Civilizzazione e Istituzione inglese - Organizzazione politica

The public attitude to politics

Politicians do not have a good reputation with the British people —> lack of trustworthiness.
People expect them to be frequently dishonest and they are not really shocked when the government is caught lying. The first rule of politics is “Never Believe Anything Until It’s Been Officially Denied”.
The lack of enthusiasm for politicians is reflected in the general ignorance of who they are (less than half of the adults in Britain know the name of their local Member of Parliament (MP)).
Most people rarely become passionate about politics and nobody regards it as a 'dangerous’ topic of conversation and over the years, this lack of enthusiasm has increased; but a general feeling of confidence in the stability and workability of the system remains.
In Britain, it is generally accepted that politics is a dirty business, a necessary evil.

The style of democracy

Although they may not have much respect for the present institutions of the law, the British have a deep respect for the principle of law; there is little systematic lawbreaking by large sections of the population and they are comparatively unenthusiastic about making new laws.
In many aspects of life, the country has comparatively few rules and regulations —> this lack of regulation works both ways.
Two unique aspects of British life will make this clear:
citizens do not have identity cards.
a law was passed which entitles people to demand information held by public bodies; many requests for information are refused on the grounds that disclosure is “not in the public interest”.
These two aspects are characteristic of the relationship in Britain between the individual and the state.
There is also a law (the Official Secrets Act) which obliges many government employees not to tell anyone about the details of their work. It seems that in Britain, both your own identity and also the information which the government has about your identity are regarded as private matters.
The duties of the individual towards the state are confined to not breaking the law and paying taxes.
It would be correct to call the country “a democracy” but in Britain, this democracy does not involve much participation in governing and lawmaking —> if the government wants to make an important change in the way that the country is run, it does not have to ask the people.
In Britain, democracy has never meant that the people have a hand in the running of the country; rather it means that they choose who is to govern the country, and then let them get on with it.

The constitution

Britain is a constitutional monarchy = it is a country governed by a king or queen who accepts the advice of a parliament.
It is also a parliamentary democracy = it is a country whose government is controlled by a parliament elected by the people.
There are features of the British system of government which make it different from other countries and which are not ‘modern’ at all; Britain is almost alone among modern states in that it does not have ‘a constitution’ —> there are rules, regulations, principles and procedures for the running of the country but there is no single written document which can be appealed to as the highest law.
The principles and procedures by which the country is governed and from which people’s rights are derived come from a number of different sources; some of them are written down in laws agreed
by Parliament, some have been spoken and then written down and some have never been written down at all.
Moreover, there is no single written document which asserts people’s rights —> some rights which are commonly accepted in modern democracies have been formally agreed by Parliament in certain laws.

The style of politics

Despite modern innovations such as the televising of Parliament, political life in Britain is still influenced by the traditional respect for privacy and love of secrecy.
In both Parliament and government, there is a tendency for important decisions to be taken at lunch, or over drinks, or in chance encounters in the corridors of power. These features, together with long years of political stability, have led to a habit of genuine cooperation among politicians of different parties —> both normally see the practical advantage of cooperation; a very notable example is the system of 'pairing’ of MPs.

The party system

Britain is normally described as having a 'two-party system’ because members of just two parties occupy more than 85% of all of the seats in the House of Commons and one of them, by itself, controls the government. One reason for the existence of this situation is the electoral system and
the origin of British political parties —> were first formed inside Parliament and only later extended to the public.
Although they differed broadly in their general outlooks, the two parties did not exist to promote single, coherent political philosophies; the main reason for their existence was to gain power by forming an effective coalition of groups and opinions.
British political parties:
conservative party = developed from the group of MPs known as the Tories in the early nineteenth century and still often known informally by that name —> right of centre: stands for hierarchical authority and minimal government interference in the economy, likes to reduce income tax, gives high priority to national defence and internal law and order.
In government until 1997, aggressive reform of education, welfare, housing and many public services designed to increase consumer-choice and/or to introduce ‘market economics’ into their operation. This party is referred to the richer sections of society, plus a large minority of the working classes.
labour party = formed at the beginning of the twentieth century from an alliance of trade unionists and intellectuals —> left of centre: stands for equality, for the weaker people in society and more government involvement in the economy, more concerned to provide full social services than to keep income tax low + emphasis on community ethics and equality of opportunity rather than equal distribution of wealth, it has also loosened ties to trade unions. This party is referred to working class, plus a small middle-class intelligentsia.
liberal democratic party = formed in the late 1980s from a union of the Liberals and the Social Democrats —> centre or slightly left of centre: in favour of greater unification with the EU, more emphasis on the environment than other parties, believes in giving greater powers to local government and reform of the electoral system. This party is referred to all classes, but more from middle class.
It is very difficult for smaller parties to challenge the dominance of the bigger ones. The fact that the party system originated inside Parliament has other consequences; parties do not extend into every area of public life in the country and another consequence is that it is usually a party's MPs who have most control over party policy —> this means that their members who are not MPs can have an effect on policy in a number of ways: first they elect the party leader, second they can make their views known at the annual party conference and third, the local party has the power to decide who is going to be the party’s candidate for MP in its area at the next election —> these powers are limited by one important consideration, the appearance of unity.
Party conferences are always televised so they tend to be showcases whose main purpose is not genuine debate but to boost the spirits of party members and show the public a dynamic, unified party.

