Conservative thinkers: the key contributors to the political thought of the modern Conservative Party 9780719075087, 9781847792990, 1847792995

Table of contents :
Copyright Page......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Introduction......Page 7
1 Harold Macmillan......Page 14
2 Rab Butler and the One Nation Group......Page 28
3 Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham......Page 46
4 Enoch Powell......Page 63
5 Angus Maude......Page 79
6 Keith Joseph......Page 97
7 The traditionalists......Page 111
8 Ian Gilmour and the wets......Page 127
9 John Redwood......Page 146
10 David Willetts......Page 161
Conclusion......Page 175
Bibliography......Page 185
Index......Page 193

Citation preview

Conservative thinkers

Conservative thinkers The key contributors to the political thought of the modern Conservative Party Mark Garnett and Kevin Hickson

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York

distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

Copyright © Mark Garnett and Kevin Hickson 2009 The right of Mark Garnett and Kevin Hickson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN

978 07190 7508 7 hardback

First published 2009 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents    

    Acknowledgements

page vi

    Introduction   1  Harold Macmillan   2  Rab Butler and the One Nation Group   3  Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham   4  Enoch Powell   5  Angus Maude   6  Keith Joseph   7  The traditionalists   8  Ian Gilmour and the wets   9  John Redwood 10  David Willettts     Conclusion

1 8 22 40 57 73 91 105 121 140 155 169

    Bibliography     Index

179 187

Acknowledgements Kevin Hickson would like to record his thanks to the late Lord Biffen, Lord Howe, John Redwood MP, Professor Roger Scruton, Jonathan Sumption QC, Lord Tebbit, David Willetts MP, and Sir Peregrine Worsthorne. All kindly agreed to be interviewed for the book. John Redwood, Roger Scruton, Jonathan Sumption, David Willetts and Sir Peregrine Worsthorne also commented on the relevant draft chapters. We are most grateful for their assistance, although we accept full responsibility for the judgements included in the published version. Kevin Hickson would also like to thank Professor Lee Miles and Professor Arthur Aughey. Mark Garnett’s greatest debts are to five Conservatives who, in the course of research for earlier projects, offered valuable insights which were relevant to this book. Lord Alport, James Douglas, Lord Gilmour, Sir Edward Heath and Lord Pym are no longer alive, but they are remembered with great affection and gratitude. The chapters on Macmillan, Butler, Hailsham and Maude are dedicated to Ian Gilmour, in memory of a long and cherished friendship. Although he died before the completion of the chapter on his own career, he agreed to be interviewed for the project and, as ever, was a generous host on that occasion. He would have dissented very strongly from the conclusions of the chapter which discusses the nature of his own ideas, but hopefully he would have recognised their friendly intentions.

Introduction

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his book is an analysis of the political thought of the Conservative Party. Academic discussions of the Conservative Party have tended to neglect ideology, focusing instead on the ‘pragmatic’ nature of the Party and its electoral and governmental record. We believe that this view is mistaken, and that the Party’s development since the Second World War cannot be understood without a detailed consideration of ideas. The chapters trace the ideology of the Conservative Party through its most prominent thinkers. These are Harold Macmillan; R. A. Butler; Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham); Enoch Powell; Angus Maude; Keith Joseph; the traditionalists (T. E. ‘Peter’ Utley, Maurice Cowling, Peregrine Worsthorne, Shirley Letwin and Roger Scruton); the ‘wets’ (most notably Ian Gilmour); John Redwood; and David Willetts. These are the individuals considered by the authors to have made the most important contributions to the political thought of the Conservative Party. Some of them did so through the publication of a major book or even in some cases a series of books. Others (notably Powell) made their contributions in the form of articles or speeches. Some of these individuals were primarily academics (Cowling and Scruton) or journalists (Utley and Worsthorne) who, through their utterances on Conservatism, made important contributions to the Party’s ideology. Others, most notably perhaps Butler, contributed more to the ideological reconfiguration of the Conservative Party through practice rather than theory. Our subjects are studied in a broadly chronological framework and each chapter contains a brief biographical overview followed by an evaluation of their thought. This brief overview of the book provokes two theoretical issues and it is the purpose of the Introduction to deal with these head-on. The first relates to the nature of the Conservative Party, which many commentators argue is not an ideological entity. The most widely cited academic perspective of this

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sort is the ‘statecraft’ thesis first outlined by James Bulpitt, who argued that the Conservative Party is in fact a pragmatic movement committed above all to winning elections and maintaining power.1 If this view is correct then there seems little point in analysing the work of authors who have tried to exercise ideological influence over the Conservative Party. The second issue raised here is that of why and how the authors have selected the individual thinkers and overlooked others with plausible claims to influence. Ideology and pragmatism in the Conservative Party A number of commentators have argued that the Conservative Party is free from ideology. This has indeed been argued by prominent Conservatives themselves and was frequently heard in the 1980s as opponents of Thatcherism claimed that Margaret Thatcher had brought in something alien to the Conservative Party – ideology. This view was expressed most vocally by Ian Gilmour, who prided himself on his lack of ideology (a view that will be examined critically in this book).2 Others argued that in fact the Thatcher Governments had not been pragmatic but had instead been part of the authentic Conservative tradition, which the Party had neglected in the years after 1945. Of those discussed in the book, this view was expressed by Peter Utley and Shirley Letwin.3 The most sophisticated academic expression of this approach to the politics of the Conservative Party was expressed by Bulpitt.4 Although the Conservative Party may well hold to all kinds of opinions on a broad range of issues, the Party as a whole was not an ideological organisation, but instead was one guided by ‘statecraft’. Briefly expressed, statecraft was a preoccupation with the politics of power. It was concerned above all with winning elections and holding on to office. If the Conservative Party was in opposition, then this would involve finding effective critiques of the government; if in power, the Party should demonstrate a degree of governing competence, as well as discrediting its political opponents. Ideas didn’t matter in this process, except to further the Party’s statecraft, to gain what Bulpitt termed ‘elite argument hegemony’.5 This process of statecraft could be seen in the post-war repositioning of the Conservatives after Labour’s victory in the 1945 General Election, and a similar strategic shift after the two electoral defeats of 1974. If this view is accepted then it makes only limited sense to analyse the ideology of the Conservative Party. However, it is important to raise a number of issues with the ‘statecraft’ interpretation as it stands. The first relates to the nature of the Conservative Party’s statecraft itself. It becomes apparent that this has changed over time. The notion of statecraft as limited politics, as Bulpitt outlined it, was most associated with the leadership of Lord Salisbury (1881– 

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1902), who believed that politics was an activity limited to maintaining social order and defending the nation from internal and external threats.6 The role of the state was like that of the policeman, and without deviant human conduct there would be no need for the state. Consequently it was not the responsibility of the state to manage the economy or to implement social reform. Gradually, over the course of the twentieth century, the functions of the state were enlarged as it took responsibility for welfare reforms and economic management. This was occurring before the Second World War but increased under the Churchill coalition and the first majority Labour administration (1945–51). Therefore the statecraft of post-war Conservative governments was very different from that of Salisbury. The election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government in 1979 may well have been expected to herald a restoration of limited politics. However, the economic and welfare reforms implemented after 1979 required a very active form of government.7 Therefore, we can see that the statecraft of the Conservative Party was not fixed but rather changed over time in the light of changed circumstances and the beliefs of the Party’s leaders. On this view, ideology has always been an integral element in Conservative ‘statecraft’; indeed, there have been times when the Party’s prospects of winning or retaining office have been endangered by the pursuit of ideological objectives. Thus, even though the idea of statecraft is important for understanding the Party’s fortunes since 1945 it could not be fully appreciated without a thorough study of ideological developments. The second reason for transcending the statecraft thesis is that it rests on a very limited evidential basis. The usual sources for historical enquiry – memoirs, diaries, speeches, press releases, private and official papers, etc. – are largely dismissed as exercises in political rhetoric while professional politicians correctly perceive that the reality is one of the essential power-struggle within and between political parties. However, the methodological approach taken in this book is that of hermeneutics. The essential feature of hermeneutics is to accept that political activity is a subjective exercise and one shaped by beliefs. Such academic analysis will inevitably be subjective as the views of the author will shape the ways in which he or she understands the actors under scrutiny. However, this does not mean that academics should fall in to relativism. Instead, there are a range of sources that can be used in order to understand the motivations of political actors. It is only through a careful examination of these sources that academics can gain an accurate understanding of the beliefs of the actors involved. Hence, for the purposes of this study, the authors will examine a range of published and unpublished sources. What these sources reveal is that the political actors in question were or are all motivated by beliefs or ideology. While policy does not derive purely from ideology, it is one important source of policy development; hence we cannot understand the development of the 

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Conservative Party without an accurate understanding of its ideology. This raises the question of what form the ideology of the Conservative Party actually takes. This has been the subject of bitter contestation among Conservatives, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s when rival groups claimed to be custodians of the true Conservative (or ‘conservative’) faith. Thankfully this thorny subject is not a primary concern for the present study; we examine the ideas of various thinkers who are associated with the Conservative Party, and although an attempt is made to characterise their ideas it would be quite improper to come down decisively on one side or the other. The point of the exercise is to reach a critical understanding of the various viewpoints, and to assess their impact on the Party. A clear account of the Conservative Party’s ideology has been provided recently. Hickson distinguishes between four main ideological traditions present in the Conservative Party since 1945: traditional Toryism, New Right, Centrist and One Nation.8 The essential features of traditional Toryism are a concern with the preservation of the social order, a strong attachment to the nation and the preservation of the authority of the state. Many of the ideas of the traditionalist approach were articulated by Lord Salisbury. In the 1970s the free-market strand of Conservatism began to reassert itself. For some the free market was required to uphold the core values of traditional Toryism, and hence the traditionalist position morphed into the New Right. However, the dominant strand within the New Right was a liberal one, motivated by a belief that the drift towards economic collectivism since 1945 (if not earlier) was undermining individual freedom, which was best preserved through the free market. Centrists are concerned primarily with party unity and loyalty to the party leadership in order to best win elections; as such, it can be argued that they are the only Conservative practitioners of ‘statecraft’ within the Party. The final strand of Conservative thought is the One Nation tradition, which originates with Disraeli and was dominant within the Conservative Party from 1945 to 1975. The One Nation view is that there is a need to preserve social unity, which is undermined by social class antagonisms. For post-war Conservatives the welfare state was deemed to be the most effective way of preserving social unity. By outlining the political thought of the Conservative Party in this way we can stress several points. The first is that the Conservative Party contains a number of ideological traditions. Although these can be placed on a left–right spectrum to some extent it would be simplistic to do so without taking into account the evolving nature of such a spectrum. Secondly, it is the tensions between these ideological traditions, and the ways in which key actors ­reinterpret these traditions in the light of changing circumstances, that allow for the ideological modernisation of the Conservative Party. Finally, we can see that at best, 

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only one strand of the Conservative Party – the ‘centrist’ one – is a reasonable approximation to the statecraft which Bulpitt ascribed to the Party as a whole. The issue of selection The other important issue that we need to address in the Introduction is the way in which the individuals featured in this study have been selected. It follows from the above outline of the ideology of the Conservative Party that the individuals chosen represent leading figures within the major ideological traditions. Hence, we begin with a discussion of Macmillan, whose The Middle Way (1938) is usually read as the basis for the form of politics dominant in the Conservative Party after 1945. The role of Butler as Chairman of the Party’s Research Department after 1945 was to allow for the development of concrete policy proposals which owed something to Macmillan’s ideas, although as this study shows, Butler was never wholly convinced by The Middle Way. By the 1980s this One Nation strand of Conservatism came under attack from the New Right and the work of Gilmour in particular can be seen as a defence of One Nation Conservatism. The interrelationship between conservative and liberal elements within the New Right can be seen in the work of Powell, who combined a strong sense of national identity with free-market economic policies. After Powell had left the Conservative Party in 1974, the economic liberal side was articulated most forcibly by Mrs Thatcher’s ‘guru’, Keith Joseph and after 1979 Redwood was crucial in the development of a number of key policy areas. The political thought of the traditionalists underlined the tensions that existed over the free market. In the 1970s most traditionalists were supportive of the move to the right; however as the 1980s wore on some remained sympathetic while others became more critical. Of those studied in the book, three are perhaps harder to place within this framework. The first is Hailsham, who wrote in the 1940s and 1950s from a perspective broadly sympathetic to the One Nation tradition. However, Hailsham was a generational misfit: had he entered the Commons alongside Butler (1929) or the One Nation Group (1950) he might easily have joined forces with both, but his victory in the 1938 Oxford by-election made him at best a distant ally. As it was, he never forgot his resentment against Labour’s 1945 election victory, and this (along with his loyalty to the legal profession) ensured that he swallowed his distaste for the Thatcher Governments. The second is that of Angus Maude. Maude opposed the drift towards ­collectivism and advocated a number of economic liberal policies, but combined this with a philosophical eclecticism which contrasts starkly with the 

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more overtly ideological advocates of the New Right, whose chief philosophical guide was Friedrich von Hayek. The final individual who stands out as being somewhat unique in this book is Willetts, the only individual under review who has sought to articulate a post-Thatcherite Conservatism. All of those selected for enquiry have shaped the ideology of the Conservative Party. Some have helped to develop policy in specific areas but all have made a distinctive ideological contribution. A number of others have made serious and sustained contributions to the development of policy in one or more areas, but have not contributed significantly to the Party’s ideology and for this reason have been excluded. Others have attempted to make an ideological contribution but do not warrant inclusion either because their ideas were not as original or as influential as those we have included or because they did not prove to be as consistent in their beliefs. One principle of selection is that the contribution of some is best evaluated in relation to others. This is the case, for instance, with Richard Law (Lord Coleraine) whose views on Conservatism in the late 1960s and early 1970s are contrasted to those of Maude. Moreover, we have tended to focus on individuals rather than groups within the Party since we believe that it is through individuals that we can best trace the ideological trajectory of the Conservatives. However, it is important to note that some groups have been important in the major ideological as well as policy developments of the Conservative Party. Such groups would include One Nation and the Tory Reform Group on the left of the Party, the Monday Club and the Salisbury Group in the articulation of traditional Toryism, and the numerous think tanks and internal party groups associated with the New Right. Similarly, in relation to the modernisation of the Conservative Party under David Cameron it is important to mention the work of Policy Exchange and Reform. Some readers might be surprised by our decision to exclude Michael Oakeshott from this book. Oakeshott is seen by many as the leading conservative political philosopher of the twentieth century, at least in a British context. However, Oakeshott’s contribution was more to conservatism as a political philosophy, rather than the ideology of the Conservative Party. In this respect, given the general tendency of academia in the post-war period, his importance owed a great deal to his novelty value as a philosopher who was prepared to resist a seemingly inexorable trend. He wrote a number of articles in the Cambridge Journal after 1945 rejecting the post-war reconstruction of Conservatism but, with this one exception, remained aloof from the Party. His distinction between rationalist and anti-rationalist forms of politics has been hard to apply to the Conservative Party and perhaps for this reason his name has been used both to defend or to attack One Nation Conservatism and the New Right. It is for these reasons that we have not included Oakeshott in this book, but inevitably his name crops up in several chapters and he can be used, as he is here, to 

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­illuminate several features of the thought of those who are included. Notes 1    J. Bulpitt, ‘The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft’, Political Studies, 34:1, 1986. 2    I. Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism (Hutchinson, London, 1977). See Chapter 8. 3    See in particular S. R. Letwin, The Anatomy of Thatcherism (Fontana, London, 1992). 4    See note 1 above. 5    Indeed, Bulpitt argued that ideas were only for amateurs since professional politicians realised the overriding importance of statecraft. J. Bulpitt, ‘The European Question: Rules, National Modernisation and the Ambiguities of Primat der Innenpolitik’, in D. Marquand and A. Seldon (eds), The Ideas that Shaped Postwar Britain (Fontana, London, 1996), p. 252. 6    See A. Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1999) for a detailed account of Salisbury’s political outlook. 7    One particularly interesting account of this paradox of the New Right is N. O’Sullivan, ‘Conservatism, the New Right and the Limited State’, in J. Hayward and P. Norton (eds), The Political Science of British Politics (Harvester Wheatsheaf, Brighton, 1986). 8    K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945 (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2005).



