The Parliamentary Labor Party in Great Britain

James Macgregor Burns

American Political Science Review, 1950, vol. 44, issue 4, 855-871

Abstract: Who rules Britain? For the political scientist hunting out the real core of power, the question is hard to answer. Students of British politics have variously concluded that the Cabinet, or Parliament, or the party in power, or the administrative class of civil servants, or the “Big Three” (or Four, or Five)—or some combination of these—actually held the reins of authority. Constitutionally, however, the question is an easy one. Formal power rests with a majority of the Members of Parliament. This majority can pass laws and raise money, can bring down governments and make new ones, can change the Constitution itself. Those who have ruled Britain in this sense during the past five years have been a few hundred Labor Members of the House of Commons, organized in the Parliamentary Labor Party. Constitutionally, this is the ruling group, every member of which has equal power. In fact, a small minority of Labor Members, grouped in or about the Cabinet, actually make the great decisions of state. At the same time, the large majority of Labor Members not only lack real power but even in their very name —Backbenchers—they appear as the symbols of impotence.

Date: 1950
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