Where are the Radicals? A short history of radicalism

At a time when protests are rife and the established progressive parties are disappointing, it is astonishing that no parties pushing a more radically progressive agenda have emerged to fill the obvious gap. Even existing progressive groups, such as the Green Party, are struggling to pick up more votes and seats (Sinclair, 2014).

The Left in Britain is fragmented, split between Greens, Trade Unionists, Co-operativists, Socialists, Liberals, Social Democrats and Democrats. That situation has been replicated in other countries as well. Globalism goes on apace, the state is whittled away by ideological cuts, and the nominally main party of the British Left, the Labour Party, are failing at being radical because they don't understand it (Behr, 2014).

Labour has, over the long years, become a centralised mainstream party, shaped by the system of majority voting. It has resigned itself to certain orthodoxies, and accepted conservative economic beliefs as definite outlines of a reality to which it has to conform - not necessarily because the party believes in it, but because that narrative has become so well publicised that it has been necessary to adhere to it in order to appeal to the majority.

That situation has driven radicals out to the fringes, away from electoral power and away from policy decisions. But it didn't get this way overnight.

A Short History of Radicalism

So why aren't there any radical parties?

Radicals first sprang up as a political and electoral force around Europe during the 19th century at the time of the liberal revolutions. The term came to refer to liberals who were not satisfied with gradual reform or small concessions gained from the old monarchic order, or with the limited 'free institutions' - elected parliament, protections of the freedoms of belief and speech, and protections of property -  that mainstream moderate liberals aimed to achieve and settled for (Collins, 1971).

While democrats pursued greater political power to place in the hands of the people, and socialists sought to represent and enshrine that idea in a dictatorship over the state institutions, the radicals pursued, ever persistently, each new social reform after the other: extending voting rights for men and women, worker's rights, pensions and more.

Radicals could be found across the political divides between democrats and liberals, between socialists, anarchists, and trade unionists. They found support for worthy progressive campaigns across the left, across party partisan divides. In the UK, suffragists like Fawcett and trade unionists worked with the Liberal Party in the late 19th and early 20th century to secure women's and workers' rights. The Poor Reports of Rowntree in York, and of Booth, Potter and Collet in London, produced rational assessments of society that informed and shaped Liberal and Labour policy throughout the 1900s.

Radicalism in Western Europe

The story in Spain, Germany and Italy largely followed similar scripts to one another. When the liberal revolts of the mid-1800s failed to take hold, and the mainstream liberals settled down within their 'free institutions', the radicals found themselves largely pushed to the fringes.

In Germany the failure of the 1848 revolutions was followed by a long and intense period of conservatism. By the time free institutions re-emerged after the Second World War, it was into a Germany with modern, and organised, mainstream parties. Spain's long period under the far-right Franco regime, after the divisions and civil war of the Republican period, served only to frighten the majority of the Left into the shelter of whichever was the largest and most stable opposition group. That same affect compounded the modernisation and centralisation of Germany's political groups.

Fear of the threat posed to liberty by the Far-Right has forced the Left to centralise.

In Italy, though, the various groups on the left, with their partisan fighters - who had joined the Republican side of the War in Spain and then fought against Mussolini's Fascists in their own country during the Second World War - came out of The War with their own wide spread support. Each of the parties of the left had their own backers and their own anti-fascist records with which to maintain their separate identities for a time.

Radicals by name found themselves at home in many groups, among social democrats and socialists, or with the Republican Liberal Socialists of the Partito d'Azione. That party even saw itself, however briefly, at the head of a post-war coalition government. But infighting and an unwillingness to co-operate with those opposed to progress, or who had associated with fascists, proved their undoing. Fear of the Far-Right struck once more, forcing the Left to huddle together under one conforming banner.

Only in France did radicals manage to achieve a persistent presence in the political mainstream. However, despite the Parti republicain, radical et radical-socialiste being a major player in governments across the first half of the 20th century, being in the mainstream led to the same problems as those faced by radical progressives in Britain and elsewhere. The demands of gathering support and retaining power hindered the drive for ever more reform.

Fear and Conformity

The same fear of the far-right had long affected Britain also, where the labour movement had fought long and hard to get a foothold within the institutions of government. To make sure that conservatives and those on the far-right could not undo their long work, Labour drew all the left and centre about themselves. But the demands of holding onto those supporters, and balancing and trading off their ideas against each other, and making sure not to alienate other potential voters, stifled any spirit of radical progress.

The political system has not helped. The same safeguards that protect a country from Far-Right usurpation and dominance, within modern western states, also makes sure that progress is difficult to achieve. This, it seems, is to be the crowning glory of the political capitalist model. Progress finds itself bundled in with extremism, and is restricted and restrained in the name of perpetuating a status quo.

Fear and hunger for power have bred conformity. Power coalesces around the most widely socially acceptable faction, regardless of reason. It is brought out into the mainstream, leaving the radicals behind in the shadows, marginalised. Today, these kinds of radical campaigners, thinkers and groups continue to exist. But they are scattered across a fragmented political left and our present, majoritarian, electoral systems assures that they remains so.

This had led to a rather distorted perspective within politics. Arguments and reasoning become financial rather social. We count the cost rather than the value of new ideas, regardless their social worth. The NHS continues to be privatised, despite the fact that polls suggest that most would pay more in tax in order to maintain its independent and comprehensive social spirit (Grice, 2014). The government even continues to pursue its heavily criticised welfare policies (The Guardian, 2014), even though there are radical policy options out there, such as Basic Income, designed to eliminate poverty and social insecurity altogether (Elliott, 2014).

When big ideas are not pursued, not looked into or tested, at the behest of fear - the fear of upsetting the status quo and ushering in change - we have really lost our way. If our present systems are not designed to let us improve our world, then we need to start arguing for something better. We need to argue for a system that protects us from ignorance and domination, by encouraging reason and progress, not settle for a system that stifles all change in the name of an imperfect, uneven and thoroughly poor compromise.

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References:
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+ Ian Sinclair's 'Why does the left ignore the true progressive party – the Greens?'; in The Guardian; 6 January 2014.

+ Rafael Behr's 'Labour doesn't know what radicalism looks like'; in The Guardian; 2 July 2014.

+ Irene Collins' 'Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe'; The Historical Association; 1971. [Buy Now]

+ Andrew Grice's 'Britain prepared to pay more tax to support the NHS, poll finds'; in The Independent; 30 June 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'Iain Duncan Smith to signal more reform of 'dysfunctional' welfare system'; 11 August 2014.

+ Larry Elliott's 'Would a citizen’s income be better than our benefits system?'; in The Guardian; 11 August 2014.