Front Bench Research Articles

Please don't shoot my Fox, Mr Duncan Smith

As soon as the rumours reached me in late July of a new looming shake-up of the Conservative front bench, I got down on my knees and sent up my agnostic prayer to the bald deity with a perpetual frog in his throat: “Dear IDS, please don'tshoot my Fox: my Dr Liam Fox. It takes so long to tell the real opponents of the NHS from its constructive critics!”

The Role of the Social Entrepreneur

In Notes from the Front, practising entrepreneurs offer personal perspectives on significant issues in the light of their own business experience. This issue's author is Barry Sheerman, a UK Member of Parliament for Huddersfield since 1983. Currently, he is Joint Chair of the Education and Employment Select Committee, Chairman of Networking for Industry Ltd, Co-Chairman of the Parliamentary Manufacturing Industry Group, and Secretary of the Parliamentary Sustainable Waste Group. Formerly, he was the Opposition front bench spokesman on Education, Employment, Home Affairs and Disability. In this article he reflects on the concept of social entrepreneurship, and discusses the establishment of Urban Mines Limited, a not-for-profit environmental organization concerned with the development of practical approaches to sustainable waste management.

Three Cultures from the "Inside"

Three Cultures from the "Inside"

The Government’s Plans on Legal Aid and Conditional Fees

Radical proposals for the reform of legal aid were brought forward by Lord Mackay, Lord Chancellor in the then Conservative Government, in a Green Paper published in May 19951 and then a White Paper published in June 1996.2 Lord Mackay's proposals were subjected to fierce criticism by lawyers and non-lawyers alike.3 Lord Irvine of Lairg, writing as Shadow Lord Chancellor, castigated them.4 In particular, he rejected Lord Mackay's proposed cap on legal aid expenditure,5 though on the other hand, he said that there would be no more money for legal aid under a future Labour Government. He did not explain how this circle would be squared. Lord Irvine's first pronouncement as Lord Chancellor on his policy with regard to legal aid was in his speech to the Law Society's annual conference in Cardiff on 18 October 1997. It appeared from his speech that his plans for legal aid were even more radical and controversial than anything proposed by Lord Mackay. He said that conditional fee agreements (CFAs) would be extended to all money and damages actions and that legal aid for all such claims would be abolished. This proposal produced consternation and a storm of criticism. It was attacked by, inter alia, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the National Consumer Council, the Consumers' Association, Shelter,the Child Poverty Action Group, JUSTICE, the Legal Action Group, the Law Centres Federation, the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux and the Advice Services Alliance.6 They were also savaged by Edward Gamier, the Conservative Front Bench spokesman, in a powerful hour-long critique in the House of Commons debate on the proposals.7 This battering had some result.8 On 5 March 1998 Lord Irvine published a Consultation Paper Access to Justice with Conditional Fees9 in which the Government outlined those of its proposals on legal aid that it thought could be

“Without regard to the interests of others”: Canada and American Unilateralism in the Post-Cold War Era

