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From International Socialism, No.19, Winter 1964/5, p.28.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The English Voter
A.J. Allen
English University Press, 12s. 6d.
Mr. Allen was formerly connected with the Economist Intelligence Unit, and is a consultant with National Opinion Polls, who in the 1959 election and subsequent bye-elections came closest to predicting the actual results. In writing this book as a ‘guide to the enquiring elector’ he has clearly felt at a loss on moving outside the field of precisely defined questions and answers in which those organisations operate competently. It would seem that he was never able to make up his mind whether he was trying to furnish details of past elections or to draw political conclusions from them in Robert Mackenzie/Mark Abrams style, or what.
The upshot is that the book cannot be taken very seriously either as a source of reference or as a contribution to political controversy, although there is a good deal of statistical information which will appeal to that minority who, like this reviewer, enjoy poring over lists of election results, and there are four very nicely coloured maps. Incidentally, by ‘English’ Mr. Allen means ‘British’. It is when he starts pronouncing on politics that Mr. Allen exposes the real limitations of the school which thinks that the subject can be approached like a Consumers Association investigation of electric razors, with the sad result that it falls down on the one test it believes really important, quantitative prediction. But if your concept of classes is derived from the categories of the Registrar General it is perfectly natural that writing in 1963 you would have considered the Liberal revival of enormous significance, and that you would draw from it all the approved conclusions about ‘affluence’, etc., which you would already have taken for granted at the outset of your inquiry.
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