1

Harold Macmillan I shall be able to claim, like Disraeli, that I have educated my party Harold Macmillan to Selwyn Lloyd, 15 July 1961.1

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ccording to the late Ewen Green, ‘Harold Macmillan was the most selfconsciously intellectual Conservative leader of the twentieth century’.2 Unusually for Green, this is a contestable judgement. Arthur Balfour, after all, was fully aware of his intellectual distinction and wrote serious philosophical treatises. By contrast Macmillan’s political writings rarely strayed into metaphysics, while his taste in fiction was fairly ‘middle-brow’ and parochial. Nevertheless, Macmillan was bookish from boyhood and his introspection deepened during the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded. His studious nature did nothing to enhance his prospects after his first election to parliament in 1924. Simon Ball has written that until well into the Second World War, ‘Macmillan was regarded, by both friends and enemies, as impossibly pompous, self-obsessed and utterly lacking in charm’, and while this judgement is exaggerated, fellow MPs soon knew better than to expect light-hearted bantering speeches from the Member for Stockton. When he was not spewing out streams of statistics he was capable of disagreeable breaches of parliamentary etiquette. Even in 1940, when Macmillan took an active part in the removal of Neville Chamberlain from office, he managed to sour the occasion by attempting to lead his fellow Conservative rebels in a chorus of Rule Britannia after the historic vote of no confidence.3 If Macmillan really had been so ‘self-consciously intellectual’, his subsequent elevation to the party leadership would be very difficult to explain. Although John Stuart Mill’s jibe about ‘the stupid party’ was never fair, Conservatives have always distrusted unduly cerebral politicians. Ewen Green’s portrait of the ‘intellectual’ prime minister Macmillan emerges in the context of an essay which largely eschews biographical considerations. By contrast, this chapter argues that there were two Macmillans – the pre-war intellectual, and the post-war opportunist. From this perspective, it is possible to understand his ­ambiguous

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contribution to the development of ideas within the Conservative Party. The Middle Way By the time of the Second World War, Macmillan was already a prolific author. In his case, the impulse to seek out an audience for distinctive political views was augmented by a guarantee of publication, since it was unlikely that any colleagues in the family publishing house would dare to turn down one of his proffered manuscripts. His most important work, The Middle Way (1938), capped a series of volumes which were written either singly or in cooperation with others. In this period of his life, Macmillan understood the value of combination with like-minded MPs; he was, for example, a member of the Conservative ‘ginger group’ which was eventually dubbed ‘the YMCA’. Along with other members of this group, Oliver Stanley, John Loder and Robert Boothby, Macmillan had produced Industry and the State as early as 1927. The Daily Mail had denounced its findings – which included the suggestion of worker–employer partnerships in industry – as a manifestation of ‘socialism’.4 This accusation would become increasingly familiar to Macmillan in the interwar period. However, the subsequent economic crisis helped him to win a more favourable reception in some quarters, and his tract Reconstruction (1933) was reviewed sympathetically in The Times. By 1933, though, it was doubtful whether Macmillan would even be able to sustain a career as a boring backbencher. In the general election of 1929 he lost his Stockton seat. Deprived of a parliamentary platform, Macmillan’s equanimity was further disturbed by the adultery of his wife, who had embarked on an affair with his former coadjutor, Boothby. In 1930 Macmillan suffered a breakdown, and his political judgement became increasingly erratic. He was widely regarded as a likely defector from the Conservative ranks, especially after a public show of support for the Labour renegade Oswald Mosley. This appeared in a letter which Macmillan sent to The Times in May 1930. He complained that his own party had fought the previous year’s election on a platform whose ‘pledges and promises were either negative or self-contradictory’. Having lambasted the Conservatives, Macmillan delivered a more general attack on the prevailing tendencies within the political system, in which the main contestants apparently felt unconstrained by electoral promises. ‘I suspect,’ he wrote, ‘that this is the real way the game ought to be played. Only, if these rules are to be permanently enforced, perhaps a good many of us will feel that it is hardly worth while’.5 Despite this truculent display, Macmillan was not ready to kick over the traces, and although in the following year he privately acknowledged his ­sympathy for 

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Mosley’s breakaway venture, the ‘New Party’, he did not join it. The old party system was under strain in those years, but Macmillan’s best chance still lay with the Conservatives. The formation of a National Government gave him the opportunity of regaining Stockton in the Conservative interest; Reconstruction was his attempt to persuade the coalition to adopt a truly national policy. By 1938, Macmillan could feel that he had contributed to a trend in political thinking which had exercised a considerable influence over government decisions. The social services had developed from the base laid down by the Liberals in the early years of the century, and the state had taken a much more active role in economic affairs, so that the ‘utilities’ were increasingly falling under public control. Yet Macmillan felt that government thinking had been insufficiently systematic. Democratic governments in Europe were confronted by the twin challenges of fascism and socialism. In order to defend themselves against the totalitarian threat, democrats needed to reaffirm their commitment to individual liberty while espousing more rational procedures in economic and social matters. In short, they needed to champion the ‘Middle Way’, piloting a course between unadulterated capitalism and a degree of state control which suffocated the spirit of individuality. Macmillan’s prescription was based on the belief that the Western world had solved the problem of production, at least so far as essentials were concerned. Everyone in Britain could now be guaranteed a decent standard of living, if only policy was actuated by rationality rather than outdated prejudices. The main problem for the British economy was its inability to find a painless way of adapting to change. While some areas and industries were thriving, others were declining in a way which caused unnecessary social hardship. Macmillan’s solution was more rigorous economic planning. He identified three stages in the life of any industry: an initial period of entrepreneurial excitement, followed by prosperity, and then decline. In the first stage the state should stand aloof; in the second it should play at most a limited role in encouraging the rationalisation of production; but in the third it should move to centre stage, overseeing the liquidation of failing concerns and trying to provide alternative employment in the areas where workers had been made redundant. If necessary, Macmillan was not frightened by the prospect of certain industries being taken into state ownership. He produced evidence which showed that government intervention had already made deep inroads into economic activity. This process had not been inspired by any ideology; it was, rather, an evolutionary response to perceived needs, in an era when economies of scale, in production, marketing and distribution, were looking increasingly attractive.6 For Macmillan, economic reorganisation on rational lines was merely a means to an end. His main concern was that, as presently constituted, ‘our social services are only touching the fringe of social needs’. He produced ­statistical 10

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evidence to demonstrate the extent of malnutrition amongst Britain’s poor, and stressed that within an unplanned economy impoverishment could affect almost anyone. Minimum standards of living should be guaranteed, not just for those in paid employment but also for the jobless. The unemployed should always make themselves available for work, but since industrialism made it impossible for landless individuals to be self-sufficient, society had a duty either to provide constructive outlets for their energy or to maintain them in their enforced idleness. While he accepted that the current level of cash benefits was about right, he urged that it should be supplemented by the free distribution of essential foodstuffs. On the one hand, Macmillan’s detailed calculations betrayed a puritanical streak – the unemployed, he argued, should have less money to fritter away on beer, tobacco and presents. But his recommendations demanded a prodigious effort by the state in terms of distribution and administration; the essential foodstuffs would have to be delivered free of charge to the doorsteps of the unemployed, by a National Nutrition Board. The same principle would operate in the cases of the ill and the elderly.7 Macmillan thought that he had devised a system which would create a virtuous circle in the social and economic spheres. As a friend and admirer of Keynes, his chief anxiety was to direct state activity towards the maximisation of economic activity and demand. For him, Britain was faced with two problems: the decline of long-established industries, and the enduring prevalence of laissez-faire, as much as an instinct as a fully-fledged theory. For the most part, state intervention should be advisory rather than directive; companies in declining economic sectors would be persuaded that their best interests lay in rationalising their operations. Once this process was under way unemployment would decline; but since the state itself had reorganised its approach to the social services, the remaining jobless could be supported in a more civilised fashion without imposing an additional burden on the nation’s wealth creators, who were already taxed to the limit. Contrary to the view of his libertarian critics, Macmillan took pains to stress that his aim was to protect liberty against totalitarians of both right and left. There was, he argued, no need to sacrifice ‘democracy, political liberty, and individual freedom’ in the quest for economic efficiency. There was, in fact, a potential threat to democracy in Macmillan’s proposals, since many key economic decisions would be taken by the leading representatives of capital and labour without any clear line of accountability to the public. However, if pressed on this point Macmillan could argue that such individuals already enjoyed considerable economic power, and in a quasi-governmental capacity their ­ deliberations would attract more publicity. At the first opportunity he proclaimed the ultimate purpose of his ‘Middle Way’ in the age of Hitler and Stalin: ‘let us make human liberty the first objective of our plans – that is, ­liberty 11

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from the humiliation and restraints of unnecessary poverty; liberty from any unnecessary burden of toil; liberty from the haunting fear of insecurity’. The power of the machine should be harnessed so that ‘new vistas of freedom open up’. 8 Ultimately his position was that some sacrifice of economic individualism was the unavoidable price if Britons wished to retain their spiritual freedom in the unfriendly context of the 1930s. The proponents of laissez-faire, in his view, had a contrary order of priorities. Macmillan scorned them as ‘dispassionate blackboard reasoners’, who scarcely differed from the more obvious enemies of human freedom in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union.9 Climbing the ladder Without Hitler, Macmillan might have remained a fairly obscure figure. As it was, his fortunes were transformed by Winston Churchill’s emergence as a national saviour. His record as an anti-appeaser definitely helped, and in Churchill’s eyes his questionable loyalty to the Conservative Party was by no means a handicap. He got his first taste of ministerial office in 1940, at the Ministry of Supply. According to the Conservative backbencher Cuthbert Headlam, promotion made Macmillan even more insufferable: ‘He never will let the other man have his say and he invariably knows everything better than the other man’. Yet Headlam acknowledged that despite his relatively slow start and unpleasing personality Macmillan was likely to rise further – even, perhaps, to the very top.10 In February 1942 he moved to the Colonial Office, as an Under-Secretary. Before the end of the year he had been named as the resident Minister in North-West Africa, a post which allowed full scope to his energy and also secured some useful contacts, particularly with the future US President Eisenhower. In Churchill’s short-lived caretaker government, he finally achieved Cabinet rank as Secretary for Air (where his Under-Secretary was Quintin Hogg). This sudden preferment transformed Macmillan’s character and outlook. Larry Siedentop has written that Macmillan’s life story ‘is one of the persistent pursuit of power’.11 Yet until the war he had been working to promote certain ideas; after rising to ministerial office he was actively seeking his own advancement. It was no surprise that the nature of Macmillan’s ideas changed along with his re-ordering of priorities. According to his admirer Harold Nicolson, in November 1943 he was beginning to brood on the possibility that post-war reforms in the social services would produce a ‘dependency culture’; workers, he mused, ‘think that they can now be idle, and that in some manner the Govt. will provide’.12 Since Macmillan had been abroad for much of the previous year, this judgement cannot have arisen from his customary factual analysis; 12

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more likely, his previous assumption that mass unemployment was entirely the fault of a malfunctioning economic system had been overturned by a new tactical concern for the electoral fortunes of his party, in a post-war world where Labour could easily make the ideological running. As it was, in the 1945 General Election Macmillan lost Stockton for the second time; but his new prominence within his party ensured a convenient and swift by-election success at Bromley. In itself, this geographical flit was telling; Macmillan always made much of his connection to the north-east of England as a formative influence, but now he was in too much of a hurry to waste valuable time waiting for the electoral pendulum to swing back in his spiritual homeland. He was closely involved in the re-thinking of Conservative policy which bore fruit in the Industrial Charter (1947). Although Rab Butler was undoubtedly the main mover in the exercise, a superficial resemblance between this document and the general approach of The Middle Way inspired a view that the Charter could be read as a ‘second draft’ of Macmillan’s book. In truth, it was far removed from Macmillan’s pre-war visions. In defending the Charter against press criticism Macmillan described it as ‘merely a restatement in the light of modern conditions of the fundamental and lasting principles of our party’.13 It is doubtful that he would ever have delivered such a modest assessment of The Middle Way. Indeed, a strict follower of the doctrine of that book would have deplored the failure of the Attlee Government to instigate systematic planning on a nationwide scale, rather than concentrating on piecemeal nationalisation of the public utilities. Macmillan himself had drawn attention to the unrevolutionary nature of Labour’s inter-war proposals, noting that the party had no intention of taking over failing concerns without adequate compensation.14 Macmillan was handed a chance to put his ideas into operation when he was made Minister of Housing and Local Government in Churchill’s post-war administration. Seemingly it was not a glamorous appointment, but fate was now running irresistibly in Macmillan’s direction. At the 1950 party conference – an event which Macmillan himself did not attend – the audience stampeded their Chairman, Lord Woolton, into a promise to build 300,000 houses per year. The demand was not unprecedented in Conservative circles; back in 1944 Quintin Hogg had argued that ‘We need millions of houses, and millions of houses are not built in a day’; and Enoch Powell’s chapter on housing in the recently-published One Nation volume must have encouraged the mood at the 1950 conference.15 But Macmillan was able to turn a public pledge which was not of his own making into a blank cheque. Through a mixture of good organisation, energy, cajolery and astute threats of resignation, he prised the necessary resources out of the reluctant Chancellor, Butler. Macmillan had no qualms about using the public sector in order to make sure that he fulfilled his target; but once the magic 300,000 figure had been achieved, he ensured that as many 13

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houses as possible were built by private enterprise. In both respects, Macmillan was acting in accordance with the doctrine of The Middle Way; if his critics regarded his three-year stint at Housing and Local Government as an exercise in ‘pink socialism’, they were continuing to mistake their man. In the way that the pledge was fulfilled, he was also helping to boost the popularity of his party, adding substantially to the ranks of middle-class property owners. Close identification with a policy which benefited the Conservatives was unlikely to do Macmillan’s leadership prospects much harm.16 In any case, if things did go wrong Macmillan could merely retort that he had fulfilled the unlikely task that had been foisted on him. As it was, his stock rose further. Within little more than a year of leaving Housing and Local Government he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, having served at Defence and the Foreign Office in the brief interim. Once again the dice had fallen to his satisfaction. He had been made Foreign Secretary when Anthony Eden succeeded Churchill in April 1955, but only because Eden was anxious to keep his supposed chief rival, Butler, out of the Foreign Office. Eden really wanted to act as his own Foreign Secretary, and Macmillan was too astute to lapse into a subordinate role. In December 1955 he was shunted to the Treasury, but refused to go quietly. Instead, he demanded a free hand in economic policy-­making, dropping unsubtle hints about the revolutionary changes he envisaged. In fact, Macmillan’s stewardship of the Treasury was notable mainly for the introduction of Premium Bonds, a populist initiative which has generally been taken as evidence for his ‘showmanship’. Whether or not this judgement is fair, it was certainly not a trait which would have been suspected in the Macmillan of The Middle Way. ‘Supermac’ Macmillan served as Chancellor for just over a year – not really long enough to have carried out a ‘revolution’, even if he had wanted one. However, many of his decisions bore the hallmarks of a very conventional careerist. In his search for savings he spared limited loyalty for his old ‘spending’ ministries of Defence and Housing – even though he had constantly badgered the Treasury for money when he had held those posts. Significantly, the Chancellor who had tried to resist Macmillan’s demands had been Rab Butler. Since Butler (now Home Secretary) was Macmillan’s junior by ten years, the older man was well aware that if his ambitions were to be realised he would have to advance quickly, and, if possible, at his rival’s expense. Macmillan, though, was certainly not orthodox in his behaviour during the Suez crisis, which was to bring him the ultimate prize of the premiership. His 14

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critics were right to argue that he was ‘first in, first out’ – initially complacent about the likely US reaction, then panic-stricken when his advice to Eden turned out to be hopelessly wrong. The ‘middle way’ was the one position which eluded him in this crucial period. In different circumstances, Macmillan might have followed the prime minister into involuntary retirement after the ignominious collapse of the Suez adventure. Instead, the fiasco made him Eden’s logical replacement. In part, this was precisely because his post-war antics had erased his earlier image, and he now seemed less intellectual than his fastidious opponent, Butler; as Edward Pearce has written, by comparison Macmillan ‘looked like people’s idea of a statesman’.17 Also, while Eden had demoted (and, according to some, humiliated) Butler in the reshuffle of December 1955, Macmillan’s career was still on an upward trajectory. This context meant that Macmillan – who could be nerve-wracked to the point of vomiting before public speeches – gave a much more effective performance than Butler at the crucial 1922 Committee meeting after Eden had departed to convalesce in the West Indies. Enoch Powell described Macmillan’s self-advancing speech as ‘One of the most horrible things that I remember in politics’.18 Others, though, merely formed the impression that Macmillan might be capable of spectacular misjudgements, but at least he was ready to take a stand. The man who had once attacked politics as a ‘game’ because the participants seemed so dishonourable had become the main beneficiary of one of the most shoddy episodes in British political history. In fact, Macmillan had become so consumed with the game of politics that he had paid little heed to the situation that he would inherit. By the beginning of 1957, his main concern was to seize the crown from Eden and Butler. In some respects, the outlook was propitious for the ideologue of the inter-war years. Britain had continued to decline in relative terms, although in most respects it was still a major player on the world stage. Economic planning was being practiced in other European countries, notably France. Yet Macmillan was no longer a backbench politician with big ideas; he was the leader of a party which was suffering a nervous breakdown. His role, as he saw it, was to give the public the impression of business as usual. If anything, this act succeeded too well. The resignation of Treasury ministers, including Enoch Powell, in January 1958 was brushed aside by the prime minister as evidence of ‘little local difficulties’. The nickname ‘Supermac’, originally bestowed on Macmillan by the hostile cartoonist ‘Vicky’, ended up being regarded as a tribute to his preternatural political powers. Most importantly, Macmillan’s warning about economic difficulties, delivered to a Conservative rally in July 1957, was translated into a straightforward boast that ‘we’ve never had it so good’. While media commentators were responsible for taking the remarks out of context, Macmillan had certainly come a long way from 1938 when he 15

