Abstract
Only a generation ago Britain’s political institutions were the object of widespread admiration. Churchill’s wartime leadership, the successful mobilisation of people and resources against Hitler, and the Attlee government’s achievements in social welfare and economic reconstruction all provided evidence of the ability of the institutions and leaders to cope with problems and maintain consent.
It is a very difficult country to move, Mr Hyndman, a very difficult country indeed, and one in which there is more disappointment to be looked for than success. Disraeli (1881)
Britain, Progress and Decline (Macmillan, 1980).
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Notes
The distinction is often applied to France and the United States. For Britain, see Dennis Kavanagh, Crisis, Charisma and British Political Leadership (London: Sage, 1974).
David Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1945).
W. L. Guttsman, The British Political Elite (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1963).
R. Rose, ‘Class and Party Divisions: Britain as a Test Case’, Sociology, II (1968) 129–62.
W. D. Muller, The Kept Men? (London: Harvester Press, 1977).
On this trend, see Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961).
See R. Rose, Politics in England Today (London: Faber, 1974), p. 159.
R. W. Johnson, ‘The British Political Elite, 1955–1972’, European Journal of Sociology, XIV (1973) 35–77.
Egon Wertheimer, Portrait of the Labour Party (London: Putnam, 1929).
Quoted in C. L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (London: Methuen, 1955), p. 173.
Quoted in Eric Nordlinger, The Working Class Tories (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967) p. 42.
Reginald Bevins, The Greasy Pole (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965);
Sir Charles Hill, Both Sides of the Hill (London: Heinemann, 1964).
Nigel Fisher, The Tory Leaders (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977).
On the decline of landed estates among Conservative MPs, see Andrew Roth, The Business Backgrounds of MPs (London: Parliamentary Profiles, 1972), p. 94.
R. T. McKenzie and A. Silver, Angels in Marble (London: Heinemann, 1968), p. 242.
W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: World’s Classics, 1955).
J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1943), p. 291.
D. Butler and M. Pinto-Duschinsky, ‘The Conservative Elite 1918–78: Does Unrepresentativeness Matter?’, in Zig Layton-Henry, Conservative Party Politics (London: Macmillan, 1980).
Lord Hailsham, The Case for Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), p. 13.
B. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: Social and Imperialist Thought 1895–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960);
G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency (London: Blackwell, 1971).
Sidney Low, The Governance of England (London: Ernest Benn, 1914), pp. 197 and 304.
Anthony Sampson, Anatomy of Britain Today (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), pp. 172–3.
John Goldthorpe, ‘Theories of Industrial Society’, European Journal of Sociology, 12, 1971, p. 284.
R. H. S. Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Vol. I (London: Hamish Hamilton and Jonathan Cape, 1976), p. 50.
Anthony King, ‘The Election that Everyone Lost’, in Howard Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1974), p. 7.
See D. Butler and D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of October 1974 (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 256–7.
Anthony King, ‘Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, XXXIII, 1975, pp. 483–505.
L. S. Amery, Thoughts on the Constitution (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 22.
On this feature, see Robert Putnam, The Beliefs of Politicians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975);
And Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan, 1974).
Ian Gilmour, The Body Politic (London: Hutchinson, 1960).
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© 1990 Dennis Kavanagh
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Kavanagh, D. (1990). From Gentlemen to Players: Changes in Political Leadership. In: Politics and Personalities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20961-3_14
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