May 6, 2013

FINEST HOUR 146, SPRING 2010

ABSTRACT
“Whenever the Socialists have come into office they have very speedily provoked a violent reaction in the country….At the next election there will probably be a very full swing of the pendulum away from the existing Ministers….The Socialist Ministers will, as usual, have to choose between quarrelling with their followers and quarrelling with the nation.”

W I N S T O N S. C H U R C H I L L First published in The Evening Standard, 14 January 1934 Published in Finest Hour by kind permission of Winston S. Churchill and Curtis Brown Ltd.

==================

2025 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 42nd International Churchill Conference. Washington, DC | October 9-11, 2025

2025 International Churchill Conference

I N TR O D U C T I O N

Churchill’s startling words above, pregnant with current relevance, are from a little-known article published only twice during a forty-year interval. In it, Churchill casts a skeptical eye on a nation beset by economic woes, and wonders if democracy could be improved by extra votes for “the more responsible citizens” and by proportional representation. He would become less enthusiastic about at least the latter idea later in his career.

In proposing a bonus vote for “every householder …who pays the rent and the rates [taxes] of any dwelling,” Churchill voices a theme later developed by the Australian novelist Nevil Shute in his 1953 book, In the Wet. In Shute’s imaginary Australia, there were up to seven votes: one for everybody; another for a university degree or military commission; another for time spent abroad; another for raising two children to age fourteen without divorce, and so on.

Such ideas are easily shouted down for obvious reasons. We’re not concerned with Shute, except as an aside, but with Churchill; and the qualifications for his bonus vote are less important than his thinking about it.

Larger and larger numbers of today’s democracies pay fewer and fewer taxes, yet retain the ability to vote themselves largesse from those who do. Churchill, an extremist of neither Left nor Right, sought a middle way, “to provide security for the working class so they would not expropriate the wealth of the holders of capital; so they would have a fair chance for themselves.” (FH 144: 11.) The bonus vote is an example of his thinking.

Proportional representation strives for a more representative democracy by distributing legislative seats in proportion to the party vote, instead of the “winner take all” approach (plurality voting) as in the UK or USA. (P.R. exists in Australia, Ireland, and many other countries.) P.R. makes the domination of a majority far less likely, but can lead to shifting party alliances, unstable coalitions, and in some cases, political chaos.

Churchill offers a novel twist by proposing proportional representation only for the cities. This, he says, would “focus the personality” of their citizens in governing their affairs. But extending P.R. to rural areas, he adds, would “destroy the personal contacts and collective identities which exist.”

But where would Churchill draw the line, particularly given the vast expansion of the suburbs since 1934? Why would a voting system good for some be bad for others? Paraphrasing his famous crack about democracy, we might say that plurality voting is the worst of all systems, except for all the other systems. Far from branding Churchill as an elitist, this interesting essay shows his ability—uncommon among politicians of any age—to think in fresh and imaginative ways about democracy, adhering to tradition only when he considers it essential to the political life of the nation. Judge for yourself. —RML