Book Reviews: The Elimination of Corrupt Practices in British Elections, 1868–1911, Democracy and the Cost of Politics, The Story of Fabian Socialism, The British Parliament, The British Cabinet, Parliament at Work: A Case-Book of Parliamentary Procedure, Parliamentary Reform, 1933–1960: A Survey of Suggested Reforms, Parliament through Seven Centuries: Reading and its M.P.S., Chief Whip. The Political Life and Times of Aretas Akers Douglas, First Viscount Chilston, Memoirs of a Public Servant, Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons 1955–59, The State and the Farmer, The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, Nationalized Industry and Public Ownership, The Ruling Class, The Kremlin since Stalin, Communism in Czechoslovakia, 1948–1960, The Structure of American Federalism, When Governors Convene, The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dixon-Yates: A Study in Power Politics, Workable Competition and Anti-Trust Policy, Divide and Quit, Religion and Politics in
| Author | Basil Chubb,H. J. Hanham,Allen Potter,Philip Parks,H. Hanak,J. Frankel,R. S. Milne,Michael H. Banks,Ieuan G. John,E. Harrison,T. C. Boyd,Raghavan Iyer,Robert E. Dowse,E. Thorp,W. H. Greenleaf,D. D. Raphael,Howard Warrender,Geoffrey Marshall,Richard Rose,Philip Abrams,J. A. Brand,Roghavan Iyer,Doreen Collins,D. J. Bentley,Lewis A. Gunn,Donald Southgate,Demetrios Argyriades,J. A. Sabine |
| Published date | 01 October 1962 |
| Date | 01 October 1962 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1962.tb00999.x |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
THE ELIMINATION
OF
CORRUPT PRACTICES IN
BRITISH ELECTIONS,
1868-191
1.
B~CORNELIUS
O’LEARY
(Clarendon
Press.
Pp.
253, 35s.)
DEiMOCRACY AND THE COSTOF POLITICS.
By
WILLIAM
B.
GWYN.
(Athlone
Press.
Pp.
256. 35s.)
Until the information and understanding provided by Seymour
of
Yale in 1912 have been
widened and deepened by comprehensive period-studies such as those of Gash and Hanham
and by ‘those monographs on individual constituencies without which generalizations must
be
tentative’ for which Dr.
O’Leary
calls
in
the introduction to his
The Elimination
of
Corrupt
Practices in British Elections
1868-1911,
no general electoral history
of
post-1832 Britain
can
pretend to
be
definitive. Dr.
O’Leary
now provides an essential
vudemecum
for the mono-
graphers, summarizing the laws within which the constituencies before 1868 could not
be
made to work, and the conclusions of Royal Commissions (after 1852) and election judges
(after 1868) on delinquent constituencies, in order to place in its true context the Act of 1883,
one of the greatest reforms of the nineteenth century. We are shown how the perfection of
the law, and of the means of enforcement, took out of elections much of the nastiness (and
of
the fascination). The Corrupt and Illegal F’ractices Act, which delivered elections over to
national parties relying on voluntary effort under professional direction and propagating
national issues, is really the Psephologists’ Charter.
Both
Dr.
O’Lcary
and Mr.
Gwyn,
the American author of
Democracy
and
the
Cost
of
Politics
(who wishes to professionalize British politics and make
a
parliamentary career
a
‘money making’ instead of
a
‘money spending’ occupation. thus giving a democratic political
system its ‘natural concomitant’!) well understand that the purging of the electoral system
was an aspect of the development of Victorian morality. In 1860 Sir Frederick Slade,
Q.c.,
said
‘You
might
as
well
try
to prevent the sexes coming together
as
to try
to
prevent bribery’,
but Dr.
