Discounted Democracy: The 1918 General Election
Making victory cheap with coupons.
The 1918 general election heralded a number of firsts in British political history. It was the first election held under manhood suffrage, to use a roughly contemporaneous expression for universal male suffrage. It was the first time some women could vote and all could stand as candidates, although the only woman elected refused to take her seat. Plural voting was also drastically expanded, through the creation of various individual and combined university constituencies to enfranchise the graduates of all eighteen universities in Britain and Ireland, as opposed to eight beforehand. On the other hand, this election was the last held in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, since the landslide victory of Sinn Féin in Irish constituencies triggered the Irish secession shortly thereafter. It was also the final occasion when an iteration of the Liberal Party won the second-most seats in the House of Commons and a Liberal headed the resulting government.
Amidst all the progress and change commonly associated with this election, however, there is a convincing argument to make that the outcome was virtually predetermined by the ruling coalition government. The so-called ‘coupon election’ forms a clear deviation from conventional narratives of democratisation and modernisation in twentieth-century Britain, yet remains obscure alongside the bulk of the country’s rich political history today.1
The premise of the Coalition Coupon derived from the consequences of Herbert Asquith’s downfall from the premiership. Having entered the Great War in August 1914 with a nearly united Cabinet and party, growing personality splits and military setbacks firstly forced Asquith into coalition with the Conservatives and then ousted him altogether.2 He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Lloyd George in December 1916, one of the chief architects of the internal discord against Asquith, splitting the Liberal Party in the process. Despite Lloyd George’s initial certainty of carrying a large number of Liberal MPs, if not a majority of them, into a new coalition with Bonar Law’s Conservatives, it was the latter which possessed the greatest security of its strength for the rest of the war and thus formed the bedrock of the wartime government.3 For that matter, if the Liberal split was irreconcilable, Law’s party readily stood to gain at a subsequent election. Having recovered from the debilitating splits over protectionist tariff reform that led to their landslide defeat in 1906, the party had drawn level with the Liberals in the two 1910 elections prior to Law becoming leader. He had since consolidated their political power by unifying the Conservative and Liberal Unionist parties in 1912. On the other end of the political spectrum, the Labour Party, which the Liberals had previously underestimated as “a friendly semi-independent pressure group,” had developed a serious parliamentary representation at the latter’s expense.4 Meanwhile, Asquith spent most of the two years after his fall from power as a Leader of the Opposition unwilling to seriously oppose the government, lest he be considered unpatriotic.5
By early 1918, however, it remained unclear whether Lloyd George would continue to preside over a government dependent on the Conservatives for its existence or reunite with the Asquithian Liberals. It was equally unknown when exactly another election would be held, since emergency amendments to the Parliament Act 1911 had meant the Parliament elected in December 1910 had long exceeded its five-year term and would likely continue for as long as the war. The passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918 made the need for an election more important, but at the same time practically delayed one until at least October to allow the millions of newly enfranchised voters to be registered.6 Coalition Liberals used this time to prepare, prominent members such as chief whip Frederick Guest and Lloyd George himself concluding in July and August respectively that an electoral alliance with the Conservatives was the most likely means of remaining in government.7 The Conservatives had reasons for maintaining the coalition themselves. Pragmatically, Lloyd George was a popular figurehead and continuity was preferable to oversee the post-war transition of the country to normal peacetime affairs.8 Ideologically, an alliance could offset the expected further rise of Labour, particularly if they were favoured by the new electorate instead of the two established parties.9 From this mutual interest and once Lloyd George largely “yielded” to Law over matters of coalition policy in October, an arguably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dictate the election’s outcome in an apparently democratic system presented itself.10
The “coupon,” as coined disparagingly by Asquith, was a letter signed by Law and Lloyd George declaring their support for the recipient in a given constituency.11 541 coupons were given, mostly to Conservatives, but 159 were allocated to Liberal candidates as well as small numbers to pro-coalition Labour candidates and the National Democratic Party (a pro-war offshoot of a forerunner to the slightly more notable Communist Party).12 Only 63 couponed candidates were defeated, a success rate of a little over 88% amidst an electorate evidently intent on rewarding the government which won the war, once the election was finally held on 14th December 1918.13 These statistics, though convincing for arguing the predetermination of the election’s outcome, hide some necessary context. The Conservatives, having consistently supported the war and kept the party unified, did not need to depend on the coupon to thrive against their fractured opposition. Moreover, Ireland was not included in the coalition’s arrangements, yet nonetheless supplied 23 Irish Unionist MPs from 36 candidates to the government’s total.14 The Coalition Liberals, on the other hand, protected themselves from mutual annihilation against their Asquithian counterparts by cementing the distinction between the two groups and ensuring Conservatives would generally not run against them.15 Considering the previously discussed circumstances of the main British parties in the 1910s, the destruction of both sides of the Liberal Party by their own conflict and external pressures would have been the natural result of the 1918 election. Instead, only Asquith’s faction was crushed.
