at an emergency meeting during the day between Lamont, Major,
foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, president of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine, and home secretary Kenneth Clarke (the latter three all being staunch pro-Europeans as well as senior Cabinet ministers), and that the interest rate hike to 15% had only been a temporary measure to prevent a rout in the pound that afternoon.
Aftermath
Other
ERM countries such as Italy, whose currencies had breached their bands
during the day, returned to the system with broadened bands or with
adjusted central parities.
Some commentators, following Norman Tebbit, took to referring to ERM as an "Eternal Recession Mechanism"
after the UK fell into recession during the early 1990s. While many
people in the UK recall Black Wednesday as a national disaster that
permanently affected the country's international prestige, some
Conservatives claim that the forced ejection from the ERM was a "Golden
Wednesday" or "White Wednesday", the day that paved the way for an economic revival, with the Conservatives handing Tony Blair's New Labour a much stronger economy in 1997 than had existed in 1992
as the new economic policy swiftly devised in the aftermath of Black
Wednesday led to re-establishment of economic growth with falling
unemployment and inflation. Monetary policy switched to inflation targeting.
The Conservative Party government's
reputation for economic excellence had been damaged to the extent that
the electorate was more inclined to support a claim of the opposition of
the time – that the economic recovery ought to be credited to external
factors, as opposed to government policies implemented by the
Conservatives. The Conservatives had recently won the 1992 general election, and the Gallup poll
for September showed a small lead of 2.5% for the Conservative Party.
By the October poll, following Black Wednesday, their share of the
intended vote in the poll had plunged from 43% to 29%.
The Conservative government then suffered a string of by-election
defeats which saw its 21-seat majority eroded by December 1996. The
party's performances in local government elections were similarly dismal
during this time, while Labour made huge gains.
Black Wednesday was a major factor in the Conservatives losing the 1997 general election to Labour, who won by a landslide under the leadership of Tony Blair. The Conservatives failed to gain significant ground at the 2001 general election under the leadership of William Hague, with Labour winning another landslide majority. The Conservatives did not take Government again until David Cameron
led them to victory in the 2010 general election, 13 years later. Five
years later in 2015, the party won its first overall majority 23 years
after its last in 1992, five months before the crisis.
In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.14 billion, which was revised to £3.3 billion in 2005, following documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (earlier estimates placed losses at a much higher range of £13–27 billion).
Trading losses in August and September made up a minority of the losses
(estimated at £800 million) and the majority of the loss to the central
bank arose from non-realised profits of a potential devaluation.
Treasury papers suggested that, had the government maintained
$24 billion foreign currency reserves and the pound had fallen by the
same amount, the UK might have made a £2.4 billion profit on sterling's
devaluation.
Socialism in the UK – created by the Socialist Party of Great Britain
Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopianphilanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the birth of the Labour Party that was founded in 1900.
Origins
The Reformation occurred later in Britain than in most of mainland Europe. As in the rest of Europe, various liberal thinkers such as Thomas More became prominent, but another important current was the emergence of the radical Puritans who wanted to reform both religion and the nation. The Puritans were oppressed by both the monarchy and by the established church. Eventually these pressures exploded in the violent social revolution known as the English Civil War, which many Marxists see as the world's first successful bourgeois revolution.
During the war several proto-socialist groups emerged. The most important of these groups were the Levellers, who advocated electoral reform, universal trial by jury, progressive taxation and the abolition of the monarchy and aristocracy and of censorship. This was strongly opposed by Oliver Cromwell's government, who also persecuted the moderate reformist group the Fifth Monarchy Men and the radical utopian group the Diggers.
19th century
Industrial Revolution and Robert Owen
The Industrial Revolution,
the transition from a farming economy to an industrial one, began in
the UK over thirty years before the rest of the world.
Textile mills and coal mines sprang up across the whole country and
peasants were taken from the fields to work down the mines, or into the
"Dark, Satanic Mills", the chimneys of which blackened the sky over Lancashire and Yorkshire. Appalling conditions for workers, combined with support for the French Revolution, turned some intellectuals to socialism.
The pioneering work of Robert Owen, a Welsh radical, at New Lanark
in Scotland, is sometimes credited as being the birth of British
Socialism. He stopped employing children under the age of ten, and
instead arranged for their education, and improved the working and
living conditions of all his workers. He also lobbied Parliament over child labour and helped to create the co-operative movement, before attempting to create a utopian community at New Harmony.
The trade union movement in Britain gradually developed from the Medieval guild
system. Unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, but
were already widespread in cities such as London. Workplace militancy
had also manifested itself as Luddism and had been prominent in struggles such as the Radical War (or Scottish Insurrection) in Scotland in 1820, when 60,000 workers went on a general strike, which was soon crushed.
Militants turned to Chartism, the aims of which were supported by most socialists, although none appear to have played leading roles.
More permanent trade unions were established from the 1850s, better resourced but often less radical. The London Trades Council was founded in 1860, and the Sheffield Outrages spurred the establishment of the Trades Union Congress in 1868. Union membership grew as unskilled and women workers were unionised, and socialists such as Tom Mann played an increasingly prominent role.
Christian socialism
The rise of Non-Conformist religions, in particular Methodism,
played a large role in the development of trade unions and of British
socialism. The influence of the radical chapels was strongly felt among
some industrial workers, especially miners and those in the north of
England and Wales.
The first group calling itself Christian Socialists formed in 1848 under the leadership of Frederick Denison Maurice.
Its membership mainly consisted of Chartists (see below). The group
became dormant after only six years, but there was a considerable
revival of Christian socialism in the 1880s, and a number of groups
sprang up. Ultimately, Christian socialists dominated the leadership of
the Independent Labour Party, including James Keir Hardie.
Chartist movement
The Chartist movement
of the 1830s and 1840s was the first mass revolutionary movement of the
British working-class. Mass meetings and demonstrations involving
millions of proletariat and petty-bourgeois were held throughout the
country for years.
The Chartists published several petitions to the British Parliament (ranging from 1,280,000 to 3,000,000 signatures), the most famous of which was called the People's Charter (hence their name) in 1842, which demanded:
Universal suffrage for men.
The secret ballot.
Removal of property qualifications for members of parliament.
Salaries for members of parliament.
Electoral districts representing equal numbers of people.
Annually elected parliaments.
The government subsequently subjected the Chartists to brutal
reprisals and arrested their leaders. The remaining party then split as a
result of a divide in tactics: the Moral Force Party believed in bureaucratic reformism, while the Physical Force Party believed in workers' reformism (through strikes, etc.).
The Chartist movement's reformist goals, although not immediately
and directly attained, were gradually achieved. In the same year as the
People's Charter was created, the British Parliament
instead responded by passing the 1842 Mining Act. Carefully valving the
steam of the working-class movement, Parliament reduced the working day
to ten hours in 1847.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Marxism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels worked in England, and they influenced small émigré groups including the Communist League. Engels' book The Condition of the Working Class in England became a popular expose of conditions for workers, but initially Marxism had little impact among Britain's working class.
The first nominally Marxist organisation was the Social Democratic Federation, founded in 1882. Engels refused to support the organisation, although Marx's daughter Eleanor joined.
Although Marxism had some impact in Britain, it was far less than in many other European countries, with philosophers such as John Ruskin and John Stuart Mill having much greater influence. Some non-Marxists
theorise that this was because Britain was amongst the most democratic
countries of Europe of the period, the ballot box provided an instrument
for change, so a parliamentary, reformist socialism seemed a more
promising route than elsewhere.
