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fabian tract 483 
Electoral reform 


1 
2 The case against 
proportional representation 15 

chapter 1 Why electoral reform 

The Authors 


Tom Ellis has been MP for Wrexham since 1970. He was a member of the Labour 
Party (1943-81) before becoming a founder member of the SDP. A Works Chemist for 
ICI he became a coal miner when the mines were nationalised and later graduated in 
mining engineering with the help of NCB scholarship. He was a colliery manager 
from 1957-60. 


Rosaleen Hughes is the Secretary of the Young Fabians. She read PPE at Oxford and 
is currently research assistant to Phillip Whitehead. 


Phi/lip Whitehead is MP for Derby North and Labour's Front Bench Spokesman on 
Higher Education and on the Arts. He was Chairman of the Fabian Society in 
1978-79, a member of the Annan Committee from 1974-n, and of the Select Committee 
on Procedure. He is a writer and television producer. 


This pamphlet, like all the publications of the Fabian Society, represents not the 
collective view of the Society but only the views of the individuals who prepared it. 
The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving the publications it issues as 
worthy of consideration within the Labour movement. 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 H 9BN. 


September 1982 Cover design by Dick Leadbetter 
ISBN 7163 0483 X 1 Printed by Blackrose Press (TU) 
ISSN 0307 7535 Photoset by Range Left (TU) 
Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London SW1 H 9BN. 



p 

1075 

,G7 

1. Why Electoral Reform? E~l 
Tom Ellis 

I 

Democracy is today a freely used word; it is at the same time a difficult one. Mass-
democracy presents even greater difficulties. Nevertheless the effectiveness of its mass-
democratic institutions must be a paramount consideration for the citizens of a country 
whose most significant political development during the twentieth-century has been the 
erosion of its formerly hierarchic social and political structures. 

Britain today has become a laterally structured society in which Jack is as good as his 
master. At long last the unique 300 year old continuum of the country's ruling class has 
been ruptured bringing to an end the seemingly effortless stability and success which had 
characterised it. In the meantime extraordinary problems have arisen impairing the 
effectiveness of Britain's political institutions. 

Introduction 

Problems of adaptation present themselves 
especially in respect of two essential 
characteristics of representative mass-
democratic government: firstly that it depends 
on a sufficient degree of consensus 
which can be represented existing in 
society and secondly that its leaders should 
trust the people sufficiently. Neither characteristic, 
each of which complements and 
stimulates the other, is convincingly demonstrated 
in Britain today. The shortcomings 
are particularly grievous for 
Britain because of her unique tradition of 
unfettered parliamt;ntary sovereignty the 
'very keystone' of the unwritten constitution 
-whereby parliament is free of 
the encumbrances of a written constitution, 
constitutional court, separation of 
powers, federal structures, delegated 
membership and almost, one might say, 
bicameral prudence. To justify this somewhat 
extraordinary constitutional arrangement 
society must at least feel that parliament 
truly represents it and can be trusted. 

An additional problem is that British 
parliamentarians, conditioned slavishly to 
follow outmoded practices some of which 
today are aberrations, seem to be instinctively 
prejudiced against these two essential 
characteristics of mass-democracy and 

to be determined to prevent their being 
established in any meaningful degree. 

"For Britain to regain her self-
assurance and poise therefore, it 
has become necessary for the 
British people, despite the waywardness 
of their political leaders, 
to insist on their proper democratic 
entitlement. ' ' 

For Britain to regain her self-assurance 
and poise therefore, it has become necessary 
for the British people, despite the 
waywardness of their political leaders, to 
insist on their proper democratic entitlement. 


Two common myths, held against the 
weight of all the evidence, must be demolished 
initially if significant advances are to 
be made. The first is that the British parliamentary 
system of democratic government 
is the finest in the world. 

Nowadays perhaps, in the face of its 
more obvious shortcomings, some people 
shamefacedly might concede let us say, 
that it is served by parliamentarians of less 
than the highest calibre but nostalgia for 
past glories still persuades them of the 
system's continuing superiority. The myth 


draws sustenance from many sources. An 
example is the melange of parliamentary 
flummery on which it feeds, the archaic 
ceremony and procedure, sentimental 
nostalgia about the Mother of Parliaments 
and the country's long history of stable 
parliamentary democracy, wishful thinking 
about our effortless constitutional 
supremacy -the easy flexibility of an unwritten 
constitution, that gentlemen's 
agreement denied to lesser mortals -and 
the commonplace snobbery evoked even 
today by the idea of gallant if hardly patrician 
amateurs muddling through successfully 
in the end. 

Or again there is the more direct influence 
of Iuddite politicans determined to 
retain the system under which they were 
apprenticed to their craft and which has 
served them well. Many of them with their 
own tributes are only too anxious to 
humour a national proclivity in parliamentary 
matters dangerously predisposed 
towards self-congratulation. 

The second common British myth is that 
electoral reform while no doubt desirable 
in itself and worthy of support is of marginal 
political singificance; that it is merely a 
do-gooding, fuddy-duddy, middle-class 
thing, a Liberal whimsy concerned with 
arithmetic and best left to clever people in 
colleges to argue about. The established 
politicans, however, appreciate that electoral 
reform is political dynamite and 
oppose it implacably for that reason while 
at the same time nurturing the myth by 
pretending less vehemently to disparage 
electoral reform either as an irrelevance or 
as perverse, foreign obsucrantism. 

''A causal relationship can now be 
established between the shortcomings 
ofBritain's parliamentary 
system and her chronic decline.'' 

It is important to demolish the first myth 
because a causal relationship can now be 

established between the shortcomings of 
Britain's parliamentary system and her 
chronic decline. The importance of 
demolishing the second arises from the 
fact that introducing an appropriate electoral 
system incorporating a much 
stronger democratic bias is probably the 
single most effective practical step one can 
readily take which would initiate radical 
qualitative change for the better in the 
parliamentary system. The aim of this 
pamphlet is to justify both these claims. 
Before considering these political issues, 
however, it might not be inappropriate 
first to look briefly at some factual and 
quantitative aspects of the present British 
electoral system. 

British Electoral Arithmetic and 
its Aberrations 

The British electoral system, like universal 
suffrage and the franchise itself, was not 
established in antiquity and there are no 
historical grounds for regarding it as sacrosanct. 
Prior to the 1884 Reform Act the 
majority of constituencies were multi-
member and even under the 1918 Representation 
of the People Act, 13 constituencies 
had two members of which all 
were not finally abolished until 1950. In 
addition, in the multi-member university 
seats (Oxford, Cambridge, combined 
English universities, Scottish universities) 
wliich also survived into the post-war era, 
candidates were elected under the Single 
Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional 
representation. 

Nor is there an international consensus 
for the British system thereby suggesting 
that it is overwhelmingly attractive. Out of 
some two dozen or so leading western 
democracies, only four -Canada, New 
Zealand the USA and South Africa operate 
our simple majority system and 
some of these countries have other constit


utional balances (separation of powers, 

2 


federal structure, constitutional courts, 
written constitutions, etcetera) which 
ameliorate the adverse consequences of 
British-type electoral arithmetic. 

In Britain the system has in fact resulted 
in comparatively short-lived governments. 
Between 1964 and 1974, largely because of 
the waywardness of external events we 
had little of either strong or stable government. 
Four elections in ten years, providing 
an average of 30 months a government 
was even worse than the average of 35 
months between July 1945 and October 
1974. A more seriously debilitating result 
of the system however, is that since 1935 
neither of the major parties has been able 
at an election to muster over 50 per cent of 
the votes cast let alone 50 per cent of the 
electorate, yet they have formed governments 
with large majorities in the House 
of Commons. Indeed on two occasions 
since the war a party which had received 
less electoral support than its main rival 
actually held a majority of seats and formed 
a government. One could well argue in 
a Fabian tract that the course of British 
history might have been very different if in 
1951 for example, the Labour Party with 
its highest ever vote, a figure never since 
achieved, had won its proportionate share 
of parliamentary seats.In fact Labour with 

48.8 per cent of the vote returned 295 MPs 
and the Conservative Party with 48.0 per 
cent returned 321 MPs to claim a substantial 
parliamentary majority. 
''The concept of a 'mandate to 
govern,' much trumpeted by partyleaders after successful elections, is 
clearly disingenuous and at best no 
more than a claim to exploit a 
perverse set of rules.'' 

The concept of a 'mandate to govern' 
much trumpeted by party leaders after 
successful elections, is clearly disingenuous 
and at best no more than a claim 

to exploit a perverse set of rules. At worst, 
as will be seen, it has become under the 
British system a licence under which extravagant 
and simplistic appeals to the 
electorate reduce politics to a cynical game 
of goodies and baddies. The bias in the 
system is in fact profoundly antidemocratic. 
Neither major party is concerned 
with trusting the people or with the 
credibility of its policy. The aim is to cultivate 
a dichotomy of interest expressed by 
two parties based largely on sectional and 
class differences and them simply to wait 
for the swing of the pendulum when 'our 
turn will come'. It is this heightened and 
frequently unreasoning partisanship on 
the part of the politicians and the stunted 
application of the concept of governing 
with the consent of the people which is at 
the root of the public cynicism surrounding 
politics and politicians in Britain. 