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had expressed regret that people had become enslaved by materialism.19 Angus Maude, who resigned as a Conservative MP a few months after Macmillan became prime minister and re-entered parliament in the last months of his government, thought that ‘it is not easy, in retrospect, to identify the Macmillan administrations with any ideals of a markedly spiritual kind’.20 However, the earnest Macmillan of the 1930s had not been entirely subsumed by the showman. The Treasury resignations of January 1958, for example, were provoked by the prime minister’s refusal to countenance economic measures which he considered to be over-restrictive. This could be taken as evidence that Macmillan was still an economic expansionist on principle. However, by the late 1950s his old theorising was reinforced by fear that a recession might cost the Conservatives the next election – and concern for his party’s short-term interests had certainly not been a major consideration for the Macmillan of the 1930s. The best evidence of continuity in Macmillan’s thought and practice was the National Economic Development Council (NEDC), which met for the first time in March 1962. Macmillan, rather than his Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd, was the real instigator of this institution, which was intended to provide a forum for detailed discussions on the economy between representatives of employers, trade unions, government and independent experts. It was during the preparatory work on the NEDC that Macmillan referred back to The Middle Way and told Lloyd that he would be ‘educating his party’, albeit somewhat belatedly. The NEDC was certainly disliked by the advocates of laissez faire, who thought that it savoured of ‘corporatism’. Similar bodies covering specific industries (‘Little Neddies’, as they were dubbed) were also established. Yet although Macmillan was briefly entranced by the possibility that ‘events’ might bring his old ideas into vogue, the new institutions never came close to realising the visions of The Middle Way. In 1965 Andrew Shonfield noted that the NEDC had been deliberately kept ‘at arm’s length’ from the government; its members ‘had no right of access to official documents or to the Government’s discussions about its own plans’. This meant that the NEDC compared very unfavourably to its French counterpart, the Commissariat du Plan.21 Later assessments have been even harsher. The historian of the Macmillan Government has claimed that ‘the achievements of NEDC were infinitessimal’. Certainly before Macmillan left office in 1963, Richard Lamb wrote, the body ‘did nothing to affect industrial practice and must be dismissed as a failure’.22 If anything, Macmillan’s attempt to ‘educate’ his fellow Conservatives was even less fruitful; far from winning acceptance over time, after many stagnant years the NEDC was finally abolished by John Major’s Government in 1992. It was somehow in keeping with Macmillan’s premiership that much greater faith was placed in the likely economic benefits arising from membership of 16

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the EEC. In the immediate post-war period Macmillan had been a champion of European unity, but during his brief spell as Foreign Secretary he did little to advance the cause or to ‘educate’ his party on the subject. It may be that in the post-Suez context Macmillan had no choice but to push Britain still deeper into the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US. However, the inevitable result of this strategy was increasing suspicion of Britain’s intentions towards Europe, and De Gaulle’s veto of Macmillan’s EEC application. This, rather than the ensuing Profumo affair, was the most telling testimony to Macmillan’s failure as a constructive politician. His major success was to lead his party to victory at the 1959 General Election, a notable achievement so soon after Suez but still a cause for celebration among Conservatives rather than a positive development for the country as a whole. The Legacy It might seem unfair to judge Macmillan’s record as a senior cabinet minister in relation to ideas which he had advanced several decades previously. Such an approach grossly underplays the independent power of a Chancellor or Prime Minister, as well as disregarding changes in context. After all, by the time of Macmillan’s retirement in 1963 it was arguable that the chief economic menace for Britain was inflation, rather than the mass unemployment which had inspired his most notable writings. However, Macmillan himself encouraged people to judge him by The Middle Way, stating as late as 1978 that ‘I have not changed the philosophy that underlies the work’.23 And during his years in Downing Street, a concerted drive towards economic planning would have enjoyed widespread support among media commentators and academics. The formation of the NEDC, though, did encounter resistance within the Conservative Party, even amongst Macmillan’s cabinet colleagues. The backbencher of 1938 had not been short of courage, but the seasoned operator of twenty years later was not prepared to risk his hard-won position by staking his full authority on a systematic approach to economic policy-making which might split his party. In practice, probably the most important legacy of Macmillan’s pre-war thought was the credence it gave to the argument that the post-war Conservative leadership had made a conscious accommodation with ‘socialism’, which amounted to a betrayal of the party. This view has been stated most forcefully by David Willetts, who characterised the proposals of The Middle Way as ‘­nearly Bennite socialism’.24 As we have seen, this judgement overlooks Macmillan’s concern to preserve, rather than undermine, the capitalist system; as a verdict on Macmillan’s post-war practice it would be even more of a caricature. 17

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However, even if Macmillan made only a half-hearted attempt to put his old ideas into practice, it is permissible to speculate about the nature of those ideas. The Middle Way is an unusual product for a Conservative politician, not least because its author made no attempt to locate himself within the various traditions of thought represented by his party. At no time does Macmillan argue that his colleagues should endorse his views because they are representative of ‘true Conservatism’, and he does not accuse his opponents within the party of ideological deviation. In fact, he ignores his party entirely, addressing his appeal to thinking people of all parties or none. In this context it is hardly surprising that after the Second World War Macmillan was prepared to jettison the Conservative name, suggesting a re-branding to ‘New Democratic Party’.25 This facet of The Middle Way, the product of a semi-detachment from the narrow partisan concerns which Macmillan subsequently embraced, makes it more appropriate to regard the book as an ideological exercise of rare purity. Those who want to insist on Macmillan’s conservative credentials are not bereft of ammunition; for example, The Middle Way claims to be a pragmatic response to existing conditions, rather than a utopian document, and Macmillan stressed that his proposed economic order was already ‘evolving’. Burke himself might have endorsed Macmillan’s argument that his proposals entailed ‘a voluntary acceptance of inevitable change’, which would ensure social peace.26 However, Macmillan’s response to this situation is far removed from the characteristic conservative approach. It is a prime example of what Michael Oakeshott would have called ‘rationalism in politics’ – an attempt to impose a blueprint which made few concessions to the vagaries of the human condition. In this crucial respect it is difficult to agree with W. H. Greenleaf, who presents Macmillan ‘as belonging to and sustaining the tradition of Tory paternalism’.27 Following Disraeli, this tradition was based on a sentimental regard for the ‘labouring classes’, who played an important role within an organic society and deserved to be sustained when they fell on hard times. By stark contrast, Macmillan’s work looked forward to a time when entrenched class divisions and the resulting antagonisms could be ironed out by the rational activities of a class-neutral, benevolent state. If Macmillan had been able to implement his recommendations in full, they might indeed have played into the hands of successors who wanted to build a socialist Britain. But the ideology which inspired his tract is undoubtedly a form of liberalism. It is no accident that John Stuart Mill is the only political thinker of note who receives an extended quotation in The Middle Way. In the same chapter, Macmillan asserts in Millian fashion that ‘it is only out of the conflict of opposing views that truth and intellectual progress can emerge’. Drawing on a different strand of liberal thinking, he also alludes to ‘the “social contract” of inalienable rights and duties’.28 18

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If he had served out his political career in the nineteenth century, Macmillan’s active social conscience might have made him into a follower of Disraelian conservatism. As it was, in the very different context after the First World War, Macmillan can only be understood as a new (or ‘social’) liberal. Like Beveridge and Keynes, Macmillan wanted to give as many people as possible the chance to live meaningful lives, on the understanding that economic insecurity was the main enemy of character development. Rather than enticing Macmillan into an alliance with Oswald Mosley, these concerns would have made him more likely to defect to Lloyd George’s Liberal Party if its electoral prospects had been brighter at the end of the 1920s. Macmillan’s belief that every individual should be given an opportunity to fulfil his or her inherent potential even induced a nod towards the idea of comprehensive education, at least for the very young: in The Middle Way he argued that ‘It would do nothing but good to the children of every class if the early years of life were spent in the same school’.29 For a product of Eton and Balliol this was easy enough to say. Equally, it was not difficult for someone with Macmillan’s inherited wealth to express a disdain for materialism. But whatever the background influences underlying the message of The Middle Way, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of a book which was originally intended to inform public debate, rather than to advance the author’s political prospects. After the war there were only very occasional glimpses of the old, idealistic Macmillan – even in his diary, where the prediction (December 1953) that ‘we will drift on to disaster unless we can get a faith to inspire more than material gain’ jars against his habitual reflections on the short-term machinations of Whitehall and Westminster.30 The fact was that Macmillan’s cynicism increased in tandem with the rise of his worldly ambitions, and he greeted the occasional reprintings of The Middle Way as pleasant reminders of a better, much younger self which casual observers might otherwise have forgotten entirely. In 1958, the prime minister commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the book’s first appearance with a speech to the Conservative Political Centre. Although Macmillan acknowledged that parts of the book were now ‘completely out of date’, he expressed ‘sympathy with the general approach’. However, instead of discussing the contents of the book, he used the rest of his speech to attack Labour’s contemporary policies on defence. Earlier, he had claimed that Conservatives ‘do not stand and have never stood for laissez-faire individualism or for putting the rights of the individual above his duty to his fellow men’. But now, as leader of a governing party, Macmillan was happy to caricature the views of his opponents. The Labour Party, he asserted, was actuated by ‘envy, jealousy and spite’. It was unable to understand that ‘it is only by giving their heads to the strong and to the able that we shall ever have the means to provide real protection for the weak and for the old’.31 In short, over the twenty years since the first appearance of 19

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The Middle Way Macmillan had lost all ‘sympathy with the general approach’ of that book, which had been to pitch a detailed policy programme without much care for its effect on the fortunes of the political parties. Towards the end of his long life, Macmillan borrowed from the credit of his writings when, in a 1985 address to the Tory Reform Group, he chided Mrs Thatcher for ‘selling off the family silver’.32 Undoubtedly he was being sincere when he delivered what proved to be his valedictory speech; in practice, after all, despite lavishing some theatrical compliments on Mrs Thatcher in the first years of her leadership he had never blinded himself in Thatcherite fashion to the virtues of public ownership in certain circumstances.33 However, the speech lost some of its intended impact because it was delivered by someone who had relinquished principle in favour of political acting. After all, in 1963 Macmillan had plumped for Alec Douglas-Home as his successor, rather than progressive politicians like Quintin Hogg and Rab Butler. His calculations at the time would have horrified the idealistic backbencher of the 1930s. Ewen Green is not alone in thinking that the long-term repercussions of Macmillan’s decision were extremely harmful for those who wanted the Conservative Party to stick to the ‘middle way’.34 But this was not the only respect in which Macmillan’s legacy was unhelpful to progressive members of the Conservative Party. He had, after all, reached the top by transforming himself from an ideologue into an opportunist. It was not the kind of career path that any principled moderate within the party would care to emulate, and it is unsurprising that, unlike Butler or even Hogg, he left few conscious followers. Even so, when future Conservatives reflected on Macmillan’s record, most of them did so with the intention of using his failings to discredit the party’s progressives, the wing to which he had never truly belonged. Notes  1����������������������������   �������������������������� Quoted in E. H. H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002), p. 182.   2   Ibid., p. 157.   3   Simon Ball, The Guardsmen: Harold Macmillan, Three Friends, and the World They Made (HarperPerennial, London, 2005 edn), pp. 75, 212.   4   Ibid., p. 108.   5   The Times, 27 May 1930.   6   H. Macmillan, The Middle Way (Macmillan, London, 1938 edn), pp. 119–20.   7   Ibid., pp. 36, 334–9, 359.   8   Ibid., pp. 117, 14, 21.   9   Ibid., p. 119. 10   Stuart Ball (ed.), Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: The Headlam Diaries 1935–1951 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999), p. 209.

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11   L. Siedentop, ‘Mr Macmillan and the Edwardian Style’, in V. Bogdanor and R. Skidelsky (eds), The Affluent Society 1951–1964 (Macmillan, London, 1970), p. 18. 12   N. Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1945–62 (Collins, London, 1968), p. 43. 13   Quoted in J. D. Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1945–51 (MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1964), p. 158. 14   Macmillan, The Middle Way (1938 edn), p. 117. 15   Q. Hogg [Lord Hailsham], One Year’s Work (National Book Association, London, 1944), p. 71; One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems (Conservative Political Centre, London, 1950), pp. 27–38. 16   See M. Pinto-Duschinsky, ‘Bread and Circuses? The Conservatives in Office, 1951– 1964’, in Bogdanor and Skidelsky (eds), The Affluent Society, pp. 59–63. 17   E. Pearce, The Lost Leaders (Little, Brown, London, 1997), p. 97. 18   A. Howard, RAB: The Life of R. A. Butler (Papermac, London, 1988 edn), p. 241. 19   Macmillan, The Middle Way (1938 edn), p. 21. 20   A. Maude, The Common Problem: A Policy for the Future (Constable, London, 1968), p. 51. 21   A. Shonfield, Modern Capitalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1965), p. 152. 22   R. Lamb, The Macmillan Years, 1957–1983: The Emerging Truth (John Murray, London, 1995), pp. 78, 79. For a more positive, and contemporary view of the NEDC and associated planning institutions see Shonfield, Modern Capitalism, esp. Chapter 8. 23   H. Macmillan, The Middle Way (E. P. Publishing, London, 1978 edn), Preface. 24   D. Willetts, Civic Conservatism, quoted in Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, p. 186. 25   Pearce, Lost Leaders, p. 61. 26   Macmillan, The Middle Way (1938 edn), p. 15. 27   W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Volume Two: The Ideological Heritage (Methuen and Co., London, 1983), p. 245. 28   Macmillan, The Middle Way (1938 edn), pp. 23–6. 29   Ibid., pp. 64–5. 30   P. Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 1950–1957 (Macmillan, London, 2003), p. 307. 31   H. Macmillan, The Middle Way (Macmillan, London, 1966 edn), pp. xvii–xxii. 32   Quoted in A. Horne, Macmillan, 1957–1986 (Macmillan, London, 1989), p. 627. In fact, Macmillan did not use that exact phrase, but it accurately conveys his meaning. 33   For Macmillan’s flattery of Thatcher see, for example, George Hutchinson, The Last Edwardian at No. 10: An Impression of Harold Macmillan (Quartet Books, London, 1980), pp. 150–1. 34   Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, p. 191; I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories? (Fourth Estate, London, 1997), p. 203.