Liberal–Labour and the Independent Labour Party
The Reform League,
which was founded in 1865 to press for universal male suffrage and vote
by secret ballot, qualified its demand for suffrage with the phrase
"registered and residential" shortly before the passing of the 1867 Reform Act.
This qualifier excluded a great number of British labourers, casual
workers, and unemployed. The change in policy has been attributed to
donations received by the League from Liberal Party politicians in 1866 and 1867.
At the time, Marx wrote that he and Engels had been "betrayed [...] in
the Reform League where, against our wishes, [Cremer and Oder] have made
compromises with the bourgeoisie".
However, a great deal of collaboration came to exist between the
Liberal Party and the leaders of the labour movement, though Marx saw
these as effective bribes by the bourgeoisie and the government. The 1867 Reform Act
passed and enfranchised roughly three million people, around half of
whom were working class. This was extended to five million by the Representation of the People Act 1884, which extended the householder's franchise. The Liberal Party was worried about the prospect of a socialist party taking the bulk of the working-class vote, while their great rivals the Conservatives initiated occasional intrigues to encourage socialist candidates to stand against the Liberals.
In 1874, the Liberals agreed not to put candidates against Thomas Burt and Alexander Macdonald, two miners' leaders who were standing for Parliament. Both were elected and became known as Liberal-Labour or Lib-Labs for short. Other miner's leaders entered Parliament via the same route.
At the 1892 general election, Keir Hardie,
another Liberal politician who had joined Cunninghame-Graham in the
Scottish Labour Party, was elected as an Independent Labour MP, and this
gave him the spur to found a UK-wide Independent Labour Party in 1893.
20th century
Timeline of parties in the broad socialist movement
The early twentieth century saw a number of socialist groups and
movements in Britain. As well as the Independent Labour Party and the
Social Democratic Federation, there was a mass movement around Robert Blatchford's newspaper The Clarion from the 1890s to the 1930s; the more intellectual gradualist Fabian Society; and more radical groups such as the Socialist Labour Party. However, the movement was increasingly dominated by the formation of the British Labour Party.
In 1900, representatives of various trade unions and of the
Independent Labour Party, Fabian Society and Social Democratic
Federation agreed to form a Labour Party backed by the unions and with
its own whips. The Labour Representation Committee
was founded with Keir Hardie as its leader. At the 1900 general
election, the LRC won only two seats, and the SDF disaffiliated, but
more unions signed up.
The LRC affiliated to the Socialist International and in 1906 changed its name to The Labour Party. It formed an electoral pact with the Liberals, intending to cause maximum damage to the Unionist government at the forthcoming election. This was successful, and in the process, 29 Labour MPs were elected to the House of Commons.
Women's suffrage
The
campaign for women's suffrage in Britain began in the mid-nineteenth
century, with many early campaigners including Eleanor Marx being
socialists, but many established socialists, including Robert Blatchford
and Ernest Bax
opposed or ignored the movement. By the early twentieth century, the
campaign had become more militant, but some of its leaders were
reluctant to involve working-class women in it. Sylvia Pankhurst campaigned for enfranchisement among women in the East End of London and eventually built up the Workers Socialist Federation.
Syndicalism and World War I
Supporters of Daniel De Leon in the Social Democratic Federation chiefly in Scotland split to form the Socialist Labour Party. Their fellow impossibilists in London split from the SDF the following year to form the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB, still in existence). The remainder of the SDF attempted to form a broader Marxist party, the British Socialist Party. The SLP and BSP parties came to influence the shop steward movement, which became particularly prominent in what became known as Red Clydeside. Socialists such as John Maclean led strikes and demonstrations for better working conditions and a forty-hour working week.
This activity took place against the background of the First World War.
The Labour Party, like almost all the Socialist International,
enthusiastically supported their country's leadership in the war, as did
the leadership of the British Socialist Party. This split the BSP, and a
new anti-war leadership emerging.
Bolshevism and the Communist Party of Great Britain
The shop steward movement worried many right-wingers, who believed that socialists were fomenting a Bolshevik revolution in Britain. A Communist Party of Great Britain
(CPGB) was founded, but it attracted only existing left-wing militants,
with the British Socialist Party and Workers Socialist Federation
joining many Socialist Labour Party activists in it.
The CPGB soon became known for its loyalty to the line of the Comintern, and proposed the motion to expel Leon Trotsky from the international. Under the leadership of Harry Pollitt, it finally gained its first MP, and began to expel Trotskyists.
Labour and the general strike
The
Labour Party continued to grow as more unions affiliated and more
Labour MPs were elected. In 1918, a new constitution was agreed, which
laid out several aims of the party. These included Clause IV, calling for "common ownership" of key industry. With their success at the 1923 general election, Labour were able to form their first minority government, led by Ramsay MacDonald. This government was undermined by the infamous Zinoviev Letter, which was used as evidence of Labour's links with the Soviet Union. It was later revealed to be a forgery.
In 1926, British miners went on strike over their appalling working conditions. The situation soon escalated into the General Strike, but the Trade Union Congress, ostensibly worried about reports of starvation in the pit villages, called the strike off. The miners tried to continue alone, but without TUC support had eventually to give in.
Labour formed a minority government in 1929 again under MacDonald, but following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression engulfed the country. The government split over its response to the crisis. MacDonald and a few supporters agreed to form a National Government
with the Liberals and the Conservatives. The majority of the Labour
Party regarded this as a betrayal and expelled them, whereupon they
founded National Labour.
The Great Depression devastated the industrial areas of Northern England, Wales and Central Scotland, and the Jarrow March of unemployed workers from the North East to London to demand jobs defined the period.
Oswald Mosley had been a rising star in the Conservative Party
but left over the government's policy of repression in Ireland and
eventually joined Labour. Mosley rose just as quickly on the Labour
benches and was a government minister charged with dealing with
unemployment during the Great Depression. Mosley proposed the "Mosley
Memorandum" which suggested the formation of Cabinet committees to deal
with specific policy issues, rationalisation and mechanisation in
industry to make it more competitive, and a programme of public works.
Although the memorandum prefigured Keynesian
policies that would be accepted by later governments, it was too
radical a set of proposals for 1930 and both the Labour government and
the party rejected it. In response, Mosley left Labour in 1931 to found
the New Party,
taking four other Labour MPs with him. The New Party failed to win any
seats in 1932 and Mosley subsequently came to support fascism, merging
his party with several far-right groups to form the British Union of Fascists.
Spanish Civil War and World War II
WWII badge for the "Birmingham Socialist ARP Canteen Fund"
The Independent Labour Party disaffiliated from the Labour Party in
1932, in protest at an erosion of their MPs' independence. For a time,
they became a significant left-of-Labour force.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War
was viewed by many socialists as a contest against the rise of fascism
which it was vital to win. Many CPGB and Independent Labour Party
members went to fight for the Republic and with the Stalinist led
International Brigades and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) anti-fascist forces, including George Orwell who wrote about his experiences in Homage to Catalonia.
The Labour Party leadership always supported British involvement in World War II, and they joined a national government
with the Conservative Party and the Liberals, and agreed a non-contest
pact in elections. The CPGB at first supported the war, but after Joseph Stalin signed a treaty with Adolf Hitler, opposed it. After the fascistinvasion of the Soviet Union,
they again supported the war, joined the non-contest pact, and did all
in their power to prevent strikes. But strikes did occur, and they were
supported by the anti-war Independent Labour Party and the newly formed
Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party.
The CPGB also grew on the back of Stalinist successes in Eastern
Europe and China, and recorded their best-ever result, with two MPs
elected (one in London and another in Fife). The Trotskyite Revolutionary Communist Party collapsed.
