The Changing Face of the British House of Commons in the 1970s

The Changing Face of the British House of Commons in the 1970sAuthor(s): Philip NortonSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Aug., 1980), pp. 333-357Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439549 .

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PHILIP NORTON

University of Hull

The Changing Face of the British House of Commons In the 1970s

Until 1970, one party normally had a governing majority in the House of Commons, high voting cohesion existed in both major parliamentary parties, and Govern- ments were rarely defeated in the House. In the decade of the 1970s, governing majorities declined in size and then disappeared, intra-party dissent rose markedly, and Government defeats in the division lobbies occurred frequently. These changes called into question the previously held assumptions that party discipline in the House of Commons resulted from the MPs' fears of precipitating a general election, from the power of the whips, from the expectation of party loyalty among the constituency parties, and from the Government's superior sources of information on matters of policy. A new self-reliance among MPs is likely to sustain and reinforce the movement for parliamentary reform.

The period from 1945 to 1970 was one in which a number of generalizations could be and were made about collective behaviour in the British House of Commons. These generalizations, widely known and taught, stated that Governments tended to have an overall majority, that parties were cohesive in the division lobbies, and that Governments could not be defeated. Various hypotheses were used to explain these behavioural patterns. The decade of the 1970s witnessed significant changes in parliamentary behavior, with the generalizations applicable to the pre-1970 period no longer being of use. The purpose of this paper is to consider briefly the generalizations applicable to the 1945-1970 Parliaments, detail the changes of the 1970s, and consider their implications for the variables posited as being responsible for the behaviour of pre-1970 Parliaments. The behaviour of the pre-1970 period was also a contributory factor to pressure for parliamentary reform, and the author's tentative analysis of the implications of the changed behaviour of the 1970s for the reform movement will be advanced by way of conclusion.

The developments of the 1970s are significant in themselves, and they and their wider implications important for an understanding of the contemporary House of Commons. This paper does not attempt to explore

Legislative Studies Quarterly, V, 3, August, 1980 Copyright 1980 by the Comparative Legislative Research Center 0362-9805/80/0503-0333$01.25 333



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in depth any one of these developments, but seeks rather to provide an over- view of and comment upon them. In short, it seeks to provide a sketch, and no more than that, of the changing face of the House of Commons in the 1970s.

Parliamentary Behaviour 1945-1970

Until 1970, students of British politics could make three generalizations about the postwar House of Commons, generalizations that were central to an understanding of parliamentary behaviour. All three-majority government, party cohesion, and rarity of Government defeats-were well known, though each was not as well documented as it might be. They may be identified briefly as follows.

One party was normally returned to the House of Commons with an overall majority (Table 1). On two occasions the Government majorities were small (five in 1950 and four in 1964, the latter reduced to one at the time of dissolution), but they were nevertheless sufficient to enable the Government on each occasion to survive for more than one session. Of the remaining elections, four resulted in Governments being returned with two figure overall majorities and two in Governments with three figure majorities. The last occasion on which a Government had been formed without an overall majority, moreover, was in 1929.

A very high degree of cohesion was a feature of both Labour and Conservative parliamentary parties, especially so in the division lobbies of the

TABLE 1 Parliamentary Majorities, 1945-1970

Parliament Party Returned to Office Overall Majoritya

1945-1950 Labour 146 1950-1951 Labour 5 1951-1955 Conservative 17 1955-1959 Conservative 60 1959-1964 Conservative 100 1964-1966 Labour 4 1966-1970 Labour 98 1970-1974 Conservative 30

aOverall majority following the General Election. The Speaker is included in the party of which he was previously a member in Tables 1 and 2.

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House. "Division lists," as Samuel Patterson (1973, p. 373) observed, "normally reflect(ed) complete intra-party solidarity." With the exception of the 1959- 1964 Parliament, the number of divisions in which one or more Members of either main party cast dissenting votes constituted less than 10 percent, sometimes considerably less than 10 percent, of all divisions in each Parliament, and in the 1959-1964 Parliament the figure was only 13.5 percent of all divisions (see Table 3, below). Indeed, in the two Parliaments of 1951-1955 and 1955-1959, there were a total of only 23 divisions in which one or more Conservative Members entered the lobby against their own party (Norton, 1975, pp. 89-136).

When dissenting votes were cast, they had little serious effect. Conservative Members, on the whole, did not dissent in large numbers. Of the 213 divisions in which Conservative Members cast dissenting votes in the years from 1945 to 1970, 88 involved one dissenting Member only. Throughout the period of Conservative Government from 1951 to 1964, there was only one occasion when Conservative backbenchers entered the Opposition lobby in sufficient numbers to embarrass seriously (though not remove) the Govern- ment's majority.1 Labour Members on occasion did dissent in large numbers, but when they did so their party was either in Opposition and/or the Con- servatives abstained from voting or entered the lobby to support the Labour Front Bench: the greater the number of dissenters, the less likelihood there was of their entering a whipped Conservative lobby (see Table 4, below). Twenty or more Labour Members dissented in a total of 66 divisions in the 1945-1970 period, but only one of these occasions entailed entering the Con- servative lobby on an important issue and embarrassing the Government's majority (see Norton, 1975, p. 296). "Despite occasional deviations," as Ergun Ozbudun (1970, p. 305) noted, "party cohesion is a well-established norm in British politics."2 The "occasional deviations" were few, and rarely of a magnitude to worry the party whips or business managers.

The Goverment of the day was able to carry each division without fear of defeat because of dissent by its own backbenchers or because of opposition parties combining against it in a fully whipped division. Each Government had an overall majority, and that majority was prepared to sustain the Government in the lobbies. A few quickly forgotten defeats did occur-a total of ten, concentrated in though not confined to the 1950-1951 and 1964- 1966 Parliaments-but these were attributable to poor parliamentary management by the Government whips (for example, miscalculating the number of Government supporters needed to carry a division) or, as in 1953 and 1965 (Wigg, 1972, pp. 165-167; The Times, 8 July 1965),3 deliberate Opposition ploys, with Opposition Members leaving the House, hiding nearby and then returning for a division. Due to the rarity of Government defeats, and the

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rare defeats themselves being generally overlooked, the view was expressed that a defeat in the lobbies had to be reversed or else the Government had to seek a vote of confidence from the House, request a dissolution, or resign (or some variant on this theme, some sources not including the discretion to seek to reverse a defeat; see Norton, 1978b, pp. 360-361). In 1964, Graeme Moodie (p. 100) wrote that, except for free votes, "it is now assumed as a matter of course that any defeats in the House of Commons must be reversed or else lead to the Government's resigning or dissolving Parliament."

