Page 41 - History 2020

This was much more than an academic debate. Rather it was a culture war over the

nature of parliament, power, British identity and the role of reason and science in
government; ultimately, the future direction of Britain. Was the 1832 Reform Act the
beginning of a new era of reform, or just a one-off? The Gothics, keen to reassert
tradition and stability, were swimming with the tide of Merrie England. Their capture
of Parliament was a significant victory in these Victorian culture wars*.

*Edward J. Gillin A Radical Building: The Science of Politics and the New Palace of Westminster
(2017)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/victorian-palace-of-science/radical-building-the-science-
of-politics-and-the-new-palace-of-westminster/C39AEFD0BA65952E7EBEF47ED90410AC

While the new Palace of Westminster was being built, MP’s were housed were
housed in temporary accommodation rigged up on the site. Building started in 1840
and not finished until 1870, although MP’s were able to use the Commons chamber
from 1852.

If indeed “we shape our houses, then they shape us”, how has it affected things that

since the 1850’s our Parliament has been housed in a sumptuous Victorian Gothic
palace? Historian Richard Tombs notes that after the opening of the new Palace of
Westminster, the Victorian Parliament changed. It grew steadily more aloof from the
public. Governments tightened their grip. Debates on petitions were ended.
Ministers took tighter control of parliamentary business. Guillotining of debates was
adopted to curtail discussion. Above all, party discipline grew; from the 1860’s the
two major parties began to develop national organisations suited to managing mass

electorates and Parliament became less of “deliberative” assembly.

Bagehot on the Constitution: Dignified and Efficient
As it happens, one of our shrewdest writers on the Constitution was a Victorian,
Walter Bagehot. Let’s see if he can help us better understand our “Gothic
constitution”.

Bagehot published The English Constitution in 1867. Unlike many such guides, his is

readable and accessible. He attempts to explain how it operates as a whole, what
drives and animates it, “the living reality in contrast to the paper description”, its
“inner moving essence”.

Who was Bagehot? He was from Langport in Somerset, studied maths and
philosophy, trained as a lawyer and barrister, but instead went into the family

banking and shipping firm. He also became a journalist, founding the National
Review, which published the first review of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and