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Nonconformity and Electoral Sociology, 1867–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. W. Bebbington
D. W. Bebbington
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Extract

Patterns of voting in Britain between the second Reform Act of 1867 and the Franchise Act of 1918 have to be scrutinized afresh in the light of Dr Dunbabin's recent suggestion that very little changed in the period. The electoral profile of the regions, he argues, remained fundamentally constant from well before the period until well afterwards. The basis of the cleavage between conservative and anti-conservative voters was deeply ingrained in regional character and was merely modified slowly by processes of social change, of which the chief was the sprawling growth of London. This is to challenge earlier views holding that there was a deep-seated shift in the allegiance of the electorate in the years before the first World War. Of such views the most carefully worked out is that of Dr Clarke. The cleavage between the conservative and the anti-conservative at the beginning of the period, according to Dr Clarke, was founded on the gulf between different communities of which the primary social bond was religion. The confrontation between conservative and liberal corresponded to, and was the political expression of, that between church and chapel. By the end of the period, however, the basis of cleavage was no longer religion but class. Conservative strength was sapped by a tendency to working-class solidarity which at first benefited the liberals more than the infant labour party and which explains the two liberal general election victories of 1910. The social base of the parties had been transformed so that the electoral conflict was no longer a matter of ‘cultural politics’ – a rivalry of contrasted, classless cultural units – but a matter of class politics. Dr Clarke asserts what Dr Dunbabin denies, that there is a sharp discontinuity between the characteristic pattern of nineteenth-century politics and the characteristic pattern of twentieth-century politics.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 633 - 656
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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