Political defections, commonly known in Westminster parlance as ‘Crossing the Floor’, have been a phenomenon in Parliament since at least the 17^th century. This has either happened en masse, as part of major schisms within pre-existing parties (such as the establishment of the Liberal Unionists in the late 19^th century, or the Social Democratic Party in 1981 and The Independent Group/Change UK in 2019), or on an individual level, motivated either by political issues of national significance, or as a result of local contexts. In the History of Parliament’s Oral History archive, multiple former MPs have recounted their decision to ‘cross the floor’ and change party affiliation. These were frequently extremely difficult decisions, often at huge personal cost, in some instances causing the end of long-term friendships or associations. They also frequently reflected major changes in British politics happening well beyond their immediate experiences.

Some MPs took the difficult decision to leave their party because of local issues, typically involving conflicts with their constituency parties. In 1973, Dick Taverne, the moderate Labour MP for Lincoln (1962-74), resigned the whip after his local party deselected him due to his pro-European views, particularly for voting in favour of the UK joining the European Economic Community (EEC).

Taverne would subsequently resign his seat to trigger a by-election, which he won under the ‘Democratic Labour’ label. It was the first time a candidate other than the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberals had won an English by-election in the post-war era. While Taverne’s parliamentary career after Labour was brief (he was defeated at the October 1974 general election by Labour’s Margaret Beckett), it anticipated later political events, most notably the defection of Labour’s ‘Gang of Four’ and the establishment of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. Taverne himself would join the SDP, and later stand again for Parliament (in Dulwich, unsuccessfully) in 1983, before becoming a Liberal Democrat peer in 1996. In 1977, Reg Prentice (Newham North-East, formerly East Ham North, 1957-79; Daventry, 1979-87) left the Labour Party due to similar local conflicts, but took the far more controversial decision of defecting directly to the Conservatives. He would later change constituencies and serve as a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s first government. Once again, Prentice’s defection partly showcased the various political divisions emerging within the Labour Party at the end of the 1970s.

Other defections were directly motivated by national political issues. In 1976, Scottish MPs Jim Sillars (South Ayrshire, 1970-79; Glasgow Govan, 1988-92) and John Robertson (Paisley, 1961-79) both resigned from Labour to set-up the ‘Scottish Labour Party’ (SLP). They were motivated by the issue of devolution, and frustration with the failure of the incumbent Labour government to establish a devolved Scottish Assembly with substantial economic powers.

While Sillars never regretted his decision to leave Labour and set up the SLP, he did admit that it was a ‘rush to the head’ and not fully thought through.  

Nevertheless, though the SLP ultimately enjoyed little electoral success, and was dissolved by 1981, Sillars and Robertson’s defections reflected the growing influence of Scottish nationalism in British politics, and anticipated the left-wing, pro-European form it would take in the following decades. In 1988 Sillars was returned to Parliament following a by-election in Glasgow Govan, this time standing as a candidate for the Scottish National Party (SNP), on a platform designed to outflank Labour from the left

Like other defections, Nicholson’s departure from the Conservatives reflected wider developments, but was also of notable personal significance, being the member of a very prominent Conservative family.  

Our interviews with both Sillars and Nicholson emphasise the emotional cost of leaving their parties. Party membership is more than a collection of people with shared political outlook; very deep relationships are made and it can be a key part of a politician’s identity.  For Sillars, leaving the Labour Party was ‘like a Catholic leaving the church […] it’s a tremendous trauma, personal trauma’ and the pressure really affected his health (he developed ulcers), his family and marriage. Nicholson described being ‘extremely angry’ with the Conservatives before she left. In part her defection was her response to feeling ‘bullied’ by the whips and a determination to resist that behaviour. Yet it was a decision she reached ‘very sadly, because I am intrinsically a Conservative.’

