who were the rebels? dissent in the house of commons, 1970-1974

Who Were the Rebels? Dissent in the House of Commons, 1970-1974Author(s): Mark Franklin, Alison Baxter and Margaret JordanSource: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 2 (May, 1986), pp. 143-159Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439873 .

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MARK FRANKLIN ALISON BAXTER

MARGARET JORDAN University of Strathclyde

Who Were the Rebels? Dissent in the

House of Commons, 1970-1974

Three hypotheses have been put forward in past research to explain the reduced extent of party cohesion observed in British parliamentary divisions after 1970. One of these, the "new breed" hypothesis, associates the change with a generation effect. Another, the "poor leadership" hypothesis, associates it with mismanagement of the Conservative party by Edward Heath. A third hypothesis links the dissension to a change in parliamentary rules. This paper looks more closely at the nature and correlates of dissent in the parliamentary parties during the early 1970s and conclusively discredits the "new breed" hypothesis. In neither party is there any evidence of a generational effect in rebellious voting. Nevertheless, this finding does not really support either of the other hypotheses, since the rise in dissent predicates the period associated with change in parliamentary rules and the correlates of dissent are found to be the same in both parties.

The Problem

British parliamentary behaviour has changed considerably in the past 20 years. In 1964 the parliamentary scene contained two major parties that confronted each other on important policy issues, one supporting the Govern- ment of the day and the other opposing it. Because of virtually total loyalty on the part of individual MPs, the Government was guaranteed a majority in support of its legislation and assured of survival for five years or until the prime minister decided that the time was propitious for holding an election.

In general terms, this description still holds as a characterization of British parliamentary life, but it is clearly oversimplified. In 1964 it was taken for granted that if a Government lost a vote-any vote-in Parliament it would resign so that a new Government, enjoying the support of a majority of MPs, could take office. Today it is equally clear that this convention, referred to by Schwarz (1980) as "the parliamentary rule," does not apply. Governments now regularly lose votes in Parliament without anyone supposing that they might resign or that elections might be called. Of course they claim

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XI, 2, May 1986 143



Franklin, Baxter, and Jordan

that the votes lost are on minor matters that do not call the overall policies of the Government into question, and this may normally be true. But the fact remains that votes are lost without the consequences that were taken for granted 20 years ago. Moreover, it is clear that, during at least one recent administration, the votes that the Government lost on a daily basis were far from minor. In the years leading up to the election of 1979, we had the spectacle of a Government that would clearly stay in office without being able to carry a single piece of legislation into law, as long as it could survive a vote of no confidence; and indeed it was only as a result of its failure to survive such a vote that the general election of 1979 was called.

In part this change in the basic features of British legislative behaviour is due to the rise of minor party representation in Parliament, challenging the virtual two-party monopoly that existed in 1964. But to dismiss the transformation as merely a parliamentary reflection of changes in the electoral sphere is too facile. It is not because of Liberal or SDP intervention that Mrs. Thatcher is occasionally forced to withdraw or revise her legislative proposals; it is because of disaffection among Tory backbenchers, who are willing to voice their opposition to particular aspects of their leader's policies, even while giving support to her leadership in general.1 Moreover, the features of parliamentary life that appear so distinctive when viewed in historical perspective first became evident during the Parliament of 1970-1974, before minor-party representation received its first major postwar surge at the following general election.

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the decline in party loyalty of British members of Parliament. Two that receive widespread acceptance can be characterized as the "new breed" hypothesis and the "poor leadership" hypothesis. The first of these has a long history, being referred to in Robert Jackson's Rebels and Whips (1968). It is widely espoused in the popular press2 and frequently enunciated by MPs themselves. This hypothesis was most thoroughly presented by Colin Mellors in his book The British MP (1978), which showed that the members who entered Parlia- ment in 1964 and later were distinctively different in social characteristics and occupational background from their predecessors of earlier years. These MPs were younger, better educated, and more likely to have set themselves upon a parliamentary career without outside sponsorship.3 From a socioeconomic point of view the young MPs were more "professional," in that they had the characteristics generally associated with occupations known in Britain as "the professions." Because of this, it was easy to assume that this new breed of MPwould behave in Parliament with more "professionalism": treating it as a career in its own right and not simply as a reward for past services or a stepping stone to Government office.