Introduction In October 1993, the election of a Liberal government was seen by many as the harbinger of a souring in Canadian-American relations. After all, the new prime minister, Jean Chretien, had explicitly rejected the essential pro-Americanism of his Progressive Conservative predecessor, Brian Mulroney, which was described disparagingly as a camp-follower approach; the Liberal party was on record as favoring the rejection of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless it could be renegotiated; and at least two members of the Liberal front bench then being touted for key roles in Chretien's cabinet--Sheila Copps and Lloyd Axworthy, the Liberal foreign policy critic--had well-established records of anti-American sentiment. (1) As Joseph T. Jockel has noted, however, the anticipated downturn in relations did not occur. Instead, in the first two years of the government's mandate, there was a persistent in the Canada-U.S. relationship, marked by the absence of major disputes between the two countries and the lack of evidence of deep-seated differences between Jean Chretien and President Bill Clinton. (2) Jockel suggests that one explanation for the calm was that the new government in Ottawa wanted to concentrate on the Quebec issue and the economy, a reflection of what he describes as Chretien's general cautiousness on both domestic and foreign policy matters. (3) It might also have been a function of a more careful reading of the mood of the Canadian public in the mid-1990s. According to J.L. Granatstein, anti-Americanism was at a weak point in Canada at the time, (4) and it might have been that Chretien sensed that, while Canadians might have been uncomfortable with Mulroney's closeness to American presidents, there was little desire to see their government pursue an overtly anti-American policy. Finally, the calm may have been a result of personnel choices by Chretien: both Axworthy and Copps were given portfolios (human resources and environment, respectively) that did not involve them in issues then on the Canadian-American agenda. Instead, the Foreign Affairs portfolio was given to Andre Ouellet, whose experience with international affairs was slight; Axworthy would not be given Foreign Affairs until the cabinet shuffle of January 1996. Equally, Chretien's first minister for international trade was Roy MacLaren, a member of the faction of the Liberal party which favored free trade. While Jockel was not wrong to describe the relationship as calm, that calmness nevertheless masked a mounting divergence in approach to the international system in the post-Cold War period. At issue was the willingness of both governments to attach themselves to the principles of multilateralism in international politics. (5) The Canadian government, which had a historical commitment to multilateralism, began expressing concerns about what it saw as the increasing tendency of the United States government to abandon the multilateralism that a succession of administrations had demonstrated during the Cold War. (6) Instead, the United States was seen as increasingly willing to take a unilateralist approach to some key elements of trade and diplomacy in the post-Cold War period. Unilateralism, in this context, included the willingness of the government in Washington to define the rules for itself, decide what rules it would choose to follow, and generally act, as Axworthy was to put it in 1996, without regard to the legitimate interests of others. (7) Canadian concerns about American unilateralism in the post-Cold War period focused on three areas: trade remedies, financing for the United Nations, and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, or the Helms-Burton Act, as it is commonly called after its sponsors. In each area, the Canadian government pursued essentially the same policy: Ottawa devoted fairly sustained efforts to dampen American unilateral impulses by engaging in open and public criticism of American policy, and included a healthy dose of what can best be described as preaching the virtues of multilateralism to the United States. …

Reassessing the impact ofyesterday's men

This special seminar to explore the controversy surrounding the Yesterday's Men programme of 1971, and its subsequent significance in the history of British political documentaries, was held at the Institute of Historical Research, London, on 26 January 1994. The seminar opened with a re‐screening of the programme, which featured interviews with Harold Wilson, the then leader of the opposition to Edward Heath's new Conservative government, front bench opposition spokesmen including Roy Jenkins, Tony Crosland and Denis Healey, and the political correspondent Peter Jenkins. The discussion was introduced by Dr Jean Seaton and chaired by Professor Peter Hennessy. The principal participants were Joe Haines (Chief Press Secretary to Harold Wilson 1969–76), Brian Wenham (editor, Panorama 1969–71, Head of BBC Current Affairs Group 1971–78) and John Grist (Head of BBC Current Affairs Group 1967–71, Controller, BBC English Regions 1972–77), with further contributions from Philip Whitehead, Professor Ben Pimlott, Peter Rose, David Benn, Professor Colin Seymour‐Ure, Joanna Kayford, Rosaleen Hughes, Hugh Purcell, Murray Weston and Chloe Miller.

The institute for public policy research: Policy and politics

The Institute for Public Policy Research's primary aim was to provide rigorous theoretical analysis outlining the direction a government run by Labour modernisers could take. Starting from a financially uncertain base, the Institute informally allocated different policy areas to its research fellows who proceeded to act as its editors‐in‐chief of projects, overseeing their development and farming out work, effectively conserving resources in the process. With Labour's defeat in the 1992 election, it was clear that planning new initiatives for government was somewhat premature and the party's leadership renewed their drive for union and Clause IV reform, overshadowing the IPPR's attempts at policy renewal. However, the quantity and quality of IPPR publications helped reassure party activists and political sympathisers that there was an alternative to pure free market thinking. Thus although it is still not clear how much influence the IPPR has exerted over its original target audience, the Labour front bench, it has played an important role in boosting Labour Party morale and confidence.

