In an earlier blog I mentioned that the 1919 constitutional reforms which changed the composition of the Legislative Council excluded women from being appointed to Council by the Lieutenant-Governor. A similar provision also excluded women from being elected to Council by the House of Keys. The Isle of Man Constitution Amendment Act 1919 provided by s.12: “A person to be qualified as an elected member must be a male of not less than twenty-one years of age, and must, at the time of his election, and must, so long as he continues in office by virtue such election, be resident within this Isle”. It was not until 1961 that the words “a male of” were removed by the Isle of Man Constitution Act 1961 s.25. In one sense, the position of women in Manx politics, insofar as it applied to these posts, was singularly clear between 1919 and 1962 (the date of the first election to which women were eligible). Nonetheless, there are patterns and themes from this period which are worth teasing out in part because of the light they shed on the later era.
The 1919 Act created the new category of “elected members”, defined as “Four members to be elected by the House from their own members or otherwise” (s.7(a)(2)). The otherwise excellent Tynwald Research Paper on the 1919 Act states that the Keys were required to elect MLCs from within their own number, but this was not the law even for the first, in many ways unusual, election. The Keys was to elect these members within fourteen days of the 1919 reforms coming into effect, at an open meeting of the House (s.8). Throughout the period under discussion in this blog, elected members required at least 13 votes in their favour – a provision which frequently caused parliamentary chaos (s.8). For the first election only, the Keys was to determine which of the two elected members were to serve a full eight year term, and which were to serve only a four year term (s.8). This difference was necessary to begin a rotation by which two MLCs were to leave office every four years (s.10), and provided a useful precedent when Tynwald sought to return to normal business after scheduled MLC elections had not taken place during World War Two.
Who did the Keys elect as MLCs?
By law, elected members could only be men. There is no suggestion in the debates associated with each vote to elect an MLC that this was seen as noteworthy; certainly no woman MHK was named as someone who would otherwise be considered. As well as the law, however, there were two themes in the election choices of the MHKs which could have worked to exclude women in any case.
Firstly, there is only one example of MHKs electing someone who was not already an MHK, or a sitting MLC, to the Council. Of the 31 seats filled during this period, only Joseph Callister (in his 1951 election) was not then in Tynwald. Joseph Callister cannot, however, be seen as an outsider. He was a sitting MHK when, in 1946, he was elected to Council at a bye-election. He failed to retain that seat in 1950, but returned in the 1951 bye-election triggered by the death of AJ Cottier.
It is not that MHKs and sitting MLCs had a significant advantage over other candidates in contesting these elections: the field of candidates was almost as much dominated by members of Tynwald. Walter Quayle, who had recently failed to win Peel in a General Election to the Keys that year, was nominated in the first MLC elections in 1919. The same election saw two former MHKs nominated. Including Joseph Callister, we have only 4 of 76 candidates (a little over 5%) who were not already in Tynwald; and, apart from Walter Quayle, all of these had previously sat in Tynwald as MHKs.
Such a predominance of practice could easily slip into a constitutional understanding that MLCs should be chosen from the Keys, requiring Speakers and MHKs on a number of occasions to remind the House that they could appoint “from their own members or otherwise”. In the 1950 election, for instance, the Speaker reminded members of this, noting “it is not always recognised”.
Given only two women were elected as MHKs in this period, this constitutional understanding would itself have been a very significant brake on women being elected as MLCs. It would have been bolstered by a second theme, emerging from the election debates, around length of service as an MHK.