However, Mellors did not investigate the actual parliamentary behaviour of his new breed of MP to see whether these individuals were

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Dissent in the Commons

in fact less loyal than their predecessors, and indeed he does not explicitly make the claim that they were less loyal. The link is instead implied by the manner in which Mellors discusses the professionalism of the new breed: MPs who, not content to be mere party lobby fodder, sought to extend the opportunities for backbench influence and made considerable impact on Parliament in the process. It has, however, been made explicit in more recent writings (for example, Marsh, 1983).

The second hypothesis was put forward by Philip Norton in Con- servative Dissidents (1978). This was that the rebellious behaviour that first became apparent in the the Parliament of 1970-1974 was due to poor leadership on the part of the then prime minister, Edward Heath. According to Norton, Heath brought about the rebellious behaviour through the manner in which he introduced Government bills, through his failure to more widely employ his powers of patronage and appointment, and through his failure to communicate effectively with backbenchers. These failures combined to create what Norton saw as "an environment of unease or disquiet within the Parliamentary party; an environment within which dissent could more easily be encouraged than within one of contentment." Rather than identifying the discontent with younger and more professional members, Norton instead noted (p. 254) that the disquiet was most marked among a generally identifiable body of members who constituted the party's right wing and that within this wing the leadership of older members, and particularly of Enoch Powell, played an important part.4

Although Norton does not himself confront the socioeconomic explanation associated with the new breed hypothesis, reviews of his book, particularly by Marsh (1983), have pointed out the contrast between the two approaches. Indeed, Marsh goes so far as to suggest that the two approaches are incompatible and that the new breed hypothesis remains more convincing despite Norton's arguments. However, since Norton did not analyse the social background characteristics of the MPs whom he identified as constituting Conservative right-wingers, the possibility does remain that both hypotheses could be confirmed at the same time. Indeed, the new breed hypothesis requires an additional component to explain why the distinctive features of the new generation of MPs did not manifest themselves in open dissent until the Parliament of 1970-1974. The poor leadership of Edward Heath might have supplied the necessary trigger.

A third hypothesis, which appears to have gone completely unnoticed by British commentators, was put forward by John Schwarz (1980). Schwarz appears to accept the "poor leadership" hypothesis as an explanation for Conservative dissent in the 1970-1974 Parliament, but sees the need for a different explanation for Labour dissent in the following Parliament. The explanation he proposes relates to a change in what he calls the "parliamentary rule" (that a government will resign when defeated on any issue), which we

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have already referred to and which he thinks occurred during the session of 1974-1975.5

The major problem with this third hypothesis is that the English Constitution is not a written document subject to amendment by orderly and visible processes, and so we cannot point to a particular date at which the parliamentary rule (if such it was) changed. Schwarz asserts that the rule was changed when a minority Labour Government "was defeated no fewer than 16 times in seven months without ever considering resignation" (Schwarz, 1980, p. 34). But this assertion is clearly false. The rule was already defunct in 1972 at the time of the first Conservative defeat of the 1970-1974 Parliament, since Edward Heath did not dissolve Parliament in the face of that or subsequent defeats suffered by his Government. The fact that there might be reasons for those defeats, associated with poor handling of divisive policies by the Conservative leadership, would not have made them any less subject to the parliamentary rule, had it been in force. Moreover, Schwarz admits (p. 33) that the rule had come into question by 1975, "partly due to Conservative experience." Thus, on his own admission, he is focussing his attention on the wrong time period.

Schwarz's hypothesis is unconvincing for another reason also. Although the parliamentary rule was certainly one factor that commentators thought encouraged loyalty within the parliamentary parties, other (and rather more immediate) factors were thought to apply. These were with- drawal of the party whip and possible ensuing expulsion. A member who failed to support his party in the division lobbies could be punished through having his affiliation revoked. The consequence could be that, even if Parlia- ment were not immediately dissolved (because the rebellion was not sufficiently widespread to actually cause a Government defeat), at a future election the MP might have to stand without official party backing and run against a newly nominated (official) candidate. This threat was supposed to be taken seriously by MPs because independent candidates seldom succeed at British elections, and it was a threat that could be employed against potential dissidents not only within the governing party but within an Opposition party as well. But then it is not only dissension in a ruling party (Conservative before 1974 and Labour afterwards) that needs explanation but also dissent within a major party when that party is in opposition.

