Autocracy to Oligarchy

With the signing by William and Mary of the 1689 Bill of Rights Britain's autocratic monarchy had finally been brought under constitutional discipline and Parliament had won its position of supremacy. But Parliament at that time was an Oligarchy, a word derived from the Greek meaning government by the few – a 'minorcary', representing only a small proportion of the population. Many there were, of course, who would be quite happy to keep it that way. The reformers however, both in and out of government, would now press for continuing expansion of the voting franchise.

Nonetheless, Conservatism, preservation of the status quo, versus Reform; this theme was to dominate Parliamentary proceedings for some two hundred years.

Following a tradition of earlier times when the King's advisers sat on his right, likewise the Conservatives in Parliament loyal to the Crown and the maintenance of the status quo now sat on the Speaker's right, while the Radicals and Reformists sat on the left.

So Britain's Parliament assumed the confrontational shape still maintained today, of Right and Left, Conservatism and Reform facing one another across an aisle, and the terms Right and Left assumed the significance now familiar throughout the world.

When the Right-Left polarization first took shape, the Conservatives seated on the right supported the Monarchy and a degree of Royal prerogative provided the Nobility could share in it. They accepted the established order of Church and State, and furthered the interests of landowners, and later the big industrialists.

At first known as Royalists, they have subsequently become known by an early nickname: the word Tory is derived from an Irish word meaning robber, doubtless reflecting their appearance in the eyes of many common people.

On the other side were the Liberals, or "Whigs". Formerly Republicans, they now supported the Monarchy provided it was kept under constitutional constraints. They also supported reform generally, including a gradual widening of the franchise. The party of the Left later became more widely known simply as Liberals, until the 1900s when the Left position was taken by the Socialists.

Thus the battle lines were drawn, as Parliament struggled with and within itself for 200-odd years, from 1700 to 1900, culminating in the condition of broad participatory government popularly known today as Democracy.

Though now a matter of history in Britain, development of a broad and honest electoral system is a story which is still being enacted in many countries today.

Two areas particularly would be subject to continuing reform: Parliamentary Representation with its inequalities and corruption, and the physical process of casting votes.

The rapid growth of industry and the accompanying flight from the countryside during the late 1700s had unbalanced the traditional representation patterns. Some country "boroughs" (the so-called "rotten boroughs") still sent members to Parliament though they were now totally uninhabited, while huge new industrial cities were without any form of Parliamentary Representation.

Reform of Parliamentary Representation was very much a lively topic of debate; frequent meetings were held, and well attended, in coffee houses, public houses, and in the meeting rooms of Political Reform Societies, with proceedings carefully documented for posterity by the Society's "Hon. Sec." In May, 1809 a meeting of dedicated Reformers was held at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand; among the many items debated were calculations made by Grey in 1793, to the effect that 307 English Members of Parliament were appointed, through money and influence, by just 154 individuals.

Throughout the 1800s the demand for electoral reform grew steadily, though not without opposition from vested interests. As early as 1819 cotton workers from all around the cotton mill areas gathered in Manchester to demonstrate for male suffrage; they were ruthlessly suppressed by mounted Yeomanry Cavalry in what was to be known as the "Peterloo Massacre".

Yet the sheer pressure for electoral reform slowly gained momentum, and by 1830 the Liberal Party was able to defeat the Tories in a general election on this very issue. A Liberal committee was set up to compose a Reform Bill; this Bill was passed in the House of Commons and, after a protracted struggle in the House of Lords, became law in 1832.

It established male suffrage for all those with property worth more than £10 in annual rent, and reformed the various Constituency anomalies, abolishing the "Rotten Boroughs" and enfranchising the new industrial cities.

But even after this great Reform Act of 1832 the vast majority of the working classes were still unable to vote.

As to the process of election, "having the vote" certainly did not mean, as it does today, that one could in secret and without pressure vote for the Representative or the Party of one's choice.

