Opinions, Publics and Pressure Groups: An Essay on 'Vox Populi' and Representative Government by Graeme C Moodie & Gerald Studdert-Kennedy

Author:Graeme C Moodie & Gerald Studdert-Kennedy [Moodie, Graeme C & Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781032129242
Google: FE5FEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58286554
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

3 op. cit., pp. 125-33. And see the general conclusion of J. D. Stewart, British Pressure Groups (Oxford, 1958), that campaigns in, or directed towards, the House of Commons are designed largely to secure recognition for a group by the permanent administration.

Heterogeneity

At first sight the world of pressure groups can be bewildering, so great is the variety of groups and activities. Apart from their shared concern to persuade others there seems little in common between, for example: ‘highbrow’ literary campaigns by the associations for the reform of the laws on homosexuality, abortion, divorce or obscenity; ramblers’ associations resolutely hiking and petitioning local authorities to keep open traditional rights of way in rural England; earthy yeoman farmers (and agricultural businessmen) engaged, through the National Farmers’ Union, in tough annual bargaining over prices and subsidies with their sponsoring Whitehall Ministry; rioting by militant associations of social or religious bigots in Belfast; gentlemanly public and private attempts by civic societies to persuade local councillors of the cash and prestige value of urban aesthetics. Nevertheless, some attempt must be made to order the field.

There are numerous ways, first, by which pressure groups may be classified. One of the commonest we have already referred to: the distinction between interest, sectional, spokesman or functional groups on the one hand, and, on the other, promotional or cause groups. The precise terminology and meaning varies, but the general import is the same, and significant. For there is an important difference between those groups which speak for a recognizable section or interest in a society, whether it be an industry, a trade union, a profession, council-house tenants, or surtax payers, and those which exist to promote a particular ideal or ‘cause’. Membership of the former derives largely from those in a particular, relatively clearly definable, location within the social or economic structure in virtue of which they are likely to be similarly affected by events (including government action or inaction). In principle, moreover, the total number of people in that location is discoverable, so that it is not obviously nonsensical for a group to say that it represents a certain percentage of those for whom it claims to speak. By contrast, there is no comparable clientele (other than the whole body of citizens) for promotional groups which must attract members because of a consensus of opinion on a specific issue (such as the location of a new London airport) or because they share a more general disposition (such as the complex of anxieties about nuclear weapons which first brought many people into the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), and not primarily, if at all, on the basis of their sharing certain other socially identifiable characteristics. This distinction can be important in terms of the methods objectives and relationships with governments likely to be sustained by the two types of group. But we doubt whether it is caught in an equally satisfactory way by ¿1 the pairs of terms in common use, or entirely satisfactorily by any.

Of the labels mentioned, ‘spokesman’

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