The British are pre-eminently a political people, as Americans are, and as Germans, Russians, and Italians are not. They regard politics and government as serious, honorable, and, above all, interesting occupations. To many Britons the techniques of government and politics in Nigeria or Louisiana or Iceland are as fascinating as the newest jet fighter is to an aviation enthusiast. They have been at it a long time, and yet politics and government remain eternally fascinating.

The comparative stability and prestige of government and politics result in part from tradition and experience. The British govern themselves by a system evolved over a thousand years from the times of the Saxon kings, and they have given much of what is best and some of what is worst in that system to nations and continents unknown when first a Parliament sat in Westminster. Although it was dominated by peers and bullied by the King, a Parliament met in Westminster when France seethed under the absolute rule of His Most Christian Majesty. Some of the greatest speeches made against the royal policy during the American War of Independence were made in Parliament.

The course of history has strengthened the position of parliamentary government. Parliament and Britain have survived and triumphed, but where is the Europe of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, of Wilhelm II, of Hitler? Even in times of great stress the business of government must go on. I remember my astonishment in June of 1940 when I returned from a stricken, hopeless France to learn from a Member of Parliament that a committee was considering plans for uniting the West Indian islands in a single Commonwealth unit after the war.

The idea that politics and government are essential to the well-being of the nation fortifies tolerance in British public life. The political and military disasters of 1940 were far more damaging and dangerous to Britain than Pearl Harbor was to the United States. They invited bitter recrimination. Yet Winston Churchill, himself bitterly attacked in the locust years for predicting these very disasters, took Neville Chamberlain into his cabinet and silenced recrimination with the salient reminder that if the nation dwelt too much on the past it might lose the future.

For a century the British have avoided the dangers of an important extremist political party comparable to the Communists in France and Italy or the Nazis in Germany. The Communist Party exists in Britain, of course, but only barely. Sir Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts made some impression just before and just after the last war, but their direct political influence is negligible.

The British don't think extremism is good practical politics. They went through their own period of extremism in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries when for a variety of reasons, religious as well as political, they cut off one king's head, tried a dictatorship, brought back a king, and finally found comparative tranquillity in the development of a constitutional monarchy.

The memory of these troubled times is not dead. At the height of McCarthyism in the United States a British diplomat explained: "We're very fortunate; we went through the same sort of period under the Tudors and the Stuarts when treason and slander and libel were the common coin of politics."

With exceptions, the great political parties in the country have now identified themselves with the national interest rather than with a partisan one. Even the exceptions change. As the status of the working class has changed for the better, the Labor Party has moved perceptibly away from its early position as a one-class party. The heirs of Keir Hardy—the Attlees, Morrisons, and Gaitskells—understand that Labor must appeal now to the whole people.

The national interest is something the whole people has always understood and accepted in the past. For the British are guided politically not by an ideology but by interest. This interest is a free world, free from the economic as well as the political standpoint. One factor in the decision to withdraw from India was the conviction that, in the end, withdrawal would serve British commercial interests. I do not suggest that this was the only factor. There were others, including the belief of the leaders of the Labor government that India could not and should not be kept within the Empire by force.

Similarly, Britain is ready to give way on the independence of other parts of the Empire when she thinks these areas are ready for independence as democracies, and when she believes that their emergence as independent democracies will benefit her own commercial interests. This mixture of realism and idealism is difficult for outsiders to grasp, especially when the British cling to a territory such as Cyprus for reasons that are largely connected with their commercial interests in that part of the world.

Yet although the British have acquired, and are now in the process of losing, a world-wide empire, they never suffered from a desire to remake the world as did the French of 1789, or the Russians of 1917, or the Germans of 1939. As a commercial people their basic interest was, and is, peace. The British will go to almost any lengths to prevent a war, as they did in 1938 and 1939. Once at war, however, they fight with cold ruthlessness.