Labour lost power in and after Clement Attlee retired as party leader in 1955, he was succeeded by the figurehead of the "right-establishment" Hugh Gaitskell, against Aneurin Bevan.
Although there were some disputes between the Bevanites and the Gaitskellites, these disputes were more about personality than ideology, and the rift was healed when Harold Wilson, a Bevanite, was elected as Leader of the Labour Party after Gaitskell's sudden death.
In 1969, Wilson's Labour Government introduced In Place of Strife,
a white paper designed to circumvent strikes by imposing compulsory
arbitration. Opposed by many trade unionists, including Home Secretary James Callaghan; it was soon withdrawn. Later legislation passed by Edward Heath's Conservative government was successfully resisted as union militants, many close to the CPGB, led the successful 1974 UK miners' strike. More ominously for the left, the unsuccessful Grunwick dispute, and the 1978–79 Winter of Discontent
were also blamed on them. The Labour leadership's failure to work with
trade unions, or for their opponents an inability to keep them under
control, resulted in the election in 1979 of an economically liberal Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, which finally ended the post-war political consensus.
1980s
After the 1979 Labour defeat, Jim Callaghan tried in vain to keep the left-wing of the party (in which Tony Benn was prominent) and the right-wing (in which Roy Jenkins
was prominent) together. In 1980, the Labour Party conference was
dominated by factional disputes and what Callaghan regarded as Bennite motions. Callaghan resigned as party leader late that year and was replaced by Michael Foot,
a left-winger who by then had distanced himself from Benn but failed to
transmit this to the media or the voters. The following year, Denis Healey only narrowly won the deputy leadership in a contest with Benn.
In 1981, thirty MPs on the right-wing of the Labour Party defected to found the Social Democratic Party, which formed an alliance with the Liberal Party and opinion polls briefly saw the new alliance appear capable of winning a general election.
At the 1983 general election, Thatcher benefited from increased popularity, an after effect of the successful Falklands War, and a Labour manifesto which Labour MP Gerald Kaufman
described as "the longest suicide note in history". Labour suffered
their worst election defeat since 1918 with eight and a half million
votes, over three million votes down on the previous general election.
Many former Labour voters had voted for the SDP-Liberal Alliance
instead. The Alliance came close to Labour in terms of votes, but had
only a fraction of its seats due to the limitations of the first-past-the-post system.
After the 1983 general election, Neil Kinnock,
long associated with the left-wing of the Labour Party, became the new
leader. By that point in time, the Labour Party was factionalised
between the right, including Healey and deputy leader Roy Hattersley, a "soft left" associated with the Tribune group, and a "hard left" associated with Benn and the new Campaign Group.
The Trotskyist Militant tendency, using entryist tactics in the Labour Party, had gradually increased their profile. By 1982, they controlled Liverpool City Council,
and had a presence in many Constituency Labour Parties. The Labour NEC
began to expel Militant members, beginning with their newspaper's
"editorial board", in effect their Central Committee. A revival in municipal socialism seemed, for a time, a solution to Conservative hegemony for many on the left. The Greater London Council, led by Ken Livingstone,
gained the most attention, seeming genuinely innovative to its support
base, but the GLC was abolished by the Conservatives in 1986.
The defining event of the 1980s for British socialists was the 1984–5 miners' strike. Miners in the National Union of Mineworkers, led by Arthur Scargill, struck against the closure of collieries. Despite support in the coalfields, including many miners' wives in Women Against Pit Closures, the strike was eventually lost owing to a union split, amongst other reasons. The Conservatives had already begun to privatise other state industries. Labour lost the 1987 general election by a wide margin, although it did manage to reduce the Conservative majority significantly.
Socialism and nationalism
Scottish and Welsh nationalism have been the concern of many socialists. Having been raised in the nineteenth century by Liberals also calling for Irish Home Rule, Scottish Home Rule became the official policy of the ILP, and of the Labour Party until 1958. John Maclean
campaigned for a separate Communist Party in Scotland in the 1920s, and
when the CPGB refused to support Scottish independence, he formed the Scottish Workers Republican Party. The poet Hugh MacDiarmid, a Communist, was also an early member of the National Party of Scotland. The CPGB eventually changed their position in the 1940s.
The early nationalist parties had little connection with
socialism, but by the 1980s they had become increasingly identified with
the left, and in the 1990s Plaid Cymru declared itself to be a socialist party.
Irish republicanism came to be supported by socialists in Britain. Labour's election manifestos for 1983, 1987 and 1992 included a commitment to Irish unification by consent.
1990s
In 1989 in Scotland, and 1990 for the rest of the UK, the Conservatives introduced the deeply unpopular poll tax. For the first time in the decade, socialists were able to organise effective opposition, culminating in the "Poll tax riot" on 31 March 1990. Margaret Thatcher's own party compelled her to step down on 22 November that year, and she was replaced by John Major, who abolished the charge in 1991.
The CPGB dissolved itself in 1991, although their former newspaper, the Morning Star, continues to be published and follows the programme of the Communist Party of Britain
which was founded in 1988 after an internal crisis in the CPGB led to a
split. The Eurocommunists, who had controlled the party's magazine Marxism Today, formed the Democratic Left.
In the run-up to the 1992 general election, polling showed that there might be a hung parliament,
but possibly a small Labour majority – the party's lead on the opinion
polls had shrunk and some polls had even seen the Tories creep ahead in
spite of the deepening recession. In the event, the Conservatives led by
John Major;
won a fourth consecutive election with a majority of 21 seats. This has
been attributed to both the Labour Party's premature triumphalism (in
particular at the Sheffield Rally)
and the Tories' "Tax Bombshell" advertising campaign, which highlighted
the increased taxes that a Labour government would impose. This general
election defeat was shortly followed by Kinnock's resignation after
nearly a decade as leader. And, as had happened in the aftermath of the 1959 general election defeat,
there was widespread public and media doubt as to whether a Labour
government could be elected again, since it had failed in the face of a
recession and rising unemployment.
After the brief stewardship of John Smith in the early 1990s, Tony Blair
was elected leader following Smith's sudden death from a heart attack
in May 1994. He immediately decided to revamp Clause IV, dropping
Labour's commitment to public ownership of key industries and utilities,
along with other socialist policies.
Many members of the party were unhappy with the proposed changes
and several unions considered using their block vote to kill the motion,
but in the end their leaderships backed down and settled for a new
clause declaring the Labour Party a "democratic socialist party",
broadening the party's electoral appeal. However, Labour had been
ascendant in the opinion polls since the Black Wednesday
economic fiasco a few months after the 1992 general election, and the
increased lead of the polls under Blair's leadership remained strong in
spite of the revolt, and the fact that the economy was growing again and
unemployment was falling under Major's Conservative government.
Labour's popularity was also helped by the fact that the Conservative
government was now divided over Europe.
Several party members, such as Arthur Scargill, regarded this as a betrayal of Labour's ideology and left the Labour Party. Scargill formed the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) which initially attracted some support, much of which transferred to the Socialist Alliance on its formation, but the SA has since been wound up and the SLP has become marginalised.
The Scottish Socialist Party have proven much more successful, while Ken Livingstone became the Mayor of London,
standing against an official Labour Party candidate. Livingstone was
re-admitted into the Labour Party in time for his re-election in 2004.
Under Blair, Labour launched a PR campaign to rebrand as New Labour.
The party also introduced women-only shortlists in certain seats and
central vetting of Parliamentary candidates to ensure that its
candidates were seen as on-message. Labour won the 1997 general election with a landslide majority of 179 seats; their best result to date.
The international anti-globalisation movement,
while difficult to define, has become a focus for other socialists in
the twenty-first century, and many see a reflection of it in the
opposition of large sections of the population to the 2003 Iraq War.
