Party Politics: The Growth of Parties

This 1961 text is the second volume of Party Politics, following Appeal to the People which appeared in 1960. It is an historical analysis of the nature, growth and activity of organised political parties in England, from the parliamentary divisions of the Civil War to the general election of 1959. Sir Ivor Jennings shows that party conflict has roots going very far back in English history, though the decisive or formative stages were reached comparatively recently. But this ample and very readable history emphasises above all that English politics, in all their strangeness as well as their rationality, are an organic historical growth, forever developing.