Denominational segregation (verzuiling)

Up until the late sixties/early seventies, Dutch politics, and in fact most of Dutch life, was denominationally segregated. On this page we'll discuss this feature, and also explain the consequences of the breakdown of this system.

Pillars

From about 1900 to 1970, Dutch society was split into four 'pillars' ('zuilen'), one each for the Socialist, Catholic, Protestant, and Liberal denominations.

Broadly speaking, each of the four "pillars" had its own mini-society within the greather whole of Dutch society. Protestant people voted for a Protestant party, read Protestant newspapers, watched the Protestant broadcasts, were members of the Protestant social club, bought at Protestant grocers, and sent their children to a Protestant youth camp and a Protestant football club (the competitor of which was of course the local Catholic or Socialist football club).

Mixed marriages were frowned upon, and Catholic bishops and Protestant preachers threatened hell and damnation to the lost soul who dared listen to the "wrong" radio broadcast or vote for the "wrong" party ("wrong" most often meaning "Socialist").

According to a popular story, the question whether a stud owned by a Catholic farmer could cover a mare owned by a Protestant one was hotly debated in all churches. Which faith would the fillies have?

The denominations in parliament

Below you see a graph of the number of seats the various denominations had in parliament. Three points are of interest:

1. Before 1918 the Liberals occupied most seats. However, in that year proportional representation was introduced, and the Liberals lost heavily; mostly to the Socialist and Catholics.
2. From 1918 to 1967 the combined religious parties had an absolute majority in parliament (though that also counts a few ultra-orthodox parties like the SGP, with which even other Protestant parties didn't want to form a government).
3. Around 1967 (flower power!) the religious parties, and especially the Catholic one, started their slide downhill.

The four denominations

Liberals

The Liberals hotly denied they formed a separate denomination; instead they considered themselves "Neutral". All fine and dandy, but the other three denominations kept their pillars securely locked, and in the end Neutral became a synonym for Liberal.

Typically, Liberals came from the upper middle and upper classes, and although most of them were Catholic or Reformed, political principles counted for more than religious ones.

Being the aristocrats and natural leaders of the country, the Liberals were usually in power in the 19th century. It was only when the Catholics and Protestants discovered they could combine against the Liberals that their rule was lost. The 1918 adoption of proportionate representation instead of the district system that had been used until then, decimated the Liberals (39 to 18 of the 100 seats) and led to the rule of the religious parties.

Before World War II the Liberal block was split up among several parties; after, though, there was only one Liberal party: the VVD, which still forms the moderate right wing of Dutch politics today.

Protestants

In contrast to the other denominations, the Protestants were deeply divided. In general they considered three parties the absolute mininum to represent the plethora of opinions found in the Protestant denomination; and occasionally they needed four or five.

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920), founder of the ARP (1879) and the Gereformeerde church (1886-92), prime minister 1901-1905. He discovered the strength of a Catholic-Protestant alliance, which became the central theme of Dutch politics.

Within the Protestant denomination there was one major split and a host of minor ones. The major split occurred between the Hervormden and Gereformeerden, the one being the broad, rather liberal majority church, of which the Royal family were members, the other being the far stricter and (at least, according to themselves) far more orthodox minority church. Most Protestant parties actually stemmed from the Gereformeerde part of the Protestant denomination.

Both groups, and especially the Gereformeerden, regularly enjoyed bitter in-fights about obscure theological problems, leading to the split-off of yet another church. Usually these new churches created their own "pillars", with their own political party, newspaper, broadcasting corporation, sport clubs, youth organisation, and so on.

Their most important parties were the Gereformeerde, popular ARP (Anti-Revolutionary Party; the revolution in question being the French), and the Hervormde, aristocratic CHU (Christian-Historical Union). At least one of them, and usually both, sat in every Dutch government from 1918 to 1994, except for the Socialist-Catholic 1946-8 government.

In 1977 the ARP and CHU merged with Catholic KVP to form the CDA.

Catholics

Herman Schaepman (1844-1903), Catholic priest and politician, de facto leader of the Catholics in parliament, 1888-1903, de jure 1901-3. Although he never was prime minister, or even a party leader, he was as influential as Abraham Kuyper, whose government he supported.

Catholics are especially numerous in the two southern provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg (see also the maps page). Back in the 17th and 18th century, these provinces were not represented in the States-General and were treated as occupied territory by the northerners, who also tried (and failed) to infuse the southerners with the proper Reformed faith.

The northern provinces also have their share of Catholics, who for centuries were excluded from political offices and whose faith was officially (though not in practice) illegal.

In the mid-19th century Catholic emancipation started, and in due time this also took a political form. Although Catholics had seats in parliament from the mid-19th century onwards, they started to form a true political party only in the 1890s, when they combined with the Gereformeerden to form religious governments whenever possible.