The phenomenon of large numbers of 
wasted votes, votes which have played no 
part in choosing the final representation 
either because, in a particular constituency, 
they are given to a minority party 
or because they form part of an excessive 
majority of the dominant party, also helps 
in producing frustration and ultimately 
cynicism. The mood is reflected in the arithmetic 
by the large number of abstaining 
electors and by the declining proportion of 
votes received by the two major parties 
despite the ineffectiveness of the system in 
sustaining a three party House of Commons. 
The turn-out at the general election 
of 1950 for example was 84.0 per cent 
whereas in October 1974 and May 1979 the 
figures were 72.8 per cent and 76.0 per 
cent respectively. Even the 1950 figure 
compares unfavourably with the 90 per 
cent or more nowadays achieved in several 
continental countries (apart from those 
where voting is compulsory) using systems 
of proportional representation where a 
much greater proportion of the votes cC!st 

are used to effect. The most recent British 

administrations, the Labour government 

3 


of 1974 and the present Conservative 
government, were elected respectively by 

27.8 per cent and 33.3 per cent of the 
electorate. 
The combined Labour-Conservative 
share of the total vote (not electorate) in 
October 1974 was just 75 per cent. That 
compares with the period 1931-1970 when 
it averaged 91 per cent and never fell 
below 87 per cent. From a Labour point of 
view however, the most starkly chilling 
comparison is between its vote in 1951 and 
1979. The electorate increased during the 
period by 5.7 millions from 34.6 millions to 

40.1 millions while the Labour vote fell by 
2.4 millions from 13,948,605 to 
11 ,457,079. 
Another important aberration of the 
British electoral system is the discrimination 
exercised against minority parties 
and their supporters, seen at its worst 
probably in the February 1974 general 
election when the Liberal Party was rewarded 
with 14 parliamentary seats for its 
6,063,470 votes. Each of the two main parties 
at that election had less than twice as 
many votes as the Liberal Party but captured 
more than twenty times as many 
seats. Any political party which claims to 
support a democratic system of government 
based on parliamentary representation 
and at the same time refuses to 
remedy so gross an injustice cannot deplore 
criticism of its own lack of idealism 
and morality nor complain when the democracy 
itself begins to show symptoms of 
the cancer at its heart. Nor for that matter 
can a politician claim to be a socialist as 
some do including members of the Fabian 
Society, who cannot see that a socialism 
which does not struggle against abuses is 
depriving itself of its raison d'etre. 

The abuse of the franchise is bad ofitself 
but even worse are the consequences of 
that abuse. Two in particular are worth 
drawing attention to. Firstly, a feature of 
British political life now seems to be that in 
large parts of the country a single party 

holds a permanent monopoly of representation. 
For example, in the South East 
region of England from Kent to West 
Sussex, in the South from Berkshire to 
Dorset, and in the South West from Avon 
to Cornwall, the Conservative Party, 
which received about 54 per cent of the 
vote in 1979, holds 107 out of a total of 116 
seats. There are 1.5 million Labour voters 
and 1.2 million Liberal voters in the whole 
region some of whom would have to travel 
100 miles to contact their nearest Labour 
or Liberal MP. The phrase 'two nations' 
has acquired a new and dangerous territorial 
connotation which would never 
have entered Disraeli's mind. 

Secondly, Lord Acton's dictum about 
power tending to corrupt has been confirmed 
on a number of occasions in recent 
years, especially in the field of local 
government when monopoly control enjoyed 
by both main parties has been well-
established. Caucus rule untrammelled by 
effective democratic restraint has been 
given its head in too many areas for the 
good of democracy. 

Finally, there is one other 'factual' consequence 
of the British electoral system 
worth noting. An elector, if he chooses to 
vote for a particular party, is unable to 
choose between individual candidates in 
that party. Ifhis party's candidate, chosen 
usually by a small group of party activists, 
happens for example to represent a wing 
of the party not to his liking, then the 
elector's dilemma is a difficult one. 

What Kind of Electoral 
Reform? 

Electoral reform is frequently regarded as 
being synonymous with proportional representation, 
the implication being that the 
prime or even the only aim of reform 
should be that a political party be awarded 
seats in an assembly proportionate to the 
number of votes it received at the election. 

4 


This mechanisitc view, however, despite 
its virtues is a limited one chiefly because 
an exclusive preoccupation with proportionality 
is bound to leave the voter's 
options too closely circumscribed. The 
elector's dilemma mentioned in the previous 
paragraph can be as pronounced 
with electoral systems striving for absolute 
proportionality as with the present system. 

In Israel for example candidates' names 
do not appear on the ballot paper; only 
those of the political parties do so and a 
Labour suporter would simply vote for the 
Israeli Labour Party. The party is then 
allocated a number of seats in the Knesset 
proportional to the votes it has received in 
the one national constituency. The system 
achieves almost complete proportionality 
between parties but it can be argued convincingly 
that this quantitative achievement 
does not justify the qualitative decline 
in the democratic nature of the representation 
since the actual individuals 
who sit in parliament are nominees of the 
party machine thus completely depriving 
the ordinary voter of any influence he 
might otherwise have had in deciding this 
key democratic function. 

This is an important principle connected 
ultimately with the quality of the democracy 
it inspires. A democratic electoral 
system should enable the voter as far as 
possible not only to support the political 
parties he prefers but also to choose the 
individuals from those parties who in fact 
constitute parliament. Indeed the system 
should go further. While in practical terms 
the political party is a convenient, perhaps 
essential, vehicle of representation it 
should not be exclusive. One could visualise 
for example a feminist who was more 
concerned with electing women rather 
than voting a party ticket. 

The electoral system therefore should 
be designed to accommodate such essentially 
democratic aspirations as well as 
achieving party proportionality and a 
balance has to be struck between the two 

aims. It is here that the democratic characteristics 
-trusting the people and the existence 
of a degree of consensus -have 
their roots. The ideal electoral system 
enables both characteristics not only to 
stimulate each other but also to develop 
the subtle and complex political interdependence 
of a genuine mass-democracy 
which is at the same time a decisive 
governing system. 

''Reform of the electoral system 
should aim beyond strict party proportionality.'' 


The stark alternatives of British politics 
are a consequence of an over-developed 
party exclusivity brought about not least 
by the dichotomising bias built into the 
electoral system. For this reason preferential 
voting allowing voters the 
freedom just described is desirable despite 
the fact that it may lead to a slight loss of 
proportionality. Reform of the electoral 
system should aim beyond strict party 
proportionality although, clearly, greater 
proportionality than exists at present is 
essential. Achieving this tine balance 
between greater discretion for the voter 
and proportionality for the parties should 
be central to electoral reform. That is why 
a comparative assessment of the various 
available systems is of much more than 
academic interest. Furthermore the argument 
that because any system of proportional 
representation is better than existing 
electoral arrangements the choice of 
system should be made on the grounds of 
which one MPs are most likely to accept 
begs a crucial question, namely whose interest 
the system is designed primarily to 
serve, that of MPs or that of the democracy 
itself? 

Systems of ProportionalRepresentation

There are broadly two systems of pro


5 


portional representation which are commonly 
accepted as being appropriate to 
British circumstances although there are 
many adaptations of each. They are the 
'multi-member' system with its preferential 
voting and the 'topping up' 
system. Confusion about the relative 
merits of the two arises from the fact that 
they are sometimes viewed from different 
standpoints; that of an MP and that of the 
voter. 

Some MPs who are prepared to accept 
the need for electoral reform favour the 
topping-up system and decry the mutlimember 
system. There is a jealous resentment 
at sharing a constituency with other 
members which may be rationalised by 
stressing the importance of an alleged personallink 
between a member and his constituency 
that can be forged only if the 
constituency has a single member. On the 
other hand evidence is strong that citizens 
who have elected MPs under a multi-
member system are glad to have the opportunity 
of choosing any one from a 
number of MPs in their constituency to 
deal with problems. 

There are many similar 'technical' advantages 
to be had under the multi-
member system such as the greater proportion 
of women or blacks likely to be 
elected under it who would all rank as MPs 
of equal standing but the true merit of the 
system is incomparably more significant. It 
is that the system gives the voter more 
discretion in deciding the nature of his 
representation and thus indirectly of his 
democracy. Not only is a much higher proportion 
of the votes cast used to some 
purpose but the individual voter can express 
his preferences between two or more 
candidates from different wings of the 
same or any other party. Over time he will 
not only shape the character of 'his' party 
but it in turn will more sensitively respond 
to the subtleties which the voter with his 
greater discretion can now express. A doctrinal 
party like the Labour Party if it is to 

remain in business will be obliged intellectually 
to regenerate itself -a process 
which in turn will lead towards nuturing 
consensus. The process is vital to the 
health of what is at present an excessively 
polarised British politics wallowing in the 
dogma of 50 years ago. 

''Government in Britain today is 
demonstrably capricious, divisive 
and even undemocratic.'' 

The Quality of a Demoqracy 

The foregoing brief look at some technical 
and quantitative aspects of British elections 
can hardly have concealed the real 
issues. They are qualitative ones and the 
mechanics of elections become important 
only because of their influence on the 
quality of democratic government. The 
demand for electoral reform grows inexorably 
because government in Britain today 
is demonstrably capricious, divisive and 
even undemocratic. It fails primarily in the 
democratic essentials of trusting the 
people and fostering a degree of consensus. 
Indeed the British parliamentary 
system of government seems today as if 
calculated to divide the British people and 
to produce a maximum of antagonism 
between two dominating sections of 
society -Big Labour and Big Business which 
are allegedly in conflict with each 
other. 

Before considering these defects in 
greater detail however, the causal connection 
should be clarified between the 
electoral system and the quality of British 
democracy. Perhaps one of the most succinct 
admissions that the connection is a 
direct one was that quoted by Professor H 
W R Wade in his 1980 Hamlyn lectures. 

"I cannot help quoting" said Professor 
Wade "since it reveals the situation so candidly, 
the guidance issued several times in 
1976 and 1977 by the General Secretary of 

6 


the Labour Party, urging that Labour supporters 
should oppose proportional representation 
as the method of election for 
the European Parliament. His argument 
was that it would then become difficult to 
resist pressure for proportional representation 
in the British Parliament and 

or weaken the Party's appeal to the electorate 
next time round. That may have 
been so , but only in the limited sense of 
what was electorally expedient for the 
Labour Party within the existing system. 
The real issues facing the country -'the 
ultimate test' -are broader. 

he was reported as saying: 'Proportional 
representation means coalition government 
at Westminster on the lines of our 
European partners, and it is goodbye then 
to any dreams or aspirations for a democratic 
socialist Britain'. There could 
hardly be a more honest admission that the 
party could not carry out its policy if the 
voting system fairly reflected the wishes of 
the electors and that it must rely on the 
possibilities, indeed probabilities, of what 
the Slake Commission called 'flagrantminority rule'." 

