Book Notes
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1989.tb00272.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Subject Matter | Book Notes |
Political Studies
(1989),
XXXVII,
139-168
Book
Notes
British Politics
Paul Byme,
The Campaign
for
Nuclear Disarmament
(Beckenham, Croom
Helm,
1988),
The most interesting part
of
this book is its analysis
of
the membership structure of the CND, wherein
Conservative supporters do not rate a mention. The most irritating parts are its innumerable failures
to test the factual claims of the organization against the rigorous criticisms of its opponents. This is
because, as Paul Byrne admits, his main source was the CND itself, partly buttressed with some
secondary material.
Thus, Byrne perpetuates the myth (p. 187) that
MI5
material was the
source
of
Michael Heseltine’s
1983 political analyses of CND leaders. Contrary to his account, Miss Cathy Massiter has never
made thisclaim.
He
quotes CND demonstration figures which are not only false (p. 152) but are quite
different from those claimed by CND itself at the time.
He
duly cites CND’s rogue Gallup poll
supposedly showing 44 per cent backing for unilateralism in 1986, without noting that the sample
contained only 283 Conservatives to 338 Labour voters. A series of five Gallup polls (from 1985 to
1988), showing consistent 6&69 per cent opposition to unilateralism, is overlooked.
In short, there is nothing wrong with this book which exposure
of
its ingredients
to
critical
comment would have failed to rectify. Since Byrne has chosen to ignore those of
us
who opposed the
CND during its ‘second-wave’ revival, the reader will get out of this book what he has deigned to put
in it: ‘history’ as the CND would largely like it to be written. JULIAN LEWIS
Policy Research Associates
x
+
241
pp.,
E30.00
ISBN
0
7099
3260
X.
John Ditch,
Social Policy in Northern Irelandbetween
1939
and
1950
(Aldershot, Avebury,
This book has three aims: to set
out
an historical narrative of the development of social policy in
Northern Ireland during the 1940s, to locate this development within the province’s political context,
and to draw out the implications for an understanding of social policy as both substantive practice
and as an academic subject (p. x). Adapting Titmuss’s account of the development of the British
welfare state, John Ditch does rather better at the first two objectives than the third.
The historical core
of
the book makes extensive
use
of previously unreported documentation and
describes those aspects of Northern Ireland’s wartime experiences which bear upon the development
of social policy. Due consideration is given to the political and constitutional differences between
Britain and Ulster. But the implications of the Northern Ireland case study for social policy analysis
are set out in an overly complicated fashion. Nor, one suspects, do they enhance
our
understanding as
profoundly as the author claims.
The reader will not be surprised to find that the book is largely derived from a 1985 doctoral thesis
(an oversight leaves Ditch referring to it as such on p. 149). It retains all the inhibiting baggage of a
thesis, with its exhaustive (exhausting?) review of earlier models, its dry and unengaging style, and
eccentric punctuation. Wanted: an editor! JAMES
E.
CRIMMINS
Huron College. University
of
Western Ontario
1988), xv
+
177
pp.,
E22.50
ISBN
0
566
05309
8.
0032-321 7/89/0l/0139-30/$03.00
0
1989
Political Studies
140
Book Notes
P.
E.
Hart,
Youth Unemployment
in
Great Britain
(Cambridge, Cambridge University
This book reviews the British research evidence
for
neo-classical, Keynesian and structuralist
explanations of the rise in youth unemployment, and makes some instructive comparisons with
France and Germany. It concludes that the striking upward trend has been due both to supply-side
forces (such as demographic trends, income tax thresholds, national insurance contributions and
inadequate training) and to demand-side
forces
(such as the substitution
of
adult married women
for
young people, and of capital
for
labour). Accordingly, it makes a series of policy recommendations
which are non-doctrinaire and aimed at attracting broad technocratic support.
The assumption throughout
is
that government would prefer a solution based on investing in
human capital (as in West Germany, where young workers are much better trained), rather than one
based on driving down wages. But the present government may be more interested in emulating the
USA. In a highly segmented labour market, fierce policing
of
the benefits system and cuts in young
people’s weekly rates might eventually force them to compete with married women for part-time jobs;
this, rather than systematic skilling, seems to be the direction
of
present policies.
W.
J.
0.
JORDAN
University
of
Exeter
Press,
1988),
xi
+
142
pp.,
€19.50
ISBN
0
521 35348
3.
John
Holford,
Reshaping Labour: Organisation. Work and Politics
-
Edinburgh in
the Great War and After
(Beckenham, Croom Helm,
1988),
viii
+
276
pp.,
E30.00
ISBN
0
7099 4755
0.
Reshaping Labour is an extremely interesting account of the growth
of
the labour movement in
Edinburgh from about the middle of the Great War until the
1920s.
There is useful material linking
the development of a political movement with the current economic and social conditions and the
ways in which these affected people’s thinking about the strategy which the movement should adopt.
In particular,
one
understands,
for
this area at least, why there was such a clear acceptance of the
paramouncy
of
parliamentarism.
The author goes beyond an analysis of the organization to show how some ideas changed during
the war. The idea
of
‘profit’, for example, could not enjoy its pre-war legitimacy when it and
everything else were forced to take second place to the aim of winning. Similarly, it is shown that the
managerialist ideas which went with this attitude paved the way for socialist planning. Most
interestingly, the author suggests that the war had the effect of changing and expanding the idea
of
‘nation’ for the working classes. Indeed he suggests that the whole terminology
of
nationalism was
altered. It would have been extremely interesting if he had developed further this idea.
JACK BRAND
University
of
Strathclyde
R.
J. Johnston,
C.
J.
Pattie and J.
G.
Allsopp,
A
Nation Dividing? The Electoral
Map
of
Great Britain
1979-1987
(Harlow,
Longman,
1988),
xiv
+
379
pp.,
g9.95
pbk
ISBN
0
582 02432
3.
While social class was the major source ofcontroversy among scholars of British voting studies in the
1970s,
in the
1980s
the focus
of
attention has shifted to spatial variations. The controversy has been
given greater force by the
1987
general election result, which showed a distinct regional trend in
voting, with Conservative support disproportionately concentrated in the south
of
England and in
rural and suburban constituencies, and Labour support in northern England and in urban and inner-
city constituencies. One body
of
opinion views these spatial variations as the result
of
the clustering of
social characteristics, and not aconsequenceperse; the opposing view, ofwhich R. J. Johnston is one
of the foremost protagonists,
is
that geographical location has an autonomous role in determining
electoral behaviour.
In
A
Nufion Dividing, Johnston, Pattie and Allsopp put their case for geographical variations in
voting by analysing British election results and opinion surveys using
22
‘geographical’ regions and
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