- For opposition to all forms of government, social hierarchy
or authority, see Anarchism. For
other meanings see also radical, extremism, far-right and
far-left. Radicalism as a political movement should be
distinguished from the modern American usage of radical merely to
denote political extremes of right or left.
The term
Radical (from the
Latin radix meaning root) was used during the
late 18th century for proponents of the
Radical
Movement. It later became a general term for those
favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic
changes to the social order.
Historically, early radical aims of liberty
and electoral reform in Great
Britain
widened with the American Revolution and French Revolution so that some
radicals sought republicanism, abolition of titles,
redistribution of property and freedom of the press. Initially
identifying itself as a
far left party
opposed to the
right-wing parties; the
Orleanists, the
Legitimists and the
Bonapartist in
France in the nineteenth
century, the
Republican,
Radical and Radical‐Socialist Party progressively became the
most important party of the
Third
Republic (1871 – 1940).
As historical Radicalism
became absorbed in the development of political liberalism, in the later 19th century in both the
United
Kingdom
and continental Europe the
term Radical came to denote a progressive liberal
ideology.
United Kingdom
According to
Encyclopedia
Britannica the first use of the word "Radical" in a
political sense is generally ascribed to the English
whig parliament Charles James Fox. In 1797, Fox declared
for a "radical reform" of the
electoral
system drastically expanding the franchise to the point of
universal manhood
suffrage. This led to a general use of the term to identify all
supporting the movement for parliamentary reform. The
Britannica biography of Fox mentions his dismissal from
the
Privy Council in 1798 for
reaffirming the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people in a
public speech. However, the biography does not describe the
specifics of Fox's declaration. Fox was no democrat: he would never
have countenanced the notion that property would be safe in a
democratic society in which the property-less voters would
obviously be in a majority. Fox stated his view as being that
property was the true foundation of aristocracy, and a country best
prospered whose government was in such hands. These sentiments
appear to be at odds with the Radical cause, but at this time
parliament operated on shifting patronage rather than party lines,
and Fox was noted for inconsistencies.
The word
was first used in a political sense in 18th century Great
Britain. Initially confined to the upper and middle
classes, in the early 19th century "popular radicals" brought
artisans and the "labouring classes" into
widespread agitation in the face of harsh government repression.
More respectable "Philosophical radicals" followed the
utilitarian philosophy of
Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported
parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments
and tactics of the "popular radicals".
By the middle of the
century parliamentary Radicals joined
with others in the Parliament of the United
Kingdom
to form the Liberal
Party, eventually achieving reform of the electoral system.
Origins
The
Radical movement had its beginnings at a time of tension between
the American colonies and Great Britain, with the first Radicals, angry at the state of the
House of
Commons
, drawing on the Leveller
tradition and similarly demanding improved parliamentary
representation. These earlier concepts of democratic and
even egalitarian reform had emerged in the turmoil of the
English Civil War and the brief
establishment of the
republican Commonwealth of England amongst the
vague political grouping known as the
Levellers, but with the
English Restoration of the monarchy such
ideas had been discredited.
Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had
increased parliamentary power with a constitutional monarchy and the
union of the parliaments brought
England
and Scotland
together,
towards the end of the 18th century the monarch still had
considerable influence over the Parliament of Great Britain
which itself was dominated by the English aristocracy and by
patronage. Candidates for the House of Commons stood as
Whigs or
Tories, but once elected formed shifting coalitions of
interests rather than splitting along party lines. At
general elections the vote was restricted
to property owners, in constituencies which were out of date and
did not reflect the growing importance of manufacturing towns or
shifts of population, so that in many
rotten boroughs seats could be bought or were
controlled by rich landowners, while major cities remained
unrepresented. Discontent with these inequities inspired those
individuals who later became known as the "
Radical Whigs".
William Beckford fostered
early interest in reform in the London
area.
The
"Middlesex
radicals" were led by the politician John Wilkes, an opponent of war with the
colonies who started his weekly publication The North Briton in 1764 and within
two years had been charged with seditious libel and expelled from the House
of Commons. The
Society for the
Defence of the Bill of Rights he started in 1769 to support his
re‐election developed the belief that every man had the right to
vote and "natural reason" enabling him to properly judge political
issues. Liberty consisted in frequent elections. For the first time
middle‐class radicals obtained the backing of the London "mob".
Middlesex
and Westminster were
among the few parliamentary constituencies with a large and
socially diverse electorate including many artisans as well as the middle class and
aristocracy, and along with the county association of Yorkshire
led by the Reverend Christopher Wyvill were at the forefront
of reform activity. The writings of what became known as the
"
Radical Whigs" had an influence on
the
American Revolution.