The modern situation

The traditional confidence in the British political system has weakened. After all, the general direction of public policy has been the same since 1979, suggesting stability and a high level of public confidence. Two developments may help to explain it:
the first concerns the perceived style of politics —> in recent years it is their public relations advisers, whose job is to make them look good in the media, who have become their closest advisers ('spin doctor’ has entered the British vocabulary).
the second concerns the style of democracy as a constitutional significance like free speech or the law of the ID card.
In modern Britain, it is not only the authorities with which the principle of free speech can sometimes conflict. It can also conflict with the values of a certain section of society.
As long as everybody in a country shares the same attitudes about what is most important in political life and about people’s rights and obligations, there is no real need to worry about inconsistencies or ambiguities in the law —> laws can just be interpreted in changing ways to match the change in prevailing opinion, but in Britain today, different sections of society can sometimes have radically different priorities. In these circumstances, the traditional laissez-faire attitude to the law can become dangerous, and it may be necessary to frame something like a written constitution as a way of establishing certain basic principles.

The Monarchy - The appearance

The position of the monarch in Britain illustrates the contradictory nature of the constitution; the Queen has almost absolute power, and it all seems very undemocratic.
In Britain there is no legal concept of 'the people’ at all.
As far as the law is concerned, she can choose anybody she likes to run the government for her and the same people to fill some hundred or so other ministerial positions and if she gets fed up with her ministers, she can just dismiss them —> they are all 'servants of the Crown’.
She also has great power over Parliament, it is she who summons a parliament, and she who dissolves it; nothing that Parliament has decided can become a law until she has given it the royal assent —> it is the Queen who embodies the law in the courts.
In Britain, it is 'the Crown’ a reference to the legal authority of the monarch.

The reality

In practice, the reality is very different = the Queen cannot just choose anyone to be Prime Minister; she has to choose someone who will command majority support in the House of Commons —> this is because the law says that 'her’ government can only collect taxes with the agreement of the Commons.
In practice, the person she chooses is the leader of the strongest party in the Commons. Similarly, it is the Prime Minister who decides who the other government ministers are going to be.
The Prime Minister will talk about ‘requesting’ a dissolution of Parliament when he or she wants to hold an election, but it would normally be impossible for the monarch to refuse this ‘request’.
In reality, the Queen has almost no power at all. She cannot actually stop the government going ahead with any of its policies.

The role of the monarch

Three roles are often mentioned:
- the monarch is the personal embodiment of the government of the country.
- the monarch is a possible final check on a government that is becoming dictatorial.
- the monarch has a very practical role to play; by being a figurehead and representative of the country

The value of the monarchy

The real importance of the British monarchy is probably less to do with the system of government and more to do with social psychology and economics. The monarchy gives British people a symbol of continuity, and a harmless outlet for expressions of national pride.
Even in very hard times, Britain has never looked like turning to a dictator to get it out of its troubles, and the grandeur of its monarchy may have been one reason for this.
In addition, the glamorous lives of ‘the royals’ provide a source of entertainment.

The future of the monarchy

The British monarchy as an institution has not been a burning issue in British politics for several hundred years. There is almost no public debate about the existence of the monarchy itself.
Very few people in Britain would use ‘monarchist’ or ‘republican/anti-monarchist’ as a defining feature of their political beliefs; there is, however, much debate about what kind of monarchy Britain should have —> various marital problems in the Queen family lowered the prestige of royalty in many people’s eyes.
The one aspect of the monarchy about which most people feel consistently negative is how much it costs; people continue to believe that the royal family gets too much money. Nevertheless, the monarchy remains broadly popular.