Several minor socialist parties merged in 2003 to form the
Alliance for Green Socialism which is a socialist party that campaigns
on a wide variety of policies including; economic, environmental and
social.
After George Galloway's expulsion from the Labour Party in October 2003 following his controversial statements about the war in Iraq, he became involved in Respect – The Unity Coalition (later renamed the Respect Party) in an alliance with the Socialist Workers Party and leading figures from the Muslim Association of Britain. Galloway, who stood as a candidate for Respect, was elected as the Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2005 general election, where he defeated the sitting Labour MP; Oona King. Galloway strongly opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq while King strongly supported it.
The association with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) ended in 2007.
Galloway did not seek re-election for Bethnal Green and Bow at the 2010 general election, but stood at the Poplar and Limehouse constituency instead. However, he finished in third place, behind Tim Archer of the Conservatives and Jim Fitzpatrick of the Labour Party. After a two-year absence from Parliament, Galloway returned to the House of Commons after winning the 2012 Bradford West by-election. Respect though has suffered from the resignation of leading members over the years, and Galloway lost his seat to Naz Shah of the Labour Party at the 2015 general election.
In 2013, director Ken Loach made an appeal seeking to create a United Left Party in light of the perceived successes seen by Syriza in Greece,
the perceived failures of previous Left of Labour projects such as
Socialist Alliance and the perceived failings of Respect. The Left Unity political party was founded in November 2013 as a result of the appeal.
The Labour Party was defeated at the 2010 general election,
after talks of forming a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats
failed. During their thirteen years in government, Labour made few
changes to the trade union reforms passed by the previous Conservative
governments, and the only nationalisation which took place during that
time were of several leading banks facing collapse in the recession of 2008 and 2009 under the premiership of Gordon Brown. The Conservatives returned to power with the Liberal Democrats as a coalition government following a hung parliament; the first in 36 years.
Other socialists place their hopes in a trade union revival, perhaps around the "Awkward Squad" of the more left-wing trade union leaders, many of whom have joined the Labour Representation Committee. Others have turned to more community-based politics. Yet others believe they can reclaim the Labour Party.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) was formed in January 2010 to contest the 2010 general election. Founding supporters include Bob Crow,
general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union
(RMT), Brian Caton, general secretary of the POA and Chris Baugh,
assistant general secretary of the PCS. RMT and Socialist Party
executive members, including Bob Crow, form the core of the steering
committee. The coalition includes the Socialist Workers Party, which
will also stand candidates under its banner, RESPECT and other trade unionists and socialist groups. This followed the No2EU coalition which fought the European elections in 2009
gaining the official backing of the RMT. The RMT declined to officially
back the new TUSC coalition, but granted their branches the right to
stand and fund local candidates as part of the coalition.
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) has been actively campaigning for Scottish independence since the announcement of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Its co-convenor, Colin Fox, sits on the advisory board of the Yes Scotland
campaign organisation. The party's support for Scottish independence is
rooted in a belief that "the tearing of the blue out of the Union Jack
and the dismantling of the 300-year-old British state would [be] a
traumatic psychological blow for the forces of capitalism and
conservatism in Britain, Europe and the USA", and that it would be
"almost as potent in its symbolism as the unravelling of the Soviet
Union at the start of the 1990s". Representatives of the party have also
claimed that while the break-up of the United Kingdom would not result
in "instant socialism", it would cause "a decisive shift in the balance
of ideological and class forces".
The campaign for independence has also enjoyed support from a minority of trade unionists. In 2013, a branch of the Communications Workers Union
covering Edinburgh, Lothians, Fife, Falkirk, and Stirling voted to back
a motion describing independence as "the only way forward for workers
in Scotland", and agreeing to "do all in our power to secure [a Yes] outcome". Additionally, the Scottish Trades Union Congress
has refused to take a stance on the referendum, instead laying out
"challenges for both sides of the debate", in particular calling on Better Together to "outline a practical vision of how social and economic justice can be achieved within the union".
Other left-wing sections refused to support a nationalist position,
instead arguing either for working-class unity or a critical approach to
both sides. Campaigns such as Socialism First and the Red Paper
Collective were a challenge to the official campaigns on both sides
arguing for "Class over Nation".
Until 2006, the RMT was affiliated with the Scottish Socialist Party.
The Labour Party campaigned in favour of a "No" vote through the referendum campaign, headed by former Labour Chancellor of the ExchequerAlistair Darling, and through United with Labour, a campaign composed solely of Labour Party figures. However, some members of Scottish Labour joined Labour for Independence,
a pressure group of Labour members who back Scottish independence. The
appeal of independence is attributed by the group's leader to a feeling
of being "let down and betrayed by a party who no longer represent them
or the people of Scotland".
Polls had suggested a hung parliament at the 2015 general election, which was the party's first general election with Ed Miliband
at the helm. When the final results were counted however, Labour
suffered a second consecutive defeat and the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, formed a majority government for the first time since 1992. The number of Labour MPs declined by 26 from 2010, after they lost 40 of the 41 seats they had in Scotland to the Scottish National Party and finished with 30.4% of the vote nationally and 232 seats in the House of Commons. Miliband resigned as party leader following his party's defeat and subsequently triggered a Labour Party leadership election. Harriet Harman served as acting leader while the election was contested. The Labour Party are currently the official Opposition Party.
Miliband's election as Leader of the Labour Party on the back of trade union member votes had been seen by some
as a return to the left following the New Labour years (1994-2010).
Miliband was nicknamed "Red Ed" by some (predominantly right-wing)
media.
After assuming office as Leader of the Opposition, Miliband softened
some of the more left-wing ideas he had adopted during the leadership
election, but remained committed to causes such as a living wage
and the 50% tax rate on high earners. However, the Labour Party under
Miliband focused on calls for "responsible capitalism" rather than
socialism. Labour's then-Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls also committed to maintaining some spending cuts scheduled for 2015 and 2016 by the Conservative-led coalition, and was accused of planning to cut the state pension. These were unpopular ideas with traditional socialists.
Jeremy Corbyn became Leader of the Labour Party in September 2015. Corbyn identifies as a democratic socialist.
A graph showing Labour Party individual membership, excluding affiliated members and supporters
In August 2015, prior to the 2015 leadership election, the Labour Party reported 292,505 full members. As of December 2017, the party had approximately 570,000 full members, making it the largest political party by membership in Western Europe.
On 18 April 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May announced she would seek an unexpected snap election on Thursday 8 June 2017.
Corbyn said he welcomed May's proposal and said his party would support
the government's move in the parliamentary vote announced for 19 April.The necessary super-majority of two-thirds was achieved when 522 of the 650 members of parliament voted in favour of an early election. Some of the opinion polls
had shown a 20-point Conservative lead over Labour before the election
was called, but this lead had narrowed by the day of the 2017 general election; which resulted in a hung parliament.
Despite remaining in opposition for the third general election in a
row, Labour won 40% of the popular vote, its greatest share of the vote
since 2001. It was also the first time the Labour Party had made a net gain of seats since their 1997 landslide victory. Thirty new seats were gained to reach 262 total MPs, and, with a swing of 9.6%, achieved the biggest percentage-point increase in its vote share at a single general election since 1945. Immediately following the election, party membership rose by 35,000.
In July 2017, opinion polling suggested Labour leads the Conservatives, 45% to 39% while a YouGov poll gave Labour an 8-point lead over the Conservatives.