This paper looks more closely at the characteristics of individual MPs who rebelled during the Parliament of 1970-1974, to determine whether these rebellions were consistent with the new breed hypothesis or the poor leadership hypothesis or both and to see whether parliamentary dissent during this period was significantly different from that which occurred after 1974. In order to do this, we employ the data Norton employed regarding rebellious behaviour, supplementing these with data of the kind employed

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by Mellors in specifying the nature of the new breed. On this basis we are able to determine whether the rebels were in fact distinctive from a socioeconomic viewpoint and, if distinctive, whether distinctive in a manner consistent with the new breed hypothesis. This permits us to make a far more elaborate and suitable test of the hypothesis than was conducted by Schwarz, who viewed the new breed purely in generational terms (and employed a cutting point, 1970, which does not accord with that suggested by Mellors).

However, this paper also goes further in two respects. In the first place, we do not content ourselves with looking at Conservative dissidents. Ignored by Norton and Schwarz is the fact that the Parliament of 1970-1974 saw high levels of dissent not only among Conservative MPs but among Labour MPs as well, and this fact provides the main item of evidence for those who criticize the Norton view. It is thus necessary to investigate dissent within the Labour party as well as within the Conservative party, in order to determine whether the same phenomenon appears to have operated in both parties or whether an idiosyncratic explanation, such as poor leadership, could apply in one of them.

In the second place, this paper goes further than past studies in distinguishing between different sorts of rebellious behaviour. Norton and others consider only what we can call the extensiveness of dissent: the number of times MPs rebel in any manner at all. In Parliaments before 1970, when dissent was infrequent, this catholic approach was the only one that yielded fimdings of any kind. However, in a Parliament that saw dissenting votes on more than one in every five divisions, it becomes important to distinguish between the extensiveness of dissent and what we will call its "intensiveness." A vote with the Opposition party against his own party whip is a much more intense form of dissent than abstention or than a vote against the whip when the other party is not opposing the division. Schwarz goes to the other extreme in considering only acts of dissension that contrib- uted to the defeat of the Government. Though important from a systemic point of view, such acts are often indistinguishable at the individual level from other acts of rebellion that might have brought the Government down had they been sufficiently widespread. This is because an individual rebel cannot always know whether his rebellion will contribute to a Government defeat. And Government defeats take no account of dissension in an Opposi- tion party, though the act of disloyalty involved in such dissent has traditionally been considered no less important than dissension on the Government side.

For the sake of comparability, therefore, we do not in this paper distinguish rebellious votes responsible for a Government defeat from other votes in which members enter the division lobbies alongside their electoral enemies. On the other hand, by distinguishing this most severe form of dissent from less severe forms, we are able to evaluate the hypotheses of other writers more thoroughly than has previously been possible.

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The Data

The data for this study consist of three files. A machine-readable file of socioeconomic characteristics of MPs was coded from the Times Guide to the House of Commons, Dod's Parliamentary Companion, and Who's Who. It also contains information pertaining to the career and activ- ities of each MP within Parliament, taken from the same sources. This file was combined with a file of constituency characteristics derived from the 1966 Sample Census (Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, 1979), aggregated to the constituency level and accompanied by election returns for all constituencies in 1966, 1970, and 1974. This combined file of aggregate and socioparliamentary data was in turn linked to a file recording the rebellious behaviour of each MP, the linkage being made at the constituency level.

The file of rebellious behaviour requires rather more explication than the socioparliamentary or aggregate data files. It was created by computer manipulation of text transcribed from Philip Norton's Dissension in the House of Commons, 1945-1974 (1975). The original text is arranged by division, describing briefly each one that saw any rebellious behaviour and listing the MPs who:

(a) crossvoted (voted with the Opposition when their party opposed it); (b) abstained (when their party voted against the Opposition); (c) voted with the Opposition (when their party abstained); (d) voted against the Opposition (when their party abstained); and (e) opposed or abstained (when both parties voted together).

The computer manipulation of this text was designed to produce a data matrix organized by MP, in which each variable was a division and the values that this variable could take reflected the particular form of rebellious behaviour (if any) that each member engaged in. The variables were coded to constitute a six-point scale, with zero standing for absence from any of the rebellious lists, one standing for inclusion in list (e) above (deemed to represent the least severe form of rebellion), and five for inclusion in list (a) above (deemed to represent the most severe form of rebellion). Only those divisions are represented in the data matrix that saw at least one member rebelling in some manner. In addition, the computer program recorded for each MP the number of occasions upon which his name occurred in any of Norton's lists (the extensiveness of his rebellious activity) and the sum of the scores assigned (its intensiveness). These last two variables are the ones upon which the present investigation is based.

