{119}
We now return to the machinery by which elections are, determined. Before one can understand this one must understand that mysterious entity, the “Central Office.”
What is the Central Office? It is not representative of the people. It is not even representative of the active members of the Party. These active members dispersed throughout their clubs are represented at the conferences of the National Liberal Federation and the National Union of Conservative Associations. These bodies pass resolutions and define policies; but nothing that they do has the smallest effect on practical politics until it has been ratified by the Central Office.
The Central Office is the medium of communication between the governing group on the Front Benches and the local party organisations throughout the country. These local organisations themselves do not represent very adequately the rank and file of the parties; they are composed of the {120} most enthusiastic partisans (a small proportion of the community), and are largely dominated by the local rich men who help to keep them going. These men often covet seats in Parliament and work the local organisation with the object of obtaining them. Yet, unrepresentative as they often are, and controlled by local plutocracy, the local organisations are too democratic to be trusted under such a system as ours with the reality of political power. The Central Office exists to keep them in order.
At the head of the Central Office is an official nominated by the Governing Group. He is in close touch with the Whips, and, through them, with the Leader. He wisely leaves a certain amount of discretion to the local organisations in things not essential. But, where his intervention is required, as, for example, where a local organisation is disposed to stand by a man who takes an independent attitude, or where a man unacceptable to the Front Bench is nominated, he interferes, and his interference is usually successful, for in truth his power, though hidden, is immense.
For he holds the purse-strings. Through his hands pass all those huge secret sums of which we have already spoken. It is in his power to give or to withhold these; and they are constantly withheld from members who do not satisfactorily toe the party line. It is also he who makes arrangements with the subscribers to the Party Funds—arrangements of which the Leader is conventionally {121} supposed to know nothing, though he obediently carries them out.
In fact, the Central Office, though by no means the most really powerful factor in our politics, is the hinge upon which everything else depends. Through it the politicians master the constituencies.
We have already said that under a really democratic system of representation members of Parliament would be chosen freely by their constituents, probably in most cases from among their own number. In many cases they would be elected by acclamation. In others there might be a contest. But in the final resort it would be the man most thoroughly trusted by his fellow-citizens of that particular district who would become the member. It is clear that this does not happen now.
How do men get elected to Parliament? There are normally two processes. Sometimes the richest man in a particular locality interests himself in what is called “politics,” and subscribes largely to the funds of the local organisation, sometimes paying all its expenses out of his own purse. In such a case he naturally becomes all-important to the local politicians, and if he cares to contest the seat he is, subject to confirmation by the machine—as we shall see when we deal with the process in the next section—chosen as candidate. This arrangement obviously implies wealth as a {122} necessary condition of entrance into politics, and affords no guarantee whatever that the man chosen will really represent his constituents. It is, however, in practice probably less mischievous than the other and commoner course of procedure.
When a man has no special local connections, or when his political preferences do not accord with those of the locality to which his connections bind him, he must approach the Central Office, directly or indirectly, and ask them to find him a seat. If he is a rich man he will put down a subscription which will be paid into the secret treasury of the Party, and the seat found for him will, other things being equal, vary in security with the amount of the said subscription. [Note 122.1] If, on the other hand, the man is poor, he will show himself active in political work, make speeches for other men, write articles in reviews, and generally force himself upon the notice of his patrons as a useful gladiator. If he can get a private secretaryship to a politician or in any other way connect himself with the Governing Group, his path will be all the smoother, and such action be thought more normal if he is a lawyer; for lawyers are at once recognised as advocates, offered the largest salaries (within and without the House), and further find men of their calling to be already the nucleus of Parliament. They are the most {123} serviceable tools of the party bosses. Such an apprentice to the game will be generally sent in the first instance to fight some hopeless seat. If he shows himself a good candidate and makes himself agreeable to the leaders, a more hopeful seat is subsequently found for him. His poverty is no obstacle to his success, so long as he is submissive to the machine, for the Fortunatus Purse of the Party Funds is placed unreservedly at his disposal. But the sacrifice of his freedom (and honour) is the condition of his securing these advantages. If, by some accident, a junior actually elected so misunderstands his position as to ask a question or move a motion on some point affecting the machine, he is usually reminded—by an “independent” but wealthy colleague—that his ability to fight his seat again depends upon the will of a secret Caucus, and of those by whose money that Caucus is kept going.