This first emerges in the 1919 debates, but is a recurrent theme. Mr Cain’s principal reason for wishing to elect MHKs was the prevalent understanding of the democratic imperative on the Keys – a point I expand on below – but he also raised the idea of elevation to the Council as a reward: “If there are gentlemen in this House who have given service ungrudgingly to the State for many years in this House, for the benefit of their fellows, have not they a prior claim to any gentleman from outside, however brilliant that gentleman may be?”. Election as MLC as a reward for long service in the House of Keys would probably have excluded both of the women elected in this period, neither of whom served for ten years. A related theme was the suitability of the Council for an aged MHK – an honourable semi-retirement during which he could contribute to public life at a reduced pace. The case is made most explicitly by Mr Teare, proposing ex-MHK Alfred Christian for one of the 1919 seats. He argued that the only reason Mr Christian had not sought to keep his seat in Ayre was “purely a matter of strength and health. The strain of frequent journeys to Douglas in wintery weather he found rather too much for him … it will be within the imagination of members that the work of the Council will not be as strenuous and will not make such demands as the work of the representative chamber”
Why did MHKs elect MHKs?
One interpretation is that MHKs knew and worked with each other, forming a distinct political group, and voted for other MHKs as a way of securing an important benefit for a colleague. This interpretation was recognised by Mr Teare, for instance, in his opening contribution to the 1924 debate: “I know in our small community it is said we propose each other because we have certain friendships, or business interests, or are associated with one another”. Certainly, the theme noted above that stressed elevation to the Council as a reward for long public service suggests collective self-interest and, as the practice became established and expected, perhaps even individual self-interest. This intimacy, which I have suggested elsewhere is a key issue for small democracies, may also be reflected in a number of bye-elections when the Keys were urged to commit to reelecting the MHK elected for a very short-term in the future. In the July 1935 bye-election, for instance, the Speaker asked for “a tacit understanding” that the successful candidate would be elected when the seat fell vacant in November of that year. The November election led to two candidates, including the one elected in July, being elected without the need for a formal vote.
There is however an important counter to this interpretation which needs to be considered, particularly as it no longer operates in the same way in the contemporary Manx constitution.
One of the foundational themes of the Manx constitution is the tension between the House of Keys (seen as in some sense representative of the Manx nation even before a democratic mandate), and the Imperial establishment of the Council. The 1919 reforms were the beginning of a rebalancing of the power in this relationship: introduction of elected members appointed by the Keys meant this centre of Imperial power was now being occupied by a minority of appointees of the Keys. In the context of this tension between a national Keys and an Imperial Council, a number of MHKs saw appointment of MHKs into the Council as fundamentally democratic. As might be expected, we see this most clearly in the first election, that of 1919, but I will also highlight two other elections.
In the 1919 election, it was unsuccessfully proposed by Mr Shimmin before the process began that the scope should be limited: “that we appoint to this important branch of the Legislature men who have been elected in the first place by the people. To elect outsiders would be to violate the rights of the people whom we represent”. In a contribution which stressed the democratic mandate of the Keys, Mr Cain argued that “If this House, recently elected, is going to elect persons from outside, they are going to deal a blow at the very foundations of democracy which the people of this Island have looked for and hoped for so long”. While other contributions rejected this approach, arguing like Mr Teare that the Keys should “not be circumscribed by the limits of this House”, the record of actual appointments made throughout this period suggests that was not a dominant view in the Keys.
