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THESE
are the British
[Illustration]
THESE
are the British
by
DREW MIDDLETON
New York: Alfred · A · Knopf: Mcmlvii
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
L.C. catalog card number: 57-11164
© Drew Middleton, 1957
[Illustration: THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF,
INC.]
Copyright 1957 by Drew Middleton. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages
in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in
the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada by
McClelland & Stewart Limited.
FIRST EDITION
_This book is dedicated
to the memory
of_
ALEX CLIFFORD,
EVELYN MONTAGUE,
_and_
PHILIP JORDAN
_FOREWORD_
It was in 1940 that the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom noted
that Britain and the United States would have to be "somewhat mixed up
together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage."
This situation has persisted until the present. Yet, despite the
closeness of co-operation in the intervening years, there is among
Americans a surprising lack of knowledge about modern Britain.
This book is an effort to provide a picture of that country--"warts and
all." Such a book must perforce be uneven. There are areas of British
life--the attitude toward religion is one--that have not been touched.
I have tried to emphasize those aspects which are least well known in
the United States and to omit as far as possible consideration of those
which are superficial. Ascot, I agree, is spectacular. But as far as
modern Britain is concerned it doesn't matter a damn. I hope, however,
that the reader will find here some idea of what has been going on in
Britain since 1945 and what is going on there today. This is a modern,
mobile society, important to us as we are important to it. If we look
at this society realistically, we will discern physical and moral
strength that the fictions of Hollywood can never convey.
For one whose roots are deep in his own country, the British are a
difficult people to understand. But they are worth understanding.
They are worth knowing. Long ago, at a somewhat more difficult period
of Anglo-American relations, Benjamin Franklin warned his colleagues
that if they did not all hang together, they would assuredly hang
separately. Good advice for Americans and Britons today.
DREW MIDDLETON
_Bessboro Farm
Westport, Essex County
New York
March 12, 1957_
_CONTENTS_
I. _Britain Today_ 3
II. _The Monarchy_ 13
III. _How the British Govern Themselves_ 34
IV. _The Conservatives_: A PARTY AND A WAY OF LIFE 50
V. _The Labor Party_: POLITICAL MACHINE OR
MORAL CRUSADE? 70
VI. _A Quiet Revolution by a Quiet People_ 90
VII. _A Society in Motion_: NEW CLASSES AND NEW
HORIZONS 112
VIII. _The British and the World_ 135
IX. _The Atlantic Alliance_: STRENGTHS AND
STRESSES 159
X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_ 187
XI. _The British Character and Some Influences_ 217
XII. _Britain and the Future_ 260
INDEX _follows page_ 290
THESE
_are the British_
[Illustration]
I. _Britain Today_
_They called thee Merry England in old time._
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
_It was never good times in England since the poor began to speculate
on their condition._
CHARLES LAMB
To begin: the British defy definition. Although they are spoken of as
"the British," they are not one people but four. And of these four,
three--the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish--are fiercely jealous of
their national identity. The English are less concerned. They have been
a nation a very long time, and only on occasions like St. George's
Day do they remind themselves, a bit shamefacedly, that the English
are the central force of the British people. Of course, if there are
Scots, Welsh, or Irish in the company, the English keep this comforting
thought to themselves.
The variety of the British does not end with nationalities. There are
Yorkshiremen and men from Somerset, Cornishmen and people of Durham
who differ as much as Texans and Vermonters did in the days before the
doubtful blessings of standardization overtook our society.
Here we encounter the first of many paradoxes we shall meet in this
book. Homogeneity in political thought--basic political thought that
is not party allegiance--seems far greater in Britain than in France
or the United States. Yet, until the present, the resistance to
standardization has been much more stubborn. Institutions and customs
survive without undue prodding by Societies for the Preservation of
This and That, although there are plenty of the latter nesting in
British society.
Early in 1954 I was in Inverasdale, roughly five hundred miles
north-west of London on the western coast of Scotland. Inverasdale is a
small village buffeted by the fierce winds that beat in from the North
Atlantic, and its people are independent and God-fearing. John Rollo, a
Scots industrialist, had started a small factory in Inverasdale to hold
the people in the Highlands, where the population has fallen steadily
for a century.
Inside the factory John pointed to one of the workers. "That's the
bard," he said. "Won a prize at the annual competition this year."
The bard, clad in rubber boots, old trousers, and a fisherman's jersey,
had little of the "Scots Wha Ha'e" about him. But he was the real
thing. He had journeyed to the competition on foot and there recited
in Gaelic his own composition, a description of his life in Germany
as a soldier in the British Army of the Rhine. "I sung of those queer
foreign sights and people," he said.
I asked him if he had liked the Germans.
"I did not," he said. He was not a particularly loquacious bard. But
he was intensely and unostentatiously devoted to customs and a culture
well established before there were white men in America.
