Or, a very British revolution
How many of you, I wonder, know about the event in British history referred to by the English as the Glorious (glorious because bloodless) Revolution? How many of you know that the English fought their own Civil War, over issues of religious toleration, orthodoxy and the role of Parliament in relation to the Crown? The fighting concluded in 1660. But the Civil War didn't end until 1668, when William of Orange became King of England as the conclusion to the Revolution. He accepted the claims of Parliament, and the principle of religious toleration, was given the title of King in return and the wealth of England was put at his disposal - subject to oversight by Parliament, of course.
James II, the formerly Protestant but latterly Catholic King whom William ousted fled to France - with William's guarantee of safe passage. Only once did the 'King across the Water' attempt to reclaim the throne. He and his forces (Irish and French) were routed at the Battle of the Boyne (an event still commemorated in Northern Ireland by the Marching Bands of the Loyal Order of Orangemen, and an ongoing casus belli between Catholic and Protestant to this day).
From 1668 on, the Revolution was portrayed as the salvation of England, both from the forces of Catholicism, and of anarchy. In some ways it was. But what it never was, was a victory for the 'common Englishman'. It was a victory for the forces of the mercantile (and later the industrial) middle classes - the Bourgeoisie. It laid the foundation for the defeat of Aristocratic political privilege (an event which has only finally occurred in the last couple of days - which is one reason I'm writing this) and it laid the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, as well as of the eventual rise of the British Empire. Its cardinal role and ongoing meaning in British political life is seen in the nature of its legacy to the British Parliamentary system today.
Even in the Upper Chamber ('the House of Lords') the hereditary principle was almost extinguished by the last attempt at Reform that actually effected change, in 1999; almost, but not entirely. The entirety of the House of Commons, on the other hand, are all the children of solidly middle class backgrounds, many of them lawyers, some independently wealthy, but none having gained their positions through primogeniture and the Aristocratic principle. What the Revolution did was to consolidate the economic and political power of the Bourgeoisie for centuries to come. What the Bourgeoisie did with that power was to create for themselves a political caste made up largely of lawyers, or those associated with law, to defend their interests in Parliament and ensure that nothing similar to the Glorious Revolution could occur again.
Their success is demonstrated by the fact that the Labour Party, once deliberately and consciously a political movement dedicated to the defense and advancement of the interests of the workingmen of England, is now virtually indistinguishable from the Conservative Party - the acme of middlebrow Little Englandism and for long the natural defenders of Property and Money. Labour, under that detestable ape and traitor, the lawyer Blair, now proclaims itself the natural defender of the English middle class - the days in which it sought to nationalise the 'commanding heights' of the economy in the name of the general good are long since dead and gone.
This is of interest because it forms the backstory to what is possibly the most significant moment in British Parliamentary history since Parliament secured its rights against the Crown. Finally, over three hundred years after the Glorious Revolution, there is a real chance to break the stranglehold of Political Parties and Political Castes over the democratic process in Britain.
Two days ago, the House of Commons voted to reform the House of Lords and make it fully elected. Until the vote of two nights ago the House of Lords was made up of the remaining rump of hereditary Peers while the rest were all 'life-Peers' - in other words Party-political appointees. Not a single member of the Lords had a direct democratic mandate. Not one. While this was certainly a glaring deficit in British 'democracy' (that democracy we are so vigorously urging the Iranians and Iraqis to adopt) it was not in itself necessarily a bad thing. Life-Peers are just that - appointed for life. That means they cannot be removed from office even if they don't subsequently toe the Party line that they were appointed to support - as many of the Lords have not. Equally, many of the life-Peers were appointed in consequence of possessing some particular expertise, so that while there are lawyers in the Lords, lawyers are not a majority and other points of view than the peculiar prejudices of the legal caste can be brought to bear on political questions.
These are attributes of a bicameral democracy that ought not to be destroyed by the final ending of political appointments and hereditary office: independence of judgment and a wide spread of experience. A fully elected Upper House addresses one form of democratic deficit - an unelected Chamber having influence over the decisions of the elected Chamber - but it creates other deficits of its own.
In British Parliamentary democracy, the Commons or lower chamber is the body which creates law. The Lords, the upper Chamber, has a scrutinising and advisory capacity, along with the power to send back to the Commons any Bill which does not successfully pass in the Upper Chamber. However, the Commons has the whip-hand, since it can immediately compel passage of the Bill using the Parliament Act, or may pass it into law regardless of the Upper Chamber's decision after the elapse of a year. The House of Commons has supremacy over the House of Lords, and the basis of that supremacy is the ballot and the democratic mandate of the people. But what if both Houses are fully elected? More particularly, what if a newly constituted Upper Chamber were to be elected by Proportional Representation rather than by the 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) system (which can see a Party gain power with less than a third of the popular vote overall) which sends Members of Parliament to the House of Commons?
