Regular readers of The Guardian‘s website will be familiar with
its “From the archive” section, which reprints interesting or
significant stories from past editions. Since the paper goes back 185
years, there is plenty to choose from, and yesterday’s is a real gem:
the report from the Manchester Guardian (as it then was) of 27 June 1846 on the repeal of the Corn Laws.

The Corn Laws
were a system of protective tariffs designed to restrict the import of
foreign grain into Britain and therefore keep prices high, to benefit
landowners at the expense of consumers. For 30 years they were a
battleground between the forces of protection and free trade, and
therefore between the established landed class and the rising
industrial interest.

The Corn Laws were finally repealed after the Irish famine made all but
the most obstinate realise the need to bring cheaper food to the
masses. The Manchester Guardian headlined it as “A triumph with no
parallel in history”, reporting the victory “So excitedly that it
barely drew breath for paragraphs at a time”:

Probably at no period in the history of the world has a change so
important in itself, and so repugnant to the feelings of the great body
of those possessing political power in the country, been effected, in
so short a time, by the mere force of reason and persuasion.

Does any of this matter, 160 years later? It does, for two reasons.

Firstly, the Corn Laws debate was an example of a successful alliance
between the middle class and the workers. The Anti-Corn Law League,
founded by Richard Cobden and John Bright, assembled a powerful
coalition to attack protection. Free trade was a progressive cause,
closely aligned with other movements such as peace, electoral reform
and “retrenchment”, or what we would call “small government”. The
parties of today’s left could do worse than study its lessons.

Secondly, repeal of the Corn Laws was one of the key events shaping
Britain’s party system. The Conservatives split; prime minister Robert
Peel became a convert to repeal and, with most of his senior
colleagues, left the party. They, together with the opposition Whigs
and radicals like Cobden and Bright, eventually merged to form the
Liberal Party.

Today’s Conservative Party traces its ancestry instead to the die-hard
protectionists, led by Derby and Disraeli, who opposed Peel. Those who
blithely assume that conservatives are the friends of free trade and
smaller government could also do with a history lesson.