‘The true author of European Peace’: The Foreign Office, the League and Locarno, December 1924–December 1926

Since his early student travels to France and Germany Chamberlain believed that he had been in training for the Foreign Office. Although he had accepted the shadow portfolio for foreign affairs on his return to the Conservative front bench in February, however, he did not consider the Foreign Office as a possibility until Baldwin first raised the question in October 1924. At this juncture, daunted by the expense, the exacting burden of work with which he was unfamiliar and the attendant political risks, Chamberlain had been inclined to prefer a return to the India Office. In the event, his wife recommended the Foreign Office and, rather uncharacteristically, he was soon confiding to his sisters that he had ‘rapidly found [his] feet’. Within a year he was rejoicing in afar greater sense of fulfilment from the Foreign Office than he could ever have expected from being Prime Minister. To a considerable degree this satisfaction was derived from the very special nature of the position enjoyed by a British Foreign Secretary. As he noted when the offer was first made, the Foreign Office ‘is the highest office in the public estimation’: a status reflected in the special pomp and dignity which surrounded its holder. As Eden later recalled, the Foreign Secretary's journey to Geneva was ‘something of an event and took place at a measured pace. The top-hatted stationmaster and the Foreign Office representatives at Victoria, the harbourmaster at Dover bowing us on to the ship, the préfect and the mayor of Calais, then the drive across Paris and dinner at the Embassy, the night train at the Gare de Lyon, where M. Briand and some other of Sir Austen's colleagues were also embarking for Geneva. Finally, the arrival at Geneva, about 7.30 in the morning, when the whole staff was paraded to meet their chief at the station’. In many respects, Chamberlain was ideally suited by character and temperament to fulfil such a role as a model British Foreign Secretary.

Return of the ‘exer ex-Ministers’: The Opposition front bench, December 1923–November 1924

At the Carlton Club meeting in October 1922 Balfour had reflected caustically that while ‘it has never been a Conservative principle to abandon a Leader … I concede it has sometimes been a Conservative practice’. At this meeting, the Conservative Party had abandoned Austen Chamberlain. A little over a year later it appeared as if a similar fate would befall his principal successor. Amid the ruins of Law's victory for ‘Tranquillity’ many observers subscribed to Hanky's view that ‘Baldwin, though a nice fellow is not the stuff of which British Prime Ministers are made’. In the immediate aftermath of this disaster, most also assumed he would be compelled to pay the ultimate price for this inadequacy. Certainly Birhenhead was one of them. Electoral defeat was a vindication of all that he had predicted since the fall of the Coalition. Rejoicing that it had finally ‘put an end to the idea that fifth rate intelligence could govern the Empire’, Birkenhead set in motion the final act in a strategy to which he had committed the Chamberlainites in November 1922. Between 6 and 10 December rumours abounded that the former Conservative Coalitionists were about to displace Baldwin, replace him variously with Balfour, Derby or Chamberlain and then form some sort of Liberal-Conservative combination to exclude Labour from office. In the event, the plan miscarried. The apparent recrudescence of the ‘old intrigue’ rallied the victors of the Carlton Club to defend the Party, their brand of Conservatism and, by necessity, its leader from coalitionist conspiracy. Virtually overnight, Baldwin was transformed from the wanton destroyer of Law's majority into the guarantor of Conservative principle. As Amery told Baldwin, ‘you embody and personify the decision of the Party to live its own life and have its own constructive policy’. Ultimately, therefore, despite much Conservative anger, frustration and despair at Baldwin's perceived folly, the impulse which brought about the coalescence of figures as diverse as the Cecils, Younger, Strachey, Gretton and the ministerial beneficiaries of the Carlton Club was the consensus that they were ‘not prepared to cut off Baldwin's head and make Austen Chamberlain King’. They were even less inclined to install Birkenhead as Regent.

Disunity on the Opposition Front Bench, 1884

Disunity on the Opposition Front Bench, 1884

Gladstone, Whiggery, and the Liberal Party, 1874-1886

This reassessment of the role of the aristocratic Whigs in the Liberal Party of the 1870s and 1880s studies the largely neglected Whig leadership of Granville and Hartington (1875-80), the leadership crisis of 1879-80, and the strategies of both front and back bench Whigs following Gladstone's return to power in 1880. Traditionally the Whigs have been dismissed as a recalcitrant and increasingly marginal element in an age characterized by `Gladstonian' Liberalism. Dr Jenkin's aim is to restore `Whiggery' to a position of significance in Liberal politics and, in the process, to re-examine Gladstone's leadership and the role played by Radicals such as Joseph Chamberlain in the years leading up to the Home Rule crisis of 1886. In asserting the central importance of the Irish Question to the split in the Liberal Party, the book rejects previous interpretations of the schism as merely the result of class divisions, or the result of cynical manoeuvring for personal advantage by ambitious politicians. The book is based on the author's thesis, which has been awarded the University of Cambridge's Prince Consort Prize for 1988.

