Change in British Politics (West European Politics)

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS Edited by

HUGH BERRINGTON

FRANK CASS

First published 1984 in Great Britain By FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED Gainsborough House, 11 Gainsborough Road, London E11 1RS, England This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” and in the United States of America by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED c/o Biblio Distribution Centre 81 Adams Drive, P.O. Box 327, Totowa, N.J. 07511 Copyright © 1984 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Change in British politics. 1. Great Britain—Politics and government—1964– I. Berrington, Hugh B. 320.941 JN231 ISBN 0-203-01327-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7146-3243-0 (Print Edition) This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on ‘Change in British Politics’ of West European Politics, Vol.1, No.4, published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Frank Cass and Company Limited.

Contents

Notes on the Contributors

v

Change in British Politics: An Introduction Hugh Berrington

1

The Labour Party: The Rise of the Left Philip Williams

25

The Conservative Party: From Pragmatism to Ideology—and Back? James Douglas

54

The SDP-Liberal Alliance: The End of the Two-Party System? David Denver

73

The De-Nationalisation of British Politics: The Re-emergence of the Periphery W.L.Miller

101

Confrontation, Incorporation and Exclusion: British Trade Unions in Collectivist and Post-Collectivist Politics Rod Hague

127

The Business Lobby: Political Attitudes and Strategies Wyn Grant

160

The Electorate: Partisan Dealignment Ten Years On Ivor Crewe

179

Central-Local Government Relations: The Irresistible Rise of Centralised Power Michael Goldsmith and Ken Newton

212

The United Kingdom Election of 1983 John Curtice

229

Notes on the Contributors

Hugh Berrington is Professor and Head of Department of Politics, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne. Among his publications are How Nations are Governed, Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons 1945–55 and Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons 1955–59. Philip Williams is a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the biographer of Hugh Gaitskell. James Douglas is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Northwestern University. He was an officer of the Conservative Research Department from 1950 to 1977, and its Director from 1970 to 1974. D.T.Denver is Lecturer in the Department of Politics, University of Lancaster, and co-author of BBC/ITN Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies (1983). His most recent article is ‘Candidate Selection in the Labour Party: What the Selectors Seek’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.13 (1983). W.L.Miller is Visiting Professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Senior Lecturer at Strathclyde University. He is author of Electoral Dynamics (1977), The End of British Politics? (1981) and The Survey Method (1983). Rod Hague is Lecturer of Politics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is coauthor (with Martin Harrop) of Comparative Government: An Introduction (1982). Wyn Grant is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Political Economy of Industrial Policy and co-author of The Confederation of British Industry. Ivor Crewe is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has written numerous articles on electoral behaviour and public opinion in Britain, and is co-author (with Bo Särlvik) of Decade of Dealignment (1983), which is based on the 1974 and 1979 British Election Studies, of which he was co-Director. His current research projects include the preparation of an electoral reference book based on the 1983 general election and the analysis of the BBC/Gallup survey conducted on the eve and day of the 1983 election. Ken Newton is Professor of Political Studies at the University of Dundee and author of The Sociology of British Communism, Second City Politics, and co-author of Balancing the Books.

vi

Michael Goldsmith is Senior Lecturer in Politics, Salford University. From 1974 to 1977 he was Researcher on public participation and planning, Department of Environment, and since 1973 he has been Research Co-ordinator, SSRC Research Initiative on Central-Local Government Relations. He is author of Politics, Planning and the City (1980), and co-author of Public Participation and Planning in Practice (1980) and Public Participation in Local Services (1982). John Curtice is a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and Co-Director of the 1983 British General Election Study. He has written a number of articles on British electoral politics.

Change in British Politics: An Introduction Hugh Berrington

THE END OF THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS The most striking change in British politics, during the seventies and early eighties, was the undermining and then the end of the post-war British consensus. That consensus had been long in decline before the final seals were set by Mrs Thatcher’s victories in 1979 and 1983. The elements which were sapping, and which finally destroyed, the consensus, and the end itself, had profound effects on the British polity: they unsettled the distribution of power within the political parties (and hence the working of the institutions of the government); the direction of economic policy, the character of local government, and relations between government and interest groups were transformed. It would be wrong to see Adversary Politics and Consensus Politics as mutually exclusive alternatives.1 For much of the post-war period, whilst the spirit of government was consensual, much of its form was adversary. The two parties, wrote Robert McKenzie in 1955, ‘conduct furious arguments about the comparatively minor issues that separate them’.2 Indeed, the contrast between the spirit and form of parliamentary politics contributed to the disillusionment with Adversary Politics at both elite and mass level. The consensus was the political counterpart of a long-lasting compromise in which government, labour and capital were in uneasy equipoise. It reflected the incorporation of the manual working class in British society, and an apparent softening of class feeling. The decline of the consensus was accompanied by the revival of the pre-1914 centreperiphery cleavage, which seemed likely to disrupt, and indeed, may yet disrupt, the unity of the British state. In the short run, the politics of the periphery became intertwined with the politics of the old class parties; the unhappy conjuncture of the devolution referendum in Scotland and widespread strikes by public service trades unions during the Winter of Discontent of early 1979, arguably destroyed Mr Callaghan’s Labour Government. What accounts for the ending, in the mid-1970s of the ‘policy consensus’ which characterised British politics for most of the post-war period? These essays seek to explore the causes, and some of the consequences, of this breakdown. First, we must note the apparent failure of corporatism. Corporatism requires, not merely agreement between government and the national leaderships of business and labour, but the ability of those two estates to deliver the support of their followers. Rod Hague’s

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essay on the trades unions makes clear why corporatism could not succeed in Britain; the structure of the trade unions, their sectional jealousies and traditional animosities, the weakness of the Trades Union Congress and its General Council, meant that the trade union leadership could never be sure either of the support of the national officers of particular trades unions, or of the ordinary membership of the whole movement. The changes in structure which occurred did little to bring order and clarity into the Hobbesian jungle of British trades unionism. Nothing comes more easily to the pen of most commentators on contemporary British politics than criticism of the trades unions. Yet as Grant makes clear, the fragmentation of, and lack of unified and positive purpose shown by the trade unions, are paralleled on the business side. The diversity of motives within the business lobby, the high value put on independence from government, would, even with a radically reformed trade union movement, make the development of Continental-style corporatism unlikely for years to come. A second cause, discussed by James Douglas in his essay on the Conservative party, lay in the intellectual retreat of Keynesianism. Citing Keynes’ own words; ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly supposed’, Douglas lays stress on the doctrinal vacuum which grew as the weaknesses of Keynesian economics became more visible. Douglas refers to another possible cause—changes in the character of political activists and parliamentary candidates, a question discussed at length in Philip Williams’ article on the rise of the Labour Left. Douglas rejects the charge that changing style and opinions amongst Conservative activists account for that party’s swing to the Right but puts some weight on the change of parliamentary personnel—the shift from amateurs to professionals, or in cricketing parlance from gentlemen to players. The growth of the Left in the Parliamentary Labour party is itself, at least partly, a consequence of changes within the constituency parties. Moreover, growing polarisation was self-reinforcing. The Conservative swing to the Right was itself partly a reaction to growing militancy in the Labour party; in turn, the leftward pressures there were given added force by the Conservative abandonment of consensus. A fourth cause is highlighted by Ivor Crewe—the marked rightward turn on some issues by the British electorate, a movement which itself seems to mirror the social changes which have so reduced the core of Labour’s traditional voting strength in the industrial working class. Fear of electoral retaliation if the party moved too far to the Right on economic and welfare issues was a powerful constraint on the Conservative party. That constraint was first eroded, and then dissolved, by the changing chemistry of opinion. Labour’s swing to the Left precipitated the rise of the SDP/Liberal Alliance, described in detail by David Denver. At first, the Alliance seemed to fill the vacuum created by the polarisation of parties. The question arises why the Alliance was not able to translate the mood of the neglected centre amongst the electorate into a force capable of ‘breaking the mould’. The reasons are numerous and complex: inherited family loyalties, deficiencies in communication, the lack of visibility of Alliance leaders—even the fact that on some issues public opinion is not particularly moderate—are all relevant factors, but pride of

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place must be given to the electoral system. If the mould has only cracked, and not broken, the fault lies in the clamp of the electoral system, which, in the allocation of seats virtually disregards, up to a level of nearly a third of the votes, parties with evenly spread support. In all of this, the future of the United Kingdom as a political entity remains in doubt. No one can foresee how the troubles of Northern Ireland, already 15 years old by the time of the 1983 election, will end. Despite the apparent demise of Scottish nationalism as an electoral force, the threat of ultimate separation cannot be dismissed. THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT Political and social change in Britain, during the 1970s and early 1980s was so rapid and in some fields so contradictory in direction, that any essay of a synoptic kind, such as this, is beset by one almost unanswerable question: where do we begin? Changes in the political environment were often sudden, and sometimes not consistent in direction. Inflation, which was less than one per cent in 1959, reached 27 per cent in August 1975 and fell to eight per cent by 1978—a figure which would have been denounced as unacceptably high ten years before. Since then, after hitting 22 per cent in May 1980, it fell rapidly so that by May 1983 it had dropped to 3.7 per cent, the lowest level for 15 years.3 If inflation resembled a switchback, unemployment in contrast was more like an escalator. After 1979, unemployment rose no less quickly than inflation did in the period 1972–75. At the end of 1973 it stood at 2.2 per cent, which was high by post-war standards. Under the Labour Governments of 1974–79, unemployment more than doubled, though when Mr Callaghan left office in May 1979 it was still only 5.2 per cent. By March 1983 unemployment had hit 12.7 per cent.4 What was remarkable was the way in which, after an initial slump in the Conservatives’ standing, unemployment, having risen to a scale once thought to be electorally suicidal, left no apparent imprint on the popularity of the party in power. The rise in unemployment is a reflection of economic decline: revised figures show that gross domestic product fell by 2.5 per cent between 1979 and 1982, and in the latter period industrial output stood below the level attained ten years before. The fall in national income was borne largely by the unemployed; over the whole of the 1979 parliament, average earnings outstripped prices. The real income of those in employment rose sharply in the year before the 1983 election. In the twelve months, April 1982 to April 1983, whilst prices rose by four per cent, average earnings increased by 8.2 per cent, and real take-home pay (i.e. after tax) rose by three per cent.5 The spread of unemployment mirrored an especially severe shrinkage of the manufacturing sector. Some of Britain’s traditional industries, such as steel and textiles, have contracted radically. By the spring of 1983, it was expected that for the first year since the Industrial Revolution, Britain would import more manufactured goods than she exported.6 Such a statistic is not itself evidence of economic deterioration, for new industries such as electronics have been developing whilst others have diminished. However, such a figure, whilst reminding us of the extent to which Britain’s balance of

4 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

payments and living standards have been sustained by North Sea oil, illustrates the changing character of the British economy and of its labour force. For years, the manual working-class element in the labour force has been declining, as a result of economic growth, technological innovation and new forms of consumer demand, whilst the proportion in professional, managerial and clerical posts has increased consistently. Ivor Crewe has shown the way in which changes in the occupational structure have been reinforced by broader social developments such as the rise in home ownership. The manual working class which formed the bedrock of Labour’s traditional support has been shrinking. Simultaneously, the ethnic composition of the British nation has changed. Coloured citizens are estimated to be about two million, out of a total population of nearly 56 million. In the early 1980s, as the first generation of British born children of New Commonwealth immigrants became adult, the full implications of the racial question were not clear. The early political effects of immigration were to the advantage of the Conservatives. By 1970, Labour had come to be seen as ‘soft on immigration’ and although there were signs, in the general election of that year of some mobilisation of coloured voters behind Labour, the issue on balance helped the Conservatives. The admission of Asian refugees from Uganda in 1972 dissipated some of the electoral credit the Tories had obtained and in the mid-1970s the openly racialist National Front began to gain ground in working-class inner-city districts. Since then, Mrs Thatcher’s stand on this question has probably helped to recoup support for the Conservatives, and the National Front, fell back in the 1979 election and, after splitting, again in 1983. Another probable but important effect of coloured settlement was to accelerate the movement of the white middle classes to the suburbs. Meanwhile the immigrant groups became increasingly politically conscious. Surveys in both 1974 and 1979 showed that coloured voters, both West Indian and Asian, but especially the former, were voting overwhelmingly for Labour.7 The coloured population is, apart from stockbrokers and coal miners, the nearest that Britain has to a bloc vote. The recession not surprisingly hit coloured teenagers worst of all. However, although considerable tensions remain and although coloured people were prominent in the inner city disturbances of 1981, the spread of unemployment did not see a return either to the race riots of the late fifties, or to the big demonstrations by white workers which followed Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968. There have been some ugly incidents of racial violence in Britain’s inner city areas, but political violence, almost unknown 25 years ago, has been fed from largely indigenous sources—above all, from the terrorism of the Provisional IRA. The killings in Ulster have been followed by bombings in mainland Britain, aimed both at soldiers and civilians. In Wales, as William Miller shows, the almost inaudible echo, by language enthusiasts, of the tactics used elsewhere eschews violence against people. Political violence, so conspicuous in Ulster, remains, however, relatively unusual in Great Britain. More disturbing here has been the almost continuous growth in violent crime of a non-political kind. The issue has come on to the political agenda, and the rise in crime has led to demands for tougher police action, the response to which has been followed

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 5

by a deterioration in relationships between the police and sections of the public, a worsening situation fed, not surprisingly, by allegations of police corruption. The change in Britain’s international role was inevitable, given the break-up of the empire and the dramatic developments in military technology, but it has been compounded by the country’s relative economic decline. The erosion of Britain’s international importance since 1945 has been almost continuous, punctuated only by assertions of outraged national feeling at Suez and in the Falklands. The country has slowly accommodated itself to the gradual loss of great-power status. The biggest changes have been in Britain’s adhesion to the European Communities in 1973. Membership of the Communities has brought increasing economic integration and a greater degree of political co-operation. There has been some shift in the focus of ministerial and administrative activity, from Whitehall to Brussels, but the notion of a European identity has still to take root amongst the mass public. Support for membership has fluctuated, and after initial unpopularity, it was endorsed by a two to one majority at the referendum. After the referendum, approval fell, with large majorities in opinion surveys wishing to withdraw from the Communities; but in 1983, faced by an explicit pledge from one party, Labour, to rescind membership, feelings seem to have changed, and a Gallup poll on the subject during the election campaign showed that 53 per cent of the population wanted to stay in the EC.8 Support has sometimes been widespread, but never enthusiastic. The Falklands episode was for many a healthy assertion of national power. It united those who believed in the primacy of self-determination and those for whom the vindication of the national honour was the supreme touchstone. It showed that despite a hostile United Nations, an equivocal America, and lukewarm European allies, British armed might was still adequate to repel aggression and expel the aggressors. The episode may have interrupted the country’s process of accommodation to its changed position in the world. If economic expectations are now unrealistically low, belief in British capability abroad may have become implausibly high. The Falklands affair fostered a psychology of illusion, temporary perhaps. It showed resolution and luck in abundance, but hardly judgment. The domestic political consequences were startling. Six months before the Argentine invasion, Mrs Thatcher was trailing in the opinion polls as the most unpopular prime minister ever. Four months before the invasion the Conservative party’s ratings stood at 23 per cent. In July, after the fall of Port Stanley, 52 per cent expressed approval of Mrs Thatcher as prime minister, and 46.5 per cent said they would vote Conservative at an immediate general election.9 The Falklands war was a turning-point. Although the war faded from public consciousness, Mrs Thatcher retained her popularity, with only slight fluctuations, and her party retained its lead. THE POLITICAL CULTURE The most significant change in the British political culture during the last 25 years has perhaps been in popular expectations. In 1959, when Harold Macmillan won a majority of 100 seats, economic expectations appeared to be roughly in line with the country’s physical capability. By the early 1970s, expectations had far outrun national capacity and

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this change in popular psychology seemed to be the central problem of British government. Today, expectations appear no longer excessive. Indeed, as in the 1930s, they seem unrealistically low. It is as though Lord Keynes had never lived. The classic investigation of Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, carried out in 1959– 60 at the height of the Indian summer of the British economy, found a country whose political culture came close to the ideal they stipulated for a successful and stable liberal democracy, with participant attitudes blended with, and contained by, widespread deference.10 Less than 15 years later, Marsh’s survey, conducted early in 1974 during the confrontation between the Heath Government and the miners seemed to reveal ‘a widespread and unsuspected erosion of the authority of the Heath government’.11 ‘Ungovernability’ became a fashionable word amongst political scientists and some commentators foresaw the demise, in Britain, of the liberal democratic regime itself.12 Today an observer might discern not ungovernability but excessive compliance. Rising unemployment, a recession without parallel since the war, helped the government to win nearly all its battles with the trades unions; and, despite that unemployment, the Conservatives won in 1983 with a massive majority. The British polity has been widely admired by many foreign observers as well as by its own citizens. Foreign commentators saw in Britain a country which combined, in unusual synthesis, a capacity for decisive government action exercised through strong executive leadership, with responsiveness to the popular will and respect for individual liberty. ‘Measured by the standards of devotion, absence of violent commotions, maintenance of law and order, general prosperity and contentment of the people’, wrote A.L. Lowell in 1908, ‘the English Government has been one of the most remarkable the world has ever known’.13 It is salutary to recall that these words were written on the eve of some of the most passionate constitutional controversies which have beset Britain since the first major extension of the suffrage in 1832. Later generations of scholars, especially Lowell’s compatriots, many of whom were struck by the facility with which the Labour programme of 1945 was enacted, have been hardly less favourable. In the eyes of such observers, Britain has had a political culture of moderation, one which emphasised and reflected gradual change rather than sudden rupture, and characterised by a basic procedural consensus, which for considerable periods has been a substantive consensus as well. Britain was distinguished by widespread respect for the rule of law, the disavowal of direct action and by a practice of seeking redress, or pursuing change, through constitutional means, especially by the use of the vote. Almond and Verba describe Britain as a Subject Participant culture. Although the obligation to participate was widely shared, the subject role was also heavily endorsed. This widely diffused deference, the willingness to accept the decisions of the governing elite, gave that elite considerable scope.14 In turn, respect for the rule of law and the acceptance of the formula of majority rule rested on a long established sense of nationhood, a sense so secure, so little challenged, that it was hardly necessary to assert it. Already, by the early 1970s there were signs that this political culture, perhaps perceived in a somewhat idealised manner, was changing in various ways. We do not have

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 7

much data for the pre-war or the early post-war periods and so it is not easy to tell whether cynicism about politicians, and the parliamentary system, represents a new development or whether, as seems likely, it has always been present.15 In other areas of the political culture, however, it seemed likely that certain changes were occurring. Thus Marsh found that substantial numbers of citizens were prepared, in defence of their interests, to go beyond the conventional means of constitutional politics. Nearly a quarter were prepared, for example, to take part in rent strikes or unofficial strikes and more than half of those were willing to resort to workplace occupations and the blocking of traffic.16 Marsh argued that, with the attitudes revealed by his survey, the passivity of the working class in face of the depression of the 1920s and 1930s would have been inconceivable. His most significant findings were that this erosion of deference was more marked within the middle class than among the working class, and had occurred quite widely amongst Conservatives. The great divider was neither class nor party affiliation but age, so that a young middle-class Conservative was likely to display more—much more—protest potential than an elderly working-class Labour voter.17 If sustained, this spread of protest potential was fraught with serious implications for the maintenance of a liberal democratic regime. There had already been signs of a willingness to repudiate the rule of law in a number of areas of social life. One example of this was the campaign conducted against the proposed South African cricket tour of 1970 when demonstrators threatened to make the matches unplayable and the government of the day, on the eve of a general election, requested the cricket authorities to cancel the tour. Other examples included the call at the Labour Party Conference in 1973 for a future Labour government to indemnify those local councillors who refused to carry out the legislation of the Conservative parliament.18 Nevertheless, in spite of obvious and important erosions of the political culture of the 1950s, many of the features discussed by Almond and Verba still remained. Thus the emphasis upon procedural, and to some degree substantive, consensus was still to be found amongst the general public and indeed we can discern a general desire (rather more general than when applied to specific issues) for ‘moderate’ government. The changes in the temper of British politics could be observed most starkly amongst activists— not merely political party activists but amongst enthusiasts for various kinds of cause groups, and some trade union militants—much less in the broad mass of the population. Although Marsh’s survey revealed considerable support for direct action to safeguard interests, there were few signs, as the recession spread, apart from the brief outbreaks of violence in inner-city centres in 1981, of a resort to unconventional behaviour; indeed sitins and factory occupations were rare. One of the remarkable features of the recession was the general passivity with which the public reacted. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the changes in the political culture than changing attitudes to the police. Side by side with the deferential attitudes discerned by Almond and Verba went two important features: the belief that citizens possessed a reserve power, to be used if their needs were ignored, or their rights overridden, together with expectations of fair treatment from government officials and the police. Thus Almond and Verba found that 89 per cent of their respondents expected equal treatment from the police, and 83 per cent from the bureaucracy.19 Since then, complaints against the police

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have become much more frequent, especially amongst the young. Thus, in a MORI opinion poll in January 1982, 47 per cent agreed ‘That there are now more policemen who are corrupt than there used to be’, and whilst the police were in general still wellregarded by most of the public, feelings amongst the younger generation were more negative. Only 39 per cent of the youngest respondents replied ‘not at all’ when asked how much they distrusted the police, as against 78 per cent of the over 65s.20 Thus, the political culture seems to have altered in several ways. There was growing doubt about the efficacy of conventional forms of protest, and increasing scepticism, not altogether ill-founded, about the capacity of governments to control events. Relations with the police—the most conspicuous everyday representatives of authority—were worsening amongst the young. Some adverse features, however, are long-standing: politicians are thought to be selfinterested, insulated, unconcerned with the worries of ordinary voters; but even when politicians are regarded as honourable and committed, events are seen as lying outside their influence. Moreover, in the past, cynicism was complemented by widespread deference, and deference carried with it a considerable measure of trust, of belief in the competence and integrity of leaders, and sometimes of the capacity of government to alter things for the better. The new danger is of frustration, of fatalistic but embittered passivity. Secure democracies usually rest on a long-established sense of nationhood; the advent of class politics after 1918 may have divided Britain along an unfamiliar line of cleavage but it also helped to promote the union of the three constituent lands of Britain, in a way Unionism had failed to do. The rise of Scottish and Welsh nationalism in the 1960s caught most people unprepared. The unity of Britain which had hitherto been accepted without challenge, was now seriously questioned for the first time since the First World War. THE BRITISH PARTY SYSTEM In that apparent combination of strong executive leadership and responsive ness to the popular will, the party system played a crucial role. It was the parties that bridged the separation of powers inherent in the distinction between government and parliament, which gave Britain an ‘efficient fusion’ of powers. The character of the parties—their centralised and disciplined structure, their recognised national leadership—made a general election a plebiscite between two alternative programmes and sets of policies. More specifically, British parties were seen as: (i) programmatic, (ii) centralised, (iii) disciplined, and (iv) headed by a recognised national leader, who was either prime minister, or the alternative prime minister. The programmatic nature of British parties does not depend solely upon the character of the election documents which they publish. What makes a programmatic party is, inter alia, its ability to implement its programme through a disciplined parliamentary party, under a powerful national leadership. Again, the contrast is drawn either implicitly or explicitly, with the United States. British parties were seen as unified and centralised. The Democratic party in Michigan was for years a very different body from the Democratic party in Mississippi whereas the

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Labour party in Scotland was recognisably the same party as the Labour party in South East England or the West Midlands. Most observers ignored the blatant differences between the Ulster Unionists and the Conservative party in England. In the House of Commons each of the two major parties behaved as a cohesive, disciplined bloc. One party could normally count on having an overall majority and its general election programme was implemented through the medium of a united and loyal parliamentary party. It was rare for Members to cast a vote dissenting from the majority of their party, so rare that when it occurred it was almost a matter for newspaper comment. In addition, each major party was headed by a recognised national leader, who possessed considerable authority over his own party. Again, commentators drew the contrast with the United States where one party has at best a titular leader, and where even the leader of the successful party, occupying the presidency, is unable to mobilise the party across the nation behind his banner, and is often unable to impose unity upon his nominal supporters in the Congress. Finally, Britain had a two-party system. The two-party system was reflected both at legislative and at constituency level. In Parliament, the two major parties held the overwhelming majority of seats—all but six in the Parliament of 625 elected in 1955 and all but seven in the Parliament elected in 1959. There was also however a two party system at constituency level giving the voter an effective choice, in all but a handful of constituencies, between the two major parties. So in 1955 Labour and Conservative occupied first and second places in no fewer than 605 of the 618 constituencies in Great Britain and 590 in 1959.21 These nationally organised parties elicited a single national response from the electors. In an election campaign the swing from one party to another was very much the same in Sussex as it was in Durham. There were no special local or regional factors which interfered with a simple nationwide expression of support for one or other of the two main parties.22 Class Parties The two main parties were also based, it seemed, on clear-cut class traditions, their arguments concerned chiefly with the distribution of material goods. ‘Class’, wrote Peter Pulzer in 1967, ‘is the basis of British party politics; all else is mere embellishment and detail’.23 The Labour party rested on the support of about two-thirds of the manual working-class and the Conservatives on between three-quarters and four-fifths of the middle class. In Parliament, these differences were reflected, though less sharply, in the composition of the two parliamentary parties. The Conservative party was overwhelmingly dominated by representatives of the upper middle classes, its members drawn heavily from business and the professions and educated at elite schools and universities. The Labour party boasted a considerable if declining working-class element in its composition, with many Labour MPs linked formally to the trade unions. British politics revolved around the themes of material betterment—the rate of taxation, the standard of living, the health of the economy, the level and quality of social services.

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Linguistic, ethnic, regional and religious differences seemed unimportant. Survivals of this kind from an earlier era certainly introduced an element of complexity and diversity into accounts of party evolution, or electoral support, but in most accounts, the primary emphasis was upon the role of the class cleavage. The long past history of conflict between centre and periphery, on which the party system had rested for 40 years and indeed even longer, before 1922, was played down or ignored almost as a historical aberration. The clichés used to describe the political parties in the 1950s sounded dated or even obsolete 30 years later. The Parties and the Location of Power The greatest contrasts lie in the change in the location of power within the two parties, and in the fluidity, and indeed, unpredictability of power relationships at leadership level. Robert McKenzie’s classic work British Political Parties, first published in 1955, argued that despite the apparent differences in the constitutions of the two major parties, the distribution of power within each party was overwhelmingly similar.24 McKenzie identified in each party a parliamentary leadership, sustained by its parliamentary supporters, which had effectively subordinated the extra-parliamentary organisation of the parties. In McKenzie’s model these different elements acted in concert. The mechanisms by which this was achieved differed in the two parties. Thus deference played a much greater part in the Conservative party than in the Labour party. The Labour party’s co-ordination depended upon the informal alliance of the parliament ary leaders with the leaders of the big trade unions. Through this alliance the Labour Party Conference, and the organ of conference, the National Executive Committee, could be relied upon to ratify the decisions of the parliamentary leadership. Thus the demands of legitimacy imposed by the Labour party constitution could be met without seriously weakening the power of the parliamentary leaders. In the last 20 years this automatic concert has broken down with Labour and to a lesser extent, following the changes in the method of choosing the party leader, with the Conservatives. Partly as a result of this breakdown, the two main parties have increasingly polarised. In both parties, the major changes have lain in the mechanism of electing the party leader, and in the Labour party in the new reselection procedure for parliamentary candidates. The changes in the Labour party have coincided with the influx of an apparently new type of party activist, passionately committed to the achievement of the party’s socialist vision. Before 1970, and certainly before 1966, there was a concentration of power within each party. This concentration, among other things, made the behaviour of the parties much more predictable. The disruption on the Labour side which has occurred in the last 20 years has put question marks over the behaviour of the party in the short-term, and its future evolution. The selection procedure for parliamentary candidates has long been a loaded gun at the disposal of the party activists, which has, however, lain unused and indeed barely threatened, on the shelf. The power to nominate candidates for parliament makes the

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 11

activists the ultimate arbiters of the composition of the parliamentary parties and hence the parliamentary leadership. This power, vast in its implications, has lain largely untouched for decades. Once a candidate had been chosen and had fought and won an election the whole weight of custom and inertia tended to favour his or her automatic reselection. This meant, in practice, that the political balance within each parliamentary party, insofar as it changed at all, changed slowly. There were signs, however, in the early 1970s of activists taking an increasing interest in the behaviour, and particularly in the policy stances, of their MPs. Eventually, after the long campaign described in Philip Williams’ article, the Labour party constitution was changed to provide for mandatory reselection. This meant that it would now be much easier for a constituency party to disavow an MP whose attitudes were unsatisfactory. The first round of reselection i.e. that taking place within the life of the 1979 parliament, did not result in the great purge some people feared, though there were a number of casualties and there would, but for the defections to the SDP, have been more. The importance of reselection lies not so much in its immediate effect on the composition of the parliamentary party as in its potential for the future in the opportunity it gives to constituency activists to exert pressure upon and if need be to replace their MPs. In addition, there is evidence that, quite apart from reselection, constituency parties have tended to replace retiring Labour MPs with candidates well to their Left. The second innovation lies in the new method of choosing the party leader. In the long run, with the steady change in the composition of the Parliamentary Labour Party, there was the likelihood, even had the choice remained with that body, that the candidate chosen would be drawn from the Left. The alteration in the method of choosing the leader has accelerated this development, and at the same time introduced new rigidities. Under the old formula the constituency parties were represented, only indirectly, through the votes of Labour MPs, and the likelihood was that this influence was not merely muffled but slight. The election in 1981 for the deputy leadership of the Labour party showed the strength of the Left in the constituency parties and, as Philip Williams shows, potentially, through pressure on MPs, the voice of the constituency parties may be felt by 60 per cent, rather than 30 per cent of the electoral college. However, the adoption of ballots on ‘One Member, One Vote’ in the 1983 contests has demonstrated that the implications of the new method for the party’s future leadership are still in doubt. In the 1970s, the PLP’s claim to autonomy, and the effective veto exercised by the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party upon the contents of the election manifesto, helped to contain left-wing pressure, fed through the national executive committee and by victories at Conference. Now, though we cannot be sure of the outcome, the new way of choosing the leader increases the likelihood that the decisions of Conference will be pressed through the mechanisms of the parliamentary party and its leadership. The rules do provide that when Labour is in government there will be no annual election for a leader, unless Conference decides by a majority vote to hold one; however, this latter provision would leave a Labour prime minister highly exposed to pressures from Conference and from its constituent elements such as the trade unions. Within the Conservative party the formal relationship between the extra-parliamentary organs of the Conservative party and the parliamentary party has not been altered. The

12 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

crucial formal change has occurred within the parliamentary party. Until 1965, when a Conservative leader died, or retired from office, his successor was chosen by what were called ‘the customary processes of consultation’ a process which effectively increased the power of the hierarchical elements within the Conservative parliamentary party. Although soundings were taken amongst Conservative backbenchers no figures were ever given of the distribution of support for various candidates and this absence of information must in itself have increased the strength of the party’s Establishment. The most notorious recent example occurred in 1963, when Mr Harold Macmillan resigned, and the ‘magic circle’ chose Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, to succeed him. Another, less clear-cut instance followed the resignation, as Prime Minister, of Sir Anthony Eden in 1957.25 Margaret Thatcher, in contrast, owed her appointment to a formal election in which it is believed very few of the old parliamentary Consultative Committee (the Shadow Cabinet) had voted for her. In 1965, the Conservative party had decided to choose its leader by a formal election, with somewhat complex rules in which the electors were the Conservative Members of Parliament. Moreover, the rules, as revised in 1974/5, provide that the mass party is to be consulted though given no authoritative voice and prescribe that the leader must submit him or herself to annual re-election.26 The effect of the new procedure was greatly to increase the dependence of the leader, and any potential leaders of the party, upon rank-and-file Conservative MPs. In the past, the opinions of Conservative MPs were weighted informally according to the apparent importance and standing of the Member. In a formal election, each Member counts for one, regardless of his status within the party and this method, as the selection of Margaret Thatcher showed, greatly diminishes the strength of the party’s elite. The effects of the Labour party’s new rules are likely to have been further complicated by the adoption of new Standing Orders by the Parliamentary Labour Party. The new Standing Orders of the parliamentary party provide that an incoming Labour prime minister must choose his Cabinet from those who held office in the Parliamentary Committee (elected by Labour MPs) immediately before the dissolution of Parliament. Moreover, the Labour Cabinet has to be presented to, and approved by, the parliamentary party together with a list of all the appointments to junior office. Naturally, we have no means of testing how these provisions will work in practice but the obvious result is that they will considerably diminish the powers of the Labour leader in relation to his parliamentary colleagues. It has been observed that the rule that the leader must include the members of the outgoing Parliamentary Committee within his Cabinet is likely to strengthen the ability of those members to insist on the allocation of particular offices. There are two important variables which relate to the location of power in a parliamentary party: the first, to the distribution of power between the elements of the parliamentary party and the second to that between the parliamentary party as a whole and the party outside Parliament. First, are the internal relationships hierarchical or collegial? Do members all enjoy, at least nominally, the same status and rights or are some accorded higher standing and privileges than others? Secondly, how much autonomy does the parliamentary party have? To what extent is it subject to external inteference and control?

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 13

FIGURE1

Internal relationships would, of course, be irrelevant if external control were absolute. However, the hierarchical/collegial distinction will be important insofar as a parliamentary party enjoys any significant latitude. Figure 1 puts this typology in diagrammatic form: In principle, the Conservative Parliamentary Party was an autonomous body operating in a strongly hierarchical way. The Parliamentary Labour Party on the other hand, although in the past largely autonomous was nominally collegial, though in practice because of the primacy attached to the premiership, there were important hierarchical elements. The Conservative Parliamentary Party remains highly autonomous, but has shifted towards a more collegial nature. The Parliamentary Labour Party has moved in two ways —both towards greater external control, and towards greater collegiality. Individual Labour MPs count for more, in decision-taking, within a parliamentary party whose scope has been significantly reduced. The changes in the Standing Orders of the Parliamentary Labour Party are potentially of great significance. The patronage of the party leader will be severely qualified. He must appoint to his Cabinet, inter alia, the elected members of the old parliamentary committee, and he must present his full Cabinet, and all nominations to junior office, to the parliamentary party for their approval.27 How obtrusive that scrutiny would be, in practice, is not clear, but the limitations on the leader’s power are serious. He will retain some patronage through his right to appoint additional members of the Cabinet and the power to nominate is in itself considerable. He will, however, be far weaker both as Opposition leader and as prime minister than any previous Labour leader since 1922. These restrictions on the party leader’s prerogatives may have come too late to be of any practical importance. The effects of the change in the Conservative party, are easier to assess. It is, as Douglas implies, the direct dependence of the leader on backbench support

14 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

which helps to account for the emergence of Mrs Thatcher and for the swing to the Right in the evolution of its policy. However, it must be borne in mind that Mrs Thatcher’s election as leader was in a sense accidental. Her candidature was supported by some MPs, not to install her as party leader, but to overthrow Mr Heath and to replace him with another candidate.28 Nevertheless, it is notable that on the only two occasions in which the backbenchers have had the opportunity to choose directly the leader of their party they have voted for the more partisan, the more abrasive and in a sense the more extreme, candidate. The other change lies in the much greater degree of control and scrutiny which the party outside parliament now exerts upon the Parliamentary Labour Party. Here, as Philip Williams describes, the sources both of the new constitutional relationship, and the control itself, lie in the change in the type of activist running the constituency Labour parties; this feature, coupled with a long-term swing to the Left in the trade unions and the passing of a generation of trade union leaders, has greatly increased the strength of the Left within the party, though it would be an exaggeration to say that the Left now controls the party. Lack of space prevents discussion of the decline of party discipline in Parliament, so meticulously recorded by Philip Norton.29 In both parties, rebellion in the division-lobbies has become more common; to an increasing extent Members of Parliament have been prepared to vote against the advice of their leaders. The greater freedom shown by ordinary MPs reflects what seems to be a new mood and temper amongst Members, and the coming to the House of a new type of MP. An important distinction must be made about the nature of the control imposed upon Members. Generally, pressure has in the past been applied by the parliamentary leadership upon individual MPs. The shift in the locus of power in the Labour party has brought with it the prospect of the party outside Parliament exercising collective control over the Parliamentary Labour Party. A new important breach with the past practice of the constitution is in the offing. What comparable changes have there been in the Conservative party? Is a new breed of activist to be found there? Did the parliamentary party which elected Margaret Thatcher as leader already bear the imprint of such an influx? Will the new recruits of 1983 be more right-wing than their predecessors? We have, alas, very little information about changes in the character of Conservative activists. This area of study must surely be high on the agenda of British political science. The potential importance of these changes for the working of the formal institutions is considerable, and if the Labour party survives as a party of government, far-reaching. Meanwhile, the change in the balance of the parties, and in the nature of the dominant party, may herald profound changes in the relationship between government and extraparliamentary interest groups. IDEOLOGY, BUSINESS AND ORGANISED LABOUR The triumph of the new individualism and its endorsement by the electorate has meant a growing change in the relationship between government and pressue groups. By its nature, however congenial laissez-faire is to the general aims of the business lobby, it must

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 15

resist particular demands for favoured treatment and special exemptions. The government’s economic policy has, as Wyn Grant describes, often aroused anguished complaint from business: ‘Nineteenth-century liberalism has little time for representative organizations which frustrate the operations of the market’. The Thatcher Government, in its first term of office was ‘the most politically autonomous Government of the post-war period’. There has been no parallel situation on Labour’s side. The logic of socialism, as distinct from that of interventionism, demands an autonomous government as much as does the logic of laissez-faire; however, to adapt Disraeli’s phrase, we are not governed by logic, but by the electorate. Labour has not been able in government to establish its independence of the trade unions. When in 1969, the Wilson Government tried to introduce legislation limiting the power of the trade unions, it failed, arousing bitter hostility throughout the party. Nor, until the recession, and the return of mass unemployment, could the Conservatives contain the power of the trade unions to raise money incomes ahead of productivity. Both in its general trade union legislation and in its dealings with specific groups of workers, the Thatcher Government has practised salami tactics. Whilst never losing sight of its ultimate goal, it has shown a pragmatic responsiveness, always willing to retreat for the time being (as over the closure of coal mines in 1981), though ready for the next move forward when the opportunity comes.30 As Rod Hague shows, legislation to reduce the legal privileges of trades unions has come in instalments. The combination of the recession, and the new and developing legal framework, has left the trade unions weaker than at any time since the War. In reacting to the problems of particular industries, such as steel and motor cars, the government has often shrunk from pressing the full logic of its belief in self-help. Thus British Leyland, whose collapse might have led to severe and adverse electoral repercussions in the Midlands, was given large-scale government aid. The steel plant at Ravenscraig in Scotland was likewise spared, despite a recommendation from the Chairman of British Steel that it should be closed.31 When the question of closing uneconomic coal mines was first broached early in 1981, the Government gave way in humiliating fashion to the threats of the National Union of Mineworkers—but since then some pit closures have occurred and the whole question was put back on the political agenda. Plans made by the National Coal Board, disclosed soon after the 1983 General Election, envisaged the loss of 60,000 to 70,000 jobs—or about a quarter of the work force.32 James Douglas, in his essay on the Conservative party, offers a Downsian explanation of the long period of post-war consensus between the parties. Butler and Stokes have shown, as Douglas acknowledges, how the electorate responded more to ‘valence’ issues than to ‘position’ issues.33 Electors tended to cast their votes according to how well, in their judgment, the parties had managed the economy, and how well they would do so in the future. Thus, empirically, the electoral ‘centre ground’ was not the same as the ideological centre. Voters were concerned about inflation, unemployment and livingstandards. This concern with short-term material well-being made the parties unduly sensitive to the claims of strategically-located producer groups, whether their location

16 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

was industrial or geographic. The arguably admirable ideological moderation of the two parties went hand in hand with a craven attitude to the claims of the interest groups. The responsiveness of governments to the threat of strikes, or other forms of withdrawal of services, derived from the fear of the loss of crucial votes to the Opposition at the next general election—a loss which would be magnified by the electoral system by a factor of two or three when translated into parliamentary seats. The willingness of governments to preserve uncompetitive industries derived from the fear of a local, or regional, backlash leading similarly to the loss of precious seats. Such fears, in turn, were based on a very even division of popular support for the two main parties. A small nationwide swing—or even a larger swing located primarily in two regions, as in February 1974—would destroy the government and put the Opposition in power. The one thing that the ‘Single Member, Simple Plurality’ formula did not do was to provide strong government or stable policies. Governments could, at least until the 1970s, win nearly all their battles in the division-lobbies—only to lose in their struggles with the extra-parliamentary interest groups. One of the chief features of a competitive two-party system lies in the alternation of power between the two parties. Paradoxically that feature, proclaimed as a prominent merit of the system, is inconsistent with the other alleged virtue—strong government. It is the prospect of the alternation of power which makes governments so sensitive to the demands of the interest groups. By implication, if not explicitly, Mrs Thatcher and her friends have stigmatised the governments of the period from 1950 to 1979, whether Conservative or Labour, as weak—governments which derived from the Single Member, Simple Plurality system. In an era of competitive parties, when the difference between the popular vote of the two main parties was rarely more than five per cent, political leaders were acutely vulnerable to any threatened withdrawal of support, whether the threat came from some geographically concentrated group such as automobile workers, or from electors expressing a more widely diffused discontent at the government’s failure to increase living standards or to hold down inflation. The 1983 election seems, at least for the time being, to have undermined the old balance between the parties. Is the Thatcher government of 1983 free from the need, which has dogged every other administration since 1950, to maximise its electoral chances by systematic appeasement of producer groups? Labour and the Alliance have far to go to overturn the Conservative majority; but it is also true that the potential for rapid oscillations of support is now large, and increasing. Mrs Thatcher is likely to interpret any mid-term setbacks stoically, but it is hard to predict the reaction of her parliamentary party, if the pattern of 1981–82, described by David Denver, should reassert itself. The most that can be said is that the electoral context, looked at on the surface, has rarely been so congenial to ‘strong government’. It would be rash, however, to say that the competitive party system is dead, or that the Conservative party will be the dominant party for years to come. The party system is highly unstable; and there could be no better recipe for party instability than a combination of electoral de-alignment and the Single Member, Simple Plurality formula.

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 17

CENTRE AND PERIPHERY, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT— CENTRAL GOVERNMENT RELATIONS Between 1885 and 1922 the parties were essentially organised on a centre-periphery axis. At this time, the Conservative party—or the Unionist party as it became called after the alliance with the Liberal Unionists—corresponded closely to Lipset and Rokkan’s ‘nation builders’ whilst the Liberal party, in alliance with the Irish Nationalists, represented the forces of the periphery 34 With the rise of class politics, and the collapse of the old Liberal party after the First World War, the centre-periphery cleavage in British politics seemed to disappear. Effectively, periphery feeling was canalised behind the Labour party which in the 1920s and the early 1930s still retained some nostalgic sympathy for home rule for the peripheral territories. Increasingly, however, the Labour party became committed to policies of national planning and centralised control.35 There was, therefore, a paradox in that the Labour party, the legatee of the traditional periphery support of the Liberals was in practice the party most committed to centralisation. The Conservatives under Mr Heath dallied briefly with devolution. The party reasserted its Unionist identity with Mrs Thatcher’s rise to the party leadership. Unionism is one thing, centralisation another. Much more surprising has been the party’s commitment to the emasculation of local government, a movement described in such cogent detail in the article of Newton and Goldsmith and, it is clear from the Conservative Manifesto of 1983 and statements in the 1983 campaign, one which is to be continued. The paradox of Labour, heir to the Liberals as the party of the periphery, moving further and further towards centralisation, has already been mentioned. Recent years have seen a new paradox —a party committed to the free market, asserting individualist doctrine and the right of free choice, protesting against collectivist centralisation, now bent on the subordination and enfeeblement of local government. Mr Tom King’s extraordinary pledge that the rates of high-spending local authorities would be determined by Parliament represents the triumph of centralising individualism.36 ‘You may have any colour you like, so long as it is blue’ is the Conservative party’s message to the local electorate. The attitude of the new Conservatism to local government reflects two distinct strands. First, it is a concomitant of the free market economic policy. A school of thought within the Fabian Left has often emphasised that coherent economic planning requires a high measure of territorial centralisation and functional concentration in the organs of government. A genuinely independent system of local government makes it hard to plan, and hard to level out inequalities in social service provision. The scope of local government has to be contained, and the nature of decisions controlled, within the boundaries set by the needs of collectivist planning. What is now clear is that the Conservative administration cannot allow the working of the free market to be impeded or distorted by collective decisions taken at the local tier of government. Individualism is as inimical as are some forms of collectivism to a vital, local democracy. It is wrong to assume that the Conservatives have abdicated responsibility for national economic goals. The free market is a mechanism, not an end in itself. The suppression of inflation, and an improvement in British industrial competitiveness are the two prime and linked aims of national economic policy. The achievement of these goals, through the market, requires

18 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

as much concentration of governmental power at the centre as does collectivist intervention, even though the sum total of that power will be smaller than before. The government may be laissez-faire in method, but the purpose of that method is to achieve certain collective ends. This neo-liberal strain in modern Conservatism derives from utilitarianism, not natural rights; its prophet is Bentham, not Paine. The second strand is grounded in belief in individual rights and embodies the view that local, collective decision-making is, over a wide area, redundant. Men are free to choose as individual consumers, and the existence of local authorities with their power to choose and to compel, limits that freedom. What has been happening reflects the long-standing tension between individual liberty (the ‘negative freedom’ of Berlin and Hayek) and majority rule. Participation occurs through the free market, not through local elections. The new populist Conservatism seeks to limit, not merely the centralised state, but state power at all levels, with control over what remains heavily concentrated within the central executive. The results of the 1983 general election, with the further decline in the nationalist vote, presumably mean that separatist feeling in Scotland is now channelled through the Labour party. The disparity between representation in England and Scotland has never, in this century, been so stark. The Conservatives hold 362 out of the 523 seats in England— in Scotland only 21 out of 72, and only 28 per cent of the votes cast. The developments foreseen by William Miller in the direction of Scottish Labour demanding some kind of autonomy for Scotland are already taking place, with Scottish Labour MPs calling for Home Rule.37 Elsewhere, Michael Keating has foreshadowed a more dramatic script.38 Two defeats in succession for British Labour will increase the temptation for the Scottish Labour party to ‘go it alone’, demanding much greater autonomy and offering a programme which is both socialist and nationalist. Calculations of party advantage, Keating suggests, might persuade the Conservative majority at Westminster to accede to such demands. ‘Let my people go’ might appeal to a Conservative pharaoh, glad to seize the chance of further diminishing the likelihood of a Labour majority in the United Kingdom. It seems more probable, however, that the joint influence of traditional unionism and individualist centralism will for the next few years bar the road to Scottish Home Rule, whether moderate or radical in form. For the longer-term, the possible transformation of the Scottish Labour party offers the prospect of renewed centreperiphery tension. From such a standpoint the most important development in Scottish politics in the last 20 years has not been the rise and fall of the SNP but the collapse of the Conservatives in Scotland, and of Labour in England. Scotland, like Northern Ireland, seems after 1983 to have a distinctive party political system. Labour is the largest single party, whilst the Scottish Conservatives are almost as weak as Labour is in England. The Alliance, as in England, lies a close third. The incentive for Labour, urged on by the fear of a revived Scottish National Party, will be to press the cause of Home Rule. Such a course would surely add to the tensions within the British Labour party, and, on a wider stage within Britain, re-open the debate about devolution.

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 19

THE ELECTORATE, ELECTORAL GEOGRAPHY AND THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM Future historians may well regard the election of 1983 as a turning point in British political development, not because of the apparent landslide to the Conservatives but because of the way the political map of Britain has been re-drawn. Who came second most often may well be the most important question to pose. Whilst, on the surface the two-party system seems to have been at most dented—the Conservative and Labour parties hold 606 of the 650 seats—at the constituency level it has been broken, at least temporarily. The SDP/ Liberal Alliance won 23 seats in Great Britain but came second in 312 constituencies- more than half the remainder. Labour came first in 209, and second in 132, but third (or worse) in 292 constituencies—nearly half of all seats in Great Britain. In half of the country, the battle remains one between Conservatives and Labour; but over most of suburban and rural Britain the real fight may be between the Alliance and Conservatives. The new, triangular pattern of electoral forces could well transform the nature of future election campaigns. Unless the Labour party revives, the Conservatives will confront the Alliance over half the country and Labour over the other half. Over the whole of southern England, outside Greater London, Labour won only two seats out of 153, and came second in only 18.39 Indeed, Britain now has two parallel party systems. The Alliance may not yet have replaced Labour as the alternative party of government, but over half the country it has displaced Labour as the party of Opposition. The election result has thrown the question of the electoral system into the political arena. Labour’s 209 seats rest on the support of 27.6 per cent of those who voted, the 23 Alliance MPs on that of 25.4 per cent. A comparison of votes cast, and seats won, in England, shows the under-representation of the Alliance even more starkly: TABLE 1 GENERAL ELECTION 1983: VOTES AND SEATS IN ENGLAND

The British electoral system is capable of many anomalies but never since the war, perhaps not even this century, has it engineered such a manifest disparity between popular support and parliamentary representation. The British electoral system rewards parties with concentrated support (at any rate down to a certain threshold) and penalises (again up to a certain threshold) those whose backing is widely spread. Geographic propinquity carries with it disproportionate political benefits. The system magnifies the representation of parties whose clientele have some attribute related to residence—class, ethnicity, language, religion—and diminishes, often to a fraction, that of parties whose voters are distinguished by no such hallmark.

20 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

The extraordinarily even way in which the Alliance drew support across every social group, noted by Denver, is the source of the grotesque under-representation of the Alliance. Parties which draw their support from a national cross-section are acutely handicapped by the British rules of the game. Labour, not much less of a minority than the Alliance, has benefited because its vote is so highly concentrated. In 1935, with 38 per cent of the vote Labour elected no more than 154 MPs; in 1983, with less than 28 per cent, it won 209 seats.40 To put things another way, Labour did much better than the Alliance in terms of seats because it lost so many more deposits (the deposit is a sum of £150 put down by each candidate which is forfeited by any candidate who fails to poll one-eighth of the total votes cast in his constituency). Labour lost 119, the Alliance 11. Moreover, in contrast to its prospects under proportional representation the present electoral mechanism gives Labour the hope, however distant, of an overall parliamentary majority. The Alliance will have an obvious benefit from electoral reform. The Labour party has little; because of the distribution of its support, it has obtained more seats than its 27 per cent of the vote would warrant, if strict proportionality were to apply, and more indeed than it would have been likely to win, under the Single Member Simple Plurality system at the early post-war elections. It is less easy to understand the complacency of the Conservatives. Because their support is less concentrated than Labour’s they are likely to suffer more if their vote should fall in the way and to the level Labour’s did. In December 1981, the Gallup poll showed Labour at 23.5 per cent, and the Conservatives at 23 per cent.41 The Conservatives recovered, almost to their 1979 figure whilst Labour could add only another four per cent. The possibility of the Conservatives sinking to the mid or high twenties cannot, therefore, be ruled out as simply a psephological nightmare. If Conservative support were to fall so low, the toll in seats would be horrendous. Thus with 27 per cent support, and the Alliance at 41 per cent, the Conservatives would be reduced to 50 seats. At the 25 per cent level, and with the Alliance at 43 per cent, the party would return no more than 19 MPs. The British electoral system is severe in the penalties it imposes upon parties with evenly spread support, whose total vote falls below a critical level.42 What likelihood is there of Labour recovering well enough to become a credible contender for power again? The task is not impossible but is numbing in its scale. To win an absolute majority, Labour needs to hold every seat which it won in 1983 and to gain almost every constituency in which it ran second. For every one of these latter seats it fails to win, it must leapfrog from third to first place somewhere else. A swing of 13 per cent, a movement of votes which has never occurred between two successive elections since the war, in the seats in which it ran second would give Labour a small absolute majority. A uniform swing of just over 11 per cent, which would enable it to pick up some seats in which it ran third in 1983 would give a similar result. The Alliance would become the largest single party with a swing of a little over 11 per cent from the Conservatives coupled with tactical voting by electors who voted Labour in 1983 in seats where Labour ran third. If we assume that the Alliance gains half the Labour vote in such seats (down to an irreducible bedrock of 5 per cent for Labour) and achieves an 11 per cent swing from the Conservatives, it would have 239 seats to Labour’s 241, assuming no other changes. Even allowing for Labour also gaining somewhat from a squeeze

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 21

on third party voters in an election in which the main swing was to Labour, it is still fair to say on these simple criteria that the chances of the Alliance being the largest single party in the next Parliament are almost as high of Labour’s forming a majority government. Such a judgment takes no benefit from the kinds of strategic mistakes that Labour, on current form, may well make. What took 60 years to build up has been pulled down in a decade. LABOUR AND THE ALLIANCE Labour’s problems, however, do not end with its devastating defeat of 1983. Philip Williams has described the new constitutional mechanisms, which seem almost designed to subject the party to the maximum of public discord. Nevertheless, tempting though it may be to call Labour its own worst enemy, Conservative plans for trade union reform are likely to inflict considerable damage upon the party. The proposal to alter the rules under which trade unionists pay the political levy, if implemented, would have a serious effect on the party’s finances, already under severe strain. Much more important is the suggestion that unions with a political fund should hold periodic ballots to determine whether the fund should be maintained at all. The potential implications of such a change are vast. There is, if such a proposal becomes law, the possibility and, perhaps the likelihood, of widespread disaffiliation of trade unions from the party with incalculable consequences for the Left-Right balance within the party and for the party’s continued political stability. There seem indeed to be only two valid reasons left for continuing to treat Labour as a major party. One is that the funeral rites of the party have been pronounced so often that a further burial service seems, on the basis of experience, to be premature. The second, more cogent, ground lies in the electoral system. Labour’s chances of forming another government are not great; the chances, given the working of the electoral system and the concentration of Labour support, of the party’s being wiped out are, however, even more remote. It is the Conservatives, much more than Labour, whose existence as a substantial parliamentary force is at risk under the present electoral regime. At first sight, the future of the Alliance seems bound up with Labour’s future. What is bad for Labour, the reasoning goes, must be good for the Alliance. The strains in the formation of the Alliance, described by David Denver, never effectively hidden, will not be easily dispelled. However, sheer self-interest is likely to bind the Liberals and the SDP even more closely together. For the two parties to fight each other at elections is so obviously suicidal that it seems hard to envisage the Alliance being disbanded. The possible continuation of Labour’s travail must surely too, give adequate incentive to the SDP leaders to maintain their organisation, which as Denver shows, has already brought so many novel features into national and local party structure. However, the Alliance’s horizons are not bounded by Labour’s troubles. Past Liberal resurgences have occurred during periods of Conservative government and a period of prolonged Conservative unpopularity would enable the Alliance to bite deep into the Conservative vote. Since the war, each wave of multi-partyism in England, as Denver indicates, has lasted longer, and mobilised more voters, than the preceding surge. Perhaps Conservatives should ponder the words of Hecate:

22 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

As you all know, security Is mortals’ chiefest enemy. The very mechanism that gave the Conservatives such an exaggerated majority in 1983, and rewarded the Alliance with such a pitiful number of seats could visit the Conservatives, if popular support drops heavily, not with mere defeat but with electoral catastrophe. THE PARADOXES OF CONTEMPORARY BRITISH POLITICS What these essays reveal is a series of paradoxes. The Labour party, which might, on demographic grounds alone, have become the natural majority party of Britain is now struggling hard to survive as a national party of government. The same social changes which have, it seems, nurtured the new class of activist which has taken over the party in the constituencies have made it hard for the party’s leaders to mobilise an electoral majority. The Labour party’s one hope of surviving as a party of government, and indeed of perhaps outliving the Conservative party, rests on an electoral system which the Conservative leadership is committed to retain. As the leadership of the Conservative party becomes less patrician and more meritocratic, and as class identity declines in the wider society, so the party—and in a sense the country —swings sharply to the Right. A party standing for individualism becomes the most centralising government in modern history; a party claiming to stand above all else, for national unity may provoke, if only passively and by accident, the disintegration of the United Kingdom; a party which claims to stand for no class, maintains an electoral mechanism which preserves class politics; and a party whose signal achievement has been to lower the level of material expectations at home, fosters illusions amongst its people about Britain’s strength abroad. Above all, we have a Conservative party whose very iconoclasm has changed the agenda of British politics. NOTES 1. For a stimulating discussion of Adversary and Consensus Politics with a different spirit and conclusion, from these comments see R.Rose Do Parties Make a Difference? (London: Macmillan, 1980). 2. R.T.McKenzie British Political Parties (1st Edn.), (London: Heinemann 1955), p.586. 3. For monthly figures of the retail price index, see Department of Employment Gazette Jan. 1976 for Aug. 1975 figure, Jan. 1979 for 1978 figure, June 1980 for May 1980 figure, Dec. 1960 for 1959 figure. 4. Figures for 1973 and 1979 from Department of Employment Gazette, Jan. 1983. Figures for March 1983 from Department of Employment Gazette, April 1983. All figures are seasonally adjusted, exclude school leavers, and are for the UK as a whole. They are calculated on the

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS: INTRODUCTION 23

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

new basis which recognises only those claiming unemployment benefit. On the old basis the figure for 1983 would be about 0.4 per cent higher. For earlier indices of gross domestic product, see Economic Trends, Dec. 1982 and for Industrial Production indices see July 1977, and Dec. 1982, and for revised figures, The Times, 21 Sept. 1982. For average earnings, see Department of Employment Gazette, Dec. 1982 and, for 1983, The Times, 30 June 1983. The Times, 28 May 1983. See Community Relations Commission, Participation of Ethnic Minorities in the General Election of October 1974 (London: Community Relations Commission, 1975) and M. Anwar, Votes and Policies: Ethnic Minorities and the General Election 1979 (London: Commission for Racial Equality, 1980). Daily Telegraph, 6 June 1983. Reported in Political Companion, Nos.32 and 33 and Gallup Political Index, July 1982. G.A.Almond and S.Verba The Civic Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963) A.Marsh, private lecture, and Protest and Political Consciousness (Beverley Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1977). The best single source book for the ‘ungovernability’ debate is A.King (ed.), Why is Britain Becoming Harder to Govern? (London: BBC Publications 1976). A.L.Lowell, The Government of England (New York: Macmillan, 1908), Vol. 1, p.v. Almond and Verba, op. cit. See the chapter by Dennis Kavanagh in G.Almond and S.Verba (eds.), The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). Marsh, op. cit., ch. 2. Ibid. ch. 4; the reference to the passivity of the working class is from a private lecture. Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1973, pp. 207–20 and Appendix 4, p. 362. Almond and Verba, op. cit., p. 108. MORI Report, No. 1, January 1982. F.W.S.Craig, British Electoral Facts 1832–1980 (4th edition), (Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services, 1981). See D.E.Butler The British General Election of l951 (London: Macmillan, 1952), ch. x and Appendix and The British General Election of 1955 (London: Macmillan, 1955) Appendix I. P.G.J.Pulzer Political Representation and Elections (3rd Edition), (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), ch. 4. McKenzie, op. cit. See L.Minkin The Labour Party Conference (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978) for a brilliant critique of McKenzie. See Randolph Churchill, The Fight for the Tory Leadership (London: Heinemann, 1964) and for the emergence of Harold Macmillan as prime minister, see R.T.McKenzie British Political Parties, 2nd Edition, 1963, ch. x. For the way backbench opinion was assessed in 1963, see The Times, 12 May 1983 (letter by Humphrey Berkeley). See N.Fisher, The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977), Appendix 2, and Daily Telegraph, 18. Dec. 1974 for detailed rules, and P. Norton and A.Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London: Temple Smith, 1981), pp. 196–7, 224–46 for a general description and appraisal. Standing Orders of the Parliamentary Labour Party as adopted in 1981. I am grateful to Bryan Davies, Secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party for supplying me with a copy of the Standing Orders.

24 CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS

28. See N.Fisher, The Tory Leaders: Their Struggle for Power (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977) and N.Wapshott and G.Brock, Margaret Thatcher (London: Macdonald, 1983) for a description of Mrs Thatcher’s victory in the leadership contest. 29. P.Norton Conservative Dissidents and Dissension in the House of Commons 1945–74 (London: Macmillan, 1975) and Dissension in the House of Commons 1974–79 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). 30. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 19 Feb. 1981, Vol. 999, col. 457. 31. For British Leyland, see Hansard Parliamentary Debates 26 Jan. 1981, Vol. 997, cols. 639–646 and for steel see Daily Telegraph, 21 Dec. 1982. 32. See Hansard, Vol. 999, col. 457 and Daily Telegraph, 16 June 1983. 33. D.Butler and D.Stokes, Political Change in Britain (1st Edition) (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1969), ch. 18, and ch. 8, p. 189 and 2nd Edition (London: Macmillan 1974), ch. 18. 34. S.Lipset and S.Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (London: Collier Macmillan, 1967). 35. M.Keating and D.Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1979), chs. 3 and 4. 36. The Times, 27 May 1983. See also L.J.Sharpe, ‘The Labour Party and the Geography of Inequality: A Puzzle’, in D.Kavanagh (ed.), Politics of the Labour Party (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982) for discussion of attitudes to centralisation in both the Conservative and Labour parties. 37. See Guardian, 14 June 1983. 38. M.Keating, ‘Labour and Scottish Nationalism: An Update’ Cencrastus, Spring 1983. 39. D.McKie, Guardian, 16 June 1983. 40. F.W.S.Craig, op. cit. 41. Political Companion No. 32. 42. I am grateful to Clive Payne, Oxford Social Studies Computing Unit for calculations of the relationship between various distributions of party support and the outcomes in terms of seats.

The Labour Party: The Rise of the Left Philip Williams

I. MAXIMALISM CROSSES THE CHANNEL When the Russian Communists set up the Third International in 1921, in what they believed to be a revolutionary situation in Europe, they imposed 21 conditions on wouldbe member parties, including the expulsion of their reformist wings. Many left-wing socialists, who despised the social democratic Second International for its record in the recent war, were unwilling either to break openly with the Communists or to accept their harsh discipline. Predominant in many continental socialist parties, especially in Austria and pre-fascist Italy, these ‘maximalists’ set up their own organisation (promptly dubbed the 2½ International) in Vienna. Their watchword was ‘no enemies on the Left’, and their hallmark was their ambivalence about the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. They did not plan it or directly preach it, but they would not repudiate those who did. They emphasised that their socialist objective took priority over the preservation of bourgeois democracy, their vocabulary was full of the rhetoric of class war and revolution, and their policies often implied the existence of a revolutionary situation; but —unlike their right-wing enemies—they made no serious effort to prepare for a violent clash with the other side, feeling confident that its defeat would inevitably be ensured by the inexorable march of history. Maximalism had only a short-lived appeal in Britain, limited to the left wing of the trade unions (before 1926), and to the Independent Labour Party (which in its declining years adhered to the 2½ International). After that it vanished in this country, and one achievement of the Communist parties has been to kill it off, or reduce it to tiny dimensions, on the European continent. It is the purpose of this article to discuss how and why it has recently revived in Britain, and is now—without the long-forgotten name or the full-blown revolutionary rhetoric—a powerful force within the very party which, in its heyday, resisted it more successfully than the sister parties on the Continent. Its rise has come about because of three types of change. First, developments in the political system have given it an opportunity: the hold of the established political parties on the electorate has been greatly weakened, the Labour party can no longer count on the automatic unquestioning loyalty of the working-class vote, and many active party workers have lost confidence in the party leadership. Secondly, social changes have provided new

26 THE LABOUR PARTY

elites to seize that opportunity, pressing new demands on their established predecessors who, in the Labour party as elsewhere, face fierce competition to which in recent decades they have grown unaccustomed. Thirdly, changes in the industrial structure have transformed one audience to which all Labour politicians must appeal. As the influence of the trade unions within the party has become still greater, the balance of power within the movement has shifted, both with the rapid rise of some new unions and the rapid decline of some old ones, and with the sharp falling-off in the authority of nearly all union leaders over their members and organisations. At the same time the end of economic growth and the erosion of Britain’s industrial base has led to widespread disillusionment on the Left with the social democratic outlook which implicitly relied on the existence of a surplus to distribute; and to similar disillusionment on the Right with a moderate Conservatism which was content to compete with Labour within the limits of a post-war consensus—on full employment, the welfare state, a substantial public sector—which it did not seek fundamentally to challenge. II. THE POWER STRUCTURE UNDERMINED The decline in the appeal of the old parties is now a familiar story. Between them they never, from 1950 to 1966, polled less than 65 per cent of the entire British electorate, though the trend was sharply downward. Since 1970 they have never reached that figure, and in the 1983 election the Conservative and Labour vote combined attained only 51 per cent. Labour’s performance was particularly dismal, for in only one of the last eight elections did it increase its share of the electorate, which over 32 years had dropped by more than half. TABLE 1*

* Finer (see n.8), p.61: Great Britain only. Also Crewe in Kavanagh (see n.1), p.13.