The Government

When we talk about government we refer to all the politicians who run government departments or have other special responsibilities, such as managing the activities of Parliament —> there are about a hundred members, with various ranks each with their own titles and called “ministers”.
The other meaning of the term ‘the government’ is referred only to the most powerful of these politicians, namely, the Prime Minister and the other members of the cabinet —> there are about twenty people in the cabinet, most of them are the heads of the government departments.
Partly as a result of the electoral system Britain has ‘single-party government’ = all members of the government belong to the same political party.
Coalition government is traditionally regarded as a bad idea, the habit of single-party government has helped to establish the tradition known as collective responsibility = every member
of the government shares in responsibility for every policy of the government, even if he or she did not take any part in making it.
By convention, no member of the government can criticize government policy in public (any member who does so must resign).

The cabinet

The leading politicians in the governing party usually become members of the cabinet, where they are tied to government policy by the convention of collective responsibility.
Once a week, the cabinet meets and takes decisions about:
- new policies;
- the implementation of existing policies;
- the running of the various government departments.
The reports of the meetings, which are circulated to government departments, summarize the topics discussed and the decisions taken.
To help run the complexities of a modern government, there is an organization called the cabinet office —> it runs a busy communications network, keeping ministers in touch with each other and drawing up the agenda for cabinet meetings.
Unlike 'the government’ itself, the people on these committees are not necessarily politicians.

The Prime Minister

The position of a British Prime Minister (PM) is in direct contrast to that of the monarch; while the Queen appears to have a lot of power but in reality has very little, the PM appears not to have much power but in reality has a very great deal.
The Queen is obliged to give the job of PM to the person who can command a majority in the House of Commons —> this means the leader of the party with the largest number of MPs.
The monarch’s powers of patronage are actually the PM’s powers of patronage. The fiction is that the Queen appoints people to government jobs 'on the advice of the Prime Minister’ but what actually happens is that the PM simply decides.
The strength of the PM’s power of patronage is apparent from the modern phenomenon known as the ‘cabinet reshuffle’ —> it is the habit of the PM to change the members, each getting a new department to look after.
The second reason for a modern PM’s dominance over other ministers is the power of the public image; a single person whose face appears constantly on the television and in the newspapers is much easier to identify with. The PM can sometimes go ‘over the heads’ of the other ministers and appeal directly to the public.
Moreover, the cabinet office is directly under the PM’s control and works in the same building; as a result, the PM knows more of what is going on than the other ministers do.
Matters that are not discussed can be decided by the PM. The convention of collective responsibility then means that the rest of the government has to go along with whatever the PM has decided.

The civil service

Considering how complex modern states are, the day-to-day running of the government and the implementation of its policy continue in the hands of the same people.
Governments come and go, but the civil service remains. Unlike politicians, civil servants, even of the highest rank, are unknown to the larger public even if the British civil service is a career —> its most senior positions are usually filled by people who have been working in it for twenty years or more; these people get a high salary, have absolute job security and stand a good chance of being awarded an official honour.
The British civil service has one powerful weapon with which to defend itself from these attacks on its power; many ministers have remarked on the struggle for power between them and their top civil servants. The main hope for top civil servants to retain some influence on ministers is to continue staying out of ‘politics’ —> this means that they can be trusted in a way which personal advisers cannot.

Local government

In Britain local government authorities (generally known as ‘councils’) only have sowers because the central government has given them powers. The system of local government is essentially the same as it is nationally, there are elected representatives called councillors who meet in a council chamber in the Town Hall or County Hall.
The relative lack of power of local government in Britain is reflected in the public attitude; nevertheless, people in Britain has far more direct dealings with local government than with national government.
In addition, there is no system whereby a national official has responsibility for a particular geographical area. Local councils have traditionally been fairly free of constant central government interference and are allowed to collect one kind of tax —> called council tax, based on the estimated value of a property.
More than half of a local council’s income is given to it by the central government. The trend in the last half century has been towards greater control from central government, inevitable because national party politics dominates local politics. 
Most people vote at local elections according to their national party preferences, so that these elections become a kind of national opinion poll —> is ironic because ‘devolution’ (the redirecting of power from central government to local communities) is an idea that all political parties say they support but recent governments have not given any more powers to local government bodies.
One idea to redress the balance of power is to allow local councils to collect a local income tax.
Local government services include public hygiene and environmental health inspection, rubbish collection, the cleaning and tidying of all public places and many others.

