Dissension in the House of Commons, 1945-1974

"It is. Philip himself once said it’s the sort of book that once you put it down you can’t pick it up again. This is not a rip-roaring read. The vast majority of the book, in fact almost all of it, is just lists of dissenting MPs on every occasion where there was dissent against the party political line from 1945 to 1974. You then have a small section where it analyses this. It’s not the sort of book you take on a desert island. I chose this book for two reasons. The first is that this is a really good example of back-breaking, detailed, academic work making a really important substantive point. When he published the book in the middle of the 1970s, everybody claimed that modern MPs were weak and feeble, but in the past had been very independent. Norton showed that actually the reverse was true, and that British MPs were becoming much more independent, much more radical. He uncovered these two sections of the 1950s where not a single government MP – not a single one – rebelled. It didn’t improve until the late 60s and early 70s. So I’m including it because it’s a really good example of a book that stands his point on really detailed research and frankly we don’t have enough of those books. And another reason I included it is that it was a book that when I read it made me interested in that sort of study; I’ve gone on to carry on some of that work. You wouldn’t want to settle down to read it at night in front of the fire but it’s a book which I think a lot of journalists have to read before they can comment on Parliament. And, in fact, all students studying politics should at least read the conclusion. So for that reason it’s one of my five."