POLITICAL COMMENTARY
The Decline of the Pressure Group
By ALAN WATKINS
RL the present indications are that shortly after this piece appears the Plowden Com- mittee will recommend some measures of state intervention in the aircraft industry. Whereupon the industry (or certain sections of it) will, of course, grumble; the Opposition will make what capital it can out of the word nationalisation; while the Government, for its part, will feel slightly embarrassed at receiving so radical a prescription from so respectable a source. How- ever, the cause of this embarrassment will be not so much the fury of the aircraft lobby as the possible electoral effect of any suggestion of further nationalisation. As the disputes over the TSR 2 and HS 681 aircraft showed, the aircraft industry is now, politically speaking, a negligible force. And there is a wider political moral here. For it is not only the aircraft industry which is less powerful than it was, say, five years ago. Many other lobbies are in the same condition. Pressure groups, in short, are not what they used to be.
One might not think so if one relied on the academic literature alone. In the late 'fifties and early 'sixties a whole spate of books on pressure groups rolled from the presses. Lobbies became a reputable, indeed a fashionable, subject for study : a small but flourishing university growth industry was established. Some of these books were concerned with particular pressure groups, such as the British Legion or the BMA; others (Professor S. E. Finer's Anonymous Empire is a readable example) were more general; most were excellent; many were written by Americans. Though these works differed widely in scope and content, a common theme emerged. We were told that pressure groups, far from being somehow sinister—the 'vested interests' of the old Liberals and Radicals—were, on the contrary, both in- evitable and desirable in an advanced industrial democracy. This attitude was summarised and put in its most extreme form in Dr. Bernard Crick's In Defence of Politics. For not only did Dr. Crick say that the representation of interests was natural and beneficial in a free political society. He went further : he defined a free political society solely in terms of the representation and reconciliation of interests. This, wrote Dr. Crick, was what free politics was about, and nothing more.
Many observers, particularly Professor Samuel Beer in his invaluable Modern British Politics, have given great weight to the work that was done on pressure groups in the peOod 1958-62. But things have changed since then. The old analyses no longer quite fit the facts. Though spokesmen for groups may still be invited along to ministries to discuss the minor details of legislation, though interests may still be given representation on various committees, the power of the lobby has declined. The following examples provide some evidence of this. In each of them a pressure group goes reeling backwards once it is confronted by a determined govern- ment : (i) In abolishing resale price maintenance Mr. Edward Heath chose to oppose a defined group, the small shopkeepers—a group, moreover, which was traditionally attached to the Con- servatives. In acting as he did, Mr. Heath was not responding to any pressure from inside his own party : quite the reverse. Nor was he be- having as the spokesman of a rival interest group in the multiple shopkeepers: for there is no evi- dence that the large shops pressed for the change. Nor, again, was Mr. Heath responding to any shift of public opinion in favour of abolishing rpm. No, Mr. Heath banged the table in Cabinet because (and I am delighted at last to be able to pay some tribute to him) he believed that what he was doing was right. And, in the end, Mr. Heath won hands down.
(ii) It was for some years an article of British political faith that the farming community was an enormously potent electoral force, on no account to be seriously offended. Quite why this should have been thought is difficult to deter- mine; for farmers are small in number, and are in any case Conservatives almost to a man, so there is not much point in a Labour government being unduly tender towards them. Be this as it may, both Labour and Conservative parties were for a long time scared stiff of the farmers. Along comes Mr. Fred Peart, who produces a price re- view that is not to the NFU's taste. The farmers protest; they present live chickens to Mr. Peart, and plaster their trees and hedges with posters. It all has no effect. Mr. Peart behaves with great firmness and politeness, and the farmers retreat ignominiously.
(iii) As Mr. Francis Boyd noted in the Guardian earlier this week, hardly any real atten- tion has been given to the policy of pit closures foreshadowed by Mr. George Brown in his national plan, and already being put into opera- tion by Mr. Fred Lee. The political consequences could be much greater than anyone supposes. The Communist party might well find itself a beneficiary, as might the Liberal party, to which the miners for a long time remained faithful. But for the purposes of the present argument, the im- portant aspect to pit closures is that they present the spectacle of an almost legendary pressure group—the NUM—behaving completely in- effectually in the face of a firm governmental decision. Where is the miners' well-known mili- tancy? Where are all those sponsored MPs we have read so much about? There is hardly a whisper to be heard.
(iv) One can regard the case of the NUM as an illustration of something much wider—the in- creasingly aggressive attitude adopted by both Mr. Brown and Mr. Ray Gunter towards the trade unions. Certainly this attitude would have been unthinkable even as recently as two years ago. Old union hands have been known to look back wistfully to those days when the pacific Sir Walter Monckton held gentle sway at the Ministry of Labour, and Sir Winston Churchill plied the lads with Scotch at Number Ten. Even Mr. Harold Macmillan, even Mr. Macmillan talking about the sacrifices of Passchendaele, had his points. At least there was no suspicion that he was going to tear the trade unions apart and then put them together again in a different way.
(v) Mr. Brown again, this time in his relations with manufacturers. On the whole he has been remarkably successful in keeping prices down. He has accomplished this by exhortation; or, if you prefer to put it slightly differently, by bullying. There has been no bargain, no quid pro quo. The manufacturers' pressure groups have simply done what the Government wanted them to do.
(vi) The entire local government complex is a most formidable pressure group, or was thought to be so. Yet Mr. Richard Crossman has said +113 without qualification that he intends to abolish the rating system. He has said further that the whole structure of local government in this country needs to be remodelled. He has made these contentious remarks without engaging in that consultation with the interests involved which, according to the writers on pressure groups, is one of the main features of govern- ment in this country.
(vii) We may recall Sir Edward Boyle's victory over the teachers' union on the question of differential payments.
(viii) There is the case of Mr. Roy Jenkins and the aircraft industry cited at the beginning of this article.
Clearly a shift has occurred in governmental attitudes towards pressure groups. What is the explanation? It would be flattering, but mislead- ing, to say that we are observing some intrepid ministers, with nothing but the public interest in mind, firmly standing up to selfish groups. But what has happened is more complicated than this. At least two major forces can be isolated, and the parties have responded to these forces. First of all, prosperity has resulted in a growing number of citizens seeing themselves as con- sumers rather than producers—all the formerly powerful pressure groups are producers' associa- tions. Secondly, the whole notion of a managed, producers' economy—that economy which had its origins in the late nineteenth century, reached its apogee in the 'thirties and persisted into the 'fifties—is increasingly being called in question. The whole trouble with Britain, we are now told, is that too many industrial matters have for too long been arranged behind closed doors so that the producers, employers and workers alike, can have a quiet life. Competition—Powellism, if you prefer it—has been adopted as a policy by both parties, though Mr. Powell himself may be sur- prised to hear this. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath now agree that we must all work harder and not be artificially protected. Which is a way of say- ing that the great age of the pressure group is over.
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