The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain

The boundaries of the state in modern Britain

This innovative book provides an essential historical perspective on the boundaries of the state in modern Britain. At a time of intense debate about the state, the writers of these interdisciplinary studies are unimpressed by the apparent 'rise' of the state before 1979 and its supposed 'decline' in the wake of Thatcherism. The boundaries of the state in modern Britain constitutes a comprehensive and coherent attempt to delineate the many and varying aspects of public involvement in private life during the twentieth century. It shows how the state has advanced into some areas of life, whilst vacating others. It explores the impact of these changes on civil society and intellectual life in Britain, paying particular attention to the relationship between publicly sponsored activity and its intellectual justification. Finally, the essays consider where the state might be going in the twenty-first century.

The boundaries of the state in modern Britain Edited by

S. J. D. Green All Souls College, Oxford and the University of Leeds

and

R. C. Whiting University of Leeds

I CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 1996 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1996 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue recordfor this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

The boundaries of the state in modern Britain / edited by S. J. D. Green and R.C. Whiting. p. cm. ISBN 0 52145537 5 1. Political science - Great Britain - History - 20th century. 2. Great Britain - Politics and government - 20th century. 3. Government spending policy - Great Britain - History - 20th century. 4. Great Britain - Economic policy. 5. Great Britain - Social policy. I. Green, S. J. D. II. Green, S. J. D. (Simon J. D.) JA84.G7B58 1996 320.1T09410904-dc20 95-10665 CIP ISBN 0 52145537 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 52222 6 paperback

Contents

List of List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements 1

figures

page ix x xii xiii

Introduction: the shifting boundaries of the state in modern Britain

1

S. J. D. GREEN AND R. C.WHITING

Part I 2

The state and political theory

Political thought and the state

15

JOSE HARRIS

3

'Boundaries' in theoretical language about the British State

29

MICHAEL BENTLEY

4 The twilight of the British state?: Henry Dubb versus sceptred awe

57

DAVID MARQUAND

5 Thinking about the state and the economy

70

ROBERT SKIDELSKY

Part II 6

The economy

The size and scope of the public sector

89

ROGER MIDDLETON

7 The boundaries of taxation

146

R. C. WHITING

8

Economic knowledge and the state in modern Britain G. C. PEDEN

170

viii

List of contents

Part III Welfare and social policy 9 The dilemmas of welfare: Titmuss, Murray and Mead

191

ALAN DEACON

10 Medicine and the English state, 1901-1948

213

ANNE DIGBY

11 The English state and educational theory

231

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

Part IV Conflict and order 12 British national identity and the First World War

261

j . M. WINTER

13 A state of seige? The state and political violence

278

CHARLES TOWNSHEND

Part V Religion and morality 14 Survival and autonomy: on the strange fortunes and peculiar legacy of ecclesiastical establishment in the modern British state, c. 1920 to the present day

299

S. J. D . GREEN

15 Religion and the secular state

325

BRYAN WILSON

16 The British state and the power of life and death

341

CHRISTIE DAVIES

17 Conclusion: on the past development and future prospects of the state in modern Britain

375

S. J. D. GREEN AND R. C. WHITING

Index

397

Figures

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8

6.9 6.10

6.11

6.12

Summary indicators of public sector size, 1900 and 1979 page 91 Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP at current market prices, 1900-79 93 Public sector receipts and total taxation as a percentage of GDP at market prices, 1900-79 109 Standard rate of income tax (percentage), financial years 1900-80 111 Public employment by category as a percentage of working population, selected years 1901-79 118 GDFCF by sector as a percentage of total GDFCF, selected years 1900-79 120 Ratio of outstanding national debt to GDP, financial years 1900-79 121 Public sector financial balances as a percentage of GDP at current market prices, current and capital account, 1900-79 123 Relative price of government final consumption expenditure, 1900-79 135 Ratio of 1979 to 1950 general government expenditure as a percentage of GDP and annual average growth rate of real GDP, 1950-79 141 General government expenditure, including and excluding privatisation proceeds, as a percentage of GDP at current prices, 1978/9 to 1993/4 144 UK and OECD averages: general government expenditure and current receipts as a percentage of GDP, 1978-92 145

IX

Tables

6.1 6.2

6.3 6.4 6.5

6.6 6.7 6.8

6.9 6.10

6.11 6.12 16.1 16.2 16.3

The growth of public expenditure, 1790-1900 page 95 Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP at market prices, by economic category and functional classification, selected years, 1900-79 98 Total government expenditure as a percentage of GDP at current prices, selected years, 1880-1950 102 OECD: general government expenditure as a percentage of GDP, selected years, 1950-79 103 Functional distribution of OECD-Europe general government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, decennial averages, 1950s-1970s 107 Public sector receipts and total taxation as a percentage of GDP at market prices, selected years 1900-79 110 OECD: total tax receipts as a percentage of GDP at market prices, selected years, 1950-79 113 OECD: structure of taxation as a percentage of total tax receipts and social security contributions, and total taxation and social security contributions as a percentage of GNP at factor cost, in 1979 114 OECD-Europe: administrative employment per one thousand population, selected years, 1900-70 119 Summary measures of public sector growth: observed elasticities of public expenditure/taxation with respect to GDP at market prices, selected years, 1900-79 128 Public expenditure growth: correlation matrix, UK and OECD-16 average, 1951-78 133 Distribution of marketed output (as percentages of marketed output), selected years, 1900-91 142 Voting on capital punishment for desertion, by party 358 Numbers of MPs with military titles, by party 358 Conservative voting on capital punishment for desertion, by military title 359

List of tables 16.4 16.5

Voting on capital punishment for murder, by party, in 1948 Voting on capital punishment for murder, by party, in 1964

xi 362 366

Contributors

MICHAEL BENTLEY

is Professor of Modern History, University of

St Andrews. CHRISTIE DAVIES ALAN DEACON ANNE DIGBY

is Professor of Sociology, University of Reading.

is Professor of Social Policy, University of Leeds.

is Professor of History, Oxford Brookes University.

is Lecturer in Modern History, University of Leeds, and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

SIMON GREEN

is Fellow of St Catherine's College and Reader in Modern History, University of Oxford.

JOSE HARRIS

is Director of the Political Economy Research Centre and Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield.

DAVID MARQUAND

is Senior Lecturer in Economic History, University of Bristol.

ROGER MIDDLETON GEORGE PEDEN

is Professor of History, University of Stirling.

is Chairman of the Social Market Foundation and Professor of Political Economy, University of Warwick.

LORD SKIDELSKY

CHARLES TOWNSHEND

is Professor of Modern History, University

of Keele. is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Leeds.

RICHARD WHITING

is Reader in Sociology Emeritus, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College.

BRYAN WILSON

is University Lecturer in History and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

JAY WINTER

is on the staff of The Economist, and is Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

xii

Acknowledgements

We are happy to thank the Nuffield Foundation for providing financial assistance for a conference held in 1991 at Leeds University which proved to be the starting point for this book. The School of History and its then chairman, Dr Christopher Challis, provided additional encouragement and support for which we are grateful. We thank the editors of Political Quarterly (1993) for permission to reprint David Marquand's essay which received its first airing at the Leeds gathering, and the research for which was supported by the Leverhulme Trust. The untimely death of Geoffrey Finlayson, one of the participants at the Leeds conference, deprived the volume of what would have been a valuable essay. A measure of his substantial contribution to the history of social thought and policy can be gained from his posthumous book, Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain (Oxford, 1994).

Xlll

1

Introduction: the shifting boundaries of the state in modern Britain 5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

The theme One of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century British history has been the rise of the state. That we take to mean the transformation of the executive branch of government from a limited system of force into an extensive network of services, at once literally bigger, more selfconsciously competent and altogether more intrusive - for good or ill into the lives of its citizens than ever before.1 Whatever else can be said about it, this development has not passed unnoticed in our time. Lipservice is paid to it almost daily by politicians, journalists and even ordinary people. Academic colloquia are continually dedicated to its more sophisticated understanding. Books are written about it, often good books too. Studies in the history of government involvement in the organisation and management of Britain's post-war economy have multiplied, almost as this involvement has grown, during the past thirty 1

'Until 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post-office and the policeman.' A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 1. '[W]e have become [by 1987], a "much governed nation", with councils, boards, departments, and authorities of many kinds exercising . . . numerous . . . and extensive . . . powers . . . in the name of social justice and the common good.' W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. I l l , part 1, A Much Governed Nation (London, 1987), p. 1; ibid., vol. I, The Rise of Collectivism (1983), p. 42. The fullest account of the process, in all its ramifications, is found in Greenleaf's three masterly volumes, viz. The Rise of Collectivism, The Ideological Heritage (1983) and A Much Governed Nation, parts 1 and 2 (1987); a fourth volume, The World Outside, is forthcoming. A very different perspective can be found in James E. Cronin, The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1991). For an elegant summary of the literature see Jose Harris, 'Society and the State in Twentieth Century Britain', in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.)j The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, vol. I l l , Social Agencies and Institutions (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 63-177. And, for a simple introduction, Paul Johnson, 'The Role of the State in Twentieth Century Britain', in Johnson (ed.), Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Social and Cultural Change (London, 1994),

pp. 476-91.

2

S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

years.2 Significant treatises on the rise of publicly managed social and welfare policy scarcely fall far behind.3 Similarly so for the transformation of political behaviour which these changes entail.4 Once neglected fields, such as investigation into the impact of, and alterations 2

3

4

The most recent, and fullest, history is now found in Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, vol. I, Britain in Search of a Balance, 1961-1974 (Basingstoke, 1986), vol. II, Threats to the Post-War Settlement, 1961-1974 (1990), and vol. Ill, The End of the Post-War Era, Britain since 1974 (1991). Other accounts, covering all or part of the period, range from the semi-official to the journalistic; cf., F. T. Blackaby (ed.), British Economic Policy 1960-74, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Economic and Social Studies 31 (Cambridge, 1978), esp. chs. 2 and 14, and Samuel Brittan, Steering the Economy, 3rd edn (New York, 1971). The question of post-war state enterprise is treated in William Ash worth, The State in Business 1945 to the mid-1980s (London, 1991); and set in wider, historical framework by James Foreman-Peck and Robert Millward, Public and Private Ownership in British Industry 1820-1990 (Oxford, 1994), chs. 8-11. An essential, polemical work, an economic history of planning which informed the 'Thatcher revolution', is Alan Budd, The Politics of Economic Planning (Manchester, 1978), and see esp. the conclusion. For a purely theoretical introduction to the whole phenomenon, see Bruno S. Frey, Democratic Economic Policy (Oxford, 1983), esp. part 3. The most accessible introduction, which meritoriously integrated social with economic policy, is G. C. Peden, British Economic and Social Policy: Lloyd George to Margaret Thatcher (Hemel Hempstead, 1991), esp. chs. 6-9. A modern textbook on the welfare state in Britain is Michael Hill, The Welfare State in Britain: A Political History since 1945 (Aldershot, 1993), passim. For a comparative perspective, considering the example of the USA and western Europe additionally, see Douglas E. Ashford, The Emergence of the Welfare State (Oxford, 1986), esp. chs. 4-6. Critiques of the whole now range from socialist/feminist to conservative/liberal; see inter alia, Lois Bryson, Welfare and the State (Basingstoke, 1992), esp. chs. 2 and 4—6, or Digby Anderson (ed.), The Ignorance of Social Intervention (London, 1980), passim. More notably wide-ranging discussions, expressing several different viewpoints on the matter, are found in S. N. Eisenstadt and Ora Ahimer (eds.), The Welfare State and its Aftermath (London, 1985), passim; and Thomas and Dorothy Wilson (eds.), The State and Social Welfare: The Objectives of Policy (London, 1991), see esp. parts 3 and 5. For a critical account of recent developments in Britain, see Malcolm Wicks, A Future for All: Do We Need a Welfare State? (Harmondsworth, 1987), esp. part 2. Individual case studies include Peter Malpass, Reshaping Housing Policy: Subsidies, Rents and Residentialisation (London, 1990), esp. chs. 7 and 8; and Carol Walker, Managing Poverty: The Limits of Social Assistance (London, 1993), esp. ch. 7. It is acknowledged, for instance, in the very title of Samuel H. Beer, Modern British Politics: Parties and Pressure Groups in the Collectivist Age, 3rd edn (London, 1982), esp. ch. 3. For the particular, and allegedly peculiar, example of the Labour Party, see Barry Jones and Michael Keating, Labour and the British State (Oxford, 1985), esp. chs. 4, 6 and 7. On modern 'pressure-group' politics see, inter alia, A. G. Jordan and J. J. Richardson, Government and Pressure Groups in Britain (Oxford, 1987), esp. part 2; also Richard Rose, Politics in England: Persistence and Change, 4th edn (London, 1985), ch. 8, and Max Beloff and Gilliam Peele, The Government of the UK: Political Authority in a Changing Society, 2nd edn (London, 1985), ch. 9. And, in many ways, it formed the basis of the 'neo-corporatist' interpretation of modern British politics, fashionable in the 1970s and 1980s; see especially, Keith Middlemas, Politics and Industrial Society: The Experience of the British System since 1911 (London, 1979), passim, and Andrew Cox and Noel O'Sullivan (eds.), The Corporate State: Corporatism and the State Tradition in Western Europe (Aldershot, 1988), ch. 9.

The shifting boundaries of the state in Britain

3

in, the application of economic and social expertise in public and even private life now find their niche.5 And all the time, positive and normative theories of the state, especially the liberal state, and particularly the British liberal state, abound.6 In such an over-crowded field, the appearance of yet another book on the state in modern Britain requires some justification. This lies, or strictly speaking begins, with its title. The term 'boundaries' has been carefully chosen to incorporate not merely the contents but also the purposes of this book. For it enables the reader to appreciate the possibility, that is the significant intellectual possibility, of the modern historical phenomenon of retreating as well as of advancing public boundaries. (And in that understanding we include both those concessions which have occurred, and those which might yet come to pass.) More subtly, it also permits him to allow for the probability that what has indubitably expanded, as the state has extended the range of its formal interests - its specific, legally endorsed, concerns in British society - has not necessarily also acquired a concomitant increase in its competence actually to deal with - significantly to alter, to redirect or even to improve - what it now increasingly encounters. Accordingly it is an exercise which allows him to envisage the appropriateness of a history of the state in modern Britain which is, and must always be, a study not simply of its extent but also of its limits, not merely of its growth but also of its degeneration; a consideration, in other words, of its shifting and even of its transforming boundaries. 5

6

For a general, historical account, see Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London, 1989), chs. 4 and 8. The particular example of economic expertise is covered in Mary O. Furner and Barry Supple (eds.), The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences (Cambridge, 1990), see esp. chs. 6, 7, 10-12 and 14; a complementary volume on social expertise is Michael J. Lacey and Mary O. Furner, The State and Social Investigation in Britain and the United States (Cambridge, 1993), see esp. chs. 1, 6 and 9. The relationship of these developments to the growth of professionalism within the state is discussed in Bob Carter, Capitalism, Class Conflict and the New Middle Class (London, 1985), esp. ch. 4; and more widely in the various essays in Rolf Torstendahl and Michael Burrage (eds.), The Formation of Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy (London, 1990). For a wider context still, see W. H. G. Armytage, The Rise of Technocrats: A Social History (London, 1965), esp. parts 4 and 5. Probably the best introduction is now Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary, Theories of the State (London, 1987), passim; an alternative, and rather more historical account is found in John A. Hall and G. John Ikenberry, The State (Milton Keynes, 1989), see esp. ch. 2. Critiques of the phenomenon range from the 'Marxist' exposure in Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London, 1969), see esp. chs. 7 and 8; to the libertarian argument of Anthony de Jasay in The State (Oxford, 1985), see esp. ch. 4. Essential readings are presented in David Held et al. (eds.), State and Society (Oxford, 1983); see esp. part 1. For the British state in historical context see Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, vol. I l l , conclusion, pp. 447—87.

4

S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

That said, one thing should be made clear from the outset. To acknowledge any such reversals or failures, even indeed to insist upon a proper understanding of the complexity of the effects, is not to argue for their inherent inevitability, still less desirability. Certainly, there is no need to accept the advantageousness of a diminishing state in order to apprehend that the boundaries of the state have, in fact, retreated in many, very important areas of British life during the twentieth century. After all, in certain respects, particularly as it relates to questions of public doctrine and social morality, this might almost be said to be a characteristic dynamic of modern states.7 On the other hand, there is no necessary correlation between the pursuit of such limitation(s) and the political complexion of its or their pursuers. So, one of the most important of these concessions discussed below, the power over life and death, was altogether more actively sought on the political left than on the ideological right, in this country as elsewhere.8 One of the more recent, the retreat of the state from its prohibitory regulation in the lives of homosexual men, similarly so.9 One might go further. Even to the degree that such concessions have 7

8

9

A point made in Bryan R. Wilson, 'Morality in the Evolution of the Modern Social System', British Journal of Sociology, 36 (1985), 315-32, esp. at pp. 318-24. Whether this is a good or bad thing, of course, is a quite different matter, and indeed constitutes the basic material for the political argument between liberal individualists and socialist and/or conservative communitarians in contemporary culture. See, inter alia, Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (London, 1981), esp. chs. 2-6; and the liberal critique of Macintyre, and other communitarians, gathered together in Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Anti-Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); also the wide-ranging discussion, 'pro' and 'con', offered in Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians (Oxford, 1992), passim. The contemporary history of this movement can be consulted, academically, in James B. Christopher, Capital Punishment and British Politics: The British Movement to Abolish the Death Penalty 1945-57 (London, 1962), esp. ch. 7; and polemically, in the essays collected in Louis Blom-Cooper (ed.), The Hanging Question: Essays on the Death Penalty (London, 1969). The important, and changing, religious dimension of this struggle is considered in Harry Potter, Hanging in Judgement: Religion and the Death Penalty in England from the Bloody Code to the Abolition (London, 1993), esp. chs. 13-15 and 17. For an up-to-date, world-wide survey, see Roger Hood, The Death Penalty (Oxford, 1989), chs. 1 and 2. The fullest political account of this movement is probably now Stephen Jeffrey-Poulter, Peers, Queers and Commons: The Struggle for Gay Law Reform from 1950 to the Present (London, 1991), see esp. chs. 3, 5 and 12. A wider historical framework is set in Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800, 2nd edn (London, 1989), see esp. chs. 6 and 12-14. Perhaps the most moderate statement for the further liberalisation of the law is offered in Anthony Grey, Quest for Justice: Towards Homosexual Emancipation (London, 1992), passim. For a philosophical consideration of the problem, with practical implications, see Michael Ruse, Homosexuality: A Philosophical Enquiry (Oxford, 1988), esp. chs. 8-10; and for different arguments, with different implications, see Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation (London, 1986), chs. 9 and 10.

The shifting boundaries of the state in Britain

5

been made, they have neither always presumed, nor actually entailed any increase in, or even restoration of, personal freedom and individual responsibility. Think of the very recent and speedily developing privatisation of punishment (the prison service) in this country. Ignore, for the moment, whether or not this will prove to be for the good of the criminal and to the benefit of the taxpayer. What it indubitably is - it could be no other - is an example of the willingness of the contemporary British state to trade one of the most basic expressions of its historically acquired authority - the exclusive right to coerce - for one of the more recent calculi of its continuing legitimacy - the willingness to do its public duty for the least possible expense. No criticism of that policy is implied in the observation that it has been done in a way, and to an end, that is entirely unconcerned about the continuing vigour, or otherwise, of Britain's law-abiding citizenry.10 All of which is perhaps no more than a long-winded way of saying that the boundaries of the state in modern Britain are far from obvious, either by nature or in direction. Still less clear has been the degree to which their identification and development have been sustained by a coherent doctrine of the state, and of its proper responsibilities, during the modern era. And, in so far as the state really has grown in this period, this uncertainty suggests three critical questions about the particular character of the state of its activities, in modern Britain: first, how far have these developments of state responsibility been adequately, or even coherently, justified by concomitant developments in the general political culture and according to specific intellectual dogmas of the time? Secondly, what have been the implications for the authority of the state of the exponential growth of particular professional expertise in key areas of interest? And thirdly, what (if any) have been the connections between the emergence of so many associated fields of scientific and pseudo-scientific 'knowledge' and the programme of a more nebulous, but equally critical, moral authority pertaining to their practitioners to employ that understanding on behalf of the state, and for the common good? It should go without saying that these are not the only questions worth asking about the rise of the state in modern Britain. Yet surely they are three of the most important. The first points to the putative connection between political democratisation and the growth of public 10

An intelligent discussion of the narrow question of privatisation can be found in Charles H. Logan, Private Prisons (New York, 1990), chs. 2, 3 and 14; and a wider consideration of the related social problem in Ira P. Robbins, The Legal Dimensions of Private Incarceration (New York, 1988), passim. Both concentrate upon the American case, but parallels with the (emerging) British example are obvious.

6

5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

authority in twentieth-century Britain, both conceived and executed during an era in which Britain very self-consciously became a democratic regime, indeed became one of the world's leading, and certainly one of the world's most stable, liberal democratic polities; and at a time when the political theory of democracy, and also, supposedly, of state welfare as an aspect of that democracy, became more widely entrenched in British intellectual life.11 The second identifies its direct, and often contradictory corollary: the extent to which the public implementation of these democratic desires (if such they were) actually and necessarily rested upon the particular benevolence of uncommon skill (if such it was).12 And this third explores the necessary, and contingent, tension between the two: between, as it were, the very obvious sense in which a democratic state rhetorically associates itself with the public good, and the less obvious reality of the means through which it fulfils its presumptively beneficent tasks.13 Answers to these questions should illuminate the wider question of the political relationship between the state and the civil society during the same period. Certainly, they should help us to understand the experiences of collective and individual interests in society in their relations with the state. An understanding of these experiences in turn should take us some way towards the goal of properly appreciating the degree to which the relationship between civil society and the state another way of describing the boundaries of the state - has not merely been uncertain, nor even simply generally perceived to be unclear, but also the uncertain and unclear product as much of the efforts by civil society to negotiate modification and qualifications in its relationship with the alternatively over-bearing or beneficial public juggernaut with which it was continuously confronted. This relationship has significantly changed, both by statutory fiat and through more nebulous civil negotiation, across the widest spectrum of British social life. Accordingly, any study of the boundaries of the state in modern Britain should, properly, be developed across the widest 11

12

13

By which we mean that public welfare became an aspect of political democracy itself. That view is implied in the analysis of Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. I, ch. 4. For the political theory underpinning this view see, inter alia, Anthony Arblaster, Democracy (Milton Keynes, 1987), ch. 7; or, for its attempted repudiation, Brian Crozier, The Minimum State: Beyond Party Politics (London, 1979), ch. 2. Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society, ch. 8. For a comparative perspective see Charles Derber, William A. Schwartz and Dale Magrass, Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order (New York, 1990), esp. part 5. As above, the question of what the public good consisted and consists in, conceived a priori, we leave unanswered. By this we do not imply that it is not, has not been, and cannot be, a matter of public concern.

The shifting boundaries of the state in Britain

7

practicable range of subjects. These include those obviously and unambiguously important areas such as the economy and social policy, but they are not restricted to them. They also include, for instance, the apparently more nebulous fields of religion and morality. The British state, after all, remains an Established order. And its ecclesiastical arm, however ineffectually, still embodies its defining - if not necessarily its prevailing - ethical dimension. Finally, they include the seemingly marginal concerns of warfare and rebellion. The British state, uniquely amongst the western democracies, still deploys its own troops routinely in order to police and protect its own citizens on the streets of at least one part of its own land. And that simple and brutal fact has ramifications far beyond the shores of Ulster. These will continue, in the short term at least; certainly well into the development of the so-called 'peace process' of contemporary times. These varying dimensions, and different boundaries, are explored below in terms of the various competences of the state, not in relation to their particular location. Specifically, that means that the political and, for that matter, legal aspects of both regional (county, urban, district) and supra-national (especially European) government are largely neglected in what follows. This is not to deny their importance. It is to suggest that they have their own place. Clearly, the question of local administration (and conversely, of central delegation) has been of enormous significance in British history, once almost a barometer of the changing climates of domestic liberty and tyranny. Perhaps it still is. But it does not illuminate the issue of where in the lives of each of its citizens the state, tout court, may legitimately intrude; or where, in fact, it has actually trod.14 Similarly, the very large matter of European integration cannot fail to engage the mind of anyone concerned, amongst other things, with public interference in private life, now or in the future. But, once again, it is difficult to envisage that the European Commission will conceive of whole new areas for its proper competence, unimagined or unimaginable by the British state. Only the most pessi14

A vast subject which can be done no justice in a brief bibliography. For the national/ local dimension, however, it might be worth considering the essays in Ken Young (ed.), National Interests and Local Government (London, 1983); and, from another perspective, Michael Harloe, Chris Pickvance and John Urry (eds.), Place, Policy and Politics: Do Localities Matter? (London, 1990), passim. The large question of finance is treated in N. P. Heyworth, The Finance of Local Government, 7th edn (London, 1984), see ch. 3 on 'Government Grants'. Perhaps the best primer remains Howard Elcock, Local Government: Policy and Management in Local Authorities, 3rd edn (London, 1994), see esp. chs. 1 and 2. On the vexed question of the relationship between politics and government in the localities, a start can be made in William Hampton, Local Government and Urban Politics (London, 1987), part 2.

8

S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

mistic Europhobe or, conversely, optimistic Europhile could really think that.15 The book This book is a collection of essays on the various aspects of these many and interrelated problems. Contributors were invited to participate in the project solely because the editors believed that they had something to say on subjects about which they are acknowledged experts. In making their choice, the editors envisaged no particular methodological, still less a specific doctrinal, approach. Accordingly, the volume is unashamedly multidisciplinary. It is hoped that this will be to its advantage. At the same time, whatever subsequent interdisciplinary virtues it may display have not been self-consciously wrought. Certainly, no attempt has been made to forge a social scientific synthesis out of such disparate material, and from so many diverging perspectives. None of the contributors was asked to sacrifice the wider purposes or specific conveniences of his own specialist academic discipline for the supposed needs of the whole. And the editors have made no attempt to mould the resulting efforts into a syncretistic intellectual blancmange. What the reader will find are the separate perspectives of economists, political scientists, sociologists and historians exploring as such in areas where they were judged to be especially competent to make a general contribution to knowledge. It is up to the reader alone to determine whether they have, in fact, done so; and whether, too, the editors' organisational indulgence has had a benign or malignant effect on their efforts. By the same token, it should go without saying that the volume neither professes, nor presumes, any particular political bias. Certainly, no specific line of ideological attack was envisaged. It is doubtful if the editors themselves could have agreed upon one. And it is likely that the value of the work as a whole would have been even less if they had. Thus 15

On the question of 'Britain in Europe', a beginning can be made in Stephen George, An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community (Oxford, 1990), see esp. chs. 1, 5 and 6. See also the essays collected in George (ed.), Britain and the European Community: The Politics of Semi-Detachment (Oxford, 1992), notably chs. 1 and 3-5. On the future, perhaps see Michael Franklin and Marc Wilke, Britain's Future in Europe (London, 1990), a frankly positive account; and James M. Buchanan, Karl Otto Pohl, Victoria Curzon Price and Frank Vibert, Europe's Constitutional Future (London, 1990), which, with one obvious exception, contains rather more sceptical readings of the matter. The historical question is introduced in Sean Greenwood, Britain and European Co-operation since 1945 (Oxford, 1992), see esp. chs. 1-7; and a wider framework still can be found in David Apter, The Politics of European Integration in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot, 1993), passim.

The shifting boundaries of the state in Britain

9

the reader will find a dozen or more different social and political perspectives in the essays which follow, each of them individually disclosed. This is taken to reflect the realities of the subject matter and the inevitable controversies which it has already stimulated and will continue to invoke. It is also understood to express the diverging judgements of an informed, but inevitably opinionated, multiple expertise. And, finally, it is assumed that the reader will be canny enough to establish each of their biases for himself and, where necessary, to supply his own, suitably salutary, corrective. For all that, the book does aspire to some degree of coherence. Certainly, it is the fervent belief of the editors that whilst not every conceivable avenue of enquiry has been followed, a sufficient number of the most important (if not necessarily the most obvious) have been addressed, and in a way which has made the pursuit of a broad academic angle at least compatible with the obligation to maintain a steady intellectual focus. Similarly, it is their strong conviction that the duplication of disciplinary perspectives should yield not merely a richer but also a more integrated picture of change in the British state during the past century: of what caused it, and where it now proceeds. In that way, it is hoped that a volume of essays, variously authored by specialists of different expertise, will enable the reader to appreciate more fully than hitherto just what is peculiar in, as well as general to, the formation and development of the state in modern Britain, or about how it has become so much like so many of the other states within the advanced world, but also about how, given its historical legacy, and according to the logic of its own political, social and economic context, it has developed in its own peculiar ways. To understand the general in the development of the British state is inevitably, even perhaps unconsciously, to contribute towards the theory of the state in a liberal democracy. And if this book makes any contribution to such a theory, that will be to the good. To be sure, it can offer no integrated, nor even coherent, account of the whole phenomenon. But to appreciate the particular more thoroughly is not, necessarily, to subvert the very possibility of such a general theory. It may even have the effect of pushing it further forward. At the very least, it should not be taken for a destructive activity, still less for a trivial pursuit. For in the progressively converging system of states - if not necessarily of economies - which the European Union seems increasingly to be, it might prove salutary to acknowledge, if for no other reason than to be properly prepared against, the individuality of the states' systems which necessarily have constituted and will constitute the basis of that wider organisation. But that, of course, is another question. And

10

5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

for all its intrinsic merits - indeed precisely because of those merits - it will not be dealt with here. Plan of the work The plan of the work follows the logic of the problem and the variety of its implications. Because this is a book concerned as much about the many different ways in which the state has been perceived - identified, described and understood - as about what it has actually done (or failed to do) in modern Britain, the first section is devoted to four quite separate and different interpretations of what might loosely be called the political theory of the state. Of these, that by Dr Harris is primarily concerned with the emergence (or otherwise) of philosophically coherent language to describe the politics of state development; another, by Dr Bentley, about the degree to which that language did or did not envisage the notion of boundaries. Later contributions by Professors Marquand and Skidelsky set out the ways in which such rhetoric envisaged either a wider role, or a more specific agenda, for the activities of government in modern British society. Part II is devoted to the critical, and unquestionably central, question of the development of the state in relation to the growth and performance of the British economy during the twentieth century. Dr Middleton provides an essential overview. Dr Whiting explores the limits, both administrative and political, of the tax system. Finally, Professor Peden considers the relationship between the economic activity of the state and the growth, or otherwise, of economic knowledge made available to it during this period. The so-called 'welfare state' is approached directly in Part III. Three aspects of its workings are described and analysed here: namely welfare policy, strictly speaking, by Professor Deacon; health, and the growing interventionism which prefaced the National Health Service, by Professor Digby; and finally education, and the putative emergence of a national educational system, by Dr Wooldridge. The more venerable and still important - albeit changing - 'warfare state' is treated in Part IV. Dr Winter explores the general question of the degree to which the waging of two world wars in this century - a state-dominated activity if ever there was one - has helped forge a British national identity. And Professor Townshend provides much needed consideration of the particular case of Northern Ireland, and the effect which the management of political violence has had upon the British state up to the present time. The last section of the book identifies and describes the significance of the religious dimension of the state. Dr Green outlines the major

The shifting boundaries of the state in Britain

11

implications of the continuing existence of a state church in modern Britain. Dr Wilson examines some of the ramifications of that continuity for the state's nonconformist, but religious, subjects. Finally, Professor Davies traces the changing contours of surely the most profound yet least discussed aspect of the state's involvement in civil society and personal life: the extent to which the state has chosen, and increasingly has not chosen, to reserve for itself the right to end the lives of each of us; and what that means for us all. In conclusion, the editors offer an account of the past development and future prospects of the state in modern Britain. This chapter in no sense summarises the book. Nor does it reflect the views of the other contributors. It is a personal view, albeit the product of the views of two people. It is based partly on what follows; and partly on wider reflection. It has no ex cathedra status.

Parti

The state and political theory

Political thought and the state Jose Harris

I One of the most striking features of writing on British politics and society from the early 1940s through to the late 1960s was the widespread silence that prevailed on the theme of the underlying nature, powers and purposes of the state. Britain's governors during that period waged a world war against one totalitarian state and a cold war against another. They withdrew from control of a global empire and devised ambitious state structures for many of Britain's ex-colonial possessions. They engaged for the first time in large-scale fiscal and monetary management, nationalised (and denationalised) major industries, introduced mass compulsory secondary education, centralised and bureaucratised many traditionally local services, and set up a welfare state designed to protect its citizens against want from the cradle to the grave. In virtually no other period of British history were the powers and functions of government so radically extended and redefined, and in no other period were the roles of state, citizen, economy, society and private voluntary associations more drastically remoulded. Yet, in striking contrast to what the naive wanderer along the highway of history might have expected, there were few attempts to analyse or justify these new powers and functions in theoretical terms. Major analytical or speculative works about the state in this period can almost literally be numbered on the fingers of one hand (and of these one was widely dismissed as 'the unhappy work of an ill man',1 while another was a work of fiction largely read by children). A similar point may be made not just about major but about minor philosophical works. For the space of about thirty or forty years, not merely 'good' and original thought about the state but bad and bumbling thought about the state virtually vanished from the pages of British philosophical, political and sociological 1

J. N. Watkins, 'Political Tradition and Political Theory', Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (1952), 323, commenting on R. G. Collingwood's The New Leviathan.

15

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Jose Harris

literature. Exceptions to this rule consisted largely of a grumbling undercurrent of critical writings which portrayed the modern interventionist state in highly negative terms, either as a barrier to proletarian revolution or as the foe of personal, civil and economic liberty. Such writings were to be of some long-term significance in eroding public confidence in the virtue, competence and legitimacy of state power; but they had little impact on either the theory or practice of politics in the immediately post-war years. This surprising lacuna cannot be ascribed simply to a native AngloSaxon philistinism or distaste for speculative political thought, since the periods before and after these dates produced a great mass of theoretical writing on both the state in particular and the nature in politics in general. The 1970s and 80s saw a growing revival of interest in theoretical analysis of state institutions, in debate about the ontological primacy of groups or individuals, and in the validity of such concepts as social justice and human rights.2 And very recently there has been an explosion of historical, political and philosophical writing on the theme of citizenship - a concept that only a few years ago was widely treated as a litmus test of corny moralism, false consciousness and intellectual confusion. Similarly, the preceding political culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had generated a massivefloweringof speculative works on the nature of the modern state, written from many different philosophical angles - idealist, positivist, pluralist, socialist, syndicalist, scientistic and neo-utilitarian. Down to the 1930s in Britain political theorising of one kind and another occurred not merely in an academic context; it was virtually a national sport of British intellectuals of all ideological and professional complexions. It was engaged in not just by professors of philosophy and by practising statesmen, but by economists, historians, scientists, doctors, clergymen, social workers, soldiers, business men, labour leaders, fellow-travellers and a host of others who saw themselves as having a finger in the pie of the body politic.3 This academic and popular culture of political thought produced a great deal of sometimes amiable, sometimes nauseating rubbish; but it produced also many serious and systematic attempts to analyse the 2

3

See in particular Brian Barry, Democracy, Power and Justice (London, 1989). For reviews of recent writing see Alan Hamlin and Philip Pettit (eds.), The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State (London, 1989), and David Held (ed.), Political Theory Today (London, 1991). See Rodney Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain (London, 1978); W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. II, The Ideological Heritage (London, 1983); Andrew Vincent and Raymond Plant, The Life and Thought of the British Idealists (London, 1984); Jose Harris, 'Political Thought and the Welfare State 1870-19124: An Intellectual Framework for British Social Policy', Past and Present, 135 (1992), 116-41.

Political thought and the state

17

role of the state and other political institutions, in a context of advanced capitalism, urban conglomeration and modern mass democracy. No single great paradigmatic thinker in the early twentieth century towered over the rest, but there were many who made an original contribution to public debate or who raised issues of fundamental importance for political and social philosophy. For several generations theorists of all complexions wrestled with the dilemmas posed by Mill, Herbert Spencer and T. H. Green - about how to reconcile 'individuality' with majoritarian democracy, about whether social reform was hostile or complementary to biological evolution, about the virtues and vices of bureaucracy, and about the role of the state in enhancing so-called 'positive liberty'. On more specific issues, one may mention A. C. Pigou's attempt to find a philosophic basis for the Webbs' doctrine of the 'National Minimum', the Webbs' own attempts to construct working models for face-to-face democracy, J. A. Hobson's attempts to ground redistribution in a concept of 'organic' surplus value, J. N. Figgis's critique of the notion of unitary sovereignty, and Bernard Bosanquet's attempt to locate a Rousseauesque 'general will' not in pure abstraction but in the day-to-day working of a common national culture.4 The virtual disappearance of systematic political theory from British public life between the early 1940s and the 1970s was not therefore, as some would have it, simply a natural expression of a characteristically pragmatic and philistine national culture. On the contrary, it was a strange death, whose causes and significance need to be investigated and explained. This can, I think, be done in a number of different ways. First, we must look at the earlier tradition of political philosophising that ran into the sand, and think about why it ceased to be a credible or morally compelling way of thought to theorists and practitioners of politics in a later generation. Secondly, we must take into account the peculiar political circumstances of Britain in the period during and after the Second World War - a period that for long was seen as the culmination of, but now looks increasingly like an aberration from, earlier centuries of British political and economic history. And, thirdly, since it seems scarcely conceivable that British intellectuals simply stopped thinking about politics altogether for a thirty-year period, we must look at other ways of analysing the role of man in society that may have 4

A. C. Pigou, memorandum to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws (Cd. 5068, XLIX, appendix LXXX, pp. 981-2, 1910); S. and B. Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London, 1920); John Allett, New Liberalism: The Political Economy of J. A. Hobson (London, 1981); J. N. Figgis, Churches in the Modern State (London, 1913); Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State (London, 1899).

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displaced or discredited traditional political theory during the wartime and post-war years. II First, then, the tradition that fell into disrepute and decay. I cannot in this short chapter adequately summarise all the many and varied strands in British political thought between the late Victorian period and the 1930s, though I have already given some examples of the range of interests that it contained. A general point that should be emphasised, however, is the overwhelmingly organicist and idealist character of nearly every aspect of that tradition, even in quarters that are often conventionally thought of as the inner heartlands of British positivism and individualism. The nature and scope of that wide-ranging idealism is perhaps a little different from what is often supposed. A number of recent studies have indicated both that the hegemony of idealism in British universities was less complete than was once claimed, and that the political influence of idealist philosophers like T. H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet was in practice fairly limited.5 Both of these points are, I think, up to a point correct. What they discount, however, is the fact that although idealism was under serious attack among pure philosophers by 1914, its influence upon what might be thought of as the sub-philosophical disciplines of political theory, sociology, social administration and social philosophy was far more all-pervasive and long-lasting. Moreover, the initial onslaught on idealism was largely an Oxbridge attack, and various forms of idealism remained deeply entrenched in the Scottish, Welsh and newer civic universities until well into the mid-twentieth century. And, similarly, although it may be hard to find proof of the direct influence of idealism upon policy documents in Whitehall, idealist categories were omnipresent in informed popular discussion of social reform, not just during the Edwardian period but right through to the 1930s and early 1940s, and not just in one particular enclave in British politics, but on the right, left and centre. As I have shown in more detail elsewhere, much British sociological writing until the 1930s was deeply impregnated with idealist preconceptions. The ten departments of 'social science' and 'social administration' that were set up in British universities between 1900 and 1920 were all fortresses of idealist thought, and many of them were founded and manned by prominent idealist philosophers - men such as Edward Urwick, Henry 5

Michael Freeden, New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (London, 1978), pp. 16-19, 55-6; Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (London, 1977), pp. 2, 312.

Political thought and the state

19

Jones, J. H. Muirhead and James Seth. 6 Edward Urwick, who from 1912 to 1924 held the chair at the London School of Economics later occupied by Richard Titmuss, made 'social philosophy' the core discipline of the school's social science syllabus; and throughout his career at the LSE his lectures and academic writings centred upon the application of Plato's Republic to the solution of social problems in the modern industrial state.7 The authority of Plato, and of classical authorities in general, was widely invoked in such media as the Sociological Review, the Social Service Review, the Hibbert Journal and the International Journal of Ethics, as pre-figuring the modern problems of how to turn men into citizens and how to subdue the fragmentation and relativism of modern industrial society to the 'common end of the good life'.8 Rousseau also was a frequent point of reference; and though Rousseau remained a somewhat suspect figure to many British readers, nearly all his Edwardian and post-Edwardian interpreters endorsed Rousseau's claim that 'true freedom' might be enhanced rather than diminished by the exercise of state power.9 Even the social survey movement, often seen as the embodiment of a purely descriptive, atheoretical approach to the study of social problems, constantly referred to the goal of 'awakening citizen consciousness' and of enabling isolated individuals to understand their roles and duties in the larger social organism. Of the major social sciences in Britain only economics remained largely wedded to an individualist and positivistic tradition; and, even within economics, welfare economists headed by Pigou and J. A. Hobson worked hard upon the problem of how to reconcile the private choices of individuals with the optimal welfare of the wider organic whole. 10 Such modes of thought remained dominant in popular and academic debate on state and society in Britain throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and may perhaps be seen as reflected in the many 'corporatist', communitarian and coalitionist experiment of the inter-war years. Idealist thought was deeply embedded in the long-drawn-out debate on poverty, which from the 1880s down to the Second World War was widely 6

7

8

9

10

Harris, 'Political Thought and the Welfare State', pp. 128-31, and 'The Webbs, the Charity Organisation Society and the Ratan Tata Foundation', in Martin Bulmer, Jane Lewis and David Piachaud (eds.), The Goals of Social Policy (London, 1989), pp. 27-63. E. J. Urwick, The Message of Plato (London, 1920) and The Social Good (London, 1927). Jose Harris, 'The Spell of Plato in English Social Thought 1890-1940', J. S. Neale Memorial Lecture, University College, London, 1992. G. D. H. Cole's introduction to Rousseau's The Social Contract (1913), pp. xi-xliv; Ernest Barker, Political Thought in England 1848-1914 (London, 1915), pp. 217-21; A. D. Lindsay, The Modern Democratic State, vol. I (London, 1943). A. C. Pigou, Wealth and Welfare (London, 1912); J. A. Hobson, 'Economic Art and Human Welfare', Journal of Philosophical Studies (1926), 467-SO.

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viewed among British social reformers not merely as a quantitative shortfall of material goods but as both a subjective and objective barrier to 'self-realisation' and virtuous citizenship.11 It was also widely pervasive in discussion about the future of democracy. Among the tidal wave of publications on the theory and practice of 'civics' that was designed to guide (or guide the guiders of) the new electorate after 1918, the overwhelming majority were couched in idealist or quasi-idealist terms.12 The mass of the British people were to be coached into an existential awareness of the moral purpose and common framework of the state through active participation in public-spirited, self-governing voluntary institutions. There were, of course, recurrent attacks upon the idealist school, such as Leonard Hobhouse's famous tirade against the so-called 'metaphysical theory of the state', and complaints from socialists like Harold Laski that political idealism ignored or marginalised the brute facts of economic inequality and class conflict.13 But Hobhouse's own political thought, and that of the progressive liberalism which he represented, was itself deeply imbued with idealist and organic visions of society and government.14 And, likewise, many aspects of British socialist thought were deeply intertwined with idealist notions, expressed for example in Ramsay Macdonald's philosophy of citizenship, in Tawney's invocation of an organic Christian commonwealth, and in G. D. H. Cole's abiding debt to the ethics and ontology of Rousseau and Kant.15 A common theme of idealist thought of the right, left and centre was that, though economic and constitutional arrangements were of great importance, the justice and well-being of the body politic was intimately bound up with and predicated upon the ethical disposition of its citizens: public-spirited, self-disciplined, co-operating individuals were viewed as the vital sinews of the modern collectivist state. During the 1930s, however, the idealist empire in social and political thought in Britain began slowly to crumble on many fronts. The longdrawn-out economic crisis in Britain and elsewhere made it increasingly 11

12

13 14

15

Bernard Bosanquet (ed.), Aspects of the Social Problem (London, 1895); Michael Freeden, 'The Concept of Poverty and Progressive Liberalism in Turn-of-the-Century Britain', paper to the symposium on 'Perspectives of Poverty: Past and Present', Agnelli Foundation, Turin, June 1991. E. M. White, 'The Purpose of Civics and How It Is Served in Recent English Textbooks', Sociological Review, 15 (1923), 209. Harold J. Laski, Liberty in the Modern State (London, 1930), pp. 55-61. Stefan Collini, 'Hobhouse, Bosanquet and the State: Philosophical Idealism and Political Argument in England, 1880-1914', Past and Present, 11 (1976), 86-111. R. H. Tawney, Commonplace Book (ed. J. M. Winter and D. M. Joslin, Economic History Review supplement 5, 1972); Ramsay MacDonald's Political Writings, ed. B. Barker (London, 1972).

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difficult for many to accept the claim of some idealist theorists that the powers of the state should be viewed as the tangible embodiment of the common good. Although the spread of Marxian ideas in Britain may have been fairly limited, theoretical Marxism - with its emphasis on economic rather than political analysis, and on the state as a tool of oppression and exploitation16 - undoubtedly supplied a new world-view to a potent and principled intellectual minority consisting of precisely the kind of people who would have been Hegelian or Platonic idealists a generation before. At a more popular level the spectacle of Fascism on the continent bred creeping disenchantment with holistic and communitarian modes of thought among certain kinds of people who had in the past been particularly prone to such modes. Social workers and organisers of private charity, for example, who down to the 1930s were widely influenced by an ethical vision derived from idealism and organicism, 17 were noticeably shocked and disorientated by accounts of 'communitarian' social work in Nazi Germany. And equally potent within an academic context were the messages that were beginning to come out of British philosophy in the 1930s - messages that were increasingly hostile, not merely to idealist political thought but to systematic political theory of any kind. Such messages were embodied in a whole series of works: in the argument of linguistic positivists that normative statements - and indeed all non-positivist forms of discourse - had no genuine logical status; in the claim of Bertrand Russell that what was commonly called 'political philosophy' had nothing whatsoever to do with philosophy properly so-called; and in the attacks of Richard Crossman and others upon the looming influence of Plato. These attacks took a variety of forms; but all agreed that - far from being a forerunner of modern social reform and democratic citizenship - Plato's political philosophy was a forerunner of Fascism, racism, elitism and totalitarian tyranny.18 These criticisms of idealism in particular and political philosophy in general - coming as they did at a time when traditional perceptions of state and society were in a traumatic melting-pot throughout Europe combined to influence the character of political discourse in Britain for the next forty years. In academic circles they were reinforced by the influence of academic refugees from Europe, who - with a few notable exceptions - added their voice to the anti-idealist, positivistic critique of 16

17 18

Though this view coincided with a well-nigh unanimous demand among marxian writers of the thirties for a great expansion of state power to deal with poverty and unemployment: a paradox whose ramifications cannot be fully explored here. Harris, 'Political Thought and the Welfare State', pp. 131-5. R. H. Grossman, Plato Today (London, 1938).

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state power. Rearguard actions were fought for some years by idealist or quasi-idealist theorists such as R. G. Collingwood, A. D. Lindsay and Sir Ernest Barker; but Collingwood's work in the late thirties and early forties was far too oblique and cryptic to attract much following; while the writings of Lindsay and Barker - with their intense emphasis on voluntarism and personal 'service' as the sinews of public welfare began to seem increasingly dated and out of touch (though they were written in an idiom that would have been perfectly intelligible and morally compelling only a few years before).19 The impact of new styles of thought was soon manifest in both academic and popular circles. Discussion of political ideas did not wholly vanish from academic journals of philosophy, but such discussion was increasingly confined either to purely historical matters or to technical issues of language and perception.20 The political and sociological journals that I mentioned earlier changed their style within the course of a few years from speculative articles about the nature of authority and the moral purpose of the state to largely descriptive studies of the nuts-and-bolts working of specific social and political institutions - or to theoretical studies based not on political philosophy but on the new positivistic social sciences. Publications like the Hibbert Journal and the International Journal of Ethics limped along in an increasingly uncertain vein until the late 1940s, and then either radically changed in character or ceased publication. Post-war studies of political thought were few in number and were increasingly dominated by the shadow of linguistic positivism - a shadow that could clearly be seen in the influential studies of T. A. Weldon, whose later works advocated total relativism in the study of different political systems and likened norms of political behaviour to the rules in a game of cricket.21 Some kind of reaction against the earlier predominance of idealism in political and social thought was perhaps to a certain extent inevitable. But the extent and extremity of that reaction appears in retrospect somewhat surprising and paradoxical, given the fact that it coincided with the enormous wartime and post-war growth in the powers of the state; and I want now to turn to the more specific character of politics and government in Britain during the 1940s. An interplanetary observer 19

20

21

Ernest Barker, Reflections on Government (London, 1942); A. D . Lindsay, The Modern Democratic State (London, 1943). There was nothing in the 1940s comparable to the discussions among professional philosophers about government growth and social reconstruction that had taken place during the First World War (see e.g. * Symposium: Ethical Problems of Social Reconstruction', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 17 ( 1 9 1 6 - 1 7 ) , 256). T . A. Weldon, States and Morals: A Study in Political Conflicts (London, 1946); The Vocabulary of Politics (London, 1948).

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23

surveying Britain through a sociological telescope in the middle of the Second World War might have been forgiven for thinking that, far from dwelling amid the ruins of a discredited transcendental political philosophy, Britain looked far more like the prototype of an idealist state than it had done a few years before; and certainly the notion of an over-arching 'general will' being tangibly embodied in the day-to-day life of society fitted Britain in 1940 much better than it had done when Bernard Bosanquet first thought of it in 1894. There was a sense in which the national solidarity fostered by war seemed simply to have solved overnight many of the imponderable problems classically debated by political philosophers; and as commentators like Stephen Spender and Lionel Robbins observed, the great conflicts of political principle that had raged in intellectual circles in the 1930s seemed suddenly to have become redundant. This sensation of living in a society steered both visibly and invisibly by a beneficent general will spilled over into much discussion of post-war reconstruction. It clearly inspired much of the work of Beveridge and other wartime social reformers; and it was symbolised by a speech of Barbara Betts (later Barbara Castle) at the Labour Party conference debate on the Beveridge report, when she called for an end to discussion of theoretical 'generalities' about 'the brave new world' and the beginning of social action.22 A great deal of reconstruction thought was premised upon the assumption that wartime standards of corporate solidarity and devotion to a common cause would survive into peacetime; in the eyes of many there was therefore no particular need to theorise about either the liberty of the individual or the legitimacy of state power. Such views were as common on the right as on the left: the reconstruction committees of the Conservative Party, which set out in the early 1940s deeply imbued with organic and ' Volksgemeinschaft' ideas, shifted during the course of the war towards the much more pragmatic, piecemeal and instrumentalist stance that was to be characteristic of official Conservatism for the next quarter of a century.23 Attempts within Conservative Central Office to promote the alternative vision of F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom met with conspicuously little response, from either planners or the wider electorate, until a much later period.24 This sense of the democratic redundancy of political theorising survived into the post-war world, and curiously dovetailed with that intel22 23

24

Labour Party Conference Report, debate on the Beveridge plan (1943). Jose Harris, 'Political Ideas and the D e b a t e o n State Welfare 1940-45', in Harold Smith (ed.), War And Social Change ( L o n d o n , 1987), pp. 2 3 9 - 4 6 . Harriet Overton Jones, ' T h e Conservative Party and the Welfare State', University of L o n d o n P h D thesis, 1992, pp. 106-8.

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lectual crisis of confidence in the whole enterprise of normative political philosophy that I have already discussed. The consequence was that, in marked contrast with the Edwardian period and the inter-war years, much public and academic debate on major social and political issues in the period after the Second World War was curiously devoid of reference to first principles. The legislation that set up the welfare state generated some discussion about whether the nation could afford it (though even on this point debate was more limited than might have been expected) but very little analysis of the impact of welfare upon state power - or upon the rights, duties, attitudes and behaviour of individual citizens.25 The sheer size and scope of the new social services meant that 'welfare' increasingly rivalled the traditional spheres of defence, property and public order as a fundamental rationale and purpose of the state's existence; yet any serious attempt to explore and defend the legitimacy and implications of that role was conspicuous by its absence.26 Awkward questions tentatively raised by Oakeshott and others about the sheer capacity of the organs of the state to devise rational solutions to social problems were left largely unanswered.27 Even theorists and polemicists who favoured further expansion of planning and public services found it far more difficult to define the proper purposes and boundaries of state power than to denounce its dangers and abuses (in the writings of Richard Crossman, for example, invective against 'managerial society', 'the State Leviathan' and 'this new feudalism' figured far more prominently than the claim that there were certain socio-economic functions in complex modern industrial societies which only the state could perform).28 Normative and morally exhortatory language ('fellowship, service, altruism') still played a major part in social policy debate, but rarely within any clearly stated philosophic framework.29 It became increasingly a commonplace - and indeed was viewed as a virtue - that the new social services were neutral, mechanical 25

26

27

28

29

See for example the discussions of the committee on the abolition of the Poor Law, an area of administration which for centuries had been a crucible for rival schools of economic, social and constitutional theories ( P R O , A S T . 7/810 and 828). T h e implications for political philosophy of the n e w welfare functions of the state were touched upon by A. C. Ewing, The Individual, the State and World Government (London, 1947) and J. D . Mabbott, The State and the Citizen ( L o n d o n , 1948); but in both cases the discussion, though intelligent, was brief and inconclusive. Both works were firmly within the waning idealist tradition. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London, 1962); R. F. Harrold, 'What is the Correct N u m b e r of Nurses?', The Cambridge Journal, 2, 8 (May 1949). R. H . S. Crossman, 'Planning for Freedom', lecture to the Fabian Society, 1955, reprinted in the book of the same title (London, 1965), pp. 64, 72, 84. See, e.g., C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London, 1956).

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25

and non-moral in their impact, by contrast with the 'moralistic' and socially coercive services of twenty or thirty years before.30 The welfare state therefore lived for several decades in a kind of historic vacuum of political theory, sustained by its popularity and by its practical success in meeting certain obvious needs, but largely unbuttressed by systematic intellectual support. This is not of course to deny that there was from the start a great deal of impassioned debate about whether government policies were going too far or had not gone far enough; but this was very largely conducted in pragmatic or sentimental terms, rather than in terms of systematic analysis of the proper purposes and boundaries of state action.31 Paradoxically it may even have been the case that the affluence and security brought about by 'state intervention' made possible the growth of choice, mobility and libertarian individualism on a far wider scale than had ever prevailed under freemarket capitalism; thus leading to the gradual piecemeal erosion of the communitarian ties and sentiments on which the welfare state was implicitly based. But what, one may ask, of the school of T. H. Marshall and Richard Titmuss and other distinguished post-war theorists of social policy? And what about the great post-war growth of the newer and more applied social sciences, which clustered around and supplied normative criteria for the development of services within the welfare state? Clearly there is room for disagreement here, but I do not myself see the writings of Marshall and Titmuss as constituting a school of political thought that adequately explored and legitimised the new role of the state in post-war Britain. T. H. Marshall usefully drew attention to the question of rights, and claimed that the new growth of 'social' rights was comparable with the growth of legal, civil and political rights in earlier epochs. 32 But merely calling something a right does not make it a right, and Marshall evaded the issue of how far something which was a product of social action could also be a predicate of that action - a question which was to engage many social and political philosophers later in the twentieth century. Richard Titmuss was an historian of great imaginative power, who had a knack of detecting dramatic issues of principle and historic change in the most prosaic and inconspicuous of 30

31

32

Barbara Wootton, 'Before and After Beveridge', Political Quarterly, 14, 4 (1943), 3 5 7 - 6 3 ; H. L. Beales, ' T h e Passing of the Poor Law', Political Quarterly, 19, 4 (1948), 312-22. There were many percipient critical comments on this absence of systematic thought at the time; but the critics themselves seemed puzzled about h o w to fill the gap. (See, e.g., D o n a l d G. Macrae, 'Domestic Record of the Labour Government', Political Quarterly, 20, 1 (1949), 1-11; and N . A. Smith, 'Theory and Practice of the Welfare State', Political Quarterly, 2 2 , 4 (1951), 3 6 9 - 8 1 . T . H . Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (London, 1950).

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social institutions (demographic trends, tax structures, day-to-day relationships between citizens and officials). But as a theorist he scarcely began to tackle the problem of rooting the welfare state in general principle: and Titmuss's social and political thought seems to me uneasily torn between a moral commitment to 'community', 'service' and 'citizenship' derived from Edwardian idealism, and an approach to practical policies that was largely utilitarian.33 New developments in the social sciences (particularly economics, psychology and criminology) undoubtedly contributed a strongly theoretical dimension to certain aspects of post-war public policy, most notably in such areas as casework, control of deviance, and fiscal and monetary management.34 But social sciences which focussed upon diagnosis by experts rather than customary intuitive knowledge or rational choice by citizens merely reinforced the challenge to the traditional concerns of moral and political philosophy - and confirmed the widespread sense of many in the 1950s that classic 'political theory' was in terminal decline.35 Ill Did the weakness of political theory matter? Did it make any difference that policy-makers in the post-war era were not inspired or constrained by a culture of academic and public discussion that might have given the new functions of the state a more than merely pragmatic legitimacy? In the short term, perhaps not. Many would argue that high politics in Britain has always been hermetically sealed from the world of grand theory, even in epochs when theory was at its grandest, and that in this respect the post Second World War era was just following the general rule. At a more grass-roots level, surveys of public opinion in the 1950s found a high degree of popular contentment with and confidence in the institutions and functions of the British state.36 And it may perhaps be the case that, just as happy families have no history, so nations that feel themselves to be just and contented have no need for anything so abstract and artificial as systematic 'political thought'. 33

34

35

36

A n approach exemplified by his The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (London, 1970). See John Bowlby, 'Psychology and Democracy', Political Quarterly, 17, 1 (1946), 6 1 - 7 6 ; and for a critique of such trends, Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Social Pathology (London, 1963). See introduction to Peter Laslett (ed.), Politics, Philosophy and Society, first series (London, 1963), pp. vii-xiv; and Isaiah Berlin, 'Does Political Theory Still Exist?', in Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds.), Politics, Philosophy and Society, second series (London, 1972), p p . 1, 33. Gabriel A l m o n d and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, 1963).

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27

It seems arguable, however, that the strange death of serious analysis of the functions of the state in the epoch after the Second World War was of wider and possibly damaging significance in British political history in a number of different ways. Some of these were as follows. First, it contributed to a certain impoverishment and stereotyping of day-to-day political discourse, and to a reluctance among politicians on all sides to pursue intransigent problems to their logical conclusions. When public figures did make efforts to ground the new public services in some kind of general principle, they invariably fell back upon the idiom of an earlier generation - upon public spirit, duty, co-operation and national solidarity - which frequently sounded hollow, even if it was not. 37 Secondly, it led to the displacement of political by technical goals, and fostered encroachment by experts and professionals upon the roles of citizens. This was one unfortunate side-effect of Keynesian economics, which as a political theory was premised on the view that there were certain forms of medicine which citizens would not take - so therefore the medicine must be suitably doctored by pain-free economic management. It was evident also in the widespread tendency of 1950s social workers to treat the residual 'poor' as candidates for psychotherapy. Thirdly, it led to widespread lack of understanding about the historical meaning of many major items of contemporary policy - items which often appeared to be merely practical and pragmatic, but which in fact had profound significance for the underlying long-term character of both state and society. Instances of such lack of understanding can be found at many points where state activity bisected and redefined the lives of individuals and communities: in policies towards families, education, immigration, transport, sexual morality and madness (to name but a few). And, fourthly, it fostered trivial and confused visions of the institutions of the state: visions in which central government was viewed, often simultaneously and by the same persons, both as inherently intrusive and oppressive and as a toothless and passive beast of burden, to which massive social functions could be continually transferred without any ensuing shift in the structure of political power.38 Such confusion left the welfare state and the public services in general peculiarly vulnerable to theoretical attacks from both right and left when eventually public spending fell into popular disfavour - and when,

37

38

C. A. R. Crosland's The Future of Socialism, for example, continually invoked the old communitarian catchwords of ethical socialism — whilst at the same time deriding the old culture of puritanism and stoicism from which such ideals had sprung. A point made by W . A. R o b s o n , ' L a b o u r and Local Government', Political Quarterly, 24, 1 (1953), 3 9 - 4 5 .

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concurrently, philosophical discourse about the fundamentals of state power began to revive.39 39

This chapter is part of a larger study on the intellectual history of modern social policy, being carried out with assistance from the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation. I should like to express my thanks to those two bodies for their encouragement and support.

3

'Boundaries' in theoretical language about the British State Michael Bentley

I When and why did spatial metaphor become part of normative language about the State in Britain? It has acquired so much familiarity in recent years - especially through the Thatcherite topos of 'rolling back the frontiers of the State' - that it stands in danger of turning transparent and unremarked. But in failing to notice its pervasive presence we remain blind to a strange and time-specific way of talking about politics. Writers of any period cannot but recognise that any given State has a territorial element: to identify one in relation to another involves stipulating which piece of land or stretch of sea comes under its distinctive, and normally exclusive, sway. So when Alfred Zimmern, all too conscious in 1918 of how States consisted of fields and towns and coasts that might suffer their boundaries to be crossed by invaders, decided on a definition of the State as, 'a territory over which there is a government claiming unlimited authority',1 he hardly said anything worth confuting. The age of imperialism among European powers (and of Frederick Jackson Turner in the United States) had already quickened its romantic language by allowing the frontier a role as cultural metaphor. Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set; or so it seemed to Lord Appin when he remarked, during one of John Buchan's more excruciating conversations among the imperial elite, that all 'this modern talk of empire seeks to extend the boundaries of Britain so that a quarter of the world shall be one state'.2 Understood in this non-problematic sense, the notion of a 'State' has considerable force in the theory of international politics but none in discussions of internal relations between governors and governed. More interesting is the translation of a spatial description of a unit of sovereignty into the language within which 1

2

Zimmern in Nationality and Government (London, 1918), quoted in Harold Laski, 'The Pluralistic State' (London, 1919), reprinted in David Nicholls, The Pluralist State (London, 1975), appendix B, p. 146. John Buchan, A Lodge in the Wilderness (London, 1906), p. 296.

29

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sovereignty itself is conceived and debated. This language - or, more accurately, this dialect - has become valuable to British individualists who need a register in which to say what is wrong with a State3 that over-masters its citizens: it makes available images that help underline danger and strengthens the sense of threat. And those dialects, for there are more than one, have a history as well as a function. This essay will take an interest in the origins and modulations of some of them.4 'State' in its weak territorial sense occurs in political texts long before the stronger sense emerges in the first half of the nineteenth century. Even historians who lack Macaulay's sharp picture of that stronger sense have no compunction over speaking of a 'British state' as early as the twelfth century - meaning, simply, the territorial extent of where a ruler's writ ran.5 The stronger usage rested on a connection between State (often defined crudely as government) and society (often not defined at all). And that relation was taken by nineteenth-century writers to have been confirmed in the Reformation and its aftermath in Britain. The State, by absorbing the Church and itself becoming confessional, pressed its claims to exert sovereignty over all the commonwealth. Far from speaking the language of boundaries, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries instituted (as it seemed from the high ground of nineteenth-century criticism) the very reverse: a vocabulary of fusion in which the commonwealth, 'some regiment or policy under which men live', has broken down the barrier between Church and State to become an undifferentiated community of which the king is 'the highest uncommanded commander'.6 However unclear the consequences of the fusion. 3

4

5

6

The question whether to capitalise the term is inescapable and insoluble. I have chosen to represent State in this sense with a capital letter throughout this chapter while retaining within quotations the style followed by the contemporary text. I shall not take space here with a discussion of the usefulness of 'languages' in political theory: for an introduction the reader can go to Anthony Pagden's introduction to Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987,1990) and especially to J. G. A. Pocock's introductory essay on 'The Concept of a Language and the metier d'historiert (pp. 19-38). We can note, however, that 'boundary language' has enjoyed much prominence recently as an analytical tool. See, for example, Michael Freeman and David Robertson, The Frontiers of Political Theory (Brighton, 1980); Charles S. Maier, Changing Boundaries of the Political (Cambridge, 1987); Guglielmo Carchedi, Frontiers of Political Economy (London, 1991). See Michael Bentley, 'The British State and its Historiography', in W. Blockmans and J.-P. Genet (eds.), Visions sur le developpement des etats europeens: theories et historiographies de Vetat moderne (Rome, 1993), pp. 153-68. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1662 edn), p. 188. Cf. William Gladstone's gloss in coloured retrospect: 'And thus much at least is clear: there can be no doubt that [the Eighth Book of the Laws] teaches or rather involves, as a basis and precondition of all its particular arguments, the great doctrine that the state is a person, having a conscience, cognizant of matters of religion, and bound by all consti-

'Boundaries' in language about the state

31

the nineteenth-century State did not figure among them; and it follows that one struggles to identify any unambiguous 'boundary dialect' in the texts of the intervening period. Naturally one notices rulers and discovers metaphors in which their relation to their subjects is given immediacy. Hobbes has a tantalising play with space and liberty, for example. 'For whatever is so tied, or environed, that it cannot move but within a certain space, which space is determined by the opposition of some external body, we say it hath not liberty to go further.' But then he pulls away because such metaphors are inapplicable to human beings ('that which is not subject to motion, is not subject to impediment') and returns to an imagery of 'chains' which behave less like halters than peculiar receptors. They are 'artificial chains, called civil laws, which [men] themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power; and the other end to their own ears'.7 No individual will seek personal space from his governor, else why come out of the state of nature in the first place, an arena in which everyone had 'enjoyed' social space by the acre but also all the insecurities that Hobbes alleged to be its accompaniment. 'He that brings an action against the sovereign, brings it against himself.'8 He, the new citizen, is not playing a ball-game, inhabiting a world of mere practice. He is rather acknowledging his part in a geometry; and the geometry of commonwealths, like all others, has its axioms and rules.9 Had Hobbes lived to witness the geometry of John Locke he would have found it non-Euclidean but perhaps have seen a certain comity in Locke's determination to ban boundaries as a form of logical solecism. Instead of 'bounds' we have 'fences' but there is little point, apparently, in discussing their usefulness against a tyrannical ruler. 'For if it be asked what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne.'10 Once turn towards a civil society, conversely, and the question again need not be borne because it cannot arise. The citizens have emerged from the state of nature in an act of resignation: they have left '[t]his executive power of the law of nature and . . . resign[ed] it to the

7 8

9 10

tutional and natural means to advance it.' Gladstone, The State in its Relation with the Church (London, 1838), p. 9. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (ed. Michael Oakeshott, Oxford, 1946), ch. 21, pp. 137-8. Ibid., ch. 20, p. 136; ch. 21, p. 144. He is willing to discuss 'the bounds of that power' granted to the sovereign (ch. 22, p. 147) but of course the assumption behind measuring them makes the concept self-defeating unless the commonwealth be reduced to anarchy through the impotence of its sovereign. Ibid., ch. 20, p. 136. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (1690), Bk III, ch. 7, sec. 93, p. 162.

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public'; and they have done so for one overwhelming reason - to secure 'the preservation of their property5 which Locke's otherwise nonHobbesian state of nature had left insecure.11 It followed that, although the theoretical problem of ensuring that 'men . . . be restrained from invading others' rights' might arise in an imperfectly formed commonwealth, in a Lockean civil society its very fons et origo would work in a contrary direction on behalf of the citizens so that 'the power of the society or legislature constituted by them c[ould] never be supposed to extend farther than the common good'.12 The death and resurrection of the 'body politic' as an organising idea really wants its own essay. Certainly it would help understanding if one could ascertain with some precision when the anthropomorphism of seventeenth-century political thought gave way to the mechanism of late eighteenth-century writing and when, under the cover of Darwinian language, it made its return after 1870. What seems demonstrable is that the supression of boundaries implicit in Hobbes and Locke does not consistently survive the end of the eighteenth century. Perhaps in part the shift owes something to a well-known importation of scientific vocabulary, especially from the mechanical sciences and most notably within a constitutional doctrine which stressed the appropriateness of check-and-balance imagery. In part it doubtless derived also from an assertiveness in the expanding legal profession as it looked for textual fixities to keep control over a society undergoing unsettling change. Fundamentally, indeed, an explanation might best be sought in confusions of social status, dislocation within industrialising towns, major attacks on traditional modes of rural existence and the substitution of a conflict-inspired mode of thought for one resting on cosmic harmony. That such new modes retained their organic patina one can concede at once. Blackstone's State is neither a tree nor a clock; but it assuredly remains 'a collective body composed of a multitude of individuals united for their safety and convenience, and intending to act together as one man'.13 Burke's arboreal state likewise pays attention to the community of interest in which the people have a voice that no sovereign dare ignore: I have nothing to do here with the abstract value of the voice of the people. But as long as reputation, the most precious possession of every individual, and as long as opinion, the great support of the state, depend entirely upon that voice, it can never be considered as a thing of little consequence either to individuals or II 12 13

Ibid., ch. 7, sec. 89, p. 160; ch. 9, sec. 124, p. 180. Ibid., ch. 2, sec. 7, p. 120; ch. 9, sec. 131, p. 182. Blackstone quoted by Jeremy Bentham in his Fragment on Government (London, 1776 edn), p. 126.

'Boundaries' in language about the state

33

governments. Nations are not primarily ruled by laws: less by violence . . . Nations are governed by the same methods, and on the same principles, by which an individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals or his superiors; by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious management of it.14 Yet within this organicism one finds hints of discrete divisions. In the case of Blackstone he dilates on the concept of state-qua-man by identifying an agency of sovereignty - '[a] supreme, irresistible, uncontrollable authority' - whose tasks will presumably include settling disagreements among individuals by asserting the boundaries of individuality. 15 As for Burke, his willingness to see the State as two 'parts' leaves open the obvious question, what is to happen when those parts have learned to police their mutual boundary and eventually come to covet one another's territory? Others went further in making that future explicit. An obvious strategy when examining boundary dialects involves turning to the proto-anarchism of Godwin whose Political Justice seems likely a priori to provide a dissonance when heard after Burke's more harmonic intervals. Godwin does not, it is true, have an industrialised state against which to rail in the way Carlyle and Ruskin would later declaim; but he finds no difficulty in blowing away organicist ideas by simply reasserting an individualist ontology in the most brutal terms and ridiculing the absurdity of that fiction by which society is considered, as it has been termed, as a moral individual. It is in vain that we endeavour to counteract the laws of nature and necessity. A multitude of men, after all our ingenuity, will still remain a multitude of men. Nothing can intellectually unite them, short of equal capacity and identical perception. So long as the varieties of mind shall remain, the force of society can no otherwise be concentrated than by one man . . . taking the lead of the rest . . . All government corresponds, in a certain degree, to what the Greeks denominated a tyranny.16 From tyranny it seems no great step to 'encroachment', the avoidance of which constitutes one of his oracular 'principles'. 17 Although territorial language comes into the discussion, however, it does so in a literal way as a form of imperialism or aggrandisement; and boundaries, when they 14

15

16

17

'On the Present Discontents', in B. W. Hill (ed.), Edmund Burke: On Government, Politics and Society (London, 1975, New York, 1976), pp. 75-6. So a 'state' has two 'parts', namely 'government' and 'people'; but they are joined like Siamese twins. Cf. ibid., p. 79. Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. I, p. 48, quoted in Harold Laski, Authority in the Modern State (New Haven, 1919), p. 24. William Godwin, An Enquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (London, 1793), Pelican edn, p. 550. Ibid., 'Summary of Principles', p. 76.

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enter the argument as metaphor, function as an ethical guide in a passage on assassination and tyrannicide, to which he lends his support when ethical borders have been crossed and '[t]he boundaries that have hitherto served to divide the honest man from the profligate are gone. The true interest of mankind requires, not the removal, but the confirmation of these boundaries.'18 Here, then, is one coarse dialect of libertarian individualism. It does not present an hermetic account of the units within a state so much as a moral protest against the effects of tyranny. The metaphor had nonetheless begun an interesting career and, even in this primitive form, offered possibilities for depicting the agglomerations of government and the wider idea of a 'State' over the next half-century. Two traditions of thought call for identification in the period before 1832 and both had appeared implicitly in eighteenth-century reflection about the State. The first represents that organicist persuasion seen in Burke which, invigorated by the great German generation of Fichte and Herder, flowered in Britain with Coleridge, Carlyle and Arnold. Even taken by himself, Samuel Coleridge appears counter-thematic in any account of individualism. His metaphysics remained an analysis of 'errors and diseases of the body politic'; and, rather than adopt the language of mechanism to resist an unwelcome State, he reasserts the duty of the national Church to 'form and train up the people of the country to obedient, free, useful, organizable subjects, citizens and patriots, living to the benefit of the State, and prepared to die for its defence'.19 He combines a view of the Church's function with various certainties about its past and produces in the mixture a legitimation of the State's doing whatever it needs to do (or undo) with an authority that makes resistance unthinkable since it, the State, operates as an avatar for the wider 'nation' - 'that blended result of Laws, Language, Customs, long enjoyment of personal and political Independence, illustrious Forefathers and whatever else constitutes a Grand national character and makes a Nation more than an aggregate of Individuals'.20 This means that the State, authentically conceived, cannot usurp. True, there have been spectacular cases of apparent usurpation. Before the Reformation, for example, 18 19

20

Ibid., p p . 295, 540. On the Constitution of the Church and State (London, 1830), pp. 54, 56. Leadership did not rest only in the hands of the Church, of course, but within a broader 'clerisy' which included 'the sages and professors o f . . . all the so-called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the civilization of a country, as well as the Theological'. Ibid., p. 46. Quoted in J. H . Grainger, Character and Style in English Politics (Cambridge, 1969), p. 215.

'Boundaries' in language about the state

35

large masses were alienated from the heritable proprieties of the realm, and confounded with the Nationality under the common name of church property. Had every rood, every peppercorn, every stone, brick and beam, been retransferred, and made heritable, at the Reformation, no right would have been invaded, no principle of justice violated. What the state, by law - that is, by the collective will of its functionaries at any one time assembled - can do or suffer to be done; that the state, by law, can undo or inhibit.21 This form of spiritual erastianism, of which the nineteenth century was to hear a great deal, offered compelling reasons for kicking over the barriers between Church and State and re-mapping their respective boundaries until one overlay the other like a transparency. The rolling back of the State (to the extent that it had rolled forward) would have prejudiced rather than enhanced the ability of the Church to produce social betterment. Earlier generations had understood this perfectly well, or so Thomas Arnold alleged in 1834; it was recent theology that had confused social thought: the State, being the only power sovereign over human life, had for its legitimate object the happiness of the people, - their highest happiness, not physical only, but intellectual and moral; in short the highest happiness of which it has a conception. This was held, I believe, nearly unanimously till the eighteenth century. Warburton, the utilitarians, and I fear Whately maintain, on the contrary, that the State's only object is 'the conservation of body and goods.' Thus they play . . . with the hands of the upholders of ecclesiastical power, by destroying the highest duty and prerogative of the Commonwealth.22 To announce a doctrine of this kind implied that organicism was not nearly so dead as Godwin had claimed; it also invited a rebuff from those proto-liberals who hated the language of resignation in the face of loss of individual rights. When liberals knew something of history> as did Macaulay, the challenge to romantic mysticism became very sharp indeed and deployed the vocabulary of invasion as part of its point. It is not by the intermeddling of Mr. Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, [Macaulay sneered in the Edinburgh Review] but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization . . . Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law and by observing strict economy in every department of the state.23 21 22

23

Church and State, p. 5 1 . T h o m a s Arnold to W . W . H u l l , 3 0 April 1934, in A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1881), vol. I I , p. 378. * Southey's Colloquies o n Society', Edinburgh Review, (Jan. 1830) printed in Lord Macaulay's Essays and Lays of Ancient Rome (London, 1899 edn), p. 122.

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In this language of holding back the State the second tendency of thought suggests itself and presents a chronological context for the theme of this essay. The onset of utilitarian clear thinking about the nature of sovereignty dates from the same period; it clarified the argument even if it did so on the basis of a misjudged and later abandoned definition. Certainly John Austin's lectures of 1832 left no room for Coleridgean comfort or for the blurred affirmations of the Liberal Anglicans. The State was not a complex of interrelated particulars, nor some sponge pudding confected out of social units: it was finite and identifiable. 'It denote[s] the individual person, or the body of individual persons, which bears the supreme powers in an independent political society.' It meant that a State gave orders and that a people obeyed them. To talk about people obeying themselves was to fool with words because Burke's two parts of the State did not behave as discrete segments of an interresponsive whole; they were rather links in a chain of command. Sovereignty ceased at a stroke to float around mysteriously in the ether. Indeed by the end of lecture six it had become expressly grounded in a sentence that would find its way into much legal and political argument and whose italics gave it the resonance of Archimedes' principle. 'If a determinate human superior, not in a habit of obedience to a like superior, receive habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society . . ,'24 The reduction of the State to a definable sovereign power provided the precondition for a political theory resting on boundaries. By the 1830s, then, we have a dual recognition: a sense of what a 'State' is and warnings about its tendencies to invade, infringe and constrain. It therefore becomes inviting (and dangerous) to project the story forwards in order to join together these changes with John Stuart Mill or twentieth-century individualists - showing perhaps that recent Conservatism is a liberal derivative25 in its determination to expose the individual to the weight of personal responsibility for social survival. Casting this line backwards proves no difficult task: Mrs Thatcher learned what she knew from Hayek; Hayek belongs to a tradition running back to Mill and Sidgwick: that government governs best which governs least . . . Cliches cluster around the argument like grapes. 24

25

John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (London, 1832), ed. H . L . A. Hart ( N e w York, 1954), pp. 194, 226n. From a growing literature about Thatcherism one might instance Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The politics of Thatcherism (Basingstoke, 1994); but early studies also can reflect the tendency. See Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, The Politics of Thatcherism (London, 1983); Martin Holmes, Thatcherism: Scope and Limits 1983-7 (Basingstoke, 1989); Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (London, 1992).

'Boundaries' in language about the state

37

Caution seems necessary in the light of two distinctions. The first separates a party doctrine from a climate of political ideas on the ground that these levels of discourse have different functions.26 What this implies for the history of boundaries is that their deployment as rhetorical construction may originate in purposes quite foreign to the concerns of political theorists and may, therefore, have their own context for enquiry. The second distinction has more urgency for the present problem. Individualism in Britain has not comprised a consistent and unequivocal language: it has given voice to a number of dialects whose users would not always understand one another. In its many texts commenting on the relationship between State and society, it presents a Janus face. One style of expression will be termed here 'organic' individualism; its defining characteristic lies in grounding judgements about the State in a conception of interdependence of political and social arrangements and an expectation of harmony - theoretically, at least between the various elements of society. The reverse face exposes what one might think of as 'inorganic' individualism. This collection of devices brings with it the idea that 'society' is a polite fiction and argues a strong ontological case about individuals as the sole 'real' element in a polity. This form of latter-day nominalism sweeps away the State as a universal with no more meaning than 'society' and follows Austin in seeing the State as no more than a government and a government as no more than superior force. Both dialects have words for boundaries but their linguistic operation is different. Both have a past, but it is not the same past. II The best-remarked boundary in the whole of modern political thought must be Mill's demarcation of an individual's self-regarding from his or her other-regarding ones - a principle which establishes an important point of reference for ethical philosophy but which also implies a political recommendation in applauding the presence of the State in controlling the deleterious effects of other-regarding behaviour while confining it to that domain and thereby excluding it from the selfregarding action of citizens whose 'negative freedom' thus gains protection from an over-zealous State.27 To establish the boundary, however, 26

27

I have developed this distinction elsewhere and shall not rehearse it again here: see Michael Bentley, T a r t y , Doctrine and T h o u g h t ' , in Michael Bentley and John Stevenson (eds.)j High and Low Politics in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1983), pp. 123-53. ' T h e State, while it respects the liberty of each in what specially regards himself, is bound to maintain a vigilant control over his exercise of any power which it allows him

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was almost implicitly to cross it. Mill's own examples excluded greyer areas of the self-regarding which a State (or the 'society' which Mill seems to see as its ultimate conditioner) could hardly refuse to enter. Perhaps one might anticipate that an Idealist such as Bernard Bosanquet would later declare the boundary a fake 'which cannot be traced and therefore cannot be respected'.28 We shall see that the heirs to Coleridge would pull down many such fences after 1870. It is more significant for individualist argument that Herbert Spencer had seen the crossing long before Mill saw the boundary. Social Statics had explained the futility of all such boundaries as early as 1850, most directly in its chapter on 'The Limits of State Duty': To the assertion that the boundary line of State-duty . . . is at the wrong place, the obvious rejoinder is - show us where it should be drawn. This appeal to expediency philosophers have never yet been able to answer. Their alleged definitions are no definition at all . . . Between the one extreme of entire non-interference, and the other extreme in which every citizen is to be transformed into a grown-up baby, there lie innumerable stopping places; and he who would have the State do more than protect, is required to say where he means to draw the line . . .29 Because Mill's name has so often appeared in a canon of individualist resistance to the State and Spencer's in an organicism linked to Darwin's, one easily misses the way in which their conceptions of state and citizen might be juxtaposed. Mill, for all his stress on individuality, sees his citizens ultimately as social constructs and socially answerable: he approves of the monitoring of social and ethical norms and produces a view that connects this idealised society to a role for the State to play in it.30 Spencer explains the coming into being of the State and society in organic, evolutionary language. But his view of the relationship between government and governed is the reverse of organic. By asserting, indeed insisting on, a particular ontology and defying anyone to begin anywhere else, he leaves little room for alternative understandings of what individuals are like. They either have 'moral feeling' or they do not. If they have it, then their 'society' may survive because it will contain the only 'force by which men's actions are to be restrained within certain

28 29 30

to possess over others', On Liberty, ed. John Gray and G. W. Smith (London, 1991), p. 118. Cf. Sir Isaiah Berlin's seminal exposition of the distinction in Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford, 1958). For a recent re-examination of this distinction, see Horacio Spector, Autonomy and Rights: The Moral Foundation of Liberalism (Oxford, 1992). Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State ( L o n d o n , 1899), pp. 15-6. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (London, 1850, N e w York, 1896), p p . 127, 131. See Michael Bentley, The Climax of Liberal Politics (London, 1987), pp. 4 1 - 3 . For an influential critique of Mill that stresses the authoritarian sub-text, see Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge, 1963).

'Boundaries' in language about the state

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bounds'; for 'no legislative mechanism can really increase its results'. If they do not have it, then the future will be grim since no government can put it there. In whatever degree we lack the qualities needful for our state, in the same degree must we suffer. Nature will not be cheated. Who should think to escape the influence of gravitation by throwing his limbs into some particular attitude, could not be more deceived than are those who hope to avoid the weight of their depravity by arranging themselves into this or that form of political organization.31 The State has to have boundaries - Spencer was to become increasingly aggressive about that over the next thirty years - but they were needed less to protect individual freedoms considered worthwhile in themselves than to follow the cosmos in retaining the only true ontology and the link, as crucial in society as in the jungle, between actions and their consequences. He builds his idea of a society by beginning with a mental picture of a specific individual and then asking questions about the preconditions for that individual's survival and betterment. His conclusion is that the State can only detract from those preconditions by distorting the austere compression of cause and effect which propels the universe. The use of boundary-language from within a view of social organism helped engender an important criticism of individualism pur et simple from the 1870s and emerged as the justificatory theory for a revamped Liberalism at the level of Liberal Party doctrine from the 1890s. A second line of attack, which particularly concerns us, retained the refusal to countenance socially grounded concepts of sovereignty. It developed into a significant minority persuasion in the twenty years after 1880, enjoyed a brief afterlife in the current of pluralism during the first two decades of the twentieth century and resurfaced as a party doctrine within a curious form of Conservatism after 1975. That the organic mode of individualism gained ascendancy in Britain one may credit to a series of contingencies which have already attracted attention here. Hooker's erastianism and Gladstone's celebration of it comment obliquely on one component. For if relations between Church and State had taken a different turn after the Reformation, then the individualists of later years would have had ample scope for deploying their vocabulary to protect and enhance the divide. This (did not happen except at the margins of influence. From Gladstone it would have seemed strange in any case. From someone such as Edward Miall, whose Anti-State Church Association one might have expected a promising 31

Spencer, Social Statics, p. 116.

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platform for boundary-drawing, it does not happen either. On the occasion of Miall's trumpeted motion in the House of Commons in 1871 to disestablish the Church of England, the absence of such sword lines seems strange in retrospect. There was the usual attack on conformity and monopoly, 'sometimes bare-faced and repulsive, sometimes veiled and unobtrusive5. There was the familiar incantation that, '[considered simply in relation to its own purposes, the union of the State with the Church has been a mistake, a failure, and a wrong. ["Hear, hear" and "No!"].' There was the certainty parroted everywhere after 1869 that 'what was unjust in Ireland is unjust here'. Yet Miall granted that 'the State was the political phase [sc. face?] of the entire community'; and although the State had in this part of its duties carried out some 'injudicious meddlings', no sense emerges from the text of Miall's speech of an objection to meddling in itself.32 Devoted Conservative Churchmen such as Robert Cecil, later 3rd Marquis of Salisbury, and Roundell Palmer, later 1st Earl of Selborne, often expressed unhappiness over the State's interference in matters ecclesiastical, but neither would espouse a separatist language of resistance. Cecil only went so far as to repeat Mill's distinction between self- and other-regarding actions,33 but Palmer swung explicitly against an anti-statist position. Stimulated by Gladstone's first Irish Land Act, for example, he recalled a letter he had written as a young man to his father: Rights of property, such as they exist among us, seem to be incidents of civil society, created as well as defined by the supreme authority of the State, and subject to the control of that authority throughout all time, dejure as well as de facto. To restrain the exercise of this controlling power, there is public policy on the one hand, and distributive justice on the other . . . Circumstances will be very rare indeed, under which such a power ought to be used . . . But still, I cannot admit that [rights of property] are always, in theory and on principle, inviolable.34

Sensibilities of this kind helped those holding them towards the view that 'the church was not likely to be the moving party in measures for the dissolution' of its connection with State.35 What seems to have happened, as David Nicholls argues in his recent analysis, is that modern images of God in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries became themselves images of the State at any given moment, 'doing 32

33 34

35

Hansard: Parliamentary Debates, 3s, C C V I , cols. 477, 4 8 5 - 6 , 488, 4 9 1 , 9 M a y 1871. I am grateful to D a v i d Bebbington for reminding m e of Miall's potential significance in this account. Cecil, 'The H o u s e of Commons', Quarterly Review, 231 (July 1864), 2 6 3 - 4 . Palmer to father, n.d., in 1st Earl of Selborne, Memorials: Personal and Political 1865-95 (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1898), vol. I I , pp. 1 4 0 - 1 . Gladstone, State in its Relations with the Church, p. 3.

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more perfectly what the state [was] failing to achieve'. 36 There was no need for a language of bulwarks and ramparts until the pluralists of Figgis's generation discovered a use for one. A second explanation for the persistence of organic understanding of the State and society lies within a maturing conception of what it meant to be a State and how its sovereignty should be conceptualized. We have watched Austin's characterisation of sovereignty open new possibilities for the development of an explicit language of resistance. If it be granted that a utilitarian theory of sovereignty had this effect, then it must follow that the undermining of utilitarian notions of the State may also have produced new difficulties for individualist thinkers. From the 1860s not only did such an undermining begin to occur but it led to a paradigmatic shift in ways of thinking about the State that would have great significance for the next century. A key text in the transformation was Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law, published in 1861. Directed largely at issues raised by Bentham and Austin, Maine's study criticised traditional understanding of the 'state of nature' on which social contract theory had rested and concluded that no such state had ever existed - which its proponents had often not denied - but also that its various forms could only have been invented by people, savages in some accounts, who had been soaked in legal language, which made a nonsense of what many writers had done with the idea. He saw that the function of the state of nature united Hobbes and Locke far more than their contrasting view of its character separated them: [T]he Lockeian theory of the origins of Law in a Social Compact scarcely conceals its Roman derivation . . . on the other hand, the theory of Hobbes on the same subject were purposely revised to repudiate the reality of a law of nature as conceived by the Romans and their disciples. Yet these two theories . . . resemble each other strictly in their fundamental assumption of a nonhistoric, unverifiable, condition of the race. Their authors differed as to the characteristics of the prae-social state, and as to the nature of the abnormal action by which men lifted themselves out of it into that social organization with which alone we are acquainted, but they agreed in thinking that a great chasm separated man in his private condition from man in society . . ,37 36

37

D a v i d Nicholls, Deity and Domination: Images of God and the State in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1989), p. 30. It is noticeable that Fitzjames Stephen's well-known reply to On Liberty rested on an important fragment of the argument on religion. 'If there is a G o d and a future state, reasonable m e n will regulate their conduct by a wider kind of utilitarianism.' But although he counterposes Mill's surrogate religion to an explicit version of his o w n , and although a defensive individualism is the result, he does not identify the State as the origin of his malaise and no sophisticated theory of the State emerges. Cf. J. F. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (London, 1873), p. 262 and passim. Ancient Society (London, 1861, N e w York, 1864), pp. 1 1 0 - 1 1 .

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Maine scrutinised 'primitive' societies and showed that their operation had different implications from those alleged in social contract theory. The distinct sovereign envisaged by Austin has no place in such communities in Maine's account. Neither did it in modern law which 'had scarcely reached the footing of custom' and in which ex post facto sentencing constituted the only reliable guide to what the law meant.38 The chain of command from the sovereign to the people offered no accurate model of how societies evolved through phases in their legal structures: 'from status to contract' would become a refrain among late Victorian intellectuals. And once societies could be observed prescribing laws to themselves in various complex ways, boundaries melted away. It became intolerable to build defences against the people's own indirect wishes in this age of Rousseauesque enthusiasm.39 Beside Rousseau stood the shade of Hegel by 1870. Beginning with Sterling's The Secret of Hegel in 1865 and continuing through a dynasty of Idealist apologists, a group of British philosophers grounded Coleridge's mysticism in a systematic philosophical exposition. The generation of T. H. Green, R. L. Nettleship, Edward Caird (and a fortiori the contemporaries of Bernard Bosanquet, D. G. Ritchie and Henry Jones) extended and popularised a conception of political thought that stressed the organic assumptions of Kant and Hegel. Without the aid of a state of nature or an escapist contract, they constructed a unity of sovereign and people that rendered frontiers between them not merely unnecessary but odious. To call upon the range of evidence available would test the boundaries of this essay: let one example suffice. Ritchie's Principles of State Interference (1891) perhaps most directly attacks individualist shibboleths by first giving the social organism a Hegelian flavour, so that 'an organic whole is not merely the sum of its parts. The body corporate is mysterious, if one likes to call it so, mysterious like the personality of the individual.' Once the State is assimilated to such a mystery then crass remarks about interference miss the point. Besides, '[t]hat we call a measure "interference" is no proof that the measure is bad; we may be interfering with what is bad. It is no proof even that individual liberty even in its quite negative sense - is being diminished.' 40

This style of thought characterised by social holism in various concentrations would have mattered even if it had not helped give rise to a party doctrine within the British political system. That it played some 38 39

40

Ibid., p. 7. N o t enough has been made of the vogue for pre-revolutionary writers in this generation: they stood on the threshold where 'history' finished. D . G. Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference (London, 1891), pp. 6 9 - 7 0 , 95 (emphasis added).

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role within the 'New Liberalism' of the 1890s and 1900s gave it still greater leverage. Quite what stress to place on so diffuse a collection of positions, whose justification seemed perplexing to any who lacked philosophical training, is a question that has provoked enough controversy elsewhere to allow it a quietus here. The relevance of this corpus of evidence to the theme of conceptual boundaries comes in the representation of state interference or involvement in society as a form of liberation rather than constraint because of the State's unique potential for providing forms of individual freedom, less in what Charles Taylor calls the 'opportunity-sense' of the word than in its 'exercisesense'. Rather than provide opportunities that most people lack the means to take, as the minimalist State is alleged to do, the maximal State can make it possible for the poor and socially unprivileged to exercise their freedom in a real way by giving them guarantees about employment, health insurance, pensions and so on. Herbert Spencer's jibe that providing these things turned a Liberal government into a Tory one felt very dated by 1900.41 What appears far more significant is that organic individualism became overwhelmingly a Liberal party doctrine and lay at the centre of much-remarked changes of direction in Victorian Liberalism in favour of welfarism and the apparatus of an interventionist State. It is this deep-structured language of organic individualism that has attracted attention since 1918. We see it oozing leftwards from the Liberal Party in the 1920s42 and rightwards in the 1930s as a LiberalTory centrism that would persist into the days of Edward Heath and enjoy a rudderless revival after 1990.43 But it goes deeper than this. Until the severe shifts of demeanour inside the Conservative Party in the mid-1970s, organic individualism held so much in its grip that its control verged on the hegemonic. Even Hayek did not say what Mrs Thatcher thought he had said: indeed he went out of his way occasionally to deny the propositions that Thatcherites brought down from Sinai. His essay on 'Individualism: true and false' had taken as its theme the damage done to political thought when ideas of 'society' were swept away.44 41

42

43

44

See the opening sentence of Spencer's most polemical work, The Man versus the State (London, 1884). Michael Freeden, Liberalism Divided: A Study in British Political Thought 1914-39 (Oxford, 1986). I have discussed this facet of modern party doctrine in a separate essay: see Michael Bentley, 'Liberal Toryism in the Twentieth Century', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1994). Hayek pilloried 'the silliest of the c o m m o n misunderstanding: the belief that individualism postulates (or bases its arguments on the assumptions of) the existence of

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Nor did Conservative policy statements deploy that language of rolling back boundaries which one might have expected. The two world wars gave ample opportunity for getting up the vocabulary of prising the State out of peace-time society as part of the project of 'normalcy'. But the manifestos did not reflect it. Bonar Law's in 1922 recommended 'the minimum of interference at home and of disturbance abroad'; but that was all. Baldwin's in 1929 was ameliorist and organic in tone if not in promise. Churchill inevitably allowed himself some expansiveness in 1945. 'This is the time for freeing energies, not stifling them', the doomed manifesto ran. 'Britain's greatness has been built on character and daring, not on docility to a State machine.' And apart from the 'bonfire of controls' rhetoric, that is how the language stayed. Indeed even in the Thatcherite period the election broadsides tended to concentrate on 'clearing away the obstacles to expansion'; on 'blockages', 'bottlenecks', 'restrictions', 'cutting a clear path through the jungle of bureaucracy'. This language broadcast a commitment to the family and an opposition to the over-powerful State but said nothing about where the boundaries of enemy territory were supposed to run.45 They reflected the priorities of a prime minister who remembered more of Attlee than Hayek, as Peter Jenkins pointed out in a mischievous account. Born in 1925, [he wrote] fourteen when war broke out, at Oxford 1944-7, her formative memories were not of the dole queue but of the queue outside the butcher's, not of the means test but of the ration book. Her crucial political experiences were gained under socialism at home and communism abroad; she was a daughter of the age of austerity, a child of the Cold War.46 Nor had her own proclivities fully displaced older traditions of Burkean community. One account of Conservative doctrine published as late as 1981 made no pretence of dismissing 'society'. 'The role of the State', it argued instead, 'is to maintain order and harmony while allowing the community to express its own preferences and to develop its own diversities. In this way does the community have a real existence: it is a

45

46

isolated or self-contained individuals, instead of starting from m e n whose whole nature and character is determined by their existence in society . . . [I]ts basic contention is quite a different one: it is that there is no other way towards an understanding of social phenomena but through our understanding of individual actions directed towards other people and guided by their expected behaviour.' Individualism: True and False (London, 1945), pp. 7 - 8 . Quotations from twentieth-century manifestos are taken from F. W. S. Craig, British General Election Manifestos 1900-74 (Aldershot, 1990). Peter Jenkins, Mrs. Thatcher's Revolution (London, 1987), p. 82.

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living, organic essence.'47 It is not difficult to see these sentiments in the radiation of John Major's governments. Where, then, does the language of boundaries come from in modern Britain? It may be significant that Hayek himself, seeking to show that 'the sphere of enforced command ought to be restricted within fixed limits', had to go back to Acton's Lectures on Modern History (1906) for a suitable quotation.48 The suspicion begins to strengthen that modern boundary-language, far from representing a resurrection of the WhigLiberal Party, is a relic of late Victorian argument which had become lost to the twentieth century until recent moods inside the Conservative Party exhumed it. The terminologies of Thatcherite doctrine and Hayekian political language are best sought in a now-forgotten dialect articulated within the British political intelligentsia between 1870 and the First World War, a resistance language spoken by those who appreciated the direction of State development but who chose to oppose it from a conservative standpoint as subversive of certain fundamental insights about the basis of government and the rights of the governed. Ill Boundaries come into conversation as tolerance tautens and patience wears thin: when you stretch a point, as the wit said, you draw a line. In the 1860s this mood about the State did not exist, apart from the trauma concerning reform of the franchise in 1867. High farming persisted; the People had their William; tariffs had not returned to the agenda; selfdoubt had little place in British culture. In the later 1870s that atmosphere began its radical change of hue as first urban and then rural depression sapped confidence and provoked reactions against the incipient doctrines of socialism that claimed to have a cure for it all. At first a sense of mild bewilderment is what strikes up through the texts - as though the writers were working from ancient maps. c[W]e have no new constitutions to discover and set up', Salisbury conceded in 1873 with an eye on the recent Commune in France, 'but within their boundary our politics are scarcely less chaotic. Our political geography has to be reconstructed. The old frontiers separate those who in opinion are not divided, and classify under one name men who have now no principle in common.'49 By the end of the decade that neutrality of judgement had 47

48 49

Philip N o r t o n and Arthur Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London, 1981), p. 2 8 1 . Hayek, Individualism, p. 29. ' T h e Progress of the Radicals', quoted in Paul Smith (ed.), Lord Salisbury on Politics (Cambridge, 1972), p. 307.

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all but gone. Individualist thinkers who had not followed Mill or Green in moving towards a more statist position applied their sense of linedrawing to the mounting presence of the State. For every 'Liberal' who chose the road of Sidgwick,50 there were others who kept to the older course. Had Mill lived another decade, it has been acutely observed, he might well have died a proto-Fabian. Henry Fawcett, who died in the year of the Fabians' founding, did not do so;51 and many others stood where Fawcett had stood. Not all of them used boundary-devices to protect their individuals from government. Salisbury, for example, was often more exercised in the 1880s by the need to protect government and property from a populace that threatened to turn into their joint master.52 But for the inorganic individualists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century the flow of evil ran in the reverse direction. Mystical presentations of 'Community' and 'organism' gave rise to irreverence rather than inspiration: Social organism! As well talk of an ant-organism, of a beaver-organism, or of a wolf-organism. As well argue about a bird-organism held together by the common medium of the air. If we were all stuck together like the Siamese Twins, then the term 'organism' might do; but until that event happens, such a word, taken in anything like a literal sense, is a gross and unmeaning exaggeration.53 It became important to externalise agencies of power and put a stop to what governments did to interfere with what individuals had to be left to do for themselves. It might be the threat of economic protection that would elicit an insistence that 'both history and theory point to the conclusion that the more we curtail the nominal powers and duties of government, the greater the actual efficiency of its remaining functions' 50

51

52

53

Sidgwick had his cake and ate it in his influential Elements of Politics ( L o n d o n , 1891). H e expressly disowned Austin (p. 611). H e nevertheless located sovereignty in a determinate way in those acting on behalf of government: 'no other persons' commands are widely obeyed by adults from fear of physical force'. H e then claimed, however, that obedience to command was only a part of political obligation and had recourse to 'will' and 'opinion' and 'custom' as though mildly infected by Green (pp. 5 9 8 - 9 ) . Giacomo Becattini, 'Henry Fawcett and the Labour Question', in Lawrence Goldman (ed.), The Blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge, 1989), p. 141.

T h e famous essay o n 'Disintegration' (1883) laments the reduction of the role of government to that of 'tenant at will of the House of Commons'; cf. Smith, Lord Salisbury, pp. 346-7. T h e tendency of the latter, moreover, is to come rushing into property agreements, as over Gladstone's Irish land proposals, in order to impose terms advantageous to the under-dogs - 'coming down with an act of power'. See his speech on the second reading of the 1881 Bill, Hansard (Lords) C C L X I V , col. 261, 1 Aug. 1881. M . D . O'Brien, The Natural Right to Freedom (London, 1893), p. 14.

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would become.54 It might be educational policy after the Forster reforms, prompting voluntarists to reject the prospect of finding themselves 'forced into union by external power'.55 It might be the populist repercussions of the third reform act and its promised democratisation that would press conservatives to build fortifications against democracy's 'own defects by limiting the powers of the State' and declaring invalid the 'interference of government in matters outside its normal duties'.56 Potential areas of irritation proliferated as the State's responsibilities expanded year by year. Joining all these issues together, and informing the dialect within which individualist responses were expressed, was a redefinition of the State as government or parliament, a resurgence of Austin's views about what sovereignty involved, a suspicion of 'authority' and 'will' as licence for taking positions which words such as 'power' and 'obedience' placed in a very different light. Whether Spencer (or any single individual) popularised this language is hard to say. Certainly he contributed to its currency and strengthened the presumption of a divided social cosmology: the State on one side, the citizens on the other. In his own case the vocabulary is not always territorial; he often turns to the language he knows best, that of engineering and natural science. So 'sphere' becomes a central noun57 and in all societies there are two of them - the sphere of 'family life' (where the need for nurture brooks no denial if the young are to survive at all), and 'social life' (where nurture has exactly the opposite effect of depriving individuals of the characteristics that allow them most effectually to compete and survive in the adult world). 'The intrusion of either mode into the sphere of the other, would be destructive either immediately or remotely.'58 When viewed from the standpoint of the citizen confronting an active State apparatus, this intrusion of spheres easily slides into a concern about 'external invaders'. Subordination of the individual to the State in some degree there has to be, else unfreedom will result: Spencer stays clear about that. But his principle of demarcation is no less strident, viz. that 'such a trenching on the freedom and property of each' will pass muster only in so far as it is 'requisite for the better protection of his freedom and property'. And this in turn means 'a limit 54 55

56 57

58

Baden-Powell, Protection and Bad Times (London, 1879), pp. 4 2 - 3 (emphasis added). Auberon Herbert, 'State Education: A Help or Hindrance?', Fortnightly Review, 34/28 (July 1880), 57 (emphasis added). Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Individualism (London, 1889), p. 71 (emphasis added). T h e dialect of 'separate spheres' was broadened by Victorian commentators in a variety of directions that would repay investigation. For an excellent definition of its use in issues of gender, see Brian Harrison, Separate Spheres: The Opposition to Women's Suffrage in Britain (London, 1978). Spencer, The Man versus the State, p. 137.

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to the powers of Parliaments'.59 For all his stress on the metaphor of 'organism', therefore, Spencer's social theory cuts across its familiar implications for sovereignty by resting society on a more ultimate ontology, in the way that Hayek would attempt half a century later. When adding a few 'Reflections' to the 1894 edition of his Autobiography, Spencer explicitly drew attention to this aspect of his writing: A cardinal doctrine of M. Comte and his disciples is that individual men are products of the great body in which they exist... But it is no less true, or rather it is much more true, that the society is created by its units, and that the nature of its organization is determined by the nature of its units. The two act and react; but the original factor is the character of the individuals, and the derived character is the character of the society. The conception of the social organism necessarily implies this. The units out of which an individual organism builds itself up, will not build up into an organism of another kind: the structure of the animal evolved from them is inherent in them. So, too, is it in large measure with a society.60 His animals may not have defended territories but they gave encouragement to those who did. These men enjoyed their best years in the 1880s and 90s and it is not hard to see why. Not only had 1884 suggested (falsely) a coming democracy, but the arrival of German intellectual socialism, together with social-democratic experiments such as Joseph Chamberlain's Unauthorized Programme of 1884^5, also threatened rifts in the popular understanding of the State. Among intelligent witnesses who felt the weight of such changes, without seeing a clear way through them, one can often discern in retrospect some of these anxieties, as when Mandell Creighton tried to give a supervision from his Cambridge chair to the young Edward Grey in 1885. The 'old Radicals' had been one thing: opponents could respect them. But 'I see nothing in common between them and the charlatanism of - [deleted: presumably Chamberlain?] who would not tell you what he thought a State would do, or what were the limits of legislative action, or what was the basis of individualism as against State direction.'61 Others could have told him, especially anyone involved in the Liberty and Property Defence League, founded in 1882.62 Its presiding spokesman, the Earl of Wemyss, so hated the 59

60 61

62

Ibid.s pp. 179, 183 (emphasis added). N o t e that Spencer seeks protection for freedom, not the provision of it. Spencer, Autobiography (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1904), vol. I I , p. 465. Creighton to Grey, 1 D e c e m b e r 1885, in Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton (2 vols., L o n d o n , 1904), vol. I, pp. 3 4 8 - 9 . T h e League emerged from the 'State Resistance Society' (1880), itself a sport of the 'Political Evolution Society' (1873). See N . Soldon, 'Laissez-Faire as D o g m a : T h e Liberty and Property D e f e n c e League', in K. D . Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History (London, 1974), pp. 2 1 0 - 1 2 .

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ambiguities of State involvement that he went beyond boundaries and denned the duties of the State as purely negative ones (without seeing that the State could not avoid positive involvement if it were to prevent those evils that even Wemyss thought it ought to prevent). Against so unsocialist an opponent as Lord Salisbury, he worried about the mild legislation to improve housing that the Conservative prime minister had countenanced lest government should take it upon itself to build houses for the poor. 'He could conceive of nothing', he told fellow Peers in 1884, 'which would be more prejudicial than that, because if they began on this system, where were they to stop?' It was the familiar argument that once the boundary between State and private responsibility had been moved at all from its defensive position, no one, lekst of all its movers, could tell where it would end. 'If they built homes, would they furnish them? Would they put fire in the grate or food in the cupboard? And if not, on this principle, why not?' 63 As another of the League's leading lights put it in the same year (and in a turn of phrase relevant to our theme), 'the spirit of the league [was] one of resistance to any overstepping by the legislature of its normal boundaries'.6* The languages involved in redefining the state either according to some minimalist range of functions or by granting it maximal status on the grounds of its co-extension with society could occasionally be shared by individualists of all kinds. But the ontological point could never be concealed for long and, when it appeared, so did the boundaries that a world of discrete units recommended. Once grant, after all, that '[a] 11 that really exists is the individual surrounded by a number of beings similar to himself and the State can only come into view as 'simply the sum total of the activities of individual Englishmen'. 'Strictly speaking', O'Brien urged in 1893, 'there is no such thing as a State. The term expresses a pure mental fiction, like acquosity, luminosity, and similar abstract figments.'65 In the boundary-language of the 1890s this ontological premise becomes more shrill and determined. No one persevered in it with more fixity of purpose than Auberon Herbert, who planted the flag of resistance like some latter-day cavalier: We must convert the common view of the State and the individual. We have slipped into the idea that the individual exists for the State; that the State is a sort of over-lord, a god which is supreme over us. All that superstitious mental

63 64 65

Hansard, C C L X X X I , cols. 1703-3, 22 Feb. 1884. Wordsworth Donsithorpe, Liberty or Law? (London, 1884), p. 9 (emphasis added). O'Brien, The Natural Right to Freedom, p. 10.