The allegiance of the great political parties to the national interest is one reason why British politics and politicians are flexible and tolerant. Another is that politics are still touched by the shadowy influence of the Crown. Here is a higher, if weaker, authority than Prime Minister or cabinet. Does the presence of the sovereign at the peak of government draw some of the exaggeration and extremism from politics?

Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even Churchill in 1940, has ever been bathed in the sycophancy that deluged President Eisenhower in his first term. Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even Chamberlain in 1938 and 1939, has been reviled so relentlessly by critics as were Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Convictions are as deeply held in London as in Washington. But anyone moving between the two cities must be convinced that the political atmosphere in London is calmer, less subject to emotional cloudbursts.

The center of British politics is Parliament—the House of Commons and, to a lesser degree, the House of Lords.

Parliament represents all the countries of the United Kingdom. It can legislate for the whole kingdom or for Great Britain itself or, separately, for England and Wales. But, as this is Britain, the country of contradictions, the Parliament at Westminster is not the only parliament. Northern Ireland has its own. But it also sends MP's to Westminster. The Tynewald sits in the Isle of Man, and the States legislate for the Channel Islands.

Opposition to the power of the central government, which means Parliament, comes from the nationalist movements of Scotland and Wales. Supported by minorities fiercely antagonistic toward the Sassenach (as they call the English), these movements provide emotional stimuli for the very young and the very old. At best they are gallant protests against the accretion of power to a central government, a process that goes on in Britain as it does in the United States and elsewhere. At worst, considering the extent of Britain's real problems, the national movements are a nuisance.

But these are not rivals, and legally the Parliament in London can do anything it desires. During the five-year life of a Parliament the assembly can make or unmake any law, destroy the constitution, legalize past illegalities and thus reverse court decisions. Parliament also has the power to prolong its own life.

Is Parliament therefore supreme and absolute? Legally, yes. But legislative authority is delegated increasingly to ministers, and specific powers to local authorities and to public corporations. Such delegated powers can be withdrawn at any time, although the pressure of work on Parliament is so great that this is unlikely.

Finally, Britain has its own system of checks and balances. The two-party system forbids arbitrary action, for the abuse of parliamentary power by the party in power would invite repudiation by the electors.

Of the two houses, the House of Commons is infinitely the more powerful. In this popularly elected assembly there are 630 members. Of these, 511 sit for English constituencies, 36 for Welsh, 71 for Scotch, and 12 for Northern Irish. Each constituency elects one member. The composition of the present House of Commons, elected in May 1955, is: Conservatives and their supporters, 346; Labor, 277; Liberal, 6; and the Speaker, who does not vote, 1.

What does Parliament do? It regulates the life of the community through the laws it makes. It finances the needs of the people and appropriates the funds necessary for the services of the State by legislative action. It controls and criticizes the government.

One reason for the supremacy of the House of Commons is that bills dealing with finance or representation are always introduced in that house. Moreover, the Lords avoids the introduction of controversial bills.

Almost all bills are presented by the government in power. They reflect policy decisions taken in the cabinet at the instigation of government departments that will be responsible for the administration of the decisions when the bills become law. The principal exceptions are Private Bills, which relate solely to some matter of individual, corporate, or local interest, and Private Members' Bills, which are introduced by individual MP's.

The manner in which Parliament—generally the House of Commons—controls the government in power emphasizes the difference between the British system and our own. The ultimate control is the power of the House of Commons to pass a resolution of "no confidence" in the government or to reject a proposal which the government considers so vital to its policy that it has made the proposal's passage a "matter of confidence." If such a proposal is rejected, the government is obliged to resign.

In addition, there is that very British institution, Question Time. Between 2:30 and 3:30 each afternoon from Monday through Thursday, MP's may question any minister on the work of his department and the Prime Minister on general national policy. The questions range from the trivial to the significant. A query about the heating in a remote Army barracks may be followed by one about progress on the hydrogen bomb. The growth of Question Time as an institution has put a special premium on those ministers or junior ministers best able to parry and riposte. For the opposition can press the minister, and if his original reply is unsatisfactory, the questioner will follow with a supplementary question designed to reveal the minister as incapable and ignorant.