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Rab Butler and the One Nation Group Do not worry over-much about the Two Nations of a century ago; think of our One Nation as we see it today. Rab Butler, 19541 There is that old man, First Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister, heavy with years and with wisdom, with that extraordinary melancholy mask looking like Father Time himself, dropping his unintentional double entendres all over the place, twice deprived of the premiership by allegedly lesser men, but the essential No. 2 in every Conservative Government. Edmund Dell, 19962

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ronies abounded in the political career of Richard Austen Butler (1902–82). The conventional view is that he was the nearly-man of British politics, who flunked more than one chance to seize the top job. If a lack of necessary steel prevented ‘Rab’ Butler from reaching Number 10, the jealousy of more successful rivals sidetracked him until the end of his political career from the senior post (Foreign Secretary) which he would probably have held with most distinction. On the other hand, if Winston Churchill had been less tolerant Butler would never have held any major office. His persistence in seeking a negotiated peace with Hitler could easily have terminated his career before the age of forty. If Butler’s political ambitions were not realised, at least his role in the development of post-war Conservatism is rarely disputed. Even Lord Coleraine, who deplored Butler’s influence, claimed that ‘it was his image, rather than Churchill’s, which stamped itself on the post-war Conservative party’.3 In a more laudatory piece for the Dictionary of National Biography, Ian Gilmour claimed that ‘Butler, even more than Macmillan, was chiefly responsible for the humane and moderate “One Nation” toryism of the post-war period’. He ‘did more than anyone else to slough off the Conservatives’ dismal legacy of the thirties, to commit the party to full employment and the welfare state, and hence to secure its early return to power’.4 Yet Butler did not contribute anything of substance to the canon of Conservative writings; at least one ambitious work was planned, but it came to nothing.5 Butler’s preferred métier was the short, cliché-ridden pamphlet. As a result Gilmour himself barely mentioned

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Butler in Inside Right, his attempt to prove that the most notable Conservative thinkers have been ‘humane and moderate’. Butler’s association with Conservative revival after the landslide defeat of 1945 is due to the central position he held within the party’s policy-making apparatus. From 1945 to 1964 he was Chairman of the Conservative Research Department, having previously chaired both the party’s Central Education Committee and its Post-War Problems Central Committee (later reconstituted as the Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education). His work in these various bodies played a key role in preparing the Party for post-war ­challenges. According to one insider, ‘Without Mr Butler there would have been no policy development at all’.6 Yet it can be argued that instead of being chiefly remembered for his failures to reach the top and his role in policy development, he deserves more recognition for his concrete achievements, as President of the Board of Education (1941–44), and Home Secretary (1957– 62). This makes Butler an excellent exemplar of the empirical ‘Conservative tradition’, since his claim to attention arises from practical decisions rather than speculative words. The 1944 Education Act When Churchill offered Butler the Presidency of the Board of Education in July 1941, the prime minister ‘appeared ever so slightly surprised’ by his eager acceptance.7 After all, the post did not in those days guarantee a seat in cabinet, and although Butler had only been an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office he had occasionally been called upon to run that exalted department when his superiors were abroad. However, Butler regarded Education as a ministry in which he could exercise real influence over the future of Britain. The education system, he believed, was in urgent need of reform, to ensure so far as possible that the country’s most talented people were not held back by the disadvantages of birth. In part, Butler knew that post-war challenges could only be met by major improvements in technical education. But his main priority was not directly economic. To his mind, Britain’s future world role depended on the intrinsic qualities of its citizens, more than their standard of living. The later Conservative MP ‘Cub’ Alport knew that he was echoing his friend’s thoughts when he told Butler in February 1943 that ‘the wealth of a country is not in its foreign investments or its mines or the fertility of its fields, the antiquity of its institutions, but the spirit, character and industry of its men and women. See that they are sound and everything else will follow.’8 Butler himself was the product of an elitist education, having studied at Marlborough College and Cambridge. He was part of what Gilmour rightly 23

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described as ‘a remarkable academic dynasty’, whose members had held senior positions within public schools and universities. Butler’s father had served with great distinction within the Indian civil service. In 1926 Butler had married an heiress, which gave him the financial independence to pursue a political career. It was an unusual background for a meritocrat. Indeed, his 1944 Education Act has been criticised for reinforcing, rather than eroding, class distinctions. The resulting tripartite division between grammar, technical and modern schools could be seen as an elitist, quasi-Platonic system, segregating society’s future leaders from middle-ranking technicians and managers and the ‘also-rans’. As Angus Maude pointed out a decade after the Act, the failure to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ between the grammar schools and the rest reflected the fact that ‘A great many grammar schools have long traditions going back, many of them three, four or five hundred years’.9 A more cynical Conservative would have realised that the prestige attached to grammar schools made a nonsense of the ‘parity of esteem’ idea; Butler, in his idealistic enthusiasm, clearly overlooked the point. He also decided to leave the public schools unmolested, thus missing the chance of erasing this substantial obstacle to a truly meritocratic society when the necessary consensus could have been created and the schools themselves were at their weakest. But while the intention of the Act was not to secure that elusive objective, ‘equality of opportunity’, Butler did hope to increase opportunities for children who had previously been seriously disadvantaged by the education system. In this respect, rather than calling Butler a ‘meritocrat’ or an ‘egalitarian’, it is proper to categorise him as a ‘progressive’ – and one of the most effective in British political history. His Act guaranteed free secondary education for all, and envisaged, over time, the raising of the school leaving age. At the other end of the educational experience, it also proposed an expansion of nursery provision. The fact that these aspirations were not wholly fulfilled while the Act remained in force reflected Britain’s economic limitations in the post-war period, rather than any serious defects in Butler’s original vision. The inability of the different secondary schools to achieve the ‘parity of esteem’ that Butler sought was an indication that underlying social prejudices were stronger than he had imagined; but he was hardly the first or last educationalist to overrate the possibility that schools could provide significant compensation for disadvantages of birth. Above all, the 1944 Education Act exemplified Butler’s view of politics as ‘the art of the possible’. First, he had to overcome Churchill’s opposition to reform, which was based on first-hand memories of the religious strife which had accompanied Balfour’s 1902 Act. Butler was able to persuade the Prime Minister that the possibility of theological dissonance on this issue was outweighed by its potential as a force for social unity. Having reassured Churchill, 24

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Butler negotiated with Britain’s assorted religious denominations, who feared that the encroachment of state funding and local government influence would result in a purely secular education system. Deploying a judicious mixture of concessions, threats and mollifying words, Butler managed to square this highly vocal constituency. Butler’s strategy was informed by an awareness that, given the range of opposition to educational reform, it would be easier to thrash out an agreement on reform in the unusual conditions of wartime. For a Conservative politician, traditional ties with the Church of England would have made the task impossible after the close of hostilities. As it was, Butler knew that his proposals enjoyed significant support among Churchill’s coalition partners. By contrast, the radical programme of social reform foreshadowed by the Beveridge Report (1942) was strongly backed by Labour, but was a source of deep disquiet amongst Conservative MPs. Butler and Churchill both recognised that it was easier to get Conservative agreement on education than on issues which more directly ‘involve property or pocket’; thus, progressive policies on education could deflect attention from the lack of Conservative-inspired progress on other social issues. Privately, Butler lamented the lack of Conservative interest in education policy, noting in his diary that it was ‘very unhealthy’ that within his party ‘political interest is shifting from the soul of man to his economic position’.10 But in the short term, at least, he was the political beneficiary of this materialistic turn, since it promoted a show of cross-party unity as his Education Bill passed into law. Arguably, then, Butler’s first big contribution to Conservative policy was only possible because it took place at a time when his party was participating in a coalition government and thus had to take into account the aspirations of more radical allies. Unsurprisingly, like Churchill himself, Butler was ‘strongly in favour’ of continuing the coalition into peacetime. Apart from anything else, he was convinced that the Conservatives would lose an early election, because the party organisation was in poor shape and policies were underdeveloped. The blame for the latter defect could hardly be pinned on Butler, who had been trying to combine his policy-making role with departmental duties and had warned in advance that electoral preparations were inadequate. Privately he was inclined to blame Churchill’s maladroit electioneering for the scale of the ensuing Conservative defeat.11 In fact events favoured him because the landslide Labour victory ‘shook the Conservative Party out of its legacy and impelled it to re-think its philosophy and re-form its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century’. Quintin Hogg reflected this mood when he told Butler that the party needed ‘a new Tamworth Manifesto’ in the wake of the 1945 defeat. Unfortunately for Butler, his leader thought that detailed policy-­making in opposition would only provide the existing government with 25

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a cheap target. But the 1946 party conference conveyed a grass-roots feeling that the Conservatives should spell out their beliefs in detail, and Butler was ready to meet the challenge.12 The Industrial Charter At the 1946 conference, Quintin Hogg had stressed that the party should rebut Labour’s allegation that it was addicted to laissez-faire economics.13 The Conservative answer to this charge was The Industrial Charter, which was published in May 1947. The Charter was produced by a heavyweight committee, including Oliver Stanley, Oliver Lyttleton and Harold Macmillan. Butler chaired the group, although some of his colleagues were technically senior to him. Years later he reflected that the committee had ‘worked both harmoniously and at a steady pace’. He accepted that ‘a great deal of the intellectual background’ to the Charter was provided by Macmillan, whose economic ideas as expressed in The Middle Way Butler had ‘admired, for the most part’. Those who understood Butler’s delight in verbal qualifications would not have missed this significant proviso. Indeed, in the years before the publication of The Middle Way Butler had co-signed a letter to The Times which indicated a degree of personal contempt for Macmillan. He clearly retained his reservations, but recognised in 1946–47 that Macmillan had become a more substantial figure within the party.14 In one respect, the message of Macmillan’s book is repeated in The Industrial Charter. The authors were unafraid to talk about ‘planning’. But Conservative planning was clearly distinguished from Labour’s ‘socialist’ version. The role of the state would be restricted to exhortation, advice and the collection of helpful statistics; free enterprise would remain the chief engine of economic growth. While the document signalled the party’s acceptance of nationalisation when there really seemed to be no viable alternative, it remained opposed to state ownership in principle. In the short term, Labour’s regime of rationing and petty bureaucratic restriction would be wound down as soon as practicable after a Conservative return to office.15 David Willetts has argued that ‘The Industrial Charter marks the definitive point at which the Conservative Party became the party of freedom and the free market’.16 The fact that the Charter suggested the introduction of ‘wage fixing’ is alone sufficient to cast considerable doubt on this judgement. But Willetts’s view is more plausible than it sounds. The authors certainly emphasised their support for individual liberty and the free market. Even so, the main intention of the publication was (as Hogg had demanded) to persuade the electorate that the Conservatives were not dogmatic advocates of laissez-faire. Taking into 26

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a­ ccount the circumstances of the time – notably the success of the state in driving Britain’s war effort, the unmistakable electoral popularity of Labour’s interventionist programme, and the widespread impression that the Conservatives had embraced laissez-faire between the wars – it is difficult to see how a policy statement on industry could have been different without taking on the characteristics of a suicide note. As Butler remarked to the Party Chairman, Lord Woolton, the Charter ‘placed the party on the fairway of modern economic and social thought’; it was certainly not a slice to the right, but only those who wanted the Conservatives to dwindle into a doctrinaire pressure group could regard it as a wild hook to the left (or, as the cant phrase of the time put it, a product of ‘pink socialism’).17 Superficially, the most interesting aspect of the Charter was a ‘Workers’ Charter’ that pointed the way towards meaningful consultation between management and employees in the workplace. But, as the astute MP Cuthbert Headlam noted, this aspiration merely reflected ‘the practices that [already] exist today between employers and employees in the best managed firms’, and it would be difficult to prescribe such procedures through legislation.18 ‘Copartnership’ turned out to be an idea to which Conservatives paid lip-service over the years, without taking any practical steps towards its realisation. The document did, though, signal a more positive attitude towards the trade unions, which were to be brought into government-hosted consultations with employers. This aspect of The Industrial Charter was more than an abstract commitment, and the Conservative Governments of 1951–64 enjoyed a quite harmonious relationship with the union movement. Ultimately the chief importance of The Industrial Charter lies in its wholehearted embrace of the ‘Keynesian’ approach to economic management. This, presumably, was what Butler meant when he claimed that the party was now ‘on the fairway of modern economic and social thought’. In retirement, he rightly summarised the Charter as ‘first and foremost an assurance that, in the interests of efficiency, full employment and social security, modern Conservatism would maintain strong central guidance over the operation of the economy’.19 The document committed the party to an acceptance of the 1944 White Paper on Employment – indeed, it suggested that a future Conservative government would go even further, ensuring jobs for all who were willing to work – and also endorsed deficit-financing. The question remained as to whether The Industrial Charter was compatible with the traditional approach of the Conservative Party. As Butler recalled, the press reception was mixed; but much of the criticism came from newspapers controlled by Lord Beaverbrook, who was an ideological sniper from the sidelines rather than an oracle of orthodoxy. Within the party itself, opposition was virtually non-existent when the Charter was debated at the 1947 conference, 27

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although the MP Sir Waldron Smithers invited his audience to save Britain by rising up in anger against a document which was ‘infected with the Socialist bug’.20 There had been a careful preparation of grass-roots opinion in advance; Butler himself wrote the booklet which was disseminated for discussion among party members.21 But it seems that this preparatory campaign reflected the caution of the Charter’s authors on such a key electoral issue, rather than a real danger that the forces of laissez-faire could ever have mustered enough opposition seriously to embarrass Butler and the party leadership.22 In 1949 the Conservatives issued a more wide-ranging statement of policy, The Right Road for Britain. This was careful to avoid talk of ‘planning’, stating ‘that Government should have powers by which it can influence and encourage industry and protect the public interest’. There was a distant echo of The Middle Way in the assertion that government should concentrate its active support on industries which could not succeed unaided. But even in such cases ‘it must limit itself, as far as it can, to providing the best conditions under which industry can exercise its proper function’.23 In a significant shift of phraseology, The Right Road for Britain contrasted ‘a plan which rests on multiplying restraints and a policy which puts the emphasis on freedom.’24 Circumstances had changed since 1947, and the Conservatives were being assisted in electoral terms by the gradual dissipation of the mood which had swept Labour into power. Furthermore, while Churchill had smeared Labour by referring to the Gestapo at the 1945 General Election, the deepening hostility between the West and the Soviet Union allowed the Conservatives to allege with more plausibility that the socialist version of ‘planning’ was a giant step towards Communist dictatorship. Hence, it became impolitic to talk too much about the Opposition’s own ideas about planning, modest as they had been in the first place. A greater emphasis on individual freedom would enthuse many ‘core’ Conservative supporters, while attracting less committed voters who were growing disillusioned with Labour’s economic controls. To adopt Butler’s terminology, The Industrial Charter might have put the Conservatives back on the fairway; but he and other senior strategists clearly thought that a different club was needed to put the ball on the green. In the speech which launched The Right Road for Britain, Churchill singled out Butler for special praise; and although the leader worked hard on the revised version which was published as the 1950 Conservative manifesto (This is the Road ), it seems that his suggestions were mainly stylistic. Butler believed that the Party now stood for ‘enterprise without selfishness’.25 He might have added that this, rather than Macmillan’s statist solutions, represented a characteristically Conservative ‘Middle Way’ between socialism and unrestricted capitalism. However, one pledge included in The Industrial Charter was non-negotiable. The 1950 manifesto, This is the Road, featured the blunt declaration that ‘We regard the maintenance of 28

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full ­employment as the first aim of a Conservative Government.’26 This was ­perfectly­ ­acceptable to Rab Butler, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to remark that ‘those who talked about creating pools of unemployment should be thrown into them and made to swim’.27 One Nation The 1950 General Election marked a significant comeback by the Conservatives, but Labour was still in office. After the election a small group of newly-elected Conservative MPs began to meet and discuss the shortcomings of their party in Opposition. The main focus of their disapproval was the Conservative ­approach to the social services, and they soon agreed to produce an edited book setting out their own views. Originally the book was to be entitled The Strong and the Weak, but one of the group’s members, Angus Maude, suggested One Nation as a more eye-catching alternative. When the volume appeared just before the 1950 party conference, it featured a foreword by Rab Butler. Probably Butler had not read the text before commending it ‘as a healthy piece of constructive work’.28 But the group’s name must have appealed to him; in July 1939 he had argued that ‘If such a division as Disraeli’s Two Nations still exists in England it must no longer be tolerated by us’.29 Furthermore, he knew several of the authors very well, and had reason to expect that they would not let him down with a tranche of impractical proposals. One of the group’s founder members, ‘Cub’ Alport, was a long-standing friend and political ally of Butler’s; during the war he had promised the latter to ‘organise the party for you’.30 In 1938 Alport had written A National Faith, a tract which in many respects anticipates the post-war Conservative policy approach. Soon after the war, as the first head of the Conservative Political Centre, he produced a booklet on Conservative principles which talked of a dual heritage within the party – an ‘historical element’ which sought continuity with the past, and a ‘radical element’ which advocated social reform. Alport followed Butler in implying that doctrinaire economic liberalism had not figured in the Conservative tradition, although he shared his friend’s emphasis on ‘the free development of the human personality’.31 While Alport’s loyalty to Butler was beyond question, other contributors to One Nation were linked to him through their previous work for the Party. Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell were actually recruited for the Parliamentary Secretariat rather than Rab’s Research Department; but they were part of a general drive to equip the party with relevant policy ideas, and along with Reginald Maudling (another recruit to the ‘One Nation’ Group) were often referred to as Butler’s ‘backroom boys’.32 In 1963, after Macmillan’s retirement, 29

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both Macleod and Powell were to refuse to serve under Alec Home, in protest against the way in which Butler had been denied the Conservative leadership. Chapters 4 and 5 have been allotted to two of the ‘One Nation’ foundermembers (Powell and Maude). Of the original group, they were broadly comparable in their refusal to play the political game according to the usual rules, and by very different routes they arrived at quite similar policy prescriptions in 1950. However, taking the group as a whole it is reasonable to characterise the composition of One Nation as a collective biographical accident. As Robert Walsha has written, the group was formed ‘at the right place, at the right time, and with the right message’; he could have added that it also chose the right name, cloaking itself in the Disraelian heritage even if some group members would have been anathema to the great man himself.33 The circumstances of 1950 brought together collaborators who pursued divergent paths in the future, and indeed some (like Powell and Heath) would later become bitter enemies. As a result, attempts to read the pamphlet as either a harbinger of Thatcherism or an early statement of ‘wet’ views within the Conservative Party seem misplaced. However, the ‘Thatcherite’ interpretation of One Nation is particularly problematic. For example, in the chapter entitled ‘A Social Policy for Industry’ the authors affirm their approval of The Industrial Charter – rather than the more ‘orthodox’ Right Road for Britain – and conclude that ‘Government should leave industry under private ownership, but should use the power of the State to make it conform to definite standards’. In this context, Butler is quoted with approval. The same page includes a clear echo of Macmillan’s The Middle Way, in the argument that liberty is impossible unless everyone enjoys a guaranteed minimum standard of living. By contrast, anyone looking for an early prospectus for Mrs Thatcher’s monetarism in those pages must feel deflated by the throwaway remark that ‘Proposals for combating inflation are beyond the scope of this book’.34 Ultimately those who want to interpret One Nation as a ‘Thatcherite’ – or more accurately ‘Powellite’ – tract have to rest their case on the unmistakable fervour and sincerity of the passages in the pamphlet which argue for individual liberty, while overlooking the numerous contrary messages. Otherwise, they have to appeal to future productions of the group, notably Change is Our Ally (1954), which was published when original members such as Heath and Alport had departed. That production was certainly more radical than its predecessor. But to use this as the basis for an argument that the One Nation Group was always a harbinger of Thatcherism is highly misleading. It certainly seems that Butler himself was aware of a much more radical turn in the group’s productions, since he referred slightingly to the authors of Change is our Ally as ‘neoFabians’. David Seawright has shown that he was advised by senior members 30