To summarize, in the postwar period from 1945 to 1970 two large parliamentary parties faced one another across the floor of the House of Commons, both displaying a high degree of cohesion, one having an overall majority and able to implement its wishes through that majority in the division lobbies. In the 1970s, such observations could no longer be made, at least not with such certainty: each required serious qualification.

The Changes of the 1970s

The decade of the 1970s witnessed a considerable change in parliamentary behaviour: factors external and internal to the House of Commons combined to strip the above three generalizations of much of their usefulness. Indeed, to a large extent their opposites may be stated as being, or having been, applicable to the 1970s. These may be identified as follows.

Minority Government

In 1970, a Conservative Government was returned with an overall majority of thirty, reduced to fourteen by the end of the Parliament. In February 1974, the Prime Minister, Edward Heath, went to the country; from the time of that General Election to the end of the decade, minority Government was as much a feature of British politics as was majority Govern- ment. In the short Parliament of March to October 1974, the Labour Govern- ment commenced with only 301 seats in a 635-Member House. In October 1974, the Government was returned with a small overall majority of three (Table 2). Through bye-election losses (and later defections4) this was gradually reduced, and in April 1976, with Mr. John Stonehouse's resignation of the Labour whip, it lost it altogether. When the House was dissolved in April 1979, there were 305 Labour Members out of a total of 627 voting Members (vacancies and the Speaker and his three Deputies excluded); the Government was in a nominal minority by seventeen votes. The short 1974 Parliament was the first one-session Parliament since 1924. The 1974-1979 Parliament was the only one of the century in which a Government slipped from having a majority to a minority of Members and continued to govern for a full five-session Parliament.

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TABLE 2 Parliamentary Majorities, 1970-1979

Majority ... . . following ... at

Parliament Party Returned to Office General Election Dissolution

1970-1974 Conservative 30 14

1974 Labour -33 -37

1974-1979 Labour 3 -17

1979- Conservative 43

High Incidence of Intra-Party Dissent

By British parliamentary standards, the decade witnessed a high incidence of intra-party dissent, with each of the Parliaments of 1970-1974, 1974, and 1974-1979 experiencing the public expression of significant dissent in the division lobbies. Twenty percent or more of divisions in each Parliament witnessed dissenting votes, and in some individual sessions the proportion was well over 30 percent. The 1970-1974 Parliament saw a considerable increase in dissent by Conservative backbenchers, producing Conservative Members who were willing to vote against the Government not only in more divisions than had previously been the case, but also (unusual for a party of tendencies as opposed to factions5) more consistently and in greater numbers; the Parliamentary Conservative Party came the closest it had been in postwar history to experiencing something akin to factional dissent (Norton, 1978a, ch. 8 and pp. 244-254; 1976b). A total of 204 divisions witnessed dissenting votes by one or more Conservatives, 64 of them involving ten or more dissenters; in 50 of these 64 divisions, the dissenters entered the whipped lobby of their opponents (Norton, 1978a, ch. 8).

A high incidence of dissent was maintained in the short 1974 Parlia- ment, especially on the Conservative side of the House (Norton, 1977a), and continued in the 1974-1979 Parliament, though with Labour Members now taking the lead in voting against their own Government. No less than 28 percent of all divisions in the latter Parliament saw votes cast against their own party by one or more (usually more) Labour or Conservative Members. Labour Members proved increasingly willing to vote against their own party: one or more Labour Members voted against their own side in 30 percent of whipped divisions in the 1976-1977 session; in the following session, the proportion was 36 percent of divisions, and in the last session of 1978-1979 the proportion was an unprecedented 45 percent (Norton, 1980). This was coupled with a greater willingness to enter the official Conservative lobby (see Table 4, below).

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Conservative backbenchers, for their part, proved willing also to express their

disagreement with their leadership in even more divisions than in 1970-1974, albeit of less significance now that they were in Opposition. The result of this greater voting independence by Members on both sides of the House was that there were more divisions experiencing dissenting votes in the 1974-1979 Parliament than there were in the whole of the period from 1945 to 1970

(see Table 3). The root cause for this change in behaviour is to be found in the

1970-1974 Parliament. An analysis of that Parliament has identified the variable responsible for the increase in and seriousness of Conservative backbench dissent as the Prime Ministerial leadership of Mr. Edward Heath. The

policies which Mr. Heath was responsible for introducing (or was closely identified with), the manner in which they were introduced and then pushed through the Commons, his failure to communicate effectively with his own backbenchers either at the personal level of friendship or at the intellectual level of explaining his policies and actions (especially the so-called U-turns of 1972), and his failure to use judiciously his powers of appointment and

patronage, all coalesced to produce a parliamentary party that was unsure of itself and divided internally, with those Members who disagreed with Govern- ment policy believing that they had no acceptable alternative but to vote

TABLE 3 Divisions With Dissenting Votes, 1945-1979

Parliament Number of Divisions (Dates and no. With Dissenting Votes Percent of Divisions of sessions) Total Laboura Conservativea With Dissenting Votes

1945-50 (4) 87 79 27 7 1950-51 (2) 6 5 2 2.5 1951-55 (4) 25 17 11 3 1955-59 (4) 19 10 12 2

1959-64 (5) 137 26 120 13.5 1964-66 (2) 2 1 1 0.5 1966-70 (4) 124 109 41 9.5 1970-74 (4) 221 34 204 20 1974 (1) 25 8 21 23 1974-79 (5) 423 309 240 28

aAs one division may witness dissenting votes by Labour and Conservative Members, the Labour and Conservative figures do not necessarily add up to the number in the total column.

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against their own side (Norton, 1978a, ch. 9). Although Mr. Heath was to be removed from the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975, the foregoing factors contributing to his defeat (see Norton, 1976d), the serious dissent by Government backbenchers during his premiership provided precedents for later occasions of significant dissent by Labour Members, as indicated in Table 4 (Norton, 1978a, p. 274; note also the comments of Aitken, 1978; "Talking Politics," 1978; Braine, 1979). The importance of this dissent, though, was not merely that it increased quantitatively, but, more importantly, that it did so qualitatively, if one may so term it. For the first time in postwar history, Government backbenchers proved willing to join with their opponents to defeat their own Government in the division lobbies.