There are probably as many definitions 
of democracy as there are of socialism and 
thus one man's 'dreams or aspirations for a 
democratic socialist Britain' might not 
necessarily be the same as another's who 
also regarded himself as a democrat and a 
socialist. However, if one takes democracy 
simply to mean no more than the 
endoresement through the ballot box of 
the broad policy proposals of a government 
and putting aside questions of participation 
and representation to influence 
that policy, the Party Secretary's admission 
is a devastating commentary on the 
Party's attitude to democracy. But the 
admission is even more ominous and 
malign than might appear at first sight. 

The editorial in the Guardian newspaper 
of 16 June 1980 discussing the then 
current constitutional controversy in the 
Labour Party together with the Party 
Commission of Inquiry's newly published 
proposals for strengthening party democracy 
boldly proclaimed that 'The electorate 
is Labour's final judge'. The article 
went on to argue that 'the ultimate test' of 
the Commission of Inquiry's recommendations 
was whether they would strengthen 

One accepts for argument's sake that 
the basic issue convulsing the Labour 
Party in recent years has been that of democracy. 
It is here that the question arises of 
whether the Guardian's proclamation was 
not an over-simplification of some significance, 
or whether in Britain the electorate 
really is the final judge. The evidence is 
now overwhelming and well-documented 
that the electorate at best is less influential 
in that role than it should be in a democracy 
and thus incidentally more cynical, 
and that at worst it has become irrelevant. 
It has already been pointed out for example 
that on two occasions since the war 
a party has gained a majority in the House 
of Commons and consequently formed a 
government although another party had 
received grater support from the electorate 
while governments elected by minority 
votes have now become a permanent 
British peculiarity. 

However, the cancer is deeper-seated 
than might be suggested by a couple of 
arithmetical aberrations. The unhappy cir 
cumstances of the Labour Party controversy 
-the Guardian article's subject 
matter-arise ultimately from the fact that 
Labour has become a doctrinal party without 
a doctrine. It is the intellectual sterility 
and barrenness that causes most concern 
to 'democratic socialists' conscious that 
'Labour is nothing if not a crusade' and 
anxiously seeking a credible contemporary 
ideology to crusade for. 

The Party General Secretary, however, 
was content in the knowledge that there is 
really no need for a valid doctrine or even 
a set of credible policies to gain the support 
of a majority of the electorate. Hidebound 
party activists know that under the British 

7 


electoral system their turn will come, if not 
next time round then the time after. The 
swing of the pendulum is a certain feature 
of that system. 

Here lies the malign nature of the Party 
Secretary's advice. In its cynical repudiation 
of the need for intellectual regeneration 
it panders complacently to the simplistic 
rhetoric of the reactionary and the 
atavist. His advice was an admission not 
only that the 'democratic socialism' being 
offered is unattractive to the British 
people but that the Party knows this and is 
content to let it be so. In short the Party 
exists for no other democratic purpose 
than to get itself elected by exploiting the 
perversity in the rules. 

1t is here that a democrat arrives at his 
truly 'ultimate test'. The test can be defined 
succinctly. The real threat to democracy 
arises when it is no longer necessary 
for policy to be credible. The causal connection 
between the electoral system and 
the quality of British democracy is thus 
manifested. More worrying still (given the 
idiosyncratic nature of the country's constitutional 
arrangements) is the fact that it 
would not need a great deal more cynicism 
than that flaunted in the Party Secretary's 
advice, for British democracy to be immediately 
under a grave direct threat arising 
from an imprudent exercise by Parliament 
of its sovereign power. 

Historical Change 

A sceptical response to his argument of 
course, would be to ask how Britain has 
succeeded over the centuries in 
maintaining her stable democracy which 
has been the envy of the world? The short 
answer is that her electoral system at 
anyone time reflected social and political 
reality to best advantage and that it is 
precisely this which is no longer the case. 
The history of England has been characterised 
by Perry Anderson as being that of 
a country enjoying a unique continuum in 

its ruling class. From the Civil War 
onwards -itself hardly revolutionary by 
French standards -the historical process 
contrived to produce a ruling class which 
as an amalgam of established agrarian 
aristocracy and newly emergent 
manufacturing bourgeoisie was not only 
peculiar to England but provided the basis 
for a rare political stability. The political 
balance enjoyed in the England of the last 
century would hardly have been realised if 
the composition of its ruling class had 
suffered from the discontinuities common 
to many other countries. Furthermore the 
imperialist tradition reaching its climax 
during the latter part of the nineteenth 
century contributed to the sense of 
undisturbed and easy superiority and 
reflected itself in the unabashed jingoism 
of the turn of the century. Geography too 
played its part in sparing the island country 
from the traumatic experience of an 
invading army. Thus the continuum was 
consolidated and the national psychology 
set in its distinctive consensual mould of 
superior, chauvinistic conceit. 

It was a psychology conditioning 
Englishmen to a world where Britannia 
carried the white man's burden across an 
empire on which the sun never set, where a 
quarter of the world's population were 
grateful British subjects, where the phrase 
'the thin red line' somehow transformed 
brute imperialism into the inspiring chivalry 
of amateur gentlemen practising the 
virtues of noblesse oblige. In this world 
aristocrat and manufacturing bourgeois, 
hybridised during the long continuum and 
not a little helped by the peculiar English 
invention of the public school, together 
provided the imperial success which the 
new British state used in its mystification 
processes so that the proletariat became 
willing and docile partners in the continuous 
development of capitalist Britain. 
The consensus within the minority ruling 
class was faithfully reflected by the burgeoning 
proletariat, at least for a little 

8 


while longer. 

During the latter half of the twentieth 
century, however, it has all come to an end 
-the success, the power, the imperial role, 
the tacit consensus; -to all appearance 
within a generation. It is a bitter pill to 
swallow and it is all the more difficult 
therefore to make the substantial adjustment 
towards mass-democracy and the 
development of new skills and institutions 
required for its effective government. The 
inertia is at its greatest, the traditions most 
entrenched in Parliament, that ultimate 
repository of power at the apex of the 
hierarchy upon whose sovereignty has 
rested the constitutional tradition of the 
United Kingdom, whose priviliges have 
been sacrosanct, whose authority absolute, 
whose voice has decided the fate of 
continents and where clashes between the 
front benches have been sufficient acknowledgement 
of democratic pretensions. 


The accretion of such complete power 
by Parliament, extraordinary though it 
appears today, was a natural consequence 
of the stability and success provided by a 
ruling class which had remained a small 
minority of the population. It is noteworthy 
for example that even after the 
great industrial leap forward in the early 
nineteenth and late eighteenth centuries 
the Reform Bill of 1832 skillfully limited 
the extension of the franchise to the new 
manufacturing bourgeoisie only. 

One consequence of that stability was 
the unwritten constitution. There was 
never a post-revolutionary moment nor one 
after a war of independence or coup d'etat 
or even secession when the Englishman 
had to sit down to pen his new constitution. 
The British constitution 'just growed'. 
There were no extra-parliamentary estates 
ofthe realm to cause difficulty. The crucial 
political requirements were met, that a 
consensus existed within what was a small 
exlusive ruling society and that parliament 
in fact represented it. Indeed in 1850 half 

the members of the House of Commons 
were blood relations. 

Contemporary society however, is not 
that of the nineteenth-century although 
the last vestiges of the closed, consensual 
circle which constituted the establishment 
of that time persisted into the post-war 
period (for example Major Attlee each 
day read first the births, marriages and 
deaths columns and secondly the cricket-
il'lg columns of The Times and although 
not announced in those columns, post-war 
leaders of the Conservative Party still 
'emerged' into being). 

Radical constitutional reform is now 
urgently needed to reflect a new society 
and its masses. The key to this process lies 
within the electoral system. A seemingly 
minor piece of the old machinery -the 
simple majority system of election which, 
rather like a show of hands, might have 
been adequate for electing a parliament at 
the end of the nineteenth-century -is 
clearly unsuitable for a modem mass-
democracy which will not function adequately 
if the political intention is merely 
to replace a lumpen-proletariat by a 
lumpen-graduriat! The plain fact is that 
the electoral system no longer reflects 
society to advantage-indeed in its failure 
to adapt to modem requirements it has 
exercised a malign influence on British 
parliamentary democracy both in theory 
and practice. 

''In theoretical terms the very 
concept of a supreme parliamenta•"
Y authority . . . is itself 
hardly reconcilable with that of a 
full-blown, participatory or even 
representative mass-democratic 
society.'' 

Theoreuca/Objecuons 

In theoretical terms the very concept of a 

9 


supreme parliamentary authority, constrained 
by neither written constitution 
nor constitutional court, directing the 
affairs of a modern highly centralised, 
unitary state is itself hardly reconcilable 
with that of a full-blown , participatory or 
even representative mass-democratic 
society such as, one assumes, social democrats 
aspire to (one uses the phrase social 
democracy since democratic socialism has 
become altogether too ambiguous, the 
noun having the adjective by the throat!). 
The anomaly is compounded when the 
executive, represented in practice by half a 
dozen members of the inner cabinet, dominates 
parliament through its highly developed 
whipping system, the extraordinary 
effectiveness of which is itself 
traceable to the electoral system and the 
dichotomous nature of British party 
politics. More ominous still in the case of 
the Labour Party is the increasing erosion 
of the representative nature of the MP and 
the shift of power quite openly from parliament 
to the party. 

There has thus been a clear failure in 
post-war years to adapt the parliamentary 
institutions and the political structures of 
the state to the needs of mass-democracy 
and the representation of the people. Instead 
there has been a shift of power towards 
the extra-parliamentary agencies of 
government, managers and unions, and 
most recently party. Any attempt to resolve 
the dilemma requires at the very 
least that representation should be as true 
a reflection as possible of the general will 
of the people and not of sectional interests 
and should be designed towards fostering 
such a general purpose. We have already 
seen, however, that this minimum but 
seminal requirement is completely subverted 
by the existing simple majority 
system used in British elections. It is clear 
therefore that a powerful argument exists 
in theoretical terms for radical change. 