Since the investigation was largely exploratory, it was necessary to be able to sift through large numbers of possible relationships between each of the two kinds of rebellious behaviour and the full set of socioparliamentary

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variables. Given the sheer volume of coefficients to be computed, the only feasible statistical technique was correlation analysis, which however, assumes a level of measurement that these data do not possess. The dependent variables described above are close enough to interval level to give little fear of mis- leading results, and the census and election variables were interval level by nature. However, the socioparliamentary variables had to be transformed to yield scales that would show detectable correlations in the presence of significant relationships. To this end, most socioparliamentary background variables were recast as dichotomies measuring the presence or absence of specific attributes on the part of individual MPs, as reported in detail in an appendix to this paper.8

The Modes of Rebelliousness

We first needed to investigate the nature of our dependent variables, rebellious intensity and rebellious extent. Table 1 shows how these correlate with each other and with a measure of crossvoting obtained by abstracting scores of five from the intensity measure. As can be clearly seen, extensive rebellious behaviour is strongly related to crossvoting (r =0.75), and intensive rebellious behaviour even more so (r = 0.82). So the failure of past scholars to distinguish between different types of rebellious behaviour appears at first sight to have had little importance, since a measure of rebelliousness based on the most severe form of rebellious behaviour (crossvoting) correlates well with one based on any form of rebellious behaviour (extensiveness).

However, we almost immediately need to revise this initial impression, because of the implications of another feature of Table 1, which shows that our two measures of rebellious behaviour do not differ significantly from each other. Intensity of dissent correlates with extensiveness of dissent at the level of 0.96. What this means is that MPs were mainly differentiated in practice according to whether they were rebellious or loyal, rather than according to different forms of dissent. Consequently, when intensity scores were summed, any differences in intensities of dissent were swamped by the distinction between those who rebelled and those who did not. Because of this, our initial sense that different measures of rebelliousness come to the same thing is probably misplaced. The two measures of dissent only come to the same thing because they are not really tapping the different aspects of rebellion that they were supposed to tap.

In order to overcome the swamping problem, we decided to recast our measure of rebellious intensity as a measure of average intensity, dividing it through by the extensiveness measure:

Average intensity = sum of intensities/number of rebellions

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TABLE 1 Interrelationship Between Different Measures of Dissent, 1970-1974

(Pearson's r)

Extent of Intensity of Measure Crossvoting Rebelliousness Rebelliousness

Crossvoting 1.00 0.75 0.82 Extent of Rebelliousness 1.00 0.96 Intensity of Rebelliousness 1.00

This variable correlated only 0.53 with extent of rebelliousness, which suggests that the MPs who were customary offenders in the division lobbies were not necessarily the same as those who did worst damage to their parties by crossvoting or abstaining when their support was most needed. In the analyses that follow we thus investigate the correlates both of average intensity and also of extensiveness in rebellious behaviour.

The Sociodemographic Correlates of Rebelliousness

As stated earlier, the new breed hypothesis suggests that rebellious MPs will have been those elected since 1964 who were younger, better educated, and less dependent on trade union sponsorship. Although not necessary to the new breed hypothesis (see for example Jackson, 1968), it has also been suggested that there may be a connection between rebellion and a concern to nurture electoral support in more marginal constituencies. Few of these suppositions are consistently sustained by our data on rebelliousness between 1970 and 1974. Table 2 lists all correlations with any of the available sociodemographic variables (see Appendix) that were greater than 0.1. It can be seen that there are few relationships that even reached this modest value.

Moreover, such coefficients as did exceed the threshold indicate different effects acting on members of different parties (and are not necessarily in the right direction). Thus, Conservative rebels were more likely to include members from the salaried professions, those educated at university (other than at Oxford or Cambridge), and those with small winning margins at the previous or next general election; but these characteristics did not apply among Labour rebels (and Conservatives educated at Oxford or Cambridge were less likely to be found among the rebels). By contrast, Labour rebels were more likely to be members who entered the House of Commons after 1970,9 and those with trade union sponsorship.

