(Page 3 of 33) - Feeling the Heat of the League? When Ideas Matter (Not) authored by Schonhardt-Bailey, Cheryl.

C. Schonhardt-Bailey, Chapter 10 – “Feeling the Heat of the League? How Local Newspapers Affected MPs’ Voting on Repeal”;
02/08/2004 Page 2 of 14

I INTRODUCTION

Every chapter in this book has either directly or indirectly sought to explore the
interplay between economic interests and ideas, and occasionally, the constraints and
opportunities afforded to interests and ideas by relevant institutions. The premise of
this book is that repeal cannot be understood without reference both to interests and
ideas. But, to say that both mattered is not sufficient; rather, the task of this book has
been to dissect when and under what conditions did interests, ideas, and to a lesser
extent institutions, give rise to repeal. To briefly re-cap the argument thus far, three
sets of actors contributed to the immediacy, and ultimately, the success of repeal.
First, the Anti-Corn Law League engaged in a nationalizing the interest strategy which
created support for free trade among the general public by highlighting its benefits to
the wider societal welfare. This, in turn, exacerbated the demand side pressure on
MPs to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws. Second, once repeal was introduced in
Parliament by Prime Minister Peel, Peelites facilitated a re-interpretation of repeal
that characterized it as a means to preserve the landed basis of Parliament. This
allowed the Peelites to represent the interests of the nascent free trade-oriented
interests in their constituencies more faithfully while at the same time, appearing to
remain faithful to the ideology of Conservatism. They ultimately voted as delegates,
but justified their votes in the language of disinterested trustees seeking to promote
the larger national welfare. And, third, peers in the House of Lords shied away from
vetoing or amending the repeal legislation because they feared that such a rejection in
the face of widespread public support, backed by the support of a large majority of the
Commons, would lead to more radical democratising reforms—targeted particularly
at the Upper Chamber. Hence, they were not persuaded by the theories of the political
economists, but rather the League convinced them that it was in their own political
self-interest to support repeal. At the heart of this argument, then, lies the self-
interested motivations of manufacturers, Peelites and peers.

But, to say that interests were primary is not to relegate ideas to a residual category.
Interests could not have prevailed without recourse to ideas. First, for the
manufacturers who drove the League “machine”, ideas were fundamentally important
to spreading the message of free trade among the British population, and most
importantly was the core idea that free trade would benefit the whole of British
society, not the interests of a select few. Or, in the words of one historian of British
social history, the League argued that protection served to maintain a "privileged
monopoly at the expense of the rest of the community, while the League stood for a
class, and one which had the same interests as all the producers and consumers, and
therefore of the whole community” (Perkin 1969: 372). And, quoting Cobden, “the
middle class ‘have no interest opposed to the general good, whilst, on the contrary,
the feudal governing class exists only by a violation of sound principles of political
economy.’” (Perkin 1969: 372) Second, although Peelites voted more as delegates in
1846, they were clearly eager to characterize their votes as consistent with a revised
interpretation of Conservatism—one in which repeal, not protection, served to protect
the long-term interests of the landed aristocracy in Parliament, or the territorial
constitution. Had this ideological re-interpretation of repeal not emerged, it would
have been far more difficult for Peelites to “sell” their conversion to constituents (and
colleagues) to whom Conservatism as an ideology was core. Third, while peers
supported repeal largely in order to protect their own political privileges, it was the
League’s campaign that frightened the peers into acquiescence. The League’s ability