ABSTRACT
The key to the rise of a viable class society was the institutionalization of the middle class and, as we anticipated in Chapter VIII, the imposition of its ideal upon the other classes. Yet the evolution of middle-class institutions is full of paradoxes. The first and most striking is the failure of the middle class to create its own separate, permanent, potentially governing, parliamentary party, and the consequent concentration on individual, short-term, practicable reformsParliamentary Reform, repeal of the Corn Laws, abolition of the ‘taxes on knowledge’, and the like-which made the typical middle-class political institution an ephemeral pressure group, like the National Political Union or the Anti-Corn Law League, whose success entailed its own demise. Secondly, because it was outside the pale of the constitution, even the ‘respectable’ middle class was at first forced to use violence, or at least the threat of violence, to gain admission. Thirdly, because they were too weak either in voting strength or in sheer weight of numbers to impose their will, middle-class pressure groups were forced to broaden their appeal to embrace the working class and to compromise with the ruling aristocracy. This gave them a spurious appearance of being ‘universal’ or ‘non-class’ bodies which does not stand up to analysis of their aims and ideology. Finally, their failure to create their own political party did not prevent them from capturing the policies of the existing parties. In the last analysis the institutionalization of the middle class was the institutionalization within the traditional framework of politics, and especially in the Liberal Party, of their ideal.