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TABLE 2 Sociodemographic Correlates of Dissent, 1970-1974a

(Pearson's r)

Extent of Average Intensity of Rebelliousness Rebelliousness

Sociodemograhic Feature Labour Conservative Labour Conservative

Salaried profession or working class 0.19 0.11

Trade union sponsored 0.11 0.17

Oxford or Cambridge -0.12

Other higher education 0.13

Entered the House after 1970 0.18 0.11

Winning margin at last election -0.10

Winning marging at next election -0.11 -0.11

aOnly absolute values above 0.1 are reported.

Among Conservative members, many of the correlates of dissent would have appeared to correspond to expectations derived from the new breed hypothesis, but for the critical fact that characteristics linked to rebelliousness were not those of younger or more recently elected MPs.1 At the same time, though newer MPs do tend to be found more frequently among rebels from the Labour party, the watershed is not the election of 1964 but that of 1970. Moreover, the members concerned are not necessarily younger.11

A reversal of expectations also occurred in the matter of sponsorship. Jackson (1968, p. 191) had proposed that union sponsorship of Labour MPs was the most important and consistent factor in the cohesion of the British Labour party. However, our data show that between 1970 and 1974 the relationship between trade union sponsorship and rebelliousness was in the wrong direction. Members sponsored by trade unions in this period were more rather than less likely to rebel extensively, and the correlation with average intensity for this group is not only in the wrong direction but almost the highest in the table.

These findings effectively discredit the new breed hypothesis as an explanation for the dissension of 1970-1974. To summarize, we have not found any consistent evidence that a new generation was engaging in rebellious voting (newer Labour MPs have tended to rebel but not newer Conservatives and not younger MPs of either party). Nor do we consistently see the con- comitants of such behaviour proposed by other scholars, whether we look at

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TABLE 3 The Parliamentary Correlates of Dissent, 1970-1974a

(Pearson's r)

Extent of Average Intensity of Rebelliousness Rebelliousness

Parliamentary Feature Labour Conservative Labour Conservative

Office held this Parliament -0.14 -0.34 -0.22 -0.39

Office held next Parliament -0.14 -0.21 -0.20 -0.27

Office held last Parliament -0.29 -0.17 -0.22 -0.12

Committee role this Parliament 0.16 0.11 0.23

Committee role next Parliament 0.11 0.19 0.11

Committee role last Parliament 0.14

aOnly absolute values above 0.1 are reported.

the extensiveness or the intensiveness of dissent. (Professional and university- educated Conservative MPs have tended to rebel, but not Labour ones.) On the contrary, the sociodemographic analysis of dissent suggests that rebels were just as likely to be well-established members (of an old breed) as they were to be young turks (of a new one).

But these findings, while disappointing to those who would see in the professionalisation of Parliament an explanation for contemporary changes, do not necessarily yield contrary support for the Norton or Schwarz hypotheses, to which we now turn.

The Parliamentary Correlates of Rebelliousness

Table 3 shows the correlations between our two measures of dissent and various features of MPs' parliamentary situation. The features listed are all of those coded (see Appendix), since each of them yielded correlations above 0.1 with one or other measure of dissent.

It is not surprising to find that those holding Government office (in the past, present, or next Parliament) were less likely to rebel against their party's line. These members would, after all, be those with most say in establishing the policy that occasioned the rebellions. If anything, the surprise is to find that negative correlations between rebelliousness and holding office are no higher than shown. Clearly, rebels did on occasion include members senior enough to hold posts in the Government (if their party was in office) or to be what the French call "ministrables" (the British have no word for those

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TABLE 4 Average Intensity Scores for Labour and Conservative MPs,

By Committee Roles, 1970-1974

No Committee Role Any Committee Role Measure of Dissent This Parliament This Parliament Total

Labour MPs (N) (249) (54) (303) Number of Labour rebellious acts 534 132 666 Percentage of Labour MPs rebelling 68.6 81.5 70.9 Mean intensity for Labour MPs 2.29 2.84 2.39

Conservative MPs (N) (210) (117) (327) Number of Conservative rebellious acts 369 340 709 Percentage of Conservative MPs rebelling 40.0 66.7 49.6 Mean intensity for Conservative MPs 1.17 1.96 1.47

who will take office should their party return to power, except for "shadow cabinet," which encompasses a smaller group). In fact, there were 35 instances of rebellion by 13 Conservatives who held Government office, and 145 instances of rebellion by 50 Labour members who would hold office in the next Parliament. The rebellions concerned were not, however, particularly intense, receiving average scores of only 0.5 (Conservative) and 1.6 (Labour) in contrast to average intensity scores of 1.5 and 2.4 for all members of each party (see Table 4).

