Election of 1847
1847 was to be the first election after the reunification of the British and Irish Parliaments follows the British conquest of Ireland. It also marked the end of the ‘first Parliamentary system’ (in which Parliament was dominated by the Tories, Whigs and Radicals).
Perhaps the greatest concern during the election was how the government should respond to the unrest of 1842 and 43 that had greatly shaken the country – leading to the division of both the Whig and Radical Parties amongst other things. Of the parties campaigning in Britain the Chartists favoured accepting all the demands of the workers (they had after all been the ones to articulate their demands in the first place), the Liberals were willing to make some major reforms, the Whigs wanted to continue as they had prior to the risings and the Tories wanted to ready the state to prevent the spread of revolutionary ideas.
The people of Britain seemed to greatly favour reform as pro-reform parties (in both Ireland and Britain) dominated the polls. The end result of the election was a Liberal-Chartist coalition to be led by the Liberal Party.
But much more had changed in this election than merely the government. The rump core of the old, aristocratic, Whigs had been utterly destroyed. In spite of losing over 70 MPs in 1843 to the split the Whigs maintained 114 MPs in Parliament, making them the third largest Party. However, their core vote flooded to the Liberal Party and some even to the Chartists and Tories. It seemed that support for the same satiated government of the past decade had utterly evaporated in the face of societal change.
In truth the Liberals could never hope to maintain their high tally of members, indeed, the majority of Liberal MPs prior to the election had been ex-Radicals rather than ex-Whigs. Even before the election began it was apparent that the Radical Party’s core support was migrating towards the Chartists, so the Liberals best hope was to absorb former Whig votes and Right Radical votes. This policy seemed to be a success as Russell’s Party retained its position as the largest in Parliament and became the leading partner in a new coalition government.
For the Tories the election saw their share of Parliament marginally decline (due to the injection of Irish seats) although their influence actually increased. For the emasculated Whigs and the Unionist Party in Ireland would now look towards the Tories to bind them together into a strong opposition force to the reformist government.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the impact of the great Chartist success at the polls must be dealt with. Unlike the Tories or Liberals the Chartists suffered from a serious problem – they had very little funding. Therefore, in order to ensure that Chartist candidates could be stood in as many seats as possible the Party often worked in tandem with local Trade Unionists so that the Union would provide the candidate and the financial backing for their campaign. These candidates tended to be much further to the left than the Chartist leadership; however they were mostly stood in the more marginal seats whilst centrally appointed and more moderate candidates fought over the safer seats. Yet Chartist electoral success meant that the leftwing candidates – and these Trade Unionists in particular – secured a disturbingly large portion of the Chartist seats in Parliament. The end result being that not only the rank and file but much of the Chartist contingent of MPs were now socialists, or at least friendly to socialist ideas, while the leadership and O’Connor in particular, remained firmly liberal.
With Earl Russell acquiescing to the two centre pieces of the Chartist reform policy, universal male suffrage and an end to all laws controlling Trade Unions, the new coalition of Liberals and Chartists was secure. All that was left for the new governing coalition was the small matter of running the country.