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construction must be tumbled over. The State is only a creation of our own hands, a servant, a useful tool.66

Yet how plausible could appeals of this kind seem by the 1890s? The economy had bumped along the bottom of a trough for twenty years; the first march of the unemployed had taken place a few years before these statements appeared; ideas about old age pensions and safety legislation in the workplace were already in the air. The liberation on offer from Lord Wemyss looked less than attractive when organicists and collectivists held out the promise of a genuine opportunity for individuals to improve their standard of life via the protection of the community. O'Brien's facile depiction of the State as the 'corporate action of individual despots'67 resurrected in the imagination not only John Austin but also Charles Dickens. That the State had entered a period of redefinition clearly contributed to the individualists' apparent antiquarianism. But so, too, had the idea of an individual undergone a shift of meaning. Forgetting for the purpose of discussion the growing complexity of modern States, one could miss altogether (as Herbert and his aristocratic friends did) the degree to which the concept of an individual had undergone transformation in an intellectual environment soaked in the language of sociology and collectivism.68 Herbert's world, beyond his brother's park gates at Highclere, had become, unbeknown to him, a plural universe of intermeshed institutions and group-personalities: one in which churches had replaced church, trade unionism trade unions. It was a context of voluntary societies, pressure groups, congealing local and regional economies, all the chaos of agglomeration and fragmentation that an industrialising society tends to drag behind itself. To see the single-celled individual as the building block of that plural complexity struck commentators even at the time as peculiar. All that was left to individualists was to switch tack and to redefine themselves as the true prophets of pluralism. Tluralists', though they did not use the term until after 1914, embrace a number of significant writers among whom one might count Neville Figgis, Ernest Barker, A. D. Lindsay and the pre-Marxist Harold Laski. Their project involved retaining the most telling parts of the individualist message by beginning, again, with ontology: a picture 66

67 68

' T h e Cabinet Minister's V a d e - M e c u m ' , Nineteenth Century, 34 (Oct. 1893), 521. T h e 'slipping' seemed to some writers no less than an historical process, in which '[h]istory is the record of the gradual and painful emancipation of the individual from the socialistic tyranny of slavery, feudalism, and centralized authority'. Cf. T h o m a s Mackay, The English Poor (London, 1889), p. v. O'Brien, The Natural Right to Freedom, p. 7. See the helpful discussion of Stephan Collini in his Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hothouse and Political Argument in England (Cambridge, 1979).

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of the 'real world5. They then extended their picture into a style of normative argument that stressed the falsity of monolithic views of the State and emphasised the challenge to political thought posed by the complication of the State in its modern forms. Possibly the programme was hopeless from the start; it certainly gave rise to theoretical ambivalences which ultimately destroyed the coherence of pluralism as a distinctive mode of thought. 69 During the last decade of peace before 1914 its apologists nevertheless produced a version of State theory that differed in a self-conscious way from previous ones. Older conceptions of the State based on Hegelian organicism had already come under critical scrutiny in America from the pragmatist scepticism of Dewey and William James. In Britain these ideas found a grateful response among critics of the Wilhelmine State and its apparent English voice in books such as Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State (1899); or perhaps among those who worried about welfarism in a less tutored way, as in John Buchan's improbable seminar of notables in darkest Africa.70 Their tone did not match Bosanquet's sophistication, at least until Laski confronted him in a systematic way some years later. They used a vocabulary grounded in the everyday and they reflected suspicion about intellectuals who could not see something so obvious as that 'Society is larger than the State and is not to be confounded with it; and [that] there are interests outside both.' The 'modern citizen' was distinctive precisely because he 'ha[d] a life outside the State'.71 Thinking otherwise presumably led one in the direction of 'the intellectualist fallacy' - and, sure enough, Graham Wallas had his boundaries. He pointed out in his famous study of 1908 that not only had the Austinian mode of sovereignty fallen apart under the weight of purely quantitative considerations (small-scale societies had now become 'great' ones) but also because the language of analysis had imported terms from the negotiating table, the convention and the international treaty. Personally he thought that the Congress of Berlin marked the beginning of this phase. Since then 'everyone ha[d] become familiar' with a terminology that described international sovereignty not as an absolute but as a sliding 69

70

71

M y understanding of pluralism has been greatly strengthened by D a v i d Runciman's work: see his doctoral dissertation, 'Pluralism and the Theory of the State in English Political T h o u g h t , 1900-1939' (Cambridge, 1993). H i s duchess in The Lodge in the Wilderness is one such in 1906: * Without being a dogmatic individualist, I protest against the idea of the State incurring such vast responsibilities as providing employers with labour and moving populations around the world. I admit that the province of the State has been widened, but such an insane stretching of boundaries seems to m e to court disaster' (p. 216). Sir John Macdonnell, ' T h e M o d e r n Conceptions of Liberty', Contemporary Review, 106 (Aug. 1914), 199-200.

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scale of predominance:' "Effective occupation", "Hinterland", "Sphere of Influence" - to which the Algebras Conference ha[d] perhaps added a lowest grade, "Sphere of Legitimate Aspiration"'.72 What could be imported into the consideration of external sovereignty could percolate too into the internal. The mood generated by a sense of new conditions and a pluralist vocabulary in which to represent them leaves evidence in discussions of sovereignty in general but in some more limited areas in particular. For Neville Figgis, arguably the most coherent and effective of the early pluralists, the crucial test-case of these new relationships took him little time to identify for, as an Anglican monk in the Mirfield community, he felt its boundaries every day. His burden did not have a theoretical or normative form: the independence of the Churches from the State did not seem to Figgis to require advocacy but merely recognition. But the recognition had a touch of aggression about it. If the separation were real, as he took it to be, then that separation was a starting-point for argument, not a recommendation. Boundaries between Church and State existed whether churchmen wanted them or not, whether theorists liked them or not. In a word, when the Church asked the State to acknowledge that it has real powers for developing itself, it is asking not for a privilege to be conceded but for the facts to be realized . . . We must know the limits as well as the province of the Church within the modern State . . . It is a new problem. In the medieval world, and for a long while after the Reformation, Church and State appeared as merely different departments of the same institution. Of course they quarrelled, as Government departments do . . . Now, however, this has ceased even in appearance. What we have to secure is our corporate existence, our real life functioning inside a State, itself made up of complex elements and tolerating all religions. The tolerant State is the true State. The uniform State of the past was founded on a lie . . . But the State has yet to learn that she must tolerate not merely individual liberty but the religious society, must know that its life is real and must develop and cannot (not must not) be stopped.73 Other pluralists had less urgent concerns than Figgis but they extended the style of his argument to more general treatments of State and society, patiently trying to tease apart what the Idealists had glued together. Unlike the primitive individualists of the 1880s they did not try to deny the State's reality or utility: it supplied a 'rampart' in Lindsay's word, a fortified boundary, behind which it could carry out its work of protecting and policing social interests as a whole. But 'that 72 73

Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics (London, 1908), p. 178. J. N . Figgis, ' T h e Church and the Secular Theory of the State' (1905), reprinted in David Nicholls, The Pluralist State (London, 1975), Appendix A, pp. 139, 141.

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[was] no reason for identifying the rampart with what it protected]'. 74 Unlike the generation of Spencer and Herbert and Donisthorpe, they acknowledged that the State had its own territory and that it needed a large one. But that was no reason, either, for forgetting that all large tracts of ground are made up of a patchwork of smaller ones, each with its own character, needs and affiliations. 'I do not know England', Laski said in a chatty moment, 'before I know, say, Berkeley Square and London; from Berkeley Square and London I come to know England.'75 He thus reduced the boundaries of the State to the dimensions of personal observation, located in the reality that he could see and touch. He knew because he was there. IV Confidence in the face of a spatially removed State barely survived the First World War. Doubtless the war made it harder for soi-disant realists to persuade readers that the State was something other than society, distant and surrounded by ramparts. 'Your Country Needs You' could be read in a territorial way but readers pointed at by Kitchener knew that the State stood behind him. What this transformation suggested was not so much the death of individualism as the instability of all forms of inorganic political thought in an environment of total war. The very language of an extreme individualist such as E. S. P. Haynes seemed wildly anachronistic after four years in which the respective vocabularies of society and state had become fused.76 Laski now talked about the 'fused good will' that lay behind coercion but in truth it was will and coercion that had merged.77 Of course this put Laski into the difficult definitional waters that Spencer and his followers had avoided and in his impressive Authority in the Modern State he did his best to disavow Austinian sovereignty in a new language 74

75

76

77

A. D . Lindsay, 'State and Society', in L. Creighton et al., International Crisis (London, 1915), p. 97. I owe this reference to D a v i d Runciman. Harold Laski, ' T h e Sovereignty of the State', in his Sovereignty ( N e w Haven, 1917). H e went on to quote William James as his validator. For an echo of Lindsay's 'ramparts', one might turn to Laski's 'safeguards' on the following page at whose meaning, as so often in Laski's less literate passages, one can only guess: 'We c a n n o t . . . take for granted the motives of governmental policy, with the natural implication that w e must erect safeguards against their abuse. T h e s e , I venture to think, the monistic theory of the state at no point, in actual practice, supplies.' ' T h e Pluralist State' (1919), printed in N i c h o l l s , The Pluralist State, Appendix B, p. 148. See Haynes, The Case for Liberty ( L o n d o n , 1919). Haynes fretted over 'Fabian' policies that had taken hold of the country since 1880 and left 'no logical or reasonable ground for resisting any interference by the state with marriage, or the birth-rate, or clothes' (P. 24). Laski, Sovereignty, p. 12.

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of 'absorption' and 'sweeping in'. Yes, the individual participated in the State but, no, he or she was never absorbed into it as if by digestion. Yes, he surrenders part of his nature to the collectivity but, 'no man surrenders his whole being'.78 So the point of Laski's project (and that of his enlightened individual) must lie in 'limiting] state absorptiveness'.79 This ambition never crystallises to the point at which he can show how it will be done; and at this point the structure falls down. Just before he closes his theoretical prologue to a study of selected European thinkers, there is an appeal to emotion rather than apparatus: In the external relationships of the state it is clear that the Machiavellian epoch is drawing to a close. The application of ethical standards to the foreign policy of nations is a demand that has secured the acceptance of all who are concerned for the future of civilization. Yet is it assuredly not less clear that the internal life of the state requires a similar moralization? We realise now the dangers of a state that makes power the supreme good and is careless of the purpose for which it is exerted. We have sacrificed the youth of half the world to maintain our liberty against its encroachments. Surely the freedom we win must remain80unmeaning unless it is made consistently effective in every sphere of social life. As events transpired, even Laski did not long remain persuaded by his own opinions. Amid the social stratifications of the inter-war years, vertical group interests paled before those of horizontal class, just as a concern with moralised freedom seemed less urgent than the problems of capitalist crisis. But he would have deserted anyway. He was too intelligent to fail to see the contradictions of the position. For those, meanwhile, who escaped the life of the mind in the 1920s, there remained the language of Baldwinian organicism with its climate of 78

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Laski, Authority, p. 4 3 . Laski's individual retains his moral sense and therefore presumably harbours ideas about what a legitimate State can do, with positive expectations that the State must fulfil. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 122. T h e nearest that Laski had come to fleshing out what a pluralist conception of the State and individual/group would involve had similarly fallen short of specific recommendation: It denies the oneness of society and the state. It insists that nothing is known of a state purpose until it is declared; and it refuses . . . to make a priori observations about its content. It does not deny that the individual is influenced by the thousand associations with which he is in contact; but it is unable to perceive that he is absorbed by them. It sees society as one only in purpose . . . In such an analysis the state is only one among many forms of human association. It is not necessarily any more in harmony with the end of society than a church or a trade union, or a freemason's lodge. W h e n we insist that the state is a society of governors and governed, it is obvious that its superiority can have little logical reference only to the sphere that it has marked out for its o w n and then only to the extent to which the sphere is not successfully challenged. {Ibid., p. 6 5 - 6 )

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sacrifice for the common weal, service for the common purpose.81 Of course Baldwin's doctrines occasionally led him to give the State a role that it could not achieve; it hardly mattered from the point of view of Conservative strategists. His central concern lay in articulating a range of social holism for which Anglicanism (not the hermetic one of Figgis but the erastian one of Gladstone) provided both flame and solder. Later leaders seldom retreated from this fusion of State benignity and social amelioration - at least until 1975. Whether at the hands of Churchill in his later years, of Macmillan or of Heath, British Conservative doctrine - the spiritual home, once, of inorganic individualism - met the twentieth century on its own terms, accepted the mixed economy, comprehensive schools, the National Health Service, even nationalised industries, and offered a Burke-cum-Disraeli language about the oneness of society and the responsibility of the State for the citizen as much as vice versa. When Margaret Thatcher and her colleagues changed all that by reaching back to an older tradition they did not become 'liberals' and it perpetuates confusion to say that they did. What Mrs Thatcher took from Hayek he had taken from a generation of mostly Conservative thinkers before the First World War. Her denial of the existence of 'society', her resurrection of an individualist ontology, her determination to redraw boundaries and roll back frontiers, had once been a Conservative programme but one suppressed in a Disraelian history that the party had invented for itself with all the acumen that the Asquithians later brought to Liberal history. After the years of fudged Butskellism it sounded pretty radical as a plan: it would have seemed only a little less so to Baldwin's audience. But Salisbury would have known what she meant and Donisthorpe and Herbert would have written prose-poems to the new Gloriana. None of this denies the place of that vein of Liberal-Toryism that wants to declare boundary-language unsubtle, immoral and un-Conservative. The point is rather that this continuity voices only one of the competing language-systems within British individualism since the 1860s. Mrs Thatcher's problem, from the vantage point of political theory, did not stem from her failure to be a Conservative. Her world failed for the same reason as Spencer's and Laski's: it proved incoherent when made to find a fit with practice. The boundary dialect had sounded persuasive for a short time — say between 1870 and 1900 - as the State entered a phase of enormous expansion. Thatcherism spoke from within so radically different a context that articulating its drift often seemed as strained as the prime minister's 81

See Philip Williamson, 'The Doctrinal Politics of Stanley Baldwin', in Michael Bentley (ed.)j Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 181-208.

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accent. Perhaps the central tension was this. An inorganic style of individualism cannot appeal to an organic concept of 'society' whose existence it rejects. Nor can it attract enthusiasm for the State whose tyranny forms a major part of its rhetorical allegations. So long as all Conservatives can feel comfortable in thrusting the State back behind its rampart and celebrating the atomism of their social arrangements, the language appears plausible. In the reality of a supposed organic crisis in 1982, language had to change and with it went consistency. The public had to be made to feel that they were now in the same boat when the language had denied both the togetherness and the boat. They had to be compelled to rejoice with the British State - 'Rejoice!' - when their enemy's boat sank. If a persuasion can be holed like a battleship, then the boundary disposition went down with the Belgrano.

The twilight of the British state? Henry Dubb versus sceptred awe David Marquand

'I have changed everything5, Mrs Thatcher is supposed to have said in 1976.l For long her claim was taken at face value, by outraged opponents no less than by eager supporters. Her fall, and the misadventures of her successor, have brought a new perspective. Post-Thatcher Britain is beginning to look suspiciously like pre-Thatcher Britain; the supposedly transformed state of the revolutionaries like the unregenerate state of the ancien regime. In this essay, I explore the possible reason for this curious state of affairs. I suggest that its origins may lie in the hold on the imaginations of the British political class of three competing visions of the British state, all of which have deep roots in British history, but all of which have been emptied by the upheavals of the last twenty years or so. I conclude with the hope - for it is only a hope - that a fourth and more promising vision, equally venerable, but in this century less influential, may replace them. The 'twilight' of my title is, in short, intended to be a warning, not a prediction. Twilight certainly lies in wait for states that cannot adapt to the momentous changes now taking place in civil society and in the international economy. Some spectacular examples have occurred quite recently. And there is no divine law exempting the British state from the need to adapt. But it is up to us to decide whether we do so or no. The visions exhibited I begin, like a barrister introducing a case, with three exhibits. Each exhibit is a quotation. Each quotation seems to me to represent a particular vision, or understanding, or perhaps myth of the British state. I shall suggest that the interplay between these three visions or myths holds a key - 'a' key, not 'the' key - to the history of the British state over the last fifty years or so. I shall argue that, for a variety of reasons, each of these visions has lost or is losing its persuasive power and moral 1

Patrick Cosgrave, Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister (London, 1979). 57

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authority. Finally, I shall speculate as to whether the British political tradition has the intellectual and moral resources to inspire an alternative vision, closer to the realities of the modern world. Exhibit 'A' is a quotation from a speech to the House of Commons, made by Winston Churchill on 15 May 1945. Note the date. It was one week after the broken German armies had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies: one week after the most spectacular triumph in the whole history of the British state. Churchill was moving a Humble Address to the Sovereign, congratulating him on the successful conclusion of the war in Europe. In the circumstances, a certain vainglory might have been forgivable. There was none: or, if there was, it was not a military vainglory. Churchill began by pointing out that the British sovereign embodied 'a multiple kingship unique in the world of today and so far as 1 know in the history of the past5. Then he went on: Of this multiple kingship we in these islands are but a single member, but it is a kingship to which all the other Governments of the Empire feel an equal allegiance and an equal right. It is the golden circle of the Crown which alone embraces the loyalties of so many states and races all over the world . . . . . . We are fortunate indeed that an office of such extraordinary significance should be held by one who combines with an intense love of our country and all his people a thorough comprehension of our Parliamentary and democratic constitution. Well may it be said, well was it said, that the prerogatives of the Crown have become the privileges of the people . . . . . . If it be true, as has been said, that every country gets the form of government it deserves, we may certainlyflatterourselves. The wisdom of our ancestors has led us to an envied and enviable situation. We have the strongest Parliament in the world. We have the oldest, the most famous, the most secure, the most serviceable monarchy in the world. King and Parliament both rest safely and solidly upon the will of the people expressed by free and fair election on the basis of universal suffrage. Thus this system has long worked harmoniously, both in peace and war.2 Exhibit 'B' is less dramatic, both in language and occasion. Its author was a still unknown young Irishman called George Bernard Shaw. It comes from an essay entitled 'The Transition to Social Democracy', which Shaw contributed to the Fabian Essays of 1889. Shaw's purpose was to persuade his fellow-socialists - many of whom then disagreed with him - that the appropriate vehicle for their project was the state. At the beginning of the century, he conceded, it would not have been. In those days of jobbery and bribery, before the three great Reform Acts, 'incompetence and corruption' were 'inherent state qualities, like the acidity of lemons'. But, says Shaw, no longer. 2

Hansard: Parliamentary Debates,fifthseries, vol. 410, cols. 2305-7, 15 May 1945.

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Make the passing of a sufficient examination an indispensable preliminary to entering the executive; make the executive responsible to the government and the government responsible to the people; and State departments will be provided with all the guarantees for integrity and efficiency that private moneyhunting pretends to. Thus the old bugbear of State imbecility did not terrify the Socialist; it only made him a Democrat. But to call himself so simply, would have had the effect of classing him with the ordinary destructive politician who is a Democrat without ulterior views for the sake of formal Democracy - one whose notion of Radicalism is the pulling up of aristocratic institutions by the roots - who is, briefly, a sort of Universal Abolitionist. Consequently, we have the distinctive term Social Democrat, indicating the man or woman who desires through Democracy to gather the whole people into the State, so that the State may be trusted with the rent of the country, and finally with the land, the capital and the organization of the national industry - with all the sources of production, in short, which are now abandoned to the cupidity of irresponsible private individuals.3 Exhibit ' C , by contrast, is very dramatic indeed. It comes from an address delivered to the St George's Society on St George's Day, 1968. The author was Enoch Powell, in those days still a prominent Conservative politician. His theme was the rediscovery of England and the English identity which, in his view, had to follow the end of empire. This is how he begins. Herodotus relates how the Athenians, returning to their city after it had been sacked and burnt by Xerxes and the Persian army, were astonished to find, alive and flourishing in the midst of the blackened ruins, the sacred olive tree, the native symbol of their country. So we today, at the heart of a vanished empire, amid the fragments of a demolished glory, seem to find, like one of her own oak trees, standing and growing, the sap still rising from her ancient roots to meet the Spring, England herself. The present generation of the English, Powell continues, has come 'home again after years of distant wandering'. Having returned, it has discovered an unexpected affinity with earlier generations, generations before 'the expansion of England', generations whose inscrutable effigies are to be found in England's country churches. Suppose they could talk to us, he asks, what would they say? This is his answer: One thing above all they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian or Yorkist, squire or lord, priest or layman; they would point to the kingship of England and its symbols everywhere visible. The immemorial arms, gules, three leopards or, though quartered of late with France, azure, three fleurs de lis, argent; and older still the Crown itself and that sceptred awe in which Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit in his own chair to claim the allegiance of all the 3

George Bernard Shaw, 'The Transition to Social Democracy', in Asa Briggs (ed.), Fabian Essays (London, 1962 edition), p. 216.

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English. Symbol yet source of power, person of flesh and blood, yet incarnation of an idea; the kingship would have seemed to them as it seems to us, to embrace and express the qualities that are peculiarly England's: the unity of England, effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlimited supremacy of Crown in Parliament so naturally as not be aware of it.4 So: 'the golden circle of the Crown', whose prerogatives have been mysteriously transmuted into 'the privileges of the people'. State departments equipped with all necessary 'guarantees of integrity and efficiency'. The 'sceptred awe' of Saint Edward the Englishman recalling the 'sacred olive tree' of the Athenians. What do these images imply? The visions examined Exhibit 'A', Churchill's victory speech, I take to represent a vision of the state which I shall call 'whig imperialist'. Central to that vision is a notion of balance - of balance between freedom and order, rulers and ruled, progress and stability. Central also are the notions of peaceful adaptation, timely accommodation, responsive evolution. In Harold Nicolson's marvellous political novel, Public Faces, a pompous Foreign Office official called Arthur Peabody, and known to his staff as 'old Peabottle', meditates on the nature of foreign policy. He likens it to 'a majestic river, flowing in a uniform direction, requiring only, at moments of crisis, a glib, but scrupulous, rectification of the banks'. 5 That is whig imperialist statecraft in a nutshell. Civil society is a majestic river, flowing in a uniform direction. The role of the state is to administer the occasional glib rectification of the banks. Statecraft politics - is, in R. A. Butler's phrase, 'the art of the possible': an art 'responsive to the demands of each new age, empirical as to method, resourceful in expressing itself in popular idiom'. 6 Constitutional rigidity, born of fixed principles, is to be avoided at all costs. It is impossible to lay down in advance what the role of the state should be. As John Maynard Keynes put it in his essay, 'The End of Laissez-Faire', the agenda and non-agenda of Government, as he called them, cribbing from Bentham, cannot be determined 'on abstract grounds'. The question of what the state should do and what it should leave to private individuals can be answered only 'on its merits in detail'. 7 By the same token, it is foolish and dangerous to try to protect civil rights or liberties through some formal code. Their true protection 4 5 6 7

J. Enoch Powell, Freedom and Reality (ed. John Wood), paperback edition (Kingswood, Surrey, 1969), pp. 338-9. Harold Nicolson, Public Faces, A Novel (London, 1932), p. 2. Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible (London, 1971), p. 28. J. M. Keynes, 'The End of Laissez-Faire', in John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (New York and London, 1963), pp. 312-13.

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lies - can only lie - in the informal conventions, particular enactments and tacit understandings of a liberty-loving political class. And the reason why Britain's situation is uniquely 'envied and enviable' is that her rulers have learned the mysteries of this kind of statecraft: that they have mastered what we might call the Peabottle principle: that they have known instinctively when to resist and when to accommodate; when to administer the appropriate rectification to the banks and when to leave the river alone. Exhibit 'B', my quotation from Shaw, represents a vision which, following one of its most eminent exponents, Sidney Webb, I shall call 'democratic collectivist'. Like the whig imperialist vision, it is, in a profound sense, telelogical. It too sees the history of modern Britain as a long continuum of peaceful progress. But the differences are as significant as the similarities. For democratic collectivists, political authority is rational and secular in character, not sacral: they have no time for immemorial custom or golden circles. Where whig imperialist statecraft is reactive, democratic collectivist statecraft is proactive. The democratic collectivist state does not wait to rectify the banks of the social river; it digs a new channel through which the waters have to flow. Where whig imperialists appeal to judgement, experience, the intuitive wisdom of an ancient political class, democratic collectivists appeal to science, reason, professional expertise. Both speak of democracy, but they understand it in different ways. The whig imperialist state is democratic because it responds to popular demands. The democratic collectivist state is democratic because it is subject to popular control. Two implications follow. Because the democratic collectivist state is rational, it has both the capacity and the duty to replace the irrational higgling of the market-place with rational co-ordination and direction. And because it is democratic, further instalments of Shaw's 'formal democracy' - attempts to pull up aristocratic institutions by the roots of the sort that 'Universal Abolitionists' engage in - are pointless distractions from the path ahead. The task for democratic collectivists is to take control of the existing institutions of the state, and to use them to make society more rational and more just. Anything else is a frivolous luxury. The vision represented by exhibit ' C , my quotation from Enoch Powell, is harder to label. I suppose one possibility might be Tory nationalist. I prefer a label stolen from the historian, Jonathan Clark, who uses it to describe his own position.8 I shall call it 'authoritarian individualist'. 8

J. C. D. Clark, 'The History of Britain: A Composite State in a Europe des Patries', in J. C. D. Clark (ed.), Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain (Basingstoke and London, 1990), pp. 39-44.

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It too is similar in some ways to the whig imperialist vision. There is the same emphasis on immemorial custom. For it too political authority is sacral, not rational. As Michael Oakeshott, that most subtle of authoritarian individualists, put it, the 'intimations of government' are to be found in 'ritual'.9 But there are marked differences as well. The authoritarian individualist vision is much bleaker. Change is as likely to be for the worse as for the better. The role of the state is bleaker too. It has to police the passions which would otherwise tear society apart: to guarantee order and discipline against the disorder and indiscipline inherent in fallen human nature. It also has to guarantee property rights, social hierarchy, individual liberty against the forces of envy and folly which continually threaten them. To do all this, it must be strong and authoritative. '[W]e do not ask for a feeble state', said Mrs Thatcher in her famous Airey Neave lecture, soon after taking office. 'On the contrary we need a strong state to preserve both liberty and order.'10 And to be strong, the state must speak to the heart as well as to the head. It is not, said the great Lord Salisbury more than a century ago, a 'mere joint stock company', as individualistic Radicals imagine. It needs 'poetical trappings':11 majesty, dignity, glory. To strip these away would be at once impious and dangerous. But there is an ambivalence at the heart of authoritarian individualist statecraft. For the state is dangerous as well as necessary: a looming enemy as well as an indispensable friend. In the wrong hands, it may invade spheres which it has no business to enter: trench on the liberties which it exists to secure. Authoritarian individualists therefore view the responsive, adaptive whig imperialist state with a jaundiced eye. Suppose it responds to the wrong pressures? Suppose it adapts in the wrong way? Suppose that under the cloak of genial and accommodating whiggery it turns into the impious and destructive democratic collectivist state? What then? Sovereignty and identity So far I have looked at the implications of my three visions for statecraft; for the art of government; for rulers and those seeking to rule. They also have implications for two other crucial dimensions of statehood. One is sovereignty; the other is identity or nationality. The sovereignty story is full of complexities, but the essentials are starkly clear. For different 9 10

11

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London, 1962), p. 188. Margaret Thatcher, In Defence of Freedom, Speeches on Britain's Relations with the World 1976-1986 (London, 1986), p. 63. Quoted in Philip Buck, How Conservatives Think (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 113.

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reasons and by way of different paths, all three visions converge on the same destination: on Enoch Powell's 'unlimited supremacy of Crown in Parliament'. To put it more precisely, all three take for granted the doctrine which the great Victorian jurist, A. V. Dicey, called 'the keystone of the Constitution': the doctrine of, in his words, the 'absolute legislative sovereignty or despotism of the King in Parliament'. 12 For all three, in short, the sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament is inherently unshareable and inalienable; for all three, the engine of concentrated executive power which Dicey's doctrine celebrates and legitimises must be left intact. It is not difficult to see why whig imperialists and authoritarian individualists should converge on this end point. This is the mystery enshrined in the immemorial customs they celebrate: the sacral source of political authority they both presuppose. But why should democratic collectivists join them? The democratic collectivist vision is rational, utilitarian, instrumental. Why, then, have democratic collectivists failed to challenge the Dicey doctrine? The answer, I believe, is twofold. Part of it is to be found in an autobiographical fragment in Aneurin Bevan's In Place of Fear> published just after his resignation from the Attlee Government. 'A young miner in a South Wales colliery', Bevan wrote, 'my concern was with the one practical question: Where does power lie in this particular state of Great Britain, and how can it be attained by the workers?' His answer was Parliament: 'a sword pointed at the heart of property-power'.13 Dicey's engine of concentrated power, in other words, offers the one hope of toppling the privileged and emancipating the dispossessed. State power is the answer - the only conceivable answer - to market power. And if, in Britain, state power happens to be founded on medieval mumbo-jumbo, then so be it. That leads on to the second part of the answer. The powers of the Crown in Parliament, say the democratic collectivists, are exercised by ministers: ministers come, by definition, from the majority party in the House of Commons: the majority party in the House of Commons has, by definition, been given its majority by the people. Whatever constitutional lawyers may say, the powers of the Crown in Parliament are de facto the people's powers. The body of democracy has been inserted into the skin of Westminster absolutism. To damage the skin would be to damage the body. The identity story is also rather complicated, but in a different way. There is no doubt about the Whig imperialist vision of British identity. 12

13

A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London, 1950 edn), p. 70. Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear (Wakefield, 1976 edn), pp. 21 and 25.

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The British state is, in a unique and special sense, an imperial state: inescapably the hinge of Churchill's world-wide multiple kingship. By the same token, the British nation is a uniquely imperial nation: constituted as a nation by its decision to seek an oceanic and imperial destiny rather than a merely continental, European one. Thus, for Churchill, British history is only part of the history of the 'English-speaking peoples' which he wrote in four substantial volumes. And thus, for G. M. Trevelyan, the loss of Calais under Mary Tudor was 'pure gain' because it taught the Elizabethans to 'look westwards for new lands'.14 The authoritarian individualist vision of nationhood and identity is as deeply felt, as passionately evoked, as the whig imperialist. But it is an English vision, not a British one: post-imperial, not imperial. Of course, authoritarian individualist politicians, obliged to woo voters in the non-English nations of this island speak, when they remember to, of Britain. But you do not need to have mastered the subtleties of deconstruction to see that when 'Britain' is said, 'England' is generally meant. The myths, the symbols, the iconography are English. One example will have to stand for many. In May 1982, at the height of the Falklands War, Mrs Thatcher addressed the Conservative Women's Conference. First, she referred to 'we'. Then 'we' became 'we British'. But the final peroration gave the game away: 'And let our nation, as it has so often in the past, remind itself and the world: "Naught shall make us rue/If England to herself do rest but true".' 15 Is it altogether surprising that, under her leadership, the Conservative party did not fare as well north of the Border as it used to do? But what of democratic collectivism!? What is the democratic collectivist vision of identity and nationhood? The answer is that there isn't one. The 'poetical trappings' with which democratic collectivists have been comfortable, the solidarities they have sought to evoke have been those of class, not those of nation. I can think of one giant exception, Bernard Crick's hero, George Orwell. In his wartime writings, Orwell tried to find a distinctive democratic collectivist idiom of nationhood. The result was some of the most haunting polemical prose in the English language. But the point about Orwell's achievement is that it stands almost alone. In general, democratic collectivists have been forced back on the whig imperialist language of nationhood and identity, for want of a language of their own. When Hugh Gaitskell appealed to '1,000 years of history' in his great speech opposing British membership of a European Union, it was whig imperialist history that he had in mind. And 14 15

G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London, 1956 edn), p. 232. Margaret Thatcher, In Defence of Freedom, pp. 72-9.

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when, in the first Commons debate on the Falklands War, Michael Foot accused the government of 'betraying' the Falkland Islanders, it was a whig imperialist chord that he hoped to strike. The visions today These, then, are the visions of the state which my three exhibits were chosen to represent. Of course, they were never the only ones. Of course, they were often less coherent, more inchoate, less sharply differentiated from each other, than I have depicted them as being. But, for all that, they have been the dominant visions of the British state for most of the post-war period. And because they have been so dominant for so long, it is extraordinarily difficult to throw them off. Even now, I suspect, Old Peabottle's majestic Whig river still flows through the collective subconscious of the Athenaeum and the Cabinet Office mess. Even now, if you scratch someone on the left - even a congenital milk-and-water Menshevik like me - you will find at least a vestige of Shaw's disdain for the anarchic waste of private money-hunting. And I am sure that, south of the Border and east of the Severn, millions of people, including millions of Labour voters, have at least a corner in their hearts for Powell's English oak trees. But, in spite of this lingering afterglow, I believe that all three visions are now exhausted. The fate of the whig imperialist vision is brutally plain. You can't be an imperialist if you have no empire. The golden circle of the Crown still keeps its old magic. But the unravelling of Britain's world role, decolonisation in Asia and Africa, the search by the old white dominions for new roles and, not least, entry into the European Community have destroyed the unique and mysterious multiple kingship it once encompassed. In doing so, they have also destroyed the identity and undermined the statecraft that went with the multiple kingship. The democratic coUectivist vision has fared no better. Whatever may be true of left-of-centre hearts, whose head still accepts the Shavian presupposition that the rational and democratic state is, by definition, more efficient than the higgling of the market? Social welfare, yes. Managed capitalism, certainly. A symbiosis between public and private power, some of us hope so. But state ownership? State planning? Even state direction? Those primordial ingredients of the democratic coUectivist vision perished during the upheavals that swept the world economy in the 1970s. That leaves the authoritarian individualist vision. Here matters are more complicated. The exhaustion of the whig imperialist and democratic coUectivist vision in the 1960s and 1970s created a vacuum - a

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vacuum of understanding; a vacuum of sentiment; above all, a vacuum of language and of rhetoric. Into that vacuum rushed authoritarian individualism. Its bleak, late nineteenth-century statecraft was more congruent - or rather less incongruent - with the diverse, disorganised capitalism of the late twentieth than either relaxed, accommodating whiggery or directive democratic collectivism. Above all, it and it alone had an identity to which it could speak, tribal loyalties which it could mobilise. But there was a contradiction between that identity and the state which the authoritarian individualists aspired to rule. The state was Britain. The identity was English. For a while, the contradiction went unnoticed. Authoritarian individualist statecraft swept all before it. Tribal loyalties were mobilised to such effect that, in the 1987 general election, the principal working-class party in the south of England was Mrs Thatcher's. But the better authoritarian individualism played in Penge, the worse it played in Peebles: the more loudly it was cheered in England, and particularly in southern England, the more it grated on everyone else. The results are manifest - the Scottish Claim of Right; the Scottish Constitutional Convention; the commitment by all the Scottish political parties save the Unionists to one form or other of a Scottish Parliament. No one knows what the consequences will be, but one point is clear. Britain is, and always has been, a multi-national state, not a national one. The Scottish nation was incorporated into the state through negotiation, not through conquest. All the signs are that Scotland now wishes to renegotiate the settlement that led to her incorporation. She may opt for separate statehood within the European Community. She may prefer internal autonomy within a more or less federal United Kingdom. The first would mean the disappearance of the British state. The second would transform it beyond recognition. Neither outcome is tolerable from an authoritarian individualist perspective. Yet authoritarian individualist statecraft has helped to force both onto the agenda. A deeper contradiction haunts it as well. As my quotation from Enoch Powell showed, the Dicey doctrine of the absolute and inalienable sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament is even more fundamental to the authoritarian individualist vision than to the others. But we live in a world in which the notion of absolute sovereignty - whether of the Crown in Parliament or of anyone else - has ceased to chime with economic and social reality. In this world, the search for absolute sovereignty is the pursuit of the infeasible by the incorrigible. Government, or at least public power, still has an important role. But the sovereign, nation state - the state which Thomas Hobbes called 'that

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great Leviathan, that mortal God' - has become an anachronism, above all in its European birth-place. No member state of the European Community is still sovereign in the old way. The Community is built on power-sharing. It has to be, because power-sharing among politics is the necessary response to interdependence between economies; and economic interdependence is the Commmunity's hall-mark. And it is not only the Community's hall-mark: it is the inevitable consequence of the de-regulation and liberalisation which are fundamental to the individualist dimension of the authoritarian individualist project. But power-sharing is ruled out by the Dicey doctrine. It is therefore anathema to authoritarian individualist statecraft - as, of course, to any other statecraft based on that doctrine. Authoritarian individualists cannot draw the obvious conclusion and secede from the Community. They wish to maximize the influence of the British state, and they know that it would have less influence outside than within. But nor can they accept the power-sharing logic of Community membership. On that contradiction, Mrs Thatcher was impaled. Thanks to it, she fell. Who can doubt that it remains to plague her successors? Enter Henry Dubb Is there a way out? It is not difficult to devise an alternative statecraft, more suitable for a post-imperial and multi-national state in a slowly federalising Europe. The Dicey doctrine and all that goes with it would have to be abandoned. The British state would have to be reconstructed, with constitutional checks and balances and a federal distribution of power, so as to make possible a politics of power-sharing, both in Britain and with the rest of the European Community. Such a statecraft would have to be underpinned by a pluralist conception of identity and nationhood. Just as it is possible for Catalans to say, 'I am Catalan; I am Spanish; I am European', so it would have to be possible for a British citizen to say, 'I am English, or Welsh, or Scots, or, who knows, a Northumbrian or a Yorkshireman; I am also British; and I am European'. The difficult question is whether such a statecraft is feasible. Is the British political tradition resourceful enough to sustain it? Could it be encapsulated in a vision capable of inspiring political imaginations and of mobilising loyalties? Could it fill the void of sentiment and rhetoric which the authoritarian individualist renaissance seemed about to fill in the early 1980s, but which now gapes even more obviously than it did fifteen years ago? I cannot know the answer, but I offer a thought. My subtitle is 'Henry Dubb versus sceptred awe'. The meaning of 'sceptred awe' should, by

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now, be clear. What do I mean by Henry Dubb? Who was Henry Dubb? The answer, of course, is that he wasn't. He was an invention of the great economic historian and socialist thinker, R. H. Tawney. He was Tawney's ordinary citizen - down-to-earth, sober, unromantic: but still a citizen, imbued with the instincts of citizenship and stubbornly attached to its values. I see him as a symbol of a tradition - elusive fugitive, often half-forgotten, but never quite abandoned - of which Tawney was one of the chief exponents in this century. It is a difficult tradition to distil in a phrase. Tawney caught the essence when he wrote that Britain had accepted democracy, as a convenience, like an improved system of telephones; she did not dedicate herself to it as the expression of a moral ideal of comradeship and equality . . . She changed her political garments, but not her heart. She carried into the democratic era, not only the institutions, but the social habits and mentality of the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world . . . She went to the ballot box touching her hat.16 What he meant was that the teleologies underpinning both the whig imperialist and the democratic collectivist visions of the state were false; that Britain was not really a democracy after all; that the prerogatives of the Crown had not been mysteriously transmuted into the privileges of the people, or that if they had been, such a transmutation was not to the point; that democratic citizenship must be active, not passive; and that ours was not. To put the point in another way, the Tawneian tradition has insisted that democratic institutions without a democratic culture are like clothes without a body; and that a democratic culture is, above all, a culture of self-government, a culture of the civic or republican virtues. I do not suggest that that tradition is bound to generate reconstructed identities and a refashioned state on the lines I sketched out a moment ago. In England (though not in Wales or Scotland) the very notion of plural identities and plural allegiances is apt to seem perverse or shocking, and the suggestion that identities can be deliberately reconstructed, absurd or fantastic. If that view is right, no alternative statecraft is possible. But I see no reason to assume, a priori, that it must be right. Large numbers of British citizens already have plural identities and plural allegiances: it was because he found this incipient pluralism repugnant that Lord Tebbit framed his 'cricket test' of political loyalty. As for reconstructed identities, if ever an identity was deliberately constructed in the first place, it was the 'British' identity celebrated by 16

Quoted in Ross Terrill, R. H. Tawney and His Times: Socialism as Fellowship (London, 1974), p. 173.

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the whig imperialists. And if the conventional English view is wrong, the Tawneian tradition may have more to say to the late twentieth century than any other. For it is the only tradition available to us that offers the possibility of refashioning the state and reconstructing identities through negotiation and debate rather than through manipulation or force. And if this cannot be done through negotiation and debate, it cannot be done at all. For most of this century, the Tawneian tradition has been submerged. It is, of course, a highly subversive tradition - as subversive of the progressive mandarinate which set the tone of British public policy in the post-war period as of the defiantly reactionary neo-liberals who followed them. The values it bears run directly counter to the values implied by the notion of an absolute and indefeasible Crown in Parliament. As such, it also runs counter, not just to the whig imperialist and authoritarian individualist visions of the British state, but to the democratic collectivist vision, many of whose exponents thought of themselves as followers of Tawney. Yet it is part of our history. I suspect it can be traced back to the civic humanists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are echoes of it in some of the liberal thinkers of the nineteenth, and in rather more of the popular radicals of the same period. It surfaced in the early Labour movement, notably in the ILP. Oddly enough, there were echoes of it in the robust antiEstablishment rhetoric of Mrs Thatcher - not the least of the sources of her appeal to middle England. Now there are signs that it is beginning to re-emerge. They include the current citizenship debate, which now engages supporters of all three United Kingdom political parties, as well as the cross-party pressure group, Charter 88; draft written constitutions proffered by figures as diverse as Tony Benn and the Institute of Economic Affairs; and opinion surveys recording substantial majorities in favour of constitutional change. So I end with a question. Is Henry Dubb coming in from the cold? If he is, he - and we - may astonish us all.

Thinking about the state and the economy Robert Skidelsky

The great fact, and puzzle, of the last twenty years has been the revival of belief in economic liberalism. By this I mean the belief that economic (and to some extent social) outcomes should be mainly determined by market forces, with its corollary of a contracted role for the state in economic life. This revival occurred after a century of creeping collectivism. A distinction must be made between political and economic liberalism. Western societies, with some backsliding, remained committed to political liberalism, but accepted increasing doses of economic collectivism. Indeed, the latter was widely regarded as a condition of the former. This linkage has now been upset. Political and economic freedom are increasingly seen as indivisible, with encroachments on economic liberty viewed as threatening to political liberty. I want to reflect on this shift in a historical, partly autobiographical, way; to contrast what we - my generation - believed then and what we partly believe now, and to give some explanation for our change of views. The simplest explanation of the revolt against economic collectivism is that experience has shown it doesn't work. But in a sense this experience was always there: it was embodied in the dominant AngloSaxon - I hesitate to say western - tradition of political philosophy and political economy. It might be said that the twentieth-century experience of market failure and the costs of uncontrolled change crowded out the earlier suspicion of state control and cooled the ardour for letting market forces rip. And there is much truth in this. Since the 1970s the spotlight has swung away from the failings of markets to the failings of governments. Perhaps it is starting to swing back a little. There are evidently long cycles at work, as people become disillusioned in turn with the promises held out by collectivist and liberal systems. In the twentieth century, many economists and political thinkers came to regard moderate economic collectivism as an inoculation against Communism. This was certainly Keynes's view. Moderate collectivism 70

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was a perfectly reasonable project: it was the expression of liberalism on the defensive. Its weakness was that it offered no principled statement of where to draw the line. It was vulnerable to Hayek's charge that the state would have to take more and more powers to make it work. Experience seemed to vindicate Hayek. In the 1960s and 1970s efforts were made everywhere to buttress Keynesian demand-management by cost control through incomes policy. This required, logically, far more centralisation of economic power in the hands of the state, which threatened political liberalism. The eventual need of Keynesianism for such 'additional instruments' was an important factor in undermining liberal support for the Keynesian revolution. However, the weakness of the liberal defence against economic collectivism can also be traced to specific errors in intellectual and moral reasoning. An example of the former is the determinist fallacy. Nineteenth-century economic liberalism, it was argued, was inevitably giving way to collectivist arrangements. A classic statement was Lenin's claim that free-trade capitalism was being transformed into monopoly capitalism. Another version of the determinist thesis was Adolph Wagner's Law of Rising State Expenditures. Irreversible, or at least irresistible, economic and social trends determined an enhanced role for the state as 'democratic' controller of private monopoly, stabiliser, planner, and provider of a vast array of economic and social goods. It is now clear that the determinist thesis, in whatever form, is untenable. There has been no consistent trend of events capable of explaining the growth of state control over economic life. Nevertheless it did grow almost continuously from the late nineteenth century to the mid 1970s, by any measure you care to take: public spending as a percentage of GDP, taxation as a percentage of earnings, the size of the public sector, the number of public employees, the number of regulatory laws and agencies, and so on. Why did this happen? In a post-Wittgensteinian world we can no longer accept the earlier historicist assumption that changes in reality determined a new role for the state. Reality directs thought and language, but does not determine it; reality is itself partly constructed by the language we use. The use of the war metaphor, to which I shall return, is particularly significant in this context. We would now want to say that the growth of the state was driven by ideology, culture, and bureaucratic and political dynamics: it was, if you like, endogenously generated by the political process, not caused by the external characteristics of advanced capitalism. What we need to contemplate is a mindset, or a Zeitgeist, not statistics of demography, number of firms, urbanisation, size of the electorate, etc. One-off events, like the two world wars

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or the great depression, can certainly explain temporary increases in the role of the state, but not permanent trends. This seems to be the weakness of Peacock and Wiseman's view that 'the acceptance of new tax levels remains when the disturbance has disappeared 5. 1 The growth of democracy was clearly important, but no important changes in the franchise took place in the most rapid period of state expansion following the Second World War. If you allow for all the lags, you might just be able to discern trends, but they are far from sustaining a determinist thesis. Liberal acceptance of the inexorable growth of the state was facilitated by two further errors. The first I can only call a moral conjuring trick: the redefinition of liberty in terms of 'positive' rather than 'negative' freedom. Thus the question of what Hayek calls the 'constitution of liberty' - how to prevent incremental encroachments by the state on the sphere left to individual enterprise, initiative and choice - was evaded. A further error was the assumption of government omnicompetence: the assumption that the centralised stock of social knowledge, benevolence, and probity in administration was adequate to the new tasks required of government by the Zeitgeist. Let me give two examples of such errors of reasoning. The first is something I myself wrote in New Society on 2 October 1975, under the title: 'The Future of the State: Why It Will Grow', of which I am not proud. Its standpoint was that the scope of state responsibilities is determined by the needs of the time, and that our 'stock of social knowledge' may be sufficient to meet these needs without serious impediment to freedom. I divided the history of the modern state into three epochs: mercantile, minimal and collectivism My conclusion is conveyed by the following quotation: What does seem to me certain is that collective efforts to secure social goals will increasingly replace individual ones. One form of intervention creates both the precedent and the necessity for another . . . Nowhere in the modern scenario, however interpreted, is there to be found an agenda for state withdrawal. The only question is: what kind of state . . . I would suggest that the Keynesian State will be, is already being, replaced by the Corporate State - a system in which collective decision-making in the economic field is shared out between government and the major producers . . . The reason for this development is clear. The state's responsibilities have expanded far more than its authority. Consequently the government is overloaded with demands. The 'new corporatism' is less an attempt to devolve responsibilities than to involve powerful private groups in the state's expanded ones . . . History has set political theory a new challenge. If, through fastidiousness, political theory ignores contemporary life, we may easily 1

A. T. Peacock and Jack Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London, 1967 edn), p. xxxiv.

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end up with the worst possible state - one that combines maximum repression with maximum inefficiency. Apart from Keynes, I cited a number of sources which indicate what I was reading at the time: Robert Heilbroner's An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, with its pessimistic conclusion that liberty would have to be curtailed to tackle the problems of the twenty-first century; Harold Laski's The Rise of European Liberalism, an older text, with its quasiMarxist association of liberty with the bourgeoisie, and collectivism with the proletariat; and the equally deterministic work of the sociologists R. Pahl and J. T. Winkler. A quotation from Winkler gives the flavour of their work: 'If the trend of the past fifteen years continues, the British economy will be essentially corporatist before the end of the 1980s.' He rejects as contrary to cany objective measure', the possibility that the state would reduce its intervention 'and trust more in the market'. This was in 1977, two years before the advent of Mrs Thatcher's governments.2 Such unrestrained determinism now seems simply quaint. What horrifies me in retrospect is the way I downgraded the importance of individual liberty, and ignored the role of ideas in defining reality. Yet this was not an atypical expression of the left-of-centre mindset of the time. Take, for example, Harold Wilson's remark in 1973: 'from now on the grasp of national control must extend as far as the reach of government aid', a classic example of the logic of collectivist creep.3 My next witness is Keynes. Keynes remarked in the 'The End of Laissez-Faire' (1926) that the question of the proper spheres of individual and state action cannot be settled on abstract grounds. Each age, he implies, needs to decide for itself what the state ought to do, and what can be left to the individual; or in Bentham's terms, between the agenda and non-agenda of government. 'Perhaps the chief task of economists at this hour is to distinguish afresh the Agenda of government from the Non-Agenda; and the companion task of politics to devise forms of government within a democracy which shall be capable of accomplishing the Agenda.' In Keynes's view, the most important agenda of government related 'not to those activities which private individuals are already fulfilling . . . but to those functions which fall outside the sphere of the individual, to those decisions which are made by no one if the State does not make them'. He gave as one example, population policy, which pays attention to 'innate quality' as well as numbers.4 2 3 4

J. T. Winkler, 'The Coming Corporatism', in R. Skidelsky (ed.), The End of the Keynesian Era (London, 1978), pp. 87, 79. Tony Benn, Arguments for Socialism (London, 1979), p. 48. The Collected Writings ofJohn Maynard Keynes (London, 1972), vol. IX, pp. 288,291-2.

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This method of deciding 'what the state should do' has been at the root of much muddled thinking on the question of the 'role of the state'. It was accepted by the whole of the post-war generation; and large traces of it, I think, inform Professor Marquand's challenging book, The Unprincipled Society (London, 1988). For the simple fact is that we cannot safely lay down the agenda of government in advance of, and apart from, what 'governments in a democracy', and in particular democracies, can successfully accomplish, as was pointed out by Brian Barry in his review of Marquand's book.5 It may be that certain things not being done or done well by individuals should not be done by the state either - because it will do them badly, or because, to do them well, would require giving the state more power or control over our lives than we would like it to have. It may be argued that Keynes's formula, 'forms of government within a democracy', saves us from the latter prospect. Yet what if the agenda of government laid down by economists proves to be inconsistent with democracy, or liberty, or even good government? There is nothing in the formula which guards against this possibility. Keynes was no totalitarian; he thought that the things he wanted to do could be accomplished 'within a democracy', and without endangering liberty. Yet he also thought that they could be done better in a non-democracy. Consider the preface to the German edition of the General Theory: 'the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state'. And the same one may think is true of the kind of 'population policy' which he recommended. Keynes's formula provides no principled barrier to the Hayekian drift - the degeneration of an economically or socially inspired programme of intervention into ever more extensive forms of state control. Keynes's own barriers to the Hayekian drift were implicit rather than philosophically or constitutionally embedded. He relied on expertise, on the notion of disinterested benevolence informing administration. But this was hardly an adequate summary of bureaucratic motives even then. And he was not penetrating on the relationship between the expert and the politician. He confined his intervention to the macro-economy, leaving individualism - and its attached liberties - to reign over the micro-economy. This was a theoretical choice informed by genuine liberal values. But he offered no philosophically based obstacle to the penetration of government into the micro-economy if 'market failure' justified it. Above all, he relied on the community's moral tradition to 5

In The Times Literary Supplement, 26 February-3 March 1988.

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check over-powerful government. 'Dangerous acts', he wrote to Hayek after reading the latter's The Road to Serfdom (1944), 'can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.'6 This is an inadequate answer, because the stock of moral capital itself can be depleted by various forms of intervention: e.g., self-reliance can give way to 'dependency'. Keynes's reliance on expertise as a deus ex machina also gave him an exaggerated view of the state's problem-solving capacity. The basic insight of Adam Smith, that the Prince was both corrupt and inefficient, was obliterated. Keynes's view was greatly influenced by new prestige of the social sciences. No doubt he was putting an extreme view when he argued before the Macmillan Committee in 1930 that monetary policy could be reduced to a science 'like electricity'; but the idea that social science provided the key to social salvation was widespread. This notion had its most extensive, and expensive, trial in the 1960s, and proved sadly defective. A century of growing policy-making and administrative discretion has led to the revival of interest in constitutions. Political philosophers and constitutional lawyers are back in business. The discussion has been turned on its head. The starting-point today is not what the economy needs, but what the state can and should (or cannot and should not) do. In a sense the economists have thrown the ball back to the constitutionalists; for it was economists who finally started telling politicians that economies would be more stable and more prosperous with rules-based systems than with discretionary policies. II I have said that, in trying to explain the changing relationship between the state and the economy, we have to contemplate a mindset, not a set of events. This mindset can be characterised as a series of assumptions about the nature of reality. I want to describe the assumptions with which 'our age' - to borrow the term used by Noel Annan for an earlier generation - grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, and how they differ from what some of us, at any rate, have come to believe now. Let me start with a small piece of autobiography. I became a research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford in 1965, and I still have a copy of The Times of 12 March announcing the appointment. Some of its news stories are directly relevant to my theme. There is a speech, for example, 6

Roy Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (London, 1951), p. 437.

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by Lord Robbins, saying that unless we achieved our competitors' standards in education and training we were doomed to 'mediocrity and eventual decline'. Plus ga change . . . Another item reads more quaintly: 'The Transport and General Workers Union have at last signed the disputed agreement with the London Transport Board on busmen's hours and schedules. The Board agrees to withdraw or amend certain clauses which a section of the men found offensive. One stated that there would be no ban on voluntary overtime. The men took it as an infringement of their right not to volunteer . . .' This was the great day of Boards and Planning Committees. A body called the London County Council Town Planning Committee pops up on almost every page. It was also the great day of Royal Commissions and Committees of Enquiry. The Times lead story of that day concerned the report of a Committee chaired by Milner Holland QC, recommending a return to security of tenure and rent regulation, coupled with the demand that the attack on London's housing shortage must be 'planned, applied, and directed for London as a whole'. It is only now, I think, that we realise how much of this language was a leftover from the Second World War. The lead letter to The Times, headed 'Need for a Lib-Lab Pact' called for an understanding between the two parties based on 'purposive planning'. There were few doubts yet about the efficacy of planning in the Soviet Union, to judge by the straight-faced reporting of the following announcement: 'A total of 119 big industrial plants in the Soviet Union are to be converted in the next two years to a system of automated production management using electronic computers.' A final item to savour is the headline 'US Troops to Remain in Asia indefinitely' - this, of course, in connection with the then escalating Vietnam war. What do these snippets tell us about the character of the age, the assumptions of those who led the country? The leaders of the 1960s men and women of roughly my age now, perhaps a bit older - were products of the 1930s and 1940s. Someone of 50 in 1965 (Harold Wilson, the prime minister, was 49) would have grown up in the Depression of the 1930s, served in the armed forces or Whitehall in the war, and entered politics, the professions or business life in the heyday of planning and austerity. Such persons would have progressed through the modest liberalisation of the 1950s, perhaps with some impatience at the Thirteen Wasted Years, and come to the top at a time when Wilson's Labour Party, as can now be seen, was deliberately trying to invoke the wartime spirit, with its purposeful imagery of classes pulling together, fair shares and humming machinery to modernise and galvanise Britain to fight new battles against old enemies, now transformed into powerful

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industrial competitors. Problematically connected with this was a new hedonism based on the spread of affluence to the working class and the growth of teenage consumerism, grounded in full employment and easy job availability even to those with minimal skills. Here we have an explanation of the confused picture which the 1960s still present to us: a military model of national regeneration which presupposed structures of restraint, community, trust, even deference, which were rapidly breaking down. All over the world the war, or even pre-war, generation was in power: the rhetoric of Kennedy and Johnson was similar to Wilson's, and both harked back to Roosevelt. De Gaulle was President of France, and Adenauer had only just stopped being Federal Chancellor of Germany. The age of Brezhnev had started in the USSR. Mao Tse-tung in China, Tito in Yugoslavia, the leaders of the newly emerging countries in Africa - all were products of the 1930s and 1940s, steeped in collectivist and military myth. This generation shared certain assumptions which transcended ideological differences between parties, or even, to some extent, between societies. The following seem the most important: 1. The market mechanism, while efficient for certain allocative purposes, had little inherent dynamism. The Australian school's view of the market as a 'discovery' mechanism was hardly known. Economic development should therefore be energised by state action according to a national plan. 2. The production of goods and services could not be left entirely to the market, both because of the existence of natural or artificial monopolies, and because of the requirements of national defence. Therefore the state should own a substantial sector of the economy. The actual continuum ran all the way from the wholly publicly owned economies of the socialist world to the almost wholly privately owned US economy, with most countries somewhere in between. That the state should own at least the major public utilities and strategic sectors of the commercial sector was widely accepted: political debate centred on where exactly the frontiers should be. Ownership of the 'commanding heights' (another military metaphor) was designed, together with planning, to give the state control over economic development. By the 1960s the idea that the state should subsidise those parts of the private sector whose survival was required by the national plan, or otherwise bring about their reorganisation, was widely accepted. Janos Kornai's 'soft budget constraint' was in operation. 3. Unmanaged market systems had a permanent bias to deflation and unemployment. The state should therefore take responsibility for the

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level of employment. This was a consequence of the Keynesian revolution. This is not to say that governments everywhere pursued the same policies. There were periods of passive and active Keynesianism. Keynesian policy also fitted into different national traditions in different ways - into strong planning traditions in France and Japan; into weaker ones in the UK or USA. Also a great deal of what might be called Keynesianism worked through the machinery of the Cold War, and particularly through America's leadership of the western alliance. It never occurred to us that the thesis that unmanaged economies were radically unstable was largely untested, being simply Keynes's generalisation from the experience of the Great Depression; or that government policy might contribute systematically to the instability it was meant to cure. 4. The market system was inherently unfair. It was the state's duty to bring about a more equal distribution of incomes and life chances, by providing for an array of social and cultural services, free or heavily subsidised, supplemented by cash payments. The tax constraint on expanding the 'welfare state' would be overcome by faster growth. 5. The ideological struggle between capital and labour was being replaced by what the historian Keith Middlemas called 'corporatist bias'. It was the task of government to accelerate this trend by persuading or cajoling organised groups into acting like 'social partners' rather than armies arrayed for battle. In Britain, this conception of bargained economic and social policy sat uneasily with the official doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. In politics, it went together with calls for devolution to the regions, and decentralisation to higher-tier local authorities. It was assumed that economic life was inherently political, and would become more so, with the main question being how to reconcile the state's accountability to the electorate with the reality of over-powerful industrial baronies. 6. The economy was divided up, not into markets, but into industrywide combines (of both employers and workers), wielding market power. (The actual organisation in Britain of trade unions on a craft basis, as well as the weakness of employers' organisations, spurred the call for both to organise on an effective industry basis.) The 1960s was the age of the merger boom, partly dictated by the philosophy that Big is, if not Beautiful, at least inevitable. But the roots of this conception of the character of the modern economy go back to the 1920s and even earlier, with the joint stock company and public utility concern emerging as the norm on either side of the private-public divide, the separation of management and ownership, 'Fordist' mass production methods, and the gradual euthanasia of the family firm. The growing corporatism

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of industrial life bred an ideology of managerial autonomy, which fitted the idea of Big Business as a worthy partner of the state in directing national enterprise, and fudged the question of the accountability of managers to shareholders, and producers to the consumer. 7. There would be an eventual 'convergence' between private enterprise and socialist planning, expressed succinctly in Daniel Bell's phrase 'the end of ideology'. It was widely assumed that neither stock exchange capitalism nor state socialism fitted the needs of the societies they purported to serve; and that the path of evolution lay in the approximation of both to a middle way which blurred the distinction between the public and the private; a path characterised by separate autonomies, each responsible for its own sphere, and all displaying a degree of publicness in their activities, arising from legal obligation, or public spirit, or sheer size. It was along some such lines, at least, that reformers on both sides of the Iron Curtain looked to an eventual ending of the Cold War and the ideological and military division of the world. So much for assumptions which were reasonably explicit in the minds of policy-makers in the 1960s, and which can be amply documented in the literature of the time. More difficult to pin down are what may be called the tacit assumptions which influenced these perceptions of reality, without themselves ever being discussed. The following seem to be the most important. The first was the territorial conception of the state. The world economy was seen as a collection of national economies, whose links could be best described as 'external relations'. Increasing lipservice was paid to the notion of interdependence, but the dominant idea was that the national economy should be strengthened for generally peaceful, but occasionally warlike, competition with other national economies. Thus it was considered essential that the state be armed with weapons notice again the military language - appropriate to these tasks. Nationstates emerged from the Depression and Second World War bristling with weapons, defensive and offensive: import controls, export controls, exchange controls, controls on capital movements. Keynes had specifically reserved for national government control over monetary and fiscal policy. Parodied as the dogma that each nation had the right to its own freely chosen rate of inflation, this led inevitably to the collapse, in 1971, of the fixed-exchange rate system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. In addition there was a whole paraphernalia of subsidies, export incentives and nationalisations mainly undertaken for the purpose of preserving 'strategic industries' and keeping them under 'national control'. None of this stopped the growing internationalisation of

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economic life. But there was a growing conflict between economic forces which ignored national frontiers and the nation-state's claim to economic sovereignty. A second powerful tacit assumption might be called the doctrine of benevolence. It was the view that public spiritedness was a sound working principle on which to build arrangements for the delivery of a wide variety of goods and services. The older idea of the state as predator shifted over the course of the century to that of the state as benevolent guardian of the public weal, though it was rarely expressed quite like this. The attribute of benevolence was tacitly conceded to many other providers of goods and services, contrary to Adam Smith's well-known warning to the contrary. Administrators, managers and professionals were supposed to bring to their jobs a degree of disinterestedness, public spirit and social concern which justified a claim to partial exemption from market disciplines. The state would, to the best of its knowledge and capacity, pursue the public interest, not just because it was constrained to do so by the electorate, but because its officials put public service above private gain. And this same exemption from adequate accountability was claimed by managers, trade union leaders (some of whom were voted into office for life), social workers, architects, lawyers, educators, doctors. The tacit assumption of benevolence was one of the legacies of socialism. Public-service ethics would radiate from the socialised, or non-market parts of the economy outwards to embrace concerns which remained legally private. The view that socialism would have a transforming effect on capitalism by creating a new ethics as well as new constraints on private greed was most eloquently expressed by Anthony Crosland in his book The Future of Socialism, published in 1956, and was used by him as an argument against the need for any great extension of nationalisation. The decay of market, as well as non-market, forms of accountability would never have been allowed to proceed so far had it not been for the tacit assumption of benevolence. Conversely, one of the great themes which has driven the politics of the 1980s - both Right and Left - has been the search for accountability; or in the jargon of our time, responsiveness of producers and providers to the wants and needs of consumers, customers, clients, patients, pupils. A third tacit assumption was that existing social arrangements, being products of history, could not be changed, and that the art of statesmanship was to work 'with the grain' of inherited institutions. An example was the oft-proclaimed British dictum, which Margaret Thatcher was to challenge, that 'the law has no place in industrial relations'. (On the continent of Europe much more attention was paid to

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the explicit legal basis of state and corporate power, mainly because new constitutions were always having to be drawn up following military defeat.) Underpinning the third tacit assumption was a fourth: societies were fragile organisms, and if one pushed too hard in any direction one risked social revolution. It was an axiom of most European policy-makers that persisting high levels of unemployment would spell death not just for the governments which allowed them, but for capitalism. Market forces must not be allowed to rip, or they would rip society to shreds. Fifthly, the explicit philosophy of the middle way rested on a tacit assumption that the world would, for the foreseeable future, continue to be divided ideologically, politically and militarily between two poles of attraction and repulsion. Obviously any middle-way philosophy depends on the existence of two such poles. No one in the 1960s foresaw the collapse of one of them. Subsuming these tacit assumptions was what I would call 'sticky mass' thinking. Keynes coined the phrase in the 1920s. The older economists, he said, thought of economies as liquids, whereas in fact they were solids. So the principle of diffusion, whereby a shock which entered the system at any point produced an ever widening ripple effect leading to a new equilibrium, no longer worked. Everything was blocked. It was integral to the sticky mass view of society that the right unit of social analysis was the group, not the individual. Few noticed that the great class and occupational groupings were fracturing under the impact of affluence, home ownership, greater mobility, technical change, the spatial dispersion of industry, etc. The first politician to act on the contrary assumption was Mrs Thatcher. So much for what we believed, surveyed crudely and without attention to all the nuances and qualifications which characterised actual beliefs. All these beliefs have unravelled to a greater or lesser extent, under the impact of economic and social changes which created spaces for new languages and new political initiatives. These initiatives have created their own irresistible momentum. The most striking changes have been in the language of politics, economics, and administration. The following seem to me to be the most important. 1. The question of what the state should do is now widely discussed, even by thinkers of the Left, in the language of market-failure. The presumption is that permanent state intervention is justified only in those areas where market-failure can be shown to be inherent and extensive. (Temporary interventions to achieve 'deregulation' may be used to improve the working of markets whose failures are contingent -

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i.e., result from legislative impediments to their efficient working.) The language of public goods and externalities has been developed partly to place an analytic boundary round the 'agenda' of government, partly to meet the need for a more rigorous justification of specific proposals to influence market outcomes (in relation to the environment, for example). 2. Much greater attention is now given to the motives of public officials. The effects of government intervention are now widely discussed in the language of public choice theory, whose main purpose has been to establish the theoretical possibility, and even probability, of 'government failure'. Politicians and bureaucrats are depicted as rational power optimisers rather than as disinterested public servants. Such allocations as emerge from the process of political vote-buying and bureaucratic bargaining are further subject to what the Americans call 'pork barrel polities', where the pushiest pigs - public sector employees, special interests, the middle classes - get the largest share of the swill. The upshot of this discussion is that 'authoritative' allocation of goods and services is bound to be inferior to 'market' allocation, in terms of efficiency, liberty and even fairness. The normative proposition is that public (or political) choice should be restricted, and market choice enlarged. 3. The impact of public choice theory has led to much more attention being paid to the problem of accountability of producers to consumers, particularly in those services which remain inherently public. The conceptualisation of the public services in terms of producers and providers on the one side, and customers, consumers, users, clients on the other, illustrates the extent to which market language has replaced the older language of public service, in which benevolent elites provide for the 'needs of the people'. One approach to accountability is to create 'internal' markets in the public services, in which services are purchased by, or on behalf of, users from competing, private or semi-private, providers. The other is to increase what Albert Hirschman calls consumer 'voice' in non-market decision-making. 4. Closely connected with the above is the new emphasis on 'enabling' or 'empowering' people to make their own choices rather than having them made for them by a remote bureaucracy. The main purpose here is to help people escape from a 'dependency culture' in which they become passive 'clients' of the state. Forms of enablement range from the negative income tax or a 'citizens income', through vouchers, to the promotion of various forms of collective self-help. 5. A specific, and many would say distracting, contribution of economics to the discussion has been the so-called 'policy inef-

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fectiveness' proposition, based on rational expectations theory. This was the theoretical response to the failures of Keynesianism, first elaborated by Milton Friedman. Friedman claimed that monetary and fiscal interventions, designed to increase employment or raise growth rates, have no real consequences in the long run. If the government expands the money supply the only result, it is claimed, is higher prices; if the government spends more of a given money supply, the private sector spends less. The underlying logic is that rational agents learn to protect themselves against delusive policies which experience teaches them have real costs and few benefits. Their ability to protect themselves is that much greater in an era when finance has been deregulated and markets for capital are global. Here is another argument for a restricted state. 6. The concern with limiting state power has led to a revival of interest in constitutionalism. In economic policy, there has been much talk of the need for a 'fiscal and monetary constitution' to restrain discretionary action by vote-seeking politicians. But political constitution-making has received a great fillip as well. The Left in particular wants to disperse power to the regions and lower tiers of government. In the European context this goes under the name of 'subsidiarity'. Ill The new language, shot through with suspicion of the state, coexists in our minds with the coUectivist language which still sees the democratic state as the redresser of grievances and the improver of life-chances. We have moved onto a new set of tracks without completely abandoning the old ones. Out of this criss-crossing of lines the political economy of the future is emerging. In conclusion, I want to outline what I think some of us believe today, with varying degrees of conviction and doubt, commitment and scepticism. The mobility of the factors of production, especially capital, has now reached a point when it is unhelpful, for many purposes, to think of nation-states as the primary units of economic action. This is revealed in the striking acceleration of the drive towards European unity. But the debate has moved beyond the stereotypes of nationalism versus European federalism-cum-bureaucracy. For the Delors vision of Fortress Europe, which goes back to Monnet and Hallstein and has its roots in the two world wars and the Cold War, is itself being swept away by the growing integration of Europe, America and East Asia, and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. So the prospect is not for the incorporation of a few nation-states into a new 'European Union', but the embedding of overlapping associations of European states into a cosmopolitan system

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of world economy. Adam Smith will take over from Friedrich List, as indeed List anticipated. But this prospect is far from being certain. Old agenda have a life of their own, and can always be re-animated by dramatic events. The benevolent guardian view of government is now in irreversible retreat. People no longer want guardians, even if they are benevolent: they have too much discretionary spending power, and with that goes a desire for quality and variety of life. It is also widely recognised that the guardians were not so benevolent, and that the issue of the responsiveness of providers to users cannot be evaded by a general appeal to 'democratic choice'. Public choice theory is largely a sophisticated modern revival of the mistrust of the state held by the classical political economists. The discontent with contemporary architecture illustrates both points: people who can afford their own homes want to choose what kind of home to live in; and we are increasingly aware of the alienating quality of much of the civic architecture put up in the 1960s. The same double movement is at work in education and the National Health Service. Unless the public services can be made more properly accountable they will disappear. The real political debate is about how the demand for accountability can be satisfied. I believe that the right (reinforced by the power) of exit is superior to a combination of voice and public audit. Or, to put it another way: given that the exercise of exit and voice both have costs, I believe that, on balance, choice systems for the public services have fewer costs, actual and prospective, than participatory systems. The most difficult problem of the 1980s has been to find ways of enabling the state to fulfil what many of my generation would still regard as its obligations to the poor and vulnerable without violating the principles of a liberal economy and polity or sapping individual selfreliance. The concept of the 'enabling state', developed from an earlier 'new liberal' tradition, is enlightening, though the struggle to make it operational continues. Entitlement should be to a basic income rather than to a specific set of state-provided services. New social techniques for targeting help on those in need, like the negative income tax, may help. But the question of what the state has the right to demand in return for cash assistance cannot be evaded, especially in these budgetconstrained times. The hardest assumption of all for my generation to give up is that the state is responsible for the level of employment. Keynes argued that employment does not automatically recover after a shock - whether the originating cause is a shock to demand or to supply. The experience of the 1980s and early 1990s bears this out. Governments of western

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countries, acting together, could restore something like full employment now - but only at the cost of accelerating inflation and mounting budget deficits or, if these are to be avoided, stringent controls over the money costs of production. But no one wants a re-run of the politics of the 1970s. We have also learnt that long periods of deficient demand can destroy supply, so that the workers can only be re-employed at wages lower than the income support to which they are entitled as unemployed persons. Rebuilding capital and skills is clearly prior to enlarging consumer demand. This means that any full employment commitment will need to be for the long term. And even with the emphasis shifted to improvements in the supply-side of the economy, it is far from clear what the state's role should be. We seem set for a multitude of small experiments rather than the old Keynesian big bang. The real radicalism of the 1980s has been the abandonment of the protective attitude towards institutions. Policy in the 1980s has been both positive and permissive: positive in trade union legislation and educational and health service reforms, permissive in being willing to allow the force of economic change to reshape social arrangements. The proprietary right to go on existing simply because one has been in that business for a long time, and the corollary claim to state assistance to continue in that way of life, is no longer accepted. State subsidy has too often been revealed not as an instrument for reducing the costs of change, rather as a means of entrenching uncompetitive forms of life. Something of the new openness to change is captured in the fashionable concept of 'contestability', invented by Baumol in 1982. A market is said to be 'contestable' if the costs facing new entrants are similar to those of firms already in the market, and when a firm leaving a market is able to salvage its capital costs, minus depreciation. This implies no barriers to entry. The notion of contestability can be applied to social institutions. The new willingness to allow economic forces to reshape institutions recalls the spirit of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Related to the above, there is a more widespread acceptance than there used to be that societies have considerable capacity for absorbing 'damage5 without falling to pieces. Of course, this capacity is not constant over time. It depends on many factors, and leaders of the older generation may well have been right in fearing the effects of too rapid a change on social stability in the circumstances of their time. Today the frontier for change has opened up, partly because of the collapse of communism. As a result institutional optimism has triumphed over institutional pessimism. More things seem possible. When we look at the world today compared to that of the 1960s the most striking aspect is its fluidity. The blocs are breaking up, the sticky

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masses dissolving. In the realms both of ideas and of facts we see powerful rebirths of individualism, nationalism, globalism. This is both hopeful and frightening, but in the new situation all analysis based on static formations is bound to be questionable. Comparing the intellectual forces pressing for liberalisation today with those promoting collectivism in the earlier part of this century, I am struck by the greater vitality of the former. The exception is the Keynesian revolution, a brilliant analytic performance, but basically a defensive one, constrained by fear of the future. The greater fertility of today's ideas reflects a much greater optimism. We do not feel the need to rely on deterministic or teleological arguments. We live in a freer mental atmosphere, which I, at least, find exhilarating.

Part II

The economy

6

The size and scope of the public sector1 Roger Middleton

Introduction The expansion of the public sector and the growth of big government have been common features of all twentieth-century economies and political systems, whether they be advanced western industrial market economies, centrally planned socialist states, newly industrialising countries or less developed economies.2 Although the British case conforms broadly to the experience of the advanced industrial economies, there are important differences. This is particularly true in respect of the comparative size of Britain's public sector, the composition of public expenditure and revenue, and the timing of its critical phases of growth. As a consequence, the British case has been frequently misunderstood. In particular, the focus upon aggregate measures of state activity has resulted in insufficient attention being paid to the composition of public expenditure and the implications of this for equity and efficiency in the British economy and the underlying objectives of public policymakers.3 This chapter thus follows the tradition, which runs from the 1

2

3

This chapter is a preliminary report on work in progress, and is drawn from a larger project on British economic performance and the growth of big government c. 18901979 to be published as Government Versus the Market by Edward Elgar in 1996. Full details of all of the estimates of public sector growth discussed in this chapter are contained in this forthcoming work. I should like to thank the British Academy and the University of Bristol research fund for financial assistance and Drs Peter Wardley and Rodney Lowe, Professors George Peden and Bernard Alford and the editors for their helpful comments on a draft of this chapter. Any remaining errors of fact, analysis or interpretation are, of course, entirely my own. F. L. Pryor, Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (London, 1968); J. A. Lybeck, The Growth of Government in Developed Economies (Aldershot, 1986); and N. Gemmell (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector: Theories and International Evidence (Aldershot, 1993). It is also the case that the focus upon the conventional measures of public sector growth (the share of public expenditure or taxation in national income) has resulted in insufficient attention being devoted to the long-run growth of government regulation of the private sector, which imposes public and private economic costs which do not show up as public expenditures (P. D. Larkey, C. Stolp and M. Winer, 'Theorizing about the Growth and Decline of Government: A Research Assessment', Journal of Public Policy,

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early twentieth-century German fiscal sociologists through to modern public choice theory, that public finance, by representing the 'hard, naked facts', offers 'one of the best starting points for an investigation of society'.4 The first objective of this chapter is thus to chart the long-run growth of the public sector using a variety of indicators and to assess this in relation to comparable economies.5 With this established, explanations of public sector growth and their applicability to the British case are then examined. Finally, in the concluding section the question of excess bias,6 in particular the influential Bacon and Eltis thesis,7 is considered, that is whether the size of the public sector had become excessive by 1979, the political - though not numerical - watershed in the growth of big government in twentieth-century Britain and the terminal date for the long-run statistical series detailed in this chapter. From the provision of minimal basic services at the turn of the century - guaranteeing property rights and the maintenance of defence, law and order, and financial probity8 - British governments have come to assume a broader role in the allocation of resources, in the provision

4

5

6

7

8

1 (1981), 157-220; J. G. Cullis and P. R. Jones, Microeconomics and the Public Economy: A Defence of Leviathan (Oxford, 1987), pp. 73-5). This issue, together with wider non-financial measures of state growth (C. L. Taylor (ed.), Why Governments Grow: Measuring Public Sector Size (London, 1983), p. 14; R. Rose, 'Disaggregating the Concept of Government', in Taylor (ed.), Why Governments Grow; and Rose, Understanding Big Government: The Programme Approach (London, 1984), ch. 3), is considered in Middleton, Government Versus the Market. J. A. Schumpeter, 'The Crisis of the Tax State* (1918), reprinted in A. T. Peacock, W. F. Stolper, R. Turvey and E. Henderson (eds.), International Economic Papers (London, 1954), vol. IV, pp. 6, 7. More particularly, three comparator groups are used: the European Community (EC), the group of seven largest industrial (market) economies (G-7) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which currently has twenty-four members. Subsets of these groups are also used where full data are not available or appropriate, e.g. EC-9 refers to the EC at first enlargement (1973). Readers should also note the following conventions: that the pre-war period is taken as 1900-13, the inter-war years as 1920-38, the post-war period as 1948-79 and the two trans-war periods as 1913-24 and 1937-48; that in some tables component parts may not sum exactly to totals because of rounding; that cross-sectional and time-series averages of country estimates are unweighted means including the UK; that all numbers in parentheses in the tables are negative; and that, unless otherwise indicated, annual percentage growth rates are geometric means. See R. A. Musgrave, 'Excess Bias and the Nature of Budget Growth', Journal of Public Economics, 28 (1985), 287-308. R. W. Bacon and W. A. Eltis, Britain's Economic Problem: Too Few Producers (London, 1978 edn). Whilst this is true of the combined public sector, at the local level municipal trading, especially the provision of gas, water, electricity and transport services, had been developing since the 1870s: H. Finer, Municipal Trading: A Study in Public Administration (London, 1941); M. E. Falkus, 'The Development of Municipal Trading in the Nineteenth Century', Business History, 19 (1977), 134-61.

The size and scope of the public sector 50 -i

91

40 30

•

20 10 0

1

2 3 4 5 Indicators of public sector growth

•

6

1900 i l 1979

Fig. 6.1 Summary indicators of public sectors size, 1900 and 1979: 1 Income tax standard rate, year ending 5 April, 2 Public sector employment as % of total employment, 1901 and 1979,3 Government final consumption as % of GDP at market prices, 4 Public sector receipts as a % of GDP at market prices, 5 Total public expenditure as % of GDP at market prices, 6 Outstanding national debt as % of GDP. Note: For this and successivefiguresand tables, Southern Ireland is included for 1900-19; from 1920 onwards it is excluded. Sources: Income tax standard rate: B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 645. Public sector employment: 1901-50: M. Abramovitz and V. F. Eliasberg, The Growth of Public Employment in Great Britain (Princeton, N.J., 1957), table 1; 1960: 'Employment in the Public and Private Sectors of the United Kingdom Economy 1957 to 1961', Economic Trends, 110 (December 1962), app. table 1; 1970: 'Employment in the Public and Private Sectors of the United Kingdom Economy in 1960 and 1970', Economic Trends, 212 (June 1971), xlvi; and 1979: 'Employment in the Public and Private Sectors 1979 to 1985', Economic Trends, 386 (December 1985), 36, 90. Government final consumption and total public expenditure: GDP: C. H. Feinstein, National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom, 1855—1965 (Cambridge, 1972), table 3 and CSO, National Income and Expenditure (1981), table 1.1; public expenditure: Feinstein, National Income, tables 1, 12—14, CSO, National Income and Expenditure (1958), table 40; idem., National Income and Expenditure (1964), table 47; idem., National Income and Expenditure (1967), table 52; idem., National Income and Expenditure, 1963-1973 (1974), table 50; and idem., National Income and Expenditure (1981), tables 6.2, 6.3, 9.1. Public sector receipts: GDP - as for public expenditure; public sector receipts - as for public expenditure and, additionally Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, 18951909, BPP 1910 (5296), civ, 9; Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, 1905-1919, BPP 1921 (1246), xl, 2-3; National Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom, 1938-1945, Cmd. 6784 (1946), table 18; and CSO, Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1935-46, 84 (1948), table 4. National debt: Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 602-3, 833-5.

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of public and merit goods,9 in guiding the market to reduce income and wealth inequalities and in economic management. All three of Musgrave's functions of the public economy - allocation, distribution and stabilisation - have thus expanded,10 but to different degrees and at varying times. This is evident from the summary measures of public sector size for 1900 and 1979 detailed in figure 6.1 (which are drawn from the longer-run series used later in this chapter): a tenfold rise in the standard rate of income tax, a near fivefold increase in the public sector's share of the working population, a more than fourfold increase in the ratio of public sector receipts to GDP, an increase in the ratio of public expenditure to GDP of between two and three and a half times (depending upon which definition is considered) and a rise of nearly one and a half fold in the ratio of outstanding national debt to GDP. There have also been important changes in the structure of Britain's public finances. On the expenditure side, social services have replaced defence as the largest budgetary item (the former increasing from 17.6 to 52.2 per cent of total public expenditure; the latter falling from 45.8 to 10.3 per cent), whilst, on the receipts side, there has been a marked shift in the tax mix: from a clear bias towards taxes on expenditure to a position in which taxes on income dominate (the former falling from 68.0 to 37.3 per cent of total receipts; the latter rising from 10.3 to 45.2 per cent). In addition, we should note the quantitative significance of the state trading sector. In 1907 this had contributed 4.5 per cent of the UK's gross output and accounted for 7.4 per cent of total employment.11 By the later 1970s, after the nationalisation programme of 1945-51 and the steady acquisition of bankrupt leading companies (the so-called 'lame ducks') in the 1970s, public enterprise accounted for nearly 13 per cent of GDP, 12 7.7 per cent of the working population and 16.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Fixed Capital Formation (GDFCF) (figures 6.5 and 6.6). 9

10

11

12

Pure public goods (such as defence) have certain characteristics such that their consumption by any one economic agent does not reduce the amount available for others; merit goods (such as public education, health and welfare services) assume that individual economic agents have distorted preferences (for example, insufficient appreciation of the benefit of education) and that government provision is required to ensure a socially optimal level of consumption. R. A. Musgrave, The Theory of Public Finance: A Study in Public Economy (London, 1959). J. S. Foreman-Peck, 'The Privatization of Industry in Historical Perspective', Journal of Law and Society, 16 (1989), table 1. R. Pryke, The Nationalised Industries: Policies and Performance since 1968 (Oxford, 1981), table 1.1.

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70 -,

"1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 | Capital formation

m Transfers

flUm

1960

1970

Current expenditure

Fig. 6.2 Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP at current market prices, 1900-79. Notes and sources: As fig. 6.1.

The long-run growth of the public sector The overall course of expenditure

An examination of long-run trends in public expenditure, the conventional indicator of the growth of the public sector,13 is extremely difficult. 13

It should be noted that both the expenditure and tax ratios are much affected by varying practices in definitions and calculation. Thus, for the former, the numerator is much affected by the definition of public expenditure (whether current or total expenditures, general government or the public sector), while the denominator may use GDP or GNP at market prices or factor cost (A. Gillie, Measuring the Government Sector: Size and Productivity (Milton Keynes, 1979), figure 6; A. Pedone, Tublic Expenditure', in A. Boltho (ed.), The European Economy: Growth and Crisis (Oxford, 1982), p. 407; D. Heald, Public Expenditure: Its Defence and Reform (Oxford, 1983), figure

2.1). For Britain, in the crisis year of 1976, a wide (narrow) definition of the numerator (denominator) yielded a public expenditure ratio of 60 per cent, prompting Friedman's dire warning that 'the odds are at least 50-50 that within the next five years British freedom and democracy, as we have seen it, will be destroyed', and undoubtedly contributed to the loss of overseas confidence in sterling later that summer: M. Friedman, 'The Line We Dare Not Cross: The Fragility of Freedom at "60%"', Encounter, 47 (November 1976), 9; see also L. Pliatzky, Getting and Spending: Public Expenditure, Employment and Inflation (Oxford, 1984 edn), ch. 5; and K. Burk and A. K. Cairncross, 'Goodbye, Great Britain': The 1976 IMF Crisis (London, 1992). On

the SNA definition employed by the OECD-UN as a standardised measure the 1976 ratio was 46.1 per cent, with an EC-9 average of 47.1 per cent, G-7 average of 40.1 per cent and OECD average of 37.7 per cent (Heald, Public Expenditure, p. 15 and table 2.3).

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There has been very little data collection or empirical work since the pioneering studies of Hicks, Veverka, Peacock and Wiseman, and Feinstein.14 The published data for the period before 1900 are fragmentary, of questionable consistency and insufficiently detailed for a fully informed appraisal of both the magnitude and composition of British public expenditure.15 Thereafter, the data improve in reliability, but there are still problems in reconciling Feinstein's series for the period 1900-65 with later Central Statistical Office (CSO) estimates in order to bring the account up to date.16 14

15

16

U. K. Hicks, British Public Finances: Their Structure and Development, 1880-1952 (Oxford, 1958 edn); J. Veverka, 'The Growth of Government Expenditure in the United Kingdom since 1790', Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 10(1963), 111-27, reprinted in A. T. Peacock and D. J. Robertson (eds.), Public Expenditure: Appraisal and Control (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 111-27; A. T. Peacock and J. Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom (London, 1967 edn); and Feinstein, National Income. There has been some recent work on the eighteenth century (P. K. O'Brien, 'The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660-1815', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 41 (1988), 1-32; R. V. Jackson, 'Government Expenditure and British Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century: Some Problems of Measurement', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 43 (1990), 217-35; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, 'Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century England', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 43 (1990), 377-403; and P. K. O'Brien, 'Power with Profit: The State and the Economy, 1688-1815', inaugural lecture (London, 1991), much of it prompted by N. F. R. Craft's revision of the story of Britain's 'industrial revolution' (British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985)). The nineteenth century, however, continues to languish, though there is a useful comparative survey in D. E. Schremmer, 'Taxation and Public Finance: Britain, France and Germany', in P. Mathias and S. Pollard (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VIII, The Industrial Economies: The Development of Economic and Social Policies (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 315—493; and the following are of some use: J. F. Rees, A Short Fiscal and Financial History of England, 1815-1918 (London, 1921); E. L. Hargreaves, The National Debt (London, 1930); and F. W. Fetter and D. Gregory, Monetary and Financial Policy in Nineteenth Century Britain (Dublin, 1973); see also M. W. Wright, Treasury Control of the Civil Service, 1854-1874 (Oxford, 1969) which contains much useful detail (though his estimates in app. V are incorrectly labelled public expenditure); L. E. Davis and R. A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912 (Cambridge, 1986), esp. chs. 4, 8; and the budgetary studies of B. Mallett, British Budgets, 1887-1913 (London, 1913); B. Mallet and C. O. George, British Budgets, Second Series, 1913/14 to 1920/21 (London, 1929); Mallet and George, British Budgets, Third Series, 1921/22 to 1932/33 (London, 1933); and B. E. V. Sabine, A History of Income Tax (London, 1966). Full details of the procedures necessary to obtain consolidated accounts of the public sector 1900-79, together with the definition of total public expenditure used, are contained in Middleton, Government Versus the Market, app. I. In essence the estimates here reported conform to the CSO's pre-1977 definition: current and capital expenditure by central and local (i.e. general) government including the national insurance funds, capital expenditure by public corporations and debt interest paid by general government and public corporations to the private sector. This excludes the operating expenses of the public corporations, but includes their trading surpluses, along with those of central and local government, in the income side of the account ('Government Income and Expenditure in the National Accounts: A Change of Presentation',

The size and scope of the public sector

95

Table 6.1. The growth of public expenditure, 1790-1900

A. Public expenditure basic indicators 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900

Expenditure at constant

Expenditure per capita at constant prices

prices (£m)

£

Index (1790 =100)

Government expenditure as%ofGNP

18 36 44 44 49 46 61 72 74 100 126 265

1.2 2.3 2.4 2.1 2.0 1.7 2.2 2.5 2.4 2.9 3.4 6.4

100 180 191 169 164 140 179 202 191 232 272 519

12 22 23 17 15 11 11 11 9 10 8 14

B. Elasticity of government expenditure with respect toGNP

1790-1830

1850-1890

Total expenditure

0.95

0.76

By function: Administration Debt service Defence Social services Environmental service* Other

0.85 1.05 0.80 0.70 1.40 —

1.08 0.38 0.92 1.42 1.23 —

By economic category: Transfers Goods and services

1.05 0.90

0.08 1.12

1790-1830

1850-1890

1.8 2.4

1.5 2.9

C. Percentage annual average real rate of growth Central government Local government

Note: Public expenditure is here defined in line with Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure: net expenditure by central and local government including the social insurance funds. Sources: Veverka, 'The Growth of Government Expenditure', table 1; and R. Bird, 'Wagner's Law of Expanding State Activity', Public Finance, 6 (1971), table 1.

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Figure 6.2 charts the growth of total public expenditure as a percentage of GDP at market prices over the period 1900-79. It also shows the overall composition of expenditure: goods and services, gross capital formation and transfer payments (items 3—6 of table 6.2). Explanations of this transformation in public expenditure are deferred until later in this chapter (pp. 124-38). For the present, we concentrate upon its overall magnitude and composition, the latter itself being an important basis for such explanation. Over the period as a whole the share of public expenditure in GDP (the expenditure ratio) rose by very nearly three and a half times, though it should be noted that the public sector's direct claim upon resources (expenditure on goods and services and gross fixed capital formation) increased by far less: from 11.2 per cent to 26.5 per cent of GDP. From the outset, therefore, we can see that it was transfer payments which fuelled the growth of public expenditure. It is clear also, given the major peaks associated with the two world wars and the minor peaks of the Boer (1899-1902) and Korean (1951-2) Wars, that war has played an important part in this process, though whether we can ascribe to war a displacement effect, as has been done by Peacock and Wiseman,17 remains questionable.18 As table 6.1 suggests, the trend of public expenditure was very different in the nineteenth century. The elasticity of public expenditure with respect to GNP 19 was consistently below unity over the century 1790-1890. Indeed, the half century or so following the ending of the Napoleonic Wars witnessed a declining expenditure ratio. It was only from the 1870s that the ratio began to rise, though the estimate for 1900 in panel A of table 6.1 gives a slightly misleading impression as the numerator was strongly affected by the Boer War.20 Over the century

17 18 19

20

Economic Trends, 281 (March 1977), 89-90; 'Public Expenditure: Definitions and T r e n d s ' , Economic Trends, 361 (November 1983), 138-51; and 'Measuring Public Expenditure', Economic Trends, 382 (August 1985), 94-110). T h i s definition differs in important respects from that of general government which has been used, with modifications, since 1977 and which relates more to financial control than to resource use. Since our interest is the growth of the public sector, the pre-1977 definition was considered to be preferable. Middleton, Government Versus the Market, app. I also contains a comparison of the series used here with the C S O series for 1890-1986 ('Long T e r m T r e n d s in Public Expenditure', Economic Trends, 408 (October 1987), chart 2 and table 2), which uses the post-1977 definition. O n average our series is 1.4 percentage points of G D P above the C S O series. Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure, p p . xiii-xv, 2 7 - 8 . See p p . 125-32 below. Elasticity measures are a standard means of measuring the sensitivity of one economic variable (in this case, public expenditure) to changes in another (in this case, G N P ) . T h u s if the elasticity of public expenditure with respect to G N P is greater than 1 it is said to be elastic; unitary if equal to one; and inelastic if less than 1. Defence expenditures were £134.9 million in 1900 as against £43.1 million in 1895 and £63.1 million in 1905 (Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure, table

The size and scope of the public sector

97

1790-1890 the annual percentage cumulative rate of growth of public expenditure was 1.9 per cent, as against rates of population and GNP growth of 0.9 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively.21 Further insights into the growth of public expenditure are provided by decomposing the aggregate figures. In modern studies this is typically pursued at five levels: by economic category (e.g. direct expenditures or transfers), by function (the purpose of spending), by spending authority (the tier of government spending and control), by the department responsible for the expenditure and by the spatial pattern of expenditures across the regions of the British economy.22 Unfortunately, information for the whole of our period is only available for the first three. The structure and composition of public expenditure Long-term trends in public expenditure by economic category and functional classification are shown in table 6.2 for selected years using the CSO pre-1977 definition of public expenditure discussed earlier. As is well established,23 the expenditure ratio (and also that for receipts) is highly sensitive to changes in both the numerator and the denominator. The former is much affected by the endogeneity of the budget,24 the latter by the business cycle. Accordingly, the dates chosen for this exercise are all years of high capacity utilisation (with 1903 being included as an alternative initial date to 1900 as defence expenditures had returned to more usual levels after the Boer War), 25 and, with the exceptions of 1900 and 1951, ones in which public expenditure was not

21 22

23

24

25

A-7). Taking the average of 1895 and 1905 defence expenditures as a proxy for non-wartime expenditure in 1900, we obtain a hypothetical expenditure ratio for 1900 of 9.9 per cent of GNP as against the recorded ratio of 14.4 per cent. Veverka, 'The Growth of Government Expenditure', p. 116. T h e r e are n o historical data for t h e latter, b u t see J. S h o r t , Public Expenditure and Taxation in the Regions ( F a r n b o r o u g h , 1981) for m o r e recent estimates. F o r e x a m p l e , T . S. W a r d a n d R. R. N e i l d , The Measurement and Reform of Budgetary Policy ( L o n d o n , 1978); a n d W . A. Eltis, ' T h e G r o w t h a n d Influence of E x p e n d i t u r e : T h e U n i t e d K i n g d o m , 1 9 6 1 - 1 9 7 9 ' , in T a y l o r (ed.), Why Governments Grow, p . 7 3 . P u b l i c e x p e n d i t u r e t e n d s to vary inversely w i t h G D P , b e c a u s e , for e x a m p l e , as u n e m p l o y m e n t rises, outlays o n u n e m p l o y m e n t ( a n d o t h e r welfare) benefits rise, while tax receipts are positively related t o G D P , taxes o n i n c o m e in p a r t i c u l a r b e i n g sensitive to t h e business cycle. Business cycle reference dates from R. C. O . M a t t h e w s , C. H . F e i n s t e i n a n d J. C. O d l i n g - S m e e , British Economic Growth, 1856-1973 (Oxford, 1982), table 10.1. Strictly, t h e first business cycle peak should b e 1899, b u t F e i n s t e i n ' s m o r e detailed data d o n o t b e g i n until 1900 a n d , in any case, 1900 is t h e peak year for G D P ( E ) ( F e i n s t e i n , National Income, table 1.6), t h e major series u s e d as t h e d e n o m i n a t o r in s u m m a r y m e a s u r e s of p u b l i c sector size.

Table 6.2. Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP at market prices, by economic category and functional classification, selected years, 1900-79 1900 1903 1907 1913 1920 1924 1929 1937 1948 1951 1955 1960 1964 1968 1973 1979 A. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Economic category: Current goods and services Gross capital formation Current grants to personal sector Subsidies Current grants paid abroad Debt interest Total

9.3 8.5 18 19 05 0 4 0.0 00 0.1 0.2 2.0 1.6 13 3 12 9

7.6 13 03 00 0.0 1.8 10 9

8.2 9.0 8.1 17 22 12 09 27 39 0.0 2 1 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.0 1.7 5.7 7.9 11 9 20 5 23 6

9.2 26 44 05 0.1 7.7 24 5

11.7 33 50 06 0.1 5.4 26 0

15.0 16.8 16.6 76 57 69 58 60 54 1.8 49 32 0.4 0 3 0.5 4.8 4.7 5.1 37 0 37 5 37 0

16.3 16.4 73 90 65 72 1 9 1.6 0.4 0.5 4.6 4.2 37 1 38 9

17.8 10 8 85 2.1 0.4 4.4 43 9

B. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Functional classification: Public administration and other Debt interest Law and order External services Defence Social services Economic services Environmental services Total

0.7 0.9 16 20 0.4 0 5 0.1 0.0 6.0 4.0 2.3 3.0 16 19 0.5 06 13.3 12.9

0.8 18 0.6 0.1 2.7 3.1 14 05 10.9

0.8 0.8 1.1 17 57 79 0.6 02 05 0.0 0.1 0.0 2.9 3.1 6.1 3.7 4.9 8.0 14 24 24 0.6 03 07 11.9 20.5 23.6

1.0 77 06 00 2.6 9.2 27 07 24 5

1.0 54 05 0.0 4.9 10.5 27 09 26.0

1.2 1.2 51 47 05 06 0.2 0.6 6.3 7.6 17.6 14.1 48 71 13 17 37 0 37.5

1.0 48 0.7 0.4 8.0 13.9 62 1.9 37.0

1.0 0.9 4 6 4.2 0.7 0.8 0.8 0.5 6.3 6.1 15.1 16.5 69 71 1 9 2.5 37.1 38.9

0.9 0.9 41 44 0.9 1.0 0.7 0.9 5.6 4.8 20.2 21.2 65 78 3.6 34 43.9 42.9

18.3 19.9 93 66 8 8 10 9 2.0 2.3 0.5 1.1 4.1 5.1 42 9 45 9 0.9 51 1.2 1.2 4.7 23.9 57 3.1 45.9

Notes: (1) Full details of the calculation of these series are given in Middleton, Government versus the Market, app. I. (2) The distribution by economic classification is more accurate than that by function for the years to 1948; thereafter they use identical sources. Sources: As figure 6.1 and, additionally, U. K. Hicks, The Finance of British Government, 1920-1936 (Oxford, 1938), app. tables 1-5; CSO, National Income and Expenditure, 1946-1952 (1953), tables 32-5; National Income and Expenditure (1955), table 42; National Income and Expenditure, 1962 (1962), table 44; National Income and Expenditure, 1963-1973 (1974), table 51; Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure, table A-15; Feinstein, National Income, tables 33, 35; K. Hartley, 'Defence with Less Money? The British Experience', in G. Harries-Jenkins (ed.), Armed Forces and the Welfare Societies: Challenges in the 1980s. Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and the United States (London, 1982), table 2.1; R. Parry, 'United Kingdom: Institutional Synopsis', in P. Flora (ed.), Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States since World War II, vol. IV: Appendix (Synopses, Bibliographies, Tables) (Berlin, 1987), tables 2-3.

The size and scope of the public sector

99

inflated above trend by high defence outlays. Dividing the century into sub-periods, the following trends are observable. The expenditure ratio exhibited a slight downward trend in the pre-war period. This followed from a slight reduction in the public sector's direct claim upon resources (dominated by reduction in defence expenditures after the Boer War), with transfer payments remaining largely unchanged. However, there were important compositional changes: the major social welfare legislation was beginning to have its effect, with expenditure on social services rising from 2.3 to 3.7 per cent of GDP between 1900 and 1913, thereby replacing defence as the principal budgetary charge. Thus the establishment of welfare services in the years immediately preceding the First World War was already beginning to transform the functional composition of expenditure, with the upward trend in expenditures being masked by the strong business cycle recovery from 1907. The First World War saw a near doubling of the expenditure ratio between 1913-20. There was some increase in the direct command of resources but this was dwarfed by the increase in transfer payments. These increased from 2.6 to 10.7 per cent of GDP, with one half of this increase being associated with the massive rise in debt payments which was a consequence of the First World War (see figure 6.7 for the growth in the debt/GDP ratio). There were, however, also significant rises in current grants to the personal sector and subsidies, indicative of a more permanent impact of war on the social wage and also on governmentindustry relations. The expenditure ratio continued to rise between the wars, but was much more evident in the increasing direct claim upon resources, both current and capital. We will see later that the inter-war period was historically a period of very rapid expenditure growth, with compositional changes being determined by the reduced debt charge once cheap money had been instituted in the early 1930s. We can also observe the diminished share of total public expenditure taken by administration and by law and order, a trend which in part derives from economies of scale in the provision of such services, but also lends support to the view that in the long run modern states become less preoccupied with internal control and more with the provision of social benefits.26 Indeed, this is reflected in the shares of social, economic and environmental services 26

See, for example, R. Rose, 'On the Priorities of Government: A Developmental Analysis of Public Policies', European Journal of Political Research, 4 (1976), 247-89. However, for some schools of thought, social expenditures should be conceived of as a form of social control: see J. Higgins, 'Social Control Theories of Social Policy', Journal of Social Policy, 9 (1980), 1-23.

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which increased from 37.1 per cent of total public expenditure in 1920 to 54.2 per cent in 1937, with the most pronounced growth occurring in the 1920s and in welfare services.27 This period sees the establishment of the modern budget structure with expenditure on welfare functions far outstripping expenditure on economic and environmental services, whereas they had been approximately equivalent at the beginning of the century. Finally, until rearmament began in earnest in the mid-1930s, defence expenditures were much reduced on the pre-war period, creating a partial peace dividend which was allocated to the growth of social expenditures. The Second World War was associated with a far less dramatic rise in public expenditure and more moderate changes in its composition than the earlier conflict. Between 1937 and 1948, the expenditure ratio only rose by 11 percentage points, almost equally divided between the public sector's direct claim on resources and transfer payments. A major part of the explanation for this lies with the stability of debt payments in GDP, a reflection of the very different financial policies pursued in the Second World War. It is also the case that over the trans-war period expenditure on economic and environmental services began their upward climb. Finally, the post-war period has seen a further upward trend to the expenditure ratio: from 37 per cent in 1948 to 45.9 per cent of GDP by the end of the period, although the peak had been realised in 1975 at 49.9 per cent and had fallen thereafter. This is usually explained in terms of 1976 being 'the year in which government policy with regard to the public sector changed from a Keynesian to a classical approach due to a new belief by British governments that extra public expenditure would crowd out private investment expenditures'.28 Over the period as a whole, the direct claim upon resources led the way, a predictable outcome given the nationalisation programme of the late 1940s. These, however, peaked in 1967, with gross capital formation, in particular investment in infrastructure,29 falling away heavily from the mid-1970s. We should also note that defence expenditures remained relatively high through to the mid-1950s. With approximate stability in the expenditure ratio until the late 1950s, the share of expenditure on social functions does not begin its rapid phase of growth until the 1960s, a beneficiary of the declining shares taken by the military and by debt interest. Indeed, Judge has described the relative decline in the defence budget 1955-74 27

28 29

For general accounts, see B. B. Gilbert, British Social Policy, 1914-1939 1970); and A. Crowther, British Social Policy, 1914-1939 (London, 1988). Eltis, ' T h e Growth and Influence of Expenditure', p. 73. O. Simon, 'Investing in the Infrastructure', National Westminster Bank Review (May 1986), 2 - 1 6 .

(London,

Quarterly

The size and scope of the public sector

101

as the most important enabling factor in 'providing] fiscal space for the development of the welfare state'.30 In one important respect the trend of public expenditure in the twentieth century differs from that in the nineteenth. In the earlier period it was local government which was increasing its share of the total, from 17.4 per cent to 50.4 per cent between 1790 and 1910.31 During the twentieth century, however, local government's share has, for the most part, fallen: from the pre-war peak down to 35.3 per cent by 1932 and 23.0 per cent by 1951,32 indicative of a concentration of expenditure by central government with local authorities assuming client status in financial matters.33 The trend since 1951 has been less clear cut: from 23.0 per cent in 1951 the proportion rose to a peak of 34.2 per cent in 1973 (the last year of the old local government system), before falling back to 28.7 per cent by 1979.34 International comparison of public expenditure

In our review of the growth of public expenditure, it remains to compare Britain's experience with that of comparable economies. Again, however, the data is most incomplete for the earlier periods. Table 6.3 presents some estimates for five of the G-7 countries (plus the Netherlands). It reveals that in terms of the public expenditure ratio there was nothing that was distinctive about the UK public sector before the First World War. Thereafter, the expenditure ratio rose in all of these states in the inter-war period. However, the proportionate rise was greatest for Britain between 1913 and 1929; other G-7 economies experienced their critical phase in public sector growth in the 1930s. The explanation is most likely the differential experiences of unemployment as between Britain and other OECD states, with the 1920s being relatively worse 30

31 33

34

K. Judge, 'State Pensions and the Growth of Social Welfare Expenditures', Journal of Social Policy, 10 (1981), 505; for more detailed accounts of post-war public expenditure growth, see R. Parry, 'United Kingdom', in P. Flora (ed.), Growth to Limits: The Western European Welfare States since World War II, vol. I I , Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy (Berlin, 1986), pp. 157-240; Parry, 'United Kingdom: Institutional Synopsis', pp. 357^406; and M . Mullard, The Politics of Public Expenditure (London, 1987). 32 Veverka, ' T h e Growth of Government Expenditure', table I I I . Ibid. B. Keith-Lucas and P. G. Richards, A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), ch. V I I ; see also A. E. Holmans, ' T h e Role of Local Authorities in the Growth of Public Expenditure in the U n i t e d Kingdom', in A. K. Cairncross (ed.), The Managed Economy (Oxford, 1970), pp. 151-5. Parry, 'United Kingdom: Institutional Synopsis', app. table 2; see also G. C. Baugh, 'Government Grants in Aid of the Rates in England and Wales, 1889-1990', Historical Research, 157 (1992), 2 1 5 - 3 7 , for the long-run decline in rate income of local authorities and thus increased dependence upon grants and loans.

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Table 6.3. Total government expenditure as a percentage of GDP at current pricesy selected yearsy 1880-1950

France Germany

Japan Netherlands UK US Average

1880

1913

1929

1938

1950

11.2 10.0 9.0 — 9.9 —

8.9 17.7 14.2 8.2 13.3 8.0

12.4 30.6 18.8 11.2 23.8 10.0

23.2 42.4 30.3 21.7 28.8 19.8

27.6 30.4 19.8 26.8 34.2 21.4

10.0

11.7

17.8

27.7

26.7

Sources: Derived from A. Maddison, 'Origins and Impact of the Welfare State, 18831983', Banca Nazionale del Lavorno Quarterly Review, 37 (1984), table 1; idem. Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development: A Long-Run Comparative View (Oxford, 1991), table 3.17.

than the 1930s in the case of the former,35 and the British downturn beginning in 1929 being far less severe than was the case with most OECD economies.36 In terms of public sector size the inter-war period can be characterised as exhibiting a process of catch-up and convergence - to borrow the terminology now applied routinely to describe post-war economic growth in the OECD37 - with a lower coefficient of variation38 for 1937 in relation to both 1929 and 1913.39 Fortunately, the data are much fuller 35

36

37

38

39

U s i n g B. J. Eichengreen and T . J. Hatton's data ('Interwar U n e m p l o y m e n t in International Perspective: A n Overview', in B. J. Eichengreen and T . J. Hatton (eds.), Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective (Dordrecht, 1988), table 1) the following results for the ratio of the mean unemployment rate for 1930-8 to the mean unemployment rate for 1921-9 can be calculated: U K 1.37, France 2.7, Germany 2.36 and U S 3.62. It should be noted that there are major problems with, for example, the German data, although these would tend to magnify the deterioration vis-a-vis the British case. U K real G D P fell 5.1 per cent between 1929 and 1932 as against average falls for E C - 9 of 6.7 per cent, G - 7 of 12.9 per cent and O E C D - 1 6 of 8.2 per cent. Quantitatively, the two most significant depressions were Germany and the U S , with real G D P losses of 15.8 and 28.2 per cent respectively (calculated from Maddison, Dynamic Forces, table A-7). See, for example, C. H . Feinstein, 'Benefits of Backwardness and Costs of Continuity', in A. Graham and A. Seldon (eds.), Government and Economies in the Postwar World: Economic Policies and Comparative Performance, 1945—85 (London, 1990), p p . 284—93. T h i s statistical measure is denned as the standard deviation divided by the arithmetic mean, where the standard deviation is a measure of dispersion around the mean. For a fuller discussion of inter-war European trends, see R. Middleton, ' T h e Economic Role of the State in Interwar Britain', in S. Groenveld and M . J. Wintle (eds.), State and Trade: Government and Economy in Britain and the Netherlands since the Middle Ages (Zutphen, 1992), app. table 2.