Major John
Cartwright also supported the colonists, even as the
American Revolutionary War began,
and in 1776 earned the title of the "Father of Reform" when he
published his pamphlet
Take Your Choice! advocating annual
parliaments, the secret ballot and manhood
suffrage.
In 1780 a draft programme of reform was drawn up by
Charles James Fox and
Thomas Brand Hollis, and put forward by
a sub‐committee of the electors of Westminster. This included calls
for the six points later adopted in the
People's Charter
(see
Chartists below).
The
American Revolutionary
War ended in humiliating defeat of a policy which King
George III had fervently
advocated, and in March 1782 the King was forced to appoint an
administration led by his opponents which sought to curb Royal
patronage.
In November 1783 he took his opportunity and
used his influence in the House of Lords
to defeat a Bill to reform the British East India Company,
dismissed the government and appointed William Pitt the Younger as his
Prime Minister. Pitt had previously called for Parliament to
begin to reform itself, but he did not press for long for reforms
the King did not like. Proposals Pitt made in April 1785 to
redistribute seats from the "
rotten
boroughs" to London and the counties were defeated in the House
of Commons by 248 votes to 174.
Popular agitation
In the wake of the
French
Revolution,
Thomas Paine wrote
The Rights of Man (1791)
as a response to
Burke's
counterrevolutionary essay
Reflections on the
Revolution in France (1790), itself an attack on
Richard Price's sermon that kicked off the
so-called "pamphlet war" known as the
Revolution Controversy.
Mary Wollstonecraft, another supporter
of Price, soon followed with
A Vindication of the Rights
of Men. They encouraged mass support for democratic reform
along with rejection of the
monarchy,
aristocracy, and all forms of privilege.
Different strands of the movement developed, with middle class
"reformers" aiming to widen the franchise to represent commercial
and industrial interests and towns without parliamentary
representation, while "Popular radicals" drawn from the middle
class and from
artisans agitated to assert
wider rights including relieving distress. The theoretical basis
for electoral reform was provided by "Philosophical radicals" who
followed the
utilitarian philosophy of
Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported
parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments
and tactics of the "popular radicals".
Popular
Radicals were quick to go further than Paine, with Newcastle
schoolmaster Thomas
Spence demanding land nationalisation to redistribute wealth in
a penny periodical he called Pig's Meat in a reference to
Edmund Burke's phrase "the swinish
multitude". Radical organisations sprang up, such as the
London Corresponding
Society of artisans formed in January 1792 under the leadership
of the shoemaker
Thomas Hardy to call for
the vote.
One such was the Scottish Friends of the
People society which in October 1793 held a British
Convention in Edinburgh
with delegates from some of the English
corresponding
societies. They issued a manifesto demanding
universal male suffrage with annual elections and expressing their
support for the principles of the French Revolution. The numbers
involved in these movements were small, and most wanted reform
rather than revolution, but for the first time working men were
organising for political change.
The government reacted harshly, imprisoning leading Scottish
radicals, temporarily suspending
habeas
corpus in England and passing the
Seditious Meetings Act 1795
which meant that a license was needed for any meeting in a public
place consisting of fifty or more people. Throughout the
Napoleonic Wars the government took
extensive stern measures against feared domestic unrest. The
corresponding societies ended, but some radicals continued in
secret, with Irish sympathisers in particular forming secret
societies to overturn the government and encourage mutinies. In
1812
Major John
Cartwright formed the first
Hampden
Club, named after the
English
Civil War Parliamentary leader
John
Hampden, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and
lower class radicals.
After the Napoleonic Wars, the
Corn laws
(in force between 1815 and 1846) and bad harvests fostered
discontent. The publications of
William
Cobbett were influential, and at political meetings speakers
like
Henry Hunt complained
that only three men in a hundred had the vote. Writers like the
radicals
William Hone and
Thomas Jonathan Wooler spread dissent
with publications such as
The Black
Dwarf in defiance of a series of government acts to curb
circulation of political literature.
Radical riots in 1816
and 1817 were followed by the Peterloo massacre
of 1819 publicised by Richard Carlile who then continued to fight
for press freedom from prison. The
Six
Acts of 1819 limited the right to demonstrate or hold public
meetings.
In Scotland agitation over three years culminated in an
attempted general strike and abortive workers' uprising crushed by
government troops in the "Radical War"
of 1820. Magistrates powers were increased to crush
demonstrations by manufacturers and action by radical
Luddites.
To counter the established
Church of
England doctrine that the aristocratic social order was
divinely ordained, radicals supported
Lamarckian Evolutionism, a theme proclaimed by street
corner agitators as well as some established scientists such as
Robert Edmund Grant.
