Politics and Personalities

360 Pages·1990·31.875 MB·English

by  Dennis Kavanagh (auth.)

POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES
Also by Dennis Kavanagh
THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OF FEBRUARY 1974 (with
David Butler)
THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OF OCTOBER 1974 (with
David Butler)
THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OF 1979 (with David Butler)
THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OF 1983 (with David BlIIler)
THE BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION OF 1987 (with David Butler)
BRITISH POLITICS: Continuities and Change
BRITISH POLITICS TODA Y (with W. JOlles)
COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: Essays in Honor of
S. E. Finer (editor with Gillian Peele)
CONSENSUS POLITICS FROM ATTLEE TO THATCHER (with Pmr Morris)
CONSTITUENCY ELECTIONEERING IN BRIT AIN
NEW TRENDS IN BRITISH POLITICS (editor with Richard Rose)
POLITICAL CULTURE
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND POLITICAL BEHA VIOUR
THE POLITICS OF THE LABOUR PARTY (editor)
THE THATCHER EFFECT (editor with Anthony Seldon)
THATCHERISM AND BRITISH POLITICS
Politics and
Personalities
Dennis Kavanagh
Professor of Politics, University of Nottingham
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-0-333-51580-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20961-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20961-3
© Dennis Kavanagh, 1990
Chapter 16 © Dennis Kavanagh and Richard Rose, 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1990
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the Uni ted States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04739-9
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Kavanagh, Dennis.
Politics and personalities / Dennis Kavanagh.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-04739-9
1. Great Britain-Politics and government-1979- 2. Politicians-
-Great Britain. I. Title.
JN231.K32 1990
324.2'2'092241--{fc20 90-32158
CIP
To J
Contents
List 0/ Figures and Tables viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction x
1 On Writing Contemporary Electoral History 1
2 Power in British Politics: Iron Law or Special
Pleading? 16
3 Whatever Happened to Consensus Politics? 40
4 Is Thatcherism Conservative? 64
5 Making Sense of Thatcher 78
6 Must Labour Lose - Again? 90
7 Ideology, Sociology and Labour's Strategy 105
8 Do We Need a Centre Party? 123
9 Crisis, Charisma and British Political Leadership: the
Case of Winston Churchill 134
10 Enoch Powell: Vision and Waste 163
11 The Rise and Fall of Tony Benn: Nuisance or
Conscience? 177
12 The Deferential English: A Comparative Critique 188
13 An American Science of British Politics 217
14 From Gentlemen to Players: Changes in Political
Leadership 246
15 The Timing of Elections: Fair Play or Fiddle? 272
16 The Monarchy in Contemporary Political Culture
(with Richard Rose) 286
17 Public Opinion PolIs 315
Index 337
vii
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
9 .1 Average annual approval ratings for Prime
Minister, 1939-70 143
9.2 Approval ratings for Churchill and the government
in the Second World War 144
9.3 Percentage differences between annual average
approval for Prime Minister, party and government,
1940-70 145
16.1 An AID analysis of social structure and need for a
Queen 295
16.2 An AID analysis of social structure and pride in a
Queen 296
Tables
7.1 Labour's share of the vote in general elections,
1945-87 108
7.2 Proportion of skilled working dass (C2) voting
Labour, 1964-87 112
7.3 Labour's share of the manual workers' dass vote
(BMRS categories) 114
7.4 Changes in trade-union membership 119
7.5 Proportion of trade unionists voting Labour 120
9.1 Preferred successor to Chamberlain as Prime
Minister (among supporters of the government) 140
9.2 Average annual rates of approval/disapproval for
wartime Prime Ministers 141
9.3 Would it be a good or a bad thing for Churchill to
remain as Prime Minister after the war? 151
12.1 Social and political deference 196
12.2 Party support by dass self -images, 1963 (%) 202
16.1 The evaluation of political röles 289
16.2 Political and emotional valuations of the Queen 291
viii
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to April Pidgeon, my secretary in the Politics
Department at Nottingham, for her skill and patience in coping with
my handwriting and dictation. I have also been greatly helped by
the comments on previously unpublished papers of my colleague
Peter Morris and my daughter Jane.
The author and publishers acknowledge with thanks permission
from the following to reproduce copyright material:
Pergamon Press, for the data in Table 7.3, from A. Heath, R.
Jowell and J. Curtice, How Britain Votes (1985).
Department of Employment Gazette, for the data in Table 7.4.
Gallup Polls, for the data in Tables 9.1 and 9.2 and for Figures 9.1
and 9.3.
Allen & Unwin, for the data in Table 14.3, from D. Kavanagh
(ed.), The Polities 0/ the Labour Party (1982).
Fontana, for Figure 9.2, from H. Pelling, Britain in the Seeond
World War (1970).
Eleetoral Studies (1982), for Chapter 1.
West European Polities (1985), for Chapter 2.
Politieal Studies (1985), for Chapter 3.
Government and Opposition (1971), for Chapter 12.
Politieal Studies (1974), for Chapter 13.
Cambridge University Press (1989), for Chapter 15.
Comparative Polities (1976), for Chapter 16.
American Enterprise Institute, for Chapter 17, from D. Butler, H.
Penniman and A. Ranney, British Demoeraey at the Polis (1981).
DENNIS KAVANAGH
IX
Introduction
This book of essays draws on some of my articles and conference
papers, published and unpublished, on topics in British politics.
They cover problems of contemporary history, political personalities,
elections and political parties. With few exceptions I have resisted
the temptation to update the articles or insert second thoughts.
The ideas in the opening chapter, 'On Writing Contemporary
Electoral History' , were first presented at a conference on the study
of elections at Nuffield College in 1976. They were subsequently
rewritten and published in the journal Electoral Studies in 1982. I
have taken the liberty of adding some paragraphs covering my
experience of the 1987 election study.
A personal note may be relevant concerning my interest in the_
Nuffield studies of British general elections. I was an undergraduate
between 1960 and 1963 at Manchester University, studying politics
and modern his tory , and at the time both departments were
outstanding. The government department was being built up by
W.J.M.MacKenzie and the new subject of psephology was attracting
much interest at the time. One of my tutors was Richard Rose and
he had just co-authored Must Labour Lose? with Mark Abraham
and The British General Election 01 1959 with David Butler. He
fired my interest in political behaviour. In the 1960s David Butler
and Robert McKenzie were 'telly academics' and dominated BBC
coverage of elections. So me years later, in December 1973, David
Butler was searching for a co-author for the next Nuffield election
study (on the February 1974 election). I had never met hirn before
when out of the blue he invited me to lunch and to co-author the
next study. We have collaborated on every general election study
since.
Butler had a youthful interest in election statistics. It was first
turned to more serious purposes in 1945. A committee of the new
Oxford college of Nuffield was see king a research topic that would
advance understanding of the contemporary world. The Oxford
historian R.B.McCallum had the idea of studying the 1945 general
election and was invited by the committee to do so. The 21-year
old Butler was sent to see hirn and commissioned to produce 'some
statistics for my book'. Butler was able to show that there were
x