Practical Objections 

The damage done in practical terms 
through an outmoded political structure 
buttressed by an undemocratic electoral 
system is even more obvious imd ubiquitous. 
The one heartening sign amidst the 
gloom of Britain's chronic post-war decline 
has been the growing realization that 
the roots of the problem are not in economics 
and that the decline will not be reversed 
by a government simply adopting 
technically 'correct' economic strategies. 
There are now many references in the literature 
to deeper-seated sources of infirmity. 
Bernard Crick for example, as long 
ago as 1964 was pointing to more subjective 
but no less real influences: 'Britain 
today suffers under the burden of three 
native curses: that of amateurism, that of 
'inner circle' secrecy, and that of snobbery. 
All three seem to debase both the 
quality of political life and the energy of 
economic activity. The unreformed Parliament 
is more than a symbol of these 
things; it helps to perpetuate them by the 
most effective of all forces in politics and 
society-example; if Parliament were reformed 
, the whole climate of expectations 
could change, much of the sweet fog we 
muddle through might lift .. .' (quoted by 
Tom Nairn in New Left Review). 

The 'sweet fog' has since been dissipated 
by straightforward disenchantment. 
Roy Jenkins when he left 
Westminster to become President of the 
EEC Commission expressed the view that 
'When all possible qualifications have 
been made there can be no doubt that the 
British political system has failed adequately 
to promote the long-term interests 
of the British people -not merely 
over the last 20 years, but over a much 
longer period. In my view there can also be 
no doubt that that failure has been due, 
not merely to obdurate circumstances, but 
to some features of our system of government 
and politics and to the conventions 

10 


and assumptions which underpin it' (opcit). 

Dennis Kavanagh writing at the end of 
1978 refers to criticism focussing no longer 
on economics and society but on ' ... the 
political institutions particularly the 
workings of the two-party system and the 
sovereignty of parliament'. Finally Tom 
Nairn in a comprehensive yet succinct 
paragraph expresses most radically the 
now growing agreement: 'So it would be 
more accurate to say that the nature of the 
state is the proximate cause of the British 
crisis. It is our consititution, our political 
and administrative system, and an associated 
penumbra of civil hegemony, 
powerful yet hard to define which maintain 
society on its hopeless course . .. 
What is this nature? .. . The unwritten 
constitution reposing sovereignty upon 
the Crown-in-parliament rather than the 
people; a two-party political order placing 
stability before democracy ; .. .'(op cit) 

It is this failure to transfer sovereignty to 
the people which is at the heart of the 
matter and it is here that a start must be 
made on the cure, complicated though the 
sickness may be. And the first move must 
be in the matter of electing parliament, the 
practical first step towards more comprehensive 
reform. It is significant that the 
immediate symptom of British democracy's 
morbidity is the low esteem in 
which the electorate holds parliament and 
the cynicism with which it regards politicians. 
It is certainly not too fanciful to 
argue that parliamentary shortcomings 
have themselves been a major stimulus to 
the weakening of morale, the collective 
loss of will and the political cynicism now 
plaguing British society. 

The Simple Majority or or First-pastthe-
post system converts marginal diffferences 
in numbers of votes cast for parties 
at an election into significant differences in 
the numbers of parliamentary seats they 
hold. The extraordinary probability there 
is in present British circumstances an 

almost actuarial certainty to it -that if 
three parties were respectively to receive 
34, 33, and 32 per cent of the votes then 
one party could be awarded 350 seats and 
another only 50 seats is made even more 
bizarre by the possibility that the party 
with the largest number of votes could 
receive the fewest seats. Thus by its very 
arithmetic the system sustains the dichotomy 
which for so long has been, at least 
apparently, a feature of the house of 
Commons and which now, in the absence 
of the nineteenth-century consensus, is 
real as well as apparent. Difficulties are 
bound to arise in any modern industrial 
state, especially where government has an 
almost absolute constitutional dominance, 
if small changes in national sentiment 
produce such capricious changes in 
representation. The immediate practical 
consequence is the stridency introduced 
into the political process. It is a kind of 
inverse to the law of diminishing marginal 
utility with parties ever more outrageously 
outbidding each other for the last one per 
cent of the votes. 

' 'In short the transition from 
oligarchy to democracy has been 
bungled and made more difficult 
by the electoral system.'' 

This has led to a depreciation of the 
franchise. Universal suffrage has turned 
out to be no more than a quasi-democratic 
veneer laid over an old oligarchy. The 
roots of the present-day British malaise 
are bedded in this deceit. A modern advanced 
state depending on the professionalism 
of of its people has no role for a 
lumpen-graduariat passively accepting 
whatever lot its betters in their capricious 
ways provide for it as its nineteenth-
century proletarian grandfathers were 
content to do. The need instead is to 
develop a role for a mass-citizenry displaying 
the authority, responsibility, self


11 


discipline and assurance that membership 
of a true democracy demands. To this end 
the necessary degree of consensus about 
basic objectives and the country's destiny 
has to be fostered by the political system. 
In Britain however, two major parties are 
obliged to vie with each other at elections 
pandering to the masses with policies of 
'bread and circuses'. The syndrome is 
established of simplistic and open-ended 
demands from the voters for all manner of 
goodies on the one hand and cynical 
promises from would-be rulers on the 
other to deliver the moon in return for a 
few votes every four or five years. The 
whole thing is profoundly anti-democratic. 
Any sense of mass-democratic participation 
by citizens shouldering heavy but 
creative responsibilities, difficult though 
this may be to engender, is actively discouraged. 
In short the transition from 
oligarchy to democracy has been bungled 
and made more difficult by the electoral 
system. 

In addition the system has imposed an 
immobility on the House of Commons itself. 
Here a stylised adversative posture 
remains sacrosanct -a kind of bedraggled 
and rather pathetic virility symbol for romantic 
sentimentalists hankering after 
past gladiatorial glories without realising 
that this is a luxury only to be afforded 
when a basic consensus exists. The two 
sides of the chamber are occupied by parties 
each of which vows when in power to 
undo what was acheived by the other when 
it, in its turn, held power. The posture 
with its premium on the simplistic at the 
expense of the meaningful has become a 
major stultifying influence on British attitudes. 


It is not simply that British Members of 
Parliament are conditioned by the system 
into seeing the political issues in the starkest 
terms but that in addition it accentuates 
and perpetuates divisions and thereby 
promulgates facile solutions to unreal 
problems. That is why the real issues are 

not tackled. They are to do ultimately with 
the political and social structures of the 
state, the democratic involvement they beget 
and the political leadership they 
inspire. It is why the Labour and 
Conservative parties not simply at their 
fundamentalist extremes but at their 
centres, are reactionary parties fighting 
the irrelevant battles of long ago. It is also 
why the British people are denied the 
political leadership to which they are 
entitled. 

Anyone who would question the foregoing 
has only to listen to debates in the 
House of Commons where politics is still 
the old battle between the haloed angels 
on our side who can never do wrong and 
the horned devils on the other side who 
can never do right. One refrains from commenting 
on the superficialities of style 
which have developed in what passes for 
debate -the insensitive crudeness and the 
callow prejudice merging occasionally into 
baying infantilism. 

What follows inevitably is that the British 
people scornfully drift into ever greater 
depths of cynicism. Even more deplorably 
they have to suffer the degrading spectacle 
of the party in opposition blaming the 
party which happens at any moment to 
form the government for all the complex 
problems of inflation, unemployment and 
low growth which have bedevilled their 
country for so long. There are numerous 
parliamentary examples of this cynical and 
cavalier approach to the political proprieties 
even on matters of immediate 
practicality. Ieuan Maddock has spoken of 
the Tweedledee-Tweedledum attitudes on 
policy where the oppostion party not only 
opposes government policy but commits 
itself to reversing it at the first opportunity 
despite the fact that parliament may be 
dealing with an issue whose effects spread 
over many decades. Steel is a topical example 
of an industry which has suffered 
grievously from this parliamentary 
gamesmanship, the effect of which has 

12 


been blithely to nationalise the industry, 
to denationalise it, to renationalise it, to 
rationalise it, to review that rationalisation 
to intervene in its commercial management 
and now most recently to set cash 
limits and wash hands of it. There are a 
great many other specific examples of the 
perverse and malignant influence in a direct 
practical sense that post-war British 
parliaments have had on the country's 
affairs. 

Conclusion: Alienation in a 
Democracy 

At the theoretical core of the British system 
of parliamentary democracy is the 
representative role of the member of parliament. 
Here was the justification not only 
for granting parliament its absolute authority 
but also for the increasing dominance 
of the Commons within the parliamentary 
trinity. It was an adequate justification 
during the last century because representation 
adequately reflected the basic consensus 
within a governing class. Thus were 
nurtured the }Tioral leadership and growing 
self-confidence of nineteenth-century 
Britain which in turn together confirmed 
the consensus even further and imposed its 
ethos on the proletariat. 

''Parliamentary representation is 
inadequate not merely in that it 
neither represents nor nurtures a 
consensus but in that it does not 
even strike a reasonable balance 
between political parties and their 
support in the country.'' 

Britain's position today is different. Parliamentary 
representation is inadequate 
not merely in that it neither represents nor 
nurtures a consensus but in that it does not 
even strike a reasonable balance between 

political parties and their support in the 
country. Thus in contrast to the past it 
promotes divisiveness, weakens leadership 
and erodes confidence. There is 
neither a self-confident governing class 
certain of its own mores nor is there a 
popular leadership deriving its momentum 
from the common will it has succeeded in 
stimulating. 

British decline is therefore compounded 
and the country's problems are made intractable. 
There is a striking passage towards 
the end of Raymond Williams' 
novel, 'The Fight for Manod'. A senior 
British civil servant is speaking: 'The 
whole of public policy,' he said emphatically, 
'is an attempt to reconsititute a 
culture, a social system, an economic 
order, that have in fact reached their end, 
reached the limits of viability. And then I 
sit here and look at this double inevitability: 
that this imperial, exporting, divided 
order is ending and that all its residual 
social forces, all its political formations, 
will fight to the end to reconstruct it , to 
re-establish it, moving deeper all the time 
through crisis after crisis in an impossible 
attempt to regain a familiar world. So then 
a double inevitability: that they will fail, 
and that they will try nothing else'. 