Voting at this time was not conducted through secret ballot, but by a public show of hands; this allowed landlords and employers to "supervise" the voting of their servants and employees. The Tories as landlords, and many Liberals as wealthy merchants and industrialists, influenced voting in a way that made a mockery of the concept of free elections.

With the help of the new popular working-class newspapers, a major electoral reform movement developed, whose members were known as the Chartists. The movement centered around a "People's Charter", presented to Parliament with over a million signatures as a Petition of Right in 1839.

The Charter contained the following six demands:

1. Universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21;
2. Vote by secret ballot to prevent the abuses of open ballot;
3. Payment of Members of Parliament so working men could afford to stand;
4. Abolition of the property-owning qualifications for membership of Parliament;
5. Equal electoral districts so that each Member of Parliament represented the same number of people;
6. Annual elections so that Members would keep constant note of their voters' requirements.

Despite Parliament's awareness of the need for further electoral reform, the majority in Parliament felt that this Charter was going too far, and defeated the motion to consider it as a Bill of Reform.

The Chartists later presented a second Petition, this time with three million signatures - a figure representing a quarter of the working population. But again it was rejected by the upper-class-dominated House of Commons. As a result there were riots and uprisings throughout the country; further reform was inevitable.

In 1867 the second Reform Act gave voting enfranchisement to all male rate-payers. This was followed in 1872 by the Ballot Act which brought in voting by secret ballot, thus at last giving the lowest classes real freedom to make their own choice of Parliamentary Representatives without pressure or influence.

The working classes were now enfranchised; but their interests were not accurately represented in either the Tory or the Liberal ideologies. They needed a Party in Parliament which would represent their own interests and views, a Party which would fight against the intolerably long working hours, poor pay, overcrowded housing conditions, and all the other perceived manifestations of injustice and exploitation.

Socialism had its origins in the writings of Karl Marx and Engels, but Marx's "Communist" theories were considered too radical and revolutionary for the taste of the British. The British Labour Party began as an alliance of Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies, its philosophy influenced by the Fabian Society, an intellectual group of Socialists founded in 1884, inspired by the playwright Bernard Shaw and husband-wife team Beatrice and Sidney Webb.

The last few years of the Century saw the gradual formalization of the Socialist programme featuring a shorter working day, improved housing, higher wages, social security, and a minimum standard of education for all. The Labour Party would now become the Party of the Left, with Socialism as the "alternative" political doctrine.

The Socialist Revolution

Thus far in political history there had really been only one political dogma, known as Capitalism, Laisser-faire, Free Enterprise. Whatever it may be called, it is based on the principle of minimal Government intervention. And that made sense, at least to the ruling classes. They were doing very nicely in industry, commerce and social organization, and they had naturally instituted a form of government which would leave them quite free to get on with it.

And of course, leaving people free to get on with it is quite literally what laisser-faire means.

For many, everything looked rosy. But the Humanist visionaries were concerned that the lax political climate permitted too much opportunity for some to exploit others, for some to accumulate huge fortunes through the impoverishment of others. Idealists saw this as a form of enslavement, enslavement being defined in simple terms as the involuntary transfer of work or wealth from one person or class to another.

They resolved, as the new Twentieth Century dawned, that there would be no more enslavement of man by fellow man.

A worthy aim indeed. And how was it to be achieved?

It could have been achieved by requiring Government to do more than just leaving people free to get on with it. Freedom is fine, but perhaps people should not be so free that they are permitted so grossly, so blatantly, even so brutally to plunder the freedom of others.

The solution would have been more Government involvement: specifically, sufficient to prevent people from exploiting one another. That would have been the ideal solution; with it the development of political ideals and institutions could have made a quantum leap from enslavement to liberty, from self- interest to universal-interest.

But human nature does not work in such exalted ways. We do not see injustice and replace it with justice; we see injustice and react to the other extreme, replacing one kind of injustice with another.

And the new political creed of Socialism was just such a reaction. Hailed by so many as the dawning of social justice, it was regrettably no such thing. Socialism did not abolish injustice but perpetuated it, merely reversing the roles.

