Interesting general knowledge question of the day

[brixtonbrood]

The BBC has been called up on its description of Nelson Mandela as the "first black president of South Africa" on the grounds that "first democratically elected president of South Africa" should trump that.

Which made me think. By that definition, who was the first democratically elected prime minister of the UK? President of the US? National political leader anywhere in the world?

Be prepared to defend your choice for the US. The UK is workoutable if you have solid general knowledge, but I'd be deeply impressed if anyone knew the last one without Google. (Himself guessed the UK and guessed the country of the last one, but not the person)

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

To keep with the SA theme, I guess you'd want the first leader elected after women's suffrage. Can't be bothered to Google the US and UK dates, but New Zealand did offer them the vote pretty early.

Interesting question.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Yesbutnobut. Members of the House of Lords and (other) lunatics (to use the well worn joke) (and prisoners, hence the ongoing legal sillyness) can't vote. Then of course in the UK there was the plural vote until the RoPA 1948, do we count an election in which some people can vote three times? Otherwise my memory for when women got the vote at the same age as men was correct (and the country if we agree with Mr Vicarage that it's NZ).
US, um, well it's a federal state so people don't vote for the president - but then again people don't vote for the PM here.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I did consider saying "not yet" for that kind of reason, but decided it was unsporting. Any electoral college or party system distorts the numbers, but the question was democracy, not one person, one one vote.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

So are you saying the definition is two level - the person has to be democratically elected, or democratically elected by people who are democratically elected.
Lots of people are / were democratically elected by people who weren't democratically elected.
OK, for the US, dunno - do regressions such as 2000 where the president was elected by the supreme court mean we should say 2004 for the US?

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Two levels is acceptable. Three would be pushing it. To call the first level "democratically elected", 100% of the people is an unattainable ideal, so I'd say substantially over 50%. Which makes both women's suffrage amd the abolition of class qualifications an absolute must. Either alone doesn't get the number up past 50%.

[steer.livejournal.com]

As below -- if you're going to be so precise in your definition then there has never been a democratically elected leader. (No country has universal sufferage for every resident of any status -- you will always find some exception made for immigrants, insane, underage etc etc). I have some sympathy for the point of view that the franchise should be as wide as possible (but this must be mitigated with prevention of fraud). However, at this point your definition of "democracitally elected leader" has departed from the one everybody else uses. :-)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

The UK doesn't elect a Prime Minister. It elects a parliament, who choose someone to rally around. That person may or may not have won an election within their party, but they are not "democratically elected". It is perfectly possible for the electorate to vote for one person who they think of as leader, only for that person to fail to win the support of the Commons and/or their party, as happened with Gordon Brown.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

True. Who was the first prime minister of a democratically elected government then?

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Still very tricky, but Cromwell would have a claim as he was an MP, not a member if the Lords, when he took power.

First in our system, whoever was elected after the 1832 Reform Act (memory fails).

Alternatively, the first non Lord. Palmerston?

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Or a Pitt?

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

By the Nelson Mandela definition you're a good century out.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Lord Palmerston wasn't a non-Lord, he inherited his Viscount father's title before he was 18. Robert Walpole was a non-Lord throughout office, and he's usually regarded as the first real Prime Minister of any sort.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

UK: Ramsay MacDonald (counting 'democratic' as including full adult suffrage).

US: on same basis, tricky really, as constitutional voting rights existed some time before they were actually enforceable. I guess Nixon (as the first post-civil-rights electee) has a good claim. Or arguably none of them have really been very democratically elected, cf Bush-Gore.

World: New Zealand was the first place to give women the vote, in my mind. But that could be wrong, and anyway no idea who would have been their PM (or even if they had one then).

Good questions! Now to see what other people answered…

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, and it turns out Maori were systematically under-represented in the NZ parliament until quite recently, so maybe that shouldn't really count either. Complicated business, democracy!

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Maori have had the option to be on the Maori or General Roll since the 50's haven't they? So, regardless of the fact that the number of Maori Seats didn't scale with the number of Maori on the Maori Roll until quite recently, I don't think they were 'systematically under-represented' after then.
Also, NZ didn't get de jure independence until the late 40's (de facto arguably 30's), so would not count as 'national political leader' until then.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't know that (about the option), thanks!

(And, mm, I steered clear of the whole independence question. I figured being titled as premier/prime minister would be good enough for the purposes of the question!)

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Ramsey MacDonald and Nixon would be our choices too, but our preference for Nixon is admittedly influenced by the irony factor.

[e-pepys.livejournal.com]

The difference between South Africa and pre-civil rights US is that in SA the majority were disenfranchised, while blacks in the South are a minority of the US population (also of some of those states?). And if we're quibbling (and I enjoy a good quibble), you could say that blacks had a legal right to vote, but it was overwhelmingly curtailed by a combination of prejudicially enforced requirements (eg. literacy test that happened only to be applied only to black voters).

So, if the requirement is that a majority of the population can vote, then Warren G. Harding (I needed Wikipedia for that) may have been the first democratically elected US President - though it's possible that it was earlier, since many states allowed women to vote before the 19th Amendment.