Parliament

The activities of Parliament in Britain are more or less the same as those of the parliament in any western democracy:
- It makes new laws;
- gives authority for the government to raise and spend money;
keeps a close eye on government activities and discusses these activities.
The British Parliament works in a large building called the Palace of Westminster —> this contains the House of Lords and the House of Commons (more important of the two). The British Parliament is divided into these two ‘houses’ and its members belong to one or other of them, although only members of the Commons are known as MPs (Members of Parliament).

The atmosphere of Parliament

Inside of the meeting room of the House of Commons the design and layout differ from the interior of the parliament buildings in most other countries —> these differences can tell us a lot about what is distinctive about the British Parliament.
There are just two rows of benches facing each other, on the left of the picture are the government benches, where the MPs of the governing party sit while on the right are the opposition benches (according to where they sit, MPs are seen to be either ‘for’ the government (supporting it) or against it).
This physical division is emphasized by the table on the floor of the louse between the two rows of benches —> the speaker’s chair.
It also reinforces psychologically the reality of the British two-party system.
For MPs who belong neither to the governing party nor the main opposition party, these sit on the opposition benches furthest from the Speaker’s chair; and considering that the Commons has no special place for people to stand when they are speaking, the MPs simply stand up and speak from wherever they are sitting. Moreover, the room is very small, in fact there isn’t enough room for all the MPs —> there are about 650 of them, but there is seating for fewer than 400 (a candidate at an election is said to have won a ‘seat’ in the Commons, but this seat is imaginary). MPs do not have their ‘own’ place to sit (no names are marked on the benches).
All these features result in a rather informal atmosphere.
MPs normally speak in a rather conversational tone and, because they have nowhere to place their notes while speaking, they do not normally speak for very long either.
The House of Commons was deliberately designed like this; historically, it was an accident (in medieval times the Commons first began meeting in a church with rows of benches facing each other. This was because of a belief in the two-way ‘for and against’ tradition, and also because of a more general belief in continuity).

An MP’s life

Traditionally, MPs were not supposed to be specialist politicians; they were supposed to be ordinary people who gave some of their time to keeping an eye on the government and representing the people, this is why MPs were not even paid until the beginning of the twentieth century. Traditionally, they were supposed to be doing the public a service but this earlier amateur ideal does not reflect modern reality —> politics in Britain has become professional and most MPs are full-time politicians (the average modern MP spends more time at work than any other professional in the country) for example the prepared timetable of sittings sometimes has to be extended and occasionally the House debates all through the night and through the next day without a break. In add, MPs’ mornings are taken up with committee work, research, preparing speeches and dealing with the problems of their constituents. And, at weekends MPs are expected to visit their constituencies (the areas they represent) and listen to the problems of anybody who wants to see them.

Parliamentary business

The basic procedure by which the Commons conducts its business is by debate on a particular proposal, followed by a resolution which either accepts or rejects the proposal. Sometimes it is a matter of framing a new law or of approving (or not approving) the government’s plan to raise taxes or spend money in certain ways. This could be create a division between one side for the ‘Ayes’ (those who agree with the proposal) and the other for the ‘Noes’ (those who disagree).
There are also the committees —> some are appointed to examine particular proposals for laws, and also to investigate the activities of government in a particular field. These committees comprise forty members who have the power to call certain people, such as civil servants, to come and answer their questions. They are becoming an increasingly important part of the business of the Commons.

The party system of Parliament

Most divisions take place along party lines —> MPs know that they owe their position to their party, so they nearly always vote the way that their party tells them to. The people whose job is to make sure that MPs do this are called the “Whips” —> it is their job to inform all MPs in their party how they should vote and act as intermediaries between the backbenchers and the frontbench of a party. They are powerful people because they ‘have the ear’ of the party leaders and they can influence which backbenchers get promoted to the front bench.

The House of Lords

The House of Lords’s role is consultative, they act as a forum for discussion and sometimes bring to attention matters that the Commons has been ignoring.
The Lords can act is a check on any governments which, through their control of the Commons, are becoming too dictatorial.
its members are aristocrats. In fact, only a very small proportion of them are there by hereditary right —> it took Britain a long time to reform this undemocratic aspect of its political system: until 1958, all of the Lords were indeed aristocrats so a law was passed which made it possible to award ‘life peerages’ through the honours system which allow to sit in the Lords but not the children of these people; then the life peerage system established itself as a means of finding a place in public life for distinguished older politicians who no longer wished or be as busy as an MP in the Commons. Political parties are especially keen to send their older members who once belonged to the leadership of the party to the House of Lords, as a way of rewarding them —> this practice has become known as ‘being kicked upstairs’.
The next step was taken in 1999, when the number of aristocrats with the right to sit in the Lords was limited to 92 but at the same time, the lumbers of life-peerage appointments was increased. Many people believe members should be elected.
The Lords are there for life, they do not have to worry about losing their positions.

