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The Crisis and the Constitution: I93i and After Day to Day Pamphlets THE CRISIS AND THE CONSTITUTION: I93I AND AFTER DAY TO DAY PAMPHLETS No. 1. RusSIA To·DAY AND To-MORROW. By Maurice Dobb. u. 6d. No. 11. UNEMPLOYMENT: ITs CAusEs AND THEIR REMEDIEs. By R. Trouton, with a Foreword by J. M. Keynes. u. 6d. No. 3· THE HoRRORS OP, THE CoUNTRYSIDE. By C. E. M. Joad. 11. 6d. No. 4· WHAT WE SAW IN RussiA. By Aneurin Bevan, M.P., E. J. Strachey, M.P., and George Strauss, M.P. u. No. S· PROTECI'ION AND FREE TRADE. By L. M. Fraser, Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. IS. 6d. No. 6. ULSTER To-DAY AND To-MORROW. By Denis Ireland. u. 6d. , No. 7· ·RussiAN NoTEs. By C. M. Lloyd. 1,r. 6d. No.8. LITERATUREANDF;LMsmSoCIALISTRussiA. ByPrinceD.S.Mirsky. (In Preparation.) No. 9· THE CRISIS AND THE CoNSTITUTION: 1931 AND AFTER. By HaroldJ. Laski. 11. 6d. THE CRISIS AND THE~ CONSTITUTION: 1931 AND AFTER HAROLD J. LASKI Professor of Political Science in thL University of London. PUBLISHED BY L. AND V. WOOLF AT THE HOGARTH PRESS, 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, W.C.I AND BY THE FABIAN SOCIETY AT I I DARTMOUTH STREET, S.W.I 1932 fiRST PUBLISHED 1932 MADI AND PRI!'IT!D lN GRUI liRITAIN BY Tru GARJ>IN CITY PR!SS LTD., LIITCBWOIIIB. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTORY 7 II. THE CRISIS AND THE CABINET _I - - II III. THE CRISIS AND PARLIAMENT - 23 IV. THE CRISIS AND THE MONARCHY - - 3I V. THE CRISIS AND POLITICAL PARTIES - - 37 VI. THE CRISIS AND POLITICAL METHOD - • - 45' VII. CONCLUSION - 57 APPENDIX - 59 5 THE CRISIS AND THE CONSTITUTION: 1931 AND AFTER I INTRODUCTORY MosT people have taken the result of the General Election of 1931 as a verdict of emphatic approval for the course taken by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in the crisis of August last. His victory was the most overwhelming in our history ; for his opponents, it was a catastrophe more com­ plete than even the most vindictive of their critics could have predicted. Of the former Labour Cabinet which separated from Mr. MacDonald, a solitary member sur­ vived the election ; and among the two hundred seats. lost by the Laboftr Party were many that had formerly been regarded as its strongholds. So dramatic was the resultant spectacle that men have assumed that a new epoch in our history had begun. There was a big econo­ mic issue to be solved; the National Government had a majority sufficient to ensure its solution. That, certainly, was the predominant mood on the morrow of the election .. Mr. MacDonald had asked for a doctor's mandate. He had now only to diagnose the disease and prescribe the remedy. Yet, in fact, as the first mood of elation fades, the mean­ ing of the General Election becomes less clear, and few pretend to interpret its results with any confidence. Was it a National victory or a Conservative triumph? Mr. 7 MacDonald is as emphatic on the one side as Lord Stone­ haven on the other. Was it due to a panic about the people's savings, a fear that t~e pound would follow the franc and the mark? The quidnuncs have made theit calculatioJ?.S, but one man's guess is as good as another's. Was it a verdict of disgust with the Labour Government? But Mr. MacDonald and Lord Snowden were the main architects of that failure. Was it a pronouncement for tariff reform ? Liberals deny this as ardently as Conserva­ tives affirm it, and there are four Liberals still in the Cabinet. Certainly no observer who was honest with him­ self would dare to say more of the result than that the· _people, emphatically, did not on polling-day want the Labour Party returned to power. It returned Mr. MacDonald at the head of a" National" Government. But.what does a" National "·Government mean ? Does the Government remain National if, for example, the Samuel Liberals withdraw from it through hostility to a Tory· demand for full-blooded Protection? Does such a withdrawal mean the end of the mandate? Would Mr. M:acDonald then conceive himself bound to consult the electorate upon the rights of so changed an administration? Would the King accept his advice that a dissolution was desirable in such circumstances when Mr. Baldwin or Mr. Neville Chamberlain could form a new Tory Government with an ample majority? Or, suppose that Mr. MacDonald himself becomes obnoxious to the Tories. Could a new Government be formed without him? Has he an understanding, has he thought it necessary to have an understanding, about these matters with his new colleagues ? Has he, further, any understanding with the King about the exercise, under different circumstances, of the prerogative of dissolution ? These questions, obviously enough, are vital. For