Book Reviews: Ernest Bevin: Portrait of a Great Englishman. By FRANCIS WILLIAMS. (New York: British Book Centre. 1953. Pp. ii, 288. $4.50.)

• Published date: 01 September 1953
• Author: Richard F. Schier
• Date: 01 September 1953
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295300600315
• Subject Matter: Articles

582
dismissal of ministers, the cabinet committees, the war cabinet, and the
Crown and the power of dissolution. The chapter on the privy council
and the departments of state has been omitted. The revising author agrees
to the desirability of &dquo;a new approach to the history and workings of cabinet
government, based on less formal and institutional grounds than those
adopted by Keith and most other standard writers on the subject,&dquo; but
chooses nevertheless to continue the traditional method.
&dquo;
Yet it is on these very grounds that the principal criticisms of this
work may be founded. It describes so much that has ceased to be. Grant-
ing the value, for purposes of convenient historical record, of Keith’s
prodigious amassing of Victorian and Edwardian precedents, too many of
them are hardly controlling today. And the enlarging of the present
volume by the modest number which have additionally been authentically
confirmed only serves to emphasize the work’s nineteenth-century prepos-
sessions. It is unfortunately true that cabinet transactions and ministerial
relations with the monarch are secret, and that British conventions and the
Ofhcial Secrets Act keep them that way much longer than is generally
desired. But authors are not precluded from some measure of speculation
over the nature of executive operations today, or upon the directions in
which they might move in the future. Something more than just fifty-one
calendar years separate the eras of Victoria and Elizabeth II!
The discussion of possible ways of controlling the overextension of
cabinet authority also seems unrealistic and outdated. Of the four possi-
bilities examined, only one -
a proposal for the creation of parliamentary
committees attached to the important departments -
now has much rele-
vance to the mitigation of &dquo;cabinet dictatorship&dquo; as a contemporary prob-
lem. Indeed, it is difficult to see how one familiar with the machinery of
British government would seriously...