REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1958.tb00469.x |
| Date | 01 March 1958 |
| Published date | 01 March 1958 |
REVIEWS
DIVORCE
IN
ENQLAND.
By
0.
R.
MCGREQOR.
[London: Heine-
mann.
220
pp.
18s.
net.]
A
CENTURY
OF
Famany
LAW.
Edited
by
R.
H.
GRAVESON
and
F.
R.
CRANEL
[London:
Sweet
&
Maxwell,
Ltd.
459
pp.
85s.
net.]
THE
history of divorce law in .England, lucidly summarised by Mr. McGregor in
his
first
chapter, shows how its development has taken place in’an atmosphere
for the most part of indignation, fear, suspicion, and pTejudice,
nll
of
which
have been largely the result of ignorance. Mr. McGregor’s book is concerned
with these matters.
It
is, he says,
“
a
polemic against prejudice and ignorance.”
His analysis
of
history and available statistics
is
designed
first,
to
point out
the
present lack of and need for proper sociological investigation of divorce
:
and secondly, to show that such an investigation, judging by what can be said
on the basis of existing information, would belie many of the fears, and make
nonsense of much
of
the dubious “sentimental moralising” (the phrase is
Mr. McGregor’s), which present ignorance has produced. There
Is
general
ignorance of the true causes of the increase in divorce since
1900;
there is
misunderstanding of the character and origins of what Mr. McGregor calls
“the new democratic family unit” (which, whntcver
else
it may be,
is
far
different from what people happily, though wrongly, imagine the Victorian
family
to
have been); there is disregard
of
the evidence which does exist,
evidence contained in the statistics (albeit necessarily incomplete) which Mr.
McGregor discusses in Chapter
2.
Above
all,
it seems to
be
implicit in
Mc McGregor’s thesis, there is an “upper class” bias which operates on the
minds
of
many, if not most, of those who
talk
about the problem of divorce
in present-day England.
All these facets of Mr. McGregor’s thesis are strongly revealed in his
discussion of the evidence given to the recent Royal Commission on Marriage
and Divorce, and the Report of that Commission. Thus, Mr. McGregor divides
those who gave evidence before the Commission into
“
abolitionists
”
and
“institutionalists
”;
tlie former
are
people who wished to make away with the
necessity for proving
a
matrimonial offence in order to obtnin
a
divorce; the
latter are those who insisted on its retention. The background to the appoint-
ment of the qommission shows tlie relevance of this distinction; for the
Commission was set up
as
a
result of Mrs. Eirene White’s attempt to introduce
seven years’ separation as
a
ground of divorce (nn
“
abolitionist” approach).
The opposition of many influential people to sucli
a
measure provided the
mison
d’&tre
of the Commission. However, while the Government were eager
to select the members of the Commission from mcn and women who,
as
Mr. McGregor puts it,
“
were not publicly committed to either
‘
abolitionist’
or
‘
institutionalist’ views,” they failed to appoint a Commission competent
to
investigate.
It
was not competent, says Mr. McGregor, becniise thcrc wns not
even one professional social scientist on the Commission, nor did any Com-
missioner possess expcrt knowledge of “tlie considerable body of modern
sociological research on the causcs and social consequences of divorce and the
implication of clianging nttitudcs to marriage
”
(including, according to Mr.
McGregor’s figures, its greater popularity, cspccinlly among the young
!)
;
nor
was any Coniiiiissioner
‘‘
equipped with nn understanding of
the
techniques
nnd potentialities of social investigations de.veloped during tlic hist twenty
202
MIncir
1968
REVIEWS
203
years.” Indeed, says Mr. McGregor, the Cornmissioners
“
ignored
a
century‘s
developnicrit of the social sciences,” and went
so
far
as
to add insult to
injury
(as
Mr.
McGregor uiiglit have snid, but did not), by printing diagrams
and tables in the addenda to the Ileport without making any reference to
tlicni in the tcxt, and without making any suggestions for the improvement
of
tlic
statistics of divorce. The Commission, in Mr. McGregor’s view, and
this is the graviiriicn of his charge, was prejudiced against the possibilities
of accuratc sociologiciil research on this question. This
was
the result of the
doriiinulion of tlic Comiiiission hy liiwyers, who, to quote the pcjoriitive language
of
Rlr.
McGrcgor,
“
whilst paying lip servicc to the necd
for
judging proposals
by the test of swiiil good,
are
conditioned to define both social problems and
the socinl
good
in legal terms.”
In this unfortunate
approach
to
the
inquiry, the Commission, according to
Mr. McGregor’s account, was admirably assisted by many of the witnesses, in
particulnr the rcprcscntntives of the General Council of the Bar, whose evidencr
is scornfully analyscd and criticiscd on
pages
136-141.
nut lawyers, although
the main object of Mr. McGregor‘s dislike, at least
so
far
as
the question of
divorce
is
concerned,
:ire
not the only people to be eriticiscd by him. Everybody
who adopted tlic
‘‘
institutionalist
”
viewpoint coines under the same attack;
and for the same reason, namely that they gave not facts but opinions about
the opinions of the other witnesses, not informntivc statistics and reasoned
conclusions based thereon, but “endless conjecture.”
He
sums it
all
up
by
saying that the Commission’s search for evidence has produced “one of the
most impressive collections of unsupported cliche
[sic]
ever subsidised by the
taxpayer.”
These examples of tlic strong language used by Mr. McGregor make it
almost supererogatory to say that he is an
‘‘
abolitionist.” But
I
do not mean
to
suggest that
Mr.
3lcGregor is
as
prejudiced
as
the people he criticism;
he is simply prejudiced in another way. The only question is whether his
form of prejudice is more justified and ncceptnble than that of the others.
This question can only be answered by someone who has had
M
opportunity of
rending
Mr.
McGregor’s book: and everybody interested in the
problem
of
divorce should certainly avail himself
or
herself
of
the opportunity.
After the polcmics of Mr. McGregor it is soothing, at any rate for the
plain, humdrum lawyer, to turn
to
the more technical, and more scholarly,
though not
less
readable collection of essays edited by Professors Graveson
and Crane. There
is
little that is controversial in
A
Cmtury
of
Famtily
Law:
whatever controversial matter there may be in the book is controversial only
in
the sense that there may be differences of opinion among lawyers nbout
certain technical points of law. But this book
is
not designed,
as
is
Mr.
McGregor’s, to highlight and possibly increase public controversy about one
aspect of the
law’s
activity.
Its
aims are
to
be historical and descriptive
rather than argumentative, to provide information about the law rather thnn
to be critical of the
law
and its effects on society.
It
achieves these aims
admirahly.
As
Lord Evershed
says
in his Preface, the book is
“
n
work
of scholiirship.” und cxcellcnt scholarship at that.
nut
it is neither pedantic
nor
is it turgidly written. The English is lucid and attractive; the information
is
given succinctly but not unintcrestingly.
So
much is this
so
that it seems
very likely that it
will
fulfil
the editors’ hopes and become
a
book for the
general lay public
as
well
ILS
for the professional lawyer and the law student.
Some chapters,
such
:IS
those of Professor Graveson on the general background
of tlic developments from
1857
to
1967,
and the future prospects of fnmily law,
and that of
Mr.
Stcvas on
Women
in
Public
Law,
certainly seem suitable for
digestion by non-technically minded renders
:
thc others, however, nppenr to be
more intelligible to the professional lawyer.
There cnn be little doubt
ns
to the book’s utility for tlie latter class
of
readers. In one volume is conveniently collected together all the lam relating
to the family and the individuals who make lip
thc
family. The scope of the
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