This would suggest that the Keys should send up to the Council those who had at some point succeeded in securing a democratic mandate as an MHK. As we have seen from the actual appointments, recently successful – and so sitting – MHKs were very much the rule. The 1924 election suggests one rationale for this, based on the freshness of the new MLCs engagement with the democratic process. Here a bye-election, caused by the death of an MLC, was called very close to the Keys General Election. There was an argument, put forward most forcefully by Mr Norris, an opponent of indirect election in any case, that the closeness of a new House of Keys meant that the MLC seat should be filled by the next House:
“If there is any meaning whatever in the representation of the people in the Legislative Council, it is that the people should be given a voice through their elected representatives in the choosing of members in that Chamber, in accordance with what it believes to be the people’s will. This House is in the last gasp of its existence, and by its dying breath it is going to give life for three years at least, possibly far longer than that, to a gentleman in this House or outside this House who, no one can say, as an absolute certainly, has the confidence of the people of this Island, whom we are sent here to represent. I have had a great deal to do with the reform of the Legislative Council, and, personally, I would not agree to this indirect election, but if there ever was an election when the House should postpone a decision, it is now. I do not know how gentlemen are going to face their constituents and say we elected a man to the Council on a mandate you gave us five years ago, and we have decided who shall be your representative for the next three years at least … the work of members of this House is finished, and by a mere accident, by the intervention of Providence, members are called upon now to exercise a decision, and I suggest it is absolutely against democratic policy; it is against the intention of the Reform Act or this House now to send to the Upper Chamber a gentleman from this House or outside this House. I do say we have fulfilled our duty. Let the people’s voice, expressed through representatives coming here from the electorate, prevail. Coming fresh from the electors, how much more will that member carry to the new Chamber that breath of fresh air which is so desirable to any country?”
Part of this speech concerns the mandate of the Keys, and the desirability of those electing MLCs to have a fresh, rather than a dying mandate. The last sentence, however, links this recent connection to the candidates as well: an MHK who comes “fresh from the electors” has at least some democratic mandate. More broadly, we see this theme in the speeches of MHKs proposing candidates across the period – the number of elections successfully contested, the scale of electoral success, are regularly invoked in advancing the case for a particular candidate.
If MHKS becoming MLCs was justified by what was understood as some form of democratic mandate, it is no surprise to see concerns raised that a particular MLC had lost this connection with the national – as opposed to the Imperial – will. Elected MLCs sat for very long terms throughout this period – 8 years being the standard term, but extended during World War Two, and with a strong tendency for MLCs to be reelected for multiple terms. Thus, despite a significant numbers of terms which ended in death (8 in all), the average term length remained 8.6 years. The longest was the 26 year term of Robert Cain, but a close second was that of William Southward, who served a total of 24 years before dying in office with three years remaining on his term. It was Southward that Mr Cain was criticising in the main 1931 election:
“If a man has been elected to the Council for 10 or 20 years he loses touch with Insular sentiment. We have had an example of that in the past two or three weeks, when we have seen a man who has not had the slightest regard for local feeling even for the people who first elected him to this House and gave him a chance of getting into public life”.
While MHKs widely saw the purpose of elected MLCs as representing Manx people in an establishment Council, there was some disagreement on how far representation should take into account sub-national divisions. The most frequent tension was between “town” (that is, Douglas) and country members, and arguments about whether non-elected MLCs might be seen as town representation (for instance in 1924); but we also see suggestions that a Western or Southern MHK was due to join the Council (for instance in 1919).
So far, I have suggested that MHKs selected other MHKs at least partly because they saw this as a way of bringing “national” representatives into the Imperial Council. Returning to the ongoing conflict between Keys and Council, however, there was very frequently a sense that MLCs were there to represent the House of Keys in the Council – that is to say, the national will was to be identified with the will of the democratically elected MHKs. Proposers commented on MLCs being considered for relection as voting with the will of the Keys, as well known for sharing the views of the Keys, as being prepared to vote in line with the Keys regardless of their own opinion, or, in the crisp phrase of Mr Cowell in 1931, as understanding they were being “sent up to voice the feelings of this House”.
In conclusion, the elections of MLCs from 1919-1961 show an overwhelming pattern of sitting members of Tynwald being considered for, and then appointed to, the Council. A key part of the underpinning justification for this approach lay in the dichotomy between National Keys and Imperial Council. The decade that was beginning with women becoming eligible to be elected to the Council would end with that Council becoming composed mainly of elected MLCs. Would this change to the conditions that had led to MHKs becoming the invariable source of nominations as MLCs be reflected in nominations and elections to the Legislative Council?
This blog is authored by Peter Edge, as part of a series on Women in Manx Politics, a larger project funded by Culture Vannin. Click on the icon to go to the project page.
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