if the Cabinet does not succeed in remaining united, resigna­ tion of the Liberal part of it, with or without Mr . MacDonald, might alter the contours of policy. A resigna­ tion that was not accompanied by a general election might 8 make all the difference to British action, both national a~ ...I. international, in the next few years. No one, in fact, can consider the events of the last half of 1931 without seeing that they raise constitutional prob~ lems of the first importance. They raise them, in part, in that delicate realm of half-defined conventions in which the precedents themselves are so dubious and s_o contra­ dictory as to place even the specialist in a position where judgment is difficult. Nor is this all. They raise them also, in that wider realm where what has to be considered is not merely the character of our constitutional conventions, but the very prospects of constitutionalism itself. It is, I think, fair to say that not for the last century of our politics have issues so vital~ become the inescapable material of public debate. For what the crisis of August 1931 really means, in the constitutional realm, is our inability to answer with any assurance certain questions. What is the relation of the Prime Minister to his Cabinet ? Is he, as classical theory . assumes, simply primus inter pares, or is he their master? What is the relation between the Cabinet; and the rank and file of Members of Parliament, upon whom it depends for its support ? What is the actual position of the Mon~ archy in our politics ? Does Bagehot's famous summary of its functions as advice, encouragement and warning still hold ? Or are the facts more subtle than this ascription of influence without power would seem to imply ? What bearing had the crisis upon the future of parties ? Is the fission among those of the left merely a phase, or does it point to a fundamental reorganisation of alignments with at least the possibility that our future lies with the group­ system rather than with the historic antagonism of two major parties? And, behind all the events, what light does the crisis throw upon the problems of political method and the forms of political institutions ? Has evolutionary socialism deceived itself in believing that it can establish itself by peaceful means within the ambit of the capitalist system ? Is it the inevitable function of a legislative 9 assembly, at any period of major events, to be no more than the formal organisation through which the executive obtains the legal registration of its .will? These, as I venture to think, are the issues that have been raised. They are clearly of the :first magnitude, if only because they involve a reconsideration of the :first principles of our peculiar political system. The .discussion which follows is simply an attempt to analyse some of the possibilities which need to be weighed. 10 II THE CRISIS AND THE CABINET - IN the last century of our constitution a statesman has most usually become Prime Minister because he had been . chosen as its leader by a party which possessed, or seemed likely to possess, a majority in the House of Commons. Exceptions, as when Mr. Gladstone became Prime Mini­ ster in 1880, though Lord Hartington was the formal leader of the party, or Queen Victoria's choice of Lord Rosebery in 1894. do not really invalidate the general rule. The thesis of our constitution is the straight­ forward one that the King must choose as his .Prime Minister the man whom the party which is in a position to carry on the Government designates as its leader.· For with us, party Government is the vital principle of Parlia­ mentary Government; and no party is any longer willing to assume that the· monarch's personal sentiment has, as under the early Hanoverians, any right to influence the choice. The Prime Minister who accepts the commission to form a Government proceeds to the selection of his colleagues. It has been elementary with us, not only that he has a free hand in doing so, but also that he is entitled to ask for the resignation of any of his colleagues at any time in the history of his Cabinet. He acts, of course, at his peril. Powerful influences must be placated ; the dropping of an eminent colleague may, as with the enforced resignation of Lord Palmerston in 1851, lead to the defeat of the Government. But granted wisdom in the Prime Minister, and the normal give and take of human relations, the system with us has been found to work well in all normal situations. II It does not, of course, mean that the Prime Minister is the master of his Cabinet. He must take men he may not want ; he must appoint some of them to positions for which he thinks them unsuited.
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