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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2022
This article reconstructs and examines the idea that democracy (in various senses) was fragile or, as some had it, in ‘crisis’ in interwar Britain. Recent scholarship on interwar political culture has generally emphasized its democratic or ‘democratizing’ character, in line with a conventional historical view of Britain as an exception to the instability and contestation of democracy in Europe. It is argued here that Britain's embroilment in a European ‘crisis’ of democracy was a commonplace of contemporary political thought, commentary, and argument; and that anxieties surrounding this prompted some of the initiatives that are conventionally seen as evidence of ‘democratization’. A properly historical understanding of those initiatives, and of interwar political culture in general, therefore appears to require that contemporary ideas of the weakness or ‘crisis’ of democracy in Britain are taken seriously (but not necessarily endorsed). In conclusion, the article suggests that interwar discussions of democracy gave rise to a tendency to equate democracy with a form of negative liberty, which registered and facilitated influential developments in politics and political thought beyond the interwar period; and that historical understanding of democracy in modern Britain might be enriched through an engagement with the political theorist Sheldon Wolin's concept of ‘fugitive democracy’.
1 Quoted in Cooper, John Milton, Woodrow Wilson: a biography (New York, NY, 2009), p. 386Google Scholar. The numbers given here are derived from Capoccia, Giovanni, Defending democracy: reactions to extremism in interwar Europe (Baltimore, MD, 2005), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar and p. 265n; they are higher if one counts states such as Albania and Hungary that, in Capoccia's words, held ‘no minimally democratic elections’ during this period (p. 265n), and if one counts Russia.
2 As it was in classic studies of the ‘structural’ factors behind the survival or failure of democratic regimes, most notably Barrington Moore, Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (Boston, MA, 1966); and, more recently, in Capoccia, Defending democracy, and Sheri Berman, Democracy and dictatorship in Europe: from the ancien régime to the present day (New York, NY, 2019), ch. 10, esp. pp. 185–6, 207–13; see also Mark Mazower, Dark continent: Europe's twentieth century (London, 1998), pp. 23–4, 25. A notable recent exception to this tendency is Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting democracy: political ideas in twentieth-century Europe (New Haven, CT, 2011).
3 McCarthy, Helen, ‘Whose democracy? Histories of British political culture between the wars’, Historical Journal 55 (2012), pp. 221–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 234.
4 Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999), ch. 7, esp. pp. 204–12.
5 J. A. Hobson, Problems of a new world (London, 1921), p. 237.
6 H. G. Wells, Democracy under revision (London, 1927), p. 13.
7 Ernest Barker, ‘Is democracy dying?’, Listener, 1 May 1929, pp. 591–2. Barker's answer was that democracy was in quite good health by historical standards, but that amid multiple contemporary threats its survival depended upon the strength of ‘popular thought and will’ (ibid., p. 592).
8 Leonard Woolf, ‘Is democracy failing?’, Listener, 7 Oct. 1931, p. 571.
9 J. A. Hobson, Democracy and a changing civilisation (London, 1934), p. vii.
10 See, for example, Moritz Julius Bonn, The crisis of European democracy (New Haven, CT, 1925); C. D. Burns, Democracy: its defects and advantages (London, 1929), ch. 1 (‘The crisis’); Harold J. Laski, Democracy in crisis (Chapel Hill, NC, 1933); C. D. Burns, The challenge to democracy (London, 1934), ch. 1 (‘The crisis’); William E. Rappard, The crisis of democracy (Chicago, IL, 1938), esp. ch. 1 and pp. 202–15. Rappard's view that ‘the crisis of democracy was … discussed in Great Britain mainly because it was noticeable elsewhere’ (p. 215) is at odds with much of the evidence discussed in this article.
11 Michael Freeden, Liberalism divided: a study in British political thought, 1914–1919 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 330–9; Olechnowicz, Andrzej, ‘Civic leadership and education for democracy: the Simons and the Wythenshawe estate’, Contemporary British History, 14 (2000), pp. 3–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 15–17; Brad Beaven, Leisure, citizenship and working-class men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester, 2005), chs. 4–6.
12 Lawrence, Jon, ‘The transformation of British public politics after the First World War’, Past & Present, 190 (2006), pp. 185–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 185; Kevin Jefferys, Politics and the people: a history of British democracy since 1918 (London, 2007); Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson, and Nick Tiratsoo, England arise! The Labour party and popular politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester, 1995), but see also the critical appraisal of the latter work in Hinton, James, ‘1945 and the apathy school’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), pp. 266–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 D. L. LeMahieu, A culture for democracy: mass communication and the cultivated mind in Britain between the wars (Oxford, 1988), pp. 3–4.