Instead of the Strong and powerful exploiting the Weak, now it would be the Weak, the poor, the working classes who would, with Government help, exact vengeance from their previous masters.

Traditionally Governments had always served the interests of the powerful people who controlled them by doing as little as possible, thus allowing those with power to exploit those without it.

Now taking the side of the previously impoverished majority, Socialism would adopt the opposite approach.

Instead of doing nothing, or the very minimum, a Socialist Government would throw itself wholeheartedly into the fray on the side of the working people.

But it would be halfway through this century before Britain was to have its first real taste of Socialism.

In 1900 the first joint meeting of the various representatives of the Labour Movement was held in London to found the Labour Representation Committee, which later became the Labour Party.

The Committee adopted a resolution put forward by Keir Hardie, who would later become the first Labour MP in the House of Commons, to establish, not a Political Party in the first instance, but a Labour Group in Parliament which would co-operate with any existing Party promoting legislation in the direct interests of the Labour Movement.

Support for the new Labour Movement increased rapidly, and when the election came in 1906, to the horror of the press and the governing class, Labour captured twenty-nine seats in Parliament, swelled subsequently to over forty seats when the Miners' Federation instructed its MPs to join the Labour Party.

During the First World War of 1914-1918, many people lost confidence in the abilities of the Ruling Classes whose generals and politicians were perceived as being responsible for the War's immense and useless slaughter. By the end of the War much of the population had become politically cynical, even semi-revolutionary.

The election of 1924 gave Labour, through an Alliance with the Liberal Party, a majority over the Conservatives of 91 seats in the House of Commons. The Alliance with the Liberals, however, precluded a full Socialist programme of legislation, and after only a year in office, through an ineptly conducted attempt to restrict publication of a Pacifist article in a Communist paper, the first Labour Government was forced to resign.

In 1925, the Conservative Government supported the Coal Owners' bid to reduce miners' wages, demanding that "all workers in this country have got to take reductions in wages". A general strike was threatened and the government backed down, conceding temporary victory to the Left. When the subsidy which the government had given to the coal industry ran out in May 1926, the Government informed Labour leaders that wage cuts for the miners would be enforced.

This precipitated the great National Strike of 1926. For nine days the country was paralysed. However, through economic hardship the workers were unable to outlast the Employers and Government and were forced to capitulate. The Employers subsequently took advantage of this by reducing wages generally, and the Government then brought in a Trades Disputes Act, which impeded subscriptions by Trade Unionists to the Labour Party, made picketing more difficult and forbade the Civil Service Unions from membership of the Trades Union Council.

The Government also withheld social benefits from large numbers of unemployed on the pretext that they were "not genuinely seeking work" - an accusation not entirely sustainable within a context of large- scale unemployment.

This last action was mainly responsible for the Labour Party victory in the election of 1929, when they won a margin of seats greater than in their previous term of office; yet they were still dependent on Liberal support. This second Labour Government in power was, however, overtaken by the great financial collapse of 1929, which started in the USA and later spread to Britain. The Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald was forced to form a new coalition "National Government" which was itself soon dominated by the Conservatives.

Unemployment reached nearly three million in 1931 and had not fallen below a million-and-a-half in 1937. By the start of the Second World War in 1939, there were still up to a million unemployed, even though by then a degree of prosperity had returned to Britain.

At the conclusion of World War II in 1945 there was once again a reaction to the Left and the third Labour Government was voted in, this time with a large overall majority. For the first time Labour was able to introduce some sweeping Socialist changes.

Labour's main objectives were to extend public ownership in the economy, and to introduce a comprehensive "Welfare State".

By the second post-war election in 1950, when Labour was returned to power with a reduced majority, they had nationalised the Bank of England, Cable & Wireless, the major British airlines, coal, electricity, the railways, gas, and the iron and steel industries.

Developing the "Welfare State", they had introduced a National Health Service and a National Insurance Scheme.

In 1951 the Labour Government was split when the more radical members resigned over a budget reduction in social expenditure. An election was called, and the Conservatives returned to power for the next thirteen years. Labour's "finest hour" had come and gone.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see the idealism which motivated the principles of Socialism in its formative years. But we can also see that the Socialist Reformers in their attempts to eliminate enslavement overshot the mark and ended up with excessive and heavy-handed government.

