government policy makers may wish to draw upon and the capacity
to aid the acceptance and implementation of the policy. Thus doctors’
representatives (notably the American and British Medical Asso-
ciations) will usually be drawn into making health policy, and will
often then help to win acceptance within the health professions for
an agreed policy to be implemented by their members. Most demo-
cratic governments of whatever party have tended to consult such
groups and try to win them over to their policies. Although, in
Britain, post-1979 Conservative administrations did on occasion seem
to make a political point of not consulting groups that they regarded
as having been ‘feather-bedded’ or over-influential in a liberal direc-
tion. It is worth pointing out, however, that consultation remains the
rule. The Blair administration zealously sought business people to
serve on high-profile advisory panels and appointed several business-
oriented outsiders to important posts, including ministerial office.
In Britain, the links between Whitehall and such producer interest
groups are institutionalised in the practice of each sector of industry
having an official ‘sponsoring’ department. It is standard for such
groups to be represented on official advisory committees and for their
leaders and administrators to be on first-name terms with the corres-
ponding higher civil servants. (So there are established unofficial
communication patterns such as weekly lunches and regular tele-
phone calls.)
Trade unions have generally speaking (i.e. post-1945) been seen
within this framework – as groups that are automatically consulted,
whose prominent leaders finish up in the House of Lords and are
appointed to QUANGOs, etc. This was so under Conservative
administrations such as those of Edward Heath and Harold Mac-
millan. In Labour administrations trade unions have benefited from
the historic link between the various wings of the Labour ‘move-
ment’. In the past it was not unknown for trade union leaders to be
appointed to Labour cabinets. Conversely some on both left and
right have argued that trade union leaders have often been too pliant
toward ‘their’ Labour governments – sacrificing their members’
economic interests to the political success of the party. However,
recent Conservative Thatcherite administrations were less ready to
accord automatic deference to trade union leaders despite their
(in some cases) nominal millions of ‘followers’. Whilst the New
Labour government has been more friendly to trade unions than the196 DEMOCRACY