Money is the cancer of British politics
Saturday, 15 December 2007
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Looking on the bright side, Gordon Brown might say that if a "lollipop lady" can write a cheque for £25,000 to the Labour party, then growth and redistribution of income must have been truly remarkable in the decade of his chancellorship. As the scandal of party donations continues to erupt around the government and the Labour party, a more cynical defence is that it was ever thus, and that all parties have dirtied their hands with money.
This is truer than contemporary politicians may realise. As in so many other democracies today, money is the cancer of British politics. And yet public life is in fact less corrupt today than in earlier ages. Our particular problem now is caused by a squeeze, between the depoliticisation of society on the one hand and the self-inflicted costs of politics on the other.
As representative government emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, elections were gloriously venal: see Hogarth's pictures of the polls, or Dickens's Eatanswill election. If anything, fiction in The Pickwick Papers was less lurid than fact: the "bought parliament" of 1841 was returned by the most corrupt of all elections.
Widening the franchise, and the coming of mass parties, did not end the connection between politics and money, but only changed it. From the 1870s to the 1920s, the Conservative party was something like a subsidiary of the liquor trade. Even A.J.Balfour, prime minister from 1902-1905 and regarded as one of the more personally honest politicians of his age, sat in parliament for a Manchester seat that was known to be in the gift of local brewers.
It was to combat that kind of big money that the nascent Labour party raised small money - tiny donations, but many - through the trade unions whose political wing the party was. Despite obvious drawbacks, this worked well enough, up until the middle years of the past century.
That was, odd though it may seem to say so, the golden age of participatory democracy in this country. For one thing, we voted. At the 1950 general election, 84 per cent of British citizens cast votes. That figure fluctuated and declined, but it was still 72 per cent in 1997. Only then that did it really collapse, to 59 per cent four years later.
For another, we joined parties. Apart from the millions somewhat artificially affiliated through their unions, Labour had more than 1m individual members in the early 1950s. As for the Tories, with an astonishing membership of more than 2.5m at that time, they were one of the great popular political movements of Europe.
Since then there has been another collapse. When Tony Blair became Labour leader he said he wanted to rebuild membership, which had fallen badly. It did indeed climb to back to more than 400,000, but it has now halved to less than 200,000. And at a little more than 300,000, Tory party membership is barely an eighth of its peak in Winston Churchill's day.
At the same time the thirst for money is greater than ever. One factor in the latest affair has been quite unnoticed. Both Harriet Harman, who was elected deputy leader of the Labour party in the summer, and Peter Hain, one of the other contenders for that dubious office, have been accused of taking funds by improper means for their campaigns. But since when did candidates for the deputy leadership need any "campaign funds" at all? Did Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan need to raise money for their 1953 contest, or George Brown and Barbara Castle in 1961, or Michael Foot and Shirley Williams in 1976?
The answer is that the electorate was then the Parliamentary Labour party, no more than a few hundred MPs, and the cost of the election no more than the price of printing ballot papers. What was meant to be a democratisation of the party in 1981 through the bizarre "electoral college" of unions, constituency parties and MPs have proved not only no more democratic but also infinitely more expensive - and potentially corrupt. There has rarely been a better example of the law of unintended consequences.
Over the past week, Labour politicians publicly and Tories privately have been bemoaning the "arms race" of party spending, which has forced them towards such unhappy means of fundraising, even while recognising that most of the money is wasted. Instead of the abject clamour for state funding of parties, might it not be time - and in everyone's interests - for a disarmament conference, and a drastic limit on spending?
(The writer's latest book is Yo, Blair!)
Looking on the bright side, Gordon Brown might say that if a "lollipop lady" can write a cheque for £25,000 to the Labour party, then growth and redistribution of income must have been truly remarkable in the decade of his chancellorship. As the scandal of party donations continues to erupt around the government and the Labour party, a more cynical defence is that it was ever thus, and that all parties have dirtied their hands with money.
This is truer than contemporary politicians may realise. As in so many other democracies today, money is the cancer of British politics. And yet public life is in fact less corrupt today than in earlier ages. Our particular problem now is caused by a squeeze, between the depoliticisation of society on the one hand and the self-inflicted costs of politics on the other.
As representative government emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, elections were gloriously venal: see Hogarth's pictures of the polls, or Dickens's Eatanswill election. If anything, fiction in The Pickwick Papers was less lurid than fact: the "bought parliament" of 1841 was returned by the most corrupt of all elections.
Widening the franchise, and the coming of mass parties, did not end the connection between politics and money, but only changed it. From the 1870s to the 1920s, the Conservative party was something like a subsidiary of the liquor trade. Even A.J.Balfour, prime minister from 1902-1905 and regarded as one of the more personally honest politicians of his age, sat in parliament for a Manchester seat that was known to be in the gift of local brewers.
It was to combat that kind of big money that the nascent Labour party raised small money - tiny donations, but many - through the trade unions whose political wing the party was. Despite obvious drawbacks, this worked well enough, up until the middle years of the past century.
That was, odd though it may seem to say so, the golden age of participatory democracy in this country. For one thing, we voted. At the 1950 general election, 84 per cent of British citizens cast votes. That figure fluctuated and declined, but it was still 72 per cent in 1997. Only then that did it really collapse, to 59 per cent four years later.
For another, we joined parties. Apart from the millions somewhat artificially affiliated through their unions, Labour had more than 1m individual members in the early 1950s. As for the Tories, with an astonishing membership of more than 2.5m at that time, they were one of the great popular political movements of Europe.
Since then there has been another collapse. When Tony Blair became Labour leader he said he wanted to rebuild membership, which had fallen badly. It did indeed climb to back to more than 400,000, but it has now halved to less than 200,000. And at a little more than 300,000, Tory party membership is barely an eighth of its peak in Winston Churchill's day.
At the same time the thirst for money is greater than ever. One factor in the latest affair has been quite unnoticed. Both Harriet Harman, who was elected deputy leader of the Labour party in the summer, and Peter Hain, one of the other contenders for that dubious office, have been accused of taking funds by improper means for their campaigns. But since when did candidates for the deputy leadership need any "campaign funds" at all? Did Herbert Morrison and Aneurin Bevan need to raise money for their 1953 contest, or George Brown and Barbara Castle in 1961, or Michael Foot and Shirley Williams in 1976?
The answer is that the electorate was then the Parliamentary Labour party, no more than a few hundred MPs, and the cost of the election no more than the price of printing ballot papers. What was meant to be a democratisation of the party in 1981 through the bizarre "electoral college" of unions, constituency parties and MPs have proved not only no more democratic but also infinitely more expensive - and potentially corrupt. There has rarely been a better example of the law of unintended consequences.
Over the past week, Labour politicians publicly and Tories privately have been bemoaning the "arms race" of party spending, which has forced them towards such unhappy means of fundraising, even while recognising that most of the money is wasted. Instead of the abject clamour for state funding of parties, might it not be time - and in everyone's interests - for a disarmament conference, and a drastic limit on spending?
(The writer's latest book is Yo, Blair!)