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An Underlying Question in the British General Election
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 1978
Extract
The present issue is devoted to a comparative investigation of the relations between political parties and trade unions in four countries of the European Community: France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain. It is the result of a conference jointly organized by the Policy Studies Institute and our journal, held on 23 June 1978 in London. In turn, the conference was the first in a series of similar comparative investigations of the relations between political parties and functional interests, employers, farmers, intellectuals etc., in the countries of the European community to be organized in the near future. These investigations will contribute to the search for the ‘more profound and less obvious trends and prospects as a whole’ in the 1978 and 1979 elections in Europe which we announced in our last issue. We then went on to state that: ‘The premisses of these comparative investigations are rooted in the common problems facing all Western European states because they all belong to one, specific region of modern industrial society — a region which presents the characteristic problems of mixed economies and welfare states, and which is marked by its specific geo-political position. The variations in the democratic politics of each of these Western European countries are closely linked, if in different ways, to these two major problems. These democratic policies can be new and passionate in Italy, traditional and calm in Britain - but they are still variations on the same themes.’
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- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978
References
1 The participants were: Sir Dennis Barnes, PSI; Professor Klaus von Beyme, Institut für Politische Wissenschaft an der Universität Heidelberg; Dr Alan Cawson, School of Social Sciences, The University of Sussex; Professor David Coombes, PSI; Mr W. W. Daniel, PSI; Mr R. Davies, Director, Finance & Administration, PSI; Professor Paolo Farneti, University of Turin; Professor S. E. Finer, All Soul’s College, Oxford; Sir Montague Finniston, Chairman of Council, PSI, Chairman of Sears Engineering Ltd; Dr Michael Fogarty, Deputy Director, PSI; Professor Ernest Gellner, the London School of Economics and Political Science; Professor G. G. Ionescu, Department of Government, the University of Manchester; Professor Georges Lavau, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris Centre d’études de la vie politique française; Professor Innis MacBeath, Professor of Industrial Relations, London Graduate Business School; Mr Diarmid McLaughlin, Director, Economic and Social Committee of the European Community; Dr Isabel de Madariaga, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the University of London; Dr L. Minkin, Lecturer in Government, University of Manchester; Dr Roger Morgan, PSI; Mr Robin Paxton, Weekend World, London Weekend Television Ltd; Mr John Pinder, Director, PSI; Mr Timothy Raison, MP; Mrs E. Reid, PSI; Mr John Roper, MP; Professor Leonard B. Schapiro, the London School of Economics and Political Science; Mr John Thane, Head of Research Department, NALGO; Mrs A. Trafford, PSI; Mr Larry Whitty, Research Officer, General and Municipal Workers’ Union.
2 See this journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, Summer 1978, pp. 44.
3 See, e.g., Mr James Pryor’s remarks, quoted in The Times, 3 July 1978: ‘It is intolerable that trade union leaders are going round union conferences saying that they cannot work with the Tories.... It is in stark contradiction to what we are being told by many of them in private... ‘.
4 We are greatly indebted to Mr Robin Paxton, London Weekend Television, for providing us with a complete summary of the discussion from which we reproduce the most important portions here.