The majority of questions are put by the opposition in the hope of focusing public attention on the government's weaknesses. But government Members also put questions dealing with affairs in their constituencies. A number of them also can be counted upon to offer ministers congratulatory queries along the lines "Is the Right Honorable Gentleman aware that his reply will be welcomed by all those ...?"

Questions and answers are couched in the glistening phrases of polite debate, but occasionally tempers rise and the Speaker intervenes. Because of the variety of subject matter and the importance of some of the questions, Question Time is an exciting period. It was never more so than in the last administration of Sir Winston Churchill.

That Prime Minister, armed with the political experience of fifty years, was a joy to watch in action. One of his last memorable sallies was at the expense of Woodrow Wyatt, an earnest young Labor MP.

What plans had the government, Wyatt asked, for evacuating itself from London in the event of atomic attack?

Sir Winston regarded him owlishly. "Surely the Honorable Member does not wish me to take the bread out of the mouths of the Soviet secret service," he said.

Even without these moments, Question Time would be useful as a sort of national catharsis and as an example of democracy in action. The spectacle of the House of Commons, representing a Britain beset by a multitude of problems, pausing to discuss the affairs of a crippled veteran in a remote Welsh village is a moving one.

There is a slight similarity between Question Time and the Presidential press conference as it has developed in Washington. Both give the executive a chance to explain the workings of policy and government. But in Britain the penalties for failure to answer are much greater than in Washington. The President is answering reporters, and he is under no compulsion to answer the questions put to him. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is confronted directly by his political foes. If he fails to answer a question or offers an unsatisfactory reply, he may provoke debate later on the matter at issue.

Certainly the President is often roughly handled, but most of the press-conference questions seem to lack the bite and sting of those posed in the House of Commons. Perhaps this is inevitable under present circumstances. President Eisenhower has answered the questions of representatives of newspapers, magazines, and radio and television systems that are overwhelmingly Republican. A British Prime Minister and his ministers, on the other hand, must battle all the way.

Finally, all the government departments are represented in the House of Commons, and their representatives, as well as the Prime Minister, can be subjected to prolonged and, at times, merciless questioning. A comparison of Hansard's Parliamentary reports and the reports of Presidential press conferences since 1952 will show, I think, that there is greater pressure and a good deal more precise information in Question Time than in a Presidential press conference.

But Question Time is only one means by which the House of Commons can criticize and control the government. The opposition can move the adjournment of the House on a matter that the Speaker considers definite, urgent, and the responsibility of the government. Or it can use one of the days formerly devoted to consideration of the Estimates in Committee of Supply for a debate on some part of government policy.

The big debates on such issues as foreign affairs and economic policy are the summit of parliamentary effort. Government and opposition put forward their leading spokesmen on the issue under debate. But debates also provide an opportunity for the back benchers of all parties. The back benchers—Members who are not in the government or in the opposition's shadow cabinet—rise to make their points on the issue, and often remarkably good speeches, as well as bad ones, are delivered.

But parliamentary business is concerned with much more than questions and debates. Bills must be passed. This procedure is involved and lengthy, paying due attention to the rights of the House and the people it represents.

The bill receives a formal First Reading on its introduction and is then printed. After a period varying from one to several weeks, depending on the bill's nature, it may be given a Second Reading as the result of a debate on its general merits. Then the bill is referred to one of the standing committees.

During the committee stage, Members can amend the bill if a majority of the House agrees. When this stage is finished, the bill is reported to the House and a further debate takes place during which the Committee's amendments may be altered, additional amendments may be suggested and incorporated, and, if necessary, the bill may be recommitted to committee. Finally, the bill is submitted for a Third Reading, and if passed, it is sent on from the Commons to the House of Lords. There it enters upon the same course.

