These are the British

by Drew Middleton

The memory of these troubled times is not dead. At the height of McCarthyism in the United States a British diplomat explained: "We're very fortunate; we went through the same sort of period under the Tudors and the Stuarts when treason and slander and libel were the common coin of politics."

With exceptions, the great political parties in the country have now identified themselves with the national interest rather than with a partisan one. Even the exceptions change. As the status of the working class has changed for the better, the Labor Party has moved perceptibly away from its early position as a one-class party. The heirs of Keir Hardy—the Attlees, Morrisons, and Gaitskells—understand that Labor must appeal now to the whole people.

The national interest is something the whole people has always understood and accepted in the past. For the British are guided politically not by an ideology but by interest. This interest is a free world, free from the economic as well as the political standpoint. One factor in the decision to withdraw from India was the conviction that, in the end, withdrawal would serve British commercial interests. I do not suggest that this was the only factor. There were others, including the belief of the leaders of the Labor government that India could not and should not be kept within the Empire by force.

Similarly, Britain is ready to give way on the independence of other parts of the Empire when she thinks these areas are ready for independence as democracies, and when she believes that their emergence as independent democracies will benefit her own commercial interests. This mixture of realism and idealism is difficult for outsiders to grasp, especially when the British cling to a territory such as Cyprus for reasons that are largely connected with their commercial interests in that part of the world.

Yet although the British have acquired, and are now in the process of losing, a world-wide empire, they never suffered from a desire to remake the world as did the French of 1789, or the Russians of 1917, or the Germans of 1939. As a commercial people their basic interest was, and is, peace. The British will go to almost any lengths to prevent a war, as they did in 1938 and 1939. Once at war, however, they fight with cold ruthlessness.

The allegiance of the great political parties to the national interest is one reason why British politics and politicians are flexible and tolerant. Another is that politics are still touched by the shadowy influence of the Crown. Here is a higher, if weaker, authority than Prime Minister or cabinet. Does the presence of the sovereign at the peak of government draw some of the exaggeration and extremism from politics?

Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even Churchill in 1940, has ever been bathed in the sycophancy that deluged President Eisenhower in his first term. Certainly no British Prime Minister, not even Chamberlain in 1938 and 1939, has been reviled so relentlessly by critics as were Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Convictions are as deeply held in London as in Washington. But anyone moving between the two cities must be convinced that the political atmosphere in London is calmer, less subject to emotional cloudbursts.

The center of British politics is Parliament—the House of Commons and, to a lesser degree, the House of Lords.

Parliament represents all the countries of the United Kingdom. It can legislate for the whole kingdom or for Great Britain itself or, separately, for England and Wales. But, as this is Britain, the country of contradictions, the Parliament at Westminster is not the only parliament. Northern Ireland has its own. But it also sends MP's to Westminster. The Tynewald sits in the Isle of Man, and the States legislate for the Channel Islands.