Anti-Revolutionary Party
The Anti-Revolutionary Party was a Protestant conservative and Christian democratic political party in the Netherlands. The party was founded in 1879 by Abraham Kuyper, a neo-Calvinist theologian and minister who served as Prime Minister between 1901 and 1905. In 1980 the party merged with the Catholic People's Party and the Christian Historical Union to form the Christian Democratic Appeal.
History
History before 1879
The anti-revolutionary parliamentary caucus had existed since the 1840s. It represented orthodox tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church. Under the leadership of Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer the anti-revolutionaries became a real political force, which opposed the liberal tendencies within the Dutch Reformed Church and the liberal tendencies within Dutch politics. Their three values were "God, the Netherlands, and the House of Orange".An important issue was public education, which in the view of the anti-revolutionaries should be Protestant-Christian in nature. The anti-revolutionaries had ties with the, which opposed the official re-establishment of Roman Catholic bishoprics, and a mixed relationship with conservatives in the House of Representatives, who also opposed reforms to the social and political system but often on the basis of a mix of liberal Protestantism and secular humanism. During the 1860s Groen van Prinsterer became more isolated from his conservative allies. He also began to reformulate his Protestant-Christian ideals, and began to plead for souvereiniteit in eigen kring instead of theocracy. This meant that instead of one Protestant-Christian society, Groen van Prinsterer wanted a Protestant society within a pluralistic society. Orthodox Protestants would have their own churches, schools, papers, political parties and sports clubs. This laid the basis for pillarisation, which was to dominate Dutch society between 1880 and 1960.
File:Abraham Kuyper - Griffis.jpg|thumb|upright|Abraham Kuyper, founder and party leader until 1920, Prime Minister 1901–1905
In 1864 Groen van Prinsterer began to correspond with a young Dutch Reformed theologian named Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper was heavily influenced by Groen van Prinsterer's ideas and began to put the latter's ideal of an orthodox Protestant society within Dutch society into practice.
Foundation
On 3 April 1879, Abraham Kuyper founded the ARP as part of the larger separate orthodox Protestant society within society. It was the first nationally organised political party in the Netherlands. An 1878 petition for equal payment for religious schools became one of the catalysts for the foundation of the political movement. In 1877, Kuyper had already written "Our Program" in which the political ideals of the ARP were written down. Around the ARP the separate Protestant society began to grow: many Protestant schools were founded, a Protestant university, and a paper. In 1886, Kuyper broke free from the liberal Dutch Reformed Church to found the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in 1892.The ARP had one practical political goal: equalisation of payment between public and religious schools. It had one political strategy: the Antithesis between religious and non-religious parties, which meant that he sought to break the cooperation between liberals and Catholics and to create an alliance between Catholics and Protestants.
1879–1917
In 1879, thirteen anti-revolutionaries were among the hundred members of the House of Representatives, although not all were members of the ARP. During the period between 1879 and 1883, their numbers grew slowly, peaking at 19. After the 1884 election they had 21 members of parliament. In 1886 they won their first seat in the Senate.In the 1888 election, the ARP won 31.4% of the vote and 27 seats. A confessional cabinet was formed led by the anti-revolutionary Aeneas Mackay Jr.: it combined anti-revolutionary and Catholic ministers, joined by two conservative independents. Because the liberals still controlled the Senate, many of the cabinet's proposals met resistance there and the cabinet fell before the end of its four-year term.
In the 1891 election, the ARP lost 2% of its votes, but six of its seats. The confessional parties also lost their majority. A liberal cabinet, led by Van Tienhoven was formed. It proposed drastic changes to the census, which would result practically in universal male suffrage, proposed by minister Tak. The ARP was divided on the issue: Kuyper and a majority of the parliamentary party voted in favour of the law, while Alexander de Savornin Lohman vehemently opposed it. Kuyper had tactical reasons to support enlarged franchise – the 'kleine luyden' who would be allowed to vote often supported the ARP. De Savorin-Lohman opposed the law because it would imply some form of popular sovereignty instead of divine sovereignty. In 1894, this resulted in a split between the ARP and the group around De Savorin-Lohman. Party discipline also played a role in the conflict between Kuyper and De Savorin-Lohman: Kuyper, the party leader, favoured strong party discipline, while De Savorin Lohman opposed strong parties. The split results in the foundation of the Free Anti Revolutionary Party in 1898, which would become the Christian Historical Union in 1904. With De Savorin-Lohman a group of prominent party politicians left the party, including many of its aristocratic members. The CHU continued its opposition against universal suffrage and was more anti-papist than the ARP.
In the 1894 election, the ARP lost almost half of its vote and six of its twenty-one seats. The Catholics broke their alliance with the ARP and supported a conservative cabinet. In the 1897 election, the ARP won back some ground: it was supported by 26% of the electorate and won seventeen seats. The group around De Savorin Lohman, won 11% of the vote and six seats. A liberal cabinet was formed and the ARP was confined to opposition.
