Lecture 5. How a Democratic Society Works: People and Policies in Action

Politics: Parties, Government and People

Britain has traditionally had two parties and a system designed for two parties. In voting statistics it is necessary to go back to the early 1950’s to find a seat which was won in a straight competition between two candidates in which one candidate received 89.5% of the vote. This was a mining constituency; almost everyone was a miner or part of a miner’s family, and therefore a traditional Labour party supporter. To repeat such a result in today’s world would be impossible. (In the 1989 Parliamentary election, the biggest proportion of the vote received by any candidate in any constituency was 70%). In the capital, London, votes were much more evenly divided. Why?

Some societies with an anarchical tradition will have individuals who try to confuse or disrupt the parade; societies living under tyranny will have parts of their population openly marching in the parade but privately working against it. In Britain they have a democratic opposition. In their system, conflict is recognised as inevitable and is built into the structure. They want to see people going in the opposite direction as well, or in several different directions.

Historically, partly because they were free from foreign invasions and their terrible damage, the English developed parliamentary institutions early. By the early sixteenth century Parliament was already an important power that the King had to consult and conciliate. By the time of their Civil War (1642-49) Parliament was able to challenge the King on constitutional grounds, and the council which tried and executed Charles I in 1649 argued that they did so legally. After Cromwell’s death and the Republican experiment, Charles I’s son was invited back to England as King – but only on condition that he was subject to Parliament. Since then, especially after the foolish behaviour of his brother in 1688, the powers of the monarch have been steadily stripped away by Parliament. Not only their kings and queens unable to alter parliamentary laws and decisions, they themselves have to do what the Government in Parliament instructs them. Some people believe that their Queen has limited but significant power. They are wrong. She has no power. She is not allowed to take part in political activity. Strict rules prescribe whom she may and whom she may not marry, where she may and may not go, what she may and may not do. In return she is given considerable wealth, a protected life, and the duty to act as a popular figure head, a sort of human national flag which has the devotion of millions of her subjects.

From the late seventeenth century onwards, informal groups in Parliament slowly, over many years, joined together to form ‘parties’, representing different powerful interests. The two parties which emerged were the ‘Tories’ (ancestors of the Conservative Party) who supported the landowning gentry and the ‘country’ interest, and the Whigs’ (ancestors of the Liberal Party) who supported the town, the merchants and the new industrialists. At that time and until 1832, the electorate (those allowed to vote) was very small, but thereafter major laws enlarged the electorate so that by the end of the century all adult males had the vote. However, women were not allowed to vote until 1918, and not on the same terms as men until 1928.

By this time parliamentary government through political parties was firmly established. Since the 1920’s their two major parties have been the Conservatives who tend to represent those with established power and wealth, and also (in the twentieth century) commercial and capitalist interests; and the Labour Party (never called Labourists in this country though some at least would be proud to be called socialists) which is a development of the radical wing of the Liberal Party into a non-Marxist workers’ party with considerable support from those in the State services like health and education. But, of course, every individual is free to make up his or her own mind as to how to vote.

Because of its history, their parliamentary system is the source of both legislative and executive power in this country.

What does this mean for the ordinary citizen?

Every four or five years (it cannot be more than five and is rarely less than four) they have a General Election. Voting is carried out on the basis of areas of population called constituencies. There are about 650 constituencies in the United Kingdom (the number varies slightly from election to election) with 60-70,000 electors in each of them. Any group willing to pay a reasonable but not large sum of money can put up a candidate – but unless their candidate receives at least 5% of the vote, he forfeits the money. This discourages crazy candidates. In practice the only political parties of any significance are the Conservatives, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and, in Wales and Scotland, the nationalist parties (small in Wales, very important in Scotland). In England, some constituencies will have two candidates, most will have three.

The parties put forward different manifestos describing what they would do if elected; meetings, television programmes, candidates and their supporters knocking at your door and discussing issues, leaflets, more meetings – all these take place during the campaign. On Election Day, people go to the polling station just as we do, collect their voting paper which has a list of candidates and mark ‘X’ beside the candidate they wish to be elected. They do not cross out the names of those they do NOT want. In each constituency, the candidate with most votes wins in a simple ‘first-past-the-post’ system.

The Great Education Debate

In all parts of the United Kingdom, although laws govern the ages at which children must attend school, and the hours that they must work during the year, the organisation of education is the responsibility of each local authority (elected council controlling a certain area). Therefore there are many variations of detail from one authority to the next.

