Commentary: Hansard, the Abridged Edition?

Lord Solely’s recent Lords of the Blog post on potential reforms included a suggestion of creating a specially edited version of Hansard that might have a broader public appeal: ‘With good editing and with pictures it might sell in the shops and provide people with an alternative to the gossipy and trivial news coverage of Parliament in some of the newspapers.‘

Without reproducing my own comment verbatim, I can safely say that even though I’m about as close to a target demographic as any publisher might wish for this sort of edited version of Hansard, I doubt that I would buy it. Much as I love Hansard as an institution (and would gladly work as a Hansard reporter or editor, if given the chance), I can’t see much of a market for this kind of publication.

What I would love to see, however, is a series of professionally edited Hansard debates on key pieces of historic legislation. The editions would contain the texts of the debates in both the Commons and the Lords, with an editor’s introduction and conclusion, appropriate scholarly footnotes and references for further reading, a dramatis personae of the key figures in the debate, and perhaps the odd photograph or illustration (such as topical political cartoons). Pick six fairly well-known or noteworthy acts to start with — say, the 1911 and 1949 Parliament Acts (a two-part set), the 1944 Education Act, the 1958 Life Peerages Act, the 1967 Abortion Act, and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act — and have that be the first series. All of these acts fall well within the 30-Year Rule, so most of the relevant papers would be available at Kew and in various other archives for consultation. Ideally, the volumes would be edited and written to be well suited for A Level and undergraduate study, or just for the general reading public interested in contemporary history.

I haven’t seen anything of this nature available for sale, but I would absolutely be interested in buying it (or contributing to it, for that matter!) if some enterprising publisher wanted to take a chance on it.

Commentary: Bagehot on the ‘history wars’

A recent article from the Economist‘s Bagehot on the history wars among British politicians prompted me to ponder the use of history as a stick with which to beat one’s political opponents.

It’s hard to disagree that hearkening back to past failures is, as Bagehot puts it, ‘a comforting kind of displacement activity….less a way of understanding the future than avoiding it‘. Watching Prime Minister’s Question Time during the Blair years was rather like playing a drinking game, preparing a shot glass in anticipation of the first mention of ‘the shambles we inherited from 18 years of Conservative Government’ or some iteration on that phrase. At some point around 1999 (possibly even earlier), the phrase lost whatever meaning it might have had, and became an almost expected part of Question Time regardless of who was facing the Prime Minister on the Opposition benches. Good for at least one shot in the PMQs drinking game, if nothing else.

I suspect that much of the impetus for the ‘history wars’ comes from New Labour’s own attempts to reinvent itself and distance itself from the problems of the Wilson and Callaghan years, as Anthony Seldon and Kevin Hickson’s collection of articles and essays suggests. Unfortunately, this insistence on disavowing the past seems to have left Labour without much to stand on except its current record, and the Tories aren’t much better when it comes to facing down the demons of the Thatcher and Major years, especially on questions related to Europe. History does make a very good stick for beating one’s opponents, but more often than not it ends up being like the magic cudgel in the Brothers Grimm fairytale that will spring out of its sack and start hitting anyone in sight, indiscriminately, until the right command is found to stop it. At the moment, it seems, no one’s figured out how to make it stop.

Publications: ‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera’ (in print)

To my chagrin, I’ve only just realised that I’ve neglected to mention in To Bed With a Trollope that the following article is now available from Contemporary British History:

‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera: Evaluating the Impact and Influence of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister‘, Contemporary British History 23:3 (September 2009): 315-336

Abstract: The satirical 1980s television programmes Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister have made a lasting contribution to the substance and content of political discourse in Britain, shaping public and political opinion on the relationship between politicians and civil servants. An in-depth analysis of the reactions to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister — from the earliest reviews to the most recent references to the programmes in contemporary political debates — reveals the programmes’ incisive observations on the proper roles of government and administration in the British political system and explains why these observations continue to be relevant nearly three decades after the programmes first aired.

This article is available online through the link above or in the hard copy edition of the September 2009 issue of Contemporary British History.

Clem Attlee by Francis Beckett and Alec Douglas-Home by D.R. Thorpe

Another pair of book reviews originally written for Political Studies Review. In the interests of keeping the article intact as written, I’ve left the two book reviews together.

Clem Attlee by Francis Beckett and Alec Douglas-Home by D.R. Thorpe

The “Great Statesmen” series released by Politico’s Publishing has produced new paperback editions of Francis Beckett’s biography of Clement Attlee and D.R. Thorpe’s biography of Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Both biographies examine career politicians who remain little-known and less-understood figures in post-war British political history, and seek to show why these two men, of all their contemporaries, were amongst the few chosen to hold the office of prime minister.