The bard was proud of his association with an old and famous race. But,
then, all over the British Isles there are groups rejoicing in the
same fierce local pride. In Devon you will be told that it was "Devon
men" who slashed the Armada to ruins in the Channel. That battle was
fought nearly four hundred years ago. In a future century the visitor
to London will be told, quite correctly, that it was the near-sighted,
snaggle-toothed, weak-chested youngsters from the back streets who
held the Germans at Calais until preparation could be made for the
evacuation at Dunkirk.
The British often act and talk like an old people because they _are_
an old people. Nearly nine hundred years have passed since the Norman
invasion, the last great influx of foreign blood. Before that, wide,
deep rivers and the absence of natural fortifications near the coast
had invited invasion. Celts, Romans, Saxons, and Danes had mingled
their blood with that of the ancient Britons. But major invasions ended
with 1066.
Consequently, the British are unused to foreigners in large numbers.
They make a tremendous fuss over the forty thousand or so Jamaicans
and other West Indian Negroes who have settled in the country since
1952. The two hundred thousand Poles and other East European refugees,
many of whom fought valiantly beside the British in World War II, are
more acceptable. This is true, also, of the Hungarians driven from
their homeland by the savage Russian repression of the insurrection of
1956. But you will hear grumbling about "foreigners" in areas where
refugees have settled. In rural areas you will also hear someone from
a neighboring county, long settled in the village, referred to as a
"foreigner."
The Republic of Ireland is the main source of immigrants at present.
No one knows the exact figures, for there is no official check, but it
is estimated in Dublin that perhaps fifty thousand young Irishmen and
Irishwomen have entered Britain in each recent year.
This migration has raised some new economic, social, and religious
problems and revived some old ones. It is also beginning to affect,
although as yet very slightly, political balances in the western
Midlands, for this area is short of labor and its industries gobble up
willing young men from across the Irish Sea.
These industrial recruits from a rural background become part of an
advanced industrial proletariat. By nature and by upbringing they are
foreign to the industrial society that uses them. Their political
outlook is far different from that of the loyal trade-unionists beside
whom they work. They are much less liable to be impressed by appeals
for union solidarity and Labor Party support. They accept the benefits
of the Welfare State, but they are not of it. The economic Marxism of
the orators in the constituency labor parties is beyond them; besides,
have they not been warned that Marx is of the devil? The incorporation
of this group into the Socialist proletariat poses a question for Labor
politicians of the future.
Despite the lack of large-scale migration into Britain during nine
centuries, national strains remain virulent. Noisy and stubborn
Welsh and Scots nationalist movements give young men and women in
Cardiff and Edinburgh something to babble about. London boasts many
local associations formed of exiles from the north or west. Even the
provincial English manage to make themselves heard in the capital.
Few winter nights pass without the Loyal Sons of Loamshire meeting to
praise the glories of their home county and drink confusion to the
"foreigners," their neighbors.
If the urbanization of the country has not broken these barriers
between Scot and Londoner or between Lancashire and Kent, it has
changed the face of England out of recognition. And for the worse.
The empty crofters' cottages around Inverasdale and elsewhere in
the Highlands are exceptions, for Britain is crowded. The area of
the United Kingdom is 93,053 square miles--slightly less than that
of Oregon. But the population is just under 51,000,000, including
44,370,000 in England and Wales, 5,128,000 in Scotland, and 1,389,000
in Northern Ireland.
Since the end of the last century the population has been predominantly
urban and suburban. By 1900 about three quarters of the British people
were living within the boundaries of urban administrative areas, and
the large "conurbation" was already the dominant type of British
community. This ugly but useful noun describes those areas of urban
development where a number of separate towns, linked by a common
industrial or commercial interest, have grown into one another.
For over a third of a century about forty per cent of the population
has lived in seven great conurbations. Greater London, with
a population of 8,348,000, is the largest of these. The other
conurbations and their centers are: southeast Lancashire: Manchester;
west Midlands: Birmingham; west Yorkshire: Leeds and Bradford;
Merseyside: Liverpool; Tyneside: Newcastle upon Tyne; and Clydeside:
Glasgow. Of these the west Midland area is growing most rapidly.
Southeast Lancashire has lost population--a reflection of the waning of
the textile industry.
The growth of the conurbations, particularly London, has been
accompanied by the growth of the suburbs. Of course, many of the older
suburbs are now part of the conurbations. But the immediate pre-war and
post-war building developments have established urban outposts in the
serene green countryside.
Today more than a million people travel into the city of London and six
central metropolitan boroughs to work each morning and return to their
homes each night. Another 240,000 come in from the surrounding areas to
work in other parts of greater London.