An Interview with the 'Shadow' Home Secretary

Gerald Kaufman took over opposition front bench responsibilities for Home Affairs last autumn. How has his thinking developed on criminal justice issues? He spoke to Probation Journal on June 28th.

Goodies in the new health Bill

The government's second attempt to introduce a Health and Social Security Bill got off to a bad start. The copies were not back from the printers at the appointed time, and that caused a fuss in the Commons with Mr Frank Dobson, Labour's shadow health spokes? man. The Bill, the provisions to implement the decisions on opticians' services apart, is pretty much the same as the one that Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody successfully sabotaged as part of the price of letting the government complete some of its legislation before the general election. She had strenuously opposed the proposals to give family practitioner committees independent status as health authorities, a victory that did not please doctors at the time. Mr Kenneth Clarke, Minister of State for Health, insists that his bit of the Bill contains no surprises. He hopes to get the second reading before Christmas and royal assent by the summer. But it does look as if the committee stage is going to be protracted. Like all Department of Health and Social Security Bills it is a double barrelled effort, and the social security section, for which Dr Rhodes Boy son is responsible, is said to be fairly controversial and to include the real changes. The health section is not controversial in the sense that it contains new proposals. But Mr Dobson?a Gwyneth Dunwoody in trousers, according to one commentator? will want to make his name as it will be the first committee in which he will be speaking from the opposition front bench. Nor can Labour, having so strongly resisted the previous plans for indepen? dent status, suddenly decide that the rerun version should receive less opposition. The failure to get the Bill launched last Friday was something of an embarrassment to ministers. They got the formal first reading? it is one of the odder Commons rules that this can be done without anybody being able to see the actual Bill. Not even the ministers last Friday had a proper printed copy. But for the public launch they had to wait until the beginning of this week. Mr Dobson made the most of it, and set the whips scurrying around deciding what was to be done. It may not sound much to outsiders, but it is one of those little Commons contretemps that boost opposition spirits and leave ministers blushing slightly. Another factor that will make the committee stage that much harder will be the opposition by the opticians to the proposals announced by Mr Norman Fowler, Social Services Secretary, last month. These will permit freer advertising aimed at ensuring that the public is provided with more information about the prices of glasses and the ending of the opticians' monopoly to sell glasses, a change that will also affect ophthalmic medical practitioners. Mr Fowler told the Commons that the conditions that he was laying down would ensure that no risks were taken with people's sight and that all sales would have to be made against a recent prescription. It was a skilfully drafted statement, concealing what amounts virtually to the end of National Health Service spectacles. That is something that the Labour party will claim amounts to a lessening of the service. If Mr Fowler is right and the frames available privately are sold at reasonable prices then that attack will be weakened. But it is anybody's guess what is going to happen. So it does look as if there will be a reasonably interesting time ahead in legislative terms, instead of it all being about political banana skins outside the Commons.

Front Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Government in British Politics. By R. M. Punnett. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973. Pp. xvii, 500. $17.95.)

Front Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Government in British Politics. By R. M. Punnett. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973. Pp. xvii, 500. $17.95.)

Front Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Government in British Politics.R. M. Punnett

<i>Front Bench Opposition: The Role of the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Government in British Politics.</i>R. M. Punnett

Anatomy of Reformism: The Social and Political Ideas of the Labour Leadership in Yorkshire

Critiques of the history of British Socialism tend to begin with the assumption that the Labour movement preferred evolution to revolution, reform to fundamental change. The local Labour leadership is alleged to have responded to the difficulties of radical politics between 1880 and 1920 by tamely following a policy of tactical moderation devised in London by the Parliamentary front bench.

