The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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The
dominant from of representation until 1860 was, as some call it,
‘elitism’, a system of
representation in which the interests of a privileged social
class are mediated through their position as a
dominant status group. The notion
of the gentleman in the early nineteenth century was the means through
which the
landed class defined itself as the natural rulers of society. “Landowners
regarded
themselves as having a right, indeed an obligation, to exercise such power and to
speak on
behalf of those who were not entitled or competent to participate in the
exercise of political
power.”36 But from the 1840’s a rival principle
of
‘electoralism’ became more and more significant. Those who were elected to
decision-making
positions in the state were to represent the interests of those who
elected them. Politics was to be based on
an open and critical dialogue in the
‘public sphere’, where public opinion could be formed and
decisions arrived at.
Parliament and parliamentary elections were at the centre of this public
sphere.
Between the 1840’s to the 1860’s, a period of confrontation among elitist and
electoral
principles or political representation took place. However, the outcome
was not just the replacement of
elitism by electoralism. It was that the landed
class had to come to a compromise with the manufacturing
class, and the structure
of political representation reflected the nature of this compromise.

Within
this format of political representation the rival party groups of
Whigs and Tories competed with one another
for the support of privileged
classes. The Tories depended on most landowners and farmers, together
with
support from the colonial and shipping interests and those attached to the
established Church.
“In short, the Tories were supported by all those elements
which considered it necessary to safeguard
their interests against the necessary
results of modern manufacturing industry.”37 The Whigs were also drawn from
the landed class, but attempted to articulate the
interests of the manufacturers and
commercial classes. “The emergence of electoralism involved an
important
transformation of the political system as the mode of political representation

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