More interesting are the solid (though by no means spectacular) correlations evident in Table 3 between average intensity of dissent and committee role. MPs who held leading positions on backbench committees (chairman or vice-chairman) were more likely than not to be among those rebelling intensively, if not extensively. Among Labour members, 54 held leading committee roles, and the rebellious acts of these members averaged 2.84 in intensity out of a possible maximum of 5. Among Conservatives, 117 held equivalent positions, and their rebellions yielded an average intensity score of 1.96. In both cases these averages are well above average intensity of dissent among MPs with no committee roles (see Table 4).12 This finding reinforces the hints already given in our sociodemographic analysis that the rebels of 1970-1974 were as likely to be well-established members as they were to be young turks.

In this manner the finding constitutes a final nail in the coffin of the new breed hypothesis, but it is one that runs counter to the Norton

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hypothesis as well. Norton originally suggested that dissent in the Conservative party was centered around an identifiable right-wing faction, but leading members of backbench committees are not, in either party, likely to represent a factional wing.l3 To see these individuals overrepresented among dissidents, even to a minor degree, is to see dissent established in the very heart of a parliamentary party: and the same pattern (at least as far as concerns the rebellions that matter) holds in both major parties.

The finding does not rule out Norton's more modest (1985) con- tention that there was some ideological basis to Conservative dissent, but that similar patterns are evident in both major parties does cast considerable doubt on his continuing assertion that Conservative dissent was a product of poor leadership. Equivalent leadership errors simply did not occur within the Labour party, and it is implausible to suppose that another set of causes in that party should have had such similar parliamentary correlates.14

Particularly striking in Table 4 is the evidence that rebellious acts on the part of Labour members were almost as numerous as those by Conserva- tives. Considering that the Conservative party held a majority of the seats in this Parliament, the fact that 48% of all rebellious acts were committed by Labour members (666 out of a total of 1375) is very worthy of note.5 When we further observe that over 70% of Labour MPs engaged insome form of rebellious activity between 1970 and 1974, it becomes clear that looking for an explanation of Labour rebelliousness in the events of 1974 is to miss the period of their rise to prominence. It can certainly be argued that a change in what Schwarz called the parliamentary rule had occurred by 1975, but to focus on this as a cause of Labour rebelliousness is to miss the fact that rebelliousness can occur in Opposition as well as in Government, and that Labour Government defeats after 1974 merely represented the manifestation within a ruling party of patterns of behaviour already established while that party was in opposition.16

These patterns are primarily internal to Parliament. The relatively low correlations observed in Table 2 between dissent and extraparliamentary factors are emphasized by a multiple regression analysis in which all correlates from Tables 2 and 3 are employedtogetheras predictors of rebellious intensity.Table 5 shows the regression weights of any of these variables found to add as much as .5% to variance explained, after others had been removed by "backward elimi- nation" (Draper and Smith, 1966, pp. 167-168). The variance explained by all available predictors is not impressive, but by far the greatest portion of this explained variance (almost two-thirds for Labour and over three-quarters for Conservative) is ascribable to the weight of parliamentary rather than sociodemographic characteristics.17 Moreover, with one exception, the best available statistical explanation of rebelliousness is based on identical predictors in both parties. The exception is sponsorship, which is not employed in the Conservative party and so does not have the opportunity to enter the Conservative equation.

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TABLE 5 Predictors of Rebelliousness

Of Conservative and Labour MPs, 1970-1974 (multiple Rs)

Average Intensity of Rebellion for

Independent Variables Conservative Labour

Government office, this Parliament -0.35

Government office, previous Parliament -0.18

Committee-leading role, this Parliament 0.12

Committee-leading role, next Parliament 0.16

Trade union sponsorship 0.15

Salaried profession, trade union official, or working man 0.10 0.07

Variance explained 16.7% 10.1%

Conclusions

Party discipline was long regarded as the mainstay of British parliamentary life and, in contrast to other parliamentary regimes, the British Parliament is no doubt still one that exhibits a high degree of party discipline. Too much should not be made of the changes of recent years. Nevertheless it would be idle to pretend that change has not occurred, and so we cannot avoid grappling with the reasons for its occurrence. In this paper we have made little progress toward understanding why British MPs should have become less loyal toward their parties at this time, since in attempting to choose between three existing hypotheses we have been forced regretfully to discard all of them.

