Reviews: The British Ombudsman, The History of the Liberal Party 1895–1970, Lancashire and the New Liberalism, Ireland's English Question, Liberalism in South Africa 1948–1963, The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of the Leaders of the Sarvodaya Movement for Non-Violent Revolution in India, The Finnish Political System, Politics and Society in De Gaulle's Republic, Fédéralisme et Nations, The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev and Kosygin, The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies, The Origins of Polish Socialism: The History and Ideas of the First Polish Socialist Party 1878–1886, The Intellectual Origins of the Prague Spring: The Development of Reformist Ideas in Czechoslovakia 1956–1967, The Secret Vysočany Congress: Proceedings and Documents of the Extraordinary Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, 22 August, 1968, the Czechoslovak Experiment 1968–1969, Democracy, Polyarchy, Empirical Democratic Theory, Voting and Collective Choice, Social Movement, Constitutional Theory, Magna Carta: Th
| Author | Harry Street,Sheila Marriner,Owen A. Hartley,R. N. Berki,Francis G. Castles,D. J. Murray,Geoffrey Marshall,P. M. H. Bell,Roger Clements,Carole Pateman,C. J. Hughes,A. H. Brown,Charles Vereker,D. J. Manning,Thomas McPherson,J. Rasmussen,Z. A. Pelczynski,N. C. M. Elder,John B. Morrall,Olga A. Narkiewicz,J. A. Bank,Paul Taylor,J. E. S. Hayward,T. J. Nossiter,Brian Barry,F. F. Ridley,Dennis Kavanagh,J. H. Whyte,B. B. Holden |
| Published date | 01 June 1972 |
| Date | 01 June 1972 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1972.tb01076.x |
| Subject Matter | Reviews |
REVIEWS
THE BRITISH OMBUDSMAN.
By
FRANK
STACEY.
(Oxford
Uniuersity
Press.
After nearly five years in operation the British Parliamentary Commissioner is ripe for assess-
ment and Frank Stacey is first past the post with this excellent detailed account of the origins,
Parliamentary passage, and subsequent operation of the Ombudsman legislation. The summary
of the proceedings in both Houses is managed with considerable skill,
so
that the reader, even
after progressing by page
230
to ‘The Lords Amendments Considered in the Commons’ presses
on agog (almost) to
see
how things fall out. In part, this
is
possible because two central threads,
making for continuity run through most of the discussion. These relate to what might
be
called
the ambit and the penetration of the Commissioner’s powers. Between the Whyatt report in
1961
and the second reading of the Labour Government’s Bill in
1966
a good deal of vagueness
and misunderstanding existed
on
both these fronts. The Labour Party’s Election Manifesto had
spoken of the potential function of a Parliamentary Commissioner as being to ‘expose any misuse
of Government power as it affects the citizen’ and to ‘investigate the grievances of the citizen’.
It may well have been a suspicion that an ombudsman might get near to doing precisely that
that impelled the Macmillan government into rejecting the scheme. Mr. Stacey suggests that,
since senior civil servants had co-operated with the Whyatt Committee in preparing its report, the
opposition must have come from within the Cabinet. One feels, however, that there must have
been official opposition too, since civil servants, more
so
than the average elector
or
politician
must have been aware of the difficulties of deming in statutory terms the power of an official
who was to remedy grievances, and satisfy complainants of hardship and injustice without
contesting the exercise of the discretions conferred on ministers and civil servants. (There
can,
as
one Parliamentary Benthamite pointed out, conceivably be hardship to individuals without
injustice, since the hardship may be
on
balance outweighed by considerations drawn from the
general welfare.) Later on, when the Parliamentary draughtsmen had done their level and un-
successful best to find a formula that would implement the intentions of the Whyatt report and
the Labour White paper to contine the Ombudsman to correcting, not injustice and wrong, un-
reasonable and unfair decisions, but ‘maladministration’-whatever that might be-they and
the Lord Chancellor came up with
a
clause that appeared to deprive the Commissioner of all
authority even to inquire into the
use
of discretionary powers. As amended and enacted the
provision that the Commissioner may not ‘question the merits of a decision taken without
maladministration’ in the exercise of
a
discretionary power, has been a central and arguably still
unresolved point of controversy about the working of the Act.
