Upsetting the Political Map
By DAVID BUTLER
TrTWICE in the last twenty years arguments 1 over the redrawing of constituency boun- daries have produced parliamentary turmoil. Is it about to happen again? Two weeks ago a quiet announcement in the London Gazette re- vealed that the Boundary Commissioners have decided to undertake a general review of con- stituencies. The Boundary Commissions are inde- pendent statutory bodies and pay no regard to Political considerations—but their latest decision may have far-reaching political consequences. The effect of their work will be to deprive a number of MPs of their seats, while giving Others much securer tenure. It may also have an appreciable influence on party fortunes nationally —there are some who argue that if redistribution had taken place last year, the Labour Party would not now be in office.
The boundary review is certain to play a part in the delicate arguments over election -timing that will go on els long as there is a government With a single-figure majority. If an election is forced this year, perhaps it will not matter so much; but next year, as the date for giving effect to the Commissioners' proposals approaches, the arguments against dissolution will grow stronger. For a government to hold an election on boun- daries declared obsolete would be called uncon- stitutional; for Mr. Wilson to hold an election in anticipation of changes that might favour the Conservatives would be described (by some) as a defiance of fair play. Did not Mr. Gladstone in 1885 allow Lord Salisbury seven months in Office while waiting for redistribution to be com- Pleted? By 1968, when the next general election Is almost certain to be out of the way, the Com- missioners would have a much clearer run.
At the last redistribution, the Boundary Com- missioners waited to start work until August 1953, less than two years before the statutory deadline for submitting their reports. As a result, they made it virtually impossible to hold a general election in the autumn ot 1954 and, although their operations were unduly rushed, the changes were given effect awkwardly dose to the spring elections of 1955. This time they have started work with almost five years to spare.
They have two justifications for this. First, owing to a change in procedure enacted in 1958, they may have to spend more time considering Objections to their detailed proposals—what took fifteen months in 1953-54 may take twenty-four months in 1965-66. Second, there is an urgent need for redistribution in the Greater London "rea to be completed before April 1967; if this ts not done, the GLC elections will again have to be condutted on the cumbrous multi-member sYstem used last year. On the other hand, much of the Commis- sioners' work in the next two years may become Obsolete by the time it is finished, simply because all county and borough boundaries are being
overhauled. The local government Boundary Commission (a quite separate body) has pro- posed drastic changes for the North-East and for the West Midlands; they are about to put forward far-reaching recommendations for South Lancashire. Every area cf the country is bound in some degree to .be affected by their proposals and, for every area except the South-East, their work should be finished by around 1967. It would surely be better for the parliamentary Boundary Commissioners to see what their local government colleagues suggest before going to work themselves. They are, after all, charged with making constituency and local boundaries coincide as far as possible.
One of the main causes of inclination at the time of the last general revision in 1954 was the clumsiness of the English Boundary Commis- sion's public relations; it did not make plain to interested parties how it was proceeding or why it arrived at its final decisions (the Scottish and Welsh Commissioners set a much better ex- ample). The Commissioners' current failure to explain why they have chosen to start work now is a bad augury for the future: they have, a difficult—and delicate—task to accomplish and it is important that they should strive to maintain public good will and understanding.
The basic dilemma facing all Boundary Com- missioners is that they have to perform a highly political task in an apparently non-political way. They have to create units that are roughly equal in population, that conform to local government boundaries, and that constitute natural and com- pact geographical areas. Often there are alterna- tive ways of satisfying these conditions, solutions which are equally good technically but which have very different consequences for the parties. Are the Commissioners to take these conse- quences into account? Should they even listen to representations from the parties? The current dispute about the wards of Northampton illus- trates how it can be almost equally .difficult for the Commissioners if they allow for the political implications of their proposals or if they ignore them.
Perhaps the Commissioners may take com- fort from the fact that the party consequences of their actions are likely to be smaller than many people suppose. Professor Bromhead sug- gested in The Times last week that redistribu- tion was likely to cost the Labour Party from ten to fifteen seats. This seems very doubtful.
Two types of reason are given for supposing that redistribution will favour the Conservatives. The more sophisticated—and the more mislead- ing "-'argument stems from the recent disappear- ance of the Conservative 'bias' in the electoral system. In each of the elections of the 1950s it seemed that the system worked so that the Conservatives would get about twenty seats more than Labour for any given percentage of the popular vote; in 1964 that bias was absent— equality in party votes nationally would have produced equality in seats. Many commentators ascribed this change to the impact of recent population movements and assumed that, once boundaries were adjusted to population, the bias would reappear. But that does not fit the actual results last October: there was, in fact, not a single Labour gain which could unequivocally be attributed to the major population movements since 1959. The main explanation for the dis- appearance of the bias lay in the exceptional falls in turnout in safe Labour seats The second reason given for arguing that re- distribution will favour the Conservatives is that seats will be taken from the city centres and given to the supposedly Conservative suburbs. On the basis of 1964 electorates, inner London is due to lose seven or eight seats and industrial Lancashire three. Hertfordshire and Hampshire are each due to gain two seats and almost all the other counties in the South-East one apiece.
However, a detailed examination of the places where seats are due to be abolished or modified or created suggests that on balance the party con- sequences of redistribution may well be negligible. (The effects of boundary changes are often mis- calculated: the seventeen extra seats added during the 1948 redistribution against vehement Conservative protests in fact divided evenly be- tween the parties; the 1955 changes which caused Labour such anxiety seem in the end to have made a negligible difference to the parliamentary majority.)
In the GLC area, which seems due to lose nine seats, Labour is bound to forfeit a couple of East End MPs—but is likely to make com- pensating gains south of the river. If a new seat is created in Sussex, it may well be a solid Labour one at Crawley. The effects of redistribu- tion in Leicestershire and Birmingham may favour the Conservatives, but in Hertfordshire and Essex the new seats are more likely to help Labour. . . . Any arithmetic about the impact of the Boundary Commissioners' recommenda- tions must be speculative; but, assuming that they work in much the way they worked in 1954, I shall be surprised if their proposals have a major influence on party fortunes nationally.
There can, of course, be no certainty that the Commissioners will work as they did before. The 1958 amendments to their rules gave them, mercifully, more freedom to let well alone. Their positive decisions may be swayed by the repre- sentations made to them; the party that com- mands greatest subtlety in masking with geo- graphical plausibility the partisan advantage underlying its suggestions may reap some reward.
But much more hangs on the Commissioners' approach to a fundamental question on which Parliament has given them no clear guidance. Should they strive for numerical equality or should they give any advantage to scattered rural constituencies? In 1955 they allowed Norfolk and Cornwall to retain more seats than they were entitled to under a strict application of the elec- toral quota; in the whole country they allowed county seats to have 4,000 fewer electors than boroughs. When they decide whether to favour county seats this time, and if so by how much. the Boundary Commissioners, whether they like it or not, will be making a political decision— to add to rural representation is, on balance, to add to Conservative representation. In this basic policy decision, far more than in their in- dividual proposals, lies the key to whether the Commissioners will have a measurable influence on the size of the next parliamentary majority.
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