Proportional Representation (PR) can be much more truly democratic and representative than is FPTP. If the Upper Chamber were to be elected in a manner that meant the democratic choices of the people (as opposed to the Parties' voice in drawing up lists of candidates of their own choice for people to vote on) would be better expressed in the Upper Chamber than in the Lower - then the primacy of the Commons is brought to an end and Britain's unwritten 'constitution' is thrown into complete disorder. This is an overplus of legitimacy; so much legitimacy, in fact, that chaos is the likely outcome.
On this basis some might argue that the solution is to use lists of candidates drawn up by the Parties, since the Parties in the Commons have already received the democratic mandate of the people via election to the Lower Chamber. But this solution simply reintroduces into and reinforces in the new Upper House the problem of the stranglehold on politics held by the political caste that dominates the Commons.
If there is not to be a democratic deficit in the form of the strangulation of politics by political elites; if there is not to be a democratic deficit in the form of an overplus of legitimacy; then another solution is required. Not a new solution, but a very old one, first developed as a mechanism of democracy by the ancient Greeks. Its technical name is 'sortition'.
Sortition simply means selection or appointment by lot, by random selection, as in the choice of citizens for jury service. To quote the Lords Reform Institute (Link), sortition ensures real representation. If a per centage of society holds a certain point of view, that per centage of representatives in the Upper Chamber will hold that point of view. It breaks the hold of Parties in either placing or recalling representatives, since no longer will they be subject to the undue influence of the Party 'line' on an issue. Sortition would ensure a wide array of perspectives and opinion could be brought to bear on the oversight of the work of the Lower Chamber, breaking Parliament out of the lawyer's mindset, the Westminster 'bubble', that now dominates political thinking and reduces every issue to a question of what new legislation can be created (since lawyers live from legislation, new legislation only ever serves as an increase in the wealth of lawyers) in order to address it - new legislation which, during Blair's tenure, has only ever served to increase the power of the State at the expense of the public sphere and civil society.
Political life in Britain has entered a period of profound crisis - though it might not appear obvious that this is so. Even before the Iraq War, even before I left to come to America, there were extremely deep divisions in British society, divisions reflected in the measure of devolution offered to Scotland and Wales. There was also a chronic sense of political powelessness accompanied by a growing sense of political apathy. If all your vote achieves is more of the same by a different name - then why vote? A vote under such circumstances is an act of futility.
In the manner in which they treat the Reform of the House of Lords, British Parliamentarians now have a chance to demonstrate just how deep is their actual commitment to real democracy in Britain. They have a truly historic opportunity to jump-start the moribund body of British politics and breathe new life into it, by giving to the people a real measure of oversight and control over the actions of those elected to represent them.
Personally, I think they're going to make a complete bollocks of the job from start to finish. I hope they do. Because underneath the apathy and frustration and hopelessly undirected resentment, I believe (or rather I hope) that there is real anger. An anger that will not be satisfied by being told 'voting for who we tell you to vote for is the only democracy there is.'
The British in general are quiet and patient. But we are not quietistic. We fought a bloody civil war, executed a king, and politically emasculated his successors, over whether Parliament or the Crown was sovereign. Now there is a chance to decide whether it is Parliament or the people that is sovereign - and I see no reason to think that we have become incapable of fighting another civil war over the issue, if we had to. I think there is a real chance that the Parliamentarians of today will not see the writing on the wall until it is too late; that they will use this opportunity for reform to once again entrench the interests of a political caste rather than as a chance to revive the democratic life of the nation; and that there is a real chance that they will be required to pay for their intransigence, pride and bloody-minded stupidity in the only coin that really counts: blood.
If we can kill Kings over such debates, we can certainly dispose of the pious fool Blair and his brood of lawyerly vipers. This is the Twenty-first Century. It's long, long past time to do away with the shadows of Monarchy and Aristocracy, to put away the evil influence of political hacks, Party placemen, and the rewards of the political appointee. And rather than another bloodless coup such as that which brought William of Orange to the throne and secured, seemingly forever, the privileges of Money and Property, I hope for a revolution rather less glorious. Less glorious - but bitter, bloody, and uniquely British.