Equally controversial then and now are the exclusions from the ambit of the Ombudsman’s
powers. Besides the exclusion of wide areas of administration that lie outside the responsibilities
of the central departments there are the procedural exclusions-the exclusion of one chamber of
the legislature from participating in the scheme for what is nonetheless called a Parliamentary,
not
a
Commons Commissioner; the exclusion
of
any investigation
on
the initiative of the Com-
missioner himself; and the exclusion of the citizen from any direct access to the Commissioner.
On balance, the arguments for these latter exclusions are unconvincing.
So
is
the reasoning by
which thecommissioner and theselect Committee have reached the conclusion that someaspects
of
some kinds of delegated legislation may
be
looked at by the commissioner, though the making
of
a
statutory instrument itself, though a governmental act, is by reason of its ‘legislative’
character not proper for scrutiny, since only ‘administrative’ acts can lead to ‘maladministration’.
For Parliamentarians brought
up
to grimace at the mention of the separation of powers to talk
themselves into this kind of corner is
a
shocking thing. Even lawyers could do better! Possibly it
manifests a more general weakness of the British Ombudsman system, namely the need in the
last
resort
to rely on government for its legal advice. There are reasons of convenience and
economy for this, which Sir Edmund Compton frequently expounded.
But
it
usually
means that
Pp.
351.
U.00.)
REVIEWS
221
when any question arises that relates to jurisdiction
or
the construction of the Parliamentary
Commissioner Act or any other statute, it is resolved by the Law Officers of the Crown handing
out unopposed whatever fustian they think fit.
In the final section of the book Mr. Stacey sums up the work of the Select Committee and
reaches some provisional conclusions about the working of the system. He discusses the pros and
cons of widening the Commissioner’s jurisdiction, of direct access by complainants and of
possibilities for making the publication of reports more effective. By way of postscript there is a
description of what has been happening on the local government and Northern Ireland fronts.
If Mr. Stacey is willing to oblige we shall look forward to his next two volumes. At the moment,
indeed, with ombudsmen springing up from Alberta to Central Africa no political scientist need
look
far for work. Anyone for Tanzania?
The
Queen’s
College,
Oxford
GEOPFR EY MAR SHALL
THE
HISTORY
OF
THE
LIBERAL PARTY 1895-1970.
By
ROY
DOUGLAS
with
aforeword
by
JEREMY THORPE.
(Sidgwick
and
Jackson,
1971.
Pp.
331.
f3.00,
pb.
E1.75.)
Having fought five parliamentary elections for the Liberal Party from
1950
through
1964,
Roy
Douglas is not an uncommitted observer of its history. Nonetheless, his book is not a partisan
tract, but a scholarly account of the party’s fortunes since the first general election after Glad-
stone’s retirement down to the present. Without being at all pedantic, the book shows the evi-
dence of careful, detailed research. In addition to employing newspapers, party documents, and
standard secondary sources, Douglas utilizes extensively the private papers of many of the
party’s leading figures. Furthermore, he has talked with and corresponded with many of those
who occupied key positions in the party at various times during the twentieth century.
Given this diligence, it is both surprising and disappointing that the book contains
so
little
new information or fresh insights. Curiously this defect is most pronounced in the last
50
pages,
which are devoted to events since the end of World War 11; one never would guess that Douglas
had been an active participant in many of these affairs. Despite the wealth of inside information
he must have accumulated from service on various party organs and wide contacts in the party,
he tells his readers little that they could not learn from newspapers
or
books written by outsiders.
For example, although he plainly admires Clement Davies, he reveals nothing about the ham-
fisted way in which Davies was forced from the Leadership of the party in
1956.
It must be noted that Douglas has been active in the more conservative, Free Trade wing of
the party, the section which has emphasized the libertarian-both political and economic-
stream of Liberal doctrine more than the social reform
or
social justice element. Glimpses
of
this orientation appear when, for example, he discusses the Common Market and the Design
for Freedom group. He endeavours to make this group, which attempted to join together some
members of both the Liberal and Conservative parties to combat socialism immediately after
Labour’s
1945
victory, seem progressive and less reactionary than most qualified observers would
assess it. And only a Free Trader could regard the departure from the party of Air Vice-Marshal
Bennett and Oliver Smedley over support for the Common Market as ‘important losses’.