Multiple Government Defeats

The decade of the 1970s witnessed a significant number of Govern- ment defeats in the lobbies, significant not only by comparison with preceding postwar Parliaments but also by comparison with Parliaments of this century as a whole. Between July 1905 and March 1972, according to the researches of this author, there were 34 Government defeats in the division lobbies (there were no defeats in the period from 1966 to 1972), that is, 34 defeats in a 67-year period. Between April 1972 and April 1979-a period of only 7 years-there was a total of 65 Government defeats in the House of Commons' division lobbies. Six of these took place in the 1970-1974 Parliament, 17 in the short 1974 Parliament, and the remaining 42 in that of 1974-1979 (Norton, 1978a, p. 207; Norton, 1980, appendix).

Not only were there a considerable number of defeats, but many were on issues of importance, indeed, increasingly so. They included defeats on the Second Reading of a Bill (the Reduction of Redundancy Rebates Bill in February 1977), only the second time this century that a Government has lost the Second Reading of a measure, and on the Third Reading of a Bill (the Local Authority Works [Scotland] Bill in July 1977). However, these two defeats, given the circumstances in which they took place, are not as important as on the face of it they may appear. Other defeats encompassed the following: on the central provisions of a Bill (the Dock Work Regulation Bill, which, combined with a later defeat, was effectively lost); on important financial legislation (notably the 1978 Finance Bill); on a guillotine motion for the Goverment's most important constitutional measure (the 1977 Scotland and Wales Bill), as a result of which the Bill in its original form was lost; on important provisions of the subsequent Scotland Bill and Wales Bill (including the fateful amendments stipulating a 'Yes' vote by 40 percent of all eligible voters in the 1 March 1979 referendums); on Expenditure White Papers in

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TABLE 4 Size of Dissenting Labour Lobbies: 1945-1979

(Number of divisions in which Labour dissenters entered

official Conservative lobby given in parenthesis)

Number of Dissenting Number of Divisions Labour MPs 1945-50 1950-51 1951-55 1955-59 1959-64 1964-66 1966-70 1970-74 1974 1974-79a

1 only 16 (14) 1(0) 1(1) 2 (0) 12(7) 1(1) 18(13) 13(7) 1(1) 53 (32)

2-9 27 (15) 2 (1) 5 (0) 6 (1) 8 (0) 0 (0) 16 (4) 6 (2) 0 (0) 87 (41)

10-19 17 (4) 1(0) 3(0) 0(0) 1(0) 0(0) 44 (l)b 5(1) 1(0) 49 (14)

20-29 5 (1) 0 (0) 2 (0) 0 (0) 4 (0) 0 (0) 10 (1) 1 (0) 1(0) 31 (4)

30-39 9 (1) 1 (0) 2 (0) 1 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 10 (0) 3 (0) 2 (0) 20 (0)

40-49 4 (0) 0 (0) 1 (0) 0 (0) 1 (0) 0 (0) 5 (0) 3 (0) 2 (0) 25 (1)

50 or more 1 (0) 0(0) 3 (0) 1 (0) 0(0) 0(0) 6 (0) 3 (1)c 1(0) 44 (3)

Total 79 (35) 5 (1) 17(1) 10 (1) 26 (7) 1(1) 109 (19) 34 (11) 8 (1) 309 (95)

aIn addition, in this Parliament Labour dissenters joined with a sufficient number of unwhipped Conservative Members to impose Government defeats on six occasions.

bLabour Members voting against Government during passage of Parliament (No. 2) Bill not included as voting in official Conservative

lobby (Opposition whips not being applied in the divisions). CVote on the principle of entry into the EEC when Labour dissenters entered unwhipped Conservative lobby.

uo -P4 CD

C0

o:

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practice in 1976 and 1977 (both precipitating confidence votes); on the central provision of the Government's economic policy (sanctions against firms breaking the 5 percent pay limit) in December 1978; and, of course, on a motion of no confidence on 28 March 1979. Other defeats included those on the issue of holding the inquiry into the Crown Agents' affair in public and on the devaluation of the so-called Green Pound. All of these examples are taken from the 1974-1979 Parliament. The defeats in the division lobbies were reinforced also by defeats in standing committees. In the 1970-1974 Parliament there were defeats on 24 issues, a total of 28 divisions being involved (Norton,1976c); in the 1974-1979 Parliament, the number of defeats appears to have been in the region of no less than 100 (estimate based on Schwartz, 1978).6

These defeats, of course, were defeats on measures that the Govern- ment brought before the House. There are instances as well of the Government withdrawing Bills apparently for fear of defeat as, for example, a measure to regulate shotguns in the 1970-1974 Parliament (Lawson and Bruce-Gardyne, 1976, pp. 174-175), and the 1976 Weights & Measures Bill, withdrawn two days before its scheduled Second Reading (Burton and Drewry, 1978, p. 143).

The defeats taking place in the 1970s were the consequence of minority Government and the increase in intra-party dissent. Those in the short 1974 Parliament, and a minority (19) of those in the 1974-1979 Parlia- ment, were attributable to opposition parties combining against a minority Government. The 6 defeats in the 1970-1974 Parliament, and a majority (23) of those in the 1974-1979 Parliament were attributable to dissent by Govern- ment backbenchers. Of the 6 defeats under Mr. Heath's Government, the most important was that on the immigration rules in 1972 (Norton, 1976a), which provided a precedent for later defeats. As one leading dissenter noted to the author, once the Government had been defeated on one occasion it was much easier to do it a second time. Just as one defeat provided a precedent for another, so the experience of one Parliament provided the precedent for another. Conservative backbenchers demonstrated that it was possible to join with the Opposition and impose a Government defeat without necessarily endangering the Government's continuance in office. It was a precedent recognized and used by a number of Labour Members opposed to various Labour Government policies or proposals, and after several defeats in the 1974-1979 Parliament, as one Labour Member responsible for engineering a number of them noted (in the author's presence), their occurrence came to constitute something of a habit.

To summarize, the decade of the 1970s saw a period of minority Government, a high incidence of Conservative and (later) Labour Members voting against their own party, and, as a result, a significant number of Government defeats in the division lobbies, some of them taking place on

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important issues, indeed, on occasion, on items central to the Government's economic strategy. These changes are important in themselves. They also have important implications for previously held assumptions as to why Members did not engage in such a degree of voting independence and their reasons for refraining from seeking consciously (when on Government backbenches) to defeat the Government on issues on which there was disagreement with the line taken by the Treasury Bench.