In 1901, the ARP won a decisive victory. It won 27.4% of the vote and 23 seats. A cabinet was formed out of the ARP, the Catholics and the group around De Savorin-Lohman, now called the Christian Historical Party. The cabinet was led by Kuyper, being the first person to formally lead the cabinet for four years. It was characterised by Kuypers' authoritarian leadership. This can best be seen by the railway strike of 1903, in which Kuyper showed no mercy to the strikers and instead pushed several particularly harsh anti-strike laws through parliament. After the Senate, where there was a liberal majority, rejected Kuypers' law on higher education, which sought to bring equal titles for alumni of the Free University, which Kuyper himself founded, Kuyper called for new elections for the Senate. With a confessional majority in the Senate, the law was pushed through.
In the 1905 election, the ARP lost only 3% of the vote, but eight seats, although it was able to strengthen its position in the Senate. Kuyper, the party's leader, lost his own seat in Amsterdam to a progressive liberal. Theo Heemskerk led the anti-revolutionary parliamentary party. A minority liberal cabinet was formed. Former anti-revolutionary MP Staalman left ARP and founded the Christian Democratic Party, which later became the Christian Democratic Union, which would play a minor role in the interbellum political landscape.
In 1908, Kuyper returned to the House of Representatives. After a crisis in the liberal cabinet Theo Heemskerk was given the chance to form a new cabinet. A minority confessional cabinet was formed. In the 1909 election the ARP won 3% of vote and twenty-five seats. The Heemskerk cabinet continues.
In 1912, Kuyper left national politics because of health reasons, and in 1913, he was elected to the Senate. In the 1913 election, the ARP lost 6% of the votes. The party lost more than half of its seats, leaving them with 11 seats overall. Another minority liberal cabinet was formed. The leadership of the ARP lay in the hands of less prominent politicians. Although a relatively small opposition party, the ARP played an important role in Dutch politics. The liberal minority cabinet, led by Cort van der Linden sought to resolve two important issues in Dutch politics: the conflict over the equalisation of payment for religious schools and universal suffrage. In the constitution change of 1917 both items were resolved. The ARP was given equal payment for religious schools, but it had to accept women's suffrage and proportional representation.
1917–1945
After the Pacification of 1917, marked by the introduction of universal suffrage, the party never received more than twenty percent of the vote. The 1918 election provided a decisive test for the party, where the party won two additional seats. The three confessional parties won 50 seats. The confessional parties formed a new cabinet, led by the Catholic Charles Ruijs de Beerenbrouck. The ARP supplied three ministers and former prime minister Theo Heemskerk became Minister of Justice. A group of concerned anti-revolutionaries, led by Gerrit Kersten, founded the Reformed Political Party, which opposed universal suffrage and cooperation with the Catholics. The electorate of the ARP changed in the interbellum – the difference between lower class Protestants who voted ARP and middle class Protestants who voted CHU began to disappear, with religious differences between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands becoming more important.In the 1922 election, former minister of war Hendrikus Colijn became the leader of the ARP. He emphasised defence and fiscal conservatism as core issues of the party. With him the ARP got sixteen seats in the House of Representatives and fifteen in the Senate. He became Minister of Finance in the second cabinet of Charles Ruijs de Beerenbrouck. He led the party in the 1925 election; the party lost three seats in this election. The ARP continued in government with Jan Donner as minister of Justice. In the 1929 election, the ARP lost another seat. The confessional parties continued to govern.
File:PS Gerbrandy 1941.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, Prime Minister 1940–1945 during World War II leading the Dutch government in exile
In the 1930s, with the growing international political threats and economic crisis, the ARP began to regain its popularity, under the leadership of Colijn. In 1933, the ARP gained two seats and Colijn formed a broad cabinet comprising the Roman Catholic State Party, CHU, ARP, Liberal State Party and Free-thinking Democratic League. Jan Schouten led the party's parliamentary party. Between 1933 and 1939, Colijn led several parliamentary and extra-parliamentary cabinets with changing composition, although the CHU, ARP, and RKSP continued to form the core of the cabinet. Colijn refused to devalue the guilder but was unable to resolve the economic crisis. In 1937 the ARP gained three seats and reached a historic 17 seats. Colijn continued to govern. In 1939, his fifth cabinet fell and Colijn was succeeded by Dirk Jan de Geer. Pieter Gerbrandy joined the cabinet without support of his parliamentary party.
During World War II, members of the ARP played a role in both the governments-in-exile, of which many were led by Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy and the resistance movements. The resistance paper Trouw was founded by ARP members. Many future ARP MPs began their political career in the Dutch resistance.