Before socialism
emerged as a mainstream political ideology, radicalism represented the
left-wing of liberalism and, thus, of the political spectrum. As social
democracy came to dominate the centre-left and supplanted socialism,
radicals either re-positioned as conservative liberals or joined forces with social democrats. Thus, European radical parties split (as in Denmark, where Venstre undertook a conservative-liberal rebranding, while Radikale Venstre
maintained the radical tradition), took up a new orientation (as in
France, where the Radical Party aligned with the centre-right, later
causing the split of the Radical Party of the Left) or dissolved (as in Greece, where the heirs of Venizelism joined several parties). After World War II, European radicals were largely extinguished as a major political force except in Denmark, France, Italy (Radical Party) and the Netherlands (Democrats 66). Latin America still retains a distinct indigenous radical tradition, for instance in Argentina (Radical Civic Union) and Chile (Radical Party).
Overview
Radicalism and liberalism
The two Enlightenment philosophies of liberalism
and radicalism both shared the goal of liberating humanity from
traditionalism. However, liberals regarded it as sufficient to establish
individual rights that would protect the individual while radicals
sought institutional, social/economic, and especially
cultural/educational reform to allow every citizen to put those rights
into practice. For this reason, radicalism went beyond the demand for
liberty by seeking also equality, i.e. universality as in Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
In some countries, radicalism represented a minor wing within the Liberal political family, as in the case of England's Radical Whigs.
Sometimes, the radical wing of the liberals were hardline or
doctrinaire and in other cases more moderate and pragmatic. In other
countries, radicalism had had enough electoral support on its own, or a
favourable electoral system or coalition partners, to maintain distinct
radical parties such as in Switzerland and Germany (Freisinn), Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, but also Argentina (Radical Civic Union), Chile and Paraguay.
Victorian era Britain possessed both trends: In England the Radicals were simply the left wing of the Liberal coalition, though they often rebelled when the coalition's socially conservative Whigs resisted democratic reforms, whereas in Ireland Radicals
lost faith in the ability of parliamentary gradualism to deliver
egalitarian and democratic reform and, breaking away from the main body
of liberals, pursued a radical-democratic parliamentary republic through
separatism and insurrection. This does not mean that all radical
parties were formed by left-wing liberals. In French political
literature, it is normal to make a clear separation between Radicalism
as a distinct political force to the left of Liberalism but to the right
of Socialism. Over time, as new left-wing parties formed to address the
new social issues, the right wing of the Radicals would splinter off in
disagreement with the main Radical family and became absorbed as the
left wing of the Liberal family—rather than the other way around, as in
Britain and Belgium.
The distinction between Radicals and Liberals was made clear by
the two mid-20th-century attempts to create an international for
centrist democratic parties. In 1923–24, the French Radicals created an Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques similaires:
it was joined by the centre-left Radical parties of Europe, and in the
democracies where no equivalent existed—Britain and Belgium—the liberal
party was to allowed attend instead. After the Second World War the
Radical International was not reformed; instead, a centre-right Liberal International was established, closer to the conservative-liberalism of the British and Belgian Liberal parties.
This marked the end of Radicalism as an independent political force in
Europe, though some countries such as France and Switzerland retained
politically-important Radical parties well into the 1950s–1960s. Many
European parties that are nowadays categorised in the group of social-liberal parties have a historical affinity with radicalism and may therefore be called "liberal-radical".
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the first use of the term radical in a political sense is generally ascribed to the English parliamentarianCharles James Fox, a leader of the left wing of the Whig party who dissented from the party's conservative-liberalism and looked favourably upon the radical reforms being undertaken by French republicans, such as universal male suffrage. In 1797, Fox declared for a "radical reform" of the electoral system. This led to a general use of the term to identify all supporting the movement for parliamentary reform.
Initially confined to the upper and middle classes, in the early 19th century "popular radicals" brought artisans and the "labouring classes" into widespread agitation in the face of harsh government repression. More respectable "philosophical radicals" followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham
and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile
to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals". By the middle
of the century, parliamentary Radicals joined with others in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to form the Liberal Party, eventually achieving reform of the electoral system.
Origins
The Radical movement had its beginnings at a time of tension between the American colonies and Great Britain, with the first Radicals, angry at the state of the House of Commons, drawing on the Leveller
tradition and similarly demanding improved parliamentary
representation. These earlier concepts of democratic and even
egalitarian reform had emerged in the turmoil of the English Civil War and the brief establishment of the republicanCommonwealth of England amongst the vague political grouping known as the Levellers, but with the English Restoration of the monarchy such ideas had been discredited. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had increased parliamentary power with a constitutional monarchy and the union of the parliaments brought England and Scotland together, towards the end of the 18th century the monarch still had considerable influence over the Parliament of Great Britain which itself was dominated by the English aristocracy and by patronage. Candidates for the House of Commons stood as Whigs or Tories, but once elected formed shifting coalitions of interests rather than splitting along party lines. At general elections,
the vote was restricted to property owners in constituencies which were
out of date and did not reflect the growing importance of manufacturing
towns or shifts of population, so that in many rotten borough
seats could be bought or were controlled by rich landowners while major
cities remained unrepresented. Discontent with these inequities
inspired those individuals who later became known as the "Radical Whigs".
William Beckford fostered early interest in reform in the London area. The "Middlesex radicals" were led by the politician John Wilkes, an opponent of war with the colonies who started his weekly publication The North Briton in 1764 and within two years had been charged with seditious libel and expelled from the House of Commons. The Society for the Defence of the Bill of Rights
which he started in 1769 to support his re-election, developed the
belief that every man had the right to vote and "natural reason"
enabling him to properly judge political issues. Liberty consisted in
frequent elections and for the first time middle-class radicals obtained
the backing of the London "mob". Middlesex and Westminster were among the few parliamentary constituencies with a large and socially diverse electorate including many artisans as well as the middle class and aristocracy and along with the county association of Yorkshire led by the Reverend Christopher Wyvill were at the forefront of reform activity. The writings of what became known as the "Radical Whigs" had an influence on the American Revolution.
Major John Cartwright also supported the colonists, even as the American Revolutionary War began and in 1776 earned the title of the "Father of Reform" when he published his pamphlet Take Your Choice! advocating annual parliaments, the secret ballot and manhood suffrage. In 1780, a draft programme of reform was drawn up by Charles James Fox and Thomas Brand Hollis and put forward by a sub-committee of the electors of Westminster. This included calls for the six points later adopted in the People's Charter (see Chartists below).
The American Revolutionary War ended in humiliating defeat of a policy which King George III
had fervently advocated and in March 1782 the King was forced to
appoint an administration led by his opponents which sought to curb
Royal patronage. In November 1783, he took his opportunity and used his
influence in the House of Lords to defeat a Bill to reform the British East India Company, dismissed the government and appointed William Pitt the Younger
as his Prime Minister. Pitt had previously called for Parliament to
begin to reform itself, but he did not press for long for reforms the
King did not like. Proposals Pitt made in April 1785 to redistribute
seats from the "rotten boroughs" to London and the counties were defeated in the House of Commons by 248 votes to 174.
Popular agitation
Mary Wollstonecraft
In the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man (1791) as a response to Edmund Burke's counterrevolutionary essay Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), itself an attack on Richard Price's sermon that kicked off the so-called "pamphlet war" known as the Revolution Controversy. Mary Wollstonecraft, another supporter of Price, soon followed with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. They encouraged mass support for democratic reform along with rejection of the monarchy, aristocracy
and all forms of privilege. Different strands of the movement
developed, with middle class "reformers" aiming to widen the franchise
to represent commercial and industrial interests and towns without
parliamentary representation, while "Popular radicals" drawn from the
middle class and from artisans
agitated to assert wider rights including relieving distress. The
theoretical basis for electoral reform was provided by "Philosophical
radicals" who followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals".