14 Christopher Hilliard, To exercise our talents: the democratization of writing in Britain (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Dawson, Sandra, ‘Working-class consumers and the campaign for holidays with pay’, Twentieth Century British History, 18 (2007), pp. 277–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 282, 303; James Hinton, Nine wartime lives: Mass Observation and the making of the modern self (Oxford, 2010); idem, The Mass Observers: a history, 1937–1949 (Oxford, 2013); Pat Thane, ‘The impact of mass democracy on British political culture, 1918–1939’, in Julie V. Gottlieb and Richard Toye, eds., The aftermath of suffrage: women, gender, and politics in Britain, 1918–1945 (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 54–69; McCarthy, Helen, ‘Parties, voluntary associations, and democratic politics in interwar Britain’, Historical Journal, 50 (2007), pp. 891–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 909–12; McCarthy, ‘Whose democracy?’.
15 Ross McKibbin, Classes and cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), p. v.
16 Susan Pedersen, ‘What is political history now?’, in David Cannadine, ed., What is history now? (London, 2002), pp. 36–55, at p. 42.
17 As an example of the limited success of such initiatives among their intended beneficiaries, see Molinari, Véronique, ‘Educating and mobilizing the new voter: interwar handbooks and female citizenship in Great Britain, 1918–1931’, Journal of International Women's Studies, 15 (2014), pp. 17–34Google Scholar, at p. 19.
18 McCarthy, ‘Whose democracy?’, p. 238.
19 Robert Saunders, ‘Democracy’, in David Craig and James Thompson, eds., Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 142–67, esp. pp. 152–63.
20 McKibbin, Classes and cultures, p. v.
21 Toye, Richard, ‘“Perfectly parliamentary”? The Labour party and the House of Commons in the inter-war years’, Twentieth Century British History, 25 (2014), pp. 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 10.
22 Morgan, Kenneth O., ‘Lloyd George's premiership: a study in “prime ministerial government”’, Historical Journal, 13 (1970), pp. 130–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 130–1, 143–4, 148.
23 Ronald Butt, The power of parliament (London, 1967), pp. 105–10. Maurice Cowling, The impact of Labour, 1920–1924 (Cambridge, 1971), p. 49, also claims that the Rothermere press launched a series of attacks on parliament in mid-1919, amid Rothermere's wavering support for the coalition.
24 J. R. MacDonald, Parliament and democracy (London, 1920), p. 53. On the political purposes that may have been served by MacDonald's expression of this sentiment, see Toye, ‘“Perfectly parliamentary”?’, pp. 10–11.
25 Kenneth Morgan, Consensus and disunity: the Lloyd George coalition government, 1918–1922 (Oxford, 1979), p. 49, states that Lloyd George and Balfour thought that a national miners’ strike, in particular, ‘would menace the very foundation of democratic government’ and that ‘alarmist talk filled the air [within government] until the late autumn of 1919’.
26 The limitations of ‘direct action’ are noted in Morgan, Consensus and disunity, p. 68, and in Toye, ‘“Perfectly parliamentary”?’, p. 9. The effect of worsening economic conditions upon the bargaining position of organized labour is noted in Morgan, Consensus and disunity, p. 73.
27 Mazower, Dark continent, pp. 20–5.
28 Quoted in Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 205. See also Baldwin's remark to the future earl of Halifax (Lord Irwin) quoted in Clarisse Berthezène, Training minds for the war of ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative party and the cultural politics of Britain, 1929–54 (Manchester, 2015), p. 13.
29 See G. D. H. Cole, ‘National guilds movement in Great Britain’, Monthly Labor Review, 9 (1919), pp. 24–32, esp. p. 31. The emphasis placed upon democracy by Cole and his associates was not universally endorsed within the guild movement: see Marc Stears, ‘Guild socialism and ideological diversity on the British left, 1914–1926’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 3 (1998), pp. 289–306, at p. 299.
30 Ivor Brown, The meaning of democracy (London, 1920), p. 170; G. D. H. Cole, The next ten years in British social and economic policy (London, 1929), p. 160.
31 Stuart Macintyre, ‘British Labour, Marxism and working class apathy in the nineteen twenties’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 479–496, at pp. 484–5.
