Politics Of Influence Ils 48

Graham Wootton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136233203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume XV of eighteen in a series on Political Sociology. Originally published in 1963, this study looks at the political influence of British ex-servicemen, Cabinet decisions and cultural change from 1917 to 1957.

PART ONE

The Formative Years (1917-21)

THE POLITICAL CULTURE: CHAPTERS II-V

THE CIRCUMSTANCES: CHAPTERS VI-VII

II

THE OBJECTS AND MODES OF GOVERNMENT

NEITHER the nature nor the aims of ex-servicemen’s associations can be fully understood except in terms of the prevailing political culture. Particular circumstances served as a catalyst, but values and beliefs in the formative years are essential guides to understanding, especially if one hopes to discover why an extremist ex-servicemen’s movement did not develop in this country.¹

OBJECTS OF GOVERNMENT

Values and Beliefs

That the political culture prevailing at the outbreak of the First World War prescribed a limited role for official groups is a commonplace. This narrow conception of the role of government was reflected in various attitudes and practices governing the treatment of the families of serving soldiers and of the ex-service community in general. To assist the wives of soldiers in distress, for instance, was deemed to be no business of the Government. In the seventeenth century most Spanish veterans in the Low Countries had their wives with them, ‘conjugal relations’ not being at that time ‘generally interrupted by military service’.² But the British Army agreed with the naval officer who said that ‘in the Navy they knew of no such useless appendage or encumbrance as a sailor’s wife’,³ and permitted only an extremely small number to marry ‘on the strength’, which conferred a right to accommodation in barracks or lodgings and certain allowances.

Such a policy had practical foundations: large numbers of wives could not be carried to Gibraltar, Aden, Malta or India. But cultural values had a role, as became clear when a regiment suddenly moved overseas. The distress of even on-the-strength wives was often serious and at times desperate, some being ‘reduced to absolute starvation’.¹ The ‘off-the-strength’ wife (who had no official status) was left behind to ‘enter the workhouse or encounter some worse evil’. Yet few seem to have thought it was the business of the Government as such to take action : the responsibility was not so much evaded as unrecognized.

Nor did Governments recognize an obligation to the parents of professional soldiers, who had no more official existence than off-the-strength wives. A recruit to the colours might leave behind him a considerable trail of distress leading back to his own home; to give aid and comfort to his parents (as such) was not considered to be a function of government.

Even a married soldier killed (or otherwise dying) was, until the South African War, deemed to have no widow, still less a mother. At least, the provision of pensions for widows and children did not become the Government’s business until bacteria and bullets in the South African veld conspired to make it unavoidable. Even then, ‘off-the-strength’ wives were excluded and the suggestion of a far-sighted colonel that other dependent relatives such as mothers should also be considered fell on deaf ears.²

Whereas, after the South African War, a dead soldier might leave a widow who would be State-supported, a married soldier discharged through injury or ill-health was still treated as though he had no wife. The Chelsea Commissioners paid regard ‘only to the degree of disablement affecting earning capacity ... the length of service and character of the soldier himself, and any peculiar circumstances attending his conduct when wounded. His family circumstances, children or dependants, have never entered into the matter of the pension to which the incidents of his military service have entitled him’.³ Thus there was a fiction of ‘military man’ as convenient for Chancellors of the Exchequer and taxpayers as the fiction of ‘economic man’ had been to early economists.

Nor was it considered the business of government to keep up (or arrange to have kept up) a discharged man’s medical treatment. The responsibility of the naval and military authorities for the provision of treatment ceased on discharge, and even in 1915, as soon as it was evident that a man would not be able to return to active service, he was discharged ‘without much regard to the question whether his health or his physical condition could be improved by further treatment’.¹

Still less was it thought to be the function of government as such to find work for ex-servicemen. This, of course, reflected a general attitude : a country that did not invent employment exchanges until 1909 was not likely to exert itself very much about finding work specifically for ex-soldiers. It is true that the problem was investigated often enough: between the 1870’s and 1906 at least five major official committees brooded upon it, but essentially its solution was left to voluntary agencies.

In short, the prevailing values prescribed the voluntary principle in the ex-service field as (though decreasingly) in public affairs generally.

These values were buttressed by certain beliefs. The voluntary principle was a form of individualism and so carried within it all those beliefs about the inherent limitations of official groups that found expression in such phrases as ‘State interference’, ‘red tape’ and other verbal obstacles to creeping collectivism. But there were also beliefs specific to this inquiry. Pressure politics, it was earlier suggested, tends to be about the allocation of an economic surplus, and foremost among the beliefs sustaining the relevant values was the view that politicians could not be trusted to administer pensions with due regard to the length of the public purse. Other beliefs of the kind were that the voluntary principle was flexible and so able to meet hard cases, and that it embodied a ‘cheerful human element’. Such views were still being expressed as late as 1917.²

MODES OF GOVERNMENT

Values and Beliefs

Values about the proper objects of government have their counterpart in values governing the means by which those objects may be pursued. From this point of view the outstanding feature of British decisionmaking in 1914 was the limited number of people who took part in it. In the relevant sense, democracy had been on the march (but not at light-infantry pace) since 1832, yet despite the extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1884, the electorate remained small: as late as the December election in 1910, it was still well below eight millions,¹ out of a total population of about 42 millions.²

Nor did the second and third Reform Acts ‘suddenly transform the House of Commons’.³ Members with aristocratic connexions declined but slowly, and were in any case replaced chiefly by ‘hard-faced’ men of business. The common man was still uncommon in the House until as late as 1906, and it was not until just after the 1914–18 War that Labour became, both in seats and votes, the second party in the land. As the Cabinets had been tinged with the colour of the Parliaments, the section of the community from which the elected decision-makers had been drawn was narrow indeed. The English statesmen of the period, living their ‘leisurely and methodical existence, each working week folded between pleasant and often sumptuous country-house week-ends’, tended to constitute a ‘ruling class’.⁴

The belief that politicians could not be trusted to administer (war) pensions properly was related, as we know...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• The International Library of Sociology
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• CONTENTS
• Abbreviations
• INTRODUCTION
• I. The Universe of Groups
• PART ONE: THE FORMATIVE YEARS (1917–21)
• PART TWO: THE ASSOCIATIONS (1917–57)
• PART THREE: AIMS AND METHODS (1917–39)
• PART FOUR: AIMS AND METHODS (1945–57)
• PART FIVE: AIMS AND METHODS ILLUSTRATED
• PART SIX: THE ASSESSMENT OF INFLUENCE
• PART SEVEN: FACTORS IN SUCCESSFUL INFLUENCE
• CONCLUSIONS
• A NOTE ON SOURCES
• APPENDICES
• Index