The passage captures the British predicament. 
Ifa remedy is to be found then a 
new approach has to be adopted. There 
are of course a whole range of economic, 
cultural, social and historical facts and 
myths which mould the attitudes, aspirations 
and beliefs of the citizen. These latter 
will not readily be changed overnight so 
that Britain's new role might more readily 
be found and accepted. The first step 
however is clear; it is that 'the divided 
order' should be reconciled, that a basic 
consensus of all the people should be fostered, 
that democracy and the more difficult 
concept of mass-democracy be accepted 
as reality. In short the people must 
be represented as faithfully as possible and 
that means in the first instance an approp


13 


riate electoral system. Only then will the 
nineteenth-century's virtuous circle of 
parliamentary democracy begin to be reestablished 
in contemporary Britain 
where consensus strengthens confidence 
which in turn accepts change. 

' 'Electoral reform will not produce 
miracles overnight. It is no 
more than a key which will open a 
number of doors.'' 

The majority of our present political 
leaders will have none of it. Their way is 
that of the former general secretary of the 

Labour Party with his predisposition for 
the elitist rule of the party caucus and the 
burgeoning of the apparachik. It is bound 
to fail because it produces an alienation 
within society. Here is the root cause of 
our failure to reverse British decline. 

Electoral reform will not produce 
miracles overnight. It is no more than a 
key which will open a number of doors. 
When these are opened a process of 
change can be initiated in our political 
system which will be cumulative and which 
can reach out at the national psyche. At 
least within a reasonable time the country 
will be more truly a democracy. The 
democrat's faith is that the democratic way 
is also the effective way. 

14 


2 The Case AgainstProportional Representation 

Rosaleen Hughes and Phillip Whitehead 

Supporters of Proportional Representation (PR) tend to make very large claims for it; 
'One of the first essential steps to the regeneration of Britain.' and they load onto our 
present electoral system the blame for many evils which range from the adversarial 
destructive nature of debate in the House of Commons to a variety of the social and 
economic ills which beset Britain today. Even when their enthusiasm stops short of 
writing in green ink and capital letters the claims they make in favour of PR are wildly 
exaggerated with a disturbing lack ofcausal explanation. NOr are they always very specific 
about which type of PR they advocate. 

''We can neither account for 
Italy's 40 governments since the 
War simply by pointing to its 
electoral system of Proportional 
Representation nor blame the failure 
of British Steel to make a profit 
on our own single member plurality 
system.'' 

The first point which must be made about 
electoral systems is that blanket generalisations 
from one country to another and 
from one time to another are invalid. The 
one agreed conclusion of all research is 
that the electoral system is only one among 
a number of elements which determine the 
party system and the composition of 
governments. It is important not to exaggerate 
the role of the electoral system 
but to take into account also differences in 
political history, established concepts of 
the state and government, social and political 
structures and the role of political 
parties. So we can neither account for 
Italy's 40 governments since the War simply 
by pointing to its electoral system of Proportional 
Representation nor blame the 
failure of British Steel to make a profit on 
our own single member plurality system. 

The Electoral System and the 
House of Commons 

Nevertheless the electoral system does 
influence both the composition of the 

House of Commons and the structure of 
the party system and two serious charges 
are levelled against our present system. 
Firstly, it is unfair and undemocratic and 
secondly, it is the main factor which has 
produced and maintained the two-party 
system which has served Britain ill and is 
now discredited and obsolete. We think it 
can be shown that these accusations rest 
on contentious assumptions about the 
nature of democracy, the role of the 
House of Commons and political parties, 
and that the anomalies and distortions in 
our present system would not necessarily 
be remedied by PR. Our contention is that 
the frustrations of our Parliamentary 
system have multifarious causes, not least 
what Keith Middlemas has called the 
prevalence of 'crisis avoidance' in statecraft 
over the past 50 years. A perfectly 
proportional system of representation 
upon which it was impossible to build a 
stable or resolute government would intensify 
these frustrations beyond 
endurance. 

The most telling flaw in our present 
system is the anomalous results that it can 

IS 


produce. It is unfair because it has consistently 
under-represented the Liberal Party 
and tended to over-represent small 
nationalist parties with a geographical 
basis of support. In the February 1974 
General Election the Liberals won 19% of 
the popular vote and gained only 14 seats. 
It can also produce freak results such as in 
1951 when the Conservatives won 48% of 
the vote and 321 seats while Labour with 
48.8% of the vote won 295 seats. All 
electoral systems contain a bias in favour 
of large parties. This tendency to over-
represent the largest parties can only be 
corrected by a very high 'district magnitude', 
that is very large constituencies, 
preferably the whole country as in Israel, 
where the whole country forms one constituency 
with candidates chosen from 
party lists. Douglas Rae has produced 
figures for 'vote-seat deviation' under 
different electoral systems. The average 
under proportional systems is 1.6, the 
average under majority systems is 3.96, 
but individual results vary considerably. 
As proof that anomalous results are not 
peculiar to Britain it is worth pointing out 
that in 1969 the Irish Labour Party increased 
it share of the vote from 15.4% to 
17%, but the number of its seats fell from 
21 to 18. Indeed Single Transferable Vote 
(STV) systems of PR, much favoured by 
the Liberals, can still lead to the party 
which gains most votes nationally losing 
the election, as has happened in Ireland, 
and, more recently, in Malta where Mr. 
M in toffs party won the election, although 
it received considerably fewer votes than 

the Nationalist Party opposition. 

The Role of Political Parties 

The underlying assumptions behind 
arguments for exact proportional justice is 
that the prime function of political parties 
is to act as a reflecting mirror of national 
opinion on the House of Commons. This is 
to mis-interpret the role of political parties 

in this country. Notwithstanding any 
number of broken moulds the evidence is 
that political parties are seen as Government 
and Opposition(s) with general elections 
as appeals by sets of ministerial teams 
rather than the representatives of interest 
groups. There is nothing about the recent 
successes of the Social Democratic Party 
(SDP) to suggest that they have radically 
altered the functions of political parties. 
The evidence is that the popularity of a 
party is more dependent upon its administrative 
competence and ability to handle 
the economy then upon its stance on other 
policy issues (see Butler and Stokes, 
Political Change in Britain) . When 
Edmund Burke said that the House of 
Commons was the 'express image of the 
nation' it was in the context of limited 
suffrage, rotten boroughs and a House of 
Commons which made and unmade 
governments. The modern party system 
means that the people, through general 
elections, make and unmake governments. 
The British concept of the role of political 
parties is important because Proportional 
Representation was introduced into many 
countries in continental Europe after the 
First World War (often as a quid pro quo 
for universal suffrage) into a context where 
the role of political parties was very 
different. In continental Europe, with its 
traditions of bureaucratic absolutism 
rather than parliamentarianism, political 
parties are seen much more as sectional 
interest groups designed to secure concessions 
from the state. In Britain political 
parties have developed a national base 
inside Parliament and not as the representatives 
of disenfranchised groups excluded 
from the state. This has played a 
large part in developing political parties 
which are coalitions of interests rather 
than single issue parties. It is almost inconceivable 
that in this country we could 
have the counterparts of the Vital Interests 
of Celibates or the Wurttemberg Wine 
growers and Farmers Union which 

16 


adorned Weimar Germany or the Slovene 
Clericals and Czech Agrarians who 
adorned the Hapsburg Empire. Is anyone 
going to claim that political life is the 
poorer for an absense of a multiplicity of 
parties? It is interesting that the principal 
supporters of PR on the left are the leading 
luminaries of minor Marxist sects who 
could aim to build up a foothold in Parliament 
through PR, with their relatively tiny 
mass following, and their erstwhile allies 
now in the Labour Party who see that 
organism, once captured and drained of its 
internal coalition's present elements, kept 
alive by the drip-feed of a proportional 
system. Neither group, of course, sees 
Parliament as either meeting place or even 
metaphor for change through persuasion, 
but as a forum for the impossible demands 
made with maximum publicity. 

The next accusation, which follows from 
'unfair' is 'undemocratic'. The concept of 
democracy has been much squabbled over 
on the Left of late. Factions lay claim, with 
great certitude, to know the true meaning 
of the word. This certainty is not shared by 
accademic theoreticians who find it an ambiguous 
and difficult concept, from which 
no perfect working system of government 
is to,be derived without being facile. 

Parliamentary democracy as it has 
evolved in Britain and those states loosely 
termed the 'Western Democracies' is 
essentially representative democracy. It 
means in practical terms that all of the 
people have a choice at certain points in 
time, not that some of the people have all 
the choice the whole time (the implication 
of 'active' 'mass' 'participatory' democracy). 
One of the assumptions fundamental 
to representative democracy is that 
the people are the ultimate judge but only 
at agreed intervals of time. Crucial 
decisions must be taken by a relatively 
small number of people with special expertise 
and responsibility, subject to dismissal, 
but with sufficient opportunity to 
be effective. The alternative concept of 

democracy offers greater opportunities to 
those who are not elected but are qualified 
by their greater degree of interest and 
commitment to make decision-taking their 
main activity in life -the self-styled 
Praetorians of the 'democracy of the committed' 
whose representative theory of 
democracy comes down to them representing 
the general will. 

A Representative Parliament 

How can Parliament be made more representative 
and therefore more democratic? 
It obviously has glaring faults. There is the 
quite grotesque survival of the House of 
Lords. The unelected Upper House was, 
said Somerville, irrationally constructed in 
the way that a jury is. But it is a random 
selection of the hereditary aristocracy, the 
placemen, and the great and the good in 
their sunset years -a tribute to the 
fecundity of Charles 11 and the venality of 
Lloyd George and his imitators, an absurd 
anomaly today. Then there are the manifold 
faults ofthe Commons. The Commons 
is accused both of under-representing 
minorities, with its white, middle-aged 
and male composition, as well as being a 
forum for the sterile rhetoric and mutually 
destructive alternation of the major 
parties. Do either or both of these criticisms 
stand up? 