It must, of course, be remembered that local political organisations are, as will be described in a moment, no more than the old stock “Tory” or “Radical” stagers of the locality. Such men, though usually honest according to their lights, are completely the dupes of the professional politicians in London, and always insist on “loyalty to the party” as the first condition of confidence. This condition nullifies all others. For, once he is pledged to do nothing that may injure the party, a candidate can cheerfully pledge himself to almost anything else, well knowing that if the measure he {124} is pledged to support is inconvenient to the Front Benches, he will either have no chance of voting on it, or his vote will be rendered harmless and ineffective by the subsequent shelving of the question. If in the last resort he is forced to break his word and vote against what he is pledged to vote for, he can always plead that to have redeemed his pledge would have endangered the Government; and by the eager “Liberals” or “Unionists” who make up local political Committees such a plea will generally be accepted. Even if he is so unusually unlucky as to fail to satisfy the local organisation on a particular point, they are, once he has been their member, almost powerless to get rid of him. To do so would be to cause a scandal, to divide the party, and to run the risk of handing over the seat to “the enemy”—as the dupes of one set of politicians innocently call the dupes of these politicians’ confederates.
If any man ventures to run independently of the two political caucuses, the difficulties in the way of his success are enormous. Generally he is severely hampered for want of money, while his official opponents have not only an inexhaustible fund to draw upon, but a fund whose sole purpose is the financing not the winning of elections. Also, though a majority of voters may actually prefer him to any other candidate, they are often afraid to vote for him, lest by so doing they should “waste” their votes: for under an absurd and dishonest ar-{125}rangement, which the machine carefully preserves, no second ballot is allowed. An impartial observer may be pardoned for thinking that, even under this system, a man could hardly waste his vote more thoroughly than by giving it to the nominee of the political bosses, who, when he is once elected, must regard himself as the servant not of his constituents, but of the caucus. But British electors are not always impartial observers, and there is no doubt that the hypnotic effect of continual assurances that an independent candidate “cannot win” operates powerfully against him. Votes promised some days before the poll are in such cases continually revoked at the last moment under the influence of this “fear of wasting a vote.”
Thus it will be seen that only three types of men find it normally possible to get into Parliament. First, local rich men who can dominate the local political organisation. Secondly, rich men from outside who have suborned the central political organisation. Thirdly, comparatively poor men who are willing, in consideration of a seat in Parliament and the chances of material gains which it offers, to become the obedient and submissive servants of the caucus.
It will be attempted in this division to describe not why, but how, that wheel of the machine which is called “the local Caucus,” the agency of the {126} Machine in a constituency, works towards an election from start to finish.
Some recapitulation of what has already been read will be necessary, but no comment need be made on it, still less any criticism: a description is enough.
The two Front Benches have at their disposal a large organisation maintained by salaried officials whose object it is to decide what men shall stand for what constituencies. Each of these organisations is approached, and lays itself out for approach, on two sides: first by those who desire to become Members of Parliament; secondly, by the local bodies that must confirm the choice of a candidate.
The decision of the Salaried Machine Officials as to who shall stand for where is guided of course by many considerations. A wealthy man who has purchased the right to stand must of course be considered first; men already noted at the Universities for their connection with party organisation there, and their power of public speaking in connection with it, have an obvious claim. Heredity is a claim. A man, the son or connection of a prominent politician or wealthy political family, a Cecil, a Howard, a Churchill, or a Rothschild, will be accepted as of right. A multitude of considerations enter here which we need not detail.
Men whose poverty renders them of no immediate importance, but whose gifts of advocacy are worthy of enlistment, will be given for their first {127} trial (as we have already pointed out) places which the officials of the double machine have decided to be “safe” for the “side” opposed to that for which the neophyte is put up. His defeat and the energy he puts into the struggle earn him a right to a better chance next time.
Men of strong local influence, or possessed of private or valuable information, are of course welcomed—and so forth.
