Interlude: We Like To Party
Heres a crude diagram showing the evolution of British parties. The odd arrangement of MPs from North America who sat apart immediately after their inclusion as an 'American Party' divided into Court and Country factions, isn't shown.
EDIT: I missed out the Burkean-Jacksonian party which seceded from the Physiocrats.
Whigs
The history of the Whigs dates back to the Glorious Revolution, and further back to the Civil War. At their most fundamental, they were an anti-Crown party. They stood for the Established Protestant Church, for the sovereignty of Parliament, and were the stalwart defenders of the Constitution of 1689. Thanks to the Tories' ties to traitorous groups like the Jacobites, by the early 18th century, they had established a stranglehold on Parliament with the only Tory ministries coming in under the patronage of the Crown. But by late 18th century, this system was breaking down. Corruption had become endemic, and the party was dominated by power-hungry grandees whose factions operated almost completely independently. Few Prime Ministers lasted long in government as the King conspired with other factions to remove troublesome ministers. George III wanted to see the Tories ascendant once again. It was Pitt the Elder's resignation in 1768 which gave the Whigs a last lease of life, forcing an election which gave the new Prime Minister, Rockingham, a healthy majority. He became one of Britain's longest serving Prime Ministers and oversaw the extension of the franchise to the British colonies in North America, as well as an adjustment of the relationship with Ireland. But it was Rockingham (and his faction) and his success which ended the long Whig domination. The other factions rankled under his long premiership and eventually tore themselves away, allowing the Tories to enjoy a resurgence under Lord North. By the dawn of the 19th century, the Whigs could no longer be thought of as a cohesive party in any sense.
Rockinghamites
The Rockinghamites refers to the party of Whigs who made up Lord Rockingham's government in its later years and of his successors prior to their rebranding. The Rockinghamites were much like any other personality-driven party, concerned with the vision of the leader. For Rockingham, he wanted to see Britain's place as a premier power reasserted and confirmed, and he pursued a soft democratisation of Britain's institutions, while at the same time defending privilege and the large landowners like himself. But after Rockingham's fall, the Rockinghamite's new leader, Charles James Fox took the party in a very different direction which saw them tarred with the Jacobin brush and relegated to the Opposition benches for nearly forty years.
Radicals
Fox took the Rockinghamites and welded them into a true party, as the Radical Whigs, continuing the reformist, patriotic and democratising policies of Rockingham to their logical conclusion. Unfortunately, he did this during the Revolutionary Wars, and Fox's early pro-French speeches did his party no good. The Radical Whigs, later simply the Radicals, became a party of free trade, which supported Britain's maritime empire, and was very enthusiastic about the negotiated end to conflicts that the Congress of Vienna had presaged. However, they remained rather aristocratic in nature, and when the Radicals finally got back into government, after some constituency and franchise reforms, they were led by an Earl. After Earl Grey's leadership which saw more franchise reform and some very radical policies, the Radicals would never again attain government on their own but were partners to other parties, prior to the National Unity Government, which split the party.
Tories
The Tories are the counterparts of the Whigs with an old and venerable history. At the beginning, they were those men who opposed the deposition of James II, and the Glorious Revolution. They took in crypto-Catholics, and 'King's Men' who wanted to see the privileges of the monarch restored. However, the involvement of high profile Tories with the Jacobites, including a few executions and flights to Catholic France, saw the Tories tainted with treachery which relegated them to an eternal second place throughout the 18th century. It was the rise of Rockingham, and the sundering of the Whigs which allowed the Tories to return to their former glory. Lord North asserted himself as a Whig, but alongside William Pitt the Younger, they dominated a resurgent Tory party. However, the party itself was split along the lines of the two personalities who had very differing visions. North was a Tory in the old cast, a King's Man, a High Church man, and a traditionalist. Pitt was a Reformist who wanted to sweep away the corruption and cobwebs which clung to Britain's politics. With the dawn of the Revolutionary Wars, this division became permanent, with Pitt abandoning his traditionalist allies and negotiating with one of the Whig parties. The Tories would continue to be divided as Northites and Pittites until Alexander Hamilton took the premiership and remade the Pittite Tories as the Reform Whigs. The Northites were always the 'true' Tories and after that drop the personality moniker. But like the Radicals, the Tories would never actually attain government themselves after the Earl of Sandwich until the Liverpool-Wellington Tory Coalitions, a wilderness period of nearly forty years. They did act as partners to one of the Hamilton coalition governments, but only begrudgingly and agreement with Hamiltonian economic policy which helped the farm estates of the big Tory landowners.
Old Whigs
Known initially as the Burkite Whigs, they were the group of Whigs which opposed Rockinghamite democratisation and undermining of the Crown's constitutional role. The Old Whigs were not so different to the Tories in many respects, though they were firm on the sovereignty of Parliament. However, they had few friends, and it is partly their lack of support and direction in the early 19th century, along with the Jacobin taint of the Radicals, which gave Hamilton such great success. They were supporters of the Reform Whigs, as they agreed on many points especially on maintenance of social order and stability. However, the industrialist and Internal Improvement policies of Hamilton soon gave them direction as they hoovered up the Luddite movement into a respectable Parliamentary grouping, and caught on to the radical agrarian movement in France. They rebranded as the Physiocrats, and became a very different party to the one Burke had envisaged as the Whiggish defenders of the Constitution.
