GOVERNMENT
John Davies and Parliament: Heath's silent verdict
ENOCH POWELL
The more the new organisation of Whitehall which now confronts the returning House of Commons is studied, the more strongly it reveals the determination to de-politicise government. By this I mean to insulate government decision from the political en- vironment and as far as possible to disinfect it politically altogether.
This will not be surprising to those who had pondered an earlier event in the format- ion of the new Conservative administration, which has not even yet received the analysis which it deserved. I refer to the fact that the new Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Mr John Davies, was appointed to the Cabinet a week or two after his first appearance in Parliament and a few months after his first becoming a parliamentary candidate. It is an event which, happily, can be discussed and studied without embarrass- ment or personal aspersion, because the relevant facts are undisputed and discredit- able to no one.
How remarkable and how significant this event was, is underlined by the curious irony that it was occasioned by the death of lain Macleod, the classic case in our genera- tion of a meteoric political rise. Yet Iain Macleod was appointed to office outside
the Cabinet (he had to wait a further three and a half years for the Cabinet) after more
than two years in Parliament, where he had won repeated distinction in debate, follow- ing on four years of parliamentary candi- dature and professional political work. The strange and unhappy story of Frank Cou- sins in the last two parliaments—the man brought straight into the Cabinet from trade union politics and thus into Parlia- ment—serves not to lessen but to enhance the significance of the Davies event. True, there seems to be a propensity in all new governments to imitate at the earliest mo- ment some of the most blatant mistakes of their predecessors; but, especially with so cool and deliberate an operator as Mr Heath, it simply will not do to shrug the action off with a half jest. From him, of all people, it is entitled to receive its full significance.
What is peculiar and almost unique about government in Britain is that it is truly par- liamentary: not in the literal and untenable sense that Parliament governs, but in the sense that men come to govern by way of Parliament, by way of the political arts which bring them to Parliament and keep them there, and by way of the parliamen- tary arts which enable them to survive in that assembly and, in one style or another, to predominate in it. These are arts which
are not communicable. Like other arts, a man may have more or less endowment to learn them, and the survival of the fittest will tend to winnow out those who have less; but learnt they must be, and time and the hard school of experience are the only tutors.
Parliamentary government, as I have de- fined it, assumes that the supreme function of government is to persuade and interpret: the man who cannot persuade the essential fraction of his own electorate who cannot persuade his fellow Members, who cannot persuade the House of Commons itself, is not, under this system, entrusted with exe- cutive power: Administrative competence, still less knowledge or experience in the subject matter of a department or depart- ments, weighs as dust in the scale; on the whole it counts the other way, as likely to render the essential function of lay leader- ship through political persuasion more difficult.
I am not claiming that this system is better or worse than any other. I am only characterising it. But such as it is, it is the system which we have long practised, and it is what the English mean by parliament- ary democracy. The exception is wartime, when a common national Will for a definite end and limited duration can be assumed. Then government becomes preeminently executive, and executive talent and accom- plishments replace as qualifications the power of political and parliamentary per- suasion. Hence, in war cabinets and in the years which immediately follow war, the ministers of non-parliamentary origin, the Kitcheners or the Bevins, who are the ex- ceptions that prove the rule. But the rule it is that runs like a connecting thread through British political life, from the first begin- nings of the teenager and the tyro to the ripe years of the 'old parliamentary hand', from the ward branch committee to the cabinet room.
On this system Mr Heath has given his silent but effective verdict. It is as if he had said in so many words that in his view (which is entitled to great weight, as coming from a long-serving parliamentarian and a former chief whip) experience of Parliament or of the political life is not requisite for discharging high office or participating in Cabinet government. He has thereby made it clear that for him government is not about what Parliament is about; for him government is about administration and expert professional knowledge or experi- ence, and not about politics and persuasion; for him, in the last analysis, government is about means and not ends.
When Caligula made his horse consul, he was telling the Roman senate what opinion he held about them and about government; and the Roman senate understood perfectly what he meant.
Previous page