The advance of suburbia and conurbia has imposed upon vast sections
of the United Kingdom a dreadful sameness. The traveler finds himself
driving for hours through an endless urban landscape. First he
encounters miles of suburban streets: television aerials, two-story
houses whose differences are discernible only to their inhabitants,
clusters of stores. Then a town center with its buses and bus center,
the grimy railroad station, a cluster of civic buildings, a traffic
jam, one or two seventeenth-century relics incongruous amid the jumble
of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Then more suburbs, other town
centers, other traffic jams. Individuality is lost in the desert of
asphalt and the jungles of lamp posts, flashing signs, and rumbling
buses.
On a wet winter day a journey through some of the poorer sections of
the western Midlands conurbation is a shocking experience. As your
car moves down street after street of drab brick houses, past dull,
smelly pubs and duller shopwindows, occasionally coming upon hideous,
lonely churches, you are oppressed. The air is heavy with smoke and the
warring smells of industry. Poverty itself is depressing, but here
it is not poverty of the pocket but poverty of the soul which shocks.
Remorseless conformity and unrestrained commercialism have imposed this
on the lively land of Shakespeare. Can great virtues or great vices
spring from this smug, stifling environment?
Yet bright spirits are bred. One remembers people met over the years:
a sergeant from the Clyde quoting Blake one morning long ago at Arras;
Welsh miners singing in the evenings. Out of this can come new Miltons,
Newtons, and Blakes. A Nelson of the skies may be studying now at that
crumbling school on the corner.
In September 1945 I was riding in from London airport in a bus crowded
with Quentin Reynolds (whose presence would crowd an empty Yankee
Stadium) and returning soldiers and airmen of the British Army and
the Royal Air Force. As we passed through the forlorn streets of
Hammersmith, Quentin, brooding on the recent election, said: "These are
the people who gave it to Mr. Churchill."
A sergeant pilot behind us leaned forward. "That's all right, cock," he
said, "they gave it to Mr. Hitler too."
To put Britain into a twentieth-century perspective, we must go beyond
the Britain many Americans know best: the Merrie England created by
literature, the stage, and the movies. This picturesque rural England
has not been a true picture of the country for over a century. But
the guidebooks and the British Travel Association still send tourists
to its shrines, novelists still write charmingly dated pictures of
its life, and on both sides of the Atlantic the movies and the stage
continue to present attractive but false pictures of "Olde Worlde"
England.
The British of today know it is dead. They retain an unabashed yearning
for its tranquillity, but the young cynics are hacking at this false
front. One morning recently I was cheered to note the advent of a new
coffee bar, the "Hey, Calypso," in the self-consciously Elizabethan
streets of Stratford-on-Avon. I am sure this would have delighted the
Bard, himself never above borrowing a bit of foreign color. And the
garish sign corrected the phony ostentation of "Elizabethan" Stratford.
Merrie England has its attractions--if you can find them. There is
nothing more salutary to the soul than an old, unspoiled village in the
cool of a summer evening. But the number of such villages decreases
yearly. The hunt, the landed aristocracy, the slumbering farms are
changing, if not passing entirely from the scene.
But--and this is very important--the values of this England endure to a
reassuring degree. Indeed, it might be argued that they have revived in
the last ten years and that virtues thought dated in two post-war Brave
New Worlds have been triumphantly reasserted. However, physically,
Merrie England, the country Wordsworth tramped and Constable painted,
is dead. The schoolteacher from Gibbsville or Gopher Prairie will find
the remains nicely laid out.
Despite the blight of suburbia, the countryside retains a compelling
charm for the visitor from the United States. There is that hour in a
winter evening when a blue light gathers in the shadows of the wood,
when the smoke rises straight from cottage chimneys, when you hear the
sound of distant church bells. I remember walking once in 1944 with Al
Paris, a young captain of the United States Air Force, through just
such a scene. "It's funny," he said, "I walk this way two, three times
a week, and I feel like I'm coming home. It's different from anything
at home. Yet I feel I know it."
But the important Englands or, rather, Britains are very different.
There is the dynamic, bustling industrial Britain of the Midlands, the
Northeast, and the Lowlands of Scotland. There is the great commercial
Britain of London, Bristol, Glasgow, Southampton, Liverpool--the
Britain of traders, middlemen, agents, and bankers, the Britain whose
effect on the political development of the country and world has been
tremendous.
Out of these Britains have come the machines and the men who have kept
the country in business and twice helped to smash the military power
of Germany. The steel plants of South Wales, the engineering factories
of Birmingham, the banks of London, the shipyards of the Clyde--these
are the real modern Britain. They are not so attractive as the old
villages sleeping in the afternoon sun. But from the standpoint of
Britain, and from that of the United States as well, they are much more
satisfying and reassuring than Merrie England.
For this is the Great Britain that is not satisfied with the past or
the present, that dreams great and necessary dreams of the industrial
uses of atomic energy, that strives to expand the three great groups of
industry: metals and metal-using, textiles, and chemicals. It is the
combination of this Britain and the character of the old England that
provides a basis for faith.
