The American Founders made sure the president could never suspend Congress

The signing of the U.S. Constitution.
Architect of the Capitol

Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire

The British monarch has the right to determine when Parliament is in session – or, more to the point, when it is not.

Breaking with longstanding tradition, and possibly with the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution, new Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked Queen Elizabeth II to suspend, or “prorogue,” the national legislature for five weeks starting on Sept. 9, or shortly after. She agreed.

Freed from having to take pesky questions in the House of Commons, Johnson claims he will be able to concentrate on getting a better deal for Britain as it prepares to leave the European Union on Oct. 31. Many British lawmakers, including some in Johnson’s own party, are furious and fighting back. But if the ploy succeeds, it will be one of the longest parliamentary suspensions since the British last cut off their monarch’s head.

Given the similarities between the U.S. and U.K. political systems and the personal parallels – and affection – between Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump, Americans might wonder whether the president has a similar power to suspend Congress.

The answer is a very clear no – thanks to the forethought, and strong historical knowledge, of the country’s Founders.

Johnson and Trump have similarities but differences too.
Erin Schaff, The New York Times, Pool

Breaking up, but still learning by example

On July 4, 1776, Congress severed all ties to Britain. The Declaration of Independence included a repudiation of George III, though Americans had initially admired him when he assumed the throne in 1760. They also rejected the monarchical form of government that King George embodied.

Initially admired: George III.
Allan Ramsay/Wikimedia Commons

Compared to other kingdoms in Europe, which were ruled by overbearing monarchs and aristocrats, the British monarchy was not that bad. In fact, the institution contained a number of features that Americans quite liked. One was the system of representative government. King George and his ministers could only enact laws, including laws that taxed the British people, with the consent of Parliament. The House of Commons, the legislature’s lower chamber, was an elective body, chosen in the 18th century by property-owning men – and occasionally property-owning women – in England, Scotland and Wales. Although Britain wasn’t a democracy, it wasn’t an absolute monarchy, and definitely not a dictatorship.

From the earliest days of English settlement, Americans held the legislative part of the British monarchy in high regard. They modeled their own colonial assemblies as far as possible on Parliament, especially the House of Commons. Each colony had a governor and a council, but the most important branch was the representative assembly. Only colonial assemblies could levy taxes, and all other laws required their approval as well.

After independence, the colonies became states. Americans, wrote David Ramsay of South Carolina in 1789, were now a “free people who collectively” had the right to rule themselves. If they were to have government based on “the consent of the governed,” as the Declaration proclaimed, they still needed legislatures, which needed to be as strong as possible. Parliament remained an example worth following.

Rejecting royalty

What Americans did not want was another king. The Founders admitted that even though the British monarchy had failed the colonists, it worked pretty well for the British, with the king’s ministers consulting Parliament on most matters of importance. But they knew that the “constitution” that required them to do so was an unwritten one based primarily in tradition, not legal statutes and documents.

A detail of a portrait of King Charles I, while his head was still attached.
Sir Anthony Van Dyck/Wikimedia Commons

They also knew that just over a century before, a different king, Charles I, had not been so accommodating. In 1629, when Parliament refused his request for taxes, Charles dissolved the legislature and governed as a personal monarch – not for five weeks, but for 11 years.

That didn’t go well for Parliament, the British people or the king. The civil war that ensued ended with Charles’ execution in 1649 on a balcony overlooking what is today Trafalgar Square. The crowd’s gasp as the axe severed his neck was a sound no one ever forgot. The kings and queens who followed him were mindful of it too. When Charles’s son, James II, suspended Parliament again, the British sent him packing, and gave the crown to William and Mary.

The lesson, however, was largely a matter of custom. During the 18th century, the king’s ministers knew how to get along with Parliament, but the law did not require them to. British monarchs still had enormous powers, and Parliament usually did what they wanted. Although it was Parliament, not George III, that sparked the American Revolution by taxing the colonists without their consent, Americans placed most of the blame on the king’s ministers, and on the king himself.

Protecting the legislature

When Americans started debating what sort of government they wanted for the United States, they knew they needed an executive with some of the vigor that they associated with a monarchy. What they had in mind, however, was different from the British crown. The monarch, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in the “Federalist” essays, was a “perpetual magistrate,” who had powers that were limited only by whatever rules he or she chose to observe.

