A Narrow Vision

...Moreover, any book on Britain's government, even a textbook, should make more than a passing reference to a salient and important fact about the contemporary British political scene: the alarming sense of political alienation evident among all social classes...

...That Sir Harold tried to make optimal use of available talent ("horses for courses"), permitted smoking at Cabinet meetings ("a difficult question"), and preferred a private residence to 10 Downing Street ("I did not want to live over the shop") somehow seems less significant than many other issues he barely touches upon...

...Who is being naive here...

...Others, however, have argued convincingly that the need to appease international lending institutions has effectively limited Britain's sovereignty...

...The NEC frequently censured his administration for being too conservative on such issues as social service spending and relations with Chile and South Africa, and Sir Harold tries to convince us that his rejection of its criticisms was designed to affirm government authority...

...More interesting is what it reveals about Harold Wilson's personal outlook and underlying assumptions...

...Sir Harold simply assumes that responsibility for national decision-making resides, as always, in Westminister and at 10 Downing Street...

...Instead, Wilson has written what he has elsewhere termed "a kind of textbook," ostensibly designed to correct academic misconceptions but actually contributing little to the available literature...

...Wilson defends his abbreviated treatment by citing national security, but that need not have precluded an informed consideration of legal and ethical questions raised by these agencies' operations...

...Unfortunately, the same assurance cannot be offered to potential readers of Sir Harold's new book...

...True, The Governance of Britain offers personal interpolations ("one man's observations") on almost every page...

...In the 70s, he continues, "I was...

...On the evidence presented, Sir Harold emerges as a man fascinated with the mechanics of politics but unable to harness that fascination to any larger social vision...

...The international bankers, lending agencies and speculators in sterling, or the former prime minister who continues to claim that power "really lies" with a debt-ridden government desperately seeking to retain their good will...

...What seems to have motivated Wilson was a simple love of the political game, conceived precisely in game-like terms...

...Its primary weakness is an excessively rigid and restricted focus...

...As a result, we get neither the kind of candid insider's view that was recently served up in R.H.S...

...Another is inadvertently given by Wilson when he notes that, as prime minister, he was obliged to "inculcate realism" in the Labor party's National Executive Committee...

...Captain of the Cabinet team, Harold Wilson stayed in competition as long as he could...

...Similarly, seven pages are devoted to the prime minister's responsibilities as First Lord of the Treasury?helping to fill vacant deaneries, can-oneries, bishoprics, and archbishoprics ("a matter to which I gave the most careful consideration") and only a terse page and half to the various secret services, whose domestic operations are of increasing concern to British civil libertarians...

...The classic answer to this question was offered by none other than Harold Wilson himself, who in 1964 told the Trades Union Congress: "You can get into pawn but don't then talk about an independent foreign policy or an independent defense policy...

...Yet he unwittingly spoils the point by admitting the real motive behind his resistance: the need to quiet "confusion in certain quarters, including national and international financial markets, where there are many who are singularly uninformed, not to say naive, about our political institutions, and on where power really lies...

...Like most textbooks, Wilson's work is essentially descriptive rather than analytical: The protocol and procedures associated with Parliament, Cabinet and prime minister are laid out in elaborate, unimaginative detail...

...however, they are for the most part devoid of substance...

...Reviewed by David H. Katz Assistant Professor of Social Science, Michigan State University When Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister of Great Britain last year, he assured his successor, James Callaghan, "You will never have a dull moment...

...In almost 200 pages, he evinces a single brief flicker of something like "class consciousness": a bitter denunciation of the "Establishment" press for allegedly holding Labor politicians to a higher ethical standard than their Conservative counterparts...

...Although his most interesting and informative ohapters—those assessing the prime minister's power and the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the British and American systems-—are necessarily somewhat generalized, for the greater part Sir Harold keeps his promise...

...Crossman's Diaries and (more devastingly) Joe Haines' The Politics of Power, nor a broad-based overview of the role and limits of a modern Social Democratic government, such as Ralph Miliband's in The State in Capitalist Society...

...an old fashioned deep-lying center half, lying well back, feeding the ball to those whose job it was to score goals, and moving upfield only for rare 'set-pieces' occasions...

...Having subsequently served as chief of state for nearly eight years, and witnessed Britain sinking ever deeper "into pawn," Sir Harold might have expanded his provocative observation into a whole chapter—or perhaps an entire book —on how it all really happens...

...you will never be bored...

...Last December's announcement of higher taxes and massive reductions in public spending—a placatory gesture clearly directed toward the International Monetary Fund?is one example of this process at work...

...Wilson claims his objective is "to show, on the basis of one man's observations, how it all really happens...

...Description is also a poor replacement for analysis of a still more fundamental question: Who actually does govern Britain today...

...In fact, both the general audience and the professional student of British politics are likely to be disappointed by this survey of Britain's "governance...

...To lovingly present the rituals and administrative structure of Cabinet and Parliament in no way substitutes for an explanation of why these same institutions appear to have lost so much of their popular legitimacy...

...While he identifies himself as a "Democratic Socialist"—a conventional enough designation for the leader of a nominally Socialist party—his book is almost totally bereft of insight into current social dilemmas...

...In the sixties," he happily reports, "I . . . played in every position on the field—goalkeeper, midfield, taking penalties and corners and bringing on the lemons...

...let alone their possible solutions...

...Yet he also promises to exercise "full discretion" in describing his relationships with other Cabinet ministers and fellow parliamentarians, and to refrain from speculative consideration of basic constitutional and political questions...

...But once the goals and "set-pieces" became increasingly infrequent, the play got rougher, and worst of all, the fans started losing interest in the game's outcome, like most good athletes he realized it was time to quit...

...As it is, the main value of The Governance of Britain does not lie in its tedious discussion of interdepartmental committees, Cabinet etiquette or bureaucratic reorganization...