To
say that readers should
be
aware of his orientation is not, however, to accuse Douglas of
special pleading. He is quite fair in his recounting of the party’s conflicts, which, in view of the
bitterness, recriminations, and avenging zeal associated with most of them, is no mean achieve-
ment. Furthermore, he does not permit his balanced evaluations to prevent him from passing
judgement on people and events, a necessary task for a competent historian. Generally his
judgements are sound; his assessment of
Jo
Grimond‘s contribution to and impact upon the
party, for example, is properly balanced and quite accurate despite the fact that he and Grimond
are from opposite wings.
15
228 REVIEWS
The book is organized chronologically except for two chapters. Having brought
the
party’s
history down to the First World War in the first four chapters, Douglas devotes
a
chapter to
relations between the Liberal and Labour parties during this period with special emphasis on
the electoral pact for the 1906 election. The final chapter summarizes the principal ideas pre-
sented in the book and assesses the party’s current prospects. These two chapters are the most
analytical of the book and even they tend to be rather more informed comment than analysis.
Admittedly ‘It is rather difficult to analyse the effect of the [1906 electoral pact] on the voting
behaviour of the electors’, but an attempt would have been desirable. It is of little help and
methodologically vague to observe simply, ‘The impression which is left from
a
comparison of
voting figures in various constituencies suggests that the L.R.C. alliance benefited the Liberals
in the North-West, but that elsewhere it did little good, and possibly some immediate harm, to
the Liberals.’
As
a
result of the limited analysis the book is confined mainly to describing the events which
occurred during this period along with offering some commentary. The main focus
is
on the
party’s electoral fortunes and parliamentary activities; its internal workings do not receive the
attention which they should for
a
standard party history, nor, surprisingly, is much said about the
substance of Liberal policy.
Too
frequently it is unclear what basis other than availability was
used for selecting facts for inclusion.
Douglas correctly perceives that the party’s history during the period he has chosen raises
two contradictory basic questions.
Through
the 1920s the puzzle is explaining
how
a
major party
could disintegrate
so
far
so
fast. Since then, especially since
1945,
the even more perplexing
mystery has been how a party with such dim prospects can manage to maintain itself at
a
small,
but sizable level with relative stability.
Douglas attributes the party’s collapse
to
the 1906 electoral pact--‘a disastrous and culpable
error’ representative of the ‘Liberal Whips’ squeamish refusal to strangle the Labour Party in
its cradle’, the Trade Union Act of 1913--‘perhaps the most disastrous measure which the
Liberals could possibly have set upon the Statute
Book’,
because it authorized unions to create
funds solely for political purposes and financed the new Labour Party, and the failure of the
Asquithians and Lloyd Georgeites to compose their differences. These points are important,
but in attempting to refute the idea that the collapse of the Liberals was historically inevitable
Douglas tends to accord the party more control over events that it probably had. The Liberals
could not stop the L.R.C. from running candidates in 1906 nor the electorate from supporting
them. It seems clear that the desire of working men to be represented by working men was grow-
ing during this period, a desire to which many local Liberal constituency associations would not
respond favourably. Given such feelings among the working class it also seems likely that even
had the Osborne Judgement been reversed without the passage of the Trade Union Act,
as
Douglas favours, the unions would have provided substantial sums to finance
a
working men’s
party. Perhaps the Labour Party could have been prevented from becoming a major party, but
it is difficult to believe that anything could have been done
to
keep it from growing considerably
larger than the Liberal Party is now.
His answer to second basic question does not seem to
go
much beyond saying that some people
have been highly dedicated to the party and that at some times the major opposition party has
not been in
a
position to take advantage of the Government’s unpopularity. Grappling with this
question requires the study of individual motivation
or
the analysis of election returns as in
Butler and Stokes,Political Change
in
Britain. Douglas does neither.
For
the party to grow beyond
its current ineffectual condition, Douglas prescribes improved finances and
local
organization,
despite the fact that the Nuffield studies suggest that good organization is worth only
a
few hun-
dred votes. But while organization may not be very significant
for
major parties, Douglas may
be quite right in thinking that it is everything for minor parties. At any rate his view is a refresh-
ing contrast to the one that has prevailed in the Liberal Party for too long that the only way to
win elections was to devise better policies than your rivals. Should Douglas’ view become wide-
spread in the party, it may once again have considerable political impact.
Vanderbilt University
J.
RASMUSSEN
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