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of the Research Department that it would not be appropriate to contribute a foreword on this occasion, because the new pamphlet contained critical comments about previous Conservative policy.35 Thankfully, in the present context an uncontentious conclusion seems possible. Whatever happened later, the original One Nation pamphlet can be regarded as part of Rab Butler’s legacy to the Conservative Party, because it sought to build on previous policy statements issued when his influence was at its height, and followed his example in stressing that the party had something distinctive to say, even if at least for the medium term the Attlee Government had set the policy agenda. So near, and yet so far When the Conservatives returned to power in 1951 Butler became Chancellor of the Exchequer, contrary to his expectations. Although some commentators have defended Butler’s record, this was probably not Winston Churchill’s happiest appointment. The more brutal Edmund Dell thought that Butler was ‘a poor Chancellor’, adding for good measure that he ‘probably would have made a poor Prime Minister’.36 Economics was not Butler’s strongest suit. Although the lack of technical expertise did not necessarily rule out success in the post, it left him vulnerable to the over-excited advice of senior civil servants. If Churchill remembered his own ill-starred and ill-equipped period at the Treasury (1924–29), he allowed this pertinent consideration to be overridden by his view that Butler would be better ‘at handling the Commons’ than the more logical candidate, Oliver Lyttleton.37 Butler’s tenure of the Treasury was most notable for the coining of a word which came to symbolise the so-called post-war ‘consensus’. ‘Butskellism’, apparently, captured the continuity between Butler’s economic policy and that of his predecessor in the office, Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell. Probably this notion was yet another damaging factor when Butler became a candidate for the Tory leadership; since Gaitskell came first, it was easy to draw the inference that Rab had merely followed in his footsteps, handing the ideological initiative to Labour. Yet it is just as plausible to claim that, if there really was a continuity of policy between Gaitskell and Butler, it was the former who had behaved like a Tory. Certainly Butler exhibited the tax-cutting, anti-inflationary instincts which are considered to be compulsory for any Conservative chancellor. As Kevin Jefferys has noted, Butler also ‘deliberately ruled out deficit financing as a means of meeting economic recession’, contrary to the message of The Industrial Charter. Even so, Butler’s main goal was the Keynesian one of maintaining full employment. In May 1954, for example, he told the House of Commons that under his stewardship the economy was being run ‘on an employment standard’ 31

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rather than the gold standard. Judged in this light, Butler’s early biographer Ralph Harris reckoned that he had actually proved a better Keynesian than Gaitskell.38 Yet the most notable episode during Butler’s period as Chancellor was his active promotion of a scheme to ‘float’ the pound sterling – a plan nicknamed ‘Robot’. In the circumstances of the time this would have been a dangerous gamble, likely to result in a steep increase in unemployment and a rise in the price of imported food. For someone who espoused the art of the possible, this ‘reckless leap in the dark’ (as Butler’s opponents dubbed it) was a strange departure. Rather than being a retreat into laissez-faire doctrines about free­floating currencies, it seems to have reflected Rab’s residual Imperial tendencies, in which a strong and free currency was the best way to symbolise national revival. The alternative view – that Butler was a free-market ideologue who in some ways anticipated the outlook of Margaret Thatcher – has won some support recently as part of a more general attempt to rewrite post-war Conservative Party history. Butler’s prioritising of full employment should be enough to set this argument at rest; it implies that if the moderately liberal trend of economic policy after 1951 had resulted in rising unemployment, the course would have been abandoned by Butler without undue regret. In other words, in the ongoing Conservative battle about the proper role of the state in economic matters, Rab was on Macmillan’s side rather than anticipating Thatcher’s.39 ‘Robot’ was eventually vetoed – mainly thanks to the opposition of Anthony Eden – and there were no further attempts to rock the boat during Butler’s remaining period at the Treasury.40 At the 1954 party conference, though, he did proffer the populistic vision that living standards in Britain could double over the next quarter of a century. The prediction proved to be reasonably accurate, but for the Chancellor it was fairly costless: in twenty-five years he was unlikely to be in office to bear the criticism if he had been wrong. In any case, it was an ironic utterance from a man who, in 1942, had grieved at the prospect that post-war politics would be reduced to ‘an auction between the different Parties’, and had thought it ‘very unhealthy’ that the Conservative Party was pre-occupied with material rather than spiritual concerns.41 Fortunately for Butler’s posthumous reputation – rather than his earthly prospects – when he missed out on the top job in 1957 his more successful rival Harold Macmillan sent him to the Home Office. In this guise Butler showed he had learned lessons from his years at the Board of Education, spelling out his intentions openly at the outset. He told Macmillan that he intended to ‘carry out long overdue reforms in our penal system’.42 Macmillan was happy to agree, as he generally did whenever Rab asked for his support while he was at the Home Office. Macmillan, after all, knew that every legislative success for Butler in that role would be regarded by the party rank and file as a further reason 32

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to regard him as too tolerant on moral issues to be a suitable candidate for the Conservative leadership; meanwhile, those who still regarded the Conservatives as inveterate reactionaries would be muffled if not silenced. Whether or not Butler knew that Macmillan was providing him with the ammunition to destroy his own leadership prospects, his biographer Anthony Howard had good reason to note Rab’s suitability for the Home Office.43 In some respects it was a rerun of Butler’s spell at Education; his department was ready for reform, even if the attitude of his party was doubtful. This time, his party leader was an outright political opponent, rather than a much older man prepared to indulge an idealistic colleague. Yet Butler was primarily a public servant, and although he was prepared to modify his preferences with an eye to party interest he was never going to back down from what he considered to be right unless he met immovable obstacles. Butler’s strategy at the Home Office was to introduce liberal reforms wherever public opinion was ready and his own party was prepared to acquiesce in a loosening of what Butler referred to as ‘Victorian corsetry’.44 This caveat explains his response to the 1957 Wolfenden Report, which recommended the legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults, and a crackdown on public soliciting by prostitutes. Butler recognised that existing public opinion would not tolerate a change in the law regarding homosexuality. On prostitution, he was well aware of the double standards inherent in proposals which meant that a woman would be prosecuted for soliciting while no action could be taken against her customers. But in this instance, the Cabinet found Wolfenden’s recommendations wholly acceptable.45 Butler also had to put up with the consequences of the recently passed Homicide Act, which introduced different categories of murder in order to determine whether the death sentence should apply. Since it turned out to be impossible to enforce, this measure merely seconded the logic of abolishing the death penalty outright. While at the Home Office Butler accepted the abolitionist case, mainly because of the possibility of miscarriages of justice; and his obvious sympathy roused the fury of the party’s hard-liners who were also enraged by his refusal to re-introduce corporal punishment.46 Butler knew that it would be too controversial to follow his sentiments on the subject of capital punishment, and took the pragmatic decision to defer a decision for as long as possible. This typical attitude could not endear him to the liberal side of the debate over penal reform. In liberal eyes, his sins of omission were compounded by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which took the first steps towards curtailing the right of unrestricted entry. In his memoirs, Butler claimed that the move was justified because ‘the rise of racial tension could be avoided only if it were anticipated’; and public opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of restrictions.47 The issue had, indeed, been causing 33

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concern even for moderate MPs like the newly elected Ian Gilmour. Ultimately Butler’s best defence here is that people like Enoch Powell subsequently took the view that his attempts to ‘anticipate’ future racial tension had been woefully inadequate. Given his offences against the liberal conscience, it is not surprising that Butler’s reputation as a reformer has been overshadowed by that of Roy Jenkins, who was already active in this field during the 1950s and who ripped apart the ‘Victorian corsetry’ in the next decade. Yet, as Mark Jarvis has argued, Butler certainly paved the way for Jenkins’s controversial tenure of the Home Office. His main contribution, epitomised by the 1959 White Paper Penal Practice in a Changing Society, was to advocate policy-making firmly rooted in statistical evidence, rather than basing it upon the periodic ‘scares’ accentuated by sensational media coverage. Always exercised by the problem of young offenders, Butler also emphasised the value of rehabilitation and constructive training; for their seniors, he began a programme of prison-building to replace overcrowded, antiquated accommodation, and pressed for better working conditions for those who worked within the penal system.48 Yet although Butler attempted to infuse penal policy with the spirit of rationality, it could be argued that, at least in part, he was dealing at the Home Office with problems of his own, irrational creation. Even while trumpeting the material success of Conservative economic policies, party members had become troubled by the possibility that Britain was growing more disorderly as a result of affluence. As Butler himself noted in a speech of October 1960, ‘old virtues, such as piety, discipline and thrift’ were being superseded by an amorality which was inextricably connected ‘to a growing materialism’.49 Towards the end of his time at the Home Office, Butler argued that ‘the moral health of the nation cannot be restored by the criminal law, or by official action’.50 Yet if it is accepted that governments cannot cure ills, it remains possible that they can promote them, even inadvertently. The Conservatives had come back into office in 1951 claiming that their brand of ‘freedom’ would restore prosperity after years of dour domination by Labour’s hyperactive state; and R. A. Butler had been the Chancellor who proclaimed that living standards would double over twenty-five years. If Conservative prosperity had brought in its train a generation of discontented youths, craving to share in spoils which they had come to expect as their natural due, then maybe there had been something to be said for Labour’s austerity after all. Loyal Conservatives were not interested in such complex arguments. They just enjoyed being prosperous, and their wealth gave them the feeling that they no longer had to feel much deference towards political leaders who rejected their favoured punitive remedies for Britain’s social problems. Harold 34

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Macmillan was more closely attuned than Butler to the average, muddle-­headed Tory ­constituency activist. In September 1961 – just before the annual party conference at which Butler delivered a particularly stout defence of his Home Office policy – the Prime Minister told him that he would have to give up two of his offices, the Leadership of the House of Commons and the Chairmanship of the Party. Macmillan even had the cheek to offer his younger rival a place in the House of Lords.51 Butler decided to soldier on as Home Secretary until 1962, and was still in that post when he accepted from Macmillan the unpleasant additional task of presiding over the dismantling of the Central African Federation. This was the final proof that Butler’s main motivation was the service of his country, since the Federation had been a Conservative initiative and winding it down could bring precious little credit to the man on the spot. Yet Butler conducted the operation with aplomb, even though it cost him the friendship of Cub Alport, who as High Commissioner to the Federation had hoped to salvage something from the experiment. His diplomacy – emollient and firm by turns, as circumstances dictated – reinforced the suspicion that Butler would have been a great Foreign Secretary if he had been given that job in his prime. When illness forced Macmillan into retirement in October 1963, Butler still harboured hopes of succeeding him. This optimistic outlook, which disingenuously discounted all the evidence of Macmillan’s antipathy, presumably arose from Butler’s justified feeling that he was the inescapable choice, even of people who disliked him. This was certainly Powell’s view, despite their ideological differences; but Powell was much more quixotic than the average Tory MP. If Macmillan’s doctors had advised him of the need for a rest at any other time, perhaps even Butler’s enemies would have been unable to prevent his succession. As it was the leadership crisis coincided with the party conference, at which Butler delivered an oration which must have emboldened his conspiratorial opponents. He evidently believed that his chances of taking the leadership would best be served by a rhetorical attack on the Opposition, currently gearing up for an election which could not be long delayed. Yet Butler could only resort to cliché in his closing passage: ‘Let us tell the people we are determined to tend and care for the flame of freedom in our souls. We alone can keep this alight’. Earlier he had indulged in a contorted literary reference: ‘The Wilsonian dream turns out to be the Wellesian nighmare come true. The individual in Britain is to have ample leisure and a carefully controlled environment – the exact circumstances of a battery hen’. He also risked a jokey soundbite which must have reminded listeners of his most uncharacteristic blunder – the flirtation with a floating currency during his time as Chancellor. He claimed that Labour’s message could be encapsulated as: ‘up with the robot automatic state and down with the individual’. Given his record, Butler might have been 35

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expected to sound more convincing when he talked about the vision of his own party. However, the ‘Programme for People’ which he outlined only emphasised his ambivalence towards the post-war Britain he had helped to shape. He insisted that the people should not be given ‘a programme that is concerned solely to line their pockets and satisfy their material needs but a programme that inspires their sense of service and dedication, develops their intellectual potential and raises their economic status’.52 Superficially, this sounded like the idealistic Butler of 1944–45; yet the peculiar phrasing suggests a recognition that, after all, post-war people were much more interested in ‘economic status’ than in spiritual and intellectual elevation. On this showing, Butler did not really have the right qualities to become prime minister in a media age. Of course, the same objection could be laid against the successful candidate, Alec Home. But at least Home had fewer enemies within the party; and while his social views were semi-feudal, in practice by 1963 they were hardly more anachronistic than Butler’s emphasis on intellectual improvement and public duty. Butler’s admirers, like Gilmour, persisted in their view that under his leadership the Conservatives would have won the 1964 election; and if that contest had depended on the public estimation of the respective party leaders their claim carries some weight. However, Home was much better equipped than Rab to keep the party united. The fact that Butler should have enjoyed the full confidence of his colleagues is beside the point; in reality, he was widely distrusted and resented, and not least because of his efforts to make the party electable again after the disaster of 1945. If a single phrase sums up Butler’s attitude to politics, it was his pledge ‘to wield the power of the state to balance the interests within it’.53 There could hardly be a better statement of ‘One Nation’ Conservatism in the post-war period. Butler was not a blinkered advocate of state control; although he was one of life’s natural mandarins, he recognised the limitations of the Whitehall outlook, and knew that the state should be kept within limits which could only be discerned by politicians who understood ‘the art of the possible’. In 1954 he echoed his colleague Quintin Hogg by arguing that ‘When there was an excess of laissez-faire we leaned towards the authority of the State; now that we have an excess of bureaucracy we are leaning towards individual enterprise and personal liberty.’ Hogg himself believed that the Conservative Party should change its emphasis while occupying the same ground, yet Butler found the neatest way of expressing this approach, adding that ‘We should continue to lean, but without losing our balance’.54 It could be argued that Rab’s insight was imperfectly shared by Edward Heath, who placed too much confidence in benevolent state action. But it was wholly alien to Heath’s successor, who was regarded with barely concealed scorn by the old statesman. The journalist Andrew Roth remembers Rab ­lambasting 36

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Margaret Thatcher in 1982, at the launch of his last book. Roth tactfully drew Butler’s attention to the fact that Thatcher had turned up at the party and was looming within earshot.55 The anecdote sums up the fate both of Rab Butler and those who tried to make the post-war party into a consistent vehicle of social conciliation. Like Macbeth, they were ‘too full o’ the milk of human kindness’ to restrain their feelings when they thought that their party’s traditions were being betrayed: but the same trait meant that they lacked the ruthless streak which might have prevented their opponents from using the state to advance the interests of the rich over the poor. Notes   1   R. A. Butler, ‘A Disraelian Approach to Modern Politics’, in Tradition and Change: Nine Oxford Lectures (CPC, London, 1954), p. 14.   2   E. Dell, The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945–90 (HarperCollins, London, 1997 edn), p. 189.   3   Lord Coleraine, For Conservatives Only: A Study of Conservative Leadership from Churchill to Heath (Tom Stacey, London, 1970), p. 60.   4   I. Gilmour, ‘Richard Austen Butler’, in H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 9 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004), pp. 198–207.   5   See correspondence in Butler Papers, H29, Trinity College Library.   6   Quoted in J. D. Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition 1945–51 (MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1964), p. 208.   7   R. A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1971), p. 90.   8   M. Garnett, Alport: A Study in Loyalty (Acumen, London, 1999), p. 55.   9   A. Maude, ‘An Educated Electorate’, in Tradition and Change: Nine Oxford Lectures (CPC, London, 1954), p. 83. 10   Butler diary, 9 September 1943, quoted in G. McCulloch, Educational Reconstruction: The 1944 Education Act and the Twenty-first Century (Woburn Press, London, 1994), p. 31. 11   A. Howard, RAB: The Life of R. A. Butler (Papermac, London, 1988 edn), p. 148. 12   Butler, The Art of the Possible, pp. 126–7, 133. 13   Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, p. 141. 14   Butler, The Art of the Possible, pp. 143–4. 15   The Industrial Charter (CPC, London, 1947). 16   D. Willetts, ‘The New Conservatism? 1945–51’, in Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds), Recovering Power:The Conservative Party in Opposition since 1867 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005), p. 181. 17   Quoted in I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories? The Conservative Party since 1945 (Fourth Estate, London, 1997), p. 34. 18   S. Ball (ed.), Parliament and Politics in the Age of Churchill and Attlee: The Headlam Diaries 1935–1951 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999), p. 523. 19   Butler, Art of the Possible, p. 146.