This development was paralleled to an even greater extent in the USSR, where the Socialist/Communist regime created both heavy-handed government and considerable oppression.

Claiming that land ownership was unfair the Soviet State took it all. No longer would a small minority of powerful landlords control 90% of the cultivable land, leaving millions with no means of livelihood or sustenance.

But in practice of course, no one either rich or poor would have any direct or personal discretion in the use of land and other natural resources which would now be fully collectivized and centrally directed. Thus the State curtailed a substantial area of individual and economic liberty, depriving itself of the initiative, commonsense and pride of ownership of its agricultural workers.

Many of them left for the New World, where their imported seeds and hard work would lay the foundations for the great American and Canadian grain belts which continue to feed a large part of the world's population today.

Throughout production and industry the story was the same.

Claiming that the country's men of enterprise were not to be trusted, the Soviet State took over the total planning and operation of all industry and commerce. No longer would employer exploit employee by paying low wages and maintaining dangerous and unhealthy factory conditions: thus at least in theory.

But in practice the substitution of centralized planning and direction with the consequent elimination of individual enterprise and initiative would lead to a steady decline in productive efficiency. This in turn meant that real wages in terms of purchasing power remained low, and that the economy could not afford to invest in new technological development or to effect improvements in environmental and factory working conditions.

Wages and prices were fixed by the State on social grounds which bore no relationship to costs; this would ensure social justice of a kind, as well as monetary stability. But without the essential discipline of accounting to clarify income and expenditure, to control costs and measure efficiency, productive resources were mis-used and mis-allocated, contributing further to low productivity and low prosperity.

Resources-use and industry had been brought under full State control; and personal liberty went the same way.

To ensure that the people got what was best for them in their personal lives the State took upon itself to regulate the daily detail of personal, family and community life. Housing, health, education, transport, holidays, news, culture, entertainment... everything was government controlled.

Certainly every Soviet citizen would now have free healthcare and education and cheap transport and subsidized ballet... all those dreams which neither the poor nor the reformers in London could ever have thought possible in the late 1800s.

But the citizens of the Soviet Union would pay a price in terms of liberty; for they would no longer be able to choose how to spend the fruits of their labours nor exercise that discipline of choice upon producers so vital to maintain and continually raise standards of service and productivity.

Thus the Socialist revolution would gradually reveal itself. People with ideas and enterprise were suppressed and even persecuted. Hard work no longer had its own rewards. Freedom of speech, of the press, and access to information and knowledge of the outside world were denied to all ordinary people.

The new elite would be the Party members, the government functionaries and the police. For the rest of the population class equality, of a kind, had been achieved. As they used to say in Poland: "Under capitalism there's rich and poor; under socialism, we're all poor."

The old injustices of Capitalism were replaced with the new injustices of Socialism; and the world, having long experienced varying degrees of enslavement, had now experienced a new political phenomenon: oppression.

Enslavement occurs when man is permitted to infringe the liberties of fellow man. Oppression is created when the State itself invades the liberties of those it governs.

Have we learned the lesson? It might appear so.

Few are the Westerners who speak Russian; but we are all familiar with the Russian word perestroika. Literally it means reorganization; in practice it has come to mean the discrediting and the collapse of Socialism/Communism.

And yet as people in the West watch with an undeniable sense of superiority the continuing disintegration of the former Soviet Communist system, they are perhaps unaware that a part of every human soul yearns for the security of the Socialist regime.

Under Socialism, the Great State Machine takes care of us all from cradle to grave, educating, entertaining, employing, feeding and housing us, doing what's best for us. We know that without the vital spark of human initiative a nation cannot grow economically; yet we cling to our Socialistic dreams of "free" healthcare and education, and subsidies for everything we can possibly imagine without even wanting to know where the money is to come from.

But the same rules which have caused the downfall of Socialism in the former Soviet Union operate in the West too.