One of the most unusual political defections recounted in our project was that of Andrew Hunter. Having sat as the Conservative MP for Basingstoke since 1983, Hunter resigned the party whip in 2002, before joining the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2004. This was the first time an MP for a mainland British constituency represented a Northern Irish party since T.P. O’Connor, the Irish Nationalist MP for Liverpool Scotland (1885-1929). Hunter’s decision was motivated by conflicts with the Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, particularly over the party’s controversial links to the right-wing Monday Club (which Hunter supported), disillusionment with the Westminster system, and a desire to pursue a political career in Northern Ireland, owing to his long-standing connections to the DUP and wider unionist community, particularly the Orange Order.  

Unsurprisingly, many of these defections sparked outrage among their former colleagues. Sillars would describe the ‘vicious’ reaction he received, while others would describe being accused of opportunism, cowardice or treason. In some instances, the defectors’ new political allies were not always entirely welcoming either. Interestingly, in many cases these defections were explained as not due to any significant change in the views of the MPs themselves, but out of discontent with their former party’s trajectory. Versions of the phrase ‘I didn’t leave the party, the party left me’ was commonly used by Labour defectors to the SDP in the 1980s, as well as by Emma Nicholson in 1995. Indeed, while some of these defections proved permanent, such as in the case of the SDP or Sillars, others were ultimately temporary. In 2016, Emma Nicholson rejoined the Conservative Party ‘with tremendous pleasure’ (BBC News, 10 September 2016), while more recently, Luciana Berger, who left Labour to form The Independent Group/Change UK in 2019 and later joined the Lib Dems, now sits in the Lords as a Labour peer. Both instances suggest that while defections have often been dramatic and bitterly divisive, reconciliation has also occasionally been possible.

Ultimately, stories from our Oral History Project reveal that political defections are often highly personal decisions and experiences, but can also reflect wider political developments, and even play a role in shaping subsequent events.

A.S. & E.P.

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Further Reading

Andy Beckett, ‘Emma Nicholson: Not her sort of party’, Independent, 31 December 1995.

Tom Chidwick, ‘“Return Taverne”: 50 years on from the Lincoln by-election’, Mile End Institute blog, 1 March 2023

Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Geoff Horn, Crossing the Floor: Reg Prentice and the Crisis of British Social Democracy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

Ben Jackson, ‘From British Labourism to Scottish Nationalism: Jim Sillars’ Journey’, Scottish Affairs 31:2 (2022), pp.233-239.

Rebecca McKee and Jack Pannell, ‘MPs who change party allegiance’, Institute for Government blog, 12 March 2024.

Emma Peplow and Priscilla Pivatto, The Political Lives of Postwar MPs (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

Direct comparisons with today’s political parties and those in the 18th century are not straightforward. Neither the Whigs nor Tories were unified political units; there was no party headquarters, no single accepted leader, and at election time not the same sense of a manifesto to pursue. Rather, people identified broadly with one or other group and if active in politics they were likely to be associated more with a factional leader than with the party as a whole. This was certainly true of the Whigs who, during the mid-eighteenth century, were divided between a variety of different noble factions. Some Tories favoured a rapprochement with the Leicester House grouping, closely associated with the Prince of Wales’s reversionary interest (looking forward to the time when their man became king and could start handing out rewards), while others were inclined to embrace near permanent opposition. The remainder, though increasingly a small minority, clung on to their identity as Jacobites.

In this sense, new parties were forever breaking onto the political scene as one grandee or another decided to go his own way or join with another alliance. However, in 1769 the imprisonment of John Wilkes helped give rise to a new political grouping that threatened to upset matters in a very real way.

Wilkes had returned from exile in 1768 to fight the general election that year. He had then surrendered himself to the courts and been imprisoned following his earlier convictions for libel. One of his reasons for quitting the continent had been his unsustainable level of indebtedness and, in response to this, a new organization, The Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights [SSBR], was formed with the express aim of helping Wilkes pay off his creditors.