By 1979, the Labour vote had fallen back to the level of its best inter-war years, 1929 and 1935, but with two differences; it is now on a persistent downward curve instead of an upward one, and the party no longer has the confidence even of those voters who still support it. Between 1964 and 1979 the proportion of Labour identifiers wanting more industries nationalised fell from 57 per cent to 32 per cent, those wanting more spent on social services from 89 per cent to 30 per cent, those denying that trade unions have too much power from 59 per cent to 36 per cent.1 So far had class loyalties been eroded that the trade unionists voting in 1979 preferred Labour to the Conservatives by only 50 per cent to 40 per cent.2 In many areas the party itself was no more than a shell. In Britain, as elsewhere, more middle-class than working-class people have always been ‘joiners’, and Labour membership in many of the party’s safest seats had been tiny. Many local parties

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 27

functioned as social clubs, run by an increasingly ageing and ossified coterie of ‘politically dead old men and women’, as they were cruelly described by one dedicated group engaged in planning their political burial.3 Everyone accepted that the officially published figures bore no relation to the reality, but by 1979 a number of fairly reliable estimates existed: one took the formal total membership at 250,000, and the number of activists at 55,000—or, respectively 400 and 90 for each constituency.4 Some of the sharpest declines of all occurred in London, where the left-wing takeovers have been most rapid and complete. Over the country as a whole, the ratio of Labour party members to Labour voters is now around one to 40; the lowest proportion in any socialist party in Europe. Many members left the party, and many more became disillusioned about their leaders and their representatives. The attitude of the constituency parties had always been ambivalent towards the front benchers, who were admired yet kept, so to speak, on probation. In 1929 the shrewdest European socialist observer of the Labour party contrasted sharply the deferential attitude of its rank and file to its leaders with the distrust professed by their counterparts on the Continent.5 But the suspicion of potential backsliding was present none the less, especially after 1931; from the moment when the constituency parties were able to choose their own seven representatives on the National Executive Committee, they balanced orthodox front-bench leaders with gadflies from the Left, chosen to act as a ginger group keeping the former up to the mark. From 1952, with Labour out of office, the critics dominated these seats overwhelmingly, though sometimes one lone front-bench regular would be returned. Yet the preference for rebel spokesman did not imply support for rebel policies. Persistent left-wing opposition to the leadership came above all from the least representative source—the heavily middle-class Labour parties in the safest Tory seats. Only on two occasions was a clear majority of constituency party votes cast in vain opposition to a majority of trade union votes on a policy issue—and on the second it was the constituencies which supported the parliamentary leadership and the unions which opposed it.6 Support for the leadership was sustained during the Attlee government of 1945–51, at least until Bevan’s resignation six months before the end. It was not destroyed by the bitter battles of the next decade. The onset of disillusionment became acute during the next period when Labour held office. ‘The official membership figures themselves indicate that the greatest depletion took place in 1966–70, during the Wilson government’; at its start in 1964 there were 66 CLPs with over 2,000 members; when it ended there were only 22.7 It is worth remembering that the prime minister was accustomed to point with justified pride to his impressive numerical score of manifesto commitments fulfilled; yet that did nothing whatever to offset the loss of confidence. The manifesto was quite irrelevant in comparison to the disappointment at the government’s economic record (even though by subsequent standards it looks, at least in its later years, like a remarkable success); or the resentment among activists at the leadership’s contemptuous ignoring of party conference decisions; or the unions’ hostility to the government’s cautious moves in its final year to influence their conduct by legislative means. In the generations brought up in the post-war, better-educated society, new elites were emerging to compete with their elders and to take advantage of the increasingly sour

28 THE LABOUR PARTY

mood. Analogous changes in the type of activists recruited to politics could be found in the other British parties and indeed in other countries (a new breed of American congressman being a notable example). In the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) the working-class component had been diminishing ever since the war, a trend masked at first by the concentration of trade-union sponsored MPs in the safe seats, so that they were proportionately stronger in opposition and weaker in office. The effort to make Labour into a ‘natural party of government’ attracted more professional-politician types seeing it as a vehicle for advancement. Moreover, the ‘talking professions’ (lecturers, teachers and journalists) provided 22 per cent of Labour MPs in 1945, 36 per cent in October 1974; between the same dates the proportion with university education almost doubled, from 37 per cent to 73 per cent.8 Younger members of these groups were, however, less likely than their seniors to join the Labour party in the late 1960s. Instead, many worked within such single-issue pressure groups as Shelter, Amnesty International, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, the Child Poverty Action Group, or the National Council for Civil Liberties. Smaller numbers were attracted to the revolutionary organisations which have always existed on the margin in Britain, but whose character was rapidly changing. Until 1956 the Communist Party and its various front organisations had overwhelmingly dominated the revolutionary Left, but Khrushchev’s revelations and the Hungarian rising seriously discredited it, and it was unable to capitalise on the discontent of many young left-wingers with the Labour party. The New Left, a group of intellectuals whose older members were mainly disillusioned ex-Communists, provided a focus for dissatisfied younger people in the universities, and some of their spokesmen were attracted to the various Trotskyist sects. These had existed precariously and in tiny numbers for a quarter of a century, and now began to acquire a modest accession of strength. The Labour party had, almost throughout its career, been suspicious of and inhospitable to revolutionaries; only in the early 1920s was any large section of it willing to admit them to membership. Among the revolutionary groups themselves, the Communists were always eager to join, in the short run to strengthen their influence, and in the long run in hopes of capturing the established political machine and taking advantage of its goodwill. But appeals for Communist affiliation or even alliance were successfully resisted by both the party and the trade union leaderships, and were normally repelled without difficulty; there was substantial support for it only in periods when the Communists were lurching sharply to the Right, calling for electoral pacts with Churchillite Conservatives before the war began, or supporting the electoral truce and leading the opposition to strikes during its later years. The Communist practice of setting up ‘fronts’, bodies ostensibly independent of it but in fact under its control, was met by the establishment of a list of ‘proscribed organisations’, membership of which was incompatible with membership of the Labour party. Trotskyists, though relatively a very minor irritant indeed, were brought within the ban in the 1950s. Its enforcement caused a little friction from time to time, especially once or twice when it was carried out with notable (and untypical) clumsiness and insensitivity. But as a rule it was accepted as a tiresome necessity, and the scale of it was quite limited. After 1968, however, with Trotskyist sympathisers superseding party-line Communists as the most active element on the far Left, the lines of

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 29

demarcation became more blurred and the opposition to enforcement more widespread and vocal. These changes were soon to find formal expression. While Labour’s old political structure was in decline and a new generation was appearing to challenge the established leaders, its industrial base was also changing drastically. The trade unions had created the party in the first place and always held the ultimate power of decision within it. They could, if united, dominate the National Executive Committee (NEC) where 18 of the 28 (later 29) seats were under their control. Their voting dominance at the Party Conference was much more complete, for their affiliated members outnumbered those who joined individually through constituency parties by about five to one, and in recent years—as the local parties dwindled—by as much as nine to one. Of course this gives an exaggerated impression of their political preponderance, since the unions were never agreed among themselves on matters of serious controversy within the party. On organisational issues, however, their influence could hardly be exaggerated since they controlled not merely most of the votes but almost all the money. If united and insistent, they were bound to get their way and the politicians knew it; but they could approach unity only on specifically trade-union issues, and were most reluctant to be seen to wield the financial strength which, as all sides were always aware, was indispensable to the party’s survival as an effective political organisation. After the 1931 crisis, in which the TUC General Council was the centre of resistance to Ramsay MacDonald, most of the principal unions (though not all) gave steady support to Labour’s parliamentary leaders until the middle 1960s. The latter could therefore almost always carry the Party Conference, where every union cast its votes as a block. This custom (never a rule) had existed from the foundation of the party, and was naturally resented by the minorities whose views were thus overridden. But as long as the union leaders were supporting the front benchers, who formed either the elected government or the prospective elected government, the block vote—however indefensible—remained comparatively inconspicuous, except to critics of the leadership within the party. That situation changed as the majority of the union vote shifted gradually towards those critics, the Old Left of the PLP. Three factors brought about this shift. Most obvious because it happened first, but least basic because it would no doubt have occurred later in any case, was a change at the top of the two largest unions. The Transport and General Workers, the most effectively disciplined union of all, acquired (by the accident of successive deaths) a left-wing general secretary in 1956, and soon swung from being the main-stay of the leadership to being that of the opposition. The Engineering Workers, the second-largest and most internally divided, also chose a left-winger in 1967 as the result of a marginal but not accidental shift in their internal balance of power. Secondly, some of the traditional manual workers’ unions showed an inclination to move to the Left in reaction to the contraction of their industries: these moves (among miners and railwaymen, for instance) were not necessarily permanent but they tended to outweigh the moves in the opposite direction (notably among the electricians) until, later in the 1970s, the Engineers adopted a postal ballot system and came under right-wing control. Thirdly, and most fundamental, the social balance within the trade unions was shifting towards the public sector and especially the white-collar unions within it; the three largest public-sector unions had as many members as the Transport and General

30 THE LABOUR PARTY

Workers by 1977, only a third as many 30 years earlier. Often these white-collar unions (such as ASTMS) found that their members included many Conservative voters and few who paid the political levy which went to the Labour party—but that minority, which took the political decisions, included a much higher proportion of activists and of left-wingers than was the case in the traditional manual workers’ unions where Labour solidarity was instinctive rather than ideological. While the Left was gaining in the industrial wing of the Movement for these various reasons, the Old Left opposition in the PLP was moving to meet them. Aneurin Bevan and his friends, constantly frustrated by the trade-union block vote, had frequently been bitter critics of the unions; and as late as 1969 Barbara Castle, a prominent and fairly intransigent Bevanite, was the author of the legislation on trade unions to which they took such strong exception. But with the block votes no longer so solidly hostile, the Left MPs saw the makings of a new alliance, and became much more sympathetic to the organisational claims of the unions—notably the insistence on unfettered collective bargaining—than they had been in earlier years. This change was assisted by developments in the structure of power within the unions themselves. The nominal basis for the earlier left-wing criticism had been the claim (always exaggerated and often false) that the leadership did not represent rank-and-file opinion. Now changes in industry, and in society more broadly, were eroding the authority of the union leaders. Power was shifting from the centre to the shop floor. Rapidly worsening inflation was providing a much greater audience for the local militants, who could play on the universal fear that any group which failed to press its claims to the maximum would find itself left behind others who were more vocal or more ruthless. The combination of traditional class solidarity and new-found group solidarity meant that the increasing number of strikes often commanded widespread backing; yet the overwhelming response in 1975–76 to the incomes policy proposed by the left-wing Transport Workers’ secretary Jack Jones (no increases above £6 per week) showed how widespread was the desire to follow any leadership which seemed capable of halting the inflationary leapfrogging scramble for higher wages, provided the halt were general and not imposed on a single group. The number of trade unionists expressing views critical of the unions (other than their own), or voting Conservative at elections, were other indications that even when workers struck in obedience to the middle-level activists they frequently did not share the same attitudes, still less the ulterior objectives which some of the activists cherished. At the same time, the number and nature of the strikes contributed to making the unions as a whole more unpopular than ever with a larger section of public opinion. The weakening of their authority and the growing strength of the criticism from below reinforced the defensive mentality which had always been characteristic of the trade union leaders, and diminished the likelihood— never great—of their taking much account of wider interests than their own. It also affected the way in which they used their power within the Labour party, to cast the union’s vote, at Conference or on the NEC, on political questions which rarely ranked high among the concerns of the great majority of their members. In an earlier generation, general secretaries referred such decisions to their executives or, in the case of the more autocratic, voted as they chose; few consulted more widely, for union conferences met at the wrong time—and were sometimes

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 31

TABLE 2

*Gallup poll published in Sunday Telegraph, 30 Sept. 1979: very similar figures were recorded in previous years.

dominated by their activist critics, forever denouncing the ‘bosses’ as dictatorial and unrepresentative. (Both sides, then and now, took for granted the indifference of the ordinary membership and paid only lip-service to their views.) In the new climate, general secretaries were much more reluctant than in the past to offend their militant critics and offer new opportunities for divisive and possibly damaging struggles within their organisations; they did not see why they should complicate their already difficult lives by taking up positions unpopular with their domestic opponents, on issues peripheral to the needs and interests of the union itself. But those political issues which were peripheral to them might be crucial to the politicians. The Left could sometimes win political votes in the unions because most members were indifferent and the leaders wanted to save their own political capital for more directly crucial battles; the public saw the unions attempting, not to defend the interests of their members, but to dictate extreme or unpopular political decisions to the Labour Party which might well form the country’s next government. In the 15 years from 1964 to 1979—just the period when the Left claimed to be democratising the unions and bringing about more representative decisions —the proportion of Labour voters finding the unions too powerful had grown from 41 per cent (against 59 per cent denying it) to 64 per cent (against 36 per cent). In the electorate: III. THE LEFT: ‘LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS’ The foundations on which the power of the leadership had once securely rested were thus crumbling by the end of the 1960s. The parliamentary leaders of the new generation enjoyed neither the respect enjoyed by their predecessors who had laboured so long in the wilderness, nor the prestige of those who had headed the successful government of 1945– 51. The principal figures in the trade unions were less committed to support of the front bench and commanded less authority within their own organisations; a cooler relationship turned to open hostility over the projected industrial relations legislation at the end of the Wilson government. When that government lost the 1970 election, defeat drove the Labour party to the Left, as it has almost always done at first. That often temporary reaction was prolonged and consolidated on this occasion by the division of the parliamentary leadership over the principal policy issue of the next couple of years,

32 THE LABOUR PARTY

Britain’s entry into the European Common Market. Vociferously opposed by most (though not all) of the unions and almost the entire political Left, it had been strongly supported for years by a minority on the party’s right wing, headed by two successive deputy leaders, George Brown and Roy Jenkins. Most of the front bench had changed their minds, from hostility to British membership while in opposition before 1964, to support for it in office in 1967. On both occasions the decision had been made for them in Paris by General de Gaulle, but with his retirement the question was again open and the new Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, was the most ardent champion of British entry. Jenkins’ followers regarded it as an issue transcending party politics, and (though a minority of Labour’s ‘Europeans’ disagreed and abstained) most of them voted with the government and helped it win parliamentary approval for entry. The bulk of the leadership had changed their minds again, renouncing their support for a measure which was plainly unpopular in the party. With the right wing in total disarray, and the union votes which dominated Conference predominantly opposed to the EEC, the Left for once enjoyed a temporary majority, which enabled them to gain control of the NEC. They promptly changed the rules to eliminate the barriers against infiltration by the far Left, and before long were to find themselves embarrassed by their new comrades. But their control of the Executive remained unshaken, and indeed kept increasing until 1981. The new majority members of the NEC were not themselves revolutionaries. They were left-wingers who saw themselves as democratic socialists, with the accent, in practice, on the noun not the adjective. They feared (with very little cause) that they might themselves one day be the victims of right-wing disciplinary action, and took ‘no enemies on the Left’ as their motto; the tiny groups of would-be revolutionaries were seen not as a potential threat, but as potential allies in the factional struggle within the party. They were to pay a high price for this misjudgment, which in a few years was to divide the Old Left from top to bottom. But in the first flush of victory they had no hesitation. They convinced themselves, and some others, that the proscribed list was not only objectionable but also unnecessary, and that no damaging consequences would follow from allowing members of revolutionary or quasi-revolutionary far-Left organisations to join the Labour party freely at last. Parliamentary candidates required the endorsement of the NEC, which had in the past been withheld from extreme left-wingers whose democratic credentials were suspect; local parties were obliged to disavow such choices on pain of disaffiliation from the national party. Henceforward no political criteria were to apply, and constituencies could choose whomever they pleased provided they kept to the formal procedural rules—a decision that within a few years was to provoke several highly damaging rows. On the same condition, constituency parties were now to be allowed a free hand to remove their MP on political grounds. Previously, MPs would usually have been protected against factional vendettas, unless they had blatantly opposed party policy from the Right; those who opposed it from the Left had engaged regularly in parliamentary rebellions throughout the 1964–70 government without ever risking any local or national disciplinary action. The Left greeted the new rules as heralding a new era of freedom, which they defined in their own fashion. In 1971 Dick Taverne, MP for Lincoln, cast his first rebellious vote ever as a Jenkinsite supporter of EEC entry; left-wingers in the

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 33

constituency party promptly disavowed his candidature at the next election and were upheld by the new Left-controlled NEC. Defiantly, Taverne resigned his seat at once— and was re-elected with 58 per cent of the vote against both Conservative and Labour. In an exceptionally high poll for a by-election, he took 60 per cent of the Labour vote, leaving only 40 per cent for the official Labour candidate representing the local party that had rejected him. The coup against Taverne was little different, in motives or style, from similar ideological disputes which had occasionally broken out in individual constituencies in the past. The success of the local organisational operation reflected the climate of disillusionment among Labour activists with the parliamentary leaders, and particularly the revolt (reinforced by some primitive nationalists masquerading as socialists) against the pro-Marketeer MPs. The difference was only in the outcome, in that the national party gave no protection to the MP, who consequently lost the official label and was driven to the unforgivable sin of opposing the Labour candidate; and then that the Labour voters, who had always overwhelmed such presumptuous rebels in the past, now turned their wrath against the party rather than the man.9 The affair was thus a spectacular sign of the growing divorce between the active members who ran the constituency parties, and the mass of Labour voters whom the MP, and the party, were supposed to represent. (That gulf was so wide that Taverne’s ill-organised and inexperienced followers won control of the local council, hitherto safely Labour, in a direct vote of no confidence in the constituency party. But the long-term advantages of controlling the machine became apparent when Taverne, having surprised everyone by holding the seat at the general election, had to face a second election after only eight months, and was defeated; and again when Labour regained the council later in the decade.) These local activists, like their spokesmen on the NEC, were maximalists not revolutionaries: recognising ‘no enemies on the Left’, they sympathised with the far-Left extremists, seen as harmless impatient youngsters who would soon grow up, far more than with the front-benchers who were suspected at best of complacency, at worst of careerism, opportunism and betrayal. It was the triumph of this outlook, both at national and constituency level, which opened up the opportunity for ‘entrism’ to that wing of the Trotskyists who had long dreamed of extending their influence within, and if possible capturing, the great lumbering Labour machine and shifting its direction to use it for their own purposes. The Trotskyists, and, in particular, the ‘entrist’ Militant Tendency who believed in infiltrating the mainstream party as others did not, had considerable assets despite their small numbers. They were thoroughly dedicated people, well disciplined and remarkably well financed—able to employ 63 full-time organisers, half as many as the Labour Party itself. Their campaign was assisted by their protective ‘maximalist’ allies, who repeatedly refused to use the machine against them. The National Executive would not publish a formal report by the second most senior party official, the National Agent Reg Underhill, which collected ample evidence that Militant was in breach of the party constitution. It would not allow local constituency parties to expel Trotskyist organisers even when they wished to do so. It went further still in providing them with a foothold in the machine, and access to Labour’s already strained financial resources, by appointing an avowed

34 THE LABOUR PARTY

TABLE 3 PERCENTAGES OF 1978 CONFERENCE DELEGATES*

* Survey by Paul Whiteley and Ian Gordon, New Statesman, 11 Jan. 1980.

Trotskyist as organiser of the Labour Party Young Socialists—a group which had for decades been prone to capture by the extreme Left, but hitherto against the resistance of the NEC rather than with its active connivance. In the constituencies their task was also made easier than in the past because, particularly in its safest working-class seats, Labour’s constituency organisation was far weaker than it had been; as we have seen, there may have been only 55,000 Labour activists, about 90 per constituency (and probably many fewer in safe seats). In contrast the Trotskyist sects, whose combined membership had for years been only a tenth of that of the Communist Party, had now grown to rough equality with it: perhaps 15,000 members (double that number read the Trotskyist press regularly) to 20,000 for the Communist Party. They were stronger than their numbers would suggest because of their individual dedication and their disciplined organisation: several of their supporters could be and were instructed to move into a local ward or constituency which seemed ripe for capture, where they operated in unison among a divided and often leaderless mass of opponents. Their successes helped to encourage more of their allies and sympathisers to join the Labour party even if they had once written it off, as the possibilities of local takeover or national influence seemed to grow. The growth of Labour’s paper membership from perhaps 284,000 in 1979 to 359,000 in 1980 reversed a long slide downwards; but the far Left, who had benefited from the decline as it reduced the size of the battlefield and enabled them to deploy their small numbers to greater effect, now benefited from the revival as it brought reinforcements to their ranks rather than to those of the traditionalists. The latter, indeed, continued to drop out of activity or even membership, as the tone of debate became more bitter, the practice of intermittent intimidation more widespread, and the policy proposals more insistently extreme. The progress of the far Left attracted much attention and vigorous opposition within the Labour party after 1979; before that it had gone on silently and little noticed for several years, and had advanced further than most people realised. At one Party Conference, an analysis of the delegates found the following views: Comparing the two columns, these figures would appear to indicate that only a quarter of Benn’s support came from the Old Left grouped around Tribune, and three-quarters of it was based on the newer, younger and harder far-Left groups. These newer left-wingers were very diverse. Many sprang from the generation whose energies had previously been concentrated on one or other of the single-issue pressuregroups acting on behalf of various radical causes: racial or other minorities; feminists;

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 35

champions of tenants, the homeless, the unemployed or the dependents of the welfare state; defenders of civil liberties and the victims of repression at home and abroad. Their experience predisposed them to suspicion and questioning of establishments, including the Labour establishment (indeed some of them had first entered party politics through the instinctively opposition-minded Liberals). They sought to broaden Labour’s appeal by coalitions with various discontented outgroups, and were unconcerned by the disapproval of a trade-union machine from which they had never had much sympathy. For such leftwingers (themselves highly diverse), there was always tension between their natural libertarianism and aversion to discipline on the one hand, and on the other their wish to change the existing Labour leadership—an objective plainly unattainable except by mobilisation of all the disparate forces of the Left, and through an organisation effective enough to hold them together. The problem was the harder to resolve because those forces included not only the Communist party, discredited in politics but still influential in some unions, but also the warring Trotskyist sects which aroused almost as much distrust on the libertarian Left (just as, for similar reasons, the early European Communist parties had among the old maximalists—an inchoate mixture of syndicalist, pacifist and semianarchist tendencies which the Communists were first to enlist, then to ‘bolshevise’ and finally to swallow up entirely). The whole heterogeneous alliance was held together by a small group of strategists who saw that the only way to prevent its dissolution was to organise exclusively behind the one objective common to them all: changing the Labour party’s power structure. The real importance of the Trotskyists, particularly of the Militant Tendency, should not be exaggerated. Militant’s candidates for the NEC have won few votes, and its influence has probably been dominant in only 50 or 60 local parties (under a tenth of the total—though these include the main Labour organisation in two big cities, Liverpool and Bradford). It confines its appeal narrowly to the white male industrial workers, and alienates other left-wingers by its total indifference or hostility to the minority groups which they champion. (Symbolically, it would not attack Mrs Thatcher over the Falklands). Its enmity towards rival Trotskyist sects is undiminished and cordially reciprocated. But the significance of Trotskyism entrism in the Labour party should not be underestimated, as it was for years because the maximalists were determined to play it down. It has notably altered the terms and the character of Labour’s internal debate: the terms, because they deliberately put forward extreme proposals which could not be peacefully accepted (such as expropriation without compensation) for inclusion as Labour party policy, appealing to a growing proportion of the membership for whom politics was a full-time activity and ‘prolier than thou’ the hallmark of socialist sincerity; and the character, because the sectarian revolutionaries imported their own familiar debating weapons, of repetitious tedium laced with acrimony, into what had been an argument within the family. Frequently it had been a very quarrelsome family yet fundamentally it had remained a united one. It soon ceased to be that, and old members who had belonged from class loyalty and treated it as a friendly club were driven away by the boredom and the bitterness—further reducing the opposition and increasing the influence of the small dedicated minority.

36 THE LABOUR PARTY

TABLE 4 PERCENTAGE OF ‘TALKING PROFESSIONS’*

* Editor’s chapter in Kavanagh (see n.1), p.99.

The target of the hatred was the centre of resistance, the Parliamentary Labour Party. But its composition was changing too, as the traditional type of MP on both sides of the House of Commons gave way to a newer, younger, more thrusting type. Among Conservatives, the ‘Knights of the Shire’ gradually retired and their place was taken by advertising or public relations men and financial operators. (In the 1950s, when badly-off Labour MPs pressed for higher salaries, they found plenty of sympathy among the Conservative leaders but were staunchly resisted by the Tory back-benchers, who feared and resisted any encouragement of professional politicians; but in 1979 and 1983, when Mrs Thatcher attempted to delay a recommended salary increase by phasing it over several years, she faced an instant revolt on her own back benches.) Correspondingly, many of Labour’s parliamentary rank and file had been drawn from retired trade union officials, loyal to the leadership and with little expectation of office for themselves. Now these were increasingly superseded by younger, abler and much more ambitious Members, often from the ‘talking professions’, who flourished in successful elections but receded when defeat threw the party back on its safer seats. The group which benefited most and earliest from this trend was the Old Left, which had always been led by, and was attractive to, journalists. From 1966 onwards the Tribune Group steadily expanded its numbers, particularly where older MPs retired or new ones had to be selected when constituency boundaries were changed. It made gains among the new-style MPs, among those representing the growing white-collar and publicsector unions like ASTMS, and also—much more than in the past—among MPs from the manual workers’ unions which were being radicalised as their industries declined. Gaining in influence both within the PLP and outside it, in Conference and the NEC, the Old Left —which had always had a strong commitment to using Parliament as the main arena in which to press its case— became increasingly reconciled to the leadership: an evolution symbolised by the career of Michael Foot, himself a journalist and for years the most intransigent gadfly on the Tribune benches, who at last accepted office in 1974, became the chief political ally of the union bureaucracies he had once chastised, earned gratitude as the deputy leader who kept the PLP Left loyal to the Callaghan government, and was finally elected leader himself as the man best adapted to holding together the quarrelsome wings of the party. But the choice of Foot came just as the irreconcilable Left was beginning to display its new strength, making his task impossible. For, in the years during which he and the Tribune MPs had gradually come to recognise the need for compromise with the leadership, the constituency activists upon whom they depended had been moving in the opposite direction: more suspicious of parliamentary methods and leaders; more attracted to direct action through demonstrations, strikes and even riots; more

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 37

hostile to the law and the police; more willing to champion the grievances of unpopular groups (such as homosexuals, or Irishmen suspected of terrorist connections) as well as those of the unemployed or the racial minorities, and even to exploit the social tensions that arose from them.10 The majority of MPs were restrained by their own convictions or their awareness of public opinion (including the views of their own Labour voters) from going very far along the activist road. That became a new offence compounding the basic sin of supporting leaders whose economic policies were seen to have failed, and whose basically socialdemocratic outlook was regarded as discredited when economic growth no longer provided resources for distribution to some without directly depriving others. Far more important than the revolutionaries was a little group of maximalists who, appealing to the widespread feelings of disillusionment among Labour activists, organised a brilliant campaign to use that discontent as a means to change the structure of power within the party, providing new machinery to subordinate the MPs to their own constituency activists, and to deprive the former of their right (unchallenged since the PLP was formed in 1906) to elect their leader who, if Labour won a general election, would become prime minister. The most effective of the various groups on the Left was the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), started in June 1973, which soon decided —as a direct result of the Taverne dispute at Lincoln—to concentrate on organisational changes rather than policy issues, and first and foremost on requiring Labour MPs to face a new selection conference in every Parliament: ‘mandatory reselection’. That choice strained relations with the Tribune group of MPs, who would much rather have seen a change in the method of electing the party leader than a threat to the MP’s autonomy of which, as strong parliamentarians, they had always claimed to be staunch defenders (at least against the party whips).11 The CLPD persisted, steadily expanding its support (21 CLPs affiliated in 1975, 75 in 1978, 107 in 1980; trade councils and trade union branches numbered 10, 52 and 129 respectively).12 Some of their members were equally active in the Labour Coordinating Committee, formed in 1978 to campaign for the left-wing policies which CLPD supporters all favoured, but did not put forward as an organisation. In 1980 these two groups made a formal alliance with eight other maximalist groups, three of which (including Militant) were avowedly Trotskyist and had belatedly joined the constitutional reform bandwagon. They relied on the popular appeal of the slogans of participatory democracy: the parliamentary leaders should be responsible not to the electorate who could put them into power, but to the party which made them leaders; and the party to which they should be accountable was not the mass of voters or the entire membership, but the limited group of activists who, through personal dedication and disciplined manipulation of the methods of indirect election, could exercise disproportionate weight in the General Management Committees (or General Committees) which control constituency Labour parties. The Trotskyist groups found they could support this form of democracy with enthusiasm.13 The principal public champion of this doctrine was Tony Benn, but he was more the symbol of the campaign built up by the press than its real leader. While many CLPD and LCC activists have been prominent among his supporters, he was widely mistrusted on

38 THE LABOUR PARTY

the far Left as only recently a convert to their cause. In the 1964–70 government he did not have a particularly left-wing reputation, and his public image was that of ‘Mr Technology’; the change to ‘Mr Participation’ was rather abrupt. In the 1974–79 Government he developed a new tactic to solve his problem of combining membership of the Cabinet with maintaining the faith of his followers. He simply ignored the concept of collective cabinet responsibility, openly distancing himself from his colleagues while never hinting that he might resign over policies he disapproved. Successive prime ministers judged that it would be too dangerous to dismiss him, and subsequently discovered thedangers of not doing so; Benn, having enjoyed the advantages and publicity of ministerial office for five years, proceeded to repudiate all responsibility for the decisions to which he had been a party. It earned him the intense distrust of his colleagues, shared by some of the more sophisticated among his new left-wing allies, but preserved his reputation outside Parliament with some left-wingers who demanded from their leaders only rhetoric that sounded the notes they wished to hear. The CLPD concentrated on three principal objectives: mandatory reselection of MPs, a new method of electing the party leader, and complete control of the Party’s election manifesto by the NEC. The first won two million votes at the 1974 Party Conference, and was called for by an increasing number of resolutions each year: 12 in 1975, 45 in 1976, 79 in 1977.14 By then three years had elapsed, and under the rules a constitutional change was again eligible for debate. The NEC agreed to consider it and bring forward a motion the following year, and they were also instructed to produce by then alternative proposals for leadership elections (by the PLP as before, by Conference, or by an ‘electoral college’ composed of the same elements as Conference). In 1978, however, the CLPD suffered a double setback: the MPs’ right to choose the leader was heavily reaffirmed, by four million to only one million votes; and as a result of a procedural muddle (or misdeed) by the Engineers’ leader, mandatory reselection lost by 400,000 against the NEC’s proposed compromise (no reselection without a prior vote of no confidence in the MP).15 The author of the compromise, the veteran left-winger Ian Mikardo, was promptly thrown off the NEC; and perhaps because of the muddled vote and the strength of the pressure, the three-year rule was waived for the following year. That was a tactical triumph for those of the Left whose veneration for the decisions of Conference is strictly proportional to their approval of the content: a vote lost demonstrates the way unrepresentative leaders could manipulate Conference, a vote won becomes holy writ, binding on everyone indefinitely. Much of the Right is, of course, no less selective—but it does not parade its unblemished devotion to principle with such ostentation.16 Suspension of the three-year rule allowed the Left another chance to reverse the massive defeat on the leadership as well as the narrow one on reselection, and between 1978 and 1979 the political situation changed sharply in their favour. IV. THE CRISIS Ever since Labour became one of Britain’s two major parties, it has fallen into bitter internal dispute whenever it lost an election and forfeited office. After 1931 the old

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 39

leadership were accused of betrayal and the whole party lurched violently, though only temporarily, to the Left: since only a handful of prominent figures departed with MacDonald, the great bulk of the governing wing remained within the ranks and the General Council of the TUC, more dominant than ever when the principal politicians were discredited and the PLP weak, soon swung the Labour party back to moderation and gradualism. The Attlee government had satisfied both Labour voters and Labour activists over a broad range of policy; the subsequent recriminations were mainly confined to foreign and defence matters, they affected the activists rather than the voters, and the old leaders retained enough prestige and goodwill to defend their positions fairly successfully. In 1970 Wilson’s government lost the confidence of voters and activists alike, perhaps for different reasons. The leadership moved rapidly to accommodate and deflect any revolt of the latter, preserving their position in the short run at the price of opening up new opportunities for far more virulent enemies over the next decade. When the Callaghan government was defeated in 1979, those enemies were poised to seize their opportunity. That government, enjoying the tiniest of majorities in Parliament until 1976, had survived for most of the next three years by means of a pact with the Liberals which made it impossible to carry out measures which the activists favoured (though many of the Cabinet themselves did not). It had few spectacular successes, but it enjoyed good relations with the trade unions and was able to preside over a sharp decline in the rate of inflation combined with (at least by later standards) only a modest rise in unemployment. This record was far indeed from satisfying the maximalists: they suspected (with some justice) that the front bench were not unduly disturbed by the Liberal constraint in Parliament and the restrictions imposed on economic policy by the International Monetary Fund, and they would much have preferred to defy both with a policy of drastic nationalisation at home and a siege economy abroad. They saw the IMF crisis of 1976 as evidence of the collapse of social democracy, the end of economic growth, and the need to promote open class warfare as the only way of making progress towards socialist objectives. These reactions found some echoes—than for many years past—among middle-level trade-unionist militants and among racial and other minority groups. But they were not shared at all by the great majority of either Labour voters or trade union members, and the government remained quite popular. The Prime Minister was expected to dissolve Parliament in October 1978, and probably to return to office; though not necessarily with a clear Labour majority in the House of Commons. He let the opportunity go, perhaps because he hoped that the unions would continue to exercise restraint as long as they knew a general election to be imminent. If that was his reason it was a fatal miscalculation. The pent-up pressure for wage increases could not be checked, and the frequent strikes of the ‘winter of discontent’ turned opinion against the government (the strikes in hospitals and cemeteries particularly offending public feeling). The Conservatives had in 1975 elected a new leader with an intransigent style who championed the private sector, repudiated much of her party’s post-war record as far too consensual, and blamed the country’s decline on years of soft options and evasions of hard choices. They won the election with a sizeable swing in their favour (though with the support of only a third of the electorate and 44 per cent of those voting), and Tony Benn from the Labour side promptly called for an equally emphatic partisan stand, and for

40 THE LABOUR PARTY

TABLE 5 SOCIAL CLASS: PERCENTAGE OF 1978 CONFERENCE DELEGATES*

* See Table 3 for their political views, and for the source.

renunciation of all moderation and compromise. It was not an appeal which found much support among Labour voters, but it had immense resonance among the activists, always uneasy at having to support and defend the actions of governments with which they were often dissatisfied, and always delighted to revert, just as soon as the opportunity arose, to the utopian vision and the opposition-minded outlook which they had never really renounced. The 1970s, then, saw the gap between activists and voters widen rapidly. Many former Labour supporters were moving to the Conservatives; many Labour politicians sought to stem that current by cautiously adjusting the party’s more extreme or unpopular positions; but a minority of politicians, and a majority of activists, considered compromise as betrayal, and reacted to the loss of support by a defiant move to more intransigent policies than ever, and a defence of every trade union and every strike, however unpopu lar: While some trade unionists disapproved of these attitudes, others were naturally delighted with them. Their strongest support came from the newer, public sector and middle-class elements in the Labour ranks, whose importance was shown in the survey of Conference delegates. The Labour party ‘is now largely a middle-class party in Parliament drawing on a diminishing body of working-class support in the country’; of all manual workers who voted in 1983 only 36 per cent supported it while 37 per cent preferred the Conservatives.17 As usual, the 1979 defeat swung the activists sharply to the Left. The Thatcher government was moving vigorously in the other direction, and the maximalists believed that they could count on a return to Labour (whatever its policies) at the next election, thanks to a reaction against Conservative economic and social policies, to traditional working-class loyalties and to the strength of the two-party system and the fear of wasting a vote on minor groups. They were thus encouraged to press their campaign more vigorously than ever before, at the price of mounting tension: with the old leadership whom they denounced, with the majority of Labour politicians who feared that the electorate would be alienated either by the new policies themselves or by the factional bitterness, and with the bulk of the trade union movement. The unions had created the Labour party, and their money kept it in business, as a political instrument to put their case when out of office, and to provide a sympathetic government when in power. They had

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 41

no liking for continuing to do so if the instrument was to be wrested from their control by the Left to put forward policies which, they feared, would saddle them with the burden of financing a party doomed to permanent, futile and quarrelsome opposition. Before the 1979 Conference David Basnett, who was steadily moving his General and Municipal Workers (the third largest union) from the right wing of the Party into the centre, had proposed the setting up of a party commission to inquire into Labour’s financial and organisational structure. As we shall see, the results were not at all what he had intended. The post-election conference was notable for two features: in the voting the CLPD at last scored a triumph, which was tarnished by the fratricidal hatred which pervaded the debates. The 1979 conference marked a dramatic change of style, which is now taken for granted…. The contrast between Labour conferences and those of the other major parties is indeed striking. No equivalent group of established leaders has to put up with the sustained venom displayed by many of the constituency delegates…. There is no guarantee of even the politest and mildest form of applause for those who oppose the Left. Some speakers are condemned by their audience before they even open their mouths. It is not only deference but some of the ordinary conventions of public debate that have gone. The maximalists’ loss of confidence in the leadership was exploited by their extremist allies as cover for a violent assault on the Parliamentary Labour Party, corralled in separate seats in a kind of dock, as the defendants being prosecuted as ‘traitors to socialism’ in a show trial before a national television audience. It was in this atmosphere of ‘malevolence and hysteria… [leading] to extreme polarisation’ (and guaranteed to repel the average viewer from any cause which attracted such champions) that the far Left were at last able to carry most of the constitutional changes for which they had fought.18 The first victory was a mandatory resolution carried at Brighton in 1979 by four million votes to three million, and reaffirmed at Blackpool in 1980 when an amendment to restore the Mikardo compromise was beaten off. Only some half a dozen MPs were in fact ‘deselected’, but a number of others (either anticipating defeat or seeing the procedure as degrading, even though they were confident of success) went over to the new Social Democratic Party before their cases were decided. The Left were delighted by their departure, but had even more reason to be satisfied with the impact on those MPs who remained. Chris Mullin of the CLPD, one of Tony Benn’s leading supporters and soon to become editor of Tribune, was justified in saying: ‘The purpose of reselection was to change the attitude of MPs, not necessarily to change MPs. There has already been a noticeable change in their attitudes’. That change became apparent when the Left won their second victory, shortly to be described, with the creation of an electoral college to elect the leader and deputy leader. Before that, the PLP under the old rules had chosen Michael Foot as leader by a majority of 10 over Denis Healey, as the candidate thought to have the best chance of conciliating the Left and restoring a measure of calm and mutual tolerance to the Party; Healey was agreed upon as deputy leader to reconcile the defeated right wing. But that was not the purpose of the maximalists, who promptly put forward Tony

42 THE LABOUR PARTY

Benn to contest the deputy leadership under the new rules. Many of their Tribune Group seniors were dismayed, and after a frantic search for an alternative nominee, John Silkin became the candidate of the ‘soft Left’. Of his 65 first-ballot supporters, half abstained and some voted for Healey on the second round. There was a notable difference between those Silkin voters who had already, and those who had not yet, faced a reselection conference: only 14 per cent of the former, but 32 per cent of the latter fell into line behind Benn. Indeed within the second group of 18, only two voted differently from their own CLPs (and one of those two promptly went over to the SDP).19 Much more startling was the Left’s success over the leadership election, which was a triumph of procedural agility. The first step was to take over the Commission of Inquiry, originally proposed by the Right as a means of overhauling the party’s decaying organisation and disastrous finances, and through their NEC majority to ensure that its composition and terms of reference would enable them to use it instead as a vehicle for their own campaign for constitutional change. Some right-wingers attempted to head off the pressure by accepting the demand for party democracy and putting it into effect by giving every Labour party member a vote for the leadership— the last thing the maximalists wanted. But those opponents were ill-organised and hopelessly divided, and in the Commission the Left persuaded James Callaghan (still the leader) and Michael Foot (then his deputy) to agree to their proposal for an electoral college. The front benchers assumed that it would comprise 50 per cent MPs, 25 per cent trade unions and 25 per cent for the CLPs (the Commission proposed 20 per cent for CLPs, 5 per cent for the socialist societies). But the Left had no intention of settling for that, or indeed for the 40 per cent share for MPs which would have satisfied their allies on the NEC. At the Blackpool conference in October 1980, the decision was postponed to a special conference at Wembley in January 1981. In between, Callaghan resigned the leadership and Foot was elected his successor in the vain hope of settling the quarrel. At Wembley the right-wing Campaign for Labour Victory at last agreed to put forward one-man-one-vote; it was much too late in the process, and now had the air of excluding the unions, so it went down to overwhelming defeat: 400,000 against six million votes. The maximalists succeeded in persuading their NEC sympathisers to provide for annual elections to the leadership and deputy leadership, and for open, recorded voting. And in the final outcome they benefited from an enormous stroke of luck. With so many proposals it would be hard to find a rational way of choosing between them. The Conference Arrangements Committee had suggested an ingenious system by which only positive votes for a proposal were counted, with no opposition voting allowed; those with less support would fall out until the most popular single proposal was submitted for final ratification, and only then could negative votes be counted. It was a skilful plan for producing order out of chaos, but for the Right it had a fatal flaw. It emasculated their most powerful supporters, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. The AUEW had always been a bitterly divided union with powerful and organised left and right wings, the former often in the ascendancy when branches voted as a unit, the two evenly balanced when members’ votes were individually counted at the branches— though the turnout was usually very low, under 10 per cent. Its decisions, industrial or political, were made by a bewildering array of different bodies, chosen by different

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 43

electoral systems.20 When the right wing had the ascendancy they instituted postal balloting—against furious left-wing opposition—and trebled the turnout, and so consolidated their position in those union offices (president, general secretary, executive committee) to which it applied. But it did not apply to the union’s Labour party and TUC delegations, and year after year the right-wing leaders were frustrated by defeat in these bodies, often by a single vote. To avoid that now familiar danger they had arranged for the union’s policy-making body, the national committee which they (precariously) controlled, to mandate the delegation not to vote for any electoral college which gave the PLP less than 51 per cent of the vote. This unbreakable mandate, intended to save them from any further unpleasant surprises, became the cause of one instead. For once their own proposal for a PLP majority in the college had been defeated, their vote was sterilised; they could neither vote against the plans they most disliked, because of the procedure adopted, nor in favour of the one they preferred—50 per cent for the PLP, proposed by other right-wing unions—because of their own rigid mandate. A million right-wing votes were unusable, in an electorate of seven million; no wonder the result was distorted.21 The maximalists owed their success to tactical skill as well as good fortune, lobbying their trade union allies to abandon the NECs proposal (33 per cent for each of the major groups and 1 per cent for the socialist societies) and rally behind the 40–30–30 alternative (unions 40 per cent, MPs and CLPs 30 per cent each) put forward by the Shop Assistants’ union (USDAW), on whom it had been ingeniously foisted by their small Trotskyist minority.22 For USDAW was politically on the moderate Left; if its own plan had been defeated, it would have swung over to and carried the 50–25–25 suggestion. Even as it was, the latter had 42 per cent of the total vote, had led throughout the balloting, and would have won easily if the AUEW had been able to participate. But it could not, and to their own dismay the unions—in the eyes of the public the section of the college with the least legitimate claim to choose the party leader—found themselves in an unwelcome exposed position, saddled with the largest share of the vote. They had, of course, no recognised or generally acceptable procedure for consulting their members, and the farcical way in which the electoral college had been instituted was soon compounded by further absurdity when it was first used. The MPs with their 30 per cent, voting publicly and at the conference itself (for they could not do so elsewhere) often felt obliged, as we have seen, to follow their local parties, so the CLPs could already exercise influence, easy to expand in the future, on the votes of MPs. Potentially, therefore, the CLPs could affect the votes of 60 per cent rather than 30 per cent of the college. These CLP votes reflected, in general, not the membership’s views but those of the few dozen activists who formed the General Committee. Some of the unions made an effort to consult their membership; one that did was the largest, the Transport Workers, who found to their horror that the preferred candidate appeared to be Healey—and then, with minimal embarrassment, cast the union’s huge vote nevertheless for Silkin on the first ballot and Benn on the second.23 The votes which carried such dubious title to legitimacy were then counted in the three categories, scaled down to the appropriate proportions for each category, and solemnly announced—to three places of decimals. If a great political party, devising a means of choosing a future prime minister, had set out to invent a system attracting ridicule and condemnation in equal measure, they would have found it difficult to do better. But the

44 THE LABOUR PARTY

Left had always given priority—often to the point of obsession—to changing the balance of power in the party rather than in the country. Either they took Labour victory next time for granted, or they viewed defeat with indiffer ence, assuming ‘red-blooded socialists’ would inherit the wreckage and swing with the pendulum into power some day. There were four main responses to the Wembley decisions, two each from supporters and opponents. Among the latter, a Council for Social Democracy was set up which almost openly announced itself as the nucleus of a new political party. Critics of the decisions who meant to remain in the Labour Party started the Labour Solidarity Campaign, endorsed by the party leader and by 150 MPs (most but not all from the Labour right wing) to seek both a return to the 50–25–25 formula for the electoral college, which many observers expected to be well within their grasp, and also a restructuring of the National Executive Committee, an old proposal which had been lost from sight for nearly 25 years. The maximalist organisations mobilised to broaden their successful assault in two ways. The more visible was the nomination of Tony Benn for deputy leader, on the ground that the MPs’ choice of Denis Healey lacked legitimacy now that the electoral college had been established. Benn’s campaign theme was a distrust of the whole leadership so virulent that Michael Foot was eventually driven to protest that its target was clearly himself rather than his deputy, and that Benn should have the courage to contest the leadership instead. The challenger’s method was to address fringe meetings at trade union conferences all through the spring and summer, hoping to mobilise the activists on his behalf and thus, where the union leaders did not give way for the sake of a quiet life, to impose his candidature over their heads. (As with Aneurin Bevan’s somewhat similar manoeuvres nearly thirty years before, one main result of exploiting the division of the unions was to exasperate their general secretaries still further at Labour’s political factionalism which kept distracting them from their industrial tasks and opening new opportunities for challenging their authority.) In far less public fashion, Benn’s allies in the local parties pressed to extend the CLPs’ control over local council groups as they had done over MPs, by individual reselection and demands for accountability. They faced stiff opposition from councillors in many places, including some of those ossified safe-seat constituency parties where a complacent clique had held sway for years. Damaging rows came to the surface from time to time—in Manchester, Bristol and some boroughs in London where the Left had had most success in expanding its influence. Their most spectacular coup was on the Greater London Council, won by Labour in May 1981, where the leader who had fought the election was ousted a couple of days later and replaced by Ken Livingstone, whose maximalist supporters had quietly succeeded in organising the choice of a majority of the new councillors. Observers wondered whether Labour’s next election victory nationally might provoke an equally sudden and unexpected change of leader. The Social Democratic Party was set up, after some weeks of hesitation and then of hasty planning, in March 1981. Its three original leaders had come very slowly and with the utmost reluctance to the decision to break with Labour. Their discontent with the direction the party was taking had been growing throughout the 1970s, and for some months they had wondered publicly how long they could remain within its ranks (or indeed in politics at all). The Wembley decisions came as the last straw, obliging them to react

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 45

before they were ready or reconciled to the necessity. The core element of their initial supporters included many of those Labour Members who had for twenty years favoured entry into the EEC, and those—often the same—who had become so completely pessimistic about stopping the progress of the far Left within the party that they were willing to see the balance slide still further leftwards as a result of their own departure. The main difference between them and the right-wingers who stayed was over their respective estimates of the outcome of that batttle: the latter were bitterly reproachful of the former for giving up the fight, the former of the latter for not taking it up when prospects of success were better. Indeed, if the Labour Solidarity Campaign had been launched 18 or even six months earlier, the SDP split might not have occurred and would certainly have been much smaller; but then, if the split had not occurred, Solidarity would probably never have been launched at all. The original founders of the SDP saw themselves as trying to restore the Labour party as it had been, and as providing a refuge for Labour people who were not yet ready to break, but would be driven to do so as the Left continued its advance. They were soon to be joined by a number of other ex-Labour dissidents: Roy Jenkins himself, who had been out of British politics for four years as President of the European Commission; some other former MPs, including Taverne; some sitting Members, some of whom had been or feared to be denied reselection; and a group of bitterly anti-Left activists and local councillors, the Social Democratic Alliance. The impact of these later adherents, and some of the miscellaneous supporters who joined as their first political commitment, was to shift the SDP somewhat towards the centre and open it to the widespread charge of behaving as all things to all men. It was top-heavy with former Cabinet ministers (much the biggest secession from a potential British governing party for almost a century) and its membership was largely comprised of the professional middle class, though it attracted some grass-roots support from local councillors and trade unionists alienated by the far Left. Ever since 1931, if not before, it had been taken for granted that those who quit the Labour party would in due course be swallowed up by Conservatives, and that expectation added bite to the normal resentment against them for repudiating their tribal loyalties. At first, Labour was contemptuous of the SDP’s electoral prospects, predicting that it was a creation of the media which would rapidly wither and, as Foot confidently asserted, would not return a single MP at the next general election. That confidence was badly shaken during 1981, when in alliance with the Liberals the SDP, drawing votes from both sides, stayed comfortably ahead of both the old parties; and it was not restored in early 1982, when the Alliance fell back to the benefit of the Conservatives, while Labour failed to show any signs of recovery at all. The complacent belief in an inevitable Labour victory became harder and harder to sustain. V. SINCE THE SPLIT At Labour’s Brighton Conference in 1981, the Labour Solidarity Campaign at last won back a little ground. The CLPD had won two of its three main objectives but had failed to gain complete control of the party’s election manifesto for the NEC (which hitherto had

46 THE LABOUR PARTY

drawn it up in consultation with the parliamentary leaders, the Left complaining that this enabled the latter to emasculate it). In 1979, the NEC had been instructed by Conference to bring forward proposals in the following year to implement this change; they did so, but were narrowly defeated in 1980 (by only 117,000 votes) and again, to the Left’s surprise, in 1981. The three-year rule which had been suspended, was now restored and offered some limited prospect that a new outbreak of constitutional warfare could be deferred until after the next election. The electoral college had its first trial, with its frequently meaningless votes calculated to three decimal places, and Benn lost on the second ballot by a tiny margin. Above all, the AUEW leaders at last managed to deliver the votes of their delegation, and the maximalists lost five seats on the NEC, where Michael Foot and his handful of Tribune Group followers now held the balance of power; much to the wrath of the Right, he failed to exploit this advantage by removing Benn (or the latter’s intermittent ally Eric Heffer) from their influential committee chairmanships. But these successes distracted attention from Solidarity’s total failure to achieve the objectives it had set itself at the start: no one ever spoke of restructuring the NEC, and the 50–25–25 electoral college formula was abandoned in another vain effort to restore harmony within the party. In the last resort the decision rested with the trade unions. Naturally they were divided between the factions, with some signs of wavering among several of those sympathetic to the Left, such as ASTMS and even the Transport and General Workers, but with a notable accession of industrial strength and prestige to the maximalists when Arthur Scargill was elected president of the Miners. The committed right-wing unions were a clear minority, though too important to ignore since they included both the Engineers and the Electricians. The balance of power was thus held by the centre, which could often count on much support among moderately left-wing unions equally irritated by being distracted from their industrial and organising tasks to deal with political issues which were guaranteed to divide them. All of them faced a dilemma, which only the far Left unions found easy to resolve. If they intervened openly and actively in Labour party affairs, they were likely to provoke rows within their own organisation to achieve an object of dubious value: for they would only be underlining all too visibly that the party was totally dependent on a sectional interest which, as they were only too well aware, was decidedly unpopular among the voters. But if they stayed aloof from the internal quarrels, they faced endless demands for funds from a party which was financially bankrupt, was becoming increasingly committed to policies of which most unions disapproved in varying degrees, and was showing more and more signs of inability to win a general election; and no trade union could see any advantage in paying the bills of an inevitable loser. Every month of the Thatcher government made them more anxious to preserve the political party on which they counted for support, and every month of sectarian wrangling in the opposition increased their exasperation as the likelihood of the party forming an alternative government receded still further; unlike the maximalist ideologues they could not console themselves, as the pendulum failed to swing, with the hope of victory for a true socialist party next time. They dealt with the dilemma by postponing it; until the next election no union leader wished to complicate his turbulent life by making controversial decisions which might prove to have been unnecessary as well as distasteful. But whatever the

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 47

election result, they were well aware that a Labour party in which four-fifths of the constituencies were behind Benn was never going to be one with which they could be comfortable.24 Before the election there would certainly be no drastic change; after it, it was no longer certain that the exclusive political links and the repeated financial subsidies would continue indefinitely. By the autumn of 1982, Labour’s position had improved marginally in opinion polls and by-elections, while the Liberal-SDP Alliance had failed to recover the ground lost in its postFalklands slump. The Conservatives continued to enjoy a comfortable lead, but Labour politicians could once again convince themselves that, provided the party presented an acceptable face to the electorate, it still had a chance to win the next election on a minority vote. For the many right-wingers who remained within Labour’s ranks, including most of the union leaders, the condition meant above all removing any public impression that the far Left were in the ascendant within the party. Temporary truces, like that arranged in the spring at a weekend conference at Bishop’s Stortford, could not long survive when the rival factions had irreconcilable assumptions about the prerequisites for victory. In this perspective, the treatment of the Militant Tendency assumed vastly exaggerated symbolic importance for both sides. Anxious to avoid reviving the proscribed list which they had detested and condemned in the past, Michael Foot and his Old Left friends agreed to an alternative course: establishing a register of organised groups within the party, which would have to provide details of their structure and finance—thus enabling the NEC to declare Militant a ‘party within the party’ and in breach of Clause 2 of its constitution. Conference carried the proposal by 5,173,000 to 1,565,000, with the support of sixteen of the twenty largest unions (including the Transport Workers) and apparently of a large minority of the CLPs. Trade union votes also gave the Right two more NEC gains; though Benn’s allies strengthened their hold in the constituency section (where Militant candidates attracted a respectable sympathy vote for the first time), they were now isolated on the executive where Benn and Heffer were promptly ousted as subcommittee chairmen. The early successes for the Right soon turned sour. A furious row over the trading of union votes in the NEC elections provoked the repudiation of the NUR’s right-wing general secretary, Sid Weighell, by his left-wing executive; Weighell resigned and was not recalled. The treatment of Militant remained as divisive as ever, though now it split the far Left also: some denounced the register altogether and urged total noncooperation; others (including Benn) opposed it up to the Conference decision but then accepted it, joining those who wanted to concentrate on resisting expulsions rather than the register itself. The Right were equally divided on the extent of any purge. The new NEC majority wanted to expel Militant’s 60 full-time organisers and its eight adopted parliamentary candidates; as usual, the Left assumed they would go much further, as some may indeed have wished. Others like Jim Mortimer, the new and stronger general secretary, joined Foot and his small group of Old Left allies in seeking to divide the opposition, and reassure the maximalists, by ousting only a handful of leaders, the current five members of Militant’s editorial board. Benn led the far Left opposition to any expulsions whatever, threatening to carry the fight into every constituency party. Foot’s

48 THE LABOUR PARTY

compromise appeased few of the critics, and the five Militant leaders alarmed the Right by threatening, with good prospects of success, to sue in the capitalist courts on the ground that using the register as a criterion for individual expulsions was in the Labour party context unconstitutional, a covert means of reviving the proscribed list without Conference authority for doing so. The eight candidates posed a still more awkward problem: if they survived, the register operation would be generally seen as a fiasco in which Foot had suffered a serious personal defeat; if they were expelled, their local parties would support them and would have to be disaffiliated (using the old weapons Foot had always denounced), so keeping alive the image of a bitterly fratricidal party throughout the run-up to the general election. Nor was the problem confined to Militant, or solely a consequence of the right-wing trade unionists’ eagerness to carry out a massive and visible purge: the maximalists could exploit the gains made by in previous years to maintain the momentum and the impression of continuing left-wing advance—the very impression which the right wing were determined to eradicate. Examples were cropping up everywhere, above all in and around London where the far Left had had most success. In Bermondsey the local party was bitterly split between the old guard (several local councillors and the MP, the former Chief Whip Bob Mellish) and the young activists led by the secretary, Peter Tatchell; he was chosen as parliamentary candidate, Foot declared he would ‘never’ be endorsed, but the local party reaffirmed its choice and he became—for both sides—a national symbol. The Hornsey party faced disbandment for insisting on admitting to membership, against the wishes of the (pre-1982 Conference) NEC, the former student activist leader Tariq Ali who had been conspicuous in one of the Trotskyist sects. At Hemel Hempstead, where the NEC did not intervene, the party’s GMC defied the wishes of most of the membership by choosing as its candidate a prominent black GLC councillor, Paul Boateng, instead of Robin Corbett, the Old Left former MP for the seat. (His share of the vote was halved and, in a supposedly marginal seat, he ran a bad third with only 22 per cent while Corbett was elected elsewhere.) With extensive changes of parliamentary boundaries about to cause another round of reselection, several other GLC leaders were actively seeking nominations: in one seat, where the normal reselection procedures had not yet taken place, Ken Livingstone was expected to displace the sitting left-wing member for Brent East, Reg Freeson. (He was frustrated by the early election—at which Freeson easily survived.) The NEC, now under the control of an alliance of the Right and the ‘soft Left’, decided on ‘closed’ rather than ‘open’ reselection in seats affected by boundary changes, so restricting challenges to sitting MPs, because the alternative could have meant extensive bloodletting on a scale which would have destroyed the party’s electoral prospects.25 The right-wing reaction on the NEC had come very late in the day, when so much ground had already been lost that any effort to exploit the new organisational balance of power was likely to provoke furious hostility with disastrous electoral consequences. Oneman-one-vote proposals for revising the party’s constitution, belatedly advocated by rightwingers who had resisted them three years earlier when proposed by the future leaders of the SDP, were further handicapped by the natural suspicions of the motives of their tardy proponents. Feelings remained rancorous between Benn’s followers and those of Foot, in

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 49

spite of Foot’s efforts to shield Benn from the wrath of the Right. Joan Lestor, who had opposed Benn’s candidature for deputy leader, lost her CLP seat on the National Executive like Ian Mikardo before her. The Tribune group of MPs publicly split when its Bennite members refused to renew their subscriptions. The weekly Tribune itself, mouthpiece of the Labour Left under the leadership of Cripps, Bevan and Foot, was swung into Benn’s camp by its new editor, his close ally Chris Mullin, despite John Silkin’s attempt to mobilise survivors from the paper’s early days to regain control for the Old Left by a shareholders’ coup. These organisational manoeuvres, regardless of their factional origins or degree of success, portrayed the Labour party to the electorate in an unappealing light. The 1982 conference, hailed in sections of the press as a turn of the tide, had no clear-cut outcome and certainly gave no prospect of an end to fratricidal strife. Opponents of the Left could take comfort from some decisions. An effort to stiffen the mandatory reselection procedure by banning short-lists of one was lost by nearly three million votes. Conforming to an old Labour tradition, an ambiguous motion gave the leadership a fairly free hand—short of a statutory incomes policy—on the most prickly but most essential problem of domestic policy. A month earlier, the TUC had at last adopted a long-debated and contentious reform of the General Council’s composition, guaranteeing a seat to each middle-sized union; in the short run that would reinforce the right wing, at the expense of the small left-wing unions currently over-represented on the Council thanks to the Transport Workers’ massive vote. On the other hand, the same party conference which had returned a right-wing majority to the NEC, also for the first time committed the party (by five million to two million, well over the constitutional two-thirds majority) to unilateral nuclear disarmament, including the removal of American bases from Britain. In typical Labour fashion, Conference also rejected (by a much bigger majority) a proposal for British withdrawal from NATO. It was probably less clear than it had been in the past that nuclear disarmament was an electoral liability; but clearer than ever that the decision set the stage for a spectacular new round of conflict within the party. Many of its leaders, and most of those who gave Labour most of its remaining claim to credibility as a future government, would be unable to serve in a cabinet committed to unilateralism. They could and did argue that it would be the NEC’s task to reconcile the two dubiously compatible resolutions, and the new NEC majority would doubtless assist rather than obstruct the Shadow Cabinet in drawing up an election mani festo satisfactory to the front bench. But on this most passionately emotional of all topics, and after the long-awaited constitutional majority of Conference had at last been attained, the left-wing cries of betrayal would be louder and more widespread, and above all would fall on far more receptive ears, than ever in the past. In the short run the leadership had acquired the freedom to use the traditional arts of manoeuvre once again to frustrate the pressures from below. But in doing so it would confirm all the Left’s charges and suspicions, and give them credibility in the eyes of a new generation of activists: the fuse thus lit might possibly produce an explosion of unprecedented violence after (perhaps even during) the 1983 election. That election seemed less likely than a year earlier to bring about a catastrophic collapse for the Labour party, but no politician looked forward to it with optimism. New

50 THE LABOUR PARTY

boundaries and the loss of the SDP members meant that Labour faced a huge task which it was in no condition to tackle, even if its internal conflicts could be temporarily patched up. Michael Foot had been chosen leader as the best man to hold the party together—not to organise a winning campaign, or to make a convincing prime minister. In the first task he had failed as anyone else might well have done; for the others, no one in the party thought him particularly adept, and the country plainly agreed—his opinion-poll ratings as leader of the Opposition were far below those of his predecessors of either party. Yet the general dissatisfaction could find no outlet, for Labour had saddled itself with the ramshackle electoral college: a leadership contest confined to the PLP might have caused trouble in the short term but reduced it in the long run, but after the first experience of an electoral college struggle, no one wanted to remind the voters that the Labour party had decided to select prospective prime ministers through that strange device. Whatever his drawbacks, Foot had to remain until the election. As 1983 began, the Conservatives retained the comfortable lead they had held since the Falklands War, with Labour trailing badly and the Liberal-SDP Alliance, its momentum lost, running a distant third. In March the festering local quarrel in Bermondsey came to a head when Mellish resigned his seat. Tatchell was nominated by a determined constituency party, Foot endorsed him despite saying that he would ‘never’ do so, Mellish supported a dissident local councillor who opposed him, and (after a scurrilous campaign in the gutter press) one of Labour’s safest seats fell to a Liberal by 9,000 votes, as Conservatives and a clear majority of former Labour supporters switched to the candidate with the best chance to beat him. The Alliance jumped forward in the national polls to tie with Labour, showing that its latent support persisted—only to lose all the ground gained, and show the fragility of that support, when it came third in the next by-election at Darlington, held for Labour after a united campaign by a strong candidate from the Old Left. Bermondsey had shocked Labour politicians into a sudden determination to halt the feud and refrain from public quarrels, for fear that an early election would sweep them away. The offensive against Militant was shelved after the expulsion of the five leaders, its parliamentary candidates remaining in the party. When the general election was called, the right-wingers agreed without protest to issue the full party programme as the Labour manifesto; acceptance of policies they disapproved (but hoped to modify or postpone in the unlikely event of victory) now seemed to them a much lesser evil than continued wrangling followed by electoral disaster for which they would assuredly be blamed. With the same medium-term calculation in mind, the CLPD leaders and Benn himself were urging their reluctant supporters to accept a pause in the left-wing advance. All could agree in hoping to benefit from the electorate’s short memory: if Labour could refrain from tearing itself to pieces for six months, perhaps they could ignore the Alliance as an irrelevance and hope, as so often before, that the reservoir of residual loyalty to the party would be topped up by a stream of voters unhappily rallying to it as the only real alternative to five more years of Thatcher government. This never looked like working as a strategy for victory: the Conservative lead actually widened in the early stages of the campaign. Before long, it began to fail even as a holding operation for survival, for the right-wing Labour leaders had accepted too many policies with

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 51

which they notoriously disagreed. Some ambiguities had had to be inserted to save their faces, since without them the party would lack all credibility as a government. But the ‘fudge and mudge’ tactic could not stand the strain of an election campaign. With both Conservatives and Alliance denouncing it and the politicians who sheltered behind it, their personal credibility was endangered. They could legitimately see their reputations as one of the party’s few remaining assets (one opinion poll even suggested that with Healey as leader, Labour would have been neck and neck with the Tories). So to preserve that asset (and their self-respect?) they felt it necessary to stress their own interpretation of the ambiguities on defence, an interpretation which the unilateralist majority would not endorse. The main opposition thus spent most of its energy, not in exposing the many frailties of the existing government but in trying to preserve the increasingly threadbare appearance of offering a serious alternative. Foot spoke on the same platform with a prominent Militant who had displaced an MP enjoying his warm personal endorsement, underlining yet again—as in the Tatchell affair—his dismal lack of authority. Always a coalition, the Labour party now embraced views and attitudes much too far apart to be reconciled, and therefore appeared to the country to be incapable of forming a coherent government. After four years of talking exclusively to themselves, many Labour politicians and activists had forgotten the need to address themselves to the rest of the electorate; in some quarters, willingness to do so was itself a cause for suspicion. The massive defeat shocked most of the party, and some of the hard Left, into accepting the need for some reappraisal. The election of a new leader and deputy showed a widespread wish for unity and recognition that it might offer Labour’s last chance to survive as a major force. Even the electoral college worked well in the new mood of harmony, enhancing the legitimacy of the winners by giving them majorities in each of its three branches. As the memory of the disaster faded, however, it was far from clear how long that harmony would continue. Neil Kinnock showed signs of proving another Harold Wilson rather than a younger Michael Foot, and of accepting the need to listen to the electorate again. He could expect support from the PLP, where the new rules and the outlook of the CLPs ensured a substantial expansion of the Left’s strength. But any open repudiation of the Left’s policy victories was sure to meet resistance, and they were now too entrenched in the organisation to be easily dislodged. While Kinnock’s honeymoon gave the party a better new start than most observers had ever expected, it remained to be seen whether the Labour coalition could rediscover any agreed principles, and so again present itself to the electorate as a united party. NOTES 1. Ivor Crewe in D.Kavanagh (ed.), The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp.37, 39. Anthony King in PS (journal of the American Political Science Association), (Winter 1982), p.12: from the University of Essex Election Study. 2. Editor’s essay in Kavanagh, p.211. (A MORI poll had instead 50% and 35%: D.Butler and D.Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980), p.343.)

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3. Militant Discussion Document, quoted by John Tomlinson, Left, Right: The March of Political Extremism in Britain (London: John Calder, 1981), p.69. 4. (Medians): Paul Whiteley in Kavanagh, p.115. 5. Egon Wertheimer, Portrait of the Labour Party (London: G.P.Putnam & Sons, 1929), especially pp. 168–70. 6. On German rearmament in 1954, when the leadership itself was almost evenly split; and on unilateralism in 1960. Martin Harrison, Trade Unions and the Labour Party Since 1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960), Ch. V and p.229; Philip Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (London: Cape, 1979), p.613 and n.172. 7. Patrick Seyd and Lewis Minkin in New Society, 20 Sept. 1979. One party in South London shed 78% of its membership in these years. 8. S.E.Finer, The Changing British Party System 1945–1979 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980), pp.22–3. The trend is understated, for the middle-class element in the PLP varies directly with its size, which had fallen by 18% between these dates. 9. In the only previous exception since the war, the left-wing MP for Merthyr Tydfil was dropped in 1970 by his local party as too old (he was 82). He stood and won as Independent Labour. 10. D.Kogan and M.Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Fontana 1982), pp. 57, 66. The leaders of the Left on the Greater London Council and in the London boroughs exemplified this tendency. See David Webster, The Labour Party and the New Left (Fabian Tract 477), pp. 12–13. 11. Kogan and Kogan, pp. 13–14, 25–7, 66. 12. Ibid., p.42: from an official CLPD statement. 13. Ibid., pp. 53, 73–6, 80–2 for the 1980 alliance. Also Webster, op. cit., p.21; pp. 1–17 discuss the relationship between Trotskyist and other far Left views, and the attitude of both to specific Labour policies. 14. Kogan and Kogan, op. cit., p.21. 15. CLPD had been much helped by the Prentice affair: ibid., pp.30–1. Reginald Prentice had been ousted from his constituency by a well-organised left-wing coup, which was opposed by right-wingers using similar tactics; the NEC and its officials had assisted the Left. When Prentice angrily went over to the Conservatives, he convinced many Labour loyalists that the Left had been justified throughout in charging that he had been a disguised Tory all along. 16. These strictures have applied over many years to attitudes towards Labour’s long-running policy and constitutional disputes. In January 1983 the CLPD was bitterly divided over the decision (discussed later) to establish a register of organised groups within the party as a device for ousting the Trotskyist Militant Tendency. Tony Benn led the opponents of this decision, who urged all left-wing groups to boycott the register; the founders of CLPD threatened to resign and set up a new organisation if the members voted to defy the decision of Conference, and prevailed by 310 votes to 288 (after furious arguments over the validity of voting credentials and procedures). 17. See Kavanagh, op. cit., p.21 (Crewe) for MPs; ibid., p.109 (editor’s chapter) for the quotation; and The Economist 17.6.83 for the percentage of manual workers. 18. Kogan and Kogan, op. cit., pp.64–5, for quotations in this paragraph. 19. Guardian, 23 Oct. 1981 (including the Chris Mullin quotation). 20. For a good brief description see L.Minkin, The Labour Party Conference (London: Allen Lane, 1978), pp. 175–87, 200–5. 21. The Kogans’ account (pp.95–7), otherwise full and clear, attacks the AUEW leaders for stupidity and misses their wish for an iron-clad mandate from the national committee—

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22. 23.

24.

25.

which had to be delivered, like so many mandates, before anyone could know the precise proposal to be voted on. Eileen Short in Militant, 30 Jan. 1981: quoted Blake Baker, The Far Left (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), pp.166–7. The media gave less publicity to another left-wing union, NUPE, which did consult its members, and honourably voted for Healey as they wished. Some other unions were deterred from consultation by legal advice that the ballot could not exclude those who do not belong to the Labour party. That proportion exaggerates his real, but not necessarily his politically effective support. First, the 80% of CLPs with Bennite majorities had anti-Benn minorities in their ranks; secondly, not all Bennites would follow him in total repudiation of the old leaders, and those who would became fewer as the election approached. But the structure of the party always over-represents the dominant group in each section, and we have seen (Table 3) that in 1978, when his total support was far smaller, three-quarters of his following among Conference delegates came from the ‘hard’ rather than the ‘soft’ Left. They count; the dissident minorities do not. The Times, 24 Feb. 1983.