Is Britain's long and glorious story nearly done? Will the political,
technological, and social changes of the first half of the twentieth
century--changes in which Britain often pioneered--combine to eliminate
Britain as a world power? Is the country's future to be a gradual and
comfortable decline into the position of a satellite in an Atlantic
system dominated by the United States and Canada? Or will Britain
withdraw slowly, under force of circumstance, into the unambitious
neutrality of Sweden?
These are questions that Britons who care about their country must ask
themselves. But because of the confidence that is still so strong in
British character, such questions are seldom debated openly. In the
spring of 1956, when the leaders of the government and of industry
were only too gloomily aware of the magnitude of the problems facing
the country in the Middle East, in competitive exporting, in gold
and dollar reserves, the British Broadcasting Corporation began a
television series, "We, the British," with an inquiry: "Are we in a
decline?" No one was greatly excited.
This seeming obliviousness to harsh facts, this innate confidence, is
one of the most arresting features of the national character. We will
encounter it often in this book as we seek answers to the questions
about Britain's future.
Consideration of Britain in the world today, and especially of her
relation to the United States and to the Soviet Union, must take into
account the historical fact that the country's present situation is not
altogether novel to Britons.
For Americans it is unusual, and hence disturbing, to live in the same
world with a hostile state--the Soviet Union--that is larger and more
populous than their own country. Enmity has burst upon us suddenly in
the past. We have been told by generations of immigrants that the whole
world loved and admired us. It has taken Americans some time to make
the psychological adjustment to the position of world power.
The British situation is different. The British have always been
inferior in strength of numbers to their great antagonists: the Spain
of Philip II, the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, the Germany of
Wilhelm II and Hitler, and, today, the Soviet Union. British power has
rested not upon numbers but upon combinations of economic stability,
political maneuvering, and the exercise of sea, land, and, latterly,
air power. The world abroad has always appeared harsh to the Briton.
Except for the second half of the last century--a small period in a
thousand years of national existence--the British have always seen on
the horizon the threat of a larger, more powerful neighbor. The balance
has been restored in many a crisis by the ability first of the English
and then of the British to attain in war a unity of purpose and energy
which in the end has brought victory.
Unity often has restored the balance between Britain and her enemies.
To many of us who were in Britain in 1940 the miracle of that memorable
year was not the evacuation of Dunkirk or victory in the Battle of
Britain or the defiance under bombing of the poor in London, Coventry,
and Birmingham, but the national unity of purpose which developed at
the moment when all the social upheavals of the thirties pointed to
division, faltering, and defeat.
Ability to achieve a national unity remains a factor in Britain's
world position. And it is the lack of this unity which makes Britain's
position so perilous today.
The country must make, and it must sell abroad. It must retain access
to the oil of the Middle East or it will have nothing to make or to
sell. It must be able to compete on even terms with the exports of
Germany and Japan. These are the ABC's of the British position.
The leaders of the present Conservative government recognize the
country's situation; so do the Labor Party and the Trades Union
Congress, although each has its own interpretation of the causes. But
there is still an unwillingness or an inability on the part of the
general public to grasp the realities of the situation.
Yet such a grasp is essential. The people of Britain must adjust
themselves to a condition of permanent economic pressure if they are
to meet the economic challenge of the times. Such an adjustment will
involve re-creation of the sort of national unity which produced the
miracles of 1940. Otherwise, John Bull, better paid, better housed, and
with more money (which has less value) than ever before, can follow the
road to inflation which led to disaster in Germany and France in the
thirties.
This return to unity is a factor in answering the question of where the
British go from here. But it is only one of many factors. Before we can
arrive at an adequate answer we must know more about the British, about
their institutions and who runs them today, about what the people have
been doing since 1945, and about how they face and fail to face the
problems of the second half of the century.
Repeatedly in the course of this inquiry we shall encounter a national
characteristic not easily measurable in commercial and industrial
values but deeply established and enormously important. This is the
ability of the British to adapt themselves to a changing world and
to rule themselves with a minimum of serious friction. Stability
and continuity are essential in politics if Britain is to meet and
answer the challenge of the times. The British enjoy these essentials
now. Their demonstrated ability to change with the times is the best
of omens for national success and survival as a great power in the
tumultuous years that lie ahead.
[Illustration]
II. _The Monarchy_
_Kings are not born; they are made by universal hallucination._
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
_A land where kings may be beloved and monarchy can teach republics
how they may be free._
VILDA SAUVAGE OWENS
[Illustration]
The monarchy is the crowning anachronism of British society. It
stands virtually unchallenged at the summit of that society. In this
most political of Western nations, one eternally bubbling with new
ideas on the ways and means by which men can govern themselves, the
thousand-year-old monarchy is admired, respected, or tolerated, but
is seldom attacked. A people who on occasion can be as ruthless and
cynical as any in the world preserve close to their hearts a mystic
symbol that asks and gets an almost childlike loyalty from millions.