Political reform
Economic
conditions improved after 1821 and the United Kingdom government made economic and criminal law
improvements, abandoning policies of repression. In 1823
Jeremy Bentham co‐founded the
Westminster Review with
James Mill as a journal for
"philosophical radicals", setting out the
utilitarian philosophy that right actions were
to be measured in proportion to the greatest good they achieved for
the greatest number.
Westminster elected
two radicals to Parliament during the 1820s.
The
Whigs gained power and despite
defeats in the House of Commons and the House of Lords the Reform Act 1832
was put through with the support of public outcry, mass meetings of
"political unions" and riots in some cities. This now
enfranchised the middle classes, but failed to meet radical
demands. The Whigs introduced reforming measures owing much to the
ideas of the philosophic radicals, abolishing slavery and in 1834
introducing
Malthusian Poor Law reforms which were bitterly opposed by
"popular radicals" and writers like
Thomas Carlyle. Following the 1832 Reform Act
the mainly aristocratic Whigs in the House of Commons were joined
by a small number of
parliamentary
Radicals, as well as an increased number of middle class Whigs.
By 1839 they were informally being called “the
Liberal party.”
Chartists
From 1836 working class Radicals unified around the
Chartist cause of electoral reform expressed in the
People's Charter drawn up by six members of Parliament and
six from the
London
Working Men's Association (associated with
Owenite Utopian
socialism), which called for six points:
Universal suffrage, equal‐sized
electoral districts,
secret ballot, an end to property
qualification for Parliament, pay for Members of Parliament and
Annual Parliaments. Chartists also expressed economic grievances,
but their mass demonstrations and petitions to parliament were
unsuccessful.
Despite initial disagreements, after their failure their cause was
taken up by the middle class
Anti-Corn Law League founded by
Richard Cobden and
John Bright in 1839 to oppose duties on imported
grain which raised the price of food and so helped landowners at
the expense of ordinary people.
Liberal reforms
The
parliamentary Radicals joined with
the
Whigs and
anti-protectionist Tory
Peelites to form the
Liberal Party by 1859. Demand for
parliamentary reform increased by 1864 with agitation from
John Bright and the
Reform League.
When the Liberal government led by
Lord Russell and
William Ewart Gladstone introduced a
modest bill for parliamentary reform, it was defeated by both
Tories and reform Liberals, forcing the government to resign. The
Tories under
Lord Derby and
Benjamin Disraeli took office, and
the new government decided to “dish the Whigs” and “take a leap in
the dark” to take the credit for the reform. As a minority
government they had to accept radical amendments, and Disraeli's
Reform Act 1867 almost doubled the
electorate, giving the vote even to working men.
The Radicals, having been strenuous in their efforts on behalf of
the working classes, earned a deeply loyal following; British trade
unionists from 1874 until 1892, upon being elected to Parliament,
never considered themselves to be anything other than Radicals, and
were labeled
Lib-Lab candidates.
Radical trade unionists formed the basis for what would later
become the
Labour Party.
France
In the
aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars it
was technically illegal in France
to openly
advocate republicanism until 1848, so republicans usually called themselves
"radicals" and the term radical came to mean a republican
(who, by definition, supported universal manhood suffrage).
From 1869 a faction, led by
Georges
Clemenceau, calling themselves Radicals claimed to be the true
heirs of the French revolutionary tradition and drifted away from
the moderate republicanism of
Léon
Gambetta.
At Montmartre
in 1881 they put forward a programme of broad
social reforms. At that time, Radicals located themselves on
the
far left of the political board,
opposed to the "
Republican opportunists"
(Gambetta), the liberal
Orleanists, the
Legitimists (both monarchist factions)
and the
Bonapartists.
These radicals then formed the
Radical-Socialist Party (or
Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, to give it its
full name) in 1901, which was the first French
left wing modern party. Four years later, the
socialist
French
Section of the Second International (SFIO) party was formed by
the fusion of
Jean Jaurès's and
Jules Guesde's rival tendencies; and
the
French Communist Party
(PCF) was created in 1920. The Radical Socialist Party continued to
be the main party of the
Third
Republic (1871–1940), but was discredited after the war due to
the role of Radical members of the National Assembly in voting for
the establishment of the
Vichy regime.
The
Democratic and
Socialist Union of the Resistance was established after
World War II to combine the politics of
French radicalism with credibility derived from members' activism
in the
French resistance.
Opposing
Gaullism and the
Christian Democrat People's Republican Movement
(MNR),
Pierre
Mendès-France tried to anchor the Radicals to the left wing.