In Ireland, the United Irishmen movement took another direction, adding to the doctrine of a secular and parliamentary republic inspired by the American and French republican revolutions, another doctrine of the French Revolution: civic nationalism.
Dismayed by the inability of British parliamentarianism to introduce
the root-and-branch democratic reforms desired, Irish Radicals
channelled their movement into a republican form of nationalism that
would provide equality as well as liberty. This was pursued through
armed revolution and often with French assistance at various points over the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Popular Radicals were quick to go further than Paine, with Newcastle schoolmaster Thomas Spence demanding land nationalisation to redistribute wealth in a penny periodical he called Pig's Meat in a reference to Burke's phrase "swinish multitude". Radical organisations sprang up, such as the London Corresponding Society of artisans formed in January 1792 under the leadership of the shoemaker Thomas Hardy to call for the vote. One such was the ScottishFriends of the People society which in October 1793 held a British convention in Edinburgh with delegates from some of the English corresponding societies.
They issued a manifesto demanding universal male suffrage with annual
elections and expressing their support for the principles of the French
Revolution. The numbers involved in these movements were small and most
wanted reform rather than revolution, but for the first time working men
were organising for political change.
The government reacted harshly, imprisoning leading Scottish radicals, temporarily suspending habeas corpus in England and passing the Seditious Meetings Act 1795 which meant that a license was needed for any meeting in a public place consisting of fifty or more people. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars,
the government took extensive stern measures against feared domestic
unrest. The corresponding societies ended, but some radicals continued
in secret, with Irish sympathisers in particular forming secret
societies to overturn the government and encourage mutinies. In 1812, Major John Cartwright formed the first Hampden Club, named after the English Civil War Parliamentary leader John Hampden, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals.
After the Napoleonic Wars, the Corn laws (in force between 1815 and 1846) and bad harvests fostered discontent. The publications of William Cobbett were influential and at political meetings speakers like Henry Hunt complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote. Writers like the radicals William Hone and Thomas Jonathan Wooler spread dissent with publications such as The Black Dwarf
in defiance of a series of government acts to curb circulation of
political literature. Radical riots in 1816 and 1817 were followed by
the Peterloo massacre of 1819 publicised by Richard Carlile, who then continued to fight for press freedom from prison. The Six Acts of 1819 limited the right to demonstrate or hold public meetings. In Scotland,
agitation over three years culminated in an attempted general strike
and abortive workers' uprising crushed by government troops in the "Radical War" of 1820. Magistrates powers were increased to crush demonstrations by manufacturers and action by radical Luddites.
To counter the established Church of England doctrine that the aristocratic social order was divinely ordained, radicals supported LamarckianEvolutionism, a theme proclaimed by street corner agitators as well as some established scientists such as Robert Edmund Grant.
Political reform
Economic conditions improved after 1821 and the United Kingdom government made economic and criminal law improvements, abandoning policies of repression. In 1823, Jeremy Bentham co-founded the Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for "philosophical radicals", setting out the utilitarian philosophy that right actions were to be measured in proportion to the greatest good they achieved for the greatest number. Westminster elected two radicals to Parliament during the 1820s.
The Whigs gained power and despite defeats in the House of Commons and the House of Lords the Reform Act 1832
was put through with the support of public outcry, mass meetings of
"political unions" and riots in some cities. This now enfranchised the
middle classes, but failed to meet radical demands. The Whigs introduced
reforming measures owing much to the ideas of the philosophic radicals,
abolishing slavery and in 1834 introducing MalthusianPoor Law reforms which were bitterly opposed by "popular radicals" and writers like Thomas Carlyle. Following the 1832 Reform Act, the mainly aristocratic Whigs in the House of Commons were joined by a small number of parliamentary Radicals as well as an increased number of middle class Whigs. By 1839, they were informally being called "the Liberal party".
Flyer for the Chartist demonstration on Kennington Common, 1848
From 1836, working class Radicals unified around the Chartist cause of electoral reform expressed in the People's Charter drawn up by six members of Parliament and six from the London Working Men's Association (associated with OweniteUtopian socialism), which called for six points: universal suffrage, equal-sized electoral districts, secret ballot,
an end to property qualification for Parliament, pay for Members of
Parliament and Annual Parliaments. Chartists also expressed economic
grievances, but their mass demonstrations and petitions to parliament
were unsuccessful.
Despite initial disagreements, after their failure their cause was taken up by the middle class Anti-Corn Law League founded by Richard Cobden and John Bright
in 1839 to oppose duties on imported grain which raised the price of
food and so helped landowners at the expense of ordinary people.
When the Liberal government led by Lord Russell and William Ewart Gladstone
introduced a modest bill for parliamentary reform, it was defeated by
both Tories and reform Liberals, forcing the government to resign. The
Tories under Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli
took office and the new government decided to "dish the Whigs" and
"take a leap in the dark" to take the credit for the reform. As a
minority government, they had to accept radical amendments and
Disraeli's Reform Act 1867 almost doubled the electorate, giving the vote even to working men.
The Radicals, having been strenuous in their efforts on behalf of
the working classes, earned a deeply loyal following—British trade
unionists from 1874 until 1892, upon being elected to Parliament, never
considered themselves to be anything other than Radicals and were
labeled Lib-Lab candidates. Radical trade unionists formed the basis for what later became the Labour Party.
The territories of modern Belgium had been merged into the Kingdom of
the Netherlands in 1815. Aside from various religious and socioeconomic
tensions between the Dutch north and proto-Belgian south, over the
1820s a young generation of Belgians, heavily influenced by French
Enlightenment ideas, had formulated criticisms of the Dutch monarchy as
autocratic. The monarch enjoyed broad personal powers, his ministers
were irresponsible before parliament; the separation of powers was
minimal; freedom of press and association were limited; the principle of
universal suffrage was undermined by the fact that the largely Catholic
south, despite possessing two-thirds of the population, received as
many seats to the Estates-General (parliament) as the smaller Protestant
north; and the Dutch authorities were suspected of forcing
Protestantism onto Catholics. These concerns combined to produce a
pro-Catholic Radicalism distinct from both the anticlerical Radicalism
of France, and the Protestant Liberalism of the Dutch north.
Following the political crisis of 1829, where the Crown Prince
was named prime minister, a limited reform was introduced establishing
constitutional rights, similar to the charter of rights of France's
autocratic Restoration Monarchy; the Belgian Radicals, like their French
counterparts, regarded such a charter of rights as insufficient,
potentially revocable by a whim of the monarch. Belgian Radicals closely
followed the situation in France when, on 26 July to 1 August 1830, a
conservative-liberal revolution broke out, overthrowing the autocratic monarchy for a liberal constitutional monarchy.
Within a month a revolt had erupted in Brussels before spreading to the
rest of the Belgian provinces. After Belgian independence, the
Constitution of 1831 established a constitutional monarchy and
parliamentary regime, and provided a list of fundamental civil rights
inspired by the French Declaration of the Right of Man.
As in Britain, Radicals in Belgium continued to operate within
the Liberal Party, campaigning throughout the 19th Century for the
property-restricted suffrage to be extended. This was extended a first
time in 1883, and universal male suffrage was achieved in 1893 (though
female suffrage would have to wait until 1919). After this Radicalism
was a minor political force in Belgium, its role taken over by the
emergence of a powerful social-democratic party.
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre. He belonged to The Mountain of the Jacobin Club, a radical force during the French Revolution.
