Electing Our Masters: The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (review)

This splendid study discusses the relationship between Britain's political leaders and the public from the eighteenth century to the present. It has little concern with the ideas of the politicians or what they actually did but rather with how they dealt with those who lived in their constituency at the time of their attempts to win election to Parliament. From roughly the time of William Hogarth to the appointment of William Gladstone as prime minister, the hustings—the small temporary grandstands within constituencies where potential members of Parliament were selected to run, allowed to speak, and eventually declared winners—held much of the drama of Britain's elections.

Slightly misleadingly, Lawrence uses the term hustings to cover the entire study, although the hustings actually disappeared in 1872; in their stead followed the generally more controlled "election meetings," which, in their turn, have been largely supplanted by walkabouts, "surgeries," posters, and leaflets distributed within particular constituencies, and television broadcasts, which operate on a national scale. The remnant of the hustings is evident in the present gathering of candidates in local halls where winners are declared. In an important sense, those who control the media and the interviewers have replaced the roistering crowds of earlier days.

The drink, corruption, and disorder that characterized the hustings (and continued much longer than one might have expected; Edwardian England was particularly rowdy) were ironically an indication of a hierarchical and class-bound society. In this period, those lower on the social scale were licensed to cause their "betters" distress, whether or not they actually possessed the vote. How the candidates handled themselves was an important test of political worth. But with rare exceptions, the mayhem did not represent any challenge to the political system. As the nineteenth century progressed, the confrontations calmed down, but they certainly did not disappear or lose significance. What might have appeared as class warfare was, in fact, an affirmation that the upper classes, whether Tory or Whig/Liberal, would remain "masters." Ironically, the class aspects of elections dramatically diminished with the advent of the Labour party, when workers became much more of a political factor (as Lawrence points out, the political elite today, as in the past, consists of much the same sort of person, regardless of party).

With the growth of broadcasting, especially television, the situation has become complex; at present, no definitive electoral pattern is obvious. Lawrence's last line suggests that broadcasters may have become the new masters now, but there is good reason to doubt it. Yet, aggressive interviewers and media figures certainly play central roles in deciding the format of political presentations. The tradition of heckling and of throwing rotten cabbage and other missiles at candidates persists in British politics as a right, even in a hierarchial society.

Lawrence's insightful analysis of the important relationship between politicians and the public "out of doors," whether in a remote constituency or in a television studio, is a considerable achievement.