The Conservative Party: From Pragmatism to Ideology—and Back? James Douglas

DIVERSITY, UNITY, AND ADAPTABILITY Like all major political parties in Britain, the Conservative party has always embraced a fairly wide range of political attitudes and views. Yet at the same time it has preserved and still preserves a recognisable unity that makes it resistant to the sort of splits that affected the Liberal party at the end of the nineteenth century and the Labour party in the second half of the twentieth century. Philip Norton and Arthur Aughey express the point well: The Conservative Party has always been content to be a broad church of men and opinions rather than a Community of Saints following a transcendent vision. Obviously within the party there will be disagreement and disaffection which, depending upon the circumstances, will be on either a narrow or broad basis. What has kept the party united has never been the monolithic nature of its membership but that divisions have generally been of less significance than views held in common. One may say that the internal debate over policy within the Conservative Party mirrors Lord Butler’s description, following Burke and Baldwin, of the essence of Conservatism itself—‘ordered liberty’.1 This ‘broad church’ tolerance of diversity is certainly functional in the British political system which is loosely described as a two-party system but which would be more accurately described as a system which normally results in a single party being entrusted with the responsibilities of office. This ability to tolerate diversity while preserving sufficient unity to form an administration is generally seen as one of the main explanations of its long survival. Certainly the British Conservative party can make a case for being the oldest established major political party anywhere in the world today with a measure of organisational continuity going back to the 1830s and a more elusive ancestry as a parliamentary faction going back to the seventeenth century and the very beginnings of parliamentary government. In 1961, when, in the aftermath of the third consecutive Conservative victory at the polls, it looked as if the Conservative party might be in office continuously for a generation or more, the editors of the Political Quarterly devoted an issue to the

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Conservative party. The editors at that time (neither of whom was particularly sympathetic to the Conservative cause) were above all struck by the adaptability of the party: Free from closely defined doctrine, it can permit within itself a wide range of viewpoints without suffering for it—unlike the Labour Party which is also a coalition…but a vastly less comfortable one, to whose doctrinal disputes must always be applied the obscure touchstone ‘is it socialism’…. The absence of doctrine creates a remarkable adaptability to the needs of the moment and even makes possible the occasional major transformation such as happened after 1945. Yet the party still remains itself; though times have changed and Conservative policy has changed with them, the party of today is still recognisably the party of Disraeli, of two generations of Chamberlains, of Stanley Baldwin and of Sir Winston Churchill.2 Intellectual Humility This ‘absence of doctrine’ and the corresponding tolerance of political diversity, I believe to be ultimately based on a kind of intellectual humility— an instinctive recognition that the most penetrating and the most comprehensive political theory can never wholly encompass the full complexity of the real world. This sort of intellectual humility and the style of discourse to which it gives rise was well described by Bagehot, more than a century ago, who attributed it to the membership of the House of Commons as a whole: They are Whigs or Radicals or Tories but they are much else too. They are common Englishmen and, as Father Newman complains, ‘hard to be worked up to the dogmatic level’. They have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of probabilities and of doubt, where nothing is very clear, where there are some chances for many events, where there is much to be said for several courses, where nevertheless one course must be determinedly chosen and fixedly adhered to. They like to hear arguments suited to this intellectual haze. So far from caution or hesitation in the statement of the argument striking them as an indication of imbecility, it seems to them a sign of practicality.3 This attitude of mind is on the decline in the Conservative party as it is in the House of Commons as a whole. ‘Intellectual hazes’ are not popular in Westminister today. Yet, as Bagehot suggested, it corresponds to a wide-spread and basic characteristic of English secular culture. The British electorate tend to be political agnostics. They are profoundly sceptical of policies based on political theories. One of the paradoxes of the last 25 years is that the electorate seems to have become increasingly pragmatic just as the politicians have become increasingly ideological. In the period from 1945 to 1964, the Conservative party well exemplified the pragmatism, the freedom from ‘closely defined doctrine’, on which the editors of the Political Quarterly commented in 1961. Following the journalistic convention, I am using

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the terms ‘pragmatism’ and ‘ideology’ but these are not really satisfactory. There is a sense in which Harold Macmillan was as ‘ideological’ as Margaret Thatcher and Margaret Thatcher as ‘pragmatic’ as Harold Macmillan. The real distinction comes closer to the distinction between incremental change and step-level change.4 Thus, the Churchill administration decided against denationalisation (except for the iron and steel industries in which the process of nationalisation had not been completed) and contented itself with moderate incremental changes in the control and accountability of the nationalised industries. The Thatcher administration, on the other hand, starting from convictions about the relative merits of private and public ownership, many of which would have been shared by the Churchill administration, has ‘embarked on the long and complex process of returning state-owned enterprise to private ownership’5 despite the fact that the middle of a recession is fairly obviously not the best possible time at which to sell national assets. What I have loosely called the ‘pragmatists’ and should, perhaps, more accurately be described as the ‘incrementalists’ are thus more conservative (with a small c). They are more cautious about making changes in the status quo even when the status quo is not of their making. This distinction also divides the post-war period more sharply. The initial period of radical reforms, the step-level change relevant to the post-war period, occurs in the closing years of the war itself and is basically bi-partisan. From 1945 to 1964 the party leadership built on this post-war consensus by moderate incremental steps. Mr Heath was the first post-war leader of the party to stand for radical step-level change. In opposition he developed, and in his first two years of office he embarked on, a programme of radical changes which he himself described as a ‘quiet revolution’. The constraints encountered in office forced him back, after 1972, on to the road of incrementalism. Mrs Thatcher then marked a second shift towards more radical change, this time adopting a more pronounced neo-liberalism and more explicitly repudiating the post-war consensus. The Hotelling-Downs Model The reason why a moderate centrist party should be electorally successful in a two-party system is fairly easily explained. The classic explanation was given by Anthony Downs a quarter of a century ago drawing on an even older economic model of spatial competition developed by Harold Hotelling.6 The assumed mechanics of the Hotelling-Downs model are essentially simple. We assume an electorate ranged linearly along a Left to Right spectrum. The voter at each end of the spectrum, say the ‘right’ extreme, has the choice either of voting for the ‘party of the right’ or, if he feels the party’s position is too centrist and moderate, not voting at all. He cannot rationally vote for the opposite party since ex hypothesi that party’s position is even further from his own. The voter in the centre of the political spectrum, on the other hand, has the option of voting for the opposite party, thus having twice as much influence on the balance of votes as the extremist. Like the extremist, the moderate can reduce the votes of the party of the Right by one vote but he also, unlike the extremist, can increase the votes of the opposite party by one. Downs argued that, under these circumstances, politicians seeking to maximise their votes would tend to give twice as much weight to moderate as to extremist opinion so that the policies of the two parties would tend to

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become ‘more similar and less directly linked to an ideology’ than would be the case in a multi-party system. The equilibrium point would be reached when the next marginal shift to the centre lost two ‘extremists’ for every ‘floating voter’ it gained. In the first 20 years after the war, British politics developed very much in the way the Hotelling-Downs model would have predicted. The emergence in the post-war period of a moderate consensus based on a mixed economy of private enterprise, publicly financed social services, and Keynesian macro-economic management, is a matter of history. It was neatly encapsulated by The Economist newspaper when they coined the word ‘Butskellism’ to designate the similarity between the policies of Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour party, and R.A.Butler, one of the main architects of Tory policy at the time. Both had been Chancellors of the Exchequer in, respectively, the last Labour administration and the first Conservative one. The shift towards the ‘middle ground of politics’ occurs in the Conservative party quite rapidly after the party’s traumatic defeat in 1945. It is signalled most clearly by the publication in 1947 of the Industrial Charter. In part this was a conscious attempt, as Lord Butler describes in his autobiography, ‘to counter the charge and the fear that we were the party of industrial go-as-you-please and devil-take-the-hindmost, that full employment and the Welfare State were not safe in our hands’.7 Lord Butler identified three principal purposes: ‘The Charter was first and foremost an assurance that, in the interests of efficiency, full employment and social security, modern Conservatism would maintain strong central guidance over the operation of the economy’. By this was meant primarily Keynesian macro-economic management of the economy. One of the insights of the Industrial Charter was the realisation that Keynesian macro-economic management should enable the economy to be steered on an even course towards full employment and rising standards of living without all the apparatus of micro-economic controls inherited from the wartime economy. This, in turn, opened the way to the second purpose ‘not to put the clock back but to reclaim a prominent role for individual initiative and private enterprise in the mixed and managed economy’. The third purpose was ‘quite simply to make a new approach to the adjustment of human relations within industry’. These three purposes summarise quite effectively objectives held in common by the ‘post-war consensus’. How far was the development of policy and its centrist tendency motivated by the desire to maximise votes in the way the Hotelling-Downs model assumes? The editors of the Political Quarterly (in the 1961 issue from which I have already quoted) clearly believed the pursuit of office—and hence presumably of votes—played a crucial role: If a guiding principle must be looked for, it is simply the assumption, unquestioned at any level of the party, that the Conservative Party ought to govern and will govern even though there be no other principle to guide its course when in power or to dictate its pattern of revival when it goes through the rare, unnatural but at the same time calcining process of electoral defeat.

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As they themselves recognise, this is an oversimplification. ‘More than a belief in the rightness of Conservative rule is needed to give the party the coherence and continuity it evidently possesses’. The Conservative party, at the time, was by no means unsophisticated in electoral analysis. Opinion polls were not extensively used until after 1964 but efforts were made to gauge public opinion and a great deal of careful thought was given to learning the lessons of the Conservative defeat in 1945. The language used by officials of the party organisation often contained echoes of the Hotelling-Downs model—‘the importance of the floating voter’, ‘the need to hold the middle ground’, etc. A party that intended to survive could not be oblivious of the electoral consequences of its policies and, while this was not the only factor of which they would have taken account, they were bound go be heavily influenced by the surrounding climate of opinion. The theme that parties are in large measure the product of the political environment in which they operate is an old one in political science. It is most clearly stated (in relation to American parties) by William Keefe: The parties are less what they make of themselves than what their environment makes of them. The parties are not free to develop in any fashion they might like, to take on any organisational form that might appear desirable, to pursue any course of action that might seem to be required or to assume any responsibility that might appear appropriate.8 The electoral system is a crucially important factor in the political environment but it is not the only one. Lord Butler quoted in his autobiography the four criteria (apparently echoing Henry Brooke) he gave to the Research Department in sifting ideas for policy. The impact on the electorate does not figure amongst these. The four criteria are need, practicality, Conservative philosophy and ‘will it be acceptable, or can it be rendered acceptable, to the party?’9 The qualifying clause ‘or can it be rendered acceptable’ is worth noting. A good deal of party propaganda, or, as it was called, ‘political education’ was and still is directed at the membership of the party itself. Several of the party organisations for this purpose, including the Conservative Political Centre, date from this period. When the orthodoxy changed, as it did, notably under Mrs Thatcher’s leadership, the political education changed too. Unlike some social choice theorists, the Conservative party does not take the distribution of opinions as part of the given. It regards the role of a party not only as reflecting opinions and policy preferences but also as forming them. Even so, before an opinion can be rendered acceptable to the party, it must be held by a fairly widespread body of opinion within the party. The nucleus of opinion within the party that already favoured the types of policy advocated in the Industrial Charter would have included the members of the Tory Reform Committee, the One Nation Group and the not inconsiderable body of industrial and business opinion that favoured the Keynesian approach.

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The Development of a Centrifugal Tendency The Hotelling-Downs model suggests a centripetal tendency in the political system as a whole. This movement seems to have been dominant until sometime in the 1960s but gradually it was replaced by a centrifugal tendency as the policies of the two main parties begin to grow further and further apart. By the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, there was considerable criticism that the policies of the two parties had become too similar. The two parties were seen as offering an ‘echo not a choice’. By the mid 1970s few people were worried that the position of the two main parties was too similar. Rather many, and particularly within the business community, were worried by the policies of the two parties becoming too dissimilar—‘party polarisation’—and the fear was often expressed that the shocks caused by the alternation of parties in office might become too disruptive of the economy and society in general. We cannot identify a precise date at which the centripetal tendency was replaced by a centrifugal tendency. The Downsian model would not have predicted Harold Wilson’s defeat of George Brown for the Labour leadership in 1963 but Harold Wilson, once elected as leader of the Labour party fairly soon airly soon—and partly to preserve the unity of his party—moved towards the more moderate wing of his party. The mechanism involves strains within the party created by moderate centrist policies which alienate the more extreme and ideological elements within the party. This is followed, particularly in the wake of an electoral defeat, by a period of reappraisal of the party’s position at which, in effect, the moderate and the extremist wings fight it out for control of party policy. What we need to consider are the factors that will tend to determine which wing wins out. In the Conservative party after its defeat in 1945, it was clearly the more centrist, less ideological, wing that gained control. After 1974 it was the more ideological wing that won and this was even more obviously the case in the Labour party after 1979. Reaction to Labour We are not likely to find a single factor to account for a change to a more ideological stance. Nor, indeed, are we likely to find the answers by studying a single party although this article concentrates on the Conservative party. The political system is a single interactive system in which each party influences the others (including the influence of the ‘third’ parties). Sir Ian Gilmour, for example, has shrewdly pointed out that to some extent, at least, the increased ideological tendency of the Conservative party after 1970 can be seen as a reaction to the increased ideological tenor of the Labour party: Faced by an animal which had become much more like a Continental Socialist party of many years ago or like a Continental Communist party of the present day than like the traditional British Labour Party, many Conservatives decided that the old ‘middle of the road’ Conservatism of the past had failed (or at least was seriously out of date) and that something quite different was required.10

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THE ORIGINS OF THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS Perhaps the first question that needs to be asked is whether the post-war consensus was a historical aberration, so that what needs to be explained is not the centrifugal tendency of the last 20 years but rather the centripetal tendency of the earliest post-war period. Anthony Downs was quite explicit that his was not an empirical or historical study based on observation of how political parties in a two-party system actually behave but that what he was describing was the rational strategy that should be followed in such a system by politicians seeking to maximise votes. Certainly a strong case can be made for the view that highly exceptional circumstances characterised those early post-war years. The leaders of both political parties had been colleagues together in the wartime coalition. Although this did not interfere with the rhetorical vigour with which they fought ensuing elections, they would inevitably have influenced each other and been subject to some of the same intellectual influences. More importantly, the main elements in the post-war consensus had been worked upon by the wartime coalition government and a measure of common policy agreed upon before the coalition broke up. This consensual exercise was known as Post-War Reconstruction. We may take Beveridge’s ‘five giants on the road of reconstruction’—Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness—as symbols of the ills the policies of the post-war consensus were designed to combat. In each case, the roots of the policies can be traced back to the coalition government. The Beveridge Report to which we can trace back the origins of the policies on national insurance and social security had been accepted by the coalition government; the origins of the National Health Service can be traced back to the 1944 White Paper on a National Health Service (Cmd 6502); education policy to the Butler Education Act; the full employment policy to the Employment White Paper of 1944 (Cmd 6527).11 It is quite true, as Paul Addison has shown, that many of the Conservative leaders at the time had argued against many of these proposals but the opponents had effectively lost out before the coalition broke up. The Conservative party in the immediate post-war period still preserved many of the characteristics Bagehot described. They would recognise that while ‘there is much to be said for several courses… nevertheless one course must be determinedly chosen and fixedly adhered to’. Once a course had been chosen by a government in which the Conservatives of the time had collective responsibility, the tendency would be to follow its implications rather than to reverse course. We can accept that exceptional circumstances characterised the post-war years and we can recognise that the 1970s and the 1980s are not the only periods in British history to be marked by sharp ideological cleavages between the parties.12 Nonetheless, if we were to conclude that the post-war consensus was merely an historical aberration and that centrifugal forces are normally dominant in the British political system we would be left with a far more difficult problem: to explain why the British political system had not burst assunder long ago.

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THE WEAK INFLUENCE OF THE ELECTORATE IN POLICY FORMATION The centripetal strategy suggested by the Downsian model may still be the rational strategy for a political party seeking to maximise votes. This statement needs to be qualified in two directions, both concerned with Downs’s assumptions rather than the deductions he draws from those assumptions. One of these assumptions is that voters decide how to vote on a rational assessment of their own interests. Leaving aside the question of how far voters may be motivated by other considerations (such as party loyalty), the effect of this assumption, as Downs himself recognised, will vary considerably depending on whether we assume that voters assess the impact of the rival parties on their interests on the basis of the record of each party in office or on the basis of the policies proposed by the rival parties. We can now be reasonably sure that voters are principally influenced by the records of incumbents only somewhat modified by expectations of conditions likely to be created by the alternative.13 Certainly we cannot assume that voters organise their policy preferences tidily on a left-right spectrum and choose their party accordingly.14 The effect of this qualification is greatly to reduce the influence of the electorate on policy choices and to leave much more scope to the leadership of the parties than assumed in the Downsian model. The electorate articulates the ends they wish government to pursue; they pass judgement on the performance of government in office but largely leave to the parties the choice of means of policies. This qualification weakens the Downsian model but it does not explain the centrifugal tendency. THE ROLE OF LOCAL ACTIVISTS The second qualification concerns the vote maximising assumption. Downs actually states the assumption in a somewhat more rigorous form—‘party members have as their chief motivation the desire to obtain the intrinsic rewards of holding office’. In my experience, this is not a very good description of the psychology of most candidates whose motivation is considerably more complex. My main criticism, however, is that in his analysis, Downs implicitly equated the pursuit of office with the pursuit of votes and assumed that politicians will formulate policies to attract the maximum number of voters. Obviously attractiveness to voters is crucially important, although, as suggested above, policies (as distinct from the record and expectations regarding the record) are not enormously important in attracting voters. Moreover candidates need to be more than attractive to voters. They need, among other things, a voluntary organisation that will help them to turn out the vote. This suggests a possible explanation of the centrifugal tendency that was popular at one time. The argument would be that these voluntary organisations are run by activists with different political attitudes from those of the mass of the electorate and more extreme and ideological in their views. It is thus the voluntary organisation, the local Labour parties and the Conservative Constituency Associations, that, on this argument, would be responsible for the shift to more ideological policies. I shall leave to Philip Williams the task of assessing the role of the local Labour parties in the rise of the Left. In

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the case of Conservative Associations, the only study of the activist views I know is, unfortunately, 20 years old15 and thus too early to cast much light on our problem. I can only report from my own observation over an extended period of time that few if any Constituency Associations are particularly ideological. Most of the members of these Associations, on whom candidates rely to turn out the vote, or no more inclined to ideological controversy than the volunteers who help in the local parish are addicted to theological controversy. If we equate the party activists with the membership of the local constituency associations, I find it difficult to accept the popular argument that they are primarily responsible for the shift to the Right that characterised Conservative policy particularly after 1974. (Party activists can be defined somewhat differently and in this other sense of ‘activist’ there may be more substance to the arguments as I discuss below.) THE EXHAUSTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL OF THE POST-WAR CONSENSUS One historical argument does go quite some way towards explaining the shift towards a centrifugal tendency in the policies of both the Conservative and the Labour parties. This I would describe as the exhaustion of the intellectual capital of the post-war consensus. In the early post-war years, the consensus policies were extraordinarily successful. In the 20 years after the war standards of living rose more than they had in the preceding half century. Unemployment was kept to minute proportions. In the period 1945 to 1964 unemployment averaged below two per cent and passed three per cent only on rare occasions for very short periods. Inflation, by the standards to which we have subsequently become accustomed, was moderate and passed single figures only in the aftermath of the Korean crisis.16 Nevertheless the weaknesses in the Keynesian system began to appear quite early and by the 1960s had become very apparent. The most obvious weakness of the Keynesian system concerned wages. When money wages rose faster than productivity (which happened easily with a highly organised labour force) the public authorities were placed on the horns of an unresolvable dilemma. They could allow the money supply and aggregate demand to rise so as to continue to absorb the productive potential of the economy at the increased cost. If they did this, they not only sanctioned inflation but in some degree also ensured its continuation since the rise in prices provoked further inflationary wage demands. Alternatively public authorities could cut back money supply and aggregate demand. If this course of action was followed, the rise in prices was not immediately checked since the increase in labour costs had to work its way through the economy. Above all, aggregate demand would no longer be sufficient to absorb the whole productive potential of the economy; production would cease to rise (or begin to fall), bankruptcies and unemployment would begin to rise. So we got the familiar phenomenon of stagflation.17 Only slowly would fear of unemployment damp down demand for wage increases and restore equilibrium at a level of unemployment nobody could calculate and at a social cost many considered unacceptable. Both Conservative and Labour administrations attempted to resolve the dilemma by going outside Keynesian macro economic management and seeking a micro-economic influence

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through wages and prices policies. These tended to follow the same sequence irrespective of the party in power; voluntary restraint would give way to a wages freeze which would be followed by statutory controls. Wage policies had serious economic shortcomings; notably they impeded structural change of the economy and thus reduced its adaptability. Moreover wage policies raised enormous political problems regarding their enforcement and both the Labour administration of 1966–70 and the Conservative administration of 1970–74 collapsed ultimately because of their inability to enforce statutory wage controls. Britain seemed faced by an impossible triad. The vast majority of the electorate wanted three things—full employment, price stability and free collective bargaining—which the economy seemed incapable of producing simultaneously. What made it particularly difficult was that it was almost impossible to determine the electorate’s preferences amongst these requirements and the political parties did not help matters by each claiming in defiance of experience to be able to deliver all three. The three objectives at any given time may in fact have constituted a circular preference. In the 1960s there was some public opinion poll evidence to suggest that a majority preferred unemployment to price inflation and price inflation to income restraint (at least restraint of their own incomes) but preferred income restraint to unemployment (at least of themselves). If we allow for preferences changing over time, then certainly preferences circulate. No sooner does inflation abate and unemployment rise than the majority reverses its preference between the two. This was not the only weakness that appeared in the Keynesian system of economic management. At least equally important was the impact on external trade and the balance of payments—although the analysis in this case is complicated by other factors including the controversies surrounding the floating of the exchange rate. One effect of increased awareness of the weaknesses in the Keynesian system was the breakdown of what I might call the consensus of informed opinion. The consensus was never absolute. Keynesianism always had its critics but, by and large, in the 1940s and 1950s, it was a fairly safe bet that a random collection of economists and officials concerned with economic policy would share a basically Keynesian approach. Christopher Dow, for example, in the preface to his standard history of British economic management, written in 1962, could state quite baldly ‘modern economic policy is based on Keynesian theory’.18 By the end of the 1960s this was no longer the case. The climate of informed opinion had changed. The economics profession was sharply divided between those who continued in the Keynesian tradition and the neo-classical monetarist school emanating from Chicago— with a third school, which was to influence the Left of the Labour party, coming into prominence in Cambridge. This division was reflected in the advice the parties received from both their official and their unofficial advisors. Earlier Keynesianism had not only enjoyed the support of a consensus of informed opinion, it was itself one of the reasons for that consensus. It enabled us to abandon thinking of the economy as a zero-sum game in which anything gained by the workers was lost to the owners of capital or vice versa. So long as resources are standing idle everybody benefits by bringing them back into employment; the rhetoric of class war becomes irrelevant and ‘one nation’ a statement of economic reality.19

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Keynes himself at the end of the General Theory, in a much quoted passage, had emphasised the importance of changing economic ideas: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist…. I am sure that the power of vested interest is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.20 Politicians faced with the failure of measures based on moderate theories and unable to rely on any consensus amongst informed opinion are more tempted to follow the dictates of their ideological faiths than when there is agreement as to what is technically the right solution and the right solution is seen to work. Politicians of leftist persuasions will then say that capitalism does not work (as some of their colleagues have been saying all along) and so we must turn to real socialism. Those of rightist persuasion can only say that the effectiveness of capitalism has been obstructed by socialist accretions and we must return to a purer form of the market economy. The polarisation of British politics thus in some measure resulted from the malaise of the British economy. CHANGES IN THE PERSONNEL OF POLITICS The impact of changing economic ideas was accentuated by changes that took place in the personnel of politics in the post-war period. Two recent studies have explored these changes and reached remarkably similar conclusions. Dennis Kavanagh has pointed to the gradual decline in the proportion of the Parliamentary Labour Party coming from the working class. On the Conservative side, he found a more modest change but also a shift from what he called the ‘patricians’ to the ‘meritocrats’. Today he concluded ‘both now draw their MPs mainly from the ranks of the professions and the graduate middle class’.21 Anthony King’s study points to the rising proportion of MPs on both sides who are committed to politics as a career and come from the ranks of journalism, lecturing and teaching, all vocations easily compatible with a political career.22 What both studies suggest is, in effect, that the dominant class in British politics today has become that new class which Daniel Bell has christened the ‘knowledge class’.23 Lipset has defined it in another context: ‘if property was the criterion for membership in the former dominant class, the new dominant class is defined by knowledge and a certain level of education’.24 Various forms of terminology can be used. We can speak, like Dennis Kavanagh, of the change from ‘patricians’ to ‘meritocrats’ or like Anthony King, of the increasing number of ‘career politicians’ or like Daniel Bell, of the emergence of a ‘knowledge class’ or, like Ronald Inglehart and Alan Marsh, of ‘acquisitives’ and ‘postbourgeois’.25 What is quite clear is that over the nearly 40 years since the war, the kind of person who became a Member of Parliament has changed. There was no sharp break. There were for example, career politicians in 1945. There probably always were. What changed was that the proportion of them increased. There are today not only fewer

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people in the House whose principal occupation lies outside politics, but there are also fewer trade union leaders, fewer businessmen, more intellectuals in the broad sense including academics, teachers, journalists, advertising and public relations consultants and so on. We can expect such a change in the social composition of the House to affect the style of discourse and the approach to political issues. On the Conservative benches in the immediate post-war period, there still figured prominently those ‘men of business’ on whom Bagehot had relied to prevent ‘party zeal’ leading to a sort of elective despotism, to avoid parliamentary government becoming ‘the worst of governments—a sectarian government’. They were used to the world of negotiation and bargaining in which one does not advance one’s case by giving the lie direct to one’s opponent and where results are achieved by compromise. By contrast with the men of business, the knowledge class is suspicious of compromise and prefers a powerful idea logically and consistently pursued. The knowledge class is attracted to ideology, the men of business were suspicious of it. To some extent the shift from pragmatism to ideology is quite simply due to the fact that there are now more ideologues and fewer pragmatists. Both the movement away from pragmatism towards ideology and the increasing influence of the career politicians (neither of which are peculiar to the Conservative party) has led to politicians’ interests drifting away from the interests of the mass of the electorate. Increasingly, politicians speak their own language and debate amongst themselves issues that seem remote to much of the electorate. This, I believe, is one of the factors that has led to the phenomenon which Ivor Crewe and his colleagues have called ‘partisan de-alignment’,26 the way in which the competition of the two parties is ceasing to focus the concerns and reflect the conflicting interests in society. The older type of MP for whom politics was a secondary avocation was, of course, a representative by virtue of election but he was also a representative in an older and more primitive sense—in the sense in which the Bill of Rights could speak of a largely unelected Parliament ‘representing all the Estates of the People of this Realm’. The landowner was a representative of the landed interest because he was himself a typical landowner. The trade union leader was a representative of the interests of labour because he was himself a man with a working-class background and working-class friends. The social pressures they both encountered in their principal avocation kept them in touch with the attitudes of ordinary citizens, their peers—the ‘actual world’, as Bagehot would say. The trade union leader when he talked to his mates in the pub, would be more likely to discuss working conditions than the theories of Karl Marx and the landowner more likely to discuss livestock prices than the theories of Adam Smith or the latest pamphlet of the Institute of Economic Affairs. The career politician, on the other hand, is principally subject to the social pressure of his partisan colleagues. Their unifying symbol and often their only unifying symbol is the party doctrine they have in common. The career politician is dependent on his party for advancement in that career. This too forces him or her to look inward into the political community, including not only the party leadership (which changes over the period of a political career) but all the elements of the party structure; fellow partisans in the House and party office holders both at national and local levels. The peer-support which the

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career politician needs to build up en route to office comes from loyalty to the attitudes and doctrines of the faction on whose support he or she will rely in competing for office. This all leads to the building up of partisan political communities and factions concerned with the internal politics of their parties, with the development and elaboration of party doctrine, but relatively loosely tied to the concerns of the ambient society. FACTIONALISM IN THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND ACTIVISTS AT THE CENTRE As Patrick Seyd has shown,27 factionalism in the Conservative party is nothing new. Certainly since the war, I have known what could be described as factions for many years. I have already referred to the influence of the Tory Reform Committee and the One Nation Group in the early post-war period. These were more specifically groups within the Parliamentary party than such more recent groups as the Monday Club or Pressure for Economic and Social Toryism (PEST), and the influence of independent extraparliamentary groups on policy does seem to have increased since the 1960s. I agree with Patrick Seyd that the Bow Group should not be classed as a faction since, in general, it refrained from pursuing a particular point of view or consistent line. The Bow Group, which was started in 1951, nonetheless, had an important influence on the way factionalism subsequently developed in the Conservative party. They offered, as the Fabian Society had done for the Labour party many years before, an institutional channel for discussing party policy to people outside the parliamentary party itself. The more recent factional groups have typically included Members of Parliament but also a variety of other people with views on party policy—often, but by no means always, people who would themselves later seek to become parliamentary candidates. These people could be called ‘activists’ but in a rather different sense to that in which we used the term when discussing the influence of constituency associations. They do not necessarily take a very active part in the day-to-day work of the party and may simply confine themselves to writing for journals and newspapers. Activists in this sense probably did contribute to the centrifugal tendency since on balance they were probably more extreme in their views than the average of party members or party voters. Even so the point is by no means certain. Some articulated a right-wing point of view; others a centrist view. On balance their effect was prob ably to articulate the variety of tendencies within the Conservative party. It may be that the number of factions increased in the 1970s. But this is really a meaningless proposition since no precise meaning can be attached to the term ‘faction’ in the very loose sense in which we are using the term here.28 Certainly factions in our sense become more visible and public in the 1970s than they had been in early post-war years. In the 1940s and 1950s, Conservatives tended to keep their differences to themselves, relying on informal and confidential means of communicating them to each other so that the press and media hardly picked them up. One important change in the nature of factionalism within the Conservative party did take place in the 1970s. When Hugh Berrington considered revolts in the parliamentary party between 1945 and 1961, he found that ‘most revolts in the Tory Party are the work

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of a temporary ad hoc alliance of back-benchers united by their disagreement with the government on the solitary specific issue in dispute’.29 He went on to suggest that ‘here, perhaps, lies the greatest difference between the two parties. In the Labour party the dissident Left is separated from the dominant Right on a whole series of questions’. Philip Norton, in his carefully documented study of parliamentary dissent, finds that this tendency to form temporary single issue dissenting alliances (as distinct from persistent and organised dissent) continues all the way until the 1970 Parliament but changes in the 1970 Parliament itself. ‘Whereas in previous Parliaments the composition of a Conservative dissenting lobby was likely to change from issue to issue, there was a greater likelihood in the 1970 Parliament of the same Members appearing in dissenting lobbies on more than one occasion’.30 It seems clear that factionalism since 1974 has continued to follow the more damaging pattern of ‘wings’ dissenting on a whole range of issues rather than temporary ad hoc ‘alliances’ on single issues of dissent. These wings are today usually characterised as ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ rather than ‘left’ and ‘right’ but the terms, if not synonymous, have much in common. For this reason, amongst others, I find it difficult to accept Norton’s view that the principal cause of the change was Mr Heath’s style of leadership. Far more probable, in my view, is that Mr Heath’s and Mrs Thatcher’s styles of leadership are not so much the cause as the result of a change whose causes lie deeper in the political environment.31 THE ENVIRONMENT OF OFFICE The movement from pragmatism to ideology in the Conservative party although it has contributed to the recent polarisation of British politics, should not be exaggerated. In introducing the 1979 Manifesto, generally regarded as the most ideological of the party’s post-war manifestos, Mrs Thatcher went out of her way to play down ideology and dogma: ‘the heart of politics is not political theory, it is people’; the Manifesto ‘sets out a broad framework for the recovery of our country, based not on dogma but on reason, common sense [and] above all on the liberty of the people under the law’. The Manifesto itself was couched in pragmatic terms. It was because past policies did not work that they had to be changed. What the Manifesto proposed included a shift towards monetarist policies as a means of controlling inflation, a reduction in the proportion of GNP taken in taxation and, above all, shifting the balance of society towards individual freedom and away from the tilt in favour of the state. Apart from the shift from Keynesianism to monetarism which can be argued to have been tacitly begun by Denis Healey, these were not incremental changes based on previous policies of Labour and Conservative administrations. They were a definite shift in direction—step-level changes—and this was repeatedly emphasised throughout the Manifesto. The movement can in part be explained by the factors I have reviewed above. In part it was a reaction, as Ian Gilmour suggests, to the more aggressively ideological posture of the Labour party, the principal competitor for office. In part, the movement may be due to what I have called the exhaustion of the intellectual capital of the post-war consensus. This was clearly the basis for the radical phase of Mr Heath’s policies. In part, I believe it to be attributable to a change in the type of Member who entered the House of Commons:

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more purists attracted to ideas and abstract theories; fewer ‘men of business’ used to compromise and negotiating interests. This last explanation, I suggest, also applies to the development since 1970 of a pattern of factionalism closer to that of the Labour party. But beyond this, there is, I believe, a more basic reason. Political parties are the creatures of their political environment and the biggest change in the environment of a political party is the difference between the environment of office and the environment of opposition. Conditions of office do not favour ideology. It is no coincidence that in both parties the ideological tenor is more marked in opposition than in office. We are inclined to think now that the party’s ‘shift to the right’ began when Mrs Thatcher defeated Mr Heath for leadership in 1975 but, in fact, it had begun when Mr Heath became leader in 1965. In the early post-war years, 1945–1951, moderating influences were dominant although the party was in opposition but, at the time, the party was still psychologically in the environment of office. It thought of itself as the party normally in office and only unnaturally and temporarily in opposition. By the late 1960s, the party had begun to think of itself as part of a cycle of alternating Labour and Conservative governments worrying, as in Sir Keith Joseph’s ‘ratchet argument’, whether the Conservative party’s periods of office could prevent a national drift to socialism unless a Conservative administration was as aggressively conservative as Labour in office was aggressively socialist. In opposition a party can to some extent rely on dissatisfaction with the outcomes of government policy to bring it votes, almost irrespective of its policies of which most of the time most voters have but the barest knowledge. In office a party is judged by the fruits of its policies and those fruits have to appeal to a far wider spectrum of the electorate than are likely to be attracted by any single ideological position. If this view is correct, we can expect the experience of office to moderate the somewhat strident ideological note that has tended to creep into much of Conservative policy and rhetoric since the mid 1970s. The longer the party stays in office, the more we can expect it to move towards consensual and incremental policies. We have seen this happen before. It was the constraints implicit in conditions of office—and notably the difficulty of combining full employment and price stability with uncooperative trade unions— that forced Mr Heath into his ‘U turns’. Mrs Thatcher has been more adept at avoiding ‘U turns’ and the Falklands crisis has served to obscure some changes in direction. Nonetheless, recent policies to reduce unemployment depart from the more austere precepts of ‘proper monetary discipline’; the publication of targets for the rate of growth of the money supply has proved in practice a less powerful weapon than the 1979 Manifesto seems to suggest; the need to control local authority expenditure has in practice forced the central government into a more rather than a less interventionist position; neither in terms of money nor of labour employed has the proportion of resources in the government sector greatly fallen. Samuel Beer, the veteran American observer of British politics, wrote recently ‘if we compare her [Mrs Thatcher’s] performance with her original strategy, we see that with regard to most of its commitments, the government had executed not one but several Uturns. In a real sense she had not been able to carry out that strategy, not only because of its internal flaws, but also because of forces of resistance that can only be termed political’.32

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The conditions of the real world with which a party in office has to contend are constantly forcing governments away from radical changes in direction towards more moderate incremental changes.32 Beer’s verdict on the Thatcher administration may be less than fair and may reflect a judgment which could reasonably be made in 1981 when neither success nor popularity attended her policies but could not so reasonably be made in the aftermath of a General Election in which she won the largest Conservative majority since the war and which coincided with widely recognised signs of economic revival. Certainly the first two years of the Thatcher administration were, in economic terms, fairly disastrous. Inflation, interest rates, and unemployment, all rose and rose faster than in other countries in Europe; output, productivity and competitiveness, all fell and fell faster than elsewhere. In fact, since the end of the 1950s, every time the party of government has changed, the first two years of the new government have been marked by a relatively disastrous economic record irrespective of party. During the first Thatcher administration, the turning points varied from indicator to indicator but, generally speaking, most took a turn for the better around 1981 or 1982. By 1983, the worst of the recession was over. For those still at work— after all, a not inconsiderable majority— real wages and salaries were rising and looked like going on rising. One reason for the spectacular Conservative victory at the General Election was, if not that ‘most of us have never had it so good’, at least that ‘for most of us things are looking better than for some time’. The analogy with 1959 should not be pushed too far. The Conservative party in 1983 received a proportion of the vote that was a little lower than in 1979. The fact that this produced a landslide of even greater proportions than that of 1959 and an even greater majority of seats is due to the crumbling of the Labour party and the way the electoral system rewards a party that stays together and penalises one that splits. In one respect the first Thatcher administration did mark a radical change from all previous post-war governments. They faced squarely the trilemma posed by the ‘impossible triad’—something no previous party had done since the problem emerged in the late 1950s. Of the three mutually incompatible objectives, full employment, price stability and free collective bargaining, their actions, if not always their words, made it clear that the one to sacrifice was full employment. Unemployment and austerity were the canes used to restore discipline and responsibility to the economy. The Conservative manifesto for the 1983 General Election was the very archetype of an incrementalist document—the mixture as before with minor modifications. In one respect, however, the manifesto with its emphasis on trade union reform suggests that the party may be moving to a better resolution of the trilemma than sacrificing full employment. The monetarist theory that seems to have been the basis of much of the economic policy under the first Thatcher administration cannot explain involuntary unemployment and it is difficult to see how present levels of unemployment can be voluntary in any ordinary sense of the term. The Keynesian economics that are the basis of the policy of the SDP and of the moderate wing of the Labour party cannot explain the combination of unemployment and inflation. The most convincing explanation we have so far of that worsening of the trade-off between unemployment and inflation which we call

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‘stagflation’ is that provided by Mancur Olson.33 He attributes it to the organisational structure of the trade unions and similar institutions which he terms ‘distributional coalitions’. Institutional reforms—changing the form of collective bargaining to make collective action less harmful to the wider collectivity—seems, in terms of economics, a more efficient solution than leaving more than a tenth of the economy idle and, in terms of society, less damaging than keeping three million people unemployed. It is also likely to be closer to the solution that would be chosen by most of the electorate if they could be made to see the problem. The results of the election will certainly strengthen Mrs Thatcher’s own position within the party and the collective leadership will increasingly consist of those who reflect her own ‘tendency’ within the spectrum of the Conservative party. There is nothing unusual about this. The same, mutatis mutandis, occurred under Harold Macmillan’s leadership. However, the policy differences between the ‘wets’ and the ‘dries’ are likely to be eroded by conditions of office—by what Bagehot called ‘contact with reality’. This is partly, as Bagehot maintained, that the untidy situations encountered in the real world can rarely be made to fit the straightjacket of a tidy theory but it is also in part the result of what Beer calls ‘forces that can only be termed political’. Pluralist democracy presupposes a certain deference on the part of those in power towards the diversity of values held by different sections of the community. There can be no single absolute goal in democratic politics. The art is to keep the different balls in play. Curiously for a party with a reputation for elitism, the Conservative party has always understood this better than its rivals. NOTES 1. Philip Norton and Richard Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London: Temple Smith, 1981), p. 55. The whole of Chapter 2 ‘Varieties of Conservatism’ provides a valuable and remarkably well balanced survey of the principal strands in contemporary Conservatism. 2. Political Quarterly, Vol. 32 No. 3 (July–Sept. 1961), p. 210. 3. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Fontana, 1963), p. 159. 4. I am grateful to my colleague Robert McKinlay for suggesting this distinction. The terms are derived from statistics. Incremental changes can be plotted as a smooth curve as with a continuous function. Step-level changes result in a jagged curve representing discontinuities and changes in direction. 5. Mrs Thatcher at Georgetown University on 27 February 1981, quoted by David Heald and David Steel, ‘The Privatisation of Industry’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 53 No. 3 (July-Sept. 1982), p. 344. This article also provides a convenient summary and critique of the principal arguments used for the policy. 6. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957). Harold Hotelling ‘Stability in Competition’, The Economic Journal, Vol. 39. (1929) pp. 41–57. 7. Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971) pp. 146–7. 8. Quoted by Robert Harmel and Kenneth Janda, Parties and their Environment (New York: Longman, 1982) p. 7.

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9. The Art of the Possible, op. cit., p. 139. The memorandum in which these four criteria are specified appears to have been originally drafted by Henry Brooke. See John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy (London and New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 100–101. 10. Ian Gilmour, Inside Right (London: Hutchinson, 1977), p. 141. 11. The work and the controversies in the coalition government on post-war reconstruction will be found documented in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), Chapters 8 and 9. 12. See, for example, on the alternation of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies, Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? (New Jersey: Chatham House, 1980), Chapter 3. 13. There is now a considerable amount of literature on this subject. The most recent review based on extensive fieldwork in Britain is to be found in James Alt, The Politics of Economic Decline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 14. The Downsian argument is also much stronger if we assume not only that voters’ preferences can be organised linearly in a left-right spectrum but also that the distribution is single peaked. Although the maximum vote in a two party system will always extend across the mean however preferences are distributred, the ‘pay-off’ for a marginal shift to the centre will be much greater if the centre of the distribution contains many voters than if it contains few voters. A bi-modal distribution of voters’ preferences is more likely to lead to an unstable situation in which policy alternates between the two modes. 15. Richard Rose, ‘Political Ideas of Party Activists’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 56, (1962), pp. 360–?. Rose concluded on the basis of an analysis of resolutions submitted to the party conferences that ‘attitudes on questions of policy are randomly distributed among constituency parties and it may be tentatively assumed among party activists as well’. The data are, of course, very out of date. My belief, however, is that more recent data would not yield a significantly different conclusion, at least for the Conservative constituency associations. 16. In this there was a considerable element of luck and of favourable external circumstances including a favourable movement in the terms of trade. 17. For a much more comprehensive theory of the generation of stagflation (which has some points in common with this analysis), see Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), Chapter 7. 18. J.C.R.Dow, The Management of the British Economy 1945–60 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. xix. 19. The influence of Keynesianism in creating a political ‘middle ground’ not only in Britain but throughout Europe in the early post-war period and the political implications of the breakdown of Keynesianism are discussed by Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein in ‘Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads’, Democracy, Vol. 2, (1982), pp. 52–68. 20. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1942), p. 383. 21. Dennis Kavanagh, ‘From Gentlemen to Players: Changes in Political Leadership’, in Britain: Progress and Decline, edited by William B.Gwyn and Richard Rose (London: Macmillan, 1980). 22. Anthony King, ‘The Rise of the Career Politician in Britain and its Consequences’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 11 No. 3, (July 1981), pp. 249–85. 23. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 24. Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Whatever Happened to the Proletariat’ Encounter, Vol. 56, (June 1981).

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25. Alan Marsh ‘The Silent Revolution, Value Priorities and the Quality of Life in Britain’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 69, (1975), p. 28. 26. Crewe, Sarlvik and Alt, ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1946–1979’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7, (1977), pp. 129–90. 27. Patrick Seyd: ‘Factionalism in the 1970s’ in Conservative Party Politics edited by Zig LaytonHenry (London: Macmillan, 1980), Chapter 10. 28. Both ‘dissent’ and ‘faction’ can be given much more precise meanings. Both Philip Norton and Richard Rose have done so. Here I am deliberately giving the term ‘faction’ a very wide meaning and using it to apply to any group of party members, however loosely organised, united in pursuit of some policy objective or consistent line of policies which they hold in common. My usage—and I think that of Seyd—of the term thus includes both ‘faction’ and ‘tendency’ in Rose’s more precise formulation. It would also include what David Hine calls an ‘issue group’ in one of the best classifications of this family of concepts which I have read so far (West European Politics, Vol. 5, No.1, (January 1982), pp. 36–53). 29. Political Quarterly, (Oct.–Dec.1961), p. 368. 30. Philip Norton, Conservative Dissidents (London: Temple Smith, 1978), p. 249. 31. Curiously enough Norton seems to have been subconsciously aware that the direction of causality could go either way as in two places (p. 249 and p. 254) he refers to Mr Heath’s style of leadership as the dependent variable in his analysis—presumably a printer’s error that passes Norton’s vigilance as a Freudian slip. 32. Samuel H.Beer, Britain Against Itself (New York: W.W.Norton, 1982), p. 215. 33. On incrementalism generally see C.E.Lindblom, The Policy Making Process (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1968) and Aaron Wildavsky, Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974). 34. Mancur Olson, op.cit.

The SDP-Liberal Alliance: The End of the Two-Party System? D.T.Denver

I. THE PARTY SYSTEM 1945–1970 Anyone asked to describe the main characteristics of the British party system in the period 1945 to 1970 would almost certainly begin by stating that it was essentially a two-party system. Commentators writing during this period suggested that the confusions of the inter-war years, characterised by minority and coalition governments, party splits, the rise of Labour and the decline of the Liberals, had given way to a clear two-party system which seemed well established for the foreseeable future. Among the reasons suggested for the likely tenacity of the two-party system were, ‘the fact that the British people on the whole instinctively prefer it to a many-party system’;1 the simple plurality electoral system; the argument that the British system of government ‘leads logically to a two-party system with one party as the Government party and the other as the Opposition’2 and the notion that ‘the two-party system seems to correspond to the nature of things’.3 Winston Churchill even held that ‘the party system is much favoured by the oblong form of chamber’.4 Whatever may be thought of the reasons put forward to account for its existence, the fact that there was a two-party system in Britain during these years can hardly be denied. Between 1945 and 1970 the Conservative and Labour parties monopolised government, the former holding office for 13 years and the latter for two periods of six years. Moreover, these two parties won the support of the overwhelming majority of voters in general elections and held all but a tiny minority of seats in the House of Commons. The electoral dominance of the two parties can be demonstrated by simply aggregating the results of the eight general elections held between 1945 and 1970. Table 1 shows how aggregated votes and seats in the House of Commons were distributed over these years. Between them, the Conservative and Labour parties obtained over 90 per cent of all votes cast in this period and won all but two per cent of the seats. Two-party electoral dominance could hardly be more conclusive. Despite this, it would be wrong to see this period as one of ‘pure’ two-party politics. Three qualifications need to be made to such an over-simplified view. In the first place, though they were not very successful, other parties were never entirely eliminated. At their lowest point, in 1951, the Liberals obtained 2.5 per cent of the vote (three-quarters

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TABLE 1 PARTY SUPPORT IN GENERAL ELECTIONS 1945–1970

Source: Calculated from election results in D.Butler and J.Sloman, British Political Facts (5th edition, London: Macmillan, 1980, pp. 208–210).

of a million votes) and six seats in the House of Commons. Secondly, and more importantly, general elections from 1951 onwards witnessed a steady, if slow, erosion of support for the major parties. In 1951, 80.3 per cent of the British electorate turned out and voted Labour or Conservative. Thereafter this declined in every successive election (with one exception) to 64.8 per cent in 1970. This downward trend was obscured at the time by over-concentration upon the share of votes received by the major parties, which declined less sharply, but with hindsight it might be interpreted as an indicator of decreasing commitment to the two-party system. The third reason why the years 1945 to 1970 should not be viewed simply in terms of two-party hegemony is that from time to time the electoral dominance of the two parties appeared to be threatened. Three separate surges in third party support occurred. The first was the mini-revival of Liberal fortunes in late 1957 and 1958, though to describe this as a ‘threat’ to the two-party system is something of an exaggeration. A second and much more substantial Liberal revival in 1962 rekindled the hopes of those who sought to break down the existing party system. Finally, in 1967–69, more localised party realignments appeared to take place in Scotland and Wales where nationalist parties recorded major advances in support. These attempted breakthroughs by third parties shared some common features. In each case a sensational parliamentary by-election result was a central event, both reflecting increased support and acting as a spur to further increases in popularity in opinion polls. (The by-elections were Torrington 1958, Orpington 1962, Carmarthen 1966 and Hamilton 1967.) In each case too the party concerned made significant gains in local elections. But all three ‘revivals’ proved temporary and support faded as the next general election approached. By 1970 it could be argued that third-party surges in mid-term were to be expected, as electors reacted to unpopular government policies, but that third-party support would inevitably evaporate in general elections. II. 1970–1979: THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM THREATENED This comfortable view of the prospects for the two-party system was seriously challenged by the events of the 1970s when the dominance of the two major parties was more seriously threatened than at any time since 1945. As noted above, the Conservative and

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Labour parties between them amassed 91.3 per cent of all votes cast at general elections from 1945 to 1970. In the three elections held in the 1970s, however, they took only 77 per cent of the aggregated votes. Moreover, the percentage of the electorate voting for these parties, having reached a low of 64.8 per cent in 1970, fell further to 60.7 per cent in February 1974 and 56.1 per cent in October 1974 before recovering a little to 62.9 per cent in 1979. In part these figures reflect a very sharp increase in the number of nonmajor party candidates in the 1970s. But this, in itself, is indicative of the weakening hold of the major parties upon the electorate’s loyalty. As in the previous period, there were increases in support for third parties in opinion polls and some spectacular by-election results (most notably Sutton and Cheam in December 1972 which the Liberals took from the Conservatives on a swing of 32.6 per cent). This time, however, though there was some downturn, support for third parties did not entirely dissipate in subsequent general elections. In February 1974 the Liberals gained 19.3 per cent of the vote, easily their best post-war performance, and they slipped back only slightly in the second general election of that year to 18.3 per cent. In Scotland, the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) obtained 21.9 per cent of the vote (and seven seats) in February 1974 and 30.4 per cent of the vote in October 1974, a figure which pushed the Conservatives into third place, and won 11 seats. While these electoral reverses were serious enough for the major parties, the long-term viability of the two-party system was called into question by evidence of decreasing commitment to the two parties (as measured by strength of party identification) and a decline in class voting.5 Class and party identification had been the twin pillars, as it were, that had sustained loyal support for the parties in the past. Now their influence was seen to be rapidly diminishing. In addition, the very desirability and effectiveness of the twoparty system and the electoral system which strengthened it were more widely questioned. Adversarial politics, it was argued, was a not insignificant factor contributing to the political and economic ills of Britain.6 Having said all this, a third-party breakthrough in the 1970s remained more of a threat than a reality. Despite their declining support, the electoral system ensured that the Conservative and Labour parties continued to dominate the House of Commons. Taking the three elections of the 1970s together the two major parties won 96.4 per cent of seats (excluding Northern Ireland). Moreover, the 1979 election results suggested a return to more normal party politics with the two-party share of the votes and of the electorate recovering somewhat from the nadir of 1974 and the major parties winning all but 15 seats on the British mainland. Such an analysis would be superficial, however, for the British Election Study reported that in 1979 there were further declines in the strength of party identification and in class voting.7 At this level the two-party system was weaker than ever. III. THE CHALLENGE OF THE ALLIANCE The period since 1979 has seen the most significant threat yet to the post-war party system. There were similarities to previous third party ‘revivals’— spectacular by-

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TABLE 2 MID-TERM SUPPORT FOR LIBERALS/ALLIANCE

Notes 1. The last column, referring to the Alliance, takes March 1981 as the starting date since that was when the SDP was formed. The first two figures in this column are derived from the standard, unprompted question about voting intention. 2. This refers only to by-elections contested by all three main parties. 3. This relates only to those constituencies in which all three parties contested the preceding general election as well as the by-election. 4. Figures in brackets refer to the number of by-elections in each category.

election results helped to swell support, and mid-term government unpopularity was a major stimulus. There were, however, three novel features. Firstly, the challenge on this occasion was not by the Liberal party alone but by an Alliance between the Liberals and the Social Demo cratic Party. Secondly, the post-1979 years have seen not only government unpopularity but also an extremely unpopular Opposition. Thirdly, the level of third-force support and the persistence of that support far outstripped anything achieved in previous mid-term threats to the system. This is shown by Table 2 which compares the post-1979 situation with previous Liberal performances, using four indicators. The first row of the table shows the maximum share of vote intentions (excluding ‘Don’t Knows’) achieved. Up to 1979 the pattern is cyclical but with each advance (under Conservative governments) exceeding the previous one. Clearly, however, the 50.5 per cent of vote intentions recorded by the Alliance in December 1981 far exceeds anything previously achieved by the Liberals. The relative durability of Alliance support is shown by the figures in the second row. The mean monthly support for the Alliance since the formation of the SDP is almost twice as great as the best previously achieved over a comparable period. This support in opinion polls has been reflected in the Alliance’s performances in by-elections. In 13 by-elections from March 1981 the Alliance gained more than a third of the three-party vote compared with a previous best performance by the Liberals of a quarter of the three-party vote. Similarly the average change in the share of the vote gained by the Alliance (compared with the Liberal vote in the 1979 election) is a good deal larger than changes in previous periods.

THE SDP-LIBERAL ALLIANCE 77

Clearly, then, this latest challenge to two-party dominance is greater than at any time since the war. The question is, however, whether it is simply another challenge which will fade away in due course or whether it represents a fundamental realignment in British politics. The last such realign ment occurred between the wars when the Labour party replaced the Liberals as the second great British party. Having lasted for more than 30 years, is Conservative and Labour dominance in the process of being replaced by a new and more complex party system? The view that this is indeed so may be strengthened by the fact that the current challenge to the system involves not just the Liberals but also an important new political party, the SDP, which burst upon the British political scene in March 1981. Immediately upon its formation the SDP had 14 MPs, making it the third largest grouping in the House of Commons. In the ensuing months this number inched upwards because of further defections from the Labour party and two by-election victories. Following Roy Jenkins’ return to the House in March 1982 there were 30 Social Democratic MPs (though this was subsequently reduced to 29 by the by-election defeat of Bruce Douglas-Mann). The SDP has, then, already made a significant impact upon British politics. For this reason it is worth looking at the party’s origins and development. IV. THE ORIGINS OF THE SDP The story of the founding of the SDP has been recounted in detail elsewhere8 so that only an outline treatment is required here. Its formation and initial impact involved an interlocking of events at the level of political elites and changes in the mass electorate. At elite level there were two main paths which eventually led to the foundation of a new party. The first might be termed the ‘Jenkinsite’ path. In 1976 Roy Jenkins resigned as Home Secretary in the Labour government in order to become President of the European Commission. During his time in Brussels Jenkins kept in touch with British politics and became convinced that a realignment of British parties was necessary. In November 1979 he delivered the Dimbleby lecture in which he floated the idea of a new centre party. In Stephenson’s words this lecture ‘proved to be the single most important event in placing on the agenda for serious discussion the idea of some new party or grouping in the middle ground of British politics’.9 It evoked a wide and sympathetic response and Jenkins returned to the theme in a well-publicised Press Gallery lecture in June 1980. Jenkins had a number of supporters and confidantes and throughout this period he was closely, if informally, in touch with David Steel, the leader of the Liberal party. But on his own he could not have achieved very much. The other road to the SDP (the ‘Gang of Three’ route) was more important. Essentially the SDP was a product of Left-Right conflict within the Labour party. There had always been struggles within the party but in the 1970s they reached a new pitch of intensity and bitterness. Extreme left-wingers were alleged to be infiltrating the party, ‘moderate’ MPs were said to be threatened with dismissal by left-wing activists, left-wing policies were adopted by the party conference and the National Executive Committee

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came to be controlled by the Left. Left-Right conflict was particularly acute over three constitutional questions—control of the party election manifesto, the method of electing the party leader and the mandatory re-selection of incumbent MPs as parliamentary candidates.10 Initially leaders of the Right in the Labour party—and in particular the ‘Gang of Three’ (David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams) were hostile to the idea of a new party. Shirley Williams declared that such a party would have ‘no roots, no principles, no philosophy’11 and Owen retorted to the Dimbleby lecture: ‘We will not be tempted by siren voices from outside, from those who have given up the fight from within. The most foolish course now…would be to abandon the struggle within the party, to talk of forming new parties’.12 By the summer of 1980, however, the Left had secured mandatory re-selection of MPs—a constitutional change of far-reaching importance—and was on the verge of securing a change in the method of electing the Labour party leader. This had hitherto been confined to the Parliamentary Labour Party, where the Left were a minority. On 1 August the ‘Gang of Three’ issued an open letter published in the Guardian in which they hinted at the possibility of forming a new party if the Left’s grip on the Labour party could not be loosened. In September the Labour Conference confirmed the earlier decision on mandatory re-selection and voted to remove the power of electing the leader from the PLP. A special conference was arranged for January 1981 to determine the new method to be instituted. The last three months of 1980 saw the coming together of the Jenkinsite and ‘Gang of Three’ paths. With some hesitation and varying degrees of doubt and uncertainty the ‘Gang of Three’ became the ‘Gang of Four’ and prepared for the break with Labour. Potential supporters were informally sounded out and, according to Stephenson, the election of Michael Foot as leader of the Labour party in November finally convinced many of them that Labour was beyond redemption. Labour’s special conference met on 24 January and decided that in future the leader of the party would be chosen by an electoral college in which 40 per cent of the votes would be cast by trade unions, 30 per cent by constituency labour parties and 30 per cent by the PLP. This represented another defeat for the right-wing of the party. The following day the ‘Gang of Four’ issued their ‘Limehouse Declaration’ setting up a new ‘Council for Social Democracy’. It was now only a matter of time before a new party was formed. On 5 February an advertisement (signed by 100 prominent persons) appeared in the Guardian supporting the Council. This prompted a remarkable response. Around 80,000 letters of support were received and opinion polls indicated substantial public enthusiasm. Gradually those who had allied themselves with the Council broke their ties with the Labour party and finally on 26 March the new SDP was formally launched amid much publicity. MPs have defected from their parties before and new parties have been formed without having the impact of the SDP. In this case the number of defectors and their prominence as politicians was unusual but even so what explained the tremendous initial popularity of the SDP was a coincidence of long-term and short-term factors influencing the electorate. In the long term there had been, as we have seen, a progressive partisan dealignment amongst the electorate throughout the 1970s. With the Labour party in particular, an ‘ideological chasm’ had opened up between the party and its supporters as the latter’s

THE SDP-LIBERAL ALLIANCE 79

support for traditional Labour principles as well as specific policy proposals declined sharply.13. The long-term dealignment of the electorate led Crewe to conclude, just before the launch of the new party that ‘Social Democrats are tapping an existing electoral constituency and not just a fleeting protest vote’.14 The short-term factor conditioning the electorate’s response to the SDP was the unpopularity of the government. The Labour party was widely perceived as having moved to the Left during the 1970s, but now the Thatcher government was being perceived as doctrinaire and inflexible in the other direction. In this apparently polarised situation neither of the major parties was particularly popular but in the last months of 1980 and the beginning of 1981 the Conservatives were trailing badly behind Labour in the polls. In these circumstances the initial impact of the SDP was dramatic. Even before the party was officially launched a series of opinion polls showed support for a social democratic party at between 23 and 31 per cent of the voters while support for a social democratic-Liberal alliance varied between 38 and 48 per cent.15 Within eight weeks of the launch 52,000 members had joined the party.16 Clearly the foundation of the SDP marked a significant new departure in British politics—in the short term at least. After the initial excitement, however, the party faced the task of converting enthusiasm and euphoria into a substantial electoral challenge to the two-party system. V. MAKING THE ALLIANCE Throughout the post-war period the Liberal party constituted the major alternative to the two dominant parties. In the gestation period of the SDP it was not inconceivable that Labour dissidents would simply join the Liberals or else set up a new centre party which included the Liberals. This latter option appeared to be favoured by Roy Jenkins and from the time of the Dimbleby lecture there was a good deal of informal contact between Jenkins and David Steel. The ‘Gang of Three’, on the other hand, were much less keen on any formal link with the Liberals. David Steel himself seems to have viewed the formation of a new party, separate from the Liberals, as the most likely route to a realignment of British politics and he worked consistently for this.17 Throughout 1980 there was much media speculation about the relationship of the Liberals to any new party and contacts were maintained between the Liberals and, in particular, Jenkins’ supporters. In January 1980, for example, an informal conference of 10 leading Liberals and a similar number of Jenkinsites was held in the West Country.18 In September David Marquand, a close confidante of Jenkins, addressed a fringe meeting at the Liberal Assembly arguing that an understanding between Liberals and Social Democrats was essential. The Jenkinsites appeared to be keeping their options open by ‘playing footsy’ with the Liberals in case the ‘Gang of Three’ funked breaking with Labour. In the event this did not happen and Steel welcomed the Council for Social Democracy as a first step towards realignment. He suggested conditions for joint action, including an agreement that proportional representation should be a major policy objective. In the House of Commons MPs supporting the Council formed a committee with Liberal MPs to

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coordinate their parliamentary activity. More significant cooperation between the two parties was always on the cards, however, for opinion polls showed wider public support for an alliance of the two parties than for both of them separately. Crewe, writing in March 1981, summarised the polls as indicating that ‘forging an alliance with the Liberals makes all other considerations—policy, organisation, the leadership—pale into insignificance’.19 And Zentner, commenting on poll results from March to May commented: ‘To be successful the SDP and the Liberal Party clearly had to work together. United they were leading. Separately as third and fourth parties they remained small’.20 Early in May the SDP steering committee proposed that representatives should meet with representatives of the Liberal party to explore possibilities for joint action. The first joint meeting, chaired by David Steel and Shirley Williams, took place on 19 May and on 16 June they issued a joint statement called ‘A Fresh Start for Britain’.21 This made it clear that there would be no merger between the two parties. It began: ‘Our parties stem from different traditions and have their own identities’. A commitment to an electoral alliance was, however, contained in the last two sentences: ‘Our two parties wish to avoid fighting each other in elections…we shall therefore consider jointly and separately the constitutional, organisational and electoral arrangements in our respective parties which will make an alliance effective’. Thus the Alliance was born and the statement was approved overwhelmingly by the Liberal Assembly in September 1981. Agreeing to an electoral alliance in principle was one thing; working it out in practice was quite another, and the task of determining which of the Alliance partners should contest which constituencies proved more than a little troublesome. Steel and Rodgers met to determine arrangements for the share-out of seats and on 21 October guidelines as to how this would be done were published.22 Over the whole country each party was to contest an approximately equal number of seats. Liberal MPs and MPs who had defected to the SDP by 1 January 1982 were to be assumed to have first call on their respective constituencies. As for the rest, however, the country was divided into 32 local negotiating units and within these areas the maximum disparity was not normally to exceed 3:2 in favour of either party. Each of the parties was to fight different kinds of seats—urban and rural, promising and less promising, Labour-held and Conservative-held, etc.—and, it was stated that ‘weight will be given to local opinion, taking into account the relative strengths of the local parties, their campaigning record and potential and the particular electoral appeal of prospective candidates and the respective parties insofar as this can be ascertained’. This section of the guidelines clearly contains some very subjective elements which could not help much in solving local disputes, and disagreements were inevitable. According to the Liberal party constitution, local associations cannot be bound by the party leadership. In many cases they had already chosen prospective candidates. Having worked over the years to build up support they could well regard the SDP as ‘johnniescome-lately’ suddenly appearing to reap the benefits of their long-unrewarded efforts. In particular, in some constituencies such as Greenock and Port Glasgow, Liverpool Toxteth and Hackney South and Shoreditch, local Liberals found it difficult to accept erstwhile

THE SDP-LIBERAL ALLIANCE 81

Labour opponents as Alliance candidates. The generals of the party might find the making of electoral pacts easy but for the foot-soldiers in the constituencies local sensibilities were a significant obstacle. On the other hand, the SDP brought to the Alliance more than 20 MPs including some very big names with ministerial experience and could well feel that it was the SDP which was the dynamic partner and which was responsible for the high levels of Alliance support. They therefore expected a fair share of ‘good’ seats. But ‘good’ seats could only be defined as those in which local Liberals were most unwilling to give up.23 Negotiations between the parties ran into trouble at the end of 1981 when Bill Rodgers, the SDP’s chief negotiator withdrew from the talks following a disagreement over the share-out of seats in Derbyshire. After some unseemly public squabbling the quarrel was patched up and a more precise agreement was reached on 11 January. The Liberals were now to keep the top 50 seats of the most likely Alliance gains while the SDP would contest 100 of the next ‘best’ 150. It was not clear, however, how the ‘winnability’ of seats was assessed. By March 1982, the original deadline for the completion of this process, 505 constituencies had been agreed.24 Some of the remainder proved troublesome, however, and on the eve of the Liberal Assembly in September the two party leaders met to sort out the remaining 30 or so seats which were still unresolved. They reached agreement— with Jenkins, it was thought, making most concessions—and stated their determination to impose their decisions upon recalcitrant local parties, though there were still rumblings of discontent in a few constituencies.25 Nonetheless, within a year of embarking upon the task the Alliance partners had succeeded in agreeing upon the division of the vast majority of constituencies—a considerable political feat given the difficulties involved. Detailed analysis of the share-out of seats between the Alliance partners is made extremely difficult by the major revision of constituency boundaries which recently took place. The parties themselves had problems keeping track of the various provisional, then revised, recommendations of the Boundary Commission and converting agreements on old seats into divisions of new seats. It does seem, however, that the Liberals secured the best prospects. Oakeshott, for example, listed the 103 old seats most likely to be won by the Alliance.26 Of those 99 which did not disappear under the new boundaries, 65 per cent were contested by the Liberals. Similarly, an analysis of the 1982 local election results in terms of the new constituency boundaries showed that the Alliance performance was generally better in Liberal than in SDP seats.27 The party negotiators did not, however, appear to have been guided by the ingenious analysis of Steed and Curtice.28 Only about 57 per cent of the constituencies were allocated to the party indicated by their analysis— little more than would be expected on a random allocation. Determining which party was to fight which seats was, however, only one aspect of a successful electoral alliance. At least three other issues remained to be resolved before the general election—the organisation of the national campaign, the election manifesto and the leadership of the Alliance. Each of these was settled in an ad hoc fashion by negotiation between the leadership groups of the two parties. The campaign was very much an Alliance campaign with no separate appeals for Liberal or SDP votes. The leaders of both parties appeared together on election broadcasts and at daily press conferences and the joint election manifesto was

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entitled ‘Working together for Britain’. The question of the leadership was resolved by nominating Roy Jenkins as ‘Prime Minister designate’, a rather grandiose and, as it proved, optimistic title. VI. THE ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SDP The SDP was clearly created by members of the British political elite. In modern democracies, however, parties cannot consist simply of coteries of leaders; they have to develop a structure involving a mass membership. The formation of an important new party like the SDP is rare enough in Britain to warrant some attention being given to the ways in which it has sought to do this. At the time of its formation the party’s organisation was chaotic. There was an informal leadership group (the ‘Gang of Four’), a number of MPs, temporary headquarters staffed by volunteers and out in the country many enthusiastic individuals in search of an organisation. Within two years, however, the party had a constitution approved by postal ballot of the membership; permanent headquarters with 35 full-time staff; seven Regional organisers; an elected Leader and President; a duly constituted National Committee; local organisations covering most of the country; and had selected 311 candidates to fight the next general election. Some aspects of this transformation are now considered. The SDP’s constitution reflects the recent experiences of most of the leadership within the Labour party. They had been involved in the conflicts within the Labour paty which manifested themselves in struggles over internal constitutional matters. Broadly these related to the respective roles and rights of Labour MPs, the Party Conference, local party activists and party members over such matters as the adoption of policies, control of the election manifesto, the selection of candidates, the relationship between MPs and local parties and the method of electing the party leader. These problems must inevitably have been in the forefront of people’s minds as they set about drawing up a blueprint for the organisation of the new party. (i) Party Structure The party constitution, which was approved by the membership in a national ballot following a constitutional conference in February 1982, has created three main party institutions. At the lowest level there are Area parties. Unlike other major parties, the SDP has not made parliamentary constituencies the basic unit of organisation. Area parties may cover from one to seven constituencies. Partly this reflects the fact that given a relatively small membership separate constituency organisations would not be viable. Partly also it minimises the risk of small, moribund parties being vulnerable to infiltration by undesirable elements as it was alleged had happened in the Labour party. Moreover, the area basis of organisation facilitates negotiations with the Liberals over the distribution of parliamentary seats. A single constituency party is more likely to take a jealously parochial

THE SDP-LIBERAL ALLIANCE 83

view; an SDP Area party, covering several seats, can more easily take a broad approach. The functions of Area parties are similar to those of the local organisations of other parties—to choose candidates, run campaigns, organise local elections and send delegates to higher level bodies within the party. By the end of October 1982 there were 182 recognised Area parties and a further 13 provisional Area parties. At national level the major party institution is the Council for Social Democracy which is described by SDP leaders as ‘the parliament of the party’. It comprises a President (a separate post from that of party leader), representatives of the Area parties and all SDP MPs (though these last do not have voting rights). Though similar to the annual conference of the Labour party in that it is responsible for adopting policies, the Council meets not less than three times per year and is smaller in that no more than 450 Area party delegates may attend. Also, in direct contrast with Labour, no mandating of delegates is allowed. The President is directly elected by the membership of the party and in September 1982 Shirley Williams was elected to the post obtaining 19,006 votes to 5, 584 for Bill Rodgers and 4,255 for Stephen Haseler. The third and most important body created by the SDP constitution is the National Committee. Basically this is the body which runs the party—it is ‘responsible for the management and conduct of the activities of the SDP outside Parliament’ and meets once a month to do so. The composition of the 39-member Committee is complex and detailed. It comprises the President and the Leader; 10 MPs elected by all SDP MPs; two members of the House of Lords elected by those taking the SDP whip there; one member of the European Parliament (should one ever be elected); 12 members elected by the Council on a regional basis; three local authority councillors and one person aged less than 26 also elected by the Council, and eight members (four men and four women) elected nationally by postal ballot of the whole party membership. This complicated procedure for choosing the National Committee with its variety of constituencies and methods of election seems to be a product of the view held by Labour’s right wing that Labour’s NEC was unrepresentative of the party. The NEC was and is elected by constituency delegates and trade unions at the annual conference and there is no separate representation for the parliamentary party. By guaranteeing places to MPs and having nationally elected members, the SDP arrangements diminish the power of local activists while the stipulations relating to sex, age and region are intended to ensure representativeness. During 1982 SDP members faced the bewildering task of electing by the single transferable vote method four male and four female members of the National Committee from lists of 40 and 24 respectively. Biographical and other details were supplied for each of the 64 candidates. The most notable self-description given by a candidate was that he ‘is NOT an MP, NOT a Peer, NOT an ex-MEP, NOT a Queen’s Counsellor, NOT an eminent academic, BUT is an ordinary grass roots member of the Party’. He was not elected. Those who were elected were Dick Taverne (ex-MP, QC), David Marquand (exMP, professor), Anthony Sampson (journalist and author), Roy Evans (tax consultant), Polly Toynbee (Guardian journalist), Mary Stott (Guardian journalist), Anne Sofer (GLC councillor) and Julia Neuberger (rabbi).