O’Leary
attributes the Act of 1883 to ‘shame’ and
calls
it an achievement of which
the Legislature could
be
proud. He shows that the purification of elections was not an immed-
iate or inevitable consequence of the widening of the franchise-at Stroud the stream
of
corruption was new in 1873; at Macclesfield the growth of party organization to meet new
needs multiplied evil; the most corrupt were often the poorer classes; the Ballot Act added
to the old forms of corrupt practice the new evil of bribery mixed with fraud. Mr. Gwyn
is
Whig enough to shy at the denigration
of
the ballot. His attribution of purification, in part
at least, to the awakening of the working class is
a
non-sequitur except in the specialized
sense that it opened
a
market for demagogy; corruption and demagogy are not mutually
exclusive.
Dr.
O’Leary
shows with great clarity the extent to which the Act
of
1883 was the conjoint
work of the two Front Benches willing the means
because
they willed the end (in contrast
to their attitudes in the Reform controversy of 1884, when
a
conjoint solution to the question
of Redistribution
was
reached only after deadlock between Lords and Commons). But
it
is
perhaps Mr. Gwyn rather than Dr.
O’Leary
who realizes the implications
of
this, and after
chapters distinguishing between corrupt and incorrupt expenditure (and showing the impor-
tance of ‘legitimate’ costliness
as
a political factor) he proceeds to discuss the finances
of
the
parties up to the payment
of
members (with a postscript on
1918-59
in which, strangely,
he
fails to stress the present phenomenon of massive and sophisticated central
party
activity
in elections, which statute, broadly speaking.
does
not touch,
and
which makes elections
294
REVIEWS
costlier than ever, though cheaper to the candidates). Unfortunately Mr. Gwyn’s interesting
chapters on the Irish and Labour Parties
use
no manuscript material (and has he not read
Ben Roberts on the T.U.C.?). His chapter on the two main parties adds nothing to our infor-
mation
or
understanding,
pace
a disquisition upon Rhodes’s contribution to the National
Liberal Federation.
Two specialized subjects for research are suggested by these books. Both writers stress the
connexion between corruption in municipal and parliamentary politics. And
Dr.
Ohry
gives us glimpses
of
the impact of
local
party associations on corrupt electioneering in the
’sixties and ’seventies; one of the effects of 1883 was the purification of
their
role on lines
being pioneered simultaneously.
There are some irritating minor errors in Mr.
Gwyn’s
book, which
cast
doubt on his
familiarity with British detail, e.g. ‘South Molton’
for
‘Malton’ on p.
104.
Queen’s College,
Dundce
DONALD
SOUTHOATE
THE STORY OF FABIAN SOCIALISM.
By
MARGARET
COLE.
(Heinemann.
Pp.
xvi+366.
30s.)
This is not quite the history of Fabianism that we should all like to have, but it is an extremely
useful addition to the literature of the subject. It has, moreover,
a
special interest and authority
as
the work
of
a former honorary secretary of the Fabian Society who was both the wife of
G.
D.
H. Cole and the biographer and editor of his opponents, the .Webbs.
Mrs. Cole has deliberately avoided writing a straight history of the Fabian Society. Instead
she has set
out
to trace the history of the ‘Fabian Socialism’ of the
Fabian Essays
of 1889
down
to
the
last
few years. This leads her to write as much about guild socialism, the Labour
Research Department, the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda, and the New Fabian
Research Bureau as about the Fabian Society, and to make the ’twenties and ’thirties of this
century the centre
of
her story. The best part
of
the book deals with events in which
G.
D.
H.
Cole took part (there is a splendid account of Cole himself), and inevitably the long prologue
on the Fabian Society up to 1908, when Cole first became
a
Fabian, and the account of the
years since 1948, suffer by comparison. Indeed, although Mrs. Cole rightly claims to make
necessary ‘adjustments’ in E. R. Pease’s pioneer history of the Fabian Society. most readers
will still find that they have
to
refer to it occasionally. There
is
still plenty of room for the
new history of Fabian ideas up
to
1918 which has been announced since Mrs.
CoL’e
book appeared.
Most readers will find Mn. Cole’s epilogue on ‘The record of Fabianism’ particularly
interesting. because it is one of the few attempts to discuss the role of ideas in British politics.
Fabians have never been dogmatic and
Mrs.