Our findings are of patterns so similar in both major parties as to cast doubt on any explanation that focusses on just one of them. They also rule out any explanation that is purely generational. Rebelliousness cannot readily be accounted for purely by leadership errors on the part of Edward Heath or by the arrival in Parliament of a new and more professional breed of MP. Moreover, our findings contradict Schwarz's supposition that Labour dissent did not manifest itself until the Parliament of 1975-1979. On the contrary, a period effect seems to have occurred, having an impact on MPs of all generations and both major parties, that made rebellion against party discipline more common after the late 1960s.

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156 Franklin, Baxter, and Jordan

Whatever the source of this period effect, our analysis makes it appear unlikely to have been a simple one. If the effect was felt as widely as we have documented it to have been, then the chances are good that its roots lie in a multitude of factors. Our own feeling is that these would have to include changes in the style of party leadership, the status of party pro- grammes, the basis of British electoral behaviour, and the nature of the links connecting MPs with their constituents. We may even be seeing the parliamentary manifestation of a general mood of individualism originating outside Parliament but eventually affecting MPs along with other members of British society. These suggestions can be no more than tentative until we place parliamentary behaviour within a wider social context; but, in casting doubt on three other competing views, we have set this one up as a prime contender to be investigated in future research.

Mark N. Franklin is Senior Lecturer, Department of Politics, University of Strathclyde, McCance Building, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow Gl 1XQ, United Kingdom. Alison Baxter and Margaret Jordan were Research Assistants, University of Strathclyde.




APPENDIX Variables Included in This Study

Socioeconomic variables

Birth year (four digits) Sponsorship (coded 1 if sponsored by a trade union, 0 otherwise) Profession (coded 1 if working man, trade union official, or member of the

salaried professions: teacher, lecturer, journalist, etc.) Schooling (coded 0 or 1)

elementary education only state secondary education privately financed school or other private education

Higher education (coded 0 or 1) no higher education evening classes and/or WGA Oxford or Cambridge Sandhurst other higher education

Entry year (coded 0 or 1) Post-1964 Post-1966 Post-1970

Sex (O=Male, 1 =Female)

Constituency and electoral variables

Winning margin at previous election (percentage of vote cast) Winning margin at next election (percentage of vote cast) Constituency class (percentage employers and managers, 1966)

Parliamentary variables

Party (1 =Labour, 2=Conservative, 0=other) Office this Parliament (coded 1 for minister, Opposition spokesman, junior

minister, PPS or whip) Office next Parliament (coded as above) Office previous Parliament (coded as above) Committee leading role this Parliament (coded 1 for chairman or other elected

position in a backbench party committee or any kind) Committee-leading role next Parliament (coded as above) Committee-leading role previous Parliament (coded as above)

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158 Franklin, Baxter, and Jordan

NOTES

This is a revised version of a paper prepared for a meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association held in Chicago, April 17-20, 1985. The authors are grateful to members of the audience at the Legislative Behavior Panel, to Jorgen Rasmussen (the chair of the panel), to Philip Norton, and to an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions for revision.

1. In fact, Mrs. Thatcher has been more successful than her immediate predecessors of both parties in maintaining the appearance of parliamentary support for her policies, but this is due at least in part to her care in avoiding or revising measures that provoke dissent (Norton, 1985). Nevertheless, in the first part of 1985 alone there were two major rebellions on the floor of the House of Commons (over Top People's Pay and Stanstead), and such revolts (more often in committee than on the floor of the House) have been a regular feature of her relations with Parliament.

2. See, for example, Gould (1978) and Raphael (1979). 3. That is to say, changes in age and demographic profile of sponsored

MPs (though they have occurred) have lagged behind changes in the party as a whole (Mellors, 1978, p. 105).

4. In more recent writings (for example, 1985, p. 38), Norton has toned down this stress on the ideological coherence of Tory dissent and rested his explanation more completely on poor leadership.

5. Norton (1985) does indeed refer to this article by Schwarz, but only in order to disagree with a quite separate argument made in the article: that dissent in Parliament had given to MPs a new role in policy making.