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Within the National Committee there is an important policy sub-committee where the position of the party leadership is even firmer. This consists of the Leader and the President, all 10 MPs and nine others. The job of this committee is to prepare draft statements of policy for submission to the Council—clearly an important power. In addition, and significantly, this committee is responsible for preparing election manifestos ‘based upon statements of policy adopted by the Council’. This formulation gives the committee considerable latitude and where no statement has been adopted the latitude given the committee is more explicit in that it can pronounce a policy as it thinks fit. Clearly then the SDP has resolved the problem of control of policy commitments at elections firmly in favour of the parliamentary leadership. Two other institutions created by the constitution are regional committees and a National Consultative Assembly. As its name implies the latter is intended as a discussion forum which any party member is entitled to attend while the former do not seem likely to be important. While it is important to describe the major institutional forms of SDP organisation, more interest perhaps centres on how the SDP proposes to cope with the constitutional problems other than policy-making that beset the Labour party, so it is worth looking at some of these in more detail. (ii) Party Membership and Finance A major complaint of right-wingers in the Labour party throughout the 1970s was that power was over-concentrated in the hands of local party activists and that these were unrepresentative of party members as a whole (usually by being more left-wing) and, even more so, of Labour voters. There is, in fact, little hard evidence of the unrepresentativeness of activists but this was nonetheless widely believed to be true. The voting pattern of constituency delegates at Labour conferences and several highly publicised disputes between ‘moderate’ MPs and their constituency parties seemed to give support to this view of activists. Central control over membership in the SDP is emphasised by the fact that unlike other parties members do not join a local association but a national party which maintains a central computerised record of membership. In order to forestall the formation of powerful cliques at local level and charges of unrepresentative party bodies, all members of the SDP have voting rights. They can vote for local officers, representatives to the National Council, parliamentary candidates, eight National Committee Members, the President and the Leader. Throughout the sections of the constitution dealing with these elections the emphasis is on secret and postal ballots. This is clearly a reaction to the allegedly ‘undemocratic’ practices in the Labour party, in which decisions of this kind are delegated to local committees. While the involvement of ordinary members in this way does have benefits —it gives people some reason to actually join the party, for instance—it also has costs. Rampant democracy is expensive. Informing local members of nominations and meetings and sending out ballot papers places a heavy burden on Area parties. And at national level the cost of sending out 60,000 ballot papers by second-class post is around £7,500, no mean

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sum for a party without substantial and reliable financinal backing. Nonetheless, the SDP’s experiment in direct party-member democracy breaks new ground in British politics and will be observed with interest by other parties. As noted above, the SDP recruited 52,000 members within eight weeks of being launched. Some scepticism was expressed at the time as to whether the party would be able to retain these early enthusiasts when it came to renewing subscriptions. In fact about 70 per cent of first-year members renewed their subscription. Like all parties the SDP has experienced considerable membership turnover, but the total number of members has remained fairly constant. It averaged 66,000 during 1981, peaked at 78,000 in March 1982 and was reported as 64,000 in September.29 While this number may appear modest compared with just over 300,000 individual members claimed by the Labour party, for example,30 it is nonetheless substantial and membership has clearly not melted away as some sceptics anticipated. Moreover, at £11 per annum in 1982 SDP membership is relatively costly, comparing with only £6 for Labour membership. Unlike the two major parties, the SDP depends upon membership subscriptions for the vast majority of its finance. While about 60 per cent of the Conservatives’ income for routine expenditure by the central party organisation comes from companies and that of Labour almost entirely from trade unions,31 the first full year’s accounts of the SDP showed that 89 per cent of total income (£855,000) came from membership subscriptions.32 Only £53,000 came to the party in the form of donations. Both major parties centrally spent more than £1 million in the 1979 general election33 campaigns in addition to expenditure by local parties. It is clear that if the SDP wishes to be part of the ‘big league’ it will have to find a lot of money from some additional source. (iii) The Election of the Party Leader It was Labour’s decision about the method of electing the party leader which was the immediate cause of the ‘Gang of Four’s’ break with the party in January 1981. Although the traditional view of the Labour Right was that electing the leader should remain the prerogative of the PLP, the right-wing Campaign for Labour Victory, led by David Owen, shifted ground and eventually came out in favour of one-member, one-vote in this as in other areas of party activity. But one-member one-vote in the election of the leader was no foregone conclusion in the SDP. At its London Assembly in February 1982 three proposals were considered. One was for a one-member one-vote system, another for MPs only to elect the leader and the third for the first election to be by the membership and subsequent ones by MPs. These proposals were voted upon in a postal ballot of all members. The first count revealed 16, 196 votes for election by party members, 12,560 for members first and MPs afterwards and 8,500 for MPs only. When the second preferences of the latter were transferred to the other two, one-member one-vote won by 16,618 to 15,670. By this extremely narrow majority the method of electing a leader which had been supported by the SDP leadership when they were still in the Labour party became part of the constitution of the new party.

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The election of the party leader in June/July 1982 was the first example of the SDP’s experiment in nationwide party democracy. Initially many had felt that Roy Jenkins was the obvious leader and that there would not be a contested election. The choice of a leader was, indeed, delayed until he re-entered Parliament. In the event, however, David Owen was also nominated. Apart from a 750-word election address by each candidate sent to all SDP members there was no overt electioneering, although Stephenson concludes that there was intense in-fighting between the two camps.34 In the postal ballot Jenkins won with 26,256 votes to 20,864 for Owen. This was widely interpreted as a good performance by Owen which made him the natural heir-apparent. The ‘turnout’ of 75.6 per cent must have been highly satisfying to the candidates and the party as a whole. (iv) The Role of MPs Despite not having the power to elect the leader, the position of SDP MPs in relation to the extra-parliamentary organisation is safeguarded in a number of ways. Only MPs may nominate candidates for the position of leader and they have the right to attend the Council. More importantly, MPs are separately and well represented on the National Committee and its Policy sub-committee. Finally, in a fairly explicit reference to alleged dictation to Labour MPs by local parties, the constitution states that ‘SDP Members of Parliament shall not be mandated nor subject to direction or control by any organ of the SDP’. The question of the mandatory re-selection of incumbent MPs was a major source of Left-Right conflict within the Labour party. The campaign for mandatory selection by the Left was interpreted as an attempt to gain control of the party by ousting ‘moderate’ MPs and when the campaign succeeded many anticipated a ‘purge’ of moderates. It would, however, be difficult for any party not to have a procedure whereby unstatisfactory MPs could be removed and the SDP’s constitution does provide for re-selection. If, however, an incumbent MP is not endorsed by a simple majority of members attending a special meeting of the local party there then has to be a postal ballot of all members. In this way the autonomy of local parties is preserved but an MP is not at the mercy of a small group of activists. Only an MP who has well and truly lost the confidence of his local party will be denied renomination. (v) The Selection of Candidates Candidate selection is a crucial process in any political party. ‘The nature of the nominating procedure determines the nature of the party’ says Schattschneider, ‘he who can make nominations is the owner of the party’.35 This sentiment became well understood in the Labour party and during the 1970s candidate selection became a major battleground between Left and Right. Moreover, the Left was winning. Berrington argues that local Labour parties became increasingly likely to choose left-wing candidates and that this was slowly affecting the Left-Right balance in the PLP.36 Quite apart from this,

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candidate selection in the Labour party was frequently a cause of much bickering and even scandal with allegations of undue trade-union influence, mysterious increases in local memberships, canvassing of support by hopefuls, etc. TABLE 3 CHARACTERISTICS OF CANDIDATES

Sources: The first three columns are derived from D.Butler and D.Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980) pp.284–286. The SDP figures are from information supplied by the SDP. The rule that at least two women must be on selection short-lists seems to have had some effect. In selections made to January 1983 the SDP chose a noticeably larger proportion of women candidates than the other parties had in 1979. SDP candidates tend also to be younger than those of other parties-80 per cent of those for whom data are available are in their thirties or forties. In part, however, this reflects the fact that no incumbent MPs are included in the SDP figures.

Like the other British parties, candidate selection in the SDP remains the prerogative of its local organisations. The role of the National Committee is confined to giving local parties approval to commence the selection process and advertising that fact to people on the party’s list of approved candidates, of whom there are around 1,100. Candidates were ‘approved’ by panels of three to four leading party members who toured the country

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interviewing applicants. A short-list is prepared by the local committee from those who apply. In order to minimise the ‘rigging’ of short-lists (another common criticism of Labour selection) the short-list must contain between six and nine people, two of whom must come from outside the area concerned. There must also be at least two men and two women on the short-list. This last feature, which is unique among British parties, is clearly intended to modify the supposed bias against women of those who select candidates and to increase the number of women candidates. The rules relating to candidate selection provide for a selection meeting where candidates address the membership but the final choice is not made by a committee but by a postal ballot of all members using the single transferable vote system. Given that not all of those voting will have attended the meeting one wonders on what basis they will make their choices. It seems likely that well-known names—either locally or nationally—will be at an advantage. This is especially true since canvassing of party members is ‘strongly discouraged’. For some reason the SDP, like other British parties, seeks to avoid selections turning into mini-primaries. This would have been a welcome novel development. If candidates were allowed to canvass party members this would give some indication of their energy and commitment. In addition, informal contact with candidates might help party members to make a more informed judgement than is possible on the basis of a formal meeting where candidates address an audience and answer questions for twenty minutes or so. But this chance for a new approach to selections has not been taken and they will continue to have, in the SDP as in other parties, an air of conspiracy and secrecy. Prospective parliamentary candidates provide a focus for and a spur to local party activity. The selection of candidates was, therefore, an urgent task for the SDP as soon as the final allocation of seats between the Alliance partners was determined. By the end of January 1983, 157 candidates had been duly selected. Table 3 compares the sex, age and occupational distribution of these candidates with other party candidates in the 1979 election.37 As in other parties the largest occupational group among SDP candidates is professional workers, though at 60 per cent of the total this is larger than in the other parties. Teachers and lecturers constitute the largest professional group in the SDP as in the Labour and Liberal parties. University teachers in particular are well represented in the SDP list constituting eight per cent of candidates. This figure underestimates university influence, however, since several candidates classified under ‘research/consultancy’ have university connections and some who describe themselves simply as ‘lecturer’, ‘soil scientist’ or ‘economist’ probably work in universities. Like the Liberals, the SDP has fewer candidates from the world of business than the Conservatives but more than Labour. It is worth noting, however, that the proportion of company directors, executives and managers (16 per cent) is similar to that found among Conservative candidates (18 per cent). A striking feature of the occupation data is that in their first 157 selections the SDP chose only one manual worker as a candidate. Positive discrimination in favour of women appears to be acceptable to SDP members and to have had some effect, but no party appears to be acceptable to SDP members and to have had some effect, but no party

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appears concerned to rectify the under-representation of manual workers among parliamentary candidates. Judged by its parliamentary candidates, then, the SDP seems to be very much a party of relatively young professional and business people. VII. TRENDS IN ALLIANCE SUPPORT As noted above, the initial impact of the Alliance in opinion polls was dramatic. Given previous experience of third-party ‘revivals’, however, sceptics could claim that this, together with later by-election successes, was due simply to the novelty of the SDP or a sort of mid-term madness on the part of the electorate and that support would inevitably wane as it had on previous occasions. In order to measure the extent to which support held up before the general election three sources can be used—opinion polls, parliamentary by-elections and local elections. (i) Opinion Polls A number of companies now produce regular political opinion polls. The different polls, of course, show some variations in the level of Alliance support but the trend is similar. Table 4, therefore, shows monthly figures produced by one firm only—Gallup.38 Gallup have used two questions to measure vote intention since the formation of the SDP—the standard unprompted question and a question preceded by a reminder of the existence of the Alliance. Figures for both questions are shown in the table (with ‘Don’t Knows’ excluded). The initial impact of the Alliance is clear. Crewe argues that the prompted figure is the more accurate indicator of Alliance support39 and on this basis it immediately went to first position in the polls and stayed there for more than a year—an unparalleled achievement for a third party. Even the unprompted responses show the Alliance in the lead for seven months. Differences between the two kinds of question have tended to become smaller over time, however, and from about May 1982 they more or less disappear. The data also show the boosting effect of success in by-elections. Warrington in July, Croydon and Crosby in November and Hillhead in March 1982 were all followed by increases in support, as was the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983. This particularly affected SDP support and indeed throughout this period, as the table shows, SDP support has been a good deal more variable than support for the Liberals. It is indeed variations in SDP support which largely determine variations in total support for the Alliance.40 In addition, the SDP’s claim to be the dynamic partner is supported by the fact that their share of vote intentions is generally greater than that of the Liberals. The peak of Alliance support was reached in December 1981. This was followed by a sharp drop in the first months of 1982 and another in May 1982. Some commentators have suggested that the first decline was a product of Liberal/SDP squabbling over the allocation of seats, but it seems unlikely that anything so esoteric and remote from voters’ concerns could have such an effect. It is more likely that the December 1981 figure was

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TABLE 4 PERCENTAGE ALLIANCE SHARE OF VOTE INTENTIONS (GALLUP)

simply unrealistically high—a product of the euphoria connected with the Crosby byelection and the very popular Shirley Williams. The second step in the two-step fall seems to be a product of the Falklands conflict which resulted in increased support for the government. After that, Alliance support fluctuated around the mid-twenties though it drifted gently downwards. This downward drift in the second half of 1982 was described in the media as a ‘slump’ or a ‘melting away’ of Alliance support. It is worth stressing that the average monthly share of vote intentions received by the Alliance in the six months from June to December 1982 (24 per cent) is still greater than any six-month average previously achieved by the Liberals. Even so, there was a clear decline in Alliance support throughout 1982. This was attributed by SDP leaders to the much lower level of publicity the party received during and after the Falklands conflict and their hope was that the publicity inevitably generated in the run up to and during the general election campaign would restore them to the electorate’s attention and to higher levels of popularity. Even given the decline throughout 1982, however, the achievement of the Alliance should not be underestimated. From the formation of the SDP Alliance support never fell below 20 per cent of vote intentions in any of Gallup’s monthly polls. This suggested that there is a much larger ‘core’ vote for the Alliance than the Liberals ever had on their own.

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TABLE 5 ALLIANCE SUPPORT IN BY-ELECTIONS

* There was no Liberal candidate in the last general election in these cases.

(ii) Parliamentary By-elections There were 13 parliamentary by-elections from the formation of the SDP to March 1983. The Alliance performance in them is summarised in Table 5. As far as by-election performance is concerned 1981 was the Alliance’s annus mirabilis. In the first three by-elections they achieved increases in support comparable with those achieved in sensational Liberal by-election victories in the past. After Hillhead, however (and therefore after the Falklands conflict), changes in vote share were more variable. Apart from the Scottish industrial seats, however (where the Alliance was on both occasions relegated to fourth place behind the Scottish Nationalists) the share of votes obtained during 1982 hovered around the mid-to-high twenties which tends to confirm opinion poll figures. Support for the Alliance did not, then, evaporate, but it was reduced from the preFalklands level. The reduction was enough to prevent the Alliance winning any byelections in the latter half of 1982 and such failure tends to be self-reinforcing. Just as victories yield helpful publicity and boost support, subsequent failure to win, no matter how good the performance in psephological terms, conveys an image of a loss of momentum which may further depress support. This cycle was dramatically broken by the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983. The astonishing victory of the Alliance candidate was, no doubt, due in part to special local factors but even so it acted as a fillip to Alliance support generally and gave a major boost to the morale of party workers. The last by-election of the Parliament (Darlington) was, however, a grave disappointment for the Alliance. At the start of the campaign, in a wave of euphoria following the Bermondsey result, the SDP were confident of victory. But support ebbed away and the Alliance was pushed into third place. Many commentators suggested that

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this was partly due to an ineffective performance by the SDP candidate and this has led some people in the SDP to rethink the party’s method of candidate selection. The Darlington candidate was a well-known local television personality and this high visibility may have helped his selection in the postal ballot of members. It is now being suggested in the party that voting for candidates should be restricted to members who attend ‘the hustings’ and can make a judgement upon the performance of potential candidates. (iii) Local Election Results Good performances in by-elections can always be ascribed to peculiar local factors—the candidates, the concentration of party workers and so on. This does not apply, however, to nationwide local elections. Local council by-elections (along with opinion polls) were one of the earliest indicators of the popularity of the Alliance, but the first natiowide test for the Alliance came in the local elections held in May 1982. In terms of votes the Alliance did well—getting around 25 per cent of the vote over the country as a whole and with no very dramatic regional variations. No third party had polled so well nationwide since the war. Despite this, the results were generally interpreted as disappointing for the Alliance. The Times headlined its report, ‘Boost for Tories as Alliance is humiliated’ (which seems a little strong since the accompanying table recorded a net Conservative loss of 20 seats and a net Alliance gain of 80).41 The number of seats won was, however, a disappointment for the Alliance compared with pre-election expectations. According to the SDP’s reckoning, the Alliance won 442 seats in England but this represented only 9.7 per cent of the seats won by the three parties. In Scotland only 25 seats, seven per cent of the four-party total, were taken. What the local election results showed was that support for the Alliance was evenly distributed over the country, that it stood at around 25 per cent of voters—similar to other indicators of post-Falklands support—and that the electoral system was a major problem for the Alliance. This was a forewarning (if any were needed) of the problem facing the Alliance in a general election. What the local election results did not show (as some claimed they did) was that the Liberals were electorally more popular than the SDP. The Liberals did gain more votes and win more seats but this largely reflects the different kinds of seats allocated to the two parties.42 In multi-member seats where the two parties ran together their votes were not significantly different.43 VIII. SOURCES OF SDP AND ALLIANCE SUPPORT New parties of the importance of the SDP are rare. Inevitably its emergence has excited curiosity about the kinds of people who were joining and/or supporting it. Much impressionistic comment has portrayed SDP members in a semi-jocular vein as concerned, middle-class, Guardian-reading, Volvo-driving, claret-drinking people. There is as yet no national survey evidence about the drinking habits and other characteristics of

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SDP members. There is, however, a short poll of delegates to the SDP’s conference in October 1981,44 a more extensive survey of the membership in Newcastle, and a study of members who attended the Scottish assembly of the party in February 1983.45 All report a heavy preponderance of professional and managerial workers (64 per cent of delegates, 67 per cent of Newcastle members, 58 per cent of Scottish members) and of men (68 per cent, 62 per cent and 60 per cent respectively). Only seven per cent of delegates and five per cent of members in both Newcastle and Scotland are manual workers. The three surveys also indicate that in terms of both previous vote and party membership ex-Labour supporters are more numerous than supporters of any other party. It is worth noting, though, that 58 per cent of delegates, 78 per cent of New-castle members and 57 per cent of Scottish members had not previously been members of any party. In terms of attitudes, both members and delegates strongly favoured the EEC and proportional representation and opposed unilateral nuclear disarmament. Interestingly, the Guardian is indeed the most widely read newspaper among SDP members in Newcastle, being read by 45 per cent of them. And when Scottish respondents were asked to indicate the last alcoholic drink they had had, the largest proportion (29 per cent) mentioned wine. Beer (24 per cent) and whisky (20 per cent) were the next most popular drinks. In comparison with SDP members a good deal of poll material relating to Alliance voters, or potential voters, has now accumulated. What is striking about Alliance support is the extent to which it resembles the nature of Liberal support before the SDP came onto the scene. Studies in the 1970s46 established that Liberal support differed from that of the main parties in a number of ways. It was not concentrated in any social or demographic group but tended to be uniform across groups, and it was ‘soft’ in the sense that few people were consistent Liberal voters. Rather at each election a large proportion of previous supporters deserted to other parties and a fresh wave of defectors from other parties voted Liberal. Not surprisingly Liberal voters displayed relatively weak party identification and the Liberal vote contained fewer identifiers than the votes of the major parties. Finally, those who voted Liberal tended to do so for negative reasons. It was not so much that the Liberals attracted them but more that the others repelled them. For these sorts of reasons the prospects for the Liberals were generally viewed pessimistically by academics. Broadly speaking, and unfortunately for the Alliance, the evidence of opinion polls is that current Alliance support displays most if not all of these characteristics. The evenness of support—both socially and geographically— is illustrated in Table 6 which shows the profile of SDP and Alliance support, compared with the two main parties, in February 1982. Unlike the Labour and Conservative parties, Alliance support is not significantly skewed in terms of occupation, age, region or previous vote. Another MORI poll conducted (for the television programme Panorama) in September 1982, when Alliance support was rather lower than in February confirms this pattern. This poll also investigated reasons respondents gave for intending to vote for the Alliance and found that negative reasons— such as dislike of the other parties—were given twice

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TABLE 6 THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF PARTY SUPPORT FEBRUARY 19821

Notes: 1. These data are from a poll conducted by MORI for the Sunday Times. I am grateful for permission to cite these and other data produced by MORI. 2. The ‘Alliance’ column combines the SDP column with those intending to vote Liberal and those explicitly mentioning the Alliance.

as frequently as positive reasons. Similar results were obtained by an NOP poll of London voters after the 1982 borough elections and in local by-election polls.47 Evidence of the ‘softness’ of the Alliance vote is less clear-cut. MORI once found that only 48 per cent of Liberals would switch to the SDP if the Liberals stood down while 70 per cent of SDP supporters would switch to the Liberals if the converse happened. Also a poll in the Hillhead constituency revealed that Alliance supporters in the by-election were much less certain than major party voters about their intentions in the next general election. There is a similar lack of evidence relating to the party identification of Alliance supporters but Crewe uses Gallup data to show that they are somewhat less committed to their parties than are major party supporters,48 and a Marplan poll early in 1983 suggests that about 74 per cent of intending Alliance voters are ‘not very strong’ supporters compared with only 48 per cent of intending Conservatives and 39 per cent of Labour supporters.49 Finally, on the basis of a very extensive analysis of party images and issue positions, Crewe concludes that the SDP has not ‘staked out an exclusive issue space’.50 That is to say, its supporters do not take a distinctive position upon political issues and there is no new issue which appears to be the basis of SDP support.

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Evidence of this kind about the nature of SDP and Alliance support raises questions not only about electoral prospects but also about the nature of the SDP itself. The SDP was created by the convergence of two strands of opinion embodied in the persons of the ‘Gang of Three’ on the one hand and Roy Jenkins on the other. Jenkins’ conception of the kind of party the SDP should set out to be differed from that of the others. He wished to create a party in the ‘middle-ground’ of politics, attracting support from both Conservative and Labour voters disenchanted with adversarial politics and the extremism of their former parties. The ‘Gang of Three’ on the other hand were anxious to create a new radical party of the centre-left, a ‘Mark II’ Labour party. As Peter Jenkins of the Guardian put it, they ‘saw the SDP doing for left-of-centre politics in Britain what the Bad Godesberg settlement was designed to do in Germany: freshening and modernising but still seeking to build a constituency firmly on the left’.51 The ‘Gang’ saw the SDP as appealing mainly to former Labour supporters alienated by Labour’s drift to the Left. This hope appears to have been unfulfilled to date. Despite the facts that all but one of the SDP’s MPs are ex-Labour members and that ex-Labour supporters predominate among party members, the profile of intending SDP supporters does not suggest that the party has a particular appeal to Labour voters or to traditionally radical groups such as young people and the working class. In addition, if anything can be inferred about the nature of a party from the characteristics of its members and candidates for office then it is clear that the SDP is a very middle-class party—resembling the Conservatives more than the Labour party. The failure of the ‘Gang of Three’ to create a radical image for the SDP is revealed by an analysis of electors’ perceptions of the ideological position of the party. According to Crewe, the SDP is seen not as a left-of-centre but as a centre party. It is ‘not regarded as a substitute Labour Party, but as a substitute, reconditioned, pastel pink Liberal party’.52 It seems likely, therefore, that any realignment in British politics will not take the form of the SDP simply replacing Labour as the party on the Left. Any permanent change in the party system will be more complex than that, involving a strengthening of the centre rather than a substitution on the Left. IX. CONCLUSION: THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1983 Evidence available before the general election suggested that like Liberal support in the past, support for the SDP and the Alliance is ‘soft’, lacks a distinctive social profile, is negative rather than positive, is weakly committed and is not related to any new issue or ideological cleavage. Academic assessments of the Alliance’s chances of making an electoral breakthrough ranged from the cautiously optimistic to the cautiously pessimistic. Thus Harrop concluded that ‘the odds must be heavily stacked against the SDP in its attempt to produce a lasting realignment’.53 King, on the other hand, argued that: ‘All the evidence suggests that the SDP as an electoral force is here to stay. The British party system has been radically and almost certainly permanently changed’.54 The assessment of Bob Worcester, a leading pollster, was that ‘the mould isn’t broken yet, nor even cracked…it

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will likely be several elections yet before a true realignment of British politics could take place’.55 What was clear was that the Alliance’s chances would be conditioned by four factors. The first is the fragility of Alliance support. Clearly there is no broad mass of electors committed to the Alliance, no large reliable core of support which can be built upon. Until such a core exists, Alliance support will remain susceptible to defection to other parties. The second factor is the continuing volatility of the electorate. Commitment to the major parties remains relatively weak and their supporters are also detachable. In the past, strong party identification made for a bond between the voter and his party that was difficult to break. But the progressive weakening of party identification that has been charted since the mid-1960s has made the electorate more fickle in their voting behaviour. The Falklands crisis showed how rapidly opinion can move and it is not inconceivable that similarly rapid movements could happen in the future. Thirdly, there is the electoral system. The British simple plurality or first-past-the-post system has, in the past, penalised the Liberals (and other minor parties) severely. In 1979, for example, the Liberals obtained 14 per cent of the votes cast but only two per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. This disproportionality between votes and seats arises because parties with an even spread of support may obtain numerous second places yet win few seats. Concentrations of support win seats and support for the major parties is concentrated in, broadly speaking, urban/working-class constituencies on the one hand and middle-class seats plus the small number of genuine rural constituencies on the other. The evenness of Alliance support, both socially and geographically, represents, therefore, a major handicap. Because of the electoral system, the two-party system could remain intact at legislative level even if there was considerably increased fractionalisation among the electorate. Finally, the Alliance is crucially dependent upon the activities of the two main parties. Most Alliance support arises from dislike of the other parties and if the latter can project an image of competence, unity and moderation then the outlook for the Alliance is bleak indeed. On the other hand, some errors of judgement by the major parties and accompanying bad publicity could boost the Alliance’s prospects considerably. At the beginning of the general election campaign it seemed as if the Alliance’s challenge to two-party dominance was about to fade away. Their support, according to the polls, dropped to less than 20 per cent and they appeared to be stuck there for the first two weeks of the campaign. In the third week, however, aided by a remarkably maladroit Labour campaign, the Alliance recovered. Their share of vote intentions rose steadily to the mid 20s and it seemed possible that they would overtake the Labour party in popular support. Four separate polls actually put the Alliance ahead of Labour. In the event the Alliance came third with 26 per cent of the popular vote, only two points behind Labour. As was anticipated, however, though the two-party system was weaker than ever before among electors, it remained intact in the legislature. The two major parties jointly obtained 70 per cent of the votes and only 51 per cent of electors turned out and voted Conservative or Labour. Both of these figures are the lowest recorded since the war. Yet the two main parties took 93 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. To quote a Liberal campaign slogan from a previous election it looks as if it

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TABLE 7 SOURCES OF ALLIANCE SUPPORT 1983

needs ‘one more heave’ before the decline of the two-party system in the country is reflected in the legislature. It was, of course, the working of the electoral system which denied the Alliance representation proportionate to their support. With nearly 26 per cent of the vote they won only 23 seats (17 Liberal and 6 SDP). All but four MPs who had defected to the SDP lost their seats. (The four were David Owen, Ian Wrigglesworth, Bob McLennan and John Cartwright.) Roy Jenkins retained his seat won in a by-election but Shirley Williams lost hers so that of the original ‘Gang of Four’ only two remained in the House. (The sixth SDP seat came from an unexpected gain in Ross, Cromarty and Skye.) The disproportionality between votes gained and seats won by the Alliance is a result of the even spread of Alliance support—both geographically and socially. Labour support, in contrast, was highly concentrated. With only two per cent more of the popular vote, Labour on the one hand lost many more deposits than the Alliance (and was clearly in third place in the South of England outside London) but on the other won nine times as many seats. This result is bound to revive pressure for electoral reform but most Conservatives, with their huge majority in the House of Commons, remain implacably opposed to it so that any move in the direction of proportional representation can be discounted for the foreseeable future. Details of the sources of Alliance support in the elections are given in Table 7.56 Clearly the Alliance took more votes from Labour than from the Conservatives, but their support was very similar among all occupational groups. The data relating to age may give the Alliance some comfort in that their lowest support was among the elderly and their highest among young votes. If these young people stay loyal to the Alliance then the physical replacement of the electorate may work to their advantage in the long run. The Alliance may also draw consolation from the fact that the large number (more than 300) of second places they gained puts them in a good tactical position. In Conservativeheld seats in particular they should be able to benefit from government unpopularity. Immediately following the election Roy Jenkins resigned as leader of the SDP and was replaced by David Owen. As we have seen, Owen’s conception of the kind of party the

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SDP should try to be is rather different from that of Jenkins. It seems likely that relations between the SDP and its Liberal partners will become less amiable and that Owen will seek to give the SDP a less centrist, more radical image appealing more specifically to former Labour voters. Labour’s miserable performance in the general election will make this task easier but it would be even more helpful to the SDP and the Alliance if the Left are seen to have the upper hand within the Labour party. If Labour continues to ignore the electorate (including its own supporters) a realignment on the Left of British politics remains distinctly possible. NOTES 1. I.Bulmer-Thomas, The Party System in Great Britain (London: Phoenix House Ltd., 1953), p. 91. 2. R.M.Punnett, British Government and Politics (London: Heinemann, 1968), p.101. 3. M.Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1964), p.215. 4. Quoted in Bulmer-Thomas, op.cit., p.97. 5. See I.Crewe et al., ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964–1974’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7 (1977), pp. 129–90. 6. See S.E.Finer, Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London: Wigram, 1975). 7. I.Crewe, ‘Electoral Volatility in Britain since 1945’, paper presented at joint sessions of ECPR Lancaster 1981. 8. See I.Bradley, Breaking the Mould? (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981); P.Zentner, Social Democracy in Britain (London: John Martin, 1982) and H.Stephenson, Claret and Chips (London: Michael Joseph, 1982). 9. Stephenson, op.cit., p.20. 10. See D.Kogan and M.Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Fontana, 1982) and Philip Williams’s article in this volume. 11. Quoted in Stephenson, op.cit., p.24. 12. Ibid., p.31. 13. The phrase is Ivor Crewe’s. See I.Crewe, ‘Why the Conservatives Won’ in H.R.Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 1979 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981). 14. I.Crewe, ‘Why the going is now so favourable for a centre party alliance’, The Times 23 March 1981. 15. Bradley, op.cit., p.95. 16. Ibid., p.139. 17. Steel appears, for example, to have actively dissuaded David Marquand from joining the Liberals and made clear to Jenkins that he preferred the formation of a new separate party. See Stephenson, op.cit., p.29. 18. Zentner, op.cit., p.175. 19. Crewe, op.cit., 23 March 1981. 20. Zentner, op.cit., p.14. 21. The full text is reproduced in Stephenson, op.cit., Appendix 2. 22. These also are reproduced in Stephenson, op.cit., Appendix 3. 23. This definition of a ‘good’ seat gained currency from the analysis offered in M.Oakeshott, ‘The Road from Limehouse to Westminster’ (Radical Centre for Democratic Studies, March 1981). An alternative analysis and proposals for allocating seats between the parties were

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24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

given in M.Steed and J.Curtice, ‘From Warrington and Croydon to Downing Street’ (North West Community Newspapers, Manchester, Sept. 1981). Stephenson, op.cit., p.134. See report in the Guardian, 8 Oct. 1982. All difficulties were eventually resolved with the exception of three constituencies where Liberals stood against SDP/Alliance candidates in the general election. Oakeshott, op.cit., p.18. J.Curtice, C.Payne and R.Waller, ‘The Alliance’s First Nationwide Test: Lessons of the 1982 English Local Elections’, Electoral Studies, Vol.2, No.1, (1983). Steed and Curtice, op.cit. The Economist, 16–22, Oct. 1982. The Times, 26 Feb. 1982. See M.Pinto-Duschinsky, ‘Financing the General Election’ in H.R.Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 1979 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), pp.216–19). The Guardian, 14 Oct. 1982. M.Pinto-Duschinsky, op.cit. Stephenson, op.cit., pp. 180–4. Quoted in A.Ranney, Pathways to Parliament (Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p.269. H.Berrington, ‘The Labour Left in Parliament: Maintenance, Erosion and Renewal’ in D. Kavanagh (ed.), The Politics of the Labour Party (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982). See also J.M.Bochel and D.T.Denver, ‘Candidate Selection in the Labour Party: What the Selectors Seek’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 13, (January 1983). A more detailed, if somewhat journalistic discussion of the characteristics of SDP candidates is given in I.Bradley, ‘The SDP Mould’, New Society, 27 Jan. 1983. For a full analysis of Alliance support combining the results of a number of polls see I. Crewe, ‘Is Britain’s Two-Party System Really About to Crumble?’ in Electoral Studies, Vol.1, No.3, (Dec. 1982). Ibid., p.284. There is a correlation of .96 between SDP support and overall Alliance support while the equivalent figure for the Liberals is .51. The Times, 7 May 1982. See Curtice, Payne and Waller, op.cit. Information provided by the SDP’s local government organiser. Carried out by MORI for the Sunday Times. D.Goodman and D.Hine, ‘The SDP in Newcastle-upon-Tyne: A Survey-based analysis’ (mimeo) and report of Scottish survey by D.T.Denver in The Scotsman, 15 March 1983. See P.H.Lemieux, ‘Liberal Support in the 1974 General Election’, Political Studies, Vol.XXV, No.3, (Sept. 1977), and J.Alt et al., ‘Angels in Plastic: The Liberal surge in 1974’, Political Studies, Vol.XXV, No.3, (Sept. 1977). Reported in NOP Political, Social and Economic Review, Nos. 36 and 37, April/June 1982. Crewe, op.cit. (1982). Reported in the Guardian, 7 Feb. 1983. Crewe, op.cit., (1982), p.304. P.Jenkins, ‘The SDP has to establish a clearer identity’, The Guardian, 13 Oct. 1982. Crewe, op.cit. (1982), pp.301–2. M.Harrop, ‘The Changing British Electorate’, Political Quarterly, Vol.53, No.4, (Oct./– Dec.1982).

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54. A.King, ‘Whatever is Happeninng to the British Party System?’, Parliamentary Affairs, Vol.XXV, No.3, (Summer 1982). 55. R.M.Worcester, ‘The Rise and Fall and…of the SDP’, London Portrait Magazine, Sept. 1982. 56. These data are taken from Ivor Crewe’s analysis of a Gallup/BBC survey published in the Guardian, 13 June 1983.

The Denationalisation of British Politics: The Re-Emergence of the Periphery W.L.Miller*

Denationalisation is the opposite of uniformity and homogeneity. As such, it is naturally more complex and varied than its antithesis. We must define denationalised politics by what it is not, rather than what it is. The classic model of nationalised politics in Britain focused on electoral behaviour and political partisanship. Spatial variation was explained in terms of class variation and temporal variation in terms of transient issues with nation-wide (i.e. UK-wide) impact. Since the end of the 1950s, however, the limitations of this uniform response model have become increasingly apparent. Partisan dealignment has permitted and encouraged partisan denationalisation (and vice versa). When large numbers of electors deserted Labour and Conservative in 1974, their choice of alternatives differed sharply according to whether they lived in Scotland, England, Ireland or Wales. And over a longer period the balance of Labour versus Conservative support has trended in different directions in different regions. Paradoxically, aggregate political partisanship has become more easily predictable in an age of individual volatility because territory and locality have assumed a greater significance in party choice. We are unlikely to overlook such trends in electoral behaviour. But an important feature of sub-British nationalism and regionalism is that it operates as much within parties and outside parties as between parties. Votes for overtly nationalist or regionalist parties sometimes index local nationalism, and local nationalist success; but on other occasions or in other localities votes are a poor guide. Within the UK, nationalism and regionalism take several forms, with different objectives and different methods. There are British nationalists intent upon glorifying the historic British state (and its armed forces in battle); English nationalists concerned to preserve their people’s racial purity against the influx of coloured immigrants, or to preserve their Treasury against predatory Scots; Scots nationalists out for economic benefits and/or national independence; Welsh nationalists concerned to preserve their language-based culture and/or to obtain economic benefits for Wales and/or to achieve national independence for Wales and/or to resist the influx of English immigrants; within Northern Ireland one group of local national ists seeks to maintain the Protestant ascendancy while another seeks to establish a Catholic ascendancy within a united Ireland; and finally, there are northern English regionalists with the more limited ambition of getting at least as much economic aid from government as the Scots. Some of these issues are obviously intra-regional as well as inter-regional.

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Quite apart from nationalist ambitions of any kind, there are significant regional variations in political traditions, political infrastructure and political processes which make some regions more regional than others, and some sub-nations more national than others. Low levels of contact and communication can lead to political diversity without any intention or ambition that this be so. Nationalist methods also vary: electoral strategies are obviously appropriate to some nationalist ambitions but pressure, protest and violence fit naturally with others. Similarly with achievements: the proper yardstick of nationalist success in one part of the UK is quite inappropriate in others. In short, the opposite of UK uniformity is diversity. There is no unity of nationalisms, no unity on the periphery and theories that seek to explain all forms of nationalism and regionalism by reference to a single principle such as deprivation, uneven development or internal colonialism are clearly non-starters. Developments in UK-wide politics have provided opportunities for regionalist action; and developments in world-wide politics have provided operating examples and psychological encouragement or discouragement but there remains an Irish dimension to Irish politics, a Welsh dimension to Welsh politics and a Scots dimension to Scots politics. ELECTORAL UNIFORMITY: IN DECLINE OR NOT? In 1880 the Conservative party appeared ‘stuck in an English agricultural fortress, seemingly condemned to almost permanent minority status’. A century later, the wheel seemed to have turned full circle. The Conservatives were once again heavily dependent upon non-metropolitan (if no longer purely agricultural) England. But in contrast to 1880, the Conservative fortress contained a prosperous and expanding population and no longer implied minority status within the somewhat smaller UK. Even though the periphery is over-represented in terms of seats per head of population, over half of all MPs represent constituencies in the south and midlands of England, and these regions contributed almost three-quarters of all Conservative MPs, both in 1979 and 1983. But despite a clear division of the UK into ‘two nations’ on the basis of economic prosperity and Conservative voting, declining support for Scots and Welsh nationalist parties at the 1979 election reopened the question of whether there was significant regional variation in voting patterns and whether such variation as did exist was decreasing. Two authoritative analyses of the 1979 results concluded that ‘national [i.e. Scots v. Welsh v. English] differences never enter as significant determinants of party choice when the British electorate is analysed as a whole’ and even more dramatically ‘one part of Britain broke with its long-term trend…. This time Wales behaved like the rest of South Britain…the switch was unmistakable and in consequence the Conservatives won their highest Welsh parliamentary representation since 1874’.1 *In addition to published survey findings, I have also reanalysed British, Scots and Welsh Election Survey tapes for 1974 and 1979. These studies were financed by the SSRC and directed by myself and J.Brand at Strathclyde, I.Crewe and B.Sarlvik at Essex, and P.Madgwick and D.Balsom at Aberystwyth. I have also reanalysed Gallup election studies for 1970, Feb. 1974, Oct. 1974 and 1979. Thanks are due to Gallup and my fellow academics for access to their data.

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But the reason why Scots/Welsh/English differences never constitute a statistically significant explanation of party choice ‘when the British electorate is analysed as a whole’ lies not in the lack of substantial political variation but in the huge population imbalance between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—which now comprise respectively only nine per cent, five per cent and two per cent of the UK electorate—and England which accounts for 84 per cent. Indeed the political significance of the Scots, Welsh and Irish derives almost exclusively from their geographic concentration, not their numbers. Geographic concentration fosters their sense of identity; reinforces their political tendencies; facilitates their organisation for party, pressure-group and violent purposes; and under the UK electoral system it guarantees them over a fifth of the seats in Parliament. By contrast, the number of Scots, Welsh and Irish living and voting in England is as large as the population of Wales, but the political options of the former are restricted and their political consciousness and political significance diminished by the preponderence of Englishmen who live around them. The extent to which Scotland, Wales and Ireland have deviated from the voting pattern in England at various times over the last century is shown in Table 1. Generally, the pattern of Welsh electoral deviance over the last century shows more continuity than change, more evidence of traditional bias than of a dynamic system of regional politics. Even the modest electoral support for Welsh nationalists in recent years has been offset by a Welsh bias against the Liberals when compared to England. Wales’ strong and traditional bias towards the Left did not in fact decline in 1979. Curtice and Steed’s conclusion was based on averaging swings in Welsh constituencies and the average misrepresented the nation as a whole because the largest swings to the Conservatives were in constituencies with the smallest electorates. Moreover, these large swings did not produce the Conservative gains in terms of Welsh seats: one of the largest swings against Labour occurred in Carmarthen, but it was Labour which gained that seat from the Nationalists. Indeed the Conservatives took only one of the five Welsh seats where they enjoyed the highest swings: most of these were small rural constituencies where Conservative support had declined to near extinction in 1974. Though the Conservative recovery in rural Wales is interesting in itself Wales as a whole did not move sharply into line with Southern England in 1979. Irish entries in the table show sudden sharp changes in the 1920s and again in 1974 but both reflect change imposed by UK governments rather than Irish electors. In 1922 the Irish part of the UK was redefined to include only six northern counties; the rest seceded. (So the figures for 1885 and 1910 are for the whole of Ireland, thereafter for Northern Ireland only.) Similarly, in 1974 it was not the Irish electorate that changed its commitment to traditional policies and institutions, but British institutions that changed their policies and their commitment to their Irish followers, notably when the Conservative government abolished the Stormont Parliament. Even through periods when party labels, leaders and organisation structures changed rapidly Irish voting patterns remained essentially unaltered. Changes in the Scottish figures, however, reflect real change in the Scots electorate. Though Scotland behaved much like Wales before the First World War its leftist bias was

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TABLE 1 NATIONAL VOTING DEVIATIONS

Notes: 1. In 1910 I have; adjusted the raw percentages in Ireland to take account of a large number of unopposed returns. 2. As equivalents of Conservative votes in Ireland from 1974 onwards I have counted only the proSunningdale Unionists and the UPNI. The Alliance is treated as an ‘other’. Most Unionists plus the SDLP and all Republicans are counted as local nationalists after 1974. 3. NR=not relevant because the Liberal party was the main Left party at this time, part of the twoparty system, not an alternative to it. 4. 1983 figures are provisional.

generally small thereafter, disappearing completely for a decade after 1945 but reappearing later, doubling in 1979, and increasing still further in 1983. South of the border, the three most northerly regions of England also deviated towards the Left between the 1950s and the 1970s and again during the 1970s. They shared with Scotland feelings that Labour represented their interest in inter-regional conflict. They took special interest in moves towards devolution for Scotland. But they lacked Scotland’s integrated set of public and political institutions; they lacked Scotland’s capacity to sustain an intra-regional political debate; they did not produce regional parties in any way comparable to the SNP in Scotland or even the PC in Wales; and they drifted towards the Left according to a different time schedule and generally by only half as much as Scotland (both before 1970 and after). Overall, the 1979 general election showed a decline in nationalist party support in Scotland and Wales, though not in Ireland. But in terms of the balance between Labour and the Conservatives, regional differentiation increased both within England and between England and the rest of Britain. Since 1979 there have only been a couple of opinion polls in Wales but at least one a month in Scotland. They show conclusively that Scotland’s pro-Labour anti-Conservative bias, compared to England, continued almost unchanged throughout the entire period

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TABLE 2 THE FALKLANDS NON-EFFECT IN SCOTLAND 1982

between the general election and the Falklands crisis. Throughout 1981 support for a Liberal/Social Democrat Alliance averaged over 41 per cent in England but only 25 per cent in Scotland. That was one new difference between Scotland and England, but it did not reduce old differences. Labour’s lead over the Conservatives in 1981 averaged 23 per cent more in Scotland than in England—much the same as at the 1979 general election. When the Falklands crisis broke, national differences changed but they did not decrease: they increased because English voters rallied to the Conservative government while Scots did not. At the 1983 election both England and Scotland swung towards the Conservatives but the swing was almost three times as high in England; so that national differences were greater in 1983 than in 1979. Welsh evidence since 1979 is unfortunately slight since so few polls were undertaken. Such as they are, they suggest that the SDP/Liberal Alliance was almost as popular in Wales as in England, and that the Falklands affair did produce a rally to the government but the traditional bias of Wales toward Labour (relative to England) was not greatly reduced. Electorally, therefore, centre/periphery differences in terms of Labour versus Conservative voting have been maintained or have increased. Uniform Response as an Explanation of Electoral Non-uniformity Since we know that the periphery differs from England on a number of social and economic dimensions it might seem possible that partisan variation is no more than a reflection of social variation. Scotland and Wales have traditionally suffered more unemployment than England, their occupational structure is a little more working-class and the Anglican church is weaker than in England. GDP per capita is specially low in Wales and socialised housing specially widespread in Scotland. Moreover some of this social variation may be amplified when objective characteristics are transformed into social attitudes. There is evidence that the sense of working-class identification varies even more sharply than class itself and higher levels of unemployment may produce still higher levels of concern about jobs.

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Within Britain if not within the whole of the UK this uniform response model is at least plausible. We can test it most directly by comparing the partisan responses of similar people in different parts of Britain. Regional differences remain strong even when we control for objective social characteristics. Within social classes, the Scots and Welsh in 1979 were much more proLabour and also pro-third party than the English. On the survey evidence, it was the working class in Scotland but the middle class in Wales who displayed the most typically Scots or Welsh pattern of political deviance not only in 1979 but in earlier years as well—a fact with some significance for Welsh and Scottish politics; but nonetheless, typically Scots and Welsh partisan bias was not restricted to Scots workers nor the Welsh middle class. Variations in house tenure seem at first more promising but the explanation of regional political differences in these terms does not survive closer inspection. Welsh tenure patterns are very similar to those in England yet the Welsh deviate most strongly to Labour. In Scotland house tenure patterns are very different: twice as many Scots as English live in socialised housing. But in consequence, Scots council tenants are significantly more middle class than English council tenants; and Scots house owners are also very much more middle class than English house owners (paradoxical though that sounds). So Scots living under the same house tenure arrangements as Englishmen should be considerably more Conservative than the English, purely on class grounds. Controlling for class and tenure in combination explains a part of Scots pro-Labour deviance in 1979 but only a part. Moreover Scots political deviance is variable and contingent rather than traditional and persistent. The same procedures of control for class and tenure which explain half of the Scots pro-Labour deviance in 1979 suggest that after taking social background into account, Scotland was deviating towards the Conservatives as recently as February 1974. In Scotland, what we need to explain is not its deviant partisanship in 1979 but the sharp changes in its deviance during the 1970s, and slowly changing tenure patterns cannot do that. Political attitudes can change more rapidly but they also fail to explain partisan variation on the periphery. Plausible though it sounds, the evidence is against the view that the Scots and Welsh were biased towards Labour because they were more concerned about unemployment. (By 1983 the Scots’ unemployment rate was lower than in the North, North West, and West Midlands regions of England, and also lower than in Wales. But all four areas swung to the Conservatives more heavily than Scotland.) English/ non-English partisan differences remain little altered by controls for the salience of prices, unemployment or industrial relations. Perceptions of whether the British economy was getting better or worse had almost no influence on peripheral deviance. Ideological positions on government provision of welfare or the redistribution of income explain a part of regional deviance but not the major part. Freely assumed selfidentification with class clearly explained very little about Welsh deviance though Gallup and BES surveys disagree on whether it explains some or none of Scots deviance. Even religious nonconformity fails to explain Welsh electoral deviance. Despite the notorious attachment of Wales to religious nonconformity, Welsh nonconformists and Welsh Anglicans were both very much more pro-Labour than their English coreligionists. Sectarian differences totally fail to explain Welsh deviance in 1979 despite

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TABLE 3 SCOTS AND WELSH PARTISAN BIAS WITHIN SUBGROUPS, 1979

Notes: 1. % LAB lead=% Labour minus % Conservative (adjusted for discrepancies between survey results and actual election outcomes). 2. NR=not relevant, too few Anglicans or Nonconformists. Sources: G=1979 Gallup merged pre-election samples of 2056 Scottish respondents, 389 Welsh, 7693 English. Similar patterns show up in Gallup surveys for 1970 and 1974. E=1979 Scots, Welsh and British Election studies with 623 Scottish, 734 Welsh and 1336 English respondents.

their importance in the last century of Welsh political history. However, Welsh respondents to the 1979 election survey report a very high tendency to follow the partisanship of their fathers and mothers. They differ from the English in this only because the children of Labour parents in England display an unusually low level of loyalty to family traditions in 1979. Even allowing for that difference, persistent family traditions explain a great deal of Welsh/English differences. Another variable which helps explain Welsh deviance is place of birth. Fully 21 per cent of the Welsh sample were born outside Wales, mainly in England, and they voted Conservative even more strongly than the English who lived in England. They voted for third parties to exactly the same degree as

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their Welsh-born neighbours but their third-party vote went heavily towards the Liberals rather than the Nationalists. These findings reinforce the view suggested by the steady relationship between Welsh and English voting: namely, that Welsh electoral deviance owes more to political tradition than current issues or current social and religious structures. By contrast the variability of Scots deviations from the English voting norm suggests more active current influence. That does not imply that the Welsh dimension in Welsh politics is weak. On the contrary, it is significant and active but largely non-electoral in method and achievement. Welsh electoral deviance is not by any means the same thing as Welsh political deviance. Indeed it obscures more than it reveals. It indexes a genuine, distinctively and irreducibly Welsh component of Welsh politics but one whose importance derives from the past rather than the present. Except in Scotland, the re-emergence of the periphery has been largely non-electoral and its success is obscured if we restrict attention to voting patterns. Nationalist Ambitions, Methods and Achievements In 1974 local nationalists of one kind or another took a tenth of the votes in Wales, a third in Scotland and almost all in Northern Ireland. Parliament spent long hours debating Scotland, Wales and Ireland. But in the referendums of 1979 the Welsh voted overwhelmingly against devolution and the Scots only marginally in favour. Either way, it made no difference: the net outcome of the 1970s was the abolition of the existing devolved parliament in Northern Ireland and no new creation elsewhere. Clearly the 1970s had been a decade of peripheral nationalism but by the end of the decade there was a widespread feeling that British national forces and the two-party system had reasserted themselves. The new Conservative government felt secure enough to repeal its predecessor’s legislation for Scots and Welsh Assemblies; secure enough to dishonour its own electoral promises of ‘better devolution’ for Scotland and a Welshlanguage television channel for Wales; secure enough to ignore a succession of ‘hungerstrike’ suicides in Irish jails; and secure enough to bring popularly elected local governments to heel—notably in the Lothian region of Scotland. What happened to the demands of the periphery? Were they met? Or suppressed? Or incorporated into normal British politics? Or were they never more substantial than the nightmares of London politicians or the whims of London news editors? Is the electoral performance of nationalist parties, or the existence of a devolved parliament the proper measure of nationalist ambitions and nationalist success in all parts of the periphery? The common feature of peripheral discontents in the 1950s and early 1960s was that all parts of the periphery, including Northern England, enjoyed much lower levels of GDP per capita than the South and Midlands of England. Unemployment, low everywhere, was non-existent in the heart-lands of England and therefore politically visible on the periphery. But that economic complaint is almost the only unifying feature of peripheral politics. Within Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) sought an independent state for Scotland and others sought more limited autonomy. In Wales the core of nationalist

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ambitions was not independent statehood but cultural survival, above all the preservation of the Welsh language. In Northern Ireland two groups of ethnic nationalists were locked in an interminable struggle. By contrast, regional discontent in northern England was more purely economic. Different nationalisms have enormously different implications for uniform political structures. Devolution as proposed for Scotland would recognise Scotland’s long history of independent statehood, and allow it to get on with the unexciting business of framing its own laws and, to a lesser extent, also planning its own economy. The same system of devolution applied to Northern Ireland would simply re-establish the Protestant Ascendancy. Devolution to Wales would delegitimise the language by forcing a sharp distinction between the Welsh population and Welsh culture. Paradoxically it was Welsh speakers who voted most strongly for a Welsh Assembly in the 1979 Referendum, guided more by instinct and emotion than rational calculation. If different problems imply different solutions they also imply different criteria of success, different instruments of action and different methods of political persuasion. Language Nationalism in Wales At the beginning of the last century most of the Welsh population spoke Welsh but by the beginning of the present century only half could do so. The figure dropped to a third in 1931, to a quarter by 1961, and to a fifth by 1971. Welsh monoglots ceased to exist and what we call Welsh speakers are now bilingual Welsh/English speakers. Welsh became the language of non-conformity, no longer a public language except in the Nonconformist chapels. No one could dispute Saunders Lewis’s claim in his 1962 BBC Wales lecture that the language would not outlast the century unless affirmative action were taken to preserve it. Opponents of affirmative action could only argue that the language would die anyway. That lecture prompted the formation of the Welsh Language Society committed to militant direct action to save the language. More than 500 of its members have since been gaoled. The lecture also expressed a sympathy and concern for the language that went far beyond the membership of direct action groups and provided a background of sympathy for them. But it also expressed a priority for Welsh nationalism and a nonelectoral yardstick of success. As Lewis put it later: ‘The language is more important than self-government’.2 The Welsh Nationalist Party, Plaid Cymru, states three fundamental aims: selfgovernment, safeguarding Welsh culture and, rather incongru ously, membership of the United Nations Organisation. For many Welsh nationalists self-government is either irrelevant or merely a mechanism, a means to the end of preserving Welsh language and culture. At its 1979 party conference for example, the branches submitted twice as many motions on the language as on devolution; and noticeably few on socio-economic policy. The party president, Gwynfor Evans, won the Carmarthen by-election in 1966 but he will not be remembered primarily for his electoral achievements. Two years later the Gittins Report on Primary Education in Wales was published by the Department of Education and Science. Its recommendation of a fully bilingual education policy was

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endorsed by the Labour government’s Secretary of State for Wales who was himself a Welsh speaker. As a result of this combination of largely non-electoral action by law-breakers, demonstrators, pressure groups, government-appointed advisory committees and language sympathisers within the established parties of government, Welsh has been transformed in the last two decades from the language of nonconformity into a language of conformity. Welsh speakers can now opt out of the English-speaking world in matters of government forms, correspondence with government departments, car licences and road signs, pleading cases in the courts, or arguing political views on regional councils. The Welsh Office which is now responsible for education in Wales, has directed that Welsh be considered for inclusion in the ‘core curriculum’. There has been a substantial increase in Welsh-medium education both at primary and secondary level and the provision of small, academically oriented ‘bilingual’ (i.e. Welsh) schools as an alternative to large comprehensives has linked the language to educational privilege and social advancement. It has become an aid to employment (though not a necessary or sufficient passport to employment) in the central and local government civil service, the BBC and especially in education. Compared to Scotland or Ireland, Wales was relatively weak in institutional infrastructure in the past, not least in the lack of distinctive Welsh mass media. The mountains of mid-Wales made all traditional lines of communication run towards the nearest part of England rather than towards the rest of Wales. So the northern Welsh had northern English newspapers and the southern Welsh southern English newspapers. But mountains provide less of a barrier to radio and television broadcasting and, in addition, the costs of radio and television in Britain are not directly linked to consumption; so Welsh broadcasting costs can be quietly shifted onto viewers in England, which is not possible with newspapers and magazines. By 1979 Welsh language broadcasting had increased from virtually nothing to 64 hours per week on radio and 14 hours per week on television, and all parties were committed to a further expansion of Welsh language television and its consolidation on a new, fourth television channel. When the fourth channel was introduced throughout the UK in 1982 the Welsh transmitters were to insert 21 hours of peak-time Welsh language programmes per week, making it bilingual but predominantly Welsh. However, the Welsh voted by four to one against devolution in the referendum and gave the nationalist party only eight per cent of the vote at the general election. The new Conservative government went back on its commitment to a Welsh television channel. The Welsh Language Society resumed its campaign of damaging broadcasting installations; the Welsh Nationalist Party urged its supporters to withhold their television licence fees; and Gwynfor Evans threatened to starve himself to death. Irish nationalist hunger strikers were men of violence. Mrs Thatcher noted that they had ‘a choice which they had not given their victims’ but that could not be said of the veteran pacifist Gwynfor Evans. At the same time his own act of non-violence seemed likely to encourage violence by his supporters or sympathisers. So the government faced the threat of violence without being able to denounce it very effectively. The threat certainly did not prevent Welsh notables unconnected with the Nationalist Party or direct

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TABLE 4 PERCEIVED EFFECTIVENESS OF DIRECT ACTION 1979

Source: Welsh and British Election Studies.

action groups from lobbying the government to honour its promise. After much delay and statements of firm intent, the government gave in, just three weeks before Gwynfor Evans was due to start his fast. Yet when Gwynfor Evans stood for his old seat of Carmarthen in the 1983 General Election, he came third, behind Labour and Conservative. After the very poor electoral performance of devolutionists in the referendum and the Nationalist Party in the election it needs to be said with some emphasis that the Welsh Nationalists have won their fight. National independence was never their central objective, the Nationalist Party was never their principal weapon and voting was never their principal method. There has indeed been a revolution in Welsh politics in the last two decades, and a successful one, but it has used stealth, protest and even violence to achieve its aims, more than votes. Occasional voting successes in a handful of constituencies have been only one form of pressure, and not the most significant. And the role of the Nationalist Party has been one group amongst several pressing for aid to the language. Not surprisingly our elections surveys show that in 1979 all respondents in Wales, and especially Welsh Nationalists, were much more likely to endorse the effectiveness of direct action than those interviewed in England. At present, the Welsh population can be divided roughly into one fifth who claim some fluency in the Welsh language, one fifth who were born outside Wales (mainly in England) and three fifths who are Welsh by birth but not by language. The Welsh election survey shows that a majority agree that ‘north and south Wales have little in common’ and that ‘south Wales is more like industrial England’. North Wales has the high levels of Welsh speakers but also the high levels of recent English immigrants. In short, Wales is not a unity and is not perceived as such by its inhabitants. The Welsh language is of intense concern only to a small minority which has to beware of turning diffuse sympathy or indifference into active hostility. It can seek, even demand, aid and support for the

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language, but its natural voting strength is low and it cannot coerce the majority. Hence the significance of stealth, quiet lobbying of London government. Hence also the significance of ‘opt-out’ demands: even the fourth television channel which is in one sense inflicted on everyone, still leaves the English monoglots with three channels and part of the fourth channel in English and the bulk of the costs are inflicted on the population of England, not on the English speakers in Wales. The vast majority of those questioned in the Welsh survey say that it would be a ‘pity if the language died’ and a majority even accept that some jobs should be reserved for Welsh speakers. But there is a majority against Welsh-medium education and there would be a sharp reaction to coercive measures in favour of the language. There is no possibility of making all Welsh residents speak Welsh but language nationalists have already succeeded in making most Welshmen somewhat second-class citizens in the land of their birth and they have won a broad measure of majority approval for that situation. Two Nationalisms in Northern Ireland: Catholic Entryism At much the same time as the Welsh linguists took to the streets to defend the language, Northern Irish catholics adopted similar methods to assert their claim to ‘civil rights’. One justification for direct action is that it challenges society to live by its ideals. Both Welsh and Irish protests did exactly that. But whereas the Welsh majority felt some moral obligation to concede minority demands, the Irish majority did not. Catholic claims on mainland British sympathy were more rewarding. Ordinary Britishers’ concern for civil rights in Ireland is on a par with their concern for civil rights in Poland or in America: to them Ireland and Irish politics are as foreign as America and American politics. Catholic protestors profited both from British sympathy and from British desires to stay out of Irish politics. British governments cannot take the view that Irish politics are foreign as easily as do British people, but since 1922 they have tried. Protestant Northern Ireland’s loyalty to the United Kingdom is not reciprocated and not welcomed. Northern Ireland exists only because the UK failed in its attempt to be rid of the whole Irish question. Unsurprisingly its boundaries are not recognised de jure by the catholic republic in the south but more significantly its boundaries are not recognised de facto by the UK govern ment either. Conscription into the armed forces was not applied in Northern Ireland during the 1939– 45 war. The British government has never committed enough resources to seal the border between north and south against terrorist movement. On the contrary, recent laws have been passed to seal the border between Britain and Northern Ireland and several hundred people were deported from Britain to Northern Ireland during the 1970s. (In 1983, Gerry Adams of Provisional Sinn Fein was elected MP for Belfast West. Under UK laws he was prohibited from entering the British mainland to attend Parliament. Under Sinn Fein principles he was committed never to attend Parliament. As soon as he was elected an MP, the British government resolved this non-dilemma by revoking the restrictions on his movements.) Conversely all citizens of the southern republic automatically enjoy all British citizenship rights, including the vote, when they reside in Britain. A 1949 act of the

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British Parliament even declares that ‘the Republic of Ireland is not a foreign country for the purposes of any law in force in any part of the UK’. While there has been some reluctance in England to concede devolved parliaments to Scotland and Wales, there has been almost excessive zeal for devolution to Northern Ireland. Until the mid 1960s Westminster observed a self-imposed convention that matters should not be raised at Westminster if they were within the responsibility of the devolved parliament at Stormont, a convention which is totally inappropriate in a devolved, rather than federal, system of government. The present troubles erupted when political activists and elites briefly forgot that Ireland was not part of Britain. They resulted from over-confidence in progress, ‘normality’ and stability. The crisis was caused by a reaction against attempts to introduce British political norms, not by the lack of British political norms. Until the mid 1960s Stormont neither sought nor required the support of the catholic minority but it did maintain a tight grip on public order. Between December 1956 and February 1962 the IRA mounted a violent campaign against Irish partition, using its traditional ‘military’ methods of bomb and bullet attacks on northern government targets —often policemen or police barracks near the border. It failed miserably. Instead of picking up new recruits as the campaign proceeded the IRA lost its existing manpower as the southern Republican government interned them without trial. When the European Commission on Human Rights criticised internment, the Republic put the gunmen before military courts.3 ‘Physical force’ was discredited even within the IRA leadership. The organisation, such as it was by then, moved towards the Left and towards constitutionalism. On the other side Terence O’Neill who became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1963, set out to emphasise the normality of northern politics by downgrading the border issue and opening a direct and friendly dialogue with the Republic. Unfortunately normal politics were so un-normal in Northern Ireland as to raise the political temperature rather than lower it. Protestant control of politics, though based on their majority, was further reinforced by a catholic tradition of abstention. And protestant control of security was guaranteed as long as the tiny IRA kept to a military strategy directed at the massive armed police forces of the north and indeed at the armed forces of the south as well. So the new catholic and republican strategy of joining in the political system of the north and refusing to fight hopeless military battles presented a threat to the protestant political system. Moreover it was obvious to protestants that catholics and republicans were merely practising ‘entryism’, coming into the system without any commitment to it, bent on changing or destroying it from within. By an unfortunate coincidence, 1966 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin and catholics celebrated it too well for protestants’ peace of mind. The Northern Ireland civil rights movement was formed in 1967 and achieved worldwide publicity in 1968. Though backed by the IRA from the start, its tactics and demands were by intention the very opposite of those used in the unsuccessful 1956–62 border campaign. Its overt demand was for incorporation within the northern political system, not exit from it; and its tactics were demonstrations and disruption by the masses rather than outright military violence by the few.