The first interpretation has a good deal 
of substance in it. It is important that 
ethnic groups should have some representation 
in the House of Commons if they are 
to feel themselves 'law-givers' as well as 
'law-obeyers' and to be properly integrated 
into society. It is also worrying that there 
are so few women in the House of 
Commons, and it ought to worry the 
Labour Party that the proportion of 
women on the 'B' or Constituency nominated 
list is greater than the number of 
candidates selected, and that the proportion 
of women candidates is lower than 
that of women MPs. But the predomi


17 


nantly white and masculine composition 
of Parliament is not self-evidently due to 
the electoral system. There are fewer 
women and members of ethnic minorities 
in nearly all the prestigous professions 
than their numbers would warrant. Effective 
remedies could just as easily be found 
by internal reform of political parties as by 
altering the electoral system. 

''Any dispassionate analysis of 
Britain since the war would show 
that the centre has held. The major 
parties have been -and are still grand 
coalitions in themselves of 
the left and the right of the political 
spectrum.'' 

The second interpretation is based on a 
false premise; that politics has an excluded 
middle , an unrepresented centre ground . 
This argument has come to the fore once 
Thatchery-Bennery replaced Butskellism, 
and shared assumptions, be they the 
welfare state or the mixed economy, came 
increasingly to be criticised. But any dispassionate 
analysis of Britain since the war 
would show that the centre has held. The 
major parties have been -and are still grand 
coalitions in themselves of the left 
and the right of the political spectrum between 
individual and collective, capitalist 
and co-operative values. The inside left 
and the inside right have not been thrust 
aside; on the contrary they have been able 
to argue that in a party aiming for majority 
power theirs was a crucial role in reaching 
across the contested centre ground. It is no 
improvement upon this to break down the 
internal coalitions into a mass of contending 
fragments, as frequently happens 
under list systems of PR, or to give a 
permanent veto to the placemen of the 
inchoate centre as in added member 
systems. The first leads to coalitions 
formed after the electorate has spoken , as 

we shall show; the latter to a paralysis of 
action where initiative passes to the archetypical 
centrist caucus man 'sitting in the 
muddled middle, playing on his fuddled 
fiddle' as Michael Foot has described it. 

' 'Nor can it be said that the adversarial 
style of Commons debate 
is due to our electoral system or to 
'two old parties' ... Obstruction, 
antagonism and filibuster were as 
common in a 4-party House of 
Commons as they are today.' ' 

Nor can it be said that the adversarial 
style of Commons debate is due to our 
electoral system or to 'two old parties', any 
more than the rhetorical excesses of 
modern Italy or France under the Fourth 
Republic can be blamed on their PR systems. 
Obstruction, antagonism and filibuster 
were as common in a 4-party House 
of Commons as they are today. They were 
even more notorious under the bankrupt 
political system of Weimar Germany 
(which happened to operate by PR). What 
was needed was a supplement to Commons 
debates, not new and fancy franchises to 
elect the participants. The proper role of 
the Chamber in Parliament is to act as a 
forum for debate, to air all sides of the 
argument and different opinions are not 
always reconcileable even among men of 
goodwill. The constructive consensual 
work is done not on the floor of the House 
but in Committees, in the scrutiny of legislation 
and of the executive done by the 
Select Committees. It is the introduction 
of these which was arguably the single 
most practical step towards the enhancement 
of democracy, not a tinkering with 
the mechanics of the electoral system. 

Pluralism and the Centre 

PR fanatics make much ofour exaggerated 

18 


' 'Where these have been abrupt 
reversals ofpolicy these reflect genuine 
divergences in the country.'' 


swings of electoral fortune, allowing one 
government entirely to demolish the work 
ofits predecessor. Tweedledum dismantles 
Tweedledee before turning to matters of 
national survival ... this is a travesty of the 
truth. Even in the sharpened antagonisms 
of the Seventies, where Roy Jenkins has 
claimed that 'only one piece of major 
legislation enacted by the Heath administration 
remains on the Statute Book', 
major reorganisations of local government, 
the NHS and industrial finance did 
remain in force , whilst the initiative in 
Northern Ireland-accepted by Labourfell 
to extra-parliamentary action. Governments 
have a positive programme of 
their own to implement, what they tend to 
do is to leave much of their predecessors' 
legislation alone, undo bits ofit and amend 
bits. Where there have been abrupt reversals 
of policy these reflect genuine divergences 
in the country. It is unfortunately, or 
otherwise, the case that there is wide disagreement 
over trade union immunities 
and the closed shop and if either a Labour 
or Conservative government enacts legislation 
which reflects either of the extremes 
of opinion it is more than likely that a 
change of government will result in an 
attempt to change the law. This division of 
opinion is not artificially manufactured by 
our electoral system; it genuinely exists. 

"Do we need to (exclude the 
policies of Tony Benn and Keith 
Joseph) with our centrist civil service 
hostile to reform, let alone 
experiment?' ' 

Is it damaging, is it more damaging than 
the alternative which would result from 
PR -a permanent domination of government 
by the centre with the exclusion of 
radicals of both the right and the left from 
influence let alone power? Both the policies 
ofTony Benn and Keith Jose ph are equally 
intensely disliked but they are admitted as 
legitimate within the tolerances of our 
political system. Some would say it were 
better for the country if neither had any 
influence on government, but to say that is 
to call for an extraordinary narrowing of 
the range of options. Do we need to do 
that with our centrist civil service hostile to 
reform , let alone experiment? What if the 
government of men of good-will and 
reasonable opinions should fail to deal 
adequately with inflation and economic 
decline and there is no credible opposition 
but the extremes of right and left? The 
price of continuity will be stultification at 
best and at worst a dangerous disenchantment 
of radicals with Parliament and due 
process. (The so-called dangerous anti-
democrats in the Labour Party do still 
think there is a great deal of purpose in 
becoming an MP). The ultimate consequence 
of excluding radicals from the 
'politics of the possible' will be to drive 
them to the politics of the street. Part of 
the insidious appeal of the Red Brigades 
and the Baader Meinhof groups in Italy 
and Germany was that the 'real left' was 
wholly excluded from power. Italy's 41 
post-war governments and Germany's bipartisan 
tolerance of Berufsverbot have 
marked out an exclusion zone where 
opinions ought to be admitted to share 
power and influence. Le vote ne change 
rien is a powerful and terrible cry. PR does 
nothing to prevent it; sometimes the 
reverse. 

Those who claim that PR will entrench 
centre parties often forget, too, that whilst 
the preconditions for such parties to 
develop, in a fissile system of proportionality, 
are more likely to exist, they may be 

19 


consortia of office seekers and populists, 
nothing more. It was Roy Jenkins who 
said in 1973 of the idea of a centre party 'A 
party based on such a rag-bag could stand 
for nothing positive. It would exploit 
grievances and fall apart when it sought to 
remedy them .. . It is the duty of leaders to 
seek to synthesise and give reality to 
people's aspirations, not to separate and 
exploit their conflicting grudges'. This 
process of synthesis ought to embrace 
grand coalitions within the serious parties. 
PR does the reverse, by putting a premium 
on the faction that sees its opportunity to 
splinter off, regardless of the 
consequences. 

What Has PR to Offer? 

Proportional representation is often 
spoken of as though it is the embodiment 
of an abstract justice. It is nothing of the 
kind. The idea has been supported, 
historically, for reasons of both self-
interest and idealism. At Westminster the 
choice tends to be presented, in the words 
of Keith Kyle, as 'between the Liberal 
Party never in office and the Liberal Party 
in office all the time'. But there are a good 
many systems which are loosely described 
as PR; advocates of one are often 
vehemently opposed to others, within the 
general principle of 'proportionality' and 
'fairness'. What we must ask each of the 
variants on offer is this; in what way are 
they fairer? Do they ensure that opinion is 
represented at Westminister, with some 
sensitivity between elections, and in a way 
which allows the promises of the 
representatives to be monitored and 
checked by their constituents? Do these 
same representatives remain as open and 
identified to their electors as they 
presently do? Is caucus rule more or less of 
a possibility? Can governments be formed 
with a reasonable span of life to perform 
on what they promised? We submit that 
these, too, are all legitimate tests of 
'fairness'. 

' 'Historically Proportional Representation 
was taken up by ... those 
who feared that the coming of a 
wider franchise would usher in 
something like mob rule.'' 

Historically Proportional Representation 
was taken up in the nineteenth 
Century in Britain (and implemented in 
the twentieth in the newer democracies of 
post 1918 Europe) by those who feared 
that the coming of a wider franchise would 
usher in something like mob rule. J S Mill 
and other early advocates thought it would 
prevent the ignorant masses from swamping 
the educated minority, and would 
ensure the election to Parliament of men 
able to provide mature political leadership. 
There was a measure of proportionality in 
the 1867 'limited vote' -multi-member 
seats where the elector had fewer votes 
than there were seats-famously thwarted 
by Joe Chamberlain's Birmingham caucus, 
where the disciplined Liberal voters were 
marshalled to spread their multiple votes 
evenly among Liberal candidates, thus 
squeezing out their opponents in the multi-
member seats. It vanished in 1884 along 
with most of the two member constituencies, 
but plural voting lingered in the 
university seats until abolished by the 
Attlee government. (Ironically the nascent 
Labour Party had for a period supported 
PR, and when the 1916 Speaker's Conference 
recod1rr1ended a mix of preferential 
systems-Alternative Voting (A V) in the 
counties and Single Transferable Voting 
(STY) in multi-member borough seats-53 
Liberal MPs voted against! As their 
majority was only seven in the House they 
may be said to have dished PR. 
Despite the hung parliaments.of the 1920s, 
and a roll-call of the great and the good in 
its support (they were all there ; Asquith 
and Birkenhead and Cecil, the Master of 

20 



Balliol and the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
with J H Thomas as court jester) PR still 
found no mass support at Westminster. A 
bill to introduce the preferential (but not 
proportional) Alternative Vote (A V) as 
the price of Liberal tolerance of the 
second minority Labour government 
passed the Commons, was blocked in the 
Lords, and lapsed with the fall of the 
government. The issue was raised again in 
the 70s, in the context of both devolution 
proposals and the introduction of direct 
elections for the European Assembly. 
Again PR was defeated. 

