When talking to neighbors yesterday afternoon (in Florida, where I am spending the winter) they asked me about the origins of democracy. They heard me give a talk last week in which I touched on the subject of parliamentary government during the reign of Henry VIII.
The king wanted a divorce, which his adviser, a cardinal in the Church, was unable to secure from the pope, so Henry VIII turned to Thomas Cromwell, a lawyer who was steeped in English law. It was Cromwell who made Henry VIII’s divorce possible. To do this, he had to sever ties with Rome and the Catholic Church. He made the king head of the newly-formed Church of England. The key was how he did it, through statutes that defined the king’s sovereign power; his sovereign authority resided IN parliament. Up to this point Parliament had been in decline, as had representative institutions throughout Europe. Absolutist governments represented the way of the future, not governments of the parliamentary type.
Troubles began to brew between monarchy and parliament during the reign of Elizabeth. It was under the Stuart monarchy that push came to shove. Charles I went to the scaffold. It was the leader of the parliamentary forces, Oliver Cromwell, who saw to the execution of Charles I and formed a republic that ended after he died. There was another revolution in 1688, when Parliament won a decisive victory over monarchy. From this time on, Parliament would be a permanent part of English government, and in time the dominant part.
This was not a victory of democracy over despotism. Parliament was dominated by the landowning class. To retain power, the members of this class had to persuade those who had the vote to cast their ballots for them, but this was expensive. It came down to bribery, in the form of entertainments and other favors.
The response to this problem was statues passed in Parliament that reduced the electorate. As the historian J.H. Plumb wrote, there was a “crushing” of the electorate in eighteenth-century England. Only with the Reform bills of 1832 and 1867 would power flow outward from a narrow landowning class to other groups beyond its circumscribed and narrow base. This process would continue until there was a democratic electorate in 20th-century Britain, including women.
My neighbors, Sasha and Oliver, told me that I should write a blog about this. They said that efforts to reduce the electorate are playing out in America today, and they are right. Several states are passing or have passed laws that will make it difficult for economically marginalized groups to vote. Voting times are being imposed that will make it difficult for some voters to get to polling places under the restrictive measures.
This is part of a social struggle in America to enlarge the power of a reactionary and increasingly powerful right-wing political class. Anti-democratic forces are asserting themselves in today’s America.