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The civil rights movement itself did not last long. Many republicans disagreed violently with the unfamiliar policy of passive resistance, while many protestants had no wish to ‘normalise’ northern politics and others could not believe the ultimate objective of catholic protest was normalisation. Neither catholics nor protestants accepted the other’s right to march or demonstrate and protestants mobilised against their own too-liberal leadership. O’Neill resigned. The Protestant Response August 1969 was a critical month. The northern police who were in Derry to defend a protestant demonstration were provoked into a fight with catholic rioters but failed to suppress them quickly. The Republic moved army units up close to the border to give first-aid treatment to the rioters and there were hints on one side, fears on the other, that the Republic’s army would not respect the border itself. Protestant-dominated Belfast erupted in communal rioting and British troops were sent to Northern Ireland to uphold the authority of Stormont internally and, if need be, externally. Since Stormont’s authority had rested not on its ability to secure consent but on its ability to secure compliance it was fundamentally impossible to send troops from outside to uphold that authority. British troops inevitably upheld the authority of Westminster, not Stormont, and all claims to the contrary were gradually discarded. Over the winter of 1968–69 various IRA conventions voted in favour of recognising the ‘partition parliaments’ of Dublin and Stormont, but the result was merely a split in the movement and the emergence of the ‘Provisional’ IRA committed to the old ‘physical force’ tradition. After the communal riots in Belfast ‘physical force’ methods were back in favour, now justified as defensive, and no longer restricted to military targets. Since 1969, loyalists and republicans have murdered each other, police and army personnel, uninvolved civilians with the ‘wrong’ religion and criminals within their own religious community. Internment without trial was introduced in 1971 but only doubled the murder rate, already running at several hundred per year. Violence on this unprecedented scale made British governments, parties and people still more willing to distance themselves from Irish affairs yet less able to ignore them. Mass surveys in Britain show consistent majorities in favour of bringing the troops home and encouraging the north to join the Republic.4 Both Labour and the Conservative parties have cut all formal links with their erstwhile Irish affiliates. British governments have abolished Stormont and instituted direct rule from London but they rule by orders in council; direct rule is temporary and must be renewed annually; integration has not been offered though protestants took advantage of the Callaghan government’s parliamentary weakness in 1978–79 to get an increase in northern Irish parliamentary representation from 12 seats to 17. Following the abolition of Stormont, the British government held a referendum within Northern Ireland on the question of unity with the Republic but protestants voted almost unanimously against it while catholics almost unanimously abstained. The only other way of relinquishing direct responsibility for Ireland is to restore some form of devolved system but a return to the old exclusively protestant system would be an

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affront to world opinion and perhaps also to the conscience of the British. Consequently, British governments since 1972 have repeatedly tried to devolve power back to Northern Ireland but have insisted this devolution should be to a body manifestly supported by both catholic and protestant communities. A ‘power-sharing’ executive modelled on the principles recently abandoned in British local government might be one way of securing and demonstrating cross-community support but the mechanism is less important than the principle. Unfortunately it is the principle rather than any particular mechanism which has so far proved unacceptable in Northern Ireland. Hence the collapse of O’Neill’s administration in 1969, and Faulkener’s Power Sharing Executive in 1974; the failure of the 1975 Constitutional Convention, of the 1979–80 Inter-Party talks and of the 1982 scheme for Rolling Devolution. At the mass level the cross-sectarian Alliance party has made some limited progress though it was down to eight per cent of the vote in 1983 and all the major parties now draw their support exclusively from one religious community.5 Leaders have little influence over their followers. Protestant leaders, even when they wished to do so, have been unable to commit their followers to power-sharing and catholic leaders are equally unable (and even less willing) to commit their followers to accepting the border with the Republic. So far neither the IRA gunmen nor the catholic political parties have succeeded in their common aim of incorporating Northern Ireland into the Republic. And neither the civil rights demonstrators of 1968–69 nor the catholic political parties have succeeded in their alternative aim of incorporating themselves into the government of Northern Ireland. Intra-sectarian competition with Provisional Sinn Fein even forced the moderate catholic SDLP (Social Democratic Labour Party) to abstain from taking up the seats it won in the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly elections. But the demonstrators and, to a lesser extent, the gunmen have succeeded in their negative ambition of destroying the protestant ascendancy in the north. Specific Catholic grievances within Northern Ireland have been redressed. More significantly external support for an exclusively protestant regime has been destroyed. Before 1968 both London and Dublin governments in practice left Northern Irish affairs to Stormont, and Dublin gave practical help with security problems. The partition parliaments had a common interest in opposing the gunmen. Since 1968 however, British governments have not only interfered directly in Irish affairs, they no longer even treat the protestants as partners. British governments now negotiate Irish affairs with the government of the Republic, with northern catholic parties, and quite often with the IRA and other paramilitary groups. Protestant parties enjoy no special status and very little sympathy. Paradoxically, British involvement and direct rule have served to underline the distinction between Britain and Ireland while reducing the distinction between north and south—at least from a British perspective; and northern protestants now fear a process of creeping incorporation into some form of united Ireland.

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Nationalist Success in Wales, Ireland and Scotland Despite obvious differences in terms of the opposition to them, the costs of success, and the difference between exit within the state and exit from it, catholic nationalism in Ireland and language nationalism in Wales have much in common. Both are minority nationalisms with twin aims of gaining benefits for the minority and imposing their way of life on the majority. Both have been fairly successful in gaining benefits for the minority but relatively unsuccessful as yet in making the majority conform. Their success has been achieved by mass protest coupled with elite pressure; electoral methods have not been so important, a natural result of their inherent minority position; and conventional political parties have not occupied a central role. During the last year of Callaghan’s minority Labour government Irish and Welsh Nationalist MPs won some concessions (on the number of parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland, and industrial compensation for Welsh quarry workers) but these were not the main issues of nationalist politics. Scottish nationalism differs in almost every particular. It is neither communal nor cultural but political. The central demand is for a greater degree of self-government. An intense minority faces an apathetic majority but both are on the same side. Notwithstanding the small majority in favour of devolution in the 1979 referendum, almost all the survey evidence before 1979 and again since 1979 suggests that there is at least a two to one majority in favour of some kind of devolved Scottish parliament; but it also suggests that this is not a matter of intense concern for the majority. Within that majority a minority are intensely concerned and a minority would also prefer outright independence. Party and especially party competition has been more significant in Scots nationalism than in Welsh or catholic Irish. An elite pressure group strategy of working within all the parties to achieve an all-party consensus was used before the First World War and tried again in the late 1940s. Since then, however, there have been only a few brief and halfhearted attempts along those lines. Demonstrations and political violence have been rare and insignificant. Instead, nationalist demands have been pressed by one or other of the Conservative and Labour parties (changing sides from time to time), by the Liberals, by the Social Democrats, and by the Scottish National Party. By choice and necessity the SNP has been a most electoral party, arguably more law-abiding than either Labour or Conservative. Electorally, Scottish nationalism has enjoyed considerable success: a third of the 1974 General Election votes went to the SNP; its standing in opinion polls frequently went higher still; 52 per cent voted in favour of a Scots Assembly in the 1979 referendum, and even that figure grossly understates the support for devolution revealed by surveys. It was electoral pressure as much as anything that caused all the parties in October 1974 to simultaneously promise a Scottish Assembly or Parliament. The Welsh Nationalist Party never achieved comparable electoral success and neither Welsh Nationalist nor Irish catholics could hope for a 52 per cent vote in a referendum. But in contrast again to Wales and Ireland, the 1960s and 1970s left nationalists in Scotland with little to show by way of ambitions achieved. Why not? There are three obvious answers: first, that Scottish nationalism is widespread but not intense; second, the nature of the demand does not allow any concession to the minority of intense nationalists

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alone, any reform must apply to the whole of Scotland—and neither the Welsh nor the Irish catholics have had much success with their global rather than particular demands; third, this lack of intensity coupled with the need to maintain a Scottish consensus, has ruled out significant use of direct action as a tactic: Scottish nationalism’s majority status has proved its greatest disadvantage. There were two critical occasions when disruptive demonstrations though probably not outright violence might have altered the course of events. On each occasion the lack of protest in Scotland was noted publicly and weighed against electoral indicators. The first was at the end of February 1977 when the Scotland and Wales Bill was effectively defeated in Parliament. The second was in March 1979 when the Scots voted for devolution in the referendum but it was clear their decision would not be implemented by Westminster. On each occasion, direct action in Scotland similar to Welsh or Irish protests might well have wrung more response from London. But our 1979 Scottish Election survey shows there was specially little support for direct action on this particular issue and the very actions which might have encouraged London to concede devolution would probably have turned law-abiding Scots against it.6 Scotland: Elections without Consequences Scottish nationalism lacks a sense of insecurity because it is locally a majority feeling and because a high level of geographic, demographic and institutional separation between Scotland and England creates the illusion of self-government. Compared to Wales or Ireland or even southern England, Scotland now has a remarkably homogeneous population—partly the result of economic decline which has kept out recent immigrants (white as well as black), partly the result of determined efforts within Scotland to treat Scotland as a unity, partly the simple consequence of geography—the same geographical factors which split Scotland off from England concentrate the bulk of the Scottish population into a single central belt. Irish and Highland immigration to the Central Belt of Scotland is now several generations back in history and the tensions that it produced half a century ago, have now faded. Scotland has its own national church, at least as national in population coverage, prestige and legal status as the Anglican church in England. The Church’s General Assembly, televised like a party conference sometimes substitutes for a Scottish Assembly. Scotland has its own criminal and commercial laws; its own judicial system; its own health and education systems; its own Scottish central civil service (practically if not theoretically) reporting to its own representative in the British Cabinet; its own general, standing and investigating committees in parliament; its own press; a large amount of separate Scottish news and current affairs broadcasting; significant Scottish trade-union, employers’ and financial institutions; and Conservative, Labour and Liberal paties with some degree of Scottish identity. Four Scottish party conferences are televised each year, and party election broadcasts by the ‘British’ parties often consist of Scottish ‘opt-outs’, planned and presented by the Scottish arm of the party. All the parties publish separate Scottish election manifestos which raise difficult problems about electoral mandates and commitments.

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There are so many separate or quasi-separate institutions, interacting so frequently, that there is a ‘Scottish political system’ in which the SNP has only a minor, though on occasion critical, role. Scotland has the media to carry a Scottish debate, the complex of institutions to give it content, and a focal point in the Scottish Office and Secretary of State. Paradoxically, this contributes both to a satisfying illusion of self-government and a demand for real self-government. The illusion is broken and the fundamental absurdity of Scots government exposed when, as now, the party that holds only 21 of the 72 Scottish seats nonetheless supplies special ministers for Scotland and devises special legislation for Scotland. In these circumstances the system is neither unitary nor federal nor devolved and comes close to being colonial. One indicator of the significance of this Scottish debate is the visibility of those who participate in it. Scottish election study respondents had to name three politicians ‘who come to mind when thinking about each of the parties’. Very few Scots names in the Labour or Conservative parties could be recalled. Respondents were then asked to name the person in each of a dozen photographs of newsworthy politicians. Thatcher, Callaghan, Steel and Home were widely recognised but though two were Scots, all four were British party leaders or ex-leaders. MacDonald (SNP) and Taylor (Scots Conservative) were recognised by three-quarters of respondents. Four other Scots—Sillars (ex-Lab), Millan (Lab), Johnston (Lib) and Dalyell (Lab)—were correctly named by about a third making them roughly comparable with Geoffrey Howe and Keith Joseph in England. The chairman and parliamentary leader of the SNP were both rather less recognisable. Clearly the Scottish political system did not predominate in Scots mass political consciousness but it did achieve some visibility at a secondary level. It is much more visible to activists and elites. Separation does not imply antagonism, however. Almost as many Scots felt they had ‘more in common’ with Scots of a different social class as felt closer to Englishmen of the same class; but while a majority perceived some conflict between Scotland and England very few thought it was a ‘serious’ conflict. A majority had ‘close relatives’ in England and claimed to ‘like’ the English. Most of the remainder refused to assert any general dislike of the English, merely saying that it depended upon the person. For the past century all parties have competed for Scottish votes by adding nationalist appeals to their standard ideological repertoire. Though Labour’s position has changed from time to time, both Labour and the Liberals have tended to advocate Home Rule when in opposition but have seldom taken steps towards it when in government. The Conservatives have responded by pointing out that private enterprise in place of state socialism is a form of Home Rule and by implementing and extending administrative devolution instead of the mere promise of political devolution. By building up the Scottish Office and the powers of the Secretary of State it is the Conservatives who, perhaps unintentionally, have done most to create the conditions for an easy transition to devolved government. For a decade after the last war they totally offset their class-based disadvantage in Scotland while using nationalist rhetoric and running a nationalist campaign against the Attlee government.7 In the early 1960s Labour offered a plan to redistribute wealth and income between regions by imposing controls in southern England to drive investment northwards. Like

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its National Plan, Labour’s Regional Plan raised high hopes but produced corresponding disillusion in the late 1960s in the midst of which the SNP scored its first run of sustained electoral success. Partly to attack Labour, partly to avoid being outflanked by the SNP, partly also because they had exhausted the possibilities for administrative devolution, the Conservatives turned towards political as well as administrative devolution. Labour postponed the issue by setting up a Royal Commission on the Constitution which did not report till 1973. As the 1970 election approached, SNP support declined. The Conservative manifesto proposed a Scottish Assembly but gave it low priority and no action was taken in government. By 1974 however the whole climate of Scottish politics was changed by the chance coincidence of several loosely related factors. North Sea Oil came to public attention and produced a ‘Scottish Oil’ campaign.8 The Royal Commission finally reported and came out in favour of devolution. In the crisis conditions of the miners strike and the three-day week British voters everywhere turned away from Labour and Conservative but in Scotland they went to the SNP rather than the Liberals. The February election gave no party an overall majority at Westminster and increased the bargaining power of Scottish electors, though not of the SNPs’ seven MPs whose only significance was the electoral forces they represented. Although the seven were not effective as a Westminster pressure group, there was a clear need for an early General Election to give Labour a working majority, and a clear risk that Labour’s chance of gaining such a majority could be endangered by further losses of Scottish seats to the SNP. Lastly, Labour had just experienced its first taste of winning a popular majority in Scotland without gaining political power. From 1970 to 1974 Labour had a two to one majority of Scots MPs backed by a majority of Scots votes yet had to watch special Scottish laws being enacted and administered by the Scottish minority. Though always statistically likely, this had not happened since 1900: it was a new frustration.9 Between the two elections of 1974 Labour committed itself to an Assembly with ‘legislative and executive’ powers and made this the centrepiece of its autumn campaign. All the other parties also proposed Assemblies. After 1974 the system readjusted to make Scottish nationalism once more an issue between the Labour and Conservative parties so that it could be contained within the traditional party system whether or not nationalist demands were met. There are similarities with the party system’s reaction to race and immigration issues in England. Thatcher issued a three-line whip against Labour’s Scotland and Wales Bill and although most of her Scottish front-bench spokesmen resigned she defeated the bill in February 1977 with the help of the Liberals and a few Labour rebels. Labour then formed a pact with the Liberals, bribed its rebels with economic concessions to their local areas, and brought forward separate Scottish and Welsh Bills which became law in 1978. It tacitly abandoned Welsh devolution by making both bills subject to acceptance in local referenda. No poll in Wales had ever indicated a majority in favour. Against the government’s wishes however, Parliament inserted the additional requirement that devolution must be approved by 40 per cent of the electorate. In

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practice that meant a two-thirds majority of those voting. Scottish polls throughout the 1970s suggested that even this stiff requirement might just be met. The government postponed the referenda till the spring of 1979 when a new electoral register would come into force and fewer electors would be effectively unable to vote. It had also lost its overall majority in Parliament through by-election defeats and knew that the SNP would keep it in office for just so long as devolution was in prospect but not yet implemented. Labour was very popular in Scotland in 1978 but not in Britain and hoped its election prospects would improve over the winter. Unfortunately that winter was the ‘winter of discontent’ when unions rebelled against the government’s incomes policy causing a swift and massive collapse in Labour support in Scotland as elsewhere. The Conservatives promised that a vote against Labour’s plans would not affect the priority given to devolution and they would bring forward better plans of their own. It was not a very credible promise but in the winter of discontent it was sufficient to encourage Conservative devolutionists to vote against Labour’s scheme. After the referendum Labour refused either to implement or repeal the Scotland Act. The SNP put down a motion of no confidence, were joined by the Conservatives, and defeated the government. The Conservatives won the ensuing election though Labour retained a large majority of both votes and seats in Scotland. Almost the first act of the new government was to repeal the devolution legislation and its plans for ‘better devolution’ turned out to be no more than a suggestion that Commons committees dealing with Scottish affairs might meet in Scotland. By various devices they would still be controlled by the Westminster majority, not the Scots majority. In the 1979 election the SNP lost half its 1974 vote. Support did not decline much until 1978 when Labour passed the Scotland Act, but then SNP support declined. Worse than lost votes was the party’s lost image. In 1974, 84 per cent of Scottish respondents said the SNP had been ‘good for Scotland’ but the figure fell to 45 per cent in 1979. When asked whether the SNP had speeded up moves toward devolution only 28 per cent agreed in 1979, 25 per cent thought the SNP had not had much effect, and a huge 47 per cent thought the SNP had actually delayed Scotland’s progress towards devolution. As SNP popularity declined in 1978, Labour’s lead over the Conservatives in Scotland compared to Britain as a whole rose sharply. Historically taking the average of election results since the 1920s and on class grounds since the Scots are a little more working-class than the English, the gap should be around eight per cent. In 1978 it rose to an average around 20 per cent and has stayed remarkably constant since then, until it widened to 32 per cent during the three months of the Falklands action and to 36 per cent in the three months afterwards. Almost inevitably the gap will decline somewhat as the Falklands affair recedes into history, though it was significantly wider at the 1983 General Election than in 1979. Nationalism and Party Competition Two questions must be asked about this historically unprecedented but now apparently stable Labour bias in Scotland. What was its cause? And what will be its consequence?

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As to cause, timing suggests Labour succeeded in adding a national bias to its classbased Scottish bias in 1978 and that it gained more than the Conservatives from the collapse of the SNP. Scottish Election Study surveys in 1974 and 1979 show the importance of devolution as an election issue and its changing relationship to party choice. Taking respondents’ own reports of its importance in deciding their vote devolution was somewhat less important than economic management issues but increasingly more important than the Scottish oil issue. Amongst SNP voters devolution was the most important issue of all. TABLE 5 PERCEIVED IMPORTANCE OF VARIOUS ISSUES IN SCOTLAND 1974–79

TABLE 6 PARTY SUPPORT BY ATTITUDE TO DEVOLUTION 1979

Notes: (1) Figures in brackets are for 1974. (2) Only the Kilbrandon question was asked in 1974 and this is the only version that can be used in the panel analyses. By 1979, however, the options it offered were less relevant to current politics. Sources: Scottish Election Studies. The SNP always fared best at the independence end of the devolution spectrum and the Conservatives at the status quo end, but there were significant changes between 1974 and 1979. In 1974 Labour did best at the status quo end and progressively worse towards the self-government end, just like the Conservatives. So in 1974, devolution attitudes essentially divided people between the SNP and other parties. By 1979 however, Labour clearly did best amongst those who wanted a Scottish Assembly, and worse amongst all those who wanted either more or less than that. A simple Downsian explanation would be that Labour had moved its policies towards those of the SNP and captured marginal SNP voters. Thus the widening difference between Labour’s lead in Scotland and

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England at the 1979 election could be explained by Labour picking up ex-SNP votes in Scotland to offset its Britain-wide losses to the Conservatives.

The 1974–79 Scottish election panel study does not support that simple explanation. In 1979 we succeeded in re-interviewing about 370 of the Scots respondents who were originally interviewed in 1974. It is a small number, and any analysis of so few respondents must be treated with caution but it gives a unique insight into electoral change and though its findings appear surprising at first, they are consistent with other evidence on Scottish voting. Scotland did not swing either to Labour or Conservative in 1979, but the panel did: it swung to the Conservatives. Devolution attitudes in 1974 did predict which 1974 SNP voters would later defect: 65 per cent of SNP voters who, in 1974, wanted full independence stayed loyal to the party in 1979, but only 48 per cent of 1974 devolutionist SNP voters stayed loyal in 1979, and a mere 25 per cent of those who had voted SNP without commitment to either independence or devolution. Unfortunately for the simple Downsian hypothesis the SNP defectors did not switch en masse to Labour: overwhelmingly they switched back to whichever party they told us, in 1974, they had voted for in 1970. In short, SNP defectors in 1979 ‘returned home’ to their 1970 allegiance and Labour gained no advantage from that switch. How then do we explain Labour’s Scottish success in 1979? First Labour did very much better than the Conservatives amongst Scottish youth in 1979. On Gallup’s figures, over 35 year-olds gave the Conservatives a lead of 11 per cent in England and a shortfall of only one per cent in Scotland; under 35 year-olds voted Conservative by seven per cent in England, but voted Labour by 23 per cent in Scotland. Labour won overwhelmingly in the battle for new and recent entrants to the Scottish electorate. Secondly, the events of 1974– 79 firmly established Labour’s credentials as a ‘Scottish’ party irrespective of voters’ attitudes towards devolution. It is as if even those who did not want devolution still reacted favourably to Labour’s manifest concern for Scotland. Respondents were asked how far they could trust each party ‘on economic affairs’, ‘on Scottish affairs’ and ‘on preserving democracy’. The Conservative party enjoyed a much better score than Labour on ‘democracy’ but lagged a little on ‘economic affairs’ and a great deal on ‘Scottish affairs’. Even amongst those who did not want either independence or devolution Labour came out ahead of the Conservatives for trustworthiness on Scottish affairs. In short, Labour’s handling of the devolution issue gave it a diffuse image advantage over the Conservatives which helped to sustain Scottish Labour loyalties and attract new electors at a time when Labour could do neither in the south of England. Different media coverage of the Falklands affair, and different mass reactions to it, probably increased still further the identification of party with nation (Labour with Scotland, Conservative with England) in 1983 and may explain why the economically hard-hit West Midlands swung so much more heavily to the Conservatives than economically better-protected Scotland. In addition, a number of West Midlands politicians explicitly blamed Labour’s pro-Scots regional economic policies of the 1960s for their own plight in the 1980s. But we still have to explain the increased fit between devolution attitudes in 1979 and Labour versus Conservative voting. This also occurred in the panel and cannot be

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explained by new entrants to the electorate. The answer is that Labour and Conservative partisans brought their devolution attitudes more closely into line with their Party’s ultimate policy position. For most electors in the 1970s SNP voting was a new departure and SNP party identification (in the American sense) was relatively weak. Thus in the tension between devolution attitudes and party loyalty, devolution attitudes were somewhat more powerful amongst SNP voters but party loyalty was very much more powerful amongst Labour and Conservative partisans. Devolution attitudes in 1974 made no difference to Conservative loyalty rates in 1979 and had only a small effect upon Labour loyalty rates: Labour’s 1974 anti-devolutionists were 81 per cent loyal in 1979, while its devolutionists were 86 per cent loyal and its self-governors 90 per cent loyal. But Labour or Conservative partisanship had a big effect on changing attitudes to devolution. Attitudes were not very stable in either party, but 45 per cent of Labour’s 1974 anti-devolutionists switched towards devolution while only 26 per cent of Conservative anti-devolutionists did so. Similarly 58 per cent of Conservative devolvers switched against it but only 43 per cent of Labour ones did so. A cross-lagged panel regression analysis confirms the finding that the dominant causal influence between devolution attitudes and party loyalty ran towards SNP partisanship but away from Labour versus Conservative partisanship. Devolution attitudes did influence SNP partisanship more than vice versa. But at the same time Conservative versus Labour partisanship determined attitudes on devolution more than vice versa. Since 1979 this process of ‘party-politicising’ the constitutional question has gone still further at an elite level, though amongst elites it probably owes more to calculations of party advantage than mere deference to party policy. Scots Labour conferences have gone beyond reaffirming their commitment to an Assembly to demand still greater economic and fiscal powers than were offered under the Scotland Act. The Conservative party has put all thoughts of devolution behind it, and the SNP has retreated back to an ‘independence —nothing less’ position. Once again the Labour party’s large but powerless Scottish majority taught it a nationalist lesson. The Scottish Executive held a number of meetings with Labour’s NEC to ensure that devolution would be given priority by the next Labour government. By 1982, however, Labour’s Left/-Right splits in England, coupled with the Falklands affair and the redrawing of constituency boundaries suggested that the most likely outcome of the next general election was not a Labour government but yet another large Labour majority in Scotland rendered powerless by a Conservative majority at Westminster. At least two groups within Labour’s Scottish leadership started planning their future action on that assumption.10 When Mrs Thatcher won her landslide majority in 1983, but only 21 of the 72 Scottish seats (and only 28 per cent of the Scottish vote), Labour’s devolutionists had to make their choice between disruption or a humiliating climb-down. Shortly after the 1979 election leftwingers within the SNP formed the ‘79 Group’ to put the case for a left-wing and direct action strategy. With some reluctance the party backed two direct action campaigns: one against proposals to dump nuclear waste in Scottish hills and the other to press for an Assembly. The 1979 Election survey showed that support for direct action under a variety of Scottish scenarios was greatest on the

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FIGURE 1 CROSS-LAGGED REGRESSION ANALYSES 1974–1979

KEY D74, D79: Kilbrandon scale of attitudes to constitutional change in 1974 and 1979. C74, C79: Conservative versus Labour vote in 1974 and 1979. S74, S79: SNP vote in 1974 and 1979. Coefficients are path coefficients x 100%. Adjusted path coefficients take account of the low correlation (0.52) between the two measures of devolution attitudes in 1979.

nuclear waste issue but least on devolution. The Secretary of State ruled against test borings for nuclear waste disposal but the direct action campaign on devolution was unsuccessful. The threat needed to mobilise mass demonstrations did not exist on the devolution issue. It is possible that mass direct action campaigns against siting Trident missiles on the Clyde will arouse more interest. The ‘79 Group’ was eventually banned by the SNP to avoid its own Left/Right split. The party’s reluctance to move left while Labour moved towards a strong devolution position has meant that instead of Labour activists defecting to the SNP, as the ‘79 Group’ hoped, there has been a steady trickle of Nationalists switching to Labour, and the SNP vote dropped to under 12 per cent in 1983. Labour’s own attempt at direct action in the 1979–83 Parliament was also unsuccessful. Labour-controlled Lothian Regional Council allowed itself to be manoeuvred into a battle with the Secretary of State over levels of rates and spending. The region claimed a popular mandate which the Secretary of State did not have. But in local

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elections in 1980 and 1982 voters in Lothian swung towards the Conservatives as other parts of Scotland swung further to Labour. If there is to be a successful direct action campaign to assert the claims of Scotland’s elected representatives against a future Conservative government neither mass demonstrations on a purely constitutional issue nor a local-government based strategy seem the best choice. Instead, present thinking within sections of the Labour party favours a campaign of Parnellite disruption within the Westminster Parliament. Liberals, Nationalists and Social Democrats (all committed to devolution) would be invited or even challenged to join in. There is no guarantee of success but electoral methods offer no guarantee either: Scottish electoral majorities in the referendum and in parliamentary elections have been disregarded. Non-electoral methods have clearly had some success in Wales and Ireland and even on limited issues within Scotland—from the UCS work-in to the abandonment of nuclear waste proposals. But the action needs to match the issue. I am conscious of having made few references to inter-regional disputes over economic benefits. They are of some importance everywhere but appear most prominent in diputes between the north and south of England such as the campaign by the Northern Consortium of local authorities against a third London airport. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland interregional economic competition is overshadowed by other local issues. Moreover, one consequence of the devolution debate in the 1970s was that regional variations in government expenditure were exposed to public debate and a convention was agreed to freeze the relative levels of Scots, Welsh and English public expenditure. In Scotland, both elites and masses have realised that they will soon arouse English opposition if they make proposals which would alter the economic balance between Scotland and England. This has sharpened the distinction between more local control and more economic benefits. Hence the declining importance of ‘Scottish oil’ as an issue. Tax-raising powers for a Scottish Assembly offer Scots more control while reassuring the English that they will not be left to foot all the bills. In addition, many of the present government’s most ideological policies, which are most abhorrent to Scots social and political elites, have little or nothing to do with finance and certainly not enough to affect Scots/English ratios of benefit from central government. Matters like nuclear waste, police powers, state assisted places in private schools, private medicine and pay beds in hospitals, council tenants rights or even, within limits, levels of local rates can be important matters of political disagreement without much affecting inter-regional economic benefits. Labour’s devolutionists hope they could make parliamentary disruption more of a threat than devolution would be. It is difficult to assess the present level of support for this strategy— rumours in the press and elsewhere indicated that somewhere between a third and two-thirds of Scots Labour MPs were thinking in these terms before the 1983 election. Now that the fears of a Conservative landslide have become a reality support for disruption may grow, but Labour leaders with ministerial experience, like Bruce Millan (Labour’s former Secretary of State for Scotland) are worried that disruption might be unsuccessful and discredit the devolution cause as well as the tactic itself. On the other hand, inaction may discredit the Labour party’s claim to be a defender of Scotland. Whether resolution will hold on the

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day is another matter, but Labour’s nationalism is no longer a concession to public opinion: it reflects the party’s own impotent outrage. Scottish nationalism has been the most electoral and the most unsuccessful. Over the last ten years it has changed its outward form but it has not disappeared. As a majority feeling it may be pushed more forcefully by a majority party than by the minority of SNP enthusiasts. If it is not then the SNP may rise again like a phoenix from the ashes of its 1983 funeral pyre. NOTES 1. See R.Rose, ‘From Simple Determinism to Interactive Models of Voting’, Comparative Political Studies (1982) pp.145–69; and J.Curtice and M.Steed, ‘An Analysis of the Voting’, in D.Butler and D.Kavanaagh (eds.), The British General Election of 1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp.390–431. 2. For an account of language politics in Wales see P.Madgwick and P.Rawkins, ‘The Welsh Language in the Policy Process’ in P.Madgwick and R.Rose (eds.), The Territorial Dimension in United Kingdom Politics (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp.67–99. 3. For an informed and balanced account of Irish politics see T.P.Coogan, The IRA (London: Fontana, 1980). 4. See R.Rose, ‘Is the United Kingdom a State? Northern Ireland as a Test Case’ in Madgwick and Rose, op.cit., pp.100–36. 5. See W.L.Miller, ‘Variations in Electoral Behaviour in the UK’, in Madgwick and Rose, op.cit., pp.224–50. 6. For a full analysis of attitudes to direct action in Scotland and Wales see W.Miller, P. Madgwick et al., Democratic or Violent Protest? Attitudes Towards ‘Direct Action’ in Scotland and Wales (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde Studies in Public Policy, No. 107, 1982). 7. For a review of Scottish politics since 1945, including some of the more extravagantly Scottish nationalist speeches of Winston Churchill as well as an analysis of more recent events see W.L.Miller, The End of British Politics? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). 8. Changing Scottish attitudes to North Sea oil are described in W.L.Miller, J.Brand and M. Jordan, Oil and the Scottish Voter 1974–79 (London: SSRC North Sea Oil Panel Paper No.2, 1980). 9. See W.L.Miller, J.Brand and M.Jordan, ‘Government without a Mandate’, Political Quarterly, Vol. 52 (1981), pp.203–13. 10. For some oblique references to these Scots Labour preparations see G.Foulkes, ‘Rallying Socialists to the Banner of Devolution’, Scotsman, 28 Sept. 1982. The left-wing Labour Coordinating Committee is also involved. See also A.McCallum, ‘Scottish Labour MPs ready to defy a Tory victory’, Glasgow Herald, 21 Feb. 1983; and K.Aitken, ‘Threat of disruption over devolution’, Scotsman, 2 March 1983; and the speech by John Home Robertson in the House of Commons on 1 March 1983. Labour plans for parliamentary disruption are derided by Jim Sillars (then vice-chairman of the SNP) in ‘Labour’s Scottish disruption is doomed to fail’, Scotsman, 3 March 1983.

Confrontation, Incorporation and Exclusion: British Trade Unions in Collectivist and Post-Collectivist Politics Rod Hague*

I: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Until 1979 the British trade union movement experienced 40 years of almost unchecked growth. Over that period, the balance of advantage between employers and unions shifted significantly towards the latter in some respects. Among trade unions, however, power remained essentially sectional and decentralised except when the movement itself was under threat. As the role of the trade unions within the economy became increasingly contentious, the voluntary system of industrial relations was undermined by state intervention. The legal framework within which collective bargaining has been conducted has been in a condition of flux for over a decade. One of the stress points of a weakening economy, industrial relations became increasingly politicised around the trade union ‘problem’ as distributive conflict increased from the mid-1960s onwards. Major confrontations between unions and government resulted in the eventual collapse of the postwar consensus built around full employment policies and the maintenance of free collective bargaining. The corporatist experiment of the Social Contract also ended in failure. Since 1979, the trade unions have been virtually excluded from any role in industrial and economic policy-making by the Conservative government. The long era of trade union growth began in the 1940s in partnership with government and employers to meet the national imperatives of war production and post-war reconstruction. For the unions, the 1950s were, in retrospect at least, halcyon years of full employment, unfettered collective bargaining and rising real wages. By the turn of the decade, however, signs of strain were already apparent in the post-war system of industrial relations. Employers and the Conservative party were unhappy at the inflationary consequences of the annual pay round. Concern was growing too at Britain’s relatively lack-lustre economic growth, blamed in part upon restrictive labour practices, strike-prone industries and outdated ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitudes. As successive governments sought to improve economic performance and restrain inflationary pressures, the scope and frequency of government intervention into collective bargaining markedly increased. The Macmillan government first tried to secure a voluntary incomes policy with the unions in 1961; then between 1965 and 1979 every government sooner or later felt

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compelled to resort to an incomes policy to hold back the inflationary push of collective bargaining. At the same time, the unions were drawn more closely into consultation over economic policy with government and employers. The tradition of tripartite discussion between unions, government and employers was symbolically enshrined in NEDC, established in 1962. But such efforts to incorporate the unions into policy-making were only at the top. The problems of industrial relations were largely seated lower down, in a fragmented and highly decentralised bargaining system in which the tenuous authority of national union officials over workplace organisation was symptomatically revealed by unofficial strikes.1 As the problem of trade union power became politically salient, every government since 1964 has attempted reform of industrial relations. By 1970 the post-war consensus over industrial relations was disintegrating, with the incoming Conservative government intent upon reconstructing, unsuccessfully as it turned out, the legal framework within which the unions operated. Unions and Labour party resisted the legislation root and branch. Between 1972 and 1974, in the gravest confrontations between organised labour and government since the 1926 General Strike, the unions won. Determined and wellorganised groups of workers such as the miners were able, it appeared, to enforce their claims upon government, employer and public alike. Prevailing orthodoxy was that the country was ungovernable without the consent, or at least the acquiescence, of the unions. Contrary to mythology, however, the miners did not bring down the Heath government. The government chose to call a snap election on the issue of ‘who runs the country’, and brought itself down because other issues like inflation were on voters’ minds as well. There followed the Social Contract under the 1974–79 Labour government. This was the most significant attempt since 1950 at incorporating the trade unions into national policy-making. It was essentially a series of deals by which the government offered legislation favourable to the unions in return for voluntary income restraint. But this corporatist venture went the way of previous income policies, with union leaderships unable after 1977 to restrain grass roots pressure. The switchback of industrial relations policy continued with the Conservative election victory two years later. A sharp drop in economic activity and employment after 1980, primarily caused by the government’s rigid deflationary policies, undercut trade union bargaining power, especially in the private sector. Meanwhile the government pressed ahead with legislation in 1980 and again in 1982 in its declared aim of reforming trade union law to correct the abuses of trade union power and the imbalance that had developed in the post-war years, as it saw it, between unions and employers. If growing state involvement and legal instability have been major features of industrial relations over the last two decades, it should be stressed that the effects of intervention

*I am grateful to Hugh Berrington, Martin Harrop and Philip Williams for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Charles Hanson and Ken Ternent were also generous and expert sources of information.

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have not always been those intended. Militant trade unionism and state intervention have been interactive. A strong case can be made that the upsurge in trade union recruit ment and militancy after 1968 was largely in response to the resentments and frustrations provoked by government income policies and rising taxation. Widespread belief that the government was treating public employees more harshly over pay restraint than those in the private sector sparked a previously quiescent public sector workforce (with the major exception of mining) into militant collective action. The spread of militant unionism since 1970 across the public sector has been of major consequence, since the government, as the biggest employer in the country, was now a principal combatant rather than a referee in the industrial ring. Industrial unrest in the public sector became an electoral issue in the 1970s, and may well become so again while intractable problems of pay determination remain unresolved. It could well be argued that the major problems of industrial relations are now located in the public sector, with its essential services and monopoly employers. The strategy of the Conservative government to public sector pay claims since 1980 might be described as one of selective resistance against judiciously chosen opponents (health service employees but not miners), in order to force down the level of expectations and settlements. Reducing the size of the public sector and its workforce by a combination of privatisation, closures and tight cash limits is the government’s stated aim. The unions concerned have declared their intention to resist strongly the implementation of this aim. Distributive conflict increased as the upsurge of trade union membership and militancy increased bargaining leverage. The relatively decorous pay round the 1950s became the pay scramble of 1974–75 or 1978–79, as each group of workers struggled to make up the ravages of past inflation and to hedge against price rises in prospect. Any union that stood aside from the scramble could expect its members to lose out, even though the pattern of leapfrogging claims was highly inflationary in outcome. The organised workforce contested the share out of the national produce with employers, among different groups of employees, and between the organised and the unorganised or non-employed segments of the population. As Phelps Brown commented, cost inflation came out as the excess of the income demands made over the income available.2 The inflationary consequences of free collective bargaining eventually proved fatal, it might be argued, to the full employment policies upon which the post-war collectivist consensus of British politics was built. This survey next looks at major structural changes in trade unionism over the last two decades, and then gives particular attention to the instability of industrial relations law in recent years. In the fourth section, it turns to trade union political involvement and the alliance between the unions and the Labour party, with particular emphasis on the unpredictable impact upon the party of the unions’ role within it.

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II: THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF BRITISH TRADE UNIONISM Union Membership and Density As Table 1 shows, at 9.8 million union membership was not much higher in 1960 than it had been ten years earlier. Then in 1969–70, union membership surged upwards, slowed in 1970–73 and then continued to grow steadily throughout the rest of the decade. By 1979, total union membership had reached 13.4 million. Thereafter membership contracted sharply, going down by more than a million over the next two years—the biggest loss of membership since the 1920s. During the years of growth, density of union membership (the proportion of potential membership actually enrolled in trade unions) also increased from 43 per cent in 1968 to 54 per cent in 1979. Density is a better measure of trade union strength than total membership, since it indicates union penetration of the labour market. Among male manual workers, union density was 63 per cent by 1979, up from 51 per cent in 1968. The level of unionisation has traditionally been lower for women workers, but still increased substantially from 27 per cent in 1968 to 39 per cent in 1979. Substantial gains were also made among white collar workers, with union density rising from 33 per cent in 1968 to 44 per cent by 1979.3 Major growth in union membership and density also took place among workers in the public sector. In a few industries experiencing structural contraction, such as mining, railways, iron and steel, the unions concerned fell in size as the workforce shrank but already high densities of union membership increased further. Density of union membership fell, however, in other sectors of the economy, notably in agriculture, construction and distribution. As Taylor has commented, the unions as a whole succeeded not merely in holding their own at a time when major changes were running through the economy but in making a great stride in recruitment .4 This took place against a net fall in employment (even before 1979), in heavy and manufacturing industry, long the basis of manual trade unionism, while employment was expanding rapidly in sectors which had previously been resistant, particularly to white collar unionisation. Why did this upsurge in union recruitment occur from 1969 onwards? Economic factors and the effects of government policy appear to be a large part of the answer. According to Bain and Elsheikh, the ‘threat effect’ of price rises to living standards predisposed people to join trade unions, reinforced by the ‘credit effect’ of pay increases achieved through collective bargaining.5 Resentment at rising taxation, and the distortion of traditional relativities and differentials by government incomes policy, also fostered militancy. These factors also spread collective action among hitherto unorganised groups, such as white collar workers.6 In short, inflation and intervention bred instrumental collectivism and militancy (in its turn but less visibly, it could be argued, militancy produced further inflation). Union growth benefited too from an expanding public sector. A major increase in employment took place in the public sector services, concentrated in local government, the health service and education; unionisation was generally not resisted and in major ways was assisted through the centralised Whitley Council

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TABLE 1 AGGREGATE UNION MEMBERSHIP AND DESITY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: SELECTED YEARS 1950–1981

Source: adapted from Price and Bain, see note 3.

bargaining arrangements. White collar unionism grew in the private sector too, reflecting increasing insecurity and diminished company identification among managerial and clerical workers, as concentration of ownership increased and the pace of takeovers quickened in the 1960s. Private employers, generally, began to show less resistance to collective bargaining as the state intervened more actively in industrial relations and incomes policy after 1965.7 Trade Union Organisation and Mergers Trade unions varied, however, in their responses to a changing labour market. Some, notably the TGWU and ASTMS, pursued vigorously expansionist policies through mergers as well as through individual recruitment. This partly depended upon the job territory available to a particular union— or perhaps to which it was confined, for structural or traditional reasons. But as a recent study points out, some unions are more marriageable than others.8 Bevin’s constitutional formula for the TGWU, combining centralised leadership in the office of the General Secretary with substantial autonomy in bargaining activity for the various trade groups, has proved much more attractive to potential merger partners than the governmental systems of either of its two main rivals, the GMWU and the AUEW. Expansion also involved leadership attitudes: compare the buccaneering style of Clive Jenkins of ASTMS with the proverbial caution of successive leaders of the GMWU down the years. A publicity conscious leadership and a free rein for union activists could also assist expansion: witness the phenomenal growth of NUPE from

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240,000 members in 1964 to 703,000 by 1981. At least in terms of recruitment, militancy paid off for NUPE in the 1970s, as membership leapt up following the major disputes in which it was involved. One of the lesser-known landmarks in British industrial relations is the Trade Union Amalgamation Act of 1964. This has arguably had more impact upon trade union structure through facilitating mergers and transfers of membership than other more controversial—and short-lived—legislation.9 Despite this, the structure of British trade unionism remains disorderly. As Table 2 indicates, the number of trade unions has fallen steadily, TABLE 2 NUMBER OF TRADE UNIONS

Source: Employment Gazette (London: Dept. of Trade), Vol. 91, No.1 Jan. 1983 and earlier issues.

but there are still a great many unions, most of which are very small. More than half of the 438 registered trade unions in 1980 had under 1,000 members apiece: and they account for the merest fraction of total membership (0.5 per cent). Mainly by mergers, the number of unions affiliated to the TUC fell from 182 in 1962 to 105 by 1981. Between these years, while membership grew and the number of separate unions dwindled, the average size of TUC affiliates more than doubled. But the distribution of the bulk of union members has altered little. In 1970, the 40 unions with more than 50,000 members each covered 85 per cent of all trade unionists. By 1980, the 39 unions of comparable size accounted for 87 per cent of all unionists. Membership is in fact heavily concentrated in relatively few unions. The top ten trade unions accounted in 1981 for two-thirds of all trade unionists. Yet the process of amalgamation and increasing concentration of membership has not replaced the extraordinarily complex historical deposit of British trade unionism with anything neater. Despite growing concentration into a few large unions, industrial unionism, for the most part, has not emerged. The main beneficiaries of the membership boom of the 1970s were ‘conglomerate’ unions (to use Clegg’s description).10 These included the big unions (TGWU, GMWU), but the description also fits aspiring industrial unions like the AUEW and white collar unions such as ASTMS, NALGO and APEX. For all their very different structures and development histories, the conglomerates recruit widely, in many grades and occupations, and often across different industries and sectors of the economy. They have been able to compensate for stagnant or declining membership in one sector by recruiting vigorously in other areas of expanding employment. The fortunes of unions confined to a specific occupational or industrial base rise and fall in line with it, whereas conglomerates proved highly adaptable to the changing circumstances of the labour market. The price of their success, however, has been to perpetuate structural muddle: a haphazard and fragmented pattern of union membership, multi-unionism, competition for membership,

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and jurisdictional conflicts over negotiating rights. The big conglomerates are likely to dominate future merger activity. But as Undy et al. argue, they are less likely to manage mergers among themselves than to search for minor partners who can be more easily absorved into existing structures of trade union government without threatening to disrupt existing alliances and power groups.11 At the national level of political-industrial relations the implications of such mergers are considerable, however, in view of the impact which the giant unions already have within the TUC and the Labour party. Not even the broad-based conglomerates, however, have been immune from the severity of the current recession. In fact, the semi—and unskilled, low paid and women workers who make up much of the recruitment territory of the TGWU have been among the principal casualties of the slump in economic activity. Between December 1979 and December 1981, the TGWU lost half a million members. Even the seemingly endless growth of the white collar unions halted. As they suffered the sharpest contraction of membership and income for fifty years, several unions found themselves in serious financial difficulty. A wave of defensive and consolidatory mergers set in. In 1981 the TGWU absorbed the Agricultural Workers and the Dyers and Bleachers union. The following year the Boilermakers Society, once the exemplar of craft exclusiveness, amalgamated with the General and Municipal Workers to form the GMBATU (General Municipal Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union). In the printing industry, a series of mergers has brought the number of TUC affiliates down from six to three. Discussions between the Sheetmetal workers and AUEW (TASS) are reputed to be at an advanced stage, while the AUEW is currently making overtures to the Electricians union. Merger negotiations are taking place among major Civil Service unions and between the banking unions. According to one well-informed source, there is scarcely a union in the TUC which is not considering amalgamation or actively negotiating with possible suitors.12 Workplace Relations and Industrial Conflict The media stereotype of the militant shop steward irresponsibly stirring up trouble is wide of the mark in more cases, as more detached investigation reveals.13 But the shop steward is the lynch-pin of industrial relations in the workplace across much of British industry. The rise of the lay representative during the years of full employment is a major element in the post-war story of British trade unionism. By the end of the 1970s shop steward organisation had become extremely widespread, with the number of stewards increasing from roughly 200,000 in the mid-1960s to around 300,000.14 In contrast, the number of full-time trade union officials is well under 5,000. With the fear of victimisation for union activists more real than for decades past, how well shop steward organisation will weather the recession, tougher management attitudes and legislative changes is open to question. If the ‘mindless militant’ is largely, though not entirely, a creation of the media, the strength of workplace organisation bears closely upon the recent history of industrial relations. Decentralised bargaining arrangements in much of industry meant that well organised workgroups could exert more or less continuous pressure on earnings under full employment, even during periods of incomes policy. Wage movements and the

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‘going rate’ for settle ments were transmitted to those sectors of the economy where more centralised bargaining prevailed. Indeed, the public sector unions set the pace once inhibitions about large-scale collective action in essential services slackened after 1969. In addition to the ‘push from below’, individual unions were so fiercely attached to their traditional bargaining autonomy that talk of incomes policy was never welcome. As Frank Cousins of the Transport Workers once said: ‘If there’s going to be a wages-free-for-all, my members are going to be part of the all’. To union leaders, incomes policy was at best a necessary evil, but could also be used as a bargaining counter in negotiations with government about a wide range of issues. To shop stewards, the pay-off from such highlevel encounters was remote and largely irrelevant, whereas incomes policy was a straitjacket on their activities and a chafing frustration. Strong workplace organisation gave the unions industrial muscle, but placed union leaders in a brittle and exposed position in their dealings with government. The collapse of successive incomes policies in pay explosions detonated by shopfloor militancy culminated in the eventual abandonment of the Keynesian employment policies which had nurtured post-war trade unionism. The gulf between official union leadership and the ‘informal’ system of workplace representation based on shop stewards was a major factor, according to the Donovan enquiry of the 1960s, behind the problem of unofficial strikes.15 It may be that the authors of the report over-generalised somewhat, but there is little doubt, however, that the report struck a resonant chord, and its recommendation to ‘formalise the informal’ was taken up with some energy in following years by unions and management alike. Under Jack Jones’ enthusiastic, almost visionary commitment, ‘all power to the stewards’ became near-orthodoxy in the Transport Workers Union. With the bitter strike and attempted breakaway at Pilkington Glass fresh in mind, David Basnett also sought to integrate workplace representation more effectively into official organisation in the General and Municipal Workers Union. The growth of workplace organisation and bargaining was reflected by greater efforts to train and harness shop floor activists in most major unions during the 1970s. A parallel development was for management to formalise previously unwritten agreements and informal bargaining structures. With the major exception of the public sector, plant-based and company-wide agreements acquired greater significance than industry-wide agreements in pay bargaining. Formalisation of workplace relations has thus been a significant trend in British industrial relations since the 1960s, lending legitimacy to steward organisation. Within this broad current, controversial aspects of industrial practice like the closed shop, which had previously been enforced by unwritten custom, became increasingly formalised—and hence more visible and politically salient. Much of the commentary upon industrial relations in the 1960s was occupied with the problem of unofficial strikes, particularly in the docks, mining and the car industry. A plausible case can be made that the pattern of industrial conflict altered in the late 1960s when large-scale stoppages in the public sector became more frequent. Certainly the number of working days lost in stoppages rose sharply after 1968, being almost ten times higher in 1972 than in 1966. It then fell erratically to a low level in 1976 and climbed again to a new peak in 1979, and thereafter fell rapidly.

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TABLE 3 STRIKE ACTIVITY

Source: Employment Gazette, Vol. 91, No.6, June 1983 and earlier issues.

The pattern of days lost can be heavily affected by a few big strikes. Because they involve large numbers of workers whose pay is determined through industry-wide agreements, disputes in the public sector mostly account for the wide fluctuations in days lost. Certainly the public sector became more ‘strike-prone’ in the 1970s, with large-scale disputes affecting among others mining, postal service, railways, local authority services, the fire-service, the health service, the steel industry, air transport and state schools. Public sector disputes are highly ‘visible’ involving, directly or indirectly, conflict with the government and a significant degree of hardship and inconvenience to the public. Hence, they possess an issue-salience to politicians and electorate alike which disputes in the private sector rarely have. But these points should not conceal certain continuities in the strike data. The actual number of recorded stoppages varies remarkably little compared with days lost. The proportion of ‘official’ strikes remains very small, not so much because workers are called out in defiance of official union leadership but because most strikes are of very short duration.16 The ‘typical’ British strike remains a short, sharp affair reflecting the decentralised, workplace-centred character of union power. However, the very sharp drop in the number of recorded stoppages may well reflect the way in which the recession has sapped the power and confidence of shop steward organisation from 1980 onwards.

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Trades Union Congress How far has the changing structure and character of British trade unionism been reflected in its central organ, the Trades Union Congress? The history of the TUC is one of perennial tension between central authority and a deep-seated attachment to union autonomy. It largely remains a loose federation of divergent sectional interests, which zealously guard their industrial freedom of action and make common cause only against external attack.17 As the report of the General Council in 1970 conceded: The TUC has the perennial problem of reconciling the special interests of particular unions, or groups of members, with the general interests of the trade union movement, and of deciding when which set of interests should prevail. This has on occasion led the TUC to make general statements which, because they are capable of different interpretations, offend none and are minimally acceptable to all. A propensity not to offend and not to appear to be interfering with union autonomy has historically often led the TUC to eschew taking initiatives.18 Under the pressure of events, however, the moral authority of the TUC and of its coordinating body, the General Council has increased. Traditionally, the TUC has tried to live with and do business with the government of the day. The post-war development of tripartism drew the TUC into participation in numerous state institutions and thus enhanced its representative stature. Then as industrial relations came to be regarded as a major factor in Britain’s deteriorating economic performance, the trade unions were pushed towards greater coordination and centralisation of authority by successive waves of government intervention, whether seeking union cooperation in pay restraint or threatening legal restraints on their activities. But the TUC remains ill-adapted to be the partner of government in any permanent system of pay determination, because of the industrial autonomy cherished by individual unions. Though it involves itself with a multitude of issues, two concerns have been paramount for the TUC: first, defending or extending the legal immunities of the trade unions; second, persuading governments to accept its prescriptions for the economy. Its record of success has been rather better on the first concern. The TUC successfully thwarted the Wilson government’s proposals for penal sanctions upon unofficial strikers in the White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’. It then orchestrated the campaign of defiance which destroyed the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. The TUC obtained from the 1974–79 Labour government a substantial body of favourable legislation. But the unions have so far failed to mobilise a demoralised rank and file against the legislation imposed by the Thatcher government. As to the issue of economic management, at the height of TUC influence under the Social Contract, food subsidies and price controls were retained for a time at union insistence, but key proposals of the TUC for reflation and selective import controls were consistently turned down. After 1976, the major contribution of the General Council was in superintending reduction of the working population’s real incomes. Since 1979, TUC influence upon economic policy-making has of course been negligible. Indeed, in an abrupt

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rejection of the corporatist tendencies and tripartite traditions of the post-war era, the role of the TUC in state institutions has been largely ignored by the Thatcher government.19 When, and if, the economy revives to something like full employment, it may be that the functional imperative towards tripartism will reassert itself, as future governments seek union cooperation in economic management and pay restraint. It is by no means clear, however, that the TUC is willing or able to offer even a sympathetic government full collaboration over pay policy. The National Economic Assessment promised in the Labour party’s 1983 manifesto appears to be founded on no more than an indication of good intentions from the unions. Meanwhile the Thatcher government shows no sign of weakening in its chosen purpose of seeking by economic, legal and administrative means to reduce the power and standing of the trade unions within British society. Twenty years ago TUC General Secretary George Woodstock declared that the TUC had left Trafalgar Square for the committee rooms of power in Whitehall. In view of the crushing Conservative election victory in June 1983, it seems unlikely that the TUC can hope to resume the inside access to government which it feels to be its constitutional due as a major estate of the realm, short of a major reassessment of its posture and especially of its present close links with the Labour party. Just as recent years have been a turning point in TUC relations with government, so have they seen the role and composition of the TUC General Council come into question. Established in 1921 to coordinate the activities of the TUC and to pursue its agreed policies in the political arena, the General Council was intended to be a ‘general staff’ for the trade union movement. This aim has not been fulfilled, but the work of the General Council, its major committees and full-time staff has become increasingly important. In essence, the TUC General Council is the public voice and its members the ‘establishment’ figures of British trade unionism. Since its formation, the General Council has been elected by and is accountable to the annual Congress. Increasing controversy, however, has surrounded the anachronistic electoral system which placed unions in the same or related industries into one of 18 trade groups. Electoral competition has in practice been restricted by strong norms of Buggin’s turn and security of tenure for incumbents. Longestablished unions believed they were entitled by right of tradition to representation on the General Council, regardless of the changing composition of the trade union movement. The original idea was that the trade group system would encourage industrial unionism through amalgamations within each group, but few mergers have taken place along these lines. The trade group structure, meanwhile, has tried to accommodate the rapid postwar growth of public sector and white collar unions. But because the entire Congress voted to elect the representatives of each trade group, the patronage of the big general unions was crucial. Leaders of some middle-sized unions (e.g. BIFU, with 148,000 and APEX 123,000 members respectively) felt that they were being unfairly kept off the General Council while the leaders of sometimes much smaller unions (e.g. ACTT with 20, 000 and Tobacco Workers with 18,000 members) were shown personal patronage or ideological favour by the leaders of the giant unions. Criticism of the trade group structure surfaced at the annual Congress almost every year after 1975, to be met by delaying tactics.20 The principle of representation for all

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unions with over 100,000 members was eventually adopted at the Trade Union Congress in 1982, to take effect a year later. Smaller unions will be able to fill a further 11 seats on the General Council, elected from among their own number. There will also be five women members, chosen by the entire Congress. At the time of writing, opponents of the change are trying to circumvent it by proposing that unions be allowed to affiliate in two or more sections, each of at least 100,000 members. In this way, for instance, the NUM could retain the two seats on the General Council it has traditionally filled. The reform of the General Council has several implications. It almost certainly means a larger say for the civil service and white collar unions in the affairs of the TUC than hitherto, and in this, it reflects the changing composition of the union movement at large. It will probably strengthen the right among trade union leaders and weaken the Left, who mostly favour the structural status quo. As Sir John Boyd of the AUEW, and not a noted radical, was provoked to remark: ‘The General Council must be the most conservative body in the land. It is in favour of reforming every institution except itself’. Opponents of the change argue that it will weaken the authority of the General Council and undermine its capacity for leadership, because the individual members of the council will not be elected by the whole of Congress and will feel responsibility only to the union which put them there. Given the multiple challenges—legislative, political and industrial—which the unions now face, the change to automatic representation may further reduce the ability of the General Council to present a coordinated front, though at the same time it may more accurately reflect the increasingly diversified character of contemporary trade unionism. III: TRADE UNIONS, THE STATE AND THE LAW The Voluntarist Tradition Most observers agree that the tradition of voluntarism has long been a dominant feature of British industrial relations. As Allan Flanders wrote: In so far as one can speak of any ideology shaping or reinforcing the attitude of British trade unions to the State, it is not socialism or the class struggle, but a devotion to what is called the voluntary system or sometimes free collective bargaining.21 The experience of the 1970s and 1980s suggests that voluntarism is in retreat as state intervention has increased and as industrial relations law, in particular, came under polarised political management. Essentially, voluntarism is the belief that collective bargaining between workers and employers works most satisfactorily when left to the voluntary efforts of the parties concerned, with a relatively limited role for the state. If it could not be actively benevolent towards collective bargaining, the state should at least confine itself to a position of neutral abstention. Given the long history of judicial hostility

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towards the unions, it is understandable that the pre-dominant view among trade unionists was that the less the law had to do with collective bargaining the better. Since 1906, trade unions have been protected by a system of immunities from liability for conspiracy and procuring breaches of contract when they act in furtherance of a trade dispute. Union attitudes toward legal intervention have gradually moderated, as it was recognised that the ‘method of statutory enactment’ (as the Webbs called it) could be used to make advances which could not be won by industrial strength alone: unemployment, sick pay, pension schemes, redundancy payments, dismissal procedures, training provision etc. Legislation has been actively sought or supported by the unions to strengthen the rights of individual employees and extend the scope of collective bargaining. But on the central function of wage bargaining there remained an obdurate preference for voluntary agreements of a legally non-binding character. However, the voluntary system based on legal immunities and state abstentionism has come under increasing pressure since the early 1960s as the British economy’s poor rate of growth relative to its main industrial competitors became increasingly connected in the public mind with disorderly industrial relations. The malaise included symptoms such as unofficial strikes, inter-union disputes, leapfrogging pay claims, inflationary settlements, restrictive practices and low productivity. Successive governments have tried to handle the trade union ‘problem’ with both carrot and stick. They have tried to secure union cooperation in economic management by means of tripartite discussions with the employers, and sought to promote the reform of industrial relations by voluntary efforts. Both Labour and Conservative governments have also sought to reshape industrial relations through legal control of trade union activities. The 1964–70 Wilson government turned to the idea of legislation in the 1969 White Paper ‘In Place of Strife’ to combat shop floor militancy and unofficial stoppages which were undermining its incomes policy. On this occasion the proposed ‘penal clauses’ were headed off by solid opposition from the TUC and the threat of a party and cabinet split. In the long run, the episode provoked party and union leaders to reassess and rebuild the partnership between the political and industrial wings of the movement. In the short run the effect was to increase Conservative determination to curb trade union power. 1971 Industrial Relations Act With the Industrial Relations Act of 1971, the Heath government departed radically from the tradition of state abstentionism and tried to reconstruct industrial relations within a comprehensive legal code with legally enforceable agreements, in order to bring the unions ‘within the law’. Perhaps, as one observer comments, the structure created owed more to the prejudices of lawyers than to pressure from employers.22 The main aim was to make the trade unions more cautious and cooperative; partly by hedging the strike weapon about with a new range of civil liabilities, to which it was assumed employers would readily resort to restore industrial order, and partly, by conferring new rights on the individual worker or groups of workers which would strengthen them against their own trade union.

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The TUC totally rejected the Act and decided on a policy of non-registration and noncooperation with it. Twenty or so affiliates were expelled for deciding to register. As Clegg puts it, within two years, the unions defied, defeated and destroyed one of the most significant Acts of Parliament of the century.23 All but a handful of employers tacitly collaborated with the unions in ignoring or circumventing the Act. There was a fundamental divergence between what Conservative lawyers and the actual practitioners— employers and trade unionists—considered ‘fair and reasonable’ in industrial relations. As one post-mortem on the Act puts it, employers generally declined to see their industrial relations as a problem.24 What others saw as ‘disorder’, managers saw as a situation requiring (and providing) flexibility. They were anxious to avoid the loss of control to outsiders which they felt the use of the new legal institutions implied. Trade Union and Labour Relations Acts 1974 and 1976 The fate of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act massively confirmed the lesson that the Labour party leadership had learned from ‘In Place of Strife’. The first commitment in the union-party alliance known as the Social Contract was the repeal of the Act. But this did not bring about a return to the tradition of state abstentionism, if only because the 1971 Act had repealed most of the legislation on trade unions and trade dispute since 1871. The system of immunities for unions and their members conferred by the legislation of 1906 and 1965 was re-enacted in TULRA (Trade Union and Labour Relations Act) 1974, and was marginally extended by an Act of Amendment passed in 1976 to cover commercial contracts as well as contract of employment. Collective agreements were to be legally unenforceable contracts unless the parties to them unambiguously expressed in writing a provision to the contrary. The same legislation created ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) which quickly established itself as an independent conciliatory agency in industrial relations, although judicial rulings effectively emasculated its statutory obligations to promote collective bargaining where employers resisted union recognition, as in the notorious Grunwick dispute. In 1975 the Employment Protection Act gave statutory protection to trade union activists but the bulk of its provisions strengthened the rights of individual employees over sick pay, maternity leave, redundancy and dismissal procedures and the like, rather than conferring additional advantages upon trade union organisation as such. The Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 created a new tripartite Health and Safety Commission, to superintend the obligations imposed upon employers with regard to industrial safety, and in so doing significantly extended the scope for trade union negotiation. The timing of this Act was somewhat fortuitous, however, as it was largely the fruit of work under the previous Conservative administration. The Equal Pay Act (1975) and the Race Relations Act (1976) also had a potentially major bearing upon industrial relations, though the evidence suggests that their impact, particularly in the second instance, has been relatively modest. Probably the most controversial item of legislation was the Dock Work Regulation Bill, which sought to protect the livelihood of dockers threatened by containerisation, and was regarded even by some Labour MPs as a piece of blatant particularism.

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In all, a substantial body of legislation favourable to trade unionism and collective bargaining was enacted by the 1974–79 Labour government. If it did not quite fulfill all expectations—or fears—the overall effect was to embed collective bargaining more securely in the workplace, which may be important for the survival of steward organisation in the current recession. The power and self-confidence of the trade unions were bolstered during the Social Contract period by a government anxious to demonstrate its goodwill. The balance of advantage between unions and employer, in both public and private sectors, was tilted distinctly towards the unions. But as will be argued below, the limits upon trade union power remained real. While militant collective action could push up money incomes, strategic control of the economy was entirely beyond the unions’ grasp, if not also indeed beyond that of the Labour government. Though the Bullock Commission on Industrial Democracy emerged with proposals to the unions’ liking, right-wingers in the Labour Cabinet managed to mangle beyond recognition the subsequent White Paper setting out the government’s intentions. Trade union power remained decentralised and sectional, save for temporary centralisation of authority at the height of the inflationary crisis in 1975–76. The public image of collective power—aggressive picketing, sit-ins and factory occupation, strikes in essential services, militant sectionalism (as in the long-running Isle of Grain dispute)— belied a largely defensive and reactive reality, as groups of workers fought to maintain their jobs and living standards. The political and economic response after 1979 however, abruptly awakened the unions to the limits of what they could and could not achieve. The 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts Believing, with widespread public agreement, that an imbalance had developed between the rights and responsibilities of trade unions in the preceding years, the Conservative government elected in 1979 declared its intention gradually to change the law relating to industrial relations. This ‘step by step’ approach reflects the main lesson drawn from the ill-fated 1971 Act, that the Heath government tried to go too far, too fast in reforming industrial relations. In 1980 the first of two (misleadingly entitled) Employment Bills was introduced. The 1980 legislation involved four main areas of change. Firstly, it confined lawful picketing to an employee’s own place of work, thus prohibiting the so-called ‘flying’ and secondary picketing which aroused such controversy in the miners’ strikes (above all, the mass picketing of Saltley coal depot), and in the Grunwick dispute. Secondly, the Act sought to inhibit the spread of the closed shop, and to increase protection for non-unionists against it. Thirdly, it sought to encourage with public money the holding of secret postal ballots in union elections, and for ballots on industrial action. Fourthly, while the Employment Bill was in committee, the government added another clause, prompted by the secondary strikes and ‘blacking’ which occurred during the steel strike in 1980, to remove the extension of immunity conferred by TULRA (1976). The trade unions strenuously opposed the Bill and the Labour party has promised to repeal it. Since the Act took effect, the TUC has followed a policy of non-cooperation with its provisions. Its results are so far barely discernible. Employers appear to have

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resisted any temptation to use the Act, perhaps in part because of the known hostility of the unions, even though the ‘day of action’ in support of National Health Service employees almost certainly involved widespread contraventions of its provisions.25 It may be, however, that the legislation has helped to stiffen management morale, while recession has undermined shop-floor militancy. As the leading ‘wet’ in the Thatcher cabinet and the minister responsible for the 1980 Act, James Prior had an uncomfortable role, striving to maintain a conciliatory tone towards the unions when the dominant view in the Conservative party was for the government to ‘crack down’ on the unions. After Prior’s involuntary transfer to Northern Ireland, partly caused by his known reluctance to bring forward further legislative measures, he was succeeded by Norman Tebbit, one of the few Conservative ministers to have had practical trade union experience. Mr Tebbit promptly produced a second Employment Bill, which went through Parliament in 1982 and came into effect in January 1983. Among its other provisions (such as facilitating selective dismissals of striking employees and prohibiting ‘union-labour only’ contracts) the 1982 Act has three main purposes. Firstly, it further reduces the area of immunity for trade union actions. Secondly, it exposes union funds to claims against unlawful industrial action. In the third place, it provides for greatly increased compensation for employees unfairly dismissed for non-unionism. Like its predecessor, the 1982 Act follows the technique of trimming the legal immunities conferred in the TULRA 1974 and 1976 legislation. The practical implications of seemingly technical changes in the definition of a lawful trade dispute appear to be wide-ranging though as yet indeterminate. Under the 1982 Act, industrial action arising from inter-union disputes seems to be unlawful, even though such actions often arise in practice through changes instigated by employers (e.g. in technology, pay structure or work allocations). ‘Political’ strikes directed at government policy or solidarity and sympathy actions are also liable to be declared unlawful. The restricted definition also appears intended to undermine international union cooperation against, for instance, multinational employers, or the campaign against cheap labour on ships flying ‘flags of convenience’. Much will depend upon judicial interpretation of the Act, as and when cases arise.26 The 1982 Employment Act enables unions to be sued for injunctions and exposes union funds to claims for damages as a result of ‘unlawful’ industrial action organised by their officials. If employers choose to use the Act, the unions might regard the risk of awards against them as an occupational hazard, in the way that some people regard parking fines. But with the biggest unions facing the prospect of up to £250,000 being awarded against them in a single action plus legal costs, the financial liabilities involved are potentially ruinous. There are provisions for union officials to ‘repudiate’ potentially unlawful actions by their members, in order to escape liability for damages. However, there is great uncertainty over the vicarious liability of unions for their members, as the cases arising under the 1971 legislation showed (particularly the Heatons Transport and General Aviation Services cases). It is not clear that the 1982 legislation will effectively surmount these difficulties. Like the 1971 Act, however, the main aim of the 1982 legislation seems

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to be to make union leaders ‘police’ union activists and members, in order to avoid exposing union funds to claim for damages. The 1982 Act provides for the Employment Secretary to pay retrospective compensation for non-unionists dismissed between 1974 and 1980, if their dismissal would have been unfair under the 1980 Employment Act. The latest Act also quadruples the compensation available to employees unfairly dismissed for non-membership of a union. Awards can vary between a minimum of £2,000 and upwards of £30,000. It is too early, as yet, to assess the impact of the 1980 and 1982 legislation on the closed shop. However, the main intention seems to be, in Mr Tebbit’s words, ‘to neuter the effects’ of union-membership agreements, in practice to make the closed shop virtually unenforcible within the law. Certainly, the creation of new closed shops has been made highly difficult, and the maintenance of many existing ones must be doubtful over the long term. Within industrial relations, the role of the law is not and never can be neutral. In KahnFreud’s words: ‘Law is a technique for the regulation of social power’. Nor will the law be static, but will continue to evolve in response to judicial interpretation, political values, industrial contingency, and the shifting balance of economic advantage between worker and employer. But the last decade or so has seen unprecedented instability in the legal framework of industrial relations, with the trade union ‘problem’ high on the political agenda. So far, there have been two main thrusts in the Conservative government’s programme of labour legislation: firstly, the protection of the individual against strongly organised and concerted trade union activity; secondly, reducing the scope of trade union immunities in the hope of inducing ‘moderation’ in trade union behaviour. New legislative objectives are now planned to ‘democratise’ the trade unions. Believing that union leaders are often out of touch with and politically unrepresentative of rank and file opinion, the Conservative government intends to bring in legislation requiring trade unions to elect their senior officials by means of secret periodic ballots. It is also contemplating removing the unions’ immunity from civil action for damages arising out of strike action unless the union in each case has first held a secret ballot of the members involved.27 Unless the unions voluntarily change their practice, the government further intends to end ‘the present nonsense’, as Mr Tebbit regards it, of the contracting-out arrangement concerning the political levy (see Section IV) and to make the continuance of political funds subject to periodic ballots.28 Potentially this could be highly injurious to the Labour party. Only 17 per cent of trade unionists in one recent poll supported the idea of unions affiliating to political parties.29 For its part, Labour is committed to repeal the latest Tory legislation. The threatened assault upon the political levy will bind Labour and the union leaders more tightly than ever in the short run, though it may have more success among the union rank and file. Further legislative incursions upon the ‘voluntary’ system of industrial relations seem in prospect, given the highly polarised attitudes that now prevail.

