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British Political Parties in 19331

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

E. P. Chase
E. P. Chase
Affiliation:
Lafayette College
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Extract

The present confusion in British parliamentary life results from three irreconcilable elements. In the first place, the House of Commons resembles the typical Continental legislative chamber in its division into groups, with an only provisional coalition of some of them into what might be called indifferently a union sacree, or a “government of concentration.” In the second place, the active political life of the electorate, being based on the traditional political parties, seems to have very little relation to parliamentary groupings. In the third place, the government shows a tendency to borrow its policies from the program of the opposition. Examination in turn of each of the three elements may reveal whatever coherence exists.

Type
Foreign Governments and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 1934 , pp. 102 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1934

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References

2 The three I.L.P. members are perhaps technically a separate group.

3 Percentage of popular vote (excluding uncontested constituencies)

See Constitutional Year-Book, 1933, p. 266.

4 Thirteen members of the cabinet of 1929–31 and 21 other ministers were defeated. Mr. Henderson was reëlected in August, 1933, at a by-election in Clay Cross.

5 Four official “policy reports” were issued in November, 1932: The Land and National Planning of Agriculture; The Reorganization of the Electricity Supply Industry; The National Planning of Transport; and Currency, Banking, and Finance. In August, 1933, Transport House issued three more: Socialism and the Condition of the People; The Colonies; and Housing and Slums.

6 The Labor party has definitely taken the position that no Communist or Communist organization may be affiliated with it.

7 Most of the important ones were republished in the summer of 1933 as Problems of a Socialist Government, with an introduction by Sir Stafford Cripps. This volume is invaluable as a presentation of what will probably be the maximum plans of a Labor government if such a government soon conies into being.

8 In England, one does not mention the monarchy in this connection.

9 The debate between Cripps and Citrine was in the New Clarion, a weekly paper representing the Labor left. An article in the June 17 number, by Professor Harold J. Laski, analyzes the controversy. Mr. Baldwin stated his views in an article entitled “The New Tyranny” in The News-Letter: The National Labor Fortnightly for July 22, 1933.

10 A reasonable estimate in November, 1933, was that they numbered about 100,000.

11 Lord Lloyd, formerly high commissioner in Egypt, is thought to typify imperialism. Lord Trenchard, commissioner of metropolitan police, is generally believed to be militarizing the London police.

11 Cf. the Unemployment Insurance Bill introduced in Parliament in November, 1933.

12 Perhaps the Socialist League would not quite agree. But an example is Mr. Herbert Morrison's supposedly socialistic arrangements for the consolidation of London transport, which were enacted into law almost unchanged at the behest of the National Government. See his Socialization and Transport (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

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