Is a Marxist interpretation of British political changes at the start of the 20th century (such as the decline of the liberal party) valid?

by ghroat

So i'm studying British political history and when i read through the events at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century it seemed to me that they could be related to the rise of capitalism and the growth in the class consciousness of the working class. I tried to look online for any historians who argue this and couldn't find any so i'm wondering why this is such an invalid interpretation. Ill run through my interpretation below and hopefully someone an tell my how i'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting the situation.

  • in the mid to late 19th century, the liberal party represented the interests of the capitalists through economically liberal policies while the conservatives represented the landed elite.
  • Towards the end of the 19th century, the landed elite were increasingly irrelevant and decreasingly powerful. This can be seen in the declining numbers of them in parliament and the rising number of new MPs and peers who came from industrial backgrounds. Owners of big businesses.
  • as the landed elite were not as much of as force, the Conservative party came instead to represent big business and the bourgeois middle classes. This can be seen in the "villa toryism" of the late 19th century. I also read somewhere that Bonar Law did a lot to make this change to the conservative party.
  • the liberals losing the basis for their support fell into disarray and were not able to recover until 1906
  • When they did recover, they only did so by representing the lower classes through progressive reforms - new liberalism
  • It was liberals not labour who were able to represent the lower classes because labour was not only very new but had its growth stunted by things like the osbourne judgement and party funding issues.
  • Once Labour managed to get on it's feet they were able to start capturing the vote of the working classes enfranchised in 1884.
  • the reason the liberals did not recover from their wartime disaster is because labour was now representing the left wing opposition to the conservatives. Especially given the universal male suffrage that was granted in 1918
  • Landed elites were no longer relevant to the economy and the conservatives represented capitalist interest against the socialist interest of the newly politically conscious working classes. There was little place for the liberal party in this new order

I'm not advocating any kind of teleological marxist history - i'm not saying this shift from a industrial capitalist vs landed elite struggle to a socialist proletariate vs industrial capitalist struggle was bound to happen. It just seems like it did happen.

I'm not incredibly knowledgeable on the subject but this is just how events seemed to read to me. Maybe there are historians who argue this but i was not able to find them. What am i missing in my version of events? Why is such a simplification irrelevant or not possible?

thank you

jimjay

I highly recommend "The Strange Death of Liberal England" by George Dangerfield which is a comprehensive account of the period leading up to the First World War and the end of the Liberals as a party of government.

It combines a number of factors, including the Great Unrest 1910-14, the fight for universal suffrage, taking us into WWI and their response to the situation in Ireland, among other things. I believe he was actually a Liberal supporter but if you want a materialist account of the death of the Liberals there is no finer study.

I'm a bit wary of an explanation that talks about "consciousness" in the abstract. The fact is (as you mention) the representation of the people act of 1918 may be most famous for enfranchising women but it also extended the franchise by 5.6 million working class men - all elections prior to this had only a minority input of working people. It wasn't a generalised sense of consciousness that had changed but that workers of both sexes had been denied the vote and so weren't electing representatives to Parliament.

Many workers looked to the Liberals prior to this as the reforming party but the moment they were able to elect a Labour government (by being able to vote in elections) that's exactly what they did.

I'd also add that if you look at the history of workers' movements in the nineteenth century in Britain these were genuinely mass movements with mass circulation newspapers, memberships and influence - "class consciousness" was pretty high (caveat: obviously it was uneven and had high and low points). What they did not have was direct access to Parliament and so often looked to other forms of struggle (often far more "to the left" of anything the Labour Party is associated with) and so I'd urge caution with thinking the Liberals died because of a decline in workers' support and look to the specifics of the political landscape.

UnworthyVictim

Which Marxists are you speaking of? I think its better to name theorists and historians. There are likely competing theories among Marxists.