However, alongside the aim of saving Wilkes from his bank account, the new group also had a clear political agenda. They believed that the people of Middlesex, who had elected Wilkes but had their choice overturned by Parliament, had been abused by the system. They also saw in Wilkes himself an example of how the power of the state had unfairly interfered in the liberties of an individual. In response, the SSBR co-ordinated nationwide petitions covering a raft of issues, though at the root of them all was the notion of the freedom of the individual and their right to have their voice heard. As they declared from the outset:

Their sole aim is to maintain and defend the constitutional liberty of the Subject. They mean to support Mr WILKES and his cause, as far as it is a public cause… [quoted by Thomas, 111]

Several MPs were prominent members of the new group, among them Wilkes’s lawyer, John Glynn, who had been elected to Middlesex at a by-election in 1768 following the death of George Cooke. There were also influential radicals from the City of London, such as Brass Crosby, John Sawbridge and James Townsend – who would each of them go on to become Lord Mayor. A downside of having so many big personalities – all the more so once Wilkes was freed from prison and able to play a more active role himself – was the tendency to fall into in-fighting. That was precisely what happened and in 1771 the SSBR fractured with one section (including Sawbridge and Townsend) leaving to become the Constitutional Society, under the leadership of John Horne Tooke.

Left at the head of the SSBR, Wilkes oversaw a reform programme, committing its members to campaign for a series of measures, including shorter parliaments and reform of the franchise. The group targeted both parliamentary and local elections, and established its own newspaper, the Freeholders Magazine, or, Monthly Chronicle of Liberty. Wilkes, after all, had huge experience of the power of the press, having previously co-edited the North Briton, which had helped bring down Lord Bute.

That the SSBR was serious about its efforts to bring about reform was apparent even before the split. In April 1771, Sawbridge introduced a motion in Parliament for reducing the length of Parliaments. Although he pronounced his own view to be in favour of annual Parliaments, he conceded the question of annual or triennial Parliaments should be a matter for future debate. At the heart of the reform, though, was the concept of accountability:

The length of Parliaments gave up that power which the constituents ought to have over their representatives, that of frequent examination into their conduct, and rejection of them if they thought them unworthy… long Parliaments gave an opportunity to such an intimacy between the minister and the Members, always dangerous and destructive to the constitution… [quoted in Jones]

In spite of the bad-tempered arguments, and a very public spat in the press between Wilkes and Horne Tooke, at the general election of 1774 both SSBR men and members of the Constitutional Society contested several seats on Wilkes’s reform programme. They had their greatest successes in and around London, winning six seats there, and a seventh at Dover. Elsewhere, they struggled and Sir Watkin Lewes, a flamboyant supporter of Wilkes, failed three times standing for Worcester. He was eventually successful at London in 1781.

Ultimately, the SSBR failed to cut through and in time Wilkes himself became a cheerleader for Pitt the Younger. According to Peter Thomas, ‘The Wilkite cause had little appeal to the electorate outside London’ [155], which was certainly Watkin Lewes’ experience. It was also reflected in their failure to carry any of the major elements of their political programme.

RDEE

Further Reading:

Nicola Jones, ‘Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights’

Peter D.G. Thomas, John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty, Chapters 7 and 9

Find out more about the political parties that existed in the 18th century via our Georgian Elections Project blogs, or in some of our recent TikTok videos!

Harley’s family were proud of their roots as an old marcher family based in Herefordshire since the 14th century. More recently, they had embraced nonconformist Protestantism, so after a period of home tuition, Harley went on to be schooled at two famous dissenting establishments: first under Samuel Birch at Shilton in Oxfordshire, and then in London at Monsieur Foubert’s French academy just off Piccadilly. He was a precocious, if sometimes lazy, child. When he was just seven it was said ‘Robin has a good memory and learns apace’ though two years later his mother was concerned at his tendency to socialize with the servants. To this she attributed ‘a strange clownish speech and behaviour’. [Hill, 4-5] The family’s deeply felt Protestant faith also left its mark on him and around the same time that Lady Harley was worrying about him clowning around, he also showed signs of religious anxieties, fretting in particular about the unforgivable ‘sin against the Holy Ghost’. [Hill, 5; HMC Portland, iii. 317]

