Disorder in the ‘Frustration’ Parliaments of Thatcherite Britain
| Date | 01 September 1992 |
| Published date | 01 September 1992 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1992.tb00707.x |
| Author | David Judge |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political Studies
(1
992),
XL,
532-553
Disorder
in
the ‘Frustration’ Parliaments
of
Thatcherite Britain
DAVID
JUDGE*
University
of
Strathclyde
There was a marked increase
in
disorder in the British House of Commons during Mrs
Thatcher’s tenure
of
office. In a legislature traditionally renowned for its ‘temper
of
moderation and fair play‘ and its usual good behaviour, there was growing concern at
the extent
of
disorderly behaviour. This concern prompted a Procedure Committee
investigation into the conduct
of
MPs in the chamber and led some commentators to
argue that the level of disorder constituted a threat to representative democracy in
Britain. This article examines the increased scale of unruliness and the main variables
used to explain this increase.
Persistent disorder in the British House
of
Commons during the premiership of
Mrs Thatcher prompted the question ‘what’s wrong here?’. The answer from
authoritative sources within the House
of
Commons, the Speaker and the Select
Committee
on
Procedure respectively, was ‘nothing’ or ‘comparatively little’.’
If these assessments were to be accepted then this article should end here! Clearly
it does not accept these ‘authoritative’ judgements. Both ‘official’ assessments of
disorder were, for different reasons, consciously complacent and both will be
challenged. If the essence of representative government is of government
conducted through deliberation,
of
the rights of minorities to be heard,
of
opposition to be voiced, of alternative answers to be articulated in the absence of
the
right answer, then behaviour which transgresses those institutional rules
designed to secure the bases and processes of discussion demands not to be
dismissed complacently but to be understood. Indeed, the focus of this article is
the breach
of
those institutional rules which
the
House
itself
has devised to
mitigate disorder. This focus has the advantage
of
avoiding subjective assessment
of such unquantifiable aspects of parliamentary behaviour as courtesy, civility or
urbanity.
In
other words, the rules considered here are those which the institution
itself has traditionally deemed to be of importance and which individual
members know to be
of
significance
in
flouting them.
*
This is a revised version
of
a
paper delivered at the 1990 meeting
of
the American Political
Science Association in San Francisco.
My
thanks to the participants at the session on ‘What’s Wrong
Here?’,
to the anonymous referees
of
this journal, and especially to Philip Norton.
’
Bernard Weatherill quoted in
The Times
(13
April 1988);
The Times
(8
March
1991);
Select
Committee on Procedure,
Conduct
of
Members in the Chamber and
the
Alleged Abuse
of
Parliamentary Privilege,
Session
1988-9,
HC
290,
p. viii.
0032-321 1/92/03/0532-22
0
1992
Political Studies
DAVID
JUDGE
533
Historical
Prologue
A
certain level
of
noise and disturbance is inevitable
in
a
gathering whose
main
characteristic is
that
it
represents the
clash
of
opinion
in
the
country
as
a
whole and whose members, by their very nature, hold
their
views more
passionately
than
the population at large.’
Robust debate has been a characteristic of the Commons throughout its history,
reflecting the tradition of an adversarial and oppositional style of parliamentary
politics. Yet the crucial point to acknowledge from the outset is that this style of
politics can be sustained only by a wider societal and political consensus beyond
the Commons. Procedure within the House, simply ‘the mass
of
rules, practices
and conventions by which [the] House regulates its own
proceeding^',^
is a fine
balance between the consensual and conflictual elements of parliamentary
politics.
In
essence the conflictual dimensions of procedure uphold the historic rights of
opposition to the executive, whilst the consensual ones recognize the pre-
eminence of the executive within the House and its control of its business.
As
Joseph Redlich pointed out, procedure and the internal self-government
of
the
Commons is political in its very nature and its development reflects ‘actual facts
of political power and
of
historic constitutional
relation^'.^
Thus, the collective
rights of opposition stem from the seventeenth century when the Commons as a
body was often in conflict with the monarch and sought
to
control ministers of the
Crown by denying them special privileges within the House. The ‘historic order
of business’, whereby public affairs were conducted by free discussion among
representatives of the people, rested upon the recognition of the equality
of
members and ‘the assertion of freedom of parliamentary action, for each
individual member and for the House as a ~hole’.~ Intrinsic to this order of
business was the acceptance of the rights of the minority to oppose, primarily
because the House often collectively conceived of itself as a ‘minority’ in the face
of executive power.
The rules governing disorder emerged, therefore, within a House which
institutionalized both collective opposition and individual freedom to contribute
to debate. These rules became entrenched
in
the following century.
In
the
nineteenth century, however, the requirements of efficient government, executive
dominance and the mediated representation of the electorate through parties,
came to prevail over the traditional rights of backbenchers and the direct
injection
of
individual and group demands into the House. The important
element of these reforms, for present purposes, is that the conflictual bases of
procedure
-
the enshrinement of the principle
of
opposition to the executive
within the rules of the House- was inverted in practice to reflect the support of the
House, or the majority therein, for party-based government. Ultimately,
procedure regulating the conduct of parliamentary business came to serve as ‘an
aid to the Ministry in governing’.‘
In
fact, the dynamic for the procedural
reforms of the last decades of the nineteenth century was already activated well
’
Select Committee
on
Procedure, Conduct
of
Members in rhe Chaniber, p.
IV.
’
G.
Campion,
An
Introduction
10
the Procedure ofrhe House
of’
Commons
(London,
Macmillan,
‘
J.
Redlich, The Procedure ofthe House ofCommons (London. Constable, 1908).
p.
xxix.
Redlich, The Procedure ofrhe House
of
Commons, p.
49.
‘
Redlich, The Procedure ofthe House
of
Commons, p.
125.
1947),p.
1.
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