During the nineteenth century, the Radicals in France were the political group of the far-left, relative to the centre-left "opportunists" (Gambetta: conservative-liberal and republican), the centre-right Orléanists (conservative-liberal and monarchist), the far-right Legitimists (anti-liberal monarchist), and the supporters of a republican military dictatorship, the Bonapartists.
Following the Napoleonic Wars and until 1848, it was technically illegal to advocate republicanism
openly. Some republicans reconciled themselves to pursuing liberalism
through the socially-conservative monarchy—the 'opportunists'. Those who
remained intransigent in believing that the French Revolution needed to
be completed through a republican regime based on parliamentary
democracy and universal suffrage therefore tended to call themselves
"Radicals" – a term meaning 'Purists'.
Under the Second Republic (1848–1852), the Radicals, on a
platform of seeking a "social and democratic republic", sat together in
parliament in a group named The Mountain. When Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte launched his military coup,
Radicals across France rose up in insurrection to defend the democratic
republic. This experience would mark French Radicalism for the next
century, prompting permanent vigilance against all those who – from Marshall Mac-Mahon to General De Gaulle – were suspected of seeking to overthrow the constitutional, parliamentary regime.
After the return to parliamentary democracy in 1871, the Radicals emerged as a significant political force: led by Georges Clemenceau, they claimed that the socially-conservative liberal republicanism of Léon Gambetta and Jules Ferry
had drifted away from the ideals of the French Revolution, and that the
Radicals were the true heirs to 1791. In 1881, they put forward their
programme of broad social reforms: from then on, the tactic of the main
Radical Party was to have 'no enemies to the left' of the Republic,
allying with any group that sought social reform while accepting the
legality of the parliamentary republic.
Georges Eugène Benjamin Clemenceau
The Radicals were not yet a political party as they sat together in
parliament out of kinship, but they possessed minimal organisation
outside of parliament. The first half of the Third Republic saw several
events that caused them to fear a far-right takeover of parliament that
might end democracy, as Louis-Napoléon had: Marshall Mac-Mahon's self-coup in 1876, the General Boulanger crisis in the 1880s, the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. The Radicals were swept to power first in a coalition government (1899) then in governments of their own from 1902. They finally managed to implement their long-standing programme of reforms, such as the separation of Church and State, or the introduction of secret ballotting.
In order to ensure that their legacy would remain unreversed, they
unified the local Radical committees into an elector party: the Radical-Socialist Party, the first major modern political party in French history.
Intellectuals played a powerful role. A major spokesman of radicalism was Émile Chartier
(1868–1951), who wrote under the pseudonym "Alain." He was a leading
theorist of radicalism, and his influence extended through the Third and
Fourth Republics. He stressed individualism, seeking to defend the
citizen against the state. He warned against all forms of power –
military, clerical, and economic. To oppose them he exalted the small
farmer, the small shopkeeper, the small town, and the little man. He
idealized country life and saw Paris as a dangerous font of power.
The Radical–Socialist Party was the main governmental party of the Third Republic
between 1901 and 1919, and dominated government again between 1924 and
1926, 1932–1933 and 1937–1940; the centre-right governments dominated by
the conservative-liberal centre-right often gave a portfolio to a
Radical, who would join cabinet in a personal capacity as the most
left-leaning minister.
The party itself was discredited after 1940, due to fact that
many (though not all) of its parliamentarians had voted to establish the
Vichy regime. Under the dictatorship several prominent Radicals, such as the young left-leaning former education minister Jean Zay, and the influential editorialist Maurice Sarraut (brother to the more famous Radical party leader Albert), were assassinated by the regime's paramilitary police, while others, notably Jean Moulin, participated in the resistance movement to restore the Republic.
In the 1950s, Pierre Mendès-France attempted to rebuild the Radical Party as an alternative to both the Christian-democratic MRP, while also leading the opposition to Gaullism which he feared to be another attempt at a right-wing coup. During this period the Radicals frequently governed as part of a coalition of centrist parties, spanning from the Socialists to the Christian-democrats.
Ultimately the installation of the Fifth Republic
in 1958, and the subsequent emergence of a two-party system based on
the Socialist and Gaullist movements, destroyed the niche for an
autonomous Radical party. The Radical Party split into various
tendencies. Its leading personality, Mendès-France himself, left in 1961
in protest at the party's acceptance of De Gaulle's military coup and
joined the small social-democratic Unified Socialist Party.
A decade later, a second faction advocated maintaining an alliance with
the Socialist-dominated coalition of the left; it broke away in 1972 to
form the Radical Party of the Left,
which maintains close ties to the Socialist Party. The remainder of the
original Radical Party became a de facto liberal-conservative party of
the centre-right: renamed as the 'Valoisien' Radical Party, it advocated alliances with the rest of the liberal centre-right, participating first in the pro-Giscard d'EstaingUnion for French Democracy (1972), then with the conservativeUnion for a Popular Movement (2002).
Irish republicanism was influenced by French radicalism. Typical of
these classical Radicals are 19th century such as the United Irishmen in
the 1790s, Young Irelanders in the 1840s, Fenian Brotherhood in the 1880s, as well as Sinn Féin, and Fianna Fáil in the 1920s.
Japan
Japan's radical-liberalism during the Empire of Japan was dissident because it resisted the government's political oppression of republicanism. Rikken Minseitō, who supported the Empire of Japan's system at the time, were classified as "conservative". Therefore, the radical liberal movement during the Japanese Empire was not separated from socialism and anarchism unlike the West at that time. Kōtoku Shūsui was a representative Japanese radical liberal.
After World War II, Japan's left-wing liberalism emerged as a "peace movement" and was largely led by the Japan Socialist Party.
One of the trends of the American radical movement was the Jacksonian democracy, which advocated political egalitarianism among white men.
Radicalism was represented by the Radical Republicans,
especially the Stalwarts, more commonly known as Radical Republican. A
collection of abolitionist and democratic reformers, some of whom were
fervent supporters of trade unionism and in opposition to wage labor
such as Benjamin Wade.
Later political expressions of classical Radicalism centered around the Populist Party,
composed of rural western and southern farmers who were proponents of
policies such as railroad nationalization, free silver, expansion of
voting rights and labor reform.
The Freethinker parties, located mainly in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and German-speaking countries, included:
In Switzerland:
The Radical movement (or "Free-thinking" movement in the
German-speaking cantons), not yet a political party, emerged during the
period of Regeneration, starting 1830 (coincident with the French July Revolution). It became the dominant political force under the 1848 Constitution, holding all seven posts in the Federal Council until 1891.
The Radical-Democratic Party
(PRD; in French-speaking Switzerland), also known as the Free-minded
Democratic Party (FDP; in German-speaking Switzerland) existed from 1894
to 2009. It started as a centre-left party but gradually moved to the
centre-right in the course of time. It was still by far the strongest
party until the 1940s, holding at least four of seven posts in the
Federal Council. Under the 1959 "magic formula" it held two of seven
posts in the Federal Council.
The Radical-Liberal Party (PLR), or FDP. The Liberals (in the German-speaking regions), was formed in 2009 by the merger of PRD/FDP with the smaller, more right-leaning Liberal Party of Switzerland.
The current Liberal Party began as a radical party in 1870, hence its name in Danish (Venstre, meaning 'Left'). When it became more conservative, the Radical wing split in 1905 to form a new party, known as Radikale Venstre ('Radical Left').
In Norway:
The current Liberal Party began as a radical party in 1884, hence its name in Norwegian (Venstre, meaning 'Left').