The present government would like the system to be more centralised, as it is in France or, indeed, was in the Soviet Union. Since, in practice, education is paid for by the state (from taxes) with only a small proportion of the costs paid from local taxes, the government argues that it should have more control over what happens in schools. Local authorities argue that they understand local conditions better, and that they are more directly responsible to the parents of the children they educate. One educational consequence of this quarrel is that the government passed laws to ensure that all children spent a high proportion of their time on a group of ‘core subjects’ – English, mathematics, science, and, in the secondary schools, a foreign language. Nobody doubts that these are very important subjects; problems arise when teachers or local authorities argue that other subjects should be given more time because they also are important. How do you squeeze into a timetable not only the core subjects but also history and geography, other sciences (a choice of physics, biology, chemistry, instead of a general science course), art, another foreign language, music, practical subjects like woodwork and needlework, maybe Latin, even Greek, P.E. (physical education), religious studies, courses for personal development – and what about economics, politics, commercial subjects...? The list can continue for a long time if we count all the different kinds of courses offered in normal comprehensive schools across the country. Not all courses exist in all schools; but local authorities argue for variety, central government is concernred that all children should have a proper basic education.

Arguments about what should be studied in the schools are closely related to the structure of the schools, and also the relationship between state and private schools. In England, about 93% of children attend state schools. The other 7% attend ‘private’ schools, sometimes called ‘independent’ schools. A minority of these private schools are boarding schools where children live as well as study. You will probably have read about such schools in English novels and stories, and you may have the impression that most British school children go to them. In fact, probably less than 3% of children are ‘boarders’. Private schools are very expensive, whether they are day schools or boarding schools, so the pupils at them are the children of privileged élites. But many parents who could afford to send their children at least to a day school actively choose not to do so. The vast majority of children, including those from professional and business homes, attend state schools.

All children are required by law to attend school full-time between the ages of 5 and 16. For younger children there are a few state kindergartens, some private kindergartens and a few ‘nursery classes’ in ordinary schools. About half four-year-olds have a few hours of education a week, but for under-fours very little is provided.

A typical school day starts at about 9 a.m. with three hours of lessons (divided by short breaks) in the morning, followed by a ‘dinner hour’ at which cheap meals are provided, and then two more hours of lessons in the afternoon. So school finishes around 3.30 or 3.45. For younger children the day is shorter. They have no school on Saturday or Sunday. Instead of one very long holiday in the summer with very short breaks at other times, their children have three ‘terms’ in a year, with about 2 ½ weeks of holiday at Christmas / New Year, 2 weeks at Easter and 6 or 7 weeks in the summer. In addition, there are short mid-term breaks of a few days.

For the first two years of schooling (5-6) children are expected to learn to read and write, to do simple sums, to learn basic practical and social skills, and to find out as much as they can about the world through stories, drama, music, crafts and through physical exercise. A good infants school is rather like the older years in one of good kindergartens, except that much more emphasis is put on reading and writing, and children are perhaps more strongly encouraged to do and make things themselves.

It is assumed that most children can read by the time they start their third year of schooling. Some of them will be fluent, others will still need help. For school work now depends on reading and writing. From 7 to about 11 or 12, children are at a school where the class teacher is still a central figure for them, because he or she teaches many basic lessons. But increasingly there is emphasis on subjects with subject teachers. There will probably be a special teacher for maths, another for crafts, another for French, if French is provided at this age. But at these ages, except perhaps for maths, children are not usually divided into different levels of ability. However, within each class there may be several different groups, each working on a different part of the subject, requiring different intellectual understanding. Classrooms are often informal in arrangement. Chuldren work at tables, and move around fairly freely in the course of studying a practical topic. Such learning methods are the pride of many teachers, parents and educationalists, and the despair of others. Do children learn essential skills and knowledge best if they are sitting in rows listening to a teacher in front of a blackboard, or if they can follow their own inclinations and work in their own way at their own pace? Of course, an obvious answer is that a mixture of both methods is probably best – and probably most often practised. Clever children flourish in either type of class, and slow children will find both difficult, though they will probably enjoy the more active, informal teaching. The children in the middle – the majority – provide conflicting evidence. Formal teaching gives them solidly based skills, informal teaching encourages them to ask questions and understand relationships. But can you ask questions and understand relationships if you haven’t got a solid basis of skills first?

The government is worried that children may be learning in an anarchical situation, and has introduced national testing of basic knowledge. Teachers complain that this takes up too much precious time, and that mechanical testing does not demonstrate real understanding.

At about 11 or 12 chidren move to a new school, usually a ‘comprehensive’ that will accept all the children from three or four neighbouring junior schools. Changing to the ‘big’ school is a great moment in life for them.