The newly created role of U.S. president, by contrast, had clearly defined powers under the Constitution, as did Congress. Crucially, the power to summon or dismiss Congress belonged to the House of Representatives and the Senate, which together decided when to convene and when to adjourn. The position of president, in other words, was intentionally designed without the authority to reproduce the 11-year tyranny of King Charles – or the five-week suspension of Queen Elizabeth II and her current prime minister.

Eliga Gould, Professor of History, University of New Hampshire

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today in History: September 25

Rise and fall in the Third Reich: Nazi party members and social advancement

shutterstock.

Alan de Bromhead, Queen’s University Belfast

When people look to the past to try and make sense of the economic and political upheaval of the years since the 2008 financial crisis, they are regularly drawn to the events in the two decades running up to World War II. On the surface, the parallels are striking. The aftermath of a global economic crisis – the Great Depression – witnessed the rise of extreme political groups and a rejection of the previous liberal economic order in favour of nationalist and authoritarian policies.

We know the consequences of the economic and political events of the 1930s. The full consequences of current events are obviously still unknown.

Of course, history is not destiny and we should always be cautious about going too far in drawing comparisons with the past. The past is, as L.P. Hartley put it, a foreign country. But can we learn anything from the extremism of the 1930s? More specifically, can we understand how extremist groups emerged and developed and what kind of people became members?

Understanding what motivated millions of ordinary Germans to support the Nazi party (NSDAP) has been the goal of historians and political scientists for decades. Studies that highlight their popularity among certain social classes are probably the most venerable and persistent. And the sociologist Seymour Lipset was among the first to describe the typical Nazi voter in 1932 as:

A middle-class self-employed Protestant who lived either on a farm or in a small community, and who had previously voted for a centrist or regionalist political party strongly opposed to the power and influence of big business and big labour.

Others, such as American historian William Brustein, have tried to rationalise support for the Nazi party by highlighting economic self-interest. Individuals whose material interests were aligned with the party’s platform would be more likely to become members.

But other studies argue that the Nazis drew support from the marginalised in society or had a mass appeal across the political spectrum. Perhaps the only group for which there is a near consensus regarding support for the Nazis is Catholics: consistently, Catholics appear to have been less likely to vote for the NSDAP or to become members of the party. So, who exactly were the Nazis?

Climbing the ladder

In our research we revisited this old question with new and more detailed data. We examined a unique dataset of about 10,000 World War II German soldiers from the 1930s and 1940s, which contains detailed information on social background such as occupation and education, as well as other characteristics such as religion, criminal record and military service.

We looked at membership of different Nazi organisations among these individuals, not just the political party, the NSDAP, but also the paramilitary SA (Sturmabteilung) and SS (Schutzstaffel) as well as the Hitler Youth.

Members of the SS marching in formation on Nazi Party Day, Nuremberg. Germany, September 1937.
Everett Historical via Shutterstock

We found that members of Nazi organisations – whether they were early joiners who signed up in the 1920s or those who joined the party in the 1940s – were more likely to come from high-status backgrounds and had higher levels of education, with people from a higher-status background almost twice as likely to join the Nazi party as someone from a lower-status background. We also confirmed that Catholics were less likely to be members of all Nazi organisations.

Such detailed data allowed us to dig deeper into the backgrounds of Nazi members. As we knew the social background of a person’s father from the records we were able to look at how far up the social ladder Nazi members climbed relative to those that did not join.

As expected, Nazi members appeared to have advanced further than non-members, for example moving up from occupations categorised as “skilled”, such as a tailor to a semi-professional job, such as teacher. What is most surprising, however, is that this advancement does not appear to have been driven by the party rewarding its members with higher-status positions.

By looking at the roles that these individuals were trained for early on in their careers, and not just their stated occupations, we find that social climbing was driven by early movements up the social ladder – Nazi organisations seem to have attracted upwardly mobile individuals.

Indeed this seems to have been the case not just for the Nazi party itself, but also the SS, SA and Hitler Youth. These were people who were already making their way in life. Although we cannot say from the data whether members benefited in other ways, such as through direct financial rewards or non-monetary benefits, the greater social advancement of Nazi members that we do observe does not appear to have been driven directly by membership.

What does this all mean for our understanding of the type of people that joined Nazi organisations? While it is impossible to uncover exactly what motivated people to join the Nazis, our findings suggest that many educated and ambitious people from the higher end of the social scale were attracted to the movement.

