more reason to deny any specificclassorientation, since class politics tends to
produce natural majorities of working-class voters who are likely to believe
that they will gain by radical change.
Typical of parties often defined as catch-all were theGaullistparties in post-
war France, especially during the early years of theFifth Republic, when they
could attract voters of all classes and almost all political persuasions by appealing
to the desire for a strong and stable government. Similarly the old Italian
Christian Democrats managed to attract considerable working-class support,
although they were to some extent a moderate conservative party, because they
could associate support for traditional conservative and religious values with
the defence of democracy, and thus ‘catch’ almost anyone who felt afraid of
radical social change such as might be offered by the communists. It is notable
that after the end of thecold warand the collapse of both theChristian
Democratsand theItalian Communist Partynone of the replacement
parties managed to achieve such a catch-all status. To a lesser extent the British
Conservative Party, which has always relied on a considerable ‘cross-class
vote’ from working-class electors, and the major American parties, which have
no overt class basis, might be categorized as catch-all parties. As the class basis
of electoral politics continues its general decline, the clear sense of some parties
being ‘catch-all’ and others not becomes less obvious. At the same time some
structural aspects of voting, such as religious identity, which helped catch-all
parties attract voters, are also declining, forcing all parties to aim at the widest
possible voter pool.
Censorship
Censorship is the control of what can be said, written or published in any way,
either by formal government authority or by informal powers, and in all senses
is an attempt to impose conformity on views and behaviour. Censorship has
been the norm in most societies in most historical periods, and exists in at least
marginal ways everywhere today. The two principal categories of censorship
concern morality and politics. Religious censorship covers both categories.
Blasphemy would be regarded as offensive to God and therefore immoral,
while heresy is the preaching or following of an alternative interpretation to
the prevailing religious doctrine; censorship, and indeed persecution, has been
used widely to suppress both, in Christendom particularly during the Middle
Ages and Reformation, when church and state functions were much closer.
Religious movements are still influential in many countries in maintaining laws
which purport to protect public morality, especially where sexual explicitness
is involved.
Political censorship through the deliberate concealment of information must
have existed in even the earliest political society. It became more significant,
Censorship