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British Workers Search for a Voice
Through much of the 19th century, Great Britain avoided the kind of social upheaval that intermittently plagued continental Europe between 1815 and 1870. Supporters of Britain claimed that this success derived from a tradition of vibrant parliamentary democracy; however, the Great Reform Bill of 1832 still left the vote to only 20 percent of the male population. A second reform bill passed in 1867 expanded voting rights, but power remained in the hands of a minority—property-owning elites with a common background, a common education, and an essentially common outlook on domestic and foreign policy. While the pace of reform in England outpaced the rest of Europe, it was still slow due to a homogenous Parliament that assured relatively stable policymaking.
In the 1880s, problems of unemployment, urban housing, public health, wages, working conditions, and healthcare upset this traditional balance and led the way for a new and powerful political movement in Great Britain—the Labour Party. In 1892, James Kier Hardie, an independent workingman from Scotland, became the first such man to sit in the House of Commons. He represented the Labour Party and built upon trade union support to craft a workers’ party dedicated to advancing the cause of working Englishmen. For the first time in its history, the British Parliament began to represent class distinctions in English society.
By 1900, wages were stagnating while prices continued to rise throughout the country, and urban housing was quite literally crumbling. Workers responded by putting their faith in the oft-militant trade unions, organizations that advanced worker demands in Parliament, cared for disabled workers, and assisted in pension, retirement, and contract matters.
The Impact of Labour in Parliament
Pressured by the new Labour movement, Liberals and Conservatives were forced to act for fear of losing any substantial labor vote. The Liberal Party, the group that traditionally received the worker vote since industrialization, became the so-called New Liberals, led by Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George. The Liberal governments supported legislation to strengthen the right of unions to picket peacefully, and passed the National Insurance Act of 1911, providing payments to workers for sickness and introducing unemployment benefits.
In addition, heeding workers’ call for a more democratic House, Lloyd George pushed the Parliament Bill of 1911, which reduced the House of Lords (the upper house of Parliament, dominated by conservatives averse to worker legislation) to a lower position than the House of Commons. After the Parliament Bill, the Commons could raise taxes without the Lords’ approval and pay for any needed worker legislation. Finally, in 1913, the powerful Labour movement pushed through the Trade Unions Act. This law granted unions the right to settle their grievances with management directly, without the interference of a generally conservative Parliament.
19th Century Reform in Britain
The Great Reform Bill of 1832 initiated, albeit slowly, a process of liberalization unseen in the history of the British Parliament. However, even this extension of voting rights did not spark immediate change. Most representatives in the House of Commons had similar educations, and thus a similar outlook on the world. They believed in the superiority of the British system, the rightness of imperialism, the power of industry, the benefits of trade, and the value of general isolation from the continent. These views, though subject to some slight degree differences between Liberals and Conservatives, remained common throughout most of the House. Such views did not account for the new concerns of workers who had never received an elite education, or, in some cases, an education at all.
However, though it took more than half a century, the British system did gradually change to meet the problems associated with the industrial age. Also important to notice is that it did not require a Labour Party majority in Parliament—something that would not come until the interwar years—to initiate changes. The political system was malleable enough that pressure from a relatively small minority party in Parliament pushed the traditionally uninterested Liberal and Conservative majority to seriously modify their political goals and actions. Politicians in England were farsighted, keen on capturing the awesome potential power of the worker movement before it got out of hand—namely, before it ignited a powerful party of its own.