Although he managed to put an end to the
First Indochina War through the
Geneva Accords signed in 1954 with
North Vietnam's Premier
Pham Van Dong, he finally left the party in
1961 to join the
Unified Socialist Party
(PSU) which advocated
workers'
self-management, while the Radical Party split into the more
conservative
Radical Party
"valoisien", the legal successor of the Radical Party, and a
faction advocating alliance with the
left,
named the
Left Radical Party.
The
Parti radical valoisien moved to the center right and affiliated itself first with
the pro-Giscard d'Estaing UDF, then with the conservative Union for a Popular Movement
(UMP), while the Left Radical Party, which claims to be the
political heir of the Republican Radicals, has close ties to the
Socialist
Party
.
Serbia & Montenegro
Radicalism had played a pivotal role in the birth and development
of parliamentarism and the construction of the modern Serbian state
leading to the Yugoslavian unification.
The People's Radical Party formed in 1881
was the strongest political party and was in power in the Kingdom of
Serbia
more that all others together. The 1888
Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia that defined it as an
independent nation and formalized parliamentary democracy was among
the most advanced in the entire world, due to Radical contribution,
it's known as
The Radical Constitution. In 1902 a crack
had occurred in which the
Independent Radical Party left and
"the Olde" remained in the party, leading it to its considerable
downfall and veering to the into
conservatism. In the Yugoslavian kingdom, the
Independent Radicals united with the rest of the Serbian opposition
and the liberal and civic groups in the rest of the new country and
formed the
Yugoslav Democratic
Party as the central , while several Republican dissidents
formed a Republican Party. The NRS had promoted Serb nationalism
and put itself as the defender of Serb national interests.
Democrats and Radicals were the dominant political parties,
especially since the exclusion of the Communists.
In Montenegro modelled a
People's Party was formed in
1907 as the first political party and remained the largest in the
period of country's parliamentary history until the Yugoslavian
unification. Later a
True People's
Party was formed, which never got widespread popular support
and whose bigger part had joined the original NS, but the
difference was not ideological, but opposition and support of the
Crown and, sometimes, in foreign relations to Serbia (the clubbists
were the crown's dissidents and supporters of the people as well as
Serbia as a regional power and brotherly ally; the rightists were
generally anti-democratic and autocratic monarchist, whereas also
distrustful to the Serbian government's acts on the national
plan).
Continental Europe and Latin America
In
continental Europe and Latin America, as, for instance, in Italy
, Spain
, Chile
and Argentina
, Radicalism developed as an ideology in the 19th
century to indicate those who supported, at least in theory, a
republican form of government, universal
male suffrage, and, particularly, supported anti-clerical policies. In northern and
central European countries, like Germany
this current is known as Freisinn (Free Mind — German Freeminded Party from 1884 to
1893, then Eugen Richter's Freeminded People's
Party — and the Free Democratic Party of
Switzerland). However, by the twentieth century at the
latest, radicalism, which did not advocate particularly radical
economic policies, had been overtaken as the principal ideology of
the left by the growing popularity of
socialism, and had become an essentially centrist
political movement (as far as "radicalism" survived as a distinct
political ideology at all).
Radicalism and liberalism
- See also liberalism
In some countries the radical tendency is a variant of liberalism.
Sometimes it is less doctrinaire and more moderate; other times it
is more extreme.
In Victorian
era Britain the Radicals
were part of the Liberal coalition, but often rebelled when the
more traditional Whigs in that
coalition resisted democratic reforms. In other countries,
these left wing liberals have formed their own radical parties with
various names, e.g. in Switzerland
and Germany (the Freisinn), Bulgaria
, Denmark
, Italy, Spain and the
Netherlands
but also Argentina, Chile and Paraguay
. This does not mean that all radical parties
were formed by left wing liberals.
In the French political literature it is
normal to make a clear separation between liberalism and radicalism
in France. In
Serbia both radicalism and liberalism have had their
distinctiveness during the 19th century, with the Radical Party
being the dominant political party throughout the entire
multi-parliamentary period before the unification of Yugoslavia. It
had cracked in 1903 when the Independent Radical Party had left,
leaving the old People's Radical Party strafing far from liberalism
and into right-wing nationalism and conservatism. The Independents
had created the
Democratic
Party, whereas the Radicals of today are a far-right extremist
ultra-nationalist political group.
But even the French radicals were aligned to the international
liberal movement in the first half of the twentieth century, in the
Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis
Démocratiques similaires.
See also
References
- See for more information the section on Liberale und
radikale Parteien in Klaus von Beyme: Parteien in westlichen
Demokratien, München, 1982
- Compare page 255 and further in the Guide to the Political
Parties of South America (Pelican Books, 1973)
- See page 1 and further of A sense of liberty, by Julie
Smith, published by the Liberal International in 1997.
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