Once political power was within reach, the Catholic politicians took their Church as an example and made sure there was only one Catholic party. Although splinters (both left and right) occasionally gained 1 or 2 seats, in general the Catholic block was single and united.

Called RKSP from 1926 to 1940, and KVP (Catholic Popular Party) from 1945 to 1977, this party has been represented in government from 1918 to 1994, usually nominating the prime minister, too. In the two southern provinces they had about 70 to 80 % of the vote, and in other Catholic villages and communities they did well, too.

From the 1967 elections onwards, the KVP lost many seats. To stem the electoral tide, the KVP merged with Protestant ARP and CHU to form the CDA (1977).

Socialists

Pieter Jelles Troelstra (1860-1930), lawyer and journalist, one of the founders of the SDAP (1894), SDAP party leader 1897-1925. In 1918, following the German revolts after the end of World War I, Troelstra tried to proclaim the revolution in the Netherlands, too. A quickly organised pro-monarchy demonstration proved him wrong. This episode is known as "Troelstra's Mistake."

The Socialists form the youngest denomination in Dutch politics. Their first two MPs were elected in 1894, and until 1918 the district system and the fact that the poorest people didn't have voting rights, held them back, much to the relief of the other denominations. When these obstacles were removed in 1918, the Socialists quickly increased their number of seats.

The Socialist denomination was reasonably united. The vast majority of Socialist voters wanted a moderate, social-democratic party which believed in changing worker conditions from within the political system, instead of a social-revolutionary one which believed only in revolution.

The SDAP (Social-Democratic Workers Party) from 1894 to 1940, and the PvdA (Labour Party) from 1945 until present, are the main Socialist parties. The SDAP was usually shunned by the other parties, afraid as they were of leftist economics and leftistism in general. Only in 1939 was the party admitted into a government of national unity.

Willem Drees (1886-1988), PvdA party leader 1939-1958, prime minister 1948-1958. He founded the Dutch welfare state by introducing old age pensions, and became affectionally known as "Father Drees". In 1971 he left the PvdA as a reaction to sixties leftism, which he considered unrealistic.

After World War II, the newly formed PvdA was finally admitted into government on a regular basis. Under prime minister Drees, especially, it laid the foundations of worker protection laws, old age laws, and the Dutch welfare state in general.

The PvdA alternated with right-wing VVD as the coalition partner of KVP, ARP, and CHU; after 1977 CDA.

The PvdA has always had some competition on its left. Directly after WW II the Moscow loyal CPN (Communist Party) was popular, mostly due to its unhesitating resistance to the Nazi occupiers (which started only in 1941; in 1940 Stalin and Hitler were still officially buddies and Moscow forbade resistance). However, out-and-out Communism turned out to be one bridge too far for the Dutch voters; the CPN slid down until it disappeared from parliament in 1986.

Pacifists, and Catholic and Protestant radicals occasionally gained seats, too, but in general the PvdA absorbed their voters with relative easy. In the 2006 elections the SP gained 25 seats on the PvdA's left, which is an all-time record. How the PvdA will deal with this challenge remains to be seen.

Desegregation

The fifties are generally regarded as the heydays of segregation, Each person knew his or her place in society, voted for the correct party, and little happened in general.

That changed when the sixties came along. The hippie and flower power movements became very popular among youths born after WW II, and Amsterdam became an international centre of hippiedom. Politically, this translated into a substantial, and permanent, seat gain for the Left parties, especially in the 1971 elections. This gain largely came from Catholic KVP (1963: 50 seats; 1972: 28 seats), although the Protestant ARP and CHU also lost a few seats. Left governments were the result. In addition, parties outside the traditional segregation, most notably D66, entered Dutch politics.

Faced with this disastrous loss of political power, the Catholic and Protestant parties decided to merge. The resulting CDA would have a decent chance of being larger than the PvdA, thus acquiring the initiative during government formation as well as the prime ministership.

This strategy largely succeeded. The CDA became christian-democratic in general, put less emphasis on the 'christian' bit and became a moderate centre party for people who felt at home neither on the left nor on the right. In 1977 it regained its stranglehold on Dutch politics, which it relinquished only in the 1994 Purple elections.

Meanwhile desegregation continued apace. Although at first this benefited the Left, it also meant that the CDA became acceptable to non-christians, and that Liberal right-wing VVD became acceptable to more people than just its traditional upper class electorate.

Besides, voters in general started to 'float'. Where in the past a very daring Protestant worker might occasionally and secretly vote PvdA instead of ARP, only to return to his 'pillar' in the next elections, voters felt less and less restricted by their 'pillar' after 1967.

Nowadays, party switching is something of a national hobby, especially from 1994 onwards. That partly accounts for the unpredictability of Dutch politics.