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IV: TRADE UNIONS AND THE LABOUR PARTY There has been a continuing imperative for trade union political involvement, to defend the gains of collective bargaining and if possible to confer additional rights and benefits through legislative enactment. Linkages between trade unions and leftist political parties are common to almost all the industrial democracies. Where Britain is different, however, is that links between the unions and the Labour party are exceptionally close. Constitutionally and financially, the party is beholden to the unions. When the party is in government, however, relations are likely to be stressful; experience suggests that party and unions are likely to find themselves under divergent pressures. As one observer puts it: ‘The party needs the union, but the unions don’t always need the party’.30 Should they choose to use it, the unions have undoubted hegemony over the party. The appearance of union domination invites highly critical scrutiny from outside the party as well as considerable resentment, on occasion, within it. The links are well known and can be briefly summarised. The unions provide the party with the bulk of its affiliated membership and of its finance. At the annual Party Conference, they deploy five-sixths of the available votes, and dominate the selection of the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the party. Through their affiliations to local constituency parties, the unions have traditionally played a major role in the selection of parliamentary candidates, particularly by means of financial sponsorship. Almost half of the Labour MPs elected in 1979 were trade union sponsored, though the trade union group of MPs is much less homogeneous than hitherto and rarely plays a coherent role within the parliamentary party. Yet the relationship between unions and party is complex and subtle. As Minkin notes, the unions have rarely exerted the control which is undoubtedly theirs to the full.31 They have accepted, indeed supported, a division of purposes. Though the representation of organised labour was the party’s raison d’ être, the primary aim of the party is nowadays to gain parliamentary power through winning elections, while that of the unions is to bargain on behalf of their members. Moreover the unions rarely form a single bloc on matters of party policy. Issues that divide the party tend also to divide the unions. They are able, however, to determine the parameters within which party policy is made; party leaders must anticipate what is, or is not, acceptable to the unions. When Labour is in government, the unions have direct access to it, in addition to their participation in state institutions. But the responsibilities of office have repeatedly pulled Labour governments towards a ‘national’ perspective, and away from a ‘class’ or ‘union’ perspective. Since the 1950s coincidence of aims between the political and industrial wings of the labour movement has become increasingly adventitious. The union-party relationship has endured many vicissitudes; in recent years there have been both divergent and convergent tendencies in the alliance. During the 1940s and 1950s the unions largely accepted the autonomy claimed for the parliamentary leadership and, with some notable exceptions, mobilised support for it against its Conference critics. In the 1960s, differentiation between unions and party increased. Each stressed its distinctiveness and differences of purpose from the other. After three successive electoral defeats, traditional ‘cloth cap’ socialism seemed to hold no

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future, so far as a largely pragmatic party leadership could see. Wilson’s electoral strategy in the 1960s sought to broaden the party’s appeal to the middle class, by stressing themes of ‘modernisation’ and ‘responsibility’, while de-emphasising the links with trade unions. Indeed, the 1966–70 Wilson government seemed almost to go out of its way to court the unpopularity of its traditional supporters. For its part, the TUC was concerned to emphasise the value of permanent dialogue with Whitehall rather than the traditional union links with the Labour party. George Woodcock, TUC General Secretary, stressed paradoxically that the strength of the union-party relationship derived from the looseness rather than the closeness of the ties. Woodcock sought to enhance the representative stature of the TUC and its expanding consultative links with NEDC and other state institutions. Relations with the Labour government deteriorated, however, because of its policies of deflation and wage restraint. The gulf between the unions and the Labour Cabinet was brought sharply into focus by the fracas over ‘In Place of Strife’. Left-wing union leaders identifying with traditional socialism, shop-floor militancy and free collective bargaining and openly associating with the dissident Left of the Labour party, confronted a pragmatic parliamentary ‘elite’. Over the next dozen years this alliance was ultimately to transform the balance of power within the party and shifted the centre of political gravity decisively to the Left, arguably at the cost of gravely weakening the party as a credible alternative government to the Conservatives. With the Conservative election in 1970, the dynamics of divergence between party and unions went into reverse. Opposition to the Tory Industrial Relations Act was an issue on which the unions and the Parliamentary Labour Party could wholeheartedly combine. The links between the party and union leaderships were reactivated, notably through the TUCLabour Party Liaison Committee. It is interesting to note, however, that the negotiation of the Social Contract through the Liaison Committee revealed the continuing functional independence of the two bodies, even though many of the members of the committee had both union and party credentials. The foundations for the Social Contract were laid in the 1973 document ‘Economic Policy and the Cost of Living’, by which the unions undertook to exercise voluntary pay restraint in return for a list of trade-union oriented legislation, including as top priority repeal of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. Labour came to power unexpectedly soon following the snap election of February 1974, and proceeded to implement its side of the bargain. In the election of October 1974, Labour’s main gambit was that it could work harmoniously with the unions. There was little evidence of bargaining restraint by the unions, however. The inflationary wage scramble accelerated. By mid-1975, with inflation reaching 25 per cent, the Labour government indicated that it would have to reverse its pledge against statutory wage restraint. The TUC responded, through the initiative of Jack Jones, with its own voluntary wage restraint policy of the £6 limit, at the price of temporarily disrupting the alliance which the major unions had cemented with Laour’s left-wing in the late 1960s. For the next two years, the TUC applied its own wage restraint policy. The neo-corporatist strategy of union-party cooperation survived four years of economic crisis-management mainly after 1976, by the prodigious efforts of Jack Jones to keep it alive, despite the TUC’s unhappiness at the deflationary path of the government.

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Though union leaders were kept fully informed by government ministers, TUC influence over policy visibly diminished. Consultation gave only the appearance of influence.32 By 1977, the strained relationship between government and union leaders might be characterised as reciprocal acquiescence. Jones’s retirement in 1978 and changes of leadership in other major unions weakened the personal links on which the rapprochement with the Labour leadership had heavily depended. The new men were less experienced and authoritative figures who needed to make their own mark in the wagebargaining round. In 1978 both the TUC and Labour Party Conference roundly rejected the idea of further limits on wage bargaining. Signals from the rank and file were in any event now unmistakable. The grass-roots strike at Fords in the winter of 1977/78 and the firemen’s dispute were precursors of the great strike wave which burst open in the winter of 1978/79. Sectional militancy, especially in the public sector, overwhelmed trade union commitment to the broad objectives of the Labour party. Any lingering notion that Labour was the only party able to cooperate with the unions to prevent industrial strife was discredited. Instead, Labour’s association with trade union power was a distinct electoral asset for Margaret Thatcher in May 1979.33 Affiliation and Finance Unusually among democratic socialist parties, the bulk of the British Labour party’s nominal adherents are affiliated trade union members rather than individual party members. Not all trade unions are affiliated however; nor is the TUC, the central organisation for trade unions, which is (at times) anxious to stress its partisan neutrality. In 1982 49 unions, including all the big manual trade unions, were affiliated though several of the largest white collar unions were not (including ‘NALGO, NUT and CPSA). The number of affiliated unions has been virtually static for decades and is now falling slowly. No union of any significance has affiliated (or re-affiliated) to the Labour party since the POEU rejoined in 1964.34 In theory, a union could affiliate for as many members as have not ‘contracted-out’ of the political party. There is at best a rough correspondence between affiliation levels and the number of members who actually pay the levy but as Table 4 shows, only a few unions affiliate at maximum level. In practice most unions appear to settle for a lower level of affiliation either to save money or perhaps in the case of the biggest union (TGWU) so as not to appear to be throwing its weight around. In some cases, however, the affiliation figure is left unchanged for several years, and it seems to be an essentially arbitrary decision to affiliate at a given level. It should be stressed, in any case, that unions affiliate to the Labour party as organisations, rather than as aggregates of individuals. Through the act of affiliation, a trade union acquires a stake in the party, and a voting power in the Party Conference equal to the affiliation fees it pays. Since affiliated membership is the basis of Conference voting power (see below) changes in affiliation levels may have consequences for Conference decision-making as well as for the party’s finances. On past occasions, unions have raised affiliation levels as deliberate acts of vote purchasing, or lowered them as a snub to the party leadership. Several unions, including some of the big unions on the right of the party, are intending to cut affiliation levels because of severe

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TABLE 4 LABOUR PARTY AFFILIATION AND THE POLITICAL LEVY SELECTED TRADE UNIONS

Note: 1Interpretation of column (d) is complicated by varying conventions among trade unions in the reporting of membership totals and by differing rules over payment of the political levy by retired and unemployed members or by members absorbed through mergers with organisations which did not have a political fund. Source: Adapted from Taylor, The Fifth Estate (1980); Labour Party Conference Report, 1979.

losses of membership. This could have an important bearing upon elections for the party leadership and the National Executive Committee. It may be, as Crouch suggests, that the unions provide the Labour party with a consoling myth of mass membership.35 Union affiliation fees (raised in 1983 to 50p a member per year) certainly provide Labour with almost 90 per cent of its central income; the party thus ‘solves’ its financial and organisational weakness by extreme dependence on the unions. This would appear to put the unions in a dominating position. Yet the unions have rarely publicly quarrelled with the party over finance, even when relationships with the parliamentary leadership have been strained. The unions supported the proposals of the Houghton Committee for state financing of the political parties, which would have the effect of reducing Labour’s financial dependence on the unions. The total political levy raised by the unions considerably exceeds the amount paid annually in affiliation fees to the Labour party. In 1977, the gross income from the political levy was £3.35 million, while the sum paid in affiliation fees at central level was £1.42 million. Much of the rest is paid out to local constituency parties, regional agencies, union sponsored MPs and parliamentary candidates, or as special donations to finance the party’s election campaign. Since 1979 and particularly in the 1983 General Election a key role in mobilising cash and union personnel for Labour’s electoral cause has been played by Trade Unions for Labour Victory (TULV).36 As Labour’s grass-roots membership appears to have withered away in many areas, the situation has become reminiscent of

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‘THE LABOUR PARTY SHOULD NOT BE SO CLOSELY LINKED TO THE TRADE UNIONS’

Source: MORI, July 1980.

Labour’s early days of extreme dependence on the unions for the most elementary electoral needs. The issues of the political levy and affiliation to the Labour party are freshly topical because of the Tories’ lesislative intentions. Under the Trade Union Act of 1913, unions may establish a fund for political purposes by a successful ballot of the membership. This is a once-for-all requirement, which most of the 63 unions with political funds accomplished shortly after the 1913 Act was passed. The Employment Secretary’s Green Paper raises the case for a periodic ballot to confirm, or discontinue, a union’s political fund.37 The impliations for the Labour party could be drastic if this requirement were enacted, given that trade union links with the party are relatively unpopular among union members, as well as the public at large, as the following MORI poll indicates:38 The Green Paper also resurrects the hoary question of the contracting-out requirement. Where a union has established a political fund, the 1913 Act requires that a member who objects to contribute to the fund must sign a declaration to that effect. In 1927 the Conservative government substituted a procedure of contracting-in, that is no member of the trade union contributed to the political fund unless he or she so decided. The Labour government restored the position to contracting-out in 1946. The Green Paper raises the case against the present arrangement on both specific and general grounds. Specifically, it argues that there are inexplicably wide disparities in the levels of contracting-out between unions, or in some cases between different areas of the same union. It reveals, for example, that between 36 per cent and 100 per cent of members pay the political levy in different areas of the NUM.39 The likeliest reason for this, the Green Paper suggests, is that it is more difficult for members to contract-out in some unions or areas than in others. Several factors are likely to be involved, however. Compounding of contributions, where the political levy is paid along with regular union dues, almost certainly leads to many trade unionists paying the political levy through ignorance and inertia. The ‘check-off’ system, whereby the employers automatically deduct union contributions from the paypacket and which spread rapidly in the 1970s, probably has a similar effect. Social pressure from union activists may also account for some of the discrepancies between unions in the level of contracting-out. Broadly, however, it seems clear that the level of contracting-out is higher among skilled workers than among unskilled, and higher still among white-collar members (of those white collar unions with political funds). The direction of structural change in the workforce is thus likely to increase the level of contracting-out. Even so, it is hard to

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avoid the inference that a good many trade unionists at present contribute financially to a political party they do not support or vote for. The Green Paper estimates that 82 per cent of trade union members pay the political levy in those unions with a political fund, almost all of which are affiliated to the Labour party. According to a MORI survey, trade unionists voted in the 1979 General Election as follows: Labour 51%

Conservative 33%

Liberal 13%

Other 3%

The precipitous decline of Labour partisanship among trade unionists has continued. According to the BBC-Gallup survey, trade union members voted in the June 1983 General Election in the following way:40 Labour 39%

Conservative 32%

Lib/SDP Alliance 28%

On general grounds, the Green Paper argues that it is: …objectionable in principle that anyone should have to indicate his dissent from the political alignment of his union to avoid contributing to political activities or to a political party to which he is opposed. And it is objectionable in practice that anyone should have to reveal his dissent to those from whom, given the realities of the shop-floor and trade union power, he may have good reason to keep his political sympathies private. It concludes that a substitution of contracting-in for contracting-out is desir able, because it is preferable that union members paying political contributions should be required to make a positive decision to do so. The Green Paper does not extend this line of reasoning, however, to employees, share-holders and customers who involuntarily assist the political contributions of business enterprises. It is also coy about the near-certainty that the imposition of contracting-in would tear a hole of considerable dimensions in the Labour party’s finances. Should Labour be returned to power in the future, restorative or retaliatory action might follow—or indeed, a switch to public funding, which the Conservatives as by far the richest of the parties have always vigorously opposed. Trade Unions and the Labour Party Conference Given that the unions bulk so large in the party’s organisation, it is difficult to isolate their influence within it because they can not be, as it were, assumed out of existence in order to hypothetically envisage what would have been decided by the party without them. The complexities of union involvement in the party at national level have been fully explored in Minkin’s authoritative study, and can only be touched on here.41 Our argument is that the nature of union participation can lead to shifts in party policy of an almost haphazard

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character, which may or may not correspond with movements of opinion among the party’s supporters or even, indeed, among rank and file trade unionists. Most of the time unions give priority to their industrial purposes: their position on party matters might at times be virtually a by-product of other factors such as leadership changes, internal factional struggles, industrial issues or amalgamation changes. Communists, Conservatives or other non-members of the Labour party may be able to contribute to the union’s position on questions involving the Labour party, sometimes significantly so. A meeting of the miners’ delegation at the 1980 Labour Party Conference was chaired, in accordance with NUM custom, by national vice-president Mick McGahey, a prominent member and former chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain.42 In the AUEW, members of the policy-making National Committee, which normally includes several Communists, participate on Labour party matters irrespective of individual political allegiance. A dominant leader may affect his union’s stance on party matters. It is often said that the unexpected arrival in office of Frank Cousins in 1956 shifted the Transport and General Workes to the Left, at Party Conference. But as Minkin argues, the constraints on union leaders vary considerably, as do the internal politics of union delegates to the Party Conference.43 Trade union rule books often provide party delegations with little guidance, but most delegations hold a pre-Conference meeting to examine the agenda and decide how to cast the union’s block vote. There may be a traditional line in the union on the question concerned or perhaps a specific mandate from the union’s own policy-making conference. But union conferences concentrate on breadand-butter issues or on internal matters tending to give questions of a party political character cursory attention: some issues are likely to be considered, at least in passing, but many may not be considered at all. So there is likely to be considerable scope for the delegation to exercise its own judgement, particularly over the intricacies of composited resolutions at Party Conference. In practice, this often means scope for the chairman and senior officials in the delegation to shape its voting intentions. Union leaders, then, may have considerable latitude in the politics of Party Conferences, but they must strive to carry their delegations with them. Nor, in the long run, can they treat with impunity the wider alignment of politically active forces within their organisations. Often, however, private links between party leaders and union ‘barons’ are the nexus of efforts to mobilise support for—or against—the platform, though such links hardly allay suspicion or reduce resentment among lay delegates over backstairs dealings. The vagaries of union participation in the Labour Party Conference can be seen in heightened fashion by examining the second largest union, the AUEW. Bitterly divided at all levels by Left-Right factional conflict, the behaviour of AUEW delegations to the TUC and Labour Party Conference has been notoriously unpredictable for decades. Recently, for example, a change of mind by one delegate swung the 928,000 votes of the AUEW on the question of constitutional reform at the 1980 Party Conference. In the recriminations which followed, the union’s absorption in its own power struggles produced a quixotic flavour to its decisions. At the Special Party Conference in January 1981, the AUEW’s preferred scheme for an electoral college to choose the Party Leader was quickly eliminated, but the delegation’s right-wing leaders were determined to keep faith with the union’s mandate to support no scheme which gave MPs less than an overall (51 per cent)

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majority in any electoral college. Because of this inflexible commitment, intended to stop the delegation ‘bolting’ (i.e. disregarding the mandate) under left-wing influence, the union’s huge block vote went unused while the remaining proposals were voted on. The other main moderate proposals (notably that of the GMWU with a 50 per cent share for MPs) were deprived of any prospect of success, and the way was opened to the much more radical USDAW proposal skilfully backed by the forces of the Left. A relative handful of unions can dominate conference decisions. Although rarely of one view on any contentious party matter, the six biggest unions command almost 60 per cent of the total conference vote. Since it was argued earlier that the trade union movement is experiencing an amalgamation wave, concentration of voting power is likely to increase. The implications for the alignment of political forces at Party Conference are hard to predict, since union amalgamations are most likely to come about for industrial or organisational reasons. The unions concerned may previously have taken different political lines, at least on occasion. Several unions which took part in the election of the Deputy Leader under the new electoral college system in October 1981 have since been involved in mergers. The election was desperately close: the abstention of Silkinite ‘soft-left’ MPs on the second ballot was probably decisive. However, the timing of the election was fortuitous so far as unions engaged upon mergers were concerned, and there will be other leadership elections to come. Among the union mergers since 1981, the Boilermakers’ Society (75, 000 votes for Silkin on the first ballot and Benn on the second) amalgamated in 1982 with the GMWU (650,000 votes for Healey). Neatly paired were the printing unions: SOGAT (50,000 votes for Benn), which has merged with NATSOPA (26,000 votes for Healey); and the NGA (21,000 votes for Healey) which has amalgamated with SLADE (whose 9, 000 votes went to Benn) ,44 The impact of these or other amalgamations upon future leadership elections or other crucial decisions is hard to foretell, for party managers no less than outside observers. One of the most contentious features of the Labour Party Conference is the system of block voting. This can be understood in two senses; firstly, as the procedure by which each affiliated organisation casts its vote entire and undivided, thus maximising its impact; secondly, in consequence, that a few big organisations dominate the outcome of Conference votes. Block voting has always had its critics, principally those on the losing end of the Conference decisions. In decades past, the party leadership found the block votes of the big unions an indispensable counterweight to the ‘fanatics, cranks and extremists’ from the constituency parties. In return for their support, the ‘loyalist’ unions looked to the parliamentary leadership to make the world safe for trade unionism. As trade union demands and state intervention grew interactively, the terms of this arrangement disappeared. Union support for the parliamentary leadership of the party became much less automatic. In the aftermath of defeat in 1979, the unions prepared to invigilate the parliamentary party more closely, as they had done in 1970 and 1931. Some unions are under left-wing control and others, including the TGWU are left-inclined in terms of Conference politics. Others again, like the AUEW, over much of its history, have been preoccupied with internal factional conflict, and have tended to be unpredictable. As the automatic loyalty of the unions to the parliamentary leadership has declined, the art of conference management has become more difficult and the party

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leadership must anticipate more actively than hitherto the arithmetic of support and probable reactions of the unions to its proposals. At the same time, one may doubt how well the political views of union leaders and the active minority who run the unions correspond to those of the rank and file. Whereas union leaders ignore at their peril the industrial mood of their members, the suspicion must be that the correspondence of political views between trade union activists and the inactive majority is very limited. Transparently flimsy efforts, in some cases, to consult union members about the constitutional changes in the Labour party and the ensuing Deputy Leadership election in 1981 have done little to allay such misgivings.45 In some cases, however, consultation of the membership undoubtedly took effect. Against a consistently left-wing leadership, NUPE members revealed a clear preference for Healey, who became thereby the rather unexpected beneficiary of the union’s 600,000 votes. To its credit, the NUPE executive chose to repeat this exercise in consultation for the contest to succeed Michael Foot. Few other unions followed suit by balloting members directly. Trade Unions and NEC Elections A central facet of union-party relations concerns elections to the National Executive Committee, the permanent governing body of party organisation, elected by the annual conference and in recent years a key site in the struggle between Left and Right. The trade union section of the NEC comprises 12 members nominated from and elected by the trade unions alone, while the women’s section consists of five members, elected by the entire Conference in which the unions account for five-sixths of the votes. The Party Treasurer is also elected by the whole Conference. Trade union votes thus wholly or largely decide 18 out of the 29 seats on the NEC. With some notable exceptions, however, the union members of the NEC have tended to be somewhat overshadowed by the parliamentarians and have played a modest role supportive of the party leadership. As with finance, the unions have generally behaved ‘responsibly’, anxious not to abuse the power that was undoubtedly theirs. Moreover, trade union conduct in NEC elections has been moderated by various norms and customs, and primarily by the importance attached to preserving working relationships within the TUC. Membership of the TUC General Council is clearly rated by top trade union officials more highly than membership of the Labour party’s NEC. Generally, second-rank officials are nominated for the NEC. Through the TUC-Labour Party Liaison Committee, the major union leaders would in any case have regular policy discussions with the party leadership—but wearing union rather than party hats. The main effect of trade union norms has been to restrict competition and provide security of tenure for sitting tenants on the NEC by a series of ‘understandings’ among the major unions. Certain unions expect to have a representative on the NEC by virtue of their size and importance (TGWU, AUEW, GMWU). Others, former giants of the Labour movement like the miners and the railwaymen, claim a historic right to nominate a representative. In consequence, the trade union section of the NEC has been a preserve over the years of nominees from a cabal of trade unions. Competition has been largely reduced to the contest for ‘runner-up’ or thirteenth place in the trade union section of the

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NEC, allowing a candidate to establish some kind of claim upon the next vacancy to occur through natural wastage. Similar norms have prevailed among the unions over elections to the womens’ section. Once successful, members of the womens’ section have been reelected largely regardless of ideological considerations. Because trade union practice favoured stability of tenure, the leftward shift of Party Conference from the late 1960s was reflected rather more slowly in the union-controlled elections to the NEC. The union members of the NEC owed their seats to horsetrading among the big unions; whether the candidates were inclined Right or Left was less significant than ‘understandings’ to support one another’s nominees. Left-wing trade unionists were elected to the NEC, but more important was the gradual takeover of the women’s section, which by 1979 had changed sufficiently in favour of the Left to give the latter control over the NEC. As the party’s factional and constitutional struggles intensified, the customary inhibitions of the unions over NEC elections began to crumble. In 1981, a right-wing coup led by the GMWU and AUEW removed five left-wingers from the NEC, including two members of the women’s section and Party Treasurer Norman Atkinson, an AUEW sponsored MP. Further manoeuvres in 1982 were less conclusive, but took a remarkable twist after it transpired that NUR General Secretary Sidney Weighell had covertly reneged on his union’s ‘undertaking’ to support a left-wing candidate from the NUM. Weighell’s relationship with his executive was already very strained and his subsequent resignation reflected that fact as much as his misbehaviour in flouting a union mandate. The incident indicates that the ‘traditional understandings’ among the major unions over NEC elections still command acceptance, but it also reveals the crucial role of the unions in the tactical in-fighting between Left and Right for control of the party. Since Weighell’s departure, the leadership of the NUR has veered distinctly to the Left. The executive of the POEU has also changed complexion in favour of the Left. This has displaced John Golding, once POEU nominee on the NEC and archorganiser of the Right in recent years. What emerges is the unpredictable impact upon the Labour party of power struggles within and between the major unions affiliated to it. The Party and Trade Union Power Do the unions have too much power within the Labour party? One problem is that the party is so much the product of the unions that it would be unrecognisable without them. It came into being to promote the interests and collective aspirations of the organised working class. As Drucker has noted, its ethos and organisational principles were uncritically absorbed and taken over from the characteristic practices of the unions.46 Ambivalence and strain are inherent in union-party relations, as they are between the rival doctrines of conference sovereignty and parliamentary sovereignty. A strong case can be made that the party’s internal contradictions are endlessly reproduced, torn as it is between affirmation of and opposition to the prevailing social order. The terms of the union-party compact have altered, particularly in response to the stresses and disappointments of office, but the self-interest of the unions has usually been decisive for the fortunes of the alliance.

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At the root of the problem has not been the power that the unions have over the party, but the power that they did not have over their members. In the post-war years, power gravitated to the shop floor; accommodations reached at national level between union leaders and Labour cabinets were and will remain inherently vulnerable to grass-roots rebellion, sectional rivalries and personal feuds among the leaders.47 Whether in office or out of it, Labour and the unions have not been able to resolve or even honestly confront the contradiction between ‘free collective bargaining’ to which the Left and most union leaders are so fervently attached and the need inter alia, for incomes planning which a socialist commitment to equality implies. ‘Labourism’, it might cynically be said, is business unionism posing as socialism. At the same time, electoral and survey evidence is overwhelming that Labour’s links with its traditional electoral supporters are withering and that the union-party alliance seems, on the evidence of June 1983, to be heading into an electoral dead-end if not indeed towards electoral oblivion. How likely are the trade unions to reassess their relationship with Labour, given the party’s appalling electoral showing and the known intentions of the Thatcher government towards the unions? Might the unions try to distance themselves from the Labour party, keeping it and its troubles at arm’s length or even detaching themselves altogether? It is argued here that the unions will follow whatever they perceive to be their self-interest. Periodic ballots may well compel some unions to disaffiliate, particularly those with largely white collar or skilled manual memberships. Other unions, especially those in the public sector threatened by expenditure cuts, may show no such wavering. It was noted earlier that the unions have at some times drawn more closely towards the party and at others drawn away from it. But it is important not to overlook the great value placed on loyalty, community and stability within the union-party alliance. This is the centripetal force which over the years has counterbalanced and broadly contained centrifugal tensions and divergent sectional interests. It may be that the great bulk of trade union activity is purely economistic, solely directed towards the immediate needs and interests of members, and that many union activists, let alone ordinary members, are barely politically conscious. But among those who are, and among senior and middle-ranking union officials, the union-party alliance is taken for granted. So far no major union leader of the Right has openly come out for the SDP/Liberal Alliance, or advocated severing links with the Labour party.48 As well as loyalty (and diffidence) there is organisational self-interest about this. The Labour party is and will forseeably remain the vehicle of the trade unions. They have a bigger say within it, and so long as Labour remains a viable competitor for power, through it, than they could possibly have through any alternative political strategy. Should Labour not recover its electoral appeal, however, the argument that the unions should not leave all their eggs in one political basket will become unanswerable. V: THE END OF AN ERA? Without question, the 1970s were a watershed for British trade unions. The decade began and ended with the unions in a combative mood. The intervening years saw major

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confrontations between government and unions and the failure of the Social Contract, the most significant post-war effort to incorporate the trade union movement as a constituent force of government. The demise of the Social Contract and the ‘winter of discontent’ which followed blew away both the remnants of the Labour government’s incomes policy and its chances for re-election. The ‘anti-union’ mood of the public, including even union members, has been successfully exploited by the Conservatives while the monetarist strategy of the Thatcher government brought upon the unions a long, harsh winter almost unimaginable before 1979. Moreover the Conservative government returned to the challenge of legislative reform of industrial relations, but in a subtler way than the Heath government a decade earlier. The main restraining influence on trade union militancy for some time ahead is, however, likely to be unemployment and the slack condition of the labour market rather than the penalties of the law. Rising unemployment after 1980 and the largest losses of union membership for half a century have unquestionably put the unions on the defensive, especially in the private manufacturing sector, with workers afraid for their jobs. In the public sector there have been several slogging matches over pay and jobs, but few sections of the work-force have shown much eagerness for confrontation with the government. The mineworkers have now rejected Arthur Scargill’s rallying call over pay and pit closures in three ballots since he took office. There is no hint of the élan and combativeness of the early 1970s, when the unions destroyed the Heath government’s industrial relations legislation and pay policy. However, defensiveness should not be mistaken for weakness. The unions are still embedded throughout much of the economy especially (and ironically, given the credentials of the Thatcher government) in the public sector. One knowledgeable observer concludes that the era of ‘collectivist politics’ is over, and that the unions must now seek to adjust to the post-collectivist age.49 This may be a little premature, But certainly, since 1979, any consensus over the management of the economy and the role of the union estate within it, has vanished. The Thatcher administration has departed abruptly from its post-1945 predecessors, Labour and Conservative alike, in making plain its view that it saw no role for the unions in the framing of economic policy, and in challenging the legitimacy of union participation in state institutions. Contrary to some early speculation, the government has not departed from that view. The depth of mutual hostility between government and unions is undiminished: the government intends to discipline ‘arrogant’ and ‘unaccountable’ union bosses, as it portrays them, and appears committed to the cause of rolling back trade union strength throughout the economy. It is not clear that this has yet been accomplished, despite the buffeting which the unions have taken from the recession. British trade unions are facing political as well as structural and economic challenges. Though the alliance with the Labour party shows no signs of breaking up, it is arguably illadapted to the changing structure of British society. In their current mood of vulnerability, union leaders keenly appreciate the importance of political action, and have clutched more tightly than ever at the Labour party as the political instrument to deliver the unions from Tory legislation. Unfortunately, from their point of view, Labour is in no position to do this. At the same time, they have been drawn more deeply and openly than hitherto into the factional struggles within the party. Their role in party matters is as crucial as it

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ever was but also more exposed to scrutiny. From the viewpoint of the party, particularly of its leadership, the vagaries of union participation in party affairs make life unpredictable. But the union-party alliance is built upon a shrinking social base and is in marked electoral decay. Moreover, in the midst of the worst recession for 50 years, the unpopularity of the unions persists—though among trade unionists, it is the other person’s union rather than one’s own which is unpopular. Growth of membership and the unions’ entry into the corridors of power as one of the ‘estates’ of the post-war realm did not bring with it greater popular commitment to trade unionism as such. In a sense, the growth of trade union power in the post-war decades came on the cheap. APPENDIX ABBREVIATIONS USED

ACTT APEX ASBSBSW ASTMS AUEW(E) AUEW (TASS) BIFU EET/PU GMBATU GMWU NALGO NATSOPA NEC NEDC NGA NUM NUPE NUR POEU SLADE SOGAT TGWU TUC

Association of Cinematograph and Television Technicians Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staffs Amalgamated Society of Boilermakers (now absorbed into GMBATU) Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (Engineering Section) Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Staffs) Banking, Insurance and Finance Union Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications/Plumbing Union General Municipal Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union General and Municipal Workers Union (now GMBATU) National and Local Government Officers Association National Association of Operative Printers, Graphical and Media Personnel National Executive Committee (of the Labour party) National Economic Development Council National Graphical Alliance National Union of Mineworkers National Union of Public Employees National Union of Railwaymen Post Office Engineering Union Society of Lithographic Artists, Designers, Engravers and Process Workers Society of Graphical and Allied Trades Transport and General Workers Union Trades Union Congress

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UCW

Union of Communication Workers (formerly Union of Postal Workers) NOTES

1. This argument follows the analysis of C.Crouch, The Politics of Industrial Relations (London: Fontana, 1977). 2. E.H.Phelps Brown, ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Reflections on the Changed Working of Collective Bargaining in Great Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 11 (July 1973). 3. R.Price and G.S.Bain, ‘Union Growth in Britain: Retrospect and Prospect’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. XXI, No. 1, (March 1983), pp.46–68. 4. R.Taylor, The Fifth Estate: Britain’s Unions in the Modern World (London: Pan, 1980), p.38. 5. R.Price and G.S.Bain, ‘Union Growth Revisited: 1948–74 in Perspective’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 14, No. 3, (1976). 6. K.Hawkins, Trade Unions (London: Hutchinson, 1981) pp.83–4. Goldthorpe has argued that attitudinal changes underlay the increased ‘pushfulness’ of the labour force. See J.H. Goldthorpe, ‘The Current Inflation: Towards a Sociological Account’, F.Hirch and J.H. Goldthorpe (eds.) The Political Economy of Inflation (London: Martin Robertson, 1978). 7. K.Hawkins, op.cit., p.85. 8. R.Undy, V.Ellis, W.E.J. McCarthy and J.Halmos, Change in Trade Unions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp.210–13. 9. An amalgamation requires the approval of a plurality of members participating in a poll held for the purpose by each of the merging unions. The partners in an amalgamation lose their separate legal identities in the new organisation. In a transfer of engagements, it is sufficient for a poll of members in one organisation to approve its absorption into another, whose legal identity remains unchanged. See Undy et al., op.cit., pp. 168–71. 10. H.A.Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), pp. 171–4. 11. R.Undy, et al., op.cit., pp.337–44. 12. H.Urwin and G.Murray, ‘Return to Trafalgar Square’, New Statesman, 3 Sept. 1982. 13. E.Batstone, I.Boraston and S.Frenkel, Shop Stewards in Action (Oxford: Blackwell, 1977). 14. W.Brown and K.Sisson, ‘Industrial Relations in the Next Decade: Current Trends and Future Prospects’, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, (March/April 1983), p.17. 15. Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Organisations, Chairman Lord Donovan, Cmnd 3623 (London: HMSO, 1968). 16. P.Edwards (1982), ‘Britain’s Changing Strike Problem’, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2, (Summer 1982), pp. 5–20. 17. R.Taylor, Workers and the New Recession (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 208. 18. Trades Union Congress Annual Report. 19. H.Urwin and G.Murray, op.cit., p. 6. 20. See R.Taylor, op.cit., pp. 80–5, for the history of recent reform efforts. See also a succinct account of the background at the changes at the 1982 TUC by P.Wintour, New Statesmen, 19 Sept. 1982. 21. A.Flanders, Management and Unions (London: Faber, 1970). 22. K.Hawkins, op.cit., p. 54. 23. H.A.Clegg, op.cit., p. 327.

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24. B.Weekes, M.Mellish, L.Dickens and J.Lloyd, Industrial Relations and the Limits of the Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), p. 63. 25. W.E.J.McCarthy (1983), ‘Trade Unions and the Limits of the Law’, New Society, 21 April 1983. 26. A test case involving the campaign of the International Transport Workers Federation against companies employing cheap labour is reported in Guardian, 22 April 1983. Though criticising the obscurity of its language, the Law Lords unanimously found that the 1980 Act removed immunity from union officials organising blacking actions. 27. According to an opinion poll, 65 per cent of trade unionists were satisfied with the leadership of their own union, though 47 per cent felt that the TUC leaders were out of touch with ordinary trade unionists. Only 19 per cent believed that their own union was under extremist control. (MORI/Channel 4, reported in Observer, 8 May 1983). The American experience of strike ballots and the sole case (involving the railways) under the 1971 Industrial Relations Act hardly confirm the view that such provisions encourage ‘moderation’ in the conduct of industrial disputes. 28. Sunday Times, 4 March 1983. Norman Tebbit was succeeded as Employment Secretary by Mr Tom King in October 1983. 29. MORI/Channel 4, loc. cit. 30. R.McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974). 31. L.Minkin, ‘The Party Connection: Divergence and Convergence in the British Labour Movement’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 13, No. 4, (1978), pp.458–84. 32. L.Panitch, ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’, New Left Review, March 1981. 33. I.Crewe, ‘The Labour Party and the Electorate’ in D.Kavanagh (ed.), The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 37–47. 34. The annual conference of the Civil and Public Services Association in May 1983 approved a motion to hold a ballot on whether to establish a political fund, and also considered a motion to affiliate to the Labour party (see Daily Telegraph, 12 May 1983). The CPSA is a major white-collar union. 35. C.Crouch, ‘The Peculiar Relationship: The Party and the Unions’ in D.Kavanagh (ed.), op.cit., pp. 176–8. 36. For the 1983 General Election, TULV pledged itself to raise £2½ million and to supply 400 trade union officials and activists for the campaign. 37. Democracy in Trade Unions, Cmnd 8778 (London: HMSO, 1983). 38. Only 17 per cent of trade unionists were in favour of any form of political affiliation according to a more recent MORI survey (MORI/Channel 4, 8 May 1983). 39. Democracy in Trade Unions, Cmnd 8778, op.cit., p. 25. 40. MORI/Channel 4, reported in Observer, 8 May 1983. BBC-Gallup data reported in Guardian, 13 June 1983. 41. L.Minkin, The Labour Party Conference (London: Allen Lane, 1978). 42. Sunday Times, 7 Dec. 1980. 43. Most accounts attribute the TGWU’s shift to the Left to Cousin’s personal dominance. But Minkin argues (pp. 117–8) that leaders experience substantial constraints in most unions on assuming office and that shifts in policy accompanying leadership changes are often as much the result of pressures from below. 44. Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1981. 45. According to the Sunday Times (7 Dec. 1980), six unions consulted grass roots opinion in some way over the constitutional changes for the Labour party leadership, 11 consulted local

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46.

47. 48.

49.

officials, while in the remaining 31 who responded to enquiries, the view was decided by the leadership. H.Drucker, ‘The Influence of the Trade Unions on the Ethos of the Labour Party’ in B. Pimlott and C.Cook (eds.), Trade Unions in British Politics (London: Longman, 1982), pp. 260–1. C.Crouch, op.cit., pp. 183–5. Frank Chapple, right-wing leader of the EET/PU and currently Chairman of the TUC General Council, has come very close to this with his declaration that the choice facing the unions was between ‘socialism or survival’ (Guardian, 22 June 1983). The trade unions ought not to be an electoral liability to the Labour party and the Labour party ought not to be an obstacle to the unions dealing with government of the day. ‘If Labour cannot save itself, we have to consider our own survival. Anything less would be a betrayal of working people’. G.Dorfman, British Trade Unions against the Trades Union Congress (London: Macmillan, 1983).

The Business Lobby: Political Attitudes and Strategies* Wyn Grant

The system of business interest representation in Britain exhibits relatively few of the neocorporatist traits to be found in many other European countries. In terms of structure, the system of business interest representation is highly pluralist, with associations overlapping one another and even competing for members and influence in many industrial sectors. In terms of function, most associations operate as classic representative bodies in the pluralistic mould, seeking to exert influence on the formation and implementation of government policy, rather than acting as neocorporatist intermediaries with responsibility for the implementation of particular policies delegated to them by government. Indeed the members and staffs of the associations generally show little enthusiasm for assuming such functions. As the director of one major trade association put it to the writer, there was ‘ample scope for more professional discharge of the traditional tasks of a trade association before we think about other tasks that might be done. The problem of associations [in this sector] is that they haven’t got to first base because they lack the resources and drive.’ One must not, of course, exaggerate the enthusiasm of businessmen in any country for neo-corporatist arrangements. Such arrangements can be against their long-run interests, as trade unions press to widen the scope of neo-corporatist bargaining beyond agreements about such distributive questions as prices and incomes policy to issues which encroach on the property rights of the capitalist, such as broader forms of industrial democracy. Moreover, the confused character of the system of business representation in Britain reflects the fact that collective action is less important to businessmen than to workers. Writers like Offe have pointed out that, unlike labour, businessmen do not necessarily have to take collective action to defend their interests.1 Individual firms can defend their own particular interests by various forms of action in the market (competition, merger and cartel formation) and, as will be discussed later, through individual political action. Nevertheless, businessmen do engage in forms of collective action. In what sense can we talk of a common business interest, identity or ideology? Cawson makes a distinction between corporate interests and individual interests. Businessmen would be seen in this perspective as a corporate group, that is one ‘defined by [its] location in the social and economic division of labour’. The identity of such a group is ‘given by the function that [its] members perform in society and the economy’.2 A number of writers have attempted to identify the objective categories of interest around which businessmen are supposed to cluster. For example, Strinati distinguishes between national-based, industrial monopoly

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capital; small-scale or petit-bourgeois capital; foreign (mainly American) multi-national capital; and money capital.3 The difficulty with this type of approach is that businessmen in almost identical objective economic positions may have widely divergent views. For example, in 1982 the major construction firm, Taylor Woodrow, resigned from the CBI because of that organisation’s criticisms of the Thatcher government’s economic policies. Within a month, the chief executive of another major construction firm, George Wimpey, made a speech that was critical of the government’s economic policy. An individual example does not disprove the validity of the objective categories of interest approach, although other instances could be adduced; the more general point is that businessmen often find it very difficult to agree about what their interests are. For example, it is often argued that a major source of tension between ‘industrial’ and ‘finance’ capital is exchange rate policy, with industrial capital anxious to bring down the exchange rate value of the pound to improve its export performance. However, at the 1982 CBI conference, the platform lost by a margin of almost two to one a motion which called for action on the exchange rate to improve export performance. The policies of the Thatcher government present a particularly difficult political challenge to the business community. Some of the policies may, of course, be more welcome than others, e.g., restraining the power of the unions compared with restraining demand in the economy. Some writers believe that the divergence between the government’s policies and the objective interests of business is so great that the policies must eventually be changed. Thus, Cawson predicts, ‘It is highly probable that the period 1981– 84 will see the Conservative government returning to the corporatist mode of intervention in Britain in order to protect British capital and help it to compete internationally’.4 However, the determination of the Thatcher government to pursue the policies that it sees as right for Britain in the long run has been assisted by the muted reaction of business interests to those policies. Some sectors, such as the chemical industry which considers itself handicapped by high energy prices in Britain, have been relatively out-spoken. Individual businessmen have also expressed their doubts about the wisdom of the government’s policies. For example, the chairman of FMC, Europe’s largest meat processing company, stated in his 1982 annual review: 1981/82 was, by common consent, the worst year in the history of Britain’s meat wholesaling and slaughtering industry…. Market forces will ultimately ensure that the over-capacity problem is taken care of. However, the danger in leaving the process entirely to the haphazard effects of the market is that it could be the country’s best facilities, those up to exporting standards, which will disappear. Britain would then be left with a network of low-cost, sub-standard units from which modern retailers would be reluctant to buy their meat. In that case, it would be mainland Europe farmers and traders who would reap the benefit. There is, therefore, a strong case now for Government interest, if not involvement, in a planned and controlled industry-wide rationalisation programme.

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Statements which emerge from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) are much more ambiguous and hesitant than those made by individual businessmen. Indeed, the CBI has sometimes damped down discontent among its members. The West Midlands has suffered a more severe downturn than any other region under the Thatcher government and the CBI’s West Midlands members have argued that it should be given assisted area status. However, the CBI decided not to discuss the request of its regional council for assisted status for the area at its monthly council meeting, where it was thought that ‘it would meet strong opposition for political and industrial reasons’.5 An analysis of the objective interests of businessmen must be an important part of any study of their lobbying behaviour, but such an analysis does not explain how they perceive their interests. Some account also needs to be taken of the units which make up business organisations, the firms, and their different corporate personalities. Three broad types of firm may be discerned from a political perspective. The ‘tripartite’ firm is anxious to develop good relationships with unions and the government. It plays an active part in its business interest associations, but has little to do with political parties. It is not hostile to some forms of govenment intervention in the economy, and may make considerable use of government aid schemes. The firm’s corporate style is acquired by new recruits through a process of socialisation and outlives particular individuals. A classic example is ICI. The ‘capitalist aggressive’ firm, on the other hand, sees too close a relationship with government and the unions as a constraint on the ultimate test of its efficiency, its ability to compete in the market place. It may regard business interest association activity as a waste of time, and when it does participate, it is likely to take a partisan stance in support of Conservative party policies. It is likely to make substantial donations to Conservative party funds. Dominant individuals may have an important impact on the firm’s policies. Firms of both these types are important in different ways in business politics, but, of course, many firms fall into neither category. These are the ‘pragmatic’ firms, who lack a corporate political philosophy and often react to issues in terms of their perception of their immediate interests. The general point to emerge from this typology is that business interest associations have to retain the support of firms with divergent outlooks and the result may often be a ‘lowest common denominator’ policy that tries to please both the ‘tripartite’ and the ‘capitalist aggressive’ firms; the ‘pragmatic’ firms tend not to take the lead in policy formation. This balance is not easy to maintain, particularly in a broadly based organisation such as the CBI and, as well as anodyne policies, other consequences may be membership revolts and the collapse of policy initiatives. From time to time, tensions between ‘tripartite’ and ‘capitalist aggressive’ have erupted in public disputes which have ended in the resignation of some members and damage to the CBI’s credibility. Problems first rose in 1967, but were defused by the formation of an Industrial Policy Group which became a kind of right-leaning ‘think tank’ within the CBI. In 1973, the CBI’s economic director, known to take a classical view of private enterprise and market economics, left the organisation after an internal disagreement about the direction of policy. However, the first really serious row was in 1974 when the then Director-General, (Sir) Campbell Adamson, made some off-the-cuff remarks a few days before the general election which were seen as being critical of the

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Conservative government’s Industrial Relations Act. A number of firms resigned from the CBI or suspended their membership. At the 1980 CBI Conference, Sir Terence Beckett, the CBI’s Director-General, responding to the apparent mood of the membership, promised a ‘bare knuckle fight’ with the government.6 Five major companies subsequently resigned from the CBI. In 1982, Taylor Woodrow resigned from the CBI complaining about its pessimistic statements on the economy and a meeting between the organisation and the Shadow Chancellor, Peter Shore. Equally, the failure to obtain clearance from key potential veto groups within the organisation may frustrate important policy initiatives. A case study by Richardson of an important draft agreement between the CBI and the TUC on new technology shows how the agreement had to be dropped in the face of significant minority opposition on the CBI Council. As Richardson points out, ‘Basically, what were seen by many as the “backwoodsmen” of the CBI chose to kill the agreement because they were then in a favourable situation for introducing technical change and saw the possibility of a national agreement as making the introduction of new technology more rather than less difficult’.7 The failure to secure the agreement seriously damaged relations between the CBI and the TUC, but the CBI leadership lacked the skill and authority to secure support for its policies. There is, therefore, a sense in which the ‘stifling breadth’ of the CBI makes the articulation of a clear business viewpoint difficult. THE ORGANISATION OF THE BUSINESS LOBBY The most striking fact about the business lobby in Britain is the lack of change in the last 20 years in its organisation and methods of lobbying. The last major change in the business lobby was the formation of the CBI from its three predecessor organisations in 1965. There have been more subtle, long-run changes, such as the growth of government relations departmens in large firms; the decline in the importance of employers’ organisations as collective bargaining units as multi-employer bargaining has become less significant; and a growing formalisation in the representational arrangements of the City of London. However, the comprehensive recommendations made by the Devlin Commission in 1972 for the reform of the system of business representation had little practical effect.8 The particular form of the Devlin recommendations, especially the emphasis placed on the role of the Commission’s sponsors, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, may have offended some businessmen. However, it could be argued that the business lobby has changed very little because it is of limited importance to businessmen. It could be argued that the dominant values of society favour businessmen, particularly financial interests, to the detriment of other groups in society. Businessmen themselves would not see it that way: they would, for example, argue that the dramatic decline in business profits in Britain over the period since 1960 is not the consequence of any inherent weaknesses of British capitalism but of the activities of the trade unions, the willingness of politicians to impose new burdens on businessmen in response to electoral pressure and other factors such as what they perceive as the hostility of cultural values and the educational system to business activity. These questions are beyond the scope of this

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essay, but what is clear is that most businessmen do feel that they need political representation through a variety of channels and are prepared to devote quite considerable resources, not just in the form of subscriptions, but more importantly in the form of the time of directors and senior staff, to a wide range of associations representing business interests. For example, Unilever was represented on 58 association committees in 1980 (15 of which it chaired) in the food processing sector alone, which accounted for less than half of its total sales. The system of business representation in Britain will be discussed first horizontally, i.e., in relation to the different ‘layers’ of business representation and then vertically, i.e., in relation to the three main arenas of business activity—finance, industry and distribution. The political attitudes of businessmen will then be discussed in terms of difficulties in devising an appropriate political strategy for business, businessmen’s suspicion of the state and their relationship with the political parties. The concluding section will attempt to assess the likely effects of prolonged recession on the business lobby in Britain. The Individual Firm The British industrial economy is relatively highly concentrated and it is not surprising that large firms often lobby government on their own behalf. Many large firms are conglomerates, and one trade association is unlikely to be able to cater for more than a fraction of their interests. On the other hand, the interests of the CBI may be too broad to suit a particular firm; for example, if the CBI advocates lower energy prices, this may please firms in energy intensive industries, but be less welcome to firms selling oil. Many firms depend to a significant extent on government contracts and very large contracts are inevitably surrounded by a certain amount of lobbying activity. This may develop into a permanent cooperative relationship between a government department and a large firm. Dunleavy points out that, ‘Advanced technology, major capital investment schemes, and military procurement are the best-known fields for such direct co-optation…. A good example of the direct and extensive role played by commercial firms in an intimate network of public and private endeavour is provided by the civil nuclear industry’.9 However, it is not only firms involved in negotiated contracts that have direct relationships with government departments. Any large firm is of importance to government in so far as its investment and other decisions have an impact far beyond its own business. For the firm itself, government action can have a profound impact on the connduct of its business. One of the more important developments in business lobbying in the 1970s was the emergence of specialised government relations departments in a number of very large firms. A study conducted by the writer10 found that three common factors contributed to the establishment of such departments in the 1970s. First, their establishment was seen as an attempt to develop a more sophisticated response to what was viewed as an unavoidable and probably irreversible increase in government intervention in industry. Second, the crisis in British politics in the mid-1970s, associated with escalating inflation and the fall of the Conservative government in 1974, persuaded some companies that they needed a

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more sophisticated appreciation of political developments. Third, a number of long-range changes in the political system were discerned which were thought to require a new approach to lobbying. Among these were a somewhat intangible but nevertheless significant sense of insecurity brought about by prolonged economic decline, and a concern about the impact of a new generation of promotional interest groups concerned with environmental and consumer issues. Above all, there was a belief that the ‘establishment’ no longer existed in the sense that it had in the 1950s and that a more sophisticated approach to relations with government was necessary. As one respondent put it, the ‘whole area has become very complex, twenty years ago all that a major chairman needed to do was to meet the Chancellor at his club, have a word in his ear and say “This isn’t on”.’ It was probably never quite as simple as that, but the political problems faced by large firms are now often so complex that they require a response at a number of levels coordinated from within the firm. None of the units studied had a large staff, and some of them were meeting internal opposition within their firms. However, others had direct links to the board and/or to the corporate planning process. Practice varied from company to company in terms of how much contact with government was actually carried out by the government relations unit itself. At a minimum, most units kept track of contacts between the company and government, so that if an executive or director was meeting a particular politician or civil servant, it was known whether the latter had met anyone from the company before and, if so, with whom, when and for what purpose. Some companies were found to have quite sophisticated ‘executive calling programmes’ to ensure that contact was maintained with ministers, shadow ministers and key civil servants. Some units placed considerable emphasis on identifying issues or potential issues that were likely to particularly affect the company so that resources could be concentrated in that area. Nevertheless, a number of respondents were concerned that they were reactive rather than proactive and that for much of the time they were responding to issues on a political agenda set by others. Despite these concerns about the effectiveness of govenment relations units, it would seem likely that companies will be more active as political actors in their own right in the future than they have been in the past. Industry Associations The Devlin Commission located 860 active trade associations and employers’ organisations in Britain with more than 800 associations affiliated to those organisations.11 There is no reason to suppose that the overall figures have changed significantly since 1972. Some associations have merged and others have disappeared, but new ones have been founded, ranging from an organisation representing independent companies producing programmes for Channel Four to the British Chemical Dampcourse Association. In any case, just counting the numbers of associations does not tell us very much. Some associations which are serviced affiliates of larger associations differ little in practice from the product sections of the parent association. What is more important is the overall structure of the system of employer representation, both in terms of its degree of fragmentation and of the relationships between associations.

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There are some very well resourced industry associations. The Times 1000 for 1980/81 lists six associations with an annual income of over £1 million a year (excluding the CBI) and another seven between £500,000 and £1 million. There are also some small product associations which cannot afford even one full-time member of staff. This, of itself, does not matter very much if they are only attempting to perform a limited range of functions. What is more important is the extent of overlap, duplication and even competition between associations in many sectors. Thus, one finds in many sectors identical functions performed simultaneously by several associations which are in competition with one another, those which determine their tasks independently without taking into account the tasks performed by other associations, and no higher order association which is in a position to exert hierarchical control over the others. Some sectors, e.g. chemicals, do have a coherent system of representation, but the general picture is a highly fragmented one. British trade unions are often criticised because of the number of unions covering a particular sphere of economic activity, but in fact there is more concentration among trade unions than among employers’ associations, with 46 per cent of members of unions affiliated to the TUC being organised by the five largest unions in 1981. It is worth asking why this rather incoherent system of representation has persisted for so long. In order to tackle this problem, it is necessary to ask where effective pressure for rationalisation might come from. One possible source is government (the term ‘the state’ is deliberately avoided because it implies a more monolithic organisation with a more coherent attitude to the system of business representation than actually exists). Government did encourage the formation of the CBI, and its predecessor, the Federation of British Industries, and it did second a civil servant as secretary to the Devlin Commission. There have also been interventions to encourage the formation of associations for particular industries or services, including the slightly bizarre case of the formation of an Association of British Introduction Agencies under the auspices of the Office of Fair Trading. In general, however, civil servants feel somewhat inhibited about intervening in what they see as voluntary associations, although in interviews with the writer they have often complained about the adequacy of the British system of business interests associations. One civil servant who was interviewed commented: ‘[We are] trying to ginger up [the] trade associations because ministers feel that strong trade associations are a good thing, too many run on a man and a boy basis, no idea of what some are doing…Government can only encourage and exhort, no question of putting money in, we say the better you are, the more ministers will listen to you’. In any case, interventions on the part of the government are not necessarily helpful. The decision by Mr Michael Heseltine, as Secretary of State for the Environment, to recognise the Group of Eight as the main channel of construction industry representation to him has led to new resentments on the part of those construction industry associations that are not members of the Group of Eight, thus making it more difficult for the different industry associations to work together. The absence of any systematic government attitude on these matters is illustrated by the fact that one of the organisations not represented on the Group of Eight is a member of the equivalent body in Scotland. The enthusiasm for institutional reform in the late 1960s and early 1970s provided a more favourable background for rationalising the system of business representation than

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the late 1970s and early 1980s. The National Economic Development Council took some interest in the representative arrangements in the sectors for which it was responsible and helped to stimulate some important changes in the retail sector.12 The CBI was also interested in assisting the rationalisation of the system of secondary associations after its formation in 1965. However, the failure of its attempts to reorganise the system of trade associations in mechanical engineering through the creation of the British Mechanical Engineering Confederation, and the lack of enthusiasm among its members for the recommendations of the Devlin Commission, seem to have led it to lose interest in the subject. It could be argued that one likely source of pressure for reform would be the larger firm. As large firms are generally involved in a considerable number of individual associations, it might be supposed that they would have an interest in supporting rationalisation, both to reduce the call on their own resources and to create a more effective system of business representation. They are also able to exert sufficient influence within associations to bring about reform. In general, they have failed to do so. It is not that the firms think that what the associations do is not important enough to bother about. Much of the work of the associations it is true, is concerned with technical legislation, particularly EEC legislation, but ‘technical’ should not be equated with ‘unimportant’. One very large firm explained: Without some means of getting an industry position, we would be weak, even though we do 60 per cent of the work on something specific. We could look after our own position with HMG, not with Brussels, we would be in a difficult position without the trade association structure…. Also there are quite a lot of consultative bodies run by Whitehall, very keen to have a [name of association] member, wouldn’t be keen to have a [name of firm] member. It’s likely to be a [name of firm] chap, but he wears an association hat’. The pressures of the recession have led large firms to demand rationalisation within associations, but not between associations. Why should this be the case? The main reason appears to be that many British firms are highly decentralised internally. They are often federal structures, run on a product division basis, with central control of finance, but not of lobbying activity. Even in those firms which have government relations units, their functions do not generally include any responsibility for coordinating representational work in associations. This means that an opportunity to examine the cost effectiveness of associative activity from the perspective of the firm is lost and that any pressure that is exerted is likely to relate to individual associations. In a number of interviews with firms, the point was made that trade association activity was the responsibility of the product division, and any attempt to intervene in trade association activity from the centre would cause political difficulties within the firm. European Community membership has given trade associations, particularly the more specialised associations, a new range of tasks to perform. However, it has also tended to complicate the system of representation in particular sectors. The food and drink industry is particularly affected by Community activity and on Britain’s accession to the

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Community, the Food and Drink Industries Council was formed to secure British representation on the relevant European level association. Unlike the existing Food Manufacturers Federation, the new organisation was an association of associations with a wider range of members than the FMF. However, the creation of the new organisation does mean that there are two associations which can claim to speak for significant sections of the food processing industry. The system of collective bargaining in Britain does not encourage employer solidarity. As Brown has pointed out, ‘we have never developed strong, industry-wide employer coalitions to any extent. In those industries where there have been multi-employer agreements, they have generally left much to be bargained over at the workplace’.13 Even where there still is industry-wide bargaining, it can intensify disagreements among employers rather than help to unite them. In the construction industry, for example, there are now two rival collective bargaining arrangements, one (the National Joint Council for the Building Industry) sponsored by the National Federation of Building Trade Employers, the other (the Building and Allied Trades Joint Council) sponsored by the Federation of Master Builders. The origins of this emergence of rival bargaining agreements are complex, but an important factor has been rivalry between the two main construction unions, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU). Thus, divisions on the union side have intensified divisions on the employer side. The most likely source of pressure for rationalisation of the system of business interest associations is the senior staff of the associations. As one director-general put it: ‘It seems to me that pressure for rationalisation might also come, in due course, from the professional staffs of the larger associations. They might be motivated both by frustration at the inefficiencies that result from fragmentation of association structure and by a desire to see their professionalism deployed on a wider field’. Not all staff may, of course, see mergers between associations as offering better career opportunities. The directorgeneral of a small association may be worried about losing his job, or at least his status, as the result of a merger, although the supporting staff may see a larger association as offering them the chance of a proper career structure. Even if staff favour rationalisation, they still have to persuade their members of its desirability. However, one experienced association director argued that association staff enjoyed more autonomy and were more able to take initiatives than before: ‘There is more of a trade association profession than 20 years ago. A dramatic difference is the authority given to head officers’. However, association mergers are a particularly sensitive subject with members and, even if staff are convinced of their merits, they may be unable to overcome member resistance. It seems likely that the present proliferation of associations, and the complex web of informal and formal coordinating arrangements between them, will continue. The Confederation of British Industry The CBI is the most prominent feature of the system of business lobbying in Britain, particularly since its deliberate adoption of a higher public profile in recent years, but prominence should not be equated with effectiveness. There is no doubt that the

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representational efforts of the CBI do benefit businessmen and that the cumulative effect of a series of small concessions obtained from government (particularly at the implementation stage) can be considerable. Nevertheless, there are important constraints which limit the CBI’s ability to exert influence. The CBI’s style of lobbying has generally been that of the conventional ‘insider group’, concentrating its attention on influencing legislative proposals before they are submitted to Parliament through discussion with civil servants and ministers. Since the late 1970s, it has shifted its lobbying strategy to some extent, paying more attention to Parliament and attempting to address itself to the public at large. In 1982 it operated what was described as its first official picket line to protest against a rates increase by Avon County Council. However, gimmicks of this kind should not distract attention from the fact that the CBI has been largely successful through building up and maintaining knowledge and contacts in particular policy arenas. This kind of attention to detail requires a large and well qualified staff but the recession has affected the CBI’s income from members’ subscriptions. The organisation’s staff has been reduced from 480 to 360 and this must adversely affect the CBI’s ability to carry out the kind of detailed lobbying at which it is most effective. Nevertheless, the income of the CBI was £7.6m. in 1981, and one must not make too much of the organisation’s resource problems. A number of large firms that were interviewed made the point that the CBI is too broadly based to be effective. The CBI encompasses large and small firms, nationalised industries and private enterprises, business associations as well as individual firms. The potential conflicts which these divisions of interest could generate have generally been handled with considerable skill, but, as emphasised earlier, one persistent problem is the division over strategy. On the one hand, some firms favour a cooptative relationship with government and the unions, muting outspoken criticisms of their actions to help build a better relationship with them; on the other hand, other firms favour an aggressive defence of what they see as the interests of private enterprise, even if concessions which might be extracted from government or the unions are endangered as a result. Similar differences over strategy can be found within unions. Some members favour the development of a close bargaining relationship with government and the employers; others see any attempt at compromise as a ‘sell out’ and favour the undiluted pursuit of what they see as their interests. Relations with a Conservative government always pose more strategic problems for the CBI than relations with a Labour government. The President taking office in 1982, Sir Campbell Fraser, said that the late Sir John Methven, then CBI Director-General, had warned him that ‘holding office under a Tory Government would be much more testing than under Labour, much more searching, and much more vulnerable’.14 The basic problem is that of criticising a governing party which most CBI members support without seeming to undermine it. Relations with the 1970–74 Conservative government were difficult enough, given Mr Heath’s known coolness to the CBI.15 However, the leadership of the CBI was at least in broad sympathy with what Mr Heath was trying to achieve. Mrs Thatcher’s government is not even a Conservative government in a small ‘c’ sense of the word. As one of her former senior ministers has stated, ‘I am a nineteenth century liberal. So is Mrs Thatcher. That’s what this government is all about’.16 Nineteenth-centrury libralism has little time for representative organisations which frustrate the operations of

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the market. In practice, of course, the government has continued to talk to the CBI. However, relations between the CBI and the Conservative government reached a new low in August 1982 when Central Office circulated a speech by a junior minister, Mr John Wakeham, suggesting that the CBI’s pessimism about the economy was less important than it might appear because of manufacturing industry’s declining importance to the UK economy as a whole. By this stage, senior ministers clearly came to the conclusion that the rift with the CBI was getting out of hand and the Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, took the unusual step of telephoning Sir Terence Beckett from a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Canada in an effort to put relationships on a better footing. A further problem for the CBI is the increased effort put into lobbying by the Institute of Directors which tends to take a more right-wing stance on most issues than the CBI. The Institute of Directors organises individual members rather than firms and members have tended to value the luncheon club and other facilities it provides at its London headquarters. However, the Thatcher government has tended to take the Institute of Directors (and, to some extent, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce) more seriously than have previous governments, if only because what they have to say tends to be more palatable to ministers than what comes from the CBI. The Institute of Directors, for its part, has improved the sophistication of its lobbying organisation. Why should businessmen express different views through the Institute of Directors from those they express through the CBI? According to its detractors, the Institute of Directors has a preponderance of small businessmen, who tend to have more unabashed right-wing views, as members’: ‘Ask them how many launderette owners they have as members, one CBI official is reported to have said.17. However, the Institute of Directors also has many directors of big firms as members; one director from at least 90 of the top 100 companies, according to their figures. It may be that businessmen are more restrained in what they say on behalf of their companies, and are able to express their own views through the Institute of Directors: ‘inside every CBI man is an IOD man waiting to get out’.18 The most probable explanation for the different stance of the two organisations is that their reputation attracts different types of activists: for example, personnel managers, who tend to take a moderate stance on industrial relations issues, are active in the CBI committees dealing with that policy arena. The rise in importance of the Institute of Directors as a lobbying organisation is another sign of the problems that beset the CBI. The voluntary prices initiative of 1971–72 showed the CBI at its best as a responsible organisation working for the national interest; and its successes in altering the policies of the 1974–79 Labour government demonstrated its ability to modify policies its members opposed. The lack of receptivity of the Thatcher government to conventional pressure policies, even though they have made some concessions to the CBI, faced the organisation with new problems which it found difficult to solve. FINANCE, INDUSTRY AND THE RETAIL SECTOR The Confederation of British Business called for by the Devlin Report has never been formed. Although the CBI likes to describe itself as ‘Britain’s business voice’, it remains

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essentially an organisation which represents manufacturing industry. Of its subscription income in 1981, 76.7 per cent came from industrial firms and associations, another 6.7 per cent came from the public sector and only 16.5 per cent came from commercial firms and associations. The financial sector does not really need the CBI to represent its interests. Apart from its traditional channel of representation through the Governor of the Bank of England, the financial sector has formed or revitalised a number of trade associations in recent years. This greater formalisation of City representation is a response to a number of changes, including new divisions of interest within the City itself, greater regulatory activity by the Bank which makes it more difficult for it to act as a spokesman, and the impact of European Community membership.19 These changes in the form of representation should not be allowed to distract attention from the fact that the City has available to it a number of sanctions which are not available to manufacturing industry (an ‘investment strike’ by manufacturing firms is difficult to organise, self-defeating and its tangible impact is seen several years later). The views of the City can influence the international standing of sterling, and even provoke a run on the pound, although the status of the pound as a petrocurrency has diminished the value of this sanction. Perhaps more important, the City can prevent the government from financing its public expenditure programme by staging a ‘gilt edged strike’; unlike the ‘investment strike’, this can have an immediate and very serious impact. In addition, fluctuations in the Financial Times 30 share index are treated with considerable seriousness by the media, even though they bear a tenuous relationship to events in the real economy. Despite its potential to exert influence, even the City has had difficulties in its relationship with the Thatcher government which must, in terms of its ability to disregard major interests, be the most politically autonomous government of the post-war period. For example, in the summer and autumn of 1982, the Thatcher government failed to respond to increasingly public complaints by clearing banks that major industrial companies were facing collapse. It is now part of the received wisdom about business representation in Britain that the financial sector has been more influential than the industrial sector, to the detriment of the economy as a whole. Commentators have expressed surprise that opposition to the apparent political dominance of the City ‘from within the ranks of capital [has been] so muted and tentative’.20 Longstreth’s answer to this puzzle is that, ‘The fact that the industrial sector is completely dominated by multinationals implies that it shares immediate interests with finance, namely the desire to keep open the option of capital export, and has good reason to follow the City’s lead in matters of industrial policy even if the consequence is the erosion of the home base to some degree’.21 The idea of a coalition between the City and the largest industrial companies is plausible, although it seems to find little institutional expression. However, there are other factors that have to be taken into account. Whatever divisions of interest there are between the City and industry, what unites them is more important than what divides them. Both are far more worried about the prospect of a left-wing Labour government than they are concerned about their own disagreements, and the more sophisticated business politicians (i.e. those active in the representation of business interests rather than the wider world of politics) are well aware that there are those on the Left who perceive that there is a political

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advantage to be gained by driving a wedge between the different ‘fractions’ of capital. The fear of a left-wing Labour government does not dissolve the real divisions of interest that exist between finance and industry (although the extent and depth of these divisions is sometimes exaggerated), but it does make industry and finance more aware of what they have in common and inhibit the public expression of their differences of view. The retail sector stands somewhat apart from the system of business lobbying in Britain, although some of the largest firms (some of which are also manufacturers) are CBI members. The peak association for retailing, an association of associations called the Retail Consortium, is not a member of the CBI and has the unusual provision in its constitution that any member association can exert a veto. Competition is very intense in the retail sector, not only between firms, but also between the different types of store (supermarkets, specialist retail chains, cooperatives, symbol groups such as Spar etc.) each of which has its own association. The intensity of competition in the sector makes closer cooperation between the different associations more difficult, although there has been progress since the formation of the Retail Consortium in 1967 and its acquisition of staff of its own in 1975. However, the political importance of the Retail Consortium has declined since the early years of the 1974–79 Labour government when it was involved in voluntary price restraint arrangements. In those years, the Retail Consortium enjoyed access up to Prime Ministerial level, but in 1981 the Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, refused to meet a deputation from the Retail Consortium. THE POLITICAL ATTITUDES OF BUSINESSMEN It should be apparent from the discussion so far that businessmen do not constitute a homogeneous group. They have different immediate interests and divergent opinions about how business can best act politically to defend its interests. If they have one attitude in common, it is a suspicion of the state and of state intervention. Businessmen do not see the state as ‘their’ state,22 an attitude of mind which has deep historical roots. As Dyson points out, British elite culture is characterised by ‘deep inhibitions about exercising “public power” [which] are the product in part of a liberal ideology that emphasises diffusion of authority rather than the importance of instruments of state policy’.23 Business interest association staff are more liable to be tempted by the corporatist vision, but even they share attitudes which they are aware are different from those found in other West European countries. As the director of a major chamber of commerce explained in an interview: There is no formally structured relationship between ourselves and the city and ourselves and the county. The situation would be totally different in Europe where you get this close nexus between the two. We don’t have it. I’m not sure that we would want it. We value our independence. If we went over to public law status, one of our worries is loss of independence, one is then at the behest of central government who would have some sort of surveillance and some sort of control over our budget. I said earlier that our income was not adequate, but at the moment we are at least completely independent of government. If I were running

