POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND ISSUES IN BRITAIN Also by James Cable GUNBOA T DIPLOMACY THE ROYAL NAVY AND THE SIEGE OF BILBAO *GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY, 1919--1979 (Second Edition) *BRITAIN'S NAVAL FUTURE *DIPLOMACY AT SEA *THE GENEVA CONFERENCE OF 1954 ON INDOCHINA As Grant Hugo BRITA IN IN TOMORROW'S WORLD APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS *A lso published by Palgrave Macmillan Political Institutions and Issues in Britain James Cable M ©Sir JamesCable 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1987 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WClE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT D Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire R021 2XS andLondon Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division ofThe Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cable, James, /920- Political institutions and issues in Britain. 1. Oreat Britain-Politics and government-1979- I. Title 320.941 JN231 ISBN 978-0-333-40541-3 ISBN 978-1-349-18765-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18765-2 For Viveca, as always Contents Preface ix 1 Introduction 1 2 The Absence of a Written Constitution 12 3 The Executive in Britain 22 ·4 Legitimacy: Queen, Lords and Commons 33 5 How Cabinet and Commons üperate 45 6 The Servants of the State 56 7 The Rivals of the State 66 8 The Commonwealth 77 9 Parties and Factions 87 10 Divisions on Constitutional Issues 99 11 Divisions on Economic and Social Policy 108 12 Divisions on Foreign and Defence Policy 118 13 The Special Problem of Ulster 129 14 Civil Liberties in Britain 139 15 The Scope for Change 148 Bibliography and Further Reading 159 Index 168 vii Preface This book is the outcome of aseries of lectures on British Politics delivered to the International Summer School at Cambridge. It owes much to the many questions asked by that cosmopolitan audience and still more to the extensive reading undertaken both before and after that stimulating experience. Otherwise my acquaintance with politics is derived from three and a half decades of direct observation - and of discussion with practising politicians: as an official at horne and a diplomat abroad. Officials are not, of course, supposed to take any active part in British politics, but they cannot do their job (or expect promotion) unless they understand the political system. Diplomats abroad have a harder task. They must not merely know how the political process operates in the country where they are stationed. They must also explain it, briefly and simply, to incredulous ministers at horne. The obvious method - equally applicable when explaining British practice to foreigners - is to draw paralleis and point to contrasts. Personal experience has thus indined me to attempt explanation by comparison: between politics in Britain and abroad; between politics today and in the past. Readers will quickly realise which prejudices have coloured these comparisons, but my bias is personal and not systematic. Objectivity is naturally unattainable by writers on politics. Even if they support no party, they can scarcely avoid belonging to a nation, a dass, a sex, a race or an age group. Those who escape the influence of their roots are soon conditioned by education, by experience, by interest. If the author has his prejudices, readers need not share them. This book is intended to inform, at worst to provoke, not to convert. It is meant to be a simple account, in a single volume, of the British political system as this existed in the later eighties; of the sources of political power and influence in Britain and of the political issues of most concern to the British people. As an academic subject politics has been sliced into as many specialisms as medicine. Mine is a general practitioner's product: aimed at the intelligent reader with enough time - and interest in British politics - for a single book. With that reader in mind there are no footnotes. In politics all statements are controversial. Instead there is a list of books used and of books offering different opinions. Anyone seriously interested should ix x Preface try so me of them. Many have an ideological commitment that will not be found in these pages. Living in various countries under contrasting systems of government is a disillusioning experience. JAMES CABLE 1 Introduction The simplest definition of politics is the struggle for power over people. It is a very widespread activity and it does not just take place in national electicns or inside the Kremlin or in party caucuses or in all the thousands of much-publicised gatherings that we are accustomed to think of as specifically political. It starts on school playgrounds and it is not unknown in old people's hornes. It happens in universities, in churches, in corporations, in hospitals, in tennis-clubs, in the armed forces: in every group, however smalI, however private, however specialised, which offers to the ambitious a chance to exercise power over people. Power over people can be an objective as attractive, as compelIing, as all-absorbing as sexual satisfaction. Fortunately the urge to power is less widespread than the sexual impulse. Otherwise the human race would have wiped itself out long ago. Many men and women have other interests or else are too lazy, too fastidious or too timid to take part in the struggle for power. Some positively prefer to have things arranged for them, to be told what to do. Others just want to be left alone. Whenever a group of human beings comes together - whether lastingly because they all live in the same village, or f1eetingly because they have been stranded for half a day in the transit lounge of some remote airport - these different human characteristics emerge. So me passively accept or wait. Others want to do something, to organise, to agitate. They often disagree about what should be done. The active argue among themselves, try to convert one another, attempt to mobilise support among the passive. That is politics. This book is concerned with one particular aspect of politics: the struggle within Britain, and the conventions that are supposed to regulate that struggle for power over the British people, British national politics. This is a broad subject with rat her fuzzy boundaries. People can start with much more limited ambitions - power in a town council, in a trade union, in so me commercial or industrial enterprise yet end by seeking to influence the conduct of the state or the destiny of the nation. If they do not, if they are content with a limited sphere of activity, concerned only to mind their own parochial business, then 1 shall have little to say about them. On the other hand, I shall not confine myself to the doings of ministers, members of parliament or 1