Pressure Groups
By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'THERE are only two questions in politics, said 1 Lenin : Who? Whom? That persons who wish the Government to favour an interest or an opinion should organise in order to achieve their purpose is inevitable and -natural. There is only more organisation today than in the past because in our modern world of large numbers and greater complexity the pressure which in former times was brought by an independent aristocrat now comes through a regular society. There are today pressure groups—as Mr. Stewart perhaps not very happily calls them*—broadly of two sorts : those of occupation, as, for instance, of dentists or a trade union or an employers' federation; and those of opinion, those who want to abolish capital punishment or field sports or to establish equal pay. But it is not very interest- ing to note the existence of pressure groups. What is much more interesting is to see upon whom they exercise their pressure, for, discovering that, we discover where such people at any rate imagine power truly to reside.
I am sure that Mr. Stewart is right in saying that the most effective and intelligent of such pressures are not on Parliament but on civil ser- vants and Ministers in their departments. The relevant organisations have succeeded in estab- lishing 'a right of consultation' by which new policies are not adopted except after consulta- tion. Where they are so adopted, it is made a matter of complaint. The pressure group does not seek to influence Parliament. It seeks to sell its policy to the Minister,' who then goes down to Parliament and imposes it on Parliament. The pressure group is confident that, whatever agree- ments may be made between Parliament and • it, will be accepted by the House of Commons, which will accept anything that it is ordered to accept by the Whips. If a Member of Parliament tries to ask questions before the negotiations be- * BRITISH PRESSURE GROUPS. By J. D. Stewart. (O.U.P., 30s.) tween the Minister and the pressure group are completed, he is fobbed off with 'Discussions are still proceeding' or 'It would not be in the public interest to make a statement at this stage' That is the general pattern and, in so far as it is true, it is but one among many examples of the eclipse of Parliament in recent years. What is much more interesting is to ask why pressure groups ever bother with Members of Parliament at all and whether there are any examples of any group getting any advantage through bothering with them. A Member of Parliament is, of course, of use as a messenger boy of private grievances.
A constituent who has suffered an injustice is well advised to bring it to the notice of his Member, who has a channel of entry to the Minister and can, therefore, see to it that the injustice is con- sidered. But when the adoption of policy is in question the Member has very little power. He can, of course, glibly promise to support the policy, but he has little chance of getting it adopted unless the Government decides to adopt it, and, whatever promises he may make, he is 'unlikely vociferously to persist in. demanding the policy if his party comes out against it. The op- portunities of free votes and Private Members' Bills are limited and, such as they are, amount to little, since it is rare indeed for a Private Mem- ber's Bill to get to the statute book unless the Government wishes it to get there.
Why, then, do pressure groups bother with Members of Parliament at all?
It is, as Hilaire Belloc once said, always con- sidered in very bad taste to ascribe to anyone 'unworthy—that is to say, serious—motives.' But we cannot understand the working of the pres- sure system unless we allow for motives which everyone knows to be potent but to which it is considered bad form to refer. In so far as the object of the exercise is to achieve a change of policy, everyone knows that the greater part of the lobbying of Members, of Parliament by officers of various organisations is wholly futile. But human nature wants not merely to achieve ends but to seem to be achieving ends—to seem so both to other people and to oneself. The back- bench Member of Parliament knows very well that he has no influence on the policy of his party. He has nothing at all to do but to sit there and from time to time walk through the division lobby, and the Whips would like him all the better if that was all that he ever aspired to do. But total, permanent inactivity is intolerable, and it salves his pride if every now and again he is able to ask a question or to make a speech, even though in his heart of hearts he knows well enough that nothing will ever come of them. So, too, with the organisations that seek to bring pressure. These organisations have their con- stituents and their officers. Of most of them it is a very open question whether there is any real sense in their existence. If they are to go on and the officers to keep their positions, then the officers must appear to their constituents to be active. What gives a greater appearance of activity than being able to point to a question in the House? So there is a curious underground, per- haps subconscious, alliance between back-bench Members and secretaries of societies to keep 'each other in occupation.
Mr. Stewart gives an exhaustive list of the pressure groups that have sought to exercise in- fluence on Members of Parliament since the war. He has no difficulty in showing that the over- whelming majority of them, as opposed to those who have sought to influence Ministers, have achieved nothing. Is the total achievement abso- lutely nil? The only occasion on which, I think, the House of Commons has forced on to the statute book a measure which the Government was reluctant to see there was the Homicide Bill. The abolitionists got less than they wanted but a great deal more than the Government wished them to get, but that, if an important victory for Parliament over the Government, was not a vic- tory for a pressure group. Whatever the activities of such a• body as the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, popular pressure was rather against them for altering the law.
The Lord's Day Observance Society is sometimes credited with the exercise of successful pressure. Certainly, whenever the House of Commons had a vote about the relaxation of the Sunday laws, there was a deluge of letters and postcards from members of the society (Mr. Stewart, curiously enough, praises the society for encouraging its members to send individual letters and postcards. All that. I received from them were word-for- word identical), and in fact Parliament has voted against relaxation and many Members have been surprisingly found in the division lobby to sup- port laws in condemnation of Sunday habits which they would not think twice about indulging in in their private lives. Yet the postwar govern- ments—at least the Home Secretaries—ha 'e never been in favour of changing the Sunday laws. It is doubtful whether they would have been Changed whether the Lord's Day Observance Society bad carried out its propaganda or not.
In the same way there was pressure brought in favour of equal pay, and in the end equal pay Was conceded. But was it conceded because of the pressure or because both the party machines Wanted it and therefore allowed the agitation to succeed? It would be hard to say. Politicians are very subtle. The less they intend to surrender to Public agitation, the more careful they are to make it appear, every now and again, that they are surrendering to public agitation. The ores- Sure group can only claim a victory for certain Where it has lobbied Members against the Government and the Government has had to Withdraw its policy. On this test pressure groups have since the war won two clear victories, to set against many defeats—the withdrawal of 'C' licences from the Socialist Government's road transport nationalisation scheme and the with- drawal by the Conservative Government of its teachers' superannuation scheme. Why the Socialist Government surrendered about 'C' licences I have never understood. The NUT's cam- paign against the first superannuation scheme Was successful—largely owing to the inept way la which the Ministry of Education handled its case and to her colleagues' failure to support the Minister. But the only result of success was that a new scheme, the same except in details, was brought in two years later and passed without very much fuss.
The conclusion, then, is that Parliament has been since the war and is today a place of small importance. He who wants to influence policy must go to the Minister or to his civil servants and, so long as the claims of party loyalty are accepted as absolute—so long as a Member always votes as his Whip tells him, on the argu- ment that the supreme calamity is a Government of the other party, and so long as in the con- stituencies all candidates that question the party line are rejected by their executives and all candi- dates that stand as independents or for third parties are rejected by the electorate—it is in- evitable that it should be so. But the situation may change. There are certain signs abroad that an increasing number of voters are coming to look on the two party machines as themselVes the great enemies and to refuse to allow each any longer to use the other as a bogeyman. If that should happen, it will be interesting to see whether we shall be able to introduce any coherent form of self-government into this country.
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