IV. The Origins of the Birmingham Caucus

In 1868 the Birmingham Liberal Association won the first of a series of dazzling victories in parliamentary and municipal elections. Contemporaries immediately recognized the presence of a new phenomenon in English politics: disciplined control of a mass electorate by a tightly organized party apparatus. At first glance the Liberal machine seemed un-English, and the Tories gleefully imported an American epithet to describe it. The traditional interpretation of the caucus, as set forth by Ostrogorski, followed contemporary opinion in emphasizing the novelty of the institution. In his view, ‘the organization of the electoral masses’ by the Liberal Association represented a sharp break with the past. He traced its origin to the minority clause of the Reform Act of 1867, which gave each Birmingham elector two votes to divide among the candidates for three seats, thus challenging the Liberals to develop an organization capable of circumventing the Act. After their success in the ‘vote as you are told’ election of 1868, the Liberal politicians, according to Ostrogorski, continued to use the caucus as a contrivance for manipulating an electorate that otherwise might have exercised independent judgment. This interpretation remains of considerable value, particularly in its treatment of the oligarchic implications of modern democracy. Nevertheless, Ostrogorski’s analysis tends to be misleading and one-sided. The Liberal politicians, like the priests in Voltaire’s account of the history of religion, are depicted as consciously constructing an institution ex nihilo to meet their own needs and purposes. Ostrogorski attributes too much to calculation and too little to the historical process that created the materials out of which the caucus was built and the foundations on which it rested.