The size and scope of the public sector

103

Table 6.4. OECD: general government expenditure as a percentage of GDP, selected years, 1950-79 1950

1960

1968

1973

1975

1979

G-7: Canada France Germany Italy Japan UK US

24.4 36.0 32.0 22.2 — 32.1 24.4

28.9 34.6 32.4 30.1 — 32.4 27.5

33.0 40.3 39.1 34.7 — 39.2 31.3

36.0 38.5 41.5 37.8 22.1 40.7 31.3

40.8 43.5 48.9 43.2 27.3 46.4 35.6

39.3 45.5 47.6 45.5 31.2 42.9 32.9

Other OECD: Australia Austria Belgium Denmark Finland Greece Iceland Ireland Luxembourg Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey

18.8 18.0 22.6 19.0 28.6 — — 32.1 25.0 26.5 — 27.6 — — 16.2 19.8 —

22.1 35.7 30.3 24.8 26.6 17.4 28.2 28.0 30.5 33.7 — 29.9 17.0 — 31.0 17.2 —

25.1 40.6 36.3 36.3 32.8 23.5 33.8 35.2 37.3 43.9 — 37.9 20.9 21.3 42.8 20.7 21.9

26.8 41.3 39.1 42.1 31.0 21.1 36.7 39.0 36.1 49.3 — 44.6 21.3 23.0 44.7 24.2 —

32.7 46.1 44.5 48.2 36.1 26.7 38.5 46.5 48.6 56.6 — 48.4 30.3 24.7 48.9 28.7 —

32.9 48.9 49.4 53.2 36.6 29.7 33.4 46.8 52.5 55.8 — 52.9 36.2 30.5 60.7 29.9 —

27.5 28.5 25.0

30.8 31.0 27.9

38.0 36.3 33.1

40.5 35.4 34.9

47.4 40.8 40.5

48.8 40.7 42.5

Averages: EC-9 G-7

OECD

Note: Because of the different source used for the 1950 and 1960-79 estimates, the 1950 and 1960 figures are not strictly comparable. The average difference amounts to less than half a percentage point of GDP and there are no significant differences for either the EC or G-7 groups. Sources: 1950: B. G. Peters, The Politics of Taxation: A Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 1991), table 3.1; 1960-79: OECD Economic Outlook: Historical Statistics, 1960-84 (Paris, 1986), table 6.5.

104

Roger Middleton

and of better quality for the post-war period. Table 6.4 shows the overall position for Britain in relation to the EC-9, G-7 and OECD states using the SNA definitions for 1950-79. Whilst Britain's expenditure ratio was consistently above that for the G-7 and OECD, it remained around the EC-9 average, so that 'If increases in the public expenditure/GDP ratio count as evidence of sin, there are many sinners.'40 Indeed, by 1979, when public expenditure stood at 42.9 per cent of GDP and exceeded both the G-7 (40.7 per cent) and OECD (42.5 per cent) averages, it was well below the average for EC-9 states (48.8 per cent). Britain's public sector, by this measure, was thus not out of step with suitable comparators. Indeed, it was between 3 and 5 percentage points of GDP smaller than the other large - and more successful - European industrial economies (France, Germany and Italy) and between 10 and 18 percentage points smaller than the Scandinavian economies (Denmark, Norway and Sweden), though of course it was larger than either Japan or the US. Moreover, Britain's relative position had changed markedly over the preceding twenty years, though not in the direction that a knowledge of the political debate of the 1970s, much of which was occasioned by the supposed crisis of public expenditure, might lead one to suppose. In 1950, Britain had one of the largest public sectors in Europe (32.1 per cent of GDP as against the EC-9 average of 27.5 per cent), so that over the intervening years it had the slowest rate of growth of the public sector by this measure of the EC countries. The data in table 6.4 suggest an approximate inverse relationship between the public expenditure ratio in 1950 and the rate of growth of the public sector to the mid- to late 1970s.41 Clearly there was a process of catch-up and convergence in the 1950s as the coefficient of variation is reduced for the G-7 and EC-9 though not the EC grouping. Thereafter, the experience of individual countries is more diverse,42 with the British case being distinctive in that there was a very marked reduction in the public expenditure ratio between 1975 and 1979 after an equally marked rise in the years 1973-5, the initial years of the OPEC I price shock. It was noted earlier that public expenditure growth since 1900 was dominated by the expansion of transfer payments, principally welfare expenditures. The question naturally arises whether there was anything distinctive about the pattern and composition of British expenditure 40 41

42

Heald, Public Expenditure, p. 32. A regression of t h e proportionate growth in t h e expenditure ratio 1950-79 on t h e expenditure ratio for 1950 for t h e twenty O E C D states for which there are available data (see table 6.4) yielded a R 2 of 0.38. T h i s is a lower-bound estimate since 1960 data were substituted where a 1950 figure was n o t available. J . - E . L a n e a n d S. Ersson, Comparative Political Economy ( L o n d o n , 1990), table 6.5.

The size and scope of the public sector

105

growth relative to comparator groups. This is extremely difficult to answer for the pre-war and inter-war periods where there is only very fragmentary cross-country evidence about the functional classification of public expenditure.43 For the pre-war period, there has been much recent debate about the heavy burden of defence expenditures, which were largely determined by empire commitments;44 the latest evidence suggesting that on average between 1870 and 1914 it was the French and not the British economy which carried the largest defence burden (as a percentage of national income and as expenditures per capita), with British expenditures approximating to those of Germany, save for the rearmament programme of the 1890s and the Boer War period.45 There is, however, quite clear evidence that there was a much lower level of investment in education relative to comparators.46 There is also evidence that whilst in terms of the implementation of social welfare programmes it was the newly unified German state that was in the vanguard in Europe, Britain was distinctive in having a phase of very rapid expansion rather than a period of more steady growth and, with the exception of Sweden, had developed social programmes with the widest coverage in Europe by the eve of the First World War.47 Despite contemporary concerns about the rising burden of personal taxation,48 and the potential disincentive effects and moral hazards associated with the new welfare programmes,49 the modest and piecemeal nature of change makes it difficult to sustain the argument that the pre-war period posed the potential for all but a minimum of crowding-out of private 43

44

45 46

47

48 49

Public Finance data have been compiled by P . Flora, J. Alber, R. Eichenberg, J. K o h l , F . K r a u s , W . Pfenning a n d K. Seebohm, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe, 1815-1975: A Data Handbook, vol. I , The Growth of Mass Democracies and Welfare States (London, 1983), chs. 7 - 8 , b u t t h e coverage is very incomplete a n d many of the data are questionable. Davis and Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire, ch. 5; P . K . O'Brien, ' T h e Costs a n d Benefits of British Imperialism, 1846-1914', Past and Present, 120 (1988), 163-200; O'Brien, 'Reply', Past and Present, 125 (1989), 192-9. P . K e n n e d y , ' T h e Costs a n d Benefits of British Imperialism, 1846-1914', Past and Present, 125 (1989), 186-92; and A. Offer, ' T h e British E m p i r e , 1870-1914: A Waste of M o n e y ? ' , Economic History Review, 46 (1993), 215-38. Offer, ' T h e British E m p i r e ' , figure 1. A. Fishlow, 'Levels of N i n e t e e n t h - C e n t u r y Investment in Education', Journal of Economic History, 26 (1966), tables 3 - 4 has estimated that by 1900 private a n d public sector educational expenditures in the U K amounted to 1.3 per cent of G N P as against 1.7 p e r cent for the U S a n d 1.9 p e r cent for G e r m a n y . P . Flora a n d J. Alber, 'Modernization, Democratization a n d t h e Development of Welfare States in Western E u r o p e ' , in P . Flora a n d A. J. Heidenheimer (eds.), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (London, 1981), figure 2.4. F . Shehab, Progressive Taxation (Oxford, 1953), chs. 12-14. B. B. Gilbert, The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the

Welfare State (London, 1966), pp. 270-2.

106

Roger Middleton

sector economic activity or the disbenefits that have come to be associated with welfare expenditures in more modern times. Our statistical base for examining the inter-war period is little better than for the preceding sub-period, though we have a fuller record of contemporary reactions to the growth of the public sector,50 and some interest by economic historians in the possible economic consequences of enlarged welfare provision: for example, the arguments for benefitinduced unemployment adduced by Benjamin and Kochin,51 which are now rather discredited.52 The available cross-country evidence does not permit of a comparative analysis of the functional distribution of public expenditure for most of the major European economies. However, there is sufficient data to be reasonably confident that Britain was not at a possible disadvantage relative to its major trade competitor, Germany, in respect of public finances. Indeed, for the years for which there are common data (1925-35), general government expenditure in Germany on social functions averaged more than double the British figure as a percentage of GDP. 53 The low priority afforded to investment in education, as exhibited in the composition of British public expenditure, continued into the inter-war period; indeed, education, and in particular secondary schooling, was very vulnerable to the periodic Treasury economy campaigns.54 The weight of defence expenditures on average approximated to that carried in the immediate pre-war period, and whilst it did increase heavily from the mid-1930s it remained lower than was the case in Germany.55 By the eve of the Second World War, however, Britain had one of the most developed welfare sectors of the advanced industrial nations, though as is well known there had been no underlying grand design, 'policy [having] evolved, like the British empire, in a fit of absence of mind'.56 It was thus during the inter-war period that the pattern was set of a state committed, in so far as the burden of defence permitted, to the easing of social tensions created by unemployment and structural adjustment. This now involved, in budgetary terms, very substantial welfare programmes (10.5 per cent of 50 51

52

53 54 55

56

Middleton, 'The Economic Role'. D . K. Benjamin and L . A. Kochin, 'Searching for an Explanation of Unemployment in Interwar Britain', Journal of Political Economy, 87 (1979), 441-78. See, for example, the balanced assessment in M . Thomas, 'Labour Market Structure and the Nature of Unemployment in Interwar Britain', in Eichengreen and Hatton (eds.), Interwar Unemployment, p p . 128-35; c.f. K. G. P. Matthews and D . K. Benjamin, US and UK Unemployment between the Wars: A Doleful Story (London, 1992). Calculated from Flora, et ah, State, Economy and Society, vol. I, pp. 387, 444. Crowther, British Social Policy, p. 35. M . Harrison, 'Resource Mobilisation in World War T w o : T h e U S A , U K , U S S R and Germany, 1938-1945', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 41 (1988), table 3. Gilbert, British Social Policy, p. 308.

The size and scope of the public sector

107

Table 6.5. Functional distribution of OECD-Europe general government expenditures as a percentage of GDP, decennial averages, 1950s—1970s Final government consumption

Social security expenditures

1950s

1960s

1970s

1950s

1960s

1970s

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Netherlands Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland UK

13.1 12.1 12.0 13.8 11.6 13.6 12.1 12.5 11.8 13.6 11.2 10.0 8.9 14.9 9.6 17.5

13.6 13.2 15.6 15.1 14.6 13.2 12.0 13.1 14.5 15.2 14.1 12.7 8.2 18.0 10.2 17.1

16.2 15.7 22.6 18.8 16.7 14.0 13.9 18.3 15.7 17.3 16.8 14.2 9.2 24.6 11.7 19.7

9.7 9.5 6.8 12.0 — 12.5 5.1 5.8 9.5 7.8 5.7 2.4 — 6.2 5.6 5.9

11.5 12.0 9.3 11.0 5.9 14.3 6.9 7.1 11.3 13.1 9.5 3.2 4.6 8.5 5.9 7.0

12.3 17.4 12.9 12.4 6.9 17.3 7.8 11.9 15.4 20.7 13.7 5.8 9.3 13.5 8.7 9.0

Averages: EC-9(1) OECD-Europe

13.1 12.4

14.6 13.8

17.5 16.6

8.3 7.5

10.0 8.8

13.9 12.2

Measures of dispersion: Coefficient of variation Eta-squared (E2)

0.17 0.86

0.18 0.84

0.24 0.83

0.38 0.93

0.38 0.87

0.36 0.83

Note: (1) No data available for Luxembourg. Source: Derived from Lane and Ersson, Comparative Political Economy, table 6.5.

GDP by 1937 as against 3.7 per cent in 1913 - see table 6.2). Thus a new balance between social equity and economic efficiency had emerged by the outbreak of the Second World War. For the post-war period we have sufficient cross-country evidence to investigate the distinctiveness of the functional composition of British public expenditure. One perspective on this is provided by table 6.5, which in addition to a functional breakdown of expenditure by decade reports two summary measures which can be used to explore whether there was a convergence in the post-war public finance systems of the

108

Roger Middleton

OECD member states.57 The concept of convergence has a long history in the sociological literature,58 a more recent one as regards public finance. Briefly, the convergence thesis states that cross-country variations tend to reduce over time as all advanced countries come to regard the provision of semi-public and merit goods as citizens' rights. It can be seen from table 6.5 that the British case was distinctive, but that it was final government consumption rather than social security expenditures which were above the average of the two comparators reported. Whilst, proportionately, the share of social security expenditures in Britain rose more than was the case for final government consumption, which is what would be predicted as government expenditure was increasingly allocated to semi-public and merit goods, these characteristics were more evident elsewhere in Europe. Examination of the summary statistics reveals that in the 1950s there was little variation between the nations' spending patterns; this was to come in the 1960s arid particularly the 1970s where the rising coefficient of variation (for final government consumption) and the reducing E2 statistics (for both categories of expenditure) indicate that the crosscountry variations were not as stable as they had been in the early post-war period. The convergence hypothesis, therefore, remains unproven as regards final government consumption,59 but a possibility in respect of social security expenditures where the high coefficient of variation and E2 scores indicate, respectively, that there were considerable cross-country differences in the degree to which 'redistributive ambitions' were manifest in spending programmes and that crosscountry variations were larger than the variations within the nations over time.60 However, the distinctiveness of British experience lay not in the high relative growth of social security expenditures, and further avenues need to be examined to understand the post-war development of the British public sector.61 The overall course of public sector receipts

Long-run trends in the growth and structure of government revenue 57

T h e coefficient of variation was defined above, p. 102; the E 2 statistic is as follows: (TSS-WSS)/TSS

58

59 61

where TSS = total sum of squared deviations; and WSS = within group sum of squares. The higher the E 2 the greater the variation between the groups than within the groups. See, for example, C. Kerr, J. T . D u n l o p , F. Harbison and C. H . Meyers, Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labour and Management in Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1960). 60 Lane and Ersson, Comparative Political Economy, pp. 157-8. Ibid., p . 158. See pp. 137-8 below.

The size and scope of the public sector

109

50 i

40 / *••., .

£30 20

10 -

0

1900 1910 1920 '1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 — Taxation

• Total receipts

Fig. 6.3 Public sector receipts and total taxation as a percentage of GDP at current market prices, 1900-79. Source: Asfig.6.1.

and taxation are even more difficult to discern than those of expenditure. There are no comparable studies to Veverka, and Peacock and Wiseman,62 and we have no satisfactory data before 1900, though there are a number of useful studies of taxation policy both in the short and longer run.63 Accordingly, as with public expenditure, it has been necessary to reconcile Feinstein's data for 1900-65 with later CSO estimates. Figure 6.3 shows taxation and public sector receipts as a percentage of GDP for 1900-79, the growing gap between the tax and receipts ratios reflecting the trading activities of the public sector which became important from the inter-war period. As with expenditure, the influence of war upon the receipts ratio is 62

63

Veverka, ' T h e Growth of Government Expenditure' and Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure. Mallet, British Budgets', Mallet and George, British Budgets, Second Series and British Budgets, Third Series', U . K. Hicks, The Finance of British Government and British Public Finances', Sabine, A History of Income Tax and British Budgets in Peace and War, 1932-45 (London, 1970); A. Dilnot, J. A. Kay and N. Morris, 'The UK Tax System, Structure and Progressivity, 1948-1982', in F. R. Forsund and S. Honkapohja (eds.), Limits and Problems of Taxation (London, 1985); and J. A. Kay and M. A. King, The British Tax System (Oxford, 1978).

Table 6.6. Public sector receipts and total taxation as a percentage of GDP at market prices, selected years, 1900-79

1900 1903 1907 1913 1920 1924 1929 1937 1948 1951 1955 1960 1964 1968 1973 1979

Taxes on income

Taxes on expenditure

Taxes on capital

National insurance contributions

1.0 1.9 1.5 1.8 10.2 7.9 6.2 6.2 13.7 13.4 12.1 10.7 10.7 12.9 12.5 13.0

6.6 7.3 7.2 7.0 8.3 10.0 10.6 11.6 17.2 15.7 13.9 13.3 13.6 15.7 13.9 15.7

1.0 0.9 0.9 1.1 0.8 1.4 1.7 1.8 1.8 1.3 1.0 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.2 0.6

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.5 1.4 1.7 2.0 2.9 3.1 3.1 3.6 4.4 5.0 5.4 6.0

Source: As figure 6.1.

Gross trading surplus

Rent, interest and dividends

Current grants from abroad

Total

0.4 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.3 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.9 2.6 2.2 2.8 3.1 3.4 3.0 3.0

0.7 0.9 1.0 1.0 0.7 1.4 2.0 1.7 1.3 1.5 1.9 2.6 3.1 2.7 3.8 3.8

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

9.7 11.5 11.2 12.4 20.9 23.3 23.8 24.5 38.7 37.8 34.5 34.0 35.8 40.7 39.8 42.1

The size and scope of the public sector

111

50 -i 40 30 -

20

10

0

1900 1910 1920' 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 Years ending 5 April Fig. 6.4 Standard rate of income tax (percentage), financial years 1900-80. Source: Calculated from Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p. 645.

dramatic. In particular, the First World War saw a near doubling of the ratio, from 12.4 per cent in 1913 to 20.9 per cent in 1920, largely as a result of the increased yield of taxes on income (table 6.6). While public expenditure was rigorously curtailed in the immediate post-war period, no such development occurred on the taxation side of the account, and the ratio rose gradually- though pro-cyclically - to 24.5 per cent by 1937. The Second World War caused a further, but less dramatic, upward shift with the receipts ratio reaching 38.7 per cent in 1948. The following decade then saw a fall in the ratio as Conservative governments sought to reduce tax rates for political and economic reasons, followed by the resumption of its upward trend through to a peak in 1970. Finally, the ratio then varied quite considerably in the 1970s as a consequence of discretionary tax policy and the characteristics of the fiscal system. 64 The structure of taxation The changing structure of public sector receipts for selected years is clear from table 6.6. Throughout the century the upward trend of the 64

Ward and Neild, The Measurement and Reform, ch. 4.

112

Roger Middleton

receipts ratio has resulted from increased rates on existing taxes and a widening of the tax base. Of these developments, the most important concerned the income tax which 'changed out of all recognition' as a consequence of the First World War.65 The standard rate of income tax is charted in figure 6.4, though because of earned income relief until 1972/3 this is not equivalent to the effective rate of tax on earned incomes.66 In 1899/1900 the standard rate of income tax stood at 3.33 per cent (see figure 6.4). By 1913/14 it had risen to 6 per cent, and progression had been introduced into the system in 1909 with the introduction of supertax (later surtax). By 1918/19, however, the rate had reached 30 per cent; and whilst it was reduced in the early 1920s it was to fluctuate in the range 20-25 per cent for the remainder of the inter-war period until rearmament in the late 1930s once more forced large increases.67 The Second World War saw the standard rate of tax rise to 50 per cent and sharp reductions in allowances, such that, for the first time, almost the entire working population became subject to income tax. The rate was reduced slightly in the first post-war budget (October 1945) to 45 per cent, increased in 1951 to finance the rearmament programme and then reduced very slowly but progressively to 38.75 per cent by 1959.68 Thereafter, the rate operated within the range 30 to 38.75 per cent. However, over the post-war period, although the income tax has been an important instrument of short-term economic management, discretionary changes focused more upon allowances than alterations in the standard rate. It was these which determined the effective rates of tax on personal incomes. Table 6.6 shows clearly the transformation in the structure of taxation and thus the tax mix over the century. In 1900 taxes on income were 1 per cent of GDP, on a par with taxes on capital, and raised less than one-sixth of the revenue of taxes on expenditure. By 1979 taxes on income and national insurance contributions, which should properly be treated as a direct tax, together represented 19 per cent of GDP as against 15.7 per cent for taxes on expenditure, whilst taxes on capital at 0.6 per cent raised less relatively than in 1900. Moreover, the proportion of total taxes on income paid by businesses had fallen sharply, from 51 65 66 67

68

Sabine, A History of Income Tax, p. 154. Kay and King, The British Tax System, p. 20. See Mallet, British Budgets, table V I I ; Mallet and George, British Budgets, Third Series; Sabine, British Budgets; and R. Middleton, Towards the Managed Economy: Keynes, the Treasury and the Fiscal Policy Debate of the 1930s (London, 1985), ch. 4. J. C. R. D o w , The Management of the British Economy, 1945-60 (Cambridge, 1964), p. 199n.

The size and scope of the public sector

113

Table 6.7. OECD: total tax receipts as a percentage of GDP at market prices, selected years, 1950-79 1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1979

G-7: Canada France Germany Italy Japan UK US

— 20.6 29.3 17.2 — 31.1 22.8

21.7 — 30.8 30.5 17.1 29.8 23.6

24.2 — 31.3 34.4 18.2 28.5 26.6

25.9 35.0 31.6 27.3 18.1 30.8 26.5

32.0 — 32.8 27.9 19.7 37.5 30.1

32.9 — 35.7 29.0 21.1 36.9 30.2

31.0 41.2 37.3 30.1 24.8 34.0 31.2

Other OECD: Australia Austria Belgium Denmark Finland Greece Iceland Ireland Luxembourg Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey

— 16.6 — — — — — — — 21.8 — 16.6 — — 22.0 — —

22.6 30.0 24.0 23.4 26.8 — — 22.5 — 26.3 26.8 28.3 15.4 — 25.5 19.2 —

23.5 30.5 26.5 25.4 27.7 — — 22.0 — 30.1 27.3 31.2 16.3 — 27.2 21.3 —

23.8 34.6 31.2 30.1 30.1 20.6 — 26.0 30.8 35.5 24.3 33.2 18.6 14.7 35.6 20.7 14.9

25.5 35.7 36.0 40.2 32.2 — — 31.2 — 39.9 26.4 39.2 23.2 — 40.9 23.8 —

29.1 38.5 41.1 41.1 36.2 — — 32.5 — 45.8 30.0 44.8 24.8 — 44.2 29.6 —

29.8 41.4 44.7 44.1 35.0 27.7 — 33.8 46.2 47.4 31.2 46.1 25.8 23.3 50.3 31.1 20.8

Averages: EC-9 G-7 OECD

9.3 17.3 7.3

17.3 21.9 18.4

18.7 23.3 19.5

27.1 27.9 26.3

22.5 25.7 24.4

24.3 26.5 26.4

34.9 32.8 34.6

Notes: (1) Because of the different sources used for the 1950 and 1955-79 estimates, the 1950 and 1955 figures are not strictly comparable. (2) The 1950 US estimate (12.8), recorded in Peters, The Politics of Taxation, table 2.2, is assumed to be an error and 22.8 has been substituted. Sources: OECD, Long-Term Trends in Tax Revenues of OECD Member States, 1955-1980 (Paris, 1981), tables 1-2; Peters, The Politics of Taxation, table 2.2.

Table 6.8. OECD: structure of taxation as a percentage of total tax receipts and social security contributions, and total taxation and social security contributions as a percentage of GNP at factor cost, 1979 Tax receipts and social

As a percentage of total taxation and social security contributions Social

Taxes on income

contributions

Households

Corporations

contributions

1 aACs UI1

1 aACb Uil

a« o % nf fiMP
expenditure

capital

at factor cost

34.8 13.9 25.7 24.7 22.9 31.4 38.2

13.3

11.8 42.3 37.2 39.7 29.4 17.1 21.7

39.5 37.7 32.0 30.3 29.8 43.1 26.6

0.6 0.7 0.2 0.3 0.8 0.5 1.0

33.8 45.8 46.0 30.1 26.2 38.5 30.4

44.6 26.5 35.7 55.5 39.0 12.9

10.5

0.0

29.4 29.5

44.3 39.5 27.7 42.5 41.2 52.7

0.6 0.2 0.8 0.4 0.3 1.6 — 0.5 0.5 0.4

31.3 48.6 50.2 54.1 36.9 32.0

33.7

4.3 6.2 0.0 4.6 3.8 — 0.0

56.3

T'QVAC

G-7: Canada France Germany Italy Japan UK US

Other OECD: Australia Austria Belgium Denmark Finland Greece Iceland Ireland Luxembourg Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Averages: EC-9 G-7

OECD

—

5.4 5.0 5.0

17.2 7.8

12.5

1.7

14.9 29.2 —

—

46.6 29.5 26.8

f\r\

0.0

41.1

28.0

5.8

19.1 29.0 39.1

28.1

10.1

25.9

35.7

—

—

—

49.2 27.2 30.4

25.4 27.0 22.8

—

— 9.4 2.2 4.2 —

—

—

0.2 — 0.4 0.2 1.6 —

27.6 27.4 29.8

8.5 9.5 8.4

28.3 28.4 26.2

35.1 34.1 35.0

0.5 0.6 0.6

15.6 43.4 41.0

Source: CSO, United Kingdom National Accounts (1992 edn), tables 3-4.

—

37.1 41.4 50.5

—

25.6 54.4 31.2 —

43.7 35.8 40.0

116

Roger Middleton

per cent in 1912/13 to 35 per cent in 1922/3,69 recovered somewhat to 43.5 per cent in 1950 and then fallen away again almost completely to 9.5 per cent in 1979.70 This trend was associated with a huge increase in the numbers subject to taxation of personal incomes and,71 after the Second World War, a lowering of the threshold after which incomes were taxed. For example, a married couple with two children were subject to income tax at 96 per cent of average earnings in 1955/6 but at only 46.8 per cent in 1979/80.72 International comparisons of taxation

As with the course of public expenditure, the experience of other countries provides a benchmark against which to assess the development of British taxation. Again the data are most incomplete for the earlier periods, with no consistent cross-country time series data available until after the Second World War. For the pre-war period it appears that the UK tax take per capita was higher than the average for other developed economies, though when adjustment is made for the higher level of UK incomes the UK did not have a high tax burden.73 For the inter-war period, and relative to a sample of thirteen European states, it seems that the share of GDP taken by taxation in Britain was probably above the average by the late 1930s but was certainly smaller than for the two other major industrial powers, France and Germany.74 The position for the post-war period is given in table 6.7. As with expenditure, this demonstrates that in the early post-war period Britain had a relatively high tax take, but that other countries caught up and there occurred a process of convergence. Thus, by 1979, the British receipts ratio at 34.0 per cent exceeded the G-7 (32.8 per cent) and OECD (33.7 per cent) averages, but was over 5 percentage points of GDP below the average for the EC-9 (39.6 per cent). Unfortunately, there are even fewer data with which to examine 69

70 72

73

74

Report of the Committee on National Debt and Taxation (Colwyn committee) (1927), app., p. 98. 71 Ward and N e i l d , The Measurement and Reform, table 4.3. See pp. 122-4 below. D . Piachaud, 'Taxation and Social Security', in C. Sandford, C. Pond and R. Walker (eds.), Taxation and Social Policy (London, 1980), p. 69. O'Brien, ' T h e Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism', table 4 estimates that average taxes per capita by U K central government over 1860-1914 were £ 2 . 4 1 as against £ 0 . 9 6 for 'foreign' states (most of western Europe, Russia, the U S and Japan). Earlier work, by E. R. A. Seligman, Studies in Public Finance ( N e w York, 1925), pp. 25, 39 suggests that, in terms of taxation per capita, in both 1900/1 and 1913/14 the U K figure exceeded that for France, Germany and the U S , but that when adjustment is made for differences in G D P the British figure was only the second highest (exceeded by France). Middleton, ' T h e Economic Role', app. table 3.

The size and scope of the public sector

117

comparative trends in the tax mix. There is clear evidence that by the late 1930s the British fiscal system was relatively more dependent upon taxes on income and social security contributions than any other for which we have acceptable data.75 By the late 1970s, however, this was less true. As can be seen from table 6.8, although taxes on income in Britain assumed a larger share of total tax revenues than the EC-9, G-7 or OECD averages, when combined with social security contributions, Britain was significantly below the average for all three comparators. Thus, during the post-war period there occurred a relative return in the tax mix to the international position that Britain had held at the beginning of the century. Other indicators of the growth of the public sector

Finally, in our overview of public sector growth we make reference to some additional financial and non-financial indicators of the size and potential impact of the public sector. First, public sector employment which is detailed in figure 6.5 as a percentage of the total working population. As can be seen, between 1901 and 1979 the public sector's share increased nearly fivefold: from 5.8 per cent to 27.9 per cent of the working population. This was accompanied by a marked shift from the production of non-market services (defence and general government) to an almost equal balance between non-market services and market and non-market production of goods (the nationalised industries). Figure 6.5 also shows that before the First World War the growth in public employment was concentrated in local government; whereas during the inter-war and post-war periods it was more equally shared between central and local government.76 A slightly different and comparative perspective to the long-run growth of public employment in Britain is given in table 6.9. This shows that administrative employment in Britain has been consistently above the European average since the beginning of the century. Indeed, until the 1960s and 1970s, administrative employment in Britain has been high relative to France and Germany. It should be noted, however, that the coverage of this data is incomplete; it does not measure the complete range of public sector activities, excluding as it does health, welfare and 75

76

A. R. Illersic, Government Finance and Fiscal Policy in Post-War Britain (London, 1955), table 13. See R. Parry, 'Britain: Stable Aggregates, Changing Composition', in R. Rose, E. Page, R. Parry, B. G. Peters, A. C. Pignatelli and K . - D . Schmidt (eds.), Public Employment in Western Nations (Cambridge, 1985), p p . 5 4 - 9 6 for a more detailed discussion of post-war trends.

118

Roger Middleton

30

c25 g 03

3 20 Q.

O

Q.

O

10

0

1901 1911 1921 1931 1938 1950 1960 1970 1979 I Armed forces I Local government

Central government Nationalised industries

Fig. 6.5 Public employment by category as a percentage of working population, selected years 1901-79. Sources: Asfig.6.1. the nationalised industries. Nonetheless, by focusing upon the purely administrative component of government, it does form a suitable proxy for the degree of overall state regulation. Indeed, this has been taken much further by Rose who, in a major survey of the growth of government departments in European countries since 1849,77 argued that because the establishment of a government department 'institutionalizes a government's commitment to action' the study of administrative growth reveals the extent to which government is prepared to intervene to alter market-determined distributional outcomes. The respective shares of the private and public sectors in GDFCF comprise another suitable indicator of the growth of government. Figure 6.6 shows clearly the declining share of the private sector since the First World War and the changing composition of public sector capital formation, especially after the nationalisation programme of the late 1940s. It should be noted that before the Second World War, central government exercised little direct control over public sector capital formation and that this was a critical constraint upon the adoption of a 77

Rose, 'On the Priorities of Government', p. 253.

The size and scope of the public sector

119

Table 6.9. OECD-Europe: administrative employment per one thousand population, selected years, 1900-70

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Italy Netherlands Norway Sweden Switzerland UK Average Standard deviation

1900

1920

1930

1950

1960

1970

6.4 6.2 4.3 3.1 7.9 6.3 12.2 5.1 2.6 2.4 3.9 8.0

11.1 9.6 3.5 3.7 12.0 13.9 15.3 7.1 4.5 4.1 6.7 16.7

9.9 9.4 4.1 4.9 9.9 16.6 12.2 6.2 4.3 4.2 6.2 17.4

16.5 11.6 9.1 7.9 21.1 20.4 17.0 16.7 8.4 8.3 9.1 27.6

16.7 15.2 10.2 10.0 24.3 22.0 19.0 11.6 10.4 9.3 9.4 24.4

20.9 18.3 14.2 15.9 27.9 24.5 22.6 18.8 11.1 14.6 12.2 26.8

5.7 2.1

9.0 4.5

8.8 4.5

14.5 6.1

15.2 5.7

19.0 5.4

Source: R. C. Eichenberg, 'Problems in Using Public Employment Data', in Taylor (ed.), Why Governments Grow, table 8.2.

Keynesian stabilisation policy. 78 Thereafter, and as had been warned by orthodox economic opinion between the wars, there arose a major trade-off between the stabilisation and efficiency criteria of public investment.79 The relationship between outstanding national debt and national productive capacity also illustrates the growth of the public sector and the different demands placed upon it, principally by war. This is clear from figure 6.7. The downward trend established after the ending of the Napoleonic Wars was brought to an abrupt end by the First World War which saw a fivefold rise in the ratio of debt to GDP, followed by a further slight rise to the eve of the Second World War, a negative inflation tax.80 The Second World War then resulted in a further rise, but proportionately much less than in the earlier conflict. Finally, the post-war period was characterised by a declining ratio, the effects of the 78

79

80

R. Middleton, ' T h e Treasury and Public Investment: A Perspective o n Interwar 61 (1983), 3 5 1 - 7 0 . Economic Management', Public Administration, N E D O , A Study of UK Nationalized Industries, Their Role in the Economy and Control in the Future (London, 1976). J. C. Odling-Smee and C. Riley, 'Approaches to the PSBR', National Institute Economic Review, 113 (August 1985), chart 1; see also OECD Economic Outlook, 35 (1985), chart A for a long-run comparison of five of the G - 7 states.

120

Roger Middle ton

100

Q CD

20

0 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 Private sector | Central government!

| Local government

I Public corporations w Fig. 6.6 GDFCF by sector as a percentage of total GDFCF, selected years 1900-79. Note: It is not possible to decompose public sector investment during the years of the Second World War. Source: As fig. 6.1.

inflation tax more than compensating for the growth of deficit-financing under the new regime of Keynesian economic management. The burden of the national debt has exercised an important, but variable, influence upon twentieth-century British public policy by shaping perceptions of the economically acceptable boundaries of the public sector. The two decisive forces have been the impact of war and the logic of the Keynesian system. However, even before the First World War, there was concern about the implications of the national debt for average and marginal tax rates, and thus supply-side incentives. In part, this was a function of the enormous cost of the Boer, and lesser, Chinese Wars which between 1899 and 1903 nullified the previous thirty years of debt redemption,81 but it was also a reflection of the implications of the new commitment to welfare spending. These concerns were naturally greatly magnified by this war, and whilst there followed a debate on the possible use of a capital levy to lessen the debt burden, this bore no fruit. 81

Hargreaves, The National Debt, pp. 216-17.

The size and scope of the public sector

121

2.5 -, 2.0 -

o to 1-0 cc 0.5 0.0

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 Financial years

Fig. 6.7 Ratio of outstanding national debt to GDP,financialyears 1900-79. Source: Calculated from Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 602-3, 833-5. As a consequence, the reduction of the debt came to occupy a central role for those who wished to reduce the size and scope of the public sector, the argument typically being in terms of the release of funds for private sector investment and thus the rejuvenation of the real economy.82 The inter-war period saw no reduction in the nominal value of the outstanding debt, though its financing was greatly eased with the cheap money regime introduced in 1932. As a consequence the burden of the debt remained a potent issue for those wishing to constrain the growth of the public sector, while the need to sustain national creditworthiness was paramount since another world war would inevitably entail further massive borrowing. The situation at the end of the Second World War was rather different: whether it be termed a Keynesian revolution or not, the management of aggregate demand now occupied centre stage and with it fiscal policy. This cast the national debt in a new light, since debt expansion was a necessary by-product of the commitment to full 82

See Committee on National Debt and Taxation (Colwyn committee), Report, Cmnd. 2800(1927).

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employment and the debt would pose no serious subsequent problems since public and private debt could be conceived quite differently, namely through the doctrine of 'we owe it to ourselves'.83 With the demise of the Keynesian system in the 1970s, which in part flowed from the very marked deterioration in Britain's public finances, especially between 1973 and 1975, the issue of the sustainability of the national debt reappeared once more with a renewed emphasis on the effects of the debt burden on the supply of capital and labour, and thus crowdingout 84 issues which had exercised public policy before the Second World War. A long run view of the balance, and composition, of the public sector budget is given in figure 6.8. The sharp deterioration in the combined balance during the two world wars is a concomitant of the behaviour of the national debt. However, it should also be observed that, during the years before Keynesian deficit-financing was permissible, public sector deficits were more the rule than the exception: of the thirty peacetime years between 1900 and 1938, the combined balance was in deficit on eighteen occasions, with the current account in deficit in seven of these years. Clearly, pre-Keynesian budgetary orthodoxy was more an aspiration than a reality, though the desire for fiscal balance dominated policy.85 After the Second World War, the public sector was in deficit for all but seven years, but the current account was always in surplus, even during the years of fiscal stress of the 1974-9 Wilson-Callaghan administration. Thus, under the Keynesian policy regime, but not the previous period of budgetary orthodoxy, current receipts always covered current expenditure and deficits reflected public sector fixed capital formation. The more recent deterioration in the public finances, with current receipts falling short of current expenditure from 1992/3, which was occasioned by the erosion of the tax base in the mid to late 1980s and the effect of automatic stabilisers with the business cycle depression of 1989-92, is thus a clear break with post-war trends, as has been observed by a number of commentators.86 Finally, the proportion of the population subject to taxes on income forms an additional proxy for the growth of the state. Here again, there are no published long-run data, but incidental sources suggest that there 83

84

85 86

R. A. Musgrave, 'A Brief History of Fiscal Doctrine', in A. J. Auerbach and M . Feldstein (eds.), Handbook of Public Economics (Amsterdam, 1985), p. 51. See H. Cavanna (ed.), Public Sector Deficits in OECD Countries: Causes, Consequences and Remedies (London, 1988); and M . J. Boskin, J. S. Flemming and S. Gorini (eds.) 3 Private Saving and Public Debt (Oxford, 1987). Middleton, Towards the Managed Economy, chs. 5 - 6 . For example, R. Kelly, ' H o w Lamont is Borrowing to Consume', Guardian, 23 March 1992, p. 14.

The size and scope of the public sector

123

10 -

A

-10-

-20 -

-30 -

1900

1910

1920

• Combined account

1930 —

1940

1950 "i960

Current account

T970

Capital account

Fig. 6.8 Public sector financial balances as a percentage of GDP at current market prices, current and capital account, 1900-80. Sources: Asfig.6.1. were about one million income tax payers on the eve of the First World War. 87 Such restricted numbers meant 'liability to income tax was almost exclusively an upper- and middle-class phenomenon . . . [in which payment of] income tax was virtually a badge of class status'. 88 By 1919/20 numbers had risen to 3.9 million, before falling back slightly to 3.4 million by 1935/6.89 Thus by 1939, when average wages were around 80 per cent of the threshold level for income tax for a married couple, liability to income tax was still confined to a small and affluent minority. During the Second World War, however, the numbers subject to tax jumped to over 12 million, about 60 per cent of the working population, and the modern system of PAYE was introduced. 90 By 1960 the whole of the working population had been brought into the income tax system, 87 88

89

90

A. Johnston, The Inland Revenue (London, 1965), p. 16. J. E. Cronin, The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in TwentiethCentury Britain (London, 1991), p. 8. Committee on national debt and taxation, app., p. 128; Eightieth Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue for the Year ended 31st March 1937, Cmd. 5574 (1938), table 44. Sabine, A History of Income Tax, p p . 2 0 0 - 2 .

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though, of course, earned income reliefs continued to mean that not all actually paid tax.91 Finally, by 1982/3 the number of income tax payers had risen to 25 million.92 Given Britain's tax mix the growth of government this century has thus had important implications for the economic and legal relationship between citizens and state.93 Explanations of the growth of the public sector Introduction

The growth of the public sector can be analysed using a number of different approaches: the historical, which stresses the role of war, technology, searing influences - such as the inter-war depression and stagflation in the 1970s - and the advent of democracy; short- and long-term forces, which differentiate over time and can be used to distinguish between policy and non-policy determinants; and in terms of the demand for public services and supply conditions. The approach adopted here uses the latter as its framework, though not exclusively so.94 Before examining this literature it is appropriate to establish the demographic background to public sector growth. Total UK population increased from 41.155 million to 56.218 million between 1900 and 1979, an annual growth rate of 0.40 per cent. This was accompanied by a marked shift in age distribution, such that, whilst the proportion of the population of working age remained roughly constant between the 1901 and 1981 censuses, the proportion who were children fell from 31.5 to 20.8 per cent and those aged over 65 rose from 4.5 to 14.8 per cent.95 91 92 93

94

95

Kay and King, The British Tax System, p p . 19-20. Dilnot et ah, ' T h e U K T a x System', p . 66. D . Butler and G . Butler, British Political Facts, 1900-1985 (London, 1986 e d n ) , p p . 380-2 estimate that a single m a n with an earned income of £10,000 faced an effective rate of personal tax of 3.33 per cent in 1900 and 26.1 per cent in 1979 (with a wartime peak of 68.6 p e r cent in 1942-6). F o r a recent classification, see P . M . Jackson, 'Modelling Public Expenditure Growth: An Integrated Approach', in Gemmell (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector, p . 123; for general surveys on public sector growth, see D . Tarschys, ' T h e G r o w t h of Public Expenditure: N i n e Models of Explanation', Scandinavian Political Studies, 10 (1975), 9 - 3 1 ; D . R. Cameron, ' T h e Expansion of t h e Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis', American Political Science Review, 72 (1978), 1243-61; Taylor (ed.), Why Governments Grow; P . Saunders and F . Klau, ' T h e Role of the Public Sector: Causes and Consequences of t h e G r o w t h of G o v e r n m e n t ' , OECD Economic Studies, 4 (1985), 11-239; J. A. Lybeck and M . Henrekson (eds.), Explaining the Growth of Government (Amsterdam, 1988); L a n e and Ersson, Comparative Political Economy; and Gemmell (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector. Calculated from Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, p p . 15-17. Children are here defined as u n d e r 15 years of age.

The size and scope of the public sector

125

Since it is well established that those aged over 65 have a more than proportionate call upon the public purse, in terms of both health and pensions,96 demographic changes, ceteris paribus, have important implications for the overall growth of the public sector.97 However, as this OECD report also makes clear, for a recent period (1960-81) approximately three-quarters of the growth in health expenditures and one half of the increase in outlay on pensions derived from increases in real benefit rates, and thus - in the phraseology of this literature - 'politics does matter'. The Peacock/Wiseman and Wagner hypotheses We begin with Peacock and Wiseman, probably the most well known of the demand-side explanations and a variant of the 'catastrophic school of taxation' initiated by Clark in that it sees taxable capacity as the major constraint upon expenditure growth.98 From this study there evolved a view which accorded a central role to the two world wars in establishing a structural break in trend in the expenditure ratio, this as a consequence of two effects:99 Displacement: where war/social upheaval results in a permanent upward shift in the public's 'tolerance' of higher tax rates; Inspection: where war reveals 'information about social etc. conditions which was not previously available, and this new knowledge may produce a consensus of opinion in favour of new and larger public expenditures of particular kinds "after the return to normalcy"', governments being able to effect this on the supply-side because of the displacement effect. Whilst the two world wars were clearly associated with sharp upward shifts in the expenditure ratio, and the Boer and Korean Wars with minor peaks, the overall analysis of the impact of war on the trend of public expenditure growth is much more problematic and the displacement effect does not explain the secular upward trend of the expenditure ratio during periods of peace and prosperity. Nor, when international experience is considered, can it account for public sector growth in other countries which have remained neutral, such as Sweden and Switzerland. Accordingly, the displacement effect has been subject 96 97 98

99

J u d g e , 'State Pensions'. O E C D , Social Expenditure, 1960-1990: Problems of Growth and Control (Paris, 1985). Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure; C. G . Clark, 'Public Finance and Changes in the Value of M o n e y ' , Economic Journal, 55 (1945), 371-89. Peacock and Wiseman, The Growth of Public Expenditure, p. viii.

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Roger Middleton

to much criticism, both general and empirical,100 and attention has now shifted back to a reappraisal of a much older demand-side explanation of the government expenditure function, that of Wagner's law. 101 Nonetheless, the Peacock and Wiseman study was of great importance, not just for its data collection, but for introducing a political theory of public expenditure determination. Wagner's law of expanding state activity derived from an empirical demonstration of the growing importance of government expenditures in progressive states. On one reading,102 this posited an upward trend to the expenditure ratio deriving from three main forces which together constitute 'a primitive explanation of the modern idea of market failure and externality':103 The expansion of the administrative and protective functions of the state which stemmed from both the substitution of public for private regulatory activity and additional demands generated by industrialisation, which had increased the complexity of legal and economic arrangements; The growth of cultural and welfare expenditures, especially on education and the redistribution of income, which were seen as luxury goods; Changes in technology and the scale of investment which would create conditions of monopoly requiring government regulation or production. The foundations of Wagner's law were 'that citizen's demands for services and willingness to pay taxes are income-elastic, and therefore bound to increase with the increase in economic affluence',104 i.e. government goods are 'superior'. However, extensive cross-national studies of the relationship between the expenditure ratio and economic growth have not born out this conclusion.105 An alternative reading of Wagner's law posits that once a certain level of economic development has been reached, there will be approximate stability in the expenditure ratio (implying an expenditure-income 100 M o s t recently, in detail, by M . Henrekson, ' T h e Peacock-Wiseman Hypothesis', in Gemmell (ed.) 5 The Growth of the Public Sector, pp. 5 3 - 7 1 . 101 A. Wagner, 'Three Extracts o n Public Finance' (1883-90), reprinted in R. A. M u s grave and A. T . Peacock (eds.), Classics in the Theory of Public Finance (London, 1958), pp. 1-15. 102 R. A. Musgrave, Fiscal Systems (London, 1969), p. 72; Bird, 'Wagner's Law', pp. 2 - 3 . 103 C. V. Brown and P. M . Jackson, Public Sector Economics (Oxford, 1990 edn), p. 122. 104 Cameron, ' T h e Expansion of the Public Economy', p. 1245. 105 M o s t recently, by R. Ram, 'Wagner's Hypothesis in Time-series and Cross-section Perspectives: Evidence from "Real" Data for 115 Countries', Review of Economics and Statistics, 69 (1987), 194-204; and N . Gemmell, 'Wagner's L a w and Musgrave's Hypothesis', in Gemmell (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector, pp. 103-20.

The size and scope of the public sector

127

elasticity of near unity). It is this latter reading which has given rise to the permanent income model of public expenditure.106 This work has in general focussed on the post-war period, although Chrystal and Alt have made estimates of the government expenditure function for the period 1900-76 (but excluding the two wars and their immediate aftermath, 1914-20 and 1939-47). 107 Their regressions yield an elasticity measure of 0.53 for logged income or 0.97 when expenditure is lagged one time period. Taking this latter result yields two important conclusions: first, that government expenditure has in fact been remarkably stable over the course of the twentieth century, with its current value in any one year almost entirely explained as a linear function of its value the previous year; and, second, that the trend in expenditure over 1958-76 is an exact extrapolation of that established in 1907-13. 108 It is important to note at this stage that Peacock and Wiseman's displacement effect derived from a study of total government expenditure, and not expenditure on goods and services, which is the focus of Chrystal and Alt and much other recent work. Thus much current empirical work cannot address many of the interesting questions about public expenditure growth which concern transfer payments and their associated political forces, the micro foundations of public expenditure. In any case, as is clear from figure 6.4 and table 6.10, the two world wars are associated with a shift in the trend rate of growth of expenditure on goods and services. Indeed, this is particularly the case for the inter-war period. Thus, if we exclude the war periods, their immediate aftermaths and the beginnings of serious rearmament in the late 1930s, the expenditure-GDP elasticity of current goods and services pre-war (1903-13) was only 0.77, whereas that for the inter-war period (1924-37) was 2.79 and that for the post-war period (1951-79) was 1.20. Thus there is some evidence for an acceleration in the rate of growth of expenditure on goods and services after the First World War, but not the Second. The picture is broadly similar for total public expenditure. The elasticity measures presented in table 6.10 show the slow growth of expenditure before the First World War, the rapid growth between the wars and the lower but accelerating growth rate thereafter. The inter106

107 108

See K. A. Chrystal and J. E. Alt, 'Endogenous Government Behaviour: Wagner's Law or Gotterdammerung?', in S. T . Cook and P. M . Jackson (eds.), Current Issues in Fiscal Policy (Oxford, 1979), p p . 123-37; Chrystal and Alt, 'Some Problems in Formulating and Testing a Politico-economic Model of the United Kingdom', Economic Journal, 91 (1981), 730-6; J. E. Alt and K. A. Chrystal, 'Electoral Cycles, Budget Controls and Public Expenditure', Journal of Public Policy, 1 (1981), 3 7 - 5 9 ; and Alt and Chrystal, Political Economics (Brighton, 1983). Chrystal and Alt, 'Endogenous Government Behaviour', table 6.1. Ibid., p. 132.

Table 6.10. Summary measures of public sector growth: observed elasticities of public expenditure/taxation with respect to GDP at market prices, selected years, 1900-79

Taxes on income

A. Principal sub-periods 1900-13 4.30 1913-24 9.00 1924-37 (0.36) 1937-51 2.84 1951-79 0.98 B. Peacetime sub-periods (economic) 1900-7 5.68 1907-13 2.43 1924-9 (2.29) 1929-37 0.88 1951-64 0.65 1951-75 1.22 1964-73 1.31 1973-9 1.06 C. Peacetime sub-periods (political) 9.84 1900-5 (Conservative) 2.03 1905-13 (Liberal) 1922-3 (Conservative)(1) 2.96 1924-9 (Conservative) (2.29) 1929-31 (Labour) (1.44)

Taxes on expenditure

Taxes on capital

1.26 2.03 1.93 1.57 1.00

1.45 1.72 2.54 0.63 0.36

2.00 0.77 1.78 1.92 0.75 0.83 1.04 1.22

0.00 2.51 3.93 1.49 0.46 0.56 1.51 0.13

3.35 0.68 1.48 1.78 0.46

(1.88) 2.64 2.00 3.93 1.14

National insurance contributions

—

Total tax receipts

Total receipts

Current expenditure on goods and services

Gross capital formation

Transfers

2.04 3.26 1.20 1.88 1.06

2.22 3.05 1.33 1.85 1.12

0.40 1.27 2.79 1.70 1.20

(0.49) 2.96 4.03 2.71 0.96

1.92 9.46 0.37 1.40 1.43

4.04 2.56 1.72 2.25 1.41 1.18

2.21 1.74 0.53 1.62 0.79 1.11 1.21 1.11

2.65 1.70 1.38 1.28 0.91 1.19 1.20 1.09

(0.99) 1.47 1.33 3.52 0.96 1.36 1.21 1.14

(2.16) 0.66 3.85 3.49 1.57 1.48 1.04 0.54

0.66 2.73 1.45 (0.21) 0.95 1.37 1.26 1.42

0.00 0.00 (1.20) 4.04 0.00

3.54 1.48 1.96 0.53 (0.11)

4.16 1.50 1.69 1.38 (0.03)

(1.87) 1.10 2.17 1.33 (0.24)

(1.02) (0.41) 6.29 3.85 (1.98)

1.66 1.91 1.99 1.45 (0.90)

3.13 3.41 1.87 1.99 0.00 —

1931-8 (Coalition) 1945-51 (Labour) 1951-64 (Conservative) 1964-70 (Labour) 1970-4: (Conservative) 1974-9 (Labour) D. Complete period 1900-79 1903-79

0.60 (0.01) 0.65 1.97 1.12 0.76

1.09 1.20 0.75 1.60 0.58 1.25

0.30 1.35 0.46 2.13 0.73 0.06

1.18 4.93 1.72 1.51 1.41 0.99

0.87 0.70 0.79 1.74 0.91 0.96

0.74 0.91 0.91 1.66 0.97 0.94

2.48 (0.90) 0.96 1.20 1.35 0.99

1.42 20.62 1.57 1.20 1.11 0.39

(0.13) 1.20 0.95 1.27 1.63 1.10

12.84 7.11

2.41 2.16

0.56 0.61

0.00 0.00

4.16 3.54

4.38 3.70

2.14 2.36

3.70 3.49

8.86 7.81

Table 6.10. (continued)

Public administration

A. Principal sub-periods 1900-13 1.22 1913-24 2.04 1924-37 0.53 1937-51 1.20 1951-79 0.75 B. Peacetime sub-periods (economic) 1900-7 1.71 1907-13 0.88 1924-9 (0.61) 1929-37 1.29 1951-64 0.67 — 1951-75 1964-73 0.93 0.97 1973-9 C. Peacetime sub-periods (political) — 1900-5 (Conservative) — 1905-13 (Liberal) — 1922-3 (Conservative)(1) 1924-9 (Conservative) (0.61) — 1929-31 (Labour)

Debt interest

Law and order

External services

Defence

1.18 9.42 (0.93) 0.80 1.09

2.96 0.59 1.30 1.08 2.15

0.38 1.99 (1.83) 30.20 2.11

(1.19) 0.85 5.41 1.84 0.59

3.79 3.70 2.90 1.55 1.75

0.49 2.62 0.84 3.58 0.79

1.21 1.42 3.52 2.33 1.87

0.53 3.27 1.64 1.70 1.24

2.07 0.61 0.58 (1.81) 0.79 — 0.96 1.41

3.74 1.99 2.36 0.66 1.72 — 1.49 1.25

2.10 (0.54) (3.44) (1.33) 1.63 — 1.15 1.62

(4.77) 1.90 (0.35) 9.39 0.66 — 0.60 0.98

4.69 2.42 3.41 2.26 1.30 — 1.52 1.21

(0.27) 1.04 2.38 1.04 1.02 — 0.84 0.80

0.81 1.47 2.05 4.06 1.74 — 1.84 0.80

(0.87) 1.62 1.63 1.58 1.07 1.38 1.19 1.11

— — — 0.58 —

— — — 2.36 —

— — — (3.44) —

— — — (0.35) —

— — — 3.41 —

— — — 2.38 —

— — — 2.05 —

(1.17) 1.05 2.50 1.63 (0.76)

Social services

Economic services

Environmental services

Total public expenditure

1931-8 (Coalition) 1945-51 (Labour) 1951-64 (Conservative) 1964^70 (Labour) 1970-^ (Conservative) 1974-9 (Labour) D. Complete period 1900-79 1903-79

— — 0.67 — — —

— — 0.79 — — —

— — 1.72 — — —

— — 1.63 — — —

— — 0.66 — — —

— — 1.30 __ — —

— — 1.02 — — —

— — 1.74 — — —

0.99 (0.06) 1.07 1.22 1.40 0.91

1.21 1.00

3.14 2.63

2.71 2.27

26.10 21.87

0.78 1.19

10.65 8.17

3.52 3.06

5.87 4.97

3.46 3.59

Note: (1) This government did not resign until 22 January 1924; the succeeding minority Labour government (which resigned on 3 November 1924) has not been included. Sources: See figure 6.1 and table 6.2.

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war period thus witnessed an historically high elasticity, prompting one reviewer of my earlier study, Towards the Managed Economy, where this feature of the period was first identified, to comment: 'It remains unanswered why public expenditure growth in the "Keynesian postwar world" was slower than in the 1920s and 1930s when, until rearmament, budget deficits were resisted, largely successfully.'109 The answer is contained in table 6.2: that the growth of the inter-war public sector is principally explained by the growth of transfer payments, namely debt interest and subsidies and grants to the private sector. In this sense the force of war is reaffirmed, as Peacock and Wiseman meant it, and as is portrayed in the tradition of the social policy literature established by Titmuss.110 Before leaving Wagner's law we ought to mention one further derivative which may have great relevance to the British case (the second lowest growth economy of the OECD-16 comparator),111 namely Wildavsky who has proposed a counter-Wagner law that the public expenditure ratio varies inversely, rather than positively, with economic growth.112 As Cameron puts it:113 Where national affluence increases very rapidly, as in Japan, any increased demand for public funds can be met by the added revenues obtained by applying a constant public share to a larger economic product. But where economic growth is so modest that it generates insufficient revenues to meet demands for additional public goods, as in Britain, those demands must be met through an expansion of the public share of the economic product. Further explanations of public sector growth

The remaining demand-side, and the supply-side, explanations can be considered more briefly in relation to current empirical findings about the British case in relation to broader OECD experience. It is important to note that all of the available work is for the post-war period, and that the modelling of the dependent (public expenditure) and independent 109

111

J. T o m l i n s o n , Economic History Review, 2 n d ser. 39 (1986), 306. R. M . T i t m u s s , Problems of Social Policy ( L o n d o n , 1950) a n d ' W a r a n d Social Policy' (1955), reprinted in Essays on the Welfare State ( L o n d o n , 1966 edn), p p . 75-87. Between 1950 a n d 1973, t h e so-called golden age of capitalism, t h e annual average growth rate of real G D P p e r capita was 2.5 p e r cent for t h e U K as against an O E C D - 1 6 average of 3.8 p e r cent (with only t h e U S a n d Australian economies faring worse or

112

equivalently), while Britain's ranking in the OECD-16 in terms of GDP per capita fell from sixth to fifteenth; data from A. Maddison, Phases of Capitalist Development (Oxford, 1982), tables 3.1 and 1.4. A. Wildavsky, Budgeting: A Comparative Theory of Budgetary Processes (Boston, 1975). Cameron, 'The expansion of the Public Economy', p. 1245.

110

113

The size and scope of the public sector

133

Table 6.11. Public expenditure growth: correlation matrix, UK and OECD-16 average, 1951-78 Dependent variables:

Final government consumption OECD-16

Independent variables: 1. Centralisation 2. Openness of economy index 3. Agricultural employment 4. Age structure 5. Unemployment rate 6. Inflation rate 7. GDP growth rate 8. Trade union density 9. Socialist vote 10. Conservative vote 11. Socialist cabinet 12. Conservative cabinet 13. Government change 14. Party-system instability

0.05 0.13 0.10 (0.08) 0.02 0.08 0.14 0.02 (0.07) (0.03) (0.00) (0.01) (0.03) 0.11

Social security expenditures

UK

OECD-16

UK

0.35 (0.06) (0.26) 0.49 0.03 0.24 0.01 0.11 (0.28) (0.12) 0.08 (0.08) (0.10) 0.31

(0.10) 0.02 0.13 (0.09) 0.02 0.05 (0.02) 0.03 (0.03) (0.07) 0.03 (0.04) 0.06 (0.03)

0.16 0.04 (0.16) 0.14 0.29 0.03 (0.14) 0.09 (0.07) (0.21) 0.30 (0.30) (0.16) 0.04

Source: Derived from Lane and Ersson, Comparative Political Economy, tables 6.11—6.12.

(economic, political and institutional phenomena) variables is necessarily highly contentious. Using OECD-16 data for 1955-75, Whiteley found the strongest relationship (r values in parenthesis)114 to be between the public expenditure ratio and the mean vote for the party of the right (-0.42), with the corollary - the relationship between the public expenditure ratio and the mean vote for the party of the left being rather weaker but of the expected sign (0.23).115 No detail of individual countries is provided in this exercise, but with the role of politics established in principle we turn to a more recent exercise which includes a cross-country correlation matrix.116 Table 6.11 summarises the results of Lane and Ersson's modelling of the growth of final government consumption and social security expen114

115

116

The correlation coefficient, r, measures the strength of the linear association between two variables, the higher the value the greater the association, and where a negative value denotes an inverse relationship. P. Whiteley, Political Control of the Macro-Economy: The Political Economy of Public Policy Making (London, 1986), table 2.3. Lane and Ersson, Comparative Political Economy, ch. 6. A correlation matrix is an array of values recording the intercorrelation coefficients for a number of variables in relation to other variables.

134

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ditures, detailing the correlation coefficients for the UK and OECD-16 average. As is immediately apparent, Britain does not conform to the OECD-16 average pattern in either measure of government expenditure. In terms of final consumption, the three most apparent relationships for the UK (r values in parenthesis) are the age struture (0.49), centralisation (0.35) and party-system instability (0.31), whereas for the OECD-16 it was the GDP growth rate (0.14), openness of economy index (0.13) and - the one agreement - party-system instability (0.11). For social security expenditures, the UK recorded the three strongest relationships in respect of socialist and conservative cabinets (0.30 and -0.30 respectively) and the unemployment rate (0.29), whereas for the OECD the equivalent results were agricultural employment (0.13), centralisation ( - 0.10) and the age structure ( - 0.09). It appears, therefore, that politics matters more in the British case, though the trade union density variable (the proportion of the labour force who are unionised) carries far less explanatory power in Britain than elsewhere in Europe for social expenditures. For both public finance dependent variables the authors found no invariant variable that was a condition for change in all of the countries and/or over the whole time period. Thus: 117 It is not the case that economic, political or institutional variables have a uniform effect upon change in publicfinancesystems . . . [and] we must look for other causal mechanisms than those traditionally specified in the 'Does politics matter-theme'. This leaves us with something of an impasse as the post-war growth of the British public sector, unlike that of the US, has not been subject to full-scale evaluation and hypothesis testing. Accordingly, we know much less of the magnitude of excess bias in state growth for the UK, especially in respect of the various economic theories of bureaucracy which have emanated from the American public choice school (who employ economic analysis to investigate the traditional problems of political science). One supply-side theory for which there is a wellestablished literature, however, concerns Baumol's law: the relative price effect whereby the relative price of public services has risen because public sector services are labour intensive and technological change, along with increasing returns to scale and the disciplines of the market, reduces the relative productivity of public to private sector employees (with public sector wages growing in line with those of the private sector).118 This is clearly the case for the UK (see figure 6.9); 117 118

Ibid., p. 169. W. J. Baumol, 'Macroeconomics of Unbalanced Growth: The Anatomy of the Urban Crisis', American Economic Review, 57 (1967), 415-26.

The size and scope of the public sector

135

1 1 0 -i

100 -

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960

1970

Fig. 6.9 Relative price of government final consumption expenditure (1979 = 100), 1970-79(1). Note: (1) Defined as general government final consumption expenditure price deflator divided by GDP (market prices) deflator. Sources: As fig. 6.1 and, additionally, Feinstein, National Income, tables 5 and 61, and CSO, United Kingdom National

Accounts (1984 edn), table 1.16. indeed such has been the force of the relative price effect since the early 1960s that 'the rise in share [of public expenditure in GDP] is more relevant to the issue of finance for the public sector than to that of the public sector's control over resources'.119 However, it remains debatable whether the relative price effect is partly the consequence of X-inefficiency in the public sector, 120 and thus a clear welfare loss, or largely explicable in terms of the inherent technical characteristics of public 119

120

M . S. Levitt, 'The Growth of Government Expenditure', National Institute Economic Review, 108 (May 1984), 4 1 . Furthermore, the relative price of goods and services bought by government in Britain are lower than in other countries, 'so that in volume terms the British public obtain more for their (public) money' {ibid., pp. 39—40). In the public finance literature, a distinction is drawn between allocative efficiency, that is whether resources are allocated according to the preferences and budget constraints of the consumer, and X-inefficiency, which relates to the efficiency of provision of goods and services. If X-inefficiency exists in the public sector, it is because it is not operating on its efficiency frontier, whereas if there is allocative inefficiency it is operating at the wrong point on its efficiency frontier: Brown and Jackson, Public Sector Economics, p. 195.

136

Roger Middleton

sector outputs (for example, some 60 per cent of NHS expenditure is labour costs).121 An influential group of writers in the 1970s maintained that there were strong institutional barriers to productivity growth in the public sector,122 and this was to lay the foundations for the reorientation of policy towards the provision of public sector goods and services after 1979. A further area in which there has been some empirical work concerns the supposed bias towards deficit-financing and the potential for political business cycles once thefiscaldiscipline of the balanced budget rule was removed with the post-war adoption of Keynesian stabilisation policies.123 There is no unambiguous evidence on the existence of such political business cycles in post-war Britain,124 and this strand of the excess bias literature has misunderstood both the motives for adopting Keynesianfiscalpolicies and,125 more importantly, the actual facts about the public sector balance since the Second World War (seefigure6.8). Moreover, apart from 1951-5, which was much affected by the Korean War, and the 1970s, the adjustment to OPEC I, 126 Britain's budget deficit was consistently and significantly below the OECD average.127 It is not intended that the argument should develop here that there is no evidence of excess bias for Britain; rather, that there is no evidence of greater excess bias relative to other advanced industrial economies. Certainly, for the post-war period, there are clear examples of the misallocation of resources by governments - the civil nuclear power programme and Concorde,128 the latter 'the fastest white elephant of modern times'129 - though they have not yet caught the economic historian's attention. There is also much doubt about the wisdom of the overall level, and structure, of Britain's post-war defence expenditures, many commentators arguing that there was excess supply because of an inflated notion among political elites of Britain's geo-political stand121 122

123

124

125

126

127 128

129

Cullis a n d J o n e s , Microeconomics and the Public Economy, p . 8 5 . For example, A. T. Peacock and J. Wiseman, 'Approaches to the Analysis of Government Expenditure Growth', Public Finance Quarterly, 7 (1979), 3-23. J. M . B u c h a n a n a n d R. E . W a g n e r , Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes ( N e w York, 1977). D . C . M u e l l e r , Public Choice II: A Revised Edition of Public Choice ( C a m b r i d g e , 1989), table 15.2 and p. 286. R. Middleton, 'Keynes's Legacy for Postwar Economic Management', in A. Gorst, L. Johnman and W. S. Lucas (eds.), Post-War Britain, 1945-64: Themes and Perspectives (London, 1989), pp. 30-1. J. B i s p h a m a n d A. Boltho, ' D e m a n d M a n a g e m e n t ' , in Boltho (ed.), The European Economy, p p . 2 8 9 - 3 2 8 . M u e l l e r , Public Choice, table 15.5. P . D . H e n d e r s o n , Innocence and Design: The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy (Oxford, 1986). B . W . E . Alford, British Economic Performance, 1945-1975 ( L o n d o n , 1988), p . 4 7 .

The size and scope of the public sector

137

ing. 130 The close-knit nature of Britain's 'expenditure community', so aptly named by Heclo and Wildavsky, 131 and the tradition of public sector professionals protecting their spending programmes through alarmist media campaigns, 132 might create the potential for bureaucratic over-supply, but there is no systematic statistical evidence of this, 133 and the British bureaucracy is entirely different - principally because of the strong hand of the Treasury - from the American model which has generated these concerns of bureaucratic budget appropriation. Moreover, as Judge has observed, there have been 'no significant differences between the records of Labour and Conservative governments at the level of aggregate expenditures . . . [rather] there seems to have been a steady acceleration in the rate of growth under both parties'. 134 A more fruitful avenue for developing a critique of the British public sector might lie in terms of the allocation of resources as between infrastructure, investment in human capital and welfare programmes. Although, as we have seen, the British case was not distinctive in terms of high welfare spending, either absolutely or in relation to comparators, there still arises the question of the trade-off in terms of economic efficiency and whether the bias towards equity considerations was successful in alleviating the social tensions that formed the rationale for such programmes. The specification of a suitable counterfactual, namely possible outcomes for efficiency and equity with a different balance of public expenditure (and taxation), poses many problems for such a research programme, whilst it must be recognised that market and non-market outcomes are influenced by government regulation and other policies, none of which is captured in conventional measures of 130

131

132

133

134

M . C h a l m e r s , Paying for Defence: Military Spending and British Decline ( L o n d o n , 1985); M. Kaldor, M. Sharp and W. Walker, 'Industrial Competitiveness and Britain's Defence', Lloyds Bank Review, 162 (October 1986), 31-49; and K. Hartley, The Economics of Defence Policy (London, 1991). H . H e c l o a n d A. W i l d a v s k y , The Private Government of Public Money: Community and Policy inside British Politics ( L o n d o n , 1974). M. Kogan, 'Education in "hard times"', in C. C. Hood and M. W. Wright (eds.), Big Government in Hard Times (Oxford, 1981), p . 163. C. C. Hood, M. Huby and A. Dunsire, 'Bureaucrats and Budgeting Benefits: How Do British Central Government Departments Measure Up?', Journal of Public Policy, 4 (1984), 163-79; and J. G. Cullis and P. R. Jones, 'The Economics of Bureaucracy', in G e m m e l l (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector, p . 1 0 1 . K. Judge, 'The Growth and Decline of Social Expenditure', in A. Walker (ed.), Public Expenditure and Social Policy: An Examination of Social Spending and Social Priorities (London, 1982), p. 29; see also B. W. Hogwood, Trends in British Public Policy: Do Governments Make Any Difference? (Buckingham, 1992), pp. 40-4; and, more generally, F. G. Castles, 'The Impact of Parties on Public Expenditure', in F. G. Castles (ed.), The Impact of Parties: Politics and Policies in Democratic and Capitalist States (Beverley Hills, Calif., 1982), pp. 21-96.

138

Roger Middleton

public sector activity.135 These problems aside, the stark conclusion remains that in 1977 the lowest decile of income earners had a zero percentage share of total income, and only 3.21 per cent when benefits are incorporated, whilst the top decile had 24.98 per cent of pre-tax and 21.23 per cent of post-tax income.136 Viewed from a longer perspective, there has been a reduced share in national income of the top decile and a reduced value for the geni coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, but the bottom four deciles had advanced little in relative terms,137 and whereas income at the seventieth percentile was nearly four times that at the tenth in 1978/9, the ratio had only been two to one in 1867.138 Three-quarters of a century of redistributive activity, both intended and accidental, has thus changed little for the bottom four deciles of British society; the real beneficiaries have been middle incomes. However, before too pessimistic a conclusion is drawn, the evidence suggests that Britain's income distribution was not unusual by the standards of G-7 countries,139 and we have abundant evidence of more successful economies which experienced greater (France) or less (Sweden) social tension than was the case in Britain. It seems, therefore, that an examination of the arithmetic of Britain's public sector can only proceed so far; that it must be incorporated in a wider political economy, one in particular which examines the relations between the state, economy and society, and one which acknowledges the stability of the British political system in face of gradually diminishing geo-political power.140 Conclusions Between 1900 and 1979 total public expenditure at current prices rose from £260 million to £88.1 billion, an annual growth rate of 7.7 per cent as against 6 per cent for GDP. As a consequence of these differential growth rates, on average the expenditure ratio rose by 0.4 percentage 135

Cullis and Jones, Microeconomics and the Public Economy, pp. 73—5. C. N . Morris and I. Preston, 'Taxes, Benefits and the Distribution of Income, 1968-83', Fiscal Studies, 7 (1986), table 1. 137 P. H . Lindert and J. G. Williamson, 'Reinterpreting Britain's Social Tables', Explorations in Economic History, 2 0 (1983), table 2; Royal Commission o n the Distribution of Income and Wealth (Diamond commission), Report no. 7, Cmnd. 7595 (1979), table A.7. 138 E . H . Phelps Brown, Egalitarianism and the Generation of Inequality (Oxford, 1988), p. 316. "9 O E C D , Income Distribution in OECD Countries (Paris, 1976); A . Maddison, The World Economy in the 20th Century (Paris, 1989), table 6.4. 140 A s , for example, in D . Marquand, The Unprincipled Society: New Demands and Old Politics (London, 1988); and A. M . Gamble, Britain in Decline: Economic Policys Political Strategy and the British State (London, 1990 edn). 136

The size and scope of the public sector

139

points of GDP per annum over the period (from 13.3 to 45.9 per cent) while, in approximate terms, real public expenditure per capita (at 1900 prices) rose from £6.32 to £66.44. 141 By more recent standards, therefore, the British public sector appears to have been most underdeveloped at the turn of the century. However, this is rather misleading: its trading activities were recognisably modern in scope, if not in scale.142 The modern tax system was well advanced, with progressivity in the income tax about to be achieved (1909), the beginnings of modern tax breaks (negative expenditures such as mortgage interest relief, introduced in 1899) in evidence and there were very recognisable difficulties in balancing the budget in face of the incessant demands of the military and pressures for social reform, what Harris calls the 'latent financial crisis of the late Victorian state'. 143 Even so, as Taylor notes in the opening passage of his celebrated account of English history from the eve of the First to the end of the Second World War: 'Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.' 144 By contrast, by the late 1970s a critique had emerged that Britain's economic problems derived in various degrees from the excessive growth of the public sector - for example, Bacon and Eltis's strictures on deindustrialisation, whereby 'too few producers' resulted from a crowding-out of private by public sector activity145 - and, in particular, from public expenditure which, in the words of the incoming Conservative government's first public expenditure white paper, lay at 'the heart of Britain's present economic difficulties'.146 Whilst there have long been commentators who subscribed to the idea of a threshold beyond which the public sector ought not to grow, such as Clark's 25 per cent ceiling to the tax take and, more recently, Friedman and his 60 per cent criterion for the maintenance of democracy,147 it must be remembered that Britain's relative economic decline long predates the 141

142

143

144 145 146 147

This latter estimate is very approximate as we do not have a GDP deflator series for the whole period. Instead, a series has been constructed using Feinstein, National Income, table 61 for 1900-65 and CSO, Economic Trends, Annual Supplement, (London, 1991 edn), 6 for 1965-79; the population data are drawn from Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, pp. 13-14. S. G. Checkland, British Public Policy, 1776-1939: An Economic, Social and Political Perspective ( C a m b r i d g e , 1983), c h . 1 1 . J. F . Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain, 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1993), p . 2 0 1 . A . J. P . T a y l o r , English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), p . 1. Bacon and Eltis, Britain's Economic Problem. The Government's Expenditure Plans, 1980-81, Cmnd. 7746 (1979), p . 1. Clark, Tublic Finance' and Friedman, 'The Line We Dare Not Cross'.

140

Roger Middleton

difficulties of adjusting to OPEC I in the 1970s or even the Second World War.148 As has been demonstrated in our earlier discussion of the public expenditure ratio, 'if Britain has been exceptional it was because of a slow rather than a rapid growth of public expenditure'.149 Admittedly, a closer examination of the available data does reveal that Britain spent more than might be expected in relation to its relatively low level of per capita incomes.150 Thus, in 1980 the UK ranked sixteenth in terms of GDP per capita of the OECD-16 group,151 but tenth in terms of the ratio of general government expenditure to GDP. 152 Furthermore, given that its elasticity of public sector revenue with respect to GDP was lower than the OECD average, there resulted a structural tendency towards rising budget deficits,153 though all OECD countries experienced fiscal stress in accommodating the supply-side shock of OPEC I.154 There exists no clear relationship between GDP growth and the expenditure ratio for the post-war OECD states, though as is clear from figure 6.10 the distinctive characteristic of the British case is that it had both the lowest GDP growth rate and proportionate rise in the expenditure ratio over the post-war period. A long-run perspective on the Bacon and Eltis thesis is presented in table 6.12.155 This indicates that, in general to 1979, the growth of non-marketed output has been at the expense of marketed sector consumption rather than investment.156 Furthermore, when total investment is decomposed, it becomes evident that the percentage share provided by the private sector rose, not fell, between the early 1960s and late 1970s, while an examination of the 148

149

150

151 152 153

154 155

156

Alford, British Economic Performance; G a m b l e , Britain in Decline, c h . 1; see also G. Hadjimatheou and A. Skouras, 'Britain's Economic Problem: The Growth of the Non-Market Sector', Economic Journal, 89 (1979), 392^101 for a detailed critique of the methodology and conclusions of Bacon and Eltis. G . H a d j i m a t h e o u , ' I s Public E x p e n d i t u r e G r o w t h a P r o b l e m ? ' , Royal Bank of Scotland Review, 153 ( M a r c h 1987), 19. M . S. Levitt a n d M . A . S. Joyce, The Growth and Efficiency of Public Spending ( C a m b r i d g e , 1987), p . 4. Calculated from M a d d i s o n , The World Economy, tables 1.3 a n d A - l . OECD Economic Outlook: Historical Statistics, 1960-1984 (Paris, 1986), table 6.5. Saunders and Klau, 'The Role of the Public Sector', table 3; see also OECD, Public Expenditure Trends (Paris, 1978). C a v a n n a (ed.), Public Sector Deficits. Longer-run estimates were first provided in N. F. R. Crafts, 'The Assessment: British Economic Growth over the Long Run', Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 4 (1988), table 4, beginning in 1924. The estimates here presented are very different for the early period from those of Crafts, though for the moment these differences remain unexplained. Crafts gives little detail of his estimation procedure, other than referring the reader to Bacon and Eltis, Britain's Economic Problem. The necessary identities (1-19) are, in fact, detailed in ibid., pp. 244-5, 250. Crafts, 'The Assessment', pp. viii-ix.

The size and scope of the public sector 4.0

141

i Swedei O

g (0

3.0 \

Denmark O

CL X 0)

O in

Austrui O

5 Belgium

^2.0

Netherlands O Norway O Australia

° O

o

1.0 2.0

3.0

Canada O

Switzerland

1.5

Italy O

O Germany Finland

4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 Real GDP growth rate 1950-79 (%)

8.0

9.0

Fig. 6.10 Ratio of 1979 to 1950 general government expenditure as a percentage of GDP and annual average growth rate of real GDP, 1950-79. Sources: Public expenditure: as table 6.4; GDP growth rate: calculated from Maddison, Dynamic Forces, table A-8. labour market would also not support a thesis of crowding-out by the public sector: the labour shed by the manufacturing sector was dominated by males whereas the employment created in the public sector was allocated to females.157 All OECD countries experienced some measure of deindustrialisation,158 though both the absolute and the relative declines in manufacturing employment and output were greater in Britain between 1960 and 1980 than in any other G-7 country.159 This suggests that there were other structural forces in operation, and, given the long-run relative decline of the British economy, it is essential not to conflate excess burden and deficiencies in economic performance. It should also be noted that since 1979 the growth of non-marketed output has indeed been at the expense of market sector investment (see table 6.12) - an interesting outcome in light of the role of the Bacon and Eltis thesis in forming opinion within the Conservative Party, but of course 157 158

159

S. Bazen a n d A. P . Thirlwall, Deindustrialization (Oxford, 1989), p p . 3 6 - 7 . Ibid.; R. R. Barnett, 'A Perspective on De-industrialization', National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review (August 1986), 13-20. A. Dunnett, 'The Role of the Exchange Rate in the Decline of UK Manufacturing', Royal Bank of Scotland Review, 161 (March 1989), table 1.

Table 6.12. Distribution of marketed output (as percentages of market output), selected years, 1900-91 1900 1913 1924 Notes: (1,2,3) (1,2,3) (3)

1937 (3)

Market-financed consumption Government-financed consumption Government materials and investment Market sector gross investment Exports less imports

Total

1948 (4)

1951

1955

1960

1964

1968

1973

1975

1979

1989

1991

81.1

79.1

73.9

73.0

59.9

58.2

56.7

55.0

54.2

50.7

50.5

49.3

49.7

50.3

51.2

4.9

4.8

15.5

13.8

22.9

21.1

20.4

20.4

19.1

20.2

20.9

23.2

18.8

22.6

23.3

8.9

7.5

7.1

11.0

8.1

10.7

10.7

9.4

11.4

13.2

12.7

13.6

11.4

10.4

11.7

8.6

7.1

6.4

7.3

11.2

14.6

14.0

17.1

17.4

16.9

18.5

16.3

19.6

21.0

14.8

(3.6)

1.6

(2.9)

(5.1)

(2.0)

(4.7)

(1.8)

(1.9)

(2.1)

(1.0)

(2.6)

(2.5)

0.4

(4.2)

(1.0)

100.0

100.0

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Notes: (1) No estimates for personal sector rent, interest and dividends are available before 1920. Estimates have been made from the total values for rent, gross trading profits and debt interest, with the distribution of these to the personal sector being assumed to be the same as in 1920. (2) No estimates for income from employment in general government are available before 1920 and thus employment shares (from the 1901 and 1911 census) have been used, assuming that the general government share in total income is proportionate to its employment share. (3) Feinstein, National Income does not provide estimates of market sector capital consumption; these have been taken as proportionate to the ratio of private to public sector GDFCF. (4) No estimate for income from employment in general government is available for 1948; assumed to be same proportion of total personal income as in 1951. Sources: Basic structure derived from Bacon and Eltis, Britain's Economic Problem, p. 250. 1900-37: Feinstein, National Income, tables 1-3, 10, 12-14, 15, 39 and 60. 1948-51: CSO, National Income and Expenditure (1958), tables 1-2, 7, 12, 40, 44, 47, 61, 64. 1955-64: CSO, National Income and Expenditure (1966), tables 1-2, 6-7, 13, 22, 52, 63. 1968-75: CSO, National Income and Expenditure, 1965-75 (1976), tables 1.8, 1.10,4.1, 10.1, 11.3, 12.9. 1979: CSO, United Kingdom National Accounts (1984 edn), tables 1.2, 1.14, 4.1, 6.2, 9.1, 10.1, 11.5. 1989: CSO, United Kingdom National Accounts (1990 edn), tables 1.2, 2.5, 4.1, 9.1, 13,3, 14.3. 1991: CSO, United Kingdom National Accounts (1992 edn), tables 1.2, 2.5, 4.1, 9.1, 13.3, 14.3.

The size and scope of the public sector

143

largely determined by the greatly enlarged cost of welfare programmes in face of mass unemployment. In other words the twentieth century has been characterised by a shift in the balance between the market and social wage and an increase in the investment ratio. This brings us to the 'cardinal choice' facing all socio-economic systems: that of equity versus efficiency.160 Evidence compiled by Cameron and others suggests that there is a strong positive correlation between the growth of the public sector and measures of economic equality,161 in this case the difference in the proportion of all national income received by the top and bottom quintiles; and a strong negative correlation between the size of the cumulative increase in the public sector and the proportion of GDP represented by private capital accumulation. Thus, there exists a distinct trade-off between relatively high degrees of economic equality and increasing rates of private capital accumulation, the latter, of course, being inter alia a determinant of growth performance. Within this general pattern, Britain is one of those nations that has chosen distributional equity rather than private capital accumulation, though as we noted earlier the results of this process could be viewed as disappointing. The issue of the appropriate size and scope of the public sector has been central to the debate about the legitimate domain of government in Britain throughout the twentieth century. In 1979, after the difficult period of adjustment to OPEC I, and in particular the public expenditure crisis of 1975-6, this issue attained a new prominence as government itself was identified as the source of Britain's economic difficulties. The new Conservative government was thus committed to a rolling back of the frontiers of the state of comparable magnitude and ideological conviction to the various economy campaigns and economic disengagement of the state which occurred at the end of the First World War. Much has changed since 1979, with privatisation, deregulation and the restructuring of public sector services.162 However, as a consequence of the two business cycle depressions since 1979 and their effect upon unemployment, together with the difficulties of achieving real cuts in social expenditure programmes, the ex ante public expenditure planning total in 1993/4 (45.5 per cent of GDP) remains above that in 1978/9 (44 per cent), the last full year of the last Labour government, and this without taking into account privatisation proceeds - in British fiscal practice, denned as negative expenditures - which would add a further 160 161 162

A . M . Okun, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington, D C , 1975). Cameron, 'The Expansion of the Public Economy', pp. 1258-9. For a survey, see C. Painter, 'The Public Sector and Current Orthodoxies: Revitalisation or Decay?', Political Quarterly, 62 (1991), 7 5 - 8 9 .

144

Roger Middleton

48 -i

46 -

o c£42 -I 40

38

1978/9

1981/2

1984/5 1987/8 Financial years

— Including privatisation proceeds

—

1990/1

1993/4

Excluding privatisation proceeds

Fig. 6.11 General government expenditure, including and excluding privatisation proceeds, as a percentage of GDP at current prices, 1978/9 to 1993/4. Source: Derived from HM Treasury, Public Expenditure Analyses to 1995-6: Statistical Supplement to the 1992 Autumn Statement, Cm. 2219 (1993), table 2.1.

0.9 percentage points (see figure 6.11). The ex ante PSBR in 1993/4 of 8 per cent of GDP also approaches even the highest figure of the 1970s, that of 9.5 per cent (of GNP) in 1975,163 though since inflation was much lower in the later period the real value of government borrowing is much higher than in the 1970s. In part, these may be temporary difficulties, the effect of the automatic stabilisers on the public finances during a period of severe depression. If the assessment period is taken as 1979-89, two business cycle peaks for the UK, the expenditure ratio (on SAA definition) fell from 40.9 to 37.6 per cent of GDP, whereas the OECD average rose 163

W. A. Eltis, 'Britain's Budget Deficit in 1967-84: Its Consequences, Causes and Policies to Control It', in Cavanna (ed.), Public Sector Deficits, table 3.1; and H. M. Treasury, Financial Statement and Budget Report, 1993-94, H. C. Paper 547 (1992/3), table 2.3.

The size and scope of the public sector

145

46 44 42 40 38 36 34 32

1978

1980

1982

1984

UK expenditure ratio OECD expenditure ratio

1986

1988

1990 1992

— UK receipts ratio ....... OECD receipts ratio

Fig. 6.12 UK and OECD averages: general government expenditure and current receipts as a percentage of GDP, 1978-92. Source: OECD Economic Outlook, 53 (1993), tables R15-R16. from 36.0 to 38.0 per cent (figure 6.12).164 However, at no point in the 1980s were Conservative governments able to achieve the real cuts in public expenditure that occurred under the previous Labour administration, this despite the much weaker political constraints on the reduction of the public sector in the later period.165 Moreover, over the period 1979-89 the tax ratio rose by just under 1 percentage point of GDP and, despite the supply-side strategy pursued since 1979, in which structural reform and the lowering of tax rates played a central part, Britain's comparative ranking in this respect only improved very marginally.166 A longer-term perspective, therefore, suggests that the period since 1979 does not constitute a break in trend, merely a new chapter for the size and scope of Britain's public sector. 164

See also P. Saunders, 'Recent Trends in the Size and Growth of Government in O E C D Countries', in Gemmell (ed.), The Growth of the Public Sector, table 2.1. 165 General government expenditure (excluding privatisation proceeds) at 1987/8 prices fell by 7.2 per cent between 1975/6 and 1977/8; the largest cut secured by the Thatcher government was a mere 0.5 per cent between 1986/7 and 1987/8, a period of strong employment and G D P growth ( H M Treasury, The Government's Expenditure Plans, 1989-90 to 1991-92, Cm. 621 (1989), table 21.4.1). 166 'International Comparison of Taxes and Social Security Contributions in 20 O E C D Countries, 1979-1989', Economic Trends, 459 (January 1992), table A.

The boundaries of taxation R. C. Whiting

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the tax system was on the brink of considerable development; both the changing nature of the state and the shared aspirations of British society have played a part in setting limits to that possibility as the century has progressed. The potential rested on the acceptance of the progressive principle, which established that fair taxation required the unequal treatment of the better-off, in alliance with what politicians took to be the popular sentiment of a mass democracy.1 There was a possible check on the arbitrary development of taxation in the form of the wide regard for the maturity and fairness of the British tax system; any tax which infringed this by inequity, or out of crude political purpose, was likely to be doomed to failure. 'Equity' in tax questions - the 'equal' treatment of taxpayers of broadly similar circumstances - was a matter for political as well as technical debate, so it would be foolish to assume that tax administration was carried out in a politically neutral domain. Nonetheless, this restraint had some force, both because of the wide acceptance of the notion of 'equity' in taxation, and because of practical experience of the difficulties of collecting taxes against determined political opposition, as in the case of land value taxation which had been introduced in 1909.2 But even this notion - that 1

2

In the words of Fakhri Shehab, the tax system was being driven by a coalition of expert opinion and popular demands towards 'the higher taxation of the rich in order to ameliorate the inequality of income distribution, and to procure optimum welfare'. See his Progressive Taxation: A Study in the Development of the Progressive Principle in the British Income Tax (Oxford, 1953), p. 209. See also H. C. G. Mathew, 'Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Politics of Mid-Victorian Budgets', Historical Journal, 22, 3 (1979), esp. 643. It should be stressed that this essay is concerned with publicly debated developments of the tax system. This has two consequences: it means that many of the examples involve the Labour Party because it was particularly concerned with extending taxation; it also follows that the raising of tax revenues within the established tax system, and the degrees to which this escapes political discussion, is little treated. For an analysis dealing with this important area, see R. Rose and T. Karran, Taxation by Political Inertia: Financing the Growth of Government in Britain (London, 1987). I am also grateful to Dr Nick Tiratsoo for comments on an earlier version of this essay. For a discussion of equity in tax questions - and the view that it has inhibited discussion of the political question of what should be desirable post-tax distributions of income and

146

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the fairness of the tax system had to be maintained - could be turned to advantage, for it did suggest that taxes, once they had passed this hurdle, should be paid as part of a wider obligation to the community.3 For the British state the acceptance of the progressive principle, and the assumption that the tax administration was fair, were necessary assets, given the practical need to raise money for two world wars and for an expanding welfare state. As revenue pressures have grown, and as inflation has challenged social harmony, so the tax system has been tested and its boundaries have appeared, both in the limited force of 'democratic sentiment', and in the apparently declining level of compliance towards existing taxes. One manifestation of tax opposition which will not be dealt with at length in this essay is its irruption into electoral politics. The unpopularity of high taxes has been more confidently grasped by politicians that it has been verified by academic research. While some economists have been categoric about the harm done to incentives by high marginal tax rates - in 1952 R. F. Harrod called it 'a monstrous violation of justice' empirical research has been more ambivalent, often to the dismay of politicians.4 Conversations with constituents, or experiences during elections, have usually brought home to MPs the danger of high taxes, either because they apparently weakened the will to work or because they blunted a sense of affluence.5 The centrality of taxes meant that the

3

4

5

wealth - see Brian Barry, Political Argument (London, 1965), pp. 155-8. For the view that 'successful administration of any large tax requires that the great majority of persons called upon to pay it should be able to feel that it is a fiscal, as distinguished from a political, measure and therefore that their assent can be reasonably expected and given' see the Report of the Committee on the National Debt and Taxation, Cmd. 2800 (London, 1927), note by the Board of Inland Revenue, 'The Practicability of a Capital Levy', App. XXII, para. 3, which cites the case of Land Value Duties as an example of a failed tax. Douglas Houghton, the Labour MP, argued that 'Willingness to pay is willingness to give, and that is the spirit in which we should look to our obligations to the community and to the state.' Hansard: Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th series, CCLXI, col. 254, 5 April 1960. The same point can be illustrated from a rather different direction, by citing the evidence from a civil servant centrally involved in the development of VAT that the drafting of enforcement powers 'was cheerless and difficult, and gave us no joy at any stage'. Addressing the pathological dimensions of taxation was necessary but far from agreeable. Dorothy Johnstone, A Tax Shall Be Charged (London, 1975), pp. 65, 74. Harrod's views are contained in his memorandum and evidence before the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income (1951-5), in Minutes of Evidence (London, 1955), esp. para. 22, p. 263. The 'dismay' of Nigel Lawson at Treasuryfunded research which indicated the weak effect of tax reductions on incentives is conveyed in his The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London, 1992, pbk edn), pp. 692-3. Even though a 'holiday' from work meant a net loss of income, there was usually a benefit in the form of a rebate for overpaid tax which had been collected through PAYE on the assumption of continuous working. For a politician's discovery of this see George

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simple solution of promising not to raise them did not always work, especially if spending proposals gave the lie to such assurances.6 Perhaps not surprisingly it is Labour as a party associated with public expenditure and the state which has suffered most from fears about taxes, even when victorious at elections.7 But there is a point to be made here not just about levels, but also about kinds of taxation. Allied to the virtues of income tax as fair and explicit - and therefore its importance in the tax system as a whole - is the income tax's drawback that this very visibility has made it a focus of discontent when high rates coincide with growing doubts about the viability of a government.8 It is the chief purpose of this essay to address two other areas where the boundaries of taxation have been demonstrated. The first is where the logical development of the tax system (logical, that is, from the point of view of certain tax experts) has failed to come to fruition. The example chosen here is wealth taxation, that is the taxation of private capital in situ, and not as it emerged through some exchange or transfer. Taxation of wealth can imply varying levels of intrusion by the state. The most modest level was the application of very heavy rates of tax to investment income in order to produce a modest levy on the assets which had generated it, as in the case of Stafford Cripps's Special Contribution of 1948. Here there was no need to make special valuations; the income led the way to the capital. The next level of operation lay with the transfer of assets at death or exchange between the living, as in the case of a capital gains or a gifts tax. The most demanding project from the tax point of view is either the capital levy or the wealth tax which requires a valuation of assets as they are held and not at the point

6

7

8

Brown, In My Way: The Political Memoirs of Lord George Brown (London, 1971), p. 17; see also the evidence of Ursula K. Hicks before the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income, Evidence, q. 2027. On the interaction of affluence (but not solely private) and taxes see Denis Healey's comment that 'Eight of the Labour clubs in my constituency have recently acquired new premises of palatial splendour — their only defect is lack of parking space. When I go into these Labour clubs on a Saturday night, four out of five complaints are that income tax is too high and that we should not pay out so much in family allowances', in 'Britain in Changing World', Socialist Commentary (November 1969), 6. A well-known example is Gaitskell's fateful promise that Labour's programme at the 1959 General Election would not mean increases in income tax, just as Crossman was trying to launch a superannuation scheme which required a shift of resources from the working population to pensioners via taxation. See Tarn Dalyell, Dick Crossman: A Portrait (London, 1989), p. 167. For the anxieties of the middle classes reported at a Cabinet meeting soon after victory in October 1974, see Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries 1974-76 (London, 1980), p. 194, for 16 October. This point is well made by Jim Tomlinson in 'The "Economics of Politics" and Public Expenditure: A Critique', Economy and Society, 10, 4 (1981), 395-6.

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of exchange, and it is with this last project - which has never been implemented - that this essay is principally concerned. The argument will be made that the chief restraint on this proposal was the unwillingness of 'democratic sentiment' to support such a project. Interestingly, notions of tax equity tended to favour such a tax, since it was one way of giving a more accurate representation of capacity to spend than has been provided by conventional definitions of income alone. 9 But popular resentment at wealth has been far less powerful than some politicians have believed, and this has restrained them from pressing ahead with the project. The changing nature of the state also has a place in the argument. Broadly speaking, support for this kind of capital taxation was strongest when an essentially nineteenth-century radical argument could be launched about the burdens of the rentier and the bondholder upon the rest of the population. It was a case of rescuing a rather small state from the consequences of debt. This worked especially well during and after the First World War; it had much less impact after the Second. The argument which took its place, which stressed the value of equality, had much less appeal. The state after 1945 had become larger and appeared more intrusive in questions of tax than it had been before. However, there was an insufficiently dichotomous social structure - at least in terms of property and capital - for the state to use its tax powers to pursue an egalitarian project against one section of society on behalf of another. Whereas in the setting of the First World War it was possible to see the state as corrupted by a particular group, after 1945 it was easier to see the state as confronting all sections of the society rather than simply representing one interest. Essentially, this was the result of the replacement of a nineteenth-century-style free trade state by a Keynesian one. The second area of interest concerns the problems posed by lack of compliance with existing taxes. The moral justification for exploiting any loophole in legislation to lighten a tax burden was well established early in this century: a tax journal reassured its readers in 1932 that 'the legitimate avoidance of income tax requires great skill for its successful accomplishment. The practice of such a skill is a perfectly honourable vocation.' 10 As taxes have increased the possibility has been entertained of avoidance (complying with the letter of the law) and evasion (breaking the law) being indications of intolerable government pressure, 9

10

See, for example, Cedric Sandford, Economics of Public Finance, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1984), p. 205. 'Ethics of Avoidance', Taxation, 5 March 1932.

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rather than examples of pathological behaviour.11 But the evidence of tax avoidance and evasion has persisted during the 1980s despite reductions in tax rates, and there has been concern about its spread and corrupting effect upon other sections of the population. These anxieties now have to be met within the demand for a smaller state and scaleddown bureaucracy, so that fundamental changes in tax administration are in prospect - a point returned to at the conclusion of this essay. To turn to the wealth taxation first. The general climate of economic thought within which taxes were considered became less squeamish at the beginning of the century about taxing wealth because of the growing sense that the state might beneficially recycle savings. The idea that there could be too much saving had originated with J. A. Hobson, and gained more powerful statement from Keynes, albeit through a different analytical framework.12 But questions still remained about how far the taxation of capital could go in an economy still drawing upon private savings and driven by private profit. It was also true that economists' discussions were carried on in a state of ignorance, not only about the psychological responses of wealth-holders to any tax, but also about wealth-holding in general. This did not change a great deal over the century; a Treasury memorandum submitted to the Select Committee which examined wealth tax proposals in 1974 referred to the 'lack of empirical underpinning' to its judgements about the effects of a wealth tax.13 The evidence which was available usually came from the returns made for estate duty purposes, a tax which many were able to lessen in its impact by legal and well-known methods of avoidance. There were hunches about how people might react, and certain views about the nature of wealth-holding, but knowledge was far from perfect. Ignorance can, of course, be a powerful spur to action in certain circumstances, but in the sphere of taxation its inhibiting effect must also be recognised. Politically, the Labour Party became a powerful force associated with state spending and the pursuit of equality. Yet the Labour Party was never unambiguously an engine for driving the state forward to wealth taxation, for two reasons. First, the Party had to make judgements about the degree of social upheaval which might be tolerated as a consequence 11

12

13

See Christie Davies, 'Can High Taxes Be Enforced?', in A. Seldon (ed.), Tax Avoision: The Economic, Legal and Moral Inter-relationships between Avoidance and Evasion, IEA Readings 22 (London, 1979), pp. 59-73. For the use of J. A. Hobson see Public Record Office (PRO) Inland Revenue Papers (hereafter 'IR') 74/4, 'Economic Effects of Estate Duties', J. C. Stamp, June 1914. Select Committee on a Wealth Tax, Hansard 1974-5, XXXVI, 'Economic and Financial Consequences of a Wealth Tax', para. 23, p. 255. The same point was made by another tax expert, G. S. A. Wheatcroft, in his evidence, q. 2537.

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of tax adventures, both for practical electoral purposes and because the goal of equality was to strengthen social harmony rather than to weaken it. Second, the working class itself participated in the kinds of economic reward - profits, capital, earnings - delineated by the tax system, and so it was a far from foregone conclusion that a dichotomous perception of the social structure could be drawn upon to encourage the taxation of wealth. For the first half of the century, the main impulse to go beyond death duties into taxing the wealth of the living came from the national debt. Much of the concern about the debt was an inheritance from nineteenth-century perspectives, especially radical ones. A heavy national debt was regarded as a bad thing because of the burden of interest payments placed upon future populations through the taxes needed to meet them. Interest paid to inactive rentier investors had to come from taxes levied on productive citizens, which harmed incentives and economic performance. Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, the Labour MP and one of the main protagonists for a levy, explained the depression of the 1830s and 1840s in terms of the debt and the transfers of income which it involved, as a way of pressing the case for a capital levy in the 1920s: It is scarcely too much to say that the bulk of the poverty of the nineteenth century owed its origin to the debt incurred in the Napoleonic Wars and the way it was handled after the peace. As a consequence, the productive activity of the nation in subsequent years was drained to provide interest to the bondholders.14 This was, of course, an eccentric interpretation of that period, and therefore Lawrence's use of this piece of nineteenth-century radical rhetoric for a twentieth-century cause is all the more telling. But the debt was a popular issue too. A. G. Walkden, representing the TUC at the Colwyn committee on the National Debt in 1925, remembered 'when I was a small boy of 10 or 12 years of age, repudiation of the National Debt was quite a popular line with agitators. In our little village of a 1,000 people I have heard people advocate the repudiation of the National Debt.' 15 Repudiation was out of the question, but the increase in the size of the debt after the First World War encouraged interest in a levy. The debt therefore opened up the possibility of a broad tax on capital, although proponents of it tried to refer to the tax as a 'debt redemption levy', as a less provocative label. Knowledge about who owned the debt (or war loan) was extremely 14 15

The National Debt (London, 1924), p. 46. Committee (Colwyn) on the National Debt and Taxation, Minutes of Evidence, 1927 (hereafter Colwyn), q. 8293.

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difficult to come by. Purchases were registered by a number of different agencies, but there was no central record of the total holdings of each individual: 'the question of where this great volume of debt was held is one which is shrouded in mystery'.16 There had been a substantial increase in private holdings of government securities, which represented about 20 per cent of total personal wealth passing at death in the tax year 1922-3.17 The radical argument assumed that the debt was held by richer sections of the population to whom interest was transferred by the majority of taxpayers. According to one authoritative estimate small savings accounted for about 12 per cent of national debt holdings in 1924;18 but small savings could be held by many who were not small savers. The estates passing at death at the lowest level (up to £300 in value), which would still have excluded much working-class property, accounted for only 0.8 per cent of the total holdings of government securities. The argument against the debt was really an inheritance from the 'small state' free trade radicalism of the nineteenth century, which attached importance to the containment of the debt as part of the control upon government spending, itself seen as potentially corrupting. Although the proposals for diminishing the debt were sometimes hooked up with working-class welfare (social service spending to take the place of interest payments on the debt) or even with back-door nationalisation (control of companies through government ownership of securities surrendered to pay the levy), in the main the attraction was to remove some of the claims upon the budget and so be able to reduce taxation.19 Other concerns besides this radical perspective animated the debate about capital taxation and the debt. When balancing the budget became an issue of precise and acute political significance, as in 1931, then even Conservatives such as Neville Chamberlain considered a levy as a way of easing the pressure.20 Moral anxieties about wealth made from the war sustained a different kind of capital tax, namely one falling on the 16 17

18 19

20

E. V. M o r g a n , Studies in British Financial Policy 1914-25 ( L o n d o n , 1952), p . 122. Sixty-sixth Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue for the Year ended 31 March 1923, C m d . 1934, 1924, table 13. M o r g a n , Studies, p . 136. J. E. Cronin has placed m o r e emphasis on t h e levy as a m e t h o d of nationalisation in his book The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain ( L o n d o n , 1991), esp. p . 64; and for a useful discussion of radical views on taxation in t h e nineteenth century see F . Biagini, 'Popular Liberals, Gladstonian Finance a n d t h e D e b a t e on T a x a t i o n , 1860-1874', in Alastair Reid a n d F . Biagini (eds.)j Currents of Radicalism (Cambridge, 1990), p p . 134-62. See Stuart Ball, ' T h e Conservative Party and t h e F o u n d a t i o n of the National G o v e r n m e n t ' , Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 171.

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increment in wealth between 1914 and 1918. But this addressed a particular distortion induced by the war; its aim was to return the distribution of wealth ownership to what it had been before 1914. Its aim was therefore more modest, and did not propose the more serious inroads upon wealth of the capital levy. In the latter, conventional assets, such as railway securities, were to have been liable to the levy, in order to pay off war loan, leaving many individuals significantly worse off. The idea of a levy on the war increment therefore tapped a good deal more support, because it only attacked a morally disreputable form of wealth; it was embodying in a tax Baldwin's action of burning his war loan in the Treasury grate.21 Once the war became more distant these kinds of support weakened, and particularly when post-war inflation had passed and the danger of loan holders turning their assets into cash ceased to be so threatening.22 After 1920, wealth taxation therefore rode on the back of the debt question. This required that the debt be seen as a real problem, that the internal transfers between persons via the budget be seen as undesirable or inequitable, and that these considerations be of sufficient dimension to justify a once-and-for-all, and therefore serious, tax of personal wealth from which debt would be repaid. But, as the 1920s wore on, the debt could not sustain this function. Labour was accused of using an obsession with the debt as a stalking horse for radical tax policies.23 The debt, in terms of the levels of income tax needed to service it, was not seen as a serious disincentive for economic activity.24 In theory, business interests might have found the tax burdens of the debt too heavy to bear, and might therefore have supported a levy, but in practice this demand never materialised.25 Once the debt argument failed to work, the other reasons for supporting the levy became less powerful, because there was no widely held view at this stage that capital was a legitimate target for reasons of tax equity, nor for reasons of social fairness. Without these elements the economic argument was insufficient. It was possible to argue that capital taxation was harmless for the economy as a whole because it did not mean the destruction of capital but merely rearrangement of the paper claims to it within the community.26 Opponents of the levy who claimed that aggregate savings would be destroyed were therefore ridiculed by economists, 21 22

23 24

25 26

R. K . M i d d l e m a s and J o h n Barnes, Baldwin ( L o n d o n , 1969), p . 74. T . Carlyle Gifford, 'Inflation of Credit a n d a T a x on Capital', The Accountant's Magazine (June 1918), 229-43. W . W . Paine, ' T h e L a b o u r Surtax S c h e m e ' , The Banker (Feb. 1928), 160. D. H. Robertson, 'The Colwyn Committee, the Income Tax and the Price Level', Economic Journal (December 1927), 580. Josiah S t a m p , Colwyn, q. 5201. H u g h D a l t o n , Will Capital Leave the Country? ( L o n d o n , 1924), p . 5.

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even though individuals might have lost very handsomely, for which the precarious possibility of a cut in income tax in the future was no recompense.27 Political opposition could therefore be taken for granted not because, as Hugh Dalton claimed, the levy was a complex issue to handle at election time, but because individuals could see very clearly that they might have easily lost out by it.28 The Board of Inland Revenue had admitted that a levy would be practicable as long as it was broadly acceptable to those who would have to pay. They knew from their experience with land value taxation just how difficult it was to collect taxes against sustained obstruction.29 The response of wealth-holders in 1924, the year of a Labour government which had campaigned for a capital levy, is a good indication of how far opposition might have gone, to the extent of sending money abroad. The Stock Exchange Gazette advised against any panic measures: anxieties about the intentions of the new government were 'chiefly confined to minor politicians, the gossips of the West End clubs and the timid class of investors who are obsessed with fears of a capital levy in the immediate future on quite inadequate grounds'.30 But despite the risks of investment in Europe, it still noted considerable liquidation in the stock market and the subsequent purchase of French government bonds. Although the Labour Party tried to revive the possibility of capital taxation at the onset of the Second World War, from the later 1940s to the 1970s the debt issue lost any centrality it once had as a reason for taxing capital wealth.31 Under Keynes's influence, budget deficits no longer had the negative implications for business confidence which they had inspired in the inter-war period. Without the impetus of the radical perspective to sustain it, the capital levy looked increasingly vulnerable on any sober calculation. Before the war it had been assumed that the lessons of the First World War would have been learned, and any war wealth removed by a capital levy.32 But tight controls on profits during the war, the containment of inflation, and high levels of post-war income tax - the accomplishments of a more powerful state - reduced the moral and distributional case for a levy. When James Meade presented a plan 27

28

29

30 31

32

J. M . Keynes: 'You are insulting, by it, a set of very strong irrational feelings in men.' Colwyn, q. 7612. Hugh Dalton, Diary, 19 January 1923, held at British Library of Political and Economic Science. Hansard Select Committee on Increase of Wealth (War), 1920, V I I , minutes of evidence, q. 3118 (J. C. Stamp). The Stock Exchange Gazette, 10 January 1924. For an example of Labour's revived interest at the outbreak of the war, see a speech by Hugh Dalton, 26 April 1939, in Hansard, 346, cols. 1527-30. See, for example, Nicholas Kaldor, 'Principles of Emergency Finance', The Banker (August, 1939), 156.

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for a levy during post-war discussions about the debt, he found 'the atmosphere at these meetings most disconcerting. It consisted of a series of facetious remarks (or what Keynes called Capital Levity) from the assembled heavyweights - Bridges, Eady, Keynes, Gregg et al. Thus all my pet arguments were swept aside in a tide of laughter.'33 The debt argument had logically required a sweeping measure to deal with it on a once-and-for-all basis; however fragile or suspect this promise of rarity looked, it was at least congruent with the purpose of the tax. Once the debt preoccupation had gone, the scale and disruption of the levy operation looked more questionable. For the new generation of Labour thinkers this was a reason to bury it. Anthony Crosland in The Future of Socialism argued that 'although society would be more contented and more just if property was more equally distributed, it does not follow that this would be true irrespective of the methods chosen to redistribute. It seems clear that a large levy would increase, rather than diminish, the amount of resentment and discontent.'34 Although the debt re-emerged as a subject of concern in the 1970s, the conception of debt holders as individual rentiers had ceased to hold good, since institutions were now the more important holders of government securities.35 If a levy 1920s style had to be ruled out, a wealth tax of some kind had again gathered momentum in the 1960s under different conditions and in different form. Instead of the savagery of a once-and-for-all levy attention was devoted to an annual wealth tax of relatively modest dimensions to allay any fears of expropriation and to encourage a sense of permanency. Discussions assumed that the tax would trawl all kinds of wealth, whether they produced an income or not. It met the case for tax equity by giving a more comprehensive view of taxable capacity; it addressed the need for a more equal distribution of wealth; it made a case of sorts for increasing incentives within the tax system, because of the possibility it held out for reducing the tax of unearned income from investments and so encouraging risk taking.36 From these various strands of interest two contrasting priorities emerged: some wanted to add a wealth tax to the range of taxes operating on companies and on personal capital gains, to round off the tax system 33

34 35

36

See S. H o w s o n and D . M o g g r i d g e (eds.), The Collected Papers of James Meade, vol. IV, The Cabinet Diary 1944-46 ( L o n d o n , 1990), entry for 3 June 1945. The Future of Socialism ( L o n d o n , 1956), p . 318. J. C. O d l i n g - S m e e and C. Riley, 'Approaches to the P S B R ' , National Institute Economic Review, 113 (1985), 6 5 - 8 0 . See also Barry Eichengreen, The Capital Levy in Theory and Practice, Centre for Economic Policy Research Paper 350 (1989). J. S. Flemming and I. M. D. Little, Why We Need a Wealth Tax (London, 1973) provides a summary of some of the arguments as well as a specific proposal.

