in 1832, the British Parliament passed the Reform Bill. this is regarded as the most significant milestone on the UK’s journey to the world-renowned democracy it enjoys today. but is it time for a new reform of our version of what is regarded as the bedrock of a civilised model of government?
what’s wrong with the UK’s democracy today?
To answer that, we have to examine why the Reform Act was necessary in the first place. Great Britain’s democracy, while responsible for many great achievements to make the most powerful nation in the world, also had been perverted by rich landowners and powerful men with their own agenda.
These rich manipulators had used the system of representation to place their own people into Parliament to carry out their wishes. They achieved this because they owned many small districts, so it was easy to place specific people to further their evil endeavours.
One man sought to change this. And that man was the British Prime Minister at the time, Lord Charles Grey. But the great Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832 would not be Charles Grey’s only monumental achievement in his short, four year term as Prime Minister.
He passed the landmark law to abolish slavery across Great Britain and Its entire Empire in 1833. The first nation in the world to do so.
But that’s a story for another time.
Ridding the nation of its “Rotten Boroughs”
Every district or “borough” had a member of Parliament. Because the area represented was small, the wealthy landowners were essentially the puppetmasters of their MP’s. What Lord Grey did was to enlarge the districts into wards to take in cities and areas of land too big to be managed by one man alone. Any prospective MP had to show a qualification to represent his ward.
This law gave tenant farmers, shopkeepers, small land owners and even householders the right to stand as an MP. It essentially created what we see today – with one caveat. Only men could vote. Ironically, up to this point women were not directly excluded from voting. Women’s suffrage was to come nearly a hundred years later, in 1918.
so why change things now?
Fifty years or more before the Reform Act, loose groups of people – factions – began to appear in Parliament. This led to the creation of political parties, such as the Whigs, with a specific leader. In effect, policies were chosen by the parties to dictate national policy, causing pendulum-like swings of decision making as each party took power.
The Party System allows wealthy individuals, financially powerful groups with specific interests or Trade Unions to have the ability to lobby, pull, influence, or bribe Parliament to move in their direction.
Today, we see echoes of the pre-reformist state of Parliament. The Rotten Boroughs have been re-invented today as selective, highly polarised party political battlefields. The poor or disenfranchised voting Labour, the better-off voting Conservative. Wards have even been re-drawn tactically to accommodate a party-political agenda.
The common man is pulled from side to side with his voice never really heard.
an end to party rule?
Why do we need parties at all. Why not vote for someone with interests that align with the voters needs in the wards they represent. Why have party people “whipped” into position to take the party line, never directly responsible to the people who voted for them?
This would be very difficult to create. It would be like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas. Yet we know today that there are sinister vested interests controlling the individual parties. Big business is one; but also foreign state actors like China have considerable weight and have infiltrated many sections of academia (Confucius Institutes), science and government.
returning accountability to the voting public
The original idea behind local representation was just that. An MP was there to be the voice of the electorate within their ward. Today, most MP’s are “parachuted” in to safe party seats but are rarely seen by or accountable to the local voters except at brief “surgeries” where concerns are fobbed off because of the disconnect between Parliament and local government.
Would it not be better if the local MP also held a senior role in the local council, with mandatory attendance at monthly council public meetings. Adding the authority to remove non-performing sitting MP’s at the local voter level would keep them on their toes – placing that power with local voters, not just the comfortable local political party would ensure real representation.
But who knows. Maybe a party will appear that will reform our democracy was in effect dissolving the power of the party in politics?
Well perhaps. Its a worthy dream. Maybe dreams can come true?