This tie between Crown and people is the basis for the monarchy's
existence. Yet, like so many other things in Britain, the tie is almost
indefinable. Its strength is everywhere and nowhere. History is one
of its foundations, and the sense of history--a reassuring sense that
worse has happened and that the nation and the people have survived--is
very strong in Britain. Yet the present institution of monarchy has
little in common with the monarchy of 1856 and still less with that of
1756. And the extreme popularity of the royal family has developed only
in the last eighty years.
The reasons for the monarchy's popularity today are far different from
those of the past. It is regrettable but true that some of the most
popular monarchs earned their popularity as much by their vices as by
their virtues.
By our American standards the British monarchy is very old, although
it does not compare with the same institution in Iran, for instance,
where kings reigned seven centuries before Christ. Certainly the age of
monarchy, linking modern Britain with the forested, lusty, legendary
England of the Dark Ages, contributes to its popularity. Age in an
institution or a person counts in Britain.
Queen Elizabeth II is in direct descent from Egbert, King of Wessex and
all England, who ascended the throne in 827. The blood of all the royal
families of Europe flows in her veins. Among her ancestors are some of
the great names of history: Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Alfred
the Great, Rodrigo the Cid, the Emperor Barbarossa, and St. Louis,
King of France. This notable lineage is unknown to millions who adore
the Queen. The visible expressions of adoration and loyalty to the
royal family can be profoundly moving, but there is nothing to suggest
that the crowd's memory stretches back much further than George V, the
present Queen's grandfather.
Is "profoundly moving" too strong? I doubt it. London was a gray and
somber city in November 1947 when Princess Elizabeth married the Duke
of Edinburgh. A long war with Germany and two years of austerity had
left their mark. The crowds, the buildings were shabby and tired.
Yet the Crown evoked in these circumstances a sincere and unselfish
affection such as few politicians can arouse.
What did it? The pageantry of the Household Cavalry, restored to
their pre-war glory of cuirass, helmet, and plume, scarlet and blue
and white? The state coach with the smiling, excited, pretty girl
inside? The bands and the stirring familiar tunes? There is no single
convincing answer. Yet the affection was there: the sense of a living
and expanding connection between the people and the throne.
But some aspects of the connection can be embarrassing, to Britons as
well as to Americans. The doings of the royal family are recounted by
popular British newspapers and periodicals in nauseating prose. Special
articles on the education of Prince Charles or on Princess Margaret's
religious views (which are deep, sincere, and, to any decent person's
mind, her own business) are written in a mixture of archness, flowery
adulation, and sugary winsomeness.
The newspapers are full of straight reporting (the Queen, asked if she
would have a cup of tea, said: "Yes, thank you, it is rather cold") but
this does not suffice to meet the demand for "news" about the royal
family. Periodically the Sunday newspapers publish reminiscences of
life in the royal household. Former governesses, valets, and even the
man who did the shopping for the Palace write their "inside stories."
These are as uninformative as the special campaign biographies that
appear every four years in the United States, but the public loves
them. I have been told that a "royal" feature in a popular magazine
adds 25,000 or 30,000 in circulation for that issue. The _Sunday
Express_ is said to have picked up 300,000 circulation on the Duchess
of Windsor's memoirs. Like sex and crime, the royal family is always
news--and the news is not invariably favorable.
The interest in royal doings is all the more baffling because the
Queen is generally held to be powerless politically. This view is
accepted in Britain and also in the United States, save among those
surviving primitives of Chicagoland who regard all British monarchs as
reincarnations of George III ready to order the Lobsterbacks to Boston
at an insult's notice. The accepted picture is of a monarch who is a
symbol with little or no influence on politics.
Superficially the picture is accurate. But in the last century and in
this there have been occasions when the Crown exerted power beyond the
functions assigned it by the constitution. These functions include the
summoning, proroguing, and dissolution of Parliament, the dismissal
or appointment of a Prime Minister, the granting of pardons, and the
conferring of peerages and honors. To become the law of the land, a
bill passed by Parliament must receive the royal assent.
All very impressive. But in practice these functions are restricted by
the principle that the monarch is responsible to the government of the
day even though it is styled "Her Majesty's Government." To take one
example, if the Queen wants to make Lord Tomnoddy a duke and the Prime
Minister says no, Lord Tomnoddy does not become a duke. The monarch
retains the right of conferring certain honors, such as the Order of
the Garter, without ministerial advice. But when Chancellor Adenauer of
Germany receives the insignia of the Grand Cross of the Order of St.
Michael and St. George the inspiration comes not from Buckingham Palace
but from Downing Street.
The principle of responsibility to the government guides the conduct
of the monarch. In rare cases the sovereign can express disapproval
of a policy. In the present circumstances the idea of the young Queen
rejecting the advice of her Prime Minister is unthinkable. Without
being romantic, we can wonder if this will always be so.
