As the OP rightly points out, it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment at which Britain became a democracy outright. However I’d wager the 1867 Reform Act, which eliminated most property requirements for people to vote, indicated the point at which Britain became more democratic than undemocratic, for me.
Otherwise I’d also go for 1911, when the House of Lords lost its ability to block the will of the Commons, as the moment it became a full representative democracy.
Earl Grey came around the corner and accidentally barreled into William of Orange; that’s how the eponymous tea first got its flavor.
I too would go for the 1911 Act.
This was the moment, following an election where this was the only issue at question, where the Liberals were re-elected and this pretty much forced the hand of the monarch to threaten to create enough liberal peers to change the balance of power in the Lords Chamber in such a way that the reform bill would go through.
Don’t forget that there were fears of civil unrest, there had fairly recently been Fenian riots in parts of England, and it was not long after that the Russian revolution took place.
Prior to this, any law could be vetoed no matter what the elected chamber proposed and no matter how great their majority…
This is really when the monarchy recognised fully the primacy of the House of Commons - being elected - over the House of Lords.
Interestingly, the Liberals still see the existence of any unelected chamber as unfinished business and became part of a coalition where one of their main issues for doing this was to pretty much get rid of the unelected part of the House of Lords. This is still a hot topic. It may indeed become a backdrop to the next general election.
The transition from absolute monarchy through to democracy will not be complete until the unelected part of the House of Lords is reformed in favour of a second elected chamber. It makes me smile to see the arguments trotted out in favour of keeping the Lords as they are, as if it presents intractable problems that cannot be resolved - seems to me that other nations have found ways of coping - its just the Lordish types do not think we can be grown up about it and still need their patronising bollocks in our lives.
Arguably, Britain will not completely be a democracy until the monarch’s reserve powers - to declare war, to name a Prime Minister, and to dissolve Parliament - are clearly abolished.
Recent thread about reform of the House of Lords: House of Lords Reform Bill 2012 - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
From what i know of British history I would tend to agree that the electoral reforms between 1832 and 1872 instituted processes that could be fairly called democratic by the standards of the time, and in 1911 finally with the preeminence of the elected power it becomes a real representative government.
There is no absolute need to create an elective upper house if it’s going to have little or no real functions – a number of parliamentary states work without one at all, including some Commonwealth Realms and many provinces/states within others. The one main reason would be to still provide some balance to the near-absolute capacity of Parliament to rule. In any case the Crown and a stripped-down Lords could be retained as ceremonial entities with purely innocuous functions for the sake of the tourist attraction.
What countries are you referring to? Are you not aware that election is by no means the most common system of composing upper houses worldwide?
The pattern is in fact that parliamentary unitary systems (like Britain) must avoid two elected chambers.
I can’t agree. The powers may nominally be in the hands of the Queen, but formally they are with the PM, who is accountable to the House of Commons. And no Government would dare do something with these powers against the wishes of the Commons.
In reality, this powers are removed from the monarch. Ergo, Britain is a democracy.
In fact, last year the power to dissolve Parliament was largely removed (or at least heavily regulated) in the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
Orange pekoe?
There are two ways of not having an elective upper house:
(1) Not have an upper house at all, i.e., have a unicameral legislature, e.g., Queensland.
(2) Have an upper house which is not elective, like the House of Lords or the Canadian Senate. In both those cases, the role of the upper house is very limited, so that the lower house (the House of Commons in both countries) can act almost as if it were in a unicameral parliament.
It is widely agreed that the Queen could decline to call new elections repeatedly in a short timespan even if the PM so advised her. The declaration of war power is still technically the Queen’s, and the Queen could refuse to exert it if the PM went bonkers (see Peter Hennessy, The Secret State). And obviously the PM can’t name his own successor. If there were a truly hung Parliament and no one could form a government, the Queen would have to name the new PM, based upon her best judgment at the time.
Granted, these are all extreme cases, but that’s why you have a monarch with reserve powers, for when the ordinary processes of government have failed.
Well, now she has an actual law to back her up - the PM can’t dissolve Parliament at a whim any more.
Before then, the situation was the Queen had a duty to prevent the PM’s discretion at calling an election for his personal benefit; for example, heading off a leadership challenge against him. The Queen’s decision would be significant and would have to be only in exceptional circumstances.
It’s extremely unlikely she’d ever have used it for personal gain; such gain would only be temporary, as we’d have a republic in days.
And if the Queen declined a DoW if the PM went nuts, how is that a bad thing? Wouldn’t she be preserving the democratic will, by insisting that the Commons declare its confidence in the PM before undertaking such a decision?
Depends what you mean by best judgement - it’s widely accepted that this ‘judgement’ is restricted to any PM who is capable of leading a government from the Commons. In reality this would require consultation with the parties in Parliament until they came to agree - the monarch’s purpose is to be an impartial ‘chair’ of such talks.
It’s a similar basis in the monarchies of the Low Countries and Scandinavia.
Heck, I imagine that such a matter would follow the pattern of the 2010 hung Parliament, where the Queen kept well away!
Well, yes; but none of what you have said means we’re not fully democratic. We have a monarch to crank a few handles when the people’s will is unclear. Her power extends only as far as ensuring that the elected Commons is not outmaneouvred by a Government.