Wider Implications of Behavioural Changes

In order to explain the high level of cohesion and the rarity of Government defeats in the postwar period from 1945 to 1970, a number of hypotheses were advanced. Some of these have retained their usefulness: the events of the 19th century and the consequent growth of organised, mass- membership political parties (and party allegiances) help explain a continuing high level of party cohesion in the Commons (see Norton, forthcoming, ch. 2). Even in the 1970s, Members voted against their own parties exceptionally rather than usually. However, although a number of assumptions were prevalent in the pre-1970 period as to why there was such a high level of cohesion in the postwar period and no Government defeats (other than those wrought on odd occasions by mismanagement or, in Government eyes, Opposition trick- ery), these were clearly vulnerable as a result of the events of the 1970s. The opposition of a number of Conservative backbenchers to a number of Govern- ment proposals and their exasperation at Mr. Heath's manner of pushing them through and unwillingness to heed their criticisms in the 1970-1974 Parlia- ment, aided later to some extent by periods of minority Government, helped to create the conditions which led to previous assumptions about influences on parliamentary behaviour either ceasing to be relevant or to the realization that possibly they had not been relevant before anyway.

Prior to the 1970s, it had been assumed that Members were unwilling to engage in serious dissent because they believed that voting against one's own party, if in Government, could lead to a defeat which could bring it down; that the Government had a monopoly of or at least superior sources of information which could not be matched by the official Opposition or by backbenchers on both sides of the House; and that the whips, and constituency parties, would take disciplinary action against dissenting Members. Let us look at each of these in turn.

Fear of Defeat Precipitating a General Election

There was a popular belief among Members of Parliament that to vote against one's own party in Government could lead to its defeat and precipitate a General Election. This belief had two consequences.

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Firstly, there was a rough correlation between a Government's overall majority and the willingness of its backbenchers to vote against it. The larger the majority, the more willing were they to allow their dissent to be carried to to the lobbies-as in the Parliaments of 1945-1950, 1959-1964 and 1966- 1970-knowing that there was little likelihood of defeating the Government; the bigger the majority, the greater the number of dissenting votes it could sustain. The smaller the majority, as in the Parliaments of 1950-1951, 1951- 1955 and 1964-1966, the less willing were Government backbenchers to dissent (compare Tables 1 and 3). This correlation was recognised by Members and whips alike.

However, in the 1970s it did not hold. Government supporters proved willing to vote against their own party, regardless apparently of the size, or lack, of its overall majority. The constraint of being unwilling to defeat the Government on occasion no longer held: Members knew they could impose a defeat without necessarily endangering its life. This point was brought home by the defeats in the 1970-1974 Parliament, especially those on the immigration rules in 1972, because of its importance (Norton, 1976a), and on an amendment to the Local Government Bill earlier in the same year, because of its political insignificance. That defeat was on the issue of which local authorities should have power to dispose of (as well as collect) garbage; this was hardly an issue likely to motivate a Government resignation (see Norton, 1978a, p. 106).

On this point, it is important to note also that some of the defeats in the 1974-1979 Parliament were attributable to cross-voting by substantial numbers of Labour backbenchers, the Government being defeated on occasion by large majorities; it was not just the case of one or two Labour Members making the difference between success and failure in a division in which the parties were fairly evenly balanced. For example, the Government was outvoted by 230 votes to 147 on an amendment to the 1975 Industry Bill when 50 Labour MPs cross-voted; on other occasions it went down to defeat against majorities of 86 (amendment to the Scotland Bill), 72 (amendment to the Wales Bill), and 71 (another amendment to the Industry Bill). In short, there were instances when the Government's small and then nonexistent overall majority did not appear to have acted as a constraint upon Labour Members who opposed Government policy, certainly not to the same extent as in previous periods of Labour Government.

Secondly, and concomitantly, there was the belief that a defeat in the division lobbies had either to be reversed or else the Government must request a dissolution or resign (or, as we have noted, some variant on this theme). It was a belief which found expression in a number of works and among MPs themselves. However, while influencing parliamentary behaviour,

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it was a belief which may be described as something of a constitutional myth. It had no basis in any authoritative original source, nor was it a 'convention' based on any consistent parliamentary practice. Indeed, it was belied by experience, including that of 1945 to 1970, during which time, as we have seen, there were ten defeats in the lobbies, the most important of which (on the Finance Bill in 1965) was accepted by the Government of the day. Neverthe- less, these defeats were quickly forgotten, and most Members appear to have continued in their belief.

The experience of the defeats in the 1970s helped lay this myth to rest. As the decade progressed, there was a much greater realization that a Government was constitutionally required to resign or request a dissolution in consequence only of a vote of no confidence. This point was made by a number of Members when dissenting from Government policy in the 1974-1979 Parlia- ment, as, for example, George Cunningham during debate on the guillotine motion for the Scotland Bill (HC Deb. 939, c. 615). The defeats that took place in the 1970s helped reinforce what in fact may be described as having been the constitutional reality since the advent of party government in Britain in the 19th century, namely that there are essentially three types of Govern- ment defeats in the Commons: those on votes of confidence, in consequence of which the Government is required to resign or request a dissolution; those on issues central to Government policy, in response to which the Government may either seek a vote of confidence or request a dissolution or resign; and those on issues which are not central to Government policy (as, for instance, amendments to a Bill, as opposed to defeats on Second Readings of major Bills), in response to which the Government need determine only whether to accept them or to attempt their de facto reversal.7

By their nature, most divisiohs in the Commons are on matters not central to Government policy. The distinction between these types of defeats has existed since the 1830s, and was identified explicitly in this century by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in 1936 (HC Deb. 310, c. 2445), being de- lineated more recently by the author (Norton, 1978b). The distinction has been recognised and adhered to by succeeding Governments, those in the 1970s responding in a manner that accorded with precedent. The Labour Government of 1974-1979 survived various votes of confidence, as in March 1977, defeat being averted by an agreement between the Government and the Parliamentary Liberal Party, the so-called "Lib-Lab Pact" (see Michie and Hoggart, 1978). Hence, it survived in office until losing by one vote the decisive division on 28 March 1979, as a consequence of which the Prime Minister, Mr. James Callaghan, had an audience with the Queen on the following day to request a dissolution. The Government suffered a small number of defeats on issues central to Government policy-the 1976 Expenditure White

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Paper, the 1977 Expenditure White Paper in practice, and the policy of employing sanctions against firms breaking the 5 percent pay limit. Each of these defeats was followed by a confidence vote, though one Cabinet Minister did apparently raise the possibility of a dissolution following the 1976 defeat (see Norton, 1976e). The remaining defeats were on issues that the Govern- ment deemed not central to its policy for the Parliament, and more often than not accepted such defeats. The number of defeats, and the Government's response to them, helped make Members and others aware of what for all intents and purposes was the constitutional reality.

