Tory Democracy at Westminster
By ANGUS
MAUDE, MP
A T the time of the Suez crisis, I remember snnoticing that there were nine Ministers responsible for defence matters, and that of these eight were Old Etonians and one was an Old Harrovian. I can clearly recall the irritation aroused in me by the intrusion of this Harrovian, who turned out to be a peer of whom I had not previously heard. It seemed to me that if Old Etonians were all that good at defence, it was silly not to do the job properly and make it 100 per cent. As it turned out, they weren't all that good at it, but this is not really the point.
The prevalence of Old Etonians in modern Conservative Governments has caught the fancy of many observers, both prejudiced and impartial. My friend Christopher Hollis, himself an Etonian, wrote about it in the Spectator not long ago, and modestly concluded that there was no obvious reason why a Rugbeian should not make as good a Minister as one of his old school friends. Al- though peculiarly gratified by this conclusion, I could not help feeling that it obscured the real issue, which is whether the Old School Tie and the Family Connection do really exercise an influence on the Conservative Party that seriously damages its efficiency and its appeal.
The presenf Government consists of some seventy Ministers, not counting odd Whips. Of these seventy, about ten could be called 'self- made,' in the sense that they were born into the working class or thereabouts and have risen to the top without birth, influence or an old school tie. The remainder are upper- or middle-class men edu- cated at public schools, with Eton contributing far more than any other school. This roughly reflects the balance in the parliamentary party as a whole, although the proportion of Etonians is certainly higher in the Ministry than on the back benches. The explanation of this is perfectly simple. The men most likely to enter the House of Commons are those who can afford to devote most time to politics; and of all those who get into the House the ones who can afford to devote most time to politics are most likely to get to the top. On the whole, the Etonians have more money and more time for politics than the rest. This is a broad generalisation, but it is broadly true.
Even so, the position has changed materially since the war. Before 1945 it was all but impos- sible for a man of moderate means to become a Conservative MP. From 1950 onwards, the intro- duction of the so-called 'Maxwell Fyfe Rules,' forbidding Tory candidates to pay any of their own election expenses and limiting the size of their subscriptions to local Conservative Associa- tions, has resulted in a considerable influx of youngish middle-class business and professional men who are far from being rich. This reform has markedly diminished the number of elderly tycoons in the party, but not the proportion of leisured Etonians—for a very simple reason. Constituency Associations, debarred from de- manding money of their parliamentary candi- dates, demand (not unreasonably) much more of their time. An absentee Member can no longer keep his supporters sweet with large subscrip- tions to their funds. Since the actual business of the House of Commons also demands far more time than it did before the war, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find men of quality who can devote the necessary time to politics. There are many Members in the present House, with developing careers and young families, who are finding life extremely difficult, while the financial position of junior Ministers is a notorious scandal.
Complaints on this score are frequently met by the easy answer that nobody has to be a Member of Parliament, and that there are plenty of people willing to take the place of the present ones. Two observations may be made about this. The first is that the present Members were chosen by their constituency Conservative Associations in prefer- ence to these others, and are therefore presumably of higher quality or, at the least, more congenial to* their supporters. The second is that such a change would almost certainly result in an even higher proportion of leisured Old Etonians.
When people say that the Conservative Party in the House of Commons 'ought to be made more democratic,' they mean one of two things. They mean either that the average intelligence and ability of Tory MPs ought to be higher than it is (with the implication that it is the old school tie that keeps it lower than it might be), or that the composition of the parliamentary party ought to correspond more nearly, in its range of incomes and soCial class, to the composition of the party in the country at large. Both these propositions are probably—though not certainly—true; to those who consider them self-evident, I would merely suggest that a parliamentary party con- sisting entirely of very clever men would be the devil to run and might prove extremely danger- ous. However, I am perfectly certain that neither of these reforms, however desirable in modera- tion, is at all possible while the work and remuneration of Members of Parliament remain what they are today. It is not the party leaders, nor the party machine, that are responsible for perpetuating the shortcomings of the parliamen- tary party. It is the modern parliamentary system that is at fault.
Moreover, only a diminution of the amount of parliamentary work will really solve this problem. Unless we return to a period of big electoral swings, involving very large parliamentary majorities, this can probably be achieved only by a strong reaction against the modern system of minutely detailed legislative control over the whole range of the nation's activities. Since this is unlikely, we are left with the second-best alternative of substantially increasing the re- muneration of MPs, which will certainly be unpopular and may well prove to have certain disadvantages. If the increase is not substantial, it will have practically no effect on the problem we have been discussing. If it is substantial, it will probably improve the quality of Conservative Members and certainly introduce a wider variety of social class and extra-parliamentary income. But it will bring us at one bound into the age of the professional politician, and not everyone looks forward to that with enthusiasm. It will also greatly increase the degree of dependence on the favour of the Whips and the party machine. A man who readjusts his life so that the greater part of his income is derived from being a Member of Parliament will 'not be anxious to risk being thrown out.
This last point is really important. My observa- tions in the last seven years have convinced me of the vital need to retain in Parliament a sub- stantial number of men with sufficient financial independence to enable them to take a politically independent line at need. Heaven knows they do it seldom enough in fact; but it is a real and salutary check on the Executive and the machine to know that in the last resort there are those who could, and might, rebel without fear of the consequences. I hope, and believe, that there will always be a few 'undemocratic' constituency Conservative Associations willing to select candi- dates of this kind.
From all this it will no doubt have appeared that I consider the need for reform to have been somewhat exaggerated, and that I am not par- ticularly optimistic about, the chances of any marked improvement. If there is to be an improve- ment in this particular field, it will have to be a natural and gradual development starting from the constituency Associations that select the candidates. An attempt to impose a 'reform' from above might well prove disastrous.
In any case, I am doubtful whether the Con- servative Party would gain greatly in electoral appeal if its parliamentary representatives were more socially heterogeneous. I often hear it said that we ought to have more 'working-class MPs,' but strangely enough it is always said by upper- or middle-class people. I strongly suspect that the very act of becoming a Conservative MP would in most cases totally nullify the very qualities and advantages that make a working man appear attractive as a parliamentary candidate. There is, however, one type of Conservative Member that seems to me outstandingly valuable, and whose numbers I should like to see increased. That is the man, born into the working or lower-middle class, who has risen by ability and hard work in industry to a position of financial independence. He generally makes a most efficient and useful Member, and gives the Whips hell into the bar- gain, which is all to the good.
Incidentally, I hope that one of these days someone will analyse the social problems of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which I suspect are becoming steadily more acute; for they have two aristocracies, of the trade unions and of the intelligentsia, and both at daggers drawn.
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