There, also, it may awaken the interest of Lord Cholmondeley, my favorite peer. Lord Cholmondeley spoke in the House of Lords recently for the first time in thirty-two years. What he had to say—about rabbits and other small game—was brief and to the point. To many, Lord Cholmondeley must symbolize the vague absurdities of the House of Lords.

Yet this peculiar institution has its defenders, and these are not all peers. There is something to be said, it is contended, for an upper chamber that debates on terms other than partisan politics the great issues of the day. The House of Lords, like the Crown, has influence but, as money bills must be introduced in the House of Commons, little direct power. From the standpoint of active politics its limited power is of a negative nature. It can, for instance, delay the passage of legislation by rejecting a bill previously passed by the House of Commons.

This occurred when the Lords rejected the bill to nationalize the steel industry and the bill to abolish capital punishment. These delaying actions demonstrated that, although the powers of the House of Lords have been drastically curtailed, they can still have considerable political importance. Inevitably, such action evokes dark mutterings from the Labor Party about the ability of hereditary peers to flout the will of the people. The Lords retort that the bill in question is not the will of the people at all, but the will of some of the people's representatives.

Theoretically, the House of Lords is a good deal larger than the House of Commons, consisting of 878 peers. Only about one tenth of them, however, take an active part in the work of the House of Lords. The peers include princes of the royal blood, who by custom take no part in proceedings; 26 spiritual peers, the archbishops and senior bishops of the Church of England; all hereditary peers of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom; 16 hereditary peers of Scotland elected from their own number for each Parliament; 5 representative peers of Ireland elected for life; and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary appointed to perform the judicial duties of the House and holding their seats for life.

Such are the bare bones of the parliamentary system of Britain. Like many other British institutions, it conceals beneath a faÇade of ceremonial and tradition an efficient, flexible machine. The debates, the great speeches, and the days of pomp when the Queen rides amid the Household Cavalry to open Parliament are in spectacular contrast to the long grind of unremitting and, by modern standards, financially unrewarding work by Members of both Lords and Commons.

When the visitor sits in the gallery high above the well of the Commons and hears a minister patiently explaining some point connected with an obscure aspect of British life, it is well to remember that this system is one for which men fought and suffered, that this House is the cradle of liberties and freedoms.

The members of the government—"Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom," as it is formally titled in Britain—are all Members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. The government and the cabinet are separate entities, for the government includes the following ministerial offices: the Prime Minister, who is the recognized head of the government but who has no department; the Departmental Ministers, seven of whom are Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, the Home Department, Scotland, Commonwealth Relations, Colonies, War, and Air; the Ministries, of which there are twelve, each headed by a Minister; and some of the older posts with special titles such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is responsible for the Treasury, and the First Lord of the Admiralty.

The government also includes non-departmental ministers who hold traditional offices, such as the Lord President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. With the flexibility that is so conspicuous a part of the British system, successive governments have found major responsibilities for these posts.

The present Lord President of the Council, the Marquess of Salisbury, is responsible to Parliament for two immensely important organizations: the Atomic Energy Authority and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Yet Lord Salisbury, one of the most important members of the present government, is not an elected representative of the people but sits in the House of Lords as a peer.

The Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers are also members of the government. The Lord Chancellor is in fact a Minister of the Crown who is also head of the judiciary in England and Wales. The four Law Officers of the Crown are the Attorney General and the Solicitor General for England and Wales and the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland.

Finally, there are Ministers of State—who are deputy ministers in departments where there is a heavy load of work or where, as in the case of the Foreign Office, the duties involve frequent overseas travel—and junior Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, or Parliamentary Under Secretaries of State.

The cabinet system, like so much else in British government, was not the result of Olympian planning. It "just growed." The Tudors began to appoint ad hoc committees of the Privy Council. By the time of Charles II the Privy Council numbered forty-seven. There then developed an occasional arrangement in which a council of people in high office was constituted to debate questions of domestic and foreign affairs.