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20   Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, p. 165. 21   R. A. Butler Talks With You About the Industrial Charter (CPC, London, 1947). 22   J. Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Department Since 1929 (Longman, London, 1980), p. 113. 23   The Right Road for Britain (Conservative Central Office, London, 1949), p. 16. 24   Ibid., p. 10. 25   Butler, Art of the Possible, pp. 152–3. 26   Quoted in [Conservative Political Centre] Conservatism 1945–50 (CPC, London, 1950), p. 232. 27   Butler, Art of the Possible, p. 61. 28   I. Macleod and A. Maude (eds), One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems (CPC, London, 1950), p. 7. 29   Quoted in R. Harris, Politics Without Prejudice: A Political Appreciation of The Rt. Hon. Richard Austen Butler, C.H., M.P (Staples Press, London, 1956), p. 96. 30   Garnett, Alport, pp. 64, 62. 31   C. J. M. Alport Talks With You About Conservative Principles (CPC, London, 1946), pp. 3–12. 32   See, for example, P. Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell (The Bodley Head, London, 1989), p. 101. 33   R. Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group: A Tory Approach to Backbench Politics and Organization, 1950–55’, Twentieth Century British History, 11:2, 2000, p. 213. 34   Macleod and Maude (eds), One Nation, pp. 73, 61. 35   R. A. Butler, ‘A Disraelian Approach to Modern Politics’, in Tradition and Change: Nine Oxford Lectures (CPC, London, 1954), p. 10; D. Seawright, ‘One Nation’, in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party Since 1945 (Palgrave, London, 2005), pp. 79–80. 36   Dell, The Chancellors, p. 203. 37   Butler, Art of the Possible, p. 156. 38   K. Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics 1940–1945 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1991), p. 215; Harris, Politics Without Prejudice, p. 159. 39   See Gilmour and Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories?, pp. 62–5; Butler, ‘A Disraelian Approach’, p. 13; cf. S. Kelly, The Myth of Mr Butskell: The Politics of British Economic Policy, 1950–55 (Ashgate, London, 2002), pp. 232–3. 40   Kelly, Myth of Mr Butskell, pp. 132–3. 41   Butler to Alport, 21 August 1942, quoted in Garnett, Alport, p. 54; McCulloch, Educational Reconstruction, p. 31. 42   Butler to Macmillan, 27 June 1958, quoted in M. Jarvis, Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957–64 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2005), p. 20. 43   Howard, RAB, p. 255. 44   Gilmour and Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories?, p. 162. 45   Jarvis, Conservative Governments, pp. 98–100. 46   Butler, Art of the Possible, pp. 201–2. 47   Ibid., p. 206. 48   Ibid., p. 200. 49   Quoted in Jarvis, Conservative Governments, p. 132.

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50   Ibid., p. 25. 51   Howard, RAB, p. 285. 52   Minutes of Conservative Party, 82nd Annual Conference, 9–12 October 1963, pp. 142–7 (added emphasis). 53   Quoted in R. Waller, ‘Conservative Electoral Support and Social Class’, in A. Seldon and S. Ball (eds), The Conservative Century: The Conservative Party Since 1900 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994), p. 587. 54   Quoted in Harris, Politics Without Prejudice, p. 126. 55   A. Roth, Obituary of Sir Adam Butler, Guardian, 14 January 2008.

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Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham Let us urge that commonsense and moderation, though they often be decried as compromise, are none the less the true wisdom of politics, themselves political principles to which a party can honourably adhere. Quintin Hogg, 19471

I

t was no surprise that Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, developed political ambitions at an early age. His great-grandfather had been a Peelite MP, and his father served both as Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor on two separate occasions. His grandfather never entered the political fray; but in addition to being a highly successful merchant he effectively founded the Polytechnic movement in Britain. If this pedigree of politics and public service were insufficient inspiration, the young Quintin Hogg was a brilliant Classical scholar, who could never be accused of undervaluing his own abilities. He showed remarkable promise at Eton, and gained a double first at Oxford, where he served as President of the Union and then won an All Souls fellowship. As if to compensate for these early advantages, Hogg encountered personal misfortunes at regular intervals throughout his life. His mother died while he was still at Eton; his gifted half-brother, the Conservative MP Edward Marjoribanks, committed suicide in 1932; his unsatisfactory first marriage came to a miserable end when he returned from service in the Second World War; and his much-loved second wife died in a riding accident in 1978. On the face of it, his father’s elevation to a hereditary peerage in 1928 should hardly be ranked as a blow to rival these unhappy incidents. But it did produce serious political consequences for young Hogg, who was aware from an early age that he was likely to be summoned to the House of Lords before realising his ambition of becoming Prime Minister. After Oxford, Hogg embarked on a legal career, but he was on the look-out for a promising political opening and in 1938 was selected to fight a by-election in the constituency of Oxford City. Although this was considered to be a safe Conservative seat, the campaign proved to be a distinctly mixed blessing for Hogg. The dominant issue was Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, which Hogg warmly supported not least because his father was a close friend

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of the Prime Minister. His opponent, A. D. Lindsay, was the Master of Balliol College, and carried the united support of Chamberlain’s opponents. These included the Balliol student Edward Heath, and the eccentric Conservative MP Harold Macmillan. Hogg won the seat, but in 1940 voted against Chamberlain in the crucial division which resulted in the formation of the Churchill coalition. Despite this recognition of Chamberlain’s failure, to the end of his life Hogg continued to place the most favourable construction on appeasement; and his performance as the main electoral advocate of Chamberlain’s policy probably damaged his future prospects in a way which was not true in the case of the less flamboyant (but more heavily implicated) Alec Douglas-Home. ‘Tory Reform’ Whether or not he deserved to carry the stigma of appeasement, Hogg was personally courageous and was wounded on active service during the war. But his duties also allowed him plenty of time to think through his political ideas; and by the time that he returned to Britain at the end of 1942 his thoughts had turned towards the post-war reconstruction of a country which, after all its struggles, seemed likely to end up on the winning side. In particular, Hogg was impressed by the Beveridge Report, which appeared in November 1942 just as the tide of war took a decisive turn. He took an active part in parliamentary debates on the report, and also pressed his case in articles for the periodical press. In February 1943 he risked the wrath of Conservative Party managers by accusing the government of committing ‘a major political blunder’ in its tepid response to Beveridge’s proposals. His view was shared by forty Conservative colleagues, who began to meet on a regular basis.2 Thus was born the Tory Reform Committee, which proceeded to issue a series of pamphlets on such topical issues as workmen’s compensation, civil aviation, agriculture and land utilisation. In a contemporary account, Hogg reported that the committee ‘has a proper executive to prepare its agenda, and meets every Wednesday evening in the House of Commons to discuss current affairs and to take common action on all business in the coming week’. It was, in short, a well-organised ginger group within the Conservative Party. As Hogg put it, ‘We have criticised the Government wherever we have felt that reactionary influences or internal dissensions were preventing the adoption of reforms which were reasonable and beneficial’. The government, of course, was a coalition; and the committee did not hesitate to criticise policies advanced by Labour ministers. But clearly Hogg and his colleagues were more interested in forcing their own party to adopt a ‘progressive’ attitude, without which it could face disaster in a post-war election. On Hogg’s own estimation, ‘twenty 41

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or thirty determined men can sway Governments and Parliaments alike’; clearly he had in mind the example of Chamberlain’s downfall, when the government ‘won’ the vote but was fatally damaged by defections.3 This position of potential power bolstered Hogg’s natural ebullience, so that even today his 1943 book One Year’s Work is an invigorating read. Evidently Hogg thought that he and his associates – who included the future Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft – could force Churchill to re-discover his own youthful radicalism. At the same time, he apparently assumed that party managers would forgive his more excited effusions. In the debate on Beveridge, for example, he had sent the Labour benches into raptures by arguing that ‘so long as there remain people who cannot have enough to eat, the possession of private property is a humiliation and not an opportunity’, and he went on to warn that ‘if you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution’.4 This was incendiary stuff, bearing out Hogg’s own admission that he saw himself as an iconoclast in the Disraelian mould. The difference was that, unlike Disraeli, who was able to force himself on a bovine party through sheer force of intellectual grasp and charisma, Hogg was challenging the position of more senior colleagues who also recognised the need for a rethinking of Conservative policy. Rab Butler, in particular, was understandably made to feel ‘anxious and irritated’ by the activities of the Tory Reform Committee.5 There was an obvious remedy to the Hogg problem. In April 1945 he was asked to join the government in a junior capacity, and he served in the Ministry of Air for a few months before the coalition was brought to an end by the 1945 General Election. Like Churchill and Butler, Hogg had not wanted an early election after the end of the war in Europe. As he had argued in 1943, ‘We ought to call a truce to the use of political slogans on both sides and get down to a rational discussion of our common future together’.6 This hope was not realised, and Clement Attlee’s refusal to renew the coalition produced one of the worst-counselled of all electoral gambits, when Churchill accused Labour of wanting to emulate the procedures of Nazi Germany. Just two years later Hogg would echo Churchill’s remark, when he claimed that ‘the Labour Party harbours within its own movement the seeds of a genuine form of totalitarianism’.7 But he had already provided reassurance for those Conservatives who feared Labour’s programme of post-war reconstruction. In the Spectator magazine of 26 March 1943, for example, he had argued that ‘State enterprise and private enterprise are not enemies. They can be partners in a happy marriage’. In his speech on the Beveridge Report, he had shown himself to be intensely relaxed about a substantial redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Wartime taxation had already reduced economic inequality; and this, for Hogg, was a cause for celebratory acceptance rather than ‘reactionary’ regret. Policy for the future should be determined by the watchwords ‘work for all’ and ‘social 42

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democracy’; in those over-heated days Hogg was unafraid to appeal to the concept of ‘Social Justice’, although this would have to be carefully defined as an essential part of a ‘National Policy’.8 In a further contribution to the Spectator, Hogg conceded that whatever the political arrangements for the immediate post-war period, life ‘cannot be particularly easy or pleasant’. Rationing would have to continue, and taxation could not quickly be reduced. There would have to be something like a Sovietstyle five-year plan to put Britain back on the road to prosperity. Yet this grim prospect only seemed to fire Hogg’s enthusiasm. The closing words of One Year’s Work were: ‘It is a rare privilege to live in these heroic times!’9 The heroism, of course, was being exhibited by Hogg’s former comrades in arms, many of whom would have to make the supreme sacrifice in the remaining battles of the war. Much of Hogg’s political passion at this time came from his conviction that, through his parliamentary work and his journalism, he could give the soldiers a voice. To some extent, though, he was also exercising the frustrations which had been produced by his domestic unhappiness. The Case for Conservatism In 1947 Hogg was asked to write a Penguin ‘special’, setting out The Case for Conservatism. It is probably his best-known book, and contains some memorable aphorisms. In the most famous of these, he wrote that ‘Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life … The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting – the wisest religion’.10 Hogg could count himself among those ‘wisest’ Conservatives; the streak of public duty within his family had arisen from religious conviction, and despite occasional doubts he was personally pious to the end of his life. He claimed that ‘There can be no genuine Conservatism which is not founded upon a religious view of the basis of civil obligation, and there can be no true religion where the basis of civil obligation is treated as purely secular.’11 A partially autobiographical book which he published in 1975 devoted fourteen chapters to religious subjects, dwelling among other things on the importance of natural law as a basis for moral judgements.12 In an otherwise favourable review of The Case for Conservatism, Michael Oakeshott criticised the use of natural law, which was ‘too abstract to offer much practical guidance’.13 In fact, there is no necessary connection between the humane brand of ‘Conservatism’ outlined in Hogg’s writings and either natural law or religious faith; anyone could take the same approach to politics, provided that they were suitably sceptical. Indeed, it could be argued that in Hogg’s case religion merely reinforced the sense of duty which made him for 43

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so long a participant in an increasingly secularised public domain. ‘Politics, it seems to me’, he writes, ‘must take into account the fallibility of human nature, the impermanence and incompleteness of all political philosophies, and the inability of man to see far into the future’.14 He concedes that ‘the last thing Conservatives believe is that they have the monopoly of the truth. They do not even claim the monopoly of Conservatism’. Like Burke, Hogg denies that ‘the power of politics to put things right in this world is unlimited. This is partly because there are inherent limitations on what may be achieved by political means, but partly because man is an imperfect creature with a streak of evil as well as good in his inmost nature’.15 ‘Conservatism,’ he claims, ‘is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force, performing a timeless function in the development of a free society, and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself … Other parties may be wedded to fixed and unalterable theories of the state. For better or worse, the Conservative Party is not. Its eternal and indispensable role is to criticise and mould the latest heresy of the moment in the name of tradition, as tradition itself has been enriched by all the transient theories of the past’. From this perspective, Conservatives opposed the Whigs in the seventeenth century, the Liberals in the nineteenth, and the socialists since 1945. In the process they have absorbed what is best in the creeds of their opponents; but they have never been driven from their fundamental beliefs in the frailty of human nature, the value of liberty and the importance of limited government.16 As well as Burke, Hailsham’s creed calls to mind the seventeenth-century Marquess of Halifax, ‘The Trimmer’, who believed that a wise politician should always throw his weight against the prevailing doctrines. It was no accident that Halifax was also a favourite for Ian Gilmour, whose thought in many respects resembled Hogg’s. However, Halifax’s prescriptions were easier to restate than to follow, and Hogg’s own career had already suggested that he was an imperfect ‘Trimmer’. During the war he had detected a demand for more concerted state action to alleviate poverty, and had tried to convince the Conservative Party that it should ride the wave of the future. Having failed in this enterprise, by 1947 he could see that Labour’s policy of economic austerity was making the Attlee Government unpopular. Once again, the best interests of his party lay in following prevailing trends, rather than opposing them. Thus, while the Hogg of 1943 was untouched by concerns that a more powerful state might constrain freedom, the 1947 version was suddenly alarmed by the socialist threat to liberty. In 1947, Hogg still felt able to boast that ‘of catchwords, slogans, visions, ideal states of society, classless societies, new orders, of all the tinsel and finery with which modern political charlatans charm their jewels from the modern political savage, the Conservative has nothing to offer’.17 With regard to ‘classlessness’, Hogg had clearly forgotten his 1943 remark that ‘Our former 44

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social distinctions are breaking down. We are developing a common culture’. He could not foresee that his party would fight the elections of 1950 and 1951 on ‘catchwords’ and ‘slogans’ which exploited the desire of many Britons to be free from lingering wartime economic restrictions. But it does not appear that he complained about the nature of the Conservative election campaigns in those years, even though his own book One Year’s Work had referred to the need for five-year plans, and envisaged a prolonged period of economic austerity – regardless of which party held power in the immediate aftermath of a ruinous war. The fact was that Hogg was not a detached philosophical observer; he was a pugnacious, partisan politician who wanted to use his account of ‘Conservatism’ to help his party’s prospects. Developments since the publication of One Year’s Work had evoked a genuine change of mind about the contemporary political battle. In 1943, Hogg felt that his primary task was to support ‘progressive’ elements within his party (which to his mind included Churchill himself ). The Labour element within the coalition was actually helpful in this enterprise; if the coalition was to be truly representative of the nation, the Prime Minister would have to bear in mind the arguments of the ‘worker’s party’ as well as more forward-looking MPs on his own benches. But it was not part of the plan that Labour should break from the coalition and win an overwhelming majority of its own. Although Hogg claimed that ‘The Conservative Party is far too old an institution to be much put out by defeat’, it remained possible for individual representatives of that organisation to be seriously perturbed.18 Among other things, the result meant that nationalisation could no longer be considered as a potentially useful adjunct to private enterprise; rather, Labour’s programme threatened to extend monopolistic public ownership into economic activities which had been thriving in private hands before the war. Hogg deplored this prospect, not least because it would endanger the pluralistic society which he prized. In addition, Hogg considered that Labour had won the 1945 election unfairly, because it had exploited a ‘myth’ about the conduct of Conservativedominated governments during the inter-war period. The Left Book Club had published a series of anonymous tracts (notably Guilty Men (1940)), which Hogg regarded as a slur on his own party’s patriotism. In answer, he produced The Left Was Never Right (1945), which demonstrated that Labour’s record on vital questions like rearmament was at least as bad. As far as the patriotism of individual Conservatives was concerned, Hogg produced lists of MPs who had served and suffered in the war. Not a single Labour MP had died in active service, while ten Conservatives had paid the ultimate price. Among those who had fought, there were 136 Conservative MPs against just 14 from the Labour ranks.19 45