The Beckett biography of Attlee regrettably falls short of the mark. The first sign of the book’s shortcomings is Beckett’s insistence on referring to Attlee as ‘Clem; throughout — in spite of his own admission that Attlee himself likely would not have approved of such familiarity. This early warning is borne out by Beckett’s tendency towards conjecture and speculation about Attlee’s thoughts and intentions. Statements such as ‘It may have been — almost certainly was — a decision [Attlee] subsequently regretted’ (95) tell the reader very little about Attlee’s way of thinking while revealing rather too much about his biographer’s opinions. And Beckett has no shortage of opinions on Attlee’s fellow politicians, particularly those who at one point or another were not on Attlee’s side—Ramsay MacDonald is a ‘cruel fraud’ (75), Herbert Morrison ‘trusted no-one and loved power’ (121), and Hugh Dalton had ‘neither the glory of being considered above plotting, nor the success which attends effective plotters’ (203). The lack of footnotes makes it all but impossible to test the veracity of Beckett’s opinionated claims, and the bibliography consists solely of a few paragraphs mentioning some of the relevant Public Records Office files and a brief list of memoirs and secondary sources.

Beckett also glosses over several unpleasant aspects of Attlee’s leadership and his tenure as prime minister, such as the chaotic effects of the 1945–51 Labour Government’s policies towards India, Palestine, and Northern Ireland and the vicious infighting over his succession that kept Labour in Opposition for nearly 15 years. Beckett does not even wholly succeed in his attempt to disprove the generally accepted ‘myth of insignificance’ (ix) that surrounds Attlee to this day; without tangible, solid evidence that can be backed up by other scholarship, Attlee still seems much the ‘accidental’ prime minister that Hugh Dalton once claimed he was.

Beckett clearly writes with love for his subject, and the sections of Clem Attlee that focus on Attlee’s domestic life and family relationships are treated with warmth and affection. Attlee’s close relationship with his elder brother Tom, a conscientious objector who went to prison rather than fight in World War I, receives particular care and attention. Even so, the overall effect produced by Clem Attlee is a cross between a hagiography of Saint Attlee of Stepney and collection of fond reminiscences about an eccentric old uncle — neither of which is suitable for a serious biographical study of a prime minister. For a more scholarly and objective examination of Clement Attlee’s life, Politico’s might have done better to reprint either Trevor Burridge’s 1985 biography or Kenneth Harris’s 1995 biography. Either would have been a more fitting choice for the Great Statesmen series.

D.R. Thorpe’s Alec Douglas-Home, by contrast, provides a far less worshipful account of its subject’s life and career. Thorpe is particularly careful with his manner of addressing his subject, if only because keeping track of the many names by which Douglas-Home was known in his lifetime is no small task. Lord Dunglass MP became the Earl of Home upon his father’s death in 1951, then became Sir Alec Douglas-Home MP after disclaiming his peerage in 1963, and then Lord Home of the Hirsel after receiving a life peerage in 1975 — and Thorpe allows the changing names to illustrate the many changes in Douglas-Home’s life over the course of his political career.

Thorpe had unparalleled access to the Home family’s private papers, and the depth and scope of the biography reflect the extensive research and interviews he conducted with Douglas-Home’s colleagues and contemporaries. Alec Douglas-Home was once described as the sort of young man of aristocratic lineage who, in an earlier century, would have been prime minister before the age of 30, and Thorpe does not shy from depicting his subject as a consummate politician who had been raised with the belief that a life in politics was the noblesse oblige of his class. Indeed, the account of the circumstances surrounding Douglas-Home’s selection as Harold Macmillan’s successor shows Douglas-Home’s political acumen, though it is unfortunate that Thorpe does not fully emphasise the sheer calculated ruthlessness by which Douglas-Home outmanoeuvred his rivals for the premiership. Alec Douglas-Home is an enlightening and highly readable work nonetheless, written with sympathetic interest that for the most part remains as objective as one could wish for in a biography. The detailed footnotes and lists of reference materials ensure that Thorpes work will endure as a well-regarded source of information on this particular great statesman.

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First published in Political Studies Review Vol. 6 No. 2 (May 2008): 221–222.
The definitive version is available at www.blackwellsynergy.com.

British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect, edited by Graham Ziegner

I occasionally write book reviews for other journals, and often link to them on my Publications page. Now that a few of them are past the standard twelve-month embargo period for re-posting, I can add them to the entries in this book review blog and rearrange my publications list accordingly. Please feel free to follow the link given after the review to visit Political Studies Review for more articles and book reviews in all fields of political studies.

British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect, edited by Graham Ziegner

In 2003, a lecture series at the London School of Economics featured five politicians who had held the position of Foreign Secretary between 1977 and 1997. The lectures are compiled in Graham Ziegner’s edited volume British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect, along with an introduction by Professor William Wallace and a concluding chapter on New Labour’s foreign policy by Professor Christopher Hill and Oliver Todd. Apart from serving as a compilation of this noteworthy lecture series, British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect provides a thought-provoking collection of opinions on the diplomatic challenges faced by Foreign Secretaries in the past three decades.

