Lord Salisbury was one of the most successful politicians in British history. During a 53-year parliamentary career he was leader of the Conservative party from 1881 to 1902 and Prime Minister for 14 years, longer than any other PM since the Earl of Liverpool. At home he was considered the embodiment of Victorian values, abroad as one of the world’s premier statesmen. However, ironically for one who to his contemporaries permeated political life he has all but disappeared from the popular consciousness. This is partly due to his peculiarly negative political philosophy, opposing nearly all change, yielding only when positions became politically untenable and to pre-empt further change. Prior to becoming PM, Lord Salisbury was also a prolific journalist, writing 1,500,000 words between 1856 and 1866, yet nowhere in this body of writing was his intransigence more evident than in his visceral opposition to democracy. To Salisbury the British constitution had been successful because it left political issues to the disinterested possessors of property, those who could be trusted to base their decisions on circumstantial expediency and to reject the dangerous allure of abstract principles. Electoral reform risked replacing what Salisbury termed a ‘constitutional’ system of government, which had advanced Britain’s global pre-dominance, with a democracy. To Salisbury, democracy and class conflict were synonymous, involving the impoverished and inexperienced majority, motivated purely by greed, attacking the wealthy, who would react in an equally violent fashion. Salisbury believed that democracy would lead inevitably to the dictatorship of the majority, trampling on minority interests and provoking a violent response. This was his explanation for contemporary events in France and America (then in the midst of a civil war).
That someone with such an apocalyptic view of democracy, so out of kilter with prevailing political attitudes, has largely been forgotten is not surprising. His analysis of the consequences of democracy is in many ways surprisingly Marxist, and of course mistaken. Unfortunately his journalism has overshadowed his subsequent record as a popular politician. Although like any politician he was willing on occasion for tactical considerations to precede those of principle, his method and style of governance is a fine example for politicians of today.
As an aristocratic politician moving from a ‘constitutional’ to a ‘democratic’ system of government, he thought it vital that the new electorate should be educated in its new responsibilities. Consequently he followed the example of Gladstone and made large speaking tours of provincial cities–and he was equally popular, drawing crowds of thousands with speeches that were relayed to many more through the nascent newspaper industry. His speeches were concerned with explaining the policy of the Conservative party, whether in or out of power; he was unafraid to subject crowds to a thorough explanation of, for example, foreign policy and eschewed the moralistic fervour of Gladstone, although still capable of injecting passion. His fear of class conflict meant that he also emphasised class cohesion and its various aspects, such as religion, patriotism and later Empire. Salisbury’s rhetoric, which was backed up by legislation (his ministries were the first to introduce free elementary education and comprehensive housing legislation), helped to retard the rise of the Left in Britain, which on the continent thrived on a sense of widespread working class alienation. He was particularly successful in Northern mill towns where by contrast today the British National Party has been thriving, picking up disaffected white working class voters. Part of the BNP’s success surely stems from a sense of political alienation which modern party politics has done little to address aside from campaigns that appear negative and patronising. Salisbury also emphasised the importance of never speaking down to an audience. Blair is only symbolic of the linguistic malaise affecting British politics today, offering such banalities as promising to enter a ‘new dialogue with the British people’ and to go ‘forward not back’: a slogan so insipid as to be frankly meaningless (not to say that today’s other main parties are any better). Salisbury also revelled in grappling with hecklers, an intriguing contrast to the last Labour party conference, when an 82-year old man was ejected for heckling!
Lord Salisbury pursued a highly consultative style of cabinet government, willing even to be overruled on matters of foreign policy. A recent trend in modern British politics has been for Prime Ministers to decrease the number of cabinet meetings, their length and therefore their importance. They have been replaced by what Anthony Seldon refers to as a ‘denocracy’, where the decision-making process has been largely removed from the cabinet to an inner circle of unelected advisers and friends. The former cabinet secretary Lord Butler of Brockwell has voiced serious concerns that the informality and lack of proper briefing papers has led to ‘a lack of reasoned deliberation’ at the very heart of government and so a decline in the quality of decision making. Salisbury expected his ministers to run their departments as independently as he managed the Foreign Office. Since ministers could also expect to enjoy long tenures of office (Salisbury felt that once appointed he could not dismiss a minister unless, as in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill, they offered their resignation) this led to a highly proficient team of ministers. The autonomy as well as stability of tenure enjoyed by Salisbury’s politicians has been unfortunately lacking in recent times; only Gordon Brown and John Prescott have retained the same position in Blair’s cabinets.
Modern democracy in Britain is certainly not all it could be. Executive power is increasingly concentrated in the Prime Minister and his direct appointees, which has led to a decline in the quality of decision-making. Efforts to ‘engage’ with the public are mostly half-hearted and disingenuous, leading to apathy amongst the electorate, evidenced by record low turnouts and voters turning to alternatives such as the Respect Party and the BNP. Although the structure of politics within which Salisbury operated was very different, his consultative, patient and sceptical approach to politics was successful then and I believe could be successful today. Perhaps these differences are best shown in the field of foreign policy. Salisbury, although assuming that nations existed in a Hobbesian state of nature, was committed to avoidance of war, which he saw as antithetical to British interests. Today ‘national interest’–the wealth, security and liberty of the British people–is eschewed in favour of pursuits such as global peace and democracy, when surely the state’s fiduciary duty lies towards its own citizens. Salisbury may well have been our most successful Foreign Secretary ever, instrumental in the peaceful partition of Africa, his finest moment of which was securing the Sudan whilst averting war with France during the Fashoda crisis and behind the scenes at the Berlin congress of 1878 averting a humiliating peace for the Ottoman Empire. His pursuit of British interests was successful and if his policy towards Europe (often mistaken for ’splendid isolation’) had been adopted, Britain and maybe even Europe might have avoided the Great War. By contrast Blair, with the support of the Conservatives, entered war with Iraq on the most spurious of reasons, although the jury is still out on the results (even though it is now a centre for Islamic fundamentalists). Strange then that an old-fashioned, aristocratic politician who witnessed with despair the dawn of popular government could well offer many answers to the problems of democracy in Britain today.