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Having seen action himself – and having won the notorious Oxford by­election on the subject of appeasement – Hogg had personal reasons for feeling affronted by Labour’s one-sided narrative of pre-war developments. It was symptomatic of his continuing ill-feeling that, years later, he could dismiss Clement Attlee as a ‘rather mean-minded, waspish man’.20 The surprising thing was the extent to which he was able to square his post-war attitude with the ideas he had expressed in One Year’s Work. He devoted separate chapters in The Case for Conservatism to what he regarded as the ‘heresies’ of liberalism and socialism; and although he was far kinder to the first of these than the second, he left no doubt that he retained very serious misgivings about the arguments for laissez-faire. Liberalism, he thought, was ‘very nearly true’; but it was still doctrinaire, and ‘Conservatives think that the doctrinaire application of a political theory inevitably involves the statesman in extremes’.21 Thus, for example, Hogg was no happier with the laissez-faire rejection of ‘planning’ than with Labour’s attempts to put the idea into practice. Labour’s version, he argued, ‘demands the concentration of all power, political and economic, in the hands of a central government and prescribes, at least in general, for each individual or class of individuals the part they must play in a planned society’. The Conservative approach, by contrast, regards the state as a facilitator rather than a dictator. Hogg’s preference, in short, is for state intervention along the general lines of Harold Macmillan’s Middle Way.22 Promotion Hogg had every reason to doubt that he would ever take a leading role in a future Conservative government. He inherited his father’s title in 1950, the year in which his party was refreshed by an influx of parliamentary newcomers including Heath and Enoch Powell. When the Conservatives returned to office in the following year, the new Viscount Hailsham was not given a ministerial position; he had to wait until 1956 before taking the Admiralty, a post outside the Cabinet. But in the following year he started his career as a front-bench fixture, albeit from his seat in the Lords. From January to September 1957 he was Minister of Education, and a member of Macmillan’s Cabinet. His tenure in this office was truncated because Macmillan needed his talents for a more onerous job – the restoration of the party’s electoral fortunes in the wake of Suez. Hailsham was made Party Chairman, still within the Cabinet. Hailsham’s new responsibilities proved that membership of the House of Lords was perfectly compatible with a high media profile. At the beginning of his spell as Chairman he won a lasting reputation for showmanship by ringing a bell at the annual conference and indulging in some widely-publicised 46

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aquatic exploits. Far more important, in his own view, was the speech he delivered to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre (CPC). ‘In an age of infidelity’, he declaimed, ‘Conservatism is concerned with faith. In an era of dissolving allegiances, it upholds loyalty. In a fog of material considerations, it points to integrity. In an atmosphere of self-seeking, it preaches self-sacrifice’.23 This was breathtaking stuff. Far from pointing to integrity, the Conservative leadership had recently been duplicitous in its handling of the Suez affair. It had also helped to generate the ‘fog of material considerations’ through its economic management. Hailsham laid himself wide open to accusations of ‘self-seeking’ through his media-pleasing performances at that same conference. In fact, on his own testimony it is likely that he made himself swallow any misgivings in the collective Conservative cause; he felt that ‘it was the duty of a Party Chairman to reflect the exact centre of party orthodoxy … whatever I had been before this time’.24 The party might still be divided over Suez, and some might be feeling ambivalent about the social effects of ‘affluence’; but it was reasonable to suppose that centrists had no desire to apologise about the Conservative record in government since 1951, and the speech was rapturously received. Whether or not it helped to turn the tide of public opinion in his party’s favour, as Hailsham believed, the Conservatives did win the 1959 General Election under his chairmanship. However, due to an obscure misunderstanding he had temporarily fallen out of favour with Harold Macmillan, and was abruptly removed from his post. This episode, during which Hailsham felt that Macmillan’s behaviour was ‘almost Borgia-like’, made him ‘disgusted with the whole life of politics’.25 But by this time Hailsham was far too absorbed by the profession to take up either fox-hunting or religion on a full-time basis. In the run-up to the election, Hailsham had produced a new version of The Case for Conservatism. The chapter on ‘The Organic Theory of Society’ reappeared almost verbatim. By contrast, there were considerable amendments in the chapter originally called ‘Commonwealth and Empire’. The 1947 edition had included the idealistic notion that ‘The British Empire should continue as a unit working for the rule of law and ultimately for the federation of the peoples of mankind’. In 1959 Hailsham thought it prudent to change the title to ‘The Commonwealth’, and dropped the reference to world federation, along with his claim that Conservative policy towards the former Empire ‘is not one of scuttle’. In 1947 he had quoted with strong disapproval Labour’s view that ‘It is fundamental to Socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can.’ In this respect, if no others, the record of the Macmillan Government had left socialists with slender ground for complaint.26 The main changes in the book resulted from the different political circumstances. Although he continued to denounce Labour, Hailsham was now primarily concerned to defend the performance of his own party in office. 47

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Naturally this necessitated praise for the materialism which he denounced elsewhere. Thanks to Conservative management, he noted, ‘the British people are earning, eating, producing, buying, building, growing, and saving more than they ever did under Socialism, more than they ever have in their history, and more than almost any other people ever have in the history of the world’.27 For Hailsham, this achievement was an unalloyed blessing because prosperity had been so widely shared, embodying the Disraelian view that the Conservatives could only survive if they were a national rather than a sectional party. He also pointed out that the government had not been as doctrinaire as its slogans suggested: after 1951 the remaining wartime controls had not been dismantled at once, and, apart from steel and road haulage, the nationalised industries had stayed under public ownership. Rather than a ‘helter-skelter “dash for freedom”’ there had been ‘orderly, steady, even cautious, progress in the right direction’. The Conservatives had also tried to moderate inflation without being doctrinaire; while the Socialist remedy would be ‘an elaborate system of physical controls’, the government had used ‘a flexible monetary policy’. It had also prudently reduced income tax, in stark contrast to the Labour record between 1945 and 1951. During the election campaign Hailsham produced a smart retort to Labour’s contradictory promises to cut taxes while increasing public spending. The Opposition, he argued, was trying to bribe the voters with their own money.28 A lost leader? For understandable reasons, Hailsham was vexed by his demotion after the 1959 election. But he was not dropped from the government. From 1959 until the beginning of 1964 he was Minister for Science; in the last months of the Douglas-Home Government he combined that post with Education. Having patched up their differences and recognising Hailsham’s potential value in a Cabinet which lacked virility, in 1963 Macmillan gave him extra responsibilities for sport and the north-east of England. Justifiably, the somewhat portly Hailsham regarded the first of these appointments as ‘bizarre’. The second produced few results of lasting value, though it reinforced Hailsham’s appreciation of the need for a regional tier of government.29 With hindsight, it looks as though Macmillan was just using Hailsham and preventing him from building up a solid record of ministerial achievement in any single post. Yet in June 1963 Hailsham was asked by Macmillan to head Britain’s delegation to talks in Moscow on a nuclear test-ban treaty. It was rather a surprising choice; after all, in revising The Case for Conservatism Hailsham had decided to replace a cautious comment about his party’s ­disapproval for Stalin 48

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with the more forthright remark that Conservatives ‘detest the Communist regime in Russia’.30 During the Profumo scandal earlier in the year, Hailsham had scarcely advertised his diplomatic skills by blustering in a television interview that ‘A great party is not to be brought down because of a squalid affair between a woman of easy virtue and a proven liar’.31 However, Hailsham proved himself a skilful and good-humoured negotiator in Moscow. Suddenly it looked as if his youthful ambitions could be realised; when Macmillan decided to step down as Prime Minister, Hailsham could be his successor. This possibility had been opened up by the passage of the Peerage Act – a measure which Hailsham had hoped for ever since the prospect of a hereditary title for his father had first clouded his horizons. Thanks largely to the efforts of Viscount Stansgate (Tony Benn), after 31 July 1963 hereditary peers would be allowed to disclaim their titles. Macmillan’s resignation just before the party conference of October 1963 induced Hailsham to revert to plain Quintin Hogg and to declare his candidacy for the leadership. However, he never had a serious chance of seizing the crown. His crowd-pleasing antics were held against him, while his fellow peerage-disclaimer, Alec Douglas-Home, was judged to have played a decorous role even though it should have been obvious to all concerned that his chances of leading the party to victory in the next election were diminishingly slender compared to those of Hogg or Rab Butler.32 Ultimately the decision rested with Macmillan, and it was obvious that at some point he had developed cold feet about Hailsham/Hogg. As the Prime Minister noted in his diary for 14 October 1963, ‘Hogg (with all his absurdities and posturings and emotions) represents what [Oliver] Stanley, and John Loder and [Bob] Boothby, and Noel Skelton and I tried to represent from 1924 onwards. Those who clamour for Butler and Home are really not so much shocked by Hogg’s oddities as by his honesty. He belongs both to this strange modern age of space and science and to the great past – of classical learning and Christian life. This is what they instinctively dislike …’33 As a rationale for Macmillan’s ultimate decision to blackball Hogg, this could hardly be less astute. For a start, there was not really any ‘clamour’ for either Butler or Douglas-Home; many (including Hogg himself ) would have accepted Butler as prime minister on the basis of his record, but few supported him with the kind of fervour exhibited by Hogg’s own supporters. For his part, Douglas-Home was only supported by people who felt that the alternatives were unacceptable – hardly grounds for a ‘clamour’ on his behalf. It might have been true that senior Conservatives ‘instinctively disliked’ Hogg. But this emotion could hardly have been evoked by his alleged triple identity – part spaceman, part Christian fundamentalist, part Roman senator. Hogg was only regarded as a product of modernity because Macmillan himself had lumbered 49

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him with modern-sounding jobs. It was unlikely that he could have changed a light bulb with any more dexterity than that other Classical scholar, Enoch Powell. Ultimately the problem for Hogg was that in those days before formal elections to the leadership he had been forced to throw his hat into a ring which was already crowded with undeclared candidates. Unlike Butler, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reggie Maudling, he had to disclaim his hereditary peerage in order to become a viable candidate. Without a formal electoral mechanism to decide between these three, it was all too tempting for Macmillan to side-step the choice by conjuring up a compromise candidate – Alec DouglasHome, who had the twin advantages of being unknown outside Whitehall, and an unreflective adherent of the Conservative right wing which Macmillan had never understood but always feared. Even so, Hogg might not have prevailed in a free and fair poll of his Westminster colleagues. There were grounds for doubting his leadership qualities, leaving aside Macmillan’s implausible rationalisations. He was fiery, opinionated, arrogant and self-centred. According to his biographer, after his rebuff in 1963 ‘there was no realistic chance that he would ever again challenge for the Leadership’.34 However, when Douglas-Home was forced out in 1965 and the Conservatives were faced with another choice of leader, Hogg could easily have been ‘drafted’ to take on the role at least until the next election. For all his character defects, he was at least more ‘clubbable’ than Edward Heath. The Conservative Party had moved from choosing an aristocratic anachronism in 1963 to a ‘meritocrat’ two years later – with infelicitous results in both cases. Hogg, who had re-entered the House of Commons for the constituency of Marylebone in 1964, would have been a very good bridge between the generations and the classes; but seemingly he was not seriously considered, and did not stand. Of all the figures who feature in the present volume, Lord Hailsham is the best example of the difficulties faced by intellectuals within the Conservative Party. Some of his admirers (notably Ian Gilmour) were convinced that he possessed the greatest intellect of any post-war Conservative. That, a cynical observer might say, was alone sufficient to disqualify him from the leadership. Yet the Conservative Party of 1963 was not against intellect; rather, it was against people whose ideas were uncongenial – people like the ‘too clever by half ’ Iain Macleod, who had none of Hailsham’s academic honours. Hailsham’s career can be compared to that of Harold Macmillan, who was regarded as hopelessly cerebral before the war and then redesigned himself, much as Hailsham did after becoming Party Chairman in 1957. There were, though, three important differences between Macmillan and Hailsham. First, Hailsham suffered from the taint of appeasement, unlike Macmillan who never needed to emphasise his 50

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track record on that score. Second, Hailsham came to prominence in the age of the mass media, whereas Macmillan had already established himself as a crowdpleaser before the advent of television. Finally, although Hailsham did rebel against the official party line during the war, unlike Macmillan he never took his opposition to the Conservative hierarchy to extremities when he thought that it was wrong. After the war Macmillan could always rest on the laurels of The Middle Way, which had affronted party orthodoxy across the board in the distant past. One Year’s Work was equally iconoclastic up to a point; but in The Case for Conservatism Hailsham showed that his principles were capable of adaptation to suit the interests of his party. As such, it was evident that when push came to shove the party could put him to its own purposes without having to buy him; and so it proved when, after being cheated of a fair chance of the leadership in 1963, Hailsham joined Butler in agreeing to serve under Alec Douglas-Home. Ian Gilmour has provided direct testimony of the conversation in which one one-time appeaser (Hailsham) urged another (Butler) to resist the elevation of the man who had been one of Neville Chamberlain’s closest supporters: ‘You must don your armour, my dear Rab, and fight’. Needless to say, this call to arms resulted in nothing more than Butler’s agreement to take note of Hailsham’s comments.35 ‘Elective Dictatorship’ Back in opposition – and now back in the Commons as MP for Marylebone – Hogg helped to shape Conservative policy on industrial relations, before moving to Shadow Home Affairs after Heath had succeeded to the leadership in 1965. In this capacity he gave cautious approval to Labour’s 1968 Race Relations Bill, and in the same year was prominent among the Shadow ministers who told Heath that Enoch Powell should be sacked for his inflammatory ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. In debate on the Bill, Hogg argued unavailingly that its terms should be extended to outlaw all irrelevant forms of discrimination, and he spoke eloquently against Powell at the 1968 party conference.36 In 1970 Hogg returned to the House of Lords, this time with a life peerage and the post of Lord Chancellor. Although his original ambitions had lain elsewhere, it was a logical culmination to his political career; and like his father, he held the historic position on two separate occasions (1970–74, 1979–87). From 1970 until his death in 2001 at the age of ninety-four, the owlish Hailsham was the embodiment of the English legal system. He remained a fierce partisan, and a prolific writer; but he never addressed another party political meeting.37 His main purposes were now to protect the law against political encroachments, and to defend the constitution in the hope that it would be reformed in 51

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­keeping with its original spirit, rather than being subverted by socialism. For Hailsham, the result of the General Election of February 1974 was even more disconcerting than the Labour landslide of 1945. On the latter occasion, his antipathy towards Attlee and his colleagues was inspired by what he saw as a discreditable contrast between their respectable conduct under the coalition and their later attempt to portray Conservatives as class enemies. But in 1974 his feelings about Harold Wilson’s Labour were unequivocal. A lifelong champion of the theory of ‘responsible’ opposition, Hailsham was horrified by Labour’s cynical exploitation of Heath’s difficulties after 1970, and he regarded its 1974 election manifesto as extreme. To a large extent, Labour’s behaviour in office after February 1974 arose from its failure to win a secure parliamentary majority, either then or in the subsequent poll held that October. However, in Hailsham’s eyes a vulnerable parliamentary position gave Labour no excuse for playing fast and loose with the constitution. At the best of times Hailsham regarded the idea of an electoral mandate as a myth, but in the case of the Labour Governments of 1974–79 it was particularly galling to hear ministers claiming that their actions were justified because ‘the people’ had spoken on their behalf. In 1976 Hailsham delivered the BBC’s annual Dimbleby Lecture, on the theme of ‘elective dictatorship’. Ultimately his thesis derived from his notion of natural law, which in his view imposed limitations on the scope of action of any government, regardless of the manner in which it was chosen. Britain, he claimed, had now reached a stage where the lack of formal constitutional checks and balances was allowing governments to trespass far beyond acceptable limits. Furthermore, the amount of work undertaken by the House of Commons was now intolerable to the average MP. Thus the British system of representative government was breaking down at both ends; the executive was attempting to do more than the people wanted, and constituency members were unable to perform the role for which they had been elected. The only remedy was extensive constitutional reform.38 Hailsham followed up his lecture with a full-length book, The Dilemma of Democracy. Some of his earlier efforts had begun with apocalyptic visions, but the new volume was particularly stark. In language reminiscent of Pilgrim’s Progress, Hailsham depicted Britain as ‘the City of Destruction, a dying country in a dying civilisation’. If the British could not address their difficulties – social and economic as well as political – ‘the zealots of world communism’ would happily pick up the pieces.39 The only means of escape open to the British was a return to the principles of limited government. This could be entrenched through new constitutional provisions, notably devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a system of regional government in England; an elected House of Lords; the 52