But one common test is applied: the men so chosen must be prepared to defend not only an existing programme settled between the various officials and professional politicians, but any future decision which their superiors may feel inclined to take. That is understood more or less clearly by the candidates so chosen: the more clearly the better their chance for promotion. A man of no powers, but of doubtful obedience, who might be tempted (were he elected) to speak for those who elected him, is offered the most hopeless opportunities until a few elections shall have schooled him.
Turn now to the local body.
In the constituencies the local machine depends upon considerable though dwindling bodies of sincere public feeling. You have not in the provinces that connivance and collusion between supposed opponents which is the essence of the central direction at Westminster. The local “prominent Liberals” are usually men of a really different type from the local “prominent Conservatives.” The mass of the people, of course, {128} care little for the “prominent Liberals” and “prominent Conservatives” whose business it is to approach the machine and discover a candidate for it. … But a few dozen men interested in such subjects surround the local big-wigs of either caucus, meet for the purpose of “electing” them to be “Presidents,” “Treasurers,” and so forth of the local caucus.
We say “a few dozen”; it is never a hundred, and there are many constituencies where it is not twenty or thirty. The local big-wigs thus “elected” by their local dependents and satellites form the “official Liberal” organisation and the “official Conservative” organisation: the word “official” here signifying “recognised by the salaried officials of the central machine at Westminster, and by the professional politicians to whom those officials owe their appointment and livelihood.”
Upon the approach of an election, or perhaps some time before, the “official organisation” “deputes” that one of its members who most loves this form of activity, and who has most leisure, to go up to London and see the salaried officials of the machine. He goes up to London; perhaps two or three others go up with him; the interview takes place (we are talking here of course only of seats not already provided with a candidate or sitting member intending to continue in Parliament); they have no one ready, and ask for someone “on the list” to be “sent down,” or perhaps they suggest a local man who has spent money {129} largely in the constituency; and if he has agreed to vote for anything the machine may suggest, he is confirmed by the machine. More commonly in the case of a vacancy it is the official at Westminster who nominates the man; but though nominated, he is not yet the “official prospective candidate.” Before he can be called by that title he must present himself to the little local clique and be “accepted by the official (blue or green) organisation.” Now and then (it is exceedingly rare, and is the exception that proves the rule) the choice thus made is so appalling that the little local clique is frightened of it; in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they do as they are bid, and the gentleman becomes the “official prospective candidate” of the blues or the greens, as the case may be. He may, if there is time and if he is wealthy, “nurse” the constituency; that is, provide material advantages for the benefit of the electorate; but, though he may “benefit” the electors to his heart’s content so far as amount is concerned, he must be wary enough to stop a certain time before the election takes place; otherwise it is bribery. The length of this time is of course not fixed, but depends on the whim of the judge, should an election petition be tried. Six months is perhaps the maximum.
From a fortnight to ten days before the election takes place the “campaign” opens; a set of points are provided for the candidate by the professional politicians, and he has to defend them in public meetings: questions are put to him which {130} he must answer as best he may. If a movement of public opinion is observable on matters outside the brief which he has been chosen to defend, he is expected to turn this movement aside and if possible to destroy it, but it is permitted that he should, in extreme cases of spontaneous popular excitement, pledge himself with a view to his return, though always on the understanding that he is bound to the machine and not to the constituency. He is expected to break those pledges always in the spirit, and even, if necessary, in the letter, after his return to Westminster: the complete ignorance of the populace upon the rules of Parliament makes the task an easy one.
As the day of the poll approaches, the candidates are “nominated”; that is, nomination papers are handed in bearing the names of certain of his supporters. The nomination is not accepted unless he can bring with him and pay down in cash a large sum of money, equivalent to the full year’s income of a well-paid skilled artisan. This, of course, is not the whole amount of the entrance fee: the full expenses can hardly be kept at less than £400, average in their avowed or legal amount £1000, and come in reality (if all be counted) to nearly double that sum.
A day or two before the election takes place, that excitement which the national character finds and delights in where any doubtful event is approaching lends great heartiness to the unreal struggle: unreal so far as any difference of {131} principle is concerned, but commonly very real in the conflicting ambitions of the two candidates.