Party Whips

There was the assumption that party whips were powerful discipli- narians, ready to pounce upon dissenters and mete out serious punishments. This is, and to some extent, always has been, a misleading assumption. It is important to stress that the main functions of the whips, as they have been throughout this century and prior to it, are those of communication and management (Norton, 1979). It is true that they help to ensure that parliamentary parties are cohesive in their voting behaviour, but mostly what they are doing is helping facilitate the cohesiveness of those who wish to be cohesive. It is only when Members indicate their unwillingness to be cohesive on a particular issue that the presumed "disciplinary" role of the whips comes into play, and what their power in this respect amounts to is that of persuasion. If Members express an intention to vote against their own side, the whips try to dissuade them by appeals to party loyalty and by putting the Front Bench case; if that fails they often arrange for the Members concerned to see the relevant Front Benchers for further talks. Beyond that, there is little in practice they can do.

The power to withdraw the written whip (receipt of which signifies membership of a parliamentary party) has fallen into disuse on the Conserva- tive side of the House. It was last employed in 1942 (Cross, 1968) and apparently last contemplated in the 1959 Parliament (Jackson, 1968, pp. 302- 303; Norton, 1978a, ch. 6). On the Labour side it has never resided with the whips but rests with meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party (see Norton, 1979, p. 25). Even if it were readily available to the whips, its use would likely cause more problems than it would solve, alienating the Member concerned and his vote for the rest of the Parliament, and possibly his constituency party as well.8

Influence over promotion prospects, also associated with the whips (especially the Chief Whips), may have some influence, but a Member's voting behaviour is merely one of several factors likely to be taken into account. A

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Member may receive promotion on the basis of ability, popularity within the parliamentary party or support among a section of the national party, regardless of dissenting behaviour, while a Member who votes loyally with his party in the lobby may get passed over for promotion because of incompetence or unpopularity with his colleagues or the Prime Minister. Of course, a dissenter may be promoted anyway as a means of silencing him. A number of Labour Members with backgrounds of independent voting behaviour found their way on to the Treasury Bench under the premierships of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.9 Indeed, by the end of the 1974-1979 Parliament, Mr. Callaghan would have found it difficult to find a backbencher to promote who had not cast at least one or two dissenting votes in the Parliament. Past dissenting behaviour (with two possible exceptions) appears to have been no bar in Mrs. Thatcher's selection of Ministers in 1979.10 If a Prime Minister was consistently to exclude dissenting backbenchers from office, as Mr. Heath was accused of doing, it would fuel resentment on the backbenches and affect adversely the morale and effectiveness of the parliamentary party, as Mr. Heath discovered (Norton, 1978a, ch. 9).

Other powers associated with the whips, such as selection for parliamentary delegations and committees, and the distribution of honours, are useful but rather limited tools at the whips' disposal, and unlikely to influence Members determined upon dissent. As Uwe Kitzinger (1973, p. 173) observed, they constitute "the small change of political life, with which habits of con- formity can be cemented, but with which no one wo-id expect to buy great votes of principle."

The events of the 1970s helped reveal more clearly that the whips were not wielders of great disciplinary powers as popularly believed. There was a significant increase in dissent which they were unable to prevent and to which they could not respond with disciplinary weapons, 11 hence the realization that they were not a strong constraint upon Members' dissenting behaviour if other supporting variables were not present, such as the belief that dissent might lead to defeat and a change of Government. If they were and are strongly motivated, Members could and can ignore the whips without harbouring fears of serious retribution.

Constituency Parties

It was generally believed also, doubtless influenced by the experience of the "Suez rebels" of the 1950s, that constituency parties would take action against Members engaging in serious dissent (see Epstein, 1960). The experience of the 1970s, especially on the issue of entry into the European Com- munities, and, in the latter half of the decade, on the issue of devolution of

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certain powers to elected assemblies in Scotland and Wales, revealed that pressure from local parties was not quite as effective as was perhaps popularly believed.

Members who disagreed with their leaders on the issue of entry into the EC were able to take their dissent further than many previously would have believed possible. Despite Mr. Heath making the Second Reading of the European Communities Bill a vote of confidence, and the issue the central item of Government policy in the Parliament, none of the Conservative Members who opposed it consistently (including on Second Reading)12 was denied re-nomination by his constituency association, though a number did run into serious trouble (Norton, 1978a, ch. 7). On the Labour side, the issue appeared to have contributed to the troubles of Mr. Dick Taverne in his Lincoln constituency, but it seemed to tip the balance in an already existing constituency dispute rather than motivating the dispute itself.

Dissenters on the issue of devolution appeared to encounter even fewer problems: they would seem to have suffered retribution neither from their local associations nor from their national parties and a number now occupy Front Bench positions.13 An exception might be George Cunningham, one of the leading anti-devolutionists on the Labour side and author of the "40 percent" amendment, who did encounter some trouble with his local party, but it was not on any serious scale.

Thus while constituency parties do remain a strong constraint upon Members,l4 especially through the process of anticipated reaction, they are not quite such strong constraints as was popularly believed. Indeed, the point can be made that, on the Labour side especially, pressure from certain constituency parties may encourage Members to disagree with the party line in the Commons rather than adhere to it.15

Government's Sources of Information

Members appeared willing to accept that the Government had sources of information which they could not effectively challenge. Government backbenchers seemed willing in consequence to acquiesce in Government policy or, if opposed, to dissent half-heartedly, while the Opposition, though willing to enter the lobby often (albeit not always) against the Government, was conscious of the limitation of not knowing all the pertinent facts and figures. This view is still held by many Members, and there is much to be said for it: the Oppo- sition and backbenchers on both sides of the House do not have the resources of the Civil Service at their immediate disposal.16 However, in the 1970s, Members (or at least some of them) proved less willing to accept as a corollary of this that "the Government knows best." They were prepared to rely more

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than before upon their own instincts in challenging their own Front Benches, and on occasion to rely upon their own sources of information, as, for example, the Conservative opponents of the Maplin Development Bill in 1973. There was much less willingness to accept what the Government said at face value. One may speculate that this was encouraged by the publication of Richard Crossman's Diaries of a Cabinet Minister which revealed clearly that decision making in Government was not necessarily a rational process based on a balanced evaluation of options and empirical data. As they showed, especially Volume III (1977), decision making was based often upon the most partisan or personal of reasons.

