Introduction

Modern understandings of the nature of political promises tend to revolve around policy. A popularly accepted model is that parties promise to undertake specific actions or programmes, and are tested by whether or not, once in office, they carry these out. We contend that this particular way of viewing promises is not the only available one and that, in fact, it is a product of how politics evolved in the era of mass enfranchisement. This introduction outlines how manifestos evolved as a genre, considering how their growing word-counts shaped the nature of promise-making––in encouraging an expectation both that parties would offer more promises and also that they would discuss such promises in greater detail. While it is far from clear that manifestos and election addresses were read enthusiastically by most voters, they became central to election campaigning, acting as the key means by which politicians outlined their promises to voters.

An end to promises? 1964–1979

While the 1964 election marked a high point in confidence in state-led modernization, by the 1970s there was a widespread loss of faith in the ability of governments to deliver on their promises. Long-term planning was replaced by short-term crisis management. The Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Liberal Party created the authority of the Westminster duopoly, reinvigorating the local campaign with their ‘pavement politics’. However, the New Right was the main beneficiary of this crisis. As Conservative Party leader from 1975, Margaret Thatcher believed that politics had been debased by parties competing for power by making promises of state expansion and greater public spending which were unrealistic and led to poor outcomes. Thatcher based the Conservatives’ 1979 manifesto around a small number of pledges, reviving the anti-promise rhetoric which had been key to Baldwin’s appeal in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘Judge a man by his character and his party by its record’, 1918–1939

Manifestos became increasingly central to the electoral campaign and the parties’ efforts to develop a ‘national’ rather than purely sectional appeal after 1918. The party leader’s address-as-manifesto did persist, but it became a rarity. Labour was at the forefront of the development of programmatic politics, producing more substantive and heavyweight manifestos than their more slogan-based pre-1914 equivalents. While the other parties eventually followed Labour’s lead in providing more detailed manifestos outlining proposed legislation, distrust of programmatic politics still lingered. Some politicians, most notably Stanley Baldwin, criticized the apparent escalation of election promises. Although election addresses remained vital to the local campaign, in part as a result of the introduction of the free postal communication in 1918, their relative importance declined in relation to manifestos. Addresses became increasingly uniform documents, designed to complement manifestos, as a result of increasing use of material from party press services.

Facing the future, 1940–1964

Let Us Face the Future became the archetype of manifestos, which the Conservatives in due course felt obliged to follow in form or method, however much they disliked its policy content. In turn, the technique of promise-making that it represented affected expectations of how government should be conducted. Winston Churchill was a reluctant supporter of programmatic politics, often employing an anti-promise rhetoric. However, the Conservatives came to embrace a programmatic politics in the 1950s. The Salisbury–Addison Convention meant that the Lords would not attempt to frustrate policies that had been included in the governing party’s manifesto. While the growing word count of manifestos made them less accessible to voters, their contents were increasingly summarized in shortened popular versions and discussed in TV election broadcasts. While election addresses remained an important means for candidates to outline their character, principles, and record, the local campaign declined in significance.

Manifestoitis, 1979–1997

Labour’s internal crisis, which had led to clashes over the content of election manifestos in 1974 and 1979, worsened in the early 1980s with both the Left and the Right of the party claiming to act as ‘custodians of the manifesto’. Some of those unhappy with the growing authority of the Labour Left broke away to create the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. While the SDP sought to ‘break the mould’ of British politics, the Alliance struggled to define a coherent progressive programme and identity. Labour’s disastrous ‘suicide note’ manifesto in 1983 led to a change of approach, from 1987 it stressed the moderate nature of its programme. Tony Blair drew inspiration from Thatcher’s approach, centring the New Labour programme in 1997 around a small series of pledges, which were presented as a ‘contract’ with the British people.

‘Our own policy is well known to you’

Election addresses emerged in the nineteenth century from a vibrant tradition of broadsides, ballads, and hustings speeches. Following the ending of formal hustings meetings in 1868, the issue of election addresses acted as the formal start of the campaign, and became the key means for candidates to set out their cause. The high regard in which this form of election literature was held owed much to the actions of party leaders. From the 1860s onwards the election addresses of Gladstone and Disraeli were widely circulated by newspapers and in pamphlet form, and came to be commonly referred to as ‘manifestos’. While candidates commonly took inspiration from party leaders’ manifestos, these addresses were often brief statements of principle, which did not outline a formal programme for government. The nascent Labour Party offered novel ways of ‘doing politics’, centring each of their election campaigns around a manifesto programme.

Epilogue and Conclusion

We explore the ongoing importance of election promises since 1997. Even if the way that promises are disseminated has changed with the growing importance of the internet and social media in campaigning, expectations surrounding manifestos remain roughly those that were set during the twentieth century. And yet the Brexit controversy has arguably created an acute crisis in trust in politicians’ promises and uncertainty about the authority of election manifestos. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, manifestos enjoyed a more central role in the 2017 and 2019 elections than they had achieved at other elections during the early twenty-first century, not least because of the ambiguities of the mandate provided by the referendum.