Physiocrats
Beginning as an agrarian party, they had radical notions of individualism while the other main parties continued to have ideals of organic societies. The Radicals were somewhat individualist but also had some early notions of communal or collective decision making. The Physiocrats wanted to see government pared down to the bare minimum, with society remade as a yeoman class of small farmers lived autonomously, employing labourers as they saw fit and living off their own produce, bartering with other farmers to get what they didn't have. It was a utopian, almost anarchist vision. However, it soon became warped as they became ever more successful in the Southern shires of North America. Here, this talk struck a note with the Planter classes. The Physiocrats became more and more dominated by the slavers as well as genuine small farmers, and by the 1840s had become a party of the Slavers, earning them a nickname of the Slaveocrats. As abolitionism became more widespread after Hamilton, and tolerance of the 'peculiar institution' of the South became ever more short, so they became more radical. The true believers in the utopian vision of Physiocracy left the party and became the
Burkean-Jacksonians, who maintained a few MPs prior to the National Unity Government.
Reformists
Known variously as the Pittite Tories, the Reform Whigs, and finally as the Reformists, the fundamentals of the Reformists changed little. They were a party of the mercantile upper classes, who wanted tariffs to protect their manufactures and products, to invest and build upon the empire, to reform British politics and maintain social order. For some twenty-five years, the Reformists would rule the country continuously, establishing the Hamiltonian system which centralised and rationalised Britain's economy plunging them deep into the Industrial Revolution. Investment in North America and the Caribbean saw that part of the Kingdom become truely invaluable. They abolished the slave trade, rebuilt the navy, reconstructed the Bank of England into a greater national institution, and asserted themselves as the natural party of government. It was boundary and voter reform which ultimately ended their highwater mark as the Radicals were brought in with a healthy majority. They flailed in opposition as Radicals and Tories tried desperately to cling to power. It was under Samuel Beresford that they won once more, but he is not remembered particularly fondly. Instead, it is Grotius 'Groot' van Buren who is mythologised, as he turned the Reformists into the stable bed rock on which the edifice of the National Unity Government stood.
Chartists and Jacobins
They only ever sent small contingents, but they are distinct. But they both emerged in the pre-Great Crises economic malaise. The Jacobins harked back to the Revolutionary Wars and called for a Republic, guillotines and a Faith of Reason. By contrast, the Chartists had no such agenda, standing mostly for reform which allowed the working man a say. They were not radicals and had no great vision for the state of the country, only that all men ought to have a say in it. Both groups were equated with one another in the popular press, and were equally vilified when the Myrmidon Corps began purging sedition and treachery during the Great Crises. However, the elections of 1854 would return some tiny contingents. The Chartists had become more of a worker's party and were well aware of the shift towards autocracy that Van Buren had taken the country in. They were republicans and democrats for the new age, as Jacobins were for the old one.
Rose-ists
The Rose Club were those Tories who forsook the traditional pro-Crown ideals in the face of Queen Charlotte's persistent electioneering and intrigue to deliver the Reformists or Radicals back into power. They aligned with the rump Physiocrats after the foundation of the Continental Congress, and the Rose-ist Tory-Physiocrat alliance presaged the foundation of the Reactionary Party. The Rose-ists are most comparable to the Ultras of France, who began as a King's Party and later diverged considerably. They were Romantic enthusiasts and were ideological in a way the Tories were not.
Beresfordites
After Queen Charlotte's assassination, most Reformists followed Van Buren into the sunlit uplands of the National Unity Government. But a few stayed behind, remaining loyal to the erstwhile Prime Minister. Eventually Beresford was convinced to join the Government on pain of being considered a traitor. In many ways, as the Reformists fell under Van Buren's spell, and the National Unity Government became more institutionalised, the Beresfordites were actually more true to Pittite and Hamiltonian ideals.
National Unionists
The successor to the National Unity Government, the National Unionists united Reformists, Tories, Radicals, Beresfordites and Burkean-Jacksonians under one banner. A few Tories and Radicals left for other new parties, but the National Unionists had united a vast swathe of Britain's political spectrum, twinned with the successes in the Great Crises and a heavy dose of populism directed at newly enfranchised voters, the National Unionists maintained and reinforced the regime which had emerged during the Great Crises. They united Reformist economic policy to Radical tub thumping and Tory patronage and paternalism, a heady mix which alongside Van Buren's reforms to the Civil Service would see the National Unionists dominate most of the 19th century.
Reactionaries
Formed from the wreckage of the Physiocrats after the Great Crises, the Rose-ist Tories and a few Tories who felt ill when confronted with the reality of Van Buren's creation, the Reactionaries wanted to reset Britain's Constitution, tearing down the populism which made Van Buren powerful, restoring true stability. They were democrats after a fashion, following the Burkean ideal of parliamentary independence. They were also agrarian after the Physiocrat mould. They were small, with little popular support thanks to the subtle gerrymandering of Van Buren and the expanded franchise and urban constituencies which weakened the Tories anyway.
Free Radicals
Those Radicals unwilling to follow Gladstones into eternal coalition with Van Buren, they took the remaining Chartist and Jacobin MPs under their wing, espousing sweeping reforms to democratise British society, at the point of a bayonet if necessary. Not taken very seriously, they languished under twenty MPs for most of the 19th century, until they found new direction.
(Which still doesn't have the Falkland Islands
