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Common Sense: New Constitution for Britain
Do we need a Monarchy? Or does it represent everything that is hidebound and stifling about Britain? The headlines tell the story: every British Institution is in crisis As a nation we have lost our way, What we have always been smugly told, is false. Our constitution is NOT the best in the world, nor is our legal system the fairest, nor is our society more open, nor are we freer than other nations. Things taken for granted are now being seriously questioned, as people realize how much of our political and economic life is outside our control. Ever since Tony Benn changed our constitution by renouncing his peerage, he has been developing the case he now outlines. His Commonwealth of Britain Bill (reproduced in the Text) is 'the first attempt to overthrow the monarchy since Cromwell' GUARDIAN. He argues for a radical overhaul of our political system, sweeping away privilege and unaccounted power and substituting for it a written constitution and democratic citizenship. Only by freeing ourselves from our historical shackles - including, but by no means only, the monarchy - can we be truly free.
- GenresPolitics
176 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 17, 1993
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About the author
Tony Benn
101 books74 followersAnthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC, formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1951 until 2001, and was a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s. After his retirement from the House of Commons, he continued his activism and served as president of the Stop the War Coalition.
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September 2, 2021
(This is a discussion of the ideas set out in two books by Benn - Common Sense and Arguments for Democracy - set out in the context of the democracy debate taking place in the UK argument today)
The question of the role that democratic reform plays in the advocacy of the left has moved through a number of phases in the UK across the last four decades. What arguments sustain our call for radical reform and a change in the balance of power and wealth in favour of the people today? Can we finally face up to the need for reform of the electoral system in favour of proportional representation which move us on from the shibboleths of yesteryear?
There is some historical context to the issues provided by the interest in the character of the British state in relation to democracy provided reflections that came out of the Anderson/Nairn v. Thompson debates of an even earlier period which argued the toss around the UK being exceptional or conforming to the standard leftist view of the development of capitalist democracy. Anderson and Nairn took the view that the advance towards a bourgeois form of democracy had been inhibited by the turn of the landowning aristocracy towards capitalist forms of enterprise which ensued that the modernisation of the state structure retained strong elements of feudal privilege. Thompson argued on the contrary, there was nothing exceptional about the ‘English’ form of social and economic development and the state had all the defects characteristics of any capitalist democracy.
The left outside the world of new left literature skirmishing took a fair bit of time mulling over the implications of the two positions, with the need to take a firm position only becoming more pressing after the election of the government of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. It took the war over the Falkland Islands in 1982 to bring the issues out into the open, registered in the analysis produced by Anthony Barnett in Iron Britannica published in that year. Barnett draw heavily on the Anderson and Nairn thesis to paint a picture of British society as being like a crumbling stately home, with a family of aging, frequently befuddle aristos still notionally at the helm, but the real decisions being taken by the class of superior servants, the butler and housekeeper, who alone have a grasp of all the tings that are going wrong on the estate.
This sense of putrefying decadence was carried over by Barnett into the launch of the Charter 88 movement in 1988, which announced its intention to campaign for democratic renewal and a written constitution for the UK. The initiative proved hugely popular with intellectuals of various kinds and brought in individual supporters in the liberal-left mainstream. It failed to win the support of the leadership of the two main parties – the Conservative unsurprisingly but a stronger disappointment on the part of Labour. By the noughties the movement had largely run out of steam. Supporters took it through a series of manoeuvres aimed at regaining enthusiasm for reform and it continues to work under the title of ‘Unlock Democracy’.
Interest in at least one aspect of democratic reform – favouring proportional representation - has been revived in parts of the Labour party, transcending the usual split between right and left. It is, however, a demand which the doyen of the left in the 80s, Tony Benn, was deeply sceptical about, for reasons he makes clear in these books. His inheritance remains strongly guarded in some parts of the socialist wing of the party, and reluctance to open up a discussion on the issue was a part of the standpoint of the leadership of the Momentum current at the high point of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Benn’s reasoning was perfectly coherent on the point and stemmed from his analysis of the argument set out by Anderson and Nairn, concerns its aristocratic component. The second, which had figured less in the standpoint of the New Left thinkers and Charter 88, was what Benn called its technocratic tradition.