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so to speak; others wanted a tax which reached those besides the very rich, in order to be able to get rid of other taxes and so act as a replacement rather than an addition to taxation. The acute inflation of the 1970s provided encouragement for both these views. Severe taxes on the very rich were a means of removing taxes on investment income for the middle classes. Under inflation the tax on investment income combined with low real rates of interest to produce negative returns. Putting a cap on the wealth of the richest was a way of rescuing the smaller fry from the disorderly impact of inflation. For those more interested in hitting the wealthy by adding a further burden, the key argument was a 'social tension' one. Inflation urged the need for pay restraint. Workers, so the argument went, were more likely to accept this if they saw the inequalities of society being addressed. It was good 'psychology' to hit the rich when asking the workers to accept limits on pay. As the Treasury put it: 'Reducing inequalities of wealth is intended to contribute towards the establishment of a more equitable society in this country. Hence it is envisaged that the tax will help to provide an environment appropriate for the government's economic and social aims.'37 A more ambitious role for the state in determining living standards and the circumstances of opposition politics proved to be a fruitful combination, and when Labour came to power in 1974 a wealth tax was on the agenda.38 But wealth proved elusive. Denis Healey has written of the tax being abandoned because of 'administrative cost and political hassle'.39 The Labour government gave no clear guidance, when it sent the proposal to a House of Commons select committee in 1975, as to whether it wanted to place additional burdens on the wealthy or instead to provide compensating reliefs elsewhere in the tax system so as to improve incentives.40 The administrative problems also looked considerable. In the 1960s it was estimated that the task of valuation would have required an expensive increase of staff, so that collection costs might have risen to 30 per cent of the return on the proposed tax.41 Moreover, the problems of valuing assets which yielded no income - works of art, or race horses 37

38

39 40

41

S.C. on Wealth Tax, ' T h e Economic a n d Financial Consequences of a Wealth T a x Explained', para. 2, p . 255. F o r D e n i s Healey w h o became chancellor with responsibility for t h e tax, t h e episode proved 'you should never commit yourself in Opposition to new taxes unless you have a very good idea how they will operate in practice'. See The Time of My Life ( H a r m o n d s worth, 1990), p . 404. Healey, Time, p . 404. Ann Robinson and Cedric Sandford, Tax Policy-Making in the United Kingdom (London, 1983), pp. 50, 172. G. S. A. Wheatcroft, 'Administrative Problems of a Wealth Tax', British Tax Review (1963), 410-22.

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were considerable, at least in terms of fixing prices which might carry a measure of agreement or conviction. 42 Recent experience of the inheritance tax - paid by only 4 per cent of estates - gives an indication of the kinds of opposition which might have been met by a more comprehensive wealth tax. Deliberately inaccurate disclosure of the value of estates for probate, simple delay in reply to Revenue enquiries, and removal of assets abroad combined with the problem of skilled staff being recruited into the private sector have all led to significant arrears of tax. 43 It is true that capital taxation has increased over this century, partly through taxes inherited from the nineteenth century (death duties) and partly through the introduction of new ones (capital gains taxes), but it is equally clear that the degree of tax reform has been disappointing. At one level this is surprising: there have been a number of occasions during this century when a good economic case existed for wealth taxation, and sometimes a moral one too. Moreover, the notion of an orderly and gradual redistribution of wealth has not been confined to the Left; those experts who have commented on the more technical aspects of wealth taxation have usually favoured the political case for it as well. But it has been the political factors which have been the most inhibiting, either as anxiety about the potential disruption of such a tax, or the feeling that the popular support has not been there. Social views on wealth taxation have not been as supportive as expert opinion. A survey in the later 1970s found that even among Labour Party supporters there was not a majority in favour of such a tax, and F. M. L. Thompson has noted the broad social tolerance towards the inherited wealth of the landed classes. 44 Because of the widespread possession of some savings or capital, however small, there has been a general suspicion towards any attempt by the state to tax them, whatever the threshold at which such a tax might in practice operate. Douglas Houghton, a Labour M P with a long interest in tax questions, wrote in 1962 of the extent to which the working class shared the views of other social groups about the dangers of taxing capital. He commented that the capital levy 'which for years attracted the Labour Movement, was never received enthusiastically even by those who would have been exempt . . . The sanctity of capital runs strongly in the British tradition. The reluctance of people to "touch" capital (even though they know some undeserving relative may 42

43 44

A. R. Prest, ' T h e Select C o m m i t t e e o n a Wealth T a x ' , British Tax Review (1976), 13-14. National Audit Office, Inheritance Tax ( L o n d o n , 1992). C. Sandford, 'The Wealth Tax Debate', in Frank Field (ed.), The Wealth Report (London, 1979), p. 123; Thompson, 'English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century iv. Prestige without Power?', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 3(1993), 6.

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inherit it) is well known. Nothing upsets folk more than being told by the National Assistance Board to draw on capital if they want to qualify for National Assistance.'45 In a similar vein, Austin Robinson advised the Labour Party in the 1950s of the need to contain inflation in times of full employment, not because of its effect upon the wage earner but because of the dangers for those with small amounts of capital: 'It may be odd to think of the Labour Party as the protector of the small rentier, but if you don't, who will?'46 This serves to show the limited extent to which the tax system, the political domain of the state, feeds off the conflict of interests between classes which are usually understood to be generated by civil society and the economy. The tax system does not identify class interests in this way; it identifies sources of reward instead - income, profits and property. It might reasonably be argued that these are enjoyed in such strikingly different degrees as to match the class structure of civil society, and indeed this assumption has underlain much of the rhetoric of tax politics. But the more the working class had interests in all three categories, however modest by comparison with those of other groups, the less the tax system could be skewed in a working-class direction, in the sense of the many without plundering the few who had.47 If this was the case, it was bound to compromise the egalitarian purpose with which the tax system was invested, partly by expert opinion and partly by the Labour Party as a political force. The changing character of the state also has a place in the argument. The experience of the working class since the Second World War fostered its suspicions of the state over questions of capital and fiscal policy, and here Keynes's impact on the tax system requires comment. Before Keynes, the discussion of taxes in relation to economic behaviour had been couched primarily in terms of incentives and the individual would a particular tax lead to a withdrawal or an increase of work, by either the labourer, the businessman or the investor? With Keynes's stress on the significance of aggregate demand - either in deficiency or excess - taxation had a part to play in setting the level of economic activity. As we shall see, this added an important new dimension to the relationship between the state and the taxpayer. It first emerged in the Second World War when Keynes's chief 45 46 47

LPA, 'Capital Gains Tax', R D 2 2 2 , March 1962, p. 10. L P A , R D 4 6 5 , January 1955. Duncan Gallie has noted in his study of British and French workers that 'British complaints about the taxation system were of a non-class type - they were either equally applicable to managers or workers, or they referred to specific sub-groups in society that cut across class lines.' Social Inequality and Class Radicalism in France and Britain (Cambridge, 1983), p. 60.

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concern was to absorb potential spending power through taxation to prevent inflation. One of the proposals in Keynes's How to Pay for the War was the idea of compulsory savings, or post-war credits. 48 In order to sweeten the pill of heavy taxation, Keynes suggested that part of the tax demand on the workers should take the form of a cash deposit to be repaid after the war. This proposal was discussed as a form of compulsory savings, although this was a misnomer, since these deposits paid no interest and were not guaranteed against inflation. By the time they were repaid their value had been substantially eroded by inflation. But in discussions with Labour representatives Keynes suggested that, in the event of prices rising, the post-war credits would be written up accordingly. 49 The scheme was also presented as generating for the workers an interest in the national debt analogous to that of the wealthier rentiers. When the compulsory savings plan was being formulated, Charles Madge of Mass-Observation carried out surveys into working-class savings, and his main conclusion was that the ordinary worker preferred compulsory savings as a way of paying for the war against higher taxes or higher prices. 50 The Keynes plan was thought to tap an aspiration to saving which was as much a matter of social status as for economic reward. But there was no hiding the fact that this function of determining saving and spending was a new departure in taxation; it was certainly not hidden from the Chairman of the Inland Revenue, Cornelius Gregg: I regard it as fantastic for the state to assume control of the individual to the point of making him save when the state thinks he ought to save and trying to make him spend when the state thinks he ought to spend. I regard that as a totalitarian interference with human liberty. You remember I expressed the same thought to you in 1939 in connection with the original Keynes plan for compulsory saving.51 These were precisely the terms in which the trade unions, at local branch level, objected to the scheme, namely as an infringement of liberties, rather than in terms of 'unfairness' or some other description. The Walthamstow branch of the Electrical Trades Union called it 'an interference with the normal liberties of citizens in a democracy'. 52 These objections grasped the point, because the 'savings' plan was not about savings at all, in the sense of providing workers with a claim upon 48 49

50 51

52

T h i s is described in R. S. Sayers, Financial Policy (London, 1956), pp. 8 0 - 4 . Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, T U C Archive, 402.2.2. 'War Finance'. P R O T l 7 1 / 3 5 5 , 'Public Opinion and Paying for the War'. In a note to R. V. N . Hopkins, 'Post-War Credits in Peace-Time', in 1945 in P R O T 1 7 1 / 3 7 2 , vol. 2.

In T U C , ' W a r Finance'.

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future resources which could be drawn upon either at any time or at a predictable moment of maturation, with the reward of interest attached; there was no interest attached, and no date of repayment. They were also non-transferable. As one economist has described them, 'post-war credits are a closer approximation to a time varying consumption tax than to a state contingent bond'.53 They were a way of taking consumption out of the wartime period and putting it back when the expected post-war slump materialised. Despite the attention given to savings in Madge's survey (which actually revealed a good deal of suspicion about the state's intentions), the operation of the scheme rested upon the assumption that any savings would be quickly turned into consumption. This was at least in tune with Madge's and other post-war surveys which stressed how far saving was linked to shortly anticipated spending rather than to wealth accumulation.54 But it gave a powerful source of grievance amongst workers towards post-war credits, when these were not repaid after the war, because of the continuation of unanticipated inflationary pressures. It was observed during the General Election campaign of 1950 in Glasgow that the question of the non-payment of post-war credits was raised frequently and forcefully, but because of the consensus on this aspect of economic policy between the two parties it found no publicist on the hustings.55 In 1958 the Bromsgrove Trades Council noted that 'we regard the non-payment of post-war credits as one of the worst confidence tricks of all time'.56 They had suffered the solution to post-war debt of inflation and non-payment which the wealthier holders of government securities had the freedom to avoid. Of course, J. R. Hicks had made the case in 1947 for a forced loan in non-transferable paper as a way of preventing the rich from maintaining their consumption by spending from capital.57 Roy Jenkins drew upon Hicks's article in his Tribune pamphlet Fair Shares for the Rich (1951) which made the case (by now a rather lonely one) for a capital levy. This presented the view that a popularly elected government had every right to prevent people with wealth using those assets to frustrate economic policy by maintaining consumption when that was being discouraged through conventional taxation. So it might be argued that the Keynesian revolution was neutral in this respect between the classes; the rich might 53

54

55 56 57

J. S. Flemming, 'Debt and Taxes in War and Peace: T h e Case of a Small Open Economy', in Michael J. Boskin, John S. Flemming and Stefan Gorini (eds.), Private Saving and Public Debt (Oxford, 1987), p. 386. H . F. Lydall, 'Liquid Asset Holdings in Oxford', Bulletin of the University of Oxford Institute of Statistics, 14 (1952), 98, 115. S. B. Chrimes, The General Election in Glasgow (Glasgow, 1950), p. 43. In T U C 411.13, T o s t - W a r Credits'. In 'The Empty Economy', Lloyds Bank Monthly Review (July 1947), 1-13.

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suffer alongside the working class in having its spending patterns shaped by the state's fiscal policy. In practice too, the Special Contribution introduced by Cripps in 1948, which was in effect a capital tax because of very heavy rates on unearned income, was in part advertised as a way of restraining consumption, and therefore containing inflationary pressures. It might be noted that the greater aggregate spending power of the working class made them more dangerous on this score than the wealthy. Although the post-war credits scheme had been scaled down because of working-class opposition, the state had to block nearly £800 million worth of credits compared to the £105 million raised through the Special Contribution. But the working class was also more vulnerable to the use of the tax system in this way because for much of the post-1945 period it could only expect to receive some kind of claim on future production from the state itself. This same point arose during discussions about capital-sharing which took place in the Labour Party in the early 1970s. These schemes which were never implemented - were designed to give all workers a stake in the increasing wealth of companies through share ownership, in addition to normal pay bargaining. However, it was argued that if workers were provided with such assets, they could not be cashed in immediately, for fear of the impact on inflation. It was 'recognised that a "hard sell" would be needed to overcome workers' suspicions of any income and wealth that was in any way frozen for a period'.58 The suspicions of the working class towards fiscal policy as it was driven by counter-inflation priorities outweighed any confidence that the state might tilt society in the direction of greater equality. The Labour Party clearly has had some difficulty coming to terms with this. On the one hand it has recognised the value to workers of acquiring some capital, some interest in economic growth; but on the other it has been fearful of giving active encouragement to such acquisition. This can be shown by the Party's views on death duty taxation, and the precise role of the state in achieving equality. Two versions of death duty taxation competed with one another in the 1970s, one which gave a considerable role to the state and one which did not. The classic statement about the role of the state can be found in R. H. Tawney's Equality. Tawney was anxious to counter the argument that taking from the rich would only allow infinitesimal improvement in conditions for the poor. Tawney's point was that the intermediation of the state would give the taxed wealth of the rich greater impact as it was directed through social spending, rather than simply redistributed 58

LPA, Capital taxes study group minutes, 6 May 1971.

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among the rest of the population. This view of the central role of the state in redistributing wealth could obviously be fulfilled by a tax on large concentrations of wealth, or through death duties on large estates.59 The alternative strategy, which gained momentum in the 1970s, was to focus on those who inherited wealth, or received gifts. The thrust of the donee or accessions tax lay in the fact that large inheritances, not large estates, caused inequality. Therefore, the higher the rate of tax on those who received gifts or inheritances, the greater the incentive to spread donations more evenly. Although the aim of greater equality was the same in both cases, the implications for the state were strikingly different. In Tawney's case the greater the revenue going to the state the more equality was being achieved; in the donee version, the less the state took in revenue, the more even the spread of gifts or bequests, because they would be falling on or beneath the level for tax exemption. For one tradition within the Labour Party there was no doubt that the Tawney version was much to be preferred, and one of the chief reasons was political. Capital taxation was one area where progressive redistributive policies ought to have received undiluted support from workingclass Labour voters, because so few were likely to inherit assets of any significant kind. The less a tax encouraged such diffusion the better, because if inherited wealth became more popular it would endanger support for a policy which ought in theory to have been wholehearted.60 Following this tradition the Labour Party saw itself as serving a propertyless working class through an active state which would have provided social services and full employment. Both the political commitment to such a state and its economic functioning would have been weakened by the diffusion of wealth more evenly amongst the population: politically because it would give the working class an interest in opposing wealth taxation; economically, because the extra dimension their spending power represented by property would, under full employment, have both threatened inflation and made its containment more difficult. The freedoms and advantages conferred by capital have therefore been at the centre of debates over wealth taxation. They have encouraged the state to try and implement effective means for wealth taxation; but the very support for these characteristics across most social groups has largely frustrated these efforts. The fact that wealth taxation usually involves shifts from the private to the public sector has weakened its 59 60

T a w n e y , Equality (London, 1952), p. 130. 'Death Duties - T h e Case against Taxing the D o n e e ' , Labour Party, R D 6 2 5 , February 1973.

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attractiveness because it addresses aspirations to equality, which may be weak, rather than to freedom, which may be strong. The significance of the state for this issue, and the way that has changed, explains why the case for wealth taxation has become weaker rather than stronger. The momentum for some kind of wealth tax was probably greatest in the aftermath of the First World War in the form of the capital levy. Then it drew strength from a nineteenth-century radical view of the state. The population was burdened by the state because of the latter's obligations to the rentier, arising from the national debt, which had increased during the war. The war had also shown how certain interests might be able to corrupt the state, in this instance through profiteering. In this respect, the First World War differed from the Second in being a 'nineteenth-century war' in its financing. Capital taxation would lighten the burden of the debt, and therefore of the state upon the people; it could also remove the immoral gains of the war. Later on, after 1945, the state had become more powerful. This weakened the case for a wealth tax. Immediately after the Second World War the need for a levy was much weaker than it had been after the First, because there had been less profiteering and less inflation, partly because of physical controls and partly through fiscal policy. But the tendency to intervene more in economic management after 1945, especially to counter inflationary pressures, also aroused resentment from both working- and non-working-class interests to the extent that it involved tax pressures upon them. While certain Labour politicians and trade unionists believed that a wealth tax would convince workers that the state could intervene to achieve fairer rewards (and therefore incomes policies would be more palatable), this did not necessarily carry conviction, because traditional suspicions towards the state had been reinforced by post-1945 developments. In the nineteenthcentury radical view, which had an Indian summer during the First World War, the state had to be liberated from its burden of debt so that it might weigh less heavily on the population; in the post-1945 perspective, the state needed not liberating, but resisting. A sketch of future developments can only be conjectural, but it suggests that tensions in this area between state and society will intensify rather than weaken. The key development encouraging this view has been the growth of home ownership (including the purchase of council houses) and the rise in house values. These will provide inheritances of considerable and, for some families, hitherto unexperienced value and in which many working-class families will participate. But precisely because of their wide dispersal and value their taxation will become a more and not less enticing prospect for the state. Indeed, the

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very 'tax community' that approved wealth taxes also tends to favour the inclusion of houses in the tax net, while recognising the political sensitivity of this question.61 It may be anticipated that, whatever care is taken in setting thresholds, this will be a proposal against which sections of the working class will be ranged alongside other more longstanding property interests in a manner reminiscent of the history of wealth taxation. Problems have also arisen over collecting taxes already in operation. Opposition to taxes has tended to fall into two categories, one based on inactivity, the other on expertise. There has been a rough division between those who have had very little to do directly with the Inland Revenue, and a smaller number who have had a more intense relationship which has explored the legal boundaries of taxation and the nature of executive authority. For the majority of taxpayers it is now the case that they do not even make an annual return to the tax authorities; their tax is deducted at source, the greater part by their employer. This is the result of the successful application of PAYE to most employees, so that roughly three-quarters of income tax is collected this way.62 A key moment was the introduction of PAYE for manual workers in 1943. This was welcomed by working-class organisations as an easier way of paying tax than the usual system of quarterly assessments based on past earnings, which required foresight and savings difficult to achieve. But PAYE was applauded by other interests because it caught the workers in the tax net far more efficiently than had been the case in earlier episodes of working-class taxation. When some workers had become liable to income tax during the First World War they were not taxed through their employers for fear of adding to labour unrest, but had to make returns to the tax officer. Not only did the tax authorities meet collective resistance organised by certain trade unions, but many simply evaded taxes by failing to make returns or moving, and at the end of the war much working-class income tax was simply written off.63 But this was not possible with PAYE, which deducted the tax at source, and this purely administrative development was widely welcomed by middle-class opinion. For The Income Taxpayer, PAYE had 'the outstanding merit that it has assisted and is assisting in raising each year 61

62 63

See, for example, Death: The Unfinished Business. A Report of the IFS Capital Taxes Group, chaired by Malcolm Gammie (London, 1988), para. 4.5.4, p. 51. Board of Inland Revenue, Statistics 1993 (London, 1993), table 2.10, p. 28. See R. C. Whiting, ' T h e Working Class and Taxation 1915-1924', Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 8 9 5 - 9 1 7 . T h i s was confirmation of the nineteenth-century views, when the working class was regarded as too mobile and too elusive for conventional tax collection. See Olive Anderson, 'Wage Earners and Income Tax: A M i d - N i n e t e e n t h Century Discussion', Public Administration, 41 (1963), 189-93.

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from wage earners many £ millions which would otherwise have had to be borne by employers and other bodies of taxpayers', and in later years Douglas Houghton wrote that 'There can be not the lightest doubt that the retention of PAYE has enabled successive governments since the war to tax earnings far more heavily than would have been possible otherwise.' 64 Once the administrative capability was in place, the only way the working class was likely to get relief was to claim particular economic significance, or to use its industrial strength in pay bargaining to displace the effects of taxation. In neither has it proved to be particularly successful. The case for the working class to be given discretionary treatment in the tax system for economic reasons - to maintain or to restore incentives to work - was made widely and vigorously in the period of the 1945-50 Labour Government, when production had to be encouraged without granting inflationary wage increases. It was felt that the PAYE system, by indicating very clearly the impact of tax on extra earnings, acted as a disincentive. Key figures in the government who did not usually concern themselves with these questions became much exercised by the disincentive effects of PAYE, and recommended, inter alia, the removal of tax on overtime working. 65 However, although the Labour government tinkered with the tax bands within which key groups - especially the miners - were located, the social survey upon which official opinion came to rely discounted the effect of income tax on the supply of labour, either because the workers lacked a clear understanding of the effect of taxes on their earnings, or because they were still keen to achieve a certain standard of living irrespective of tax. The former argument was somewhat shaky, resting as it did on the assumption that workers had to be able to predict pretty exactly the effect of additional tax on any extra earnings in order to withdraw their labour. This was a demanding assumption, and some later shop-floor surveys showed that workers with different tax liabilities showed different work patterns. 66 However, the important point is that 'official thinking' assumed that the disincentive effect of taxation upon workers

64

65

66

The Income Taxpayer, N o v e m b e r 1949, and Douglas H o u g h t o n , ' T h e Futility of Taxation by Menaces', in A. Seldon (ed.), Tax Avoision: The Economic, Legal and Moral Inter-relationships between Avoidance and Evasion, I E A Readings 22 (1979), p. 97. See in particular Ernest Bevin's interest, reported in P. M . Williams (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Gaitskell (London, 1983), pp. 3 9 - 4 0 . T h e social survey is in P R O T 1 7 1 / 4 1 4 ; the other survey material referred to is in D . Robertson, Factory Wage Structures and National Agreements (London, 1960),

pp. 52-4.

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had been exaggerated, and therefore they had to take their place with middle-class taxpayers in any claim for relief.67 The alternative strategy was to try and shift the burden of income tax through pay bargaining. This was usually rejected by employers for bringing the political sphere into industrial relations; a change in focus from gross to net pay was a prerequisite for any such sustained strategy. But while the awareness of the effect of taxation on take home pay was increased during the inflationary conditions of the early 1970s, and was helped by the paper of H. A. Turner and Frank Wilkinson, 'The Wage-Tax Spiral and Labour Militancy', a study in 1976 concluded that 'trade unions have not been prepared to use their muscle on the issue of taxation'.68 There may have been two reasons for this. First, the extent to which the income tax system, through the granting of allowances to wives and children, tended to reduce the degree of common interest over tax questions in the workforce. This was why employers preferred the differentiated form of income tax for their labour forces, rather than a simple flat rate tax on all workers which was sometimes proposed.69 Second, unions may have been reluctant to extend bargaining into a substantial area of non-wage issues for fear of reducing the centrality of wage negotiation in their strategy. What should be emphasised is that collective working-class opposition was now directed to the level of taxation, not at refusal to pay or withdrawal from the tax itself, which had been possible under the pre-PAYE tax system. If income tax seemed to have less effect on economic behaviour than might have been expected because of limited knowledge of the tax structure, this has also had implications for political attitudes. It has been the rate of individual taxes, rather than the way they affect particular individuals, which has tended to influence responses. What has caught the eye has been the changes in overall rate of income tax, rather than the modifications to allowances and thresholds which governments have made as the cheaper way of responding to particular interests. As a member of the Board of Inland Revenue put it in 1949, when grievances about income tax were strong, 'we are convinced that 67

68

69

T h i s was acknowledged by R. A. Butler in discussions before the 1953 budget, when he pointed out that the working class had lost any claim for special treatment because disincentive effects of taxes on them had been 'greatly over-stated', but that 'great encouragement would be afforded to the nation as a whole' by some tax reductions. 'Note on budget proposals', 19 March 1953, P R O T 1 7 1 / 4 1 3 . Frank Field, Chris Pond and Steve Winyard, Trade Unions and Taxation (London, 1975), p. 19. Turner and Wilkinson's paper can be found in Do Trade Unions Cause Inflation? (Cambridge, 1975). Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Federation of British Industries Archive, M S S 2 0 0 / F / 1 / 1 / 1 3 5 , minutes of taxation committee, 18 April 1951 (E. Bower).

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most of the attack on the income tax and most of the pleas for special treatment whether on the part of the industrialist, the manager or the worker, are primarily a reflection of the rate'.70 Views focussed not only on the rate, but also on the effect of specific taxes taken indivdually, rather than on the whole. Whereas tax experts tend to look at the overall picture - a burden here is matched by an alleviation there - particular taxes tend to catch the public attention. This focus can clearly pose problems for government, especially in the case of the highly 'visible' income tax, which can easily bear the brunt of political anger at a regime, as Labour found in the mid-1970s; but on the other hand, the tax authorities have found the uncertainty about the impact of taxes useful, and have been content to see debate revolve around a few reference points, which leave the overall system intact. The valedictory comments of John Kay at the Institute of Fiscal Studies make this point clearly: It took me some time to understand why the measured and carefully researched criticisms of IFS aroused so much more resentment within the revenue than the strident remarks of political opponents and interest groups. The answer is that it is precisely because they are measured and carefully researched - and attention is paid to them — that they represent a challenge to what are seen as Whitehall or Somerset House prerogatives.71 In recent years the collection of material, especially through the General Household Survey and the Family Expenditure Survey has generated interesting and useful findings on the actual impact of taxation.72 Whether this will alter the popular debates about taxation is another matter, but the relationship between the majority of taxpayers and the revenue may also be changing as a result of the spread of tax avoidance and evasion. Tax avoidance makes the obvious contrast with the arm's length relationship between taxpayer and state over PAYE. Avoidance achieving the lightest possible tax burden within the law - requires close knowledge of the tax system and a willingness to invest, or hire, time to outwit the taxman. Tax avoidance has operated in several areas, but principally has been directed at minimising death duties and to turning taxable profits into what have been in the past tax-free capital gains, 70

71

72

P R O 171/398, 1949 budget papers, vol. 2, E. St. John Bamford, 'Note on Income T a x Reliefs and Allowances', 17 D e c . 1948. 'Tax Reform in Context: A Strategy for the 1990s', Institute of Fiscal Studies, 7, 4 (1986), 17. See, for example, Central Statistical O f f i c e / T h e Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, 1987', Economic Trends (May 1990), 8 4 - 1 1 8 , which relies on material from the Family Expenditure Survey.

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particularly in share-dealing. The very success of PAYE - easy to collect, hard to evade and generally regarded as fair - seemed to highlight the moral delinquency of a small number of relatively wealthy people who were able to exploit opportunities denied the ordinary taxpayer. In the 1950s Labour played upon this; when Harold Wilson introduced the policy document Towards Equality at the party conference in 1956 he referred to 'a major cause of inequality in modern society - the growth of a new system of privilege: fiscal privilege, privilege in matters of tax. There is no way by which the worker or the civil servant can dodge paying his PAYE.'73 Labour expected people to pay tax as part of their obligation to society and to the state. The fact that a Conservative chancellor introduced anti-avoidance measures in 1960 when his party had a secure and recently acquired majority shows how a broad consensus of opinion could be directed at this issue. The view that tax avoidance was a minority and pathological activity had altered by the 1970s. The chief concern now was that tax avoidance would affect the behaviour of the majority of taxpayers. When the enforcement powers for VAT were being drafted attention was directed not only at 'deliberate and unscrupulous tax evaders' but also at 'a large unmapped middle area of tax morality, where taxpayers would be mostly honest and according to their lights conscientious, but not disinclined to save themselves trouble, to take short cuts, or to give themselves the benefit of the doubt; and where, moreover, they would see a doubt or short cut all the more readily if they began to form the impression that other people were commonly doing so without untoward consequences'.74 The solutions to the problem subsequently encountered with VAT resembled those adopted by the Inland Revenue. Essentially this meant the right of the tax-gatherer to direct against arrangements which, although perfectly legal, had been put in place solely to avoid tax; what in the past had been termed 'tax avoidance'. Because of the difficulty of keeping pace with avoidance through legislation, the power to direct against business arrangements which had no commercial or economic motive or logic behind them was achieved. This has had the outcome of introducing a concept of a business acting in the letter, but not in the spirit, of the law, which could make it subject to direction to change those operating arrangements. Tax avoidance has been replaced by 'tax mitigation' to describe allowable tax-minimising behaviour.75 But the distinction between mitigation and avoidance has 73 74 75

Labour Party, Report of Annual Conference (1956), p. 219. Johnstone, A Tax Shall Be Charged, p. 67. Comptroller and Auditor General, National Audit Office, HM Countering VAT Avoidance (London, 1922), pp. 1 0 - 1 1 , 19.

Customs and

Excise:

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been hard to define, and with much avoidance work devolved to local offices taxpayers have had no guarantee of common standards either. Some of the same anxieties arising over VAT have also been apparent on the Inland Revenue side. It also has become worried about 'a declining band of honest taxpayers coming increasingly to feel resentment at the burdens they have to bear' and has argued that the 'principal implication for tax enforcement is that when evasion is seen to succeed, erstwhile honest citizens may be tempted to try it'. 76 Investigations in the early 1980s found 'increasing amounts of irregularities', and more resources have been devoted to combating evasion, especially moonlighting. 77 This shows that active opposition to taxes has not been class specific, but spread throughout the society. But these problems, while they can sustain claims for more resources for tax administration, catch the tax authorities at an awkward moment. Investigation is labour intensive; if it is to appear thorough and evenhanded, it cannot concentrate solely on areas that will bring in large amounts of unpaid tax, and therefore be cost effective. Moreover the tradition of tax administration in Britain has been non-adversarial, in the wish to offer fair advice and guidance. 78 Both these factors support arguments for increasing the size of the tax administration. Yet the drift of reform in the state has been to cut the numbers of civil servants. It is doubtful whether this is compatible with maintaining tax morality under the existing customs of tax administration in Britain. This conjunction has occurred at the same time that the state faces the question of taxing house property as that swells personal assets in a hitherto unknown dimension. In tax questions the state is at an important stage where forces of tradition - to develop the tax base while maintaining traditional controls over the taxpayer - meet with new emphases upon a smaller bureaucracy and the encouragement of individual freedom. Here, as elsewhere, the boundaries of the state are uncertain. 76

77

78

Committee (Keith) on Enforcement Powers of Revenue Departments, P P 1 9 8 2 - 3 , xxxviii, Cmd 8822, p. 552. Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue for the Year ended 31 March 1981 (124th Report), Cmd. 8514, 1982, para. 73. In the early days of V A T it was commented that ' T h e local offices managed to preserve more fragments of the purchase tax tradition of personal helpfulness to the individual taxpayer than we dared hope they could.' Johnstone, A Tax Shall Be Charged, p. 126.

8

Economic knowledge and the state in modern Britain1 G. C. Peden

A common theme connecting a number of chapters in this book is the idea that the extension of the boundaries of the state has created a market for experts. The experts with whom this chapter is concerned are people who claim to have economic knowledge. In it I argue that economic knowledge takes a number of forms and that professional economists do not have a monopoly of economic knowledge. Financiers, businessmen, trade unionists and financial journalists also have claims to be economic experts in that they may be able to predict how markets will behave, or advise on how scarce resources may best be distributed.2 I also suggest that the relationship between the state and economic experts is by no means one-way: the nature of the state's demand for economic knowledge has helped to shape economic knowledge, both the scope of data that are compiled and the aspects of economic theory that attract most attention from economists. One problem in any such discussion is that there is no generally accepted definition of the term 'economist'. Economics, unlike law or medicine, is a profession without controls on entry or formal means of maintaining standards. There is no standardisation of academic qualifications and indeed most British economists before 1914 had not taken a university degree in the subject. The most famous example is John Maynard Keynes, whose principal undergraduate interests had been in mathematics and philosophy, and whose professional training in economics was confined to little more than eight weeks of postgraduate 1

2

This chapter is based upon research, funded by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, for a book on the British Treasury in the period 1905-58. My discussion of economic knowledge and the state has benefited from participation in a symposium, organised by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, the proceedings of which have been published in Mary O. Furner and Barry Supple (eds.), The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences (Cambridge, 1990). I am grateful to Roger Middleton for helpful comments on an earlier draft and for figures from his database on public expenditure. My use of the term 'economic knowledge' is thus much wider than that used, for example, by Professor T. W. Hutchison in his On Revolutions in Economic Knowledge (Cambridge, 1978), which is concerned with the history of economic thought.

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work. This qualification was deemed sufficient for him to be appointed to a lectureship in economics at Cambridge in 1908 and to the joint editorship of the Economic Journal in 1911.3 Specialist degrees in economics have been available at some British universities since the early years of the century but even today Oxford has no single honours degree in the subject, undergraduate economics there being studied in varying proportions with philosophy and politics in 'Modern Greats'. Nor can it be said that professional economists are defined by postgraduate qualifications, there being a number of distinguished members of the profession without any such qualification. The best definition of the economics profession is probably that given by Professor Coats: its 'members are subjectively aware of themselves as professionals and are recognised as such by those who use their services and by the public at large'.4 Economic knowledge, I suggest, takes more than one form. These forms may be categorised as follows: 1. Information. Data may be compiled by government departments (e.g. the Board of Trade, now the Department of Trade and Industry; the Board of Customs and Excise, or the Board of Inland Revenue) or by private agencies (e.g. the Confederation of British Industry, notably nowadays its surveys of business confidence) or collected by Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. 2. Practical experience. Policy-makers tend to place a high premium on the experience and expertise of the City of London in financial matters and also, according to political orientation, on the experience of businessmen or trade unionists in matters relating to industry. 3. Economic theory. This is now the particular domain of professional economists but, down to the 1930s, a self-taught economist like Ralph Hawtrey, a Treasury official, could also make original contributions to theory.5 3

4

5

Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keyes, vol. I, Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920 (London, 1983), pp. 166, 184-5, 206-7. A. W. Coats (ed.), Economists in Government: An International Comparative Study (Durham, NC, 1981), p. 11. See also A. W. Coats and S. E. Coats, 'The Changing Composition of the Royal Economic Society and the Professionalisation of British Economies', British Journal of Sociology, 24 (1973), 165-87 and John D. Hey and Donald Winch (eds.), A Century of Economics: 100 Years of the Royal Economic Society and the Economic Journal (Oxford, 1990). Like Keynes, Hawtrey had read mathematics as an undergraduate but through private study and experience of public finance at the Treasury developed into an economist. His publications included Currency and Credit (1919), which was widely used as a textbook in the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1928/9 he went on leave to teach at Harvard. For Hawtrey's work at the Treasury see Susan Howson, 'Hawtrey and the Real World', in G. G. Harcourt (ed.), Keynes and His Contemporaries (London, 1985) and for an

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4. Informed opinion. This overlaps with practical financial and business experience but extends beyond economic practitioners to the financial press, Oxford and Cambridge senior common rooms and wherever else politicians pick up ideas. 5. Realities of political economy. A sense of the 'art of the possible' in economic affairs is essential for ministers and their advisers. The accumulated experience of government departments comes into this category of economic knowledge. According to Sir Edward Bridges, permanent secretary of the Treasury and head of the Home Civil Service from 1945 to 1956, it is the duty of a civil servant 'to let the waves of the practical philosophy' of his department 'wash against the ideas put foward by his ministerial master', by pointing out administrative and other practical problems in the implementation of policy. 6 It will be observed that only one of these five categories of economic knowledge is dominated by economists, although economists, or people with a training in economics, have contributed to the other categories. For example, with regard to the first category, information, economists have served as members of, or expert witnesses before, numerous Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. Keynes managed to do both when he gave private evidence to the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry, of which he was a member and whose report in 1931 he did much to shape. 7 The bulk of the membership of, and evidence presented to, Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions may come from the world of practical experience of finance and industry, but the economist, armed with coherent theory, can frame appropriate questions with which to draw out the information which he believes will be most useful for policy-makers. Economists have often likewise made their mark on the compilation of official statistics. For example, the Board of Inland Revenue could have published official statistics on national income long before these first appeared in 1941 - indeed an unpublished report on national income was prepared by the Board for the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 19298 - but it was only once Whitehall was convinced of the value of Keynesian macroeconomic analysis to help to control inflation during the Second World War that such statistics began to be compiled and published on a regular basis.

6

7

8

appreciation of his work as an economist see Patrick Deutscher, R. G. Hawtrey and the Development of Macroeconomics (London, 1990). Sir Edward Bridges, Portrait of a Profession: The Civil Service Tradition (Cambridge, 1950), p. 19. See Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes (cited hereafter as JMK), vol. XX (London, 1981), ch. 2. See Inland Revenue Report on National Income 1929, with an introduction by Richard Stone (Cambridge, 1977).

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I The development of the modern state has certainly generated an unprecedented demand for the services of economic experts, who might be economists but who also might be businessmen or trade unionists. For example, the scale of twentieth-century warfare compelled the state to mobilise the nation's resources for munitions production, a process that required knowledge of how best to manage scarce resources in productive enterprises - a form of knowledge not possessed by conventional civil servants.9 Likewise the state's increasing involvement in what came to be called nationalised industries also created a demand for the services of managers. Before 1914 central government's direct involvement with production and distribution had been largely confined to the royal dockyards and ordnance factories and the Post Office. (Local authorities managed a much wider range of undertakings, from transport to gas and water utilities.) The inter-war period saw the creation of the Forestry Commission (1919), the British Broadcasting Corporation (1926), the Central Electricity Board (1927) and the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (1939). A feature of these public undertakings - all of them created by Conservative or Conservativedominated governments - was the combination of management by businessmen with public accountability through ministers. This feature was continued into the major period of nationalisation, 1946-9, when the coal and steel industries, gas and coal utilities, and rail and most road and air transport were taken into public ownership by the Attlee government, and in further extensions of public ownership in the 1960s and 1970s.10 A politician facing a problem with a nationalised industry was much more likely to consult someone with experience as a businessman than a professional economist - as, for example, Margaret Thatcher did in 1983 when she consulted Ian MacGregor on how to handle the militant National Union of Mineworkers shortly before he took up his appointment as chairman of the National Coal Board.11 Even when privatisation in the 1980s and 1990s reduced public ownership, the state continued to be actively involved in business through the Department of 9

10

11

See Kathleen Burk (ed.), War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914-1919 (London, 1982) and D. N. Chester (ed.), Lessons of the British War Economy (Cambridge, 1951). See William Ashworth, The State in Business: 1945 to the Mid-1980s (London, 1991) and Leonard Tivey, Nationalization in British Industry, 2nd edn (London, 1973). Ian MacGregor with Rodney Tyler, The Enemies Within: The Story of the Miners' Strike, 1984-5 (London, 1986), pp. 12-15. MacGregor had had a long career in business, mainly in the United States, and had been chairman and chief executive of the British Steel Corporation in 1980-3.

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Trade and Industry, which, from 1983, encouraged the development of management skills in small and medium-sized firms through consultancy services.12 Since the First World War the state has also had to develop a much more active role in relation to the monetary system than was the case when the gold standard was fully operational before 1914, and especially after the gold standard was suspended for the last time in 1931. Under the gold standard the monetary system was supposedly automatic, the bank rate (the rate of discount at which the Bank of England would lend to commercial banks) being determined by the need to maintain the value of sterling in terms of gold, or other currencies, such as the dollar, that were also on the gold standard. Once sterling was off gold, however - and even while the gold standard was briefly restored in 1925-31 monetary management had to take account of such considerations as the level of investment, prices and employment and became a more consciously political process.13 The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the minister responsible for monetary policy and regulation of the monetary system but he has always relied heavily upon the advice of the Bank of England when carrying out the first of these responsibilities and almost wholly on the Bank for the exercise of the second. The Bank did recruit a professional economist in Sir Henry Clay as early as 1930 but it was not until 1950 that Humphrey Mynors, Clay's successor from 1944, was joined by a second professional economist, Maurice Allen. Even in the early 1950s, however, the Bank, in the words of its official historian, was 'uncertain and hesitant about its use of economic analysis', with many senior staff believing that the Bank's influence would continue to rely overwhelmingly upon its traditional strengths of market expertise, City intelligence and financial diplomacy.14 Subsequently, no doubt, matters changed, and indeed by the 1980s many people entering the City itself had studied economics at university, but it is unlikely that traditional market expertise was entirely displaced by economic analysis. Acceptance by the state from 1944 for responsibility for the level of activity in the economy as a whole, however, greatly increased demand for the services of economic experts in Whitehall. High levels of 12

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Department of Trade and Industry, DTI - The Department for Enterprise (Cmd. 278), British Parliamentary Papers 1987-8. The best accounts of the evolution of the policy-making process with regard to monetary management in the inter-war years are: Susan Howson, Domestic Monetary Management in Britain, 1919-38 (Cambridge, 1975); D. E. Moggridge, British Monetary Policy 1924-1931: The Norman Conquest of $4.86 (Cambridge, 1972) and R. S. Sayers, The Bank of England, 1891-1944 (Cambridge, 1976), 3 vols. John Fforde, The Bank of England and Public Policy 1941-1958 (Cambridge, 1992),

pp. 318-20; 383, 393, 434-5.

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unemployment had generated a debate, beginning before 1914 but acquiring greater intensity between the wars, on the use of public investment to create employment - a debate which helped to shape what became known as the Keynesian revolution in economic theory.15 That theory itself could only be applied to policy as statisticians employed by the state compiled the data necessary for macroeconomic management - a process which began in a rudimentary way during the Second World War but which underwent increasing refinements in the post-war period as economists devised more complicated models of how the economy worked. In a famous white paper the Churchill Coalition accepted in 1944 that 'a high and stable level of employment' was one of government's primary aims and responsibilities,16 and the focus of academic research in Britain was turned on how to achieve this aim along with reasonable stability of prices and balance of payments equilibrium. From the 1960s, as governments were made aware of Britain's relatively poor economic performance compared with other industrial countries (an awareness enhanced by the publication of international league tables of standardised national income data), achievement of a higher growth rate was added as a fourth aim of government and a National Economic Development Council was established in 1962 to pool the collective wisdom of businessmen and trade unionists, as well as economists and civil servants. This new priority of government reflected and reinforced academic research into factors determining economic growth rates. The state's own expenditure became an increasingly weighty factor in the economy over the first three quarters of the twentieth century. As Roger Middleton's essay shows, total public expenditure, including transfers, averaged 11.6 per cent of GDP from 1905 to 1913; 25.3 per cent in the inter-war years; 37.7 per cent from 1947 to 1964; and 44.4 per cent from 1965 to 1979. A vigorous attempt to reverse this rising trend was made after 1979 but it took almost a decade of 'Thatcherism' to bring public expenditure to just below 40 per cent of GDP. 1 7 This reversal of the upward trend was short-lived: the recession of the early 1990s, by raising the demand for income support and reducing GDP, 15

16

17

See Peter Clarke, The Keynesian Revolution in the Making, 1924-1936 (Oxford 1988); Robert W. Dimand, The Origins of the Keynesian Revolution: The Development of Keynes's Theory of Employment and Output (Aldershot, 1988); D. E. Moggridge, Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography (London, 1992); Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, vol. II, The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937 (London, 1992). Employment Policy (Cmd. 6527), British Parliamentary Papers 1943-4, VIII, 119. For development of employment policy during and immediately after the war see Jim Tomlinson, Employment Policy: The Crucial Years 1939-1955 (Oxford, 1987). HM Treasury, Economic Progress Report, no. 194 (Feb. 1988), p. 7.

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restored the proportion of public expenditure to GDP in 1992 to what it had been before 1979. Thus, although Keynesian economics were abandoned in Whitehall after 1979, the state still needed to forecast the economic consequences of its own expenditure and of how that expenditure was financed. It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been increasing employment in Whitehall since the Second World War for professional economists who could make economic forecasts and advise on policy. Indeed, since the 1940s there has been an international trend towards the professionalisation of economic advice.18 During the First World War a number of economists had served as temporary civil servants in government departments, including Keynes at the Treasury, Walter Layton at the Ministry of Munitions and Hubert Henderson at the Cotton Control Board, but, with the exception of the Board of Trade, where a Committee of Economists, including William Ashley and Sydney Chapman, was set up in 1916 to advise on general policy, there is little evidence that the duties of these economists differed from those of other civil servants. Chapman became Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade from 1919 to 1927 and was subsequently given the title of Chief Economic Adviser to HM Government. However, the fact that his successor as Chief Economic Adviser, from 1932, was a career civil servant, Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, who regarded his principal activity as economic diplomacy,19 does not suggest that HM Government felt much need of a permanent presence of professional economists in Whitehall. During discussions that were to lead to the creation of an Economic Advisory Council to advise the Labour Government in 1930, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury (who was also head of the Civil Service) opposed the recruitment of economists into the Civil Service, arguing that, in so far as it was necessary to have economic research done for the government, it would be better to enlist the co-operation of the best economists outside Whitehall. This was in fact what was done with the Council's Committee on Economic Information, the membership of which included Josiah Stamp, who was head of the LMS Railway, Keynes and D. H. Robertson from Cambridge, and Henderson and G. D. H. Cole from Oxford.20 18

19

20

See Coats (ed.), Economists in Government, and Joseph A. Pechman (ed.), The Role of the Economist in Government: An International Perspective (Hemel Hempstead, 1989). Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, Money Talks: Fifty Years of International Finance (London, 1968), pp. 145-7. Susan H o w s o n and D o n a l d W i n c h , The Economic Advisory Council: A Study in Economic Advice during Depression and Recovery (Cambridge, 1977), esp. pp. 22—4, 107.

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The Second World War saw a dramatic change. 21 The Treasury, which between the wars had made do with one economist, Hawtrey, now brought in Henderson, Keynes and Robertson as advisers. Winston Churchill set up the Prime Minister's Statistical Section, which included at any one time half a dozen economists, less senior than those in the Treasury but including such future luminaries as Roy Harrod, Bryan Hopkin, Donald MacDougall and Tom Wilson. 22 The principal concentration of economic advisers, however, both during and after the war, was in the Economic Section of the Cabinet Office, where in the 1940s and 1950s there were a dozen or more economists at any one time, under successive directors John Jewkes (1939^11), Lionel Robbins (1941-5), James Meade (1946-7) and Robert Hall (1947-53). This time the presence of economists in Whitehall proved to be permanent, with Meade making his acceptance of his appointment conditional on his membership of the Chancellor's Budget Committee, a key body for Keynesian macroeconomic management. In 1953 the Economic Section was transferred to the Treasury, which since 1947 had established its position as the department principally responsible for economic policy, and Hall was given the title as Economic Adviser to H M Government with, in contrast to Leith-Ross in the 1930s, functions appropriate to the title. 23 The undoubted influence of economists in Whitehall was not immediately reflected in their numbers. As late as 1964 the Government Economic Service (which did not include agricultural economists) had only twenty-two staff in post - eighteen of them in the Treasury and with none at all in the Board of Trade. However, the election in 1964 of a Labour government committed to interventionist policies to stimulate 21

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23

For the impact of war on the demand for economic advice see Alan Booth, 'Economic Advice at the Centre of British Government 1 9 3 9 - 4 1 ' , Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 655-75. See D o n a l d MacDougall, Don and Mandarin: Memoirs of an Economist (London, 1987), ch. 2. For these developments see Alec Cairncross and N i t a Watts, The Economic Section 1939-1961: A Study in Economic Advising (London, 1989). T h e diaries of both Meade and Hall for the periods in which they were directors of the Economic Section have both been published: see Susan H o w s o n and D o n a l d Moggridge (eds.), The Collected Papers of James Meade, vol. IV, The Cabinet Office Diary 1944-46 (London, 1990) and Alec Cairncross (ed.), The Robert Hall Diaries 1947-1953 and 1954-1961 (London, 1989 and 1991). In additional to the Economic Section there were in the post-war period two other groups of economists with a brief to advise on general policy: the Central Economic Planning Staff, which included Austin Robinson, was formed to advise Sir Stafford Cripps w h e n he was made Minister of Economic Affairs in 1947, and which was transferred to the Treasury w h e n Cripps became Chancellor later that year, and the Prime Minister's Statistical Section, which once more included M a c D o u gall, was revived by Churchill w h e n he returned to office in 1951 but was disbanded in 1953.

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economic growth created a political demand for much more detailed economic knowledge than had been the case under market-orientated Conservative governments. Consequently Harold Wilson, the first prime minister to have been a professional economist, presided over a rapid increase in the numbers of economists in Whitehall. By 1969 the staff of the Government Economic Service numbered 192 (twenty-eight in the Treasury) and by the end of 1976 the total was 400 (sixty-two in the Treasury).24 Despite the increasing numbers of economists, there is evidence that Whitehall continued to be strongly influenced by what David Henderson has called 'do-it-yourself economies', an amalgam of inherited ideas based on departmental tradition, the interests of departmental clients, and mercantilist attitudes.25 The influence of economists was limited, no doubt, by the prejudices of politicians and by the inability of many policy-makers to understand economic analysis. However, the influence of economists was also limited by the fact that economic knowledge was never the sole prerogative of professional economists. II The state has not rated my second category of economic knowledge, practical experience of finance, trade and industry, below economic theory, if only because practical men of affairs have to cope with the consequences of government policy, and because practical men represent interests which policy-makers have wished to placate or co-opt. In both world wars not only did businessmen and trade unionists act as temporary advisers and administrators, but some also became members of the government as ministers, a distinction achieved by no professional economist who was not already actively engaged in politics.26 24

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26

Sir Alec Cairncross, 'United Kingdom', in Pechman, The Role of the Economist in Government, p. 34; Sir Norman Chester, 'The Role of Economic Advisers in Government', in A. P. Thirlwall (ed.), Keynes as a Policy Adviser (London, 1982), p. 139. David Henderson, Innocence and Design: The Influence of Economic Ideas on Policy (Oxford, 1986). Hugh Dalton was put in charge of the Ministry of Economic Warfare in 1940, but his appointment probably owed more to his position in the Labour Party than his expertise as an economist, although the latter seems not to have been unimportant - see Ben Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (London, 1985), pp. 276-82. Examples of people from industry moving into ministerial positions in the First World War include: Sir Eric Geddes (First Lord of the Admiralty, 1917-19), Lord Rothermere and Lord Weir (successive Secretaries of State of Air, 1917-19), Lord Inverforth (Minister of Supply, 1919-21) and Sir Auckland Geddes (President of the Board of Trade, 1919-20), all of whom were businessmen, and John Hodge and George Roberts (successive Ministers of Labour between 1916 and 1919), who were trade unionists. Weir was subsequently the government's principal industrial adviser on rearmament in the 1930s. In the Second World

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When in 1921 Lloyd George asked the Financial Secretary of the Treasury, Hilton Young, to make enquiries into the likely consequences of adopting a policy of 'inflation' (what would now be called reflation) to cure unemployment Young found it easier to sound out City opinion because 'industrial men, being mostly provincial, take longer to get at than financial men'. 27 Of the people whom Hilton Young chose to give direct advice to Lloyd George, two, Layton and Stamp, were economists, but two, Sir James Hope Simpson and Dudley Ward were bankers. (Significantly, all except Simpson had experience of Whitehall and could therefore be assumed to be aware to the fifth form of economic knowledge mentioned above, the realities of political economy.28) Likewise only three of the twenty members of Ramsay MacDonald's Economic Advisory Council in 1930, G. D. H. Cole, Keynes and Stamp, were economists; of the remainder, four were industrialists, two were bankers and two were trade unionists. Stamp was indeed Whitehall's favourite economist in the 1930s, probably because he was regarded as not purely a theoretician. While a civil servant in the Inland Revenue he had taken an external BSc in economics of the University of London in 1911 followed, most unusually among British economists, by a DSc (Econ.) for a thesis on British incomes and property. By the 1930s he had over a decade's experience of how to run a business, acquired in the chemicals industry and in a major railway company, besides having been an adviser to the Dawes and Young Committees that had tried to tackle the thorny problem of German reparations. It was natural that Stamp should be chairman of the Economic Advisory Council's Committee on Economic Information and that in 1939 he should be asked to head an inquiry into Britain's war plans in the economic and financial spheres. Subsequently he was approached by the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, with a view to Stamp resigning his peerage (he had become Lord Stamp in 1937) in order to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the event political

27

28

War, the trade union leader Ernest Bevin was a dominant figure as Minister of Labour (1940-5) while Lord Beaverbrook (Minister for Aircraft Production, 1 9 4 0 - 1 , Minister of Supply, 1 9 4 1 - 2 , and Minister for War Production, 1942) and Sir Andrew D u n c a n (Minister of Supply, 1942-5) were businessmen. Hilton Young to Lloyd George, 27 Sept. 1921, Lloyd George papers, F/28/8/4, H o u s e of Lords Record Office. For this episode see G. C. Peden, ' T h e Road to and from Gairloch: Lloyd George, U n e m p l o y m e n t , Inflation and the "Treasury V i e w " in 1921', Twentieth Century British History, 4 (1993), 2 2 4 - 4 9 . Layton and Ward had been temporary civil servants during the First World War, in the Ministry of Munitions and the Treasury respectively, and Layton was still in contact with government as director of the Economic Section of the League of Nations. Stamp had served in the Inland Revenue for twenty-three years before embarking on a successful business career in 1919.

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circumstances prevented Chamberlain changing his Chancellor, but the incident is testimony both to Stamp's standing in the political world and to the political world's preference for practical experience over theory.29 An even more striking example of an economic advisor with a business and Whitehall background is provided by the career of Edwin Plowden. Plowden had worked both in industry and the City before serving during the Second World War as a temporary civil servant in the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Ministry of Aircraft Production. He was Chief Executive of the latter department in 1945-6, before returning to the City. When Sir Stafford Cripps, who had been Minister for Aircraft Production, became Minister for Economic Affairs in 1947, with a brief to co-ordinate economic policy, Plowden was selected to head the new ministry's Central Economic Planning Staff (CEPS). Cripps became Chancellor later in the year and the CEPS moved to the Treasury, where for six years Plowden was a respected adviser, working in close collaboration with Robert Hall, the director of the Economic Section, on a range of economic issues, from planning the domestic economy to questions regarding the exchange rate and relations with continental Europe.30 Even after he had returned to the City (after a period as chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority) Plowden's reputation in Whitehall was such that it was natural that he should be appointed as chairman in 1959 of an enquiry into Treasury control of public expenditure.31 Although the state has put a premium on practical experience of finance, trade or industry, it has also been true that the professional economist, with his or her trained mind, has often proved to be capable of making a useful contribution to the practical world of production by asking the right questions. For example, during the Second World War, the Ministry of Aircraft Production included a number of economists who helped to plan production on a scale which was far beyond businessmen's peacetime experience.32 In the post-war period the reputation of economists was such that when the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) was set up to serve the newly created National Economic Development Council (NEDC) in 1962, it was natural that 29

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See J. Harry Jones, Josiah Stamp, Public Servant: The Life of the First Baron Stamp of Shortlands ( L o n d o n , 1964), esp. pp. 3 3 7 - 4 0 . See Edwin Plowden, An Industrialist in the Treasury: The Post-War Years (London, 1989). For an independent assessment of Plowden's influence see Alec Cairncross, Years of Recovery: British Economic Policy 1945-51 (London, 1985), pp. 245, 2 4 9 - 5 0 , 325-6. Control of Public Expenditure (Cmnd. 1432), British Parliamentary Papers 1 9 6 0 - 1 . See Alec Cairncross, Planning in Wartime: Aircraft Production in Britain, Germany and

the USA (London, 1991).

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the first Economic Director of NEDO should be an economist, Sir Donald MacDougall. Economists did much to shape the expression of 'practical experience' in publications such as the NEDC 'Orange Book' (Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth (1963)).33 Ill Turning to the third form of economic knowledge, economic theory, one can perceive its influence on policy-makers long before the tendency of the modern state to take responsibility for the fortunes of the economy elevated economists to a distinct category of policy advisers. Economic knowledge, as embodied in the doctrines of Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, tended to discourage state intervention, exceptions to the prevailing nineteenth-century philosophy of laissez-faire being seen as necessary evils. Exceptions to the principles of laissez-faire began to multiply in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but as late as the 1920s Whitehall saw no reason why economists, apart from agricultural economists, should find permanent employment in government service. The nature of economic theory then, with its emphasis on long-term equilibrium positions of real variables in the economy, rather than on forecasts of what would or could happen in the short run, was such that there was some truth in Keynes's famous remark in his Tract on Monetary Reform (1923): In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a can only tell us that when the storm is long task if in tempestuous seasons they past the ocean will be flat again.34 As unemployment persisted in the 1920s governments came to be increasingly subject to criticism, notably from Lloyd George and Keynes, for failing to have an effective, short-run, employment policy. The Treasury relied upon a combination of theoretical and practical administrative arguments to rebut these criticisms but it also realised that it had to keep up with the latest economic ideas, this task being the particular responsibility of Hawtrey. As Sir Frederick Phillips, one of the most senior officials on the financial side of the Treasury, remarked in 1937: 'the employment in the Treasury of an economist to advise on financial matters [was] a necessity . . . If this work . . . were not done in the Treasury it would be done less conveniently outside and ministers would come to rely on unofficial advice from diverse quarters.'35 From a 33 35

34 MacDougall, Don and Mandarin, ch. 7. JMK, vol. IV (1971), p. 65. Minutes of Treasury Organisation Committee, 9 March 1937, p. 4, Treasury papers, series 199, file 50c (T 199/50c), Public Record Office, London. For Treasury arguments

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Civil Service point of view nothing could be worse than ministers receiving advice from diverse quarters! As late as 1943, in discussions on the future role of economists in Whitehall, it was possible for the Director of the Economic Section, Robbins, to take the view that: 'economics, at any rate the branch of economics which is most applicable in practice, is not a difficult subject in the sense in which, say, mathematical physics is difficult'.36 However, from the 1930s professional economics was becoming increasingly technical and less accessible to laymen, Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) being a landmark in this respect. From 1941 the Chancellor's budget was no longer simply a cash account for central government but was also a macroeconomic instrument, being based on an analysis of national income and expenditure. In the 1940s to 1950s, at least, Treasury officials did not know how to draw up a budget on Keynesian principles and relied upon Keynes (as adviser to the Chancellor, 1940-6) and successive directors of the Economic Section to form a judgement of the macroeconomic variables. Macroeconomic management was handicapped by lack of reliable, up-to-date data. In the mid-1950s it was still not possible to construct national income and expenditure figures quarterly, as was then being done in the United States. There was much truth, therefore, in Harold Macmillan's remark (when Chancellor in 1956) that 'we are always, as it were, looking up a train in last year's Bradshaw'.37 Balance of payments figures when first compiled were often misleading. Hall remarked in 1961, after the figures for the 1950s had been revised, that: 'they were very discouraging to me since I felt that all my judgements in recent years had been based on somewhat false views of the actual situation. It is always an obvious problem in this job, to know where one is at a given time.'38 It is not surprising that criticism of government's performance in managing the economy became a popular pastime for economists outside Whitehall long before the monetarist counter-revolution in economics, and the economic crises of the 1970s, destroyed the dominance of Keynesian economics.

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38

deployed against Keynes's ideas see Clarke, Keynesian Revolution, part I I I a n d G . C. Peden, ' T h e " T r e a s u r y V i e w " on Public Works a n d E m p l o y m e n t in t h e Interwar Period', Economic History Review, 2 n d ser., 37 (1984), 167-81. 'Notes on t h e Role of t h e Economist in t h e F u t u r e Machinery of G o v e r n m e n t ' , m e m o r a n d u m by Professor Robbins, 25 Jan. 1943, Cabinet Office papers, series 8 7 , vol. 72 (Cab87/72), Public Record Office, L o n d o n . G. C. Peden, 'Old Dogs and New Tricks: The British Treasury and Keynesian Economics in the 1940s and 1950s', in Furner and Supple (eds.), The State and Economic Knowledge, p. 233. Robert Hall Diaries 1954-1961, p. 260.

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It is difficult now to recall how dominant the Keynesian consensus in the British economics profession was in the third quarter of the twentieth century.39 One leading Keynesian, Harrod, predicted in 1969 that Keynes's influence would increase over the next twenty years and that the 'curious revival' of the money supply theory under the influence of Milton Friedman in Chicago was 'not likely' to 'have a long life'.40 It was one of Harrod's less accurate forecasts. Indeed some doubted Keynes's paternity of what passed for Keynesian economics, Axel Leijonhufvud and others drawing a sharp distinction between what Keynes had actually written and what Keynesians had made of his ideas in constructing models of the economy and in giving advice on policy instruments. 41 Even a politician, Sir Keith Joseph (admittedly a rather intellectual politician and a fellow of All Souls College), got into the 'what Keynes really said' controversy. Following the Conservatives' electoral defeat in 1974, itself a consequence of trying to solve the problems of stagflation through incomes policy, Joseph argued that government policies leading to over-full employment since the war had been a major cause of inflation and that 'if we wish to fight the battles of the seventies with the weapons of the thirties we would do well to find out what was actually said and done in the thirties, not least by Keynes himself'.42 In the event, when the Conservatives returned to power in 1979, they chose to fight their economic battles not with the weapons of Keynes but with those fashioned by Milton Friedman. The expulsion of the Keynesians from influence in Whitehall after 1979 had less to do with any corruption of Keynes's original text than with their failure to provide politicians either with accurate forecasts of economic trends or with policy instruments that could prevent inflation (incomes policies, which they had advocated, tended to break down after

39

40 41

42

For a highly critical account of the dominant attitudes of the Keynesian economic establishment, in particular that part of it which lived in Cambridge, see Elizabeth S. Johnson and Harry G. Johnson, The Shadow of Keynes: Understanding Keynes, Cambridge and Keynesian Economics (Oxford, 1978), esp. chs. 10, 11, 15 and 16. Roy Harrod, ' T h e Arrested Revolution', New Statesman, 5 D e c . 1969. A. Leijonhufvud, On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes: A Study in Monetary Theory ( N e w York, 1968). For an example of the almost theological debates on what Keynes 'really meant' see T . W . Hutchison, Keynes v. the 'Keynesians' . . .? (London, 1977), which has commentaries by two leading Keynesians, Lord Kahn and Sir Austin Robinson. Hutchison had already proved to be a thorn in the flesh for the Keynesian establishment with his Economics and Economic Policy in Britain, 1946-1966 (London, 1968), which showed, with ample quotations from Keynesian economists' own writings, h o w they had lost sight of their early post-war fears of the inflationary consequences of full employment and h o w many of their forecasts of economic trends had been wrong. Speech made at Preston, as reported in The Times, 6 Sept. 1974, p. 14.

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two or three years43). No economist correctly predicted the surge in inflation that occurred after 1973, but the Keynesians happened to be the economists providing the official advice at the time. Moreover, at the intellectual level, Keynesian economics, and in particular the New Cambridge School, happened to be particularly vulnerable to academic criticism since an unforeseen rise in savings in 1974—5 discredited the fundamental Keynesian assumption of the stability of the consumption function - that is to say, of a stable and predictable relationship between people's disposable incomes and their expenditure on goods and services.44 Finally, there now seemed to be a coherent alternative economic theory, monetarism, whose principal proponent, Friedman, went on record before a House of Commons committee in 1980 as saying that the monetary restriction that the government proposed to impose through its medium-term financial strategy (MTFS) would result in 'only a modest reduction in output and employment' as a 'side effect of reducing inflation to single figures by 1982'.45 In the event, accurate forecasting eluded the monetarists too: inflation, as measured by the rate of increase in the official retail price index, was reduced from 21.9 per cent in 1980 to 9.5 per cent in 1982, but at the price of a rise in unemployment from 5.3 per cent to 12.1 per cent (on the 1982 basis of calculation). Moreover, the money supply targets set in the MTFS proved to be difficult to hit and the chosen definition of money, sterling M3, was downgraded in 1985 and abandoned in 1987. IV The monetarist counter-revolution raises the question of how economic theories became part of 'official thinking'. In this process the fourth form of economic knowledge, informed opinion, has played a crucial role, although that role is not independent of economic and political circumstances. Informed opinion is made up of many strands, to which economists contribute, but 'official thinking' is principally concerned with opinion that is influencing the government of the day or its critics. The influence of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) may be taken as an example. The IEA was formed in 1957 as a research and educational trust to challenge the prevailing Keynesian, interventionist orthodoxy by arguing that markets offered a better means of solving economic problems than economic planners could. Lord Croham, who, 43 44

45

See Russell Jones, Wages and Employment Policy 1936-1985 (London, 1987). See Alan W a l t e r s , Economists and the British Economy, I E A Occasional P a p e r 54 ( L o n d o n , 1978). J i m T o m l i n s o n , Public Policy and the Economy since 1900 (Oxford 1990), p . 329.

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as Sir Douglas Allen, was head of the Home Civil Service from 1974 to 1977, has observed that the IEA's arguments did not gain much attention from civil servants until these arguments were adopted by Conservative leaders and became part of the currency of parliamentary debate. Once Margaret Thatcher came to power many IEA publications became prescribed reading for civil servants. 46 Financial journalism has also played an important part in formulating and expressing 'informed opinion'. Keynes himself exercised considerable skills as a journalist and pamphleteer. In the post-war period Keynesian ideas acquired a hegemony in the quality press, and two financial journalists in particular, Sam Brittan and Andrew Shonfield, could claim to have influenced political ideas on macroeconomic management and economic planning. Brittan subsequently converted to the monetarist faith, in the inflationary circumstances of the 1970s, and played a prominent role in detaching informed opinion away from the Keynesian beliefs to which most professional economists in Britain still subscribed. 47

The fifth form of economic knowledge is an understanding of the realities of political economy. This is the final filter for economic theory before it becomes part of official thinking. Looking back on the 1960s one can see that many economists were afflicted with hubris as regards their ability to promote economic growth while maintaining full employment and stable prices. In the circumstances the rapid increase in the number of economists in Whitehall may have been a mixed blessing, and the caution with which Keynesian ideas were received by senior civil servants in the 1950s no longer seems as unjustifiable as it did to some critics of Whitehall at the time. Caution was justified because the nature of the state in Britain is such that effective policy still rests upon consent as well as on economic theory. Consent itself is dependent upon values, attitudes and beliefs in relation to the state and, in particular, to its right to interfere in economic relationships. Consent in this sense is not simply a matter of parliamentary majorities. Consent means the willing co-operation of interested parties. For example, it was always clear that a successful, Keynesian, full-employment policy would depend, inter alia, upon 46

47

L o r d Croham, ' T h e I E A as Seen from t h e Civil Service', in The Emerging Consensus: Essays on the Interplay between Ideas, Interests and Circumstances in the First 25 Years of the IEA (London, 1981). Wayne Parsons, The Power of the Financial Press (Aldershot, 1989), ch. 3.

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restraint on the part of wage-earners. When that restraint broke down from the late 1960s, earlier fears of the inflationary consequences of full employment were all too quickly realised. By the 1980s not even so distinguished an economist as James Meade could gain ministers' attention with policy proposals for ensuring that pay awards should be fixed at levels that would promote employment.48 The realities of political economy clearly change with circumstances. What is less obvious is how perceptions of these realities interact with economic ideas in official thinking. In my own research on the Treasury, covering the period from 1905 to the late 1950s, I have been impressed by the way in which some younger officials may be more receptive than older officials to new ideas. The different degrees of receptivity may reflect different levels of experience, but, I suspect, they may also illustrate the truth of Keynes's remark in The General Theory that 'in the field of economics and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age'.49 It should not come as a surprise that even in the 1950s senior Treasury officials were less than wholehearted Keynesians. Sir Edward Bridges, the permanent secretary from 1945 to 1956, had first entered the Treasury in 1917; Sir Bernard Gilbert, his principal lieutenant, who likewise retired in 1956, had been in the Treasury since 1914, and Sir Herbert Brittain, who was responsible for much of the technical drafting of post-war budgets before his retirement in 1957, had been with the Treasury since 1919. It was only after the departure of that generation of Treasury knights that Keynesian economics could becomefinallypart of official thinking. It will be some time before historians will be able to document how Keynesian economics ceased to be part of official thinking but it would be surprising if after 1979 senior civil servants embraced monetarist doctrines unreservedly. Ultimately, of course, it is the responsibility of politicians to assess the realities of political economy. Few politicians have made their mark as economists, although George Goschen, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1887 to 1892, was also author of the Theory of Foreign Exchanges (1863) and was elected to be first President of the British Economic Association (later the Royal Economic Society) in 1890, and Hugh Dalton, who was President of the Board of Trade from 1942 to 1945 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947, was also the author of the Principles of Public Finance (1923). On the other hand, some economists have made their mark as politicians, Labour Party 48 49

James M e a d e , Stagflation^ vol. I, Wage-Fixing JMK, vol. V I I (1973), pp. 3 8 3 - 4 .

(London, 1982).

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leaders Hugh Gaitskell (1955-63) and Harold Wilson (1963-76) being notable examples, both having graduated from Oxford with first-class degrees in philosophy, politics and economics, and both having at one time earned their living from teaching economics before embarking on political careers. Most politicians, however, have had to assess the realities of political economy without the benefit of any professional training in economics. Inevitably they rely upon their advisers for economic knowledge but few, if any, have chosen to rely upon professional economists alone for advice. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in particular, receives much advice from the Governor of the Bank of England, the City, the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress, as well as from officials in his own department, most of whom would describe themselves as administrators rather than as economists. VI To recap, the twentieth century has seen an unprecedented increase in demand for economic knowledge, but this economic knowledge has been widely diffused and has not been confined to professional economists. The present Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns, is a professional economist who in the 1970s played a part in both academic journals and the financial press in promoting monetarist ideas. However, prior to his appointment as permanent secretary, he has also had eleven years as head of the Government's Economic Service, during which time he presumably became acquainted with the realities of political economy. He therefore can be seen as someone acquainted with three of my five categories of economic knowledge. Whether history will judge him to be an improvement on his predecessors, most of whom studied classics or history at university, remains to be seen. Economic theory and economic knowledge are not synonymous. Economic theory helps one to frame questions but the answers depend upon access to information, knowledge of finance and industry, contact with informed opinion and an understanding of the realities of political economy. Economists can clarify the nature of choices open to policymakers and the community, but the choices are made by policy-makers and the community.

Part III

Welfare and social policy

9

The dilemmas of welfare: Titmuss, Murray and Mead Alan Deacon

Welfare is central to any discussion of the role of the state. On the most narrow of definitions it represents over half of public expenditure, while social security alone accounts for more than one third. This means that social policy is at the forefront of debates about what are appropriate and sustainable levels of public spending, borrowing and taxation. In recent years, however, the argument as to what should constitute the boundaries of the state has been given a new focus and a new intensity by the emergence of the related concepts of behavioural dependency and the underclass. The point at issue here is the extent to which state benefits and services may exacerbate the very problems they are supposed to alleviate. The payment of more generous unemployment benefits inevitably reduces the pressures upon those who receive them to seek work or to accept whatever jobs are available. Similarly, the provision of improved access to housing and enhanced income support for one parent families must make the position of particularly the young single mother less onerous than in earlier years. There is now widespread concern that such changes have made dependency upon the state a more attractive and a more practicable alternative to self-reliance. It is also argued that any lessening of the stigma which was formerly suffered by those in receipt of welfare must lead to a corresponding reduction in the social status of those who continue to support themselves by their own efforts. The result, in the words of a former Secretary of State for Social Services, is the growth of a 'dependency culture' in which 'people act in bizarre ways because they are responding to perverse incentives'.1 Those who claim to have identified such 'perverse incentives' have gone on to argue not only that the aggregate level of state support should be reduced, but also that the manner in which it is administered should be radically reformed. Two changes in particular are held to be essential if welfare dependency is to be reduced. First, benefits should become 1

Lecture by John Moore to the Institute of Directors, 8 June 1988.

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more conditional in the sense that they would be paid only to those who agree to alter their behaviour. Second, the allocation of benefits and services should become more judgemental, in that help would be withheld from those who are judged to have brought their difficulties upon themselves. These ideas are scarcely new. In different forms they variously represent a reformulation of the principles of the nineteenth-century poor law, or echo the views of Beatrice Webb or the Charity Organisation Society. There is, however, a contradiction between this renewed emphasis upon conditionality and judgementalism on the one hand and the provision of benefits and services as of right on the other. Moreover, this is itself one aspect of a broader contrast between the uncompromising individualism of much of the writing on behavioural dependency and the egalitarian collectivism which characterises the dominant normative tradition in British social policy, that associated with Richard Titmuss. Titmuss was committed to the pursuit of the goals of equality and community through the provision of universal social services, entitlement to which did not depend upon the financial circumstances or personal conduct of individuals. It is argued in this chapter that the overwhelming importance which Titmuss attached to the eradication of stigma, and the optimistic view of human nature which underpinned all of his work, lead him to ignore or dismiss questions of behaviour and motivation. It is further argued that the result of this was to leave the Titmuss tradition vulnerable to the resurgence of individualist analyses of poverty and disadvantage. That resurgence owed much to the work of two American conservatives, Charles Murray and Lawrence Mead, whose writings focussed on precisely those questions of personal responsibility and labour market behaviour which Titmuss had neglected. The focus of this chapter, then, is upon what are called here the 'dilemmas of welfare'. This term is used to refer to the clear and obvious tension between the objective of meeting needs and the objective of establishing a framework of incentives and penalties which is conducive to the creation of wealth and the maintenance of traditional family structures.2 The primary purpose is to document and discuss the conflicting analyses of these dilemmas provided by Titmuss and by Murray and Mead. It is not suggested that the notion of behavioural dependency offers a convincing or even a plausible explanation of the persistence of 2

The extent to which the maintenance of traditional family structures should be an objective of policy is currently a matter of great controversy. It was not, however, questioned by either Titmuss, Murray or Mead.

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poverty in contemporary industrial societies. It is suggested, however, that the attention paid to this and similar concepts on both sides of the Atlantic reflects the continuing relevance of theories of social pathology to debates about the goals and limitations of state welfare. Before proceeding to this discussion, however, the chapter provides a brief indication of ways in which the same dilemmas were perceived and debated by Beveridge and some of his contemporaries. The dilemmas of welfare and the 'classic welfare state' The term the 'classic welfare state' was first used by Anne Digby to refer to the social policy legislation of the 1940s.3 The defining characteristic of that legislation was universalism; benefits and services were to be open to all and used by all. It is widely accepted that the experience of war fostered an unprecedented sense of social unity and engendered a national mood which was intolerant of privilege and less prepared to see social problems as the product of individual failing. This was reflected in what Titmuss called the 'less discriminating scope and quality of the war-time social services'.4 Nonetheless, the most important manifestations of the dramatic changes which had occurred in popular expectations of government were the proposals contained in the Beveridge Report and the public euphoria which greeted its publication in 1942. As Lowe has pointed out, the proposals made in the Report were often little more than rationalisations or developments from previous practice. 'Cumulatively, however, they had a totally different significance.' Benefits were now to safeguard the invididual against the loss or interruption of earnings caused by any of the anticipated contingencies 'from the cradle to the grave'. They were to be sufficient for subsistence but paid without reference to a means test. This meant that the great majority of people were to be 'released by the state from the fear of poverty - hitherto a predominant and constraining influence on their lives - and given a freedom which previously had been the exclusive privilege of the rich. This was, by any historic standard, a revolution.' No less remarkable was the fact that 'the guarantee of subsistence by government came to be widely accepted not so much as a threat to, but as a precondition of personal responsibility'.5 It is true, of course, that this acceptance did not extend to everyone in 3 4 5

A. Digby, British Welfare Policy (London, 1989). The term is used extensively in R. Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain Since 1945 (London, 1993). R. M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London, 1950), p. 506. Lowe, The Welfare State, pp. 13, 122.

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Whitehall, and the failure of both the wartime Coalition and post-war Labour governments fully to implement Beveridge's proposals has been comprehensively documented. It is also widely recognised that both governments were extremely anxious to maintain work incentives.6 The focus here, however, is upon the more specific question as to how far Beveridge himself was concerned that the payments of subsistence benefits would have unintended and unwelcome effects upon the behaviour of those who received them. Recent writing on the Beveridge Report has highlighted the ambiguities and contradictions within it. Glennerster and Evans, for example, have argued that the Report did not embody a 'coherent view of social security', but instead reflected Beveridge's attempt to reconcile his conflicting objectives. Foremost amongst these was his desire to 'cover everything and everyone without a means test', but to do so by extending social insurance to cover all those in paid employment. 'He wished to give security to all but to base this security, apart from family allowances, on participation in the labour market, not to citizenship status.'7 One consequence of this was the exclusion of those who had not been contributors themselves and were not the recognised dependant of someone who had paid contributions. These people would have to receive means tested assistance which would be an 'essential subsidiary' element in the plan for social security. At the same time, however, Beveridge's determination to preserve the contributory principle lead him to 'steadily downgrade the generosity and acceptability of assistance'. In his first memorandum to the other members of the Committee in December 1941, Beveridge wrote that it was essential that an assistance scheme 'leave the person assisted with an effective motive to avoid the need for assistance and to rely on earnings or insurance . . . Further, an assistance scheme which makes those assisted unamenable to economic rewards or punishments while treating them as free citizens is inconsistent with the principles of a free community.'8 This meant that whilst insurance benefits were to be free of any tests of character or conduct, assistance should always be provided in such a way as to 6

7

8

Digby, British Welfare Policy, p. 48; J. Macnicol, The Movement for Family Allowances (London, 1981); A. Deacon, 'The Duration of Unemployment Benefit under the National Insurance Act 1946', in L. Burghes and R. Lister (eds.), Unemployment: Who Pays the Price? (London, 1981). H. Glennerster and M. Evans, 'Beveridge and His Assumptive Worlds', Proceedings on the Conference on Social Security: 50 Years After Beveridge (York, 1992), vol. I, pp. 17-31. 'Basic Problems of Social Security with Heads of a Scheme', CAB 87/76 No. 20, Public Record Office (PRO).

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condone any 'breach of citizen obligations'.9 It will be seen later that these phrases have a very modern ring. It should be stressed here, however, that Beveridge's view of what was appropriate for those dependent upon assistance was shared by many in Whitehall and, above all, by the members and officials of the post-war National Assistance Board. The number and diversity of those receiving assistance far exceeded the anticipated 'cripples and deformed, deaf and dumb, mentally deficient, and vagrants and moral weaklings'.10 Nonetheless, the Board remained preoccupied with the need to differentiate the deserving from the undeserving, and to retain a clear distinction between insurance and assistance. The poor law tradition was similarly preserved within the provision made for homeless families under Part 3 of the National Assistance Act of 1948. n The most important of Beveridge's recommendations for present discussion, however, were those relating to the long-term unemployed. It is generally known that Beveridge proposed that unemployment benefit should be unlimited in duration, but that after a period of some six months it should become conditional upon attendance at a work or training centre. The rationale for this was quite straightforward. It was clear that needs tended to increase rather than diminish if unemployment was prolonged, and so it would be wrong in principle not to pay benefit for as long as the claimant remained genuinely unemployed. At the same time, Beveridge argued, the provision of benefits 'which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration' brought with it the danger 'that men, as creatures who adapt themselves to circumstances, may settle down to them'. It followed from this that the 'correlative' of unlimited benefit was the 'enforcement of the citizen's obligation to seek and accept all reasonable opportunities of work . . . [and] to co-operate in measures designed to save him from habituation to idleness'.12 In his first paper to the Committee Beveridge had insisted that 'indefinite cash allowances to men of working age represent fundamentally wrong treatment, since such men need rehabilitation or training for transfer'.13 For Beveridge then the training condition was necessary to forestall 9

10 11

12 13

Social Insurance and Allied Services (SIAS), Report by Sir William Beveridge, Cmd. 6404 (1942), p. 70. This was the phrase used by the Committee. Glennerster and Evans 'Beveridge', p. 21. For the early years of the National Assistance Board, A. Deacon and J. Bradshaw, Reserved for the Poor (London, 1983), pp. 99-105. For the treatment of homeless families, B. Glastonbury, Homeless Near a Thousand Homes (London, 1971), pp. 38-45. The 'disciplinary' aspects of post-war policies are highlighted and discussed in P. Squires, Anti-Social Policy (London, 1990). SIAS, p. 58. 'Basic Problems of Social Security with Heads of a Scheme', CAB 87/76 No. 20, PRO.

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the 'demoralisation' which would otherwise result from prolonged unemployment. By such 'demoralisation', however, Beveridge did not mean a process of corruption by idleness leading to malingering or fraud. Rather he viewed demoralisation as something which arose out of the experience of rejection. It was the feeling of worthlessness engendered by being unwanted, the loss of self-esteem suffered by those denied the first condition of happiness - 'the opportunity of useful service'.14 In the event neither the Coalition nor the Labour government was prepared to countenance unlimited benefit, which was believed to pose too great a threat to work incentives, and neither saw a training condition as necessary or feasible. Nonetheless, Beveridge's concern at the impact of unemployment upon individuals was widely shared. Indeed it was expressed with stark clarity by Ernest Bevin. A man who remains compulsorily unemployed for many months gradually adjusts himself to a lower level of mental and physical activity. He does so in self protection and often he develops a protective ailment: he loses heart, and the better man he is the more he deteriorates, for the chief sufferers in this respect are those to whom it is morally intolerable to be one of the unwanted.15 This was also an important theme in the writings of contemporaries such as Tawney and Temple. Tawney, for example, argued that the debilitating effects of prolonged unemployment were the most compelling reason why it should not be tolerated, while Temple was still more explicit. 'The worst evil of unemployment', he wrote, was that it created in the unemployed 'a sense that they have fallen out of the common life . . . That is the thing that has the power to corrupt the soul of any man not already far advanced in saintliness.' A man with 'no opportunity of service' became 'according to his temperament' either a 'contented loafer or an embittered self-seeker', and the payment of benefit alone offered no remedy for this 'moral isolation'.16 It is important to keep such views in context. There is no doubt that the legislation which established the 'classic welfare state' did reflect and embody a greater recognition of the structural causes of poverty and deprivation. Nonetheless, the detailed provisions of that legislation also reflected the firm belief of both the Coalition and Labour governments that it was necessary to ensure that those who benefited from it still had a powerful incentive to seek work and to accept responsibility for their 14 15 16

W. H. Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society (London, 44), p. 122. 'Sanctions Applicable to the Recalcitrant or Workshy', PR (43) 64, PRO. W. Temple, Christianity and the Social Order (London, 1976 edn), p. 34. For a recent discussion of Temple see P. Wilding, 'Re-Review: William Temple's Christianity and the Social Order \ Modern Churchman, 34, 2 (1992), 40-9.

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families. Moreover, even amongst those most closely identified with the values which underpinned the 'classic welfare state' there remained a residual concern with the impact of welfare upon individual behaviour and attitudes and with the limitations of providing only cash benefits for the unemployed. Such concerns were to be expressed less often in the post-war years. The dilemmas neglected: the Titmuss tradition The work of Richard Titmuss dominated the academic study of social policy for much of the post-war period. As Robert Pinker has commented, 'few scholars have so dominated the development of an academic subject over so long a period of time as did Richard Titmuss. He was one of those rare thinkers who are able to shift the whole focus of debate in a field of study.' Similarly, Hilary Rose has written that at its 'height the Titmuss school reigned unchallenged over the construction of social policy'.17 Titmuss also exercised a significant influence upon public policy, most notably during the Labour governments of the 1960s. Indeed, Rodney Lowe has recently identified Titmuss as one of the three 'leading postwar social democratic thinkers', the others being Anthony Crosland and T. H. Marshall.18 Titmuss was first and foremost a moralist. What interested and animated Titmuss above all else were the moral choices which underlay policy decisions. As Mike Miller has observed, Titmuss regarded data as 'a product, not an uncovering'. All that research and enquiry could do was to identify options: the real issue was the values that determined the objectives of policy. 'The greatest legacy of Titmuss', argued Miller, was 'the profundity of his vision, the effort to provide a philosophical and moral direction for the Welfare State'. And for Titmuss that direction was the pursuit of equality and social integration. Indeed one was a means for the other, as Miller again has stressed. 'For Titmuss equality was a crucial goal but it was also a means. His objective was to restore and deepen the sense of community and mutual care in society.'19 This, of course, has been widely recognised and documented, and so too has the profound influence upon Titmuss of the Christian Socialist 17

18 19

R. Pinker, Preface to D. A. Reisman, Richard Titmuss: Welfare and Society (London, 1977): 'Rereading Titmuss: The Sexual Division of Welfare', Journal of Social Policy, 10, 4 (1981), 484. Lowe, The Welfare State, p. 19. S. M. Miller, 'The Legacy of Richard Titmuss', in B. Abel-Smith and K. Titmuss (eds.), The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard Titmuss (London, 1987),

pp. 6-8.

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thought of Richard Tawney. Vaizey, for example, refers to Titmuss as Tawney's 'spiritual heir'.20 Like Tawney, Titmuss believed that a substantial measure of equality was essential for the creation of a common culture and a sense of common fellowship. Moreover, Titmuss also shared the deontological nature of Tawney's thought. As a Christian moralist Tawney did not seek to justify equality on the basis of arguments about rights, or in consequentialist terms. All people are of equal worth by virtue of their relationship with their Creator and this fundamental equality of respect underpinned all of Tawney's work. Titmuss, of course, did not share Tawney's faith but he did echo entirely the perfectionist assumption that some forms of social organisation were superior to others. In 1939 Tawney had written, 'Man is compelled to live in twilight, but darkness is darkness and light is light, what matters is the direction in which his face is set.' Titmuss was to misquote that phrase on more than one occasion, writing once, for example, that 'what matters to the health of society is the objective to which its face is set'.21 The crucial point, however, is that in Titmuss, as in Tawney, the prior claims of equality are assumed not argued. What Titmuss did argue was that universal social services possessed a unique potential to combine these two objectives; not only to redistribute resources but to do so in a manner which itself fostered a sense of community and mutual care. The realisation of that potential, however, depended on two things. The first was universalism, and Titmuss devoted some of his most powerful writing to attacking the idea that means tests offered a ready and easy way of targeting benefits on the 'poor'. The pivotal concept here was stigma. Following Goffman, Titmuss defined stigma as 'spoiled identity': 'felt and experienced discrimination and disapproval on grounds of poverty, ethnic group, class, mental fitness and other criteria of "bad risks" in all the complex processes of selection-rejection in our society'. The 'fundamental challenge' was to devise mechanisms which would make it possible to distribute 'social rights without stigma'.22 Titmuss's failure to make specific reference to gender now appears anachronistic, but the experience of the past twenty-five years has more than vindicated both his argument that 'separate state systems for the poor . . . tend to become poor standard systems', and his contemptuous dismissal of 'the extra20 21

22

J. Vaizey (ed.), Whatever Happened to Equality? (London, 1975), p. 34. Tawney's words are quoted in D . A. Reisman, State and Welfare (London, 1982), p. 37. Titmuss's are in his introduction to the 1964 edition of Tawney's Equality, in B. Abel-Smith and K. T i t m u s s (eds.), The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard Titmuss (London, 1987), p. 25. 'Issues of Redistribution in Social Policy', in Commitment to Welfare (London, 1968), pp. 142-3.

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ordinary administrative naivety' of those who foresaw a 'computer solution to the problems of means testing'. 23 Of particular relevance to the present chapter, however, is the second condition which had to be met if stigma was to be eradicated. This was that the social services should be non-judgemental; that the provision of benefits could not be subjected to conditions or requirements which suggested that needs arose as a result of individual behaviour or personal failing. In his inaugural lecture in 1951, Titmuss all but raced the development of social administration as a subject in terms of a shift from individualist to structural understandings of poverty, and quoted with approval Tawney's 'warning' that 'The problem of poverty is not a problem of individual character and its waywardness, but a problem of economic and industrial organisation. It had to be studied first at its sources and, only secondly in its manifestations.'24 Poverty could never be relieved by measures which focussed upon the character of those affected, and 'social rights' could not be conferred by benefits which stereotyped those who received them as a public burden. To be sure, Titmuss did recognise that, at the general level, social security systems had, as he put it, to balance the need for 'equitable treatment and adequate provision' on the one hand with the need to avoid building in disincentives to full-time work or to the stability of the family on the other.25 These, however, were not issues to which he devoted much attention. In a paper published in 1970, for example, he specifically criticised the notion that they could be resolved, and quoted with approval Isaiah Berlin on the misplaced hopes - and worse - which stemmed from the 'ancient faith . . . that all the positive values in which men have believed must in the end be compatible'.26 In another paper he emphasised the need to balance the goal of 'effective' policies with the 'right of the consumer to certain services irrespective of their morals and patterns of behaviour'.27 One illustration of this which he gave to his students is particularly striking to readers in the 1990s. Swedish experience, he said, had demonstrated that it was possible for public agencies to recover from absent fathers a substantial proportion of the 23

24

25

26 27

'Universal and Selective Social Services', in B. A b e l - S m i t h and K. T i t m u s s (eds.), The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard Titmuss (London, 1987), p. 138. 'Social Administration in a Changing Society', in Essays on the Welfare State (1958), p. 18. Halsey and D e n n i s have claimed that T i t m u s s went so far as to mock T a w n e y in his lecture for his belief in the importance of moral character, although there is nothing to suggest this in the printed version. English Ethical Socialism (London, 1988), p. 254. 'Equality, Adequacy, and Innovation in Social Security', in B. Abel-Smith and K. T i t m u s s (eds.), The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard Titmuss (London, 1987), p. 230. Ibid., p. 220. ' T h e Health and Welfare Complex', in Commitment to Welfare (London, 1968), p. 69.

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monies paid to the women and children they had abandoned. This 'success', however, could mean 'a failure to preserve privacy and the freedom to disappear for a majority of citizens'.28 Titmuss's disinclination to dwell on these questions was reinforced by two other aspects of his thought. One was the extraordinary optimism which he sometimes displayed regarding future economic performance. An essay published in 1965, for example, provided a powerful critique of the then fashionable 'end of ideology' thesis, and went on to argue that in 'an age of abundance of things, the production of consumption goods will become a subsidiary question for the West'. The central question should be 'What are we to do with our wealth?', not how to enforce the work ethic or how to compel people to save for old age. 'Social workers, teachers, doctors and social administrators find their functions imprisoned by the virtues of hard work and profit, virtues that are rooted in the economics of scarcity . . . They have no relevance to the economics of abundance.'29 Titmuss's disdain for the 'economics of scarcity' stemmed in part from a striking faith in the 'social consequences of the march of science and technology'. More fundamentally, however, it reflected a still more striking optimism regarding human nature. This found its strongest expression in Titmuss's last major work, The Gift Relationship. In this Titmuss contrasted the National Blood Transfusion Service in Britain with the operation of commercial markets for blood in other countries, particularly the United States. He claimed to have demonstrated that the blood supplied by voluntary donors was far superior in terms of its purity and the dependability of its supply than that obtained from commercial donors. These findings had an enormous impact: The Gift Relationship became a best-seller in the United States and lead Elliot Richardson, then Secretary of State for Health, Education and Welfare, to consult Titmuss personally over the reform of commercial blood banks. For Titmuss, the blood transfusion service in Britain was a clear example of the ways in which social institutions could foster a sense of community and thereby 'help to actualise the social and moral potentialities of all citizens'. Indeed, he specifically claimed that the giving of blood was a 'practical and concrete demonstration' of Tawney's notion of fellowship. But The Gift Relationship went on not only to impute a high idealism to those who gave blood but to generalise from this and talk of a social and biological need to help which was denied by competi28 29

Social Policy, p. 54. 'Social Welfare and the Art of Giving', in B. Abel-Smith and K. T i t m u s s (eds.), The Philosophy of Welfare: Selected Writings of Richard Titmuss (London, 1987), p. 125.

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tive market relationships but given expression by universal social services. Ultimately, the freedom to behave altruistically could only be safeguarded by the 'intervention of the state acting through the instrument of non-discriminatory social institutions'.30 It is extremely unlikely, however, that Tawney would have shared Titmuss's optimism. It was noted earlier that Titmuss did not share Tawney's religious faith, and, as Robinson has pointed out, this meant that there was a crucial difference between them. This was that Tawney held a Christian view of men and women 'as sinful as well as capable of compassion'. This precluded 'any simple appeal to, or reliance upon, altruism' and led Tawney 'to stress responsiblities and duties rather than rights'. In contrast, Titmuss's 'view of humanity' was 'far more optimistic . . . Hence his moralism emphasises the duties of the state to the individual and not the obligations of the individual.'31 This 'over-optimistic view of human nature' was reflected not only in the rhetorical language of The Gift Relationship but also in Titmuss's indifference towards issues of personal responsibility or work incentives. The theologian Ronald Preston, for example, has noted that although Tawney saw socialism as following from 'principles rooted in the Christian faith, those most keen to acknowledge their debt to Tawney rarely refer to the Christianity but only to the principles'. Preston went on specifically to cite Titmuss as an example of those who 'have been misled by the Utopian element in Tawney's thought (without noting his qualifications). They often make the mistake of stressing only the dignity of man; they underplay his sinfulness. This . . . has the effect of presenting people of conservative disposition with an entirely unnecessary weapon. They are able to scoff at radicals and socialists as impractical idealists who do not understand the realities of human nature.'32 It is argued here that the Titmuss tradition is characterised by just such a vulnerability to conservative criticism. This is not to suggest that there was - or is - any substance in the wild allegations of fraud and abuse which surface from time to time. Nor is it to suggest that the social security system actually operates in anything like the non-judgemental manner which Titmuss advocated. Indeed, Sinfield has criticised Titmuss specifically for his failure to recognise and discuss the ways in which social security can be used to maintain social control.33 30 31

32 33

The Gift Relationship (London, 1970), p p . 238, 243. S. Robinson, 'Tawney's T h e o r y of Equality' P h D thesis, University of Edinburgh (1987), p p . 190, 199, 214. R. Preston, Religion and the Persistence of Capitalism (London, 1979), p. 109. A . Sinfield, 'Analyses in t h e Social Division of Welfare', Journal of Social Policy, 7, 2 (1978), 125-56.

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What is being considered here, however, is a normative tradition which has exercised a profound influence over academic discussion of social policy, and which has consistently neglected issues of incentives and obligations. Titmuss was dismissive of what he termed the 'handmaiden' model of welfare, which held that 'social needs should be met on the basis of merit, work performance and productivity', and which was derived from 'various economic and psychological theories concerned with incentive, effort and reward'.34 Titmuss had no time whatsoever for such 'theories', and regarded the argument that progressive taxation would impede the performance of the economy as simply a rationale for the perpetuation of inequalities. It is true, of course, that Titmuss's acceptance of public office - particularly as Deputy Chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission - meant that he had to make a greater accommodation than he may have wished to popular concerns with abuse and work incentives.35 In his writings, however, such concerns were not so much refuted as ignored. In 1967 he told the inaugural meeting of the then Social Administration Association that its subject was not 'a messy conglomeration of the technical ad hoc' but had a 'unifying interest' in 'social institutions that foster integration and discourage alienation'. He went on to identify eight 'major fields of teaching and research'. None included a specific reference to the labour market.36 The Titmuss tradition, then, is open to accusations of naivety regarding the pattern of individual rewards and sanctions which are necessary for wealth creation. More fundamentally, however, its emphasis upon non-judgementalism has appeared at times to lead to a position of almost total determinism and to a complete denial of personal responsibility. This is in part a reflection of the highly polarised nature of British debates about social policy. Titmuss himself always wrote as a participant in a debate, and even his most influential concepts such as the Social Division of Welfare were first formulated to give expression to an argument rather than as heuristic devices. His debates with the Institute of Economic Affairs over the role of the means test were classic examples of what Alice Rivlin, calls 'forensic social science'.37 He fought his corner; and he expected others to do the same. 34 35

36

37

R. M . Titmuss, Social Policy, p. 3 1 . Reisman has pointed out that Titmuss was not averse to using benefits to create incentives to smaller families in Tanganyika in the 1960s: Richard Titmuss, p. 17. ' T h e Subject of Social Administration', in Commitment to Welfare (London, 1968), pp. 2 2 - 3 . A. Rivlin, 'Forensic Social Science', Harvard Educational Review, 43 (1973), 61-75, quoted in M . Olneck, 'Schooling', in S. McLanahan et al., Losing Ground: A Critique (Wisconsin, 1985).

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Titmuss adopted the same adversarial approach in his emphatic rejection of any proposal which appeared to him to seek to 'blame the victim5 or to resurrect the discredited individualism of the poor law. The point here, however, is that the irrelevance of individualist explanations of poverty was asserted rather than argued. This was a question which was now settled and did not warrant further enquiry. Indeed, to discuss further the relative importance of personal and structural causes of poverty would be to grant the former a credence and significance which they did not deserve.38 One consequence of this is that writers within the Titmuss tradition have been highly suspicious of the principle of conditionality and unsympathetic to arguments regarding the obligations of those receiving benefits. In particular the Titmuss tradition has proved to be ill equipped to resolve the complex issues raised by the recent revival of interest in Beveridge's idea that the unemployed be required to accept work or training as a condition of receiving benefit.39 It was, of course, just such issues of personal responsibility and of labour market behaviour which were in the forefront of the assault on collectivist social welfare which was mounted in the 1980s. The dilemmas enthroned: Mr Murray and Dr Mead There has been a resurgence of interest in individualist analyses of poverty in recent years, and particularly in the notion of behavioural dependency. This rests on the assumption that it is possible to distinguish between poverty which is due to a lack of income or opportunities and poverty which 'springs in significant measure' from the behaviour of the poor themselves. The latter arises either because of 'an inability to cope' on resources which are adequate for others, or because the poor have been induced to adopt a damaging lifestyle by the availability of benefit and other cultural influences.40 There is now an extensive literature on behavioural dependency and its impact upon particularly the third Thatcher government.41 There is no doubt, however, that the two most important writers on this and the associated notion of an 38

39

40 41

Another important factor here was Titmuss's personal charisma, and his remarkable capacity to enthuse others and to communicate his intense beliefs and moral certainties. John Vaizey, an unsympathetic critic, remarked on his 'ability to hint at the inexpressible, at a complex pattern of ideas and values to which kindred spirits would feel attracted': In Breach of Promise (London, 1983), p. 61. A. Deacon, 'Whose Obligations? Work and Welfare in the 1990s', Benefits, 5 (1992), 14-17. M . Novak (ed.), The New Consensus on Family and Welfare (Milwaukee, 1987), p. 5. See, for example, H. Dean and P. Taylor-Gooby, Dependency Culture (London, 1992); A. Deacon, 'The Retreat from State Welfare', in S. Becker (ed.), Windows of Opportunity (London, 1992).

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underclass have been the American conservatives Charles Murray and Lawrence Mead. That two American writers should have had such an impact in Britain is something which would have angered Titmuss greatly. It was no more reasonable to 'generalise . . . from American values or experiences', he argued, than it was to 'generalise about the effects of the caste system in India'. The problem with many American writers on social policy was that their ideas were steeped in 'American values and mythologies about independence, work, thrift, private enterprise, the self-made man, the self-made President'. This led them to denigrate both public services and the people who received them. 'It seems', he said, 'that the American middle-classes (including many American academics) need scapegoats to sustain their values. And the welfare system is a scapegoat par exellence.'42 These comments were made during a course of introductory lectures last delivered just before his death in 1973, but they must rank amongst the most perceptive and prophetic of his writings. In truth it is difficult to think of two writers who differ more starkly than do Titmuss and Murray. Charles Murray's Losing Ground was published in 1984. It offered two things, an assertion about data and an interpretation of that data. In consequence the book generated two parallel but discrete debates; one about the accuracy and validity of the statistics presented by Murray, the other about the extent to which his analyses provided a plausible account of whatever changes had occurred. Murray's central claim was that the effect of the American War on Poverty programmes of the 1960s and 1970s was to worsen the problems they were supposed to relieve. On any indicator - jobs, incomes, crime, the family - the relative disadvantage of the poor was greater after those programmes than before. Two trends were especially striking. First, the proportion of children born out of wedlock had increased to a level which constituted the virtual collapse of the family - and particularly of the black family. Second, the labour force participation rates of black young men had declined so dramatically as to indicate that a significant proportion were simply refusing to work. Murray had no doubt that these trends were the direct result of the changes made to the welfare system. The 'effect of the new rules was to make it profitable for the poor to behave in the short term in ways that were destructive in the long term . . . We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape from poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.' 43 42 43

T i t m u s s , Social Policy, p . 4 5 . C. M u r r a y , Losing Ground ( N e w York, 1984), p . 9.

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In explaining the impact of the welfare changes Murray began with the 'proposition that all, poor and not-poor alike, use the same general calculus in arriving at decisions; only the exigencies are different. Poor people play with fewer chips and cannot wait as long for results . . . the behaviours that are "rational" are different at different economic levels.'44 Thus the increase in the rates of benefit paid to single mothers, together with the liberalisation of the rules relating to cohabitation, had the effect of greatly increasing the attractiveness of young motherhood compared to low-paid work or marriage to a husband on a low wage. A further effect of the same benefit changes was to lessen the pressure on young men to work since it was now easier for them to evade financial responsibility for children they had fathered. Moreover, the impact of all this was compounded by other changes: there were fewer penalties for those who didn't attend school; it was less likely that someone committing a crime would be caught or that they would be imprisoned if they were caught. None of the individual links is nearly as important as the aggregate change between the world in which a poor youngster grew up in the 1950s and the one in which he or she grew up in the 1970s. All the changes in the incentives pointed in the same direction. It was easier to get along without a job. It was easier for a man to have a baby without being responsible for it, for a woman to have a baby without having a husband. It was easier to get away with crime. Because it was Because easier for others to get away with crime, it was easier to obtain drugs . . . 45 it was easier to get along without a job, it was easier to ignore education. Not surprisingly, Losing Ground created a furore in the United States, and virtually every facet of Murray's analysis has been subject to intense scrutiny and challenge. An important feature of the debates which took place in the 1980s was the way in which Murray shifted his position from one which stressed the rationality of the poor, to one which emphasised the broader influences upon their behaviour. Amongst the earliest critics of Losing Ground, for example, were Ellwood and Bane, who challenged Murray's argument that the growth in single parent families was due to the greater generosity of the welfare system. They pointed out that the real value of the benefits paid to single mothers actually declined in the 1970s, although the numbers claiming those benefits continued to rise. Murray's response was to argue that there was a 'threshold' or 'break-even' level of benefit at which it was possible for a young woman to cope as a single mother. 'Once this break point is passed, welfare benefits become an enabling factor: they do not cause single women to decide to have a baby, but they enable women who are 44

Ibid., p. 155.

45

Ibid., p. 175.

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pregnant to make the decision to keep the baby.' Above this point, further fluctuations in the level of benefit were of little significance.46 In 1990, Murray told a British audience that the 'problem' was that benefits 'enabled many young women to do something they would naturally like to do'. Higher benefits and privileged access to housing were part of a process 'whereby having a baby as a single mother went from "extremely punishing" to "not so bad" . . . for a low income woman it provided a standard of living no worse and often better than she endured living with her parents. Meanwhile, sex was as fun as ever and babies were as endearing as ever.'47 Moreover, the cumulative effect over time would be to change expectations, and to create a climate in which young women from poor backgrounds would regard single motherhood as normal. In effect Murray was now arguing that the greatest danger was that the 'perverse incentives' generated by the benefit system would create new patterns of behaviour which would then become self-perpetuating. The mechanism through which this would happen would be changes in the values held within low-income communities, and the clearest and most disturbing example of this process was the erosion of work incentives amongst poor young males. In Losing Ground Murray argued that the objective of the reforms of the 1960s had been to eradicate the stigma attached to receipt of welfare. The outcome, however, had been to diminish the relative status of those in jobs, and especially of those undertaking unpleasant work for an income little greater than that provided by benefits. The effect was thus to withdraw 'the status reinforcements for upward mobility', and the impact upon the young was particularly damaging. To someone who is not yet persuaded of the satisfactions of making one's own way, there is something laughable about a person who doggedly keeps working at a lousy job for no tangible reason at all. And when working no longer provides either income or status, the last reason for working has truly vanished. The man who keeps working is, in fact, a chump.48 The eradication of stigma which for Titmuss had been the overriding goal of social policy was for Murray the central cause of the decline in the labour force participation of young blacks. Here again, however, Murray was later to stress the cumulative processes at work, writing in 46

47 48

T h e debate is summarised in D . Ellwood a n d L . S u m m e r s 'Poverty in America: Is Welfare Really to Blame?', in S. Danziger a n d D . W e i n b e r g (eds.), Fighting Poverty: What Works and What Doesn't (Cambridge, M a s s . , 1986); C. M u r r a y , ' H a v e t h e Poor Been " L o s i n g G r o u n d " ? ' , Political Science Quarterly, 100, 3 (1985), 427^15. C. M u r r a y , The Emerging British Underclass ( L o n d o n , 1990), p . 30. M u r r a y , Losing Ground, p . 185.

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1990 that it was an 'irretrievable disaster for young men to grow up without being socialised into the world of work'. The end product was an underclass which was characterised not by its condition but by its 'deplorable behaviour in response to that condition'. Britain too now had a 'growing population of working-aged, healthy people who live in a different world from other Britons, who are raising their children to live in it and whose values are now contaminating the life of entire neighbourhoods'.49 The remedies which Murray proposed were correspondingly drastic. In effect, he advocated the withdrawal of all cash benefits other than short-term contributory insurance. The poor were to be thrown back on either the labour market or local charities. This was not the most practical of programmes, as Murray once admitted with engaging candour; 'for me to expand upon my policy prescriptions is to give large numbers of readers too easy an excuse for ignoring my analysis of the problem, on the grounds that I am obviously a nut. So I do not say much about policy.'50 There are others, however, who share Murray's trenchant individualism but who do have a great deal to say about policy. By far the most influential of these is Lawrence Mead. Like Murray, Mead began with the failure of the War on Poverty programmes. The growth in poverty, he believed, stemmed primarily from the failure of the poor to work. This was not because jobs were not available, but because the poor either would not take them, or could not keep them. In his most influential book, Beyond Entitlement, Mead argued that a successful civic society required 'competent' citizens. 'The capacities to learn, work, support one's family, and respect rights of others amount to a set of social obligations.' Increasing numbers of Americans, however, were no longer able to fulfil these obligations, and for Mead it was this which delineated and defined the growing 'underclass'. 'It comprises those Americans who combine relatively low income with functioning problems.' Such 'functioning problems' could not be solved by simply paying cash benefits. Indeed, they were exacerbated by unconditional welfare. 'The damage seems to be done, not by the benefits themselves, but by the fact that they are entitlements, given regardless of the behaviour of clients. The answer, then, was not to withhold benefits as Murray had proposed, but to reform welfare to

49

50

Murray, The Emerging British Underclass, p. 4. It is important to recognise that Murray does not argue that all those born into the underclass will inevitably repeat the cycle of deprivation, some will not, and those w h o escape from dependence point the way for the others. T h i s argument is developed in Novak (ed.), The New Consensus. Ibid., p. 79.

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make it more 'authoritative and to use it to improve the conduct and character of the poor. The main problem', he wrote, 'lies not with the poor themselves but with political authorities who refuse to govern them firmly.' In short, make the poor work, teach them that 'willing work in available jobs was a defining obligation of the American polity'.51 This should be achieved through the introduction of 'workfare', whereby the unemployed would be required to work in return for benefit.52 Mead's analysis rested upon the explicit assumption that the poor would find work if they looked for it and that if necessary they should be prepared to make their own arrangements for child care in the same way as everyone else. It followed from this that governments would be justified in introducing work requirements into welfare without themselves giving undertakings about the quality of the work or training on offer, or the prospect of more permanent employment for those who met their obligations. The objective was not so much to train people for better jobs as to change their habits and attitudes. In subsequent writings Mead did come to accept that it may be necessary for governments to introduce 'job enrichment measures' such as the provision of child care. These, however, could be justified only after 'non-workers accept the jobs that exist. Only functioning citizens can claim new economic rights.'53 The debate which followed the publication of Beyond Entitlement was dominated by two issues: the question of whether or not work was available to the extent that Mead assumed and the extent to which it was reasonable to demand that the poor accept work or training whilst offering scant prospect that doing so would lead to permanent employment. The most striking feature of the debate, however, was the broad measure of agreement or compromise which appeared to have developed by the late 1980s. As Ell wood has noted, The notion of mutual responsibility is not controversial any more. It seems that in both the liberal and conservative policy-making communities, there is widespread acceptance of the notion that it is legitimate to ask people to fulfil some obligations and that, in exchange, the government must provide some training, jobs, or other programs.54 51 52

53

54

L . M e a d , Beyond Entitlement ( N e w York, 1986), pp. 65, 230, 248. In fact relatively few of the work-welfare programmes which have been introduced have taken this form. For a review, R. Walker, Thinking About Workfare (London, 1991). 'The Obligation to Work and the Availability of Jobs: A Dialogue between Lawrence M e a d and William Julius Wilson', Focus, 10, 2 (1987), 13. D . Ellwood, Poor Support ( N e w York, 1988), p. 226.