George V twice exercised his discretionary powers in choosing from
among alternative candidates the man he regarded as best suited to be
Prime Minister. Of course, in each case the candidate chosen had to
have the support of his party in the House of Commons.
We need not go back that far. George VI, the father of the present
Queen, once made a decision that profoundly affected the history of the
world.
When in May 1940 a tired, unpopular Neville Chamberlain resigned
as Prime Minister there were two candidates for the post: Winston
Churchill and Lord Halifax. The King knew that a large section of the
Conservative Party distrusted Churchill and admired Halifax. Its views
were conveyed to him in plain language.
According to _The Gathering Storm_, the first volume of Sir Winston
Churchill's _The Second World War_, Lord Halifax told both Churchill
and Chamberlain that his position as a peer outside the House of
Commons would make it difficult for him to discharge the duties
of Prime Minister. Ultimately a National Government including
representatives of the Labor and Liberal parties was formed, but,
according to Churchill, the King made no stipulation "about the
Government being National in character."
Lord Halifax certainly doubted his ability to discharge his duties
as Prime Minister. But apparently the question of whether he could
form a National Government did not arise. In any event, the King,
fully cognizant of the views of a considerable section of the
Conservative Party on the relative merits of the two men and aware
that it would have been possible to form a Conservative government
under Halifax, sent for Churchill instead of Halifax and asked him to
form a government. History may record this as a signal example of the
remaining powers of the Crown.
Sir William Anson explained in _The Law and Custom in the Constitution_
that the real power of the sovereign "is not to be estimated by his
legal or his actual powers as the executive of the State.
"The King or Queen for the time being is not a mere piece of mechanism,
but a human being carefully trained under circumstances which afford
exceptional chances of learning the business of politics."
The monarch is not isolated from great affairs. The Queen sees from the
inside the workings of government, knows the individuals concerned,
and often has a surer sense of what the people will or will not
accept than some politicians. So, Sir William reasoned, the sovereign
in the course of a long reign may through experience become a person
whose political opinions, even if not enforceable, will carry weight.
Continuity in office, wide experience in contact with successive
governments, and, finally, the influence that the monarchy exercises
through an ancient and well-established tie with the people can confer
upon the sovereign an influence far greater than is generally realized.
Queen Elizabeth II has twice used the royal prerogative of choosing a
Prime Minister. On April 6, 1955, she chose Sir Anthony Eden to succeed
Sir Winston Churchill. On January 10, 1957, she chose Harold Macmillan
to succeed Sir Anthony. The second selection occasioned sharp political
outcry. The "shadow cabinet" or Parliamentary Committee of the Labor
Party, meeting in secrecy and dudgeon, reported that the Queen's choice
had raised serious questions of a constitutional nature. It argued that
the Conservative Party, by asking the sovereign to choose between Mr.
Macmillan and R.A. Butler, had involved the Queen in partisan politics.
The Tories, Labor said with a touch of self-righteousness, should
always have a leader and a deputy leader of the party ready to assume
the highest office when called.
(This raised the contingency, pleasing to Tories at least, of James
Griffiths, the present deputy leader, as Prime Minister instead of
Aneurin Bevan in the event of some serious accident to Hugh Gaitskell.)
The Socialists' argument that the Queen was forced to choose between
Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Butler reflected a certain ignorance of what
had been going on within the Conservative Party. It was apparent on
the night of Sir Anthony Eden's resignation that Mr. Butler did not
command the support of a majority of the Tory Members of the House of
Commons. It was also apparent, or should have been apparent, that the
Queen would be advised by the retiring Prime Minister, Sir Anthony
Eden, and the two foremost figures in the party, Sir Winston Churchill
and the Marquess of Salisbury. Anyone aware of the currents within the
Conservative leadership during the last three months of 1956 could
not possibly have thought that any one of these three would advise the
Queen to choose Mr. Butler.
There was a good deal less to the high-minded Socialist protest than
met the eye. The shadow cabinet made the tactical mistake of coupling
the protest with a demand for a general election. One need not be
cynical to emphasize the connection. But the spectacle of Mr. Bevan and
his colleagues protesting like courtiers over the Queen's involvement
in politics and quoting an editorial in _The Times_ as though it were
Holy Writ added to the gaiety of the nation.
The Queen may have opinions on national and international affairs which
differ from those of her ministers. To date there has been no reliable
report of such differences. But her grandfather, George V, was seldom
backward in expressing opinions contrary to those of his ministers.
He told them, for instance, that the conduct of the 1914-18 war must
be left to military "experts," which meant Haig and his staff, rather
than to politicians. He opposed the dissolution of Parliament in
1918. He refused outright to grant a convenient "political" peerage.
This opposition, it should be emphasized, was not directed at court
functionaries. On many occasions George V took issue with David Lloyd
George, a wartime Premier then at the height of his prestige and power,
and a brilliant and tenacious debater.