32 Hobson, Problems of a new world, pp. 238, 239.
33 L. T. Hobhouse, ‘Democracy and civilization’, Sociological Review, 13 (1921), pp. 125–35, at p. 135.
34 Hobson, Democracy and a changing civilisation, pp. 78–80 (quotation at p. 80), 82, 100.
35 Burns, Democracy, p. 17 and ch. 19 (‘Education for democracy’).
36 ‘Mrs. S. Webb’ [sic], ‘Diseases of organized society, II: the drawbacks of democracy’, Listener, 20 Jan. 1932, p. 82; ‘The covenant of the League of Nations (including amendments adopted to December, 1924)’, Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 2008, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22.
37 Bonn, Crisis of European democracy, p. 18.
38 ‘Nation – not party: lessons of the election’, Times, 29 Oct. 1931, p. 12.
39 James T. Kloppenberg, Toward democracy: the struggle for self-rule in European and American thought (New York, NY, 2016), introduction (‘The paradoxes of democracy’), esp. pp. 6–7.
40 Peter Clarke, Liberals and social democrats (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 144–5.
41 J. A. Hobson, ‘Thoughts on our present discontents’, Political Quarterly, 9 (1938), pp. 47–57, at pp. 47, 48.
42 Stefan Collini, Liberalism and sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and political argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 245–53; Freeden, Liberalism divided, p. 44.
43 Hobson, Democracy and a changing civilisation, p. 107.
44 Burns, Democracy, pp. 181, 208.
45 Berthezène, Training minds, pp. 142–3, 145. On the political purpose of the Bonar Law Memorial College, see E. H. H. Green, Ideologies of conservatism: conservative political ideas in the twentieth century (Oxford, 2002), pp. 135–6.
46 E. D. Simon, ‘Education for democracy’, Political Quarterly, 5 (July–Sep. 1934), pp. 307–22, at p. 317.
47 Thane, ‘Impact of mass democracy’, p. 58.
48 Simon, ‘Education for democracy’, p. 314. It has similarly been suggested that efforts to promote citizenship through the reform of working-class leisure were partly responding to a perceived vulnerability of democracy: see Beaven, Leisure, citizenship and working-class men, pp. 133–7, 156–66, 187–9.
49 On the lineages of the tension between democracy and expertise (or ‘knowledge’), see James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain victory: social democracy and progressivism in European and American thought, 1870–1920 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 267–77.
50 On Dewey, see Tom Arnold-Forster, ‘Democracy and expertise in the Lippmann–Terman controversy’, Modern Intellectual History, 16 (2019), pp. 561–92, at pp. 576–7. For wider discussion of the tension between democracy and expertise, see G. E. G. Catlin, ‘The next step for democracy’, Realist, 1, no. 2 (1929), pp. 3–17; Alfred Zimmern, ‘Democracy and the expert’, Political Quarterly, 1 (1930), pp. 7–25; Harold J. Laski, The limitations of the expert, Fabian tract 235 (London, 1931); G. E. G. Catlin, ‘Expert state versus free state’, Political Quarterly, 3 (1932), pp. 539–51.
51 Laski, Limitations of the expert, pp. 4, 13, 14.
52 Mazower, Dark continent, pp. 16–20.
53 See, notably, the oft-cited remarks of David Lloyd George quoted in ‘Drastic action to fight unemployment’, Guardian, 13 June 1930, p. 11; Ramsay Muir, How Britain is governed: a critical analysis of modern developments in the British system of government (London, 1930), esp. pp. 2–9, 195–203; H. Sidebotham, ‘The inefficiency of parliament’, Political Quarterly, 1 (1930), pp. 351–61; Walter Elliot, ‘The inefficiency of parliament (II): a reply from the floor of the house’, Political Quarterly, 1 (1930), pp. 362–7; Winston L. Spencer-Churchill, Parliamentary government and the economic problem (Oxford, 1930); ‘Mrs. Sidney Webb’ [sic], A new reform bill, Fabian tract 236 (London, 1931); Eustace Percy, Democracy on trial: a preface to an industrial policy (London, 1931), ch. 4; Herbert Samuel, ‘Defects and reforms of parliament’, Political Quarterly, 2 (1931), pp. 305–18; John Strachey and C. E. M. Joad, ‘Parliamentary reform: the New Party's proposals’, Political Quarterly, 2 (1931), pp. 319–36; W. G. S. Adams, ‘Has parliamentary government failed?’, in Mary Adams, ed., The modern state (London, 1933), pp. 213–50.
