CONSTITUENCIES AFTER COURTNEY Trouble at the Grass Roots

By ALAN WATKINS

ON Monday a mass meeting of the East Harrow Conservative Association dis- regarded the views of its officers and passed a resolution urging that Commander Anthony Courtney should be re-adopted as candidate. this was by any standards a notable decision. Would Walter Bagehot have approved, one wonders? In one respect, he probably would have approved, since at the end of the day the sitting Member was vindicated. But would he have approved of the method which produced the result? Probably not: for Bagehot was loud in his condemnation of constituency government. 'Constituency government,' he wrote, 'is the pre- zise opposite of parliamentary government. It is the government of immoderate persons far from the scene of action, instead of the government of moderate persons close to the scene of action; it is the judgment of persons judging in the last resort and without a penalty, in lieu of persons judging in fear of a dissolution and ever con- scious that they are subject to an appeal.'

When Bagehot wrote this, the organisation of local constituency parties had not assumed its present form. In our own day the opportunities for putting pressure upon MPs are greater than they were in his day. And there are signs—they are as yet no more than signs—that local parties are growing more conscious of their power to get rid of Members who are not to their taste. Sometimes the attempt to get rid of a Member succeeds, sometimes not. Since the last election we have had the cases not only of Commander Courtney at Harrow but also of Mr. Aubrey limes at Hall Green. Mr. Woodrow Wyatt at Bosworth and Mr. William Warbey at Ash- field. There has also been a case of a con- stituency refusing--to re-adopt an MP who had lost his scat at the election. This happened when the Brighton. Kemp Town. Tories refused to re- adopt Mr. David James. (They also turned down Mr. James's predecessor as Member for the division, the eccentric Mr. Howard Johnson.) Of course, unrest in local parties is no new thing. There were numerous examples prior to the 1964 Parliament. However,. no systematic attempt seems to have been made by the party headquarter, to define the circumstances in which a local party may (politically speaking) dispose of its Member. This omission to provide any guidance is typical of the whole relationship be- tween headquarters and the various constituency parties.

Nor is this the only difficulty about providing general guidance. For along with the myth of local autonomy there goes • another myth which is in practice opposed to it--the idea (deriving perhaps from a misunderstanding of Burke) that it is somehow faintly shabby conduct to tell an MP that he is not satisfactory. Indeed this idea finds partial recognition in the model rules for total Labour parties. These rules go out of their way to protect a sitting MPs position. They pro- vide that if a constituency is already represented by a Labour MP. normal selection procedure ;hall be suspended unless '(a) such representative -ndicates his or her intention to retire, or lb) he General Committee on securing a mandate from its affiliated and party organisations inti- mates by resolution its desire that he or she must

retire.' There is a similar understanding in the Conservative party, except in Ulster, where before each election the Member has to present himself for re-selection.

Yet though local parties are given no general guidance about the circumstances in which they can try to dislodge a Member, it is possible to deduce a few principles from the cases that have actually occurred since the last war. These prin- ciples are, it is true, fairly rough and ready, and it is possible to find exceptions to them: but we must do the best we can.

First of all, it might be as well to say what local parties do not do. They do not issue instruc- tions or make suggestions to Members about which side they should take on questions dis- posed of by a free vote. (Oddly enough—or per- haps not so oddly—the only politician I have heard cast doubt on the sovereignty of conscience in free-vote issues is Mr. Harold Wilson. Before the last election he was asked on Independent Television what the Labour party's attitude was towards reform of the law on abortion. Mr. Wil- son replied that the party, as a party, had no attitude, but that he would expect MPs to sound their constituents and vote accordingly.) I should doubt whether many MPs received even queries from their constituency parties as to how they could vote on Mr. Berkeley's recent Bill.

But this is not to say that, in local Conserva- tive associations, votes in favour of libertarian or 'Home Office' measures pass unnoticed. On the contrary, Sir Edward Boyle and Mr. Nigel Nicolson became unpopular with their constitu- ency parties because of their opposition not only to the Suez operation but to capital punishment. `Dear Sir Edward,' lamented his agent at the time, 'if only, but if only you'd been sound on capital punishment.' And Mr. Nicolson, it will be recalled, modified his attitude on capital punish- ment—profitlessly, as it turned out—when his position as MP was threatened.

Indeed, this undoubted Conservative sensitivity on hanging and homosexuals is an illustration of a wider principle, applicable to both parties. This principle is that local organisations are touchy on a limited range of questions: for example. libertarianism and loyalty to the leader in the case of the Conservatives, nationalisation in the case of Labour. Major unorthodoxies can pass unremarked and unreproached. It is doubtful, for instance, whether one constituency party in a hundred cares tuppence about its Member's pre- cise views on incomes policy or the future of sterling as an international reserve currency or even Britain's defence role in the Far East. As Mr. John Biffen, the Conservative MP for Oswestry, once put it, 'Constituency associations are rarely concerned with the finer points of party policy. Parliamentary candidates are frequently chosen on an almost charmingly non-political basis.' And this indifference largely persists after the candidates have become Members.

