The Temple of British Worthies – 2 by Trevor Rickard, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
We are all familiar with the saying that ‘Britain basically has a two-party system’, an aphorism which until recently seemed to be so obvious as to hardly need saying. Incredibly, it now seems we may live to see the smashing of that centuries-old system by an insurgent party, Reform. But how did our two party system evolve, and what were its main constituent parts?
There was a bit of a discussion on here a while ago, asking what – or who – the Whigs exactly were, so I thought it might be worth taking a closer look. After all, they were a political party, weren’t they? Like we have today? Well, yes. And no.
First of all, yes they were a political party, but not one with a structure, manifesto or policies we would recognise these days. They started out perhaps more like what one might call a faction, albeit a grand one. In addition, they tended to socialise, consult and even intermarry with each other, within a few highly-regarded families, mainly made up of aristocrats, landed gentry or wealthy merchants. Some influential Whig mothers were even reported to be inconsolable if their daughters married into a Tory family, however rich the prospective spouse was.
Although they are mainly now associated with the 18th century, the background to their rise was the Civil War. Already long in the past, this nevertheless had long-term repercussions for the future. Curtailing the power of the king and elevating parliament – its literal meaning being just ‘a discussion’ – from a few court advisers to a formal and permanent body serving more than just the monarch was their aim, along with the entrenchment of the Protestant ascendancy.
The Tories, of course, continued to support the monarchy and be much more conservative with a small ‘c’ in their outlook. Revolution was not really their style, as a rule – and, although Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he never again had the absolute power that his father Charles I had enjoyed wielding. When Charles’ staunchly and openly Catholic brother James II had tried, his fate was inevitable: he ended his life in exile in France. Indeed, the terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ were first introduced in 1679 during the heated struggle over the bill to exclude James, then duke of York, from the succession. Both were originally terms of abuse from the fringes of the kingdom: a whig was a whiggamor, or Scottish cattle-driver, while a Tory was an Northern Irish brigand.
The seal was finally set on England’s new arrangement, a reformed ‘constitutional monarchy’ where royalty was constrained by the power of parliament, by the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 which saw William of Orange and his wife Mary (daughter of the deposed James II) take the throne by invitation of prominent Whig families. By this compromise, both political parties hoped to secure a peaceful and prosperous future for the country. But even so, between the 1680s and the 1850s, Whig and Tory still fought over who would wield power.
If the key to the Tory outlook was tradition, the keynote Whig word was ‘progress’. At Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, a prominent Whig family, the Tempests, put up a monument in 1795 called ‘The Temple of British Worthies’, featuring various iconic British figures who in their view had advanced the cause of enlightenment whether in politics, ideas or the arts. One portion of the monument could be argued to sum up Whig philosophy in the words carved above the sculpture of Elizabeth I. The motto reads:
‘confounded the Projects, and destroy’d the Power
that threaten’d to oppress the Liberties of Europe;
took off the Yoke of Ecclesiastical Tyranny;
restor’d Religion from the Corruptions of Popery;
and by a wise, moderate, and a popular Government,
gave Wealth, Security, and Respect to England.’
The Whigs ended their days when they merged with the Peelites and the Radicals to form the Liberal party in the 1850s.
Further reading: The Whig world, by Leslie Mitchell
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