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Books > History > British & Irish history
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Electing Our Masters - The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Hardcover)
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Electing Our Masters - The Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Hardcover)
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In this engagingly written history of electioneering in Britain
from the eighteenth century to the present, Jon Lawrence explores
the changing relationship between politicians and public.
Throughout this period, he argues, British politics has been
characterized by bruising public rituals intended to bestow
legitimacy on politicians by obliging them to face an often
irreverent public on broadly equal terms.
Face-to-face interaction was central both to the disorderly civic
rituals of eighteenth-century politics, and to the Victorian and
Edwardian election meeting. Perhaps surprisingly, it also survived
in pretty rude health between the wars, despite the emergence of
the new mass communication media of radio and cinema. But the same
cannot be said of the post-war era and the rise of television.
Today most politicians are content merely to offer the semblance of
meaningful engagement--walkabouts, canvassing and meetings are all
designed to ensure that most senior politicians come into contact
only with the smiling faces of that dwindling band, the "party
faithful." Lloyd George and Churchill might have relished the rough
and tumble of a tumultuous public meeting, but their modern
counterparts tend to be more risk-averse (and not without reason,
given that the cameras are always present to capture their
mishaps).
But this is not another nostalgic lament for a lost "golden age."
On the contrary, Electing Our Masters argues that politicians
frequently still crave the kudos to be derived from bruising
encounters with an irreverent public--hence Tony Blair's so-called
"masochism strategy" in the 2005 election campaign, with its
succession of gruelling sessions before live studio audiences. As
Lawrence points out, the vital question for today is: can we
persuade our broadcasters that such encounters must form a staple
of modern, mediated politics?
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