All the northern European health systems are now coming under increasing pressure from waste and abuse; the State school systems teach little or nothing at enormous expense; and the expansion of subsidies for anything and everything combined with a marked reluctance to pay for them has resulted in ever-increasing Government debt.

Government continues to grow in size and in cost, not only in Britain and Europe, but equally so in that bastion of free enterprise, the United States of America.

Do we blame Government, or do we blame ourselves? It is said that in a democracy people get the government they deserve; could it be that irresponsible government is the result and the wish of an irresponsible electorate?

President Kennedy once suggested that America's citizens should ask not what America can do for them, but what they can do for America. It might be suggested that voters today should ask not what they can get out of Government, but who on earth is going to pay for it.

Wherever it is practised, the nature and the problems of Socialism are the same and are simply stated.

The distinctive feature of Socialism is that it takes funds and decisions from individuals and places them in the hands of Government; the services supplied by Government are costly and inefficient, choice is reduced, and liberty is eroded.

Socialism has indeed reduced the opportunity for man to exploit fellow man which existed under right- wing, laisser-faire government; but the measure of liberty has not increased, for Socialist government creates its own exploitation through over-organization and oppression, in the name of social equality.

Democracy or Majocracy

By 1900 the franchise, the ability to vote in secret according to conscience or self-interest, was widely held. And during the first half of this Century the Right-Left choice provided sufficient opportunity for the individual voter's interests to be reflected in Parliament. "Democracy" had arrived. But what exactly is democracy?

Democracy's first and perhaps main attribute is that it is clearly an improvement over Autocracy or Dictatorship.

The word Autocracy comes from the Greek word kratos meaning power, and self (autos), the sense being that one Leader holds power for himself solely and exclusively. This term can apply to the Absolute Monarchs of early England or to the more recent dictatorships of Africa and Latin America.

Democracy gives power to the people, the word being derived from the Greek words power (kratos), and demos meaning people.

In order to ascertain the Will of the People, the Democratic system provides for periodic elections. Democracy is essentially a process whereby the People, rather than an Autocratic Monarch or Dictator, can peaceably present and review options, then select the policy of their choice.

The importance and stability of orderly electoral procedure should not be underrated. The alternative is a bullet in the President's head or a full-scale civil war. We should not forget that many countries, far too many, still change their Presidents and their Governments in this way.

But Democracy has its imperfections, and its limitations.

Democracy means power to the people. But this remains an ideal, and does not reflect the way Democracy works in practical reality. It is a matter of simple definition that we cannot have real and genuine power to the people unless all of the people are of one mind. And in practice, they never are.

Democracy, or power to the people, we do not have. What we practise today is Majocracy, or power to the majority of the people. In this sense we still give power to the Powerful; but now "the Powerful" are those in the numerical majority, or increasingly in the United States, those with the greatest financial support.

And what of the laws and social conditions which result?

The presumption of a Democratic system is that the Majority is "right". The rightness of a law exists precisely because it is a majority decision; it requires no other justification.

This presumption is not, nor ever has been, convincing.

The Law is not right simply because a majority of the citizenry supports it. Majorities can be financially irresponsible, oppressive of minorities, or simply wrong by the instinct of political morality which exists in every one of us – when we choose to consider "right" as opposed to self-interest. Wrong, unjust and irresponsible laws are approved by majority-elected governments almost daily.

A law is not right or wrong simply because the Majority says it is so. So what is right and wrong in law? What makes a law right or wrong?

The fundamental principle on which New Age Governance is based, is that an action is wrong when it injures or exploits others, and that such actions should be prevented by law. Right Laws are laws which prevent people from injuring one another, and the law is at fault when it fails to offer such protection. Similarly, wrong laws are those which regulate personal lives beyond simple protection, and prevention of injury, for such laws are intrusive and oppressive.

New Age Governance is based on one simple rule of conduct: Do No Harm.

The ideals of "Right Law" and non-injury to others are not new. They are as old as human conscience, ideals which have been expressed since the earliest records of political thought.

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