Following the 1974 election result a 
conventional wisdom has grown up 
amongst advocates of PR, firstly that the 
old two-party system is dead, but the two 
old parties still dominate because of the 
direct preference system, vampires suckled 
on the political lifeblood of smaller and 
newer parties; secondly that almost any 
PR system would be bound to be better 
than what we have now. To the first point 
we would reply that two parties are not 
necessarily the sole beneficiaries of our 
voting system, nor is there anything which 
gives either of them a parson's freehold. 
There have been three and four party 
parliaments, hung parliaments remembered 
neither for achievement nor longevity. 
One of the hig parties has been 
replaced; it could happen again. In fact the 
"historic decline" of the two parties' share 
of the vote is something of a fraud . We are 
usually given the figures for 1950 and 1974 
(a fall from 89.6% to 75%). If we compared 
1979 (80.3%) with 1945 (87.6%) or 
1924-the first election at which Tory and 
Labour were identifiably the bigger parties 
-(81.3 %) we do not see such wide variations 
over half a century. We would argue 
that the two-party domination is more 
likely to be ended when one of the constituent 
parts of one of the parties ignores 
the ground rules for operating as a coalition 
in itself-currently Labour's crisis and 
the Social Democrats' perhaps fleeting 

opportunity. With a distinctive radical 
programme, identifiable in the way that 
the small nationalist parties' programmes 
have recently been, they too might achieve 
the success denied to the Liberals. But 
they have nailed their colours to the fence 
that marks out the centre ground. 

Such a party might well be everybody's 
second preference. Its leadership have 
therefore taken up the Liberal call for PR 
with varying degrees of conviction. The 
great and the good go with them. There is 
even a certain insouciance about which 
form of PR should be used. As a Labour 
convert Austin Mitchell MP confesses; 
'Nothing does more to harm PR than the 
PR enthusiast. With his Droop Quota, his 
alternate member, and his D'Hondt rule 
he sou!lds like that other species of fanatic 
the sex shop owner. There is no need to 
bog the argument down. Systems are there 
for most purposes .. .' But the merits of 
the systems need to be discussed rather 
than glossed over. Then their various disadvantages 
have an awkward habit of 
appearing. We therefore look across the 
range on offer, from perfect proportionality 
without individual ranked choice to 
maximum voter preference with less (or 
virtually no) proportionality. Is there a 
best buy? 

"But the merits of the systems 
need to be discussed rather than 
glossed over. Then their various 
disadvantages have an awkward 
habit of appearing.'' 

The National List. The only way to get 
perfect proportionality, if this is what you 
want, is to make the whole country one 
constituency. Israel is one such. The party 
caucus draws up and ranks the list. After 
the recent Israeli election the big parties 
touted for support among the other nine 
parties with 25 seats between them in the 
Knesset. The price Mr Begin recently paid 

21 


to secure the support of a tiny group of 
ultra religious fanatics is too well known to 
need labouring. It was certainly not an 
example of PR giving the centre extra 
leverage! No serious person suggests a 
national list system for a country the size of 
Britain. Nor is it forgotten that the national 
lists of Weimar Germany did nothing 
whatsoever to dilute or frustrate the rising 
strength of the Nazis. 

The Regional List comes much closer to 
home, for it is the commonest form of PR 
used in Europe. The country is broken 
down into regions rather than constituencies. 
Sometimes the lists are ranked, 
occasionally not. There is thus some 
regional idemification and can be voter 
preference between candidates of the 
same party. A version of the Finnish 
system was recommended for Britain for 
the Euro elections, but voted down at 
Westminster. It would still allow a vote to 
be transferred to candidates on the list 
who were anathema to the individual 
voter, and for the election of unpopular 
figures who contrived to get on the list. 
List systems tend to encourage a proliferation 
of parties, to the extent where government 
becomes almost impossible. 
Italy's 41 governments since the war have 
been a high price to pay for proportionality 
-as were the 25 governments of the 
French Fourth Republic between 1945 
and 1958, only two lasted a year. In the 
Netherlands, which votes a national list in 
18 regional districts, the 1981 election on 
May 26 saw ten parties represented in the 
Dutch Lower House, only one of which 
had as much as 30 percent of thevote. It 
took 118 days thereafter to form a government 
on 11 September -and this 
government fell three weeks later. With 
examples like this in mind we are sceptical 
of PR zealots' jibes that governments 
elected under the British system are as 
unpopular as they are short-lived. (In fact 
the average length of British adminis


trations since the war has been a respectable 
26 months). 

The List System The one real advantage 
claimed for the list system is that it forces 
the party to put its best face forward -to 
achieve that balance amongst its candidates 
which the individual selection conferences 
of a hundred local parties, all 
eager for the identikit ideological model, 
will not do. We do not dispute that this 
might happen -if the ruling caucus so 
decided. But that wisdom denied to selection 
conferences-judging by some recent 
performances-may not be revealed in the 
higher echelons of the caucus. Must would 
be lost, for little gain, if a whole national or 
regional 'slate' were captured for factional 
ends. It would come back, as it does in the 
present system, to that judgement of the 
voters which even the fanatic must eventually 
heed. 
The Additional Member System This has 
been proposed for Britain by the Hansard 
Society. Something very like it exists in 
West Germany, and is often cited by PR 
enthusiasts as responsible for everything 
from the Wirtschaftswunder to Germany's 
victory in the World Cup. In fact it works 
because Germany works, not vice versa, 
and it contains within it safeguards against 
the purer proportionality of Weimar 
Germany. Half the members of the 
Bundestag are elected first-past-the-post 
in individual constituencies, as in Britain. 
This number is then topped up, in proportion 
to votes cast for a national list, 
with extra members. There is a 5 percent 
cut-off below which no members are 
allowed. The German Liberals, the FOP, 
who have not been able to win a single 
constituency by simple majority for over 
20 years, survive as long as they stay above 
this 5 percent line. In 1976 they fell to 7. 9 
percent, but rose in 1980 to 10.5 percent. 
They were in greatest peril in 1969, when 
they fell to 5.8 percent but still received 30 
seats. Yet this party can be the universal 

22 


harlot ofthe German system; always in the 
governmental bed with the highest bidder. 
It acts as a brake on the SPD (for example 
in opposing any attempt to reform the 
Common Agricultural Policy). In return it 
helps to keep out the Christian Democrats, 
even when they are the largest party, 
with over 48 percent of the total vote-so 
much for 'fairness'. Its only price; office 
for 17 of the 20 years in which it has failed 
to get a single constituency seat. 

"The Society were forced to 
recognise the deep attachment in 
Britain to the single member 
constituency, and the identified 
representative.'' 

The Hansard Society have proposed a 
British version of this hybrid. Under it the 
House of Commons would be enlarged to 

680. Three-quarters of these MPs would 
be elected as at present in (larger) single 
member constituencies. The remaining 
quarter would be topped up from regional 
lists. The Society were forced to recognise 
the deep attachment in Britian to the 
single member constituency, and the 
identified representative. What then 
would be the role of the added members, 
especially if, as the Society recommended, 
they were drawn from the losers who had 
performed best? Inevitably they would 
seek a constituency role. The great cry of 
the Caucus Race would be heard in the 
land; 'Everyone has won and everyone 
must have prizes'. AMS also is less fair to 
the voter, who has absolutely no say over 
who these 160 interlopers would be, yet 
they might determine the pace and direction 
of every government he thought he 
was helping to elect. 
' 'List systems do not need that 
valuable barometer the by-
election.'' 

It is also worth pointing out that under 
all these systems there is less opportunity 
for the voter to make his opinion felt 
between elections. List systems do not 
need that valuable barometer the by-
election. The next person on the list simply 
fills the vacancy. In the Euro elections big 
names were put at the top of the list in 
some countries who had no intention of 
taking up their seats, and over fifty of the 
victors have in fact resigned to make way 
for an alternate, often by prior arrangement. 
There have been no by-elections! 
The Single Transferable Vote The manifold 
weaknesses of the above systems have 
led the PR lobby spearheaded by the 
Liberals, the Electoral Reform Society 
and latterly the SDP to concentrate on 
STY-the single transferable vote in multi 
member constitencies. This preference 
system is discussed as though there were a 
particular purity to it, which has escaped 
many of those who have to practice it, 
whether in Malta, Ireland, or Cook 
Country Illinois. With STY you say goodbye 
to the single member constituency, 
though not to constituency politics. The 
voter is placed in a multi member constituency-
3,5, or 7, and has one vote to transfer 
by expressing preferences in order 
among all the individual candidates on the 
ballot paper. The latter are deemed elected 
when they pass a quota, the Droop quota, 
worked out by the d'Hondt formula, 

V + 1 
s + 1 
(the number of votes cast is divided by the 
number of seats plus one, this figure plus 
one is the minimum number of votes 
needed to secure election). In the Northern 
Ireland Euro election the total vote 
was 572,239. Divided by 3 + 1 this gave a 
quota of 143,060). As each candidate 
passes the quota his surplus over it is 
redistributed according to second preferences, 
until each seat is filled. Majority 
parties are still over-represented, but 
much less so than they are in Britain. The 

23 


elector knows that his preferences will 
count with less waste, although some votes 
will still be more equal than others, if they 
are cast for a first time winner and then 
transferred to other successful candidates. 

But other things happen. In Britain the 
multi-member constituencies would be 
large in population -half a million or 
more, and in the sparsely populated rural 
areas gigantic in size. The real personal 
link between the MP and his constituency 
party and one group of 65,000 electors 
would go. Larger scale party machines 
would come into their own. Manipulation 
of constituency sizes would be a constant 
temptation, for you get very different 
results in 3-and 5-member seats. By 
plumping for a range of one to eight-
member constituencies in their policy 
paper the SDP have got the worst of both 
worlds. There will be no proportionality in 
four seats (all currently held by minority 
parties!) and a medley of uneven proportionality 
elsewhere, ignoring the ease 
with which such variable constituency 
sizes can be manipulated within the system, 
according to whether 3, 5, 7 or 8 
members are elected. 

"Elections come thick and fast. 
Governments are stapled together 
after the event by open pork-barrel 
bargaining.'' 

