POWER AND PRIME MINISTERS

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 15

POWER AND PRIME MINISTERS

The Prime Ministers. Volume 11. From Lord John Russell to Edward Heath. Edited by Herbert Van Thai. George Allen and Unwin. 413 pp. 1 N.Z. price $15.15 approx. (Reviewed by G. R. Laking) The second volume of this series of essays on British Prime Ministers, covering those who held office from mid-nineteenth century up to Edward Heath, should have a wider appeal than its predecessor, simply because it has greater relevance to our own times. It traces the development of those factors which have helped to bring latter-day Prime Ministers to their present pre-eminence in Parliamentary government and spells out the gradual change in the base of political power. . The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 both encouraged and reflected the growth in the dependence of governments on the good graces of the electorate rather than the Crown. Indeed in the present century there have been only two occasions on which the choice of a Prime Minister lay with the Crown rather than with the Parliamentary group involved — the first being Baldwin’s preference over Curzon in 1923 and the second in 1957 when MacMillan rather than Butler succeeded in the position on Eden’s resignation. Even in this latter case the effective choice was indicated to the Queen by those members of the party hierarchy from whom she took advice. There was a period of some 30 years before the passage of the second Reform Bill when power lay neither with the Crown not with the electorate but directly with the House of Commons of which the Cabinet was for the time being no more than a committee. Inevitably, however, the electorate asserted its dominance, leading to the growth of party structures, responsible to their Parliamentary leaders, the development of country-wide party organisations, and finally the gradual decay of coalitions and national governments.

The hardening ot party lines and the changing nature of society in Britain, with the first fragile signs of the welfare state emerging in the 19205, combined to strengthen the position of the Conservatives and Labour at the expense of the Liberals. All this is by way of background to the central purpose of the book which is ably presented in the introduction — to show oy reference to the personalities and ' achievements of individual Prime Ministers the growth in the importance of the office, and to raise a question, which applies with equal force to New Zealand, as to whether Britain has gone on from Cabinet Government to Prime Ministerial Government. Is effective power now concentrated in the hands of a Prime Minister to such a degree that he is no longer merely first among equals but almost the equivalent of the key figure in a Presidential form ot government? And if the thesis is valid, is the development a good thing? Is it, in any event, inevitable? Irrespective of one’s interest in this highly significant aspect of the democratic process as applied to the Westminster model of Parliamentary government, there is a fascination in studying the range of personalities whose profiles are presented in the book. It is a far cry from Balfour, described by the Duchess of Marlborough as “some fine and disembodied spirit” to Lloyd George whose “supreme idea” was “to get on” and thence to Ramsay MacDonald, the only one to have come from the working class. Nevertheless the stealthy intrusion of democracy is as yet barely perceptible in the educational backgrounds of the Prime Ministers of the period. Among the public schools, Eton (8), Harrow (4), Rugby (1), and Westminster (1) still dominate the scene. However. Glasgow High School enters the lists with CampbellBannerman and Bonai Law, the latter having the even more alien distinction

of having been born in Canada. The real mavericks are Disraeii, educated at the hands of Miss Roper of Islington, the Rev Pottecanney of Blackheath, and the Rev Eli Cogan of Walthamston; Lloyd George, educated by his uncle .at Llanystundwy; and Ramsay MacDonald, educated at a board school in Lossiemouth. Among the universities. Oxford holds pride of place with 11 alumni. Cambridge has 5, Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, Mason College, Birmingham and Sandhurst, one each. Not much red brick here. But as to what makes an effective Prime Minister in political terms, the broad sweep of personalities revealed by these studies suggests that the prime requirement for any holder of the office is to understand that his effectiveness depends as much on the environment in which he is operating as on the elements of his own makeup. So, in the opinion of most, Churchill scored heavily as a wartime Prime Minister but. poorly when the problems of government no longer presented themselves as a titanic clash of personalities. Eden failed miserably in his own chosen field of foreign policy, ignoring even the lessons of his long experience in that area. MacMillan, in his efforts to repair the shattered Anglo-American relationship and then to bring the British to accept the inevitability of their future involvement with Europe, showed himself to be a brilliant and effective operator but could not command the necessary public support through the disorganisation of the earlv 19605. Loro Home, who did not want to be Prime Minister but took the office as a matter of public duty, found that personal integrity and unfailing courtesy are not the qualities which a cynical electorate most requires of its leaders. Anyone, it seems, can be a Prime Minister. The real talent lies in staying in offcie. [G. R. Laking is a former Secretary of Foreign Affairs.)