54 Daniel Ritschel, The politics of planning: the debate on economic planning in Britain in the 1930s (Oxford, 1997), pp. 75–7.
55 Churchill, Parliamentary government, p. 16; Butt, Power of parliament, pp. 130–44.
56 Harold J. Laski, ‘The recovery of citizenship’, in Laski, The dangers of obedience and other essays (New York, NY, 1930), pp. 59–90, quotation at p. 59.
57 ‘Comments’, New Statesman, 29 Aug. 1931, p. 242.
58 Gilbert Murray, ‘Dangers ahead: the government and the tories’ (letter), Guardian, 9 Nov. 1931, p. 16.
59 ‘Constitutional niceties’, New Statesman, 30 Jan. 1932, pp. 112–13, at p. 113.
60 W. Ivor Jennings, ‘The constitution under strain’, Political Quarterly, 3 (1932), pp. 194–205, at p. 204.
61 See, for example, ‘Reflections on the crisis: a symposium’, Political Quarterly, 2 (1931), pp. 457–84, at pp. 467–9, 477; ‘A “monstrous proposal”’, Guardian, 16 Apr. 1934, p. 8; ‘Menace of sedition bill’, Guardian, 28 Apr. 1934, p. 13; H. N. Brailsford, Property or peace? (London, 1934), pp. 59–60, 62–3; W. A. Rudlin, The growth of fascism in Great Britain (London, 1935), esp. ch. 5; and, more broadly, G. D. H. and M. I. Cole, The condition of Britain (London, 1937), pp. 428–36. See also below, n. 94.
62 G. H. Hewart, The new despotism (London, 1929).
63 Mazower, Dark continent, pp. 18–20.
64 Harold J. Laski, The crisis and the constitution: 1931 and after (London, 1934), pp. 26, 34; idem, ‘Labour and the constitution’, New Statesman, 10 Sep. 1932, p. 277.
65 Ben Pimlott, Labour and the left in the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 49–50. I am generally indebted in what follows to Pimlott's account of the Socialist League.
66 Stafford Cripps, ‘Can socialism come by constitutional methods?’, in Stafford Cripps et al., Problems of a socialist government (London, 1933), pp. 35–66, at p. 46.
67 C. R. Attlee, ‘Local government and the socialist plan’, in ibid., pp. 186–208, at pp. 189, 208.
68 Quoted in ‘“Hitlerism” denounced’, Times, 10 May 1933, p. 10; ‘Heretics at Hastings’, Time and Tide, 7 Oct. 1933, p. 1173.
69 Laski, Democracy in crisis, p. 92.
70 Ibid., p. 263.
71 As, for example, in Laski's justification of the USSR (ibid., pp. 211–16); and in his conjecture earlier in the text that a future Labour government would have to undertake ‘a radical transformation of parliamentary government … It would have to take vast powers, and legislate under them by ordinance and decree; it would have to suspend the classic formulae of normal opposition’ (ibid., p. 87).
72 ‘Reviews’, Adelphi, 6 (1933), pp. 140–2 (quotation at p. 141). On Niebuhr's interventions in interwar American debates about democracy, see Marc Stears, Demanding democracy: American radicals in search of a new politics (Princeton, NJ, 2010), ch. 2, esp. pp. 71–5.
73 Percy, Democracy on trial, p. 12, ch. 2.
74 ‘The centenary of democracy’, Listener, 8 Jun. 1932, p. 816.
75 Quoted in Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, p. 314. I am also indebted here to Williamson's account of the development of Baldwin's public discussion of democracy during the 1930s.
76 Ramsay Muir, Is democracy a failure? (London, 1934), p. 13.
77 On planning as the salvation of democracy, see, for example, ‘The alternatives’, New Statesman, 28 Feb. 1931, p. 5; Lord Allen of Hurtwood, ‘Private armies’, Times, 26 Jan. 1934, p. 8; ‘“The struggle for liberty”’, Times, 15 Feb. 1934, p. 11; ‘Liberty and democratic leadership: four fundamental issues’, Guardian, 17 May 1934, p. 7; Hobson, Democracy and a changing civilisation; The next five years: an essay in political agreement (London, 1935), p. 19; Harold Macmillan, The middle way: a study of the problem of economic and social progress in a free and democratic society (London, 1938), ch. 18.