In his lecture, David Owen (now Lord Owen) examines the increasingly dominant role of the Prime Minister in foreign affairs, particularly during the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and criticizes the effects of this dominance on the function of Cabinet government. Lord Carrington’s lecture explores the myriad, ongoing diplomatic problems that a Foreign Secretary must face in office, regardless of his or her party-political or personal interests. Geoffrey Howe (Lord Howe of Aberavon) takes a more personal look at the role of Foreign Secretary, analysing it in the context of his working relationship with Margaret Thatcher—a ‘marriage’, he says, ‘that deserves much more attention than the story of the divorce’ (p. 81). Douglas Hurd (Lord Hurd of Westwell) was Foreign Secretary during a time of great political upheavals in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and his lecture focuses on the future of humanitarian aid and intervention in the wake of the second Gulf War. Sir Malcom Rifkind closes the lecture series with a close, careful look at the oft-mentioned ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States, with reflections on what that relationship has meant in the past and may become in the future.

The additional chapters help to set the speeches in context — the introduction by outlining the changing role of a British Foreign Secretary in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the concluding chapter by examining the position of Foreign Secretary as held by the late Robin Cook and Jack Straw during Tony Blair’s premiership. Those who were unable to attend the LSE lectures (and even those who were fortunate enough to do so) will find this slim volume to be a simple, suitable collection of the speeches, unfettered by lengthy outside commentary on the relative merits of the speakers’ opinions.

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First published in Political Studies Review Vol. 6 No. 2 (May 2008): 232.
The definitive version is available at www.blackwellsynergy.com.

Publications: Scope Book Review

The June 2009 issue of the online film studies journal Scope contains my review of What Have They Built You to Do: The Manchurian Candidate and Cold War America by Matthew Frye Jacobson and Gaspar González. It’s a bit longer than my usual reviews, but I do tend to go on a bit when it comes to Cold War film studies.

ADMIN: Diaries and Memoirs Collection Page

In an effort to keep myself organised, I’ve added a new page to this blog that contains information on my collection of British political diaries and memoirs. Most of them, clearly, are from elected politicians, but I also have an interest in writings by civil servants or diplomatic officials.

I’ve been building this collection for the past few years, trying to acquire good condition volumes and the occasional signed or first edition copy. Like most collections, it’s very much a work in progress. I do have limits on how much I am willing to spend on individual acquisitions — recently, I passed up an absolutely beautiful signed first edition of Jim Callaghan’s Time and Chance because the price was a little too dear. With a little luck and persistence, though, I hope to build a fine little library in which I can take pride.

Publications: ‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera’

One of the things that’s been keeping me occupied of late has been the publication process for an article that is in press with Contemporary British History. ‘Downing Street’s Favourite Soap Opera: Evaluating the Impact and Influence of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister‘ was born out of my (perhaps excessive) love for that particular 1980s satirical sitcom, and I’m beyond thrilled that it’ll be in print in the September 2009 issue of CBH.

I’ve sent in the appropriate copyright forms and am waiting for the page proofs, which should be ready in about a fortnight. I’m used to editing the page proofs of other people’s articles (I do it for a living, after all), but marking up my own will be an interesting challenge. I may ask a co-worker to skim through it just in case I’ve missed something in my zillionth read-through.

Of course, this whole process has reminded me of two other papers that are sitting on my hard-drive, silently nagging me to stop ignoring them and polish them up enough to submit elsewhere. One needs a more in-depth literature review; one needs to be ripped to shreds and pieced back together in a better and more logical format. But that’s a post for another time.

Commentary: SPADs

Reading the various articles and blog posts (such as Lord Tyler’s post in Lords of the Blog) about the Damian McBride affair, my mind keeps coming back to the use of the term ‘Spad’ (or ‘SpAd’, or however one chooses to write it) as an abbreviation of ‘special adviser’. As both a political and trainspotting anorak, I have to say that I can’t read ‘Spad’ without thinking of the railway use of SPAD: Signal Passed At Danger.

In this case, as I commented in Lords of the Blog, the trainspotting term seems surprisingly apt to describe this situation. A whole series of extended metaphors could be employed about special advisers ‘misjudging the braking distance’ — or more wicked ones that might refer to ministers or civil servants as ‘dim or dark signals’. But again, as with automatic signals, signals can be passed at danger if drivers receive explicit clearance from a signal operator (a minister, perhaps?). I wonder, would it be worth looking to the new rules and technology established by the railways after the 1999 Ladbroke Grove crash for even a hint of guidance on how to proceed with a suitable code for the SPADs in Westminster and Whitehall?

Or perhaps I’ll just go back to my line diagrams and/or book reviews, and leave the political commentary to my fellow anoraks.

Semi-review: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

I’ve been attempting to write a book review post on Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, but the Economist has provided an assessment that all but sums up most of my main points. The book is indeed rushed, and though it starts out well enough it does become more uneven as the chapters progress. The earlier chapters do a decent job of introducing the basic evolution of certain key facets of high finance — government bonds, company stocks, insurance and pensions, and the like — but Ferguson drops in a lot of financial terms without always providing basic explanations, which will frustrate the uninitiated and exasperate the expert. Nonetheless, careful readers who are not afraid of chasing up footnotes will likely find much more information for further reading — in fact, one might be better off simply reading the footnotes and starting from there.

The Ascent of Money provided me with a few other titles to look into, so I suppose I owe it to mention that much. But overall, it was more than a bit of a letdown.

(Also, a quick note to mention that my review backlog is reaching embarrassing proportions — I hope to have a few more full reviews ready to post quite soon.)