INTRODUCTION

It was once observed that there are three interest groups in British politics whose mobilisation is to be feared: the miners, the Brigade of Guards and the Catholic bishops. This attributes to the Catholic community in Britain a political power for which it would be difficult to find convincing evidence. In this chapter we will attempt to evaluate the political influence of Roman Catholics in Britain by considering two particular areas of concern to Catholics: educational policy and abortion legislation. It will be suggested that the evidence does not support the fears expressed about the power of the Catholic bishops.

Politics is concerned with the question of goal-setting in society, the ideologies which underpin those goals and the strategies for seeking their attainment by those who have differential power of resource mobilisation in the pursuit of their own ends. Lass well thus regarded politics as the answer to who gets what, when and how questions (Lasswell, 1958). Lord Butler regarded consensual politics in a pluralist parliamentary democracy as ‘the art of the possible’ (Butler, 1971). We will, therefore, also consider the political voting patterns of English Catholics as well as their attitudes, relative to the rest of the population, on a number of controversial issues. Consideration will also be given to variations within the Catholic community and in particular between the various elites at both the national and parish levels.