This increased unwillingness to accept that "the Government knows best" was reflected in the defeats inflicted in the 1970s. Of special interest in this context was the defeat on the Crown Agents' affair in December 1977. The Government argued that the inquiry into the activities of the Crown Agents should be held in private. The Opposition Front Bench (the alternative Government) proved unwilling to jettison altogether the belief that on certain matters the Government of the day does know best, and in the division abstained from voting. It was left to backbenchers on both sides of the House, who wanted a public inquiry under the provisions of the 1921 Tribunal of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, to combine and impose a defeat upon the Govern- ment, doing so by 158 votes to 126 (HCDeb. 940, c. 1093-1096). It was not the only example of a Parliamentary defeat being imposed by a combination of backbenchers on both sides of the House.17 This, it could be contended, was a healthy development, as it could help force the Government to be more open, not only with its own backbenchers but also with the House as a whole.

Thus, the changes of the 1970s helped demonstrate that a number of constraints presumed to operate upon Members contemplating dissent were no longer as potent (or had never been as potent) as was previously believed. However, the implications of the changes we have identified do not end there. Although generally overlooked, they have had and continue to have important implications for the movement for parliamentary reform.

The Movement for Parliamentary Reform

In the postwar period, pressure for a reform of the House of Commons, which had been a notable feature of the late 1920s and the 1930s, returned with some force in the late 1950s and more especially the early 1960s. Its emergence at a time of economic and political difficulty for Britain, with some questioning of the country's world role, was probably not a coincidence. In seeking reasons for and ways out of the nation's problems, observers cast critical eyes over national institutions: the pseudonymous Hill and Whichelow's What's Wrong with Parliament? (1964) was one in a series,

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others in the series covering industry and even the Church. In looking at the Commons the reformers found it wanting, in part because of the three factors identified at the beginning of this paper: two large parliamentary parties facing one another, one with an overall majority and able to have its way in each division because of the voting cohesiveness of its Members, thus ensuring the passage of measures decided upon elsewhere, in Cabinet and in Govern- ment Departments. In the balance between the Commons and that element of it that constituted the Government, the scales were perceived as being tipped too far in favour of the latter. The House was fulfilling clearly the function of legitimization, but the two-party adversary system that had developed was viewed as affecting adversely the ability of the House to fulfil its function of scrutiny and influence of Government (see Norton, forthcoming).

This perception fueled pressure for internal, largely procedural reforms of the House as, for example, new select committees, morning sittings of the House, better pay and facilities for Members, a modernizing of procedure for debating financial matters, and the broadcasting of proceedings. The pressure, led by Professor Bernard Crick in the 1960s, and aided by a reforming Leader of the House of Commons, Richard Crossman, resulted in a number of reforms and procedural experiments in the 1966-1970 Parliament. These included the reforms just mentioned, though the House failed to approve a recommendation for the televising of proceedings. Others were to follow in the 1970s, including the creation of the Expenditure Committee to replace the Estimates Committee; the limited provision of public funds to opposition parties to help them fulfill their parliamentary duties; and the radio broadcasting of proceedings, initially on a trial basis and then made permanent (fo; details of the reforms in the period from 1966 to 1975, see Stacey, 1975).

On the whole, the reforms themselves achieved little. They ranged from the occasional modest success (the odd select committee) to outright failure (as with moring sittings, which were abandoned) and certainly did not achieve as much as the reformers would have liked. Even the more recent change of the broadcasting of proceedings did not have the success hoped for, with the BBC deciding in mid-1979 not to continue the live broadcast of Prime Minister's Question Time.

Changes failed to loosen the grip of the Government upon the House of Commons, and as this became more apparent the reform movement itself (in so far as it ever constituted a coherent 'movement' at all) divided into two camps: those who continued to press for more internal, procedural reforms, the "internal reformers"; and those who now advocated more radical change through electoral reform, the "external reformers" (Norton, 1978c). The latter took the view that the procedural reforms attempted constituted no more than mere tinkering with existing structure. They charged that the fault itself lay with the basic nature of parliamentary politics, with two parties

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facing one another in an adversary relationship, one implementing its policies through an overall parliamentary majority (facilitated by the "first-past-the- post" electoral system), the other party subsequently gaining office at an election and reversing the policies of its predecessor through its newly acquired overall majority.

The reformers argued that electoral reform-the introduction of a system of proportional representation-would have a number of positive benefits. On the basis of existing voting patterns, the reforms would result in the creation of a more representative centre-coalition Government which would be capable of ensuring policy continuity, with no fluctuation from one opposing party to another at elections. In addition, Members would be much freer of party ties. Voters would have the opportunity to choose between candidates of one party instead of being restricted to one party candidate, and Members would thus be more responsive to constituency interests. Pressure for electoral reform, based on this argument,18 gathered pace in the mid-1970s and was led by academics such as Professor S.E. Finer, with his reader Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (1975), and, in various writings, by S.A. Walkland (1976, 1977, 1979). Pressure for internal reform also continued, though overshadowed somewhat by the external reformers, and found expression in works such as Lisanne Radice's Fabian Pamphlet, Reforming the House of Commons (1977). In pressing for external or internal change, the reformers tended to ignore the developments taking place at that time within the House itself.

The events of the 1970s, and primarily the increase in intra-party dissent that produced Government defeats, demonstrated a new willingness on the part of a sufficient number of Members to assert themselves in the division lobbies and to delineate the broad limits within which Government could operate. Had it not been for dissent by Labour backbenchers, Britain would now almost certainly, as a result of the Labour Government's devolution legislation, have a new constitutional structure. The power that was exerted may be described as essentially negative (in the sense of defeating Govern- ment proposals rather than being involved in the policy-formulating process), but the method has proved effective and thus may point the way to effective reform. If Members wish for reform-and an essential prerequisite for effective reform is a willingness for such reform to be effective by MPs themselves-it suggests that they have the power to achieve it.

