The Reform of British Central Government, 1945-1949

Abstract

Neither a formal rigid process of amendment, nor judicial review of constitutionality, preserves the British Constitution from the inroads of a despotic majority. The British Constitution is sustained by the democratic self-restraint of the parliamentary majority and the unsubversive and unrevolutionary parliamentary minority, which acknowledges that, enfin, the country must be governed by someone, especially since one day, vox dei willing, it may be that someone. Both majority and minority subscribe to a common reason and gravitas which is the basis of a constitutional playground. The Labour Government of 1945 to 1950 made a more than usually heavy contribution to constitutional reform. It did this alongside a titanic complex of law-making and administration concerning economic enterprise and the social services. No such change effected through Parliament has been seen in England since the Parliaments of 1832 to 1848 combined! This article is, however, confined to the machinery of government. These considerable reforms raised, as their accompaniment, two interesting discussions on the nature of the constitution. It is more telling to refer to them at once rather than to deal with them intermixed with substantive measures. The first issue arose during the Government's advocacy of the Parliament act curtailing the powers of the House of Lords. The most vivid spokesman was Winston Churchill. He claimed that after the second or third year of a Government's lease of office, it had no right to try to enact controversial legislation. Its mandate was growing stale and thin. He reverted to his own doctrine uttered during the debates on the reform of the House of Lords in 1910.1 His contention was that a Parliament being of the average duration of four years, all controversial measures that had been presented to the elec-