78 For notable articulations of the tension between planning and democracy, see J. M. Keynes, broadcast on state planning (14 Mar. 1932), in Collected writings of John Maynard Keynes (30 vols., London, 1971–89), xxi, p. 84; and Barbara Wootton, Plan or no plan (London, 1934), pp. 311–12.
79 On the welcome extended to the Soviet constitution of 1936 in mainstream progressive politics, see Paul Corthorn, ‘Labour, the left, and the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 179–207, at p. 184. Prominent dissentients from this positive view of the USSR among British progressives included Hobson (see Hobson, Democracy and a changing civilisation, pp. 61–5), and Keynes (see, for example, J. M. Keynes, ‘National self-sufficiency’, New Statesman, 15 Jul. 1933, pp. 65–7, at pp. 66–7; and idem, ‘The issue of freedom’ (letter), New Statesman, 11 Aug. 1934, p. 179).
80 Ritschel, Politics of planning, pp. 77, 122, 160, 173–9, 208, 320–1.
81 William Beveridge, ‘Planning under democracy’, in Ernest Simon et al., Constructive democracy (London, 1938), pp. 125–43, at p. 142.
82 Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, pp. 303–13. The ambiguities of the ‘Peace Ballot’ are explored in J. A. Thompson, ‘The Peace Ballot and the public’, Albion, 13 (1981), pp. 381–92.
83 G. D. H. Cole, The people's front (London, 1937), pp. 17, 24; see also p. 334.
84 ‘Albert Hall rally: verbatim report’, Left News, 11 (Mar. 1937), p. 286.
85 Victor Gollancz, ‘Editorial (F): citizens in the making’, Left News, 23 (Mar. 1938), p. 720.
86 Victor Gollancz, ‘First editorial’, Left News, 24 (Apr. 1938), p. 753.
87 Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent empire: anticolonial resistance and British dissent (London, 2019), pp. 366–7, 372 (Padmore, Kenyatta); Tom Buchanan, ‘“The dark millions in the colonies are unavenged”: anti-fascism and anti-imperialism in the 1930s’, Contemporary European History, 25 (2016), pp. 645–65, at p. 651 (Nehru).
88 On responses to the ‘Moscow trials’ among the British ‘left’, see Corthorn, ‘Labour, the left, and the Stalinist purges’.
89 Pimlott, Labour and the left, ch. 15.
90 Ibid., pp. 178–81.
91 Stanley Baldwin, speech to the House of Commons, 12 Nov. 1936, Parliamentary debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 317 (1936), col. 1144.
92 ‘War economics’, New Statesman, 24 Sep. 1938, pp. 446–7 (quotation at p. 447).
93 On democracy and efficiency, see ‘Democracy and rearmament’, New Statesman, 29 Oct. 1938, pp. 676–7; ‘Can democracy be efficient’, New Statesman, 31 Dec. 1938, pp. 1113–15; ‘Mr. Churchill on democracy’, New Statesman, 7 Jan. 1939, pp. 5–7; ‘Democracy and dictatorship’, New Statesman, 14 Jan. 1939, pp. 41–2; ‘Democracy and efficiency’, New Statesman, 28 Jan. 1939, pp. 121–3.
94 See, for example, Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, 5 Oct. 1938, Parliamentary debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 339 (1938), cols. 370–1; Harold Macmillan, speech to the House of Commons, 6 Oct. 1938, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 339 (1938), col. 488 (‘We [parliament] are being treated more and more as a kind of Reichstag to meet only to hear the orations and register the decrees of the government of the day’); ‘The “J'aime Berlin” credo’, New Statesman, 5 Nov. 1938, p. 709; Kingsley Martin, Fascism, democracy and the press (London, 1938).
95 E. M. Forster, ‘The 1939 state’, New Statesman, 10 Jun. 1939, pp. 888–9 (quotation at p. 888).
96 George Orwell, ‘London letter to Partisan Review’, 15 Apr. 1941, in Ian Angus and Sonia Orwell, eds., Collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell (4 vols., London, 1968), ii, p. 120.
97 George Padmore, ‘Imperialists treat blacks like Nazis treat Jews’, New Leader, 13 Sep. 1941, p. 7; idem, ‘Britain's black record’, New Leader, 27 Sep. 1941, pp. 4–5; idem, ‘Not Nazism! Not imperialism! But socialism!’, New Leader, 27 Dec. 1941, pp. 4–5. Broadly similar criticisms of imperialism were voiced in, for example, George Orwell, ‘Not counting niggers’ (July 1939), in Angus and Orwell, eds., Collected essays, i, pp. 394–8; Leonard Barnes, Empire or democracy? A study of the colonial question (London, 1939), pp. 212–14, 261–2, 286–8; Fenner Brockway, ‘How far is the British empire a dictatorship?’, New Leader, 30 Aug. 1941, pp. 4–5; ‘British Nazism’, New Statesman, 22 Nov. 1941, p. 438.