Elections - The system

Unlike any other country in the world, the system of political representation that is used in Britain evolved before the coming of democracy.
Not until the nineteenth century were laws passed about how elections were to be conducted; this system was in place before the development of modern political parties. The tradition remains that an MP is first and foremost a representative of a particular locality —> the result of this tradition is that the electoral system is simple: the country is divided into a number of areas of roughly equal population known as constituencies (anybody who wants to be an MP must declare himself or herself as a candidate in one of these constituencies). On polling day (the day of the election), voters go to polling stations and are each given a single piece of paper (the ballot paper) with the names of the candidates for that constituency on it and each voter puts a cross next to the name of one candidate.
After the polls have closed, the ballot papers are counted and the candidate with the largest number of crosses next to his or her name is the winner and becomes the MP for the constituency.
There is no preferential voting, there is no counting of the proportion of votes for each party and there is no extra allocation of seats in Parliament according to party strengths.

Formal arrangements

In practice, it is the government which decides when to hold an election, that has to take place at least every five years. When a party has a very small majority in the House of Commons, or no majority at all, the interval can be much shorter.
Candidates are allowed to indicate their political affiliation after their names on the ballot paper; however, it is not necessary to belong to a party to be a candidate.
To be eligible to vote, a person must be at least 18 years old and be on the electoral register which is compiled every year for each constituency separately (nobody is obliged to vote).

The campaign

The campaign reflects the contrast between the formal arrangements and the political reality; a different campaign takes place in each constituency.
The amount of money that candidates are allowed to spend on their campaigns is strictly limited and they have to submit detailed accounts for inspection.
It is at a national level that the real campaign takes place, the big parties spend millions of pounds advertising on hoardings and in newspaper.

Polling day and election night

Since 1931, general elections have always taken place on a Thursday and not at public holidays, so people have to work as usual, so polling stations keep long hours to give everybody the opportunity to vote.
After the polls close, the marked ballot papers are taken in boxes to a central place in the constituency where the boxes are opened and the votes for each candidate are counted —> the count is a very public event. When all the votes have been counted, the Returning Officer, together with the candidates, gets up onto a stage and announces the votes cast for each candidate and who the MP for the constituency is.
The period after voting is a TV extravaganza, entered popular folklore. The first excitement of the night is the race to see which constituency can announce their result first —> the phenomenon of recounts is a clear demonstration of the ironies of the British system.

Recent results and the future

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the contest to form the government has effectively been a straight fight between the Labour and Conservative parties.
The north of England and most of the inner areas of English cities have returned mostly Labour MPs to Westminster, while the south of England and most areas outside the inner cities have had mostly Conservative MPs. The Lib Dems have won a large proportion of the rest of their seats in Parliament in the south west of England.
The Conservatives were generally more successful than Labour; the Conservatives won a majority eight times, nearly always comfortably. Then, in 1997, the picture changed dramatically and labour won because the voting habits in Britain are no longer based so strongly on class loyalties (there was a time when most working-class people voted Labour all their lives and nearly all middle-class people voted Conservative all their lives).
The winning party at an election was the one which managed to get the support of the small number of ‘floating voters’ but since 1997, Labour has shown itself capable of winning; It has won three elections in a row.
The British people in the twenty-first century seem to be much more fluid in their voting habits.

Modern issues

It is important that people feel they can take part in the democratic process and that their participation is effective and fair but the results of recent British elections have caused some people to worry in this respect; for example fewer people, especially younger people, seem to be bothering to vote and there has been an increase in support for smaller parties.
In response to these concerns, the rules have been changed so that anybody who wants can vote by post—> most blamed postal voting for their lack of trust; it may be, therefore, that this attempt to increase participation the democratic process will only lead to reduced confidence in it.
As for the second matter, it seems unlikely that the way in which seats are won at British general elections will change to a more proportional system, as used elsewhere in Europe, for the simple reason that there are vested interests (various forms of more proportional representation are used for the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly elections to the European parliament and some local government elections).
Britain has a rightly deserved reputation for freely and fairly conducted elections —> a reason for this is the system’s primitive simplicity.

