Christian Democracy

Published date01 June 1957
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9248.1957.tb00969.x
Date01 June 1957
Subject MatterArticle
NOTES
AND
REVIEW ARTICLES
I97
suficicnt
in
this sense;’ and it is probable, because
of
the concentration
of
high incomes
in the south
of
England, that Wales is not.
For
this reason, and because taxes are alrcady
so
high,
it
seems most unlikely that a parliament in Scotland would be willing to impose new
financial burdens on that country in order to improve its public services. But other areas
of
the United Kingdom might well insist on a Scottish Parliament’s raising more revenue to
maintain Scottish services at even their present standards.
Mr.
Birch’s criticism does not touch my general argument, and, further, he makes unwar-
ranted asscrtions about Northern Ireland. He tells
us
that the governing party at Stormont
has been able
to
disclaim responsibility
for
social policy-a statement
for
which he pro-
duces no evidence. (There is none, apart from the point, which
I
have made elsewhere,z that
the statutory responsibility
of
the Minister of Health and Local Government
is
in
some
respects very strictly limited.) Ministers in Northern Ireland, and especially those who
have resigned because
of
disagreement within the Government and in the country, would
be astonished to learn from Mr. Birch that ‘the Ulster Unionist Party has removed social
policy
from
the field
of
political controversy’. The ‘most obvious explanation’
of
Ulster’s
‘step-by-step’ policy, according to
Mr.
Birch, is that the Unionist Party has given no scope
for a constitutional opposition and has perpetuated itself in power
for
over thirty years.
The facts are that
for
twenty-four years (from
1922
to
1945)
‘step-by-step’ applied to
so
limited a range of services as to leave ample scope for a constitutional opposition; and that
such an opposition (the Northern Ireland Labour Party) arose when that policy was
extended
to
a
wider field. It is not the case, as
Mr.
Birch imagines, that ‘the background to
consultations between the Treasury and the Government
of
Northern Ireland is
.
.
.
the
existence of virtually identical legislation’. And the statement that the Northern Ireland
Government has never proposed
to
develop its own social policies by legislation is
ludicrous.
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY3
ARNOLD
J.
HEIDENHEIMER
London
School
of
Econotnics
cind
Political Science
Is
therc a coherent and integrated Christian Democratic movement on
a
European scale?
If
so,
what does it include, what are its central doctrines and its antecedents? The unified
focus which the Christian parties
of
Western Europe have in recent years found in
a
common European policy suggests far too simple an answer. Historically, the evolution
of
Catholic social policy since
Rrrum novarim
provides something of a common background,
but neither the Catholic social nor the Catholic political movements developed according
to any apparently uniform pattern. Furthermore, the inter-confessional Christian Demo-
cracy
of
today includes significant Protestant support. What, in political terms, do the
Protestant businessman of Hanover, the faithful peasant
of
Brittany, and the Catholic trade
union functionary in Milan have in common with each other?
Professor Fogarty has set himself the ambitious task
of
tracing the modern development
of
a
vast range
of
Catholic and Protestant lay movements in ‘the heartland
of
European
Christianity’. He seeks to show how European Christians mct the social and political
*
See
Report
of
Roynl
Commission
on
Scottish
Affairs,
ch. iii. (Cmd. 9212.)
*
See my article on ‘The Health Services in Northern Ireland’, in
Public
Administration,
CHRISWAN DEMOCRACY IN WESTERN EUROPE,
1820-1953.
By
MICHAEL
P.
vol. xxxiv, Autumn 1956.
FOGARTY.
(Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul.
Pp.
xvlii+461. 45s.)

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