Books
| Date | 01 December 1985 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1985.tb01588.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1985 |
| Subject Matter | Books |
Political Studies (1989,
XXXIII,
657-702
British Politics
B. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (London, Jonathan Cape, 1985) xvi
+
752 pp., f25.00 ISBN
Hugh Dalton was a prominent member of the most distinguished Labour Government
so
far, that
which Clement Attlee formed in
1945.
Indeed, he tends to be ranked as one
of
its original Big Five,
together with Bevin, Morrison, Cripps and Attlee himself. Biographies
of
Bevin and Morrison
of
very high standard have already appeared by Alan Bullock and Bernard Donoughue and George
Jones respectively, and Kenneth Harris has produced a good biography of Attlee.
A
further gap is
filled by this admirable biography
of
Dalton by Ben Pimlott. Dalton was the son
of
a tutor to the
Royal Family. He was educated at Eton and Kings. In short, Dalton was born to social privilege,
and his socialism was that
of
the ‘class traitor’. Whereas the proletarian Bevin,
for
example, came
to
act as a natural Conservative, Dalton’s socialism had some
of
the zeal
of
the convert. Pimlott argues
that Attlee accepted Dalton’s famous ‘leak’ resignation in
1947
because
of
the Chancellor’s socialist
commitment, although the November Budget in fact set out the Austerity programme which Cripps
became associated with. Otherwise, Pimlott eschews controversy and traces Dalton’s career from
cradle to grave in chronological style. To say the resulting biography is as interesting as Dalton’s
own
Memoirs
is an indication
of
the high quality
of
this scholarly work.
GEOFFREY K. FRY,
University
of
Leeds
0224 02100
1.
G.
K.
Fry, The Changing Civil Service (London, Allen
&
Unwin, 1985), xii
+
162 pp.,
The preface
of
this book promises ‘an interpretative essay
of
assessment’ (p. ix). It is not, we are
told, a textbook.
No
doubt a book aspiring to that title would have needed more than the
150or
so
pages of concisely-written text offered here. Yet they contain scholarly summaries
of
the basic facts
about the civil service and the major viewpoints propounded over the last couple
of
decades about
its place in
our
system
of
government, its management and its organization. The chapters on pay
and trade unions are particularly valuable.
As
Dr Fry points out, there is a literature on these topics;
but they are seldom discussed together with the recruitment, composition and power
of
the higher
civil service, subjects far more familiar to political scientists.
But the efficiency of the summary mars the book as an interpretation.
Too
often the conclusions
are difficult to discern among the descriptions of reports, decisions and past research.
Is
the author
opposed to political appointments in higher posts, for example,
or
merely aware
of
the possible
pitfalls? At times he seems to think
of
himself as a radical, compared with successive
administrations, including the present one, yet much
of
what is said about, say, the Civil Service
Department,
or
the trade unions, is consistent with the present Government’s stance on these.
It
would have been instructive
if
his proper scepticism about the Fulton report had been applied more
rigorously to some
of
the other subjects he discusses.
CRAIG PICKERING,
London Business
School
f15.00
ISBN
0
04
350063 3, f5.95 pbk
ISBN
0
04 350064
1.
F. N. Forman, Mastering British Politics (London, Macmillan, 1985), xiii
+
359 pp.,
Nigel Forman has been Conservative
MP
for Carshalton since 1976 and therefore, in addition
to
his
experience as a teacher
of
politics and a researcher in the Conservative Research Department, brings
0032-321 7/85/04/0657-46/$03.00
0
1985
Political
Sfudies
flO.OO ISBN
0
333 36650 6, E3.25 pbk ISBN
0
333 366651 4.
658
Books
the knowledge and eye
of
an active politician to this introductory text. As such it is thorough and
workmanlike, with a format
of
sections, chapters and subsections which makes it easy to use for
reference. The coverage is conventional, but it is good to see the inclusion
of
brief discussions on
British political culture, public opinion and on democracy, although no real attempt is made to
define the latter. The facts are presented clearly and concisely and, where appropriate, the pros and
cons
of
various points
of
view are presented. The text is also illustrated by a number of useful
diagrams. However, a much clearer distinction should be made between Cabinet committees proper
and the broadly parallel official committees
of
civil servants in Diagram
12.
I
and the accompanying
text. In addition, the role
of
judicial review is somewhat neglected and the discussion of the
ombudsmen system is very limited. Nonetheless,
as
a basic British politics test
Mastering British
Politics
is good value for money. MICHAEL RUSH,
University
of
Exeter
David Coates, Gordon Johnson and Ray Bush (eds),
A
Socialist Anatomy
of
Britain
(Oxford, Polity Press,
1985), 291
pp.$
€25.00
ISBN
0
7446 0024 7, €7.95
pbk
ISBN
0
7446 0025
5.
This is the third title in the Socialist Primer series which the editors began with
Socialist Arguments
and
Socialist Strategies.
Like its predecessors
A
Socialist Anatomy
of
Britain
is intended as a
handbook for left activists and the tenor
of
its arguments is frankly ‘committed’. But this rarely
detracts from the quality of the various contributions and more often enhances it.
Lawrence Harris’s opening chapter analyses the components of ‘British Capital’ and the
complexities
of
its various class factions while John Scott complements the focus on finance capital
with an essay on the British upper class which introduces us to the top finance capitalists. The
peculiarities
of
British capitalism and its distinctive problems are very much the theme
of
John
Urry’s analysis of the class structure and Doreen Hassey’s outline
of
the geography
of
inequality.