Cole shrewdly
sees
it
as
their chief merit ‘to have
established a standard of tolerant discussion within Socialist circles, to have insisted on laying
a
foundation of fact for all assertions, and to have exposed their proposals to the kind
of
criticism designed to prevent them from the imputation of utopian
(or
other) sillinesses’.
The main achievements that she claims
for
the Fabians are more controversial: ‘the present
system of public education’, the 1918 constitution and programme of the Labour Party, and
‘social security’. But one can
see
what she means and wonder why nobody has rated the
claims
of
the Fabians quite
so
highly before.
University
of
Manchesrer
H.
J.
HANHAM
THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.
By
ROLAND
YOUNG.
(Faber
&
Faber.
Pp.
228,
30s.)
This could
be
a convenient introduction to the British parliamentary system.
Its
greatest
merit
is
its balanced mingling of varied ways of approach
to
the subject-and this may well
REVIEWS
295
be
also
a
cause
of
its comparatively superficial defects. There is a pleasant sprinkling of
snippets from the history
of
the institution including something from every century; there are
vivid accounts of recent parliamentary occasions; prominent Members are introduced with
good, close-up character sketches. These illustrative interludes are highly readable and are
rather needed at times when the usual, but necessary, general statements about custom and
method are piling up, calling both for relief and to be brought to life.
In spite
of
the difficulty of finding anything fresh to say about such a widely studied subject.
Professor Young does manage to include some observations which may surprise without
misleading; it is
a
true statement after all, that Private Members have ‘far more’ freedom in
expressing their opinions than the occupants
of
the Front Benches (p.
113);
and it is a good
point, highly relevant to modem controversy, that a principal concern of those who participate
in Parliamentary ‘control’ over Ministers is to make certain that Ministers control their depart-
ments (p.
243).
The book has not a well-finished appearance. Sometimes it reads like
a
much amended
committee report, without the efficient editing with which civil servants polish up
so
much of
our modem reading matter: one is jerked from one subject to another in mid-paragraph;
some chapter headings seem to have little relation to the contents of their chapters; sub-
headings seem to
be
rather inconsequently printed in various sizes of
type.
There are also
several verbal imperfections such
as
the indiscriminate
use
of
the word ‘session’ to cover
a
day’s sitting, a year’s session and even also a week‘s business.
A
more substantial criticism would refer to the fact that three-quarters
of
a
chapter entitled
‘The Control of Ministers’ (a topic by no means confined to this chapter but running steadily
through the book) consists of an account
of
the troubles
of
one particular Minister during a
comparatively short period (the concluding months of the long tenure at the Colonial
Office
of
Mr. Lennox-Boyd,
as
he then was). But this account is well put together, brings the parliamen-
tary
scene
vividly to life, and does justify the author’s claim to be illustrating much
of
con-
stitutional significance.
It is
a
particular pleasure to read from an American pen that ‘Parliament carries the Rag
for all of
us’,
and more than one reader may reflect that understanding and mutual regard are
birds which
fly
the Atlantic more readily than the Channel.
London
School
of
Economics
and
Political Science
T.
C.
BOYD
THE BRITISH CABINET.
By
JOHN
P.
MACKINTOSH.
(Stevens.
Pp.
xi+546.
f2
10s.)
PARLIAMENT AT WORK: A CASE-BOOK
OF
PARLIA-
MENTARY PROCEDURE.
By
A.
H.
HANSON
and
H.
v.
WISEMAN.
(Stevens.
Pp. xi+358.
El
15s.)
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 1933-1960:
A
SURVEY
OF
S
U
G
G
E
S
T
E
D
R
E
F
0
R M
S
.
(Casself
for
The Hansurd
Society.
Pp. ix+193.
El
5s.)
PARLIAMENT THROUGH SEVEN CENTURIES: READ-
ING AND ITS M.P.S.
&
A. ASPINALL, BARBARA DODWELL
M.
D.
LAMBERT,
C.
F.
SLADE
and
E.
A. SMITH.
(CUSSeNfOr
The
Hansurd
Society.
Pp.
x+
126.
f
I
5s.)
To continue reading
Request your trial