England's Discontents by Mike Wayne

Author:Mike Wayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

5

The oscillations of liberalism

Introduction

The changing relationships of liberalism to conservatism, to economic liberalism and to the working classes have been indicative of the role liberalism has played in facilitating particular outcomes in terms of those coalitions of classes whose relationships and ‘terms of settlement’ set the agenda for an epoch. Gramsci called such settlements ‘historic blocs’. Liberalism has been central to their formation while its critique of conservatism has allowed this political culture to pose as a more progressive force than its hegemonic role within these blocs suggests that it is. We can identify three historic blocs that have shaped politics in Britain in the last two hundred years or so. The first represented an alliance which had crystallised by the early nineteenth century between the conservative landed aristocracy (represented politically by the Tories) and the slightly more liberal sections of the gentry, the commercial, mercantile and banking groups (represented politically by the Whigs, who later transformed into the Liberal Party). By the 1830s, industrial capital was sufficiently powerful to help broaden the franchise to include the new urban bourgeoisie and their growing professional middle-class support base.1 The decomposition of this historic bloc took a lifetime (between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s and 1940s), such is the sometimes glacial rate at which change in a society fiercely resistant to progressive change takes place. The driving force of this decomposition was undoubtedly a one hundred year or more struggle by the newly formed industrial working classes (between the 1830s and the 1940s) to change the terms of their position within British society. This change required a transformation in the composite national identity and national cultures, a transformation which culminated in the 1930s and 1940s with a new acceptance by the dominant classes of the centrality and importance of the working class to British society. This was a struggle of enormous sacrifices, against a repressive State–capital nexus that was saturated in anti-working-class sentiments and prejudices. The working classes had to force their way into the political life of the country, demanding social and economic rights that broke up the old historic bloc and produced a new one and with it a new component part of the national identity. The oscillation and transformation of liberalism in the decay of one historic bloc and the formation of a new one, was critical. Liberalism moved away from its initial identification with economic liberalism (the free market as the solution to all social and economic ills) in which it posed itself as a ‘radical’ reforming politics in opposition to a conservative dominated State that was seen as a threat to individual liberty. Instead the free market itself became identified as a source of social problems and the State came to be seen as the necessary body that could transcend piecemeal reforms and establish the nationwide changes required for society at large. Social liberalism uncoupled itself from economic liberalism, entered an informal alliance with the labour movement and again as such, but on different terms, posed itself once more as a ‘radical’ reforming political culture.

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