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This new 'welfare consensus' was manifested in the Family Support Act of 1988 which greatly extended the scope of work-welfare schemes.55 The new emphasis upon conditionally, however, goes far wider than the imposition of work requirements. During 1992, for example, a total of eleven states had received Federal approval for amendments to the operation of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In Arkansas no additional benefit is paid for children born to families already on AFDC; in California benefits are reduced by 10 per cent after six months, and the reduction is increased to 15 per cent if the family includes an able-bodied worker; in Oklahoma financial sanctions are imposed upon families whose children do not attend school until the age of 18; in Georgia there are penalties for families who fail to comply with immunisation requirements for pre-school children. As Michael Wiseman has observed, this is 'a major change in the landscape of welfare reform5.56 It would, of course, be fatuous to suggest that such far-reaching changes were due entirely to the work of Murray and Mead. Nonetheless, they do reflect the importance now attached to the idea of behavioural dependency, an idea which they have done more than anyone to promulgate and to popularise. There are two points, however, which are particularly important for the present chapter. The first is the extent to which Murray and Mead share the moralism of Titmuss, and the second is the way in which they began their arguments with an attack on what they presented as the determinism which underpinned the policies of the sixties and seventies. Like Titmuss, Murray and Mead are concerned with what should be. They too are concerned with values. But whereas Titmuss began with the presumption of the prior claim of equality, Murray especially began with the presumption of the personal responsibility of each individual for his or her actions. There is in this stance, he claims, 'no lack of compassion, but a presumption of respect. People - all people, black or white, rich or poor, may be unequally responsible for what has happened to them in the past but all are equally responsible for what they do next.' It follows from this that 'an acceptable social policy is one that validates and reinforces the individual's responsibility for the consequences of their behaviour'. Hence it is essential to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving and to stigmatise the latter 55

56

D . S. King, 'The Establishment of Work-Welfare Programmes in Britain and the United States', in S. Stenmo, K. Thelen and F. Longstreth (eds.), Structuring Politics (Cambridge, 1992). M . Wiseman, 'Welfare Reform in the States: T h e Bush Legacy', Focus, 15, 1 (1993), 18.

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in order to maintain and enforce just that personal responsibility. 'People are not inherently hard working or moral', says Murray. 'In the absence of countervailing influences, people will always avoid work and be amoral.'57 This, of course stands in stark contrast to the optimism regarding human motivation which underpinned the Titmuss tradition. Similarly, Mead's belief that the underclass can be reintegrated into the wider society only by compelling them to fulfil their obligations leads him flatly to contradict Titmuss's arguments regarding stigma. Mead argues that welfare dependency itself 'undercuts the claims to equality' made on behalf of the poor. 'Those who only make claims can never be equal, in the nature of things, with those on whom the claims are made.' It follows, then, that the long-term consequences of compelling the poor to work is to lessen their isolation and alienation. 'Society must give up at least some of its fear of 'blaming the victim' if it is to help them more effectively. In part the choice it faces is whether to stigmatise the least co-operative of the disadvantaged in order to integrate the rest.'58 From this perspective the provision of solely cash benefits represents an abandonment of the long-term unemployed whose needs can only be met through a more interventionist response. In 1987, for example, the influential report of the Working Seminar on Family and American Welfare Policy argued against a 'misdirected compassion in which benefits are offered without reciprocity'. Not to expect more of the unemployed is to 'treat them with lesser dignity than other citizens'.59 To some extent this argument echoes those of Beveridge and Temple cited earlier. The criticisms of the Working Seminar, however, are directed at those institutions and individuals who 'unintentionally set the stage' for the rise in dependency. John Clarke has noted that the prime objective of neo-conservative writing in the United States is to reconstruct traditional values which had been 'betrayed by the elite, corporatist liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s'.60 For Murray, of course, it was the value of personal responsibility which had been eroded by the liberals' refusal to apportion praise or blame and their insistence that it was the system which was to blame for every ill and every failing. The casualities of this process were the respectable poor who were denied the status which was due to them. 'The injustice of the policies was compounded by the almost complete

57

58 59 60

Murray, Losing Ground, pp. 146, 234; C. Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness Government ( N e w York, 1988), p. 131. M e a d , Beyond Entitlement, pp. 4 3 , 247. N o v a k (ed.), The New Consensus, p. 114. J. Clarke, New Times and Old Enemies (London, 1991), p. 124.

and Good

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immunity of the elite from the price they demanded of the poor.'61 Mead similarly railed against a 'sociological approach' which attributed 'even the behavioural problems of the poor to hostile social conditions' and created a 'taboo against discussing the behavioural side of disadvantage' which lasted for a decade.62 It is this point which has been seized upon most avidly by those who have sought to make the concept of behavioural dependency the basis for a renewed critique of collective welfare in Britain. In the late 1970s Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon had argued that a state health service which was free at the point of delivery would always be exploited by people who maximised their demands upon the service and minimised their contribution to the taxation required to pay for it. Those who failed to recognise this were blind to the realities of human nature. 'Universal selflessness is devoutly to be wished, the error is to suppose that it has arrived or can be created by the state.'63 In the same way David Green, David Willetts and others have increasingly argued that those who defend state welfare must necessarily deny any role for individual behaviour. Indeed Green echoes Mead with his assertion that it is necessary to go back to the 1905 Royal Commission on the Poor Law to find a discussion of poverty 'which does not duck the hard issues about behaviour'.64 It is, of course, the argument of this paper that this is the very issue which Titmuss neglected, and that this neglect affords a vivid illustration of Preston's point about Titmuss 'presenting people of a conservative disposition with an entirely unnecessary weapon'. It is not only an unnecessary weapon, however, but a highly damaging one. Conclusion It is not the purpose of this chapter to argue that the literature on behavioural dependency offers a satisfactory explanation of the persistence of poverty in contemporary industrial societies. Far from it. If Titmuss can be criticised for neglecting questions of incentives and behaviour, then Murray and Mead can be indicted for neglecting just about everything else. Their argument is concerned solely with the response of individuals to changes in the welfare system, and they eschew any discussion - or even mention - of the structural factors which influence the opportunities open to individuals. They have nothing to say about the collapse in employment in many older indus61

•

63

64

62 Murray, Losing Ground, p. 220. Mead, Beyond Entitlement, p. 61. R. Harris and A. Seldon, Over-Ruled on Welfare (London, 1979), p. 10. D. Green, 'Liberty, Poverty and the Underclass', in D. Smith (ed.), Understanding the Underclass (London, 1992), p. 74.

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tries or the dramatic increase in inequality which occurred in Reagan's America.65 Moreover, Murray's assertion that 'despite Mrs Thatcher' current policies in Britain make no distinction between the deserving and undeserving, and serve to shelter the poor from the consequences of their own actions, is not one which could be accepted by anyone familiar with the realities of life on benefits. Those who administer the social fund, for example, or who provide accommodation for young people, are required to be no less sensitive to the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving than were their predecessors in the National Assistance Board or local authorities in the 1950s.66 Similarly, Green's call to 'bring back stigma; all is forgiven' is extraordinary in the context of the available literature on the administration of social security, and the fact that there are already large numbers of people who fail to claim the benefits to which they are entitled.67 The fact remains, however, that the widespread attention paid to the notion of behavioural dependency has revived discussion of issues which are central to the debate about the role of state welfare. A stimulating paper by Clarke has recently considered afresh the question as to why Murray's work has been so influential if his data is suspect and his arguments flawed. Clarke argues that Murray's appeal to conservative Americans lies primarily in the skill with which he constructs a 'quasi-personal narrative', a dialogue between himself and the 'sensible people' who are his readers. The focus of this dialogue is the others, the outsiders, the underclass which at one and the same time threatens, appalls and fascinates them both.68 It is true that both Losing Ground and Beyond Entitlement are brilliantly written. A more fundamental reason for their impact in Britain, however, is the continuing importance of the questions which they raise about the influence of welfare upon human behaviour and motivation. These are questions which were long neglected - even avoided - within the dominant academic tradition in British social policy. 65

66

67

68

See, for example, K. Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor ( N e w York, 1990); D . Stoesz and H . Karger, Reconstructing the American Welfare State (Lanham, M d . , 1992). R. Walker, G. D i x and M . H u b y , ' H o w Social Fund Officers Make Decisions', in P. Carter et al (eds.), Social Work and Social Welfare Yearbook (London, 1991); M . Liddiard and S. N u t s o n , 'Homeless Young People and Runaways - Agency Definitions and Processes', Journal of Social Policy, 20, 3 (1991), 3 6 5 - 8 8 . Green, 'Liberty', p. x; P. Craig, 'Costs and Benefits: A Review of Research on T a k e - U p of Income-Related Benefits', Journal of Social Policy, 20, 4 (1991), 5 3 7 - 6 5 . J. Clarke, 'Tales from the Underclass', paper delivered to conference of the C o m parative Social Policy Group of the Social Policy Association, M a y 1993.

10

Medicine and the English state, 1901-1948 Anne Digby

The connection between the health of the individual and that of the body politic was not a new insight at the turn of the twentieth century but it was one that had begun to compel political activity by the state in redrawing the boundary between the public and the private in medicine. A century before this the caricatures of Gillray, Cruikshank and Rowlandson had deployed a visual metaphor in lampooning the parlous state of the political nation through depicting sick and dying patients in the care of impotent doctors. By 1904, however, the findings of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration had given a new political imperative to this analogy in indicating that the vigour of the imperial state depended upon the physical health and well-being of the individual citizen. Although it has been alleged that 'most medical histories have devoted little attention to the state5,1 it would be more accurate to say that attention has been focussed on the state at moments of high policy the nineteenth-century incursion into public health, the twentiethcentury inception of national health insurance (NHI) or of the national health service (NHS) - whilst intervening periods have been neglected. This chapter will concentrate on the role of interest groups, and on the contrasting impact of provider and consumer groups, in shaping the state's growing interventionism between the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the NHS in 1948. Within this intervening period there was a transition from the belief that the private medical market was the most effective deliverer of health care to the view that it was the state that could do so more efficiently. In health there was also some blurring of the public/private divide; state intervention into the family and the so-called private sphere was counterbalanced by private interest groups which became involved with the state in corporate decisions. Health became a major responsibility of the state in 1948, yet the 1

J. Rogers Hollingsworth, A Political Economy of Medicine: Great Britain and the United States (Baltimore, 1986), p. xlii.

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NHS had been created from a complex of pre-existing services, both public and private. The state had entered the field of health, as of the social services more generally, because of: (i) the charitable urge to help out people in suffering or distress; (ii) the social motive of setting minimum standards of education, hygiene, medical treatment and so on in the interests of the community; (iii) the democratic tendency towards reducing inequalities of status and opportunity; and (iv) the * self-help5 philosophy of encouraging or compelling people, by schemes of organised thrift, to protect themselves against risks to which they are exposed.2

Variations and inequalities in local services resulted from the decentralised system of the nineteenth-century local state. Laissez-faire attitudes, together with the availability of those administrative work-horses the poor-law guardians, meant that it had been expedient for central government to devolve public responsibilities on to local bodies. This had also been facilitated by the activism of municipalities in public health, as was shown by the growth in medical officers of health (from fifty in 1870 to 1770 thirty years later) and by their contemporary activity in providing sewerage and piped water supplies.3 Before 1901, therefore, much of the responsibility for social medicine was borne locally rather than nationally. This balance between centre and locality began to change with the NHI of 1911, and there was a more obvious administrative dualism between community services and social insurance. Considerations of public safety, of economic efficiency and of equity were prominent in shaping the first, while the social spreading of risk was more obviously important in the second. The creation of the NHI was intimately related to German precedents and therefore with great-power competition to achieve a healthy and economically productive people. Significantly the NHI was also related to a desire to delimit state involvement financially by giving the state a mainly regulatory function.4 The NHI scheme was thus restricted and its limited benefits were conferred principally on lower-paid, employed adult males. Even before the advent of NHI the confusion of uncoordinated medical services had been well documented in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of 1909. It recommended a unification of the preventive and medical services of the poor law and 2 3

4

PEP, Report on the British Social Services (London, 1937), pp. 29-30. S. Szreter, 'Mortality and Public Health, 1815-1914', in A. Digby, C. H. Feinstein and D. Jenkins (eds.) New Directions in Economic and Social History, vol. II (London, 1992), p. 145. E. P. Hennock, British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance, 1880-1914 (Oxford, 1987), p. 20.

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5

the public health services of local authorities. Community services at this time included: the notification and control of infectious diseases, a TB service, industrial health, mental disorder, mental deficiency, maternal and infant welfare, a school medical service, and the provision of clean water supply and efficient sanitation. Involved in their administration were three government departments, and numerous other bodies including boards of control, and over 1500 county, borough and district councils.6 This inchoate structure potentially gave multiple possibilities in devising a national health service, so that an interpretation of this health system as possessing an obvious hierarchic regionalism in structure, within an inter-war context where there was a contemporary consensus on the obvious correctness of these hierarchies of services in geographic regions, is misconceived.7 Greater insight was shown by George Godber (a distinguished post-war Chief Medical Officer), in thinking that the NHS marked the transition from, 'a mixture of private and gap-filling public services to a system of care which set out to meet all needs'.8 In evaluating the boundary of the state and the significance of public interventions the extent of private medicine was of obvious importance. Private medical care for individuals from the middle and upper classes was the staple of medical practice. The public provision of primary care, in the form of a panel system financed through NHI, was a belated recognition that medical fees were financially outside the reach of the majority of the working class. A voluntary health sector of the population, and was increasingly providing treatment for the more affluent in return for payment. An important actor in the eventual transformation of this great variety of medical services into the NHS was the Ministry of Health. Its creation in 1919 was interpreted over-optimistically by its inter-war Chief Medical Officer as implying, 'a new sort of attack on the strongholds of disease . . . increased intervention by the state, the betterment of the environment, a higher degree of coordination of national and municipal agencies'.9 But the new ministry was also responsible for local government and for agencies dealing with poverty, and therefore was split between those ideological dinosaurs who adhered to the traditional poor law mentality of economy and delimitation, and those with a more 5 6 7

8 9

Minority Report, p. 259. PEP, The British Health Services (London, 1937), pp. 416-17. D. M. Fox, Health Policies, Health Politics: The British and American Experiences, 1911-1965 (Princeton, 1986), p. 21. G. Godber, The Health Service: Past, Present, and Future (London, 1975), pp. 3-4. G. Newman, Public Opinion in Preventive Medicine (London, 1920), p. 10.

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progressive attitude towards the people's health. The influence of the first group was buttressed by strong Treasury pressure which brutally constrained government spending during the economically depressed 1920s and 1930s. These circumstances also tended to favour the interests of provider groups as against consumer-orientated ones. The British Medical Association (BMA) has been interpreted as becoming at that time 'the creature . . . of public medical policies . . . engaged in constant cooperation' with the Ministry of Health.10 This mesocorporatism, where a more powerful professional group defended a sectoral monopoly interest against weaker consumer interests, meant that politics became medicalised, and medicine politicised.11 Doctors as providers This medical corporatism involved the Socialist Medical Association, the Medical Practitioners Union and the BMA, but attention is confined here to the largest group - the BMA. Already in 1901 it represented half of all doctors on the Medical Register and this had risen to threequarters by 1948. These were general practitioners (GPs) rather than the elite of the profession - the specialists and consultants. The BMA was male dominated. Women were in a small minority in the medical profession and even by 1937 they comprised only 11 per cent of its members.12 The BMA became politically active, clashing with government at moments of high policy at the start of the NHI and NHS, but also becoming enmeshed more continuously (although less visibly) with the state in its administration of a growing range of public medical services. It was a source of technical medical knowledge, a liaison agency and a means of mobilising GPs' involvement in state policies.13 Thus, the BMA has been interpreted as being a Vital part of the departmental decision-making'. Another assessment suggests the importance of doctors as decision-makers in the creation of the NHS; civil servants neither understood GPs and the BMA, nor were able to match their influence.14 Within this framework of received interpretation what were the successes of the providers' interest group - the BMA? Doctors' remunera10

11 12

13 14

H. Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (London, 1960). A. Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory (Oxford, 1986), pp. 114-16. Royal Commission on Equal Pay, Minutes of First Day's Evidence (1945), Appendix, p. 187 (based on a survey by the BMA of 1937). Eckstein, Pressure Group, pp. 46—8. F. Honigsbaum, Health, Happiness and Security: The Creation of the National Health Service (London, 1989), pp. 213-14, 217-18.

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tion was at the top of its agenda. 'The unnerving discovery every Minister of Health makes . . . is that the only subject he is ever destined to discuss with the medical profession is money.'15 An important indicator of the power of an interest group is its ability to get resources for its members,16 but on this measure the BMA does not score highly. In 1911 the GPs were given an economic windfall of sizeable proportions by the state in the NHI scheme. This generosity was largely because the state was unaware of the low incomes and underemployment of many medical practitioners at that time.17 Since the BMA was also ill informed on this crucial point it opposed what it perceived as an offer of inadequate remuneration. Significantly, it was unable to carry a major section of the profession with it and ended up bereft of credibility, having to ratify what individual members had already decided to do through joining the panel system.18 During the inter-war period the BMA was ineffectual in its attempts to raise state payments to panel doctors. GPs found that state payments were declining elements in their income, and that a shrinking proportion of their total income came from public funds, which decreased from one-half in 1922 to one-third by 1936-8. Powerful economic pressures were operating in crisis years to curtail state expenditures still further so that panel doctors' capitation fees were reduced by 10 per cent in 1931-4, and by 5 per cent in 1934-5. Thus, whilst panel income was a useful adjunct to income from private practice, it was the private rather than the public component that was buoyant, and that enabled GPs to do better than their other professional colleagues. The panel system institutionalised an existing tension between doctor and patient in that the state emphasised the quantity of care delivered rather than intervening to improve its quality. It tended to encourage routinisation linked to a low standard of patient care: with overprescription; a reluctance to treat difficult cases rather than to refer them elsewhere; and an under-investment in modern equipment and premises.19 In lengthy negotiations between the state and the BMA remuneration was a central concern and health-related matters usually peripheral. The Secretary of the BMA did write to the Minister of 15

16 17

18

19

This was a later verdict by Enoch Powell, quoted in R. Klein, The Politics of the NHS (2nd edn, London, 1989), p. 54. Klein, Politics, p. 55. This point is developed in my Making a Medical Living: Doctors and the English Market for Medicine, 1720-1911 (Cambridge, 1994), chapter 5. N. R. Eder, National Health Insurance and the Medical Profession in Britain, 1913-1939 (London, 1982), pp. 3 5 ^ 4 . A. Digby and N. Bosanquet, 'Doctors and Patients in an Era of National Health Insurance and Private Practice', Economic History Review, second series, 41 (1988), 77-9, 90-2.

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Health, stating that 'the main point at issue is not the money [ b u t ] . . . to maintain a good medical service for the industrial population'. 20 Such disclaimers were rare. Occasionally, more far-sighted activity did take place, as in the publication in 1930 of The BMA's Proposals for a General

Medical Service for the Nation and the related Hospital Policy. The former noted that the health of the people was 'one of the most interesting and pressing public questions of the day' and went on to propose a national maternity scheme, and the extension of social insurance to dependants. GPs were to play a central role in each case. The BMA were consulted regularly by the Ministry of Health over routine matters in health administration but, when high policy was created, it became only one of many interest groups to be borne in mind. Eckstein's case study of the effectiveness of the BMA as an interest group is therefore unconvincing since he suggests that only a 'superficial reading' of history would lead to the conclusion that the BMA was weak. He concedes that the BMA had been 'relatively ineffective' over 'basic and important areas' such as professional remuneration, the balance of private and public practice, and the structure of the medical services under the NHS. Nevertheless, crumbs of comfort were drawn over BMA successes over partnerships, private practice, midwifery practice and other less significant matters on the BMA 'shopping list' during the formative bargaining between the state and medical interest groups over the NHS. The major stumbling block to any acceptance of the strength of the BMA as an interest group was the inconvenient historical fact, that Eckstein himself acknowledges, that 'Twice the government has passed over BMA opposition legislation affecting the whole structure of medicine.'21 Indeed, in reviewing this crucial episode one of the BMA's negotiating team for the impending NHS commented that Be van, the Minister of Health, 'knew all along what he wanted and the concessions he was willing to make in order to get it'. 22 This contrasted with Bevan's predecessor, Willinck, who had seen himself as 'more civil servant than politician',23 and hence gave a misleading impression that there would be rather more space for BMA influence over evolving plans for the NHS than was later to occur. Eckstein's perspective is rather different, since he concludes - somewhat surprisingly - that 'the NHS Act in operation is to a large extent a joint enterprise of the BMA and the Ministry'. In thus converting crumbs of comfort into an entire historical loaf, he draws a distinction 20 21 22 23

P R O , M H 62/149, A. Cox to Sir W. Joynson Hicks, 27 October 1923. Eckstein, Pressure, p. 92. B. Watkin, The National Health Service: The First Phase ( L o n d o n , 1978), p. 11. Honigsbaum, Health, pp. 2 1 6 - 1 7 .

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between the formal bargaining stance and the real (i.e. smaller, more realistic) objectives of the BMA. He is thus able to conclude that the 'BMA's achievements far, far outweigh its failures'.24 A less flattering, but more convincing, impression of BMA negotiating muscle is given in the official history of the NHS by Webster.25 An important constraint on professional associations such as the BMA was their inability to speak forcefully and monolithically for a unified profession. In 1948 the Minister of Health, Bevan, was able to treat separately with consultants - organised in the Royal Colleges - and the GPs in the BMA. Paradoxically, the creation of the NHS thus strengthened the old medical division between generalists and specialists.26 Another missed opportunity in 1948 was that of creating a social health service. The emphasis in modern western medicine had been more on disease as an individual rather than as a social phenomenon, and thus there had been more stress on curative treatment than preventative measures, despite the fact that curative medicine had had relatively few therapeutic successes. As early as 1910 the Webbs commented that, 'We do a great deal of State doctoring in England . . . For the most part. . . instead of preventing the occurrence of disease, we choose to let it happen, and then find ourselves driven to try expensively to cure it.'27 In the inter-war period there was increasing support for social medicine (which earlier had tended to be the poor relation of clinical medicine in professional terms), so that it seemed that a NHS might embody such ideals. The influential Dawson Report of 1920 had emphasised that curative and preventive services must be co-ordinated. To implement this would have needed medical students trained in a different philosophy, but hope of a training revolution contained with the Goodenough Report of 1944 was frustrated by the medical establishment, who preferred the old clinical training which was geared to future specialists' needs. The General Medical Council's plans for medical education were therefore conservative in defending the status quo in 1947, so that the NHS was not underpinned by a new medical philosophy which would have emphasised health rather than sickness.28 A social medicine would have placed greater emphasis on the treatment of the individual within the community; on social as well as medical action through attention 24 25 26

27 28

Eckstein, Pressure, pp. 96, 102-5. C. Webster, The Health Services Since the War (London, 1988), pp. 116-19. R. Stevens, Medical Practice in Modern England: The Impact of Specialisation and State Medicine ( N e w Haven, 1966), pp. 7 7 - 9 , 9 2 - 3 ; F. Honigsbaum, The Division in British Medicine (London, 1979), pp. 298-302. S. and B. W e b b , The State and the Doctor (London, 1910), p. v. N . Oswald, 'A Social Health Service Without Social Doctors', Social History of Medicine 4 (1991), 295-316.

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given to socio-economic disadvantage; and on the promotion of positive health rather than the treatment of disease. These were central to the campaigns of women's organisations. Women as consumers This section looks at women's consumer interest groups in relation to the state and medicine, at a time when the state's incursion into health was very obviously benefiting certain sectors of the male population. Hollingsworth's study, for example, concluded that the working classes were very important as a consumer interest group in relation to the NHI, but in discussing a scheme that was designed for the lower-paid male worker failed to explore its gendered dimension.29 Yet health has been central to the emancipation of women whether as citizens possessing political rights, as consumers and clients of welfare services, or as employees. 30 However, their involvement in the extension of the state's boundary in relation to health was a complicated one, and the focus of their interest groups was not only the NHI but more general policies related to maternal and infant welfare. Earlier feminist analyses of more advanced or fully developed welfare states drew attention to the fact that women had less power in the labour market than men, and hence less opportunity to defend or consolidate their position in the political system through interest groups. In this interpretation women were perceived as finding integration into the political system and participation in the decision-making process difficult. It was said that health policies in Britain were formulated before women had the suffrage (in 1918 and 1928) and thus that women found themselves mainly as the objects, or consumers, of policies and public interventions that they had had little opportunity to shape.31 In their attempt to influence the political agenda either through control of power or through influencing policy-making in maternal and infant welfare, women were seen as having been penalised both by their late arrival on the political scene, and by more deep-seated structural factors. In a significant discussion of the long-term basis of the modern patriarchal state, Pateman argued that there were intractable problems in contractual theory concerning women's incorporation into civil society, since 29 30

31

J. R. Hollingsworth, Economy, p p . 3-A. B. Harrison, 'Women's Health and the W o m e n ' s M o v e m e n t in Britain: 1840-1940', in

C. Webster (ed.), Biology, Medicine and Society, 1840-1940 (Oxford, 1981), p. 60. H. M. Hernes, 'Women and the Welfare State: The Transition from Private to Public Dependence', in A. Showstack Sassoon (ed.), Women and the State (London, 1987), pp. 26, 78, 81-3.

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women were not party to the original contract establishing civil society. Citizenship was thus gendered; women were not construed as individuals in civil society, and thus did not have the same standing in society as men. 32 And in a shorter-term review of women and the modern welfare state Dahlerup concluded that, 'Women have not succeeded in making the state give priority over other well-established interests to schemes which would fundamentally change women's position.' 33 More recently, attention has shifted in feminist work from the later to the earlier stages of welfare and health systems. With this has come a reinterpretation, since some early welfare systems at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries are now seen to have borne strongly maternalist rather than patriarchal characteristics. 34 By focussing on earlier voluntaryist phases of health and welfare programmes, the significance of female voluntary and civic groups was recognised as having been instrumental in the early formation of state policies. 35 Significantly, the boundaries of the state are also redrawn in this analysis to extend beyond a narrow focus on central government to the community and the local state. Women thus acquired a 'political domesticity' through an expanded role in community welfare work.36 Although women did not then possess the vote it is recognised that they were able to influence the political agenda since, at the turn of the twentieth century, the open-endedness of controversial 'high policy' in social matters gave such sectional interest groups space to influence the health agenda.37 In the local state there were over 2000 women guardians, as well as over 600 women councillors by the 1920s. Traditionally, health had been perceived as a 'female topic', both by women themselves and by medical commentators. Most health care historically had been given by women in the home and the quality of such care was acknowledged as 32 33

34

35

36

37

C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge, 1988), p. 11. D . Dahlerup, 'Confusing Concepts — Confusing Reality: A Theoretical Discussion of the Patriarchal State', in Showstack Sassoon, Women and the State, p. 117. G. Bock and P. Thane (eds.), Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s-1950s (London, 1991), p. 4; T . Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), p. 3 . S. Michel and S. Koven, 'Womanly Duties: Maternalist Policies and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1920', American Historical Review, 95 (1990), 1082. P. Barker, ' T h e Domestication of Politics: W o m e n and American Political Society, 1750-1920', American Historical Review, 89 (1984), 6 2 5 - 6 . J. Harris, ' T h e Transition to H i g h Politics in English Social Policy, 1880-1914', in M . Bentley and J. Stevenson (eds.), High and Low Politics in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1983), pp. 59, 6 8 , 7 8 - 9 .

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strongly influencing the people's health. Health had become an important function of the poor law and from the mid-1870s the Women's Cooperative Guild (WCG) had campaigned for working-class women to come forward. 'Would they like men only to choose . . . their nurses, to inspect their sickrooms and their nurseries?'38 Women guardians had taken a particular interest in improving workhouse sick wards, and pressurising the state into making more effective use of trained nurses there.39 In public health too women had been conspicuously active, although by the early twentieth century an earlier role of female sanitary inspector was being superseded by less well-paid health visitors.40 Women councillors' work in the early twentieth century was centred on the issue of infant mortality,41 and by 1918 their energy, together with voluntary work by many other women, had assisted in the creation of nearly a thousand maternity and infant clinics. 42 Other factors were also of importance, not least the appreciation in time of war of the importance of infant lives, to replace casualties, so that the Local Government Board made fourteen initiatives in infant and maternal welfare. Women's organisations were therefore pushing with the tide and the successful implementation of their objectives in 1918 owed much to this. 43 Indeed, these early municipal clinics were aptly described as 'a form of war-work'.44 'We feel we can congratulate ourselves on the formation of these Municipal Committees. Work formerly done by voluntary societies is now being taken over by the municipality', commented the WCG on the Maternity and Infant Welfare Act of 1918. The WCG had helped bring about this outcome by producing leaflets such as 'What Health Authorities Can Do' and 'Municipal Maternity Centres',45 and had also published the moving Maternity Letters in 1915, accounts of the experiences of maternal ill-health and over-work among guild members. The Women's Labour League also campaigned forcefully for this legislation. 46 The 1918 act allowed municipalities to provide clinics, salaried midwives, nurseries, food and milk for the poor. The actual work of the 38 39

40

41 42

43 44 45 46

P. Hollis, Ladies Elect (Oxford, 1988), pp. 2 4 2 - 3 . P. Hollis, ' W o m e n in Council: Separate Spheres, Public Space', in J. Rendall (ed.), Equal or Different: Women's Politics, 1800-1914 (Oxford, 1987), p. 2 0 1 . C. Davies, ' T h e Health Visitor as Mother's Friend: A Woman's Place in Public Health, 1900-1914', Social History of Medicine, 1 (1988), 57. Hollis, Ladies, p p . 486, 433. Hollis, Ladies, p. 439; J. Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1884-1948 (London, 1984), pp. 2 1 4 - 1 5 . J. M . Winter, The Great War and the British People (London, 1985), pp. 190-6. Quoted in Winter, War, p. 192. Liddington, Selina Cooper, p. 267. O. Banks, Faces of Feminism (Oxford, 1986), p. 165.

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clinics was directed to the health of the infant not the mother and was less far-reaching than had been hoped. And, as a result of BMA pressure, clinics offered neither medical treatment nor, in most cases, birth-control information. Maternal mortality remained obstinately high, even showing an increase in some areas, in contrast to the inter-war decline in the general death rate.47 The inadequacies of the public provision of health services for mothers and children were heavily criticised in an authoritative report of 1937.48 This was despite much positive work in this field of maternal mortality by Janet Campbell, the head of the maternity and child welfare section of the Ministry of Health after 1919. In 1932, as a result of an approach by women's groups, she broached the desirability of an inquiry into mother's morbidity arising from childbirth to the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, George Newman. He took a fatalistic attitude that implicitly put such matters outside the purview of the state: 'Childbirth is a heavy strain on the physique of any woman and the bodies of many must be impaired.'49 Newman's response to a contemporary approach from Gertrude Tuckwell and May Tennant - that the Ministry of Health should enquire into the extensive sickness of married women generally - was singularly dismissive. He considered it 'impossible'.50 State intervention into what was still perceived as a private sphere was thus highly selective and was dependent on financial rather than medical criteria. In pressing for improvements that would improve female health, inter-war women's interest groups did not have the coherence of the earlier suffrage campaign but were ambitious in their agenda which included improved resourcing of maternity clinics, the availability of birth-control there, and a more equitable treatment of women under the NHI scheme of 1911. The 'new feminism' of the inter-war period championed women's special needs, rather than their equality with men so that health campaigns fitted well into this scenario. Some female interest groups had a separatist strategy in mobilising women's or feminist opinion, whilst other politically active women followed a more integrationist path in relating their work to left or centrist political organisations. The Independent MP, Eleanor Rathbone, commented shrewdly in 1927 that maternity was uppermost in women's minds at the meetings she addressed, that women were coming to appreciate that they were ends in themselves not just means to an end, and hence that a 47 48 49

J. L e w i s , The Politics of Motherhood ( L o n d o n , 1980), p p . 4 5 , 180. P E P , Social Services, p. 18. 50 Q u o t e d in L e w i s , Motherhood, p . 49. L e w i s , Motherhood, p p . 4 9 - 5 0 .

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'sense of sex grievance, was developing into 'a sense of sex solidarity'.51 50 what health issues did this solidarity produce? Uniquely among compulsory insurance schemes the NHI had excluded dependants, and in 1926 the Royal Commission on Health Insurance dismissed the idea of including dependants because the cost would be 'prohibitive'.52 There was strong pressure from women's organisations for a more comprehensive system that paid due attention to their needs. Earlier, women's organisations had been horrified to find that the 30 shillings maternity benefit in the scheme for the wives of insured men, for which they had campaigned so hard, was to be paid not to women but to men. As a result of a vigorous campaign this was altered and it was acknowledged to be the legal property of women.53 What the maternity benefit meant in practice was explained to women by Selina Cooper, appointed as one of the trained, official National Insurance lecturers. Cooper also made suffrage propaganda out of the act. 'The Insurance Act affects women just as much as men, and they have to contribute 3d per week equally with men. But the men have the option of voting either for or against the Act, and the women have not.'54 In 1915 the most well-established female pressure group, the WCG, campaigned for a national scheme that would combine 'the administration of benefits under the Insurance Acts with the services organised by the Public Health Authority'.55 It wanted a Ministry of Health with a Maternity and Infant Life Department, extended maternity and pregnancy benefits, the status of health visitors elevated to that of women health officers, an improved and salaried midwifery service, maternity and infant centres, an increased number of maternity homes and hospitals, municipal milk depots, the provision of household helps for women around the time of childbirth, more women councillors, and women represented to a much greater extent on public health committees. A more active interventionist role by the state in health was also the object of campaigns by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and the Women's Freedom League. The latter stated that 'Women are angry because of the perpetual dilly-dallying of the authorities in regard to the establishment of a Ministry of Health.'56 51 52 53

54 55

56

E . R a t h b o n e , The Disinherited Family (Bristol, 1986), p p . 192-3. Royal Commission on Health Insurance, P P 1926, X I V , pp. 162, 314. E . Ross, ' L a b o u r a n d Love: Rediscovering L o n d o n ' s Working-Class M o t h e r s ' , in J. Lewis (ed.), Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family, 1850-1940 (Oxford, 1986), p . 79. L i d d i n g t o n , Selina Cooper, p . 211. M . Llewelyn Davies (ed.), Maternity: Letters from Working Women ( L o n d o n , 1915 a n d 1978), p . 209. Quoted in H o n i g s b a u m , Medicine, p . 49.

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Once a Ministry of Health had been set up in 1919 women criticised its arrangements and especially its linkage of health with poor-law administration. The WCG resolved that there ought to be a thorough investigation and with a desired outcome of a state medical service unconnected with the poor law.57 Earlier, the medical correspondent of The Times had suggested that 'The underlying idea of a Ministry of Health is to cement the alliance between the mother and the doctor.'58 This was an unrealistic view since it ignored the tensions between their interests, but one of the few promising signs of collaboration was the Consultative Council on General Health Questions which was set up in 1919 with Lady Rhondda in the chair and with a majority of female members. That it had no discernible impact on state policy was a bad omen. However, the ministry was a convenient target in attempts to reform NHI. Rathbone made some pertinent objections to the gender biasses of insurance schemes: women were penalised by being treated alongside the men in unemployment schemes (because women had fewer claims), but in health insurance (where they had more claims) they were separated.59 Women MPs took exception to the official perception that married women's sickness claims under NHI were 'excessive' and that malingering had taken place. How could the state really wish to improve maternal welfare, they argued, when Parliament gave a higher priority to actuarial soundness in the NHI scheme, thus reducing women's benefit rates. Miners, they pointed out, also had high sickness rates but suffered no corresponding penalty.60 During the inter-war period women had low citizen status with few women representatives in the House of Commons. The first women MP had been elected in 1918, numbers in the inter-war period reached a highpoint of fifteen in 1931, and a further increase was made to twentyfour in 1945. Women believed that if they could gain greater power within the central state they would be able to influence health policy. The Women's Freedom League made the demand 'that there shall be a woman Minister of Health, appointed from women members elected to the House of Commons'.61 A decade later, in 1929, Susan Lawrence, the Labour MP, became the next best thing as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, and was supported as her Parliamentary Private Secretary by Ellen Wilkinson. Lawrence was in a post she had wanted 57

58 59

60

The People's

Yearbook

and Annual of the English and Scottish

Wholesale

Societies

(Manchester, 1924), p. 34. R. N . Wilson, Wife: Mother: Voter ( L o n d o n , 1918), p . 78. B. Harrison, Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of Feminists between the Wars (Oxford, 1987). 61 Lewis, Motherhood, p . 50. H o n i g s b a u m , Medicine, p . 49.

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above all others, where she 'drank in statistics from bluebooks as some MPs imbibe whisky'.62 Before arriving at the ministry Lawrence had contemplated 'visions of glorious changes' but found instead that government was so constrained by economic pressures that within the month she was contemplating resignation.63 The most important result of the suffrage for women in Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence's authoritative view had been in bringing about a new public attitude to health, whilst another feminist activist, Ray Strachey, concluded in 1936 that women MPs had 'transformed the stuff of politics' since issues such as health and maternal mortality 'have leapt into the forefront of national affairs'.64 Yet despite much female agitation substantive changes were meagre. The most successful female pressure group was the Maternal Mortality Campaign from 1928 to 1935.65 Shrewdly obtaining the queen's support, holding wellpublicised meetings in London, gingering up local authorities through publishing the names of those who had implemented the 1918 act on maternal and infant welfare, and allying with sympathetic civil servants within the Ministry of Health (notably Janet Campbell), it was an effective counter-irritant to any ministerial complacency.66 But achieving any bold reforms through health campaigns proved to be impossible because of the administrative fragmentation of public bodies dealing with female health (including discontinuities between NHI and the municipal clinics for mothers), and because the central issue of female morbidity had such wide social and economic implications. Although the ideology of motherhood was strong, and rhetoric in correspondingly abundant supply about motherhood underpinning the health of the body politic, resources to reduce high levels of maternal and infant mortality were not forthcoming.67 It was in this context that Ellen Wilkinson commented incisively that, 'Marriage should be scheduled as a dangerous trade, since there are more deaths from childbirth than from dangerous diseases.'68 The Women's Health Enquiry also published its poignant findings on female morbidity in 1939, and highlighted the fact that health visitors, midwives and clinics operated only within twelve months of a birth. Unless a woman was one of the few insured, employed female workers, the state was not officially concerned 62 64

65 66

67

63 Labour Magazine, N o v e m b e r 1929. H a r r i s o n , Revolutionaries, p . 138. E . Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World ( L o n d o n , 1938), p p . 331-2; Fortnightly Review, 146 (1936), 337-^8. V. M . M a r k h a m , May Tennant: A Portrait ( L o n d o n , 1949), p . 57. PRO, MH 55/262, Reports of Mrs Tennant's Committee, 1928-1935; MH 55/272, Maternal Mortality Memoranda, 1930-4. 68 Lewis, Motherhood, p . 219. Birmingham Post, 21 October 1929.

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with her physical state.69 The study concluded that 'there are serious gaps' in public medical services.70 Pressure from women's groups for medical services to be linked to wider socio-economic assistance was unsuccessful but their case was validated retrospectively by the official report on wartime civilian health. This commented that, 'The national provision of milk and vitamin supplements to the priority groups did more than any other single factor to promote the health of expectant mothers and young children during the war, and . . . contributed to the gradual decline in the maternal, neonatal and infant mortality and stillbirth rates.'71 Since comprehensive provision in the classic welfare state of the 1940s was profoundly influenced by the experience of war, it might have been expected to embody some of female interest groups' demands, since women occupied important wartime roles. However, Beveridge's view that 'housewives as mothers have vital work to do in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race' was not matched by the benefits of social insurance in the welfare state. 72 Married women were made dependent on their husband's insurance contributions, although an independent maternity benefit was introduced in 1948. Thus the classic welfare state tended to confirm women's domestic status rather than their public equality, to look backward to their indirect participation in society as members of the family rather than recognising them as individual citizens in their own right.73 Women may well have hoped to achieve their objectives in the NHS since this appeared to have meant more to women than men at the time. 74 Before 1948 married women's health had been penalised by their virtual exclusion from NHI, and by their inability to pay the fees of doctors in private practice.75 But municipal maternity and child welfare clinics were marginalised in the NHS structure, since these were one of the very few areas to remain under local authorities, so that an absence of co-ordination between the different sectors of the NHS still impeded continuity of maternity care.76 69

70 71

72 73

74 75

76

M . Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives (London, 1939), p. xiv. Preface by D a m e Janet Campbell. Spring Rice, Wives, p. 54. D . M . Taylor and G. I. Brodie, 'Maternity and Child Welfare', in A. S. MacNalty (ed.), The Civilian Health and Medical Services (London, 1953), vol. I, p. 131. Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, PP 1942, Cmd. 6406, V I , p. 53. S. Pederson, 'Gender, Welfare and Citizenship during the Great War', American History Review, 95 (1990), 984; E. D u B o i s , ' T h e Radicalism of the Woman's Suffrage M o v e m e n t ' , in A. Phillips (ed.), Feminism and Equality (London, 1987), p. 131. R. Board and S. Fleming (eds.), Nella Last's War (Bristol, 1983), pp. 227, 255. E. Roberts, A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890-1940 (Oxford, 1984), p. 107. Webster, Health Services, pp. 179, 394.

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And, although pregnant mothers now got free ophthalmic and dental treatment, earlier demands for provision of free birth-control and of abortion were not recognised in the initial NHS provision of 1948. Conclusions How autonomous was the state in the creation of health policy and to what extent did interest groups alter the boundary between private and public medical provision? The state's own dynamic as an autonomous actor in the creation of policies was certainly important,77 so that to only a limited extent did its growing interventionism mediate, translate or more rarely incorporate those issues that had been put forward by interest groups. The state represented a wider constituency - as Lloyd George and Bevan demonstrated during the creation of NHI and the NHS. Klein's comment that the 'power of the medical profession is in inverse relationship to the size of the stage on which a specific health care issue is fought out'78 was made about the NHS but was to some extent also true of the NHI. Rank and file medical practitioners were able to influence the creation of the NHI more readily than that of the NHS because in 1911 the perceived interest of the state in developing primary care was congruent with their producer interests, whereas in 1948 the impact of war had moved the interests of consumers nearer to centre stage in the creation of the classic welfare state. The transformation of the concepts informing the NHI to those underpinning the NHS was remarkable and, despite the emphasis of this chapter on interests rather than ideas, it acknowledges both that historians should not make ideology 'a stranger at the feast', and that in the formation of that ideology it is important to take account of marginalised non-elite groups.79 We have seen that at the beginning of the twentieth century health was seen as a female issue, but that later on women were not perceived as important actors in the centralised political processes that increasingly determined inter-war health policies. Women remained in the non-institutionalised semi-private sphere of family, community and locality, rather than being able as a group to effect a full transition to the public, institutionalised realm of the 77

78 79

T . Skocpol, 'Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research', in P. B. Evans, D . Rueschemeyer and T . Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 3 - 3 7 . Klein, Politics, p. 52. M . Freeden, ' T h e Stranger at the Feast: Ideology and Public Policy in T w e n t i e t h Century Britain', Twentieth Century British History, 1 (1990), 34, 2 1 .

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nation-state's political life.80 After 1919 an increasingly centralised administration made the locally based strength and discursive resources of women's groups less effective. Gendered power relations and the lack of a female institutionalised power base informed a narrowing of the health agenda from maternal and infant issues to infant mortality. In contrast to the single-issue politics of the medical providers, women's consumer interest groups were multi-issue, and diffused their activity over a much wider area, thus limiting their impact. Administrative trends benefited the more highly organised and politically focussed activities of a medical provider group such as the BMA which, in representing the work-related activities of its members, was corporatised, and bargained with state agencies about public policies. 81 But because of inter-war Treasury pressure even the BMA had only qualified success in advancing these economic interests. And private practice was preserved in 1948 less because of the BMA's rhetoric about clinical freedom than because of the perceived free rights of patients as citizens to choose their doctor. Clause 1 of the NHS bill indicated the importance of the political centre in bringing about defined state objectives: It shall be the duty of the Minister of Health to promote the establishment in England and Wales of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England and Wales and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness, and for that purpose to provide or secure the effective provision of services . . .82 In practice the NHS was much less about health than about sickness: it partook of its historical origins in being a 'fire-fighting' organisation; curative rather than preventive. This bias - originating in the limited interventionism of the Victorian welfare state - was strengthened by professional interests in the twentieth century. The advice of the influential PEP Report on the British Health Services of 1937 that 'It is important therefore to outgrow the attitude of confining the term health services to what are really sickness services' was thus ignored.83 In key respects the NHS was an organisation rather than a service and so it responded much more quickly to provider's than consumers' interests, as the pre-war health services had also done. This neglect of the consumer was also related to a continued emphasis on sickness rather than 80

81 82 83

C. C. Gould, 'Private and Public Virtues: W o m e n , the Family and Democracy', in C. C. Gould, Beyond Domination: New Perspectives on Women and Philosophy (Totowa, N J , 1983), pp. 16-18. Cawson, Corporatism, pp. 9 - 1 1 . Quoted in Watkin, National Health Service, p. 17. P E P , Health Services, p. 395.

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on health. And the extent to which unequal social and regional delivery falsified the title of a national health service was also evident.84 This can be linked to a historical concentration of particular medical specialists, with a related institutional provision within relatively few geographical areas, and the successful defence of this system in 1948 by elite doctors safeguarding their interests.85 In suggesting that 'there is no limit to the usefulness of a proper and enlightened co-operation between medicine and the state', Addison, the first Minister of Health, had been over-optimistic.86 Provider interest groups in medicine were more effective negatively (in defending the status quo), than positively (in promoting radical changes) in their attempts to shape the NHS. In doing so they had some influence on the boundaries of the state in preserving an element of private health care and retaining a traditional emphasis on individual, rather than on social, medicine. It might have been expected that in health, where there is a considerable public interest, professional power would have been more constrained and patient's interests have had more weight.87 But when patient's interests were represented by women's groups then relatively little success was attained in extending the inter-war boundary of the central state's responsibility. It was striking that women participated as citizens in the NHS, as they had not done universally under the NHI, but this owed more to the transformation effected in social attitudes by war than to earlier activity by consumer pressure groups. In the slow development of a NHS there had been no obvious winners despite continuous activism by both provider and consumer interest groups. Adjustment to democracy in the medical boundaries of the state had been a slow and uncertain process, in which the relationship between the health of the individual and that of the body politic had been revealed as inherently problematic. 84

85

86

87

P. T o w n s e n d and N . Davidson (eds.), Inequalities in Health: The Black Report (Harmondsworth, 1982). A. Lindsay, Socialized Medicine in England and Wales: The National Health Service, 1948-1961 (Chapel Hill, 1962), p. 7; J. and S. Jewkes, The Genesis of the British National Health Service (Oxford, 1962), p. 13. T h i s view was enunciated before he became minister, in C. Addison, The Health of the People and How it May be Improved (London, 1914), p. 13. E. Friedson, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalisation of Formal Knowledge (Chicago, 1986), pp. 2 0 9 - 1 0 .

11

The English state and educational theory Adrian Wooldridge

Over the last couple of centuries advanced European states have all adopted similar approaches to the issue of human capital. They have all created mass educational systems, with compulsory schooling, core curricula and national examinations; and, to ease the introduction of such massive innovations, they have all employed a small army of educational experts equipped with more or less sophisticated educational theories. All, that is, except England. The English state was peculiarly reluctant to intervene in the educational market place. In Culture and Anarchy Matthew Arnold pointed out that the individualistic English have always had trouble with such a Prussian-sounding concept as the state: We have no notion, so familiar on the continent and to antiquity, of the State the nation in its collective and corporate character, entrusted with stringent powers for the general advantage in the name of an interest wider than that of individuals.1 The State (such as it was) displayed much less interest in organised teaching than its rivals on the continent. Elementary education was not compulsory in most areas of the country until the 1880s. A national educational authority was only created in 1899. State grammar schools were not created until 1902 - exactly a century after Napoleon created the state lycee. The Prussians introduced compulsory school attendance until 14 in 1826: the English waited until 1921.2 Throughout much of the century education has been the joker in the ministerial pack. When Eustace Percy first moved to the Board of Education in 1924 a well-wisher said to him: 'My dear boy, I am very glad to see you in this position. I once played bridge with a President of the Board, an ex-President and a Parliamentary Secretary. None 1 2

Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ed. J. Dover Wilson (Cambridge, 1978), p. 75. Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and the USA (London, 1990), pp. 208-308.

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of them knew anything about education; and one of them could not even play bridge.'3 When R. A. Butler was in unbuttoned mood he liked to tell the story of how he became the author of the 1944 Education Act: Winston sent for me one day in 1941, and said that he was reshuffling the Government and wanted to make me a proposition. Would I go to the Board of Education? I could have the day to think it over. I replied that I needed no time for reflection, since this was the one job I would like to have more than any other. At which the Old Man growled: 'Just like you, Rab, but I offered it to you as an insult.'4 This indifference to educational reform - or even to state education even infected the Board of Education itself.5 The last government department to introduce open competition, the Board provided a billet for public-school-and-Oxbridge products who lacked either the intelligence or the ambition to join one of the more glamorous departments, such as the Treasury or the Foreign Office.6 Between 1919 and 1939, 60 per cent of its administrative class officials were educated at Oxbridge, and 50 per cent at public schools. These officials were very much of a type, evaluating maintained schools by their degree of similarity to public schools, despising or ignoring technical training and scientific instruction, and pooh-poohing schemes for radical reorganisation. In 1938 F. H. Spencer, a school inspector, noted that the Board's officials were 'able products of the old universities and public schools' who were entirely 'without first hand acquaintance with the "proletarian" class whose education they control'. They were collectively 'against enthusiasm'; they hoped to move ahead by 'an inch rather than a mile a year'; and their cast of mind was 'always critical and seldom constructive'.7 Writing in the same year, R. H. Tawney made the same point in rather more sweeping language: 'the capital fact about English educational policy is that hitherto it has been made, except at brief intervals, by men, few, if any, of whom have themselves attended the schools 3 4

5 6

7

Eustace Percy, Some Memories (London, 1958), p. 97. R. H. S. Grossman, 'Rab Butler, Ideologist of Inequality', The Charm of Politics and Other Essays in Political Criticism (London, 1958), p. 57. Simon, The Politics of Educational Reform 1920-1940 (London, 1974), pp. 281-3. Gail L. Savage, 'Social Class and Social Policy: The Civil Service and Secondary Education in England during the Interwar Period', Journal of Contemporary History, 18, 2 (1983), 261-80. For a useful summary of the educational backgrounds of ministers and top-ranked civil servants, see pp. 264-5. See also Gillian Sutherland, 'Administration in Education after 1870: Patronage, Professionalism and Expertise', in G. Sutherland, Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government (London, 1972), pp. 263-85. F. H. Spencer, An Inspector's Testament (London, 1938), pp. 313-14. Cf. John Dover Wilson, Milestones on the Dover Road (London, 1969), pp. 91-3.

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principally affected by it, or would dream of allowing their children to attend them5.8 This lack of enthusiasm for state patronage resulted in the remarkable tolerance of alternative sources of authority. The English state happily delegated control of education to a range of independent or quasiindependent organisations: local education authorities (LEAs), the teaching profession, school governors, the churches, and even the trade unions. Education was a secret garden. To add to its impotence the state exercised minimal control over the schools which educated the elite. English education was a shambles rather than a system. The classic civil service description of this shambles was a national service locally administered. LEAs rather than the ministry of education were the practical centres of power and patronage. They enjoyed a wide range of responsibilities: fixing the dates of terms and the length of the school day, hiring and firing staff, constructing and repairing school buildings. 9 They shared their powers with stubborn vested interests such as the churches (which controlled church-aided schools and ensured that religious instruction was the only compulsory part of the syllabus) and trade unions (which controlled training through an antiquated and inflexible apprenticeship system). Within the schools the teachers were more or less sovereign. The gentleman in Whitehall may have known best - but he was content to allow teachers to decide what to teach and how. In 1957 W. O. Lester Smith celebrated the conventional attitude in his influential book Education: An Introductory Survey: No freedom that teachers in this country possess is so important as that of determining the curriculum and methods of teaching. Neither the Minister nor the local education authority exercises authority over the curriculum of any school beyond that of agreeing the general educational character of the school and its place in the local educational system.10 Thirty years later Kenneth Baker, then Secretary of State for Education, discussed the same arrangement in rather less flattering terms. He complained that English education was 'a bit of a muddle, one of those institutionalised muddles that the English have made peculiarly their own', and compared it unfavourably with more centralised regimes on the continent: 8 9 10

R. H. Tawney, Equality (revised edn, London, 1931), p. 157. Tawney was educated at Rugby and Balliol. Education Act (1944), p. 19. W. O. Lester Smith, Education: An Introductory Survey (Harmondsworth, 1957), p. 161.

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In England we are eccentric in education as in many other things. For at least a century, our education system has been quite different from that adopted by most of our European neighbours. They have tended to centralise and to standardise. We have gone for diffusion and variety. In particular, the functions of the State have largely been devolved to elected local bodies; and the school curriculum has largely been left to individual schools and teachers.11 But the English aversion to state education was as nothing to the English aversion to educational theory. Conventional wisdom might be summed up in a simple aphorism: those who can do; those who cannot do teach; and those who can neither do nor teach theorise about education. Turf-conscious teachers often regarded university-based educational experts as a threat to their autonomy. For them education was an art rather than a science. They put their faith in traditional ad hoc methods rather than the a priori principles of theoreticians. Many educational bureaucrats regarded experts as little more than a tedious distraction. When John Dover Wilson went to tell Chambers, the Second Secretary of the Board of Education, that he was leaving His Majesty's Inspectorate to take up a post at King's College, London, he found his superior sitting at an empty desk staring abstractedly into space: 'I've come to say good-by,' I said. 'Oh, where are you off to?' 'London University.' 'London University; humph. English I suppose?' 'No,' I answered, hoping to please him, 'Education'. At this he almost leapt from his chair, all lethargy gone. 'Education,' he snorted. 'A disgusting subject.'12 This aversion to grand educational theory reached right up to the top of the system. Ministers and their officials took a pride in their hostility to airy-fairy educational theory. In their joint introduction to a Ministry of Education pamphlet intended to mark the first fifty years of their department George Tomlinson, Minister of Education, and Sir John Maud, his Permanent Secretary, expressed the official scepticism about systematic theory: If this Report comes into the hands of readers from overseas, as we hope it will, they may be expected to look first for a substantial chapter on educational method and the curriculum of the schools. They will not find i t . . . The reason is that the Department has traditionally valued the life of institutions more 11

12

Department of Education and Science, 'Kenneth Baker Looks at Future of Education System', Press Release 11/87 (London, 1987), p. 1. Wilson, Milestones on the Dover Road, p. 93.

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highly than systems and has been jealous of the freedom of schools and teachers.13 The result was that England lagged behind other advanced countries not only in the construction of a mass education system but also in the creation of a respected body of educational theory. Still, despite the lag, three successive groups of experts did manage to exercise some influence over state education: psychologists, sociologists and politicised public-policy intellectuals. Educational officials turned to psychologists because of their expertise on examinations. Psychologists claimed to have developed tests capable of measuring the innate abilities of children. They were also highly skilled at devising and standardising more conventional tests of scholastic achievement. The state needed such expertise in order to deal more effectively with two very different types of children: subnormal children who had difficulty mastering the school syllabus and gifted children who might make valuable recruits into the national elite. The introduction of compulsory elementary education in the 1880s confronted teachers and administrators with the problem of backward and delinquent children. R. H. Tawney shrewdly observed that universal education dispelled the 'romantic illusion that individuals do not differ in natural capacity' and forced teachers to recognise that different children had different needs.14 Payment by results - an incentive system which made government grants dependent upon the performance of each child in an annual examination in basic subjects - provided teachers with a sharp reminder of the problem of the backward child: children who persistently failed the examination for their 'Standard' earned their school a much reduced grant.15 The shock of defeat in the Boer War and the rise of the national efficiency movement also focussed public attention on backward children.16 A series of influential surveys and reports - social surveys by the like of Booth and Rowntree, eugenic studies of the Kallikak and other problem families, and the Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904)17 - persuaded educated 13 14

15

16

Ministry of Education, Education 1900-1950 (Cmnd. 8244) (London, 1950), p. 1. British Library of Political and Economic Science (henceforward BLPS), R. H. Tawney Papers, 17/6, The Finance and Economics of Public Education (notes for lectures given in Cambridge, February-May 1935), pp. 2, 5. Gillian Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education 1880-1940 (Oxford, 1984), p. 6; Sutherland, Policy Making in Elementary Education 1870-1895 (London, 1973), chs. 7, 8 and 9. G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and British Political Thought 1899-1914 (Oxford, 1971).

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opinion that the British race was degenerating. This fear was so commonplace that Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about it and Lady Bell complained that she came upon it daily.17 Pundits insisted that the nation was courting disaster by attempting to run an Al Empire equipped with only a C3 population. To improve the quality of the stock it was necessary to understand the subnormal child. The state was even more interested in the gifted than in the subnormal child. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards the English elite began to sift the mass of the population for talent. Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan galvanised the civil service by abolishing patronage and opening positions to competition.18 Benjamin Jowett and his ilk revived the universities by awarding scholarships and fellowships on the basis of merit rather than birth.19 The state began - albeit tentatively - to construct an educational ladder intended to take the able but impoverished boy from the village school to Oxbridge.20 In the late Victorian and Edwardian period Fabians and Liberal Imperialists argued that such a ladder was necessary if the nation was to hold its own against its continental rivals. Advocates of national efficiency emphasised the importance of human capital.22 Karl Pearson warned that 'y° u cannot get a strong and effective nation if many of its stomachs are half fed and many of its brains untrained';23 and Sidney Webb argued that 'it is in the classrooms . . . that the future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are being already lost'.24 17

18

19

20

21

22

23 24

Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, Cd. 2175, in PP 1904. See also Bentley B. Gilbert, 'Health and Politics: The British Physical Deterioration Report of 1904', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 39 (1965), 143-53. Lady Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town (Middlesbrough, 1907), p. 12. The Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Organization of the Permanent Civil Service, 23 N o v e m b e r 1853. A s reprinted in Fulton Report, p . 108. T h e i r picture of t h e existing system was, of course, exaggerated. Several d e p a r t m e n t s h a d already instituted examinations a n d p r o m o t i o n by merit. See 'Competitive Examination a n d t h e Civil Service', The Quarterly Review, 133, 265 (1872), 2 4 3 , a n d E d w a r d H u g h e s , 'Civil Service Reform 1853-5', History (June 1942), 55-7. Christopher Kent, Brains and Numbers: Elitism, Comptism and Democracy in MidVictorian England (Toronto, 1978), pp. 3-52. On the scholarship ladder see Joan Roach, Public Examinations in England 1850-1900 (London, 1971), pp. 229-56 and Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement, pp. 101-11. P. J. Hartog, Examinations and the Relation to Culture and Efficiency (London, 1918), esp. p. 3. Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science (London, 1905), p. 54. Sidney W e b b , ' L o r d Rosebery's Escape F r o m H o u n d s d i t c h ' , Nineteenth Century and After, 295 ( S e p t e m b e r 1901), 375-85.

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individual justice had become an instrument of national efficiency and upper-class charity had been transformed into political expediency. The 1902 Education Act was one product of this new sense of urgency. The Act both stimulated the provision of scholarships and compelled education authorities to think hard about how to award them. In 1895 there were fewer than 2500 Local Education Authority (LEA) scholarships tenable at secondary schools; in 1900 the number had doubled and in 1906 it had more than doubled again (and if we include scholarships restricted to intending teachers more than quadrupled).25 In 1907 the Board of Education set up financial incentives for secondary schools to offer 25 per cent of their places free-of-charge to elementary school children:26 a haphazard collection of scholarships had finally been organised into a system and infused with a national purpose.27 The 1918 Education Act pushed the school door open wider still, compelling LEAs to ensure that children and young persons 'shall not be debarred from receiving the benefits of any form of education by which they are capable of profiting through inability to pay fees'.28 In 1920 the Departmental Committee of Scholarships and Free Places argued that the number of free places should be increased to 40 per cent.29 All these reformers made a clear distinction between polish and raw ability. They wanted to devise tests which would spot the most talented members of the entire community. The intelligence testers provided them with an ideal instrument for doing this. Thomas Babington Macaulay distinguished between 'ability' and 'mere learning', suggesting that 'the object of the examiners should be rather to test the candidate's powers of mind than to ascertain the extent of his metaphysical reading'.30 Northcote and Trevelyan insisted that civil service examinations should be designed 'to test the intelligence, as well as the mere attainments, of the candidates'.31 'The great advantage to be expected from the examinations', they argued, 'would be that they elicit young men of general ability.'32 (George Birdwood's prediction in 1872 that this would produce a world in which men were 'tested for the public service by means of positive Chinese puzzles' and in which school25

26 29 30

31

Report of the Departmental Committee on Scholarships, Free Places and Maintenance Allowances (Hilton Young), PP 1920, X V , Cmnd. 968, p. 3, para. 8. 27 28 Ibid., pp. 3 - 4 , para. 10. Ibid., p. 4, para. 11. Ibid., p. 8, para. 26. Ibid., p. 34, para. 101. Macaulay Report on the Indian Civil Service, November 1854. Signed by T. B. Macaulay, Lord Ashburton, Henry Melvill, Benjamin Jowett, John George Shaw Lefevre. As reprinted in Report of the Committee on the Civil Service, 1966-68 (Cmnd. 3638, chairman Lord Fulton), vol. I, appendix B, p. 122. Macaulay had been reiterating these arguments since at least the 1830s. 32 Fulton Report, p. 112. Ibid., p. 114.

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children throughout the country would be trained in solving these puzzles proved to be remarkably accurate.33) The Taunton Commission (1864-7) insisted that exhibitions should be 'open to merit, and to merit only, and, if possible, under such regulations as to make it tolerably certain that talent, wherever it was, would be discovered and cherished and enabled to obtain whatever cultivation it required'.34 The Bryce Commission (1893-5) insisted that children should be elected to awards 'propter spem rather than propter rem> for promise of general ability rather than for precocity of special attainment'.35 The examination system should thus be designed to test the 'general intelligence' of the pupils.36 The Departmental Committee on Scholarships and Free Places of 1920 insisted that scholarship examinations should aim 'as far as possible to test capacity and promise rather than attainments';37 and argued that all eleven-year-old elementary school children should be required to take the scholarship examination, since 'the country cannot afford to miss intelligent children'.38 This distinction between ability and achievement confronted policymakers with three tricky questions. How could native capacity be disentangled from particular attainments? How could capacity be measured in the scholarship examination? How was ability distributed within the school population? The first generation of educational psychologists - Cyril Burt, Godfrey Thomson, P. B. Ballard, W. H. Winch and C. W. Valentine influenced high-level educational policy-making because they possessed sophisticated answers to all three questions. Their influence is most easily traced in a series of reports issued by the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education - reports which directed official educational thinking between the wars and laid the foundations of the post-war educational settlement. The Report on Psychological Tests of Educable Capacity (1924) brought its readers up to date with the science of mental measurement, examining the possible applications of intelligence tests and analysing the theory which underlay them.39 The Report on the 33

34

35 36 37 38

39

George C. M . Birdwood, Competition and the Indian Civil Service (London, 1872), p. 17. 'For m y part', he argued, 'I would give a boy very heavy marks for an illustrious father' (p. 16). Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission (Taunton), P P 1867-8, X X V I I I , vol. I, General Report, p. 96. Report of the Royal Commission of Secondary Education (Bryce), p. 224. Report of the Royal Commission of Secondary Education (Bryce), p. 305. Report of the Departmental Committee on Scholarships, p. 19, para. 63. Cf. p. 2 1 , para. 67. Ibid., p. 2 4 , para. 75. T h e Committee felt that 'the evidence is that at present a great many excellent fish slip past the net'. Ibid., p. 25, para. 75. Board of Education, Psychological Tests of Educable Capacity (1924). See, in particular, pp. 62-107.

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Education of the Adolescent (1926) - popularly known as the Hadow Report - accepted the doctrine that children differed in their innate abilities and argued that they should be sorted into different schools, designed to cater for their varying needs, at the age of 11; 'selection by differentiation' was to replace 'selection by elimination'.40 The Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee (1929) echoed widespread concerns about the number of mentally retarded children in the population and looked forward to the establishment of a universal examination at 11-plus: 'at the age of 11 plus when the normal period of primary education ends there will be a general survey of all children whether normal or retarded, with a view to determining the type of post-primary education to which each child should proceed'.41 The Report on the Primary School Child (1931) argued that children should be classified into streams on the basis of their natural abilities, with an 'A' stream for the able, a ' C stream for the backward, and a large 'B' stream for the rest.42 The Spens Report on Secondary Education (1938) came down firmly on the side of Burt's psychological theory, arguing that 'intellectual development appears to progress as if it were governed by a single central factor, usually known as "general intelligence", which may be broadly defined as innate all-round cognitive ability' and urging that children should be allocated to different schools at the age of II. 43 The main recommendations of the 1943 White Paper on educational reconstruction and of the 1944 Education Act - that children should be educated according to their 'age, ability and aptitude'44 and that they should be allocated to different schools at the age of eleven45 - thus grew out of a series of reports which were heavily influenced by psychologists. 40

41

42

43

44 45

Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee on the Education of the Adolescent (1926), esp. pp. 132, 137, 139. See also PRO Ed. 10/147, 'Note by Dr Cyril Burt on psychological considerations bearing on the age of 11 as the age of entering upon another type of education'. On the reception of the Report see Eustace Percy, Some Memories (London, 1958), p. 101. Board of Education and Board of Control, Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee (London, 1929), vol. I, pp. 158-9. Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School (1931), pp. 7 3 - 8 , 83-90, 203-6. See also E D . 10/148, 'Memorandum on the Mental Characteristics of Children from 7 to 11 Plus by Professor Cyril Burt', Paper no. S-110 and Primary School, pp. 254-79. Board of Education, Report of the Consultative Committee on Secondary Education with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools (1938), p. 123. Cf. Ed. 10/151, 'Notes of Evidence given by Cyril Burt'. Burt's argument did not go unchallenged on the Committee. See J. Simon, 'The Shaping of the Spens Report on Secondary Education 1933-1938: A n Inside View', British Journal of Educational Studies, 25 (1977), 174-5. Education Act, 1944, part 11, 36. Board of Education, Education Reconstruction (White Paper) (London, 1943), paras. 2 and 27.

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The 1944 Education Act attempted to respond to this demand, promising that education would be stratified not by class but by intellectual capacity. If the 11-plus was the making of psychologists as policy-makers, it was also their undoing. Burt and his colleagues lost their influence with the state because intelligence testing attracted ferocious criticism from fellow academics and fierce hostility from the public. The earliest scientific criticisms of intelligence testing came from three main groups: 'reform eugenicists', experts on mental deficiency and social biologists. Masterminded by C. P. Blacker, the General Secretary of the Eugenics Society, reform eugenics tried to dissociate English eugenics from Nazi 'racial science'46 and to bring Galton's legacy into line with recent developments in scientific thinking. They argued that the biology of inheritance was more complex than Galton had imagined; that the rich were not all gifted and the poor not necessarily stupid; that unemployment was a social rather than a biological problem; that the feeble-minded were not multiplying at a menacing rate; that sterilisation would not provide an instant solution to England's problems; and that superior individuals could not be bred like pedigree guinea-pigs. Julian Huxley - who was something of an impresario of reform eugenics - summarised his creed in his Galton Lecture for 1936.47 Intelligence testing was one of his favourite targets. He argued that 'neither nature nor nurture can be more important because they are both essential'.48 He pointed out that Boyd Orr's work on nutrition added weight to the environmental argument.49 He insisted that intelligence tests revealed little about the innate abilities of groups reared in very different social environments (although he could not refrain from admitting that 'I regard it as wholly possible that true negroes have a somewhat lower average intelligence than the whites or yellows').50 Several specialists on mental deficiency helped to underline these arguments. Lionel Penrose, the leading English expert on the genetics of defect until his death in 1972, was persistently critical of psychometrics. He dismissed the idea that 'tests resembling parlour games' could 46

47

48 50

Cf. Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, Contemporary Medical Archives Centre: Eugenics Education Society Papers, Eug/C 185, Blacker to Huxley, 3 May 1935; Eug/C 184 (Aldous Huxley), Blacker to Huxley, 4 Dec. 1933. Julian Huxley, 'Eugenics and Society' (Galton Lecture), The Eugenics Review, 28, 1 (1936), 11-31. 49 Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 19. He also refused to soften his line on mental defectives and the multiplication of the unfit. See 'What Are We to Do with Our Mental Defectives?', Eug/C 185.

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measure innate intelligence,51 and insisted, in his own work with defectives, that they were only used as part of a larger battery of psychological devices.52 He questioned the correlation between social standing and intellectual ability, pointing out that poor defectives were much more likely than rich ones to end up in public institutions.53 Sceptical of the rigid distinction between 'nature' and 'nurture', he was relentlessly critical of orthodox hereditarian arguments, and emphasised» the environmental origins of such defects as mongolism, congenital syphilis, trauma and encephalitis.54 He argued that there were many different types of retarded minds, as different from each other as they were from normal minds, and so found only a limited use for the psychometric notion of a normal distribution of abilities. In particular, he suggested that the more severe cases of defect could no more be regarded as the tail of a normal distribution than could dwarfs four feet high, who were vastly more frequent than they should have been on the basis of the normal distribution of statures. Perhaps the most persuasive criticisms came from a group of experts based at the Department of Social Biology at the London School of Economics.55 They worked in an intellectual tradition - political arithmetic to its initiates - which used methods drawn from the biological sciences56 to calculate the relative life-chances of individuals from different backgrounds and with varying abilities.57 Lancelot Hogben, the head of the Unit, dismissed intelligence tests as much too crude and intelligence testers as much too credulous.58 He emphasised the numerous environmental factors which influenced measured intelligence - the uterine environment, the condition of the home, the availability of food, sunlight, sleep and exercise, the social traditions of the family, and the protracted period of development which preceded 51

52 53 54

55

56 57

58

L . S. Penrose, Heredity and Environment in Human Affairs (Convocation Lecture of the National Children's H o m e ) (London, 1955), p. 18. Mental Defect (London, 1933), p. 14. Ibid., p. 148; The Biology of Mental Defect (London, 1949), pp. 39-40. See, for example, Medical Research Council. Special Report No. 229. A Clinical and Genetic Study of 1280 Cases of Mental Defect (London, 1938), p. 70. On the Unit and Hogben, see Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (Oxford, 1977), pp. 2 8 8 - 9 0 , Gary Wersky, The Visible College (London, 1977), pp. 101-15, Sutherland, Ability, Merit and Measurement, pp. 143-4. Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence (London, 1953), p. 250. A. H . Halsey, A. F. Heath and J. M . Ridge, Origins and Destinations: Family, Class, and Education in Modern Britain (London, 1980), pp. 1, 14, n. 3; A. H . Halsey and J. Karabel (eds.), Power and Ideology in Education ( N e w York, 1977), p. 11; Lancelot Hogben, 'Introduction - Prolegomena to Political Arithmetic', in Hogben (ed.), Political Arithmetic: A Symposium of Population Studies (London, 1938), pp. 13-46 provides an intellectual genealogy of the n e w discipline. Lancelot Hogben, Science in Authority (London, 1963), p. 121.

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formal schooling59 - and argued that the nature-nurture argument rested on an intellectual confusion.60 J. L. Gray and Pearl Moshinsky, two of his most able researchers, suggested that Burt and his colleagues severely underestimated the amount of ability in the manual classes and overestimated the amount in the professional classes. After the war the British Communist Party also mounted a sustained attack on testing, dismissing it as a pseudo-scientific justification of social and educational inequality.61 Brian Simon, the Party's leading spokesman on education, produced a series of polemical books and articles against the tests, exposing what he took to be their theoretical weaknesses, condemning their practical consequences, and calling for the reorganisation of secondary education along comprehensive lines. In Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (1953) he set about

demolishing the standard claims made in favour of testing - that it was objective and culture-free, that it measured a fixed and inherited quality, and that it improved the educational opportunities of the able, but disadvantaged, working-class child. He suggested instead that the questions were culturally loaded and discriminated in favour of middleclass children. He argued that any attempt to represent a quality as complex and volatile as intelligence as a single number was doomed from the start. Brian Simon liked to present himself as an isolated opponent of bourgeois orthodoxy.62 But in fact the bourgeois press paid remarkable attention to his arguments. The Times Educational Supplement described Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School as a 'formidable

indictment of the theory and practice of intelligence testing' and concluded that 'the case stands up'. 63 The New Statesman suggested that the case 'deserves respect and demands an answer'.64 The psychological establishment took it seriously enough to devote a number of pages to it in Secondary School Selection, its official inquiry into the use of testing in the 11-plus examination. Psychologists also lost interest in the science of individual differences and faith in the accuracy of mental tests. After the war the main growth-areas within the discipline were in behavioural rather than hereditarian theory, in experimental rather than quantitative method, and in academic rather than applied work. American psychology 59 61

62 63 64

60 L. Hogben, Nature and Nurture (London, 1933), p. 28. Ibid. Brian Simon, Intelligence, Psychology and Education: A Marxist Critique (London, 1971), p . 163 (first published in Marxism Today, January 1958), cf. p . 10. Brian Simon, Education: The New Perspective (Leicester, 1967), p . 11. Times Educational Supplement, 15 January 1954. New Statesman, 27 March 1954.

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increasingly colonised English university departments, bringing with it assumptions and methods which would probably have been distasteful to many of the inter-war educational psychologists. Educational psychology won only a marginal position within academic psychology departments. Liam Hudson, one of the most innovative of the post-war educational psychologists, recalled that in the 1950s 'an interest in intelligence met none of the requirements of scientific respectability; it was macrocosmic rather than microcosmic; its techniques were paper and pencil rather than electronic; and it was tarred with the brush of "education"'. For fully a year he could not bring himself to confess to his peers what his PhD topic was.65 Those who did continue to study intelligence were more likely to be sceptics rather than evangelists. They lost faith in many of the tenets of inter-war psychology. They questioned the ability of IQ tests to predict academic performance; conceded that environmental influences such as coaching might influence performance;66 and even suggested that the IQ might be far from constant.67 Most post-war psychologists looked askance at the ruthless operation of the 11-plus. The inquiry into Secondary School Selection, prepared by Philip Vernon on behalf of the British Psychological Society in 1957, expressed this mood of disillusionment: Psychologists themselves are far from complacent about the situation. The majority of them would probably gladly abolish the selection system if there were a practicable and just alternative. And many have gone so far as to advocate that their profession should 'contract out', and refuse to have anything to do with procedures that have such harmful effects on children's educational and emotional development.68 But it was the sociologists who did more than anyone else to weaken the professional and intellectual position of the psychometrists. The essence of their case was that, whether intentionally or not, psychologists discriminated in favour of middle-class children and so helped to reinforce the class-bound nature of English education. Their 65 66 67

68

The Cult of the Fact (London, 1972), p. 58; see also p. 54. See in particular, P. E. Vernon, Intelligence Testing (London, 1952). A. D . B. Clarke, ' T h e Measurement of Intelligence: Its Validity and Reliability', in A n n M . Clarke and A. D . B. Clarke (eds.), Mental Deficiency: The Changing Outlook (London, 1958; 1965 edn), p. 81. Cf. Philip Vernon, Intelligence and Attainment Tests (London, 1960), p. 186, and Philip Vernon, Georgina Adamson and Dorothy Vernon, The Psychology and Education of Gifted Children (London, 1977), p. 16. P. E. Vernon (ed.), Secondary School Selection: A British Psychological Society Inquiry (London, 1957), p. 35. Brian Simon described this report as 'the final blow to the 11-plus examination'. Caroline Benn and Brian Simon, Half Way There: Report of the British Comprehensive School Reform ( L o n d o n , 1972 edn), p. 47.

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surveys of the class composition of English schools proved beyond doubt that middle-class children tended to go to grammar schools and working-class children to secondary moderns. In Social Class and Educational Opportunity (London, 1956), J. E. Floud, A. H. Halsey and F. M. Martin demonstrated that working-class children were losing out in the race for grammar school places. In The Home and the School (London, 1964) J. W. B. Douglas detailed some of the environmental factors which disadvantaged young working-class children. Douglas demonstrated that IQ responded to such environmental influences as the condition of the home, the degree of parental encouragement, the academic record of the primary school (measured by the proportion of its pupils regularly going to grammar schools), and the 'streams' into which children were initially placed. The selective system of education was clearly a highly inefficient 'capacity-catching machine', wasting potential ability during the primary school years and misdirecting it at the point of selection. The main conclusion of these sociologists was simple but devastating: educational selection was, to a disconcerting degree, a process of social selection disguised as academic selection. Instead of determining social stratification, education was effectively validating distinctions which had their origins elsewhere. Sociology developed late in England, but underwent a period of hectic expansion after the war. The sociologists who presided over this expansion belonged to a tightly knit generation. They were born within a few years of each other; shared similar provincial and often working-class backgrounds; and went through an almost identical professional training.69 No fewer than thirteen graduates in sociology from the London School of Economics in the years between 1950 and 1952 went on to hold key positions within the profession.70 The sociology of education was one of the main growth-points within the discipline. A. H. Halsey, Jean Floud, Asher Tropp, Olive Banks and Basil Bernstein all contributed to the discipline. The Central Advisory Council - a body set up by the 1944 Act to advise the Minister on educational theory and practice - did for the post-war sociologists what the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education had done for the inter-war psychologists: provided them with influence and legitimised their arguments. In a series of reports - Early Leaving (1954), the Crowther Report, 15 to 18 (1963), the Newsom 69

70

See A. H . Halsey, 'Provincials and Professionals: T h e British Post-War Sociologists', Archives Europeennes Sociologies 23 (1982), 150-75. Halsey lists them as follows: J. A. Banks, O. Banks, M . Banton, B. Bernstein, P. Cohen, N . D e n n i s , R. Dahrendorf, Halsey, D . Lockwood, C. Smith, J. H . Smith, A. T r o p p , J. Westergaard.

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Report, Half Our Future (1963), the Robbins Report, Higher Education (1963) and the Plowden Report, Children and their Primary Schools

(1967) - they produced a mass of evidence to demonstrate that the English educational system, with its emphasis on early selection and premature academic excellence, was wasting the talents of large numbers of children. This was particularly true of working-class children, who failed the 11-plus, left school early or underperformed in exams not because they lacked ability but because they suffered from numerous social handicaps. The Council repeatedly urged the introduction of comprehensive education. By the late 1960s and early 1970s such sociologically informed arguments had become part of the intellectual baggage of most Labour, and a good few Conservative politicians. Anthony Crosland, for example, felt that: 'We've got to a point now where this general theme of education and social background - what you call the radical sociology has been taken in and it doesn't need more inquiries to drive it home.'71 Successive governments turned to sociologists partly because they seemed to be on the popular side in the argument about the 11-plus. The 11-plus attracted savage criticism from parents who were fearful that their children would be consigned to secondary moderns and from educationalists who disliked operating such a ruthlessly Calvinist system of selection. Such criticism is hardly surprising. There were huge variations in the provision of grammar school places across the country. In Gateshead only 8 per cent of children went to grammar school, whereas in Merioneth as many as 60 per cent went. Places might even vary within a particular educational district. In the West Riding in 1952, for instance, there were places for 40 per cent of the children in one district and for only 15 per cent of the children in another. The regional distribution of places bore no relation to the regional distribution of abilities or occupations. Twenty-nine per cent of Welsh children went to grammar schools, yet the average IQ in Wales was slightly below the national average and the region contained the largest proportion of semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers' children in the country. Only 13 per cent of children in the South went to grammar schools, yet the average IQ in the South was slightly above the national average and the region contained the highest proportion of professional and salaried workers' children in the country.72 Education authorities agreed that the minimum standard of ability and attainment required 71

72

M . Kogan (ed.), The Politics of Education: Edward Boyle and Anthony Crosland in Conversation with Maurice Kogan (Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 174. J. W. B. Douglas, The Home and the School (London, 1964), pp. 54r-5. Paradoxically, waste of talent through early leaving was especially high in those areas where grammar school places were in short supply.

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for admission to grammar schools was an arbitrary standard determined by the accommodation available.73 It would be difficult to design an educational system more calculated to excite anxiety and despondency in the population at large. On the day the examination results were published parents sat, according to David Glass, 'like King Aegeus . . . on the cliffs, waiting to see if the returning sails are black or white'. A. J. P. Taylor advised 11-plus failures bluntly to 'run away to sea rather than go to a secondary modern'.74 The official fashion for sociology was also a product of the post-war boom. Growth-obsessed politicians looked to educational expansion to solve the problem of the shortage of skilled labour. David Eccles expressed this hope bluntly in his preface to Early Leaving: 'now that our manpower is fully stretched and the demand for trained men and women exceeds the supply everyone can see the importance, if our standard of life is to be raised, of developing to the full the talent we have'.75 The sociologists - unlike the psychologists with their pessimistic obsession with the genetic limits to educability - told politicians what they wanted to hear. They argued that there was a huge amount of untapped talent in the population. They urged that education could create talent as well as simply discover it.76 ('If there is to be talk of a pool of ability', the Robbins report argued, 'it must be of a pool which surpasses the widow's cruise in the Old Testament, in that when more is taken for higher education in one generation more will tend to be available in the next.'77) And - music to the ears of an expansionist educational bureaucracy in London - they insisted that investment in education was also investment in economic growth: a more educated workforce would rapidly become a more productive workforce. Why were sociologists ejected from the corridors of power? Two reasons are obvious. First: the subject became increasingly radical between 1960 and 1980. The class of '48 had spoken a language which governments could understand. They conceded that individuals differed in their innate abilities and hoped that society would make better use of its human resources.78 The class of '68 spoke a language which was incomprehensible outside 73 74

75 76 77 78

M . Kogan (ed.), The Politics of Education, p. 174. Both quoted in W. H. G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (London, 1964), p. 2 4 1 . Early Leaving, p. v. The Newsom Report, para. 15. T h e quotation is from 'On the Athenian Orators' (1824). The Newsom Report, para. 146. Glass's introduction ibid., p. 24. Glass was, however, 'more than a little suspicious of I.Q. averages for large non-homogenous populations', Eug/C 124, Glass to Blacker, 28 March 1947.

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the campus. They wanted equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Most rejected the theory of innate differences in ability and the practice of social mobility. The so-called new sociologists of education - who mixed Marxism and ethno-methodology into a heady intellectual brew - viewed learning as an instrument of class power and the classroom as just another arena for the class struggle. On this view educational failure was just another form of resistance to bourgeois hegemony. The Institute of Community Studies denounced educational selection for breaking up working-class communities and creating a generation of rootless scholarship children.79 Clearly these were not the sort of people that a sensible government would want determining its educational policy. Second: the new comprehensive schools failed to live up to the somewhat extravagant claims made for them by their advocates. They did little to break down the cultural gap between the social classes or to promote higher rates of social mobility. They did little, if anything, to tap the pool of talent wasted in the secondary moderns. Indeed, many of the criticisms directed against the selective system of education - that it discriminated against working-class children and led to a waste of human capital - might justly be levelled against the non-selective system. 'The fact that inequalities existed within the old selective system does not mean that they will disappear when selective examinations are abolished', J. W. B. Douglas warned in All Our Future (1968) 'and the fact that it is the pupils from poor homes who have been handicapped in the past does not necessarily mean that they will lose these handicaps when comprehensive education becomes universal'.80 The failure of egalitarian policies was not confined to Britain. In both the United States and Europe policy-makers discovered just how limited was the power of the state to tackle social inequalities which were rooted in family structures and individual attitudes. During the 1950s and 1960s a vast expansion of educational institutions, together with a professed commitment to equal opportunity and upward mobility, had failed to alter the social composition of the elite. The lifechances of children continued to be determined by their class and home 79

80

On the Institute, see M . Young and P. Willmott, * Institute of Community Studies, Bethnal Green', Sociological Review, 9, 2 (1961), 2 0 3 - 1 3 ; P. Willmott, ' T h e Institute of Community Studies', in Martin Bulmer (ed.), Essays on the History of British Sociological Research (Cambridge, 1985), p p . 1 3 7 - 5 1 . For detailed criticisms see Jennifer Platt, Social Research in Bethnal Green: An Evaluation of the Work of the Institute of Community Studies (London, 1971). Young and Willmott replied to Platt in 'One the Green', New Society, 28 Oct. 1971. J. W. B. Douglas et al., All Our Future (London, 1968), p. 65.

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backgrounds, with middle-class children seizing the expanded opportunities and working-class children ignoring them. Not surprisingly, the high optimism of the mid-sixties was replaced by profound pessimism in the early seventies. By 1972, it seemed that 'the essential fact of twentieth century educational history is that egalitarian policies have failed'.81 Sociologists were quickly displaced by a new breed of experts - men and women from a wide range of academic backgrounds who specialised on current public policy issues and moved in and out of government circles. The most influential among them worked in the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street (which reported directly to the Prime Minister) or the Central Policy Review Staff (which advised the Cabinet Office between 1971 and 1983). Others inhabited the privately financed thinktanks which operated - geographically as well as practically - on the edges of Whitehall: the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute and, most influential of the three, the Centre for Policy Studies, which Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher used to give intellectual substance to the emerging doctrine of Thatcherism. The more recent Labour Party think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, is also taking a lively interest in education. These public policy intellectuals were very different animals from the Oxbridge-educated mandarins who ran the civil service. Many of them were displaced academics from Oxbridge or provincial universities, the victims of the rapid contraction of social science departments from the mid-1970s. All of them were natural radicals, impatient with the cumbersome machinery of Whitehall and convinced that Britain needed a thorough shake-up. The think-tanks provided displaced academics and apprentice politicians with a chance to swim in the mainstream of intellectual life and to influence public policy-making.82 The success of the think-tanks was a function of the disintegration of the post-war consensus. In the mid-1970s leading politicians from both parties began to ask some hard questions about Butskellism. Had the State promised much more than it could deliver? Were the welfare services imposing an unsustainable burden on the economy? Had the government surrendered too much power to pressure groups? Were public servants providing value for money? In education these questions were rather easy to answer. The state had remarkably little control over the nation's schools. The buzz word 81

82

Ed. A. H. Halsey, Department of Education and Science, Educational Priority, vol. I, Problems and Policies (London, 1972), p. 6. Cf. Halsey, 'Sociology and the Equality Debate', Oxford Review of Education, 1 (1975), 9 - 2 6 . ' O f Policy a n d P e d i g r e e ' , The Economist, 6 M a y 1989, p p . 2 7 - 9 .

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in the service was partnership rather than accountability. Throughout the period of state-interventionism the balance of power within this partnership shifted from the centre to the periphery. The Elementary Regulations were abolished in 1926. The Secondary Regulations were allowed to lapse in 1944. A sequence of innovations in the 1960s and early 1970s - notably the invention of the Schools Council, the introduction of the CSE examination and the publication of the Plowden Report - all increased professional control and marginalised the Ministry.83 Harold Wilson dismissed the Department of Education and Science (DES) as nothing more than a post-box between the LEAs and the teaching unions. The displacement of social scientists by politicised policy intellectuals was partly initiated by the extraordinary success of the Black Papers in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black Papers were a series of polemical pamphlets initiated by two English literature dons, Brian Cox and A. E. Dyson, and intended to expose the 'general crisis in education'.84 They attracted numerous articulate and illustrious contributors - academics and politicians, schoolteachers and writers85 - and hit the headlines with their tub-thumping tone and spine-chilling examples. By mixing educational arguments with more general criticisms of permissive morals, they built up a composite picture of an education system in crisis and a society in decay: tension in the home, as Spock-inspired methods of child-rearing undermined family discipline; anarchy in the infant and junior schools, with permissive teachers preferring hedonism to work-discipline and self-discovery to instruction; declining standards of teaching and behaviour in the senior schools; and student unrest and government interference in the universities, as over-rapid expansion led to the recruitment of unsuitable students and academics.86 The Black Paper writers helped to create a coherent and influential anti-comprehensive movement.87 Many leading Black Paper contributors began to take an active part in Tory politics. Rhodes Boy son, the 83

84

85

86 87

S. R a n s o n , ' C h a n g i n g Relations b e t w e e n C e n t r e a n d Locality in E d u c a t i o n ' , Local Government Studies, 6, 6 (1980), 10. C. B. Cox and A. E. D y s o n , ' I n t r o d u c t i o n ' , The Black Papers on Education ( L o n d o n , 1971), p . 9. Revised version of the first three Black Papers, published in M a r c h 1969, October 1969 and N o v e m b e r 1970, collected u n d e r one cover and furnished with a new introduction. E.g. Cyril B u r t , J a c q u e s B a r z u n , G . H . Bantock, B r y a n W i l s o n , H . J. E y s e n c k , M a x Beloff, E d w a r d N o r m a n , Kingsley A m i s , Iris M u r d o c h , R h o d e s Boy son, A n g u s M a u d e , R o b e r t Conquest. 'Education: T h e Backlash S t a r t s ' , The Observer, 23 M a r c h 1969, p . 10. T h e m o s t scholarly a c c o u n t of this is C h r i s t o p h e r K n i g h t , The Making of Tory Education Policy in Post-War Britain 1950-1986 ( L e w e s , 1990).

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headmaster of Highbury Grove School, became Conservative MP for Brent North in 1974. Brian Cox and Fred Naylor joined the Party to preserve educational selection. The publication of the Black Papers also encouraged many long-time Tory opponents of comprehensives - Angus Maud had been warning that they would lead to educational disaster since 195388 - to renew their arguments. The result was that anti-comprehensive activists gradually captured the organs of Party opinion-forming from pro-comprehensive Tories such as Sir Edward Boyle.89 The Swinton Journal, the house magazine of the Swinton Conservative College, published a plethora of Black Paperstyle articles on education.90 The Conservative Political Centre, which produces briefing papers for local activists as well as MPs, published two pamphlets by Rhodes Boyson, Battle Lines for Education in 1973 and Parental Choice in 1975. 'Notes on Current Polities', the in-house journal of the Conservative Research Department, was taken over by Black Paper sympathisers.91 The education section of the 1974 Conservative manifesto was effectively drafted by three Black Paper stalwarts, Rhodes Boyson, Harry Greenway and Sir Gilbert Longden. The Black Paper contributors shared many characteristics with the professional policy intellectuals whose cause they did so much to advance. (The main difference between the two groups was institutional: the Black Paper-ites owed their allegiance to a publication rather than an institution.) They were academics and writers rather than career politicians or mandarins. They were propelled into politics by the conviction that the Leftward drift which had characterised post-war policy threatened economic prosperity and social cohesion. And they turned out to be highly successful practitioners of the politics of persuasion. The media endorsed their conclusion and repackaged their revelations in still more sensationalised form. MPs asked parliamentary questions. Universities and colleges of education held 'teach-ins' on them, publicising their arguments even as they anathematised them. Black Paper contributors were overwhelmed with invitations to speak at parents' meetings and political debates.92 88 90

91

92

89 Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 65. Knight singles out three essays in particular: John O'Sullivan, ' T h e Direction of Conservatism', Swinton Journal, 16, 1 (1971), 3 0 - 6 ; Ronald Bell, ' T h e Content of Education', Swinton Journal, 1 8 , 4 (1973), 11-16; and T o m Howarth, ' T h e Future of Our Schools: A Conservative View', Swinton Journal, 19, 3 (1974), 3 - 7 . Brian Salter and E. R. Tapper, ' T h e Politics of Reversing the Ratchet in Secondary Education 1969-1986', Journal of Educational Administration and History, 20, 2 (1988), 60. T h e authors make some intriguing points about the overlap between the Right's concern for educational standards and the Department of Education's desire to extend its power over education. Cox and D y s o n , The Black Papers on Education, pp. 10-13.

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The Black Papers were symptom as much as cause. The late 1960s and early 1970s brought a crisis of confidence in English education. Parents worried that progressive schools were indulging in fashionable theories rather than transmitting basic knowledge. Industrialists argued that schools - many of them dominated by left-wing or woolly-minded teachers - were failing to serve the needs of industry.93 (In case his duller readers failed to get the message, Arnold Weinstock entitled one of his articles CI Blame the Teachers'.) 94 Mind-boggling scandals such as the William Tyndale affair heightened the sense that the education system was on the verge of collapse.95 A spate of academic publications added to the feeling that education was being subverted by an unholy alliance of left-wing sociologists (who were more interested in equality than instruction) and progressive teachers (who valued educational fads such as open classrooms more than the long-term interests of their pupils).96 Various quantitative studies revealed huge variations in the standards achieved, the curricula offered, and the resources available for education across the country. They also showed England lagging behind its more centralised rivals on the continent in increasing participation in education and in producing the highly skilled workers required by knowledge-intensive industries. The press seized the opportunity to whip up popular worries about endangered standards and mounting indiscipline. The Fleet Street version was as simple as it was dramatic: academic standards were slipping fast; the curriculum devoted too much time to trendy fringe subjects and too little to the core disciplines of reading, writing and arithmetic; teachers were incapable of teaching children the virtues of hard-work, self-discipline and good manners; and, to make matters worse, they were all too often the victims of soft-minded dislike for traditional virtues or the exponents of a hot-headed philosophy of social subversion and political revolution.97 93

94

95

96

97

John M e t h v e n , 'What Industry N e e d s ' , The Times Educational Supplement, 29 October 1976. See, for example, Sir Arnold Weinstock, 'I Blame the Teachers', The Times Educational Supplement, 23 January 1976. For a legal view of the affair, see Robin Auld Q C , William Tyndale Junior and Infants Schools Public Inquiry (July 1976). For the teacher's view, see Terry Ellis, Jackie McWhirter, Dorothy M c D o l g a n and Brian Hadow, William Tyndale: The Teacher's Story (London, 1976). For the impact on the left, see Brian Simon, 'Education and the Right Offensive', in his Does Education Matter? (London, 1985), p. 203. See, in particular, A. Flew, Sociologyy Equality and Education (London, 1976), R. Sharp and A. Green, Education and Social Control (London, 1975), K. Evans, ' T h e Physical Form of the School', British Journal of Educational Studies, 27 (1979), 29. For examples of newspaper headlines see Clyde Chitty, Towards a New Education System: The Victory of the New Right? (Lewes, 1989), pp. 6 3 - 6 .

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Politicians responded to the mood of near hysteria by presenting educationalists as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. For solutions to the educational malaise they stopped consulting widely vilified experts such as sociologists and psychologists. Instead they turned to policy intellectuals installed in the think-tanks. The author of the new think-tank-driven approach to policy-making was Harold Wilson. In March 1974 he created a personal Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street to supplement the Central Policy Review Staff and act as his 'eyes and ears'.98 Dr Bernard (now Lord) Donoghue, a political historian turned public-policy professional, amassed huge influence as head of this think tank from 1974 to 1979." One of his main interests lay in education. Donoghue had little truck with the producer lobby in education. He argued that non-accountability had turned 'the secret garden into a weed patch'. 100 He disliked the fact that the DES was little more than a post-box between the local education authorities, and he dismissed the conventional Labour Party assumption that educational problems could be solved by throwing money at them. He had no time for the National Union of Teachers. ('In all my many dealings with the NUT at that time', he complained, 'I never once heard mention of education or children. The union's prime objective appeared to be to secure ever decreasing responsibilities and hours of work for its members and it seemed that the ideal NUT world would be one where teachers and children never entered a school at all - and the executive of the NUT would be in a permanent conference session at a comfortable seaside hotel.')101 He feared that comprehensive education was in danger of discrediting itself through its own failures and worried that the right was making invaluable political capital out of education. He also had a hunch that many of the arguments presented in the Black Papers (though grotesquely exaggerated and mobilised in a malign cause) had a core of truth to them. James Callaghan shared these doubts about progressive teaching and militant trade unionists. He was a natural traditionalist in education (as in so much else): a self-educated man who had left school at 15, he had no time for the fashionable concerns of his university-educated 98

99

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101

B . D o n o g h u e , Prime Minister: The Conduct of Policy under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan (London, 1987), p. 20. O n the Donoghue Policy Unit see G. W . Jones, ' T h e Prime Minister's Aids', in A. King (ed.), The British Prime Minister (London, 1985), esp. pp. 8 2 - 4 . Interview with Bernard Donoghue, 16 January 1986, quoted in Chitty, Towards a New Education System, p . 67. B . D o n o g h u e , Prime Minister: The Conduct of Policy under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan (London, 1987), p. 110.

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colleagues.102 Talk of allowing children to express their inner selves and doing away with the boundaries between traditional academic disciplines left him cold. To him there was no shame in thinking of education as an instrument of personal advancement and a tool of national prosperity.103 Rumour has it that Callaghan was shocked into shaking up education by his daughter's well-publicised decision to transfer one of her children from a lackadaisical state primary school to an independent school.104 But his decision also has the hallmark of a well-choreographed political manoeuvre. He was disturbed by complaints from friends in industry that the schools were failing to turn out employable workers.105 He calculated that it made good political sense to pre-empt Tory populism with Labour populism, showing industrialists that his party was keen to force schools to produce an employable workforce. Letting Donoghue off the leash made perfect political sense. Taming the progressives and prising the DES out of its embrace with the teaching lobby soon became a priority in Downing Street. Donoghue was the unseen conductor of the Great Debate on education.106 He made a start in 1975 by lobbying for the replacement of Sir William Pile by James Hamilton, a mandarin with qualifications in science and engineering, as Permanent Secretary.107 But 1976 was his annus mirabilis. He drafted a series of hard-hitting questions which James Callaghan put to his unfortunate education minister, Fred Mulley, a few weeks after moving into Downing Street.108 He coordinated the various drafts of the Ruskin speech, which not only raised doubts about progressive education but also dramatically changed the subject of the education debate from equality to productivity.109 He may have been responsible for leaking the Yellow Book, an analysis of the weaknesses of the English education prepared by the DES. (The Times nicely dubbed the memorandum 'The Department's Black Paper'.110) In 1977 he forced the DES to put some backbone into its Green Paper, 102 103 104

105

106 107 108 109 110

D e n i s Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1989), p. 448. James Callaghan, Time and Chance (London, 1987), p. 409. Gerry Fowler, ' T h e Changing Nature of Educational Politics in the 1970s', in Patricia Broadfoot, Colin Brock and Witold Tulasiewicz (eds.), Politics and Educational Change: An International Survey (London, 1981), p. 2 3 . Chitty, Towards A New Education System, p. 6 3 . T h e reference is to an interview of Callaghan conducted by T e d Wragg for the B B C Radio 4 programme Education Matters. Ibid., pp. 8 7 - 9 2 . See also Callaghan, Time and Chance, p. 410. D o n o g h u e , Prime Minister, p. 110. Callaghan, Time and Chance, pp. 4 0 8 - 9 . Education in Schools: A Consultative Document (July 1977), Cmnd. 6869, p. 8. Ibid., p. 8 3 .

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Education in Schools: A Consultative Document.111 To Tony Benn this all

smacked of an attempt to revive Cyril Burt's educational theories.112 Margaret Thatcher built on the Wilson-Callaghan legacy, though surprisingly gradually. In 1983 she abolished the CPRS - it produced too much 'guffy stuff, like PhD theses' - and turned the Policy Unit into 'a shadow Whitehall'.113 She drafted in a number of bright young men from industry and the think-tanks and gave them all precise portfolios. Mrs Thatcher had no shortage of off-the-peg policies on education. These policies accepted the core of the Callaghan agenda: more central control of the curriculum, greater teacher accountability, closer links between schools and industry, an increased emphasis on vocational education.114 But they also sympathised with the emerging new right blueprint: increased competition, greater differentiation and the reintroduction of selection. Given this ideological zeal, the first two Thatcher administrations did surprisingly little to uproot the status quo in education. Her decision to appoint Mark Carlisle (a wet with little interest in education policy) rather than Rhodes Boyson (a Black Paper firebrand) as her first Minister of Education signalled her willingness to bide her time on education. Her first administration spent little time on the subject, and her Policy Unit had no remit to tamper with education until 1982.115 The result was that practical achievements were minimal. The Education Act of 1980 made it easier for parents to send their children across administrative boundaries and introduced the Assisted Places Scheme (subsidies to help poorer children leave the public for the private sector). But the first measure made little practical difference and the second benefited no more than 3 per cent of the age group, with a disproportionate share of the largesse going to cash-strapped middle-class parents such as clergymen and widows.116 The decision to hand responsibility for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) to the Manpower Services Commission rather than the Department of Education put the education establishment onto the defensive.117 But quite what it was supposed to be defending itself against remained unclear. 111 112 113 114 115 116

117

Donoghue, Prime Minister, p. 112. Tony Benn, Against the Tide: Diaries 1973-76 (London, 1989), p. 629. Peter Hennesy, Cabinet (London, 1989), p. 194. Donoghue, Prime Minister, p. 113. N. Wapshott and G. Brock, Thatcher (London, 1983), p. 104. Geoff Whitty, John Fitz and Tony Edwards, 'Assisting Whom? Benefits and Costs of the Assisted Places Scheme', in Andy Hargreaves and David Reynolds (eds.), Education Policies: Controversies and Critiques (Lewes, 1989), pp. 138-60. See also Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order (London, 1991), pp. 475-6. David Young, The Enterprise Years: A Businessman in the Cabinet (London, 1991 edn),

pp. 31-2.

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One reason for this prevarication was lack of parliamentary time. Another was internal divisions in the Tory Party. The Thatcherite clique wanted to re-introduce selection by ability. Mrs Thatcher had no truck with 'this universal comprehensive thing' 118 and thought that a system which had produced her ('after all, I had come up by selection by ability')119 had everything to recommend it. Sir Keith (later Lord) Joseph, her intellectual mentor and Education Minister between 1981 and 1986, shared her enthusiasm for selection and differentiation.120 After the 1983 election victory sixty Tory MPs signed a motion favouring re-introducing selection. But many Tories thought that re-introducing selection would alienate the middle classes and make the Labour Party look moderate. A series of test cases in the mid-1980s proved the sceptics right. In September 1983 the Director of Education at Solihull Metropolitan Council proposed to turn two comprehensive schools into grammar schools, selecting pupils on the basis of a combination of longitudinal assessments and objective tests.121 Shortly afterwards, Berkshire and Wiltshire announced plans to extend their existing selection procedures. But everywhere the plans met vociferous opposition. In Solihull, a 'non-political' pressure group, Solihull Parents for Educational Equality, was rapidly organised. Months of concerted lobbying - letters to councillors, MPs and the media, demonstrations outside the town hall, a spate of noisy public meetings - forced the council to drop its scheme in February 1984. Activists were refreshingly open about their reason for opposing the re-introduction of selection: they had bought expensive houses in certain areas in order to ensure that their children went to socially exclusive and academically rigorous schools. Selection would introduce an element of uncertainty into their carefully laid plans for passing on their advantages to their children. It would also mean importing scholarship winners from the less desirable areas of the borough.122 Everywhere that a return to selection was mooted middleclass activists came up with similar objections. The message to the Conservative Party was clear: middle-class parents prefer to see school places allocated on the basis of house prices rather than examination results. By the end of the second term it looked as if the radical strategy had 118

Quoted in Chitty, Towards A New Education System, p. 196. Quoted in H u g o Young, One of Us (Oxford, 1986), p. 68. Quoted in Chitty, Towards A New Education System, p. 158. 121 Geoffrey Walford and Sian Jones, 'The Solihull Adventure: A n Attempt to Reintroduce Selective Schooling', Journal of Education Policy, 1, 3 (1986), 239. 122 Walford and Jones, 'The Solihull Adventure', pp. 246, 2 5 1 - 2 . T h e authors also point out that the pro-selection lobby handled their case lamentably. 119

120

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failed. The middle classes supported selection by house price rather than selection by ability. Many right-wingers regarded the replacement of a two-tier exam at 16-plus with the unified GCSE as the triumph of the comprehensive principle in the curriculum. The 1986 Education Act was a messy piece of legislation, the creation of inchoate back-bench resentments rather than co-ordinated national policy.123 When Joseph resigned in 1986, driven out by teacher strikes and middle-class discontent, it seemed as if vested educational interests had triumphed. The triumph proved illusory. Mrs Thatcher wanted reform of the welfare state to be the leitmotif of her third administration. Trade unions and nationalised industries had been dealt with in the first two administrations. Now it was the turn of the public service providers.124 In the run up to the election Mrs Thatcher repeatedly hinted that she was contemplating radical educational policies, including direct-grant schools and vouchers.125 In 1986 Brian Griffiths, the head of her Policy Unit, and a small group of intimate advisers, notably Oliver Letwin, a former adviser to Keith Joseph at the DES, worked out a blueprint for translating new right theory into educational practice.126 At about the same time, right-wing think-tanks and pressure groups, frustrated by the inertia of the Joseph years, began to focus on education, excoriating the so-called education establishment and producing dozens of plans for reform, including 'crown' schools, magnet schools, opting out, financial delegation and open enrolment.127 To ensure that bright ideas were turned into practical policies, she replaced Sir Keith Joseph with Kenneth Baker. Kenneth Baker was not an ideological soulmate like Keith Joseph - his earliest mentor had been Edward Heath - but he had a formidable reputation for cultivating friends in the press and pushing tricky legislation through parliament.128 123

Cf. K e n Jones, Right Turn: The Conservative Revolution in Education ( L o n d o n , 1989), p. 19. 124 Y o u n g , One of Us, p . 5 2 1 . 125 See Richard Johnson, 'A New Road to Serfdom? A Critical History of the 1988 Act', in Centre for Cultural Studies, Education Limited (London, 1992), pp. 59-60 for contemporary quotations. 126 S. Maclure, Education Re-formed: A Guide to the Education Reform Act (Sevenoaks, 1988), p . 166. 127 See, for example, Caroline Cox and Roger Scruton, Peace Studies: A Critical Survey (London, 1984); Adam Smith Institute, Omega Report: Education Policy (London, 1984); R. Scruton, A. Ellin-Jones and D. O'Keefe, Education and Introduction (London, 1985); A. Seldon, The Riddle of the Voucher (London, 1986); No Turning Back Group of MPs, Save Our Schools (London, 1986); Hillgate Group, Whose Schools? A Radical Manifesto (London, 1986) and The Reform of British Education (London, 1987); Stuart Sexton, Our Schools: A Radical Policy (London, 1987); and Anthony Flew, Power to the Parents (London, 1987). 128 Maclure, Education Re-formed, p. 166.

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Baker turned a rag-bag of ideas, some based on studies commissioned by Keith Joseph, some generated by Brian Griffiths in the Policy Unit, some dreamt up by think-tanks such as the Centre for Policy Studies, some outlined by Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, into a legislative programme. 129 The 1988 Education Act represented the triumph of the radical right. It created a national curriculum - the first in English history - and reinforced it with regular testing at 7,11 and 14. It promoted the Secretary of State from the senior partner into the managing director of the educational service, and relegated the local educational authorities to the role of monitors. It tried to make schools more accountable, by forcing them to publish the results of national tests, and more businesslike, by giving them control of their budgets. Above all, it injected an internal market into school funding, making a school's income dependent on the number of pupils it attracted, and effectively turned each pupil into an educational voucher. To weaken the monochrome comprehensive system still further, it gave further encouragement to a variety of new kinds of schools: City Technology Colleges which concentrated on vocational subjects and relied partly on industrial sponsorship, magnet schools which specialised in particular disciplines, and grant-maintained schools which opted out of local government control. The result was the biggest shake-up in English education since 1944. Matthew Arnold might quarrel with the result. But in 1988 the English decisively abandoned their aversion to handing education over to state control and ideological influence. The state finally turned English education into a national system with a core curriculum and a uniform method of financing. To do so it made enthusiastic use of a controversial but coherent body of educational theory. It took some time, but the state and its chosen experts had triumphed in the end. 129

Young, One of Us (1991 edn), pp. 522-4; Nigel Lawson, The View from Number 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London, 1992), pp. 606-11. Hammering out a policy was far from easy. For examples of disagreements between Baker and Griffiths see Young, One of Us, pp. 523-4.

Part IV

Conflict and order

12

British national identity and the First World War J. M. Winter

There has been in recent years a burst of interest among historians in the nature and evolution of British national identity. Among labour historians, this tendency is an indication of the decline of the Labour Party, consigned to the political wilderness in the Thatcher years and after by a failure to present Labour policies as 'national' rather than class-based. Why conservatism is national and socialism sectarian is a current political question with a long historical past. Both are class-based ideologies, but conservatism in the 1980s (as in the 1930s) more successfully pressed its claim to speak for the 'nation'. In addition, this literature has reflected a wider debate within Britain over political integration within the European community, and the rearguard action among some Conservative and Labour politicians against it. And the recrudescence of strident patriotic voices, during both the Falklands War and the Gulf War, despite the fact that the British way of life was by no means threatened by either Galtieri or Saddam Hussein, again raised the issue of precisely what British troops who risked their lives were actually defending. Historians have approached the problem of what has constituted Britishness from many different directions. Some have explored the earlier history of the British 'patriot', defined as 'one who defends constitutional rights, reveres liberty, agitates for an end to corruption, and struggles with the outrages of centralized power'. Nationalism has never been identical with this kind of patriotism, and historians have shown how on occasion the two have been diametrically opposed.1 Whatever the history of conceptual distinctions, the consensus is that this mid-nineteenth-century view of patriotism as a radical position had faded by the end of Victoria's reign. In its place came a host of images of 1

Mary Dietz, 'Patriotism', in T. Ball et al. (ed.), Political Institutions and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 177-93; see also Linda Colley, 'The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty and the British Nation, 1760-1820', Past and Present, 52 (1984), 94-129; and H. Cunningham, 'The Language of Patriotism, 1750-1914', History Workshop Journal, 12 (1981).

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the British nation which celebrated imperial grandeur and the intrinsic superiority of British institutions over those of lesser nations.2 This interpretation misses both the vagueness and the variety of pre-1914 formulations of British national identity and, I want to argue, the clarifying effects of the Great War. I want to suggest that the pressures and consequences of the 1914-18 war brought into relief features of British national identity which were blurred in the pre-war period. This occurred largely in two ways: through negative reference to the enemy and through the complex and multifaceted process of commemorating the fallen. During and after the conflict, 'Englishness' became synonymous with masculine 'decency', moral rectitude and martial virtues, expressed above all in the accents and culture of London and the Home Counties. Even though the Great War was a moment reflecting the depths of provincial culture and local identities, in fiction, in the graphic arts and in film it was remembered in a highly selective manner. In effect a new kind of national stereotype emerged to celebrate the behaviour and comportment of the men who went to war, and, over time, especially of the officers who led them. My argument is that the emphases and symbols of commemoration were not fixed. In the 1920s, the spirit of collective memory was egalitarian. The common soldier was the object of homage and the subject of sculptors, artists, and the men and women who commissioned their work. Over time, and certainly by the 1930s, this egalitarian moment passed. This was probably inevitable, given the highly inegalitarian, class-conscious nature of inter-war British society. In place of celebrating the original brotherhood of arms, there emerged a selective representation of what the Great War meant, expressed through the sacrifice of the officer corps and the social class it embodied. This inegalitarian project took many different forms, and helped bolster the profoundly conservative political culture of inter-war Britain and beyond. The current literature thus understates the degree to which the upheaval of war formed national stereotypes which appeared both clearly and subliminally in inter-war Britain. 'Englishness' was redefined after 1914 in terms of the wartime and post-war assertion of a vaguely defined but palpable set of English 'traditions' and their appropriation by British conservative politicians, writers and artists. Their work was by no means co-ordinated, but its cumulative effect was to help reconsolidate conservatism and affirm the continuities of British life in the disturbed period following the Great War. 2

R. Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (3 vols., London, 1989).

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British national identity before 1914 The most striking feature of pre-war discussions of national identity is their vagueness. There is no more slippery term in the then current political usage than 'Englishness'. Before 1914 'English' was used interchangeably with 'British', despite the distinctive and independent existence of Welsh and Scottish cultural forms.3 In addition, a flourishing provincial entertainment industry helped broadcast and affectionately exaggerated the quaint habits and accents of Newcastle, Liverpool, Birmingham and Stepney, not to mention the host of caricatures of Scots and Welsh peculiarities. These selective sketches of local oddities paralleled similar lampooning which went on as vigorously in Paris and Berlin as it did in London. But in the British case, there was a political reason for the greater emphasis on local peculiarities and imperial connections than on national identity. The relatively minor role played by the national state in pre-1914 British economic and social life and the absence of conscription in the strategy of a naval power were luxuries. They dampened Victorian and Edwardian debates about national identity which arose in disputes as to the nature of the state and its appropriate powers. Despite persistent suffragist agitation, which did directly raise the issue of citizenship, the only two nations in Europe without manhood suffrage in 1914 were Hungary and Britain. A voice in choosing the leaders of the state was still a privilege rather than a natural right or legal entitlement for the majority of the population. Three questions, though, did threaten to break the distinction between 'nation' and 'state' which underlay the absence of divisive and fundamental discussions of what Englishness actually was. They were physical fitness, alien immigration and the perennial problem of the Irish. It is well known how turn-of-the-century imperial conflicts brought to the fore the question of the British 'race', so flawed by malnutrition and poverty that a large proportion of volunteers failed to pass even rudimentary physical examinations for military service during the Boer War. These lamentable statistics of physical unfitness exposed one of the ways industrial conditions had stunted the height and health of working-class people. Combined with the decline in fertility of middle3

And not only then. Orwell's essay of 1947 'The English People' was first announced by his publishers as 'The British People'. See H. Cunningham, 'The Conservative Party and Patriotism', in R. Colls and P. Dodd (eds.), Englishness: Politics and Culture 1880-1920 (London, 1985), ch. 1.

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class families, there appeared a eugenic nightmare of a nation peopled by the prolific 'unfit' and led by a dwindling middle and upper class.4 The sense of decline and decadence was of course relative, and the debate over national inefficiency was exacerbated by the growth of German commercial and military power.5 But despite admiration for German vigour and organisation in social and economic affairs, and notwithstanding a rash of spy and invasion stories in popular literature,6 English smugness and insularity were robust enough before 1914 to contain any widespread fears about the safety and survival of the English way of life. It is true that Jewish and other turn-of-the-century European immigration flows touched chords of xenophobia and brought to the surface some voices paranoiacally worried about the future of the British 'race'. But even those particularly disturbed by the 'alien wave' of central and eastern European immigrants failed to descend to the levels of viciousness common in continental circles. Anti-Semitism was a living reality, but, like American racism, it was a time-honoured source of hypocrisy rather than a touchstone of national identity.7 Given the longevity of British institutions, it is hardly surprising that the debate about national identity was much more subdued and sedate in Britain than on the continent. To appreciate the muted character of British political argument and popular discussion of this issue, one only had to turn to the violent quarrels over French national identity in light of the Dreyfus affair or separation of Church and state, or to the complex and murky explorations of the nature and appropriate boundaries of the German Volk, producing in their wake a cloud of antiSemitic and anti-Slav sentiment pervading the Kaiserreich from top to bottom. It was not Victoria or George V who were strident antiSemites before 1914; it was Wilhelm II. 8 And while civilised antiSemitism was endemic, and some obscure British writers engaged in flights of disturbed fantasy about Jewish plots, and furthermore, while anti-Jewish violence was not unknown,9 these ethnic tensions raised relatively few fundamental issues of national identity in pre-1914 Britain. Of much greater importance was the debate over Irish nationalism. 4 5 6 7 8 9

See M. S. Teitelbaum and J. M. Winter, The Fear of Population Decline (New York, 1985), chs. 2-3. Geoffrey Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency (Oxford, 1975). I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War (London, 1966). For another view, see David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews (London, 1994). See J. C. F. Rohl (ed.), Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (Cambridge, 1984). Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford, 1983); Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986 (London, 1988).

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Long after Engels insulted the Manchester Irish as savages,10 many commentators both conservative and radical returned time and again to the themes of Irish drunkenness, criminality and general disreputableness, in such a way as to turn into a cliche the claim that there was a yawning gap between the two cultures. Anti-Catholicism played its part in some quarters. But except in extreme Protestant circles, the Irish question before 1914 was treated then (as now) as a special case, the intrinsic violence of which placed it outside British norms and practices.11 The volume of international migration, from Britain to areas of white settlement in Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and North and South America and back again, also helped obscure distinctions between the English and the other, especially the imperial other. We forget how many young British-born people before 1914 sought their fortune, for instance in Canada, and, failing to find it there, returned to England for another round of speculation on the future. A second decision to emigrate followed for those still not settled.12 What was their nationality? Canadian? British? The distinctions were on the whole blurred before 1914. In effect, once the Irish were discounted or forgotten, there was little reason for native-born British people to ask themselves what Englishness was. Instead, they simply could chime in with the delightful certainties of Gilbert and Sullivan about who or what was an English man. The impact of war An old nation either unaware of or untroubled by fundamental threats does not have to define who or what it is. That British privilege was a casualty of war. 'Englishness5 after 1914 still remained hard to spell out, but one important effect of the propaganda campaign of the Great War was to provide a cornucopia of negative references to do so. Specifying the contours of Englishness by pointing out its distance from other, lesser cultures is a time-honoured English tradition,13 resurrected like 10 11

12

13

F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in 1844 (London, 1950 edn), pp. 95-9. Boyce, 'The "Marginal Britons": The Irish', in Colls and Dodd (eds.), Englishness, pp. 230-53; S. Gilley, 'English Attitudes to the Irish in England, 1780-1900', in C. Holmes (ed.), Immigrants and Minorities in British Society (London, 1978); F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland (Oxford, 1979); D. G. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London, 1982). Dudley Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and Internal Migration in England and Wales, 1861-1900 (Cambridge, 1985). Samuel, Patriotism, vol. I l l , p. xxv.

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many others when the Great War broke out. Thereafter 'Englishness' was everything 'Germanness' was not. This process of cultural differentiation is the subject of this chapter. This redefinition of national identity had important political implications in the inter-war years.14 Underlying the domination of the Conservative Party in post-war Britain was a profound cultural conservatism, expressed in fiction, the graphic arts, film and radio. Its litany had many features, but prominent among them was a retreat from the uncertainties of war into the mythologies of a supposedly longestablished and immutable 'Englishness'. This grammar of national identity had sources deep in the Victorian period and beyond. But it took on new forms during the 1914^18 war and after, and its appeal is a central feature of the political and industrial power of conservatism in the inter-war years. It would be wrong, though, to see these cultural developments primarily or exclusively as tools of social control, political manipulation or hegemonic exchange. That they were useful to some political leaders is incontestable. For instance, Baldwin's On England, published in 1926, is a splendid mix of cultural cliches and political messages.15 But a narrowly functionalist or cynical interpretation of the redefinition of national identity in the period of the Great War will miss the central fact behind the impulse to resurrect Englishness at this time. The search for political advantage or industrial leverage did not create the new grammar of national identity. What lay behind it was another, more sombre, event. That event was the slaughter of three-quarters of a million British and Irish men in the Great War. Numbers are bewildering when we speak of a disaster of such proportions. And comparative statements about who suffered most are fraught with impossible problems of inhuman calculations. It is simply meaningless to estimate whether the shock of mass death was greater in Germany which lost the war and two million men than in Britain which won the war and lost less than half that number. Given the unprecedented universality of bereavement, the glow of victory or the pall of national defeat were eclipsed by other, more intimate reactions to loss. Each country came to terms with the disaster in its own way, drawing on different cultural and religious traditions to find some way of ascrib14

15

From different perspectives, see M. Cowling, The Impact of Labour 1920-24 (Cambridge, 1970); J. E. Cronin, Labour and Society in Britain 1918-1979 (London, 1984); J. Hinton, Labour and Socialism: A History of the British Labour Movement 1867-1974 (London, 1983). K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography (London, 1969); D. Smith, 'Englishness and the Liberal Inheritance after 1886', in Colls and Dodd (eds.), Englishness, pp. 254-82.

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ing meaning to what had happened to them. In the British case, one point in particular stands out. It is that the carnage stripped British elites of the confidence that their power could be passed on effortlessly to a new generation, just like them. The slow and steady development of British institutions, in industry as in politics, was taken by virtually all observers to be the key to that country's social stability throughout industrialisation. In 1914 family firms and not corporations still controlled most of British business life. Lines of succession were clearly marked out, despite the restriction of talent they entailed. Those who ran the country knew who the apprentices were. They were the sons of the middle class, many educated in public schools and in Oxford and Cambridge. They would enter business or (more likely) go into the public service as administrators, teachers, elected officials, and after a period of preparation they would take over the instruments of power. Even the injection of new men into politics, like Asquith and Lloyd George, not from prominent urban families or old landed gentry but from modest urban or rural backgrounds, made little difference to the ways the country was governed and its prosperity assured.16 The war challenged this orderly progression of generations. What was the British way ahead if the apprentices were no longer there, but lay in France and Flanders fields? The Prime Minister's son was there. So were the sons of Conservative leaders Bonar Law and Stanley Baldwin, and the son of Arthur Henderson, Secretary of the Labour Party. So were thousands of the sons of the powerful and the wealthy throughout Britain. While one must not forget that Britain's 'Lost Generation' was overwhelmingly working-class, it is still true that elites suffered disproportionately heavy casualties. This was in part because the class structure of British society was reflected in the social selection of military participation and rank, and because officers, and in particular, junior officers, suffered casualties well above the average for the army as a whole.17 The slaughter of subalterns shook the confidence of the British ruling class that its hold on power was enduring, if not eternal. To a degree, Britain never recovered from that shock. But during the war and in its aftermath, efforts were made by artists, writers, film-makers and poets as well as politicians to reassert older lines of continuity in British cultural life and thereby to help overcome the trauma and in some way lift the cloud of grief evident in Britain after the war. This cultural movement took many forms. The four explored here are 16 17

F. M. L. Thompson, 'Britain', in D. Spring (ed.)3 European Landed Elites in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1977). J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London, 1986), ch. 3.

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first, the demonisation of the German; second, the idealisation of the 'Tommy' in memorial art; third, the celebration of 'Englishness' in post-war popular fiction; and fourth, the resurrection of the romanticism of warfare in film. British versus German Anti-German sentiment played a crucial role in the redefinition of British national identity during and after the 1914—18 war.18 In poetry, prose, posters, postcards, commercial bric-a-brac, as well as in the more dignified statements of clergy and politicians, English 'decency' was juxtaposed to German 'bullying'; English 'fair play and morality' to German 'atrocities', ranging from the violation of Belgium to the sinking of civilian ships; English amateurishness at war to German militarism. It mattered not that the history of British (and Belgian) imperialism provided lurid examples of all the crimes British writers defined as German. In wartime, such parallels vanished as the casualty lists lengthened. And we must bear in mind that the victims of German 'barbarism' were white Europeans, with whose plight British men and women could identify easily. The First World War helped mould British national identity by providing a host of hateful symbols against which the nature of the 'British' way of life came into high relief. Its central features were clear. 'Englishness' became synonymous with masculine 'decency', moral rectitude and martial virtues, expressed above all in the behaviour and comportment of the men who went to war. There were many ways in which British institutions distanced themselves from contamination by contact with German culture. The war ruptured many Anglo-German ties. Battenburg became Mountbatten. English music, and especially the work of Elgar, was used to drown out the sounds of 'German' music.19 A further instance of the move away from German association was the termination of German Rhodes scholarships at Oxford and, by Act of Parliament modifying Cecil Rhodes' will, their transfer to men living in British dominions or dependencies. Oxford went further and cut by half the salary of the German-born Professor of German. The liberated funds went to lectureships in French and Italian. Both Oxford and Cambridge took steps to establish the PhD degree as an alternative home for Americans in search 18

19

A good introduction is S. Wallace, British Academics and the Image of Germany 1914-18 (Edinburgh, 1988). J. Crump, 'The Identity of English Music: The Reception of Elgar 1898-1935', Colls and Dodd (eds.), Englishness, pp. 171-7.

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of higher degrees. Germany had been their destination before the war.20 In the aftermath of the war, Oxford's war memorials, many sponsored by bereaved parents, excluded the names of Germans who had been at Oxford and who had served (and died) in the war.21 What better proof could there be of the yawning gulf separating British and German elites than their unwillingness to mourn together? The egalitarian moment: war memorials The impossibility of including the names of dead Germans on the published lists of Oxford men fallen in the war discloses another area in which images of national identity were displayed. One of the most important repositories of communal symbols of Englishness is the war memorial. The contrast in style and iconography between British and continental war memorials is striking. In Britain most figures celebrate not a mythical or iconic figure, as in France,22 or a classical male nude, as in many German memorials,23 but the 'ordinary' British 'Tommy', the common man, private soldier Tommy Atkins, the civilian in uniform, whose very British laconic sense of humour got him through trench warfare, and who never doubted the Tightness of the cause or the certainty of ultimate victory. This democratic and non-military symbolic representation of Britishness departs, of course, from the undemocratic and imperial facts of British life in this period. Most of these memorials were built in the early 1920s, alongside utilitarian expressions of Protestant voluntarism, like hospitals, libraries, water pumps. This was an unusually egalitarian moment in British cultural life, followed by the reassertion of social order in other forms of commemoration in the later 1920s and 1930s. We shall turn to this process in a moment. But what matters most in observing these statues in hundreds of British market towns and villages is to see how they embodied negative stereotyping in stone. The key fact was that the eternal 'Tommy' was emphatically not German. The soldiers depicted are not professionals; they are not bellicose; they are in most cases not stridently heroic. Most are sad, tired, or relieved to be coming home. They represented a nation drawn into war by necessity, 20

21

22 23

J. M . Winter, 'Oxford and the First World War', in B. Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, vol. V I I I , The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1993). J. M . Winter, 'Balliol's "Lost Generation" of the First World War', Balliol College Record (1975). See Annette Becker, Les Monuments aux morts (Paris, 1988). George M o s s e , Fallen Soldiers ( N e w York, 1990). T h e definitive work on German war memorials is being prepared by Professor Reinhard Kosseleck.

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not design, a nation shocked by the price of victory and determined to express its eternal debt to those who gave their lives.24 The landscaping of British military cemeteries also had symbolic force. The recreation of English country gardens in France and Flanders distinguishes the host of small, village-like British cemeteries built by the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission, from the larger French and darker German equivalents. It is as if these British and Dominion memorials were laid out in such a way to suggest that communities of men, not armies, went to war, and that those who died had the right to rest in cemeteries resembling those at home. It is true that there is a certain military symmetry in these ranks of the dead, though the decision taken to place officers alongside men brought out the insignificance of rank and other military distinctions.25 In addition, British domestic cemeteries are less beautifully organised and maintained than military cemeteries in France and Belgium, where a visitor can feel the power of the pastoral motif they embody. That the values associated with the land were celebrated in this way at a time when the value of land itself plummeted under inflationary pressure26 is beside the point. What matters is that a rural trope of eternal repose was set as the outward sign of the Englishness of the men who died in the war. Once more 'Englishness' was embodied in material culture in an unmistakable way in the aftermath of war. The elite returns: best-sellers and the war To gain a fuller idea of the power of this retreat into Englishness in post-war popular culture, we can turn to English popular fiction. One facet of the best-sellers of this period was the attribution of 'meaning' to the war, a set of notions very remote from the irony and iconoclasm of what is called 'war literature', the works of Graves, Sassoon, Blunden, which collectively is really the radical tip of a conservative literary iceberg. To find 'meaning' in many cases meant showing in fictional form how 'Englishness' had survived the war.27 24

25 26

27

W e await the Imperial War M u s e u m project o n British War Memorials, directed by Catherine Moriarty, before assigning numbers and percentages (as well as describing exceptions) to these assertions. I owe this point, and much else, to K e n Inglis. F. M . L . T h o m p s o n , English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), epilogue. Pioneering work in this field has been done by a number of young scholars at Cambridge. I am indebted in particular to Rosa Bracco, whose work has been published under the title Merchants of Hope: Middlebrow Literature and the First World War (Oxford, 1993). See also Laurinda Stryker, 'Suffering and Sacrifice: T h e First World War and English Chaplains, Psychologists and Poets', P h D , University of

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There is, of course, a vast difference between the outlook and emphases of the war poets and the soldier-novelists of the late 1920s, on the one hand, and the 'middlebrow mafia' on the other. Who today remembers, let alone reads, the works of Warwick Deeping or Gilbert Frankau? They were the Jeffrey Archers and John Greshams of the day, and were read by more people than were exposed to a single line of Wilfred Owen's poetry.28 Whereas the war poets stressed the shared universe of suffering, the popular writers of the 1920s thrived in asserting the distinctiveness and enduring qualities of Englishness. Once again we can see the power of negative stereotyping in the formation of national identities. Englishness was known in this fiction by its distance from the other, and especially from the German. The heroes of many post-war popular novels were emphatically 'English', for which read: middle-class, patriotic, unemotional, unintellectual, masculine, with none of the fanaticism, cruelty or pedantry of their German counterparts. Again we meet the idealised British soldier, this time almost always an officer, a man who accepted the war without much doubt or introspection, fought stoically, dismissed fear through humour, and returned to his women who understood their subordinate place. In some novels, soldiers did have a crisis of faith - Ernest Raymond's maudlin Tell England (1923) is a good example - but they almost always came through it believing in the eternal verities and the Tightness of God's (and England's) order. Film, romanticism and the Englishman at war What middlebrow fiction did for a substantial audience in the 1920s, the cinema did for millions. With some notable exceptions, it recreated the patriotic certainties embedded in post-war notions of national identity, and did so in forms readily assimilable into a conservative vision of British national character. 'English character' took on new life in inter-war cinema. Indeed, film provided unprecedented opportunities to conjure up reassuring icons of English ordinariness and decency. This was certainly true in documentary and semi-documentary form, and especially in newsreels. These brief accounts of current events trumpeted their political neutrality while broadcasting a very conservative vision of English society and

28

Cambridge, 1991; Adrian Gregory, 'Armistice Day 1919-1946', PhD, University of Cambridge, 1993, and the forthcoming Cambridge PhD dissertation of David Lloyd, 'Pilgrimages in Britain and the Dominions after the First World War'. On sales, see Bracco, Merchants of Hope, chs. 1-2.

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Englishness.29 Once again the theme of nation over class, assumed to be politically neutral, dominated the visual presentation of controversial issues. Commercial films followed the flag of 'Englishness' triumphant as well. The post-war cinematic 'England' was full of conservative cliches: about class, about gender and about the nobility of bearing arms. There are many examples of works offering these motifs, but one film in particular stands out. It is Journey's End, directed by James Whale in 1930, and based on the successful stage play of R. C. Sherriff. This film is a prime instance of the ways the cinema helped propagate conservative images of English national character in the aftermath of the Great War. Journey 3s End

Sherriff's film/play is a commemoration of the 'lost generation' of public schoolboy officers of the 1914-18 war. The hero, Capt. Stanhope, has stood the strain of four years of war through drink. He is deeply embarrassed to find that an ex-school friend has been assigned to his unit as a junior officer. This still idealistic officer, new to the Western front in 1918, is Lt. Raleigh. He worshipped Stanhope at school and retains that memory despite Stanhope's stress-induced inebriation and shame-filled rudeness. A third officer, Lt. Hibbert - based on Sherriff himself- is suffering from nerves, and asks Stanhope to send him to the rear. This Stanhope refuses to do, and when Hibbert tries to escape anyway, Stanhope pulls a gun on him and says he will shoot unless Hibbert remains in the line. Hibbert says he can't go on and waits for the shot. When Stanhope puts the gun down, the men comfort each other. Stanhope admires Hibbert's willingness to face death, albeit an inglorious death, and tells the frightened man of his own terrors. Each agrees not to mention the weakness of the other, the fear and panic which were inescapable parts of trench warfare. The men get a totally pointless order. They must organise a raiding party to take German prisoners to find out what they already know: the Germans are about to launch a massive offensive. Stanhope, embittered but loyal still, sends his men to certain death. He loses his best officer, Osborne, a 45-year-old schoolmaster who had once played rugby for England, but who was too modest to tell his fellow officers about his 29

T. Aldgate, 'The Newsreels, Public Order and the Projection of Britain', in J. Curran et al. (eds.)> Impacts and Influences: Essays on Media Power in the Twentieth Century (London, 1987), pp. 145-56; N. Pronay, 'The Newsreels: The Illusions of Actuality', in P. Smith (ed.), The Historian and Film (Cambridge, 1976).

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athletic prowess. Then the March 1918 offensive begins in earnest, and almost immediately Lt. Raleigh is hit, and dies in Stanhope's arms. Stanhope ascends the stairs, after which an explosion caves in the dugout, ending the play, and presumably Stanhope's life too. This brief summary of the plot gives only a hint of its popular appeal. The reviews highlighted the redefinition of bravery, meaning fortitude, and the profound Englishness of the story. As a tale of 'English' values transcending the carnage of war, Journey's End struck a very deep chord. On the stage, rewritten as a novel, or on the screen, Journey's End was a major commercial success, the sources of which are apparent. Journey's End both commemorated the dead and glorified their values. But 'their' values were those of the officer class. The men in the ranks appear only in caricature: a forelock-tugging comic cook, Mason, who can never get the pudding right, and a brawny sergeantmajor. In effect, Sherriff's play celebrated class, schooling, breeding, athleticism, loyalty, courage, the masculine affinity for arms. All the cliches of the English Home Counties echo in his work. Above all, the power of Sherriff's play resides in the fact that it did not ignore the pain, the stress, or the harsh choices faced by British soldiers in the front lines. But he resolved them in a manner which suggests the stubborn survival of the English way of doing things. Stanhope is a very English tragic hero. He had served for four years in the thick of things, when most officers had either died or found a safe way home. He could have taken sick leave to get away from the shelling. He refused to do so, which was brave, but could only cope by sustained drinking, which was human. His shame at seeing Raleigh was born out of fear that the news of his alcoholism would reach Raleigh's sister, a 'topping girl', informally waiting for him to return to England. He needn't have worried. Raleigh worshipped him at school, and continues to worship in the trenches. Sherriff treats Stanhope - played in the original stage version by the young Lawrence Olivier and in the film by Colin Clive - as a slightly mad embodiment of all the English schoolboy virtues. Journey's End is, in essence, a tale of heroism; not the heroism of swagger, but of the English front-line officer's suffering and persistence in the arts of survival through the nightmare of trench warfare. Sherriff himself was a lower-middle-class writer become celebrity through his worship of the public school ethos and its products. It is ironic that when he offered his manuscripts and personal papers to his old school, it turned him down.30 Service to the system occasionally is 30

They are deposited at the Berkshire Record Office, Reading.

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not enough. But Sherriff had done his best in reviving the cult of heroism and character under the tragic circumstances of trench warfare. The English way of warfare

I have dwelled on Journey's End partly because of its phenomenal success, and partly because it is the best instance of the link between the celebration of Englishness at war in middlebrow fiction and in film. In the inter-war years and after, other films followed the path of Journey's End. Anthony Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, and whose brother Raymond was killed in 1916, directed a film version of Ernest Raymond's Tell England in 1931. Nurse Edith Cavell, starring Anna (later Dame Anna) Neagle in Herbert Wilcox's 1939 film, is another mundane British cinematic treatment of doomed and noble courage in wartime. Here the woman wears the uniform, and faces death, in the idiom of the time, just like a man. Once the Second World War started, the film industry provided dozens of celebrations of English national character. Indeed, since 1939 the theme of the gallant, martial Englishman has been a mainstay of the cinema. Four notable examples among many are Olivier's patriotic rendering of Henry Fin 1942; Noel Coward's very middle-class English naval officer in In Which We Serve (also 1942); The Life and Times of Colonel Blimp (1943), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), directed by David Lean. All are character portraits of recognisably English types: following the public schoolboy turned unwilling hero in Journey's End are Olivier's immortal Henry V at Agincourt; Colonel Blimp, who has entered the language as the symbol of British gentlemanly pompousness and anachronism; and Lawrence, the mysterious, charismatic desert-wanderer, whose very elusiveness helped provide the silent space in which something of a cult was built. For our purposes, these figures of Englishmen at war and after provide fine examples of the British cinematic treatment of English national character in the period since 1918. Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon (1937) embodied this stereotype in the non-military setting of Shangri-La. But films that were set in war made the same point repeatedly in this period. Courage and character are what Henry F, Colonel Blimp and Lawrence of Arabia are all about. The first is every schoolboy's dream of English masculine military prowess. The second is a lovable portrayal of a professional soldier so wedded to a code of honour that he falls prey to the ungentlemanly tricks of the new generation of harder soldiers of the Second World War. While contemplating

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the apparent redundancy of his values, he muses over the contours of his life, and the resulting film is a powerful and entirely romantic celebration of English decency and decorum. The film breathed life and dignity into what was known to a wide public through the press cartoons of David Low. In his hands Blimp was the ideal caricature of the conventional.31 Powell and Pressburger made him a much more interesting and attractive man. After 1945, the British film industry continued to propagate traditional images of national identity. Indeed, in a number of ways, the First World War has become a familiar home for such explorations of Englishness first in fiction, then on stage, and now on television. Note the popularity of the 1989 BBC comedy series 'Blackadder', a sequence of which is set in the trenches of the Great War. The comedy has all the stock figures in it, but an entirely sober (and devastating) final scene, where the cast goes over the top, frozen in time, as their predecessors were perched on war memorials seventy years ago. Consider too the case of Lawrence of Arabia. From the mid-1920s, a cult of Lawrence was fashioned by a host of journalists and soldiers. Biographies, articles, exhibitions all contributed to the legend of the conqueror of desert sands in the name of King and Country.32 After the Second World War, the filmic version of the legend gave it new life. David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) carries on where the inter-war filmic presentation of Englishness left off. The essential link is romanticism. Just as Captain Stanhope and Colonel Blimp show public school virtues triumphant over adversity, Lawrence provides all the glamour of a quixotic, daring, slightly mad upper-middle-class gentleman, presented with nostalgia just as Britain's relinquishment of any military presence east of Suez stripped away the last remnants of Imperial power. Conclusion Arguments about the refashioning of national identity must remain speculative, since we know much more about iconography than about its reception. It still may be useful to suggest that historians ignore at their peril the ways in which the visual arts and popular literature in Britain developed and deployed a powerful array of images of Englishness. The chief features of that imagined national Pantheon were never 31

32

D a v i d L o w , Low on the War: A Cartoon Commentary of the Years 1939-41 ( N e w York, 1941). B. H . Reid, ' T . E . Lawrence and H i s Biographers', in B. Bond (ed.), British Military Historians and the First World War (Oxford, 1991).

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fully elaborated. They rarely are, since definition leads to the disclosure of embarrassing omissions and exclusions. For instance, unlike on the continent, English women may have been identified with the race and its biological perpetuation rather than, like Marianne, with the political nation and its institutional life.33 They were vessels through which 'Englishness' poured. But more importantly, the conservative myth of Englishness was based on a conjuring trick. It ignored the vast majority of the population. It both appealed to a common heritage and located its 'true' expression not in the 80 per cent of the population working in manual occupations, but in the sons of the privileged, whose decency, courage and self-confidence took them to war, largely because they were Englishmen. Thus if you asked in 1918 or 1958 or 1993 what was Englishness, you would receive the answer that English upper middleclass men find when they look in the mirror. That message can be found in poetry, in prose, and in the most revolutionary of the contemporary arts, in film. In the inter-war period, the resurrection in film of the romanticism of English martial traditions occurred at a time when other voices were reformulating images of national identity in similarly traditional ways. The main reason to believe that these cultural products are historically (rather than artistically) significant is their success in the market, a success which, with some notable exceptions, escaped pacifist art, film or literature. These images were full of cliches. But this fictional 'imagined community5 of Englishmen and women, poorly expressed and full of contradictions as it was, nonetheless sold.34 What did the people who saw these films or read these novels get for their money? Entertainment, escape, adventure, to be sure; but they took in other messages too. After the shock of the 1914-18 war and the losses it entailed, these works celebrated the survival of 'traditional' English virtues and values, generalised to the whole population during the war and in the immediate post-war period, but which came to mean the values of the officer class. Inter-war art, fiction, theatre and film presented a vision of 'Englishness' the central features of which were, in effect, its attachment to the habits of an identifiable social stratum - the educated urban middle class, from which the bulk of officers serving in the British army was drawn. The selective image of Englishness which emerged after 1918 was 33

34

J. Mackay and P. Thane, 'The Englishwoman', in Colls and D o d d (eds.), Englishness, pp. 191-229. O n Marianne, in contrast, see M . Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: trans, by J. Lloyd Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France 1789-1880, (Cambridge, 1981), and Marianne au pouvoir: I'image et la symbolique republicaine de 1880 a 1914 (Paris, 1989). O n publishing, 'print culture' and national identity, the locus classicus is n o w Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 1983).

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propagated above all by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The voice of the BBC was emphatically not regional. It was a southern voice, certainly Home Counties, rather than identifiably London. Its cadences were neither working-class, nor the more florid versions of public school English, although radio announcers wore dinner jackets for evening broadcasting.35 If only their listeners knew. Some broadcasters, like J. B. Priestley, reminded listeners of the variety of accents and rhythms which survived the period of war and depression. Provincial identities did not vanish, but from the 1920s they retreated into quaintness and caricature. The air waves were national, not provincial. And most BBC voices (then as now) inhabited a part of England which doesn't appear on the maps. It is an England of the mind, polite, civilised, and always in control. This class-specific 'national gallery'36 of sounds and images, produced in many forms, reached through radio, literature and film a wide audience, much larger than any which attended political meetings or exercised the right to vote. To a considerable degree this profoundly traditional culture in Britain after 1918, full of deference to an imagined past, underwrote the inter-war social contract, and helped ensure the enduring power of conservative appeals at moments of political and industrial conflict. As Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn suggests, the Second World War shook - at least for a time - the power of cultural conservatism.37 But he or she who seeks to find it today should just come to Britain, look around and listen. 35

36 37

I owe this point to Bill Garside. See also Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, vol. I, 1922-1939: Serving the Nation (Oxford, 1991). K e n Inglis tells m e that the Australian broadcasters adopted the same dress code. See Inglis and Jan Brazier, This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932-1983 (Carlton, Victoria, 1983), p. 70. Raphael Samuel's phrase, in Samuel, Patriotism, vol. I I , p. xi. Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (London, 1941). O n the weakness of left-wing interpretations of patriotism, see Miles Taylor, 'Patriotism, History and the Left in Twentieth-Century Britain', Historical Journal, 3 3 , 3 (1990),

981-7.

13

A state of siege? The state and political violence Charles Townshend

You do not declare war against rebels. (Lloyd George)

It is probable that most British 'statesmen', politicians or functionaries, would politely distance themselves from Weber's famous characterisation of the state - possessor of the monopoly of force in a political community - as being both too theoretical and too foreign for our case. In modern times, at least, the British state has clothed itself in a comfortably shapeless outfit which has served to disguise its fundamental powers.1 But it has differed little from any other modern state in its determination to vindicate its monopoly of force, and in reacting to violent challenges it has provided at least an oblique definition of itself. A battery of legislation, including two major Public Order Acts and a dynasty of Emergency Powers Acts, together with Race Relations Acts, an Incitement to Disaffection Act, a Treachery Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, bears testimony to the uncongenial fact that the legitimacy of the state's monopoly of force has been contested at many levels and in many areas during the course of this century. If there is still no consolidated law of civil emergency, no definition of public order or public security, no 'state of siege', this is due at least as much to the ingrained common law tradition of resistance to codification as to the fact that political violence has so far - just about - been contained by this loose legal skein. Though one may ransack British public security laws in vain for any definition of their central concepts - 'serious disorder', 'sedition', 'terrorism', even the elementary 'breach of the peace' - some attempt must be made for analytical purposes to codify the threats to which the state has responded. Strict legalism cannot take us very far down this path, because laws have a way of bending and melting as they approach the core of state power. Constitutional law textbooks have tended to skirt 1

Cf. G. E. Aylmer, 'The Peculiarities of the English State', Journal of Historical Sociology, 3, 2 (1990), 91-108.

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such matters and indicate that they are marginal.2 There was, indeed, no textbook on public order law until the publication of Ian Brownlie's Law Relating to Public Order, revised and expanded in 1981 as Law of Public Order and National Security.3 This yoking together of two vital concepts was a path-breaking attempt to identify and fix the state's centre of gravity, but for all its remarkable qualities Brownlie's book does not quite succeed in this. Or rather, it succeeds in making clear that the centre is hollow. For instance, Brownlie could not come up with a workable definition of 'sedition', much less of 'subversion'. This is not surprising in the case of the latter, which - for all its central importance in the angst of twentieth-century states - has never been legislated upon. Sedition, on the other hand, is an ancient common law charge with a grand freight of case law. The problem is that most of it is obsolete, but it is impossible to be sure how much and how far. What is quite clear is that sedition has not been a politically attractive charge in recent times.4 Indeed, the one piece of modern statute law to start life as a 'sedition bill' was deliberately (if no less obscurely) renamed the Incitement to Disaffection Act, and the government was loud in its complaints against the opposition's insistence on continuing to call it by the older name. Yet it would be a rash commentator who pronounced it legally dead: as Brownlie cautioned, 'in time of crisis an uncertain executive might resort to it again as it has done in modern times in areas of British colonial rule'.5 The central point in this is that the law of public security is essentially political. It can only be read historically, as a function of changing perceptions of the tasks and perils facing the state. This is especially true of reactions to political violence. On a superficial view, violence could be measured objectively, by its scale. Thus local, small-scale, episodic street-fighting might be less of a threat to the state than, say, a large-scale armed assault on the capital city. The view becomes more complex, however, when political intention and political impact are taken into account. Political violence is a matter of interpretation: as Hawkins insisted in the early eighteenth century, one does not have to be a full-blown revolutionary to be a threat to the state: Those who make an insurrection in order to redress a public grievance, whether it be a real or pretended one . . . are said to levy war against the king, though 2

3

4

5

A fairly representative example is the handful of pages allotted to emergency powers at the very end of Wade and Phillips, Constitutional Law (8th edn, London, 1970), pp. 717-24. Brownlie's Law of Public Order and National Security, 2nd edn, by M. Supperstone (London, 1981). The Law Commission (Working Paper no. 72, 1977, para 76) pointed out its virtual disappearance in the twentieth century. Brownlie's Law of Public Order, p. 239.

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they have no direct design against his person, for they insolently invade his prerogative by attempting to do that by private authority which he by public justice ought to do, which manifestly tends to downright rebellion.6

Thus the illegitimate use of force for a public purpose was rebellious. In Hawkins's day, this proposition remained fairly straightforward, partly because the repertoire both of force and of purposes remained quite small. By the twentieth century, both were vastly expanded. The everenlarging institutional scope of the state multiplied its vulnerability to resistance at many levels, while a formidable battery of oppositional theories - nationalist, anarchist, communist, fascist - offered the prospect of an inexhaustible supply of rebels. The result was a dramatically heightened sensitivity to the danger of subversion. In such circumstances, every manifestation of violence was to be taken much more seriously than before. Hence to grasp the significance of an incident we need to locate it in a complex matrix of values. Beyond the three dimensions of measurement used by Gerhard Botz, for instance, in his lucid study of political violence in Austria between the wars - scale, duration and level of organisation7 - we need to incorporate perceptions of public insecurity. A medium-sized, averagely destructive riot may be construed as a freakish aberration, or as a symptom of social breakdown. An 'unsigned' explosion in a city centre will almost certainly be read as 'terrorist', but any more precise message will be debatable. 'Unlawful drilling', a rather quaint-sounding offence prohibited by a statute of 1819, which receives a brief mention in Brownlie (under 'miscellaneous offences'), actually created one of the most acute political crises of modern British history when it provided the mechanism for the growth of paramilitary movements in Ireland in 1913-14. The lineaments of political violence may usefully be traced by adapting Botz's model to the British experience. Thus, for instance, the tradition of non-state court (Vehmgericht) executions (Fememord) did not exist in England; in Ireland it was erratically followed by the agrarian secret societies of the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth became the exclusive prerogative of the IRA. The principal categories whose shifting meanings will be the subject of this essay are assassination, bombing, street-fighting (Zusammenstoss), insurrection (Aufstand), riot and disturbance, under Botz's general notion of 'latent civil war'. Gradations of scale are important in distinguishing these categories, but 6 7

Pleas of the Crown (1716). G. Botz, Gewalt in der Politik: Attentate, Zusammenstosse, Putschversuche} Unruhen in Osterreich 1918-1938 (Munich, 1983), p. 15.

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the question whether a terrorist campaign taking place over a long period requires the participation of over 500 people to qualify as an insurrection is one which cannot be simply answered. Indeed, my argument will in part be that the British state has devoted much ingenuity to avoiding the confrontations logically entailed by some categories of violence. It is probably safe to say that political violence was not perceived as a significant public problem at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was loosely related to the Victorian 'conquest of violence', in which a novel kind of domestic peace had been achieved, or at least imagined (imagination being the controlling sense in matters of public security). The fit was loose, however, because while the domestic peace - the suspension of violent crime and public disorder - was broadly maintained through to the 1970s, the political peace expired rather suddenly in what George Dangerfield indelibly labelled the 'strange death of Liberal England'. This has remained a resonant notion because it rests on a vision of liberalism which has been close to the heart of British public culture. When Sir John Simon introduced the Public Order Bill in parliament in November 1936 he flourished the banner of tolerance, 'the grand characteristic of British political life': 'All the things which we prize - freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and freedom of meeting- are based on our conception of political and civic toleration.'8 If Douglas Hurd's introduction of its successor fifty years later was less rhetorical, this was due as much to the executive's ingrained impulse to deny the novelty of new legislation (presenting it as merely an adjustment of a tried and true law) as it was to a shift in political fashion.9 Tolerance, known to political science as pluralism, remained the grand characteristic, or the most frequently invoked aspiration, of the British system. Geoffrey Elton's attempt in 1992 to reassert the authoritarian foundation of English political culture went as much against the grain as Fitzjames Stephen's work had once done.10 Political violence represents the most calculated assault on this culture of reasonableness. The three principal elements of Dangerfield's 'death' - the Irish conflict, the suffragette movement and the industrial 8 9

10

HC Deb. 5th series, vol. 317, c. 1350. Though Hurd's declared aim of 'quiet streets and a peaceful framework for our individual lives' had a strong individualist cast, he later invoked Burke's 'little platoon' to specify the Conservative social vision. HC Deb. 6th series, vol. 89, c. 792 (13 January 1986); D. Hurd, 'Freedom Will Flourish Where Citizens Accept Responsibility', The Independent, 13 September 1989. G. Elton, The English (Oxford, 1992); cf. Ferdinand Mount's review in The Times Literary Supplement, 16 July 1993; also Mount's comments on John Patten's version of 'balance', The British Constitution Now (London, 1993), pp. 33-5.

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struggle - were connected, if at all, only in their tendency to push the tolerances of the system to breaking-point. The suffragette agitation was the most transient, but its violence presented a fierce enough challenge. Though estimates vary, upwards of £250,000 damage was caused by suffragette incidents in 1913, and the same amount again before August 1914.u It is doubtful whether the shock effect would have been much greater had the militants not deliberately confined their actions to attacks on property. The real affront lay in the violent defiance of convention, and its most corrosive implication was a larger contempt for the political process itself.12 The same subversive implication was present in the intensification of industrial conflict into what Dangerfield capitalised as 'the Unrest'.13 An acute crisis in the mining industry was the fountainhead of a widespread fear, or hope, of imminent revolution. The mind of the establishment had been sensitised to the impending threat by the notion of 'social treason' identified in the work of W. S. Jevons, The State in Relation to Labour, in 1882. The imagined importation of syndicalism screwed up the pitch of apprehension, so that when the South Wales coalfield riots broke in November 1910 the Chief Constable of Glamorgan was instantly convinced that 'the strike is totally different to any one I have previously experienced'. Similarly, during the transport strikes of 1911 The Times suggested that 'we are assisting at the absolute decomposition of society into its elements'. But though the whiff of syndicalism was to hang about the labour movement through the inter-war years, there was little serious suggestion of any deliberate or systematic use of violence in pursuit of fundamental change. British labour disputes hardly began, even in 1926, to take on the characteristics of general strikes. But they necessarily brought into sharp focus the sense of internal vulnerability of complex modern societies, a sense which powerfully reinforced the more traditional international fears mobilised by the outbreak of war in 1914. In combination they unlocked a new strain of state response. The 1914 Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) were declaratory laws investing the 1l

12 13

A. Rosen, Rise Up Women! The Militant Campaign on the Women's Social and Political Union 1903-1914 (London, 1974); estimates discussed in B. Harrison, 'The Act of Militancy: Violence and the Suffragettes, 1904-1914', in Peaceable Kingdom: Stability and Change in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1982), pp. 26-7. Harrison, 'The Act of Militancy', p. 76. G. Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (2nd edn, London, 1966), pp. 195-291; there is a concise modern evaluation in R. Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes: 1893 to 1985 (London, 1986), pp. 25-47, and a lucid analysis in J. Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour Disputes in England and Wales 1900-1939 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 148-87.

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executive with almost limitless powers in the name of public security. The elaboration of these delegated powers by a dramatically expanded bureaucracy was a temporary expedient, but its central point was conserved in the post-war Emergency Powers Act. The overriding claim to protect 'the life of the community' was inscribed in terms which pulled internal and external security closer together. The compound term 'national security' was still waiting to be born, but the outbreak of the Second World War brought it very close.14 The two former laws were fused in the Emergency Powers (Defence) Acts whose purpose was 'securing the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of public order and . . . maintaining supplies and services essential to the life of the community'. This was not yet the 'national security state', nor the 'strong state' of later crisis theorisers, much less the 'garrison state' of which Harold Lasswell warned in 1941.15 But it marked a fair distance travelled from Edwardian reticence. We may be reminded just how far if we consider the difficulty the government found in coming to grips with the most recalcitrant of Dangerfield's three elements, the Irish conflict. The restraint of suffragist violence and the spontaneous local form of industrial clashes did not, when the chips were down, present insuperable problems. If Tonypandy deserves its reputation as a high point of class war, it is in part because it was met by new methods which carried the state a stage further towards relative autonomy. General Macready's remarkable success - however narrow - in acting as the neutral arbiter between the two sides of the South Wales conflict prefigured a tendency which (despite occasional contrary appearances) was maintained through to the 1980s.16 The Irish case was very different. The difference could not be measured simply by the level of violence. In the years before the First World War, in fact, the Irish conflict generated somewhat less personal violence and a great deal less property damage than the other elements in the crisis. But the political threat was of a different order, whether viewed from the unionist standpoint - the destruction of the United Kingdom - or from the nationalist - the use of 14

15

16

Cf. B. Buzan, People, States and Fear (London, 1973, 1983); R. J. Spjut, 'Defining Subversion', British Journal of Law and Society, 6 (1979), 254-61; E. Grace and C. Leys, 'The Concept of Subversion and its Implications', in C. E. S. Franks (ed.), Dissent and the State (Toronto, 1989), pp. 62—85; S. P. Saltstone, 'Some Consequences of the Failure to Define the Phrase "National Security'", Conflict Quarterly, 11, 3 (1991), 36-54. H. D. Lasswell, 'The Garrison State and the Specialists on Violence', American Journal of Sociology, 46 (1941), 455-68. To judge from D. Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (London, 1978), Lasswell's argument never got beyond the sphere of academic social science. Geary, Policing Industrial Disputes, p. 47.

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armed resistance to the will of parliament. The outstanding feature of the Ulster crisis was the more or less spontaneous emergence of a large-scale paramilitary organisation. The long-term consequences of this were so severe that some account of it is required. During three successive campaigns against Irish Home Rule legislation, in 1886,1893 and 1911, the Ulster Unionist organisation gradually grew in size and complexity. The construction of a formal militia may not have been inevitable, but it was quite forseeable in the context of deep-rooted loyalist habits of public banding and demonstrative marching. The government's failure to foresee it produced a destructive hesitancy and indecision when the final crisis broke. This failure was partly political it was committed to the Irish nationalist view of self-determination but partly also cultural. Liberal ministers plainly did not want to confront the possibility that the opposition might be prepared to resort to violence. Asquith and Birrell relied on the ruggedness of the culture of tolerance - underpinned, certainly, by Dicey's doctrine of parliamentary supremacy - to smother the storm of resistance. Thus for two years the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was permitted to grow into a formidable simulacrum of an army: much the same size as the British Expeditionary Force. The simple legal device through which this happened was an obscure provision of the Unlawful Drilling Act permitting drilling on the authority of two justices of the peace to make people 'more efficient Citizens for the purpose of maintaining the Constitution and protecting their rights and liberties thereunder'. Not until late 1913 did the Attorney General suggest to the cabinet that such authorisation would not 'amount to "lawful authority" [i.e. within the terms of the 1819 Act] in a case where the whole proceeding is a seditious conspiracy'. Even then, no action was taken.17 When the government at last found itself staring into the abyss of civil war, the instruments of state power were revealed as being unexpectedly fragile. The 'Curragh mutiny' perhaps owed more to ministerial carelessness than to a real rupture in the convention prohibiting political action by the army, but it had alarming potential.18 And what could be more subversive than the Leader of the Opposition's assertion that 17

18

Unless one follows the (still current) Unionist view that there was a ministerial plot to provoke the UVF into rebellion, which misfired thanks to the resolution of the Curragh cavalry officers. C. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 266-70. I. F. W. Beckett (ed.), The Army and the Curragh Incident, 1914 (London, 1986), provides a rich collection of documents.

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'there are things stronger than parliamentary majorities'? There is considerable irony in the fact that Dicey himself, who had done more than anyone to cement, if not invent, the belief in the supremacy of parliament as the cornerstone of the English constitution, was driven by the 'monstrous iniquity' of Home Rule not merely to echo Bonar Law in saying that Ulster's moral resistance 'might rightly be carried . . . to extreme lengths', but further to hint rather loudly that it was time to ponder 'what are the limits within which the tyranny either of a king or of a democracy justifies civil war'.19 This pregnant question has overhung the Irish conflict for the remainder of the century. Although the Great War provided a temporary respite, it was evident that the state as formerly imagined was vulnerable to the establishment of pockets of alternative legitimacy where its writ might not run. For a couple of years in the early 1970s these were to take spectacular physical form as 'no-go areas', but in a sense the whole of British policy has been hedged by no-go areas of a political kind. This became clear in the aftermath of the Great War, when persistent delays in implementing Home Rule permitted the emergence of an armed republican movement prepared to use a wide range of violent methods to neutralise the British state's agencies and assert its own legitimacy as a counter-state. The epochal achievement of the IRA was to find a distinctively modern form of rebellion. Trial and error, reinforced by instinct, played a bigger part in this than theorising.20 The failure of open insurrection in 1916 left the adherents of the 'physical force tradition' with the alternatives of either admitting the failure of violence, orfindinga more viable mode for it. Those who took the latter path assembled a new strategy of insurgency out of a collection of limited violent actions targeted principally upon the semi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the political division of the (otherwise unarmed) Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). This repertoire of violence fairly quickly exhausted the available catalogue of legal classifications. To describe both the assassination of individual police officers, like the RIC District Inspector shot in Thurles in June 1919 or the DMP G Division (political) detectives shot in Dublin later in the year, and the killing of policemen (and later soldiers) in ambushes or organised assaults on 19

20

A. V. Dicey, A Fool's Paradise: A Constitutionalist's Criticism on the Home Rule Bill of 1912 (London, 1913), p. 127. T h o u g h a 'hedge-fighting' strategy had been proposed by some members of the Irish Volunteer staff before 1916, modelled on the Boer experience, its direct influence is impossible to trace; likewise that of T . E . Lawrence in Arabia.

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barracks simply as 'murder' was to forgo any policy gradation or, in effect, choice.21 Indeed, it might be argued that IRA action went off the British legal chart at the outset by picking up from the previous generation of agrarian conflict the device of the boycott, against which the government had wrestled rather inconclusively in the 1880s to find a judicial remedy.22 From the perspective of the twentieth century, the boycott was the archetypal form of civil resistance: within it each individual act was easy and harmless (in a legal sense), but cumulatively the process was as lethal as a physical assault.23 It was never clear how far the 1887 Crimes Act had been instrumental in bringing the agitation under control. The Act remained the Irish government's principal resource in 1918, even though DORA had meanwhile provided vastly greater putative powers, and the government publicly connived in the popular belief that martial law remained in force. This legal cornucopia actually testified more to the indecision than to the determination of the authorities, as Lord French found when as Viceroy he tried to suppress the surviving physical-force Volunteers. French and Walter Long, who was that rare thing, a cabinet minister with an enduring interest in Irish policy, concluded in 1918 that the only way of eliminating the hardline gunmen who had noiselessly merged into the newly enlarged Sinn Fein party was to crush the whole Sinn Fein organisation.24 Long's colleagues jibbed at such a departure from pluralism. The ingrained conviction that the great majority of people were reasonable, moderate, and law-abiding produced a more optimistic analysis: in this case, extremist politics were being imposed on the majority by terrorist methods - so that if 'terrorism' could be excised, moderation would return. French's hands were tied, and he reaped the full odium of being perceived as a military ruler, without being able to implement a military policy. In this his fate was subsequently echoed and amplified by the British government as a whole. The one consistent feature of British policy throughout this crisis, and, it may be suggested, the Ulster crisis which re-erupted after 1969, 21

22

23

C. T o w n s h e n d , The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921: The Development of Political and Military Policies (Oxford, 1975), pp. 97ff. E. O'Halpin, The Decline of the Union: British Government in Ireland 1882-1920 (Dublin, 1987), ch. 7 passim. A. V. D i c e y , ' H o w is the L a w to be Enforced in Ireland?', Fortnightly Review, 179 (1881), 5 3 7 - 5 2 ; cf. T o w n s h e n d , Political Violence in Ireland, pp. 173-^, 195, 2 0 5 - 6 , 209. Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen, 'On the Suppression of Boycotting', The Nineteenth Century,

117(1886). 24

R. H o l m e s , The Little Field-Marshal: Sir John French (London, 1981), pp. 343ff.; J. Kendle, Walter Long, Ireland, and the Union, 1905-1920 (Montreal, 1992),

pp. 164-9.

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was what is now called the doctrine of minimum force. This is an administrative rephrasing of the common law rule that force must be met with exactly the level of force necessary to overcome it.25 It has always been an uncomfortable doctrine for those who have to use it, but there is no doubt that it represents an historic definition of state power in Britain. Though it has no logical connection with the doctrine of civilian supremacy (or military subordination), the two have merged imperceptibly in modern emergencies. The key to this was the political abandonment of martial law. Martial law had a long history of opprobrium in Britain, but in spite of the opinion of a few lawyers (notably at the time of the Jamaica case) that it was actually illegal, there was no doubt that it occupied a necessary place in public law, as the ultimate guarantee of public safety: the suprema lex of salus populi (or, in the alternative formulation, salus reipublicae). The logical necessity for supplying some form of law enforcement, however arbitrary, in circumstances where the ordinary legal process was unworkable, was clear enough.26 The problem lay in the political implications of the admission that the law could not be enforced. These became far more damaging for the modern liberal state than they had been for its predecessors. Traditionally, the most likely cause of legal breakdown was war, a reasonably unambiguous concept involving well-understood kinds of military forces and operations. But modern warfare changed all that. The Boer War alerted lawyers to the fact that the impact of military action was no longer local, and the Great War hammered home the lesson that the outcome of a total war was a function of dismayingly far-reaching processes.27 Even in the light of this experience, nobody was quite prepared for the diffuse form of 'low intensity' war elaborated by the IRA. The legal logic of the Boer War suggested that the use of martial law would increase in modern conflicts, and this seemed to be confirmed by the dramatic and unprecedented declaration of martial law throughout Ireland during the Dublin rising in 1916.28 But this ostensible departure from tradition was clearly a product of war pressure. The heterodox attraction to the declaratory value of martial law (in reassuring loyal citizens) quickly faded at the end of the war, and traditional attitudes to military rule were reasserted with undiminished confidence. The result 25 26 27

Charge to the Bristol Grand Jury, 1832; Brownlie's Law of Public Order, ch. 10. R. F. V. Heuston, Essays in Constitutional Law (London, 1964), pp. 150-3. See C. T o w n s h e n d , 'Martial Law: Legal and Administrative Problems of Civil Emergency in Britain and the Empire, 1800-1940', Historical Journal, 25 (1982),

174-83. 28

C. T o w n s h e n d , 'Military Force and Civil Authority in the U n i t e d K i n g d o m , 1 9 1 4 1921', Journal of British Studies, 28 (1989), 2 6 2 - 9 2 .

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was a tenacious refusal to read IRA violence as other than marginal and criminal, and an insistence that violence could be controlled by the civil authorities. Not until the decision to negotiate with Sinn Fein had been taken in June 1921 did a senior minister publicly accept that what was going on in Ireland was 'a small war', and that war had been lost militarily.29 In the interim, however, the tenacity of the political will to preserve the mantle of the civil power was not expressed in operational consistency. As so often, no front-rank ministers were involved in formulating policy. Lloyd George himself made erratic but crucial interventions, as when he instructed the cabinet (on one of the rare occasions when French was permitted to attend) in April 1920 that 'you do not declare war against rebels', and when he reasserted in June 1921 that 'the Irish job is a policeman's job . . . So long as it becomes a military job only it will fail.'30 Walter Long, whose power was waning along with his health, never secured real control of policy. His most important initiative was characteristically indirect: the idea of recruiting British ex-soldiers to strengthen the RIC. The creation of the 'Black and Tans' went ahead because it was politically uncontentious, unlike increasing the power of the military authorities. This was a decision which more or less made itself. There can be no more forceful testimony to the power of the idea of 'police primacy' than the fact that it survived the experience of the Black and Tans unscathed.31 Indeed, the surviving Tans themselves were optimistically exported to Palestine when their Irish role was wound up, along with the legal framework in (or around) which they had operated.32 The carefully titled Restoration of Order in Ireland Act of August 1920 was the most distinctive statement of the British way through civil emergencies. Though it conveyed immense powers to the executive, on the model of DORA (whose formal lapse brought it on), these were not enough in the circumstances of actual guerrilla conflict or 'small war'. Indeed, one appeal court judge was to take the view that the Act placed some tangible restrictions on the executive's common law powers, and nullified its attempt to apply martial law in southwest 29 30

31

32

Townshend, British Campaign in Ireland, pp. 191, 203. Cabinet Conversation, 30 April 1920. C A B 2 3 20; Cabinet, 2 J u n e 1921. T . Jones, Whitehall Diary, vol. I l l , p. 73. T. Bowden, Beyond the Limits of the Law: A Study of the Police in Crisis Politics (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 180-^1; C. Townshend, 'Policing Insurgency in Ireland, 1914-23', in D. M. Anderson and D. Killingray (eds.), Policing and Decolonization: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-65 (Manchester, 1992), pp. 3 4 - 8 . C. Townshend, 'The Defence of Palestine: Insurrection and Public Security, 19361939', English Historical Review, 103 (1988), 931.

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Ireland.33 This potential disaster, which came about after the July 1921 truce, showed the possible costs of avoiding an explicit 'state of siege'. But similar statutes were to proliferate through several imperial emergencies over the next half century. In all of them the unresolved tension between civil and military functions reflected the unavailability of clear descriptive categories of internal war. This was not only a British problem, but it was especially acute for Britain. Those who had absorbed the common law tradition were impelled to see peace and war as mutually exclusive conditions, and to dodge military requests for definition of the powers and methods appropriate to such projects as 'the restoration of order'. Britain has coped (or not) with a remarkable range of insurgent violence during this century without ever reaching a consistent view of what it was up against.34 An exasperated commentator on British attempts to pacify Palestine in the 1930s, H. J. Simson, demanded that 'British rule be brought up to date, and a system of emergency rule devised, capable of bringing the extremist up with a jerk should he venture to resort to force'.35 He recognised that the British state-building project was much more demanding than mere 'pacification'; it was to achieve 'obedience to the principles of peace'. Unfortunately he did not go so far as to specify the content of the kind of system he advocated, though he did at least propose a generic term for the problem to be addressed: 'sub-war'. Convergent synonyms emerged around the same time from official sources: military reports described the situation in Palestine variously as 'virtual rebellion' and 'incipient rebellion'. While such notions might modify attitudes, they never achieved any formal status. Thirty years later, a leading military specialist in the (then still unfashionable) field of counter-insurgency proposed a framework of 'low intensity operations', which spawned a large search for dogma - but in the USA, not Britain.36 Forty years on, an academic 'terrorism expert' like Paul Wilkinson would be suggesting that 'severe, prolonged and widespread campaigns marked by higher intensities of violence' need to be seen as 'incipient or suppressed civil wars'.37 This brings us round again to Gerhard Botz's formulation 'latent civil war'. 33 34

35 36

37

Evan v. Macready, [1921], 1 I R 265. Wade and Phillips, Constitutional Law, p. 412. See C. Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (London, 1986), passim; but cf. T . Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-60 ( N e w York, 1990). H . J. Simson, British Rule, and Rebellion (Edinburgh, 1938), p. 328. F. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (London, 1971). Cf. e.g. S. Sarkesian and W . L . Scully (eds.), U.S. Policy and Low Intensity Conflict ( N e w Brunswick, N J , 1981); D . M . Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton, N J , 1989). P. Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (London, 1977), ch. 10.

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The incipient civil war which Wilkinson had foremost in mind, of course, was the Northern Ireland conflict. When this broke back into British consciousness in 1969, the state was perhaps at the apogee of its legitimacy. The 'profound, pervasive but cryptic crisis' detected by seers of the new left in the early 1960s still lay below the surface.38 The 'immensely elastic and all-embracing hegemonic order', capped by the 'supercharged religion of monarchy', had so far seen off all revolutionary challenges.39 Political violence had receded steadily from the alarms of Dangerfield's strange death. Liberal England had been through two total wars, waves of strikes and unemployed marches, supplemented by the flurry of Fascist and - more violently - anti-Fascist activism in the 1930s.40 In the process it had lost eight of its nine lives, maybe, but it was still generally believed to be living. Indeed the 'wind of change' which had accelerated the withdrawal from empire might be thought to have restored it to a more authentic liberal course after a century's deviation. Instead a rising tide of political violence boiled up through the fissures opened by the civil rights agitation and the protest movements of the late 1960s. Symptoms of the unwonted strain on the state's defences were to appear in the proliferation of sensational studies of 'Britain in Agony' or (on the other side) 'The Coercive State'.41 The sense of general political crisis was certainly forged, first and foremost, by the terrorist campaign. It was this which extorted a sequence of jolting constitutional measures whose reach quickly spread beyond the confines of Northern Ireland: the adoption of internment without trial, the restoration of direct rule, the indefinite suspension of trial by jury, the 'Draconian' Prevention of Terrorism Act, and - as telling as any the 'broadcasting ban'. 42 The Northern Ireland crisis, protracted over almost a quarter of a century, has been a 'low intensity' conflict of the most elusive kind. 38 39 40

41

42

Perry Anderson, 'Origins of the Present Crisis', New Left Review, 23 (1964), 26. Ibid., pp. 35, 39. G. D . Anderson, Fascists, Communists and the National Government: Civil Liberties in Britain 1931-1937 (Columbia, M o . , 1983); S. M . Cullen, 'Political Violence: T h e Case of the British U n i o n of Fascists', Journal of Contemporary History, 28 (1993), 2 4 5 - 6 7 . R. Clutterbuck, Britain in Agony: The Growth of Political Violence (London, 1978); Clutterbuck (ed.), The Future of Political Violence: Destabilization, Disorder and Terrorism (London, 1986); P. Hillyard and J. Percy-Smith, in The Coercive State: The Decline of Democracy in Britain (London, 1988), offer only a hint of this groundswell. By 1989 the idea of a general crisis was sufficiently well established to be the subject of an Open University textbook: J. Anderson and A. Cochrane (eds.), A State of Crisis (London, 1989). Even before 1969, an interesting sketch of the corrosive relationship between 'English Law and the Irish Question' was provided by Paul O'Higgins, The Irish Jurist, 1 (1966), 59-65.

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Apart from a period of sustained IRA activity in the early 1970s, and sporadic flurries thereafter, the level of violence has never been high enough to force the issue into the British political arena.43 No significant movement of public opinion has disturbed the 'bipartisan' nature of government policy. This silence, as much as deliberate political choice, may account for the reluctance to label the conflict a civil war. As the years have passed, official descriptions of the situation have become steadily more anodyne, and early attempts at realism like the notorious 'acceptable level of violence' have become conspicuous by their absence. The marginalisation of the issue argues, however, that the level of violence has indeed become acceptable. The point sometimes made about the relatively heavy weight of violence in the small world of Northern Ireland44 is made precisely because that weight is not felt in the larger space of the United Kingdom. Lack of public pressure, perhaps even of public opinion, has permitted the state to develop flexible, unfamiliar and covert methods of dealing with violence. Whether these comply with traditional constitutional constraints is a question which ought to be addressed. It will be approached here on two levels, that of legal powers and that of operational methods. The problem of defining terrorism has vitiated most writing, and all legislation, on the subject. For our purposes, however, it is not necessary to tackle this difficulty, simply to note that the state's definition of terrorism is inevitably political. The form of words used in the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the use of violence for political ends, would plainly include international war, but is evidently not intended to do so: the definition is rather one which operates through shared assumptions about the illegitimacy of certain kinds of violence.45 In practice, there is no dispute that violent actions for which the IRA 'claims responsibility' are terrorist, or that a special meaning is given to IRA terrorism — as a calculated threat to public security and the state by contrast with loyalist terrorism, which is routinely labelled (one might say dismissed as) 'sectarian'. However deplorable, it represents an indirect challenge to the state, in its monopoly of force, rather than a 43

44

45

O n the crudest index, that of fatalities, over half the twenty-year total occurred by 1976. B. O'Duffy and B. O'Leary, 'Violence in Northern Ireland (Oxford, 1990), p. 320; a more complex set of indices is presented in B. O'Leary and J. McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (London, 1993), pp. 4 0 - 4 . There is an excellent comparative analysis in O'Leary and McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism, pp. 9 - 2 2 . G. Hogan and C. Walker, in Political Violence and the Law in Ireland (Manchester, 1989), p. 5, observe that the Irish republic preferred to follow the (perhaps more traditionally English) path of specifying 'scheduled offences' in which motivation is irrelevant, a concrete rather than rhetorical 'criminalisation' of paramilitary action.

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direct one. 46 The reason for this is straightforward: the PTA was a response to a particular kind of violence, the indiscriminate bombing of public places, and in effect to a single instance of such violence, the 1974 Birmingham pub bombing. There can be little doubt that in 1974 the PTA was a reflection of intense public outrage. Its 'temporary provisions' were generally seen as a necessary reaction to a clear and present public danger - and the Home Secretary took care to invoke this American formula. Only with the passage of many years, and many official reviews, and the ultimate permanency of the Act, did the difficulty of such emergency laws become clearer: while their upholders could not demonstrate that they were effective in preventing terrorism, their critics could not demonstrate that they were not; and nobody was prepared to take responsibility for terminating them as long as any kind of terrorism went on. Thus Britain has arrived at a set of state powers which are farreaching but not amenable to the kind of interrogation implicit in the old principle of necessity. Such a situation is created by the stretching of common law traditions in a wholly modern campaign of violence, where the formal declaration of a state of emergency is politically unacceptable. The same process can be seen in the less spectacular but equally far-reaching provisions of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Acts. The fundamental issue addressed by the Diplock Commission was the operability of traditional legal procedures in a situation of endemic intimidation. The irresistible conclusion at that time (1973) was the temporary suspension (to 'forestall' the breakdown of the jury system) of jury trial together with other, equally entrenched, aspects of 'due process' affecting powers of arrest and pre-trial procedures.47 Twenty years on it has become hard to envisage the possibility of restoring what was once regarded as a central pillar of civil liberties. It is hard to measure the corrosive effect of these emergency measures on the legitimacy of the constitutional system as a whole. 48 Academic commentators have suggested that 'human-rights costs . . . have had incalculable negative effects on public trust in political institutions in the British Isles and upon the legitimacy of the Westminster model of 46

47

48

L. J. Macfarlane, Violence and the State (London, 1974), pp. 4 7 - 5 0 ; S. Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford, 1992), pp. 268ff. Report of the Commission to Consider Legal Procedures to Deal with Terrorist Activities in Northern Ireland, 1972 Cmnd. 5185, para. 37; G. Wilson, Cases on Constitutional and Administrative Law (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 749ff.; J. E. Finn, Constitutions in Crisis: Political Violence and the Rule of Law ( N e w York, 1991), pp. 8 6 - 1 1 8 . See, e.g. The Review of the Operation of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978, 1984 Cmnd. 9222: Review of the Operation of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1984, 1987 Cm. 264.

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government'.49 The real question is, is there any alternative? A recent legal analysis holds that emergency powers could be made to comport with 'the constitutive principles of constitutionalism' by a few technical changes - the most important being the introduction of independent judicial review. 50 Whether or not such reform is politically likely (in fact it would run counter to one of the most strongly marked tendencies in the modern history of the British judiciary, assertion of the executive's right to determine the actions necessary to maintain public or 'national' security),51 its effect would however be indirect. It would not make juries safe in Ireland. The legitimacy of legal institutions rests on, as much as it sustains, the legitimacy of the institutions of enforcement. Hard though it may be to frame appropriate laws to counter political violence, it is harder still to construct forces capable of implementing them. The Northern Ireland crisis has demonstrated the formidable difficulties generated by the coupling of what may rightly be regarded as the constitutional principle of 'necessary force' (or its cosmetic reformulation, 'minimum force') with an array of less binding but politically potent conventions, of which the most salient is still the notion of civil supremacy, habitually rephrased as 'police primacy'.52 This notion has always become problematical when the police force is paralysed or overwhelmed by an outbreak of violence, and the British conventions governing the use of military force 'in aid of the civil power' (MACP) are grounded on the assumption that military action will be brief, and that normal conditions will be rapidly restored.53 Any outbreak of violence larger or more protracted than a riot will exhaust the available repertoire of MACP and begin to generate stresses between the military and police organisations because of the differences in their operational logic. Moreover, if normality is not restored quickly, the tendency to militarise the police (in self-defence if for no other reason) is likely to be accelerated. The result is a system of forces whose functions are blurred 49

50 51

52

53

O'Leary and McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism, p. 47. A. Jennings (ed.), Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland (London, 1988). Finn, Constitutions in Crisis, p. 134. T h e leading twentieth-century case, Liversidge v. Anderson, has recently provided the focus of a fine study, A. W . B. Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime Britain (Oxford, 1992); see more generally J. A. G. Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary (London, 1991), ch. 9, and, for a celebrated recent case, C. Ponting, 'R. v. Ponting', Journal of Law and Society, 14 (1987), 366. For a concise analysis, see K. Jeffery, * Security Policy in Northern Ireland: Some Reflections o n the Management of Violent Conflict', Terrorism and Political Violence, 2 (Spring 1990), 2 1 - 3 4 . A. Babington, Military Intervention in Britain: From the Gordon Riots to the Gibraltar Incident (London, 1990), provides a useful, if hardly detached, general survey.

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and whose chances of securing legitimacy reduced. Any operational error exacerbates this tendency, which itself makes errors more likely by inhibiting the public co-operation on which normal policing depends.54 In Northern Ireland the situation was complicated by the fact that the 'normal' police structure was itself highly contentious, being the product of a pervasively denominational state system. The professional police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), was armed and organised in the style of its predecessor, the RIC, and was supplemented by a part-time force whose Protestant nature was unambiguous. Only briefly, at the time of the Hunt Report, did the possibility arise of 'normalising' the RUC by British standards.55 This would have been an imaginative policy with immense potential benefits, but it was also, and more obviously, immensely risky, and the risk was refused. Instead, the Special Constabulary was replaced by (in practice, if not principle, turned into) a garrison regiment, the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), thus ostensibly swinging the balance of force substantially towards the military side. The history of the UDR, which can now be seen whole, offers an acute commentary on the capacity of the state to find a neutral role in Northern Ireland. Though it was clearly a compromise, and not a specialised 'third force' (whatever the arguments for or against such forces), it offered a real prospect of mobilising the community in self-defence, providing the vital intelligence base whose lack has always been the principal handicap to internal security operations.56 Everything would depend on its capacity to enlist support from the Catholic minority as well as the Protestant majority. In retrospect, we may suggest that its doom was fixed at a very early point. Until the introduction of internment without trial on 9 August 1971, the new force was recruiting something like 20 per cent Catholics. In the subsequent upsurge of violence, the force was fully mobilised for the first time, and the position of Catholics within it became increasingly difficult.57 If any chance remained of preserving the regiment's cross-community viabi54

For a characteristically acute essay on the double-edged effect of even 'successful' operations, see D . McKittrick, 'House Raids Earn Security Forces N e w Enemies', The Independent, 6 February 1989; Despatches from Belfast (Belfast, 1989), pp. 196-202. Also Maire N i c Suibhne, ' T h e Lawless Roads', The Independent Magazine, 17 July 1993, pp. 16-22.

55

Report of the Advisory Committee on Police in Northern Ireland, 1969 Cmd. 535; D . G. Boyce, '"Normal Policing": Public Order in Ireland since Partition', Eire-Ireland, 14 (1979), 3 5 - 5 2 . Denis Healey in fact went further, arguing in the House of Commons on 19 November 1969 for 'the role of the services as an instrument of social integration'. C. Ryder, The Ulster Defence Regiment: An Instrument of Peace? (London, 1991),

56

57

pp. 44-7.

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lity in face of Catholic distrust, it was lost by a small but steady flow of incidents displaying its sectarian streak.58 A study of the UDR published in 1991 remarked, soberly enough, that 'it cannot be a matter for continued complacency or evasion by government that an arm of the security forces is significantly more lawless than the community which it is charged with protecting'.59 The failure of the UDR experiment cast a shadow over the general framework of Britain's anti-terrorist policy. Since the winding-up of internment, the dogma of police primacy has been given the additional gloss of 'Ulsterisation', a somewhat inelegant and imprecise term designed to indicate a degree of military disengagement - not enough to hearten the 'Brits out' party or dismay the loyalists, but enough to reduce the political odium of a deeply un-British military 'presence'. But this has laid on the RUC a weight of responsibility which it is hardly able to bear. Indeed it is hard to see how any police force, even without the tradition of semi-isolation bequeathed by the old RIC - and now aggravated by the general foreclosure of public accountability in the quasi-war situation - could establish its moral credentials in such circumstances.60 The relative stability of death rates and incident totals over the last fifteen years - the acceptable level of violence - may have served to neutralise the Irish question as a political issue, but it has hardly disguised the absolute dependence of the union on an open-ended commitment of military force. The army remains the keystone of the security system in Northern Ireland. Though operations on the scale of Demetrius and Motorman, and catastrophes on the scale of Bloody Sunday in Derry, may be a thing of the past, parts of the province continue to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to occupied enemy territory, if not actual war zones. And whilst the grosser abuses, notably in interrogation methods, imported with the initial military intervention have been replaced by more carefully calculated techniques, serious problems in the style of security operations have repeatedly surfaced.61 58

59 60

61

Ryder's not unsympathetic account balances, surely rightly, a chapter on 'Commitment and Sacrifice' with a (slightly longer) chapter called ' T h e "Bad A p p l e s ' " . Ibid., p. 184. D . Walsh, ' T h e Royal Ulster Constabulary: A Law unto Themselves?', in M . T o m l i n son et al. (eds.), Whose Law and Order? Aspects of Crime and Social Control in Irish Society (Belfast, 1988), pp. 9 2 - 1 0 8 . O n the still unresolved issues raised in the Stalker affair, see T . Hadden, 'The Law in T h e i r Hands', The Times Literary Supplement, 4 - 1 0 March 1988. For a sympathetic but very revealing study of the force, see J. D . Brewer with K. Magee, Inside the RUC: Routine Policing in a Divided Society (Oxford, 1991). Irish Information Partnership, 'Cases allegedly involving British Army Undercover S A S U n i t s , 1981-1988'; C. P. Walker, 'Shooting to Kill: Some of the Issues in Farrell v. Secretary of State for Defence', Modern Law Review, 43 (1980), 591^1.

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Indeed it seems likely that public disquiet about the constitutionality of British methods has tended to increase rather than to diminish over the decades of quasi-emergency rule. At the same time, the government has experienced little short-term difficulty in smothering occasional surges of concern, as over the so-called 'shoot-to-kill' policy, under the blanket of national security. Public opinion has remained unfocussed, a fact which appears to suit the authorities, so that it would be unwise to suggest that there is a gulf between the public view and the state project. But if, as two academic lawyers have put it, 'it should now be clear that civil liberties in Britain are in a state of crisis',62 it is important to consider whether this is the inevitable fate of a liberal democracy in face of persistent political violence. There can be no doubt that the English common law provides government with ample power to deal with emergencies, and that special statutes - even such far-reaching ones as the Defence of the Realm Actare merely declaratory. Equally, there is no doubt that English public culture was traditionally jealous of state power, and hostile to the notion of a formal 'state of siege' codifying emergency powers. In modern times this has produced the perverse effect that, as emergencies have become more extensive and the distinction between peace and war has eroded, the state has been impelled to enlarge the sphere of official secrecy and of covert action in the name of national security. The campaign of the Irish republican paramilitary organisations, and the loyalist organisations which exist to oppose them, have led to the creation of the closest approach to a formal state of siege in modern British history. But because the process has been piecemeal and ad hoc, there is a pervasive lack of clarity in the structure and function of the emergency regime. This may be an even more seriousflawthan the lack of accountability, in a state whose constitutive principles incorporate some notion of openness.63 The justification of arbitrariness in responding to 'extremism' is all too easy to understand. Against it needs to be set the tradition of upholding freedom even in times of extremity, lest the constitution be subverted by the very measures taken to defend it. 62

63

K. D . Ewing and C. A. Gearty, Freedom under Thatcher: Civil Liberties in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1990), p. 255. See, e.g., the cogent critiques in W. L. T w i n i n g , 'Emergency Powers and Criminal Process: T h e Diplock Report', Criminal Law Review (1973), 4 0 6 - 1 7 ; J. Jacob, 'Some Reflections on Governmental Secrecy', Public Law (1974), 2 3 - 4 7 ; and more recently, the Conclusion of C. K. Allen, Law and Orders (London, 1956).

PartV

Religion and morality

14

Survival and autonomy: on the strange fortunes and peculiar legacy of ecclesiastical establishment in the modern British state, c. 1920 to the present day 5. J. D. Green

The progressive, and seemingly inexorable, decline of the Church of England - as political body, social institution and moral medium - is no more than a commonplace of contemporary British cultural criticism. Scarcely less obvious is the increasing, and apparently irreversible, process of separation between Church and state in the formal arrangements of the British constitutional regime.1 So much indeed have decline and separation, whether strictly defined or informally assumed, become part of what might be called the educated orthodoxy in modern British intellectual life that even the most cursory consideration of the remaining ecclesiastical dimensions, or - more daring still - of the shifting religious boundaries of the later twentieth-century British state, might almost be construed as precious, even as eccentric. For organisational decline, whatever else it means, has always implied decreased significance. And political separation appears only to have been wrought at the price of diminished protection. As a result, the aura of a body of a marginal, even of exiguous, importance is today unmistakable. This appears at once an invitation to pass on to more pressing concerns, and an injunction to pass over the afflicted in polite silence. 1

Trevor Beeson, The Church of England in Crisis (London, 1973); Charles Moore, Gavin Stamp and A. N. Wilson, The Church in Crisis (London, 1989); and most recently, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Church Hesitant: A Portrait of the Church of England

Today (London, 1993). More thoughtful is Michael De-La-Noy, The Church of England: A Portrait (London, 1993). The underlying issues are incisively analysed by Stephen Sykes, 'The Genius of Anglicanism', in Geoffrey Rowell (ed.), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Wantage, 1992), pp. 221-AX', and

Edward Norman, 'Church and State Since 1800', in Sheridan Gilley and W. J. Sheils (eds.), A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the

Present (Oxford, 1994), pp. 277-91. 299

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Yet in what follows, neither of these ostensibly rigorous and respectful imperatives will be obeyed. In part, this is as a protest against any conception of the modern state, British or other, which would view it as no more than the sum of its transfer payments; still worse as the mere product of its macro-economic management. For states, whether they like it or not, embody profound principles about how their citizens properly should live. And, in the overwhelming majority of states, those principles have been religious in origin and by expression. Moreover, if this has been explicitly true in the past, it actually continues to be true, more subtly, in the present, even amongst many of those regimes such as the United States of America, states formally defined as secular.2 Certainly, it remains the case of the British state. It is now, and has been since time immemorial, a religious state. For more than four hundred years, first England, and then the United Kingdom, has been a reformed religious state. One church, the Protestant Church of England, is exclusively established by law in the greater part of the land. As such, it enjoys a privileged status in the life of the nation. Its bishops sit, ex officio, in the upper house of the legislative assembly. Its courts are an acknowledged part of the judicial system. Above all, an Anglican monarch is bound both by custom and statute law to sustain its predominance in the realm.3 True, neither its authority nor its privileges are what they once were. After all, Establishment holds no writ either in Wales or Northern Ireland. It exists, but it means something rather different, in Scotland. The episcopate forms a distinctly uninfluential part of the nation's parliamentary strength. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction has persecuted no one in a very long time. Even the monarchy, notwithstanding its continuing legal obligations towards the Church, now executes little of striking significance in the state. More important still perhaps, the civil and cultural privileges pertaining to membership of the Church of England, and correspondingly the penalties exacted for refusing such membership, have steadily declined since 1828, to the point where they are now virtually negligible.4 So much is obvious, indeed scarcely worth 2

3

4

Compare the First Amendment, or at least Thomas Jefferson's reading of it, with today's culture wars: Adrienne Koch and William Peden (eds.), The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jeff erson (New York, 1944), p. 381; James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991), ch. 10. For a concise historical and legal summary, see Peter Hinchcliff, 'Church-State Relations', in Stephen Sykes and John Booty (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism (London, 1988), pp. 351-63. On the nonconformist experience, see Alan Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1750-1914 (London, 1976), pt 2; the Catholic view is outlined in Adrian Hastings, Church and State: The English Experience (Exeter, 1991), ch. 3.

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repeating. The point at stake is different. It is this: what is truly noteworthy about the formal and informal standing of the Church of England today is not its historic decline, but rather its continuing survival. By the same token, it is arguable that the progressive separation of Church and state over the past two centuries is now of lesser moment than their continuing connection; and in this connection, it is the autonomy of the Church and not the freedom of the secular arm that commands, or should command, our attention. For the survival and autonomy of the Church, so denned, really do matter. This is because, so far from pointing merely to what is residual in the British state, they now highlight what was always essential to it, and what it may never wholly succeed in transcending: its religious basis. II One thing, however, must be made absolutely clear at the outset. To argue for the significance of survival is not to deny the evidence of decline in the fortunes of the Established Church. And, in exactly the same way, to highlight the importance of ecclesiastical autonomy is not to repudiate the facts of increasing separation from, and residual subordination to, the secular arm. Rather, it is to attempt to shift our perspective in these matters, just a little. If this should seem so modest an aim as to question the worthiness of the end, then it may be pleaded that even this simple goal is no mean task, given the strength of contemporary images of decline and irrelevance. Such images, of course, are for the most part justifiably strong. This is because they reflect a good part of the historical fact. By any reasonable measure, the Church of England has declined during the twentieth century. Whether as the privileged vehicle of the most cherished beliefs of the people, as an all pervasive social institution, as a mechanism of political solidarity, or even as an instrument for individual ambition, the Church simply is less important than it was in 1900; or, for that matter, in 1950, even in 1970.5 Similarly, both the formal and informal relations between Church and state are less significant than they were even twenty years ago. Today, the state does not construct economic or even social policy with reference to ecclesiastical sentiment. Vice-versa in the synod.6 5

6

A reliable guide here is Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianityy 1920-1990 (2nd rev. edn, London, 1990), chs. 3, 14, 26, 29, 37 and 39. For the most recent evidence, see Alexander Wedderspoon, Grow or Die (London, 1981), pp. 1-4. Exemplified by the Faith in the City debate. Compare the original, Faith in the City: A Call For Action by Church and Nation: The Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas (London, 1985), esp. pt 3; with the reaction documented in Peter Catterall, 'The Party and Religion', in Anthony Seldon and Stuart

302

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Yet it is more than a purely pedantic qualification, at least judged in the context of Britain's continuing ancien regime, to note that decline does not, in itself, entail fall; similarly, that increasing separation need not necessarily lead to utter dissolution. After all, Britain's hereditary monarchy and its mixed - aristocratic and democratic - parliament survive. So does its Established Church. To a degree, they have survived, and yet may fall, together. But the Church of England, alone amongst the characteristic institutions of the old order, has actually succeeded in increasing its formal powers, specifically the autonomy of its institutional administration, in matters of ecclesiastical doctrine, liturgy and organisation, during the twentieth century. This peculiar good fortune has, however, been little noted. Constitutional changes which would have been regarded as extraordinary, and even dangerous, if permitted to the Crown and to the Lords have passed almost unnoticed to the benefit of ecclesiastical establishment. Why? Because they have been deemed unimportant. And that this should have been so is owed less to any collective neglect in matters ecclesiastical than to a general presumption about the dynamic and direction of social change in the advanced societies suggesting that such questions, whether relating to a specific Establishment or to the churches in general, are simply of less significance than they once were. This is the presumption of secularisation. The theory of secularisation is too well known to need repetition here.7 Its relevance for the British case similarly so.8 Moreover, the validity or otherwise of the arguments that sustain it is not, strictly speaking, our concern.9 What is important is to appreciate how the very notion of the decline of the Church of England, first within British society generally, and then more particularly of its standing as part of the British State, makes little or no sense if viewed in isolation from this general, theoretical, perspective. This is because the decline of the

7

8

9

Ball (eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 657-64. The relevant literature is voluminous. No bibliographical footnote could do justice to it. Perhaps the best single exposition and analysis of the idea remains that of David Martin, A General Theory of Secularisation (Oxford, 1978); see esp. ch. 2. For which, see Bryan Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society (London, 1966), ch. 1; Martin, A General Theory of Secularisation, pp. 27-36; and most recently, Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing Without Belonging (Oxford, 1994), chs. 2 and 3. An otherwise endless debate succinctly summarised in Daniel Bell, 'The Return of the Sacred?', British Journal of Sociology, 28 (1977), 419-50; Bryan Wilson, 'The Return of the Sacred', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 18 (1979), 268-80; and Philip E. Hammond and Mark Shibley, 'When the Sacred Returns: An Empirical Test', in Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford and Karel Dobbelaere (eds.), Secularisation, Rationalism and Sectarianism (Oxford, 1993), pp. 37^15.

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Church of England during much of the twentieth century has not been caused by the advance of any other denomination - or faith - over the same period. Quite simply, there has been no such advance. Rather, it has been an aspect of a decline in the social significance of religion in Britain, tout court, over the course of all but the most recent years. In this respect, it has differed quite markedly from the Victorian crisis of Establishment. This was caused by an assault on privilege, conceived in an environment of intense inter-denominational competition, within an apparently expansive religious economy.10 The decline of the modern Church is, accordingly, normally understood to be part of the decline of the churches generally. And, as such, it has characteristically been traced to general causes, quite beyond the powers of any particular church to change.11 This is not to say that the contemporary fate for Establishment has been entirely the product of impersonal, apolitical forces. Few argue that. So, if 1829 really was a great betrayal - the Tractarians thought so then the 1944 Education Act may have been, from the Church's point of view, a great mistake; certainly, its famous progenitor, R. A. Butler, came to think so.12 Nor is it to suggest that secularisation has been the sole exogenous factor in the declining fortunes of the Church of England. On the contrary, many of those less controversial aspects of institutional pluralism, whether of the growth of democratic accountability, or even of the spread of an essentially mundane doctrine of social welfare, have acted to the diminution of the state Church, and of its wider role in British society, as much if not more in the twentieth century as during the nineteenth.13 It is, however, to insist that the secularisation of British society during the twentieth century - the progressive diminution of the social significance of religion in British life in that period - is the essential context for understanding the decline of the Church of England and the separation of Church and state in the British constitution. For here lies an important paradox. Within the general context of secularisation, the particular decline of the Church of England turns out to be rather less momentuous than at first appears. True, little more than 2V2 per cent of the population today attend the weekly religious 10 11

12

13

Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Churchy Part 1 (London, 1966), ch. 1. Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley, Church and Churchgoers: Patterns of Church Growth in the British Isles Since 1700 (Oxford, 1977), ch. 5. On 1829 as betrayal, see the Rev. John Keble, National Apostasy Considered in a Sermon Preached at St. Mary's Church, Oxford, Before His Majesty's Judge of Assizes, on Sunday, 14th July 1833, ed. by Alan Stephenson (Abingdon, 1983), passim; on 1944 as a mistake, see the remarks in R. A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (London, 1971), p. 124. Bryan Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford, 1982), esp. ch. 6.

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services of the Church. But scarcely much greater a proportion attends the worship of any other (Christian) church either. So there is nothing peculiar about the fate of Anglicanism in this respect.14 Moreover, it is by no means clear that there is anything special about the fate of organised religion in this regard either. Certainly, these, at first seemingly derisory, figures actually look quite healthy when compared with the health of secular social organisations. For instance, active members of the major political parties, attending even monthly associational meetings, today constitute no more than 2 per cent of the population. Moreover, their relative decline has been faster, and steeper, than that of comparable religious organisations since the war.15 From another perspective still, the contemporary minority standing of the Church of England can be shown to be no new thing. True, more Roman Catholics today probably attend Mass on a Sunday than Anglicans celebrating the Eucharist. This may cause consternation in official circles. But it excites none of the passion which its bare predominance, proved by the 1851 Religious Census, aroused in an earlier age.16 This is because the Church for a century and more has successfully survived its unpopularity. Indeed, it might almost be said to have transcended it. To some degree, this is because its formal authority in the land was never defined by the numbers of its active adherents. The Thirty-Nine Articles, after all, never appealed to popular consent. (For some at least they do not still.)17 It is also partly because its informal influence over the nation has been continually sustained through intelligent concession to the feelings of its most vocal opponents. In regions where its standing was controversial, like Wales and Ireland, over institutions where its privilege was increasingly untenable, like the ancient universities, even around economic relations where its ancient rights seemed more and more inappropriate, like the tithe, the Church invariably gave way, and in these concessions secured a respect, or at least a tolerance, that it might otherwise have been denied.18 14

15

16

17

18

The best account of the data, based on the figures for 1989, is found in Peter Brierley, 'Christian* England: What the English Church Census Reveals (London, 1991), ch. 2. Geraint Parry, George Moser and Neil Day, Political Participation and Democracy in Britain (Cambridge, 1992), ch. 3. For a discussion, see Hugh McLeod, Religion and Society in England, 1850-1914 (London, 1995), ch. 1; for a contemporary figure, see Brierley, 'Christian' England, p. 27. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Theology of the English Reformers (London, 1965), pp. 19ff. For a later assertion of the principle, see C. H. Sisson, 'Church and State', in his Is There a Church of England? (Manchester, 1993), p. 26. The best history of these concessions can be found in G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches of Great Britain, 1869-1921 (Oxford, 1987), esp. chs. 2, 3, 6 and 7. There is a list, complete to 1898, in Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England, p. 163.

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But possibly the greatest part of the Church's contemporary 'success5 may be traced to its relatively healthy performance in the modern ecclesiastical numbers game, rightly understood. Here, rightly understood means interpreted comparatively. Seen in this way, it can be appreciated how a supposedly declining Establishment actually saw off its principal (Christian) denominational rivals during the twentieth century. In part, this was because it declined more slowly than they did over the same period. Hence it gained in comparison with them; this was especially true for the major nonconformist churches after 1944. In part, too, it was also because their challenge, in the end, proved to be rather less significant than had been morbidly anticipated; this was notably the case for the Roman Catholic Church after 1960. For these reasons, together, the national Church of early nineteenth-century Britain, in a confessional state, remained the national Church of later twentieth century Britain, in a democratic society. It did so by default perhaps, but nevertheless to a greater extent than could possibly have been predicted.19 The challenge of nonconformity to the Established Church was, throughout the nineteenth century, explicitly a numerical threat. Not only a numerical threat, of course; it can be traced also to prevailing doctrines of social equality, passing notions of individual liberty, a purist's defence of the Protestant faith, correctly interpreted. But the real, effective impact of its criticism of Anglican privilege was, at all times, profoundly related to its mundane associational strength. That meant numbers. It meant comparatively favourable numbers in 1851. 20 So too as late as 1906.21 But not after 1918. The First World War may or may not have had a deleterious effect on the Established Church. But it certainly did for the numerical health of Britain's Free Churches.22 At least two of the major Methodist churches, the Primitives and the United Church, endured an absolute decline in numbers during and immediately after the war; the Primitive diminishing from 205,000 to 199,000 in England, down to 1932; and the United Church contracting from 143,000 to 139,000 over the same period.23 To be sure, the largest group, the Wesleyan Methodists, held their own - at least in crude 19

20

21 22

23

On which see the concluding remarks of Hastings, A History of English Christianity, ch. 42; also Hastings, Church and State, 'Epilogue'. Possibly the high point of nonconformist advance in England; see Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England, chs. 4 and 5. On the significance of this election, see Machin, Politics and the Churches, p. 275. Currie et al., Churches and Churchgoers, pp. 113-14; Alan Wilkinson, The Church of England and the First World War (London, 1978), ch. 10; R. T . Jones, Congregationalism in England, 1662-1962 (London, 1962), pp. 355-61. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 143.

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figures - over this period, rising slightly, from 432,000 in 1914 to 447,000 in 1932. Similarly, Methodism in Wales held its own; the corresponding figure rising from 39,000 to 42,000. So too in Scotland, where it crept up from about 9,500 to around 11,000.24 Perversely, full union, in 1932, undermined these areas of residual prosperity too. Nowhere in England and Wales did the new, united Church enjoy even so much as one year of non-adjusted associational prosperity.25 The English Church, claiming some 769,101 members in 1933, had contracted to under 700,000 by the end of the war. It fell by another 100,000 over the next twenty-five years.26 The Welsh Church, 52,000 strong in 1933, had dipped below the 50,000 figure in 1945; twenty years later, it was at little more than 40,000. The smaller Scottish Church did have a brief flourish in the 1930s, creeping up from 13,000 to 14,000 in 1942. And, after a post-war dip, it rose again in the 1950s. But thereafter it moved downwards, below 13,000 by the mid-1960s.27 What was true for Methodism proved similarly the case for Congregationalism, and for the Baptist Church, in post-war Britain. The Congregationalists avoided absolute decline, in all three kingdoms, to around 1930. Then, their numbers stood at 290,000 in England, 160,000 in Wales and just under 40,000 in Scotland.28 But thereafter they went into a slow decline throughout the land. This seepage was never reversed. By 1970, the corresponding figures were 151,000, 105,000 and 25,000 respectively.29 The Baptists began crude decline even earlier in England, around 1911, when the figure began to fall from its peak of nearly 270,000. Despite one good year - in 1926 - it had slipped to under 240,000 by 1940, little more than 200,000 by 1950, and actually less than that figure - at 198,000 - by I960.30 The pattern for Wales was exactly the same: from 130,000 in 1926, to 115,000 in 1940, 105,000 in 1950 and 93,000 in I960.31 In Scotland, by contrast, Congregationalism did enjoy something of a revival during the 1930s. But this inspiration did not 24 25

26

27 28

29 30

31

Ibid. R u p e r t Davies, 'Since 1932', in R u p e r t Davies, A. R a y m o n d George a n d E. G o r d o n Rupp (eds.), A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. I l l (London, 1983), p p . 362-4. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p . 144. See also t h e interpretation offered in Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenism (London, 1968), p p . 305-16. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 144. Ibid., p . 150. O n t h e experience, see Jones, Congregationalism in England, p p . 387—8, 390-1 a n d 4 6 1 - 2 . Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 151. Ibid., p p . 150-1. F o r t h e contemporary sense, see A. C. U n d e r w o o d , A History of English Baptists ( L o n d o n , 1947), p p . 273-^1. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, pp. 150—1.

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outlive the Second World War. Congregationalism fell from nearly 40,000 in 1940 to 35,000 in 1950 and 34,000 in I960.32 The gradual eclipse of nonconformity over the two generations from the end of the First World War probably had much to do with the general processes which were undermining organised religion generally in twentieth-century Britain: the growth of democratic politics, the increasing diversity of urban life, even the insidious indifference of domestic existence. Yet these forces, such as they were, seem to have hit dissent rather harder than the Establishment. Certainly that was what contemporary observers understood. Denis Brogan, for instance, thought it 'the . . . greatest. . . change in the English social and religious landscape since . . . 1906'.33 Precisely why this should have been so remains unclear. It may have been a function of nonconformity's wider role as the expression of provincial identity, a feature of British society which has been, for most of the century, subject to inexorable demographic decline.34 It may also have been a product of its particular association with the spirit of Victorian puritanism, a religious and moral sensibility which came under increasing attack after that time.35 Whatever the cause, that comparative disadvantage left the Church progressively more secure in British society and better in fact, as a recognisable part of the British state, in the years after the end of the Great War. This was by no means universally recognised at the time. Indeed, a sense of unprecedented post-war crisis was, if anything, stronger in the contemporary Church of England than amongst most of its Protestant rivals. So much was this so that, for instance, a short-term decline in candidates for holy orders led Crockford's anonymous prefator to lament, in 1927, that it is not too much to say that if the history of the last ten years is continued for another ten the effective maintenance of the parochial system will . . . become . . . impossible and [an] ything that can fairly be called the Church of England will have ceased to exist.36 But none of this happened; not, at least, in that way or at that time. And, from something of a numerical low in 1917, at 2,097,000 Easter Day communicants, Anglican figures held up relatively well during the 32 34

35

36

33 Ibid. D . W . Brogan, The English People ( L o n d o n , 1943), p . 1 2 1 . H a s t i n g s , A History of English Christianity, p p . 2 6 5 - 6 . F o r a l o n g e r - t e r m view, see Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth 1870-1930 (New York, 1982), ch. 7. A grievously underdeveloped subject. For a pioneering effort, see Raphael Samuel, 'The Discovery of Puritanism: 1820-1914', in Jane Garnett and Colin Matthew (eds.), Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London, 1993), pp. 201^17. A n o n . , 'Preface', Crockford's Clerical Dictionary3 1927 (Oxford, 1927), p . vii.

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inter-war years. Indeed, there were 2,245,102 communicants, an absolute if not a relative growth in the faithful, in 1939. Numbers on the electoral diocese rolls rose similarly, from 1924 (their first year of calculation) through to 1933, and remained pretty steady thereafter, at around 3V2 million, again until the outbreak of hostilities.37 Even the number of clergymen rose, albeit briefly and marginally.38 So, contrary to general expectation, contrary even to common apprehension, the Church of England flourished, comparatively, in inter-war Britain. At much the same time, the Catholic threat to Anglican Establishment disappeared. This, however, had little to do with institutional failure; not at least before 1960. In fact, the Catholic population of England and Wales rose, unspectacularly but quite significantly, from just under 2 million to something around 2% million between the wars.39 And that in Scotland stayed steady at about 600,000. 40 It was much more a product of decisive political change. The United Kingdom changed its effective boundaries in 1922. And the cessation of the Irish Free State did an ecclesiastical good work for the Church. At a stroke, some 4 milion less than wholly reconciled Roman Catholics were removed from amongst its enemies in the land. With them went upwards of seventy MPs. Britain, or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, suddenly became an unambiguously Protestant country again. True, mainland ghetto Catholicism remained. And in cities like Glasgow and Liverpool, even in parts of London, it continued to be politically significant, albeit principally as a means of sustaining Protestant political activity. But not elsewhere; and not, in truth, as part of the religious map of the United Kingdom - at least outside Ulster.41 The strangulation of political nonconformity (a function of its diminished numerical significance) and the abstraction of nationalist Catholicism (a function of its fulfilled ethnic purpose) together permitted the Church of England after 1920 to become, in R. H. Tawney's words, once more something like 'the religious aspect of the whole 37 38

39

40 41

Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, pp. 128-9. Ibid., p. 198. For contemporary reactions, see E. O. James, A History of Christianity in England (London, 1949), p. 177; and, for the peculiar case of the rural clergy, see A. Tindall Hart, The Country Priest in English History (London, 1959), ch. 9. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, pp. 134, 276; Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 153. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 153. For a summary of the 'Ulster Version', see Donald Harman Akenson, God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel and Ulster (Ithaca, N Y , 1992), chs. 6 and 9; and for the 'regional' factor in British religious politics since 1850, see John Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland (London,

1994), esp. pp. 140-53.

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42

nation'. To be sure, this was scarcely an uncontested resumption of national duties. By no means everyone applauded, or even recognised, it as such. The Liberation Society still existed, albeit as 'inactive . . . as the Giants Pope and Pagan in Bunyan's Allegory'.43 Nor was it achieved painlessly. Concessions, major and minor, had to be made for it to be possible. Yet it was clearly recognisable in the ecclesiastical and political life of inter-war Britain.44 It was observable within contemporary ecclesiastical organisations, where for instance the Church took the lead in the earliest experiments in ecumenical co-operation.45 Above all, it was highlighted by the Church's increasingly detached view of, and influential judgements upon, social and economic disputes in the new democratic regime which recent political change had inaugurated.46 This took the form of what might be called an assumed ethical authority; that is, of a notion that the Church, as the most concrete, lasting and popular embodiment of Christian morality in the country, might now properly become the appropriate vehicle for the dissemination of a general, Christian influence in the affairs of an increasingly popular (and thus inherently divided) and also increasingly secular (and therefore inevitably rudderless) system of government. This new and enhanced moral role for Establishment has recently been traced to Archbishop Davidson's intervention in the miners' strike of 1926. There is some merit in that view. Strictly limited though that intervention was, it certainly created a stir at the time. Durham (Tory) MP Cuthbert Headlam was only the most eloquent in denouncing 'damned bishops . . . talk . . . that the miners' leaders had a case' which 'queer[ed] the pitch and disturbed] public opinion'.47 He was also unusual in enjoying the full (if more circumspectly expressed) support of his local bishop, Hensley Henson, in doing so.48 Yet this may miss the 42

43 44

45

46

47

48

R. H . T a w n e y , 'Speech' (no title), probably to Conference of Christian Social M o v e ment, no venue, no date, p. 5, T a w n e y Papers, L o n d o n School of Economics, 20/7/4. Augustine Birrell, The Nation, 9 February 1929. Acknowledged, significantly, by the most important contemporary Anglican proponent of disestablishment, Hensley H e n s o n , in his The Church of England (Cambridge, 1939), pp. xii-xiv, and ch. 10. J. W. C. Ward, Anglicanism in History and Today (London, 1961), ch. 7, offers an early assessment - and vindication - in this respect. For the most detailed study of the phenomenon, see E. R. Norman, Church and Society in England, 1770-1970 (Oxford, 1976), ch. 7. For a rather more sympathetic account, try John Kent, William Temple (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 115-34. Stuart Ball (ed.), Parliament and Politics in the Age of Baldwin and Macdonald: The Headlam Diaries, 1923-1935 (London, 1992), p. 95; entry for 17 July 1926. T h i s view of the significance of Davidson's intervention is advanced in Hastings, A History of English Christianity, pp. 186-7. It is partially corroborated in the near contemporary account of G. K. A. Bell, Randall Davidson (Oxford, 1938), pp. 1307-8. Ball, Parliament and Politics, p. 121; entry for 14 M a y 1927.

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point. For the real significance of the archbishop's act (such as it was) was almost certainly much more symbolic than practical. Above all, it was more a question of timing rather than of content.49 To be sure, the idea that there was a Christian perspective to be brought upon social and economic issues was scarcely a discovery of 1926. Yet Tawney for one believed it to be something of a rediscovery, a restatement of 'the practical implications of the social ethics of the Christian faith', all but lost in the 'line of division [drawn] between the spheres of religion and . . . business [during] the nineteenth century'.50 Moreover, the notion that the Church of England, traditional instrument of aristocratic privilege in the land, might be its appropriate and generally acceptable vehicle, so much so that its judgement might as often support the perceived interest of labour as of capital, unquestionably was very novel at the time.51 What specific right the Church had to assume this role neither was nor is clear. It was unclear in Christian doctrine generally. And it was unclear in the peculiar standing of the Established Church particularly.52 Anyway, it clearly demanded political neutrality; that is, a specific willingness not to take party sides. This, despite continual accusations to the contrary, the Church has rigorously maintained since then.53 And it implied a certain social ambivalence; that is, a willingness to be in favour of generally progressive contemporary moralisms which did not, however, endorse any particular institutional understanding of their best promulgation. Nothing, perhaps, better exemplified that ambivalence than the Church's response to the extension of the welfare state in Britain after the Second World War. Thus J. W. C. Ward hailed it as 'an expression at the national level of the humanitarian work of the Church'.54 But Cyril Foster Garbett worried about its effects in diminishing individual responsibility, or even local autonomy.55 Yet Garbett was not opposed to the principle.56 And even Ward was not an 49

50 51

52

53

54 55 56

H e n c e Baldwin's caustic reaction; on which, see Keith M i d d l e m a s a n d J o h n Barnes, Stanley Baldwin (London, 1969), p . 433. F o r his capacity for forgiveness, see Stanley Baldwin, 'A Toast to an Archbishop', in This Torch of Freedom (London, 1935), p p . 221-7. R. H . T a w n e y , Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1926), p . 2. Most famously, perhaps, in Christianity and Industrial Relations: Fifth Report of The Archbishop's Commission ( L o n d o n , 1918), passim. M o s t strikingly, t h o u g h , in V. A. Demant, The Miner's Distress and the Coal Problem (London, 1929), passim. For some of the answers, see V. A. Demant, Religion and the Decline of Capitalism ( L o n d o n , 1952), ch. 6. By contrast, for instance, with t h e R o m a n Catholic C h u r c h in Italy prior to t h e fall of C o m m u n i s m ; or m a n y evangelical churches in t h e U S A today. J. W . C. W a r d , God and Goodness ( L o n d o n , 1952), p . 56. Cyril Foster G a r b e t t , The Church of England Today ( L o n d o n , 1953), p . 114. See, for instance, his earlier work, The Church in an Age of Revolution ( L o n d o n , 1952),

at p. 151.

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apologist for every fact in its development. Only a maverick Methodist, like Donald Soper, actually invoked the deity in support of its every rampart.57 In this way, the Church left itself free both to commend the state in its continuing ethical purposes and to admonish passing governments for their continual lapses in the fulfilment of the nation's most morally ambitious contemporary task. Of course, the notion of the Established Church as the legitimate organ of independent ethical judgement in the community presumed the continuing existence of an essentially Christian people. More importantly, it required the unprecedented development of an essentially unified Christian people. And both of these things held true together only after 1920. This is not to say that Britons suddenly started going to church in vast, and unprecedented, numbers. They did not. Nor is it to claim that an unchurched majority suddenly acquired the fundamentals of biblical Christianity and applied them, more rigorously than ever, to their daily lives.58 Rather it is to acknowledge that the very same people who, ironically, increasingly ceased going to church after that time, nevertheless retained a profound sense of their (different) denominational identities well into the 1950s. That kept them, in their own eyes at least, Christian.59 And, holding on to those loyalties which had once so grievously divided them, they now additionally nurtured through them an altogether more amorphous, and increasingly undifferentiated, Christian sensibility within their midst. This was what Geoffrey Gorer described as the God-centred, universalist, essentially benevolent, and above all profoundly personal Christianity; an ethereal moralism which, to a considerable extent, defined the passing of the Puritan ethic and heralded the growth of a philanthropic latitudinarianism within the general population.60 It was a religion which was increasingly difficult to define; certainly to render coherent. It was also one which was probably more difficult to place; and unquestionably more difficult to measure. Finally, it was not necessarily an especially admirable form of faith. Indeed, many concerned and committed contemporaries lamented it even condemned it.61 57 58

59

60

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Douglas T h o m p s o n , Donald Soper (London, 1971), p. 150. Contrast the view expressed in A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 168. Geoffrey Gorer, Exploring English Character (London, 1951), pp. 137-8 (based upon a questionnaire survey of 5000 persons). Ibid., pp. 2 5 1 - 9 . Corroborated in B. Seebohm Rowntree and G. R. Lavers, English Life and Leisure (London, 1951), pp. 3 6 0 - 7 2 (based upon a detailed study of two towns, H i g h W y c o m b e and York). Rowntree and Lavers, English Life and Leisure, p. 372. N o t e , however, the rather more indulgent, contemporary, Anglican view expressed in the Rev. A. T . P. Williams,

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But its development was crucial to the evolution of what can only be termed 'a public atmosphere' in which a continuing minority, privileged Church meaningfully could, and did, openly appeal to what it rightly took to be common 'Christian' sensibilities, and in the realistic hope of finding there some resonant echo amongst non-churchgoers and nonChurchmen alike. That echo did not imply much admiration, either for the institution, or for its personnel. But it did entail something akin to support, and this support enabled the Church to retain for a generation and more both a powerful belief in its own doctrinal, organisational and indeed spiritual superiority over all other churches, and a confident sense of its growing political, social and even intellectual claim to a place in the mainstream of national life. 62 Of that sense of superiority there can be no doubt. Hence William Temple, remarking upon 'our Special Character', in 1930: and, as we believe, our peculiar contribution to the Universal Church, [which] arises from the fact that, owing to historic circumstances, we have been enabled to combine in our one fellowship the traditional Faith and Order of the Catholic Church with that immediacy of approach to God through Christ to which the Evangelical Churches especially bear witness, and freedom of intellectual inquiry, whereby the correlation of the Christian revelation and advancing knowledge is constantly affected.63 Yet of the capacity of seemingly so precious an institution to converse with common concerns, there was relatively little fear. So C. H. Sisson, a noted if idiosyncratic apologist, put it like this: The Church of England is . . . more than just another voluntary organisation with private objects which amuse its members . . . it is . . . the most numerous and deep-rooted ecclesiastical organisation in England . . . the Nonconformist churches . . . are ancillary and derivative . . . The Church of England in a sense fights their battles for them, and is the voice of Christianity in the State.64 This was not just fantasy. Rather, it contained an important kernel of truth. And, in so far as it was true, it became still more so during the period between Temple's assertion and Sisson's observation. Certainly, the experience of war profoundly reinforced the notion of the inter-

62

63

'Religion', in Ernest Barker (ed.), The Character of England (Oxford, 1947), pp. 56-84 at pp. 82-3. W a r d , Anglicanism, 'Conclusion', offers a contemporary flavour. E d w a r d Carpenter, Archbishop Fisher ( L o n d o n , 1991), p t 5, recreates an almost forgotten past. Cited in William Oddie, The Crockford's File: Gareth Bennett and the Death of the

Anglican Mind (London, 1989), pp. 117-88. For an historical analysis, see Ward, 64

Anglicanism, ch. 6. Sisson, ' C h u r c h a n d State', in Is There a Church of England?, p p . 2 4 - 5 .

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dependence of religion and the civil order in Britain.65 Thereafter, public life resumed a notably more Anglican hue. This was particularly so on the Conservative front benches, where Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury and later Alec Douglas Home reasserted a latent Church bias.66 But such piety was not limited to their party. When Billy Graham began his London Crusade in 1954, his first rally was attended by 250 MPs, of all political complexions.67 Moreover, public forms, whether traditionally defined or informally assumed, seemed to express at least some of the reality of private concerns in this respect. Hence the decade after 1950 actually witnessed an increase in adult confirmation, a rise in student religion and, more strikingly still, enlarged congregations and Sunday school attendance.68 In such a climate, the claim to a legitimate predominance actually made quite good sociological, as well as traditional and historical, sense. The social revolution of the 1960s is often supposed to have killed all this. It cannot be stated too strongly that it did not. On the contrary, both the belief in the superiority of the Establishment version and a sense of the congruity of Anglicanism in English life largely survived the great cultural and moral upheavals of that decade. Some may doubt this view. Certainly, it goes against the grain of many concerned memories. For them, the authority of the Church seemed to be more under assault at this time than at any moment in recent British history, either before or possibly since. And this may have been true. But there is a real danger in confusing an intellectual history of the justification or otherwise of the traditional authority of the Church - as understood by Churchmen with a cultural history of its wider influence in and for society - as experienced by laymen. To be sure, the traditional authority of the Church was indeed attacked, and probably was diminished, at this time. Theological foundations definitely were questioned. Dean Robinson was only the most successful of these questioners.69 Similarly, ethical taboos once closely associated with the hierarchy of the Church were cut away in many areas of family and sexual law; and not always with even 65

66

67 68 69

Hastings, A History of English Christianity, ch. 26; cf. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p p . 1 1 3 - 1 5 . O n T e m p l e , see F . A. I r e m o n g e r , William Temple ( L o n d o n , 1949), ch. 2 6 . F o r a corroborative c o n t e m p o r a r y a c c o u n t , see G . S t e p h e n S p i n k s , ' W o r l d W a r I I a n d A f t e r m a t h ' , in Spinks (ed.), Religion in Britain since 1900 ( L o n d o n , 1952), p p . 2 1 5 - 3 0 . H a s t i n g s , A History of English Christianity, p p . 4 2 5 - 6 ; P e t e r Catterall, ' T h e P a r t y a n d Religion', p p . 6 5 - 7 . Hastings, A History of English Christianity, pp. 4 5 4 - 5 . N o r m a n , Church and Society, p . 395. J o h n A. T . R o b i n s o n , Honest to God ( L o n d o n , 1963); for t h e e n s u i n g d e b a t e , see K e i t h

W. Clements, Lovers of Discord: Twentieth Century Theological Controversies in England

(London, 1988), ch. 7.

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the tacit consent of the incumbent episcopacy.70 Ancient social deference dissipated. With it religious deference too. The bright young things of TW3 characterised religion as just another household commodity. The Beatles espoused Buddhism.71 All of this was reflected in - if scarcely a significant cause of- a certain falling away of the faithful. The number of Easter Day communicants dropped quite substantially, from 2,159,356 to 1,631,506 in England, between 1960 and 1970; and from 182,369 to 123,925 in Wales during the same period. On the other hand, the electoral rolls, in England at least, remained fairly steady, falling marginally from 2,861,887 to 2,558,986.72 More important still, the real effects of these assaults and of that decline, considerable though they were felt to be in many quarters at the time, can easily be exaggerated. This was because such measures of social importunity poorly reflected the religious culture to which the Church of England was in fact continuing - successfully - to appeal at that time. Hence, to suppose that theological liberalism really undermined the faith of the majority is to presume that their religion, prior to about 1960, really was that of biblical Christianity. But we know that was only very marginally the case. And to assume that contemporary ethical relativism truly affronted Anglican prestige is to conceive of it as the institutional bulwark against creeping permissiveness which it had really ceased to be after Archbishop Fisher's retirement. Finally, to conclude that satire - or indifference - killed Christianity at this juncture is simply to ignore the fact that its real targets, and the real victim of the demise of deference during the 1960s, was the political elite, not the religious Establishment. It was, after all, the social anachronism of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not the spiritual piety of Michael Ramsay which really offended the self-consciously progressive in 1963.73 Moreover, in all this presumed anti-establishmentarianism, it was actually the ecclesiastical competition which suffered most. Free Church losses at this time were truly dramatic. Congregationalist membership fell by 20 per cent in the decade; the Presbyterian figure by almost as much.74 Their union, in 1970, was a case of the ecumenicalism 70

71

72 73

74

On Archbishop Ramsey's personal ambivalence, see Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey (Oxford, 1990), pp. 152-5, 1 6 ^ 5 . Best captured in contemporary journalistic accounts; see Bernard Levin, The Pendulum Years: Britain and the Sixties (London, 1970), passim. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 129. On the continuing and contingent in Anglicanism's historical morality, see Paul Elmer, 'Anglican Morality', in Sykes and Booty (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism, pp. 325-38. On the social and political anachronism of Alec Douglas-Home and the 'liberating' effect of Harold Wilson, see Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London, 1992), p. 395. Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 151.

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of mutual decline if ever there was one.75 Methodist membership dipped from about 733,000 in 1960 to 557,000 in 1975, a diminution of 24 per cent in fifteen years. Even the Baptists lost around 13 per cent of their numbers in the ten years from 1960 to 1970.76 More pointedly, if less obviously, the Roman Catholics did not advance. Everything, in 1960, suggested that they were going to do so. Catholic infant baptisms peaked between 1959 and 1964, at something like 15 per cent of the nation's live births. Catholic marriages hit their highest total, 44,000 or nearly 13 per cent of the whole, in 1961. Catholic conversions soared to 13,735 in 1959.77 But these were all high points, never to be repeated. Annual average conversions to Roman Catholicism slumped to fewer than 4000 by 1972.78 The number of mixed marriages exceeded purely Catholic unions as early as 1963, and by 1971, at 25,000 to 19,000, was well ahead.79 Baptism into the faith declined similarly, and accordingly; indeed, still more strikingly so as the traditional injunction to bring up children of mixed marriage in the Roman faith waned. This, in itself, pointed to the wider significance of Catholic decline. For whilst, in Professor Hastings's words, the Anglican and Free Church crises of the 1960s 'could be seen as essentially the reinforcement of a tendency that had been present since 1910', the Roman Catholic reversal of that later decade 'was in contrast to a steady rise over the previous century'.80 That pointed to a rather different, and more profound, cause of Catholic troubles: to the break-up of the Irish ghettoes; to a decline in the special loyalty of Roman adherents; finally to the special inappropriateness of the Church's teaching in an age of increasing permissiveness.81 Hence the supreme social and theological paradox of the 1960s. It may be stated simply. The moral and cultural revolution of the era actually left the ecclesiastical Establishment in some ways stronger than ever before. Certainly, a greater proportion of the population now identified themselves as Anglicans, by comparison with any other Christian denomination, than at any time in the recent past. Moreover that association, institutionally weak though it unquestionably was, itself reflected an eclectic popular faith, and a comfortable conventional 75

76 77 78

O n its a n t e c e d e n t s , see J o n e s , Congregationalism in England, p p . 4 3 2 - 3 ; o n t h e t h e o r y of e c u m e n i c a l i s m as a r e s p o n s e t o decline, see W i l s o n , Religion in a Secular Society, pp. 126-8. For a critique of this theory, see David M. Thompson, 'Theological and Sociological Approaches to the Motivation of the Ecumenical Movement', in Derek Baker (ed.), Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies i n C h u r c h H i s t o r y 15 (Oxford, 1978), p p . 4 6 7 - 7 9 . Currie, Churches and Churchgoers, p. 151. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p . 552. 79 80 81 Ibid., p . 5 6 1 . Ibid., p . 580. Ibid., p . 5 6 3 . Ibid., p . 580.

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practice, easily capable of withstanding reasoned theological criticism or passing social unrest. For it was increasingly a sensibility, and an activity, which neither especially depended upon the Establishment, nor was particularly offended by it. As such, it took what it conceived to be the good of Establishment - national unity - and quietly ignored what it understood to be otiose - a public doctrine. So the Establishment survived, and indeed prospered, during that otherwise treacherous decade because it had, in effect, become an instrument of popular social

III But it was a rather different Church which emerged from these later shadows. That was because it was the Church which really changed during the 1960s; certainly more, not less, than the society which surrounded it. Such a view no doubt defies the contemporary image. But it accords with the organisational facts of the matter. And it is vitally important to an understanding of the current precarious position of Establishment. During those years the Church underwent something like a doctrinal, liturgical and institutional revolution. This was true both of its 'internal' affairs and of its 'external' relations with the state. And it was especially true of, and in, the higher echelons of the Church. In its colleges and seminaries, traditional Anglican theological method all but disappeared. The historic balance of 'Reason, Scripture and Tradition', pursued in the context of 'the corporate life of the Church', gave way to a thoroughgoing alienation of theology from religion, increasingly exercised according to the canons of secular scholarshp alone. The virtual disappearance of the Book of Common Prayer, and its effective replacement by the so-called 'Alternative Service Book', was one of the results.83 Another was the rise of political episcopacy, as the bishops seemed to make more public pronouncements on matters of state than on questions of the soul.84 82

83

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F o r confirmation, see t h e surprisingly favourable statistical a c c o u n t in Church and State: Report of the Archbishop's Commission (London, 1970), Appendix D , pp. 106-20, esp. pp. 107-10, 117-20. T h e real p o i n t of G . V. B e n n e t t ' s ill-fated Crockford's 'Preface', first p u b l i s h e d in 1987. T h i s essay is best c o n s u l t e d i n its r e p u b l i s h e d form in B e n n e t t , To the Church of England, e d . b y Geoffrey Rowell ( W o r t h i n g , 1988), p p . 1 8 9 - 2 9 9 , e s p . p p . 1 9 0 - 4 , 1 9 7 - 2 0 1 , 2 2 3 - 5 ; also c h . 10. F i r s t exposed a n d excoriated in E d w a r d N o r m a n , Christianity and the World Order (Oxford, 1979), ch. 1; for the particular context of the bishopric and Mrs Thatcher's government, see the essays in Digby Anderson (ed.), The Kindness That Kills: The Churches' Simplistic Response to Complex Social Issues (London, 1984); also, and

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The real extent, and true significance, of such a recent alteration in the Anglican way of doing things was, naturally, a matter of considerable disagreement amongst participants and observers. So too is the question of its merits. Neither controversy need detain us here. We may simply observe, for the moment, that something has happened, and that its value is continuously disputed. 85 What is more important is the context of that debate. For it has been an argument conducted almost entirely by Churchmen and committed laymen. That is, it has taken place largely outside the principal channels of political communication. Moreover, it has scarcely addressed the religion, or the morality, of the mass of the population of Britain at all. And that is because it has taken place within a Church, and about a Church, which increasingly operates as an autonomous institution with the state; more specifically, as an autonomous religious institution within the state. Institutional autonomy did not develop overnight. It has a long pedigree. In a sense, it can be traced back to the revival of Convocation, in 1855. That restored the deliberative functions of the Church. 86 In a wider sense, it gained a real purpose from the inauguration of the Lambeth Conferences, in 1868. These gave the Church an unprecedented, international dimension.87 It first assumed recognisable form in the Church Assembly, established in 1919. This established a representative voice within its ecclesiastical purposes. 88 But synodical self-government, as recommended by report in 1966, and inaugurated by royal authority in 1970, was something different. If earlier concessions to ecclesiastical independence were designed to strengthen the Church, to bolster its spirituality, to reflect its dominion, even to infuse its democratic urges, the later arrangements were designed to reflect an altered, even a diminished, institutional standing for the Church in the state; more cynically, to rid the secular arm of an ecclesiastical authority which no longer won it kudos or brought it strength. In direct consequence, as Professor Hastings puts it, the character and working of the General Synod quickly came to dominate the Church from this moment and to provide an ethos noticeably different from that

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pointedly, Brian Griffiths, Monetarism and Morality: A Response to the Bishops (London, 1985), p p . 19ff. Recognised in Stephen Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism (London, 1977), passim. See also his remarks in ' T h e Genius of Anglicanism', p p . 232^10. O n t h e churches generally in this respect note t h e partisan observations in Catterall, ' T h e Party a n d Religion', p p . 664—5. F o r a full account, see Chadwick, The Victorian Church, p p . 309-24. A. M . G . Stephenson, The First Lambeth Conference (London, 1967). Roger Lloyd, The Church of England, 1900-1965 (London, 1966), p p . 232, 2 4 3 - 5 ; K e n n e t h A. T h o m p s o n , Bureaucracy and Church Reform (Oxford, 1970), ch. 6.

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of former decades . . . [specifically,] I t . . . served to distance [the Church] from the State . . . The Church [was] permitted, very largely, to rule itself, with its own quasi-parliamentary procedures . . . [And,] a mounting sense of ecclesiastical power [was allied] to a reduced sense of dependence on Crown and Parliament [as] the political establishment no longer bothered very seriously about this section of its former empire.89 Not quite; when Synod acted upon the Report of the Chadwick Commission on Church and State to demand ecclesiastical exclusivity in the selection of bishops, the Prime Minister of the day baulked, and settled for reserve powers over a choice of two names.90 But not far off either; so a bill, introduced into parliament in April 1981, and designed to ensure that, subject to certain conditions, at least one main service per month in Church of England parishes should be in the form prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, was widely denounced and subsequently defeated.91 Moreover, it was the Church in Synod, and the Church so constituted alone, which finally decided upon the ordination of women priests, in 1993.92 In all this, probably few on either side at the time fully appreciated, or even now wholly apprehend, what the two arms of state had, in effect together, done. One who possibly did, whilst resisting the implications of his own analysis and the force of contemporary change, was Enoch Powell. Remarking on the rejection in the Commons of a minor measure passed by Synod in July 1984 - the first such rejection in many years he observed that It is possible to have an internally self-governed church in this country, but it will not be the national church, it will not be the Church of England. The Church is the Church of England because of royal supremacy - and that is to say, lay-supremacy. It is for that reason that it is the church of the people and the Church of the nation, and can never be converted into a mere sect or a private, self-managing corporation.93 This was and is true, constitutionally speaking. But it reflected neither the arcane significance of contemporary symbolic gesture, as the bishops placed their names above the Crown in the new prayer book, nor 89

90

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Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p . 606. Chadwick, ' T h e F r e e d o m of t h e C h u r c h ' , in Michael Ramsey, ch. 7, section 6; Gavin W h i t e , ' " N o - o n e is Free from Parliament": T h e Worship and Doctrine Measure in Parliament, 1974', in Stuart Mews (ed.), Religion and National Identity, Studies in Church History 18 (Oxford, 1982), p p . 557-65. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p. 607; Church and State, pp. 37^14; Proposal *B' (Proposal ' A ' suggested t h e retention of the t h e n status quo). Sisson, 'A G e n t l e W a r n i n g ' , in Is There a Church of England?, p p . 147—9. W h i c h is n o t to say that parliament would n o t have voted for t h e measure, prior to t h e 1970 arrangement. Cited in Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p. 608.

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the practical realities of daily church life, as doctrine and liturgy were altered by synodical fiat.94 The Church, in effect, had won, and now wields, its freedom in all but the residual authority of parliament in matters doctrinal, liturgical and organisational. Moreover, it had won that freedom from a state which continued, at least formally, to be its ally and within a society which continued, at least implicitly, to be its friend. But with what effect? For Professor Hastings, that change represented, and now constitutes, a workable compromise between a general aversion to disestablishment and a similarly undirected attraction to a residually religious state.95 For Mr Sisson, it is the simple, and all too specific, proof that the Church of England has effectively ceased to exist.96 Yet it may be that neither conclusion is true. For the notion of a minimal Church, itself highly problematic, should not be confused with the ideal (if such it is) of an inoffensive Establishment.97 It may be that the Church significantly continues and that, increasingly, it offends. And this may not only have to do with what the Church is, or is seeking to be, but also with what British society has become, or is trying more and more to be. Certainly, there are those who now see it that way. Why? IV Establishment, whether for a Church which seeks the greatest possible comprehension of the religious beliefs of the nation, or for a liberal Protestant sect intent upon asserting its peculiar opinions at public expense, was, and is, a privilege. That privilege was once justified, above all by the 'judicious Hooker5, in the name of religious truth and civilised politics.98 Subsequently, it was sustained, even by atheist philosophers, through the argument of social stability.99 Paradoxically, the gradual 94

95 96

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I owe this insight to Sisson, ' T h e Alternative Service Book', in Is There a Church of England?, p. 143. Hastings, A History of English Christianity, p. 608. T h e flavour of t h e whole of Is There a Church of England? W e m a y assume that t h e question m a r k is rhetorical. For this view, see Peter Cornwall, The Church and the Nation: The Case for Disestablishment ( L o n d o n , 1983), passim; for a defence, see J o h n H a b g o o d , Church and Nation in a Secular Age ( L o n d o n , 1983), esp. ch. 6. A balanced s u m m a r y of the a r g u m e n t , ' p r o ' and 'con', is presented in Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945, ch. 8. Richard Hooker, On The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. J. Kebb, 3 vols., 7th edn (New York, 1970), Preface, b k 1, bk 5, chs. 1-2, 62, 65, 76, b k 7, b k 8, chs. 1-4, 6, 8. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols., 1765 (facsimile edition, Chicago, 1979), bk 3 , ch. 7, bk 4, chs. 4, 8, 28; David H u m e , Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F . Miller (Indianapolis, 1985), p p . 65—7; A d a m

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secularisation of British society during the twentieth century did little or* nothing to undermine the utilitarian case. Indeed, in many ways, it strengthened it. For the real force of secularisation in this country over that time (perhaps even the true content of secularisation) was to take religion out of the realm of public affairs. This unquestionably enfeebled the political impact of religious sentiments in the land. It also rendered public dispute much less dangerous for the nation. Anyone who doubts either of these observations should consider the history of Northern Ireland since 1922, where neither of these developments had any significant local effect. At the same time, the Church has enjoyed a virtually unopposed security of tenure in British society, or at least in England, since 1920. In effect, neither its Christian nor its post-Christian people has offered much of a threat to its continuing existence. Indeed, for the most part, they have been curiously, and continuously, supportive.100 But Britain's supposedly secular society has changed - considerably during the past twenty years. For whilst it has become arguably less Christian during that time, it has assuredly not become more secular. True, church figures, traditionally measured, have continued to fall.101 But the 'religious' population of Britain has almost certainly risen. This may be true even within the Church itself. Certainly, the committed, evangelical wing is more important than ever before. Externally, the processes of revival and renewal, particularly the latter, have spawned a myriad of new religious movements which, if they do not as yet figure prominently in national life (few even aspire to do so), unquestionably account for an increasing number of actively religious persons.102 Finally, new commonwealth immigration, cultural differentiation and simple conversion have forged the dynamic existence of new and powerful non-Christian religious minorities in Britain. The most significant of these is its Islamic population.103 There are at least one million Moslems in Britain today. There may well be more.104 Moreover, their numbers

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Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols., ed. R. H. Campbell et al. (Indianapolis, 1981), bk 5, ch. 1, pt 3, art. 3, pp. 792-3. Though the Liberal Democrats voted for disestablishment in the Annual Conference, September 1990. Neither of the major parties has recently pursued the matter. Wedderspoon, 'Introduction', pp. 1-4; Brierley, 'Christian' England, chs. 2 and 6. John V. Taylor, 'Signs of Growth in the Church of England', and John Gray, 'Signs of Growth in the Church of Scotland', chs. 1 and 2 of Wedderspoon, Grow or Die', Keith Ward, The Turning of Tide (London, 1985), ch. 1; Eileen Barker, New Religious Movements: A Practical Introduction ( L o n d o n , 1989), passim. For a fuller discussion, see S. J. D. Green, 'The Revenge of the Periphery? Conservative Religion and the Dilemma of Liberal Society in Contemporary Britain', in Ralph Mclnerny (ed.), Religion and Modernity (South Bend, Ind., 1994), pp. 89-115. All available figures a r e estimates. Best guesses come from Social Trends ( L o n d o n , 1989-) a n d Labour Force Survey Data ( L o n d o n , 1985-).

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are growing, and fast. It is in no sense fanciful to conceive of Islam as the most popular practised religion in Britain within a generation. Nor is it merely alarmist to predict that the way in which it will be practised will differ quite markedly from the manner in which the indigenous mainland population has recently gone about its religious business. This is because Britain's Moslem population is made up largely, but not exclusively, from its Asian-origin community. And that section of society is both more reproductively fertile and more culturally conservative than the rest of the population. Together, these two factors make its religion altogether more of a challenge to Anglican Establishment, and for the British state, than any indigenous development whether towards post-Christian religion, or indeed towards further secularisation.105 The essence of that challenge is its anti-secularism and, to a lesser extent, its anti-liberalism. Put simply, Britain's Moslem community, in so far as it can be judged and characterised as a whole, professes quite different standards about the permissible limits of profane speech (witness the Rushdie case), about the proper basis of educational instruction (see its reaction to the Swann Report) and concerning family values (including domestic law) than the rest of the population.106 In asserting these different standards, whether in matters of human rights or on questions of prevailing custom, and across such wide-ranging concerns as sex, gender roles, arranged marriages, mixed marriages, female dress, family authority and honour, extended family and the preservation of cultural identity, it necessarily comes up against, and is continually rebuked by, the norms of British law.107 It also confronts the peculiar privileges of Anglican Establishment. So too those of Christian preferment more generally. It was, and is, the Christian, more specifically the Anglican, understanding of the divine which is protected by English blasphemy law.108 And it is Christian (also Jewish) schools which are subsidised by denominational definition in this country.109 105

Aspects of this 'cultural conservatism' are summarised in Tariq Modood, 'British Asian Muslims and the Rushdie Affair', Political Quarterly, 61 (1990), 143-60, esp. pp. 145—52. For a detailed survey, see Alison Shaw, A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford, 1988). 106 Education For All: The Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Backgrounds (London, 1985); for a trenchant critique, see Mervyn Hiskett, Schooling For British Muslims: Integrated, Opted-Out or Denominational (London, 1989). 107 M o d o o d , 'British Asian M u s l i m s a n d t h e R u s h d i e Affair', p . 147. 108 T a r i q M o d o o d , 'Religious A n g e r a n d M i n o r i t y R i g h t s ' , Political Quarterly, 60 (1989), 2280-5. 109 J u r g e n S. Nielsen, 'Islam in E d u c a t i o n in Britain', Research Papers, n o s . 3 0 - 1 , J u n e / S e p t e m b e r 1986, Selly O a k Colleges, B i r m i n g h a m , p p . 29ff.

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Moslems are excluded on both counts.110 Or, as Swann so gloriously puts it, 'minorities may maintain their individual cultures only insofar as they are not in conflict with rationally shared values5.111 That these are examples of religious discrimination there can be no doubt. And if the specific justification for their continuance is invariably articulated in terms of secular reasoning (this was specifically the case in Swann), then its historical basis lies in Anglican Establishment (clearly so for the blasphemy law). That latter fact leaves the Church vulnerable to the criticism of unjustified privilege. For it suggests an unsustainable differentiation of religious favours by the state, benefiting as it clearly does one faith over another and one branch of that faith over all its other variants. And for an increasingly secular state, this points to the quick panacea of disestablishment, rather than to the arduous task, and seemingly futile purpose, of differential justification.112 It is not difficult to think of circumstances in which it might become almost irresistible. But, and this is the point, it is next to impossible to think of any set of conditions in which such an action would render the British state thereby more legitimate to its increasing number of religious critics. For what they seek is not disestablishment at all, but the extension of the privileges and the purpose of establishment to their own faiths: not creeping secularism, but real multi-culturalism.113 Hence the current dilemma of the British state. Its authority is increasingly questioned by its sustenance of a privileged Establishment. And yet its patronage of that Church is maintained largely because of the diminished influence, and through the autonomous administration, of this body. Put another way, the contemporary British state supports an Established Church, and permits that Church so considerable a degree of freedom of action, precisely because it is weak. But its most recent critics, quite contrary to their nineteenth- and twentieth-century (Christian) forbears, demand not that such weakness be carried to its logical conclusion, but rather that it be stemmed; and that the logical conclusion be reversed.114 There is no sign to suggest that the state has any intention of responding. It is difficult in the prevailing political 110 111 112

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Cited in Hiskett, Schooling For British Muslims, pp. 26-7. The assertion in Stewart Lamont, Church and State: Uneasy Alliance (London, 1989), ch. 7. The question of speed is a moot one. Informed guesses suggest that even the legislative mechanisms of disestablishment could take an entire parliamentary session. It is unlikely that any foreseeable administration would be willing to devote that much time. The view explicitly advanced in Tariq Modood, 'Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship', Political Quarterly, 65 (1994), 53-73, esp. pp. 67ff. M. H. Farqui, 'For Muslims, the Law of Indifference', Impact International, 21 (1991), 5-9, esp. at p. 7.

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climate to see how it reasonably could do so. The surviving Church, far from 'doing quite a lot of good and very little harm', has become its albatross.115 What of the autonomous Church? It cannot truthfully be accused of being unaware of the issues of cultural nuance involved. But nor can it be credited with any intellectual coherence in the matter. For institutional independence had been gained, paradoxically, to the accompaniment of increased intellectual uncertainty. And the Church, it seems, is currently altogether keener to retain the former than to dispel the latter. Indeed, to ponder the recent writings of a wholly representative figure, Archbishop Hapgood, is immediately to pass into a kind of cultural relativism where the force of the Church's message for contemporary society might almost be judged directly as a function of its willingness to comprehend the view of other religions, and other cultures, within its stated vision of the whole. Consider the General Synod report, produced under his chairmanship, which appeared in July 1987, under the title Changing Britain: Social Diversity and Moral Unity. This document argued that the best response which the Church might give to the question of religious truth, and its proper application in an increasingly morally and socially 'diverse' society, would necessarily be 'broad' if it was to be 'accessible to people of different religious convictions'. And it concluded that this broadness of approach would not be limited to 'a clear Christian message', in so far as it was directed towards 'the moral unity . . . of society' urged by the commission.116 Naturally, it neither envisaged the possibility of a principled abandonment of theological and ethical comprehensiveness by the Church; nor urged the desirability of the conversion of those beyond its auspices to the timeless truth of its biblical teachings. It should come as no surprise to learn that this kind of ecumenical approach to religious truth, even of the Christian message, has generally outraged Anglican traditionalists.117 It was perhaps more of a shock to the authors of the report that it has so signally failed to engage the sympathy of other religious groups in British society. In the main, this was because they have been unimpressed by its quasi-secular tone. And, to a very considerable degree, they remain unwilling to countenance the extent of doctrinal dissipation which it would require. So it has, in effect, become a report without readers, at once pandering to the worshipful indifference of the many whilst it simultaneously insulted 115 116 117

Hastings, Church and State, p. 76. Cited in Oddie, The Crockford's File, at pp. 57, 124ff. E.g. Gareth Bennett; see his 'Ecumenism and Catholic Concerns', in To the Church of England, pp. 183-8.

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the religious sensibilities of the few. In this way, the autonomous Establishment threatens to become the kind of widely perceived social abuse its seemingly dependent predecessor always avoided. For, in abandoning the assumption of superiority, it actually becomes more anomalous, not less, as a privileged body in the British state.118 This is because it effectively ceases to be the religious expression either of the state or of the people; merely of itself. Of course, that, in many ways, is a tribute to the reality of its autonomy. But it cannot be an apology for its public preferment. This story has no obvious moral. Nor does it suggest a clear solution. It points only to the degree to which the state's current dilemma is the product of historical circumstances, specifically the forces of a very specific form of historic continuity which have determined the extent to which it has not become a model, liberal, democratic and secular system of government. Its failure to do so (another way of describing the survival of the Church of England) was certainly not inevitable. Many intelligent commentators believed disestablishment to be 'inevitable' as early as the Prayer Book controversy of 1927-8.119 The late Bishop of Durham still does. But the Church continued, and continues, having won a degree of autonomy in the state which would have been the envy of its pre-war leadership. In recent years, it has become apparent that this mutually contrived compromise has had and will have consequences that go far beyond 'doing quite a lot of good and very little harm'. Whether these consequences have been, or will be, benevolent or malignant is more a matter of personal opinion than of legitimate historical judgement. But the question can no longer be avoided in the language of banal bromide, either by those who would have the Church established or those who seek its disestablishment. It will remain a serious question for as long as British society remains even residually religious. And it may well become a more, not less, pressing question in the years immediately ahead. Perhaps one might be permitted one paradoxical prediction: it would be a revival, or a resurgence, of religious feeling in Britain which would really endanger the Church, not its decline. 118

For two eloquent expressions of this paradoxical view, see Jonathan Sacks, The Persistance of Faith: Morality and Society in a Secular Age (London, 1991), pp. 97-8;

119

Modood, 'Establishment, Multiculturalism and British Citizenship', pp. 67ff. Ball, Parliament and Politics, p. 141; Henson to Headlam, 5 March 1928; reasserted by Henson in his The Church of England, p. xvi; also note the caustic remarks of Sisson, 'Church and State', Is There a Church of England?, at p. 19.

15

Religion and the secular state Bryan Wilson

That Britain is, effectively, a secular state brooks little prospect of contradiction. This may be said despite the persistence of a variety of constitutional and legal arrangements which entrench certain religious facilities, and which protect and privilege a church that is established by law. Beyond the specific provisions which affect the Church of England, there are others which recognise and facilitate the exercise of religion more generally. The Church of England is still the residual legatee of a policy which, as Hooker put it, 'there is not any man of the Church of England but the same is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England'. If that Erastian formula is no longer warranted, none the less the spirit it exudes is still sufficiently in evidence to confer on the Church legitimacy and primacy in religious affairs. Its temporal head is the monarch, its senior officials are appointed by the Prime Minister in the name of the crown; its legal affairs are intimately bound up to the general legal system, and courts, presided over by regular lay lawyers, govern its practices, furbishments and the discipline of its personnel. It enjoys automatic financial concessions granted only on supplication to other religious bodies, and, perhaps above all, it is accorded the presidency on all state and civic occasions in which religious ministrations are called for - from mercifully rare coronations to regular daily prayers in parliament, from the launching of battleships and from armistice day parades, down to the opening of local civic buildings. Yet all of these are but the forms bequeathed by history. In the event, governments have lost all real interest in the right to appoint bishops, whose political views are no longer depended upon in parliamentary votes, and among whom mavericks may now readily be tolerated perhaps more readily than earnest and conventional figures, in that they add spice to political debate and social comment without carrying much if any influence. Parliament has unreluctantly surrendered most of its legislative powers over the Church to church synods, relieving itself of 325

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what many had come to see as irrelevant if not irritating and unimportant matters which, none the less, might at times become politically divisive. Beyond the specific provisions affecting the established Church, there are enactments which - despite the growing secularity of the state maintain some specific defence of religion. One such measure is the law against blasphemy, thought to have fallen into desuetude - since so much blasphemy, even on public media, goes unheeded - until reactivated by Mrs Whitehouse in the action that she brought against Gay News. Originally, blasphemy was an offence not merely against God, and the law proscribing it was a defence not only of religion, but also of the state against subversion, since the Church was established by the law of the land. But from the middle of the nineteenth century, gradually the law became more concerned with vulgar abuse of religion rather than with reasoned arguments launched against it (the Holyoake prosecution notwithstanding). From the early 1920s, no blasphemy cases were brought, and by 1959, the secularist case appeared to be so much taken for granted that the Society for the Abolition of the Blasphemy Laws was disbanded, content no longer to seek the repeal of laws which, though remaining on the statute book, had apparently become dead letters.1 But in 1977, Gay News was successfully prosecuted for publishing a poem, 'The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name'. The poem was not, in any sense, an assault on religion. It was not calculated to promote disbelief, nor written in abusive language. Its actionable feature was that it attributed homosexual practice to Jesus. The prosecution was successful because the poem was deemed to shock those with strong religious sentiments, and publishing matter offensive to religionists was in itself held by the House of Lords to be sufficient to contravene the law. But the law protects only Christian religion - indeed, more specifically only Anglican religion. Lord Scarman raised the point that the law did not go far enough, since it protected only Christianity.2 The Law Commission, in a paper in 1981, took up the question of whether the law should not prohibit incitement to religious hatred. The Commission feared that such an extension of its scope might endanger free speech. They also believed that such a provision might lead to the protection of sects and cults, and opined that 'it is very much in the public interest that the beliefs and practices of particular religious sects should come under sharp criticism' although this alleged desideratum clearly was not seen as applicable to more established forms of religion.3 1 2 3

St. John A. Robilliard, Religion and the Law (Manchester, 1984), pp. 25-6. Ibid., p. 35. Law Commission Paper No. 79, para. 8.15, cited in ibid., p. 40.

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Clearly some of the state's agents are still disposed towards religious discrimination. Blasphemy is, however, little more than a notional defence of religion by the state, and scarcely a primary concern, and this despite the debate on the Salman Rushdie affair which persuaded some commentators to reiterate the views advanced by Lord Scarman. A second defence of religion was entrenched in the requirements of the 1944 Education Act, and its successor of 1988, concerning the teaching of religion in schools with the provision that the dominant emphasis in that instruction should be on the traditional religion of the land. The occasion of the new enactment was, of course, seized upon by the Christian lobby. They were successful in entrenching the teaching of traditional religion as a requirement of the act. This was an attempt to reverse the trend for schools to teach religion in comparative and academically neutral terms in the 'multi-faith society'. The trend had alarmed Christians, at a time when Christianity was seen to have suffered serious and increasing erosion in its influence on the national life; and that not merely by the incursion of immigrants of other religious faiths, but by a continuing process of steady secularisation of the social system and of the cultural and moral climate. Religion in general, beyond the Church of England, and indeed beyond Christianity, is also the beneficiary of certain legal provisions. In the spirit of the various provisions according tolerance to diverse religions, embodied in the various items of legislation proceeding from the original Toleration Acts of 1688, and gathering their full impact in the mid-nineteenth century, religious bodies may establish trusts for particular purposes which are eligible for charitable status. These various provisions may be tested at law in particular instances, and even though the acquisition of charitable status puts all religions formally on a par, it does not of course accord quite the automatic rights enjoyed by the Church of England.4 Similar arrangements affect the rating of church properties and the registration of places of religious worship. All of these provisions indicate the concessions that have been made to nonAnglican religion in the past which still remain in force even in a largely secularised society. The protection of religion and the exemption of religious bodies from fiscal obligations borne by other non-state agencies should not, however, obscure the fact that, at this structural level, the erstwhile functions of the churches have to a very considerable extent been taken over by secular institutions, and often directly by the state itself. 4

See Eileen V. Barker, 'The British Right to Discriminate', in Thomas Robbins and Roland Robertson (eds.), Church-State Relations (New Brunswick, NJ, 1987), pp. 269-80.

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Nowhere is this more evident than in public education, a sphere in which the churches - Anglican and established nonconformist denominations - had a particularly prominent role from the very beginnings of formal instruction. Once the state relied virtually entirely on the churches to provide education, the content of which was also to a very considerable extent religious. At the turn of the last century, there were more church schools than state schools, and even in higher education, a high proportion of university teachers were in holy orders. Today, the state concedes generous terms to those remaining religious school foundations that it recognises (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist and Jewish) but, as the government's cautious - almost reluctant - approach to according similar financial arrangements to Muslim school indicates, it is clear that the state does not seek to increase its dependence on religious bodies for the provision of education. There are over 4000 voluntarily aided religious schools (the vast majority divided almost equally between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church), but such evidence as we have suggests that the ethos of church schools does little, especially as children grow older, to differentiate their pupils from those in state schools with respect to the moral dispositions of the pupils - such is the pervasiveness of the secular influences in the wider society beyond the school portals, and perhaps even, at least informally, also within them. The growth of secular education is reflected in the replacement of religious agencies in other social services which once were religiously controlled but are now run by the state at national or local level. Such is the case with social work activities like child welfare and district visiting. A variety of other voluntary welfare functions have passed from the hands of the churches to central or local government control. These shifts in institutional provision reflect the easily documented process in which religion has lost its former functions.5 At one time religion was an agency of social control with effective sanctions, not least in its teachings of post-mortem reward and punishment. It was the source of knowledge about the natural and social world. It provided legitimacy not only for social, and eventually state organisation, but also for the course of social policy, and its blessings were invoked for decisions which ranged from the private contracting of matrimony to the state's declarations of war. It socialised the young, sought to civilise the mature, solaced the dying, and solemnly dispatched the dead. Except for this last item, little today remains of this panoply of On secularisation generally, see Bryan R. Wilson, Religion in Sociological Perspective (Oxford, 1982), pp. 148-79.

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religious performances: those which do persist are essentially in the private domain. For the society at large, where these functions are still performed they are in the hands of professional agencies established and licensed by the state. The role of religion has shrunk and the sphere of influence and presumed competence of its functionaries has been reduced to its core concerns of ritual performance, exposition of scriptures (and not so much of that, either) and amateur counselling. Whether this process is taken as the decline of religion or as its appropriate divestment of secular involvements is not my immediate concern. Rather, I seek only to indicate how, in relation to social structure, religion has retreated from former activities and functions as the secular state has consolidated its boundaries and evolved diverse spheres of technical expertise in the various departments of social life. If religion has lost significance at the structural level, it has also experienced diminution of influence on the cultural plane. Government in the nineteenth century was much more concerned about religious affairs than is the case today, as royal and prime-ministerial correspondence of the time testifies. Today, politicians avoid religious issues in general and pay scant heed to the pronouncements of the clergy. Since the 1902 Education Act and the 1906 General Election, the strong relationship that then prevailed betwen religious affiliations and dispositions towards public and political affairs has very considerably weakened. A decade or so ago, the government was embarrassed by the attempts of traditionalists to ensure one Prayer Book service a month in local churches, in a measure introduced into the House of Lords in 1981, and resisted the attempt. Their resistance was not prompted by hostility to the Prayer Book, but rather sought to prevent a waste of parliamentary time on tiresome, potentially divisive and politically inconsequential intrusions into the affairs of state. Although the churches retain a larger following than any other mass organisations - whether it be those active in the trades unions or those larger numbers who pursue the activities of the Football League - it is very doubtful whether today this following could be mobilised for political causes in Britain. In the major churches, commitment is segmentary, by which I mean limited and partial, taking its place among the many other diversified interests and persuasions of a heterogeneous public. Although the churches are more or less evenly distributed throughout society, although they claim special preoccupation with ultimate verities and values, and although they assert the primary of religion over all other causes, their clientele is largely passive. If church people are active, they are active generally in expressive rather than instrumental directions, and hence they have very little impact on the operation of the state.

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Despite the persistence of formal establishment, the Church of England has become increasingly dissociated from the operation of society and the functioning of the state. Notionally, such a liberation from erstwhile functions in support of the secular authorities has freed the clergy to assume a critical role, challenging secular procedure and values. But such criticism has been only random and occasional, and certainly of little, if any, consequence for the operation of the social system. Faith in the City was perhaps the most trenchant of such commentaries, but this, together with the doubtful voices raised about church commemoration of the Falklands Campaign and the Gulf War, have scarcely disturbed the political processes of an increasingly secular society. Church criticism has been of government policy rather than of the constitution of the state, and despite periodic murmurings about disestablishment, the Church as a whole appears in no mood to challenge this particular boundary with the state. At the same time, the open acknowledgement of church poverty both by the state church and by the largest of the Free Churches, the Methodists, indicates the decline in real support - financial support - of the churches by the people, and hence the very insecure basis from which the major churches might address the affairs of the state. It might well be supposed that, in a multi-faith society, there would be challenges for a historically Christian state from the growing numbers of adherents of immigrant religions - Muslim, Sikh and Hindu - since all of these traditions embrace different assumptions about the structure of society and espouse customs and norms that are essentially alien to the traditional British way of life. There have been some demands for such things as segregated schooling for the sexes, and pressure for exemptions from, for example, compulsory school or work uniforms. And there has been some skirmishing with animal rights groups with regard to the ritual slaughter of animals, which could become the occasion for Muslim groups to challenge the state. But by and large, the millions of adherents of these alien religions have settled into their own enclaves within the secular British society without serious systematic attempts to change or challenge existing social patterns, government policies or the existing framework of legal order. Perhaps because these religions lack coherent hierarchical structure and centralised organisation such discontents that their adherents may feel remain largely mute and unarticulated (although cognizance must be taken of the newly instituted, so-called Muslim parliament, unrepresentative of the majority of Muslims as it may be). Alternatively, immigrants may themselves be adjusting to a secular social system, and may be allowing their own religious dispositions to be infected with the pervasive

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secularity of our society, most especially perhaps among the younger generation. The modern state is not only effectively secular; it has largely sloughed off its former religious prescribed official endorsement of a specific code of morals.6 In many non-criminal matters it has become ethically neutral and increasingly permissive. Even old laws protecting public decency - as we have observed in the case of blasphemy, although it is far from being the only instance - have been allowed to fall into desuetude. Acts against the profanation of the Sabbath (the Sunday trading laws, are an example), acts prohibiting foul language, and even acts protecting the person of the monarch, are no longer enforced, while definitions of what constitutes obscenity or pornography have been progressively liberalised. The permissive ethic of contemporary society, initially affecting public attitudes and behaviour, has extended its influence on just what the state might require of its citizens - and 'citizens' are what, in the changed climate, erstwhile subjects have become, with the attendant rights pertaining to that status. Given this extension of civic liberties, it is not surprising that wider breaches should open up between what the state will tolerate and what certain religious bodies would like the state to disallow. Almost all traditional Christian bodies which retain anything like their pristine rigour draw tighter parameters around the arena of acceptable public conduct than does the state. Some are content with such moral scrupulousness as a prescript only for their own (putatively saved) members, but others would like such moral rules to be part of the general civic order, with the force of law behind them. Such religious bodies - and the point would hold for Muslims and perhaps others, were they in a position to claim something like traditional cultural influence - would like the state to enforce morals, and their own moral code in particular. Whilst such religious organisations do not overstep the boundaries of the state in the sense of contravening the law, they do demand that the laws should, in particular respects, become increasingly restrictive. At one time, this area of concern would have been drawn to embrace the widest range of matters. But times have changed. The nonconformist temperance lobby has grown virtually silent, and even one-time staunch advocates of teetotalism, such as the Methodists, have succumbed to allow their members the occasional glass of sherry. In an age of football pools, clerical tipsters, premium bonds and a state-sponsored lottery, the Calvinist legacy of opposition to gambling appears to have 6

See Bryan R. Wilson, 'Morality in the Evolution of the Modern Social System', British Journal of Sociology, 36 (1985), 315-32.

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suffered a demise. Even the demand for moral rigour in matters pertaining to sexuality, marriage, reproduction and death is not what once it was. Such has been the public's relaxation of attitudes, and, following that, the steady attrition of the moral content of the law (in favour of more technical regulation),7 that within this area pressure with respect to, for example, the easy availability of birth-control techniques, has largely ceased to be an issue on which the churches now press the state for action. The increasing evidence of homosexuality among priests, and the overt campaigns by homosexual priests for toleration within the clerical profession, has perhaps done much to diminish formal pressure on government to maintain (or restore) legal prohibition of homosexual acts. But the churches, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, continue to voice hostility to official permissiveness in matters of abortion and the prospect of increasingly liberal attitudes (and perhaps even legal change) in the matter of mercy-killing and euthanasia. The churches may make representations on such matters when legislation is in process of formation, and their more militant members, following the raucous and sometimes violent forms of public protest of our time, may seek to disrupt the state-provided facilities for what is, after all, legal practice. In so doing they challenge the boundaries of the state, but the nature of their conflict is with what they see as an insufficiently paternalist state - not with what they themselves are prevented from doing or are obliged to do, but with the rights and facilities accorded to all, which they deem inappropriate and immoral. Allowing for this exception, the boundaries of the state are not persistently assaulted by the religiously orthodox of any tradition, Christian or immigrant. All of the mainline faiths appear, except in rare instances, to accommodate the secular culture, and the immigrant religions among them may, indeed, thrive better in an effectively secularised state than in a state committed to the defence of religion - that is, of a particular religion. The real challenge to the authority of the state comes, tiny minorities though they may be, from sectarians. The sect dissents from the dominant religious tradition of the society, and the religious dissent of sectarians is often paralleled by attempts to dissociate themselves from the purposes of the state. Christian sectarians in particular often define themselves in radical terms as citizens more of a world-to-come than of this temporal sphere, and in consequence claim exemption from some of the demands which the state makes of citizens. At the same time, as religious bodies they often claim the benefits which the state accords by way of concessions to all religions. 7

On this issue, see Christie Davies, Permissive Britain (London, 1975).

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Sects obviously differ one from another, and the specific issues on which they confront the state vary; and even on the same issues, the particular legitimations and the grounds on which argument is engaged are no less differentiated from one sect to another. Thus, generalisations are always subject to qualification, but certain common themes can be discerned. Adventist sects, which proclaim the early return of Christ and the subsequent establishment of God's kingdom and a return to the paradisial conditions of government that prevailed before the fall of man, generally seek to absolve themselves from political affairs of contemporary society. The state is as much the focus of opprobrium as the Church - both are testimonies to apostasy, and the sectarian should distance himself fully from both. Sects which fall into this category include the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Christadelphians and the Exclusive Brethren. All of these groups enjoin their members to be scrupulous in fulfilling their legal obligations in such matters as payment of taxes, the orderliness of their comportment and the avoidance of whatever the state deems criminal - indeed, their moral stance is far more rigorously sustained than what the law imposes or what other citizens, orthodox Christians or unbelievers, maintain. Part of distancing themselves from the wider society, is the determination to keep to a minimum all involvement in its political systems: thus, they do not exercise the vote, do not stand for political office, and in general avoid all civic occasions. Witnesses also refuse to make such symbolic gestures as saluting national flags and singing national anthems - abstentions which have led them into desperate situations in countries as diverse as the United States and Malawi, but which have not occasioned them civic or social condemnation in Britain.8 Nor, in a country where voting is not compulsory, do these self-imposed restraints lead to direct confrontation with the law, even though, implicitly, they impugn its legitimacy. Congruent with these deliberate dissociations, the sectarians of this general type claim exemption from civic obligation to the society in which they voluntarily deny themselves participation. Thus the Exclusive Brethren and the various fellowships of Christadelphians have had long-running brushes with the law courts in which they have been summoned as jurors - a civic obligation from which they seek exemption. Technically, judges are empowered to excuse conscientious objectors from jury service, but the courts have repeatedly made plain that adherence to a particular religious body does not in itself constitute an adequate ground for such excusal. The matter is one of discretion for the 8

For an account of this matter in the United States see David R. Manwaring, Render Unto Caesar: The Flat-Salute Controversy (Chicago, 1962).

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judge or court officer, and, in recent years, not all judges have been accommodating, notwithstanding the fact that it is virtually impossible to compel an unwilling individual to act as a juror. Attempts to introduce rights of excusal in Clause 16 of the Justice Act of 1988 failed by only four votes, and in consequence the matter still rests within the discretion of the judge in each particular case. A more celebrated and perhaps the most salient instance of sectarian civic dissent has arisen during periods of compulsory military service from which the members of various sects have sought exemption on conscientious grounds. Refusal to defend the realm has always been seen as a highly serious defection from civil, legal and perhaps also moral obligation. Sectarian morality has dictated otherwise, and steadily the ground has been gained, by Quakers, Seventh-Day Adventists, Christadelphians, Witnesses and Brethren among others, that rights of conscience transcend obligations to the state. Their case has been complicated because of the diverse doctrinal legitimations employed by sects, and the differences among them about the actual point at which the tender conscience is seared. Thus, Quakers and Adventists will generally undertake non-combatant military services, and so, too, will the Brethren: Christadelphians and Witnesses have taken a more radical line, even refusing to serve as special constables, and, in the former case, throwing into doubt the justifiability of working in the armaments industries - a serious matter for a sect for which Birmingham has always been a major centre. Less direct confrontation has occurred when the state has permitted 'closed shop' arrangements for trades unions in particular industries. The members of various sects object to trades unions, and the members of some sects - Exclusive Brethren and Jehovah's Witnesses, for example - deliberately avoid employment where there is an obligation or even strong encouragement to belong to a union. The Brethren object to membership of any organisation of which Christ is not the head, and the Witnesses refuse to be 'unequally yoked with unbelievers'. There have, however, been cases in which sectarians have had jobs in which closed shop arrangements have, at some stage, been implemented in an industry with at least the acquiescence of the political party in government. Christadelphians who were employed in the British railway industry successfully challenged in the European court the obligation to belong to a union, and in this sense won a victory for the maintenance of civil rights on this issue.9 The same right has not yet been won with respect to membership of students' unions in universities (although recurrently 9

Robilliard, Religion and the Law, p. 176.

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promised by Conservative politicians), and one reason, among others, which led the Exclusive Brethren to withdraw their young people from higher education was the fact that membership of students' unions was obligatory for all students. In the field of education at lower levels, the state has become increasingly prescriptive with respect to just what shall be taught, which has led to some sectarians coming increasingly to demand rights of exemption for their children from classes which conflict with their conception of what children need to know. The issue has been raised most strenuously by the Exclusive Brethren who object both to the inclusion of sex education in the school curriculum, and the use of computers in the newly introduced subject of communications technology. The Brethren believe that the family, and not the state or its educational agencies, is the place in which instruction and advice on sexual matters should be provided. The modern state seeks in various respects to protect citizens from practices and commodities which it deems potentially or actually baleful: the illegality of drugs, the obligation of tobacco companies to warn consumers of the risk they run in smoking, and the licensing laws restricting the places at which, and the age groups to which alcohol is available, are examples of the protective state. None of these specific issues affects Christian sects, of course, although prohibition of drug use (specifically of marijuana) might have some application to some branches of the Rastafarians were the authorities to choose to take cognizance of their practices. There is an adjacent area, however, in which similar considerations obtain; this is in the matter of public health, and most specifically in the medical care of minors. Some sects, including some New Age bodies, practise alternative medicine or embrace medical theories that conflict with the canons and the techniques of orthodox medical practice. Where minors are concerned, the state has taken powers to override sectarian scruples or preferences by instituting procedures which, in certain instances, allow children in medical care to be declared wards of court, thus enabling medical treatment to be administered without parental consent. The rule applies most particularly to the children of Christian Scientists in respect of all medical treatment, and to the children of Jehovah's Witnesses regarding blood transfusions to which, on the basis of their interpretation of the scriptural prohibition on ingesting blood, Witnesses object. In the past, there have been prosecutions of Christian Science practitioners for failing to call for medical attention in cases in which their 'patients' - both children and adults - have died. The courts have, however, sometimes drawn back from the government's efforts to impose general regulations,

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as the exemptions obtained by Sikh motor-cyclists from the general legal requirements to wear crash helmets demonstrates. Another aspect of consumer protection amounts to a re-drawing of part of the boundaries of the state relative to religion. A government may be persuaded, particularly by the campaigns of anti-cult groups, that the public may be in need of protection not only with respect to a specific aspect of belief and practice, as in these foregoing cases of therapeutic preferences, but with regard to the entire life-style, ideology and modus operandi of, particularly new, religious movements. Some of these bodies are alleged to be guilty of deception, charlatanism, exploitation or mind-control, and the state is urged to act against them, although by and large thus far, despite some strong judicial pronouncements, particularly against Scientology and the Unification Church, and parliamentary allegations against the Family of Love, governments have preferred to leave conflicts concerning new religious movements to be settled in the civil courts. In these various ways, among others, sects and new religious movements have come into conflict with one or another agency of the state, whether in the political or judicial realm. Sectarians generally pride themselves on being law-abiding, only adding that in circumstances where there is a conflict of laws - God's and man's - then, for them, God's law must prevail. Yet the sects themselves sometimes find need to have recourse to the courts, distasteful to them as this concession to state power may be. They do so to make good their claims to enjoy the privileges which the state makes available to religious organisations in general, and which they have been denied, or concerning which they are threatened with denial. One issue on which the courts are not infrequently obliged to decide occurs when - particularly among Witnesses and Exclusive Brethren - one parent leaves the sect and a struggle ensues for the parental custody of children. Not uncommonly in such cases, the court is asked by the defecting parent to declare sect allegiance inimical to the well-being of children, and sometimes judges have complied with such requests. The state does not take power to intervene in such matters when both parents are practising sectarians; curiously it sometimes does so when one parent challenges the sect, and this in spite of the fact that sect members generally claim to maintain very strong family commitment, and that all the available evidence tends to confirm such claims. The state specifically supports religion by the fiscal concessions already mentioned in ways not extended, for example, to the arts or sports, by tests which, in the case of charitable status, purport to establish whether a movement's teachings are religious, whether those

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teachings are subversive of all religion and morality, and whether it is for the public benefit. The case law by which these criteria were instituted, and on which judgements rest, is archaic and, if not actually internally contradictory, certainly lacking in coherence.10 For exemption from local government taxation, the criterion employed is whether a building is appropriately described as for 'public worship'. Recent judgements have, perhaps surprisingly, required that that worship must be available for the public at large (and not merely to the self-selected public of a specific sect or denomination).11 These criteria and the empirical evidence that satisfies them are rooted in the particular Christian tradition of English history. They turn, respectively, on just what is defined as religion, and on just what can be said to constitute worship. In each case, the established instances that have been approved are narrowly applicable to the Christian, or perhaps to the Judeo-ChristianMuslim tradition. Thus, whatever else may be counted as 'religion', and the law is extremely vague about that, certainly monotheism counts as religion, and may be the only thing which with absolute certainty does count. But of course, the law would have to be tested to see whether a polytheistic system (such as Hinduism) or an atheistic system (such as Buddhism) would formally qualify. Again, in the case of worship, the courts, working on precedents, acknowledge worship as dispositions of reverence, praise and humility before a god, although this leaves out the practices of various groups that lack anthropomorphic conceptions of the supernatural. As with the question of 'what is religion', many groups benefit from ad hoc decisions about local rates which, however, scarcely conform to the stereotypical instances of what constitutes worship which have hitherto actually been tested at law and been granted formal acknowledgement. When sects experience internal difficulties, such as schism, which has occurred in the case of the Exclusive Brethren, the trusts, which, in the past, they have established to administer their properties, have sometimes been denied charitable status: such a movement is thus effectively penalised in relation to other religious bodies. Similarly, when new movements come into being, if they have unconventional conceptions of deity or unusual practices of celebration, they may be denied recognition as occupying premises registered as a place of religious worship. Scientology provides a case in point. A likely consequence of not being allowed to register premises as a place of religious worship may be the 10 11

For a discussion, see Bryan R. Wilson, The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism (Oxford, 1990), pp. 87-102. SeeiWd.,pp. 67-86.

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denial of exemption from local taxation and perhaps also of a licence to solemnise marriages according to their preferred procedures. Over all, the effect of the existing legal arrangements is to rigidify conceptions of what constitutes religion according to patterns recognised by the state and modelled, at least in origin, on conceptions exemplified by the established Church. A basis for discrimination is built into the law which, although not actively applied, and liable to come into operation only when a specific legal process is brought forward by a supplicant sect (or its opponents), lies dormantly entrenched as a testimony to somewhat atavistic images built into the state apparatus of the law. Given such a situation, periodic confrontation between sects and the state is clearly predictable. Yet here, the state must tread warily. Charitable status turns very much on the definition of religion, and religion as conceived has a close approximation to what Christianity exemplifies. Any attempt to deprive a movement of charitable status - as was canvassed by politicians after the Moonies lost their 1981 libel action against the Daily Mail, and as was proposed by the Attorney General in the mid 1980s - might easily turn into a 'heresy trial'. It was in recognition of this prospect and the embarrassment that such a process would occasion which led the government to drop the case after having briefed lawyers to prepare the action over a period of more than two years. Fiscal concessions, such as the granting of charitable status and the facility to exempt religious premises from local taxation, were initially introduced to accord a measure of greater (but not total) parity of status between nonconformist religious bodies and the Church of England. They were a tangible evidence of an enhanced commitment to religious toleration. Inevitably, the right to grant concessions embraces the right to withhold them, and withholding indicates the boundaries of toleration. The state is not, of course, a monolithic system in the administration of the legal provisions governing such fiscal relief, as the hiatus at different times, between the decisions of the Charity Commissioners and the preferences of the Attorney General, or the diverse judgments of tribunals, appeal courts and the House of Lords on various occasions, all serve to illustrate. But the state, represented as the more conscious political entity which is government, may sometimes act more decisively and with less prospect of contradiction from judicial agencies. This occurs when a minister - usually the Home Secretary, but on occasion another ministry, such as the Secretary of State for Health -. intervenes to make orders relevant to the practices of one or another religious body. Such action has been urged on various occasions, not only by groups opposed to particular religions (especially anti-cult groups which

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monitor the activities of the new religious movements active in Britain) but also by MPs. Several were vociferous in seeking to persuade the Home Secretary to prohibit the entry into Britain of James Taylor, Jnr, the American leader of the Exclusive Brethren, in 1964. A few years later, an order was made against L. Ron Hubbard of the Church of Scientology as persona non grata, restricting his right of entry to the country, and similar prohibitions were exercised against the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church, and the Bhagwan Rajneesh.12 In 1968 a more embracing order was made refusing entry to foreign citizens whose stated intention was to pursue Scientology courses at the British centres of the movement in East Grinstead and Edinburgh. The rhetoric of modern politics, from the pronouncements of international assemblies on human rights to the economic policies of privatisation, suggests that the state divests itself of much of its power over individuals, and implicitly thereby over the groups that individuals voluntarily bring into being. The reality in many areas appears often to be different as state and super-state bodies acquire an increased capacity and tendency to intervene in private concerns. Certainly, in one form or another, and sometimes by local as well as by central government agencies, the state has taken on many of the erstwhile functions of religion. At the same time, in challenging the state on such matters as the closed shop, compulsory military service and the obligations of citizens for jury service, sectarian bodies have in some measure succeeded in prompting the expansion of areas of human rights and the rights of conscience. Such concessions, perhaps not surprisingly, given the relative powerlessness of minority religions and their abstention from political processes, have been effected only gradually, piecemeal and often with ill grace by courts and governments, and certainly with little evidence of the application either of coherent policy or philosophical principle. Pressure on the boundaries of the state from religious bodies is, in total, not great, but if the regulations of the state, or of the European community, continue to intervene increasingly in the affairs of private citizens and their religious practices, we may expect to see minority religions, and perhaps also immigrant religions, seeking further exemptions and concessions. There is also the prospect, with the growing privatisation of religious belief, and the decline of religion as public cult, 12

James A. Beckford, 'States, Governments, and the Management of Controversial New Religious Movements', in Eileen Barker, James A. Beckford and Karel Dobbelaere (eds.)j Secularization, Rationalism, and Sectarianism (Oxford, 1993), p. 137. For a

comparative discussion of the response of governments to new movements, see James A. Beckford, Cult Controversies (London, 1985).

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for new forms of deviant religion to multiply. A privatised world, and a world in which laissez-faire principles prevail in economic life, must also imply the likelihood of a world of laissez-faire in religion. It heralds the probability of more diversity within religion generally, and hence stronger demands for parity of treatment among religious bodies. Such a development may well call for a body of law freed from the concrete and specific concepts and assumptions of Christian - indeed Anglican provenance. Whether the entrenched clauses that allow the Church of England to enjoy privileges over and above those of other faiths can be retained in such a climate of free, unconstrained and equal religious choice in what is effectively a secular society remains an open question.

16

The British state and the power of life and death Christie Davies

One of the few striking abdications of power by the British state in the twentieth century has been the abandonment of its power to execute individual citizens. In some measure this was a continuation of a nineteenth-century trend in which the death penalty had been abolished step by step for a large number of offences, so that from 1861 civilians could only be executed for four offences; murder, high treason, piracy with violence and the destruction of naval dockyards and public arsenals.1 Executions for the latter offences have been somewhat rare in the twentieth century and in general the execution of civilians in peacetime has been confined to those found guilty of murder. The conventional view is that no further major changes took place until the Homicide Act of 1957 which divided murder into capital and non-capital murder, the majority of murders being rendered non-capital.2 In 1965 capital punishment for murder was suspended for five years and at the end of that period abolished altogether. Since then several attempts have been made to restore capital punishment, either for all murders, or for particular types of murder, but none has succeeded. In each case, except for the 1957 Homicide Act, changes in the law, or attempts to change it, have been initiated by individual Members of Parliament and decided by a formally free vote, unlike government-sponsored legislation, which usually involves strictly controlled voting along party lines.3 Even the Conservative government's 1957 Act was put forward (as a compromise) in response to a free vote in favour of the complete abolition of capital punishment for murder in the House of Commons in 1956, a measure which the Government did not favour, but which had the support of a majority of individual MPs, including a number of its own supporters.4 1

2 3 4

See Sir Ernest Gowers, A Life for a Life? The Problem of Capital Punishment (London,

1956), pp. 26-7; Arthur Koestler and C. P. Rolph, Hanged by the Neck: An Exposure of Capital Punishment in England (Harmondsworth, 1961), pp. 42-3. For details see Christopher Hollis, The Homicide Act (London, 1964), pp. 54—5. See Peter G. Richards, Parliament and Conscience (London, 1970). See Hollis, The Homicide Act, pp. 5CM.

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The account given above is a summary of the conventional liberal wisdom concerning the abolition of capital punishment in Britain. It omits5 one extremely important phase, vital to a full understanding of the restriction, indeed in practice the withdrawal, of the state's power to execute, namely the abolition of capital punishment for military offences in the decade before and including 1930. It is striking how these two closely related twentieth-century phenomena, the abolition of hanging for murder and of execution by firing squad for military offences are never discussed together. However, it makes little sense to discuss each in isolation. The employment by the state of its monopoly of the legitimate use of force to shoot a soldier condemned to death by court martial for a purely military offence, or come to that for murder, or to hang a civilian convicted of murder by a jury in an ordinary criminal trial are not two radically different phenomena. In each case the state executes an individual, according to a set procedure, for what are perceived to be valid and adequate reasons. Between 1900 and 1964 (the year when capital punishment for murder was abolished) 780 civilians were hanged in Britain after being convicted of murder, i.e. on average between 11 and 12 individuals per year.6 During the same period 278 men were shot for purely military offences, while serving with the British army, nearly all of them during the First World War,7 when there was on average an execution every week, i.e. soldiers were executed more than three times as frequently as civilians. Even if the frequency were to be calculated over the full thirty years 5

6

7

See for instance Koestler and Rolph, Hanged by the Neck, pp. 43-6; Harry Potter, Hanging in Judgement (London, 1993), pp. 120-31; Elizabeth Orman Tuttle, The Crusade Against Capital Punishment in Britain (London, 1961), pp. 45—54. These authors may justifiably feel that military executions lay outside the scope of their work. My point is that they were mistaken in drawing the boundaries of their studies in such a way as to exclude the case of the military. Capital punishment is capital punishment. See Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1949-53 (London, 1953), Cmd. 8932, Appendix 3, Statistical tables pp. 298-9 and 302. Between 1900 and 1929 inclusive, i.e. over a 30-year period, 413 persons were executed in England and Wales and nineteen in Scotland. A further 312 persons in England and Wales and sixteen in Scotland were condemned to death but the sentence was commuted. The corresponding figures for 1900-49 are 633 executed and 506 commuted in England and Wales and twenty-three executed and thirty-two commuted in Scotland. There were a further ninety-five executions in 1950-6 inclusive (i.e. prior to the 1957 Homicide Act) and twenty-nine executions in 1957-64, making a total of 780 executions for murder in Britain during the twentieth century. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War 1914-20, War Office (London, 1922), p. 648. Military executions for ordinary offences such as murder have been excluded (arguably they could even be added to the Royal Commission's civilian total) and so have the executions of soldiers and labourers in units drawn from other countries even though operating under British military discipline; one execution for desertion from the Boer War has been added. Cases of civilians condemned to death for treason have not been included in either total.

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during which capital punishment for military offences existed, it must be remembered that the soldiers who were shot had to be members of an army, which even during the First World War consisted of about 4 million men, of whom only the 2 million at any one time on active service with the British Expeditionary Forces8 were liable to be executed. By contrast the executed murderers were drawn from the entire adult population, which was several times greater, the total population of Britain (excluding Ireland) at the time of the First World War being 41 million, of whom about 26 million were aged over 18 and thus liable to capital punishment. 9 When allowance is made for this difference, it is clear that proportionately far more individuals have been shot by a British army firing squad in the course of the twentieth century than have been hanged for murder following a conviction in the British courts. It is clearly necessary, then, to discuss the repeal of military and civilian capital punishments together. Also, a study of the successful moves to abolish capital punishment for purely military offences during the 1920s, and of the opposition to these changes, provides useful insights into the much later abolition of capital punishment for murder. In particular, it focuses attention on, and suggests an explanation for, two key aspects of this important social and political change. First, there is a very strong link between membership of a particular parliamentary party and attitudes to capital punishment. Even when Members of Parliament have a free vote on this issue, it is overwhelmingly the case that, throughout the twentieth century, Conservative MPs have voted in favour of capital punishment, whether in the army or for murder, and Labour and Liberal MPs have voted against. Yet, even when the number of MPs voting contrary to the majority of their party colleagues is utterly trivial, the pretence that it is an issue that cuts across party lines tends to be maintained on both sides. It is in point of fact a non-party issue only in the narrow sense that the party whips are not usually used to direct the votes of individual MPs, but the informal pressures to conform to one's party's general view are strong, and few MPs defy them. By tacit agreement the parties did not and do not debate this issue at election time and it may seem to have little in common with the more central and explicit ideological controversies as to whether the 8

9

See Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, pp. 29-33, 62. The number of soldier-days spent in the various military theatres during the war was 3,199,303,499 (ibid., p. 739). See the Report of the Royal Commission on Population (London, 1949), Cmd. 7695 and Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 363. The total number of adult person-days involved for 1900-30 is about three hundred thousand million i.e. 100 times the army figure.

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economy should be run on capitalist or socialist lines, or what the balance between unions and employers or taxation and welfare should be. Public opinion, which was almost certainly against executions for purely military offences but definitely in favour of hanging murderers,10 has been kept at bay, something that is regularly referred to for legitimation, but never unleashed. However, the study of the collapse of capital punishment for military offences points to a difference in ideology and in social background between the parties and their respective politicians, that helps also to explain why they differed so strongly over capital punishment for murder, and indeed to some extent over other moral issues as well. A second, and in some ways related, point follows from the insulation of the debate about capital punishment from normal politics and its portrayal as a matter of individual conscience rather than ideological disagreement. In the case of those wishing to retain capital punishment, it led them on two quite separate occasions to lose the debate, because they failed to realise the weakness in a twentieth-century democracy of arguments based purely on deterrence and on the need to maintain order, if these are not buttressed by a widely shared sense that the particular individuals being executed deserve their fate. Yet in later years, the very same insulation of parliament from public opinion assisted the abolitionists, who felt that they could ignore the voters' view that wilful and wicked murder deserved to be punished by execution and yet not damage their party's electoral prospects. The first World War had a drastic and dramatic effect on British society in many different ways. Before the war most ordinary British citizens had little to do with the armed forces. There was no conscription and only a small professional army. The regular officers tended to be drawn from aristocratic or gentry families or were the sons of Anglican clergymen, and the enlisted men were recruited from those who had found it difficult to find a satisfactory social and economic niche in civilian life.11 The army was seen by the lower middle classes and by the respectable workers, by nonconformist chapelgoers and by trade unionists, as a world apart, to be disregarded, except on the rare occasions when it impinged on their lives. They might, in some contexts, be proud of it as a national symbol and institution, but they also mistrusted the army as a cause of high taxation and a means of forceful 10

11

See James B. Christoph, Capital Punishment and British Politics (London, 1962), p. 44; Hazel Erskine, 'The Polls - Capital Punishment', Public Opinion Quarterly, 34, (1970), 290-307; Potter, Hanging in Judgement, pp. 143-5; Tuttle, The Crusade, p. 71. See Anthony Babington, For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts Martial 1914-20 (London, 1983), p. 34; Ernest Thurtle, Military Discipline and Democracy (London, 1920), p. 27; Ernest Thurtle, Time's Winged Chariot (London, 1945), p. 66.

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intervention in industrial disputes, and often despised those who enlisted in its ranks. 12 During the nineteenth century, parliament had forced a reluctant army to relinquish some of its more savage penalties such as flogging (in 1881), but brutal modes of field punishment had been retained or substituted.13 Capital punishment existed for many military offences, but it was not often employed. During the Boer War, there were no executions in 1899-1900 and only two in 1901, one for desertion and one for murder. 14 In 1902, though, two prominent Australian officers were executed for murdering Boer prisoners as a reprisal, during the last and bitter phase of guerilla warfare. As a result the Australian government, unlike those of the other Dominions, Canada, Newfoundland and New Zealand, refused in future wars to allow Australian soldiers fighting under overall British command to be subject to the death penalty.15 During the First World War, the British had to create a new mass army of several million men, initially from volunteers and after 1916 by conscription. For most of those enlisting it was a new, strange and frightening experience, casualties were high, and the stress of fighting a static trench war, involving the massive use of artillery, machine guns and even poison gas, was very great. Many individuals cracked up under the strain and exhibited 'shell-shock'. Two and a half years after the Armistice, 65,000 ex-servicemen were drawing disability pensions for neurasthenia and 9000 were receiving hospital treatment for it.16 During the course of the First World War 3080 men were condemned to death by court martial while on active service with the British Expeditionary Forces, and 346 of these were actually executed, i.e. 11.23 per cent. Of those executed 291 were British troops, the others being Canadians, New Zealanders, members of the Colonial forces, the Chinese labour corps, etc.; 266 of the 346 executions were for desertion, eighteen for cowardice, seven for quitting one's post without orders, six for striking a superior officer or other violence, five for disobeying orders, three for mutiny, two for sleeping at one's post and two for 12 13 14

15

16

See Babington, For the Sake of Example, p. 34; Thurtle, Military Discipline, p. 28. See Babington, For the Sake of Example, p. 1. Ibid. There were many cases of undetected desertions; for an acute and sympathetic comment see Kipling's 'Wilful Missing' from The Five Nations: Rudyard Kipling, War Stories and Poems (Oxford, 1990), pp. 181-2. Babington, For the Sake of Example, p. 1. Desmond Morton, 'The Supreme Penalty: Canadian Deaths by Firing Squad in the First World War', Queen's Quarterly (Kingston, Ontario), 29 (1972), 345-52, at pp. 350-1. See also William Moore, The Thin Yellow Line (London, 1974), pp. 150-4. Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into Shell Shock (London, 1922), Cmd. 1734, p. 24; see also Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Gas and Germ Warfare (London, 1982).

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casting away one's arms in the face of the enemy. In addition, thirtyseven soldiers or labourers under military discipline were executed for murder following a trial by court martial.17 The army leaders argued both during and after the war that the executions were necessary for the sake of example. Deserters were shot in order to deter deserters. Even when the rate of desertion was low, as in the winter of 1916-17, the fear of desertion on the part of senior officers was high and Anthony Babington quotes one Brigade Commander's opinion at the time that 'offences of this kind are now prevalent and ought to be dealt with severely to discourage others'. 18 It is clear, however, that the members of the War Cabinet, together with many army officers, were uneasily aware that this view was not acceptable to public opinion. In order for an execution to have the maximum impact as a deterrent, there would be a special parade of the condemned man's unit on the evening before the execution, with the prisoner present under escort, and the adjutant or another officer would read extracts from the evidence together with the findings and sentence of the court and the order of confirmation. Indeed, some senior officers urged that as many men as possible should be present.19 In contrast to this the next of kin of the man executed were often deceived as to the cause of his death20 and this deception was carried over into reports in the local press and the casualty records of the regiment.21 In part this was to spare the feelings of the relatives and to save the honour of the regiment, but it also served to prevent local anger and controversy. Indeed, those who unofficially changed the content and softened the tone of the notifications sent to the next of kin of men who had been executed may well themselves have felt uneasy and ambivalent about military executions in general, or this particular execution. Throughout the war questions were frequently asked in parliament about the number of executions and how the next of kin were informed, but the official answers given tended to be evasive.22 In November 1917 the War Cabinet decided to alter officially the mode of formal notification of the next of kin of a man's death by 17 18 19 20

21 22

Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, pp. 648-9. Babington, For the Sake of Example, p. 110. Ibid., p. 17. Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, Shot at Dawn (London, 1992), pp. 217, 224, 229, 257. Hansard: Official Reports of Parliamentary Debates, vol. 216, col. 52. (All references to Hansard except where otherwise specified refer to Hansard House of Commons 5th series.) Putkowski and Sykes, Shot at Dawn, pp. 229, 258-9. For example Hansard, vol. 80, col. 1553, 8 March 1916; vol. 8 1 , col. 30, 21 March 1916; vol. 8 1 , cols. 2204-5, 18 April 1916; vol. 82, cols. 128-9, 4 May 1916; vol. 82, cols. 656-7, 10 May 1916. See also Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 75-83, 121-4.

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execution. Ambiguous phrases such as 'died in service' or simply 'died', without specifying a cause, were deliberately employed, in an attempt to prevent them knowing that he had been executed. Lord Derby objected that this could in fact increase the distress caused to relatives, should they find out inadvertently, but the War Cabinet insisted on the change.23 They probably wished to avoid public disapproval of, or even political agitation against, the execution of particular individuals, who may not have particularly deserved their fate, but had been used as a means to an end. At the same meeting on 21 November 1917, the War Cabinet further acknowledged the peculiar moral quandary it was in, by deciding that the relatives of soldiers executed for military crimes should receive pensions in the same way as the relatives of those who had died in action. Furthermore, these pension rights were made retrospective to cover the cases of men executed earlier in the war. Disputed claims about pensions would, of course, have revealed the details of particular executions, as happened in Canada.24 Contrary to what has sometimes been argued,25 the British government was more concerned to preserve appearances and play down the executions than to save money. It was, at one and the same time, committed to announcing and publicising executions at the front, so as to achieve the maximum of deterrence, and to concealing them at home to avoid popular criticism and possible political protest. When news of particular executions did emerge, it shocked even those Members of Parliament who accepted that they were an inevitable part of war. Philip Morell, MP commented on 20 February 1918: The stories that come to one of these death penalties and sentences are quite poignant. Of all the horrors of war, I think nothing is more horrible than that men are condemned to be shot, and are actually shot by their comrades, in many cases for failure of nerves or it may be sleeping at their posts - something which does not necessarily show moral delinquency but only grave neglect of duty.26 As soon as the war ended, the executions ceased. General Milne, the Commander-in-Chief in Salonika, had written to the War Office, to ask whether soldiers convicted by post-war courts martial of deliberate desertion during the war should be shot. A secret letter was issued four days after the armistice, saying that no further executions, except for murder, should take place without the sanction of the War Office.27 Also 23

24 25 26 27

W a r Cabinet M e e t i n g N o . 279 on 21 N o v e m b e r 1917 (Wo. 32/4675), cited by Putkowski and Sykes, Shot at Dawn, p . 83. See also M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, p . 124. M o r t o n , ' T h e S u p r e m e Penalty', p . 350. See B a b i n g t o n , For the Sake of Example, p . 58. Hansard, vol. 103, col. 847 (see also cols. 8 4 6 - 5 5 ) , 20 F e b r u a r y 1918. Putkowski a n d Sykes, Shot at Dawn, p . 2 6 3 .

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no disciplinary action was taken against returning British prisoners of war who had committed serious offences against military discipline prior to being captured. As soon as the wish to deter became irrelevant with the ending of the war, the will to punish by execution collapsed.28 There was also a strong feeling that there should be no further or retrospective stigmatising of those who had been executed; on the contrary it was urged that the slate be wiped clean. On 29 July 1919 Colonel Lambert Ward, MP, who had sat on wartime courts martial at which men had been sentenced to death and who believed in the necessity of having such a death penalty, said in parliament: I should like to obtain an assurance from the Secretary of State for War that there shall be no difference made between the graves of those men who were killed in action, or died of wounds, or disease, and those unfortunate men who paid the penalty of their lives under Sections 4 and 12 of the Army Act, or who, in other words, were tried by court-martial and shot for cowardice or desertion in face of the enemy. I bring this forward because it has been on my conscience for some time . . . I ask the House not to dismiss this petition by the remark that these men were cowards and deserved their fate. They were not cowards in the accepted meaning of the word . . . These men, many of them, volunteered in the early days of the War to serve their country. They tried and they failed . . . In many cases they were the victims of circumstances . . . I should like to ask him [the Secretary of State for War] for a further assurance, and that is that all the records of these trials shall be destroyed and not kept permanently as records of the War Office. Now that the War is over and we have got peace, I do not want people in this country to think that tucked away, stored in some dusty corner of the War Office is a record of how their husband, their father, their brother or their son was tried by court-martial and shot for cowardice or desertion in the face of the enemy.29 Since Colonel Ward's magnanimity coincided with the government's wish for secrecy, it has until recently been difficult to know exactly who was executed during World War I. The names of men who were executed often appear on local war memorials and rolls of honour, or on municipal Certificates of Glory, treasured by their families, and they have been buried in Commonwealth War Graves alongside those killed in battle. 30 Only the use of ambiguous phrases such as 'died on service' or 'died' reveal to the initiated (in some cases) how they died. 31 After the First World War, the doubts of public and politicians alike about the wartime executions led to the setting up of a 'Committee to Enquire into the Law and Rules of Procedure Regulating Military 28 29 30 31

Ibid., p p . 2 6 3 - 4 a n d 270; M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, p . 183 ( b u t see also p . 281). Hansard, vol. 118, cols. 2 0 4 0 - 2 , 29 July 1919. Putkowski a n d Sykes, Shot at Dawn, p p . 2 5 7 - 9 . Ibid., p p . 2 5 8 - 9 , 272.

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Courts Martial' by the Army Council, which reported in 1919 that most courts martial had been conducted in an exemplary fashion and no major changes were necessary. The report did little more than restate the standard view of the military leadership that they must have the power to inflict severe punishments when an army was on active service, for 'unless discipline in armies be preserved, such forces are but a mob dangerous to all but their country's enemies'.32 Significantly the evidence taken by the Committee has never been published and three of the five Members of Parliament on the Committee refused to sign the report. It was signed by only two MPs, both Conservative (one with minor reservations), by three military members, by the army's Judge Advocate General and by the Chairman, Sir Charles Darling.33 This politically divided perception of the report was followed in the 1920s by a strong, sustained and successful campaign against capital punishment in the military by Labour and Liberal radicals, with the army leaders and the Conservatives retreating in good order, but conceding position after position, without any confidence that they would ever be able to hold the line against their critics. Indeed, each time they conceded that a particular penalty, which they had previously argued was essential for military discipline, could now be safely abolished, their opponents, sensing that they had them on the run, argued that those penalties still held to be vital by the military were equally unnecessary, and could also be dispensed with.34 At no stage were the Conservatives able to appeal to public opinion for support, as they were to do later in the case of capital punishment for murder. There was no reservoir of popular moral indignation and desire for retribution on which they could draw. Also, since the First World War had supposedly been the war to end war, and there was no discernible external threat to the country's security, a peacetime mentality remote from the exigencies of war had developed. Advocates of the severe punishment of military offences to maintain army discipline through deterrence, therefore, lacked credibility. The attacks on capital punishment in the military began soon after the end of World War I and during the 1920s amendments were regularly proposed to the annual Army Bills, which would have restricted the use 32

33 34

Report of the Committee Constituted by the Army Council to Enquire into the Law and Rules of Procedure Regulating Military Courts Martial (London, 1919), Cmd. 428, p. 108. Report of the Committee Constituted by the Army Council, p. 110. O n the theme that retreat led to further retreat, see Hansard, vol. 162, cols. 1512-15, 1519-21, 12 April 1923; vol. 182, col. 1381-2, 1 April 1925; vol. 194, cols. 1235-6, 1246-7, 21 April 1926; vol. 216, cols. 3 2 - 5 , 4 6 - 7 , 17 April 1928 and vol. 237, cols. 1583-4, 1611-12, 3 April 1930.

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of capital punishment, or enhanced the legal rights of those threatened with execution. The Labour Government of 1924 referred a list of proposed disciplinary amendments relating to military capital punishment to an Interdepartmental Committee, but they lost the election of November 1924 and the new Conservative government replaced the Committee's original Labour chairman, J. J. Lawson, MP with one of their own MPs, Captain D. King. Most of the other members were military men. The Interdepartmental Committee once again declared that the death penalty was necessary for morale, discipline and the safety of the army and 'enforced on the troops the lesson that complete self-sacrifice is demanded by military duty in war'.35 It was, they stressed, seen by military men 'not as vindictive but simply as deterrent'.36 They were, however, willing to allow the death penalty to be abolished in peacetime, except in the case of mutiny, and even in wartime for certain offences for which the death penalty was very rarely employed, such as impeding the provost-martial in the execution of his duty, violence against persons bringing up supplies, and the irregular detaining or appropriating of supplies proceeding on orders somewhere else.37 In 1925 the abolitionists again tried to amend the Army Bill to abolish the death penalty for most military offences, this time with the official support of the Labour Party.38 They pointed out that Australian soldiers had not been subject to the death penalty in World War I, but had performed as effectively as their British counterparts.39 It was a difficult argument to answer, for the Australian army had fought bravely and effectively, despite lower standards of formal discipline and the absence of a deterrent death sentence for those who stepped out of line. The next major change came in 1928, when the Conservative government's Army and Airforce Bill, with the full approval of the Army Council, removed the death penalty for a further eight offences including sleeping on post, disobedience and striking a superior officer, so that only cowardice, desertion, leaving a guard or post without orders, mutiny and treachery remained as capital offences.40 The Labour Party 35

36 38 39

40

Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Proposed Disciplinary Amendments of the Army and Air Force Acts (London, 1925), Cmd. 2376, p. 5, para. 13. 37 Ibid. Ibid., p. 6, paras. 14 and 16; Hansard, vol. 182, col. 1350, 1 April 1925. Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, p. 207; Thurtle, Time's Winged Chariot, p. 93. For contemporary, earlier and subsequent uses of this argument, see Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1581, 12 April 1923; vol. 182, cols. 1358, 1392, 1 April 1925; vol. 216, col. 69, 17 April 1928. For details of awards for bravery and distinguished service made to Australians see Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 763; Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 149-158, 208. Hansard, vol. 216, col. 34, 17 April 1928; Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 209-10.

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proposed that it be abolished for all military offences except mutiny, treachery and desertion but without success.41 After the election of 1929, there was once again a Labour government, but it had no overall majority and had to rely on Liberal support. In 1930 the new government further restricted capital punishment in its first annual Army and Air Force Bill, by doing away with the death penalty for cowardice and for leaving a post or guard without orders. The military members of the Army Council opposed these changes, but their advice was disregarded by the government.42 Ernest Thurtle, MP, the leader of the abolitionists, wished to go even further and proposed an amendment to the Bill making penal servitude, not execution, the maximum penalty for desertion on active service in wartime. Thomas Shaw, Labour's Secretary of State for War, opposed this on behalf of the government, saying that more time was needed for discussion and consultation with the military, but Thurtle called a special meeting of Labour MPs, at which there was almost unanimous support for immediate abolition.43 The government now allowed a free vote on the issue and the death penalty for desertion was voted out of existence by 219 votes to 135.44 The House of Lords, in a debate dominated by the views of ennobled World War I generals such as Allenby and Plumer, voted to restore the death penalty45 for all three offences of cowardice, desertion and leaving a post without orders by 45 votes to 12, but the members of the House of Commons refused to compromise on the issue, and the Lords permitted the entire Bill to become law. They presumably realised that it was not a good issue on which to provoke a constitutional conflict with the House of Commons, which might well have led to a further curtailing of their powers in the name of democracy, as had happened after they rejected the Lloyd George budget. During the Second World War, at the time of the North African campaign, some of Britain's senior military men wanted the death penalty to be restored for military offences, but the matter was never pursued, as it would have met intense opposition from people and parliament alike.46 Clearly the changes that had taken place had proved 41

42

43 44 45

46

Hansard, vol. 216, cols. 3 2 - 8 2 , 17 A p r i l 1928; M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 210-11. Hansard, vol. 237, col. 1577-80, 3 April 1930; B a b i n g t o n , For the Sake of Example, p . 2 1 1 ; M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, p . 212. Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 2 1 2 - 1 3 ; Thurtle, Time's Winged Chariot, p. 110. Hansard, vol. 237, cols. 1226-30, 3 April 1930; M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, p . 2 1 3 . See Hansard ( H o u s e of L o r d s ) , vol. 2 7 , cols. 1 5 1 - 2 1 , 15 April 1930; B a b i n g t o n , For the Sake of Example, p. 2 1 1 ; M o o r e , The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 2 1 4 - 1 6 . Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 2 2 4 - 5 ; Thurtle, Time's Winged Chariot, p. 111.

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to be secure and irreversible; what, then, were the issues that led to such a total change in the laws relating to military discipline and the death penalty? Ironically one of the main problems facing those who sought to defend the use of capital punishment by the military was that it had been used so sparingly. During the war 266,784 British soldiers had been convicted of a military offence, including 7361 for desertion, which could be a capital offence, but only 2675 death sentences were passed and only 276 carried out, of which a very high proportion (240, i.e. 87 per cent) were for desertion.47 The justification of these executions that was given by those defending the retention of military capital punishment in the post-war years was almost entirely in terms of deterrence.48 However, as has often been pointed out and was pointed out forcefully in 1923, a severe penalty that is only applied to a small proportion of those offending tends to lose its deterrent effect.49 Only 9.7 per cent of those sentenced to death for purely military offences were executed, and many of those convicted of committing offences which could carry the death penalty were given a lesser or suspended sentence. Also many military offences carrying the death penalty were never recorded, either because they went undetected, or because the officers detecting them decided not to press charges, sometimes out of consideration for the offenders, sometimes to avoid disgracing the good name of the regiment,50 or again because they had more urgent duties to attend to.51 In many cases the officer in charge chose to substitute a lesser, noncapital charge, such as absence, instead of charging a man with desertion.52 For all these reasons the chances of any particular offender being executed were extremely small. Despite the zeal with which the army's leaders informed the troops that they could be executed, or that a particular execution had been ordered to take place, the possibility of being shot at dawn must have 47

48

49

50

51 52

See Statistics of The Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 649 and Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1509-10, 12 April 1923. See Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Proposed Disciplinary Amendments, p. 5, para. 13 and Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1580, 12 April 1923; vol. 182, cols. 1357, 1380, 1390, 1 April 1925; vol. 194, cols. 1245-6, 1261, 21 April 1926; vol. 216, cols. 49, 50, 5 6 - 7 , 17 April 1928; vol. 237, cols. 1570, 1576-7, 3 April 1930. See Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1588, 12 April 1923 (Captain Benn). (Cesare) Bonesana Beccaria, Of Crimes and Punishments (published with Alessandro Manzoni, The Column of Infamy, L o n d o n , 1964), p p . 6-96, and especially p p . 5 7 - 8 , and Koestler and Rolph, Hanged by the Neck, pp. 5 0 - 1 . See Hansard, vol. 182, col. 1383-^, 1 April 1925; vol. 194, col. 1234-5, 21 April 1926; vol. 237, col. 1571, 3 April 1930. See Hansard, vol. 237, cols. 1616-17, 3 April 1930. See Hansard, vol. 182, cols. 1373, 1375, 1 April 1925.

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appeared a very remote possibility to those tempted seriously to break the army's more significant regulations. Only a very few soldiers could say that one of their immediate comrades had been shot, but most of them would know men who had committed serious offences in the past, who quite clearly had not been executed. The theory that military capital punishment offered waverers a stark choice between possible death in battle or certain execution53 is difficult to sustain in respect of a war that saw only 276 executions for purely military offences, but in which over 700,000 British servicemen lost their lives in action.54 The deterrence model may well apply to, and draw its plausibility from, the occasional but well-documented cases of officers shooting, or ordering their men to fire on, soldiers who were at that instant running away from or tamely surrendering to the enemy,55 but these irregular instances have little in common with an execution following a court martial. It is also striking that those officers in the House of Commons who argued that the deterrent effect of capital punishment was necessary for army morale and discipline in general always saw it as applicable to units other than the ones that they themselves had commanded. The defenders of military capital punishment in the 1920s, however, dared not argue that it should be used more frequently and rigorously in the future, for that would have inflamed public opinion against them. On the other hand, if executions are very uncommon, how can they be an effective deterrent? In 1928 Major-General Sir Alfred Knox argued against the abolition of capital punishment for striking or offering violence to a superior officer, saying: In future if any man wants to get sent to the rear, all he has to do is hit his commanding officer in the eye. Supposing there is a big 'push' coming up and a man does not want to go over the top. All he has to do is to hit his commanding officer and he will be sent to the rear.56 Clearly, for the Major-General a vital safeguard and deterrent was being lost. Yet (as his opponent Ernest Thurtle pointed out on another occasion) there had been several thousand recorded cases of men being 53

54

55

56

T h i s opinion tends to be held or at least expressed by military leaders seeking to retain a particular penalty and by radical critics of the military. See Thurtle, Military Discipline, pp. xiii-xiv. T h o s e in the 'centre', between these two groups, disagree. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 237; Babington, For the Sake of Example, p. 1; Hansard, vol. 194, col. 1238, 21 April 1926 (Morison). See Hansard, vol. 194, col. 1294, 21 April 1926 (Captain King); vol. 216, cols. 7 0 - 2 , 17 April 1928 (E. Brown) and vol. 237, col. 612, 3 April 1930 (Thurtle). BrigadierGeneral Frank Percy Crozier, The Men I Killed (London, 1937), pp. 4 8 - 9 , 5 4 - 5 , 6 4 - 5 and 287. Hansard, vol. 216, col. 5 0 , 17 April 1928 (Knox).

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court-martialled for this offence during World War I, but only four were actually executed.57 An ever bigger difficulty that faced and faces those administering a system of punishments, where only a very small proportion of those guilty of 'capital' offences get executed, is the problem of selection. How do you decide which individuals to execute? In an autonomous military system, as the army was to some extent in World War I, it will be left to the discretion of the military commanders, who will be mainly concerned with the morale and discipline of particular units. Thus, whether a particular soldier was executed or not would depend not only on his own past record, but on whether the offence with which he was being charged was, or was becoming, prevalent in his particular units.58 A soldier with a good record might thus be executed for (say) desertion because several other men from his unit, possibly worse offenders,59 had deserted earlier, but had received more lenient sentences or had had harsh sentences reduced or commuted on review. Alternatively the entire matter may be left to chance, either by default or, as in the more distant past, by the selection from a much larger guilty number of a token number of soldiers, chosen by lot, to be executed. In a democracy neither procedure is satisfactory, as it is felt that all citizens have the right to be dealt with in an equitable way, that takes into account their personal circumstances and gives them their just deserts. As soon as the British army became a mass army of the entire nation, composed of a mixture of conscripts and patriotic volunteers 'for the duration', it was inevitable that there would be demands that courts martial should conform to the ideals of procedural and substantive justice prevailing in civilian life60 and in the ordinary courts. Accordingly, both during the First World War and during the 1920s, the entire process of court martial followed by a review of finding and sentence by the higher military authorities, that could lead to a man being executed, was severely criticised, for it was alleged that: (a) some 57

58

59 60

Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 649 records four persons being executed out of 7116 cases of conviction for the offence. Thurtle, in Hansard, vol. 237, cols. 1611-12, 3 April 1930, claimed two were executed out of 6000. Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1579, 12 April 1923 (Captain Benn); vol. 194, cols. 1233-4, 21 April 1926 (Thurtle); Morton, 'The Supreme Penalty', p. 346; Putkowski and Sykes Shot at Dawn, p. 34. Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1579, 12 April 1923; vol. 237, col. 1571, 3 April 1930. For example see Hansard, vol. 162, col. 216, 9 April 1923. See also Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 649 note. A degree of official uneasiness on this score may be inferred from the note to the table of death sentences, which stresses, somewhat irrelevantly in the context, that of the 324 soldiers and others under military discipline executed by sentence of Court Martial, ninety-one were under suspended sentences of w h o m forty had been previously sentenced to death, one on two occasions.

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at least of those executed had not been properly represented and advised of their rights; also, although there was a lengthy and thorough process of review, there was no right of appeal to an independent court against a finding of guilty and a sentence of death;61 (b) there was a lack of uniformity and equity, indeed a degree of capriciousness, in sentencing and review that led to arbitrary severity in one case and leniency in another,62 sometimes with the aim of finding a scapegoat for the failure of a particular military operation;63 (c) insufficient attention had been paid to mitigating factors in particular cases, such as shell shock, cumulative stress or the fact that the offender was of a weak temperament or very low mentality;64 (d) officers were treated with much greater consideration and were much less likely to be sentenced to death and executed than enlisted men. Of the 261 executions for military offences, only two were of officers and none of these had a rank higher than (army) lieutenant.65 In the era of Admiral Byng, senior officers who failed were shot pour encourager les autres, but by the time of Viscount Byng, they were either cashiered and dismissed the service or quietly transferred to another post far from the front line. While it is true that British officers directly involved in combat tended to lead bravely from the front and suffered proportionately more casualties than in other armies,66 there was not a vast difference in the overall British casualty figures between officers and men. There were 21.4 other ranks for every officer on the main battle-front in France and the ratio of other ranks' casualties to those of officers was about 21 to I.67 If commissioned officers had been executed with the same frequency as NCOs and privates, twelve officers would have been shot at dawn for military offences rather than two, i.e. an enlisted man was about six times more likely to be executed than an officer was. These four sets of issues were repeatedly raised by those critical of the imposition of capital punishment by the army on a few individuals, drawn from an enormously greater mass of offenders. It is interesting to note that when the US Supreme Court was, at a much later time, faced 61

62

63 64

65

66 67

Hansard, vol. 162, cols. 1 6 0 9 - 1 1 , 1 6 1 6 - 1 8 , 9 April 1923; Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, pp. 175-7. Hansard, vol. 118, cols. 2 0 3 1 - 2 , 20 July 1919; vol. 182, cols. 1355-6, 1 April 1925; vol. 194, cols. 1233 and 1258, 21 April 1926; vol. 237, col. 1571, 3 April 1930. Hansard, vol. 162, col. 1565, 12 April 1923. Hansard, vol. 162, cols. 1568 and 1582, 12 April 1923; vol. 182, cols. 1353-5, 1 April 1925; vol. 194, cols. 1237, 1256 and 1299, 21 April 1926. See Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, pp. 6 4 8 - 9 ; Hansard, vol. 162, cols. 1560 and 1576, 12 April 1923; vol. 182, cols. 1351-2, 1355, 1365, 1 April 1925; Moore, The Thin Yellow Line, p. 124. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, p. 358. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, pp. 245, 248, 2 5 2 - 3 .

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with a similar problem in regard to murderers condemned to death under the criminal law of the individual states or the federal government, it came to essentially similar conclusions as the British critics of military capital punishment in parliament in the 1920s, though, of course, justifying these conclusions by reference to the American constitution. In the early part of the twentieth century the American murder: execution ratio was estimated at between 70:1 and 85:1, but by the 1960s it had risen to 504:1, with a murder:death sentence ratio of 92:1, so that less than one person in five sentenced to death was executed.68 This may be contrasted with the figures for England and Wales for the period between 1900 and 1949, when the murder execution ratio was 12:1 and well over half of those sentenced to death were executed.69 Even when the very much higher murder rate in the USA is allowed for, the proportion of American murderers and even of those condemned to death who were finally executed was and is very low indeed. When individuals scheduled for execution appealed to the US Supreme Court, the justices of the Court decided in case after case that defendants had been denied their constitutional guarantees of 'due process of law' (i.e. trials and appeals characterised by fairness and rule-bound procedural justice) and 'equal protection of the laws' (i.e. uniform treatment of all like-situated individuals). The Supreme Court insisted that defendants in such cases must be properly represented and defended, and that death sentences could only be imposed within a framework of standards and guidelines that would assist and compel courts to make reasonably rational and equitable choices, based on the heinousness of the crime and the culpability of the accused. Where such a procedure had not been followed, the imposition of death sentences was held by Justice Stevens to be unconstitutionally 'cruel and unusual, in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual . . . the petitioners are a capriciously selected random handful, upon whom the sentence of death has been imposed'.70 Justice Douglas ruled further that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally selective way against accused persons who were 'poor and despised and lacking political clout'.71 All these principles were supposedly derived from the American 68

69 70

71

Author's calculations based on data in H u g o Adam Bedau (ed.)j The Death Penalty in America ( N e w York, 1983, 3rd edn), pp. 3 0 - 1 . See also Rt. H o n . Lord Darling, Crime and Insanity, Murder and its Punishment, Musings on Murder (London, 1925), pp. 28—9. Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, pp. 3 2 6 - 7 , 3 3 4 - 5 . In the case of Furman v. Georgia (1972), 408 U S 238; 92 S Ct 2726; 33 P.Ed 2d 346 (at 390). See also the comments of Justice White in the same case, at 392. In Furman v. Georgia, at 358. See also Gregg v. Georgia (1976), 428 U S 153; 96 S Ct 3235; 50 L . E d 2d 30.

The British state and the power of life and death

357

constitution, and the justices decorated them with the rhetorical phrases of that document, but they were equally cited in the British parliamentary debates of the 1920s and 1930, i.e. they are simply a set of general objections derived from liberal ideology to the erratic and expedient use of capital punishment as a deterrent. Neither in Britain nor in America was it possible to avoid the generally held moral principle that no one should be punished more than they deserve. Capital punishment for murder has survived and its use even increased in America, because appropriate criteria related to the moral standing of the offender were devised, that enabled courts, legislatures and people alike to believe that, when they chose to execute one murderer and reprieve another, they were acting justly. In Britain, by contrast, attempts to create clearly denned sub-categories of cowardice or desertion in wartime, characterised by obvious and outrageous moral turpitude, that would merit capital punishment in the eyes of the public, failed. Consequently the death penalty for military offences was abolished, except for treachery, mutiny and deliberate desertion to the enemy, which clearly did involve personal wickedness rather than mere weakness of will. Whilst it is clear which arguments prevailed, it still remains to be explained why, even when there was a free vote, the issue of whether there should be capital punishment for military offences divided MPs so strongly along party lines. In particular, why were so few Conservatives willing to support the changes, even though they sensed that they had lost the entire argument and made no attempt to reverse them when their party was in power? The breakdown of the formally free vote in 1930 on Ernest Thurtle's amendment, adding desertion to the list of offences which should no longer be liable to capital punishment, is particularly striking (Table 16.1). There is clearly a very close link indeed between party affiliation and voting on this issue, even though this was in principle a free vote, and despite the claim by speakers on both sides that it cut across party lines. Nonetheless it is not immediately obvious why the Conservatives should be so overwhelmingly on one side of the issue, even though only half of them took the trouble to vote, and Labour and Liberal MPs on the other. A clue is provided, if the party affiliation of those voting on Thurtle's amendment is matched against the military titles enjoyed and employed by those gallant Members of Parliament who had held commissions in the regular army and/or served as officers in the First World War (Table 16.2). The Conservative and Unionist Party was clearly the party of those who had exercised the power to command and who, it may be inferred,

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Table 16.1. Voting on capital punishment for desertion, by party Labour

Liberal

195

20

2

Total number voting Total number of MPs by party

Abolish capital punishment for desertion Retain capital punishment for desertion

Conservative

Other

Total

2

2

219

4

129

0

135

197

24

131

2

354

287

59

260

9

Source: Based on data from Hansard, vol. 237, cols. 1625-30, 3 April 1930.

Table 16.2. Numbers of MPs with military titles, by party Labour Number of voting MPs using a military title Number with no military title (or not using it) % of total voting MPs with military title

Liberal

Conservative

Others

4

3

55

0

193

21

76

2

2.1%

12.5%

42%

0%

Source: As for Table 16.1.

saw the power to execute as a necessary corollary of this. That this was the case can be shown by a comparison between the voting behaviour (on the issue of whether deserters should be executed or not) of Conservative MPs using military titles with that of Conservative MPs who did not (Table 16.3). Clearly the experience of having been an officer had an independent effect on individual Conservative MPs, influencing them in the direction of voting to keep capital punishment. Yet at the same time the members with a military identity strongly shaped the dominant outlook of the Conservative Party overall. Only two of the non-military-titled Conservative MPs dared to break ranks and actually vote for abolition. There is a slight degree of inconsistency over the use of military titles by MPs in different contexts and some of the very few Labour MPs who possessed a military title chose not to use it at this time, such as Major Clement Atlee, who later became an Earl. Many Conservatives by contrast even proudly added their military rank to their other titles as knight, baronet or non-House or Lords aristocrat. The latter differences

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Table 16.3. Conservative voting on capital punishment for desertion, by military title

Voting to retain capital punishment for desertion Conservative MPs using a military title Conservative MPs without, or not using, a military title Total

Not voting, or voting to abolish capital punishment for desertion

Total

55

26

74

105

179

129

131

260

81

[Chi-square = 15.72, p < 0.001; Tschuprow's T = 0.15] Sources: Based on data from Hansard, vol. 237, cols. 1625-30, 3 April 1930 and 'The Times' House of Commons 1929 (London, 1929).

in choice of nomenclature and identity further reinforce the view that the two parties identify themselves with different categories of people, as defined by their relationship to the British state's use of force. In Britain and many other complex societies where the state has a monopoly of the use of legitimate force, this is controlled and administered by particular groups of people, such as the officers of the army, navy and airforce, senior police-officers, the judiciary and the senior civil servants of the relevant departments of state, and in the past colonial officials and administrators. They belong to the category of the 'dominant', who exercise immediate or indirect authority in regard to the use of legitimate force over those whom we can class as the 'subordinate'. Whether we treat these categories as dichotomous, or treat 'dominion' as a continuous dimension along which individuals and groups are located, is a matter of convenience, according to what kind of question we wish to ask and answer. Dominion should not be confused with power or authority in general, for it is only one kind of power and authority, that based on and specialising in the disciplined use of force. It is analogous to, but quite distinct from, the forms of economic and social power that give rise to classes and status groups respectively. The existence of such a dimension of power and stratification is obvious in societies controlled by military men, such as pre-war Japan, or stratified by party, as in the former Soviet Union and its brutal socialist satellites in Eastern Europe. In such societies the most important form of inequality is often not economic or social, but the division between those who can command the use of force and those who have to obey. One expression of this was

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Christie Davies

the frequent use of capital punishment in the former Soviet Union to punish 'economic' crimes involving state property, such as embezzlement. In Britain this division is far less central, in part because there is little chance that the military would seek to overthrow or seriously defy the government, or would be needed to defend it against a popular uprising. Also, in the 1920s, those who exercised dominion on behalf of the state tended to be drawn from backgrounds of wealth and high status, factors which have received far more attention from the sociologist. Yet to neglect the 'dominion' dimension in the stratification of British society is, for instance, to isolate and to render incomprehensible the imperial and Irish issues that have provided so much symbolic division and drama in British politics. As the party of dominion the Conservatives have been able to count on popular support for imperial success and assertiveness. By contrast the Liberal and Labour Parties, which even when in power have felt themselves excluded from, and in opposition to, 'the Establishment', have espoused an ideology of 'underdoggery', that has led them to criticise and restrain the state's powers of life and death, not excluding the case of capital punishment. In the case of capital punishment for murder, support for abolition was an unpopular line to take. In the case of capital punishment for military offences, by contrast, it was the Conservatives who were at a strong disadvantage, for those who had lost their lives were neither enemies of the state, nor morally deplorable individuals, and this accounts for the Conservative retentionists retreat and defeat on this issue. Both parties, though, exploited the fiction that it was a non-party issue, for the Conservatives did not wish to appear hard-faced and hard-hearted, given the peacetime sympathy for those executed, and the Labour Party did not want a public, head-on, official clash with the army leadership. For the military leaders and their Conservative supporters the abolition of their power to execute was the loss of a symbolically important prerogative and a retrospective undermining of the legitimacy of their actions in the past. Also, those who exercise military command may at any time have to make rapid decisions on behalf of the state and its security, that may result in unintended or unjustified loss of life. Under such circumstances, questions of whether justice has been done to particular individuals may appear irrelevant, or even trivial, even though such questions are seen by the public and by politicians as vital aspects of the democracy that is being defended. At the very same time as the clash between the parties representing the 'dominant' and the 'subordinate' respectively was occurring over military capital punishment, the issue of capital punishment for murder was dividing in very similar ways those MPs who were members of the

The British state and the power of life and death

361

Select Committee on Capital Punishment. This committee, which had taken evidence during 1929-30, reported unanimously in favour of suspending, and thus in time abolishing, capital punishment, but only after all six of its Conservative members had resigned.72 Had the recommendations of the Report of the Select Committee been voted on in Parliament, while the Labour and Liberal members still outnumbered the Conservatives, it is possible that the abolition of capital punishment for murder would have followed soon after its abolition for desertion. However, the Labour government deliberately avoided any debate on the issue of capital punishment for murder, because, unlike the military case, abolition would be very unpopular with the electorate. An indication of what could have happened, though, is given by the unanimous vote in favour of abolishing execution for murder at the Labour Party Conference in 1934. However, the formation of a National Coalition government by the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald, in 1931 split the Labour Party, and in the resulting general election a large majority of Conservative MPs were returned. It was only after the Second World War, when the Labour Party gained a large overall majority, that there was any real chance of the abolitionists succeeding. In 1948,147 abolitionist MPs of whom 135 were Labour members added an amendment suspending capital punishment for five years to the government's Criminal Justice Bill; the amendment was carried by 245 votes to 222 on a free vote (except for the actual members of the Labour government).73 The voting was overwhelmingly along party lines, despite claims of bipartisanship by both sides during the debate, the apparently high Labour vote in favour of capital punishment being the result of the instruction given to ministers to support retention or else to abstain, lest it appear that the government was officially in favour of abolition. Also the government was anxious that a row over capital punishment might impede the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill, which incorporated many urgent changes, some held over since before the Second World War (Table 16.4). Because the debate about capital punishment now concerned murder, which involves moral culpability, rather than military offences characterised by mere fear and failure, the themes of retribution and desert were strongly emphasised in these debates, in contrast to those held twenty years earlier on capital punishment in the military. However, once again wartime events had a strong influence on the debates. For the 72

73

Report from the Select Committee on Capital Punishment (London, 1931); Tuttle, The Crusade, p. 40. G o w e r s , A Life for a Life?, p . 72; P o t t e r , Hanging in Judgement, p . 145 (of t h e seventytwo government ministers, forty-four abstained).

