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TWO BRIEF, but comprehensive publications appeared in 1968; both are surveys: one, of teaching programmes, the other, of research. The first is the U.N.E.S.C.O. booklet, The Teaching of the Social Sciences in Higher Technical Education: An International Survey. The second, the June issue of the American Educational Research Association's Review of Educational Research, devoted to international development education."I The U.N.E.S.C.O. survey was commissioned to present 'a factual and quantitative collation of data on social science teaching in schools and other institutions of polytechnic education at university level'. Additionally, it was to make 'an analysis of such teaching in historical perspective and a critical study of the present situation, including prospective developments and teaching methods'.(2) Though there appears to have been an unfortunate delay between the collection of the material and its publication, the book nevertheless provides a useful insight into this somewhat hackneyed problem as it existed about 1965/6.(3) Though changes have occurred in the last three years in some of the institutions surveyed many of the assumptions given here would still seem to hold good. The editors distinguish between two views of the social science contribution to engineering education, the 'humanistic' and the 'instrumental'. The instrumental view 'treats the social sciences as disciplines with positive value for the engineer as he deals with the practical problems of his profession'. The humanistic view 'emphasizes the intellectual orientation given by a study of the social sciences . . . complementary to the technical values imposed by the engineer's training'. (4 The objectives served by social science teaching in engineering education are described with reference to group or organizational needs, to the larger economic, political and social context within which the engineer operates, and to the function of the social sciences as bridge disciplines between the legendary two cultures. These arguments are sufficiently well known to need repetition here. The second reference point, the A.E.R.A. Review, describes international development education as 'the field concerned with organised programmes of teaching and learning within the context of planning for economic, social or political change in the newly developing regions of the world'."0 Though long, this is a comprehensive definition for scholars working in the area of 'education and development'. The issue reviews over 450 research titles under various headings. Topics covered include the relationship between education and economic, political and social development; concepts and techniques of educational planning; research on content, methods and techniques in education for development, and international development through educational exchange. This would seem to be the

III THE PATTERN EXPLAINED In part I of this paper we described the gross pattern of public policy in our five countries. In part II we looked at how the pattern developed in each of the countries. We noticed that the countries have pursued policies that diverge widely, at least with respect to the size of the direct operating role of the State in the provision of public services. We also noticed that the United States differs from the four other countries far more than they do from each other. These findings will not have come as a great surprise to anybody, although some readers may have been surprised – in view of the common assumption that all major western countries are ‘welfare states’ – to discover just how much the countries differ and what different histories they have had.

A kinetic investigation has been made of the interaction of nitrogen with evaporated films of tungsten prepared under ultra-high vacuum conditions. A technique is described for the accurate determination of the sticking probability of gases on metal films; the value for a clean film a t 290 °K (0·75) is higher than values reported for filaments or sheets, which have relatively smooth surfaces, and is attributed to multiple collisions at the film surface. At 195 and 290 °K, a redistribution process has been characterized, which, as in the hydrogen-molybdenum film system at 78 °K (Hayward, Taylor & Tompkins 1966), is due to the desorption of weakly held adsorbate from the outer, more accessible surface, and readsorption on to the inner porous structure of the film. Heats of adsorption for this weakly held state varied between 14 and 24 kcal/m ole. The redistribution process has been quantitatively treated utilizing an exponential variation of the activation energy for desorption with coverage. At high coverage an activated conversion of weakly bound to strongly bound adsorbate has been identified, this process being distinct from the redistribution between outer and inner surfaces of the film.

Anthony King is Professor of Government and Chairman of the department at the University of Essex, Colchester, England. He did his undergraduate work at Oxford and was a Fellow of Magdalen College before assuming his position at Essex. He and David Butler are the co-authors of the well-known books on the 1964 and 1966 British general elections. He is currently working on an interpretive volume on the American political system.

This report is primarily concerned with the use of stone clappers at the village of Ikire Ile, situated about 6 miles north of Iwo. However there is some slight evidence of the use of a rock gong just outside the town of Iwo itself, and the information on this latter practice is also included herein. Before proceeding further let me explain the meaning of the terms "stone clappers" and "rock gong". The physical nature of some rock gongs has been well described by Bernard Fagg in a number of papers', and a brief description is thus all that is necessary in this report. A rock gong is any slab of rock which, when beaten with stones at a number of definite points, is used to produce a rhythmic background to traditional songs; there may be a number of beaters and they may beat either with one stone each or with two stones, one held in either hand; the beating produces a ringing sound from the rock and this may or may not have a definite pitch. Stone clappers, obviously related to rock gongs, consist simply of two conveniently sized stones which are held one in either hand; the smaller of the two stones is held in the beater's right hand and this is then used for striking the left stone to produce a sharp percussive sound; the clappers are usually employed in groups, i.e. two or more players, and supply a rhythmic background to traditional songs. The presence of a rock gong at Iwo was first reported by Mr. D. Adeniji, a field assistant working with the Yoruba Historical Research Scheme. The reported rock gong is situated on tie north-west side of the hill, known locally as Oke Orire (Rock here is my head), which overlooks the waterworks and lies about a mile from the town on the Ikire Ile road.