The last night or two before the poll is a debauch, of mere excitement upon either side, called “a rally,” the intensity of which is often a gauge as to whether a few hesitating voters have been drawn into the whirlpool on the one side or the other. But its main purpose is not persuasion, but ritual; it is very expensive, and there is some finessing as to the bespeaking of halls, etc.
Meanwhile a number of workers of the poorest classes, who by legal theory give their services gratuitously, are engaged in personally interviewing every elector and getting him to say that he will vote for their “side.” The majority pledge themselves to both sides, as indeed courtesy demands; but a certain proportion answer “yes” to the one side and “no” to the other. As is always the case where large numbers of human beings are being estimated, an average can be struck, and the average of these stubborn souls is fairly fixed; to estimate the results of the “canvass,” as it is called (it is endowed with an elaborate system of checks and counter-checks), a certain percentage is taken off all the pledges, doubtfuls are added to one’s opponent’s canvass, and the result is thought to be, and often is, a rough indication of how the poll will go.
On the day of the poll the voters cannot, of course, be expected to register their opinions—for, as a rule, opinions are not at stake—nor even {132} to fulfil their pledges; a vast and (again) an expensive organisation for getting at each voter personally and bringing him to the poll is set to work. The opportunity of a ride in a motor car or a carriage is not without its influence, and the mere pestering by the “workers” is of great effect. Were it not for this costly effort the proportion of those who vote would be negligible in most constituencies. It is, of course, essential to the life of the Party System that the numbers should be fairly equal on either of the sham “sides,” taking the country as a whole.
Therefore, to win by 10 per cent, of the electorate in any one constituency is an enormous majority; to win by 5 per cent, a solid and satisfactory one; to win by 2 per cent, does not mean that the seat is “safe,” but the election is hardly called “close”; blue or green gets the larger number of crosses, and duly goes off to Westminster to vote for anything whatsoever that the machine may give him orders to vote for during the next few years.
No mention has been made of what is called the “organisation,” with its local salaried officials, noting the removal of every elector, checking the names, places on the list, residences of all, and so forth. That type of work may be easily imagined. Oddly enough it is commonly performed (though at a wage) by one of those men, common in the provinces, who sincerely believe in the reality of the differences between the pro-{133}fessional politicians. Their simple faith is one of the anomalies of the system.
Thus does the party engine work at the constituency end of its activities, and thus is the personnel of the House of Commons determined. It helps to explain that personnel.
If the selection of members has, of course, been taken completely out of the hands of the people, quite equally so has been the selection of the “programme” of which they are supposed to ask the electors’ approval, but which, as a fact, official candidates must depend on as on a brief.
In a really democratic system, as has been pointed out, the initiative would come from the people. They would ask for certain alterations in the law, and would send men to Parliament to express their wishes.
The demand by the electors would come first, and the declarations of the candidate would merely embody that demand. Under such a system programmes would naturally vary from constituency to constituency according to the special needs and grievances of the locality; but some demands would be common to all, because the grievance to be redressed was felt by the whole nation.
Now, as a matter of fact, nothing of the kind happens.
{134} Two programmes are drawn up by the politicians, usually after consultation with each other, and between these two alone are the voters asked to choose.
No subject not mentioned in either programme, however much the people may desire to raise it, can be effectually raised. No solution of any problem, except the two prescribed solutions, however much the people might prefer it, can ever be really discussed. Nothing is left to the people but to choose the least of two evils.
It is true that in framing these programmes the politicians have their eyes on votes. But the vote-catching of politicians is a matter of arbitrary arrangement; it has nothing to do with any national demand. One side is to bid for the votes of Churchmen; the other of Nonconformists. One is to secure the support of publicans; the other of teetotalers. But the question to be answered is framed by the politicians. And to frame the question is to go a long way towards framing the answer.
It was not always so; at least not to the same extent. Just as the control of the House of Commons over the Ministry has weakened, just as the control of the electors over their members has weakened, so has the initiative of the people in legislation weakened.
