The Crossman-Silkin session

POLITICAL COMMENTARY ALAN WATKINS

It may happen that in twenty-five years' time the session of Parliament which has just ended will be regarded as one of great constitutional innovation. On the face of it, admittedly, this may strike the reader as an exaggerated, even an extravagant observation. Morning sittings that get the ordinary back-bencher home no earlier—if anything, rather later—at night? A couple of new select committees which are, however, still firmly under the control of the Government? A leader of the House who has had more than his fair share of fiascos, and a Chief Whip who has had more than his fair share of revolts? Can this really be the stuff of great parliamentary change?

And yet . . . and yet . . . the point made at the outset can be expressed in a more homely, it may be in a more convincing, fashion. Looking back at the session of 1966-7, what are the events, and who are the people, that stick in the mind?

The events are surely (this is more than a purely personal view) the passing of the Bills on abortion and homosexuality, and the rebellions in the lobbies upon such subjects as prices and incomes, the Common Market and the increase in overseas students' fees. (For, as I indicated last week, the left was foolishly criticised for its failure to vote against the Government in the economic censure debate. I omitted to point out that, prior to this debate, the left had a not unimpressive record of revolt.) And the people? They go with the events, or rather the events go with them. They are Mr John Silkin, Mr Richard Crossman, Mr David Steel and Mr Leo Abse, with honourable mention, though for differing reasons, for Mr Norman St John-Stevas and Mr Michael Foot.

Now it is arguable—a number of Labour back-benchers, themselves sympathetic to re- formist measures, such as Mr David Marquand, do in fact argue it--that if MPS can find nothing else to get excited about except abortion and homosexuality there is something amiss not so much with MPs as with the Government. According to this argument, it is for the Government to stir torpid Socialist consciences by saying radical things and it may even be by occasionally performing mildly radical actions.

There is a sense, however, in which this argument is irrelevant to the point under dis- cussion. The fact is that the session of 1966-7 was, to a greater extent than any of recent times, a back-benchers' session. That this was so, not because of any desire by the Government to make it so, but because of a lack of govern- mental initiatives, because of a vacuum, is un- important. Indeed it is possible to reverse the argument, and to say that the July measures and their consequences were, if not a mixed blessing, then at least a contributory cause of the movement for parliamentary reform.

But the movement had two more important causes. The first was the character of the 1966 Labour intake, which was perceived by Mr Crossman, by Mr Silkin and, to be fair, by Mr Harold Wilson himself. The second was the theoretical view held by Mr Crossman about the nature of modern parliamentary government. The composition of the new. House of Corn-

mons gave Mr Crossman the opportunity to put some of his ideas into practice.

1‘ A great deal has already been written about the character of the 1966 intake, some of it misleading. For example, the proportion of university lecturers, though high, is not as high as all that. In any case, there is no evidence to show that university lecturers, as a group, arc significantly more independent-minded or courageous in their voting habits than any other section of the population. No, where the 1966 generation differ from their predecessors is surely in that they have jobs to which they can go back if politics pall. To this extent they are less amenable to party discipline than were previous generations. And it was Mr Wilson's apparent failure fully to realise this that made 'his 'dog' speech so inept.

We come now to the Crossman view of parliamentary government, which, of course, is independent of the character of any particular intake. Roughly, his belief is that since 1867 the party machines have taken over from the House of Commons as an entity. But let Mr Crossman speak for himself. 'There will not, I think,' he said on 14 December 1966, 'be much disagreement about the main cause [of the .decline of the House of Commons]—the simple fact that institutions developed under one set of conditions and designed to fulfil certain specific functions have been perpetuated under quite different conditions.' He went on: 'Many of our main procedures are survivals from a period when parties were weak, when the mak- ing and unmaking of ministries still rested with the House of Commons, not with the electorate based on universal suffrage, and when the Cabinet was merely the executive committee of the Commons.'

Interestingly enough, Mr Crossman was anticipated by the third Marquis of Salisbury in the Quarterly Review of January 1866. `America during the last five years,' wrote Salisbury, 'has only repeated to the world the lesson that has already been taught by France, that, if you will have democracy, you must have something like Caesarism to control it. The feeble and pliable Executive of England is wholly unsuited to such an electoral body. A Government that yields and must yield to the slightest wish of the House of Commons is only possible so long as that House of Commons is the organ of an educated minority. Such an instrument of government has never yet in the history of the world been worked by a legisla- ture chosen by the lower classes.'

Lord Salisbury's fears proved groundless. Why? Because the political parties grew up to operate, not as instruments of mass democracy, but as a buffer between Government and people. This is what Mr Crossman complains about and this, presumably, is what Lord Salisbury would have welcomed (though not wholeheartedly, as to which see below). Mr Crossman's solution is not to return to a pre-1867 situation in which the House makes and unmakes governments, but to allow MPs a little more freedom—free- dom to abstain from time to time, freedom to inquire more closely into government and administration through the medium of the select committees.

It is difficult, granted Mr Crossman's pre- mises, to believe that this goes nearly far enough. Take, as an example of what might be done, the two private Members' Bills, mentioned earlier, on abortion and homosexuality. Every- one knows' that most ministers favoured them, but that the Government, through political cowardice, gave only covert support. Why on earth should not the Government say to the House: `Look, we commend this to you, and we regard it as a Government measure, but we are perfectly ready to accept defeat, in which case we shall not resign'? And why should not the Government extend this practice to spheres outside those of normal libertarian and re- formist concern? This would not lead to an unstable pre-1867 situation. It would, however, lead to an increase in the power of the House. Both of Mr Crossman's criticisms would be satisfied. The basic idea is, after all, very simple: but then, good ideas are simple.

Yet this is not all there is to be said about Mr Crossman's reforms. He has the engaging dialectical habit of throwing several balls in the air, juggling with them with enormous skill and then forgetting all about them. And one of Mr Crossman's past notions is that power must be restored, not simply to the House of Commons, but to the electorate. His object is to distribute power. Now certainly the select committees restore some power to the House, or at least they take it away from the political parties. The reform I have suggested above would -restore even more power to the House. But the elector- ate seems to have been forgotten. Indeed, in a speech on 11 August 1966 Mr Crossman seemed to imply—he cannot really have meant it that it was enough if the voters elected a government every five years or so.

Here again the third Lord Salisbury per- ceived the problem. 'We are in danger,' he said in the House on 30 May 1867, `of drifting into a system of nomination caucuses such as are to be seen in--operation in America, and such as will arise when there are large multitudes in each constituency. Wherever the multitude is so large that it swamps every special local influence, that it destroys every special real interest, what happens is the introduction of the hard machinery of local party organisation con- ducted by managers, men who give up their lives to the task —not usually men of the purist motives or highest character; and the danger, now that we are following so closely in the footsteps of America, is that it will be into the hands of these men, and not into the hands of those who have hitherto been recognised. as the leaders of the people, that the practical govern- ment of this country will fall.'

Mr Crossman has frequently said the same kind of thing, though from a different political standpoint. To reform only the House, he must know, is not in the end enough. In the nineteenth century 'reform had an altogether wider mean- ing. It must have a similarly wide meaning today.