Such committees or cabinets persisted until the reign of Queen Anne. Usually, but not always, they met in the presence of the sovereign. In 1717, George I, the first Hanoverian King, ceased to attend cabinet meetings. Until recently the accepted historical reason for this was the King's ignorance of English—a circumstance that might, one would think, enable him to bear long debates with fortitude. However, J.H. Plumb in his recent life of Sir Robert Walpole has suggested that the King's absence from the cabinet was due to a quarrel between the monarch and the Prince of Wales.

At any rate, the cabinet system continued to flourish. Its members consistently ignored the provision in the Act of Settlements (1725) which forbade office-holders to sit in the Commons. The direct influence of the sovereign was reduced, although his indirect influence, as Lord North and "the King's Friends" demonstrated, was great.

Nowadays the members of the cabinet are selected from the government by the Prime Minister. Usually it has fewer than twenty members.

The cabinet determines the policy the government will submit to Parliament, it controls the national executive in accordance with policy approved by Parliament, and it co-ordinates and limits the authority of the departments of the government. In its operations the cabinet makes great use of the committee system, referring problems to one of the standing committees or to a temporary committee composed of the ministers chiefly concerned.

A British cabinet operates under the rule of collective responsibility and of individual responsibility. That is, ministers share collective responsibility for the policy and actions of the government and individual responsibility to Parliament for the functioning of their departments. A cabinet minister in Britain must appear before the legislature, of which he is a member, and submit to a lengthy questioning upon the work of his department. He must defend his department in debate. No such procedure affects American cabinet members, although they can, of course, be questioned by Congressional committees.

The members of the cabinet in Britain are a good deal more than advisers to the Prime Minister. Their relationship to ultimate policy is closer and their responsibility greater. Hence it is unusual, almost impossible, in Britain to find the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs saying one thing about foreign policy and the Prime Minister another. Lord Melbourne said it did not matter what the members of his government said as long as they all said the same thing. This principle has been hallowed by time.

Although members of the cabinet often disagree furiously in private, there is an absence of open bickering. Moreover, the authority of the cabinet and the House of Commons is supreme. There have been no British General MacArthurs. Field Marshal Lord Montgomery is a wise, cogent, and talkative man. Occasionally he has offered the country his views on non-military matters. Invariably he has been told to leave government matters to the elected representatives of the people. When the cabinet requires the advice of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff or the First Sea Lord (not to be confused with the First Lord of the Admiralty) on military matters, the cabinet asks for it.

The cabinet minister is bound to secrecy. If he resigns from the cabinet because of a disputed issue, he must obtain through the Prime Minister the permission of the sovereign before he can make any statement involving a disclosure of cabinet discussions.

Nor may a cabinet minister repudiate either in Parliament or in his constituency policies that have been approved by the cabinet or propose policies that have not been agreed on with other ministers. He must be prepared to vote with the government on all issues and to speak in support or defense of its policy. Inability to agree or compromise with the view of the majority in the cabinet usually results in the minister's resignation from the government. A minister who remained in the cabinet under such circumstances would be held responsible for the policy he opposed.

Political conflict flourishes in Britain. Yet for many reasons the government of the day and the opposition practice a basic bipartisanship on basic issues. To a considerable degree this is the result of the change in Britain's position over the last two decades. There is an unspoken recognition by the leaders of the two great parties that the present situation of the United Kingdom is too precarious for prolonged and violent differences on essentials. There are, of course, exceptions. Violent controversy does break out on essentials between party and party and within a party.

Consider two essentials of British policy: the Anglo-American alliance and the decision to make the hydrogen bomb.

The relations between the United States and Britain developed their contemporary form in World War II. Since 1945 they have been strengthened by the rise of an aggressive Soviet Union. There are other contributing factors, some of which are not particularly attractive to political or economic groups within each partner to the alliance. Moreover, there has never been a time when there were not powerful critics of various aspects of the alliance in both countries.