Electoral reform in Britain is an unlikely prospect at the moment. Both Conservative and Labour Parties (the two beneficiaries of the existing electoral system) are opposed to it. The Prime Minister, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, is a well-known opponent, as are Members who do not wish to vote themselves out of their own seats, which would be the practical effect in some cases. The

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extent to which it is an unlikely prospect has been demonstrated by votes in the Commons in recent years: in the 1974-1979 Parliament, an amendment to the Scotland Bill to provide for election to the proposed Scottish Assembly by a system of proportional representation was defeated, on a free vote, with a majority of 183 against it. It is not an issue whose time has come; indeed, there would appear to be less parliamentary support for electoral reform now than there was in the 1930s.

The reformers' arguments are also open to criticism. Policy disconti- nuity is as likely to be the product of policy change by Government during the life of a Parliament (as, for instance, the so-called U-turns on industry and the economy in 1972) as it is the result of a change in Government following a general Election. Further, policy continuity and greater freedom of voting action for Members of Parliament do not appear to be necessarily compatible aims. "Even under the existing system of strong party ties, Members are capable of interrupting policy continuity ... How much more so would it be under the system envisaged by the reformers?" (Norton, 1977b, p. 169).

As for internal reform, that was ineffective in so far as it depended upon the Government initiating and implementing the measures required, measures that were supposed to provide a means of scrutiny, of possible criticism, of Government. Governments in practice, and more especially their permanent officials, are not too keen upon establishing bodies that may be in a position to challenge. Hence the limitations of the Crossman reforms. The reformers, such as Crick, also made the mistake of assuming that the House's power could be strengthened without detracting from the power of Govern- ment (what would be described in current parlance as a non-zero sum equation), and failed to pay due attention to the necessary prerequisite of effecting a change in attitude of Members themselves.

If reforms are to be introduced and made effective as a means of scrutiny, then the developments of the 1970s suggest that the answer lies with Members themselves. Support from Government or the official Opposition obviously helps, but in itself is not a sufficient condition; conversely, opposition from Front Benchers may be insufficient to prevent pressure for change. If a majority of Members wish for reforms, it is up to them to press the Government of the day to ensure their enactment and then to sustain them through their activities and, if necessary, their votes. As Edward du Cann noted in a debate on the civil service in January 1979, change generally does not come from the Government: "What is needed is an exercise of political will on the part of the House of Commons as a whole" (HCDeb. 960, c. 1342).

Indeed, toward the end of the 1974-1979 Parliament, a number of Members began to realise that the way to effective procedural reform lay through them. In August 1978, the First Report from the Select Committee on Procedure (HC 588, 1977-1978) was published, proposing a new structure

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of twelve select committees, based on Government Departments rather than subject areas, with specialist staff and power to take evidence from interested parties. Initially, it looked as if the Report would go the way of previous such Reports, ignored by the Government and consequently undebated. However, both the Opposition Front Bench and backbenchers on both sides of the House began to take an interest in its recommendations and started pressing the Government for action. As a result of this pressure, the anti-reform Leader of the House, Michael Foot, agreed reluctantly to a debate on the Report. In the debate, in February 1979, the Opposition Front Bench combined with Conservative and Labour backbenchers to support the view that the House should have the opportunity to vote upon the Procedure Committee's recommendations. This view was put forward with sufficient vigour for Mr. Foot to reverse his previous position and concede the opportunity for such a vote. The General Election of May 1979 then intervened. The Conservative Party manifesto contained a pledge to "give the new House of Commons an early chance of coming to a decision" on the recommendations, and the new Govern- ment honoured that pledge on 25 June 1979. As one of the Party's publications subsequently observed, "by tabling a motion authorising the establishment of twelve departmental Select Committees the Government paid prompt attention to recommendations originated by Parliament itself" (Politics Today, 1979). By 248 votes to 12, the House approved the setting up of the new committee structure.

If the new committees are to be effective in scrutinizing and influencing the activities of Government, then it is up to backbench Members on both sides of the House to make them so. There is still some way to go. The choice of Members to serve on the committees rests with the Committee of Selection instead of the whips (a useful development, though the independence of the Selection Committee is open to some question), but the House failed to approve amendments giving the committeespower to compel the attendance of Ministers, to set aside a minimum of eight parliamentary days each year to debate committee reports, and to give them power to appoint sub-committees to consider matters of detail.19 The Leader of the House, Norman St. John- Stevas, gave a pledge that Ministers would do all in their power to "cooperate" with the committees. However, the most cooperative of Ministers are likely to be those with least to hide, and attitudes toward the activities of such committees tend to vary from Minister to Minister, some doubtless influenced by their permanent officials. Shortly after the votes on the amendments, one Conservative MP was writing to his constituents that "my own faith in the willingness of Ministers to cooperate is not that great!" (Brotherton, 1979).

If the committees are not to go the way of their predecessors, Members on both sides of the House have to be prepared to sustain them, if

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necessary to strengthen them, and to ensure an effective linkage between their activities and the Floor of the House where Members' effective power, through the division lobbies, lies. The 1970s witnessed a new assertiveness on the part of backbench Members, the 1980s will see whether they are prepared to utilise that assertiveness to ensure that they may more effectively keep under scrutiny the activities of Government.

Conclusions

The decade of the 1970s witnessed important changes in parliamentary behaviour, changes which were important not only in themselves but also for an understanding of future behaviour in the House of Commons. Especially important were the changes in Members' voting behaviour and their implications for the constraints presumed to operate on Members contemplating dissent. The return of a minority Government in the 1970s was the best known of the changes we have identified, but for the purposes, of this paper arguably the least important. The uncoordinated voting behaviour of millions of electors resulting in no one party receiving an overall majority is not something that voters can necessarily or will consciously repeat in future elections, as the General Election of May 1979 has demonstrated already.