It is not all that obvious when we look 
across the water that all the evils of the 
British system, so relished by advocates of 
PR, have actually been avoided. There is 
caucus rule, within the parties -themselves 
differentiated less by ideology than 
by ancient quarrels, and their candidates 
distinguished by how close their fathers 
had been to the Post Office in 1916. Elections 
come thick and fast. Governments 
are stapled together after the event by 
open pork-barrel bargaining, like Mr 
Haughey's buying the last vote he thought 

he needed in 1982 for over £100 millions. 
We do not think it adds up to any kind of 
regeneration, and certainly has not been 
so for the Irish Labour Party, which has on 
occasion increased its vote and actually 
lost seats. the Electoral Reform Society 
themselves admit that the Droop Quota 
can give 'perverse results'. 

"One such (casualty) is the MP 
who has the courage to go against 
consensus ideas.'' 

One such is the elimination of the MP 
who has the courage to go against consensus 
ideas, and this becomes a casualty 
of the hostile transferred preference. 
Conor Cruise O'Brien lost his seat in the 
Republic of Ireland, when he would have 
retained it had first preferences carried the 
day. Another is that governments can and 
do manipulate STY constituencies to their 
own advantage; a 3-member seat constructed 
to give two seats to the largest 
party, or three in a 5-member seat, if 
discipline prevails among party voters on 
their transfers. ('Full ticket voting' in the 
1981 Irish election was put at 78% for both 
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in the study by 
Sinnott and Whelan). Thus the amount of 
plumping is less great than supporters of 
STY often claim. Results can be remarkably 
similar to those under a direct 
voting system, as the 1977 Irish election 
was. What then do we get, to make this 
system the best buy for PR enthusiasts? 
Robert Newland of the Electoral Reform 
Society, as well as claiming greater stability 
of government and representation of all 
parties in all areas, sums up thus; "Electors 
are released from the strait jacket of 
spurious representation in an artificial 
single-member constituency by an MP 
whose views they may oppose. MPs and 
Councillors, no longer elected by a mere 
relative majority and consequently embarrassed 
by the fiction of having to rep re


24 



sent the heterogeneous electorate of a 
whole constituency, can now confidently 
speak for a homogeneous Quota or constituency 
of opinion. " 

"It is a stark accountability unknown 
in list systems, uncommon 
in the largest and most proportional 
STV constituencies.'' 

We are not impressed by these arguments. 
Single member constituencies of 
roughly equal size leave the MP compelled 
to take account of all sections ofopinion to 
whom he is answerable. He has to carry his 
local party and his local constituents with 
him, and balance their interests and 
opinions. He cannot hide behind the list or 
the caucus. He has no soft second chance 
as the most favoured loser. It is a stark 
accountability unknown in list systems, 
uncommon in the largest and most proportional 
STY constituencies. Ifthe argument 
is that, even so, the MP is frequently 
not the choice of more than 50 percent of 
his electors' first preference, then the 
answer may be to allow the non-
proportional alternative vote in single 
member constituencies. This would increase 
the chances of the third party 
candidates who came a close second, and 
actually change the result in perhaps some 
twenty constituencies (if the proportions 
were similar to the most recent results for 
the Australian lower house, where Alternative 
Voting is used) so that every 
candidate ended up with majority support. 
A V is little favoured by electoral reformers 
today, however; to them proportionality is 
all. Yet A V would do something to break 
up the concentrations of one-party representation, 
north and south, which have 
been much criticised in the present system. 
In any case, if the mould has been broken, 
as the SDP claims, there will be very few 
safe seats left. 

European Elections 

It has been said that if Britain takes part in 
the next Euro-elections in 1984, as she will 
if still a member of the Community, the 
case for PR will have been won by force 
majeure. The European Assembly's 
Document 1-988/81 on a draft uniform 
electoral procedure for the election of its 
members came out for proportional rather 
than majority voting. It proposed a list 
system of multi-member constituencies 
with the allocation of seats by the d'Hondt 
system. This common system would allow 
exceptions only 'for special geographical 
or ethnic factors', but 'it would be left to 
the Member States to decide how their 
territory was to be divided into constituencies 
and whether national or regional 
lists would be used.' The UK government 
in 1984 might choose to fall in line with 
such proposals, especially if it was under 
strong pressure from third and fourth 
parties at the time. We would admit that 
the sheer size of the electorate in the 81 
British constituencies weakens arguments 
for the link between the individual Member 
and his constituents. Our Euro MPs 
low profile, lacking a real base and real 
problems to tackle, bears this out. There is 
an additional factor; the nature of the 
Assembly. The Seitlinger Report itself 
picks up the differences between the 
European Assembly and a national parliament, 
when it refers to the fact that some 
member states have returned from the 
proportional to the majority system. This 
was in the exceptional 'need to strengthen 
the executive at a specially difficult time in 
a particular country's history' (M Seitlinger 
is a Frenchman!) which 'does not arise in 
the Community institutions'. And why is 
this? Not because ofthe particular agonies 

of the PR cursed Fourth Republic. It is 

25 



more generally, because 'there is no Community 
government which is answerable to 
Parliament and which has therefore to be 
sustained by large and effective m a jorities.' 
The Assembly is different-a representative 
body indeed, but not one from 
which a government is drawn, nor to 
which one is accountable. That is the 
crucial difference. Our objections to PR 
are to its effect on the business of government 
and opposition in a national parliament. 
Therefore they do not apply with 
the same force to the European Assembly. 

Conclusion 

There are many constitutional reforms 
which are needed in Britain to bring about 
devolution of power and greater accountability 
of governments to electorates. 
Some would make a contribution to easing 
the malaise that has gripped Britain during 
years of political and economic decline. 
None however vitiate the case for effective 
governments, presenting clear pro-
grammes. For us that means majority 
Labour governments, able to show the 
electorate, in Tawney's words, that they 
can 'promise less, but demand more'. In 
this PR seems to us to offer little. Those 
who advocate it in Britain do so from the 
perfectly respectable ground of self-
interest, knowing that it would indeed lead 
to the permanent coalitions of the continental 
systems which they admire. There 
is nothing especially admirable about the 
haggling after the event which distinguishes 
such coalitions, be they in 
Ireland, Israel or the Netherlands. True 
they can arise under our present system, 
but the last squalid months of the last 
Labour government, suspended by the 
hempen noose of the Ulster Unionists' 

goodwill, hardly argues that we should 
deliberately make this the rule rather than 
the exception. PR would rule out the 
probability of majority Labour government 
again. 

It seems to us that there is nothing 
dishonourable in arguing for such a 
majority Labour government, achieved by 
patience and persuasion from the reforming 
and progressive half of the country. 
And that means warning against a system 
which would destroy that larger hope. 

It will be said that the impulses to fragmentation 
are already there, with the 
defection of the Social Democrats. But the 
bulk of the Labour coalition remains, conscious 
once more that it must maintain and 
widen its base of support. Those who 
believe that PR would attract out of the 
Labour Party those parasitic entryists who 
have drained much of its energy into 
infantile Leninist and Trotskyite spasms 
entirely misunderstand these sectarians. 
Other left sects might use PR-and some 
welcome it-to aim for a small percentage 
of the total vote. The entryists would not. 
The parasites would live with the host, and 
die with it, if Labour cannot build on its 
traditional support as a democratic and a 
socialist party. So PR is no answer to 
Labour's domestic difficulties. 

Meanwhile, under PR, government 
would of course continue, built upon 
coalitions (sometimes including Labdur or 
fragments of Labour) agreed on little 
more than hunger for office and the desire 
for consensus. For a country not in crisis 
this might be acceptable; for Britain it 
would not. In our present difficulties the 
fanatics of proportionality are irrelevant. 
The best we can say of them is that they 
resemble the old jibe against psychoanalysis; 
that it is the only disease which 
mistakes itself for its cure. 

26 



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469 Peter Hall ( ed) 
470 Roger Carroll 
471 John Bowers, Suzanne Franks 
472 John May 
473 Paul Wilding 
475 Robin Cook 
476 Stuart Bell 
478 A Fabian Group 
479 Roy Kohn 
480 ed. David Lipsey 
481 David Basnett 
482 Betty Vernon 

The politics of monetarism 
Can Labour win again? 
What future for higher education? 
Taxing wealth inequalities 
Socialism at the grass roots 
A radical agenda for London 
The two wage worker 
Race and affirmative action 
Justice, welfare and juvenile delinquents 
Socialism and professionalism 
No nukes! 
How to abolish the Lords 
Against all reason 
Enforced leisure: enforced education 
Making government work 
The future of collective bargaining 
Margaret Cote 1892-1980 

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44 Melvyn Westlake World poverty: the growing conflict £1.50 
45 Geoff Harris A wider Europe £1.50 
46 David Elliott The Lucas Aerospace workers' campaign £1.50 
47 Tom Schuller Education through life £1.50 
48 Mark Swift A regional policy for Europe £1.50 
49 Mark Goyder Socialism tomorrow £1.50 
50 Nick Butlin The IMF: time for reform £1.50 

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This pamphlet, in argument format, is a lively debate on the appropriateness 
of reform of the British electoral system. Is the present 
system biased against the centre and undemocratic in that it does 
notproduce elected members who reflect the views ofthe electorate? 
Can a greater power to choose candidates within a particular party's 
nominations be introduced? Or is reform just a change which is not 
for the better and which produces results with as much, oreven more 
undesirable features as our present system. This pamphlet examines 
a perennial yet topical issue. 

Fabian Society 

The Fabian Society exists to further socialist education and research. 
lt is affiliated to the Labour Party, both nationally and locally, and 
embraces all shades of Labour opinion within its ranks -left, right 
and centre. Since 1884 the Fabian Society has enrolled thoughtful 
socialists who are prepared to discuss the essential questions of 
democratic socialism and relate them to practical plans for building 
socialism in a changing world. Beyond this the Society has no 
collective policy. lt puts forward no resolutions of a political character. 
The Society's members are active in their Labour parties, trade 
unions and co-operatives. They are representative of the Labour 
movement, practical people concerned to study and discuss problems 
that matter. 

The Society is organised nationally and locally. The national 
Society directed by an elected Executive Committee, publishes 
pamphlets and holds schools and conferences of many kinds. Local 
Societies -there are one hundred of them -are self governing and 
are lively centres of discussion and also undertake research.