The present royal family invites comparisons with that of a century
ago. Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is, like Albert, the Prince Consort
of Victoria, an exceptional person. He is a man of industry and
intelligence. Like Albert, he understands both the broad outlines and
the nuances of a new industrial age into which Britain is moving. He
has a wider acquaintance with the world of science, so essential to
his country, than any other member of the royal family. The techniques
of industry and invention really interest him. He understands, perhaps
better than some of his wife's ministers, the importance to Britain of
such developments as the industrial use of nuclear energy. Finally, the
Duke of Edinburgh has one matchless qualification for his role. As a
young officer of the Royal Navy he became aware of the way the Queen's
subjects, as represented by the lower deck of the Navy, think and feel.
He has in fact what the admirers of the Duke of Windsor claimed for him
when he was Prince of Wales: an intimate knowledge of the people of
Britain.
These qualities are not universally admired. A trade-union leader
told me he did not want "well-intentioned young men like Philip
mucking about with industrial relations." At the other side of the
political spectrum, the _Sunday Express_, Lord Beaverbrook's newspaper,
tut-tutted at the Duke's interest in this field.
The reasoning behind both attitudes is obvious. Industrial relations
are politics. The union movement is the Fourth Estate of the realm, and
"royals" should leave them alone.
There is an obvious parallel. The Prince Consort when he died had
established himself at the center of national affairs. But for his
death, Lytton Strachey wrote, "such a man, grown gray in the service
of the nation, virtuous, intelligent, and with the unexampled
experience of a whole lifetime of government," would have achieved "an
extraordinary prestige."
Disraeli saw the situation in even more positive terms. "With Prince
Albert we have buried our sovereign. This German Prince has governed
England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none
of our kings have ever shown.... If he had outlived some of our 'old
stagers' he would have given us the blessings of absolute government."
The parallel may seem far-fetched. Of course present-day Britain is
not the Britain of 1856. It is hard to think of Sir Anthony Eden or
Hugh Gaitskell being moved politically, at the moment, by the views of
the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh as Lord Clarendon was, and as Lord
Palmerston was not, by Victoria and Albert. But, to borrow Napoleon
III's incisive phrase, in politics one should never say never.
Not long ago a diplomat who had returned from a key post abroad
encountered the Queen at what should have been a perfunctory ceremony.
He expected a few minutes' conversation. What he got was forty minutes
of acute questioning about the situation in the country he had just
left. The Queen impressed him with the width of her knowledge, her
accurate memory, and the sharpness of her questions. He, a tough,
skeptical intellectual, departed with heightened respect for his
sovereign's intelligence.
What will be the Queen's influence a quarter of a century hence? By
then some politician, now unknown, will be Prime Minister. How much
will the wisdom and experience of the Queen, gained as the repository
of the secrets of successive governments, affect the government of the
day? Monarchy, we Americans are taught, is an archaic symbol and an
obsolete form of government. History has moved away from constitutional
monarchies and, of course, from one-man rule. But has it? Will the
movement continue?
By 1980 the British monarchy may be a memory. But let us suppose
that by that year the royal house is represented by an infinitely
experienced Queen and a consort who knows the country's problems as
well as most of her ministers. Prince Philip is a nephew of Earl
Mountbatten, one of the most striking Englishmen of today. What will
this infusion of determination, energy, and intelligence do for the
fortunes of the monarchy?
The British are cautious in discussing any indications of the influence
of the Crown on the day-to-day conduct of government. But occasional
comments and indiscretions indicate that this influence is a factor in
decisions. For instance, early in 1956 I was talking to an important
civil servant about a government decision that was to be announced
in the next few days. The government was busy making certain, he
said, that "the Palace" wouldn't "make a row about it." I said I was
surprised that he should ascribe so much weight to the Palace's view on
a matter that involved the cabinet and the House of Commons. His answer
was that in a country such as Britain under a Conservative government,
influence is not exerted solely through the House or government
departments. "What people say to each other counts," he said. "And when
the Queen says it, it counts a great deal. Of course, she couldn't
change a decision. Nor would she ever attempt to. But it can be
awkward, you know."
To guess at the future power of the monarchy we must examine it as it
is today. What lies behind its popularity and how is that popularity
maintained? What keeps strong this tie between a largely working-class
population, highly progressive politically, and an aristocratic
institution that has outlived its power if not its influence?
To understand, we must watch monarchy operate within the limitations
imposed upon it by the constitution. The principal functions are the
public performances of the duties of the Crown--what the British press
calls "royal occasions." They range from a state opening of Parliament
to a visit to an orphanage.
These take place in an atmosphere fusing formality and enthusiasm.
Protocol calls for dignity, friendliness, and a certain aloofness
on the part of the Queen. Those who make the arrangements for royal
occasions are mindful of Walter Bagehot's warning against allowing
too much light to fall on the institution of monarchy. But from the
standpoint of popular reaction, the Queen's appearances are most
successful when she stops to say a few words to someone in the crowd.