As an illustration of this, compare the Free Trade movement of the ’forties with the Tariff Reform movement. We do not propose to discuss the {135} question of the relative merits of Free Trade and Protection. [Note 135.1] But this may be fairly said, that Free Trade was forced upon the legislature by the urgent demand of a section of the people—a minority perhaps, but still a section. Tariff Reform, on the other hand, had its rise in no such demand. There were always, it is true, in this country a considerable number of convinced Protectionists. Some were old-fashioned Tories who regretted the repeal of the Corn Laws. Others were economists who had studied the Continental and American advocates of Protection, and agreed with them. Others were working men who believed that the foreigner had got their job. But these men, though one continually met them, were politically utterly negligible. Suddenly a Cabinet Minister, a member of the governing group, spoke and declared for Protection. On the instant, men who had never in their lives before doubted the validity of Free Trade, but who happened to be professional politicians, suddenly appeared as convinced Protectionists, while crowds of their satellites and would-be replacers at once followed suit.
But there is no matter for wonder in this phenomenon. It is normal to the working of the machine, for the machine pre-supposes that popular opinion shall have no initiative.
There is no machinery by which, at the present time, the people can raise a particular political {136} question, however intensely it may interest them, unless it is included in the programme of one or other of the political parties. They can indeed obtain pledges from candidates; but such pledges, as we have seen, are perfectly valueless; for, though a man may be pledged to vote for a particular measure, he cannot vote for it unless it is brought before Parliament and a division taken on it; and it has already been shown that the Front Benches can generally prevent a division on any inconvenient question, and even if a division is taken, can prevent the matter going any further. Thus, even supposing, no small supposition, that the elected member is honestly desirous of keeping his promise and carrying out the wishes of his constituents, he will generally find it impossible to do so. The Front Benches, by their control of the House of Commons, control also the effective programmes submitted to the electors.
Even if the solution of some question is so urgently demanded by the electors (or far more often by the rich men whose money is at the back of the official parties) that the Government cannot ignore it, the voters are not allowed to choose their own solution, but only to vote for one of two solutions put forward by the Front Benches. We have already given one example of this—the Drink Question. The people are from time to time allowed to choose between the suppression of public-houses and their endowment out of public money, but they are not allowed to vote for any {137} other policy, least of all are they allowed to vote, as they certainly would vote if they got the chance, for the removal of some or all of the intricate and mostly senseless regulations which interfere at every point with the habits and festivities of the poor. The numerous Education Bills, drafted not to satisfy the people whose children are to be educated, but solely to gain the support of sectarian leaders of all kinds—men who would as soon think of sending their children to be educated in Nigeria as at a public elementary school—afford another example.
To take cases where the demand comes from a section at any rate of the populace: the two Front Benches decided last November that the reversal of the Osborne Judgment should not be among the issues presented to the electors for discision; they secretly agreed that payment of members should side-track the demand of the workers. The Labour Party of course gave way; the Front Benches have won.
In regard to the Unemployed, the people are not and will not be allowed to vote for or against the Right to Work Bill, though they might be allowed to consider Mrs Webb’s policy of imprisoning working men in compounds until they consent to work for the rich. It is more likely, however, that such a proposal would, like the Children’s Bill and the Prevention of Crimes Bill, be carried over their heads as a “non-controversial measure.” “Non-controversial measures,” it may {138} be explained, include all violently unpopular proposals for the oppression of the poor, which happen in no way to affect the professional politicians.
For with the loss of initiative the people have also lost all right of veto, so that not only are they unable to frame the programme which their representative is to carry into effect, not only can their demands, even if their representative is pledged to them, be entirely neglected, but the most detested of measures, for which there is no shadow of mandate, which were never mentioned at the previous election, may be passed into law, and the electorate is utterly powerless to secure their repeal. Even though they should punish their member for voting for such measures by rejecting him at the next election, his successor, the representative of the other team, will probably lack the will, and will certainly lack the power to undo the work, if that work is approved by the Front Benches. The Licensing Clauses of the Budget, which are certainly unpopular, but which the “Conservative” team undoubtedly intend to continue when by mutual arrangement their turn of office comes, afford an excellent example of this.
It is clear then that, despite all the elaborate machinery of polling-booths and ballot-papers, despite all the frenzied appeals to “the popular will” which are the staple of political eloquence at election times, the people have neither the power {139} to make Parliament pass the laws that they want nor to prevent it from passing the laws that they dislike. The whole power of legislation has passed to that Standing Committee of Professional Politicians which is called in the House of Commons “The Two Front Benches.”