While millions of electors cannot coordinate their voting behaviour, the limited population of Members of Parliament can. The greater independence in voting behaviour in the Parliaments of the 1970s and the resulting Govern- ment defeats have meant not only that important precedents have been set, but their incidence has been such that many Members have acquired new habits. The realization of the weakness of the constraints presumed previously to operate has meant that Members may maintain their habits in the current and future Parliaments. As a number of MPs conceded in a radio discussion on the subject, there can be no going back to the rigid unity and 'discipline' of the 1945-1970 period ("Talking Politics," 1978). The current Parliament returned in May 1979 has borne witness already to the fact that it is different from pre-1970 Parliaments. The first Government Bill of the Parliament, the Kiribati Bill, was opposed in voice and vote by a number of backbenchers on both sides of the House. When a large number of Conservative Members made it abundantly, and publicly, clear that they were prepared to vote with the Opposition to defeat the Government if it persisted in its original proposals on Members' pay,20 the Cabinet decided not to persist. As one political correspondent (Mount, 1979) noted in a somewhat different context, "the atmosphere in 1979 is different from 1970."

The events of the 1970s were such that it will be difficult for this and future Governments to take for granted the passage of measures which do not have the clear support of their own backbenchers and a majority of the

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House. If there is to be a continuing shift in the balance between the House and that part of it which forms the Government in favour of the former, in order that it may fulfil more effectively its function of "scrutiny and influence" (see Norton, forthcoming), then it is up to Members of the current and future Parliaments to sustain the recent changes and, if necessary, assert their basic power through the division lobbies. The realization that Members would be prepared to contemplate such an assertion of power, as they have already on the matter of Members' pay,is sufficient to demonstrate that the contemporary House of Commons is a different animal from that which existed in the years from 1945 to 1970.

NOTES

This article constitutes a revised version of a paper of the same title given at a session organised by. the British Politics Group at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., August-September 1979. Some of the points made in it have been developed further in Norton (1980).

1. On an amendment to the Resale Prices Bill in March 1964, when the Government's majority was reduced to one (Norton, 1975, pp. 251-252).

2. For an explanation of the growth of party cohesion in the late 19th and the 20th centuries, see Norton (forthcoming, ch. 2).

3. It appears also to have been the case in the 1950-1951 Parliament (see Thornton-Kemsley, 1974, p. 234).

4. In addition to the resignation of the Labour whip by John Stonehouse in April 1976 (referred to in the text), the two breakaway Scottish Labour MPs, James Sillars and John Robertson, resigned the whip finally in July 1976, and the former Labour Cabinet Minister, Reginald Prentice, crossed the Floor of the House to join the Conservatives in October 1977.

5. The distinction between factions and tendencies is based on Rose (1964). The dissent by Conservative Members was not factional, but it extended beyond that of tendencies.

6. The figure of 100 or more was arrived at by assuming the same level of defeats in the remainder of the Parliament after publication of the Schwartz article as was identified for the period up to publication.

7. A motion, once defeated, cannot be reintroduced in the same session. To reverse a defeat, the language of the new motion must be "materially different" to that defeated though, in practice, seeking to achieve the same ends. Hence, all reversals that take place are de facto and never (in the same session, unless standing orders are sus- pended) de jure.

8. If a Member is well entrenched with his local party he is in a strong position to resist the wishes of his parliamentary leaders and whips. There would have been little point, for instance, in withdrawing the whip from Mr. Enoch Powell, the Conservative Member for Wolverhampton South-West, because of his persistent opposition to Govern- ment policy in the 1970-1974 Parliament (see Norton, 1978a, p. 172). Note also the experiences of Captain Cunningham-Reid when the whip was withdrawn from him (see Cross, 1968).

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9. For example, Robert Cryer, Mrs. Judith Hart, Leslie Huckfield, Joe Ashton, John Ellis, Eric Heffer, James Wellbeloved, James Marshall and Mrs. Ann Taylor. A number of these did later resign office (Cryer, Ashton, and Ellis) in order to pursue disagreement with Government policy from the backbenches, and one was dismissed (Heffer) for speaking against Government policy in debate.

10. Among those with backgrounds of notable dissenting behaviour given Government office were John Biffen, Angus Maude (both appointed to the Cabinet), Neil Marten and Nicholas Ridley, as well as the pro-devolutionists identified below (Note 13). Another, Ian Gow, was appointed as the Prime Minister's parliamentary private secretary. The two exceptions were Winston Churchill and John Biggs-Davison, widely believed to have been denied office because of their votes against the Rhodesian sanctions order in 1978, for which both lost their then Opposition Front Bench posts.

11. This is not to say, though, that the persuasive powers of the whips, which can be considerable, did not help prevent the dissent from being even greater than it was (see the comments of Norton, 1978a, ch. 6).

12. Fifteen Conservative MPs voted against the Second Reading of the Bill (and a further five abstained from voting), the first time in postwar history that a number of Conservative Members had voted against a Conservative Government on a vote of confidence.

13. The four leading Conservative supporters of devolution who offered their resignations as Front Bench spokesmen in order to support the Scotland and Wales Bill, Alick Buchanan-Smith, George Younger, Hector Monro, and Malcolm Rifkind, are now Government Ministers, Mr. Younger being in the Cabinet. (Russell Fairgrieve, who offered his resignation as chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, is also a Minister). George Cunningham is an Opposition Front Bench spokesman.

14. Indeed, it is possible to contend, on the basis of the author's own experience and some of the comments made by MPs in King (1974), that more Members run into some trouble with their local parties than is generally realized. However, it is only in exceptional circumstances-more exceptional than is probably believed-that a Member is likely to be denied re-nomination.

15. In the 19th century, Liberal radicals who dissented stood to be applauded by their local caucuses, not disciplined (Berrington, 1968, p. 363). The same would appear to apply to a number of Labour Members, on the party's left wing, in the 1970s.

16. However, for an alternative comment, that too much information is available, to MPs and others, see Grimond (1979).

17. The Government was defeated on a new clause to the Criminal Law Bill, in a division in which the Opposition abstained officially from voting (HC Deb. 935, c. 531-534). Four defeats on amendments to the Scotland Bill took place in divisions in which Opposition Members were not whipped (HC Deb. 942, c. 1541-1544, 1545- 1548;HCDeb. 944, c. 597-602,601-606).

18. Pressure for proportional representation itself, on grounds of fairness, is not new, and has been a feature of Liberal Party policy for some time.

19. Only three of the committees (Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Treasury & Civil Service) have power to appoint a sub-committee.

20. The attitude of Conservative Members was made clear (sometimes in quite bitter language) both in the 1922 Committee and on the Floor of the House. "If the Government pushes forward its three-stage proposal to the House of Commons, it is almost certain to be roundly defeated" (The Economist, 30 June 1979, p. 15).



Philip Norton

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Documents

The Changing Face of the British House of Commons in the 1970s