Summary A method employing a special stainless steel and Teflon prosthesis in total division of the bladder into two equal halves has been described. This operation makes possible brief and long-term split-renal function studies.

From 78 to 150°K, and at coverages < 8 x 10 14 molecules/cm 2 , the sticking probability s of nitrogen on tungsten films (= 0·9) is independent of both temperature and coverage, whereas at temperatures above 150°K it is a function of both these variables. These results are interpreted in terms of a physically adsorbed precursor state with a heat of adsorption of ca . 3 kcal/mole. It is concluded that only a fraction of molecules colliding with the surface enter this state and that it is this fraction which determines the initial value of s at low temperatures. The decrease of s with increasing temperature above 150°K is a consequence of the inactivity of some planes, such as the (110), at the higher temperatures. Desorption spectra were obtained by warming films from 78°K to room temperature and recording the subsequent pressure changes as a function of time. From these data the distribution of site energies for the weakly held adsorbate (the αγ state) was evaluated, indicating a continuous distribution with heats of adsorption varying between 6 and 20 kcal/mole.

The outlook for the Conservatives in the months immediately after October 1959 could hardly have been more buoyant. The party had just won its third successive electoral victory, and had a leader whose standing with the public showed every sign of continuing to rise. The economy was expanding rapidly and, despite the summit debacle of May 1961, Britain continued to exert substantial influence in world affairs. The 1959 intake of new Conservative M.P.s included many able younger men whose presence on the back benches boded well for the future. By contrast, the Labour party — divided, demoralised and increasingly absorbed in abstruse questions of party doctrine — seemed bent on self-destruction. It was in this mood that Mr. Macleod addressed the 1960 Conservative conference: ‘The Socialists can scheme their schemes and the Liberals can dream their dreams; but we at least have work to do.’

It used to be called the ‘secret garden of British politics’, and a few years ago an American commentator claimed that the garden remained secret partly because our political parties deliberately kept the gates locked — and even patrolled the walls to keep outsiders from peering over. What was in the garden was the way the parties went about selecting their parliamentary candidates. Elections, yes, they were public, and everybody knew about them. But selections — oh no — they were a private matter to be decided by the political parties internally, by themselves, away from the public gaze.

In the early years of the 1959 Parliament, few in the Labour party contemplated the future with confidence. Not only was the party divided internally; the conditions which had made possible the great Conservative victory of 1959 seemed likely to persist indefinitely. Lecturing to the Fabian Society within weeks of polling day, Mr. Richard Crossman argued that ultimately competition from the Communist bloc would cause capitalism to founder. In the meantime, Labour could do little but maintain itself in readiness to take advantage of the capitalist crisis when it came: ‘Those who assert that the sole object or even the main object of the Labour party today should be to regain office seem to me to misconceive not merely the nature of British socialism but the workings of British democracy.’1

Parliament isn’t only a talking-shop, as we’ve tried to show in some of the programmes in this series, but it is at least a talking-shop. After all, the word Parliament itself — ‘Parlement’ in French — originally meant speaking or talking or conversing. And most people, when they think of Parliament, probably have mainly in mind the debates that go on there.

Even before Labour’s victory in 1964, Mr. Wilson had been acutely conscious of the advantages accruing to any government simply from the fact of its being in power. The personal authority of the Prime Minister of the day usually far exceeds that of the Leader of the Opposition. He alone determines the date of the election. Because the Prime Minister and his colleagues control the parliamentary timetable and the timing of official announcements, their power to command public attention is almost unlimited. By contrast, the opposition is seldom in a position to do much more than respond to government initiatives. Whereas the government can perform, the opposition can only promise. It will have difficulty communicating its policies to the public. It is always in danger of appearing negative and carping, particularly since a party out of power is deprived of all access to official information and the advice of the civil service.

In ‘The Case of Flora Ginetio’ we described in some detail how an individual Member of Parliament handled a typical constituency case: how it came to him, the government departments he got in touch with, and how eventually he got what was for him and the people who’d come to him a satisfactory outcome. In that particular case the Member of Parliament was always confident he’d get the right answer in the end — and he did.

At the first Liberal assembly which Mr. Grimond addressed as leader, in the autumn of 1957, he asserted that the party had passed the point of no return: “In the next ten years, it is a question of get on or get out. Let us make it get on.”