At the age of ten Harley’s home tutoring ended and he was packed off to Birch’s school, where he remained until 1680. On 28 August 1671 he sent his father, Sir Edward, his first letter, hoping in time to send him ‘fairer fruites than these first beginings’. [HMC Portland] He was far from alone there. His younger brother, Edward, went with him, and they were later joined by another brother. At least three more future parliamentarian colleagues were also in the school with him: Simon Harcourt, Thomas Trevor, and Thomas Rowney. Under Birch, Harley acquired some knowledge of Classics, though it was a disappointment to his parents that Birch was not proficient in instructing his pupils to dance. [Cliffe] Harley’s instruction was supplemented by tips by his father, advising in one letter that his son read his Greek lexicon and Erasmus’ Adages. [HMC Portland] One lesser-known detail of Birch’s career – a former Parliamentarian officer, and ejected minister, who had been taken under Lord Wharton’s wing – was that he had clearly owned a large hunting dog, kitted out with a metal collar engraved with Birch’s name, address and coat of arms. The collar was subsequently discovered in Somerset.

Sending the boys to Birch had been Lady Harley’s idea, but that theirs was an affectionate family is indicated by her impatience come December 1671 for them to be home again for the holidays. A ‘charet’ [chariot] was dispatched to pick them up and Lady Harley apologized to her husband; ‘if I am a little impatient I am excusable being at the longest I ever thought of without seeing them’. [HMC Portland]

By 1678 Harley’s parents were clearly beginning to think of the next stages of his education. Oxford appears to have been considered, but in October Sir Edward wrote to his son asking him to inform Birch that it was no longer necessary to secure him lodgings there: ‘I have altered my thoughts therein’. The change of plan was the more poignant, as when Harley was eventually raised to the peerage, the title he took was that of Oxford, and as the preamble to his patent emphasized, it was particularly appropriate for such a learned person to be made earl of the university city.

By the summer of 1681 Harley was established in London. The same year, he entered Monsieur Foubert’s Academy, where he seems to have enjoyed some fairly raucous living among his fellow students. However, he also seems to have been busy acting as his father’s agent. There were frequent letters from Sir Edward enquiring after French Protestant exiles (Huguenots), pointing out that he was happy to accommodate them in Herefordshire at very favourable rates. Harley was also supposed to be finishing his education, though, and a year on Lady Harley returned to the theme of her eldest son’s perceived laziness. Writing to her husband, she reported that she had been advised a year was quite long enough to perfect everything learned in an academy: ‘I hope Robin does not lose his time’. [HMC Portland]

Harley’s period of formal education ended when he quit Foubert’s establishment in December 1681. His political education was, however, only just beginning. If he had already taken on some of the qualities later associated with him as a Member of Parliament, he quickly acquired some of his other key characteristics. A busy maker of notes himself, we can perhaps see where some of this came from.

First, from his father, who was accustomed to send around detailed reports of political happenings to the family. Second, in February 1684, an unnamed correspondent sent to Harley just such a list as he was later to compile himself by the bucket-load. It opened with the names of the sureties for a group of lords who had just been bailed and then went on to deliver a detailed exposition of the comings and going at Court: who was in and who was out. In the summer of 1688 it was Harley advising his father of ‘hot talk’ of a new Parliament, rather than the other way around, and he wrote of dining with Lord Chandos and talking ‘freely’ of elections. By September he was recounting to his father details of which candidates were likely to stand where and who was thought sure of being elected.

At the outset of the Convention Parliament in January, though not yet a member himself, Harley was to be found writing to his father from ‘the door of the House of Commons’, filling him in on events at Westminster. In April, his father returned the favour by writing to his son passing on the news of his election for the Cornish borough of Tregony thanks to family intervention and the patronage of the local borough-mongers, the Boscawens. Sir Edward concluded the dispatch with a prayer that God might:

Enable you with every good and perfect gift, that you may with godly sincerity be faithful and serviceable in this great occasion.

HMC Portland, iii. 436

Quickly employed by the Commons as a committee-man, Harley would in time serve as Speaker, as Secretary of State and ultimately as Lord High Treasurer.

RDEE

Further Reading:
Trevor Cliffe, Puritan Gentry Besieged, 1650-1700 (2002)
Brian W. Hill, Robert Harley, Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988)
Historical Manuscripts Commission: Papers of the Duke of Portland, vol. III.