In Mediterranean Europe, Radical parties were often labelled 'Democratic' or 'Republican' parties:
In France, during the nineteenth and the first half of the
twentieth century, radicalism was intertwined with republicanism to the
point that radical parties were often simply labelled 'republicans'. The
election of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
in 1841 is generally considered the start of the radical-republican
movement as a political force in France. Over the next century a pattern
emerged of Radicals forming a party on the left of the parliamentary
spectrum (but to the right of socialists), only for the party to drift
to the centre, which would cause the party's left to splinter off and
re-establish a new main Radical party while the weakened parent party
was eventually absorbed by the liberal centre. This meant that there
were generally two rival Radical parties at any one time, one leaning
relatively towards socialism, and the other relatively towards
liberalism.
La Montagne
(The Mountain) (1848–1851) was the first parliamentary group to provide
a home for France's miscellaneous radical republicans. Its official
name, the Socialist Democrat group, signalled its two tendencies: the
more socialist-leaning tendency of Louis Blanc, and the more middle-class democratic-reformist tendency of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. At that time it represented a very small political current situated on the far-left of the parliamentary spectrum.
The Republican Union (1871–1884), led by Léon Gambetta,
was the Mountain's spiritual successor during the transition to
democracy; its members included former parliamentarians of the Montagne
such as Louis Blanc, and prominent Radical intellectuals like Victor Hugo.
A minor force at first, by 1876 it had grown in parliamentary strength
but begun to drift towards centrist cooperation with liberal Catholics;
this prompted the party's more fervent radicals to splinter off in
several waves and form new Radical parties (Georges Clemenceau in 1876; René Goblet's Radical Left in 1881; Isambart's Progressive Union in 1894).
The Progressive Union (1894–1902) was originally a splinter
of the Republican Union by left-leaning radicals during the Dreyfus
Affair. In 1902 the formation of the major new Radical-Socialist Party
to its immediate left forced it to pick a political family, and it chose
to ally then merge with other centrist parties to form the
politically-liberal Republican Democratic Alliance.
Radical Left
(1881–1940), a parliamentary group initially formed by hardline
anticlerical radicals dissatisfied with the Republican Union's centrism.
It was a major political force in centre-left and centrist governments
between 1898 and 1918, and regularly provided ministers in centrist and
right-wing governments between 1918 and 1940; the importance of this
current was underlined by its leader, the veteran Radical Georges Clemenceau, being called to lead the war government
during the First World War. The foundation of the PRRRS to its left in
1901 pushed it one space towards the centre and it increasingly drifted
into alliance with the liberal republican centre-right.
By 1918 it was de facto a party of the centre-right, and from 1936 was
essentially absorbed by the liberal right, its old political niche taken
over by the PRRRS.
The Radical-Socialist Party (officially the Radical, Republican and Radical-Socialist Party or PRRRS),
the most famous of France's many radical parties. It was the dominant
political force in France from 1901 to 1919, and a major force from 1920
to 1940. Due to its central political role it could alternate in and
out of alliance with both socialists and with conservative-liberals;
this prompted several splinters by the party's most left- and right-wing
members:
Centrist and centre-right Radical splinters: The Social and Unionist Radical Party (1928–37) was a small splinter of anti-socialist radicals from the PRRRS, led by Henry Franklin-Bouillon, who preferred to ally with the centrist Radical Left and other liberal right wing parties. The French Radical Party (1937–1938) was a similar small anti-communist splinter, led by André Grisoni. These two small groups merged in 1938 as the short-lived IndependentRadical Party, which was itself restored after the Second World War and was a founding organisation of the Alliance of Left Republicans.
Independent Radical Party (1937–1940), a merger of the Unionist Radical Party and the French Radical Party.
Social-democratic Radical splinters: The Republican-Socialist Party (1911–1935) and the French Socialist Party
(1923–1935) were two small parties formed of left-wing Radicals
philosophically close to social-democracy or rightwing social-democrats
philosophically close to Radicalism, but unable or unwilling to join
either the official socialist party
or the PRRRS. Although electorally small, they were a significant
political force as they regularly provided ministers and heads of
government in left-wing and centrist coalitions. They merged with other
social-democratic parties and independents in 1935 as the Socialist Republican Union.
The Camille Pelletain Radical Party, a small splinter of
anti-fascists from the PRRRS that briefly existed between 1934–1936. The
party opposed the willingness by the PRRRS's party leaders during
1934-35 to prefer cooperation with the right and far-right rather than
with other left-wing parties. Its name was a reference to a leading
historical figure of left-wing Radicalism, Camile Pelletain,
as a way to lay claim to an authentic Radical tradition felt to have
been abandoned by the official party. Once the PRRRS returned to allying
with the rest of the left in 1936, the Pelletanist Radicals returned to
the old party.
After the Second World War, the pre-war Radical-Socialist Party,
Radical Left party and their smaller counterparts were left discredited
and weakened as communism, social-democracy, Christian-democracy and Gaullism
exploded in popularity. The remaining Radicals mostly banded together
with the remnants of other pre-war liberal parties to form a
centre-right umbrella party named the Rally of the Republican Left: this was no longer distinctly Radical in ideology, but espoused laissez-faire parliamentary liberal-democracy. In 2017 the Radical-Socialist Party merged with the Radical Party of the Left to form the Radical Movement.
In Spain, Radicalism took the form of various 'democratic', 'progressive', 'republican' and 'radical' parties.
The Progressive Party (1835–1869), formed by former participants in the radical Revolution of 1820;
The Democratic Party
(1849–1869), split from the Progressive Party, a progressive party of
Jacobin inspiration, mainly active in the 1850s. It split into two
successor parties:
A second splinter of the Radical-Republican Party formed the Republican Democratic Party and Republican Union (1934–1959)
Reformist Party (1912–1924) and its successor Republican Action (1925–1934) which was to the left of Radical Republican Party; merged into the Republican Left; its leader Manuel Azaña was two-time prime minister of the Second Republic (1931–1933 and 1936)
Action Party, formed by Risorgimento leaders around Giuseppe Mazzini,
striving for a unitary, secular Italian republic with universal
suffrage, popular sovereignty and freedom of speech (1848/53–1867)
Radicalism had played a pivotal role in the birth and development of
parliamentarism and the construction of the modern Serbian state leading
to the Yugoslavian unification. The People's Radical Party formed in 1881 was the strongest political party and was in power in the Kingdom of Serbia
more than all others together. The 1888 Constitution of the Kingdom of
Serbia that defined it as an independent nation and formalised
parliamentary democracy was among the most advanced in the entire world
due to Radical contribution and it is known as The Radical Constitution. In 1902, a crack had occurred in which the Independent Radical Party
left and "the Olde" remained in the party, leading the original
People's Radical Party to stray far from progressivism and into
right-wing nationalism and conservatism. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia,
the Independent Radicals united with the rest of the Serbian opposition
and the liberal and civic groups in the rest of the new country, forming
the Yugoslav Democratic Party,
while several Republican dissidents formed a Republican Party. The NRS
had promoted Serb nationalism and put itself as the defender of Serb
national interests. Democrats and Radicals were the dominant political
parties, especially since the exclusion of the Communists. Later
far-right parties such as the Yugoslav Radical Union and the Serbian Radical Party adopted the title "radical" as allusion to NRS.
In Montenegro, a People's Party
was formed in 1907 as the country's first political party and remained
the largest in the period of country's parliamentary history until the
Yugoslavian unification. Later, a True People's Party
was formed, which never got widespread popular support and whose bigger
part had joined the original NS, but the difference was not ideological
and instead was opposition and support of the Crown and sometimes in
foreign relations to Serbia (the clubbists were the crown's dissidents
and supporters of the people as well as Serbia as a regional power and
brotherly ally—the rightists were generally anti-democratic and
autocratic monarchist and also distrustful to the Serbian government's
acts on the national plan).
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