98 ‘Progress and anarchy’, New Statesman, 16 Dec. 1939, pp. 884–5; J. B. Priestley, Postscripts (London, 1940); George Orwell, The lion and the unicorn: socialism and the English genius (London, 1941).
99 See, for example, H. N. Brailsford, Democracy for India, Fabian tract 248 (London, 1939); Leonard Barnes, ‘The uprising of Indian and colonial peoples’, in Where stands democracy? A collection of essays by members of the Fabian Society (London, 1940), pp. 63–84.
100 See, for example, W. E. Williams, ‘Education in the army’, Political Quarterly, 13 (1942), pp. 248–64, esp. pp. 257–8.
101 Bertrand Russell, Power: a new social analysis (London, 1948; orig. edn 1938), p. 286.
102 For this latter tendency, see, for example, C. E. M. Joad, Guide to the philosophy of morals and politics (London, 1938), introduction and ch. 19, esp. pp. 770, 799–801; Stafford Cripps, Democracy up-to-date: some practical suggestions for the reorganization of the political and parliamentary system (London, 1939), p. 19; G. D. H. Cole, War aims (London, 1939); Harold J. Laski, ‘Government in wartime’, in Where stands democracy?, pp. 40, 42; Clarence K. Streit, Union now: a proposal for a federal union of the democracies of the north Atlantic (London, 1940), p. 18.
103 See, for example, Hobhouse, ‘Democracy and civilization’, p. 135; Burns, Challenge to democracy, ch. 1; Laski, Democracy in crisis, esp. pp. 181–5; ‘Working a democracy’, Time and Tide, 17 Apr. 1937, p. 502.
104 Friedrich, Carl Joachim, ‘Democracy and dissent’, Political Quarterly, 10 (1939), pp. 571–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 579–80.
105 On post-war debates over ‘values’, see Middleton, Stuart, Williams's, ‘Raymond “structure of feeling” and the problem of democratic values in Britain, 1938–1961’, Modern Intellectual History, 17 (2020), pp. 1133–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 1141–4.
106 I am grateful to Susan Pedersen for prompting me to think more carefully about this point.
107 Müller, Contesting democracy, pp. 4–5.
108 Ibid., pp. 146–50. The dominance of the executive in post-war Britain is emphasized particularly strongly in Harold Perkin, The rise of professional society: England since 1880 (London, 2002; orig. edn 1989), pp. 324–31.
109 On discussions of this (within all the major political parties) after the Second World War, see Middleton, Stuart, of, ‘The concept “the Establishment” and the transformation of political argument in Britain since 1945’, Journal of British Studies, 60 (2021), pp. 257–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
110 The most notable critique of mass culture in Britain during the 1950s was Richard Hoggart, The uses of literacy: aspects of working-class life, with special reference to publications and entertainments (London, 1957). The problems that new media may pose to contemporary democracy have recently been surveyed in Hans Kundnani, The future of democracy in Europe: technology and the evolution of representation, Chatham House research paper, Mar. 2020, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/03/future-democracy-europe, esp. ch. 3.
111 Wolin, Sheldon, ‘Fugitive democracy’, Constellations, 1 (1994), pp. 11–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 11.
112 Ibid., p. 22.
113 See, for example, McCarthy, ‘Whose democracy?’, p. 234; LeMahieu, Culture for democracy.
114 Priestley, Postscripts, p. 97.
115 Ibid., p. 98.
116 Wolin, ‘Fugitive democracy’, p. 23.
117 See, for example, A. C. Grayling, Democracy and its crisis (London, 2017); Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How democracies die: what history reveals about our future (London, 2018), introduction and pp. 212, 230–1; Michael J. Abramowitz, ‘Democracy in crisis’, in Freedom in the world 2018: the annual survey of political rights and civil liberties (London, 2019), pp. 1–9; Adam Przeworski, Crises of democracy (Cambridge, 2019), esp. ch. 5; R. S. Foa, A. Klassen, M. Slade, A. Rand, and R. Collins, Global satisfaction with democracy: 2020 report (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 12, 18.