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Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce I’d have three times the number of people working for me, but could I write a letter to the city of Frankfurt telling them exactly what I thought of them? Suspicion of the state may, of course, reflect not just historical elite attitudes, but also contemporary partisanship. The overwhelming majority of directors of large companies are probably inactive Conservatives; a small minority spare the time to be active in the Conservative party, and an even smaller minority support other parties. One piece of relevant evidence is provided by an opinion poll, conducted by Marplan for the Financial Times after the 1982 budget, of 500 senior directors of companies with a turnover of over £5 million. The directors contacted were asked how they would vote if there was to be a referendum on the following day purely on economic policies. About 80 per cent said that they would vote for the economic policy of the Conservative party, though nine per cent preferred the Social Demo cratic and Liberal Alliance. Support for the economic policy of the Labour party was statistically negligible.24 A considerable number of companies provide funds for the Conservative party or for organisations which appear to give a substantial proportion of the funds they receive to the Conservative party. However, it should be stressed that it is a minority of companies that make donations to the Conservative party and its allies; 339 (27 per cent) of the largest 1, 250 companies in 1981 according to a Labour party survey.25 Many companies like ICI, adhere to a policy of not making political donations. When 20 leading companies engaged in a political advertising campaign under the Aims of Industry umbrella during the 1983 election campaign, many other businessmen were embarrassed by what they saw as a potentially counter-productive initiative. It has been suggested that an apparent 19 per cent drop in funding for the Conservative party by manufacturing industry between 1980 and 1981 ‘reflects a decline in the faith in a government whose policies have devastated the manufacturing base of the economy’.26 However, these figures were dismissed as inaccurate by the Conservative party and Labour party figures show a 8.8 per cent increase in political donations between 1980 and 1981, almost exactly in line with inflation. Early hopes that business might provide substantial funding for the Social Democrats have not been realised. The only donors among major companies in 1981 appear to have been Marks and Spencer who provided £5,000 for the joint Alliance commissions on electoral reform and the economy and Thorn-EMI who also provided £5,000. In the autumn of 1982 the Alliance parties started discussions on a special joint financial appeal to the City and industry with a possible target of up to £1 million. Businessmen have been rather more willing to provide funds for a cause favoured by the Alliance, that of electoral reform. Among donations in 1981 were £5,000 from Marks and Spencer, £1,000 from Rank Hovis and Macdougall and £500 from Commercial Union. At its 1978 conference the CBI passed a motion calling on the organisation to press forthwith ‘for early reform of our electoral system’.27 Lord Caldecote of Delta Metal argued that proportional representation would benefit industry in three ways: by producing greater stability of policy in the medium term, producing powerful majority support for necessary and difficult changes, and by reducing legislation and therefore

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providing less distraction of industry from its real job of wealth creation. However, the issue has been quietly shelved by the CBI, no doubt because it recognises that a significant minority of its members are opposed to electoral reform. Apart from active supporters of the National Committee for Electoral Reform, businessmen tend to become interested in electoral reform when there is a prospect of a Labour government and ignore the issue the rest of the time. When one looks at the relationship between business and the political parties, the most striking fact is the general absence of a relationship. This is particularly true of the relationship between business and the Conservative party.28 In his ‘bare knuckles’ speech, Sir Terence Beckett told the CBI conference: ‘You had better face the brutal fact that the Conservative party is a rather narrow alliance.’ Asking how many of those in Parliament or the Cabinet had actually run a business, Sir Terence said that this was of vital importance. He commented, ‘They don’t all understand you. They think they do, but they don’t. They are even suspicious of you, and what is worse they don’t take you seriously.’29 There are those who are close to the Thatcher government who think that big business is to blame for many of Britain’s economic problems, and Mrs Thatcher’s own background may be reflected in her emphasis on small businesses as the key to economic revival. The strong streak of populism in Thatcherism does not help relationships between the Conservative government and big business. CONCLUSIONS The environment in which business representation operates has changed significantly since the 1950s, although many of the features of the system of business interest associations have changed relatively little. The gradual disappearance of the old, club-based ‘establishment’ has meant that many of the informal channels of influence once open to businessmen are no longer available. The result has been a greater formalisation of business interest representation, both in terms of the formation of the CBI, which likes to claim that it is a voice for British business as a whole, and the establishment of government relations divisions within individual firms. These developments must also be related to a perceived loss of influence on the part of business and a higher level of concentration in the economy, the latter development being particularly important in terms of understanding the growing importance of direct relationships between government and large firms. However, the continuities in business lobbying must not be overlooked. Reform of the arrangements for business interest representation has been a slow and difficult process. Thus, the system of association remains fragmented and, in many sectors, competitive. There is, of course, still substantial overlap and competition between trade unions, and, as has been pointed out, competition between trade unions can spill over into the relationships between employers’ associations and intensify conflicts between them. Looking at the functions of business interest associations, it is difficult to characterise the British system of business lobbying as neo-corporatist in Schmitter’s sense of ‘a mode of policy formation, in which formally designated interest associations are incorporated within the process of authoritative decision making and implementation’.30 However,

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although the system as a whole is not neo-corporatist, there are important exceptions: at least five have been identified in a recent study by the United Kingdom team working within the International Institute of Management project on business interest associations.31 One of these arrangements, that in the dairy industry, may be at risk in the long run because of changes favoured by at least some members of the Thatcher government.32 However, in another case, that of the involvement of the Export Group for the Constructional Industries in the administration of the Overseas Project Scheme, the relationship seems to have become more corporatist under the Thatcher government. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Thatcher government has paid far less attention to tripartite bargaining between government, CBI and TUC than its Labour predecessor. An important point is that governments have continued to display considerable autonomy from business interests over the post-war period. In general, Conservative governments have often distanced themselves more from business interests than Labour governments, the 1979 Thatcher government being an extreme example of the way in which a Conservative government can disregard business opinion. Some writers would, nevertheless, challenge the validity of this argument. The case against the political science conception of interest group activity has been put by Cawson who argues that: No distinction was made in pluralist theory between interests and interest groups. If business, for example, formed a weak pressure group as measured by the group’s demonstrable impact on government policy, then the conclusion was commonly drawn that the business interest was weak. It did not occur to pressure group theorists that those interests which are well established in the structure of government itself hardly need an independent pressure group.33 It may be questioned whether industrial interests are well established within the structure of government itself. The Department of Industry is industry’s principal spokesman within government, but because it is seen as a spokesman for industry, its views are discounted to some extent; in particular, it often encounters strong opposition from the Treasury. More generally, the line of argument adopted by Cawson is a ‘heads you lose, tails I win’ approach. If business is seen to exert direct influence on government, then its political power is demonstrated; but equally, if it exerts relatively little influence, this is because it does not need to. It could, of course, be argued that the values of business (e.g. profit maximisation) permeate the whole society. What Cawson sees as the irrationality of voters in supporting the policies of the Thatcher government is then explained in terms of the emotional appeal of the values of capitalism.34 One does not have to be convinced by this argument to accept that the policies of the Thatcher government set a new context for the conduct of relations between business and government in Britain. In analysing what has happened since 1979, it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the policy stance of the Conservative government, and in particular its determination to pursue its policies regardless of opposition, from the effects of the recession. The effects of the recession may turn out to be more important, in so far as they could be longer lasting than the government or its policies. There can be no doubt that the recession has affected the resource base of associations, with some associations

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losing up to a third of their staff. This, in turn, may affect their ability to conduct the lobbying activities at which they have traditionally excelled. In earlier recessions, one traditional function that trade associations have performed is to act as cartels to protect their industries. However, that is not possible under Britain’s restrictive practices legislation which is enforced by the Office of Fair Trading. Highly informal collusive arrangements may escape its attention, but any attempt by an association to operate a cartel is likely to be challenged in the courts. In 1980 proceedings instituted by the Director-General of Fair Trading in the Restrictive Practices Court for contempt of court against four suppliers of concrete pipes led to fines totalling £185,000 being imposed. Indeed, the restrictive trade practices legislation is so strictly enforced that it sometimes prevents associations from introducing quality control schemes to guarantee the standard of work produced by their members. Interviews with association directors suggest that the fear of violating restrictive practices legislation is a real constraint on their activities. In a sense, an interventionist Labour government gives industry associations much more to do than a non-interventionist Conservative government. The policies of a Labour government generally provide something concrete which an association can oppose; and, given the anxiety of Labour governments about industrial opinion, it is generally possible to secure concessions which can be produced to members as proof of the association’s effectiveness. It is much more difficult to oppose a government for doing nothing than for doing something which an association’s members do not like. When a government introduces a new measure, the ‘rules of the game’ of the British political process require consultation with affected interests, thus offering a structured opportunity to exert influence. When a government fails to intervene, the initiative passes to the association, but British business interest associations are more attuned to reacting to initiatives taken by government than taking initiatives themselves. They therefore find themselves at something of a loss as to how they should proceed. That is not to say that the associations would welcome the return of an interventionist Labour government, but it does illustrate how the style of government influences the character of lobbying. Fidler has suggested that ‘perhaps more than in the past, businessmen are forced to be lobbyists’ because, ‘The traditional party of business has not been successful enough: and even when in power does not necessarily respond to business needs’.35 Fidler’s conclusions about the business view of power coincide with the view that the writer has formed on the basis of his discussions with businessmen, civil servants and association executives: The government, that is, in practice the cabinet plus senior civil servants, controls business, not business the government. From the business point of view, the power game is not a balanced one, for trade union leaders are conceived of as having a significant vetoing effect on government action.36 Mrs Thatcher’s victory in the June 1983 election at least ensures that the political vetoing power of the trade unions will not be underwritten by government, although in conditions of economic recovery, the unions could still effectively constrain the power of

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management through industrial action. The Conservative victory leaves unresolved the central strategic problem facing the CBI: how to reconcile its members’ wish that it should give political support to a Conservative government with its own perception of the need for effective criticism in the interests of industry. Indeed, the greater self-confidence of a government with a renewed mandate may mean that the government will be even less willing to listen to the CBI and that the industrialists’ organisation will have to take even greater care that it is not outflanked on the Right by other organisations. Within the CBI, the balance of influence may shift even further away from the ‘tripartite’ firms towards the ‘capitalist aggressive’ firms. However, unless the government adopts a really effective competition policy (which it failed to do in its first term of office), the trend towards greater concentration in the economy will continue and one likely political consequence is that direct contacts between large firms and government will become more important. At the same time, the further shedding of functions by government may give industry associations new opportunities to provide collective substitutes for government action, as happened in the sphere of industrial training in the government’s first term of office. The resultant pattern of political self-reliance at the level of the firm and mutual aid at the level of the association will be very different from conventional conceptions of neocorporatism, but it will also differ significantly from the conventional pluralist pattern of representation of business interests. NOTES * This essay draws on research on government relations units in large firms carried out as part of research funded by the Social Science Research Council, and on interviews with the directors of business interest associations funded by the Nuffield Fountation. 1. C.Offe, ‘The Attribution of Public Status to Interest Groups: Observations on the West German Case’ in S.D.Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp.123–58, 147. 2. A.Cawson, Corporatism and Welfare (London: Heinemann, 1982), p.38. 3. D.Strinati, Capitalism, the State and Industrial Relations (London: Croom Helm, 1982), p.204. 4. Cawson, Corporatism and Welfare, op.cit., p.80. 5. Financial Times, 19 Jan. 1983. 6. Financial Times, 12 Nov. 1980. 7. J.J.Richardson, ‘Tripartism and the New Technology’, Policy and Politics, Vol.10, No.3, (1982), pp.343–61, 355. 8. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Industrial and Commercial Representation (London: Confederation of British Industry and Association of British Chambers of Commerce, 1972). 9. P.Dunleavy, ‘Quasi-governmental Sector Professionalism: Some Implications for Policymaking in Britain’ in A.Barker (ed.), Quangos in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 191. 10. Wyn Grant, The Development of the Government Relations Function in UK Firms, A Pilot Study of UK Based Companies (Berlin: International Institute of Management, 1981). 11. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Industrial and Commercial Representation, op.cit., p.24. 12. See W.P.Grant and D.Marsh, ‘The Representation of Retail Interests in Britain’, Political Studies, Vol. 22, (1974), pp.168–77.

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13. W.Brown, ‘Comments by William Brown’ in F.Cairncross (ed.), Changing Perceptions of Economic Policy (London: Methuen, 1981), pp.95–100, 97. 14. Financial Times, 26 May 1982. 15. See M.Holmes, Polltical Pressure and Economic Policy: British Government 1970–1974 (London: Butterworths, 1982), pp.51, 52, 85. 16. John Nott, interviewed in the Guardian, 13 Sept. 1982. 17. John Husley, ‘Who Speaks for Industry?’, Sunday Times, 29 Aug. 1982. 18. Ibid. 19. See M.Moran, ‘Finance Capital and Pressure-Group Politics in Britain’, British Journal of Politic Science, Vol. 11, (1981), pp.381–404; and J.Sargent, ‘The British Bankers’ Association and the EC’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol.11, No.3, (March 1982), pp.269–85. 20. F.Longstreth, ‘The City, Industry and the State’ in C.Crouch (ed.), State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism (London: Croom Helm, 1979), pp. 157–90, 187. 21. Ibid., p.188. 22. See D.Vogel, ‘Why Businessmen Distrust Their State: The Political Consciousness of American Corporate Executives’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 8, Part 1, (January 1978), pp.45–78, 77. 23. K.Dyson, The State Tradition in Western Europe (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1980), p.248. 24. Financial Times, 13 March 1982. A quota sample was taken from the Dun and Bradstreet market file. 25. Labour Weekly, 17 Sept. 1982. 26. ‘Collapse of Confidence in Tories by Manufacturing Industry’, Labour Research, Aug. 1982, pp. 177–79. 27. CBI Conference Report, 1978, p.38. 28. See Wyn Grant, ‘Business Interests and the British Conservative Party’, Government and Opposition, Vol.15, Number 2, (Spring 1980), pp.143–61. 29. Financial Times, 12 Nov. 1980. 30. P.Schmitter, ‘Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America’ in S.Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe, op.cit., pp.287–327, 295. 31. See W.Grant, ‘Studying Business Interest Associations: Does Neo-Corporatism Tell Us Anything We Didn’t Know Already?’, paper presented at the Political Studies Association annual conference, April 1982. 32. See W.Grant, ‘Gotta Lotta Bottle: Corporatism, the Public and the Private and the Milk Marketing System in Britain’, paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions, Freiburg, 1983. 33. A.Cawson, Corporatism and Welfare, op.cit., p.34. 34. Ibid., p.4, 114. 35. J.Fidler, The British Business Elite: Its Attitudes to Class, Status and Power (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp.230–31. 36. Ibid., p.231.

The Electorate: Partisan Dealignment Ten Years On Ivor Crewe

In the mid 1970s observers of British elections began to revise their assumptions about the nature of the electorate. The 1970 election, it was argued, marked the close of a quartercentury of ‘stable two party voting’; the two elections of 1974 the beginning of a new era of ‘partisan dealignment’.1 These two labels were convenient shorthand for a series of loosely linked propositions about voting patterns and the working of the electoral system. The first referred to a relatively neat and tidy dovetailing of party, class and ideological allegiances into two electoral blocks, converted into parliamentary parties by the simple plurality electoral system. The second referred to an electorate with weaker and less cumulative allegiances which the same electoral system forced into a two-party mould only with increasing difficulty. Chart 1 summarises these two views of the British electorate. CHART 1 THE ERA OF STABLE TWO-PARTY VOTING AND THE ERA OF PARTISAN DEALIGNMENT

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The initial diagnosis of partisan dealignment was inevitably tentative because there were only two elections, held a mere eight months apart, on which to rely for evidence. The fact that the first of these, in February 1974, was precipitated by a double crisis of economy (the three-day week) and constitution (strikes versus government legislation) and accompanied by an unusual degree of industrial and party conflict made firm conclusions particularly difficult. There was no knowing at the time whether it signified a minor byway or major juncture in the history of British elections. Nonetheless, in electoral commentary hesitant revisionism soon turned into new orthodoxy: ‘increasing volatility’, ‘consumer voting’, the ‘decline of class’ all entered the common currency. All reports on the electorate are interim; none can ever be final. But the passing of two more general elections, in 1979 and 1983, provides an opportunity to re-examine the central tenets of partisan dealignment. Indeed, it offers a valuable test. Since the mid 1970s the economy has gone into deep recession, marked by burgeoning unemployment and sharp cuts in public services, and the two major parties have each moved to a more fundamentalist position. These circumstances might be thought more conducive to partisan consolidation than partisan dealignment. Whether this is so will emerge from examining each pair of propositions in Chart 1 in turn. I. TWO-PARTY DECLINE Britain has never had an exclusively two-party system. Since 1945 minor parties, notably the Liberals, have contested numerous constituencies, not infrequently come runner-up, and very occasionally won. But from 1945 to 1970 Britain came nearest in its history to being a pure two-party system. The Conservative and Labour dominance over the electorate, and thus the House of Commons, seemed impregnable. In the eight intervening elections the two parties won, on average, all but eight per cent of the vote and all but two per cent of the seats. The largest number of Liberal MPs was 12 (in 1966) and after the Liberal debacle in 1950 the party managed to contest more than half the seats (and then only just) only twice. It was not until 1970 that the Nationalists in Wales and Scotland fielded candidates in most constituencies, and got one elected (although there had been by-election victories earlier). In 1970, therefore, the Conservative and Labour hegemony looked as solid as ever. They took 90 per cent of the vote, 98 per cent of the seats and first and second places in all but 44 constituencies. The two-party system appeared to be irremovably rooted in the electorate. However, appearances can be deceptive. The electoral strength of parties can be measured in various ways. Some indicators are conspicuous, such as number of MPs, first and second places, and share of the national vote; others are less so, such as individual membership, or degree of allegiance as revealed by attitudinal surveys. These different facets of a party’s mass support tend to move in the same direction, but not at the same pace. A change in one—the strength of partisan allegiance, say—will not be paralleled by an immediate and commensurate change in another, such as number of MPs. We may compare the condition of the Conservative and Labour parties to two old buildings, whose grand exteriors are an unreliable guide to the state of the foundations.

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The first cracks in the two parties’ facades appeared in February 1974 when the twoparty share of the vote fell from 90 to 77 per cent. The Conservative share of the vote slumped by 8.6 per cent, the sharpest loss it, or indeed any party, had incurred since 1945. But Labour’s share also fell, by six per cent, the worst deterioration suffered by the major Opposition party in half a century. The main beneficiary was the Liberal party, whose share of the vote almost trebled. In Scotland the emergence of the Nationalists was equally dramatic: they doubled their vote from 11 per cent to 22 per cent. The minor parties tripled their representation at Westminster from 13 to 37 and came second in a further 169 constituencies—over a quarter of the country. The cracks have not been repaired since. In the election eight months later there was less change (except in Scotland, where the Nationalists advanced further still, to 30 per cent of the vote and 11 MPs). The two-party share of the vote stayed the same, and the number of minor party MPs rose by two— to a post-war record. The 1979 election saw a reversal, but no reversion. The two-party share of the vote recovered to 83 per cent, but this fell well short of the normal level in the preceding quarter century. The number of minor party MPs fell, but at 27 was greater than at any time between 1950 and 1970. In 1983 the cracks widened further. The two-party share of the vote dropped to 70 per cent, the lowest since 1923, when Labour’s challenge to the Liberals as primary Opposition party to the Conservatives temporarily gave Britain a three-party system. Conservative and Labour candidates occupied first and second places in under half the constituencies (286). Even after discounting the five extra seats allocated to Northern Ireland, the number of minor party MPs, at 44, was a new post-war record. Unlike in February 1974, however, the two-party decline arose from the tribulations of one party only, Labour. Throughout rural, suburban and Southern England (outside London) it was eliminated as a serious political force and replaced by the Liberal/SDP Alliance as the main (but not always close) challenger to the Conservative party. Labour returned 209 MPs, its smallest total since 1935. Its vote share fell by 9.3 percentage points—the severest drop suffered by a major party at a single election since the war—to 27.6 per cent, its lowest level since 1918. In reality Labour’s decline was worse still. In 1918, unlike 1983, Labour’s low vote was partly caused by its failure to contest over a third of the seats in Great Britain. If performance is judged by the average share of the constituency vote going to Labour candidates, 1983 was Labour’s poorest showing since the party was founded in 1900.2 Although the two parties’ deteriorating support was only noticed after 1970, their base in the mass electorate has been slowly crumbling for much longer. Whichever indicator one chooses reveals the same long-term trend. The public’s allegiance to the established parties has become weaker, more conditional and less predictable. The details have been documented elsewhere and will only be summarised—and updated—here. Share of the Vote In the 1951 general election more than eight out of ten electors turned up at the polls. Only one in thirty declined to vote Conservative or Labour. Over the following thirty years a growing proportion has refused (see Table 1): by October 1974 it was almost one

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TABLE 1 ELECTORAL SUPPORT FOR THE CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTIES 1945–1983

Notes: 1. These figures are based on the regis stered electorate in the UK which will have included people who had died, emigrated or moved out of the constituency by the time the election took place. Adjustment for the age of the register at the time of the election would raise the figures (by 4 per cent on average) but not alter the direction or magnitude of the trend over the period. This table makes no adjustment for the number of Liberal and other minor party candidates. Their steady increase since 1955 partly accounts for the decline of the major party vote, but partly results from it too. 2. Includes votes for the National Liberal Party, the National Labour Party, National candidates assisted by the Conservative party and for Ulster Unionists up to 1970, after which they no longer took the Conservative whip. 3. Excludes University vote and MPs. 4. The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1969.

in four; by 1983 nearly one in three. The Conservatives’ ‘landslide’ victory of 1983 is therefore deceiving. It came from a modest 42.4 per cent of the UK vote, which was 1.5 per cent down on the previous election, and markedly lower than when the Conservatives won a series of less spectacular victories in the 1950s, or indeed won under Heath in 1970. Its large parliamentary majority is due to the even steeper recent decline of the Labour vote. Despite speculation at the time that Labour had yet to come into its full demographic inheritance, its average share of the vote fell from 46 per cent in the 1950s and 1960s to 39 per cent in the 1970s and, after 27 continuous months of less than 40 per cent support in the regular polls, to under 28 per cent in 1983. In thirty years Labour’s vote share fell by two-fifths. With the exceptions of Switzerland and Belgium no other European democracy has given so little support to parties of the Left than Britain after 1970.

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Share of the Electorate The single most telling statistic of a party’s popularity is its share of the total electorate, since this simultaneously incorporates the impact of abstention as well as of minor party support. The statistic must be treated with some caution because the proportion of the registered electorate who vote partly depends on the age of the register on election day, and partly on the efficiency of the register in deleting the names of the dead, emigrants etc. Nonetheless the direction of the trend is unmistakable. In 1951, when the two-party grip was at its tightest, 80 per cent of electors turned out to vote Conservative or Labour. Since then the proportion has declined unremittingly: 73 per cent in 1959, 68 per cent in 1964, 64 per cent in 1970, 55 per cent in October 1974, 51 per cent in 1983. Thus over the last thirty years the two governing parties have been abandoned by almost 30 per cent of the electo rate and are now supported by barely over half. Government office continues to alternate between them exclusively, but each time one party has taken over power from the other it has been with the support of a successively smaller portion of the electorate. The present government’s massive majority is the product of well under a third of the UK electorate (31 per cent), one per cent less than it obtained when it went down to a Labour landslide in 1966. The Popularity of the Party Leaders The declining vote for the two parties might reflect a growing disenchantment with their capacity to govern, but not with their capacity to produce leaders. The British electorate does not appraise parties and their leaders identically, even though the Prime Minister and majority party leader are the same person. Generally, approval for the Prime Minister runs ahead of voting support for the government party; approval of the Opposition leader behind voting support for the Opposition party. For all that, the popularity of leaders has fallen more or less in tandem with that of the parties over the past quarter century. Table 2 shows how the ‘combined approval score’ for Prime Minister and Opposition leader dropped by a quarter between the mid-1960s and early 1980s. This was not simply because of Michael Foot’s exceptionally low ‘ratings’—the lowest for any party leader since the Gallup survey first asked the question thirty years ago. By the second half of 1981 the Prime Minister’s ‘approval rating’ was below that of any of her predecessors (except for Harold Wilson for a brief period in 1968). By late 1982, even after ‘winning’ the Falklands War, Mrs Thatcher’s popularity was less than that of Conservative Prime Ministers in the 1950s and early 1960s, including Sir Anthony Eden after he had ‘lost’ the Suez War.3 Included in partisan dealignment is a decline of deference. Party Membership Current national membership figures are unavailable from the Conservative party and notoriously unreliable for the Labour and Liberal parties. But there is little doubt that individual membership of political parties has fallen even more sharply than the twoparty share of the electorate. The best estimates—unofficial but independently

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TABLE 2 APPROVAL FOR LEADERS OF THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES, 1955–83, GALLUP POLL

Note: All figures are the average (mean) for each month within each Parliament. Source: Reproduced from Richard Rose, “Why won’t we play follow-my-leader?”, New Society, 4 Nov.1982, p.210, with additional material taken from Social Surveys (Gallup Poll) Ltd. Gallup Political Index, Nos. 265–73 (Aug. 1982-April 1983).

corroborated ones—are that the Conservative party membership fell from 2.8 million in 1953 to about 1.5 million in the mid 1970s and that Labour party ‘book’ membership fell from just over a million in 1953 to 250,000 to 300,000 over the same period.4 Thus the two big parties lost over two million individual members during the period in which the electorate expanded by 15 million and leisure time and voluntary association membership grew considerably. These losses cannot be due to increasing membership of the minor parties, moreover, which altogether stood at about 400,000 in the mid 1970s, and to which the 60,000 members of the SDP can now be added. There are few grounds for believing that this trend will go into sustained reversal. Party Identification Party membership, however, is a dubious measure of partisan commitment. The majority of members are not active and some campaign activists are not members. A superior indicator is the direction and strength of an elector’s self-declared party identification. This has consistently proved to be the strongest single correlate of long-term party loyalty and of party political involvement, including turnout. Figure 1 and Table 3 display the level and strength of Conservative and Labour party identification from 1964 to 1983, and reveal a marked drop in the electorate’s long-term commitment to the two parties. In 1964, 81 per cent of the electorate identified with one of the two governing parties, the large majority at least ‘fairly strongly’ and half ‘very strongly’. The two-party system appeared to rest on a bedrock of unswerving commitment. Twenty years later the portion of the electorate with a ‘very strong’ Conservative or Labour partisanship had dwindled from being a substantial minority (40 per cent) to being a clearly insubstantial one (23 per cent). There are technical reasons for believing that the real decline may have been steeper still.5 The staunch, automatic

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Conservative or Labour supporter has become a member of a small and rapidly dwindling group. FIGURE 1 INCIDENCE AND STRENGTH OF CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTISANSHIP 1964– 1983

*Exclude the small number of respondents who said that they had no party identification but who subsequently said that they felt closer to one of the parties. See note to Table 3.

The general picture of declining loyalty to the two parties needs to be qualified in various ways. First, the willingness of respondents to give themselves some kind of party identification, weak or strong, major or minor, has lessened only slightly and remains remarkably widespread (86 per cent). Positive repudiation of the party alternatives, or indifference between them, has not grown to significant levels (much smaller proportions of the electorate volunteer, or after pressing yield, a class or religious identification). Indeed, identification with the minor parties, despite their eruptions of support at elections, has barely changed over the twenty years. In 1964 it stood at 12 per cent; in 1983 at 16 per cent. The proportion identifying with the two main parties has fallen, but not by much, from 81 to 82 per cent in the 1960s to a still high 70 per cent in 1983. In the era of partisan dealignment many more electors continue to think of themselves as Conservative or Labour than actually vote for them; many more neglect or defy their party loyalties than abandon them. This phenomenon invites two interpretations. It suggests, firstly, that as an influence on the vote old-established party loyalties have increasingly been overridden by other, short-

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TABLE 3 THE INCIDENCE AND STRENGTH OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION, 1964–1983

Note: The figures for 1983 are derived from a survey conducted on the eve and the day of the general election; the figures for all other years are taken from surveys conducted in the 6–8 weeks after the election (see note 5). Sources: Butler & Stokes’ election surveys, 1964, 1966, and 1970; British Election Studies, February 1974, October 1974 and 1979; BBC/Gallup survey, 1983.

term, factors in recent elections. One possibility is that the emergence of television as the main mass medium of politics has made the short campaign period—and the issues, people and events it brings into prominence—a more powerful determinant of the vote. But, secondly, it draws attention to the considerable reserves of partisan loyalty and habit in the electorate, accumulated over many decades, from which the Conservative and Labour parties can still draw to re-establish their electoral ascendancy. In the major party ranks electoral obedience has become less automatic; major rebellions more frequent; but permanent desertion on a large scale has not yet happened. Residual attachments to the two major parties remain widespread. The point to stress, however, is that they are increasingly residual. For what has markedly declined over the past two decades is strength of partisanship. The proportion of ‘very strong’ Conservative and Labour identifiers in the electorate has almost halved, from 40 per cent in the 1960s to 23 per cent in 1983; the proportion of ‘not very strong’ Conservative and Labour identifiers has almost doubled, from nine to 17 per cent. Only one elector in five can now be described as a truly committed, unswerving, Conservative or Labour loyalist.

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The decline of partisanship has shadowed the electoral fortunes of the Conservative and Labour parties and has not, therefore, been even-handed between the two. The proportion of Conservative identifiers has fluctuated over the two decades but was the same at the end as at the start (38 per cent). In Labour’s case, however, the proportion has fallen from 43 per cent in 1964 (and 46 per cent in 1966) to 32 per cent in 1983—a loss of one-third. In 1983, for the first time on record, Conservative identifiers outnumbered Labour identifiers. Until then Labour had been the ‘natural majority’ party in the sense that, although it often lost elections, it enjoyed a small headstart over the Conservatives in the instinctive allegiances of the electorate. Trends in the strength of Labour as opposed to Conservative identification tell a similar story. The electorate’s commitment to both parties has weakened, but more so in Labour’s case. Moreover between 1979 and 1983 there was a marked recovery in the strength of Conservative identification but none overall in that for Labour. This contradicts what one might have expected, for it would be natural to assume that a contraction of Labour identifiers would involve the dropping away of the least committed, leaving a smaller but at least more steadfast group. In fact the opposite has occurred. In this sense the public’s loosening of attachment to Labour has taken a toll in morale as well as numbers. This dilution of partisanship has occurred with remarkable uniformity across the social and demographic spectrum: men and women, rich and poor, working class and middle class, young and old have gradually distanced themselves from the two main parties at about the same rate. There is one significant exception. Partisan weakening has proceeded further and faster among the younger generation of university graduates and professional people than in any other category. These groups are likely to be the opinion leaders and agenda setters of the next three decades and as such the avant garde of the political culture of the 1990s. Moreover, the incidence and strength of partisanship is directly related to age (as indeed it always appears to have been). The younger the age category the higher its proportion of weak partisans. In 1983, 46 per cent of party identifiers aged 65 and over described themselves as ‘very strongly’ partisan; among 18–22 year olds (i.e. new voters) the figure was 13 per cent. In line with the electorate’s overall weakening of partisanship, each ‘entry cohort’ of new electors has become progressively less partisan since 1964. Scoring ‘very strong’ identifiers three, the ‘fairly strong’ two, ‘not very strong’ one and those with no party identification zero, the mean partisan strength score for each batch of new electors since 1964 has declined as follows: 1964 1.97

1966 1.95

1970 1.82

Feb/Oct 1974 1.72

1979 1.77

1983 1.58

In the absence of a sharp reversal of this trend among future entry cohorts, the overall proportion of strong partisans in the British electorate is likely (although not guaranteed) to continue falling as older generations die out.

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Voting Motivation Partisan weakening has been reflected in the amount of electoral support for the two main parties; it has also been reflected in the motivation for that support. In Britain the electoral mood appears to be increasingly negative, the majority voting against rather than for (see Table 4). In 1983, 59 per cent of all voters, and fully 73 per cent of those deciding during the campaign, said they disliked the other parties more than they liked their own. Longterm trend figures do not exist, but the degree of negative voting in 1983 was well up on 1979. In this sense recent elections have increasingly become unpopularity contests and election victories, including the Conservatives’ landslide in 1983, victories by default. Allegiance to one’s preferred party might be weakening, but the rejection of the other might not. TABLE 4 MOTIVATION OF PARTY CHOICE

Note: The survey question was: ‘What would you say is stronger—your like of the Conservatives (Labour/Lib-SDP Alliance) or your dislike of Labour (the Conservatives/the Conservative and Labour parties)?’ The small number replying ‘both equally’ are excluded. *The motivation question was not asked of Liberal voters in 1979.

2. CLASS DEALIGNMENT Where do people’s party loyalties come from and what sustains them over time? Early upbringing, a particular incident many years past, and sheer force of habit can all play a role. But these factors illustrate rather than define the foundation of long-term party preferences, which is the social structure. By this is meant the relatively enduring features of people’s lives which, often at the prompting of the parties themselves, produce a sense of collective interest and instill a certain set of values. In Great Britain, since World War I, ‘class’ has played this role: it has been the primary, almost exclusive, social basis of party choice, In the late 1960s the first signs of a weakening in the class-party link appeared. Alternative bases of partisanship emerged (or re-emerged after decades) in some areas: language and culture in rural Wales, national identity in Scotland, race in a few cities. Butler and Stokes reported an ‘ageing of the class alignment’:6 a new generation of

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electors, brought up in the relative prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s, were less likely than their parents, who had known the inter-war Depression, to think of politics in terms of class conflict or to develop a party identification that followed class lines. Nonetheless, until 1970 the overall amount of class voting remained fairly stable. How the trend in class voting moved after 1970 is shown in Table 5 which sets out the Conservative, Labour and Liberal/other party division of the vote among manual and nonmanual voters at each of the eight elections from 1959 to 1983. This is a convenient period of comparison as it begins and ends with decisive Conservative victories and is marked in the middle (1970) by another, although slightly less impressive, Conservative win: thus the trend in class voting should not be unduly affected by the trend in the election results. The second half of the period, 1970–83, was marked by minimal growth, rising unemployment and sharp cuts in public expenditure and was punctuated by outbreaks of severe industrial unrest in 1972, 1974 (coinciding with the February election) and 1978–79. During this time, therefore, a class polarisation of the vote might have been expected. Instead, Table 5 shows that class voting declined, at first fitfully but then with increasing pace. One measure of class voting, Alford’s Index, is the difference between Labour’s percentage of the middle-class as against the working-class vote, and ranges from 0 (no class voting) to 100 (perfect class voting). In the two elections of the 1960s it stood at 42 and 43. It dropped to 33 in 1970, stayed there in the two 1974 elections, and then fell further to 27 in 1979 and down again to 21 in 1983—half the score of twenty years before. An alternative measure of class voting is the number of Conservative non-manual workers and Labour manual workers as a proportion of all voters. (It has the advantage of not relying exclusively on the Labour vote, and of treating Liberal and other party supporters as non-class voters.) The proportion was 65 per cent in 1959, 60 per cent in 1970, 55 per cent for the rest of the 1970s, and 47 per cent in 1983. Over the 24-year period the incidence of class voting fell from two-thirds to under half of all voters (and thus a mere third of the total electorate). The class basis of the vote has not disappeared, but it is much less visible. Thus the period of partisan dealignment is also one of class dealignment: it is easier to vote against one’s class once party loyalties weaken, easier to abandon one’s party once class loyalties wither. In the period under scrutiny the class structure itself underwent major changes. With the gradual replacement of manual labour by machinery and of manufacturing industry by the service sector, the non-manual labour force expanded and the manual workforce contracted: in the surveys reported in Table 5 the non-manual to manual ratio shifted from 40:60 to 45:55. A change of this kind need not affect the overall amount of class voting,7 but it could be expected to alter the relative amount within each class. From the recruitment of manual workers’ children (and wives) into the non-manual labour force, especially the rapidly expanding lower grades, and from the resulting growth in white collar trade unions, one would anticipate a gradual fall in the Conservative share of the non-manual vote. And as the manual work-force contracts, increasingly confined to those ‘left behind’ by economic change, one would expect it to become more solidly Labour. This is not quite what happened. Between 1959 and 1983 the Conservative share of the non-manual vote did fall, from 69 per cent to 58 per cent (which is twice the rate

Source: Butler and Stokes’ Election Surveys 1964,1966 and 1970, BES February 1974, October 1974 and May 1979 Election surveys, BBC/Gallup Survey, 1983. Data on voting in 1959 were obtained from recall in the 1964 survey.

‘CLASS-VOTING’ 1959–1983: PARTY DIVISION OF THE VOTE IN NON-MANUAL AND MANUAL OCCUPATIONAL STRATA

TABLE 5

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of the 49 to 43 per cent drop in Great Britain as a whole). But Labour’s share of the manual vote, far from rising, plummeted from 62 per cent to 38 per cent. The collapse of the working-class Labour vote is the single most significant change in the electoral sociology of Britain in recent years. In both the 1979 and 1983 elections the largest swings to the Conservatives were among the working class, not the middle classes. The Labour party’s claim to be the party of the working class looks increasingly threadbare —sociologically if not ideologically. The Labour vote remains largely working-class; but the working class has ceased to be largely Labour. In the 1983 election it split its vote three ways, giving Labour a mere five per cent majority over the Conservatives; among trade unionists the Labour majority was only seven per cent. (MORI, on the basis of 13, 000 interviews during the campaign actually found a Conservative lead of one per cent amongst trade unionists.) Labour’s share of the working-class electorate was down to barely a quarter (27 per cent). By 1983 it would be more accurate to describe Labour as the party of a segment of the working class—the ‘traditional’ working class of Scotland and the North, the public sector and the council estates (see Table 6). Among these slowly dwindling groups Labour was still the first, if not always the majority, choice. Among the expanding ‘new’ working class, however, Labour support has haemorrhaged badly. In 1983 Labour ran neck and neck with the Conservatives among private sector workers. Among manual workers owning their house, or living in the South, the Conservatives had a commanding lead and Labour was third choice, behind the Liberal/SDP Alliance. Moreover, the ‘new’ working class is the increasingly preponderant group. By 1983 twice as many manual workers were employed in the private sector as the public sector, which will contract further under the Conservative government’s plans for retrenchment and privatisation. Many more manual workers are home-owners than council tenants; and over the next few years more council houses will be sold to their tenants and little new council house building will start. Almost as many manual workers live in the South as in the North and Scotland combined; as the population drift from North to South continues the balance will tip the other way. The ‘traditional working class’ is Britain’s newest minority; it is far too small, by itself, to elect a Labour government. In contrast, Conservative support among the working class was the same in 1983 as in 1959, having fluctuated considerably in between. The incidence of working-class Conservatism may not have changed; but its character almost certainly has. The political sociologists of a generation ago distinguished various sources of working-class Conservatism —social deference, authoritarianism, ‘economic instrumentalism’—but all had in common the assumption that a manual worker who voted Conservative did not do so out of direct, individual or group, economic self-interest.9 The ‘socially deferential’ rejected the claims to power of working-class people and institutions and was not primarily concerned about his own or his group’s economic advance. The ‘authoritarian’ saw himself as a member of a nation or race rather than class, and was less concerned with material than symbolic issues. The ‘economically instrumental’ saw himself as an indirect, rather than direct beneficiary of the Conservative party’s superior ability to manage the general economy. Conclusive research on the contemporary working-class Conservative

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TABLE 6 THE TWO WORKING CLASSES: % OF THREE-PARTY VOTE, 1983

Source: BBC/Gallup survey, 1983.

has not been undertaken. In 1979, however, it emerged that many working-class Conservatives, especially converts from 1974, were attracted by Conservative party policy to cut income tax, abandon incomes policies and encourage local authorities to sell council houses to tenants at a market discount.10 In all three instances Labour policy was hostile or ambivalent; in all three instances secure, high-wage manual workers stood to gain. Twenty years ago the one-third minority of manual workers who voted Conservative arguably did so despite their economic interests; today most of them do so because of their economic interests. Conventional ‘class voting’ has declined; class-related voting has not. The class-party relationship has gradually weakened in a second sense. Not only have the party differences between the social classes narrowed; so too have the class differences between the parties. Class voting has diminished; so have ‘voting classes’. A simple measure is the difference between the percentage of the Conservative vote as against the Labour vote cast by manual workers. The score ranges from 0 (when the class composition of the two parties’ vote is identical) to 100 (when each party’s vote is drawn exclusively from one class). The actual score has fallen, in fits and starts, from 38 in 1959 and 41 in 1964 to 32 in both 1979 and 1983. The main reason is the gradual rise in the proportion of Labour votes drawn from non-manual workers, which was one in five from 1959 to 1966 but has been one in four since. Most of this change is due to the expansion of white collar jobs. The class gap between the parties’ supporters has narrowed in another way. At the beginning of the period the class composition of Liberal voters was almost identical to that of Conservatives: in both cases the majority were non-manual workers (57 per cent). There was therefore a clear division between Labour voters and the rest of the voting electorate. By the end of the period the social make-up of Liberal voters had diverged from that of Conservatives, having become less middle-class. In their class background (43 per cent non-manual, 57 per cent manual, by 1983) they were equidistant between the two major parties. The class differences between the parties could no longer be described

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as a simple dichotomy between Labour voters and the rest. Not only has the class polarisation of the parties narrowed; it has also fragmented. Analysts of British elections occasionally cast doubt on the significance of the weakening of class voting, as revealed in Table 5. Miller found a very high correlation between the class composition (notably the proportion in professional and managerial work) and the two-party vote ratio of parliamentary constituencies, and showed that this correlation has strengthened, not weakened, over the post-war period.11 ‘Where you live’, he concludes, ‘is a better predictor of the vote than what you do’. We shall return to this important paradox in the Conclusion. Franklin, Rose and others point out that occupational status is only one, albeit the most conventional, of a number of indicators of ‘social class’, a term which literally means no more than a category of society with a similar amount of money, status and power at its disposal.12 Income, housing tenure, education, or membership of a trade union might capture social and economic inequalities more successfully than occupational status, and consequently prove a stronger basis of the vote. Each of these can serve to differentiate Conservative from Labour voters; and each can be used to separate an overwhelmingly Conservative or (more rarely) Labour voting group from the rest of the electorate—for example, 75 per cent of the self-employed voted Conservative in 1979. However, no Alford-type index of voting, based on the dichotomies of self-employed and employee; owner occupier and renter; those with and without further education; non-member and member of a trade union; and those with a ‘high’ as against ‘low’ standard of living could match the fairly modest index score of 27 (in 1979) derived from the non-manual/manual division.13 Moreover, an AID multivariate analysis of the contribution of different dimensions of inequality to the 1979 vote, which controls for the strong inter-correlations between these dimensions (e.g. between housing tenure, education and occupational status) found that the manual/non-manual distinction overrode, without entirely eliminating, the effects of the others. Thus the weakening of the class-party relationship is not an artefact of measurement or definition, but a true reflection of social and political change. Other commentators14 have suggested that a new social cleavage between the private and public sectors of employment might be replacing that of social class as a basis for party choice. Under post-war Labour governments the public sector has expanded and in recent years the distinction between the sectors has become party political. The Conservative and Labour parties have ties of recruitment, ideology and (in the Conservative case only) money with, respectively, the private and public sectors. Moreover, Mrs Thatcher’s government has been particularly determined to root out the alleged waste and inefficiency of the public sector by policies of retrenchment, strict financial control and privatisation. In both 1979 and 1983 the vote of private sector workers was indeed more Conservative and less Labour than that of public sector workers. Moreover, between 1979 and 1983, in contrast to the class convergence of the vote, there was a slight sectoral polarisation of the vote: in the private sector the pro-Conservative swing was 7.5 per cent; in the public sector five per cent.15 (The entire difference, incidentally, was due to a sectoral polarisation of the vote within the middle classes.) However, the Alford-type

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index of sectoral voting (eight percentage points) remains well below that of class voting (21 percentage points). The employment sector has grown, and might well continue to grow, in importance as a basis of party choice, but it still does not match the significance, however diminished, of the manual/non-manual divide. Housing tenure, employment sector, trade union membership, income and other indicators of position in the social structure do not override manual/non-manual status as a basis of the vote but they still have some independent effect. That effect will reinforce class voting among electors who fall on the same ‘side’ of two or more of these social divisions. For example, an AID ‘tree analysis’ of the Labour share of the three-party vote in 1979 found that it reached 78 per cent among those respondents who were manual employees in manufacturing or mining industry, who belonged to a trade union (or had a spouse who did) and lived in a council house. It dropped to a mere 10 per cent among those who were self-employed or non-manual employees, enjoyed what was defined as a ‘high’ standard of living, did not belong to a trade union and were owner-occupiers. However, the first of these combined categories accounted for only nine per cent of all voters; the second for only 10 per cent. The remaining 81 per cent of voters-four out of five—belonged to ‘impure’ class categories.16 Social change over the past quarter-century has placed an increasing number of electors into ‘mixed class’ situations. For example, in the mid 1950s only a fifth of all manual workers owned their own homes; now over half (51 per cent) do. Because income tax threshholds failed to rise as fast as money earnings in the inflationary 1970s almost all manual workers in employment pay income tax; in the 1950s only a minority did. The expansion of the public sector and rise in the number of professionally qualified employees has led to a rapid growth of white collar trade unionism: by 1980, 44 per cent of all non-manual workers held a trade union card.17 Inter-generational social mobility, especially upward mobility, has become much more prevalent. Already a decade ago 31 per cent of the sons of manual working men had crossed the class barrier to non-manual work; 38 per cent of men in non-manual jobs were brought up in the families of manual workers.18 As a result, the contraction in the number of ‘pure’ working-class and middleclass extended families is startling. In 1972 barely a third (34 per cent) of all households consisted of husband, father and father-in-law all in manual jobs; the figure for consistently non-manual households was 13 per cent. The remainder—over half of all extended families—were mixed.19 Most important of all, the entry of large numbers of women into the labour force— predominantly ‘white blouse’ work in offices—has produced a burgeoning number of mixed class households typically consisting of a husband in manual work with a wife in non-manual work: over a third of all two-worker households are mixed-class.20 If this datum is added to what we know about intergenerational mobility the proportion of pure working-class households would be smaller still. The significance of the preceding data is that voters in mixed-class situations are subject to partisan cross-pressures. Not unexpectedly, the result is a somewhat more evenly balanced Conservative and Labour share of the vote than is found in pure-class categories. However, the balance skews in favour of the Conservatives. The vote of those in mixed class situations reveals a consistent asymmetry: the Labour lead among manual workers

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exposed to some aspect of middle class life is always smaller than the Conservative lead among non-manual workers exposed to some aspect of working class life.21 The pattern occurs among the inter-generationally mobile, mixed-class marriages, working-class home owners, middle-class renters, white-collar trade unionists and the public sector salariat.22 Here, therefore, is one important source of the crumbling of the working-class Labour vote: the rapid erosion of the ‘pure’ working class. A second result of the fragmentation of social class is electoral fickleness. People subject to any form of conflicting pressures typically meet their dilemma by compromise, procrastination, wavering and withdrawal. Politics is no exception. There is evidence from both the 1979 and 1983 elections that those in mixed class situations were more likely to vote for the Liberal/ SDP Alliance, delay their voting decision until late in the campaign, change their voting intentions and identify less strongly with any party—but the differences are slight rather than marked.23 Here, therefore, is a clue to the increasing electoral volatility, which is chronicled in section IV. III. IDEOLOGICAL DEALIGNMENT Psychological and social attachments are not the only kind that bind electors to parties. Partisanship can be rooted in ideology. If a party’s supporters are overwhelmingly committed to the party’s objectives, and to its strategy in obtaining them, their allegiance will be unimpaired by dissatisfaction with any of the party’s particular policies, leaders or spells in office. Doubts and disappointments can be more easily swallowed if one believes in what the party stands for. Recent studies have established a close fit between respondents’ positions on the main issues of an election and the way they voted—a much closer fit than that found between social class (or any other social attribute) and the vote. For example, the British Election Study for 1979 found that 69 per cent of the three-party vote could be correctly predicted on the basis of a discriminant-analysis of voters’ issue positions, and most of the incorrect predictions applied to Liberal voters.24 Indeed, respondents’ views on the two main parties’ records on strikes, unemployment and prices were sufficient to explain 48 per cent of the variance in the three-party vote.25 Moreover, voters’ overall issue positions were an effective predictor of whether their vote deviated from their party identification, and whether it had changed from the previous election. One would therefore expect a loosening of party loyalties to occur, at both the individual and collective level, where the policy positions of a party and its nominal supporters diverged, and to a further loosening if the divergence grew. An ideological dealignment of this kind has occurred over the last twenty years between erstwhile Labour supporters and their party. Since the early 1950s26 Labour voters have been indifferent and sometimes actively hostile to aspects of Labour party policy and in favour, sometimes enthusiastically, of certain aspects of Conservative policy; whereas among Conservative voters there is no such policy mismatch. In this respect there has for long been an asymmetry in British politics. Labour wins votes despite its policies, the Conservatives because of theirs. In the case of the Conservative party, its voters usually

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prefer the policies to the party, and the party to the leaders; in the case of the Labour party the reverse is more usually true. This asymmetry is displayed in Figure 2, which shows the average location of different partisan groups on the eight ‘position’ issues that dominated the 1979 election, and their relation to the electorate’s perception of where the two main parties stood. It shows that Liberals and weak Labour partisans were ‘closer’ to the Conservative party’s perceived position than to the Labour party’s; it also shows that very/fairly strong Labour identifiers were much further away from the Labour party than their Conservative counter-parts were from the Conservative party. Separate configurations for each of the eight issues in the analysis reveal this pattern in six out of the eight cases.27 Findings of this kind, however, are not new. To establish a connection with the period of partisan dealignment, what needs to be explored is the long-term trend in the attitudes of each party’s supporters towards the party’s basic principles and strategies. Comparable data over the post-war period are hard to come by, but the attempt is made in Tables 7 and 8 which reveal a quite exceptional movement of opinion away from Labour’s traditional positions among Labour supporters over the last two decades. There has been a spectacular decline in support for the ‘collectivist trinity’ of public ownership, trade union power and social welfare. In 1964 a clear majority of Labour identifiers approved of further nationalisation (57 per cent) and repudiated the idea that trade unions were too powerful (59 per cent); an overwhelming majority wanted more spending on the social services (89 per cent). By 1979 support for each of these three tenets was down to barely a third, and support for all three together limited to under a quarter. Support for these three positions has fallen particularly sharply among a younger generation of the working class. On electorally less salient issues, like defence spending, the House of Lords, foreign aid and the restriction of dividends and profits, there was also a substantial if less spectacular drift to the Right. The electorate has moved to the Right while the Labour party has stood still—or even drifted to the Left. What was already an ideological gap between party and supporters in the 1960s had turned into an ideological chasm by the late 1970s. Labour’s decisive defeats in 1979 and 1983 cannot be unconnected. By contrast, the convergence between the policy positions of the Conservative party and its supporters has remained strong and stable throughout the 1960s and 1970s (see Table 8). What little change has occurred has consisted of a moderate movement to the ideological Right. The fit between official party policy and the views of Conservative party supporters has, if anything, grown closer. Thus the Conservative party’s vulnerability to a loss of support lies exclusively in its record in government (as in 1964 and February 1974), whereas Labour is subject to a long-term erosion of support in addition to any losses occasioned by a disappointing period in office. In this connection it is significant that since the war the Conservative party has always recovered its share of the vote after a full Parliament in opposition (as in 1950, 1970 and 1979) whereas Labour’s has fallen as much during periods of opposition (1951–64, 1970-Feb. 1974, 1979–83) as during periods of government.

Source: British Election Study, 1979 Cross-Section.

ELECTORAL CONFIGURATION OF PARTISAN GROUPS ON EIGHT POSITION ISSUES, 1979 GENERAL ELECTION

FIGURE 2

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TABLE 7 LONG-TERM TRENDS IN SUPPORT FOR LABOUR PARTY POLICIES AMONGST LABOUR SUPPORTERS

Note: Percentage bases exclude ‘don’t knows’. Source: Comparison of identical questions in Gallup survey, September 1957 and MORI survey, June 1980; cited in Martin Harrop, ‘Labour-voting Conservatives: A survey of Policy Differences between the Labour Party and Labour Voters’, in Robert M Worcester and Martin Harrop, eds., Political Communication (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), p.155.

IV. ELECTORAL VOLATILITY In the quarter-century after 1945 general elections displayed a rock-like stability in the major parties’ division of the vote. From 1950 to 1970 both parties’ share fell within the narrow six-point range of 43 to 49 per cent, and the average two-party swing was only 2.

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TABLE 8 LONG-TERM TRENDS IN SUPPORT FOR CONSERVATIVE PARTY POLICIES AMONGST CONSERVATIVE SUPPORTERS

* % saying cut back social services ‘a bit’ or ‘a lot’. Source: See Table 7.

8 per cent. The Liberal party’s vote share appeared to vary more, but this was due to the sharp changes in the number of seats it contested. The average share of the constituency vote won by Liberal candidates fluctuated within a band almost as narrow as that for major party candidates. (This stability refers, of course, to the net vote; the underlying gross change in the vote, especially that of the Liberals will have been greater.) As partisan and class ardour cooled, however, considerations other than habitual party and class loyalties began to influence the voting decisions of more and more electors. In particular, campaign-specific factors—the outgoing government’s record, the major issues of the day, the party leaders’ personal qualities, specific and perhaps quite trivial incidents—took on a greater significance. Judging from the opinion polls, the three-tofour week campaign has had a stronger impact in recent years. Until 1970 the average change in each party’s share of the vote between the first week of the campaign (according to the polls) and election day was 2.0 per cent. In February 1974 it was 2.8 per cent; in 1979, 3.9 per cent and in 1983, 5.3 per cent.28 In both 1970 and February 1974, the campaigns undoubtedly decided which party took office. Moreover, even the votes of those adhering to their usual party in the campaign are prone to waver more. Between 1964 and 1979 the proportion of voters who left their final voting decision until the campaign jumped from 17 per cent to 28 per cent, and the proportion claiming to have thought seriously of voting differently in the course of the campaign rose from 24 per cent to 31 per cent.29 The committed electorate has begun to make way for the hesitant electorate. The weakening of partisan ties has produced more switching between parties from one election to the next, and in by-elections and the opinion polls in the intervening period (see Table 9). The mean fall in the governing party’s vote share at by-elections, compared

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with the same constituencies at the preceding general election, rose from two per cent in the 1950–51 and 1951–55 governments, to nine per cent in 1955–59,14 per cent in 1960–64 and 17 per cent in 1966–70—a harbinger of the growing electoral volatility of the 1970s. In fact the fall in the governing party’s share of the vote at by-elections in the 1970s and 1980s appears to be slightly less serious than in the 1960s. However, when adjustment is made for the lower general election base against which the by-election support is compared, the fall turns out to be proportionately more serious, not less. Oscillations in the opinion polls have also become sharper, again usually at the expense of the governing party. The trend is cyclical rather than linear, but clear enough. In the three governments of the 1950s the average annual fluctuation was 11 per cent, nine per cent and 14 per cent respectively; in the three governments of the 1960s, 11 per cent, 18 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. In the 1970s they reached new heights—an annual average of 26 per cent under the 1974–79 Labour government. And under Mrs Thatcher’s first government the record was broken again. The opinion polls recorded 20 per cent leads for each of the Conservative party, Labour party and Liberal/SDP Alliance at some point between May 1979 and May 1983. The average annual fluctuation over the four years was 27 per cent. Inter-election volatility is more important than intra-election volatility. The British Election Study’s 1974–79 panel survey showed that over the four elections of the 1970s— a mere nine years—half the electors entitled to vote on all four occasions changed vote or abstained at least once, and often more.30 Volatility between pairs of consecutive elections was lower, but rising. In the three elections of 1964, 1966 and 1970 it averaged 32 per cent; in the three of February 1974, October 1974 and 1979 it averaged 37 per cent.31 Panel data are not available for the 1983 election but a comparison of recall data in 1979 and 1983 leaves little doubt that volatility in 1983 went up, equalling or exceeding the exceptional level of February 1974.32 Much of this switching cancels out, but not all. The two-party swing at general elections has steadily risen, from 2.0 per cent in the four elections of the 1950s, to 3.2 per cent in the two elections of the 1960s, 4.0 per cent in the 1970s (5.3 per cent if the two 1974 elections are counted as one) and 6.3 per cent in 1983 (see Table 9). The 12.9 per cent two-party swing to the Conservatives between October 1974 and 1983 is the sharpest turnround in a major party’s fortunes since Labour’s revival between 1935 and 1945. The ‘increasing volatility of the electorate’ might be a cliché, but like many clichés it is true. V. NATIONAL DIVERSITY From 1945 to 1970 the national map of a general election result resembled a calm pond disturbed by the tiniest of ripples. The stability of the major party division of the vote meant that election outcomes turned on tiny fluctuations of Conservative and Labour support; and these ripples of change were remarkably uniform, in magnitude as well as direction, across the whole of Great Britain. In every election at least three-quarters of the constituency swings were within two per cent of the national median, and usually only a

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TABLE 9 INDICATORS OF VOLATILITY OF SUPPORT BETWEEN THE CONSERVATIVE AND LABOUR PARTIES IN GENERAL ELECTIONS, BY-ELECTIONS, AND OPINION POLLS 1945–1983

Notes: 1. The national swing shown relates to the relevant pair of consecutive elections, e.g. 1951–55, 1966–70. Two-party swing is adopted, i.e. the change in the Conservative share of the two-party vote. 2. In the 1950–51 and 1964–66 parliaments Labour was in office but with only a tiny majority. Both periods continued to experience the electoral trends of the previous few years. 3. Range is measured by the difference between the highest and the lowest support for the Conservatives in any one month plus the difference between the highest and lowest support for Labour in any one month. The figures are calculated from David Butler and Jennie Freeman, British Political Facts 1900–1968, for the period until 1968 and from the Gallup Political Index, 1969–1983. 4. Calculations for by-elections between 1970 and February 1974 exclude the Speaker’s seat, Southampton Itchen. 5. There was only one by-election between February and October 1974. 6. This is a misleading figure since there was a substantial fall in the vote shares obtained by both the Conservative (• 7.4%) and Labour parties (• 5.9%). 7. If the three by-elections held during the Falklands War are excluded , the fall is 13.7 per cent. n.a.=information not available.

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handful of seats swung against the national trend (except in 1959). To know the swing in Cornwall was to know, within a percentage or two, the swing in Caithness. The Kingdom was not United politically; but at elections it responded as one nation. The party elected to govern would be weak in some regions—Labour in the South East, the Conservatives in the North East—but it could claim that the movement of opinion towards it was national, not local. In that sense, at least, it received a general mandate. The new electoral turbulence of the 1970s was accompanied by a geographical unevenness unknown for fifty years. The two elections of 1974 were an early signal. In Scotland the Nationalists ate into Conservative support to become the second party in votes (but not seats) and the main challenger to Labour in urban and industrial areas. In suburban and rural England, particularly in the South, the Liberals usually replaced Labour as the second party. The 1979 general election revealed geographical differences to even better effect, however, because by then the minor parties were generally in retreat. The movement to the Conservatives showed exceptional regional variations by post-war standards. South of a line running roughly from the Humber to the Mersey (including Wales) the average swing was 6.4 per cent. North of that line it was 2.9 per cent (3.8 per cent in Northern England but only 0.7 per cent in Scotland). Within each region, too, there were unusually marked variations from one constituency to another. It was no longer the case that ‘as goes Cornwall, so goes Caithness’ but rather ‘as goes Cornwall, so too, perhaps goes part of Devon’. In the outer suburbs, smaller towns and countryside the Conservatives advanced further than in the major industrial conurbations. And, sub-dividing again, there were consistently higher than average swings to the Conservatives in some types of community such as New Towns and ‘affluent-worker’ seats than in others such as university towns and areas of Asian and West Indian settlement. In no previous post-war election had so many local factors acted as a brake or accelerator on the national swing—a reflection, perhaps, of the weakening grip of partisan loyalty.33 The overall picture to emerge was of a ‘two-nation’ election. The Conservatives advanced most where there was economic expansion and security, least where there was deprivation and decline. Preliminary analysis of the 1983 election suggests a similar pattern. Above the Humber-Mersey line the swing to the Conservatives was 2.8 per cent; below it, 4.4 per cent. The two regions with the lowest swings were the North West (1.5 per cent) and Scotland (1.8 per cent); the two with the highest the South East (5.4 per cent) and East Anglia (5.9 per cent). Variations within regions also appear to have followed the 1979 pattern. In the countryside and mixed urban-rural areas the drop in the Labour vote was twice that in the inner cities. Labour’s loss of votes in constituencies with high unemployment was half that in constituencies with low employment. In areas where under one household in ten was black the Labour vote fell 9.8 percentage points; in areas where more than one household in five was black, it fell by only 6.7 percentage points. Where there was prosperity, Labour shrivelled; where there was decline, it proved a sturdier plant.34 A painstaking analysis by Steed and Curtice shows that many of the local factors so conspicuous in 1979 and 1983 have in fact been operating since the 1960s.35 As the geographical axis of economic growth has tilted, so too has that of party support. At first

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very gradually, but recently in a more pronounced manner, the Conservative and Labour vote has become geographically polarised. The Conservative party is increasingly the party of the South and Midlands, the suburbs, small towns and countryside. Labour is increasingly the party of the North and Scotland, the large towns (other than London and Bristol), the inner city areas and the outer-fringe council estates. The accumulation and overlapping of these movements have produced major transformations in the electoral map. For example, between 1955 and 1979 rural and small town constituencies in the South and Midlands swung 14 per cent to the Conservatives. During the same period big city Scotland swung 18 per cent—to Labour.35 By 1983 that discrepancy had grown wider still. As a result of these glacial changes, the Conservative party has virtually ceased to represent the urban North. In 1983 there were no Conservative MPs for Glasgow, Liverpool or Hull and only one in each of Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle and Bradford (but 56 out of 84 in London). The number of Conservative MPs with direct knowledge of high unemployment will be minimal, despite their large number at Westminster. Only one of the sixteen English members of the 1983 cabinet represents a constituency with unemployment above the national average.36 The geographical base of the Parliamentary Labour Party is even more lopsided. There are 183 seats—over a quarter of the UK total—in the South outside London. Of these only three (Bristol South, Ipswich and Thurrock) elected Labour MPs. Within London Labour was largely reduced to the inner city area, taking only three outer London seats (Barking, Dagenham, Southall). In 1983 it had become the third party throughout the South, taking 22 per cent of the vote, seven per cent behind the Lib/SDP Alliance. Even among manual workers in the South Labour took third place (26 per cent). It had become a sectional party—the party of one class within one region. VI. FROM MALIGN EXAGGERATION TO MALIGN DISTORTION: THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM Under the single-member, simple plurality electoral system (henceforward SMSP), in Britain as elsewhere, the relation between votes and seats has always been disproportional. In particular, SMSP most over-rewards the party winning the largest number of votes; magnifies small shifts of the national vote into a larger turnover of seats; and penalises the smaller parties, notably those like the Liberals whose support is spread fairly evenly rather than concentrated in local areas. Advocates of SMSP argue, however, that what the system lacks in proportionality it more than makes up in its capacity to produce single-party majorities in the Commons and thus, it is inferred, governments that are effective, enduring and clearly accountable. On no occasion between 1945 and 1970 did a party fail to obtain an overall parliamentary majority; only once, in 1951, was the party leading in votes (Labour) the runner-up in seats; and only two elections produced a parliamentary majority too small to last a full Parliament (1950, 1964). The Liberal party was persistently under-represented, but its vote only exceeded 10 per cent at one election

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(1964); such minor injustice, it was argued, was a small price to pay for the nearguarantee of strong and stable government. The full effects which flow from the exaggerative properties of the SMSP system depend on an ample supply of marginal seats. Since 1970 that supply has dwindled. The discoverers of this fact report: in the 1970s both major parties won more seats by large two-party majorities: the distribution of the two-party vote widened and flattened. Before 1974 it was unimodal with a peak near its centre; the distribution is now bimodal with peaks where both parties win safe seats by moderately safe majorities.37 Curtice and Steed calculated that the number of marginal seats (defined as those in which the standardised Conservative share of the two-party vote at an election ranged from 45 to 55 per cent) fell from 166 in 1955 to 108 in 1979. The boundary revisions which preceded the 1983 election reduced the number of marginal seats yet further. There appear to be three reasons for the decline of marginal seats. One is the reinforcing relationship between economic growth or decline, geographical area, and prior party strength, to which reference was made in the preceding section. The long-term swing to the Conservatives has been in areas of economic expansion which tend to be dominated by the Conservatives. The long-term swing to Labour has been in areas of economic decline which have for a generation been dominated by the Labour party. Thus the two parties have consolidated their hold on their own ‘natural’ territory while losing what toehold they once had in ‘enemy’ territory. Patterns of migration are the second reason. The upwardly mobile, skilled and largely white working class, which is relatively Conservative, have left the inner cities, leaving behind the predominantly Labour population of the unemployed, the poor, Blacks and welfare dependents—a movement similar to that in the Northern USA in the 1950s. In rural areas mechanisation and low wages have driven out agricultural workers whose cottages have been taken over by the retired or commuting (and Conservative) middle classes. The third reason is more technical. When minor parties gain votes they usually do so at the relative expense of the weaker of the two major parties in a constituency, i.e. of Labour in suburban and rural Britain, of the Conservatives in metropolitan Britain. This results in a swing, especially a two-party swing, to the stronger of the major parties. Thus Berrington reports for the 1983 election average two-party swings of 9.3 per cent in safe Conservative seats, 5.3 per cent in marginal Labour seats but only 1.5 per cent in safe Labour seats (all in England only).38 Despite the Conservatives’ exceptionally large majority in 1983, the much-vaunted capacity of the electoral system to manufacture parliamentary majorities out of electoral minorities has, in fact, declined. The number of seats changing hands between the major parties for every one per cent change in the ratio of their votes has fallen from 17 in 1955 to 10 in 1979 (the difference to one party’s majority over the other falling from 34 to 20).39 This decline increases the chances of a hung Parliament in a period when governments are more vulnerable than before to losses in by-elections and when the minor parties that might exploit such a situation include a number- the Irish parties, the SNP,

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Plaid Cymru—whose commitment to the Westminster model is less than full-hearted. However, greater electoral volatility has a contradictory effect, increasing the chances of a landslide. Since 1970 the virtues of the SMSP system have been less in evidence, the yices more marked. In February 1974 the system failed to produce an overall parliamentary majority for any one party, or indeed for any two parties in combination. Moreover, the party with the most votes (the Conservatives) came second in the number of seats gained. In October 1974 Labour had a 3.4 percentage majority of votes over the Conservatives but a majority in the Commons of only three, which disappeared through by-election losses and backbench defections after two-and-a-half years. Over the same period election results have become more disproportionate. We can measure disproportionality by averaging the difference between the percentage of votes and the percentage of seats obtained by each of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal and other parties at an election. Table 10 shows that between 1945 and 1970 disproportionality never exceeded 7.0 per cent and averaged 4.3 per cent across the eight elections. In the four elections since 1970 disproportionality has always exceeded 7.0 per cent and averaged 9.6 per cent. The 1983 election was the least proportional of all. The Conservative share of the vote fell by 1.5 percentage points but its parliamentary majority rose from 44 to 144. The Labour party won 2.2 percentage points more of the vote than the Alliance but nine times as many seats. The Alliance took 25.4 per cent of the vote but only 3.5 per cent of the seats. An exaggerative electoral system had turned into a radically distortive one. VII. SOME CONCLUSIONS AND A PARADOX The process of partisan dealignment first detected a decade ago has since advanced further. A variety of indicators-party membership, the two-party share of the electorate, the incidence and strength of party idenfication, negative voting, electoral volatility at and between elections, class voting— all point in the same direction. The main difference between the 1980s and 1970s is that the particular vulnerability of Labour, which was only foreseen a decade ago, has now come to pass. In a period of dealignment the pool of relatively unattached electors swells: more voters are ‘up for grabs’. But this does not necessarily undermine the established twoparty system, let alone realign it in a predictable direction. The two parties may take voters from each other. If they do it simultaneously, turbulence in the electorate can still produce a stable outcome (stable dealignment). If they take turns, landslide elections will become more frequent (unstable dealignment). If one party grabs and then maintains its new supporters, the existing two-party system will survive, although the party balance will undergo an enduring change (two-party realignment). If one or more additional parties ‘scoop the pool’ the two-party system is transformed into either a three-party or multiparty system (new party system), or, if one of the old parties withers away, into a different two-party system. Dealignment makes realignment more likely, but neither guarantees its occurrence nor determines its shape.

