Our Constituents and Edmund Burke
By LORD HINCHINGBROOKE, M.P.
44 ERTAINLY, gentlemen, it ought to be the happi- ness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constit- uents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinon, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. " To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authori- tative instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judge- ment and conscience—these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution."* Burke's relations with the electors of Bristol well justified the immortal words he used, for it was indeed at that time a pure political democracy that characterised his representation. The secret channels of privilege and power lay elsewhere. In 1774 a Member of Parliament did not even lie under the charge of the 1920s that he had bought his seat. He merely received it, as talented proteges in the arts and sciences received their commissions, from the great territorial patricians. Having got the seat he held on to it by a judicious mixture of ability in Parliament and ingratiation with his patron. It was, signifi- candy, not to the proprietors of pocket boroughs that Burke delivered his famous address, but to the people he had been nominated to represent.
* Works of Edmund Burke, World'q Classic Series, Vol. 11, pp. 164 seq. It is, to say the least of it, doubtful whether the modern electorate, supporting either great party, would now receive the wisdom of Burke from the mouths of their Members of Parliament with enthusiasm and understanding. And if the many did, a few in every constituency would not. They would fret and fidget. For have these few " close supporters," as they are styled, not chosen the Member in the first place ? Have they not nurtured him and counselled him since he first appeared in swaddling clothes ? And do they not now find all the money that publicises him and his party's policies in between elections and pay for the machinery that puts him at the top of the poll ? In the run of a business-man's day the rule is that he that pays the piper calls the-tune. An execu- tive sent on a business errand must do the firm's work or be dismissed.
The modern constituency organisation is master of many subjects. Except for three weeks in four and a half years the agent and the office staff are its servants. The candidates in local elections are selected and sponsored. If they insist on independence in the Council they are often fought and defeated. The party literature that comes into the constituency-office in bulk is disseminated to branch chairmen and secretaries on a military plan. It is read and absorbed, and in due course builds up a corpus of political ideas, paying its dividends in full- throated unanimity at any meeting of the keener spirits. Any deviating individual or doctrine immediately assumes a doubt- ful hue.
Cash, organisation and ideas are what make a business successful. Loyalty, co-operation and discipline are what win battles. Are politics so different ? There are still many who say " In the war we did without politics. Must we have it now, and especially with the cold war going on ? " The thought is infinitely acceptable to many who in the war gave devoted national service. What the country still needs, they feel, is leadership, unity and strength. No enterprise can survive with- out team-work. How right they are ! And yet. . . . And yet. . . . " Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different interests which interests each must maintain as an agent and advocate against other agents and advocates. Parliament is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole. . . . 'If a constituent should have an opinion evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far as any other from any endeaysur to give it effect."
The theme here is a two-way traffic of ideas. It postulates automatically the independence of the Member and clothes him with the armoury of dissent and criticism. Guidance he may well receive, but in the end he is isolated and alone in deciding on the great issues of Authority and Freedom. In the hour of action no one can command his judgement.
One of the constitutional rights of the Sovereign is the right to " warn " his Ministers. One of the constitutional duties of a Member of Parliament is the duty to advise, educate and influ- ence his constituency supporters. For a Member merely to carry out the mandates of his leading constituents would cause intellectual chaos to reign in Parliament and paralyse the Commonweal. It is for the Member and the Member alone to judge when he should support Executive Government in its perpetual demands upon the peoples' liberties and when he should be a suppliant to Government for the return of those liberties. The account of his stewardship is returnable at a general election or at a by-election at his choice and not before.
How far this undoubted constitutional position can be main- tained in the face of the steady transfer of privilege and power to constituency political associations is one of the emerging problems of our times. At present the elective principle pre- vails at all stages from the casual party-subscriber t,) permanent senior office-holders. The nominative princip'e. upon which one may suppose that eighteenth-century parlia- mentarians selected their tight little bands of party stalwart, and supporters, has today been entirely eliminated. No one would wish to see those days return. A just and reasonable compromise must be arrived at. A just and workable coin- promise has been arrived at in the higher realms of government. The entire membership of the Government and certain other party offices are at the disposal of the Prime Minister or leader of the party. The elective principle runs no higher, in the Conservative Party at any rate, than the chairmanship of all the party committees in Parliament when the party is in power and the Vice-Chairmanship of all but one when it is in opposi- tion. There is at present no call for such solutions to be applied in constituency associations and certainly not by overall regula- tion or rule of thumb. May it be said only that circumstances differ so widely in every division that local compromises of differing character should be sought in the interests of mutual good fellowship and the utmost strength and coherence of the organisation as a whole.
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