War and democracy

In 1901 Britain had a constitutional government, but it was not a fully-fledged democracy. In 1918 it became a democracy, with the introduction of universal adult male suffrage and votes for women aged over 30.

World War One determined the timing of democratic change.

What mattered more by then was the fact that the country was engaged in the greatest war of modern times, one in which Britain's military deaths were more than twice those it would suffer in World War Two.

World War One may not have initiated democratic change, but it determined its timing. Ironically, the war's demands also weakened the exercise of constitutional government, albeit temporarily.

Freedom of speech was curtailed by the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914. Elections, due in 1915, were deferred until the war was concluded. And the formation of a coalition government in the same year all but silenced parliamentary opposition.

When Britain entered World War One, it did so in the name of 19th century liberal values - the rights of small nations and the rule of law.

What justified these claims, which became the touchstone of British propaganda, was Germany's invasion of Belgium, as its army bypassed France's eastern defences by swinging round them to the north.

Wooing the workers

But 19th century liberalism, although it had a provided powerful rhetoric in foreign affairs, had been more limited in its domestic aspirations. 'Household suffrage', adopted in 1867, tied political responsibility to the ownership of property.

Although increasing affluence meant that the boundaries of this suffrage were porous, in 1914 Britain had the most restrictive franchise of any power in Europe, with the exception of Hungary. Many of those killed in action in 1914-1918 were fighting for a state that denied them the vote.

The Conservative party dominated government for the decade after 1886 - when William Gladstone's Liberal party had split over the issue of 'home rule' for Ireland. The Liberals were returned to power at the end of 1905, winning elections in 1906 and 1910 (twice), even if with dwindling majorities.

Many of those killed were fighting for a state that denied them the vote.

Their recovery was founded in part on their readiness to embrace social reform. The long-term issue for the Liberals was whether they or the Labour party would be the preferred party of the working classes, and on that would hang their survival in government.

The 'new' Liberals struck a deal with the Labour party in 1903, pledging themselves to avoid clashes in seats dominated by Tory interests. When in government, they introduced old age pensions, unemployment benefit and public health provision.

The Liberals' shift to the left was aided by fact that the association of the Labour party with the trades union movement truncated the growth of political socialism in Britain, and so tied Labour to the material interests of the working class, more than to a radical and reforming ideology.

Reform and crisis

This did not mean that the Liberal government did not tackle political reform before 1914. The House of Lords had not really been touched by the reform acts of the 19th century and increasingly behaved as a Conservative opposition when the Liberals were in power.

In 1909, the Lords vetoed the budget, a package of tax proposals which Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George had adroitly presented as designed to finance welfare reforms, when in reality they were driven as much by the requirements of defence.

The ensuing crisis, which spanned two general elections, culminated with the Lords losing their power of veto and becoming a revising chamber only.

Incipient domestic breakdown was usurped by international crisis.

The other great constitutional issue remained unionism. By 1912 - 1913 Ireland was threatening to break the Liberal party once again. The 1910 elections left the Liberals without an overall majority and dependent on the Irish nationalists, the price of whose support was Irish 'home rule'.

In Ireland itself, the Ulster Protestants refused to be separated from Britain and in March 1914 elements of the army made clear that they would not force them, even if ordered to do so by the elected government of the day.

Thus the political ramifications extended beyond debates within Westminster to include the power of extra-parliamentary actors, and even the danger of civil war in Ireland.

For those anxious to generate a sense of crisis there were other straws blowing in the same wind. Strikes by the major trade unions between 1912 and 1914 and the militancy of the women's suffrage movement suggested that defining government in terms solely of parliamentary sovereignty could be self-defeating.

In the event, the sense of incipient domestic breakdown, as intense in July 1914 as in any of the immediately preceding summers, was usurped by international crisis.