The latter position offered another approach to the pressing need for the modernisation of the UK system, but which saw the way to achieve this coming from technical expertise and rational management. For the technocrat:
“Government can be operated through expertise, and society broken down into specialised functional units […] Not so much socialism as a sort of paternalism by civil servants and experts.” (Common Sense, p.28)
As a matter of principle Been held the view that, though input from people with technocrat skills might be welcome, the critical decisions on the direction policy should take “should be left to tose who are affected by expert rule -those who have to live with the outcome of the duties, rights and privileges it seeks to establish.” (CS, p.29)
Reforms to the systems and procedures by which governance was extended across society had to be consistent with this end of achieving the rule of the people. The adoption of an election procedure which aimed to bring about outcomes proportionate to the votes cast, rather than enhancing democracy “… would in practice merely consolidate the unofficial coalition which now exists into a formal one, and place greater power in the hands of those party leaders responsible for drawing up lists of candidates.” (CS p.7)
The technocratic component of PR was also discussed in the earlier ‘Arguments for Democracy’ where Benn was even more adamant that its unavoidable logic was to strengthen the dominance of an expert elite. At that time technocratic control was envisioned as state/capitalist corporatism, imposing a permanent statutory incomes policy on the working class; “legislation to restrict and centralise the power of the trade unions; an interventionist industrial policy; and a move to restructure capitalism within a federal Europe.” (AfD, p.157) This was a package that “would be reinforced by adopting proportional representation, which would insulate a form of ‘national government from effective challenge. (p. 158)
There is some irony in the fact that Benn’s nightmare vision of a government embodying technocratic rule did come about, but, with the exception of its hostility to the activity of free trade unions, was solidly committed to pretty much the opposite of corporatism – namely turbo-charged free market capitalism. The governments which drove forward this development demonstrably had no interest in a PR election system and instead was content to reap all the benefits which the first-past-the-post heaped on them.
But this has presented the advocates of democratic reform with another substantial challenge. Back in the 1980s and 90s, in the heyday of Charter 88, the argument in favour of a deeper and broader democracy was compelling because the emergence of a dynamic sovereign people with a fresh vision of British society was seen as the best way to break the logjam of the ossified, semi-feudal British state and force its long-overdue modernisation. But modernisation of a sort has been the outcome of the Thatcher and Blair years, gained from their full-on drive towards integrating the UK into a neoliberal, globalised economy. The loss of the modernisation argument for democracy advocates was noted by Charter 88’s chief instigator, Anthony Barnett, in am openDemocracy article written in November 2011. Reviewing the achievements of his erstwhile campaign he saw it as having won a full one-half of the demands it had set out (a Bill of Rights, Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, Freedom of Information, replacing the hereditary Lords) but had not seen them integrated into a system which shifted the balance of power towards ordinary citizens.
Another way to put this is that all the considerable reforms of this period succeeded in changing the architecture of the British state, but it had left the power of the ruling elite completely intact. The changes had in fact gifted this elite with an extraordinary power to write new rules as they went along in order that the country could make the transition into a highly-centralised post-industrial state, with an economy operating in just very few sectors where it could provide decent employment to workers, and a much reduced capacity to maintain high quality public services. So much for the grand schemes for constitutional reform!
Yet the feeling remains powerful that more democracy is a critical part of the good society we are working to build. The case might have been weakened if the neoliberal UK state had delivered what it claimed it could do back at the height of the Thatcher revolution – namely more security and wealth for all citizens and world class health and education systems, even if they were not necessarily part of the public sector any longer. Britain today looks a long way from those sunlit uplands. But the argument for democracy today is much less about the need to rid the British state of its feudal component, though it is still highly relevant to the need to reign in on an elite – no longer seen as being technocratic as such, and more fittingly called straightforwardly incompetent.
Our all for greater democracy nowadays revolves around ending the gross disfigurations of inequality across the country, settling the questions of English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh power to the satisfaction of their populations, and building an economy which benefits working people above rentier capitalists and is capable of supporting modern public services.
The question of the role that democratic reform plays in the advocacy of the left has moved through a number of phases in the UK across the last four decades. What arguments sustain our call for radical reform and a change in the balance of power and wealth in favour of the people today? Can we finally face up to the need for reform of the electoral system in favour of proportional representation which move us on from the shibboleths of yesteryear?
There is some historical context to the issues provided by the interest in the character of the British state in relation to democracy provided reflections that came out of the Anderson/Nairn v. Thompson debates of an even earlier period which argued the toss around the UK being exceptional or conforming to the standard leftist view of the development of capitalist democracy. Anderson and Nairn took the view that the advance towards a bourgeois form of democracy had been inhibited by the turn of the landowning aristocracy towards capitalist forms of enterprise which ensued that the modernisation of the state structure retained strong elements of feudal privilege. Thompson argued on the contrary, there was nothing exceptional about the ‘English’ form of social and economic development and the state had all the defects characteristics of any capitalist democracy.
The left outside the world of new left literature skirmishing took a fair bit of time mulling over the implications of the two positions, with the need to take a firm position only becoming more pressing after the election of the government of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. It took the war over the Falkland Islands in 1982 to bring the issues out into the open, registered in the analysis produced by Anthony Barnett in Iron Britannica published in that year. Barnett draw heavily on the Anderson and Nairn thesis to paint a picture of British society as being like a crumbling stately home, with a family of aging, frequently befuddle aristos still notionally at the helm, but the real decisions being taken by the class of superior servants, the butler and housekeeper, who alone have a grasp of all the tings that are going wrong on the estate.