This programme in the ‘Talking Politics’ series is actually more about talking than about politics. We are going to spend some time considering that new twentieth-century art form: the political interview on radio or television. We aren’t going quite to turn the tables on political interviewers — we haven’t invited politicians into the studio to interview the interviewers — but to discuss the art we have with us three very experienced practitioners: George Ffitch, who appears regularly on Independent Television as well as being Deputy Editor of The Economist; Ian Trethowan, a political journalist who presented programmes on television before becoming Managing Director of Radio in the B.B.C.; and Robin Day.

The most remarkable thing about the 1964 parliament was that it lasted as long as it did. Harold Wilson had been asked on becoming leader of the Labour party what he would do if Labour had only a tiny majority after the next election. ‘Oh,’ he had replied, ‘we don’t discuss nightmares like that,’ Later, as the results were coming in, a future cabinet minister maintained on television that, short of a coalition, no government could survive for long with a majority of less than about a dozen. In the event, however, Labour succeeded in governing for fully seventeen months with a majority over the Conservatives and Liberals that fluctuated between five and only one. And when the 1964 parliament was dissolved on March 10th, 1966, it was at a time entirely of the Prime Minister’s own choosing.

In this programme we are going to talk about an unpopular group of men — a group of men who believe that what they do is seriously misunderstood by the public at large and even by some of their own colleagues — the two dozen or so party Whips in the House of Commons. We are going to look at them both as they seem to themselves — we talked to the Chief Whips of both of the major parties — and as they seem to those they whip — we talked to two backbench M.P.s who on occasion have defied their parties.

This programme, for a change, is not about politicians, but about the people who write about politics: the hundred or so journalists who cover Westminster and Downing Street, the lobby correspondents. The Lobby produces practically all the political news we all consume, yet almost nothing is known by the general public about how it actually works. And even among journalists there are profoundly divergent views about whether the Lobby in its present form is a good thing or not. Anthony Howard, the Editor of the New Statesman, who for years has been the scourge of the Lobby

At 4 p.m. on September 15th, after the Prime Minister had paid a flying visit to the Queen at Balmoral, it was announced from 10 Downing Street that Parliament would be dissolved on September 25th and that polling day would be Thursday, October 15th. In giving 30 days notice, Sir Alec was following exactly the timetable set by Mr. Macmillan in 1959. But this time the announcement had been even more fully anticipated. The last legally available Thursday for polling day was November 5th and it had long been assumed that it would be a few weeks earlier. October 1st was not considered because 330,000 ‘Y’ voters would only come on the register on October 2nd. October 8th (the date in 1959) was unsuitable because the Queen would be away on her long promised visit to Quebec. October 15th had, therefore, been confidently tipped ever since the spring. Indeed, in early September there was almost more speculation on when the announcement would be made than on what it would be.

Until very recently, a lot of people undoubtedly thought of the House of Commons as pretty much a rubber-stamp, at least as far as legislation was concerned. The Government introduced a Bill, it then used its majority to make sure the Bill was passed, and that was that. Parliament has been made to seem a good deal more powerful by Labour’s troubles with its Industrial Relations Bill three years ago, and in 1971–72 by the present Government’s narrow escapes over the Common Market. But, even so, most people are probably unaware of just what the role of the House of Commons is in the passage of a major piece of legislation, and probably tend to underestimate the impact the House can have.

‘Sir,’ said Samuel Johnson in the middle of the eighteenth century, ‘a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ And that, even in the middle of the twentieth century, is still the view sometimes held about women as politicians. Women don’t make good politicians, it’s said, and even if they did they don’t really belong in politics. Now we’re not going to spend time disputing this view, we‘re simply going to ignore it. It seems to us too obvious to be worth arguing about that women are in politics, to stay, that many of them are very good at it, and that a woman’s place is just as much in politics as in any other occupation requiring qualities, ideally, of intelligence, honesty and courage.

We are going to be dealing in this programme with one of the least-publicised, least party-political, but by no means least important aspects of the work of the House of Commons: the work of select committees. It’s a pity that the term ‘select committee’ is so off-putting. It suggests a board-room full of elderly gentlemen deliberating ponderously on some rather dreary matter, whereas, in fact, select committees often attract younger Members of the House and deal with matters of self-evident importance. Here, for instance, we are going to be looking particularly at the work done by one select committee on the subject of family planning and Britain’s population.

So far this book has been concerned with what politicians, pollsters and newsmen did at the national level. But Britain had 36 million people of voting age — and over 27 million of them voted. There were 1,757 candidates in the 630 constituencies, most of whom at the very least made some speeches and sent literature to every home in their area. They all had agents (nearly half of them full-time professionals) and they had active supporters ranging from a score to several hundred, who filled envelopes and canvassed and drove cars. It is not possible to chronicle all that went on in the constituencies. Even to provide a rough estimate of the volume and nature — let alone the effectiveness — of local party activities is very difficult.