Once the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the British political economy have been examined a further seven
chapters are concerned with ‘the constituency
of
the left’. These cover environmental politics,
feminism, racism, the trade unions and Northern Ireland while David Coates surveys the British left
and Robert Looker engages with Labourism and Thatcherism. In this section
of
the book Richard
Hyman’s chapter on ‘Class Struggle and the Trade Union Movement’ and Anthony Arblaster’s
essay on Northern Ireland are especially good introductions to these issues. Indeed the whole book
is worthy
of
recommendation to students concerned with British politics today.
JOHN CALLAGHAN,
Wolverhampton Polytechnic
Geoffrey Ingham,
Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social
Development
(London, Macmillan,
1984),
viii
+
304
pp.,
f20.00
ISBN
0
333 301 16 1,
f7.95
pbk
ISBN
0
333 301 18
8.
The ‘division’
of
Geoffrey Ingham’s title is that between productive industry and the City in the
economic history
of
British capitalism, a duality in which, time and time again, the interests
of
the
latter have been given priority over the interests
of
the former in all matters of public policy. This is
of course familiar ground. The central purpose
of
the author however is not to rehearse familiar
arguments but rather to question the adequacy
of
the explanations of this phenomenon offered by
Marxist theory and by Marxist scholarship. This he does at a brisk pace. Contemporary
explanations offered by,
inter aliu,
Tom Nairn and
Perry
Anderson are rapidly found wanting, as
are such explanations from the classical literature
of
Marxism suggested by Hilferding’s concept
of
finance capital and Lenin’s concept of imperialism. The roots of present confusions are
subsequently located in the works
of
Marx himself. The labour theory
of
value, together with
Marx’s puritanical obsession with production itself, rendered that seminal thinker singularly
unfitted
to
properly appreciate the positive, dominant and permanent role that the financial
institutions of international commercial capitalism would play within British capitalism. Moreover
Marx’s failure
to
develop any serious theory
of
politics,
or
an adequate theory of the state, meant
Books
659
that he lacked the basic theoretical tools necessary to an understanding
of
the enduring significance
of
that privileged political access to economic policy making that City interests enjoyed.
Though disclaiming polemic this is an interesting and provocative book. The author eschews any
comparative purpose in challenging the varied explanations
of
‘British exceptionalism’ that have
emerged from within the Marxist tradition. Yet the interesting reflection arises, nonetheless, that
perhaps one reason why subsequent capitalist revolutions invariably failed to conform to the British
model lay in the fact that that model itself failed to adhere to the requirements
of
Marx’s theory.
ALAN
J.
FOSTER,
Thames
Potyteclinic
C.
Cook,
Sources
in
British Political History 1900-1951, Volume
6
(London,
Reviewing volume one (1975)
of
this series for another journal, the present writer remarked that it
would ‘whet the appetite for its companions’. Initially there were four,
on
the papers
of
public
servants, MPs (two volumes), and selected writers, intellectuals and publicists. Now the changes
brought about by the passage
of
time and the acquisitive activity
of
a wide range of repositories have
stimulated the production
of
a sixth volume which has the hallmarks
of
Dr Cook’s expertise in this
kind
of
compilation.
Volume six is divided into two sections, the records
of
institutions and those of individuals. The
former range from the Abortion Law Reform Association to youth movements; and the latter from
a Principal Clerk of Committees in the House
of
Commons to a busmen’s organizer and peace
campaigner. The researcher may disregard the date limit set in the title: there is much material
recorded
of
a more recent date, including, for example, of an organization
of
non-aligned and staff
unions which was born, worked and expired within the lifetime
of
Cook’s survey and indeed within
the lifetime
of
the repository which now houses the records. At the other end
of
the time scale,
numerous trade union archives and some local Conservative Association records are listed which
pre-date 1900. ‘Political’ has been interpreted
in
its widest sense, as in the earlier volumes; the
labour movement is given a wide interpretation, interest groups are strongly represented and some
religious organizations feature. (In the latter connection, it is a matter for regret that an error in
volume one has been compounded,
so
that the YWCA archives are still recorded as being at their
headquarters, rather than now in the Modern Records Centre, University
of
Warwick Library.)
The layout
of
the entries is a model
of
clarity and legibility; the lack
of
an index is regrettable,
except in
so
far as it will encourage the user
to
become familiar with the detail of the entries at first
hand. The volume concludes with a single-page appendix on specifically post-I951 records, which
promises a seventh volume arising from a systematic survey
of
this period.
It
will be awaited with
interest and, no doubt, some impatience. RICHARD STOREY,
Universify
of
Warwick
Macmillan,
1985),
x
+272pp., f25.00,
ISBN
0
333 26568
8.
D.
Butler
and
P.
Jowett,
Party Strategies
in
Britain: a Study
of
the 1984 European
Elections
(London, Macmillan,
1985),
x
+
171 pp.,
f25.00
ISBN
0
333 38459
8, f8.95
pbk
ISBN
0
333 38460
1.
In the first two pages of this book the 1984 European election in Britain is described variously as ‘a
non-event’, a ‘singular opinion poll’, ‘a political exercise without troops’, ‘a second-order election’
and ‘a caricature of a general election’. Despite this, the authors argue that the election merits
attention and they have produced a study firmly in the Nuffield tradition-although it is something
of
a mini-Nuffield study, containing fewer than half the pages
of
the last general election book.
The treatment is, then, familiar, with chapters on the background to the election, the campaign
strategies and organization
of
the parties, the national campaign and
so
on and the normal
information is provided on candidates, media treatment, election results and
so
on. As in ‘regular’
Nuffield studies the strength
of
the book is that it provides an invaluable record of the election and
events surrounding it. In this case, however, one’s confidence in the accuracy of the record is a little
shaken by the fact that the Abbeystead disaster is said to have occurred at ‘Abbeyfield’ (p. 94)
or
‘Abbeydale’ (p.
105).
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