The study not only helps us to understand how the Nazi party emerged and came to power in the years before WWII but also gives us an insight into how extremist organisations can form and attract members more generally. It reminds us that we need to think beyond pure ideology when it comes to motivations for joining extremist groups and look at economic and social factors too.

Alan de Bromhead, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Queen’s University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fall of the Mongols

Today in History: September 24

Today in History: September 23

The Origin of Switzerland

Today in History: September 22

Battle site shows the Norman conquest took years longer than 1066 and all that

Like 1066 all over again: William had his work cut out to subdue the Saxons.
Lucien Musset

Helen Birkett, University of Exeter

The possible discovery of the site of a 1069 “sequel” to the Battle of Hastings is a reminder that the Norman Conquest wasn’t just a case of 1066 and all that. In fact William the Conqueror faced repeated threats to his power from both inside and outside the kingdom during his reign.

Writer Nick Arnold claims to have identified the site of a battle in 1069 which marked the last major attempt of Godwine and Edmund, the sons of the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, to regain power following their father’s defeat at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Historical sources tell us that the 1069 encounter took place at the mouth of the River Taw in North Devon and, by combining this with scientific data, Arnold has narrowed down the location to a spot between Appledore and Northam. While an interesting piece of historical detective work in its own right, the potential identification of this site is a reminder that the Norman Conquest took years, not days.

Challenges to William’s rule

Admittedly, in the history of medieval military encounters, the Battle of Hastings was unusually decisive. This hard-fought battle resulted in the deaths of King Harold and a large portion of the English aristocracy. With the removal of much of the ruling elite, William the Conqueror and his Norman allies (in reality a mixture of men drawn from various regions of France and Flanders) took over the controls of a remarkably centralised Anglo-Saxon state.

But it would be wrong to think that the Norman Conquest ended there. While much of the population probably accepted that the country was, in effect, under new management, not everyone welcomed the change. The late 1060s and 1070s saw significant challenges to William’s rule in England, of which the attempted invasion by King Harold’s sons in 1069 was just one.

Our most reliable witness to events at this time, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tells us that in 1069 “Harold’s sons came from Ireland at midsummer with sixty-four ships into the mouth of the Taw”. The naval force mentioned was almost certainly supplied by the Norse kingdom of Dublin and reflects previous ties between King Harold and Dublin’s overlord, King Diarmait of Leinster.

This was the second attempt by Harold’s sons to mount an invasion and the second time that they had targeted the south-west. In 1068 they had attacked Bristol and ravaged Somerset, before being seen off by English forces under Eadnoth the Staller, who was killed in the encounter. They were repelled again in 1069, this time by a Breton lord, Count Brian, who seems to have taken over responsibility for defence of the area.

‘Harrying of the North’

The north of England paid a price for rebelling against William.
Ulrich Harsch

The brief return of the Godwinsons in 1069, however, was a mere sideshow compared to the full-scale rebellion in the north later that year. This was led by English earls in support of Edgar the Ætheling, who claimed the throne as the closest male relative of William and Harold’s predecessor, Edward the Confessor. Like the attempted invasion by Harold’s sons, this rebellion was made possible through an alliance with a foreign power: in this case, King Sweyn of Denmark, who provided a fleet of 240-300 ships. William’s response was to gather his army and “utterly ravage and lay waste” to the region in what became known as the Harrying of the North, forcing the northern earls into a truce.

The Danes, meanwhile, remained a disruptive force in England until the following summer, when they left laden with plunder largely taken from the abbey at Peterborough. All of which underlines that the events playing out in England were part of political struggles in the context of her European neighbours. For the Normans, conquest was an ongoing campaign that lasted years, not something that was handed to them by virtue of Harold’s death at Hastings.

Battleground England

Although Arnold’s purported discovery of the 1069 battle site can be admired as an ingenious piece of detective work, only archaeologists will be able to prove his claims. In reality, this announcement adds only a limited amount to our current knowledge of historical events, which means any identification of the site in which the Godwinsons made their last great bid for power is probably of more significance to a local audience than to a national or academic one.

But if anything it should remind us of the turbulent years after 1066, when the Norman conquest was by no means assured – and it seemed as if Hastings’ immediate legacy had been to turn England itself into a battleground.

Helen Birkett, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today in History: September 21