A critique of Cabinet government

Even before the 1906 election, a species of socialist criticism had emerged which was to become of crucial importance in the immediate pre-1914 years. Its focus was what Hyndman, especially, had always called ‘the unconstitutional Cabinet’, as contrasted with the committee system in local government. The latter seemed to many a model of democracy.

The wide appeal of such a view sprang in part from the fact that socialist and Labour politics were locally well-established before they acquired a national foothold. The 1906 election meant, for some new Labour MPs, a transfer from the local state to the centre. Compared with local government, many features of the House of Commons were bound to seem undemocratic and baroque. F. W. Jowett, with his considerable experience on Bradford City Council, fits this pattern. Even more important was the large body of activists with similar local government backgrounds whose interest in Parliament was greatly increased by their hopes and expectations concerning the performance of ‘their’ MP.

That Labour should contest ‘the tremendous power vested in that close oligarchy known as the Cabinet’ was an argument that first H. Russell Smart and later Jowett had put, before 1906. As early as 1901 Smart wrote: