Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The functioning of the British parliamentary system depended to a very great extent on the possession by the members of Parliament of this attitude. Until the end of the nineteenth century, most members of Parliament, coming from the same class background, had this attitude. Since then, it has been lost to a considerable extent, in the Conservative Party by the growing influence of businessmen and the declining influence of the older aristocracy, and in the Labour Party by the fact that the majority of its members were never subjected to the formative influences, especially educational, which created this attitude. The loss of this attitude, however, has not been so rapid as one might expect because, in the first place, plutocracy in England has always been closer to aristocracy than in other countries, there being no sharp divisions between the two, with the result that the aristocracy of today is merely the plutocracy of yesterday, admission from the latter group to the former being generally accomplished in one generation through the financial ability of the first generation of wealth to send its children to the select schools of the aristocrats. This process is so general that the number of real aristocrats in Britain is very small, although the number of nominal aristocrats is quite large. This can be observed in the fact that in 1938 more than half of the peerage had been created since 1906, the overwhelming majority for no other reason than recognition of their ability to acquire a fortune. These new peers have aped the older aristocrats, and this has had the effect of keeping the attitudes which allow the constitution to function alive, although it must be confessed that the new businessmen leaders of the Conservative Party (like Baldwin or Chamberlain) displayed a more complete grasp of the forms than of the substance of the old aristocratic attitude.

Within the Labour Party, the majority of whose members have had no opportunity to acquire the attitude necessary to allow the proper functioning of the constitutional system, the problem has been alleviated to a considerable extent by the fact that the members of that party who are of working-class origin have given very wide influence to the small group of party members who were of upper-class origin. The working-class members of the Labour Party have proved very susceptible to what is called the “aristocratic embrace.” That is, they have shown a deference to the points of view and above all to the manners and position of the upper classes, and have done so to a degree which would be impossible to find in any country where class lines were not so rigidly drawn as in England. The working-class members of the Labour Party, when they entered Parliament, did not reject the old upper-class methods of action, but on the contrary sought to win upper-class approval and to retain lower-class support by demonstrating that they could run the government as well as the upper class had always done. Thus the business-class leaders of the Conservative Party and the working-class leaders of the Labour Party both consciously sought to imitate the older aristocratic attitude which had given rise to the conventions of parliamentary government. Both failed in essence rather than in appearance, and both failed from lack of real feeling for the aristocratic pattern of thought rather than from any desire to change the conventions.

The chief element in the old attitude which both groups failed to grasp was the one which we have attempted to describe as emphasis on methods rather than on goals. In government, as in tennis or cricket, the old attitude desired to win but desired to win within the rules, and this last feeling was so strong as to lead a casual observer to believe that they lacked a desire to win. In parliamentary life this appeared as a diffidence to the possession of high office or to the achievement of any specific item of legislation. If these could not be obtained within the existing rules, they were gracefully abandoned.

This attitude was based to a very considerable degree on the fact that the members of both government and opposition were, in the time of Queen Victoria, from the same small class, subjected to the same formative influences, and with the same or similar economic interests. Forty out of 69 Cabinet ministers were sons of peers in 1885-1905, while 25 out of 51 were sons of peers in 1906-1916. To resign from office or to withdraw any item of projected legislation did not, at that time, represent any surrender to an adverse group. This was not an attitude which either the new business leaders of the Conservative Party or the working-class leaders of the Labour Party could accept. Their goals were for them of such immediate concrete value to their own interests that they could not regard with equanimity loss of office or defeat of their legislative program. It was this new attitude which made possible at one and the same time the great increase in party discipline and the willingness to cut corners where possible in interpreting the constitutional conventions.

The custom of the constitution thus rests only on public opinion as a sanction, and any British government can do what it wishes so long as it does not enrage public opinion. This sanction is not nearly so effective as might appear at first glance, because of the difficulty which public opinion in England has in obtaining information and also because public opinion in England can express itself only through the ballot, and the people cannot get an election unless the government wishes to give one. All the government needs to do is to prevent an election until public opinion subsides. This can be done by the Conservative much more easily than by the Labour Party because the Conservatives have had a wider control over the avenues of publicity through which public opinion is aroused and because the actions of a Conservative government can be kept secret more easily, since the Conservatives have always controlled the chief other parts of the government which might challenge a government’s actions. The first point will be discussed later. The second point can be amplified here.

The Commons and Cabinet are generally controlled by the same party, with the latter controlling the former through the party machinery. This group can do what it wishes with a minimum of publicity or public protest only if the other three parts of the government cooperate. These three parts are the monarchy, the House of Lords, and the civil service. Since all three of these have been traditionally Conservative, a Conservative government could generally count on their cooperation. This meant that a Conservative government, on coming to power, had control of all five parts of the government, while a Labour government had control of only two. This does not necessarily mean that the Conservatives would use their control of the monarchy, the Lords, or the civil service to obstruct a Labour-controlled Commons, since the Conservatives have generally been convinced of the long-run value to be derived from a reluctance to antagonize public opinion. In 1931 they abandoned the gold standard, without any real effort to defend it, as a result of the mutiny in the British fleet; in 1935 they used their control of the British Broadcasting Corporation relatively fairly as a result of public protests at the very unfair way they had used it in 1931.

Nonetheless, the Conservative control of these other parts of the government at a time when they do not control the government have been very helpful to them. In 1914, for example, the army refused to enforce the Irish Home Rule bill which had been passed after two general elections and had been approved three times by the Commons. The army, almost completely Conservative, not only refused to enforce this bill but made it clear that in any showdown on the issue its sympathies would be with the opponents of the bill. This refusal to obey the Liberal government of the day was justified on the grounds that the army’s oath of loyalty was to the king and not to the government. This might well be a precedent for a rule that a Conservative minority could refuse to obey the law and could not be forced by the army, a privilege not shared by a Liberal or Labour minority.