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Table 16.4. Voting on capital punishment for murder, by party, in 1948 MPs voting for abolition in 1948

MPs voting for retention in 1948

Labour Conservatives and allies Others

215 16 14

74 134 14

Total

245

222

[Chi-square = 12.72, p < 0.01; Tschuprow's T = 0.138] Source: Hansard, vol. 449, cols. 1094-8 (tellers not included).

abolitionists, the willingness of Britain's wartime enemies to use state power to kill on a massive scale confirmed their moralist view that capital punishment was always wrong.74 The supporters of capital punishment argued that, if Britain's support for retributive punishments in the war crimes trials in Nuremburg and Tokyo was morally justified, so too was the employment of retributive capital punishment for murders committed at home.75 The abolitionists were uneasily aware that several countries which had abolished capital punishment or allowed it to fall into disuse, such as Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, had reactivated a sleeping penalty or even restored capital punishment and applied it retrospectively, in order vindictively to execute those who had collaborated with the German invaders occupying their countries.76 It could hardly be argued that this had been done to deter potential collaborators in future wars; rather it was seen as an act of justice such that they got what they deserved. The abolitionists, however, stressed that, after the wartime collaborators had been tried and executed, there was no wish in these countries to retain capital punishment for the routine murders of peacetime.77 Either way the effect of the Second World War and its aftermath was to strengthen the moralist convictions of those on either side of the debate. The abolitionists won in the House of Commons, but lost heavily in the House of Lords, by 181 votes to 28. Most of those voting for abolition were Labour peers; only three Conservative peers, one Liberal 74

75 76

77

For instance Hansard, vol. 449, col. 1015 (John Paton) and col. 1093 (R. T . Paget), 14 April 1948. Hansard, vol. 449, cols. 1017 and 1066, 14 April 1948 (Quentin Hogg). See Hansard, vol. 449, col. 1034,14 April 1948. (For details see Amnesty International, The Death Penalty (London, 1979), pp. I l l , 121, 122.) See for instance Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 156, col. 132, 2 June 1948 (Bishop of Chichester, George Bell).

The British state and the power of life and death

363

78

peer and one bishop voted with them. The government now sponsored a compromise clause that would have restricted but not abolished capital punishment, and this was passed by the House of Commons. The compromise clause was again decisively rejected by the House of Lords and thus all attempts to abolish, or even to whittle away, capital punishment failed. In 1930 the House of Lords had refrained from blocking the abolition of the death penalty for military offences, when the House of Commons had twice passed a clause in a Bill to this effect; it was clear to them that their continued opposition to this measure would receive no popular support and would be seen as undemocratic. By contrast, in 1948 the members of the House of Lords were encouraged by Conservative leaders such as the Marquess of Salisbury and Sir Winston Churchill to believe that they had public opinion on their side, and this was reinforced by opinion polls showing that at least two-thirds of the British people thought that murderers should be hanged.79 A clash between the two Houses of Parliament on this issue, far from putting the House of Lords' future in jeopardy, would have enabled the House of Lords to pose as the true voice of the people, embarrassed the Labour government and possibly led to a general election, which the Conservatives might well have won. Many of the key Conservative defenders of capital punishment were men whose lives had been spent exercising a disciplined and regulated use of force on behalf of the Crown. In the House of Lords in particular, it was often those who had had successful careers in the armed forces, the colonial service or the judiciary who defended capital punishment most strongly. What these military leaders, colonial rulers and senior judges had in common was that they had had to order the taking of life on behalf of the state, within a tightly constructed framework of rules and discipline that excluded or constrained private wishes and personal emotion. They saw murder as the anarchic antithesis of their way of life, as an act of undisciplined passion, or a deliberate attack on the established order. Murder was for them an infringement of their monopoly of the use of force, and a defiance and contradiction of the values of impersonal obedience and discipline which were at the core of their way of life. For such men, the appropriate response to such an outrage lay in the state reasserting their values, by deliberately and ritually condemning and executing the offender according to a fixed and unchanging set of rules. The abolition of capital punishment would, directly or indirectly, have retrospectively undermined the legitimacy of their own 78 79

Potter, Hanging in Judgement, p. 151; T u t t l e , The Crusade, p. 73. Christoph, Capital Punishment, p. 44; Erskine, ' T h e Polls'; Potter, Hanging in Judgement, pp. 143-5; Tuttle, The Crusade, p. 71.

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infliction of death on others in defence of state and society, through legal executions or just wars. What may not be done in the future must have been wrong in the past. The senior judges in the House of Lords used an argument in these debates that had not been available to the military defenders of capital punishment in the debates of the 1920s and 1930; they stressed the personal wickedness of those who had been tried and convicted of singularly horrible murders in the courts over which they presided or whose cases they had examined on appeal. In this way, the fate of the murderer was linked backwards in time to the destruction of a particular known person, the innocent victim. This provided a necessary supplement to the argument from deterrence, which deals with the more nebulous, unknown, statistical persons, whose lives will be saved if an execution deters other people from committing murder in the future. Indeed, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, in his speech in favour of retention, did not stress questions of policy, expediency or deterrence at all, but justified capital punishment for murder in purely moralist and retributive terms: 'Murder is a crime sui generis — it stands by itself; the man who commits the supreme crime should pay the supreme penalty.'80 Following the defeat by the House of Lords of the Labour government's compromise clause restricting capital punishment to certain types of murder, a Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, with Sir Ernest Gowers as chairman, was set up, to consider whether the law relating to capital punishment could be improved. The Commission reported in 1953, stressing three main points. The first was that the main defect of the law as it stood was that it provided a single punishment, namely death, for a crime whose culpability varied enormously from one case to another. Second, that it could not be proven that capital punishment had a uniquely deterrent effect in preventing murder. Third, that they had found it impossible to grade murders into capital and non-capital categories, as they had been instructed to do.81 The Conservative government then in power rejected the report, but in 1956, on a free vote, the House of Commons voted in favour of abolition.82 For the first time a substantial number of Conservative 80

81

82

Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 156, col. 1 1 6 , 2 June 1948. See also Arthur Smith, Lord Goddard: My years with the Chief Justice (London, 1959), p. 143; Gowers, A Life for a Life?, pp. 5 2 - 5 . (This is a twentieth-century judicial view. Earlier judges had been content to apply and uphold the death penalty for minor property offences and to justify this purely in terms of deterrence.) Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, pp. 2 1 2 - 1 4 , paras. 6 0 4 - 1 1 . See also Gowers, A Life for a Life?, pp. 3 3 - 4 2 , Tuttle, The Crusade, pp. 8 6 - 9 . Potter, Hanging in Judgement, p. 173.

The British state and the power of life and death

365

MPs, forty-eight of them, voted in favour of abolition, more than three times as many as in 1948, which may well have reflected the changing social composition of the party in Parliament. The Bill abolishing capital punishment was passed by the House of Commons, but once again rejected by the House of Lords. The Conservative government now passed the Homicide Act of 1957, which divided murders into capital and non-capital. Only those in the former category, which consisted of murders in the course or furtherance of theft, murders by shooting or causing an explosion, murders committed in the course of resisting arrest or of escaping from custody, murders of police or prison officers executing their duty or of persons assisting them, or the committing of two or more murders on separate occasions were subject to the death penalty;83 the majority of murders were rendered non-capital. The division between the two categories rested on two principles clearly enunciated by the Lord Chancellor Viscount Kilmuir: 'The death penalty is to be retained for those cases where murder is most dangerous to the preservation of law and order and where the death penalty is likely to be a particularly effective deterrent.' 84 He pointed out that the capital murders were in no sense denned by reference to moral guilt, for they were neither the most abhorrent of murders, nor those that had been most clearly and callously premeditated. 85 This deliberate attempt to avoid questions of retribution and degrees of culpability86 was, as will be indicated later, in keeping with a new trend of the times in regard to legislation on moral issues. However, precisely because it was so narrowly based on the principles of deterrence and of maintaining order, the Homicide Act, which had been portrayed by its supporters as a stable and lasting compromise,87 was open to attack and demolition along the same lines that had led to the drastic curtailing of capital punishment for military offences by 1930. It is possibly the case that many more lives would be saved by executing those responsible for fatal accidents of any kind, than by having capital punishment for deterrable murders. However, such a measure would not be acceptable to public opinion, because causing accidents, like desertion or cowardice in the army, is not seen as directly and deliberately 83 84 85 86

87

Hollis, The Homicide Act, p p . 5 4 - 5 ; T u t t l e , The Crusade, p p . 157-61. Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 2 0 1 , cols. 1168-9, 21 February 1957. See Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 2 0 1 , col. 1169, 21 February 1957. See Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 198, col. 751, 10 July 1956 (Archbishop of Canterbury: Geoffrey Fisher). See for instance t h e conclusion of the Archbishop of C a n t e r b u r y , Geoffrey Fisher's speech o n t h e H o m i c i d e Bill. Hansard (House of L o r d s ) , vol. 2 0 1 , col. 1194, 21 F e b r u a r y 1957.

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Table 16.5. Voting on capital punishment for murder, by party, in 1964 Voting for abolition

Labour Liberal Conservative

Voting for retention

Numbers ofMPs

% of MPs

Numbers ofMPs

% of MPs

268 8 81

84.8 88.9 26.6

1 1 170

11.1 55.9

0.3

Sources: Hansard, vol. 74, cols. 1002-10, 21 December 1964; Richards, Parliament, p. 180 (the tellers are included in the numbers given in the table).

wicked in the way murder is. Likewise, those responsible for fatal accidents, like those whose nerve has failed in wartime, or deserters, are seen by the public as persons like themselves, who have proved fallible in a crisis; murderers, by contrast, are seen as morally set apart. The Homicide Act thus contained an inner contradiction, in that the accepted reason for having capital punishment for any kind of murder, but not for other dangerous and deterrable forms of behaviour, was contradicted by the manner in which capital murders were held to differ from non-capital murders. In 1964 the Labour Party came to power again with a small overall majority and it must have been decided that priority should be given to the abolition of capital punishment. As in the past it was formally treated as an issue of individual conscience, but only one Labour MP voted for retention on the Second Reading (Table 16.5). Among the Conservatives the greatest support for retention came from those MPs who had been educated in military and naval establishments for a career as an officer in the armed services. Three-quarters of them (twenty out of twenty-eight) wanted to retain capital punishment and only 18.5 per cent (five out of twenty-eight)88 supported abolition. It was presumably among this group that the principles of deterrence and order as the bases of punishment received their greatest support. A different but complementary pattern of opinion was expressed in the House of Lords, where abolition was now approved by 204 votes to 104. It is particularly striking that the senior judges, who had previously been strongly in favour of capital punishment, now voted in favour of abolition because they did not wish to continue operating the 1957 Homicide Act, with its distinction between deterrable capital 88

Richards, Parliament, p. 185; see also pp. 190-1.

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367

versus non-deterrable non-capital murders. Since they had previously supported capital punishment as being a just retribution, they were disturbed by a system in which the wicked were often more severely punished than the very wicked. The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Parker of Waddington, speaking on behalf of most of the senior judges, said: I suppose it is probably true that no one, perforce and not by choice, has seen more of the many types of murder and of the circumstances in which they are committed than the holder of my office. I am sure that my noble and learned friend Lord Goddard would agree. For this simple reason, that nearly every murderer, certainly every capital murderer, appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeal, over which the Lord Chief Justice is the almost constant presider. Therefore, I hope you will bear with me if I express my views - and I am afraid rather strong views - on this proposal for the further abolition of the death penalty . . . I confess, looking back eleven years, that if anybody had then said that I should come out as a full-blooded abolitionist, I should have been surprised. But during that time, and particularly during the last seven years . . . I have seen the complete absurdities that are produced, and have been completely disgusted at the result. . . They (the judges) sit in court; they see where the shoe pinches; they see where justice does not appear to be done, and when it is not done. I think I can say that the Judges are quite disgusted at the results produced by the Homicide Acts89 . . . For seven years I have presided in the Court of Criminal Appeal, to whom almost every capital murderer appeals, and for the last four of those seven years I have been so disgusted (if I may put it that way) with the anomalies that arise, with the injustices that are done as between man and man - one man is hanged and another, equally blameworthy, imprisoned for life - that I determined four years ago that something ought to be done and I was in favour of abolition.90 The upholders of capital punishment would, as we shall see later, have lost anyway in 1964-5, even if the 1957 Homicide Act had been drafted according to different principles. Nonetheless, the defeat they suffered in 1964r-5 was, in many respects, a re-run of the long retreat over military capital punishment of the 1920s, that culminated in final abolition in 1930. In each case the aims of deterrence and order were not enough in themselves to justify capital punishment, when the supporting principle of moral turpitude had been removed. Not only the judges, but many of the Labour abolitionists (in their case often expediently and disingenuously) argued forcefully that it was not possible to justify the execution of less culpable murderers, when the law did not permit the 89

90

Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 268, cols. 4 8 0 - 1 , 19 July 1965. Second Reading of the Murder (Abolition of D e a t h Penalty) Bill. Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 269, col. 5 4 1 , 26 October 1965. Third Reading of the Murder (Abolition of D e a t h Penalty) Bill. H e is explicitly recapitulating what he said on the Second Reading (see note 89). See also speech by Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 268, cols. 5 3 5 - 8 , 19 July 1965.

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application of capital punishment to others, who had committed far more heinous crimes.91 This seems not to have bothered the former military men, who stood firm in defence of order and deterrence. However, there were now fewer of them, and they had less influence, even among their Conservative colleagues whose background and outlook were very different from their predecessors in the 1920s. In 1929 a large proportion of the Conservative MPs who had served in World War I were still using their military titles ten years later. In 1955, ten years after World War II, most of the Conservative MPs who had held commissions in that war did not use a military title; most of those MPs who did had been career soldiers. In 1922 the British Empire had reached its greatest extent and the defeat of Germany in World War I had temporarily removed Britain's most aggressive rival. Nonetheless, the decline of Imperial Britain was already underway. By 1964 the once powerful British Empire had been dissolved and replaced by a cosmetic Commonwealth, and Britain was reduced to being an off-shore island of Europe. The sacred hierarchies of the military and the established churches, though still respected, had been pushed from the centre to the margins of society. They had neither the power nor, in the case of the Anglican bishops, the will and desire to block reforms, such as the abolition of capital punishment or the decriminalisation of male homosexual acts.92 At an earlier time they had successfully opposed these charges, which they saw as inimical to the ethos of their all-male, disciplined hierarchies, with strong internal and external boundaries,93 whose central concern was matters of death and life. The sacred hierarchies had been superceded by the bland bureaucracies of production and welfare, staffed by members of both sexes, driven by short-term material considerations, and, perhaps ironically, less greedy94 of their members' time, loyalty and autonomy. The argument presented here, that the fading away of Britain's 91

92

93

94

See for instance Sidney Silverman, Hansard, vol. 704, cols. 879 et seq., 21 D e c e m b e r 1964. See Christie D a v i e s , 'Religion, Politics a n d " P e r m i s s i v e " L e g i s l a t i o n ' , in P . B a d h a m (ed.), Religion, State and Society in Modern Britain. T e x t s a n d Studies in Religion 43 ( L e w i s t o n , 1989), p p . 319^10, a n d Hansard ( H o u s e of L o r d s ) , vol. 266, col. 660 et seq., 24 M a y 1965 a n d vol. 268, cols. 7 1 1 - 1 4 , 20 J u l y 1965. See Christie D a v i e s , 'Sexual T a b o o s a n d Social B o u n d a r i e s ' , American Journal of Sociology, 87, 5 (1982), 1 0 3 2 - 6 3 ; D a v i e s , 'Religious B o u n d a r i e s a n d Sexual M o r a l i t y ' , Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, 6 (Fall, 1983), 4 5 - 7 7 ; a n d D a v i e s , From the Sacred Hierarchies to Flatland: A Sociological Account of Moral, Social and Legal Changes in Twentieth Century Britain, with Particular Reference to Capital Punishment, Homosexuality and Abortion ( C a n t e r b u r y , 1990), P a m p h l e t 12. See Lewis Coser, Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment ( N e w York, 1974).

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military and imperial position and outlook made the abolition of capital punishment possible, receives some support from comparisons with other countries. Among the western democratic countries there seems to be a historic link between a state's ability and willingness to use force outside its own borders and its retention of capital punishment. The existence of capital punishment in a state is thus a measure of national power and ambition. The earliest states in Europe to abolish capital punishment were the small, neutral pays faineant who hoped, often in vain, that they could stay out of the wars of their more powerful neighbours. These countries, with the dates of their de facto and/or formal abolition of capital punishment, are the Netherlands (de facto abolition 1860, formal abolition 1870), Belgium (de facto 1863), Denmark (de facto 1892 , formal abolition 1930), Sweden (de facto 1910, formal abolition 1921), Norway (de facto 1875, formal abolition 1902), Iceland (1928). The second group of countries to abolish capital punishment were those one-time powerful, or would-be powerful, countries, whose deliberate careers of wanton aggression ended in total defeat and disgrace. In Italy the death penalty for civil offences was abolished in 1944 by legislative decree and in Germany the abolition of capital punishment was part of the basic law of the new Federal Republic of Germany set up in 1949.95 Capital punishment had been abolished earlier in Italy in 1890, but restored under Mussolini, and likewise it had fallen into disuse in Weimar Germany by 1928 and in some German states had been abolished altogether.96 The final group of countries to abandon capital punishment were those that had been great imperial powers, but had declined in power and withdrawn from empire, notably Britain (1965) and France (1981).97 The United States, now for a brief time the world's lone super-power, is the only major western industrial democracy to retain capital punishment, in the laws of many individual states as well as the federal government. Arguments in favour of capital

95

96

97

Data from Amnesty International, The Death Penalty, and Amnesty International, When the State Kills (London, 1989); the Report from the Select Committee on Capital Punishment and the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment. Regarding the pays faineant it is worth quoting a German official's account of an alleged conversation he had with a member of the Danish government, when their country was under German occupation during the Second World War. T h e Dane boldly declared, 'You see there is the heroism of the lion, which you, as the great German nation have, and then there is the heroism of the hare, who has to know when to flatten his ears in danger, and we are a small nation, and for us the heroism of the hare is appropriate' (cited in Norman Longmate, If Britain had Fallen (London, 1972), pp. 256-7). Report from the Select Committee on Capital Punishment, pp. lxxxii-lxxxiv, paras. 372^1 (Germany) and paras. 3 7 4 - 8 3 (Italy). Amnesty International, The Death Penalty and When the State Kills.

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punishment, based on the need to provide deterrence and promote order, still carry a great deal of weight in a country with 25,000 homicides a year and in the throes of the oddly but aptly named 'war against drugs', which combines forceful law enforcement within America with the use of the military in, and against, the countries of the drug suppliers and traffickers. The final criteria for execution are, however, based on desert and must satisfy the guidelines laid down by the US Supreme Court, that stipulate the weighing up of the aggravating and mitigating factors involved in each particular case.98 Had the upholders of capital punishment in Britain likewise tried to define the differences between capital and non-capital murder in the 1957 Homicide Act in terms of moral culpability, with order and deterrence merely providing a general overall justification for the use of such a strong penalty, they would have retained the support of the judges, but they would still have lost in 1964. The public and the judges were still in favour of retributive capital punishment based on desert, but among the legislators generally the morality of guilt and innocence, and of blame and desert, was losing its force. Indeed in order to understand why the 1957 Homicide Act was based on deterrence and the preservation of order, rather than degrees of heinousness, it is necessary to look not only back to the First World War, when the security of the state took precedence over the degree of culpability of individuals, but forward to the changes in the law relating to divorce and abortion that were to take place in the 1960s." Previously divorce had been seen as wrong in itself, but it could be awarded to the innocent party who could prove in court that he or she was the victim of a matrimonial offence such as adultery, cruelty or desertion. The innocent parties were the victors and also could, if they chose, justly deny a divorce to their guilty partners. Fairness was seen as the distribution of rewards and penalties according to the moral worthiness of the parties. According to the new Act of 1967 by contrast the 'irretrievable breakdown of marriage' became the basic reason for divorce and innocent partners could be divorced against their will. The key question ceased to be 'who is to blame?' but became rather 'what course of action will cause the least harm to the sum total of the parties concerned, quite regardless of individual desert?' This negative, short-term, utilitarian principle,

98

99

See for instance W o o d s o n v. N o r t h Carolina (1976), 428 U S 280; 96 S Ct 2978; 4 9 L . Ed 2d, 944 and Lockett v. Ohio (1978), 438 U S 586; 98 S Ct 2954; 57 L Ed 2d 9 7 3 , cases which established the necessity of individualised sentencing. See Christie Davies, Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies (London, 1975).

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100

which I have elsewhere termed 'causalism', also prevailed in the case of abortion. Previously abortion had been forbidden, as wrong in itself, except when the mother's life was in danger, though the principle had been stretched as a result of a noted case, in which an abortion given to a young and innocent victim of rape was ruled to be legal. Now the view was taken that the prohibition of abortion by law merely forced women into seeking dangerous back-street abortions, and that less harm would be caused overall if these operations were performed safely and legally by qualified doctors. The test of legality was not the innocence that could be claimed by those who had not consented, or who could not consent, to the act that had made them pregnant, such as rape victims, under-age girls or the mentally defective; indeed parliament discussed each of these cases and explicitly refused to specify them as reasons for abortion in the Abortion Act of 1967. Rather the key criterion laid down to tell doctors when an abortion might be legally performed was based on an assessment of the harm that would be suffered by the woman and her existing children if she were denied an abortion.101 Once again the aim was to minimise harm regardless of a person's moral status. For the supporters of the reform of the law relating to abortion, the foetus could be disregarded, since it lacked a capacity for suffering and could not be regarded as inviolable, since it was not a full individual person with plans, expectations, fears and a self-conscious identity; the argument put forward by the opponents of reform that the foetus was 'innocent' was regarded as irrelevant by the reformers. Whilst such arguments were successful (and still prevail) in the case of divorce and abortion, where the state was retreating from the exercise of its power to enforce private morality, they proved less certain in the case of capital punishment. It can be, and was, argued that to retain capital punishment only for deterrable murders is also an act of 'causalist' harm minimisation,102 for such rules ensure that a person may only be executed, if it can be argued that this will save lives in the future. However, in permitting divorce and abortion, the state was and is minimising harm in the short run, by allowing individuals an immediate escape from an unwanted situation, regardless of what the long-term consequences for society may be. By contrast, in the case of capital 100

101

102

Ibid., pp. 3 - 7 and Christie Davies, 'Moralists, Causalists, Sex, Law and Morality', in W. H . G. Armytage, R. Chester and John Peel (eds.), Changing Patterns of Sexual Behaviour (London, 1980), pp. 13-14. See Davies, Permissive Britain for a fuller account. See also Hansard, vol. 732, cols. 1 1 1 8 - 1 9 , 1 1 3 7 , 2 2 July 1966; vol. 749, col. 934, 29 June 1967; vol. 750, cols. 1180 et seq., 13 July 1967; and Sir John Hobson et al., Abortion: A Conservative View (London, 1986), p. 6. See Davies, Permissive Britain, pp. 2 7 - 3 0 .

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punishment, when it is viewed purely as a deterrent, it is necessary for the state to inflict immediate harm now on a particular individual, in order to produce an uncertain benefit in the future for unknown 'statistical' persons, as would-be murderers are deterred. In the moral climate of modern Britain, where harshness is deplored, doubts about deterrence were bound to prevail. Thus in the end, the state withdrew from exercising its powers to prohibit and punish in regard to capital punishment as well as divorce and abortion. The coercion and control of the morally suspect in modern Britain has not shifted in the direction of becoming a more subtle, finely tuned and measured pattern of surveillance; it has merely become less rigorous and more permissive. By the 1960s the traditional established upholders of the majesty of the state could no longer successfully justify the exercise of capital punishment in terms of moral desert nor in terms of the need for order and deterrence, for both of these arguments had lost their force. What we have seen in Britain in the twentieth century is a major change in our understanding of the sanctity of life, away from the idea that society is sacred and towards a view that upholds the inviolability of each particular individual. The state has been substantially divested of its powers of life and death over the individual, for it can no longer claim to exercise such powers in the name of a sacred social order. It is now the person and autonomy of the individual citizen that is sacred. Accordingly the infliction of not only capital but corporal punishment by the state or by state institutions has been to all intents and purposes abolished. Members of the medical profession are now in some respects the managers and gatekeepers of abortion and euthanasia, but they do not have a mandate to act as the agents of an explicit, shared, collective morality, for they have to take into account the autonomy and individual wishes of their patients, whose movements or choice of other medical advisers they can do little to constrain. The overall pattern of change can be seen particularly vividly in the papers of Geoffrey Fisher, who was Archbishop of Canterbury between 1945 and 1961. He lived in an era of transition and desperately sought to find durable compromises, that would preserve the core of the old outlook, while making concessions that would satisfy those pressing for change. In 1948, when addressing the issue of capital punishment, which he generally felt should be exercised in a 'wise' and 'expedient' fashion, he used the occasion to assert the sanctity of human life against 'modern denials of it', such as a growing tolerance of suicide and euthanasia.103 103

See Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 156, cols. 42-9 and esp. 48, 1 June 1948, and papers of Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace Library, 1949, vol. 55. See also Tuttle, The Crusade, pp. 72-3.

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Only the state, representing society, could morally take away a person's life, not the person him or herself. Accordingly he was horrified when, in the course of giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1950, he was asked whether a person who had been condemned to death by the courts should be allowed to commit suicide. Not only did the archbishop see suicide as the sin of self-murder, but he also insisted in his reply that it was important that society itself should inflict the death penalty, rather than permitting condemned persons to choose how they wished to die.104 The extraordinary lengths to which those guarding persons under sentence of death went to prevent them from committing suicide, or to resuscitate those who attempted to do so,105 reveal and indicate that capital punishment is designed to demonstrate the power of the state over the individual. Such prisoners were deprived of any articles of clothing, such as ties, belts, laces, that could be used to commit suicide, and even of their false teeth and spectacles,106 lest like Dr Crippen they should break a lens and use the sharp fragments of glass to slash open a blood-vessel. Should a prisoner succeed in thus 'cheating the gallows', by committing suicide in prison as, say, Hermann Goering did, it was regarded as a major scandal and disgrace.107 Even though in such cases the condemned person was equally dead, the power of the authorities had been defied and set aside and their right to the symbolic use of force, through the ritual of execution, denied. In 1956 Archbishop Fisher was again faced with the issue of capital punishment and he became one of the keenest supporters of the Homicide Act of 1957, by a somewhat convoluted process of reasoning. However, he was in no doubt that the principle of the sanctity of life was closely tied to a belief in the supremacy of society over the individual. In an early draft of the speech he was to make in the House of Lords about the death penalty, he wrote: There are only two moments at which society says to every one of its members 'take note of the dignity of life5. One is in war when society says to itself 'members, you have this precious possession of life - we ask you to sacrifice it for 104 105

106 107

Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, pp. 2 6 6 - 7 , para. 769. Courtney Browne, Tojo, the Last Banzai (London, 1969), pp. 2 3 0 - 3 . Christie Davies, 'The Ethics o f Certain Death: Suicide, Execution and Euthanasia', in Arthur Berger, Paul Badham, Austin H . Kutscher, Joyce Berger, Ven. Michael Parry and John Beloff (eds.), Perspectives on Death and Dying: Cross Cultural and Multi-Disciplinary Views (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 149-62; Syd Dernley with D a v i d N e w m a n , The Hangman's Tale: Memoirs of a Public Executioner (London, 1990), pp. 8 9 - 9 0 . Courtney Browne, Tojo, pp. 2 5 2 - 5 . Douglas Botting, In the Ruins of the Reich (London, 1986), p. 343; F. T . Grossmith, The Cross and the Swastika (Worthing, 1984), pp. 8 3 - 4 .

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us all.' The other occasion is murder where society says to a murderer 'y° u have deprived a fellow man of his life; that is such an indignity that you must pay for it with your own life'. In both these occasions society is recognizing that life is a matter of tremendous importance and responsibility. To call for its sacrifice is one way of showing it. Abolish war - abolish the death penalty and society is left with no single manner in which it declares its witness to the dignity and solemn responsibility of life. It is treated as one of the trivial things and the death»toll on the roads becomes a measure of how it is valued. Thus I defend the death penalty on the grounds that it stands for the dignity of human life.108

Even at the time the archbishop's chaplain109 felt that these sentiments were anachronistic and advised him to make changes to his speech. Today it is a reminder of a social and moral world we have lost and of the strange death of Conservative England, despite the decisive victory of capitalism over socialism. Indeed it had been lost by 1964 when the bishops in the House of Lords, for the first time, voted together against capital punishment. It is perhaps significant that this occurred soon after the repeal in 1961 of the law that made suicide a crime. The law had long since ceased to reflect public attitudes towards suicide, but its repeal at this time was symbolically significant and was seen as such.110 It was one more step in the retreat of the state from its position as the arbiter of life and death. In most human affairs the British state has become more powerful and more interventionist over the course of the twentieth century, but, while it has come to regulate institutions and individuals more and more in the name of efficiency and equity, it has retreated from the task of enforcing a shared morality. In particular the state has relinquished its power over life and death, for it no longer imposes death111 on individual citizens, however culpable or dangerous they may be, nor does it react as certainly and decisively as it once did to prohibit and penalise the taking of one's own life or that of one's neighbour. 108 109 110

111

Geoffrey Fisher's papers, 8 March 1956, vol. 167, 201. Geoffrey Fisher's papers, 12 March 1956, vol. 167, 204. See for instance the comments of the Bishop of Carlisle, Hansard (House of Lords), vol. 229, cols. 258-62, 2 March 1961. The change is not yet quite complete. It is still possible for the British state to execute a civilian for treason, though the power has not been exercised since 1946; also the death penalty is in principle available, though not mandatory, in the case of piracy or arson in a naval dockyard. Furthermore there is in Britain no 'right to death' for those who wish to end their own lives.

17

Conclusion: on the past development and future prospects of the state in modern Britain 5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

The 'Thatcherite' revolution in the British state is over. Its passing was symbolised in the failure of her successor to secure the legislation necessary for the privatisation of the Post Office, in November 1994. To be sure, this was an ironic funereal symbol. For it represented defeat at the hands of a public, ancient institution to which the eponymous hero of denationalisation was intensely loyal. But the sense of a changing order was, and remains, unmistakable. The idea of an unambiguous direction in public policy - towards an ever smaller state - has died. And with its demise, it is becoming easier to view the events of the last two decades as in some way ephemeral, as the malignant products of a transitory ideology now discredited, or errors inspired by a malevolent view of the state now shown to be false and, presumably, soon to be subject to suitable reverse. This temptation, we believe, should be resisted. To some extent, that is because it attributes too much of the events of the past twenty years, at least as they have affected the state, to the impact of doctrine, and too little to the force of circumstances. But, still more, it is because it fails to recognise the real significance of what has actually happened to the British state - smaller and larger - during that time. Not only is relatively little of it reversible in the forseeable future. More importantly, the very question of its reversal will become less and less meaningful - less and less worth the asking - in the immediate years to come. To understand why this will be so, it is first necessary to clear our minds of one of the most widely held misconceptions about modern British politics: the chimera of consensus. No false perspective, perhaps, so distorts our understanding of the state in modern Britain as the image of an essentially post-war growth, the happy (or negligent) product of a mid-century political consensus, then the helpless victim (or deserving recipient) of a Thatcherite challenge, hence the pitiful object (or proper ground) for divisive contemporary intellectual disagreement. It is not, of course, that there is no evidence to support such a view. There is. Many aspects of the modern 375

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state are exclusively post-1945 in origin. And some have only been abandoned or revised in the last ten years or so. It is rather that too much evidence is thereby ignored: too much history, too much debate and too much uncertainty and confusion; both before 1945 and after.1 For the banal truth about the outward expansion of public competence, and indeed about the inward constriction of statist pretension during the twentieth century has been its essentially piecemeal nature, or the relative gradualness with which it has all happened. And the striking fact about how that growth (and diminution) have been acknowledged in contemporary British society has been neither the supposed arcadia of mid-century consensus nor even the plausible scenario of fin de siecle division, but rather the muddy reality of continuous incoherence. So much so that it might be more appropriate to identify the later twentieth-century state rather than the Victorian empire as that which was truly acquired in 'a fit of absence of mind'.2 This is not mindlessly to denigrate the various visions either first of the Edwardian, and then of the inter-war, state-builders. Still less is it to pass partisan judgement on the many achievements of the Attlee governments.3 Least of all is it to claim that the opposition which they severally faced at the time - and they did face a lot of it - was grounded in a continually coherent social doctrine of individual responsibility.4 1

2

3

4

Now an orthodoxy; see, e.g., David Dutton, British Politics since 1945: The Rise and Fall of Consensus (Basingstoke, 1991), passim; for the 'Thatcher effect', see Denis Kavanagh, Thatcherism and British Politics (Oxford, 1987), esp. chs. 2-\\ ironically corroborated, albeit with different purpose and emphasis, in Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993), pp. 7—8. For the beginnings of a critique, see Ben Pimlott, 'The Myth of Consensus', in Pimlott, Frustrate Their Knavish Tricks: Writings on Biography, History and Politics (London, 1994), pp. 229—39; and for a salutary raspberry, see Alan Watkins, A Conservative Coup (London, 1991), pp. 34-5. J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (London, 1885), p. 8. 'There is something very characteristic in the indifference which we show towards this mighty phenomenon of the expansion of our race and the expansion of our state. We seem, as it were, to have conquered . . . half of the world in afitof absence of mind.' A short account is offered in W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. I, The Rise of Collectivism (London, 1983), pp. 28^12; for an alternative view, see James E. Cronin, The Politics of State Expansion: War, State and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 1991), esp. chs. 4, 5, 8 and 9. On the deliberative aspects of Asquith's social reforms, see Colin Cross, The Liberals in Power, 1905-1914 (London, 1963), esp. chs. 7 and 9; of Attlee's, see Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945-51 (Oxford, 1984), ch. 4. On some of the less deliberate aspects, respectively, see Jose Harris, Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy, 1886-1914 (Oxford, 1972), esp. p. 351; and Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, vol. I, Britain in Search of Balance, 1940-61 (Basingstoke, 1986), ch. 3. For such principled opposition as there was, see Matthew Fforde, Conservatism and Collectivism, 1886-1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), ch. 1; and John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department since 1929 (London, 1980), ch. 6. And, from the contemporary record, see Lord Hugh Cecil, Conservatism (London, 1912); and Quintin Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (London, 1947). Con-

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But certain historical qualifications to the myth of continually purposive advance can be made. It is far from clear, for instance, that Lord Beveridge would have found much to favour in the modern welfare state.5 And we may reasonably doubt that those who promoted the great liberalising reforms of the 1960s - concerning capital punishment, marital relations and sexual behaviour - either wholly anticipated or have since entirely approved of their subsequent social consequences.6 To a greater degree than is commonly appreciated, ignorance and uncertainty characterised those who advocated the growth of the state in our time. Equally, they invariably described those who opposed it. But if not all, if perhaps not even very many, of the apocalyptic visions of its opponents came to pass then so did relatively few of the Utopian dreams of its advocates. Anyone who doubts that should consult the contemporary literature.7

5

6

7

servative 'concession' to the welfare state is treated at length in W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. II, The Ideological Heritage (London, 1983), ch. 7. Contemorary 'concessionaries' worth consulting include H. Bentinck, Tory Democracy (London, 1918), pp. 77ff.; and R. A. Butler, Our Way Ahead (London, 1956), pp. lOff. Beveridge's view was clearly set out in his 'Three Guiding Principles of Recommendations', in Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, Cmd. 6406 (London, 1942), pp. 6-7, esp. 'The third Principle . . . that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the state and the individual. The state should offer security for service and contribution. The state in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and for his family.' For an amplification of Beveridge's view, see Karel Williams and John Williams (eds.), A Beveridge Reader (Hemel Hempstead, 1987), esp. pp. 53-4, 62-4, 92-100 and 151-67. On the progressive rejection of his principles by successive post-war governments, in and through the practical development of the welfare state, see Rodney Lowe, 'A Prophet Dishonoured in His Own Country? The Rejection of Beveridge in Britain, 1945-70', in John Hills, John Ditch and Howard Glennester (eds.), Beveridge and Social Security: An International Perspective (Oxford, 1994), pp. 118-33. For his subsequent demonisation, see Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (London, 1986), esp. pp. 276-304. For a vigorous defence, see Jose Harris, 'Enterprise and the Welfare State: A Comparative Perspective', in T. R. Gourvish and A. O'Day (eds.), Britain since 1945 (Basingstoke, 1993), pp. 39-58, esp. pp. 48-51. Jose Harris, William Beveridge: A Biography (Oxford, 1977) remains the standard life. Though little evidence of this, it must be acknowledged, can be found in the memoirs of the various protagonists. See, inter alia, Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London, 1991), pp. 180-1, 199-201, 208-10 and 397-8; or David Steel, Against Goliath: David Steel's Story (London, 1989), pp. 62-6; or for an ambiguous proponent of social liberalism and opponent of cultural permissiveness, Frank Pakenham, Earl of Longford, The Grain of Wheat (London, 1974), parts 3 and 4. An early critic, later active Conservative politician, was John Selwyn Gummer, The Permissive Society: Fact or Fantasy (London, 1971), see esp. ch. 10. The phenomenon of 'permissiveness' is most authoritatively treated in Christie Davies, Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies (London, 1975), passim. For some of the most eloquent expressions of the hopes, see L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism (Oxford, 1911), ch. 7; Sidney and Beatrice Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London, 1920), esp. pp. 200ff.; R. H. Tawney, Equality (London, 1931), chs. 4 and 7; R. H. S. Crossman et ah, Keep Left (London, 1947),

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None the less, one way or another, the British state did come to assume a quite unprecedented degree of at least ostensible competence for the management of the economy until the mid-1970s.8 It also acquired a major interest in the organisation and well-being of society, especially over families and their material provision. Moreover, it consciously adopted social policies which had profound, if indirect, consequences upon many such matters. And in some areas of emerging cultural concern - ethnic relations and sexual politics, for instance - it determinedly adopted statutory legislation, administrative authority and public resources in order to direct individual attitudes and effect collective outcomes. In other words, it became an economic planner, a social engineer and an ethical leader in the land; leading, indeed, even in its insistence that, in some areas of life, no-one should lead and that individual choice should count for all. In this latter vein, it gradually retreated from many of its erstwhile and specific responsibilities in matters of life and death, marriage and sexual behaviour, moral standards and personal conduct.9 passim; Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear (London, 1952), chs. 2 and 4-6; and C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London, 1956), passim. For the fears, see W. H. Mallock, A Critical Examination of Socialism (London, 1908), esp. ch. 7; F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London, 1944), passim; T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards a Definition of 8

Culture (London, 1948), ch. 5, esp. pp. 93-^1; and Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London, 1962), ch. 1. For a general account, see Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. I, ch. 3. For a specific analysis of the intensification of control between 1974 and 1979, see Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, vol. I l l , The End of the Post-War Era:

9

Britain since 1974 (Basingstoke, 1991), chs. 3 and 4. And for an intriguing account of what might have been, an even more enveloping 'corporate conservatism' which almost was, see John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London, 1993), pp. 471-8. The significance of 1979 as a turning point in British economic management has become a matter of debate; for the view that something of a 'silent revolution' in this respect began around 1976, see Power, Competition and the State, ch. 5, p. 165; for the argument that there was such a break in 1979, see Kathleen Burk and Sir Alec Cairncross, 'Goodbye Great Britain': The 1976 IMF Crisis (London, 1992), pp. 227-8. There was, of course, little or nothing peculiar about the British state in this respect; certainly, the managerial/permissive axis it describes is appropriate to common contemporary western European or North American experience. On which see, inter alia, James Simmie and Roger King (eds.), The State in Action: Public Policy and Politics

(London, 1990), esp. parts II and III; or, more broadly still, Ali Kazancigil (ed.), The State in Global Perspective (Aldershot, 1986), part 2, esp. chs. 7-11. Nor was, or is, there anything peculiar about the subsequently perceived crisis, and supposed diminution of the British state during the 1980s. For the most recent comparative account see Wolfgang C. Muller and Vincent Wright (eds.), 'Special Issue on: The State in Western Europe: Retreat or Redefinition?', Western European Politics, 17, 3 (1994), 1-197. One significant difference between Britain and other western European nations, though one rarely discussed, is in their respective states' patronage, and projection, or otherwise, of national culture; for the contrasting British and French experiences, compare Janet Minishan, The Nationalization of Culture: the Development of State Subsidies in the Arts

in Great Britain (London, 1977), ch. 7; with Marc Fumaroli, UEtat culturel: essai sur une religion moderne (Paris, 1991), part 2.

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These developments, wanted or not, understood or not, controlled or not, really have happened in our century. And the overwhelming sense, shared even by those who remain essentially in favour of them, or who have since denounced them, is that they have had truly significant consequences, and will continue to have profound implications for the future; more still, they have had and will have consequences and implications that no-one fully anticipated, and that no-one, whether Utopian innovator or sceptical resister, wholly delights in. Which is to say that the state has been a widely acknowledged disappointment in our time. For it has succeeded in satisfying neither those who had hoped for very much from its expanded provision - the radical proponents of social justice - nor those who had banked on relatively little from its increased interference - the conservative apologists for social peace. We might almost call this a consensus. But if so, it is a consensus of disillusion, not of expectation. No doubt everything disappoints the children of rising expectations to some extent. But the generally perceived failure of state either to deliver the material goods it once apparently promised or to maintain the moral standards it once seemingly upheld goes far beyond that normal (or inexorable) form of institutional short-changing. Put bluntly, the shifting boundaries of the state have forged a public authority in this country which today fails something more than either our present expectations, or our nostalgia for the past. It has become the witting and unwitting focus of our different discontents; with each other, as overt social and ethnic conflict has gradually been squeezed out of the traditional polity; and against the rest o? the world, as neither distant empire nor proximate enemies have remained to assume a vicarious responsibility. Yet it has shown itself to be increasingly unable to bear that burden, less effective in masking the real conflicts that lie behind its seemingly benevolent intercessions, and less willing to take the flak for the mutual failings they inevitably uncover.10 Some of that focussing of discontent on the state has actually been consciously wrought. To observe so much is not to be perverse. Nor, indeed, is it even necessarily to be critical of the state. For the very idea of the state as principal economic planner in modern society actually 10

Perfectly mirrored in the rise, fall and virtual disappearance of the concept of 'corporatism' in British political science. See, inter alia, W. L. Weinstein, 'Is Britain Becoming a Corporate State?', in R. I. Tricker, The Individual, the Enterprise and the State (Oxford, 1977), pp. 137-69; Keith Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society (London, 1979), esp. ch. 13; Otto Newman, The Challenge of Corporatism (London, 1981), esp. part 2; Sarah Vickerstaff and John Sheldrake, The Limits of Corporatism: The British Experience in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot, 1989), esp. chs. 6 and 7; and Peter Barberis and Timothy May, Government, Industry and Political Economy

(Buckingham, 1993), esp. pp. 92-103, and 131-70.

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presumes, in so far as it is realised, that whilst the state might reasonably take credit for any subsequent economic success it must, by the same token, bear an unusually great responsibility for failure. And this is exactly what has happened. Governing parties have claimed success, rhetorically. Exasperated electorates have punished failure, psephologically. Hence, to the degree that the British economy has, in some conclusive degree, 'failed' in the twentieth century, and to the extent that this failure may properly be traced to the ways in which it has been publicly planned, an attitude of disappointment, or a feeling that public performance in so crucial a matter has not been up to scratch, can be nothing more than appropriate.11 In this sense, we may simply compare the standing of the post-war British state with its French counterpart. Gaullism (or anyway Monnetism) worked. Butskellism did not.12 More subtly, we may also observe that the increasingly neo-corporatist state of the post-war era positively concentrated criticism upon itself in its determination to act as the 'honest broker5 between capital and labour, thereby enabling both to conceal their struggle behind its seeming incompetence.13 And to the degree that pre-1979 corporatism 11

12

13

Within a truly vast literature, the most important accounts include J. C. R. Dow, The Management of the British Economy, 1945-60 (Cambridge, 1964), esp. chs. 1, 14 and 15; F. T. Blackaby (ed.), British Economic Policy, 1960-1974 (Cambridge, 1978), esp. ch. 14; and Sir Alec Cairncross, The British Economy since 1945: Economic Policy and Performance, 1945-1990 (Oxford, 1992), esp. chs. 6 and 7. A succinct analysis is offered in Jim Tomlinson, British Macroeconomic Policy since 1940 (Beckenham, 1985), part 2. A summary of some of the other explanations for British economic decline is offered in Royce Logan Turner, The Politics of Industry (London, 1989), part 2. On 'Monnetism' see Stephen S. Cohen, Modern Capitalist Planning: The French Model, 2nd edn (Berkeley, 1977), esp. ch. 2 (for a comparison of British and French growth rates, see p. 290). The phenomenon of 'Butskellism' is well treated in Philip M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell (London, 1979), pp. 312-18; see also Neil Rollings, 'Poor Mr. Butskell: A Short Life Wrecked by Schizophrenia', Twentieth Century British History, 5, 2 (1994), 183-205. The more prosaic matter of contemporary British economic performance is dealt with in M. W. Kirby, 'The Economic Record since 1945', in Gourvish and O'Day, Britain since 1945, pp. 11-37. On the role of the Ministry of Labour in this practice, at least to the Second World War, see Rodney Lowe, Adjusting to Democracy: The Role of the Ministry of Labour in British Politics, 1916—1939 (Oxford, 1986), passim. Aspects of its post-war role are discussed, inter alia, in Robert Shepherd, Iain Macleod (London, 1994), pp. 106-13. On the formation of NEDC see Keith Middlemas, Industry, Unions and Government: Twenty-One Years ofN.E.D.C. (London, 1983), esp. ch. 1 and passim. On the post-war rapprochement of government and unions (and its decline) see Chris Wrigley, 'Trade Unions, the Government and the Economy', in Gourvish and O'Day, Britain since 1945, pp. 59-87. On the ill-fated DEA, see Frank Blackaby, State Intervention in British Industry (London, 1969), chs. 2, and 6—8. Changing labour law is summarised in Hugh Armstrong Clegg, The Changing System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain (Oxford, 1979), ch. 8. The most sympathetic analysis of the 'Thatcherite' repudiation of an intermediary role is offered by Shirley Robin Letwin, The Anatomy of Thatcherism (London, 1992), ch. 6. An alternative, Marxist, account of the same is found in

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really did sacrifice future investment for the sake of present equality, it seems to have done so in a way that brought relatively little credit upon itself.14 Paradoxically, the state in this era really did help the little man against the big institution. But the little man seemingly remained profoundly ungrateful for its actions. Perhaps he expected it to do more still. Perhaps he simply did not notice what had been done in his name. Perhaps he did not even particularly approve of it. To be sure, this last possibility should be treated with caution. There is, after all, a great deal of evidence (albeit rather woolly evidence) that the British public quietly came to approve of most, if not all, of the basic tenets of the welfare state, notably its national health provision and, rather less uncritically, its social security arrangements during the years after 1945.15 Yet some of the latter especially were always contested, notably in the arguments about universal or targeted benefits. And all are now increasingly challenged by a revived sense of the (proper) distinctions which should be made between the deserving and the undeserving poor.16 Most important of all, many of these 'disappointments' are connected. The failure of the planned state has reflected badly upon the limitations of the technocrats. The decline of the corporate state has demonstrated the exiguous powers of organised capital and labour to exercise mutual restraint. And the crisis of the welfare state has suggested to us that we are not quite as 'good' a people as we once thought we were. Anti-statism in our time has built upon such shifts in general sensibility - against experts, against social institutions and even against our nebulous sense of the masses - as much as it has pointed to objective accounts of national performance. This is not to say that such accounts are of no importance. They are. The battles over nationalisation of key

14 15

16

Werner Bonefeld, The Recomposition of the British State during the 1980s (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 186-249. See Roger Middleton, above, ch. 6, p. 143. Jose Harris, 'Society and the State in Twentieth-Century Britain', in F. M. L. Thompson, (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, vol. Ill, Social Agencies and Institutions (Cambridge, 1990), p. 116; citing Ann Cartwright and Robert Anderson, General Practice Re-visited: A Second Study of Patients and their Doctors (London, 1981), pp. 178-9. Interestingly, Beveridge believed that something like this was already accepted by 1942; see Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, p. 13. On the idea, see Mark Almond, 'Discretion: Quietly Discriminating between the Deserving and the Undeserving Poor', in Digby Anderson (ed.), The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America (New York, 1992), pp. 201-10. For a contemporary history, see David Vincent, Poor Citizens: The State and the Poor in Twentieth Century Britain (London, 1991), ch. 4, esp. pp. 193-4. For an example of discretionary practice - vigorously criticised - see Eileen Evanson, Les Allamby and Roberta Woods, The Deserving and the Undeserving Poor: The Social Fund in Northern Ireland (Derry, 1989), chs. 1 and 3.

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industries were as much about efficient direction as about social justice. And the question of precisely how well the major primary and secondary industries actually performed under public ownership after the Second World War is an open one. It is by no means clear that they were all unambiguous failures.17 What, however, is apparent from all the relevant and generally acknowledged data is that in taking on such responsibilities the British state assumed altogether more obligations for economic performance (and social relations) in this country than it acquired economic and social competence to fulfil those duties. And this was true regardless of how much technical expertise came into government at the time.18 The state was thus rendered immediately and increasingly vulnerable to the economic (and social) effects of organisational complexity. At the same time, it also became necessarily associated with certain prognoses about economic and social priority in Britain's industrial structure which time could, and increasingly did, render more and more problematic. As a result, it was also rendered immediately and increasingly vulnerable to the economic and social effects of organisational change. That vulnerability, both to the complexity of the organisational forms over which it had assumed responsibility, and to the propensity for change within them, was mirrored in the state's increasing involvement in the minutiae of British social well-being. For in establishing a 'welfare state', however slowly and circumspectly, British public authority effectively assumed the responsibility for an acute form of moral hazard.19 First, the state assumed primary responsibility for the social 17

18

19

A brief account is offered in Terry Gourvish, 'The Rise (and Fall?) of State-Owned Enterprise', in Gourvish and O'Day (eds.), Britain since 1945, pp. 111-34. A more critical analysis may be found in William Ashworth, The State in Business: 1945 to the mid 1980s (Basingstoke, 1991), esp. chs. 5 and 6. The 'political' dimension is covered in Peter Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (Cambridge, 1986), chs. 3 and 4. The beginnings of the disentanglement are charted in Dennis Swann, The Retreat of the State: Deregulation and Privatisation in the UK and the USA (Hemel Hempstead, 1988), chs. 6-8; and interpreted, from the point of view of economic analysis, in John Vickers and George Yarrow, Privatisation: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), see esp. part 2. On which see: Geoffrey K. Fry, Statesmen in Disguise: The Changing Role of the Administrative Class of the British Home Civil Service 1853-1966 (London, 1969), ch. 5; also Fry, The Administrative 'Revolution3 in Whitehall: A Study of the Politics of Administrative Change in British Central Government since the 1950s (London, 1981), ch. 10; and Gavin Drewny and Tony Butcher, The Civil Service Today (Oxford, 1988), chs. 10 and 11. On specifically 'economic' expertise, see Leslie Hannay, 'Economic Ideas and Government Policy on Industrial Organisation since 1945', in Mary O. Furner and Barry Supple (eds.), The State and Economic Knowledge: The American and British Experiences (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 354-75. The classic definition of 'moral hazard' is found in Kenneth Arrow, 'Insurance, Risk and Resource Attrition', lecture 3, in Arrow, Aspects of the Theory of Risk-Taking

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insurance (e.g. against the loss of breadwinner, ill-health, unemployment) of a hugely increased number of individuals, themselves attached to increasingly complex and often fast-changing households. Secondly, it did so under conditions which were peculiarly stacked against the principal; for its policies presumed, quite contrary to historic and continuing private practice, no economic penalty for their use - put simply, no matter how many times the policy-holder claimed his or her premiums never went up. Rejecting not only a 'means tests' of basic eligibility, but also the price mechanism for subsequent usage, the state created a panoply of perverse economic incentives for insurers and their families. Of course, it did so for the best humanitarian reasons. But, inevitably, it paid a price. So too did at least some of its seemingly fortunate beneficiaries, in the privileging of short-term gain over longer-term stability which such incentives inevitably entailed. Precisely what sort of price, and specifically whether a price worth paying or not, remain matters of considerable dispute, both for Britain and in general. What seems less disputed is that the price, however defined or measured, has risen. And it is undoubtedly clear that fewer and fewer national governments - Britain's emphatically but not especially included - are unambiguously willing to pay it. 20 That the welfare state could never have been anything other than an increasingly expensive concern requires and (despite Beveridge's famous rhetorical enormity) required no great genius to discern. 21 The mere fact of healthier people living longer in a regime of increasingly

20

21

(Helsinki, 1965), and reprinted in The Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow, vol. 4, The Economics of Information (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), p . 85. ' T h e insurance policy itself might change incentives and therefore the probabilities on which the insurance company has relied.' T h e argument was developed in M . V. Pauthy, ' T h e Economics of Moral Hazard', American Economic Review, 58 (1968), p p . 531-7, and K e n n e t h J. Arrow, ' T h e Economics of Moral Hazard; F u r t h e r C o m m e n t ' , ibid., p p . 537-9. See the remarks of T h o m a s C. Schelling, Choice and Consequence (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), p p . 7 - 8 : 'there is no getting away from it . . . any compensatory program directed towards a condition over which people have any kind of control, even remote and probabilistic control, reduces the incentive to stay out of that condition, and detracts from the urgency of getting out of it. T h e r e is n o use in denying it in defence of social programs . . . Principles conflict. T h e r e is nothing to do b u t compromise.' T h a t such a 'compromise' might actually be rational is argued for in Nicholas Barr, The Economics of the Welfare State, 2 n d edn (London, 1993), part 4, chs. 2, 3 and 6 and passim. T h a t it might not be is suggested in H e r m i o n e Parker, The Moral Hazard of

Social Benefit: A Study of the Impact of Social Benefits and Income Tax on Incentive to Work (London, 1982) esp. ch. 3. The debate cannot be resolved here. Beveridge estimated social security expenditure in 1945 at £697m. He believed this would rise to £858m. in 1965, the twenty-year projected period with which his report dealt. However, he envisaged no increase in the cost of 'health and rehabilitation services' over these years, 'it being assumed that there will actually be some development of the service, and as a consequence of this development a reduction in the number of cases requiring it': Social Insurance and Allied Services, p. 105.

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inflexible working lives ensured that there were always going to be more pensioners. Similarly, the exponential growth of medical costs coupled with the inflation of social expectations determined that health provision would become progressively more expensive. And, in truth, it has been these two virtually unavoidable financial imperatives which have driven most of the (world-wide) reappraisals of public health, welfare and pensions provisions.22 Yet what has sometimes proved more striking, and what certainly has been more noticed and more argued about - if actually less significant in proportionate financial terms - has been the growth of a seemingly new poverty, that is, of a publicly subsidised poverty, the 'dependency culture', a culture which has arisen within the framework of, indeed has seemingly been created under the auspices of, the welfare state. For this apparently new phenomenon has suggested, to some of its critics anyway, that the welfare state may actually have been a positively bad and burdensome, not merely a necessarily expensive and increasingly cumbersome, thing. And that proved quite a salutary thought.23 Such a pessimistic conclusion is, of course, by no means widely accepted in Britain; neither amongst the 'welfare experts', nor within 22

23

O n ageing, a n d its effect o n public welfare services, see Paul Johnson a n d Jane Falkingham, Ageing and Economic Welfare ( L o n d o n , 1992), esp. chs. 5 - 7 . Another perspective is offered in David T h o m s o n , Selfish Generation? The Ageing of the Welfare State ( L o n d o n , 1993). F o r Beveridge's prescience in this regard, see Social Insurance and Allied Services, p p . 8 - 9 , 9 0 - 1 0 1 . O n t h e inflation of medical costs in post-war Britain, see Michael H . Cooper, 'Economics of N e e d : T h e Experience of t h e British Health Service', in M i k e Perlman (ed.), The Economics of Health and Medical Care ( L o n d o n , 1974), p p . 89-107; for m o r e recent trends, a n d an accessible statistical digest, see J o h n Appleby, Financing Health Care in the 1990s (Buckingham, 1992), esp. ch. 3 ; and for comparison with t h e U n i t e d States, ch. 6; or West G e r m a n y , ch. 7. T h e general question of t h e strain o n 'welfare state' tax bases is considered in B. G u y Peters, The Development of the Tax State (Strathclyde, 1985), p p . 2 5 - 6 . I t is important, here, to distinguish between those who were always opposed, a n d those who changed their m i n d , during this period. Root a n d branch opposition originated with Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, esp. chs. 3 a n d 9. I t was continued in such works as Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty ( L o n d o n , 1960), p t 3 , a n d Law, Legislation and Liberty ( L o n d o n , 1982), ch. 14. T h e importance of t h e 1960s in rendering such views respectable is acutely observed in t h e essays reprinted in A r t h u r Seldon, The State is Rolling Back: Essays in Persuasion ( L o n d o n , 1994), esp. p p . 177-216. Subsequent 'converts' included J o h n Vaizey, see esp. In Breach of Promise: Gaitskell, Macleods Titmussj Croslandy Boyle; Five Men Who Shaped a Generation (London, 1983), passim and National Health (London, 1984), ch. 10; and, rather more grandiosely, Hugh Thomas, see esp. An Unfinished History of the World (London, 1979), pp. 586-7. At the same time, a shift in popular attitudes, away from the public provision of welfare services and towards their private allocation, was discerned in Peter Saunders and Colin Harris, Attitudes to State Welfare Services: A Growing Demand for Alternatives? (London, 1988), esp. pp. 11-25. Perhaps the most eloquent, and cogent, contemporary intellectual defence was Robert E. Goodin, Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State (Princeton, 1988), esp. parts 1 and 2.

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the general public. And it may, in fact, be wrong. Certainly the image quite common in the mid-1980s - of a particularly pernicious British welfare state, especially generous and thereby particularly burdensome, finds little corroboration in detailed, comparative analysis.24 But, even in its error, it points to two observations which are probably incontestable. First that any non-discretionary, that is non-behaviourally discretionary, welfare system, however sophisticated, necessarily creates perverse economic incentives. This is true, theoretically, for all persons. It is also true practically, for all classes. It most certainly is true, theoretically and practically, for the not so poor, as well as the poor.25 The British experience has been no different in this respect.26 Secondly, and whether or not it has been markedly influenced by such dubious stimuli, social change in contemporary Britain, particularly changes in household structure, has wrought social consequences in which a large and seemingly increasingly dependent population can at least be seen to have emerged, quite regardless of concomitant economic growth and rising living standards; a population exemplified by, but not limited to, the most publicised phenomenon of unemployed single mothers. 27 The pincer movement of ever rising (and increasingly widely distributed) costs, allied to the effect of seemingly more ambiguous (and increasingly well-publicised) results, robbed the welfare state of much of its earlier ethical sheen by the late 1970s. Not all of that sheen, and not in every part of state welfare. But it would be simply foolish to deny that a general sensibility - almost a new consensus - emerging not just in Britain but throughout western Europe and North America, that all was not well with the welfare state, that it was costing even more to do what 24

25

T h e central a r g u m e n t , p e r h a p s , of B a r n e t t , Audit of War, ch. 14; convincingly refuted in H a r r i s , ' E n t e r p r i s e a n d t h e Welfare S t a t e ' , p p . 43—5. Schelling, Choice and Consequence, p p . 7 - 8 . See also, t h e e n o r m o u s l y influential critiques of welfarism for t h e ' n o n - p o o r ' in J u s t i n le G r a n d , The Strategy of Equality: Redistribution and the Social Services ( L o n d o n , 1982), p a r t 2; a n d R o b e r t E . G o o d i n a n d

Justin le Grand et al., Not Only the Poor: The Middle Classes and the Welfare State 26

( L o n d o n , 1987), e s p . c h s . 2, 5, 7, 8 a n d 10. T h o u g h it m i g h t b e typically bad; t h e a r g u m e n t , essentially, in R a l p h Segalman, The

Swiss Way of Welfare: Lessons for the Western World (New York, 1986), esp. chs. 2 and 3; and for the supposedly peculiar, and admirable, case of Japan, see Arthur Gould, Capitalist Welfare States: A Comparison of Japan, Britain and Sweden (London, 1993), part 1. 27

O n t h e n o t i o n of 'welfare d e p e n d e n c y ' , see e s p . Charles M u r r a y , Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 ( N e w York, 1984), p p . 1 8 - 2 2 , 3 6 - ^ 0 , 1 5 0 - ^ , 2 2 7 - 3 5 ;

and Lawrence M. Mead, Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship (New York, 1986), pp. 19-20, 40-5; for a debate, in the British context, Charles Murray, Frank Field, Joan C. Brown, Alan Walker and Nicholas Deakin, The Emerging British Underclass (London, 1990), passim. For a wholesale rejection of the idea, see Hartley Dean and Peter Taylor-Goodby, Dependency Culture: The Explosion of a Myth (London, 1992), passim.

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did not always even seem wholly good, took hold quite widely during that decade.28 Certainly, it explains the increasing hold which various (often half-baked) notions of welfare efficiency, whether of seeking better value for money or of more careful targeting of putative benefits or even of more exact policing of public provision, exerted over all three of the major British political parties from the 1980s. It also furnishes a more convincing context for the substitution of entrepreneurial for idealistic means of provision, along with the intrusion of more strictly technical, into once ethical, standards about who might properly be provided for. No longer a self-confidently good state providing for a self-evidently good people, the welfare state is being gradually transformed into a purpose-made bureaucracy tending to the contingent circumstances of the changing labour force. True, many of the changes to date have been as much rhetorical as substantial in this respect. On the other hand, there is every reason to believe that any reversals, under a future Labour government for instance, will be more superficial still. The dye of the real dynamic, it seems, is cast.29 It is often difficult to see how it could have been otherwise. For the British state is today quite self-consciously and increasingly less of a good state. That is, it has become less and less of a state which publicly sustains any explicit, coherent and integrated notion of the good in British society. This is not to say that the British state today professes no notion of the good life. It does. It can be derived, albeit now with some considerable difficulty, from a careful reading of its many political, ecclesiastical, legal, even educational and other charitable functions. It is to argue that such a notion has become increasingly blurred. And it has also become obvious that the penalties which the state is prepared to exact from its subjects for any individual failure to follow its implied norms, over almost the whole spectrum of life, from birth through marriage, family, sexual and moral (also religious) habits - even up to death - are fast diminishing; so too, the rewards for conformity. In effect, the choice of British subjects to behave as they wish, subject to 28

29

T h i s process has been acknowledged by some of those who most strongly disapprove of it. See, inter alia, Michael Sullivan, The Politics of Social Policy (Hemel H e m p s t e a d , 1992), chs. 5 a n d 6. N o r was it confined to Britain at this time; see M a r y S. G o r d o n , Social Security Policies in Industrial Countries: A Comparative Analysis (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 16. A s u m m a r y of the limited results is offered in Julian le G r a n d , ' T h e State of Welfare', in J o h n Harris (ed.), The State of Welfare: The Welfare State in Britain since 1974 (Oxford, 1990), p p . 338-60. F o r some of the political a n d other reasons for inertia, see A n t h o n y Seldon, 'Conservative C e n t u r y ' , in A n t h o n y Seldon a n d Stuart Ball (eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford, 1994), p p . 17-65, at p. 60; also G o u l d , Capitalist Welfare States, ch. 9. O n t h e limited possibilities for real reversal, see D a v i d M a r q u a n d , The Progressive Dilemma ( L o n d o n , 1991), ch. 16.

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the laws of economic exchange and social development, has increased. And, more strikingly still, the willingness of the British state to define precisely what are the proper parameters of these choices has significantly declined. Ironically, even in those areas of life where the state has increasingly intervened to impose its own vision of the good life upon its subjects - notably in the pursuit of ethnic and sexual equality it has done so through mechanisms which have specifically bypassed its ancient institutions, parliament excepted, and in a way which has added little, if any, lustre to its traditional forms.30 It might be argued that none could have been added in this way. For perhaps those 'historical forms' are part of the problem itself. Certainly it is the case that the British constitution retains a unitary structure in the face of profound, national division.31 Equally, it maintains a formally aristocratic polity within an increasingly democratic culture.32 And last, but not least, it supports an Established Church within an increasingly multi-religious society.33 These are anomalies. It would also be easy to argue, though possibly very difficult to prove, that they contribute towards a common sense of a state without either an explicit or a sustainable ethical foundation.34 It would be more to the point to conclude that, even to the degree to which they continue to win public affection and collective respect, they must necessarily do so more as a 30

31

32

33

34

I n fairness, they may n o t have been designed with this e n d in m i n d ; indeed, in so far as they were designed to p r o m o t e t h e moral neutrality of the state in such matters, at least as they pertain to t h e good life, it may b e argued that they were designed contrary to this end. T h i s was generally u n d e r s t o o d to have been a n important aspect of the 'delegitimation' of the British state in t h e mid-1970s; see, eg., Jack Brand, ' F r o m Scotland with L o v e ' , and M i l t o n J. E s m o n , 'Erosion of t h e P e r i p h e r y ' , in Isaac K r a m n i c k (ed.), Is Britain Dying? (Ithaca a n d L o n d o n , 1980), p p . 169-99. A n d , for t h e continuing problem, see Michael Keating, 'Regionalism, Devolution a n d t h e State', in Patricia L . Garside a n d Michael H i b b e r t (eds.), British Regionalism, 1900-2000 ( L o n d o n , 1989), p p . 158-72; also Garside and Hibbert (eds.), State and Regional Nationalism: Territorial Politics and the European State (Hemel H e m p s t e a d , 1988), esp. p p . 174-200. The Labour Party is currently pledged to end the voting rights of hereditary peers. Such a commitment has been tried, and failed, before. See Janet Morgan, The House of Lords and the Labour Government, 1964-70 (Oxford, 1975), chs. 7 and 8. T h o u g h this has never been otherwise, a n d it is altogether m o r e u n p o p u l a r with avowed secularists t h a n t h e excluded faithful. F o r a brief history of establishment, see Peter Hinchcliff, ' C h u r c h - s t a t e Relations', in Stephen Sykes a n d J o h n Booty (eds.), The Study of Anglicanism ( L o n d o n , 1988), p p . 3 5 1 - 6 3 ; a n d for continuing, non-Anglican support of Anglican establishment, see J o n a t h a n Sacks, The Persistence of Faith: Religion, Morality and Society in a Secular Age (London, 1991), pp. 97-8; also Tariq M o d o o d , 'Establishment, Multiculturalism, a n d British Citizenship', Political Quarterly, 65 (1994), 5 3 - 7 3 , esp. p p . 67ff. Hence, presumably, the point of organisations such as Charter 88. For a recent, and important, consideration of some of these issues, see Ferdinand Mount, The British Constitution Now (London, 1992), esp. chs. 3 and 4.

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function of the customary 'dignity' their historical connotations possess than of the moral 'efficiency' which their continued existence guarantees. Whatever the case, the moral authority of the British state actually does seem to have declined since the war. It is not a reactionary illusion, for instance, to insist that lawlessness has increased. By any sensible measure it has.35 Nor is it mindless nostalgia to observe that its functionaries are not accorded the deference they once took to be their due. Quite simply, they are not.36 For good or ill, the British state is less frequently obeyed and more widely criticised by its subjects than ever before. Rising material expectations have met diminishing spiritual indulgence and forged a contemporary state from which many demand much, but to which relatively few permit unfettered authority. To be sure, that decline is not necessarily traceable to the slow abdication of the state from a coherent defence of an identifiable good life. Certainly, we cannot presume that there was any causal link between the former and the latter. Yet, at the same time, it would be merely fanciful to conclude that there has been no connection between the two. For the liberalisation of the state in our time has rarely, if ever, been wrought through the conscious replacement of one notion of the good by another. More usually it has been achieved through a successful appeal to 'changing social attitudes' or the like, whether or not such manners and mores have actually changed at all. In doing so, it has rendered the state ever vulnerable to those (real or imagined) changes; never fully representing them, always in all probability either behind or ahead of them, possessed - in effect neither by its own ideal nor of a common consensus. It is precisely because its moral vulnerability matches its material insecurity that the British state is so beleaguered in our time. And it is that sense of crisis that points, most surely, to its probable future development. Let us call this the regime of managed, and selective, withdrawal. There is no reason to believe that this will be spectacular. The growth of the state during the twentieth century has rarely, if ever, been spectacular. Nor have its various retreats.37 But there is 35

36

37

T e r e n c e M o r r i s , Crime and Criminal Justice since 1945 (Oxford, 1989), ch. 7, see esp. p p . 9 1 , 96, 104. T h o u g h this m a y b e a n aspect of progressive contemporary egalitarianism, rather than assumed contemporary decline. See William J. G o o d e , The Celebration of Heroes: Prestige in a Social Control System (Berkeley, 1978), ch. 14; Samuel H . Beer, Britain Against Itself: The Political Contradictions of Collectivism ( N e w York, 1982), ch. 4. Public attitudes to politicians actually remain surprisingly sanguine; for t h e evidence, see Peter Riddell, Honest Opportunism ( L o n d o n , 1993), p . 277. F o r the 'progressiveness' of government growth see Greenleaf, The Rise of Collectivism,

pp. 31-42.

Past development and future prospects of the state

389

every reason to believe that it will be dictated much more by that multifaceted sense of institutional vulnerability than it will driven either by 'new' libertarian doctrine, or indeed by any revived collectivist dogma. This is not to say that such vulnerability and its necessary alleviation will be any more the product of political consensus as, in truth, was the earlier development of the state. But it is to say that common exhaustion, fear and indifference now increasingly point in much the same way. To a considerable extent, they already have done so. For instance, the much-fabled privatisation of large parts of the public productive sector can be interpreted in many ways: as a genuine attempt to halt the economic decline of Britain by the re-establishment of entrepreneurial imperatives into its critical manufacturing sectors; as a related, but rather ambitious attempt to break trades union monopoly power in large tranches of the British economy, reintroducing the laws of supply and demand into once protected niches of British social life; or as a much less bold and impressive attempt by government to abstract itself, its resources and its authority from huge swathes of British economic, social and political life in which it had, during forty years or more, achieved relatively little, lost much, and stood in danger of ceding still more of its international credibility and local prestige. None of these explanations is mutually exclusive. But we tend to the last version.38 Similarly, the recently heralded citizens' charters, supposedly examples of state-sponsored standards infieldsof life (especially but not exclusively that of welfare services) where the public monopoly provision has all but universally been ceded, are just as credibly - we think more credibly - interpreted as examples of the British state seeking to define, thereby to limit, the full extent of its responsibilities in relation to the citizen. This is not to accuse its architects of bad faith. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that such responsibilities should be defined and limited. Part of the problem of the British state in recent years has stemmed from the fact that they were not. And much of the moral and political crisis which has wracked its welfarist arm is traceable to recent practices of establishing those limits through specific resource allocation rather than by prescriptive definition. Charters, even rather mean charters, which define these limits more by long-standing 38

For a suggestion that the roots of this loss of confidence might be related to the retreat from empire, see K. O. Morgan, 'The Rise and Fall of Public Ownership in Britain', in J. M. W. Bean (ed.), The Political Culture of Modern Britain: Studies in Memory of Stephen Koss (London, 1987), esp. pp. 294-5.

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5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

civil standards than through annual budgetary distribution might well be an improvement in this.39 Ironically, that kind of state, that is, a state seeking to define and limit its economic and social responsibilities, would also be better adjusted to its, slowly emerging, pluralist moral form. For the essence of a moral pluralism which is not simply moral anarchy is institutional limitation: a drawing-up of the boundaries of legitimate interference, of the definition of areas of life, spiritual as well as material, into which government will simply not intrude, either because it literally cannot, or more likely because it is generally perceived that it should not; most probable of all, because of a mixture of the two. Such a state would not necessarily be a small state. Indeed, there is every likelihood that as a continuing provider of so many legal, social and welfare services it would continue to be a very large state. But it would be a less ambitious one. Some will find this an implicitly ideological and, correspondingly, an ideologically unacceptable conclusion. They will argue that the state in Britain has been an instrument of social emancipation (most notably of the elderly, the infirm and the unemployed) and that, simply given the political will, it could become the mechanism of, for instance, still greater ethnic and gender equality too. In this way, it could strike down inequalities that have remained in British society up to the present date. To argue that it will not in fact do so in the future is tantamount to asserting that it should not do so, which is no more than to engage in partisan politics under the pretence of historical analysis. Still worse, for being still more historically inept, it is to mistake current government policy for readily conceivable political change. Yet this accusation is surely, in turn, to confuse particular political aspirations for a general re-evaluation of proper administrative capabilities. To be sure, the issue of exactly what sorts of legal and social initiatives are required to establish the legitimate rights of ethnic minorities or the female half of the population is, irreducibly, a political question. Hence the answers too will be political. And they will differ from interpreter to interpreter. Some will call for much more state activity in these specific (if not necessarily in any other) areas. Some will call for less. But, and this is the point, none will successfully demand a wholly planned economy, a limitlessly managed society, and a precisely ordered moral community. At least, in so far as they do, they will almost certainly fail. And that, we believe, is not to make a partisan political prognosis under the pretence of historical analysis. For it is historical analysis, 39

For two different perspectives on this question, see Clive Bone, Achieving Value for Money in Local Government: Meeting the Charter's Challenge (London, 1992), passim,

and Madsen Pirie, The Citizen's Charter (London, 1991), passim.

Past development and future prospects of the state

391

above all, which demonstrates how the British state grew in the twentieth century, what that growth entailed and why, during our own lifetimes, that growth produced a peculiarly vulnerable central authority and a notably unsatisfied general public. It is also historical analysis, much more than ideological commitment (one way or the other), which suggests that this institution, motivated as much by the thought of its own survival as by the doctrinal colouring of the party in power, has already reduced and will go on in the future seeking to reduce the areas of its own vulnerability. And finally it is historical analysis again which suggests precisely where those areas will be: at the points at which administrative temptation and public expectation meet; in major industries, the most significant social services, around the most symbolically important moral exemplars in our culture. Put rather cynically, any 'partnership' which the state chooses to contract with the people under any future administration is likely to be couched in terms which make it a good deal less likely that the state will emerge further diminished by the encounter. And this means fewer commitments - however defined and not more. This is not to say that any particular change is predictable. To take just one instance, it is entirely conceivable that, some time during the next fifty years, the Church of England will finally be disestablished. It is also entirely conceivable that it will remain the Established Church of the land. The peculiar convergences of particular political imperatives will determine its fate, one way or the other, and in the short term. It is to argue that the pace and direction of such change, conceived generally, has been marked during the last generation. The pace will surely be slow, if for no other reason than the incontrovertible (surely uncontroversial) fact that the state has involved itself in no aspect of British life during the twentieth century from which it would be particularly easy, still less expeditious, to extract itself (an argument which, ironically, applies with the greatest of force to the example of the Church of England). And the direction will be towards that degree of definition which allows for limitation, if only because we now know definitively - that the state cannot satisfy every expectation its potential or actual involvement in a complex economy, society, or even system of moralities, inevitably involves. Again, this is not to say that there will be a 'rolling back of the state' in Britain in the near future. For what it is worth, our opinion is that this will not happen. More: that it will not happen regardless of which of the major parties happens to be in power during the next few years. One reason for this is the simple unpredictability of political will. Such unpredictability affects all governments, even those blessed with a

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combination of the accepted weakening of the state in its traditional domain, general support for economic and political liberalism, and the opportunity provided by electoral success. The limits to withdrawal of the state are located at both ends of the spectrum. They are to do with the recent political experience of the state on the one hand, and with the 'empowerment' of individuals on the other. To take the first: while it is true to say that there has been a continuing sense of hostility to the state in twentieth-century Britain, it is equally important to recognise the very specific events which gave the re-statement of political and economic liberty its opportunity. The Thatcher years were prefaced, so we are often told, by the work of think-tanks and the like, many of which have been operating from the later 1960s. But what gave them their opening was not a long-term build-up of pressure but a rather more immediate crisis over the funding of public debt in the mid-1970s and difficulties with public sector unions.40 As has been acutely observed, there was, in fact, a close similarity between the containment of the state in the early 1920s and the same 'project' at the end of the 1970s, based on fears of inflation.41 Successful deflation required the state to bear down on the power of interest groups, and especially, but not exclusively, that of the trade unions. But the state did not withdraw from economic life in any general sense. On the contrary, it remained a guardian of certain interests. More: it became their guardian once again.'Insider' accounts show how particular middle-class interests had to be protected in the Thatcher period from the full logic of private responsibility and economic liberalism.42 As if to illustrate the untidiness of the state's role in particular conditions, Mrs Thatcher's successors have actually been less respectful of middle-class concerns since 1990, yet have replaced that seeming negligence with an interest in moral issues and wider institutional concerns which has itself been supportive of a continuing role for the state, and indeed its extension into areas which it had apparently vacated in earlier periods. Anxieties about the fragility of society which previously concentrated on unemployment now seem to be switching to moral and behavioural issues rather than being displaced altogether. 40

41 42

O n t h e ' t h i n k - t a n k s ' , a n d t h e i r intellectual l a b o u r s , see R i c h a r d Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931-1983 (London, 1994), esp. chs. 5—8; on the debt crisis, see Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State,vol III, The End ofthe Post-War Era, Britain since 1974 (Basingstoke, 1991), ch. 5. A n insider's a c c o u n t is p r o v i d e d b y E d m u n d D e l l , A Hard Pounding: Politics and Economic Crisis 1974-76 (Oxford, 1991), esp. p a r t 4. J i m T o m l i n s o n , Public Policy and the Economy since 1900 (Oxford, 1990), p . 3 3 1 . Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London, 1993),

pp. 667-8,819-21.

Past development and future prospects of the state

393

Current Conservatism appears unable to emulate the outwardly nerveless touch of Peel in the far greater moral crisis of the 1840s, where the competence of the state was the touchstone of where to act and where not to. And so while the loss of authority of governing institutions may be the reason why the state should be more limited in its expectations, the anxieties which this very development induces actually encourages politicians to be more assertive about its role. This has had some bizarre results. Take the example of education. The effect of the removal of some intermediate layers of administration and authority has been to increase the role not only of individuals but also of the state. School governors have far greater powers and responsibilities than they possessed formerly, but some have been struck by an ambiguity of purpose. Are they there to support a local school, the direction and ethos of which have been established over many years, or are they allies of the state in curbing an educational establishment out of touch with popular feeling? Certainly, the responsibilities of governors to ensure that the national curriculum is carried out and that religious education is provided suggests that the intention is the latter, but in practice the former has had a countervailing influence. Precisely because the state wishes to intervene in many areas of education, individuals are given more responsibility simply as citizens, but whether this can be interpreted as greater freedom is quite another matter.43 In other, similar circumstances - given the greater responsibilities facing individuals - the state may also find that it has little choice but to maintain a level of activity even though its nature has changed. Pensions may prove to be a good example here. As both large companies and the state find traditional pension provision increasingly burdensome, so individuals may have to take greater responsibility for their own arrangements, or may choose to do so. While some may be able to turn to employment organisations - especially trade unions - to help in the negotiations with the private sector and the oversight of pension funds, others will not have the same opportunity. But how far the state will wish to envisage the possibility of real failures in decisions which are of long-term significance and are potentially irretrievable, is questionable. It may be that the state will in future actually help people not so much because it does things for them, but because it provides very powerful regulatory powers and abilities to make sure that individuals are not let down by the private sector. Thus it might move from nanny state to the night-watchman state less through a single diminution of effort than by emphasis on the different kind, rather than 43

'You Join to Help, Not to Sack Teachers', The Independent, 19 May 1994, p. 34.

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5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

different level of activity, namely from executive to regulatory functions. In that way, the development towards increasing regulation may actually be desirable. For through it, the state might in fact secure the conditions for greater individual decision-making. In the present jargon, it might bring about the 'empowerment' of the individual, At its most desirable, this would mean some degree of freedom from the state, rather than the exertion merely of 'consumer' pressure upon it. The latter has had limited value, and is very often a way of the state limiting its obligations. Empowerment of the 'exit' variety is a genuine expression of freedom, which might be welcomed equally by right and left. Two conditions would seem necessary to exercise this choice and discretion: real resources at private disposal, widely distributed among the population; and perceived low taxation. 'Perceived low taxation' is hard to define; views in the past that taxation should only take a certain percentage of national income cannot be used as reliable guides, since the tolerance of tax levels is so variable across time. It may be simpler to connect taxation to the levels of prosperity required for a market society to function successfully. Absolute levels of income are clearly significant for determining the degree to which people suffer frustration from being unable to fulfil the functions of provision and choice asked of them. An historically low-growth economy like Britain's may generate problems in this respect. Apart from the halcyon periods of the 1950s and 1980s, there have been few occasions since 1945 when a sense of prosperity was broadly diffused. Without this condition it is hard for governments to sustain 'low perceived taxation'. Once taxation becomes controversial so the services which governments provide come under scrutiny, which makes 'rolling back' all the harder.44 But 'empowerment' need not only rest upon the general conditions of economic prosperity and low taxation which characterise a successful market society. It also requires individuals to have capital resources which they can call their own. This is the counterpart, at the individual level, of proposals to give certain state-dependent organisations their own capital endowment, as a condition of independence and responsibility. It is seen as the only way of giving certain groups independence from the state, yet accountability to the individual, who becomes a fee-paying user of the service. It has been associated particularly with the aim of giving universities necessary freedom yet a measure of 44

For the degree to which tax grievances also express more general political discontent, and the connection between taxation and services, see B. Guy Peters, The Politics of Taxation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 55-6, 188ff.

Past development and future prospects of the state

395

accountability which an 'arms-length' public body could not achieve.45 For individuals this may seem a far-fetched idea, yet a genuine prospect for it lies in the near future. As the extension of home ownership is converted into inheritances in the near future, many individuals will acquire real resources of their own for the first time, which will give them command over a wide variety of 'goods'. But will the state tolerate this, without trying to take its share, as it always has, at the time of death, when property rights in peacetime are at their most contingent? Death duty or inheritance taxation has hitherto been weak in its effectiveness, but the temptation of a much larger number of inheritances providing the opportunity to broaden the tax base from its politically sensitive areas of income tax and VAT might be too great to resist. Moreover, there is the fear of inflation. Britain's inflation, whether high or low in its own terms, has always been in the upper reaches of international bands. The very real freedom to consume out of capital at a time of one's own choosing is one which a state in conditions of inflationary pressure might fight hard to tolerate even though the methods by which it is contained may vary. The longer Britain remains an economy in which the aspirations to consume outrun the productive resources to meet them, the more these constraints may continue to operate. In other words, at the moment when the population begins to see itself as being on the threshold of 'freedom' of a genuine kind, so the state, in the hands of either the left or the right, might be caught at its most squeamish. All this is only to say that, even as the state's role is much modified under pressure of its own shortcomings, political debate will still reign. There is no reason to expect any consistency of approach either. Some initiatives, like Post Office privatisation, have been resisted. Others, like the break-up of the nationalised railway, may be reversed. On the other hand it will not be possible to assume that certain functions, because they seem to have been so fundamental to the role of the state for so long, shall remain unchanged. Some of the most recent examples of the 'rolling back' of the state have been unlikely enough. Few would have suspected the privatisation of prisons ten years ago. Others, soon to be recommended in a Home Office Review will appear more remarkable still: forensic work, the summoning of defendants, the executing of warrants, custodianship of criminal records, licensing functions, deportation, the policing of public events and the provision of crime preven45

Elie Kedourie, Diamonds into Glass, Centre for Policy Studies Paper no. 87 (London, 1988), pp. 30-1. For the idea of a 'national bounty', namely a lump sum payment to each individual, see Cedric Sandford, Economics of Public Finance, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1984), pp. 361-2.

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5. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting

tion advice.46 They point to a state relatively undeterred by the diminution in its moral authority and yet desperately concerned to fulfil its public duties at minimal social cost. And this hints at an ethical order in which the fact that a task is fulfilled has become more important than the identity of the actors who are fulfilling it. As such, it cannot be entirely inappropriate to see them as a perfect example of the subtly but significantly changing boundaries of the state in modern Britain. 46

David Selbourne, 'Citizens Must Protect the Civic Order', The Times, 11 August 1994, p. 14.

Index

accountability, 82, 84 Acts of Parliament Abortion Act (1967), 371 Defence of the Realm Acts (1914), 282-3, 286 Divorce Act (1967), 370 Education Acts: (1902), 237, 329; (1918), 237; (1944), 238^10, 303, 327; (1980), 254; (1986), 236; (1988), 237, 327 Homicide Act (1957), 341, 365, 370, 373 Justice Act (1988), 324 Maternity and Infant Welfare Act (1918), 222 National Assistance Act (1948), 195 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Acts (1978), 292 Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974), 290, 291-2 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (1920), 288 Toleration Acts (1688), 327 Addison, Christopher, 230 agendas of government, 73-4, 82 Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 209 Aircraft Production, Ministry of, 180 Allen, Sir Douglas, 185 Allen, Maurice, 174 Anti-State Church Association, 39 Army Bills, 349-51 Army Council, 348-51 Arnold, Matthew, 257 Arnold, Thomas, 31 Ashley, William J., 176 Attlee, Clement, 358 Austin, John, 36, 37, 41, 42 authoritarian individualism, 60, 62, 65-7

Brownlie, Ian: Law of Public Order and National Security (1981), 279

Bacon, R. (and Eltis, W.), 90, 139, 140-1 Baker, Kenneth, 233-4, 256-7 Baldwin, Stanley, 55, 153, 310 n.49 Our England (1926), 266

Buchan, John, 29, 51 Buddhism, 314, 337 Burke, Edmund, 33 Burt, Cyril, 238, 239, 242 Butler, R. A., 60, 231, 303

Ballard, P. B., 238 Bank of England, 174, 187 Banks, Olive, 244 Barker, Sir Ernest, 22, 50 Baumol, W. J., 134 Beatles, the (and Buddhism), 314 Bell, Lady, 236 Bernstein, Basil, 244 Bevan, Aneurin, 63, 218-19, 228 In Place of Fear, 63

Beveridge, William, 21, 194-6, 203, 210, 227, 377 Report, 193-4 Bevin, Ernest, 178 n. 26, 196 Birdwood, George, 237-8 Black and Tans, 288 Black Papers, 249-51 Blackadder (1989), 275

Blackstone, Sir William, 32-3 blasphemy, 321, 326-7 Booth, Charles (and Rowntree), 235 Bosanquet, Bernard, 18, 23, 51 Philosophical Theory of the State (1899), 51 Botz, Gerhard, 280, 289 boycott, 286 Boyle, Sir Edward, 250 Boyson, Rhodes, 249-50, 254 Bridges, Sir Edward, 172, 186 British Broadcasting Corporation, 173 British Medical Association, 216-18, 229-30 British Overseas Aircraft Corporation, 173 Brittain, Sir Herbert, 186 Brittan, Sam, 185

397

398

Index

and Butskellism, 55, 380 Caird, Edward, 42 Callaghan, James, 252-4 Campbell, Janet, 223, 226 capital formation, 96, 100, 118 capital punishment, 341-74 abolition in other countries, 369 categories of murder, 365 deterrence, 353, 362, 364-5 dominion soldiers, 345—6 executions, 342-3, 352-3 ratios (USA), 356 views on (and military title), 357-9, 363-4 Carlyle, Thomas, 33 Castle, Barbara, 23 Central Economic Planning Staff, 180 Central Electricity Board, 173 Central Policy Review Staff, 248, 254 Centre for Policy Studies, 248 Chamberlain, Neville, 152, 179 Chapman, Sydney, 176 Charity Organisation Society, 192 Christadelphians, 333, 334 Christian Scientists, 335 Christian Socialism, 197-8 Christianity, 201, 327 Chrystal, K. (and Alt, P.), 127 Church of England, the Anglicanism, 36, 55, 313-14, 316, 340 Book of Common Prayer, 316, 318, 329 Changing Britain: Social Diversity and

Moral Unity (1987), 323 Church Assembly, 317 Convocation, 317 decline, 299-308, 314 dissociation from society, 330 ecclesiastical establishment, 299-324 education, 233, 321, 327-8 erastianism, 35, 39, 55, 325 Faith in the City (1985), 330

Church of Scientology, 337-8, 339 Churchill, Winston, 44, 55, 58, 175, 177, 232, 363

citizens' charters, 389 citizenship, 68-9 City, the, 171, 174, 179-80 City Technology Colleges, 257 civil service, 172, 185 Clark, Colin, 125, 139 Clark, Jonathan, 61 Clay, Sir Henry, 174 Cole, G. D. H., 20, 176, 179 Coleridge, Samuel, 34, 38 Collingwood, R. G., 15, 22

comprehensive schools, 247, 250 Confederation of British Industry, 171, 187 Conservative governments, 134; (1924—9), 350; (in National government of 1930s), 173; (1951-64), 111; (since 1979), 143, 145, 203 Party, 23, 141, 185, 250, 255, 343, 349, 357-8, 368

see also Thatcher, Margaret constitutionalism, 75 consultants (medical), 219 Consultative Council on General Health Questions, 225 counter-insurgency, 289 courts martial, 345, 348-9, 353-4 Cox, Brian (and Dyson, A. E.)} 249 Cripps, Stafford, 148, 161, 180 Crosland, Anthony, 27 n. 37, 155, 197, 245 The Future of Socialism (1956), 80

Crossman, Richard, 21, 24 Curragh Mutiny, 284 Custom and Excise, Board of, 171 Dalton, Hugh, 154, 178 n. 26 Principles of Public Finance (1923), 186

Dangerfield, George, 281-2 Darwin, Charles, 32, 38 Davidson, Archbishop Randall, 309 Dawson Report (1920), 219 democracy, 20 democratic collectivism, 61, 64-5 dependency, 191-5, 210-12, 384 Derby, Lord, 347 Dicey, A. V., 63, 64, 65, 66-7, 284-5

Disraeli, Benjamin, 55 dominion (as a dimension of power), 359-60 Donoghue, Bernard, 252-3 Douglas, J. W. B. All Our Future (1968), 247 The Home and the School (1964), 244

Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, 313, 314 Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), 285 Dublin Rising (1916), 287 Durham, Bishop of, 324 Economic Advisory Council, 176 Economic Journal, 171

Economic Section, the (of the Cabinet Office and later of the Treasury), 177 Education, Board of, 231, 232, 234, 237, 238 Reports of the Central Advisory Council

Index Children and their Primary Schools (Plowden, 1967), 245, 249 Early Learning (1954), 244-5 Half Our Future (Newsom, 1963), 245 Higher Education (Robbins, 1963), 245 Reports of the Consultative Committee On the Education of the Adolescent (Hadow, 1926), 239 Of the Mental Deficiency Committee (1929), 239 On the Primary School Child (1931), 231 On Psychological Tests of Educable Capacity (1924), 238 On Secondary Education (Spens, 1938), 239 Education, Department of, 252-3 educational psychologists, 235-9, 242-3 educational sociologists, 243-8 educational theory, 234, 257 eleven-plus, 239^0 Elton, Geoffrey, 281 employment, 84-5 public sector, 117-19 'empowerment', 82, 393-4 Englishness, 262 anti-catholicism, 265 anti-Germanism, 268, 271 anti-Semitism, 264 BBC, 277 Conservative Party, 266 death, 266-7 film,271-2 heroism, 269, 271, 273-4 equality education, 253 war, 262, 269-70 welfare, 198-9 equity efficiency, 137, 143 redistribution, 138 tax, 146-7, 149, 153 eugenics, 240 Europe (and European Community), 7, 65-7, 83

public sector, 101-8, 113-19, 140-5 Exclusive Brethren, 333, 334, 335-7, 339 Family Expenditure Survey, 167 Feinstein, Charles, 94, 97 n. 25, 109 Fichte, J. G., 34 Figgis, J. N., 17,50,52 films Henry V (1942), 274 In Which We Serve (1942), 274 Journey's End (1930), 272-4 Lawrence of Arabia (1962), 274, 275

399 Life and Times of Colonel Blimp (1943), 274-5 Lost Horizon (1937), 274 Tell England (1916), 274 Fisher, Archbishop Geoffrey, 314, 372^ Floud, J. E. (and Halsey, A. H., Martin, F. M.)' Social Class and Educational Opportunity (1956), 244 Forestry Commission, 173 French, Lord, 286, 288 Friedman, Milton, 83, 139, 183-4 Gaitskell, Hugh, 64, 148 n.6, 187 and Butskellism, 55, 380 Garbett, Cyril Foster, 310 Gay News, 326 Glasgow, 308 General Elections: (1906), 329; (1929), 351; (1987), 66 General Household Survey, 167 General Medical Council, 219 general practitioners (GPs), 216-18 genetics, 240-1 Gilbert, Desmond, 186 Godber, George, 215 Godwin, William, 33 and An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), 33 Goodenough Report (1944), 219 Gorer, Geoffrey, 311 Goschen, George, 186 Theory of Foreign Exchanges (1863), 186 Government Economic Service, 177, 178, 187 Graham, Billy, 313 grammar schools, 245-6 Green, David, 211-12 Green, T. H., 17, 18, 42 Greenway, Harry, 250 Gregg, Sir Cornelius, 159 Griffiths, Brian, 256, 257 Hall, Robert, 177, 180, 181 Hapgood, Archbishop John, 323 Harrod, R. F., 147, 177, 183 Hastings, Adrian, 317-19 Hawtrey, Ralph, 171, 177 Hayek, F. A., 22, 36, 43-5, 55, 71, 72, 74-5 The Road to Serfdom (1944), 23, 75 Haynes, E. S. P., 53 Headlam, Cuthbert, 309 Healey, Denis, 156 Health, Ministry of, 215-18, 223-5 Heath, Edward, 43 Hegel, G. W. F., 42, 51

400

Index

Heilbroner, Robert, 73 An Enquiry into the Human Prospect (1974), 73 Henderson, Hubert, 176, 177 Henson, Bishop Henley, 309 Herbert, Auberon, 49-50, 52, 55 Hibbert Journal, 19,22 Hicks, J. R., 160 Hinduism, 337 Hobbes, Thomas, 31, 32, 41, 66-7 Hobhouse, L. T., 20 Hobson,J. A., 17, 19, 150 Hogben, Lancelot, 241 home ownership, 163-4, 395 Home Rule, 284, 285 Hooker, Richard, 319, 325 Hopkin, Sir Bryan, 177 Houghton, Douglas, 147 n. 3, 157, 165 House of Commons, 353, 362-5 House of Lords, 351, 362-5 housing, 191 Hubbard, L. Ron, 339 Hurd, Douglas, 281 Huxley, Julian, 240 idealism, 18, 19, 20, 22-3, 52 Imperial War Graves Commission, 270 individualism, 33, 34, 38-9, 43, 74, 203 industrial conflict, 281-2, 283 inflation, 156, 163, 395 Inland Revenue, Board of, 146 n. 2, 154, 157, 166, 172 Institute of Economic Affairs, 184-5, 202, 248 Institute for Fiscal Studies, 167 Institute for Public Policy Research, 248 intelligence testing, 237, 240-3 Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration (1904), 213, 235-6, 263 interest groups BMA, 216-18, 229-30 women, 220-8 International Journal of Ethics, 19, 22 Irish, 263-5 and Catholicism, 304 and conflict, 281, 283-95 and marginal character, 291 and nationalism, 284 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 280 forms of rebellion, 285-95 Jehovah's Witnesses, 333, 334, 335 Jenkins, Roy: Fair Shares for the Rich (1951), 160 Jevons, W. S.: The State in Relation to Labour (1882), 282

Jewkes, John, 177 Jews, 321, 328 Joseph, Sir Keith, 183, 248, 255-7 Kant, Immanuel, 20, 42 Kay, John, 167 Keynes, J. M., 60, 70-1, 73-5, 81, 150, 154-5, 170-1, 176, 181, 182, 183 'The End of Laissez-Faire' (1926), 60, 73 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), 182, 186 Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), 181 Keynesianism, 27, 71, 78, 83, 100, 119, 120-2, 136, 172, 175 Keynesians, 183 Kipling, Rudyard, 236 Knox, Sir Alfred, 353 Labour governments, 143; (1924), 154, 350; (1929-31), 176, 361; (1945-51), 165, 167, 194, 361; (1974-9), 122, 134, 145 Party, 148, 150, 157, 161-2, 261 capital punishment, 343, 349, 351, 357-8, 360-1 Laski, Harold, 20, 50, 53-4, 55, 73 Authority in the Modern State (1919), 53 Rise of European Liberalism (1936), 73 law blasphemy, 321, 326 common law, 287, 288, 289, 296 lawlessness, 388 martial, 287 public security, 278-83 sedition, 279 subversion, 279 terrorism, 291-3 Lawson, Nigel, 147 n. 4, 257 Layton, Walter, 176, 179 Leijonhufvud, Axel, 183 Leith-Ross, Frederick, 176 Lester-Smith, W. O.: Education: An Introductory Survey (1957), 233 Liberal Party, 39, 43 capital punishment, 343, 349, 357-8, 360-1 liberalism, 43 economic, 70-86 individual, 73 political, 70 Liberation Society, 309 Liberty and Property Defence League, 48-9 Lindsay, A. D., 22, 50

Index Liverpool, 308 Lloyd George, David, 179, 181, 228, 278, 288,351 Local Education Authorities, 233, 237 Locke, John, 31, 32, 41 Lond, Walter, 286, 288 Longden, Sir Gilbert, 250 Macauley, T. B., 30, 35, 237 MacGregor, Ian, 173 MacDonald, J. R., 20, 179 MacDougall, Donald, 177, 181 Macmillan, Harold, 313 Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry (1931), 172 Madge, Charles, 159-60 Maine, Sir Henry, 41-2 Ancient Law, 41 Malthus, T. R., 181 market, the, 61, 65, 77-8, 81 Marquand, David: The Unprincipled Society (1988), 74 Marshall, T. H., 25, 197 maternal mortality campaign, 226 Maud, Sir John, 237 Mead, Lawrence, 192, 207-9, 211 Beyond Entitlement (1986), 207-9, 212 Meade, James, 154^5, 177, 186 Medium Term Financial Strategy, 184 Miall, Edward, 39-40 Military Force in Aid of the Civil Power (MACP), 293 Mill, John Stuart, 17, 37-8, 46, 181 miners' strike (1926), 309 monetarism, 83, 182^1, 187 Moonies, see Unification Church Moore, John, 191 moral hazard, 105, 383 Morell, Philip, 347 Muirhead, J. H., 19 Mulley, Fred, 253 Murray, Charles, 192, 203-7, 210, 212 Losing Ground (1984), 204-6, 212 Muslims, 320-1, 330-1 Mynors, Humphrey, 174 National Assistance Board, 158, 195 National Blood Transfusion Service, 200 national debt, 119-22, 151-5 National Economic Development Council, 175, 180-1 National Health Insurance (NHI), 213-18, 220, 223-8, 230 National Health Service (NHS), 55, 84, 136, 213-19, 227-30 National Union of Mineworkers, 173

401 National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, 224 National Union of Teachers, 252 nationality, 62, 65-8, 261-77 Nettleship, R. L., 42 New Age groups, 335 New Society, 72 Newman, George, 222 nonconformity, 305-7 Baptists, 306, 314-15 Congregationalists, 306-7, 314-15 Methodists, 305, 314-15, 328, 329 Northcote, G. P. (and Trevelyan), 237 Oakeshott, Michael, 24, 62 organicism, 18-20, 32-3, 51 Orwell, George, 64 The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), 277 'Oxbridge', 18, 248 Oxford University, 269 Palestine, 288-9 Palmer, Randell, 1st Earl of Selburne, 40 Parker, Lord Chief Justice, 367 Parliament, 63-4, 66, 69 patriotism, 261 Peacock, Alan (and Wiseman, Jack), 72, 96,125-6, 127 Pearson, Karl, 236 Penrose, Lionel, 240 pensions, 384, 393 Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline, 226 Pethick-Lawrence, Frederick, 151 Phillips, Frederick, 181 Pigou, A. C , 17, 19 Plato, 19, 21 Plowden, Edwin, 180 pluralism, 50-2, 67-9, 390 Policy Unit (Downing Street), 252, 254, 256-7

Post Office, 375 poverty, 19-20, 196, 199, 384 Powell, Enoch, 59-60, 61, 318 Priestley, J. B., 277 privatisation, 389 Home Office, 395 post office, 375 prison service, 5, 395 progressive schools, 251 public choice theory, 82, 84 public expenditure, 93, 96-108, 175, 180 administration, 99 convergence of, 107-8 defence, 100, 106, 127, 136 education, 106 Europe, 104-5

402

Index

growth, 132-8 law and order, 99 local government, 101 political determinants of, 125, 134, 136-7 ratios, 96-100, 104, 126-7 social services, 92, 99, 105, 106-8 transfer payments, 96, 99, 104-5, 127 public revenue, 109—17 receipts ratios, 109-11 tax structure, 111-17 expenditure, 112 income, 112-16 capital, 111 puritanism, 307, 311 Quakers, 334 radicalism, 48, 151-3 Ramsay, Archbishop Michael, 314 Rathbone, Eleanor, 223, 225 redistribution, 138, 162 religion civic obligation, 333-4 education, 327-8, 351 fiscal questions, 336, 338 trade unions, 334 welfare, 328-9 Report (Taunton) of the Schools Enquiry Commission (1867), 238 Rhondda, Lady, 225 Ricardo, David, 181 Ritchie, D. G.: The Principles of State Interference (1891), 42 Robbins, Lionel, 23, 76, 177, 182 Robertson, D. H., 176 Robinson, Sir Austin, 158, 177 n. 23, 183 n. 41 Robinson, John, 313 Roman Catholic Church, 304-5, 308, 315, 328, 332 Rousseau, J. J., 19, 20, 42 Royal Commissions on Capital Punishment (1953), 364, 373 on Health Insurance (1926), 224 on the Poor Law (1905), 211, 214 on Secondary Education (1893-5), 238 Royal Irish Constabulary, 285, 288 Royal Ulster Constabulary, 294-5 Ruskin, John, 33 Russell, Bertrand, 21 Salisbury, 3rd Marquess of, 40, 45, 46, 49, 55,62 Scotland, 66, 68, 300, 306

Select Committee on Capital Punishment (1931), 361 Shaw, George Bernard, 58-9 Shaw, Thomas, 351 Sheriff, R. C , 272-4 Shonfield, Andrew, 185 Sidgwick, Henry, 36, 46 n. 50 Sikhs, 336 Simon, Brian, 242 Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (1953), 242 Simon, Sir John, 281 Simpson, James Hope, 179 single mothers, 191, 205, 385 Sinn Fein, 286, 288 Smith, Adam, 75, 84, 181 Adam Smith Institute, 248 social biology, 241 social sciences, 18-19, 25-7, 75, 152, 198 Social Service Review, 19 Sociological Review, 19 Solihull Parents for Educational Equality, 255 Soper, Donald, 311 sovereignty, 62-3, 67-9 Spencer, F. H., 232 Spencer, Herbert, 17, 38-9, 43, 47, 53 Spender, Stephen, 23 Stamp, Josiah, 176, 179-80 Stephen, James Fitzjames, 41 n. 36, 281 Strachey, Ray, 226 suffragettes, 281-2, 283 Supplementary Benefits Commission, 202 Swinton Journal, 250 Tawney, R. H. Christianity, 20, 198, 201, 310 Church of England, 308-9 education, 232-3, 235 political thought, 68-9, 161-2 unemployment, 196 taxation administration, 146-7, 156-7 avoidance, 149, 167-9 capital levy, 120, 151-5, 160 class, 158 inheritance tax, 157 Pay-As-You-Earn, 123, 164-8 post-war credits, 159-61 Special Contribution (1948), 148, 161 Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, 254 Temple, Archbishop William, 196, 210 Tennant, May, 223 Thatcher, Margaret, 45, 57, 73, 81, 173, 261

Index anti-establishment rhetoric of, 69 Centre for Policy Studies, 248 Conservative Party, 66 education, 254—7 European Community, 67 Falklands War, 64, 261 F. A. Hayek, 35, 43, 55 the individual, 81 the state, 62 Thatcherism, 29, 248, 375 Thomson, Geoffrey, 238 Thurtle, Ernest, 351, 353, 357 Titmuss, Richard, 19, 25-6, 192, 193, 209-11 The Gift Relationship (1970), 200-1 the Titmuss tradition, 197-203 Tomlinson, George, 237 Trade and Industry, Department of, 174 trade unions, 233, 389, 393 Transport and General Workers Union, 76 Treasury, 150, 154, 176-7, 181, 182, 186, 187, 216, 229 Tropp, Asher, 244 Tuckwell, Gertrude, 223 Ulster Defence Regiment, 294-5 Ulster Unionism, 284-5 Ulster Volunteer Force, 284 unemployment, 106, 195-6, 203, 204 Unification Church, 336, 337, 338 United States, 134, 137, 200 capital punishment, 355-1, 369-70 religion, 300, 333 welfare, 204-10 universities, 18 Urwick, Edward, 18-19 Value Added Tax, 147 n. 3, 168-9 Vernon, Philip, 243 Wagner, Adolph, 71, 126-7, 132 Wales, 300, 304, 306 Walkden,A. G., 151 Wallas, Graham, 51 war, 71-3, 120, 125, 132 Boer, 96, 97, 99, 105, 125, 235, 287, 345 Chinese, 120 Falklands, 56, 64-5 First World, 71-3, 99, 105, 111, 119, 123, 127, 149, 154, 163, 174, 261-77, 283, 285, 305, 343, 354, 368

403 Gulf, 120 Korean, 96, 125, 136 Napoleonic, 119 Second World, 96, 100, 107, 111, 119, 121, 127, 136, 149, 154, 158, 163, 174,283,310,351,368,382 Vietnam, 76 war cabinet, 346-7 war novels, 271 war poets, 270-1 Ward, Dudley, 179 Ward,J. W. C , 310-11 Ward, Colonel Lambert, 348 Webbs, 17, 219 Beatrice, 192 Sydney, 61, 236 Weinstock, Arnold, 251 Weldon, T. A., 22 welfare state, 25, 27, 227, 383-5 'classic', 193-6 in USA, 204-10 mothers and married women, 227-8 provision, 191 Wemyss, Earl of, 48-9, 50 Whig imperialism, 60, 62, 64 Whitehouse, Mary, 326 Wildavsky, A., 132, 137 Wilkinson, Paul, 289-90 Willetts, David, 211 Wilson, Harold, 73, 76, 122, 168, 178, 187, 249 Wilson, John Dover, 234 Wilson, Tom, 177 Winkler, J. T., 73 women boards of guardians, 221 health, 220-8 local councillors, 221-2 maternal mortality, 223-7 MPs, 225-6 'new feminism', 223-7 Women's Co-operative Guild, 222, 224, 225 Women's Freedom League, 224, 225 Women's Labour League, 222 x-inefficiency, 135 Young, Hilton, 178, 237 Zimmern, Alfred, 29