William Blathwayt, Imperial Fixer: From Popish Plot to Glorious Revolution

O N June i8, i687, John Evelyn had dinner with one Mr. Blathwayt, whom Evelyn described as at War, Clerk of the Council, etc., having raised himself by his industry, from very moderate circumstances. He is a very proper, handsome person, and very dextrous in business; and, besides all this, has married a great fortune. His income by the Army, council, and Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Plantations brings him in above 2000?J per annum. Plainly, William Blathwayt had become a notable pluralist since entering office eighteen years previously. And Evelyn's et cetera included Blathwayt's seat in Parliament and the auditor-generalship of the colonial revenues. The diarist would not be surprised at Blathwayt's future service as secretary of state to William III or his decade of dominance at the Board of Trade. Translate William Blathwayt's responsibilities into contemporary terms. He was minister of defense; secretary to the cabinet; permanent undersecretary of state in the colonial office; member of Parliament on the government front bench; auditor of imperial accounts; and, subsequently, acting secretary of state for Europe and America and the leading member of the expert, standing commission for the export trade and commonwealth. Subtract the distortion of such a translation and still there remains an impression of Blathwayt's enormous responsibilities and power. This impression has been muted naturally by time and artificially by the scholarly habit of considering Blathwayt's roles individually. Such consideration obscures Blathwayt's integration of his offices and conceals

New Faces on the Front Bench

New Faces on the Front Bench

The Early Start Toward Cabinet Office, 1918-55

INE-TENTHS of theM.P.'s who first won seats in the House of Commons in 1918 or thereafter, and who held some ministerial office in the years from 1918 to 1955, began their progress toward posts in a ministry or a Cabinet by serving as parliamentary secretaries or as junior ministers. This proportion holds for both the Labour and the Conservative parties. Almost a third of the Labour parliamentary private secretaries subsequently were appointed to ministerial office, and 7 per cent finally reached Cabinet rank. The record of Conservative parliamentary private secretaries is much the same, though only 4 per cent finally reached Cabinet posts. In both parties a little less than a third of those who began as junior ministers went on to higher official postions, and a sixth ultimately reached Cabinet positions.' Recruitment to the front bench clearly begins with these two offices. Twothirds of Labour ministers and Cabinet ministers, 55 per cent of Conservative ministers, and three-fourths of Conservative Cabinet ministers began their careers in office by service in one or the other or both of these posts.

Department of Applied Statistics, University of London, University College: Drapers' Company Research Memoirs Biometric Series, x: A Study of the Long Bones of the English Skeleton Department of Applied Statistics, University of London, University College: Drapers' Company Research Memoirs Biometric Series, xi: A Study of the Long Bones of the English Skeleton

IF in the rapid increase of knowledge at the present time there is a tendency for men to limit their labours more and more to one narrow field of investigation, there is also, we are glad to note, an opposite tendency leading men who have become eminent in their own particular subject to cross professional frontiers and to carry war, seldom peace, into neighbouring or even distant specialities. In the present two great publications, devoted chiefly to the human thighbone, containing more than a quarter of a million words, with tables which give the results of at least 70,000 measurements, and illustrated by 105 anatomical plates, we find Prof. Karl Pearson, the mathematician, definitely settling himself in the front bench of speculative anatomists. He cannot have expected a warm welcome in his new quarters, for there are few British anatomists who do not bear the mark of at least one of those biometrical brickbats at the throwing of which Prof. Pearson has manifested very considerable skill. They did not hurt any the less because they were nieant kindly! In spite of all their scars, however, British anatomists—nay, anatomists of every country—who study these volumes will forget their past sores and be glad to welcome him to their membership for the great service he has rendered to their subject, not only in this, but also in previous memoirs. Department of Applied Statistics, University of London, University College: Drapers' Company Research Memoirs. Biometric Series, x.: A Study of the Long Bones of the English Skeleton. By Karl Pearson Julia Bell. Text: Part i., The Femur. Chaps, i. to vi. Pp. v + 224. Atlas: Part i., The Femur. Pp. vii + plates lix + Tables of Measurements and Observations. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1919.) Price, Text and Atlas, Part i., 30s. net. Department of Applied Statistics, University of London, University College: Drapers' Company Research Memoirs. Biometric Series, xi.: A Study of the Long Bones of the English Skeleton. By Karl Pearson Julia Bell. Text: Part i., Section ii., The Femur of Man, with special reference to other Primate Femora. Chaps, vii. to x., Appendices, Bibliography, and Indices. Pp. 225–539. Atlas: Part i., Section ii., The Femur of the Primates. Pp. vii + plates lx–ci + Tables of Femoral Measurements of the Primates; (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1919.) Price, Text and Atlas, Part i., Section ii., 40s. net.