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TABLE 10 SHARE OF THE VOTE AND SHARE OF SEATS UNDER BRITAIN’S ELECTORAL SYSTEM, 1945 TO 1983

Notes: 1. i.e. the differences between the share of parliamentary seats and the share of the UK vote obtained by each party. 2. Lib/SDP Alliance in 1983. 3. The small number of Liberal candidates in some elections e.g. 1951, 1955 means that the exaggerative properties of the electoral system are not fully reflected in the figures for such elections.

None of these neat and tidy re-adjustments to the British party system has taken place so far and it is impossible to know which, if any, will. The most frequently discussed possibility is the gradual replacement of the Labour party by the Liberal/SDP Alliance. After the 1983 election, the reduction of Labour to permanent minority status is something that cannot be dismissed out of hand. The task of winning a parliamentary majority at the next election is certainly formidable. Labour would need to gain 117 seats, almost all from the Conservatives, even though it is now in second place to the Conservatives in only 125 seats; and it would need a swing of about 11 per cent, which is half as much again as any party has obtained at any post-war election. Yet it would be wildly premature to predict a realignment on the Left of the party system. Despite its exceptionally high vote in the 1983 election— the Centre’s best for sixty years—the Liberal/SDP Alliance has not so far established itself as a major party, let alone the second party, in the minds of the electorate.40 In structure and motivation SDP support closely resembles what has been reported about the Liberal vote in the past. In both cases electoral support appears to be as shallow as it is wide. By and large their voters are

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Conservative and (especially in 1983) Labour renegades, not committed partisans; they have failed to mobilise a distinctive social base; and they are not yet the beneficiary of any major new issue conflict or social cleavage which cuts across existing partisan divisions. Their appeal appears to be negative and diffuse, rather than positive and specific; to be based on their leadership, style and sheer novelty rather than policies and ideology. Instead of creating a new social and ideological constituency, the SDP seems to have attracted, at least temporarily, part of the large, volatile, potential Liberal vote which has existed in Britain for many years. None of this proves that the Alliance’s spectacular electoral successes in 1981–82, and more modest advance in 1983, will be as transient as previous Liberal revivals. For one thing, past cycles of Liberal support have moved along an upward spiral. Each successive Liberal peak since the late 1950s has reached higher, lasted longer and subsided less than its predecessor. In time, moreover, as a distinctive programme develops, the Alliance might mobilise firmer support around particular interests, issues and institutions. A comparison of the motivation of their support in February 1974 (the time of the previous Liberal surge) and 1983 hints at just such a ‘firming up’: for example, approval of the party’s policies was much more prevalent in 1983.41 Nor should we exclude the possibility that in future elections the consolidation of support around particular interests and issues will no longer be necessary to realign the party system. The probability of such a realignment is certainly stronger than at any time since the 1920s. The 1983 election was not an earthquake, but in parts of the country it was a blitz. It destroyed much of the old party landscape. Whether or not that landscape is re-built much as before is an open question. Certainly the ground has been sufficiently razed for a quite new architecture to take its place. These reflections, however, ignore a paradox at the heart of partisan dealignment in Britain. The electorate’s temper has changed, but the electoral system’s capacity to represent those changes, and the party system’s capacity adapt to them, has declined. The electorate is increasingly volatile, but the number of seats that change hands for any given swing has fallen. The electorate has grown increasingly disenchanted with the two governing parties, especially Labour, yet accidents of geography and the working of the SMSP system have entrenched the two parties even more securely in their strongholds. The voting threshhold for a significant parliamentary breakthrough by new parties remains very high. Voting along class lines is on the decline; yet one of the parties heavily relies on the votes of a single class. The majority of the working class has ceased to vote Labour but most Labour MPs represent overwhelmingly working class areas. Both parties, as a result, may cease to be broad, national coalitions of interests. The Conservative party has less need: representing so much of the expanding South it can dispense with Scotland; with the vote of the ‘middle mass’ in its pocket it can ignore the unemployed and what remains of the traditional working class. The Labour party has the greater need, but also the greater difficulties. To regain office it must forge a new confederation of support. But it may find it increasingly difficult to bridge the interests of the state-dependent lumpen proletariat (the unemployed, the unskilled, blacks, single parents, the disabled and the poor) on whose votes it increasingly depends and the state-funding skilled working class and salariat whose votes it must regain.

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The British electorate appears to be less fitted to the established two-party system than at any time since the war. The electoral system, however, is a powerful mechanism for containing Britain’s new and volatile electoral forces within the two-party mould. There was a situation, to some extent similar, to some extent different, in the 1920s. Then the emerging electoral forces, unleashed by World War I and the extension of the franchise, were strong enough to realign the party system. Whether today’s dealigned electorate will break its bonds awaits the next election. NOTES 1. See Ivor Crewe, ‘Do Butler and Stokes Really Explain Political Change in Britain?’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.2, No.1, (March 1974), pp.47–92, and Ivor Crewe, Bo Särlvik and James Alt, ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain, 1964–1974’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.7, No.2, (April 1977), pp. 129–90. For an early warning of what was to come see David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp.206–8. A few passages in this article are heavily dependent on parts of the two earlier articles as well as on Ivor Crewe, ‘Is Britain’s s Two-Party System Really About to Crumble?’, Electoral Studies, Vol.1, No.3, (Dec. 1982), pp.275–313, and Bo Särlvik and Ivor Crewe, Decade of Dealignment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)—the inevitable consequence of writing a follow-up to previous work. 2. The average percentage of the constituency vote obtained by each party’s candidates in opposed seats can be found (and can only be found) in David Butler and Anne Sloman, British Political Facts 1900–1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980) pp.206–9. 3. The standing of the Prime Minister and Opposition leader in the Gallup polls can be found in Norman Webb and Robert Wybrow (eds.), The Gallup Report (London: Sphere Books, 1981), Appendix E. 4. See Dick Leonard, Paying for Party Politics: The Case for Public Subsidies, PEP Vol.XLI, Broadsheet No.555 (London: Political and Economic Planning, Sept. 1975), pp.2–3; Report of the Committee on Financial Aid to Political Parties (Houghton Report), (London: HMSO Cmnd 6601, August 1976), pp.31–32; and ‘Are More People Joining the Parties?’, New Society (no author), 16 April 1981, p.103. 5. Self-declared strength of party identification tends to be higher in surveys conducted close to general elections than in mid-term. (See Butler and Stokes, op.cit., p.470.) The interviewing for the election surveys in 1964, 1966, 1970, 1974 and 1979 was done a few weeks after the general election, whereas that for the 1983 election was done on the eve and day of polling. 6. Butler and Stokes, op.cit., pp.193–205. 7. For a demonstration of why this is so, see Särlvik and Crewe, Decade of Dealignment, p.89. 8. For more details, see the preliminary report on the BBC/Gallup survey of the 1983 election, by this author, in the Guardian 13 June and 14 June 1983. A slightly expanded version of the two articles appears in Public Opinion, June/July 1983. For the figures from MORI see The Economist 18–24 June 1983. 9. The major studies of working-class Conservatism at the time are Eric A.Nordlinger, The Working-Class Tories (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967) and Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver, Angels in Marble (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1968). See also Bob Jessop, Traditionalism, Conservatism and the British Political Culture (London: George Allen & Unwin,

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10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

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1974). On working-class authoritarianism, see Seymour Lipset, Political Man (London: Mercury Books, 1963), Chapter 4. See Ivor Crewe, ‘Why the Conservatives Won’, in Howard Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 1979 (Washington and London: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1981) especially pp.293–6. See W.L.Miller, ‘Social Class and Party Choice in England: A New Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.8, No.3, (July 1978), pp.257–84 and ‘Class, Region and Strata at the British Election’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXII, No.4, (Autumn 1979), pp.376–82. See Richard Rose, ‘Class Does Not Equal Party’, Studies in Public Policy No.74 (Glasgow: Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1980) especially Table 14; Mark Franklin, ‘The Rise of Issue Voting in British Elections’, Strathclyde Papers on Government and Politics No.3 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, Department of Politics, 1983); Jonathan Kelley, Ian McAllister and Anthony Mughan, ‘The Changing Electoral Salience of Class: England, 1964–79’, Working Papers in Sociology (Canberra: Australian National University, Institute of Advanced Studies, 1982). Särlvik and Crewe, op.cit., pp.93–103, 106–10. See Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The Political Implications of Sectoral Cleavages and the Growth of State Employment’, Political Studies, XXVIII, Nos. 3 and 4 (Sept. and Dec. 1980) pp.364–83 and 527–49. These figures are taken from an analysis of the BBC/Gallup survey of the 1983 election. Särlvik and Crewe, op.cit., p.107. The figures in the preceding passage are all taken from Central Statistical Office, Social Trends 13 (1983 Edition), (London: HMSO, 1982), pp.115 (home ownership), 72 (income tax) and 152 (trade union membership). See Anthony Heath, Social Mobility (London: Fontana, 1981), pp.54, 63. A generation earlier, in the late 1940s, the proportion of manual working fathers whose sons held nonmanual jobs was 21 per cent (ibid, p.86). Ibid., p.240. See Nicky Britten and Anthony Heath, ‘Women, Men and Social Class’ (Department of Community Health, University of Bristol, 1982, mimeo), Table 3. Forty per cent of manual worker husbands with working wives were married to a non-manual worker. Anthony Heath, op.cit., pp.233–45; Britten and Heath, op.cit., Diagrams 12 and 13. These conclusions are derived from a separate analysis of the 1979 British Election Study and 1983 BBC/Gallup survey (no table). See Ivor Crewe, ‘Electoral Volatility in Britain Since 1945’, paper presented to the Workshop on Electoral Volatility in Western Democracies, Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research, Lancaster, March–April 1983, Table 22. Särlvik and Crewe, op.cit., p.286. Ibid., p.266. See, for example, R.S. Milne and H.C.McKenzie, Marginal Seat, 1955 (London: Hansard Society, 1958), pp.117–21. The issues were all ones on which the respondents were first asked to choose between two ‘positions’ and then say how strongly he or she supported that position. The eight issues covered unemployment policy (reliance on state or market); the legal reform of trade union activities; incomes policy vs. free collective bargaining; nationalisation vs. de-nationalisation; cut back vs. extend social services; ending of immigration vs. more aid to urban areas as solution to race relations; cut taxes vs. maintain public services, and co-operation vs. non-co-

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28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

operation in the EEC. Each issue was converted into a seven-point scale, from left (low score) to right (high score). (The last two were the exceptions to the general pattern.) It is important to appreciate some of the limits to this method of analysis. For one thing, it is difficult to apply to those issues (sometimes described as ‘valence’ as opposed to ‘position’ issues) on which the electorate shares a near-identical goal and disagrees only on the relative ability of the parties to achieve it, e.g. a reduction in the rate of inflation or crime. On these issues one can only discover which party is preferred by electors. For another, not all ‘position’ issues are uni-dimensional: although the issue of nationalisation can be represented by a line running from ‘nationalise the lot’ to ‘de-nationalise the lot’, there would be no obviously correct location for the voter who believed in nationalising some industries and de-nationalising others. Thirdly, the ‘position’ on the line for any group of electors is only the average of a scatter of positions of the individuals composing the group; and the degree of scatter itself varies across issues and between groups. Fourthly, the position attributed to the two parties is based on the perceptions of the electorate as a whole, not on those of a particular sub-group. However, perceptions of the two parties’ positions do not vary sufficiently to affect the conclusions drawn in the text. These and other technical points are discussed in more detail in Ivor Crewe and Bo Särlvik, ‘Popular Attitudes and the Conservative Party’ in Zig Layton-Henry (ed.), Conservative Party Politics (London: Macmillan, 1979). Details of the movement of opinion polls during election campaigns can be found in the ‘Nuffield series’ of books entitled The British General Election of…, by David Butler and a coauthor (always published by Macmillan, London, in the year after the election) and in the chapters by Richard Rose in Howard R.Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls: The Parliamentary Elections of 1974 (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1975) and Howard R.Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls, 1979. These figures are taken from the series of British Election Studies conducted from 1964 to 1979. See Ivor Crewe, ‘Party and Public in Britain and the USA’ in Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), British and American Party Systems Compared (New York: Praeger, 1983). Särlvik and Crewe, op.cit., p.68. Ibid., p.62. In the BBC/Gallup eve and day of election survey in 1979, 28 per cent of those entitled to vote in both the October 1974 and the 1979 elections claimed to have switched; in the BBC/ Gallup survey for 1983 the proportion was 36 per cent. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that the actual amount of switching, including movements to and from abstention, as measured by a panel survey, would have been higher in 1983 than 1979. The standard deviation of constituency swings was the largest since the election of 1950. For an extended discussion of the point, see John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘An Analysis of the Voting’, in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (London: Macmillan, 1980), especially pp.393–403. These figures are taken from the preliminary analysis of constituency results reported in the Sunday Times, 11 June 1983, undertaken by John Curtice and Clive Payne of Nuffield College, Oxford. See John Curtice and Michael Steed, ‘Electoral Choice and the Production of Government: The Changing Operation of the Electoral System in the United Kingdom since 1955’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 12, No.3, (July 1982), pp.249–98, especially 256–82. The unemployment figures are those for 1981, as reported in Office of Population Census and Surveys, Census 1981: Parliamentary Constituency Monitors (1983 Boundaries), Great Britain (London: Government Statistical Service, 1983).

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37. Curtice and Steed, loc.cit., p.269. 38. Hugh Berrington, ‘How the Cracks Got Deeper’, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 June 1983, p.6. 39. Curtice and Steed, loc.cit., p.268. The boundary revisions reduced the number of marginal seats yet further. See Ivor Crewe, ‘The Partisan Impact of the Boundary Revisions’, in The BBC/ITN Guide to the New Parliamentary Constituencies (Chicester: Parliamentary Research Services, 1983), pp.1–14, especially pp.6–7. 40. For a detailed exposition of this argument, see Ivor Crewe, ‘Is Britain’s Two Party System Really About to Crumble?’, and for similar appraisals of the Liberal party’s electoral appeal, see John Curtice, ‘Liberal Voters and the Alliance: Realignment or Protest?’ in Vernon Bogdanor (ed.), Liberal Party Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) pp.99–122, and Hilde Himmelweit, How Voters Decide (London: Academic Press, 1981), Chapter 10. 41. In February 1974 there was not a single issue on which the Liberal party was the most preferred party among Liberal voters; not even one in four Liberal voters could be mustered to choose their own party as best able to deal with any of eight issues. In 1983 the Liberal/SDP Alliance was the most preferred party among its voters on all of the ten issues on which questions were asked in the BBC/Gallup survey.

Central-Local Government Relations: The Irresistible Rise of Centralised Power Mike Goldsmith and Ken Newton

INTRODUCTION If an extra-terrestrial had visited Britain in 1951 and happened to read a textbook on British govenment, he would have found little, if any, mention of local government and would have dismissed it as quite unimportant. Local government was viewed as administration, concerned overwhelmingly with the delivery of services to the locality. At best, it was ‘low politics’, nothing of real concern to those in central government, something which could safely be left to local worthies to oversee, assisted by their competent, apolitical administrative aides. Returning 30 years later he would have found local government at the very centre of a fierce political controversy—politicians haranguing each other, front-page articles, television programmes, public meetings, protest marches, newspaper advertisements accusing the government of bad faith and of even worse practice, and a small academic industry pouring forth on the subject. What has caused this major eruption of interest and activity in the subject of local government? This article will argue that the old consensual politics of the post-war years have been replaced by suspicion, hostility, and outright conflict because the last decade or so has seen a major re-structuring of central-local government relations resulting in a huge shift in the balance of power between centre and locality. Central government has always been powerful in Britain, which, with France, is one of the most highly centralised, unitary states in the western world, but in the last few years the centre has further consolidated its power by increasing its legal, political, and financial control over local authorities. These now show clear signs of becoming little more than agents of the centre, though like most subordinates they retain some discretion over the public services they deliver. This article traces the main stages in this process of constitutional restructuring and the subsequent centralisation of power. But first, it is necessary to explain why local government has moved from its place as an administrative backwater to become a political centrepiece. The reasons are quite simple. Local government has become big government in all senses. In areal terms, British local authorities are large; the Highlands Region of Scotland is 9,700 square miles, almost as large as Belgium. In population terms they are, by international standards, even larger; the Greater London Council has just under seven million residents— more than Denmark, Finland, Norway, or Switzerland. And in

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financial terms they are massive. In 1981, local government spent £33.5 billion pounds, more than the GDP of Finland or Norway. In service terms, local government in Britain is responsible for all the public services except defence, social security, health and water. In no other large industrial nation in the west is the local government system charged with the exclusive responsibility of such a wide-ranging, important, and expensive range of public services. Local government is thus a crucial part of the British governmental machine, and one in which central government takes a close interest. Beyond contributing large sums towards the cost of these services, however, central government does rather little. It does not, for example, construct schools, teach pupils, build houses, provide libraries, collect refuse, run leisure centres, draw up plans, oversee the police, or organise fire services. As Richard Crossman observed in his famous diaries, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (of which he was Minister at one point) had not actually built a single house in its entire history. Local government’s role in the life of the nation is not limited to the provision of services, however, no matter how important these might be. It has another, and some say an even more important function, as the second tier of democratic government. Constitutional theorists have traditionally argued that a democratically elected system of local government is crucial, particularly in a state such as Britain which is unitary, has no written constitution, and no Bill of Rights, and where the power of central government can easily threaten traditional rights and liberties unless locally elected representatives provide an effective set of checks and balances. And because local government is now big business, it has also become markedly more partisan in recent years. All parties, but particularly the Labour and Conservative parties, contest far more local elections, whilst more councils are organised on party lines than was true before the local government reorganisation of 1972. This change is particularly noticeable in the more rural shire counties and districts, once numerically dominated by Independent, non-party councillors. One feature of this development is the emergence of a new type of political leadership, as personified by people like Ken Livingstone, Labour leader of the GLC. He represents a new kind of party leader, rather different from the kind of public person who led the old local authorities. The new style leader is both more professional as a politician and more dependent on his party for his continued stay in office than his earlier counterpart. Changes such as these have all helped to politicise local government, bringing out conflicts which had previously either been implicit or else had lain dormant under the old local government system. They have also helped increase the tension and conflict between both levels of government in Britain. Although this conflict is at its most extreme when Labour councils intent on maintaining or extending services come into conflict with a Conservative central government intent on cutting local expenditure levels, the debate has been a general one, with many Conservative authorities extremely unhappy with the centre’s attempts at controlling their activities, as the united opposition to the 1982 Finance Act illustrates. As a result, local government is both more partisan and its relations with central government more politicised than at any other time since the Second World War.

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Central government, however, has strong interests in controlling the behaviour of local authorities, for three main reasons. First, there is its concern with the overall level of public expenditure (of which local government expenditure is a large part) and the implications this has for macro-economic policy and general control over the economy. The relationship between local authority current expenditure and macro-economic policy is a matter for some debate, but clearly local government borrowing has implications for the overall level of government borrowing, even though control over local authority capital expenditure has always been tight and has tightened in recent years. Nevertheless, central government does have a major concern for economic management, and, insofar as the activities of local government affect the centre’s ability to manage the economy, then the centre can reasonably be expected to seek some control over local authorities. Such a concern has always been accepted by local government, which, with one or two exceptions, has managed to keep its level of expenditure closer to target than has central government. Second, the centre has an interest because its financial contribution derives from taxes paid at the national level by taxpayers. It reflects a concern to see that central government’s money is spent efficiently and economically. Third, since central government is frequently the instigator of services subsequently provided by local government, it can claim a concern with local authority behaviour to see that local authorities actually provide the services in the way central government intends. The sale of council houses or the introduction of comprehensive schools both provide examples. Normal practice is for the relevant government department to issue advice notes and circulars or to give informal advice, though ultimately the centre can either introduce new legislation or else seek backing from the courts for its actions. The first and second of these concerns have been given added strength as a result of the impact which first inflation and second economic recession have had on central government’s control over the economy and its ability to finance the increase in the cost of its welfare services. It is particularly in this context that our examination of the recent restructuring of central-local government relations takes place. But party political and service dimensions are also there, not quite to the forefront, but not unimportant, especially for the activities of individual local authorities or specific functions. In a strange sort of way, financial, political and service pressures for central control came together for the first time in the 1970s: local government, as we shall see, is still recovering from the effects of these pressures in the 1980s. CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL ISSUES Many of the issues involving central-local government relations over the last two decades have involved a major restructuring of local government which has resulted in a loss of autonomy, or better, discretion, on the part of local government, on the one hand, and a continuing centralisation of British government on the other, with the consequent domination of the centre over the localities. The pace of this process has quickened since the mid 1970s, as economic recession and the subsequent cutback in governmental services have been felt more strongly. Cutback has been felt particularly at the local

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government level, since it is local authorities who are the main providers of governmental services. Nevertheless, the overall process has been running throughout the twentieth century, and, with regard to local government is perhaps most noticeable with debates over the boundaries and functions of local government which culminated in the reforms of 1972. All discussions of local government reform centre around the twin competing criteria of democracy and efficiency. Local government ought to be democratic (which in British terms means it ought to be a good representative, accountable system of government), and it ought to be efficient (which in British terms generally means that it ought to be economic i.e. lowest financial cost, though with overtones of technical efficiency and economies of scale). The 1972 reforms acknowledge both criteria, though the public debates hid a number of other reasons why reform was thought to be necessary. First, as Sharpe1 notes, the 1972 Act was designed to suit the Conservative party rather than the public, who at best were indifferent to the prospect of change. Clearly, as the narrowlydrawn boundaries of the metropolitan areas illustrate, party political considerations lay behind the 1972 Act. To a large extent, as Denver and Bristow2 have demonstrated, the gerrymander has proved successful, with 60 per cent of local authorities likely to have Conservative-led councils. But there have been unexpected hiccups, not least in some shire counties (e.g. Lancashire and Cheshire in 1981), and some of the metropolitan authorities have also experienced unexpected changes of political control. The point, however, is that by and large the political gerrymander involved in the 1972 Act has worked, though with one or two conspicuous exceptions sufficiently strong to have raised the political hackles of the Conservative party when it came to power in 1979. If the drawing of boundaries reflected partisan concern, then the reduction in the number of authorities and the allocation of functions between levels reflected bureaucratic concerns with both local efficiency and central control. The larger central government departments were active participants in the debate on reform; the first feature of reform, of which these departments were powerful advocates, was a massive reduction in the number of authorities (from about 1400 to 40), and a single-tier system. Sharpe argues that one reason why the centre favoured this view was because the departments wanted to head off regionalism and possible devolution, and also because a smaller number of authorities would enable it to maintain tighter control over what local authorities do.3 As Sharpe notes, this reason is rarely explicitly discussed in public, although both the Treasury in evidence to the Redcliffe-Maud Commission, and Peter Walker when introducing the 1972 Bill, talked of the need for a ‘closer working relationship’; a ‘very effective’ one, which would ensure ‘basic coordination in central and local government thinking, and few difficulties’.4 Here are early shades of a command rhetoric in Conservative and bureaucratic thinking which was to emerge more openly later in the decade. But just as the partisan boundary solution was flawed, so were the centre’s hopes of a system which would be easier to control. First, instead of a unitary solution, Peter Walker went for a two-tier system which was acceptable to the Conservative-dominated shire counties and rural districts, as well as being supported by their national associations, the County Councils Association and the Rural District Councils Association.

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Furthermore, he adopted the London solution for the metropolitan areas: a weak upper tier, with tightly drawn spatial boundaries, and most of the functions located at the lower tier. So instead of 30 to 40 authorities to deal with, the centre has nearer 400 in England and Wales. Second, the creation of larger local authorities transformed much of the local government into big business, and particularly strengthened the local authority associations at the apex of the local government world. Ironically, one of the intentions of the RedcliffeMaud Commission was to strengthen local government vis à vis the centre, something with which the latter was not entirely in sympathy. It could be argued that the early years after reform saw a stronger local government than the centre, particularly the Treasury, desired. The result was a second strategy in the restructuring of local government, namely the creation of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance (CCLGF). This body, together with its subordinate working groups, provides an elaborate organisation in which the levels of central government grants are determined through a process of bargaining and negotiation between the two sides. Rhodes5 et al. have made an extensive study of the CCLGF in which they argue that its creation was part of central government’s strategy to co-opt local government into central structures and processes, but, with the election of a Conservative government committed to cutting public expenditure, the CCLGF has become somewhat redundant. In the early 1970s, negotiations over grant between the local authority associations and government had resulted in considerable growth in local government expenditure. As a result, government, and particularly the Treasury, was concerned to bring such expenditure under tighter control and particularly to restrain its rate of growth. With the reintroduction of cash limits on government expenditure in 1974, the centre felt the time was right to secure the needed control over expenditure by agreement, and a proposal to create the CCLGF was put forward, initially at the Treasury’s suggestion. It was seen as a way of establishing agreement on how to curb continuing public expenditure growth. The Associations reacted favourably, coming to the first meetings of the Consultative Council in 1975 with apparently new opportunities to influence macro-economic policy as well as the general policies affecting local government. In the years that followed up until 1979, the CCLGF increasingly found its deliberations dominated by the language of cutback and recession. The grant negotiations, by far and away the central element in the CCLGF’s work, became increasingly difficult, with increasing disagreement between the two sides. The Associations too increasingly disagreed amongst themselves and became disillusioned about their work on the Public Expenditure Survey. All this occurred despite the fact that economic circumstances appeared to have improved and local government expenditure was also under control: cuts, however unwelcome, were achieved and there was even underspending by local government as a whole. The primary weakness of the CCLGF lay as much in interassociation conflict, particularly over the working and consequences of the multiple regression analysis used as the method of distribution for the needs element of the grant. The election of a Conservative government in 1979, with its commitment to cut public expenditure, aggravated the situation. If previous consultation had been unsatisfactory, at least it had been consultation: what followed was direction, with CCLGF meetings doing

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little more than providing a symbolic opportunity for participation. The privileged position which the Associations thought they had obtained by joining the CCLGF disappeared: the new government simply and unilaterally changed the rules of the game, particularly with the introduction of the new block grant and the sanctions on overspending which we discuss later. Another stage in the restructuring of central-local government was complete. This time it was the financial relationship which changed, moving from a period of vague negotiation at the beginning of the 1970s, through cooptive consultation in the mid 1970s, to direction at the end of the decade. Such changes seemed necessary as local government expenditures rose to meet the cost of providing new and better service levels. As these costs were further fuelled by inflation, so the apparent need to control the rate of growth of expenditure grew. Initial attempts to achieve this goal by agreement proved inadequate as inflation and recession increased the fiscal crisis of the British state, and the arrival of the 1979 Conservative government provided the opportunity to move from a consultative to a directive mode by the centre. In the interim, the local government associations, as a result of being co-opted into the structure and process of central decision-making by joining the CCLGF saw their expectations of partnership unfulfilled and found it difficult to return to the role of spokesmen for local government interests in the early years of the new government. Indeed, it is arguable that it was only early in 1982 that the Associations had sufficiently recovered from the experience to be able to mount anything like an effective, though still weak, campaign against the legislative attempts of the government to control local authority expenditure even more directly. Thus, the experience of the CCLGF, far from bringing the local authority associations greater influence over policy, actually weakened their ability to influence the centre. It distanced them from their constituents and incorporated them into the centre’s closed decision-making machinery, with the result that the centre’s ability to control local government was improved, and the process of restructuring central-local government relations had gone a stage further. A third element in the restructuring process was the introduction by the centre of a number of policy planning systems for various services, most notably housing and transport.6 The introduction of Transport Planned Programmes and Housing Investment Programmes was heralded as giving local authorities the ability to determine their own capital and current programmes for these services on a five-year rolling programme, but the introduction of special supplementary grants for those services, together with what became a virtual standstill on capital programmes, has meant that in practice local authorities have simply provided central government with the information it needed to control central local authority expenditure in these areas. The urban aid programme, culminating in inner city partnerships and programmes, provides another example of a policy planning system. It is also a rather disparate policy area with a number of identifiable strands over which there is little coordination. Thus, transport similarly has the road and public transport division; housing its building and improvement strands, and the inner city its social deprivation and economic regeneration elements. In each case, the centre has felt the need to move in certain preferred directions, but has also been unsure that it could secure local agreement and cooperation with its agreed strategies. Hence the introduction of planning systems which oblige local authorities to work out their

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priorities, then argue the case for those priorities with central government departments which also have priorities of their own, has effectively given those departments the means by which they are better able to ‘persuade’ the localities that the central priorities are best. Another element which these policy planning systems have in common is the sense of distrust which the centre has increasingly felt about the ability of local authorities to undertake the efficient delivery of services for which the centre has largely been responsible for introducing and expanding. In Greenwood’s terms, the centre has a strong sense of cultural disdain for local government and what it does, a disdain derived from the largely Whitehall and London centred life which most of those active at central government level (be they politicians or civil servants) actually lead. This view argues that the centre has very little concern for the problems of (at least) the (English) regions, especially as those of the periphery in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can be handled by the respective territorial offices.7 This disdain is evident in the efforts by the Conservative government since 1979 to control and direct local authority behaviour. The centre has been more directive in two ways, legal and financial, both of which represent yet another strand in the process of restructuring central-local government relations and shifting the balance of power further towards the centre. The legal dimension, if that is the correct phrase, is an interesting one. The dimension refers to the various attempts by the centre to control and direct local authority behaviour either through legislation or through the courts. It comprises three strands. The first, legislation, is obvious enough and involves the 1980 legislation (Local Government and Planning Act) on local government, planning and housing. The second, control through the courts, is perhaps less clear, though a number of landmark cases are well known, such as Clay Cross over housing in 1972, and Tameside over comprehensive education in 1976.8 More recently decisions over the sale of council houses (involving Norwich) and transport (involving the GLC and other metropolitan authorities) have made the legal dimension to the conflict between centre and locality more explicit. The power of Ministers to approve, modify or reject proposals put forward by local authorities, for example, for structural plans and educational re-organisation, constitutes a third strand to the legal dimension, for there is no appeal against the Ministerial decision. In an important paper on the subject of law and central-local government relations, Elliott9 sees these central legal powers of statute, approval, and appeal to the courts, as ensuring that the relationship between central government and local authorities is an unequal one. Furthermore his interpretation of the 1980 Local Government, Planning and Land Act argues that the ‘nature of the legal regime of central-local relations becomes more obvious, one in which the powers of the centre are such as to ensure reduced status for the locality vis à vis the centre’.10 A strange conclusion in the light of the Secretary of State’s justification for the introduction of the Act as freeing local government from the shackles of central control, the new block grant system notwithstanding. This largely symbolic rhetoric of local autonomy colours much of the legislative changes over recent years, but it masks the real attempts at control which most of the legislation involves. The introduction in legislation of a tenant’s right to purchase his

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council house effectively undermined local authorities’ ability to resist the sale of council houses on other grounds. Even so, it took the legal decision through the courts in the Norwich case for the delaying tactics which some authorities had adopted to be undermined. More ominously, the decision over London Underground fares, in the Bromley v. Greater London Council case, whereby the GLC was effectively prohibited from subsidising Tube fares, seems to have serious implications for the localities’ ability to adopt policies deviating from those encouraged by the centre. However, subsequent decisions in relation to a number of other metropolitan authorities with similar subsidy schemes, albeit brought under different legislation, resulted in a less clearcut situation. This impasse has simply been resolved by the Transport Minister promising to introduce legislation which will effectively permit him to set fare and subsidy levels. A good example of how Ministerial approval might be used to further central department policies is that of Manchester’s sixth-form reorganisation. Manchester wanted to close existing sixth forms in schools on both educational and economic grounds, and replace them with a number of sixth form colleges. Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Education, decided, however, that such a scheme might damage good comprehensive schools which already had good sixth forms, and rejected the scheme. Nevertheless, Ranson argues that to see such a decision as demonstrating central government’s wish to direct local authorities is misleading, for the Manchester scheme was widely regarded as a test case amongst educational interests and was well supported by the educational establishment and within the Department itself .11 Whatever the correctness of the Secretary of State’s decision, the example illustrates how the Ministerial power of approval can be used to achieve control over local authority behaviour. Our last element in the legal dimension of central-local government relations concerns the organisation of the police service and the question of its accountability. Here is a service which is locally based, but where the appointment of the chief officer (the Chief Constable) has to be approved by the Minister (the Home Secretary) and where the local police committee’s ability to call the Chief Constable to account, or to direct police behaviour is severely limited.12 Perhaps more than any other service, the police are closest to being a national one, yet there are significant local variations in police behaviour which have little to do with the fact that local constabular ies are run by local police authorities. Local autonomy and local discretion in the hands of an elected, accountable body is thus virtually negligible. But one area where the restructuring of central-local government relations has led to particular efforts at controlling the behaviour of local government as a whole, and of individual authorities as well, is local finance, and it is a consideration of the changes in this area to which we now turn. FINANCIAL ISSUES None but the crudest economic determinists would argue that the financial relations between central and local government are of supreme importance, and even fewer would claim that they alone determine the nature of the relationship. In something as complex

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and subtle as central-local relations, no one factor, or even a family of them is likely to prevail. But, by the same token, few could deny that finances are important, and most would agree that they have considerable influence. They are certainly at the heart of the bitter and rancorous conflict which has made central-local relations a political battlefield since 1975. To start with the size of the issue in simple figures: local government spends gigantic sums of money; in 1981 its total on the current and capital accounts was £33,551 million which represented almost 14 per cent of GDP and almost 30 per cent of public sector expenditure. Since Britain has only two levels of government—central and local—and since the responsibilities of local government have proliferated in the twentieth century, local spending has increased slowly but surely for the past hundred years. It accounted for five per cent of GNP in 1900, but by 1975 this had risen to 16 per cent.13 By British standards the growth of local spending was particularly rapid in the period from 1960 to 1975, when it increased from 10 per cent to 16 per cent. Compared with many neighbouring nations (Denmark, France, Finland, West Germany, Norway, or Sweden, for example), neither this level of spending nor its rate of growth was at all outstanding, but nevertheless it produced severe problems for local finances in the UK.14 Most of these must be attributed to the fact that local government in the UK has very limited means of raising its own finances, and depends heavily on central government grants: these contributed only a fifth to total current income in 1900, but by 1975 the figures was 45 per cent (rates, 28 per cent, and other income, mainly fees and charges for services, 27 per cent). The size of the grant makes local government heavily dependent financially upon central government, and also makes the centre particularly sensitive to changes in local spending. To make matters worse, the methods devised to distribute the grant became increasingly unwieldy and complicated as the centre tried to come to grips with the complexities of differing local circumstances. Problems Emerge—the 1970s In particular, the regression formula used to measure the spending needs of different local authorities was rarely understood, and, partly for this reason, came in for widespread criticism in both central and local government circles. The formula was indeed a strange one, suffering three main disadvantages. First, the logic underlying the formula was circular. Lacking any better definition or indicator of ‘need’, it was assumed that local authorities would spend what was needed to provide adequate services. In other words, expenditure was treated as a proxy for need. A series of social and economic indicators thought to be associated with spending needs was then drawn up, and fitted, by way of multiple regression analysis, to actual expenditures. Those with the closest fit were then selected, and the needs element of the rate support grant was then distributed according to the incidence of these factors in different authorities. In 1978–79 the list included such things as the number of schoolchildren, indicators of poor housing, population density, indices of labour costs, and population sparsity. In short, the needs element was distributed according to the social and economic features of local authorities which were most closely related to their spending patterns.

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The second main problem of the formula was the argument about the factors to be included and the weight attached to them. At one point only the highest population density counted, but this provoked authorities with slightly lower densities to complain, so they were included, with a lower weighting. The third problem centred on the claim, already alluded to, that grant was distributed according to the virtual spending of authorities, which meant that big spenders got big grants and vice versa. It was often stated that an authority could increase its grant by increasing its spending. This was wrong because no single authority, or even a small group of them, could affect the regression formula in more than a marginal way, since the formula was based upon the spending patterns of over 100 authorities. Furthermore, grant was not directly determined by spending patterns, but by the social and economic factors which were related to spending patterns. The fit between grant and spending was thus far from exact, and was made more inexact by ‘damping’, which ensured that grant did not fluctuate much from one year to the next. However, misunderstanding of the grant calculations was widespread and the claim that individual authorities could increase their grant by increasing their spending was used effectively by those who wanted to change the whole system. There was also grave concern about local finances by some sections of the general public. After a series of steep increases in local taxes which were more apparent than real, and strong protest in some areas, the government set up the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance (the Layfield Committee), which reported in 1976 with suggestions for reform which were ignored both by Labour and by Conservative governments.15 But by far and away the most important stimulus for change was the state of the nation’s economy, particularly after the double digit inflation figures provoked by the fuel crisis of 1973. It was felt in some quarters that public expenditure had to be cut as a way of restoring the health of the private sector, and the crisis of late 1976, when the country borrowed from the IMF, either strengthened the Labour government’s resolve or forced its hand: it called a halt to local spending and introduced a system of cash limits. Cash limits mean that grants are fixed in terms of the price levels assumed to obtain in a given year, as opposed to allowing automatic adjustments for inflation. They had been introduced by the central government in a limited way in 1976–77, and were applied more generally to the grant settlement for 1977–78 and also to capital expenditure for housing in that year. They were the first real weapons used by central government in the war of attrition against local spending. Meanwhile, capital outlays had already started to fall slightly, partly because of government controls, but mainly because inflation had pushed up interest rates which had become a considerable burden on local budgets. From its peak of 17.7 per cent of GNP in 1975, local spending fell to 14.6 per cent in 1979, thus reversing the rising trend of the preceding 100 years (see Table 1). The pace of the downward trend had, not surprisingly, been set by the national government, with local authorities dragging their heels, but the pressure for change was increased considerably by the election of the Thatcher government in 1979. From its first day in office it argued that it had a ‘mandate’ to cut public spending. Local government spending actually rose in 1980, the first full year of the Thatcher government, the level having in effect, being fixed by the outgoing Labour government. Although general election results

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TABLE 1 TOTAL LOCAL AUTHORITY EXPENDITURE (CAPITAL AND CURRENT) AS A PERCENTAGE OF GNP, 1950–1980

Source: Central Statistical Office, National Income and Expenditure (London: HMSO, appropriate years).

are notoriously difficult to interpret on any particular policy issue, and although the evidence suggests that the electorate wants not so much a cut in public spending, as an improvement in public sector efficiency and ‘value for money’, the government set to work with a will to reduce government spending. Local government came in for particular criticism with claims that its spending was ‘out of control’, and that some authorities were profligate and irresponsible. In fact, local budgeting was anything but out of control, since authorities had come unerringly close to spending targets set for them in a succession of years. Not only had local government met its targets with precision, but as often as not it had underspent by a small margin (see Table 2). The estimated 2.4 per cent overspend in 1979–80 was caused by the new government’s revised targets, set late in the day. TABLE 2 PERCENTAGE DEVIATION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT CURRENT EXPENDITURE FROM CENTRAL GOVERNMENT GUIDELINES

Source: Roysion Greenwood, ‘Fiscal Pressure and Local Government in England and Wales’, in Christopher Hood and Maurice Wright, (eds.), Big Government in Hard Times (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p.83.

Moreover, local spending as a percentage of GDP has declined quite sharply since 1975, whereas central government expenditure has increased no less sharply (see Table 3). Between 1976–77 and 1981–82 central government spending increased eight per cent in real terms, while local government spending fell 21 per cent. Nonetheless, in the government’s view local spending was not falling rapidly enough. Furthermore, the

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government felt that the grant system needed reforming. The Minister concerned, Mr Michael Heseltine, introduced legislation to force local authorities to comply with his wishes. TABLE 3 CENTRAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT CURRENT EXPENDITURE AS A PERCENTAGE OF GDP AND THE PUBLIC SECTOR TOTAL

Source: Central Statistical Office, National Income and Expenditure (London: HMSO, appropriate years).

The Significance of the 1980–1981 Acts For almost 400 years the right and power of local authorities to set their own taxing and spending levels had been enshrined as a fundamental principle of British government and local autonomy. The reasons are obvious and are used in most western societies to defend local democracy. The right of central government to set such things as national minimum service standards, to require local authorities to fulfil their statutory duties, and to regulate the overall level of spending in the interests of national economic planning was not in dispute. Indeed, central government had already made strenuous and successful efforts to reduce total local spending, but its guidelines did not have the force of law, and each authority retained its time-honoured freedom to decide its own budget. The Conservative government challenged this freedom with its Local Government Planning and Finance Act, which was passed in November 1980 and came into force in April 1981. The Act gave central government the right and power to determine the notional spending level of each individual authority in the country, in the following way: 1. A calculation is made for each of about 50 services according to the factors which are believed to determine local needs—the number of schoolchildren, the number of old people, the incidence of poverty and poor housing, miles of roads, and so on. 2. The service costs of each authority are summed to give a single figure representing the amount that authority needs to spend in order to provide services to a national standard. The figure is known as the grant related expenditure assessment, or GREA. 3. Central grants are then distributed according to GREAs (Block Grant), making allowances for the different revenue raising capacities of rich and poor authorities.

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Block grant as it came to be known, was itself controversial, for it transferred the right to decide local spending needs from local to central government, but new powers to reduce grant to individual authorities were even more fiercely opposed by the defenders of local democracy and autonomy. Under the 1980 Act, authorities spending 10 per cent more than their GREA would have their grant tapered off (grant taper), and local taxpayers would have to meet a larger proportion of the additional spending. In other words, authorities which overspent according to central government calculations would suffer the penalty of increasing local taxes. The 1980 Act gave the centre unprecedented power and was opposed by the Conservative and Labour authorities alike both on these grounds, and because it was beyond the technical and political capacity of central government to decide the spending needs of individual local authorities. The local authority associations also argued that the calculations were based on subjective judgements about expenditure factors and their appropriate weights, and that quite small changes in judgement could have quite large effects on grants. Besides, the Act gave the centre the beginnings of still further powers to set and enforce its spending targets on individual authorities. The government strongly denied this, pointing out that local authorities could increase their taxes to cover extra spending. Before the echo of these denials had died away, the government was framing new legislation to limit local tax increases and to control the spending of individual authorities. Much to its anger and embarrassment the ill-conceived and hastily drafted Act of 1980 failed to do the trick of bringing down all local spending as fast as the government wished. Local government was under acute financial pressure, partly because of a reduction of central government grants, and partly because inflation, which hits public services hard, had risen from nine per cent to over 20 per cent within a year of the new government’s coming to power. Many local authorities, especially Labour controlled ones, had tried to fill their fiscal gap by increasing their local taxes. This response was exactly what the government did not want. Not only did the centre view itself as the final protector of local taxpayers (though local government is responsible to its electors), but the whole point of central government’s activity was to bring down local spending sharply. Having failed at the first fence, therefore, the Conservative government turned its attention from spending levels to taxing levels, in the hope that by controlling the latter it could reduce the former. Local authorities in Britain have only one local tax at their disposal, a property tax known as the rates which are similar to the property taxes levied in many other nations. The basic right of local authorities to set their own tax levels was established by the Poor Relief Act of 1601, and, according to the standard text on the matter, the first advantage of the system is that it is ‘entirely independent of central government and is very clearly locally derived. No attempt has been made to take over or manipulate this tax for the benefit of central government’.16 That is no longer a merit of the rates, for by means of the Local Government Finance Act, central government has assumed virtually complete control of local taxing. The Act, which came into effect for 1982–83, gave central government the power to withhold grant from authorities which exceeded their spending targets. Whereas the 1981 Act enabled the centre to reduce its proportion of grant to authorities spending in excess of their GREA, the new legislation combined this tapering off with the power to punish

CHANGE IN BRITISH POLITICS 225

individual authorities by holding back a proportion of their grant if they exceeded government targets. In other words ‘overspending’ authorities would have a proportion of grant withheld completely (holdback), and would also receive a smaller proportion of grant necessary to cover its remaining costs (grant taper). In addition, a loophole had to be closed. In theory a local authority could incur these penalties during the course of the financial year and make up the difference by levying a supplementary rate, a revised tax demand sent out during the course of the financial year to take account of changed circumstances. Therefore, the 1982 Act abolished supplementary rates in order to place local authorities at the mercy of grant holdback and taper. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEW SYSTEM The first and most obvious consequence of the 1980 and 1981 Acts is a lurch towards greater centralisation of the political system.17 There was room for disagreement about the trends of the previous four or five decades, but the quantum jump of the last few years is unmistakable and has resulted in the virtually complete control by the centre of local finances. When the Conservatives came to power in 1979 local authorities in Britain set their own budgets and their own tax levels; the 1980 Act changed the first, and the 1981 Act effectively eliminated the second: in 1979 the grant was distributed largely according to the spending patterns established by local authorities; after the 1980 Act it was distributed according to criteria established by central government alone. The result was a fundamental shift in constitutional arrangements and a further centralisation of power. The long-term consequences of the erosion of the traditional rights and powers of local government are difficult to gauge, but the short-term impact of the new era has clearly been a new level of rancorous conflict between two levels of government. Conflict has developed for three reasons. First, there is the issue of the cuts themselves, but since these are a purely political matter, this essay will not comment upon them. Second, in its attempts to bring down spending, central government acted in an erratic manner when it came to picking out ‘overspending’ authorities in line for financial penalties. In September 1981 it published a list of 23 such authorities with higher than acceptable rates, but since this list included quite a few Conservative authorities, the rules were changed to exclude those which had underspent the average for their class of authority by three per cent or more. Since this smaller list still contained some Conservative authorities, a third criteria was introduced which excluded authorities which had spent two per cent or more below the 1978–79 outturn figures. There were now 14 authorities on the list, which, by special pleading, was reduced to eight, all of which happened to be Labour authorities in London. Many other examples could be given. In December 1980 it was announced that grant settlement would be based upon GREAs. A few weeks later Mr Heseltine announced that GRE As were an inadequate basis for expenditure targets and introduced a different target of 5.6 per cent below 1978–79 outturn figures. When this failed to produce the expected cuts in expenditure estimates, not least from Conservative controlled authorities, Mr Heseltine returned to GREAs as expenditure targets. At a different point in the whole procedure, it looked as if local authority opposition to the Finance Bill of 1981 would be inflexible, including Conservative authorities who had not wished to lose their autonomy.

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A short time before coming to an agreement with the Conservative authorities the government announced that the new grant settlement would channel more money to rural (and more Conservative) areas. Finally, in November 1982, Mr Heseltine announced changes in the spending targets for individual authorities which had been settled four months earlier. Neither the widespread belief that political discrimination was involved, nor the constant and last-minute changes in targets contribute to effective and efficient government. The third reason for the highly unsatisfactory and conflict-ridden nature of the new system centres on the block grant itself. It is often argued that the block grant is not at fault, only the financial penalties for ‘overspending’ which happen to be attached to it, but this is not so. Block grant calculations must always be determining the detailed spending needs of individual local authorities. Quite apart from a battalion of technical problems, the ‘need’ for public services is something which no theorist or practitioner has succeeded in defining, never mind measuring, and even less implementing. The problem is insoluble, or at least no nation in either the east or west has yet shown how to solve it. And yet this is exactly the duty which Mr Heseltine took upon himself in drafting the 1980 Act. Lacking a philosopher’s stone, or a crystal ball, he has inevitably resorted to arbitrary and subjective criteria, mixed with some erratic and capricious ones. As the Financial Times wrote: Block grant, we now know, will not be simpler, will not be any more logical and will also be full of extraordinary anomolies and potential unfair and discriminatory factors—all of which will need complicated and sometimes arbitrary and often crude mathematical factors to iron them out….18 While almost everything that has occurred on the financial front has resulted in a quantum leap in the further centralisation of power, it should also be noted that something which has not happened has also had the effect of preserving the power of the centre. For many decades it has been obvious that local finances need reform. Local taxes have not been reformed and local authorities continue to rely heavily on central government grants, a dependence which maintains the centre’s power of the purse. THE FUTURE This article argues that the constitutional, legal, and financial innovations in centre-local relations over the past decade or so can be seen as consistently weakening the political power of local government and considerably strengthening the grip of the centre. The 1972 reform, the creation and subsequent operations of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance, the introduction of policy planning systems, the use of legal powers on the sale of council houses and council rents, the use of ministerial veto, and most especially the finance legislation of 1981 and 1982, have all had the effect of altering age-old constitutional patterns, and eroding the important rights and duties traditionally accorded local government. The public rhetoric of the two major parties makes use of fine words and phrases such as ‘the grass roots’, ‘decentralising and devolving power to the

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community’, and ‘local autonomy’, but both have contributed to the centralist march of the 1970s and 1980s. And now, after several decades of relatively peaceful relations between the two levels of government in which both have tried to work for reasonable, rule-bound, and compromise solutions to their problems, the system has erupted into conflict, suspicion, and distrust. It may well take a decade to repair this state of affairs, longer should a Labour government use the draconian powers bequeathed to it in order to press its policies with the single-mindedness of the Thatcher government. The end of the centralist road is not yet reached, however, for central-local financial relations are, at present, inherently unstable. The grant system must, sooner or later, give way to something more objective, reasonable, and predictable. Local authorities will continue to press for this, particularly Conservative authorities faced with a Labour government using the laws enacted by the present government. In addition, limiting local government to one highly unsatisfactory and politically unpopular tax is self-evidently absurd. Though the matter has been debated ever since Victorian times, it must come to a head. This is especially true given the new Conservative government’s proposals for reforming if not abolishing the rating system and for introducing limits on the amounts by which local authorities may raise rates. The change in the Minister responsible for local government may make it easier for the new Conservative government to achieve this end. Similarly the abolition of the metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council and the reorganisation of the way in which their functions are performed also seem likely following the recent election results. Of course it is impossible to say how events will work out in detail, but it seems highly likely that the country will follow an increasingly centralist road. Central government holds most of the cards: a no-holds-barred constitutional supremacy, the power of the purse, an ability to divide and rule local authorities (Labour and Conservative ones, urban and rural ones), and the fact that local government has a poor image. There are already some hints (no more) that the present government may be prepared to take control not just of total spending for each authority, but of spending on each service. The ground for detailed control of this kind is well prepared. There are already hundreds, if not thousands, of central government regulations controlling local service provision, and central government (Conservative and Labour) has shown no reluctance to impose its policies on local authorities. In the famous Clay Cross case a Labour council initially refused to increase council rents to the level required by central government, until that government got its way by implementing procedures for surcharging individual councillors for the loss of revenue. The same threat of surcharge was also used to force councils to implement the Education (Milk) Act of 1971, and to force through council rent increases in Scotland in 1980. Most recently, the government has announced its intention to set limits on the ability of the GLC and the metropolitan counties to subsidise public transport out of their rate fund accounts. On the other hand, it is also true that government’s proposals for the separate financing of education seem to have died a quiet death, so perhaps central control of specific services is not an immediate likelihood. It remains the case, however, that central government has most of the powers required for such detailed supervision and for reconstructing local government. The new Conservative government has both the political will and the majority to use them. Should it choose to

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do so, then an era in British constitutional history which has lasted over four hundred years will come to an end. NOTES 1. L.J.Sharpe, ‘Reforming the Grass Roots’, in Halsey and Butler, Policy and Politics (London: Macmillan, 1978), pp.83–5. 2. D.Denver, ‘Party Systems and Electoral Change in English Districts, 1973–1979’, paper presented to the Political Studies Association Annual Conference 1979. S.Bristow, ‘Local Politics after Reorganisation’, Public Admimstration Bulletin, No.28, (Dec. 1978), pp. 17–33. 3. Sharpe, op.cit., p.103. 4. Ibid., p.105. 5. R.A.W.Rhodes, B.Hardy and K.Pudney, Corporate Bias in Central-Local Relations: A Case Study of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance, Discussion Paper No.1, Department of Government, Essex University 1982. 6. Structure plans for land use provide an earlier example. 7. R.Greenwood, ‘Fiscal Pressure and Local Government in England and Wales’, in Hood and Wright, Big Government in Hard Times (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p.96. 8. The Clay Cross case involved a Labour local authority refusing to implement the Conservative government’s 1972 Housing Finance Act. The Authority refused to increase public housing rents to the level expected by the Act. The Tameside case involved a Conservative local authority seeking to change a comprehensive education scheme after it had been formally approved by a Labour government. 9. M.Elliott, The Role of Law in Central-Local Government Relations (London: SSRC, 1981). 10. Ibid., pp.44–55. 11. S.Ranson, ‘Education and Policy Making’, Institute of Local Government Studies, The University of Birmingham, mimeo, 1982. 12. D.Reagan, ‘Police and Accountability’, Paper to P.S.A. Urban Politics Group, Birmingham 1982, and the references cited therein. 13. For an excellent set of historical statistics see C.D.Foster, R.Jackman, and M.Perlman, Local Government Finance in a Unitary State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980). 14. For a comparison of local government finances in Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy and West Germany see L.J.Sharpe, (ed.), The Local Fiscal Crisis in Western Europe: Myths and Realities (London: Sage, 1981), and K.Newton, et. al, Balancing the Books: The Financial Problems of Local Government in West Europe (London: Sage, 1980). 15. Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Local Government Finance (London: HMSO, 1978), Cmnd. 6453. 16. N.P.Hepworth, The Finance of Local Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), p.83. 17. See G.W.Jones, J. Stewart, and R.Greenwood, ‘Defending Local Government’, Local Government Chronicle, 20 (Nov. 1981). 18. Robin Pauley, Financial Times, 5 Aug. 1980, quoted in Tony Travers, ‘The Block Grant and Recent Developments of the Grant System’, Local Government Studies, 9 (May/June 1982), p. 12.

The United Kingdom Election of 1983 John Curtice

The United Kingdom went to the polls on 9 June 1983, just over four years after the previous general election, and nearly a year before Mrs Thatcher, the Prime Minister, was constitutionally required to face the electorate. Her decision to hold an election paid off handsomely. The Conservatives were returned to power with a majority of 144 seats, the largest majority won by any party since the Labour party’s famous victory in 1945. The decision to call an election came after a period of intense speculation about the possibility of an early poll. Both political and economic indicators suggested that the Conservative government could reasonably have high hopes of winning an early poll, but that its prospects thereafter were less certain. The government had continuously enjoyed a comfortable lead in the opinion polls since the onset of the Falklands War in the spring of 1982. The year-on-year inflation rate was set to drop below four per cent in the early summer (a 15-year low) but seemed certain to rise thereafter. Meanwhile the level of unemployment was continuing to rise and, despite an increase in personal disposable income and in consumer spending over the previous twelve months, few if any economists anticipated any sustained reversal of the upward trend in unemployment to set in during the next twelve months. Thus although local elections held throughout most of England and Wales on 5 May pointed towards a modest rather than a large Tory lead, four days later Mrs Thatcher announced her intention of going to the country. The General Election came at the end of a dramatic period in British party politics. As described in the articles by Philip Williams and David Denver, Labour’s heavy defeat in the 1979 General Election led to the outbreak of a bitter row between ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ factions over both party policy and the party constitution, a row which eventually resulted in the defection of a group of Labour MPs and the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Led by four former Cabinet Ministers, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers, the SDP entered into an alliance with the Liberal party and together they proceeded to win all three by-elections held in Great Britain between October 1981 and March 1982 and during the same period established a lead in the opinion polls. But at the beginning of April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and British public attention was consumed for the next three months by events in the South Atlantic. Between April and May the government’s popularity in the monthly Gallup poll rose by 10 percentage points, with a commensurate fall in Alliance support. Mrs Thatcher succeeded in capturing the public imagination by her conduct during the Falklands crisis

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TABLE 1 PARLIAMENTARY GENERAL ELECTION, UNITED KINGDOM, 9 JUNE 1983

Notes: 1. These figures are based on those reported in the press immediately after the election. The final official figures will differ slightly. 2. The 1983 election was fought on new constituency boundaries which increased the number of seats in the House of Commons from 635 to 650. A BBC/ITN estimate of what the result would have been if the 1979 election had been fought on the new boundaries was, Conservative 360, Labour 260, Liberal 9, SNP 2, Plaid Cymru 2, Others (NI) 17. 3. The Liberal and Social Democratic parties fought the election as an Alliance. The Liberals won 4, 210,112 votes (13.7%) and 17 seats, the SDP 3,570,992 votes (11.7%) and 6 seats. Comparison is made with the Liberal performance in 1979. 12,657 votes won by Liberal candidates standing against SDP Alliance candidates are excluded.

and her personal popularity rose by 16 points between April and June. Thereafter, only in February 1983, when the Liberals won the heavily working-class South London seat of Bermondsey from the Labour party in a by-election, did either of the opposition parties look like seizing the political initiative back from the Conservatives. But a disappointing vote for the SDP candidate at the subsequent by-election in Darlington the following month pricked the Alliance bubble once more. The Conservatives thus entered the election with a commanding lead. But post-war British elections have been characterised by the narrowness of the gap in votes between the Conservatives and Labour parties, and at each general election since 1955 the party behind in the opinion polls has improved its position during the course of the campaign. But during the 1983 election the opposite happened. The Labour party conducted a disastrous election campaign in which its internal divisions, particularly on nuclear weapons, were cruelly exposed. Its leader, Michael Foot, a former left-wing rebel MP now approaching his 70th birthday and considered to be one of the finest orators in the House of Commons, proved to be uncomfortable in meeting the technical demands of television and gave the impression—in strong contrast to Mrs Thatcher—of lacking control over his party. Labour support in the opinion polls fell away during the campaign, while that for the SDP/Liberal Alliance increased. By polling day the only issue at stake was whether the Alliance could replace the Labour party as the second party in terms of votes—the Conservatives appeared home and dry.

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TABLE 2 FALL IN THE LABOUR VOTE 1979–1983

Note: Seats not fought by the Liberals in 1979 or those where there was an important split candidature in 1979 or 1983 are excluded. Each entry is the mean change in the Labour percentage share of the vote in constituencies in that category using the BBC/ITN estimate of what the result of the 1979 election would have been on the new boundaries as the basis for comparison. The urban/rural classification is determined by the number of electors per hectacre. The unemployment and New Commonwealth information is derived from the 1981 Census.

As can be seen from Table 1, the Alliance narrowly failed in their aim. But even so, in comparison with previous general elections the result of the 1983 election still looks like a further significant step in the decline of Britain’s two-party system. The Conservatives’ landslide victory was accompanied by a fall in their share of the total vote. Indeed, it was the lowest share of the vote won by a majority Conservative government since 1922 (when the Conservative vote was deflated by the unopposed return of 42 Conservative MPs).1 Meanwhile, in terms of votes Labour’s debacle exceeded even that of 1931, its share of the vote being the lowest since 1918; indeed, in terms of percentage vote per candidate this was the worst Labour result since its foundation in 1900. The combined Conservative and Labour vote (70.0 per cent) was the lowest since 1923. The Conservatives’ landslide majority and the small number of Alliance seats reflected the working of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system rather than electoral preference. The Alliance’s difficulties arose from the fact that its vote is much more evenly spread than that of either the Conservative or the Labour party. Thus until it can win over a third or so of the vote it is destined to be second in a large number of constituencies, but first in few. If we take account of the total number of first and second places won by each party the discrepancy between Labour and the Alliance disappears. Labour won 341 first and second places (including 132 seconds), the Alliance 337 (314 seconds).2 On the other hand Labour lost their deposit in 119 seats, the Alliance in just 11.3

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The fall in the Labour vote was unevenly distributed across the country; the most striking variation is shown in Table 2. Since 1955 Labour has done worse in the South of the country than in the North, and in rural areas than in urban ones.4 These two patterns were broadly, though not exactly, continued in 1983. Labour did relatively well in the North-West and Scotland, and badly in the south-eastern corner of the country. Except for the most rural seats, it fared better in urban than in rural areas. But there are two other patterns of note in the fall in the Labour vote. It held up somewhat better in areas of high unemployment and in places with a high ethnic minority population.5 In other words, the more affluent and more Conservative parts of Britain rejected Labour more firmly than its traditional heartlands. Labour Britain and Conservative Britain grew yet further apart. The Parliamentary Labour Party is now almost wholly confined to urban and northern Britain. It won only two seats in the South of England outside London, and only six rural or mixed seats in the South and Midlands (of which four are mining seats). Outside London and the West Midlands, Labour is now in third place in terms of votes in 27 out of 31 counties. The divide between affluent and non-affluent Britain suggested by the election results receives some echo from the limited survey evidence so far available.6 The unemployed were less likely to defect from Labour than the employed, and council tenants less likely than home owners. Affluence and class, however, are not the same thing. Labour’s support haemorrhaged badly amongst the working class, as it did in 1979; just 38 per cent of voters in manual occupations voted Labour. The even spread of the Alliance vote was an inheritance it received from the preAlliance Liberal vote. Like the Liberals, its support was broadly similar across social class, housing tenure and virtually every other socioeconomic divide.7 Its small number of seats in relation to votes thus came as no surprise. There were, however, two important variations in the improvement the Alliance achieved on the 1979 Liberal vote, one which hindered the Liberals, the other which aided the SDP. In those seats where the Liberals had polled more strongly in 1979, in particular where they polled over a third of the vote (which seats were all contested for the Alliance by Liberals), they were less successful in adding to the Liberal total. The Alliance improved on the Liberal vote by an average of 11. 4 per cent; but where the Liberals had polled over a third of the vote in 1979 the average improvements was only 3.3 per cent. In many of these (mostly very rural) seats the Liberals had already squeezed the third-placed Labour vote to as little as 10 per cent or less, so that Labour’s vote almost inevitably dropped by less than the national average of 9. 2 per cent. This ‘plateau’ effect denied the Liberals at least five seats. But the ability of the SDP wing of the Alliance to win seats on 25 per cent of the national vote was crucially dependent on the ability of some of the MPs who had defected to them from Labour to retain their seats on the basis of a personal vote. In general, SDP defectors (including the two by-election victors) fighting constituencies wholly or substantially similar to the ones they fought in 1979 did nearly twice as well as other Alliance candidates, improving on the past Liberal vote by an average of 20.4 per cent. Four of the six seats that the SDP won were won by defectors defending their seats as SDP candidates for the first time,

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while a fifth seat came from Roy Jenkins’ successful defence of his by-election victory at Glasgow Hillhead. The election in Northern Ireland was once more dominated by entirely different issues and contested by different parties than on the British mainland. The number of parliamentary seats in the province was increased from 12 to 17 as a consequence of legislation passed in the final months of the last Labour government in 1979 when it was dependent for support upon the minor parties in the House of Commons. Of the 17 seats, five have at least a small Catholic majority, but only two Catholic MPs were elected, one from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and one from Provisional Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Catholic terrorist organisation, the Provisional IRA. An electoral pact between the two unionist parties, the Official Unionists (OUP) and the Democratic Unionists (DUP), denied Catholic candidates two further seats. Within the Unionist camp the traditional party of loyalism, the OUP with 34.0 per cent of the votes and 11 seats clearly gained ground at the expense of the Rev. Ian Paisley’s DUP (20.0 per cent, three seats), and appears to have recovered from the serious challenge to its role as the leading party of unionism that the DUP has posed in the last few years. Provisional Sinn Fein, on the other hand, who first entered the Northern Ireland electoral arena in the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, increased its share of the province-wide vote by 3.3 per cent to 13.4 per cent and remains locked in a bitter struggle with the SDLP (17.9 per cent) for the support of Catholic voters. The result of the 1983 British election poses a number of important questions for political scientists. How did a government which had presided over an increase in unemployment from 1¼ million to over three million and many of whose policies were perceived as having been unsuccessful by the electorate,8 succeed in retaining the bulk of its electoral support? In part at least the answer appears to lie in the importance of the future rather than the past. Mrs Thatcher’s conduct of the Falklands War created an image of competence and determination on the part of the government. The Labour opposition, on the other hand, were perceived as lacking in competence— only a narrow majority of voters saw Labour as likely to reduce unemployment if they were in office and Labour had less of a lead over the Conservatives as the party with the best policies on unemployment than in 1979. In other words, while the electorate’s retrospective evaluation of the Conservatives was not particularly favourable, this was less important than their negative prospective evaluation of the opposition. Not only governments lose elections— oppositions can do so also. The Conservatives’ success can also probably be explained by the fact that Mrs Thatcher is correct in believing that in the everyday lives of most people inflation is seen as a more important problem than unemployment. All opinion polls agreed that voters regarded unemployment as by far and away the most important issue in the election, with inflation coming a long way behind. But in a Harris poll which asked a slightly different question, ‘How much do you feel that the welfare of you and your family is directly affected by decisions on…?’, 57 per cent said decisions on inflation affected them a great deal, but only 35 per cent said unemployment.9 But for the long-term future of British politics the more significant question is, is the Alliance likely to end the Conservative and Labour parties’ domination of British political

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life in the foreseeable future? The election result clearly demonstrated how big a hurdle the electoral system is to its hopes. But in assessing its future the size and geographical distribution of its support may be less important than its depth. Liberal support has in the past consisted of a constantly shifting body of people who were often expressing dissatisfaction with one or more aspects of their ‘normal’ party’s policy or performance. If it is to have any long-term future as a party of government it needs to acquire positive support for its own policies rather than just be a vehicle for dissatisfaction. It may be that one of the Alliance’s more significant achievements in the 1983 election was to make progress in that direction; in a BBC/Gallup poll conducted on polling day and the day before, 24 per cent of voters said that the Alliance had the best policies, only a little less than its share of the vote. If the party can succeed in healing its internal divisions (and at its Conference in October 1983 the party elected a new leader, Neil Kinnock, who displayed a determination to set about that task) it might yet present itself as a credible alternative government; if it cannot its future appears bleak. NOTES 1. Labour won an overall majority of four in October 1974 on 39.2 per cent of the vote; all other majority governments since 1923 won a higher share of the vote than the Conservatives did in 1923. 2. The Conservative majority is, however, lower than it would have been if the electoral system still operated according to the ‘cube law’. Under the law the Conservatives would have won 475 seats. On the decline in the exaggerative power of the British electoral system see J.Curtice and M.Steed, ‘Electoral Choice and the Production of Government: The Changing Operation of the Electoral System in the United Kingdom since 1955’, British Journal of Political Science, XII, No.3, July 1982, pp.249–98. 3. Each candidate has to lodge a deposit of £150 at the time of his nomination, and he forfeits it if he fails to win at least 12½ per cent of the votes cast in his constituency. 4. For further details, see Curtice and Steed, op.cit. 5. All four patterns retain their explanatory power when controlled against the other three. 6. I.Crewe, ‘The Disturbing Truth Behind Labour’s Rout’, The Guardian, 13 June 1983; I. Crewe, ‘How Labour was Trounced All Round’, The Guardian, 14 June 1983; P.Kellner, ‘Anatomy of a Landslide’, New Statesman, 17 June 1983; ‘Class is no Guide’, The Economist, 18–24 June 1983. 7. But not surprisingly for a party advancing amongst the electorate, its appeal was greater amongst the young than the old. 8. Harris poll, The Observer, 5 June 1983. 9. Harris poll, The Observer, 29 May 1983. 10. Crewe, The Guardian, 14 June 1983.