THE PARTY MACHINE M R. WRIGHT, the Independent Conservative candidate in
the East Norfolk election, has with- drawn from the field, and the Government can rest assured there will be no split in the ranks of its some- what restive supporters. It is doubtful whether the electors of East Norfolk will regard Mr. Wright's retire- ment with equal satisfaction. There will be no 'repre- sentative for those who, like Docking the butler, think it " reasonable that an agricultural constituency should return an agriculturist." On another page of the Spectator Major Athill expresses some of the feelings of the local electors at the thought that it is not they who should choose their candidate for Parliament ; many others have expressed their resentment at having a complete stranger thrust on the constituency and even more at misrepresentations of the situation which have appeared in London papers pledged to support of the official National Liberal candidate, Mr. Medlicott, a London lawyer, who, with a past record as seasoned free-trader and anti-coalition Liberal, presents him- self as an appropriate representative for the farmers of East Norfolk.
It may be said that all this is a fuss about nothing, The National Government is a coalition and it is necessary to maintain the delicate balance of its constituent groups. The task of the Government's supporters is to see that this balance is maintained, not to worry about agricultural policy ; and the political experts in London are better fitted than mere voters to choose a representative for East Norfolk. And, after all, Mr. Wright was perfectly free to stand if he chose ; he had only to resist the pressure brought upon him at mysterious interviews in London, realise that though a Conservative he could hope for nothing but opposition from the official Conservative organisation, and run the risk of splitting the party in East Norfolk and detaching enough votes for the Labour candidate to get in.
One may think as one pleases of such arguments ; but they seem to show a certain contempt for the repre- sentative theory of democracy. If pushed to their conclusion, they mean that a Member of Parliament is not meant to represent his constituents ; he is merely a willing ox chosen by the party machine. And whom does the party machine represent ? It represents, pre- sumably, those who support the party funds. They pay their money and they take the machine's choice. Both the Conservative and the Labour party organisations operate on this principle. The Labour party candidates are decided, as is well known, very largely by the Trade Unions, who contribute the bulk of the party's funds, and this "dictatorship " of the trade unions has aroused protest from within and without the party. Yet this method of dictation has at least this much justification : that by the nature of their organisation the trade union would find it difficult to impose on constituencies candi- dates with no knowledge of local interests and that their decisions are not actuated by other motives than the political qualifications of the candidate.
This has been pointed out lately by a young Con- servative candidate, Mr. Ian Harvey, and he also declared that it was not the case with the Conservative machine. Seats, he said, are divided into three grades ; safe, promising or possible, and hopeless. The last are reserved for young men with political ambition and talent but no money ; the first two are distributed according to the ability of candidates to contribute to party funds and bear the heavy expenses of an election. Mr. Harvey's criticisms are serious ; but no one has troubled to deny them. The Prime Minister, it is reported, is gravely concerned ; and indeed when he surveys the packed and dependable ranks of the Government majority in the House of Commons he must sometimes wonder where the recruits for future Cabinets are to come from and whether the present method of selecting candidates is the best method of ensuring that either the King's Government or the Conservative party is carried on.
It is important, however, that these criticisms should not be exaggerated. Party government could not exist without efficient and powerful party machines. It is even necessary that they should have a decisive influence on local associations if there is to be unity and cohesion of party policy, and a restriction on the growth of splinter parties which represent no one because they create a situation in which, as in Weimar-Germany, party government can no longer operate efficiently. But the power of the party machine is, as it should be, limited by reponsibility not merely to supporters but to the demo- cratic system itself.
If one of the two political machines in this country chooses candidates mainly for their wealth, and the other for their trade union loyalty, there is a danger that great masses of the people may find themselves virtually disfranchised ; indeed, there are signs, in the dissatisfac- tion of large numbers of electors with both parties capable of forming a government, that this has already occurred. There is a further danger that politics may become a mere matter of manipulation, that politicians, satisfied to depend on the power of the machine, lose contact with their constituents and cease to voice their demands and beliefs. A ghostly political world is created, detached from what Mr. Maurras has called " the real country."
In a recently published book by Mass Observation,:= * Britain. Penguin Special. 6d. it is asserted that a profound gulf exists between the House of Commons and the country it is meant to represent. A cursory reading of the pages of Hansard shows how much truth there is in this charge ; how rarely the unspoken wishes of millions find their authentic voice in Parliament. The duty of party organisations is to see that this gulf is narrowed, that the party is sensitive and responsive to every movement of opinion in the innumerable local groups to which the party in Parliament is responsible. If this duty is not performed, the party machine must degenerate into a mere autocracy, with the function of suppressing, not expressing, opinion, and Parliament into a body which has lost the virtues of representative democracy, though all its failings remain. We have seen enough of what happens when Parliaments are discredited.
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