By forcing Conservative candidate withdrawals and bolstering Lloyd George’s favoured Liberals, the consequences of the Coalition Coupon brought about an artificial landslide instead of a solid Conservative majority. Despite fears Labour “seemed likely to make sweeping gains” regardless of the coupons, the coalition’s arrangements appear decisive in Labour more than tripling their vote share for only a modest increase in seats.16 In other words, the coupons’ partial suspension of plurality, coincidentally Asquith’s objection to the coalition during the election campaign, cheapened the 1918 election.17 The Liberal Party, typically containing the early harbingers of reform, had lost their natural constituency to both the left and right during their final governments, at least partially because of their particularly progressive spate of reforms. That the Conservatives chose to forestall their reformist opponent’s demise by almost any means, at least for a few more years, was ironically the greatest defence of the status quo in those circumstances. Of course, the political intrigue explained here struggles to figure in the simpler, more alluring narratives of progress which permeate our modern understanding of history in various forms. The symbolic victory of the women’s suffrage movement and the inexorable march towards universal suffrage are clearly more validating to contemporary prejudices than what nearly amounts to a subversion of the same election to prop up part of a shattered party. Clearly, the consistently stable and strong democracy enjoyed today is more of a hard-won achievement than often remembered. Ultimately, the 1918 election and the Coalition Coupon do not necessarily refute existing narratives, but instead point towards a more substantial interpretation of twentieth-century British politics. Specifically, this was but one moment of ramification in a still ongoing series of attempts to integrate a modern democracy into an ancient yet effective constitutional monarchy.
Notes and Bibliography
The argument made about the Conservatives’ defence of the status quo through keeping the coalition deserves some expansion, although the following counterfactual is tangential to the main topic. If the Conservatives had let the two Liberal parties more or less destroy one another in the election, there is a fair chance Labour would have become the largest opposition party in 1918. Effectively, Labour’s rise via the newly enfranchised electorate would have been roughly brought forward by one election. Meanwhile, the sources in the bibliography below indicate the Conservatives would have sought a more reactionary programme in government alone, likely including a repeal of the Parliament Act 1911 (principally to re-empower the Lords) as a trade-off for continued acquiescence to the Representation of the People Act 1918. If Labour was to then achieve government in the 1920s, without a strong third force in the Liberal Party to split the opposition as in 1924, a standoff between Labour and a vetoing Lords may have led to a more severe restriction (or even abolition) of the latter than had occurred in the years before the Parliament Act.
Ball, Stuart R. “Asquith’s Decline and the General Election of 1918.” Scottish Historical Review 61, no. 171 (1982): pp. 44-61.
Close, David H. “The Collapse of Resistance to Democracy: Conservatives, Adult Suffrage, and Second Chamber Reform, 1911-1928.” The Historical Journal 20, no. 4 (1977): pp. 893-918.
Close, David H. “Conservatives and Coalition after the First World War.” Journal of Modern History 45, no. 2 (1973): pp. 240-260.
McEwen, J. M. “The Coupon Election of 1918 and Unionist Members of Parliament.” Journal of Modern History 34, no. 3 (1962): pp. 294-306.
McGill, Barry. “Asquith’s Predicament, 1914-1918.” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 3 (1967): pp. 283-303.
McGill, Barry. “Lloyd George’s Timing of the 1918 Election.” Journal of British Studies 14, no. 1 (1974): p. 109-124.
Taylor, Alan H. “The Effect of Electoral Pacts on the Decline of the Liberal Party.” British Journal of Political Science 3, no. 2 (1973): pp. 243-248.
Wilson, Trevor. “The Coupon and the British General Election of 1918.” Journal of Modern History 36, no. 1 (1964): pp. 28-42.
David H. Close, “The Collapse of Resistance to Democracy: Conservatives, Adult Suffrage, and Second Chamber Reform, 1911-1928,” The Historical Journal 20, no. 4 (1977): p. 893.
Barry McGill, “Asquith’s Predicament, 1914-1918,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 3 (1967): p. 284, pp. 292-295.
Ibid., pp. 295-297; Barry McGill, “Lloyd George’s Timing of the 1918 Election,” Journal of British Studies 14, no. 1 (1974): p. 110.
Alan H. Taylor, “The Effect of Electoral Pacts on the Decline of the Liberal Party,” British Journal of Political Science 3, no. 2 (1973): p. 243.
McGill, “Asquith’s Predicament,” pp. 297-298; Stuart R. Ball, “Asquith’s Decline and the General Election of 1918,” Scottish Historical Review 61, no. 171 (1982): pp. 44-45.
McGill, “Lloyd George’s Timing,” p. 111; Ball, “Asquith’s Decline,” pp. 45-46.
Trevor Wilson, “The Coupon and the British General Election of 1918,” Journal of Modern History 36, no. 1 (1964): p. 35; McGill, “Lloyd George’s Timing,” p. 117.
David H. Close, “Conservatives and Coalition after the First World War,” Journal of Modern History 45, no. 2 (1973): pp. 241-242.
Ibid., pp. 241-242.
McGill, “Lloyd George’s Timing,” p. 119.
Wilson, “The Coupon,” p. 29.
Ibid., p. 38.
Ibid., pp. 38-39.
J. M. McEwen, “The Coupon Election of 1918 and Unionist Members of Parliament,” Journal of Modern History 34, no. 3 (1962): p. 296.
Wilson, “The Coupon,” p. 38, pp. 41-42.
Close, “Conservatives and the Coalition,” p. 242.
Ball, “Asquith’s Decline,” p. 46.