Aneurin Bevan and his friends on the radical left of the Labor Party have often lambasted the United States and Britain's dependence on her. Similar criticisms could be heard in private from Tories. When the United States voted with the Soviet Union against Britain in the United Nations after the British and French had invaded Suez, the Conservatives were moved to put their protest into the form of a motion in the House of Commons. This was accompanied by much sharp criticism, which had a therapeutic effect in encouraging some realistic thinking about the alliance.

A great deal of the anxiety about United States policy, of the jealousy of United States power, of the anger at Mr. Dulles's self-righteous sermons about colonialism was vented during this period. It did some harm, certainly. But from the standpoint of the honest expression of Conservative Party opinion and of American realism about the British attitude, it also did some good.

The alliance is an essential. Even when indignant Conservatives—and a number of Socialists, too—were thinking up pet names for Mr. Dulles, the leaders of the party were doing their best to mollify their followers. They were themselves anxious and angry, but they never suggested defection from the alliance.

It may be suggested that the British had nowhere else to go. This may be true, but even so it would be no bar to their departure. They are happy when they are on their own, and many on this little island would count the alliance well lost in exchange for a vigorous reassertion of independence.

In 1940 the cockney, the inevitable cockney, used to remark, for the edification of American correspondents: "Cor, we're alone. What of it, guv?" Now, I have always regarded this not as a piece of patriotic rhetoric but as a natural response to events by a brave people. Shakespeare, of course, said it better.

Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

The important word is "itself." If there comes a time of great outside pressure when alliances and confederations are in danger, Americans will be well advised to remember that word.

The decision to make the hydrogen bomb, a project involving the expenditure of great sums that Britain could ill afford, again was a bipartisan matter. The Conservative government proposed it. The Labor opposition (with Mr. Bevan dissenting in a burst of Welsh oratory) agreed. There have been recurrent criticisms of how the work was being done, of the cost, of the necessity for testing the weapon, and of the arrangements for the tests. But there has been very little criticism of the bomb's manufacture from the leaders of the Labor Party—excepting always Mr. Bevan.

Bipartisanship is assisted by consultation on issues of major national importance between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. But the achievement of bipartisan policies owes much more to a general understanding in both parties in the House of Commons of the country's present position.

Socialist reform and experimentation in the years between 1945 and 1951 aroused Conservative fears as fierce as Labor Party hopes. The enmity aroused in the largely Conservative middle class by the Labor governments of those years certainly has not disappeared. But much of it has been re-directed against the moderate policies of the Conservative government, which has long claimed the allegiance of the middle class.

The leaders of the two great parties—Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, and R.A. Butler for the Conservatives, and Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson, Jim Griffiths for Labor—are moderates. On the periphery of each party stand the radicals advocating extreme measures at home and abroad. Should Britain's economic and international troubles persist, the moderate approach to their solution may not satisfy either the Conservative or Socialist voters.

British politics in May of 1955 continued one of those rhythmic changes of direction which feature political life in every democratic nation. The Conservatives won a smashing victory in the general election and became the first party in ninety years to be returned to office with an increased majority.

The victory gave the Tory government a majority of 61 in the House of Commons. But this majority is not an exact reflection of the way the electorate voted. The Conservatives and their supporters got 13,311,938 votes and Labor won 12,405,146. The Liberals got 722,395 and the Communists 33,144.

This almost even division of the British electorate between the two major parties must be kept in mind when we examine the right and the left in British politics. Not since 1945, when the Labor Party swept into office, has there been a difference of a million votes between the two in general elections.

Labor's sun was sinking in the election of 1950, which the party won by a narrow margin. The Conservatives took over in 1951 and boosted their majority in 1955. Has the pendulum's swing to the right ended? The answer may lie in the policies and personalities of the two great parties today.

pic