It will be observed that the questions which agitate local parties are not only limited in scope; they also cover the middle area of the general political spectrum. That is to say, the MPs who get into trouble are on the whole moderate in their views: they are either progressive Conser- vatives (like Sir Edward Boyle or Mr. Anthony Nutting or Mr. Aubrey Jones or Mr. Nicolson) or right-wing Socialists (like Mr. Wyatt). None of the old Suez group found himself in trouble-- except recently for Mr. Angus Maude, and that was for different reasons, as we all know.

This pattern, however, should not be thought of as a rigid one. It is subject to the more im- portant principle that any MP, whatever his views, whether he is a left-wing Conservative or a right-wing Socialist, can establish himself securely if he is personally liked by the constitu- ency party. The outstanding example is perhaps Mr. Desmond Donnelly. From time to time Mr. Donnelly takes it upon himself to say the most outrageous things. There are murmurs of pro- test down in Pembrokeshire, rumours that he. is in 'serious trouble with his party'; and then sud- denly it is all over. Mr. Donnelly goes down to Haverfordwest, utters a few well-chosen words to a meeting of the local party and comes back on the night train to Paddington with a unani- mous vote of confidence under his pillow.

How does he manage it? For one thing, Mr. Donnelly makes a point of 1..ttending every monthly meeting of his party's general manage- ment committee. (The meetings, unlike those of other constituencies' GMCs, are held at the week- end, so that the Member can conveniently get to them.) For another thing, Mr. Donnelly has the reputation of being an exceptionally active constituency MP. Above all, he has his agent on his side—and in a local Labour party the agent is comparable in importance to a Conserv,''ve constituency chairman.

But the case of Mr. Donnelly is perhaps illus- trative of something else: that at a local level the Labour party is more tolerant than the Con- servative. This assertion may seem surprising. Is not Labour the party of expulsions and standing orders and disciplinary committees and rumours of Trots? So of course it is. And local Labour parties are more tolerant of their MPs (this tolerance, as the recently expelled Mr. Ken Coates will testify, is hardly extended to non- Members), not because of any superior virtue on their part, but because of the control exercised from the top of the party.

First, the steely inquisitors of Transport House, single-minded heresy-hunters such as Miss Alice Bacon, Mrs. Bessie Braddock and Miss Sara Barker, both 'validate' a nomination for a seat and endorse the final selection. Thus unde- sirables (though chiefly, it must be added, sup- posed undesirables of the left) are kept out at the beginning. Afterwards, when the candidate becomes an MP, he is made subject to much more stringent discipline than any Conservative. So, in a sense, the local parties' repressive work is done for them, bOth by Transport House and by the Whips.

Again, Transport House can intimidate a local party much more effectually than can Central Office if the party tries to dispose of a locally unwanted, but officially valued, MP. It is pro- vided that the Labour party's National Executive Committee may 'vary the procedure for the selec- tion of parliamentary candidates otherwise than is provided in the rules of the party' or 'effect a change in the relationship of . . . constituency parties with the Labour party.' This latter pro- vision means that a refractory local Labour party may be closed down if it tries to ,reject an MP who is favoured by the national leadership. This threat was effectively employed when the Liver- pool Exchange party tried to oust Mrs. Brad- dock. But Transport House does not intervene when every MP's position is menaced. It did not move to help Mr. Stanley Evans after he had become unpopular through his support of the Conservative government's Suez policy.

We may note another reason, not for the com- parative tolerance of local Labour parties, but for the faintly proprietorial attitude which some Conservative associations assume towards their Members. Prior to the Maxwell Fyfe report of 1948, Conservative MPs often made substantial contributions to local party funds. Following the report, contributions were restricted to £50 a year from MPs and £25 from candidates. The dangers of this were pointed out at the 1948 party conference, ironically enough by Mr. Aubrey Jones. 'When our Members and candi dates paid the piper,' said Mr. Jones, 'they were able to some extent to whistle their own tune. Now the constituency associations and Central Office are goin, to pay the piper, may I ask them very solemnly to declare this afternoon that in this matter of calling the tune they will exercise a very proper restraint?'

Mr. Jones's view is echoed by the official notes on procedure for local associations: 'It was simple for an MP to maintain his independence when he was footing the bill for the local organi- sation. Now that the association pays it must not regard the candidate or MP as an employee.' Alas, there is evidence that some associations regard him in precisely this way.

However, one does not want to be too hard on local Conservative associations. There is a disposition on the part of many liberal commen- tators to say that any attempt to dismiss an MP is reprehensible whatever the circumstances. Yet there is not the slightest reason why any Member should regard himself as haying a claim in per- petuity upon the loyalty of a constituency party. What has been wrong in the past is that MPs have been ousted by cliques and by hole-in- corner methods. Recently, however, the Conser- vatives have been ahead of Labour in making use of the referendum technique when the position of Members or former Members is threatened.

First with Mr. Nicolson at Bournemouth, then with Mr. James at Kemp Town. and now with Commander Courtney at Harrow, the whole local party membership has been allowed its say or at least its vote. The case for primary elections is argued at length in Mr. Peter Paterson's forth- coming study of candidate selection. As Mr. Paterson points out, there are signs that the Con- servative party is moving cautiously along this road. It is a perhaps surprising development.