Written reports of such encounters usually endow the Queen with a
celestial condescension. The fact is that the Queen, though shy, is
friendly, and her awed subjects are likely to report that "she talked
about the baby just like she was from down the street."
Of course, the Queen is not like someone just down the street. But the
essence of a successful display of the monarchy is a combination of
this friendliness with the serene dignity displayed on great occasions
of state. The men and women in the crowd want to believe that the Queen
is, or can be, like them. As long as they do, the monarchy, no matter
how rich its members and how expensive its trappings, is relatively
safe.
To the people in the streets the Queen is paramount. The Duke of
Edinburgh is popular. So are the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.
But it is the Queen who combines all those elements of tradition,
affection, and mysticism which contribute to the Crown's unique place
in public life.
The crowd does not care much about other royalties. To the man in
the street there is little difference between, say, Prince Rainier
of Monaco and Aristotle Onassis. The British nurse at their hearts a
snobbish isolationism toward foreign crowns. Only their own Queen and
royal family really matter.
One reason is that Britain's Queen and the monarchial institution
she heads are kept before the people to a far greater degree than is
customary in the monarchies of Holland or Sweden. Official political
and social appearances in London are augmented by visits to various
parts of the country. The Queen and the Duke are the chief attractions,
but other members of the family perform similar duties.
Careful planning and split-second timing are the key to successful
royal visits. So familiar is the pattern that a skeptic might think
the effect negligible. When the Queen comes to Loamshire, however, she
is _there_ in Loamshire. Everything she does is familiar, but now she
is there directly before the crowd's very eyes, rendering a personal
service.
The Queen and the Duke arrive in Loamshire for a three-day visit.
Their car is a huge, glittering Rolls-Royce flying the royal standard.
Thousands of people, most of them women and children, are on the
sidewalks and in the windows of the buildings around the town hall of
the county town of Loamshire. As the Queen gets out of the car there is
a wave of cheering, strong and unaffected. (It is well to balance this
enthusiasm against the inattention paid "God Save the Queen" when it is
played at the end of the program in a provincial movie theater.)
The Mayor, sweating freely in his excitement, welcomes the Queen and
delivers an appropriate address. In a country divided almost evenly
between the Conservative and Labor parties, a large number of mayors
are Socialists. But, with rare exceptions, the Socialists and their
wives are as eager as the Tories to welcome royalty.
The Queen and the Duke are introduced to the dignitaries of Loamshire,
with the Lord Lieutenant of the county in attendance. The Queen
inspects a guard of honor which may be drawn from the Royal Loamshire
Light Infantry or from the local Girl Guides. There is lunch, usually a
pretty bad lunch. Then the royal party is off to lay the cornerstone of
a new hospital or press a button to start a new power plant or unveil
a war memorial. At any such occasion the Queen reads a short speech of
blameless sentiments.
Then on to the next town, to more cheering in the streets and waving of
flags, more loyal declarations and another mayor and council. This may
go on for two or three days. Every step the Queen takes, every action
is noted by newsreel and television cameras. Every word she utters is
taken down. Every person with whom she talks is interviewed afterward.
Back in London there are more ceremonies. There are also ambassadors
to be received, state papers to be read, decorations to be awarded,
distinguished visitors to be met.
It is often said that the Queen is just like anyone else of her age,
an idea much favored by the spun-sugar biographies in the popular
press. Of course it is nonsense. The Queen cannot, because of her
birth, upbringing, and station, be like anyone else. Certainly she has
a private life not unlike that of other wealthy young women, but her
private life is severely restricted.
She and the Duke may like to eat their supper off trays and watch a
popular comedian on television, but they seldom get an opportunity
to do so. The Queen must be wary of what plays she sees and what
amusements she patronizes. As head of the Church she is an inviting
target for sorrowful criticism by the bluenoses. The Queen's love
of horse racing and the Duke's love of polo are often attacked by
puritanical elements. The League Against Cruel Sports periodically
reproves her for attending "the sporting butchery" of fox-hunting.
What sort of woman is she? Forget the cloying descriptions of courtiers
and the indiscretions of "Crawfie" and her friends, and the portrait is
rather an appealing one. Elizabeth II in person is much prettier than
her photographs. Her coloring is excellent. Her mouth, a little too
wide, can break into a beguiling smile. She is slowly overcoming her
nervousness in public, but still becomes very angry when the newsreel
and television cameras focus on her for minutes at a time. Her voice,
high and girlish on her accession, is taking on a deeper, more musical
tone. Years of state duties, of meeting all kinds and classes of
people, have diminished her shyness. She was almost tongue-tied when
she came to Washington as Princess Elizabeth, but her host on that
occasion, President Harry S. Truman, was surprised by the poised and
friendly Queen he met in London in 1956.