6. In fact, it is not possible to be sure which abstentions constitute acts of rebellion unless one has direct evidence from the MPs concerned (and even that may be falsified). Norton took great trouble to determine which MPs abstained rebel- liously by their own admission or in the view of knowledgeable observers, but the lists occur in footnotes to emphasize the fact that they cannot by their nature be defini- tive. Missing will be those rebels who succeeded in retaining the essential ambiguity of their action; but if we view rebellion as an act deliberately performed to mark a position taken, then ambiguous abstentions ought to be ignored.

7. This is deemed a less severe form of rebellion than case (b), since the rebel's party (by abstaining) has indicated that it is a less important matter. Only in cases (a) and (b) can the rebellion actually cause a vote to be lost for the rebel's party.

8. When employed as independent variables in a correlation analysis, variables coded in this way will yield coefficients that should properly be regarded as the E coefficients from analysis of variance. But, as the square root of the variance explained, such coefficients are conceptually as well as numerically identical to correlation coefficients in the special case where there are only two categories to the independent variable.

9. 1964 and 1966 were used as alternative cutting points (see Appendix) to yield variables more in accord with the new breed hypothesis, but those variables did not yield correlations above the threshold for inclusion in Table 2.

10. Not shown, because the coefficient failed to reach the threshold for inclusion, is the fact that younger Conservative MPs and those entering the House after 1964 were actually less likely to be rebels (r=0.03 in both cases).

11. The correlation with age (at r=0.04) does not even come close to the threshold for inclusion.

12. Note that all these averages are held down by the inclusion of MPs who did not rebel, and so had average rebellious scores of 0. The difference between Labour and Conservative average scores is due primarily to the number of Conservatives holding



Dissent in the Commons 159

government office. Table 4 shows that only 49.6% of Conservatives ever rebelled during this Parliament, compared to 70.9% of Labour MPs.

13. It is true that factional fights do occur over elections to backbench committee leadership posts, but the result has never in recent years been the elevation of members supported by a single faction to leadership roles on a wide range of committees (communication with Philip Norton). When we look separately at the rebelliousness of committee leaders in different policy areas, we see above average dissent in all but the area of defence.

14. It is true that the sociodemographic correlates of dissent are not the same for both parties, but those correlates (in Table 2) are of much smaller magnitude than are the parliamentary correlates (in Table 3), which are clearly similar for both parties.

15. Of course, some 100 Conservative seats were held by members of the Government, which will have reduced the pool of available Conservative rebels even though we have already seen that Government office did not prohibit rebellion in this Parliament.

16. In fact the pattern had been established earlier still, toward the end of the 1966-1970 Parliament when the Labour party did hold office. However, our point is that the change predated 1974 and (once established in both parties) had the same correlates in both parties.

17. In an analysis of the extensiveness of dissent, rather less variance can be explained (9.6% for Labour and 15.1% for Conservative rebelliousness), but very similar variables come to the fore. Again, the largest part of explained variance is accounted for by intraparliamentary characteristics.

REFERENCES

Butt, Ronald. 1968. The Power of Parliament. London: St. Martin's Press. Dod's Parliamentary Companion. Occasional. Hailsham: Dod's Parliamentary Companion. Draper, R.N., and H. Smith. 1966. Applied Regression Analysis. New York: Wiley. Gould, Bryan. 1978. Democracy and the Parties. The Listener, 100:37-38. Jackson, Robert. 1968. Rebels and Whips. London: Macmillan. Marsh, David. 1983. Dr. Norton's Parliament. Public Administration Bulletin, 41:33-39. Mellors, Colin. 1978. The British MP. Farnborough: Saxon House. Norton,Philip. 1975.Dissension in the House of Commons 1945-1974. London: Macmillan.

. 1978. Conservative Dissidents. London: Temple Smith. , ed. 1985. The Commons in the 80s. Oxford: Blackwell.

Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. 1979. Sample Census 1966: Constituency Tables. London: HMSO.

Raphael, Adam. June 24, 1979. Will Cabinet Give Way on MPs Pay? The Observer, p. 18. Schwarz, John E. 1980. The British House of Commons in the 1970s. American Political

Science Review, 74:23-37. The Times Guide to the House of Commons. Occasional. London: The Times. Who's Who. Annual. London: A and C Black.



who were the rebels? dissent in the house of commons, 1970-1974

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