The law - The police and the public

There was a time when a supposedly typical British policeman could be found in every tourist brochure for Britain. His strange-looking helmet and the fact that he did not carry a gun made him a unique symbol for tourists = image of the friendly British “bobby”.
The system of policing was based on a single police officer with his own ‘beat’, a particular neighbourhood which it was his duty to patrol, on foot or by bicycle —> the local bobby was a familiar figure on the local streets, a reassuring presence that people felt they could trust absolutely.
But in the 1960s, life became motorized and as a result, individual police officers stopped being the familiar faces that they once were so young representatives started to see the police as the symbol of everything they disliked about society —> police officers were no longer known as "bobbies’ but became the "fuzz’ or the ‘cops’ or the ‘pigs’.
Also, police dramas on all British TV channels since then have continued to depict the imperfections of those who represent the law and the police lost much of their positive image in the second half of the twentieth century.
In several police forces, officers have to wear name badges in order to make them seem more ‘human’ —> these liaisons with the community can sometimes take a worrying turn when organizations pay the police for special services, leading to murmurings about the ‘privatization of policing’.
However, the relationship between police and public in Britain still compares quite favourably with that in some other European countries, even if most British police still do not carry guns in the course of normal duty.

Crime and criminal procedure

Figures on this matter are notoriously difficult to evaluate; one reason for this is that the proportion of certain types of crime which is reported can vary over the years.
It is impossible to say whether crime overall has increased in the last few decades but what is certain is that the fear of crime has increased —> it has gone together with a lack of confidence in the ability of the police to catch criminals.
They attempt to educate people in crime prevention and to encourage the people of a particular neighbourhood to keep their eyes open for anything suspicious.
There has also been some impatience with the rules of criminal procedure under which the police and courts have to operate. In 1994, public concern about criminals ‘getting away with it’ led the government to make changes in the laws on this matter.

The system of justice

The system of justice in England and Wales, in both civil and criminal cases, is an adversarial system —> there is no such thing as an examining magistrate who tries to discover the real truth about what happened; it is not the business of any court to find out ‘the truth’, its job is simply to decide ‘yes’ or ‘no” to a particular proposition after it has heard arguments and evidence from both sides.
The civil justice system has its own courts, more than 90% of all cases are dealt with in magistrates’ courts —> every town has one of these in which a panel of magistrates passes judgement.
Magistrates’ courts are one example of the importance of amateurism in British public life.
Magistrates, who are also known as Justices of the Peace (JPs), are not trained lawyers, they are just ordinary people of good reputation who have been appointed to the job by a local committee, also, they do not get a salary or a fee for their work.
Even serious criminal cases are first heard in a magistrates' court.
Unlike most other countries in the world, the decision regarding guilt or innocence is not taken by the judge or any other legal professional but it is taken by a jury —> consist of 12 people selected at random from the list of voters (in order to reach a verdict, there must be agreement among at least ten of them).
The duty of the judge during a trial is to act as the referee while the prosecution and defence put their cases across and question witnesses, and to decide what evidence can be taken into account by the jury and what cannot.

The legal profession

As in many other countries, lawyers in Britain are not the most popular of professionals and do not often advertise their services directly.
In Britain there are two kinds of lawyers:
solicitors = who deal with the public (anybody who needs a lawyer goes to see a solicitor). They handle most legal matters for their clients.
barristers = who work in a higher court, their main function is to present cases in court and also offer expert legal opinions when asked.
Solicitors dealt with the realities of the everyday world and its problems while barristers were farther removed, becoming experts in arcane points of law and acquiring the special skill of eloquence in public speaking. As a result, the two kinds of lawyer came into competition with each other.
Now, in the popular image, barristers are in some sense ‘senior’ to solicitors, more highly educated and so, perhaps, ‘better’; unlike solicitors, they are mostly self-employed and have a prestige similar to that of doctors. Because of this popular perception, the country’s solicitors felt they needed to defend their territory by boosting their image.
In fact, solicitors and barristers still receive separate training and have to pass different exams, reflecting the different skills they are expected to acquire. Previously, barristers were recruite almost entirely from the upper strata of society and those who became judges, although often people of great learning and intelligence, sometimes seemed to have difficulty understanding the problems and circumstances of ordinary people and to be out of step with general public opinion.
At the same time, some traditions remain —> barristers and judges in higher courts still wear the archaic gowns and wigs to emphasize the impersonal majesty of the law.