This sense of putrefying decadence was carried over by Barnett into the launch of the Charter 88 movement in 1988, which announced its intention to campaign for democratic renewal and a written constitution for the UK. The initiative proved hugely popular with intellectuals of various kinds and brought in individual supporters in the liberal-left mainstream. It failed to win the support of the leadership of the two main parties – the Conservative unsurprisingly but a stronger disappointment on the part of Labour. By the noughties the movement had largely run out of steam. Supporters took it through a series of manoeuvres aimed at regaining enthusiasm for reform and it continues to work under the title of ‘Unlock Democracy’.
Interest in at least one aspect of democratic reform – favouring proportional representation - has been revived in parts of the Labour party, transcending the usual split between right and left. It is, however, a demand which the doyen of the left in the 80s, Tony Benn, was deeply sceptical about, for reasons he makes clear in these books. His inheritance remains strongly guarded in some parts of the socialist wing of the party, and reluctance to open up a discussion on the issue was a part of the standpoint of the leadership of the Momentum current at the high point of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Benn’s reasoning was perfectly coherent on the point and stemmed from his analysis of the argument set out by Anderson and Nairn, concerns its aristocratic component. The second, which had figured less in the standpoint of the New Left thinkers and Charter 88, was what Benn called its technocratic tradition.
The latter position offered another approach to the pressing need for the modernisation of the UK system, but which saw the way to achieve this coming from technical expertise and rational management. For the technocrat:
“Government can be operated through expertise, and society broken down into specialised functional units […] Not so much socialism as a sort of paternalism by civil servants and experts.” (Common Sense, p.28)
As a matter of principle Been held the view that, though input from people with technocrat skills might be welcome, the critical decisions on the direction policy should take “should be left to tose who are affected by expert rule -those who have to live with the outcome of the duties, rights and privileges it seeks to establish.” (CS, p.29)
Reforms to the systems and procedures by which governance was extended across society had to be consistent with this end of achieving the rule of the people. The adoption of an election procedure which aimed to bring about outcomes proportionate to the votes cast, rather than enhancing democracy “… would in practice merely consolidate the unofficial coalition which now exists into a formal one, and place greater power in the hands of those party leaders responsible for drawing up lists of candidates.” (CS p.7)
The technocratic component of PR was also discussed in the earlier ‘Arguments for Democracy’ where Benn was even more adamant that its unavoidable logic was to strengthen the dominance of an expert elite. At that time technocratic control was envisioned as state/capitalist corporatism, imposing a permanent statutory incomes policy on the working class; “legislation to restrict and centralise the power of the trade unions; an interventionist industrial policy; and a move to restructure capitalism within a federal Europe.” (AfD, p.157) This was a package that “would be reinforced by adopting proportional representation, which would insulate a form of ‘national government from effective challenge. (p. 158)
There is some irony in the fact that Benn’s nightmare vision of a government embodying technocratic rule did come about, but, with the exception of its hostility to the activity of free trade unions, was solidly committed to pretty much the opposite of corporatism – namely turbo-charged free market capitalism. The governments which drove forward this development demonstrably had no interest in a PR election system and instead was content to reap all the benefits which the first-past-the-post heaped on them.
But this has presented the advocates of democratic reform with another substantial challenge. Back in the 1980s and 90s, in the heyday of Charter 88, the argument in favour of a deeper and broader democracy was compelling because the emergence of a dynamic sovereign people with a fresh vision of British society was seen as the best way to break the logjam of the ossified, semi-feudal British state and force its long-overdue modernisation. But modernisation of a sort has been the outcome of the Thatcher and Blair years, gained from their full-on drive towards integrating the UK into a neoliberal, globalised economy. The loss of the modernisation argument for democracy advocates was noted by Charter 88’s chief instigator, Anthony Barnett, in am openDemocracy article written in November 2011. Reviewing the achievements of his erstwhile campaign he saw it as having won a full one-half of the demands it had set out (a Bill of Rights, Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, Freedom of Information, replacing the hereditary Lords) but had not seen them integrated into a system which shifted the balance of power towards ordinary citizens.
Another way to put this is that all the considerable reforms of this period succeeded in changing the architecture of the British state, but it had left the power of the ruling elite completely intact. The changes had in fact gifted this elite with an extraordinary power to write new rules as they went along in order that the country could make the transition into a highly-centralised post-industrial state, with an economy operating in just very few sectors where it could provide decent employment to workers, and a much reduced capacity to maintain high quality public services. So much for the grand schemes for constitutional reform!
Yet the feeling remains powerful that more democracy is a critical part of the good society we are working to build. The case might have been weakened if the neoliberal UK state had delivered what it claimed it could do back at the height of the Thatcher revolution – namely more security and wealth for all citizens and world class health and education systems, even if they were not necessarily part of the public sector any longer. Britain today looks a long way from those sunlit uplands. But the argument for democracy today is much less about the need to rid the British state of its feudal component, though it is still highly relevant to the need to reign in on an elite – no longer seen as being technocratic as such, and more fittingly called straightforwardly incompetent.
Our all for greater democracy nowadays revolves around ending the gross disfigurations of inequality across the country, settling the questions of English, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh power to the satisfaction of their populations, and building an economy which benefits working people above rentier capitalists and is capable of supporting modern public services.
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