At this stage comes the debate about ‘streaming’ – that is, dividing pupils into different groups according to ability. A few local authorities still send clever children to one school and slow children to another but now that the vast majority of secondary schools are comprehensive (i.e. accept children of all abilities) the decisions have to be made within the schools. Very few teachers believe that it is possible to educate children of all abilities together if some are going to study advanced mathematics, for example. On the other hand, few teachers want to go back to rigid streaming where children were kept apart, and those at the bottom were always at the bottom. The most common solution is to organise children into both classes of mixed ability and groups of similar ability, and to organise timetables in which they are moving between classes and groups.

When the pupils reach the age of 14-15, some of those problems tend to solve themselves because of subject ‘options’. Every pupil has to take a national examination at 16, called GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). The examination must be taken in ‘core’ subjects, plus three or four or five other subjects. These are chosen, in discussion with teachers, from a list. But there is no ‘free chooice’ because of timetables and demands for a coherent education. One of the subjects must be practical, another must be part of ‘social studies’ – geography, history, etc. Academic pupils will be able to choose mostly academic subjects, those who find school work more difficult can concentrate on practical and technical subjects. The examinations involve written(and sometimes practical) papers, sometimes two papers in each subject, and they are marked nationally. There is a complicated (and changing) system of marking. Exams are usually marked, out of 100, and then ‘converted’ into grades – maybe five or seven or eight grades.

At the end of the year in which he or she reaches 16, a British pupil can leave school. Many do; though of these, some go on to further training for employment. Although the situation has been improving slowly, far fewer children in the United Kingdom stay on after 16 at school than in most European countries including Russia. Pupils who stay at school can take a variety of further courses. The most important is the ‘A-level’, which is usually studied in three subjects. Pupils who want to enter university spend their last two years at shool (17-18) studying intensivly just those three subjects. It means that when they start their university course they are already much more advanced than undergraduates in most other countries, and a first degree in three years is common practice. And British undergraduates compare well with others.

‘A-levels’ are also marked nationally. At this point the grades are crucial, because the university and polytechnic places are awarded on the basis of A-level grades. Bad A-level can change your life!

All British universities and polytechnics are state institutions. Entry is by academic merit, and those who win places get their fees paid and are also paid a grant. Students enter university at 18 or 19, are almost always living away from home. Most of them complete their degrees in three years, a few in four years. A degree is awarded on the basis of examination, and sometimes of ‘course work’. Afterwards a minority compete for places to do graduate research work; the rest go out into the world to look for jobs. Jobs are not easy to find; and undergraduate unemployment can be quite high in the first few months after leaving university.Polytechnics also provide degree courses; and for those who do not reach university or polytechnic, there are all sorts of lower courses and qualifications by studying part-time at local colleges.

British education has traditionally been directed towards academically clever children. These children have to ‘prove’ themselves from an early age by writing long examination papers. Emphasis has therefore been on memory, on clear expression of arguments, on intelligent selecting of evidence and reaching of conclusions – not just a memory test, but a test of knowledge and rational judgement. The same process happens in universities, where a degree used to be awarded on the basis of many examination papers taken at the end of the course.

Since the seventies, step by step, teachers have been introducing ‘continuous assessment’ on the basis of ’course work’ – that is, the work which a pupil does during a course. Most of this will also be written, but some will be oral. It will be part of the normal day’s lessons, a description perhaps, or a map with personally researched information about a distant country; or an effort to imagine (and write down) an account of contrasting lives of rich people and poor people in Victorian England. It should be clear that neither in schools nor universities do they put much emphasis on oral work, and very little indeed on oral tests. The kind of oral examinations observed in Russian universities are unknown in UK. Perhaps that is why Russians are so fluent at talking while so many English adults hesitate and stumble. But most of them expect to be able to write fairly fluently.

A Note About the Military

Britain has its own Army, Navy and Air Force. It is also part of NATO and contributes troops to the NATO forces. As members of NATO they contribute to a nuclear force which is at present being reduced. Britain also has its own ‘Independent Nuclear Deterrent’ (nuclear weapons in submarines) which has been a source of bitter political debate.

They have a professional army; conscription was abolished in the late 1950’s. The deeply unpopular practice of sending 18-year-old boys to barracks for a year or two has not been one of their problems since that time.

Military officers are often highly educated. Ordinary soldiers are almost always from among the poorer and less happy groups in the population, especially from areas where employment is difficult. Some come to enjoy army life very much, others do not. Until recently their biggest force was in Germany, as part of NATO, but the most difficult tours of duty are considered to be in Northern Ireland. Being a ‘peace-keeping force’ in your own country, hated by both sides, is a terrible experience. Some soldiers behave well; others don’t. The army was sent into Northern Ireland in 1969 and it is still there. Many people think it should leave, while others are convinced that there would be many more killings if it left. Actually, nobody knows.