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incorporation into British law of the European Declaration on Human Rights; and referendums to decide on future changes in fundamental laws. The system of devolution would have to involve much more than a token transfer of power from the centre; in Hailsham’s view, ‘it will have to approximate to federalism in order to be workable’.40 While this was a relatively new departure provoked by Hailsham’s rising concerns since 1974, the introduction of a European dimension into his constitutional thought had first appeared as early as 1943, when he had argued for coordinated European defence and even ‘a High Court to adjudicate disputes’ within the continent. At that time he had felt that ‘we are moving into a world in which the nation state is no longer the standard political institution’. As we have seen, the supposedly crusty Conservative had even taken seriously the possibility of a post-war World Federation.41 Hailsham’s recommendations were not just intended to defend individual liberty; they would also help central government to be more effective by restraining its hyperactivity. As Hailsham put it, while government has tried to increase its power ‘never does it seem, at least for many years, to have commanded so little respect, achieved so few successes, exacted so little loyalty, and perhaps imposed so low a standard of obedience’.42 This analysis suggested that Conservatives had been as much at fault since the war as their Labour opponents. However, Hailsham could never do more than give a tacit hint at even-handedness. The current crisis was really Labour’s fault, and only the Conservatives could be trusted to put things right. This left Hailsham with an obvious problem. He produced the usual complaints about ‘dogmatism and doctrinaire ideology’. Yet since 1975 his own party had been led by a figure who was often accused of dogmatism – not least by some of Hailsham’s fellow Conservatives. In addition to her ideological fervour, Mrs Thatcher must have offended Hailsham by her lack of interests outside politics. Back in 1947 he had famously written that ‘The man who puts politics first is not fit to be called a civilised being, let alone a Christian’.43 This was a little excessive; there were times in his life when Hailsham himself ‘put politics first’, and he was never less than civilised. But Mrs Thatcher took things much further, to the extent that politics became her hobby as well as her profession. Hailsham’s solution to the awkward situation within his party after 1975 was to avoid mentioning the name ‘Margaret Thatcher’ at any point in The Dilemma of Democracy. Far from recognising that the Conservatives might become the ideological mirror-image of Labour, he contented himself with an implausible reference to the ‘present moderate Conservative leadership’.44 Like Ian Gilmour in Inside Right (see Chapter 8), he accepted that the next Conservative government would have to take ‘a series of harsh and unpalatable decisions’. But how could it hope to make such decisions effectual, if at the same time it was proceeding with Hailsham’s plan to impose unilateral 53

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constitutional ­disarmament on central government? The ‘dilemma’ identified by Hailsham was even more tortuous than he had suspected; a Conservative government would have to take unprecedented powers in order to bring about a situation in which it could restore ‘limited government’.45 This, of course, is the best rationale that can be offered by Mrs Thatcher’s libertarian friends – that she was a reluctant centraliser who had to use central government to force the British to be free.46 Hailsham himself had no such illusions. Even before Thatcher returned to office he had failed to convince her of the need for devolution; and, ironically, Labour’s failure to implement that policy played a central role in bringing the Conservatives back into office in 1979. In Opposition and later, Hailsham frequently disagreed with Thatcher’s decisions; in The Dilemma of Democracy, for example, he had urged that Labour’s fall should be followed by a period of stability, and that a Conservative government should not even take strong action to restrain the trade unions. He was concerned that the party leadership was making itself unpopular through its ideological attacks on the welfare state, and rejected talk of an emerging ‘dependency culture’. Eagled-eyed Thatcherites on a heresy hunt would have been disconcerted to read his view that the nation could only prosper if the Conservative Party was ‘led from left of its own centre’, a remark whose force was not reduced by the additional injunction that Labour should be led from the right.47 But far from making common cause with other opponents, he contented himself with acidic asides. His desire to keep on cordial terms with his leader was indicated by a condescending response to Harold Macmillan’s comparison of Thatcher’s privatisation programme to ‘selling off the family silver’; at the same time, he claimed that Ian Gilmour’s plan for regenerating the British economy was based on a ‘fallacy’.48 In truth, although Hailsham undoubtedly relished office-holding, his main reason for staying in an uncongenial cabinet was his desire to protect the legal system against the radical intentions of his own leader. In this, at least, he was fairly successful, and it is a testament to the respect his commanded that the Prime Minister waited until his retirement after the 1987 General Election to launch her unsuccessful effort to ‘Thatcherise’ the legal profession. By the time of his retirement Hailsham was wide open to the allegation of double standards. In the early 1980s Britain more than ever resembled a ‘City of Destruction’. A party supported by a minority of the electorate was forcing through deeply unpopular policies, thanks to the distorted results of first-pastthe-post. The time was surely ripe for a ‘Trimmer’ to throw his full weight against the doctrine which was dominating government thinking, a manoeuvre which could be perpetrated without abandoning the centrist principles which Hailsham had always advanced on paper. Practice, however, proved to be a different matter. Indeed, some details of The Dilemma of Democracy suggest 54

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that Hailsham had shifted to the right since the idealistic days of One Year’s Work. For example, he now felt that in 1945 Britain had been well placed for a rapid recovery, compared to other European countries. This opportunity, he argued, had been thrown away by ‘fecklessness and disunity’ – no doubt the sole responsibility of the Attlee Government. He also remarked that ‘I am not fond of the expression “social justice” which is commonly used by those whose interest it is to foster envy, hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness between the classes’.49 Hailsham himself had freely used the phrase as a member of the Tory Reform Committee. It was of course, perfectly acceptable for Hailsham to change his mind, but it remained possible that the first-hand witness of economic and social realities of 1943 had been more perceptive than the ageing statesman who had been soured by decades of political and personal frustrations. It was in keeping with Hailsham’s career that as late as 1992 – two years after Thatcher had left office, when it should have been safe to speak out – he published a book On the Constitution which illustrated the threat of ‘elective dictatorship’ by reference to Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps, rather than citing an example that would have been fresher in the minds of his readers.50 Notes   1   Q. Hogg [Lord Hailsham], The Case for Conservatism (Penguin, London, 1947), p. 310.   2   Q. Hogg [Lord Hailsham], One Year’s Work (National Book Club, London, 1945), pp. 54–61.   3   Ibid., pp. 126–7.   4   Ibid, pp. 58, 60.   5   G. Lewis, Lord Hailsham: A Life (Jonathan Cape, London, 1997), p. 95.   6   Hogg, One Year’s Work, p. 50.   7   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 59.   8   Hogg, One Year’s Work, pp. 50, 85, 86, 90.   9   Ibid., pp. 100–1, 128. 10   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 10. 11   Lord Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight: Memoirs (Fontana, London, 1991 edn), p. 215; The Case for Conservatism, p. 16. 12   Lord Hailsham, The Door Wherein I Went (Fount, London, 1978 edn), pp. 15–23. 13   M. Oakeshott, ‘Contemporary British Politics’, Cambridge Journal, May 1948, p. 475. 14   Lord Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy: Diagnosis and Prescription (Fount, London, 1979 edn), p. 36. 15   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 11. 16   Ibid., pp. 13–14. 17   Ibid., p. 11. 18   Ibid., p. 13.

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19   Q. Hogg [Lord Hailsham], The Left was Never Right (Faber and Faber, London, 1945), p. 13. 20   Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight, p. 262. 21   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 53. 22   Ibid., p. 165. 23   Lewis, Lord Hailsham, p. 170. 24   Hailsham, The Door Wherein I Went, p. 167. 25   Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight, p. 324; The Door Wherein I Went, p. 181. 26   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 38. 27   Viscount Hailsham, The Conservative Case (Penguin, London, 1959), p. 149. 28   Ibid., pp. 161, 145–7; R. Lamb, The Macmillan Years, 1957–63: The Emerging Truth (John Murray, London, 1995), p. 61. 29   Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight, pp. 335–40. 30   Hailsham, The Conservative Case, p. 33. 31   Lewis, Lord Hailsham, p. 199. 32   For a detailed insider’s account, see I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories? (Fourth Estate, London, 1997), pp. 190–203. 33   Quoted in Lewis, Lord Hailsham, p. 235. 34   Ibid., p. 238. 35   Gilmour and Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories?, p. 200. 36   Lewis, op. cit., p. 252; Gilmour and Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories?, p. 237. 37   Hailsham, A Sparrow’s Flight, p. 377. 38   Lord Hailsham, Elective Dictatorship (BBC, London, 1976). 39   Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy, pp. 15–16. 40   Ibid., p. 139. 41   Hogg, One Year’s Work, pp. 83, 110, 98–9. 42   Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy, p. 125. 43   Hogg, The Case for Conservatism, p. 11. 44   Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy, p. 43, 21–2. 45   Ibid., p. 43. 46   Compare the argument eloquently expressed in S. Jenkins, Accountable to None: The Tory Nationalisation of Britain (Penguin, London, 1996 edn). 47   Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy, pp. 224, 43, 119–20, 200. 48   Daily Telegraph, 20 November 1985. 49   Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy, pp. 26, 117. 50   Lord Hailsham, On the Constitution (HarperCollins, London, 1992), p. 16. In the same work, Hailsham teeters on the brink of criticising Thatcher’s remark that ‘There is no such thing as society’. But although he concedes that ‘there is danger in using the dictum without further analysis’, he notes that ‘Literally, of course, she was absolutely correct’; ibid., p. 17.

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Enoch Powell The terms ‘free economy’ and ‘free society’ are to me interchangeable. Enoch Powell, 19601 You have nothing to fear either from exercising freedom, or from facing reality. Your dangers lie in the opposite direction – in surrendering yourselves to control and management, and in retreating to live in a world of fantasy. Enoch Powell2 I have said before … and I say again now: I was born a Tory, am a Tory and shall die a Tory. Enoch Powell3

T

he opening quotations highlight the twin ideological traditions that John Enoch Powell attempted to integrate into a coherent whole. These traditions were economic liberalism and traditional toryism. The former emphasises freedom, defined negatively as freedom from coercion and best protected through the extension of the market as the mechanism through which decisions should be taken, and the imposition of strict limits on the role of government. The latter emphasises social order, the authority of the state and the defence of the nation. Both of these positions were articulated by Powell. The main purpose of this chapter is to outline Powell’s main political principles and how these applied to the broad range of policies he addressed as an MP inside and outside of Parliament. The second aim of the chapter is to evaluate these ideas and to discuss various criticisms made of Powell’s political viewpoint. There are two main difficulties in discussing Powell’s political thought. The first is that he did address himself to a very broad range of political issues throughout his political lifetime and this makes it difficult to address his policy prescriptions in anything more than a brief manner in the limited space available. Moreover, his position can be seen as one of the first attempts to outline what would be called the New Right. Certainly he was the first senior politician, as seen in his place in this book, to offer a serious intellectual challenge to the paradigm of progressive Conservatism in the post-war period. There was a limited state tradition within the Conservative Party, but after 1945 these ideas were marginal in the Party and it was only with Powell that the free market

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strand of English Conservatism began to challenge the post-war orthodoxy in the Conservative Party. The broader Powellite or New Right position contains a number of intellectual issues beyond the scope of this chapter, but several of them are discussed later in the book. Firstly, the relationship between freedom and social order is discussed in relation to Keith Joseph in Chapter 6 and the traditionalists, who can be seen to be developing Powell’s ideas in the 1970s and 1980s. The relationship between markets and national sovereignty is discussed in relation to John Redwood in Chapter 9 and finally the relationship between individualism and the community is discussed through the work of David Willetts in Chapter 10. The second difficulty in discussing Powell’s political thought is that he has been analysed so exhaustively by a number of biographers. The first biography of Powell, which appeared within weeks of his notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech and was written by T. E. Utley, was largely sympathetic.4 The second study, which appeared a year later, was a polemic from the left-wing journalist Paul Foot.5 This was followed by a longer, more balanced account by Andrew Roth6, a social scientific perspective which was provided by Douglas Schoen.7 In 1977 the former Conservative MP Humphrey Berkeley provided a further polemic.8 The final book to appear on Powell during the 1970s came from Russell Lewis9 and it was a further decade before a new biography was written by the right-wing journalist Patrick Cosgrave.10 Two final studies appeared around the time of Powell’s death – by Robert Shepherd11 and the ‘official’ biographer Simon Heffer, containing references to Powell’s private papers for the first time.12 In addition, Powell has been the subject of many academic articles, chapters and numerous journalistic studies.13 This is not the place to evaluate these works although we have drawn on all of them where relevant. Two points are worth making: first, they tend not to concentrate on his intellectual development, except as part of a wider perspective; and secondly they all tend to be written from either a strongly sympathetic or a highly critical view of Powell. Of the authors mentioned above, only Roth and to some extent Shepherd attempt to provide a more impartial account of Powell. The nature of Powell’s political views plus his character still makes him a controversial figure. Hence, the chapter attempts to provide a fresh perspective on Powell – focusing primarily on his political thought and seeking to do so in a more balanced way than much of the existing literature. What can be gleaned from Powell’s life and career? Powell was born into a middle-class family in the West Midlands and he showed early promise as an academic child. He was to win a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and became a noted scholar of classical Greek. After an appointment as the youngest professor in the Commonwealth at the University of Sidney, he was to relocate to Durham when the Second World War broke out and he ­distinguished 58

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himself reaching the rank of Brigadier. After the war he refused to return to academic work and instead joined the Conservative Party’s research staff before becoming an MP in 1950. He was appointed as a junior minister but resigned as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in January 1958 alongside Peter Thorneycroft and Nigel Birch after failing to get Cabinet support for cuts in public expenditure. He returned to the government and joined the Cabinet as Health Minister in 1962–63 but then refused to serve under Alec DouglasHome when he became Prime Minister in preference to Powell’s favoured candidate ‘Rab’ Butler. It was after the 1964 General Election defeat that ‘Powellism’ began to emerge as he made speeches outlining free-market views and promoting notoriously tougher immigration controls and repatriation. He was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet in 1968 for his ‘rivers of blood’ speech but then intensified his rejection of Heath’s policies by adding Northern Ireland and opposition to membership of the European Economic Community to his list of grievances. His critique of the Heath Government was so vehement that when the February 1974 election was called he quit as a member of the Conservative Party and urged the electorate to vote Labour as the best means of withdrawal from the EEC. He returned to Parliament in the autumn as a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, but his views on Ulster were distinct from most other Unionist MPs. After the 1979 General Election, he was to soften his earlier opposition to Margaret Thatcher although he was to be particularly critical of both the Single European Act and the Anglo-Irish Agreement before adopting a critical attitude towards the Major administration after 1990. This potted biography of Powell highlights a number of issues. Firstly, Powell was highly dedicated and ambitious and showed clear achievement in all he did, but also showed an equal willingness to resign. He quit academia for the army and then the army for politics and was to become known as a resigner over the course of his political life.14 Most of his political achievements came while he was out of office. The second is that Powell’s political views were not static. He was initially sympathetic to Butler’s modernisation of the Conservative Party and was a member of the One Nation Group. His preference for free market economics was highlighted in his 1958 resignation, but he was to place emphasis on higher public expenditure and planning as Health Minister on his return to government. Moreover, his political outlook also changed from being an arch-Imperialist to a strident nationalist as Britain’s imperial role ended and was replaced by what he saw as the meaningless Commonwealth. The views commonly described as ‘Powellite’ were therefore largely to be expressed only after 1964. Moreover, his political development can only really be understood in relation to those of his colleagues. The One Nation group contained only backbench MPs and Powell was to be a member of it longer than many ­others as rivals such as Edward Heath and Iain Macleod were promoted before him. 59

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He decided to stand for the leadership in the first poll of MPs in 1965 but came a long way behind the two other candidates – Heath and Reginald Maudling (both representative of the left). The self-promotion and opposition to Heath from 1965 should be seen in this context but we should still reject Foot’s portrayal of Powell as an unprincipled opportunist. Within this context and bearing these points in mind, it is now possible to discuss Powell’s political thought, beginning with his advocacy of economic liberalism. Economic liberalism The essential argument of economic liberalism is that the freedom of the individual can only be maintained by limiting the scope of government intervention and maximising the role of markets, through which citizens may choose which goods and services they want. After the defeat of the Conservative Government in 1964, Powell asserted his belief that a clear choice existed in economic policy (and other areas of policy) between socialism, which would continue to limit freedom as it had done since 1945 under governments of both Labour and Conservative, and capitalism: ‘there is an essential and ineradicable conflict between socialism itself and the freedom of the individual under the law’.15 Socialism incorporated not just state socialism, of which there had been very little in Britain, but also social democracy since this involved the allocation of decision-making powers over economic activities to the state. The only alternative to this was free-market capitalism, where decisions were left with the individual.16 It was this logic that Powell applied to a range of economic issues, where the overriding aim was consistent – to limit as far as was possible the role of government in the economic sphere. The first aspect of this was monetarism. As mentioned above, Powell resigned from the Macmillan Government in 1958. The issue was a relatively small reduction in public expenditure. The Treasury team wanted to reduce the borrowing requirement, which they believed was generating inflation. In contrast the Prime Minister and other senior ministers were sceptical, believing that inflation was caused by other factors such as excessive wage increases, and that cuts in public expenditure would result in higher unemployment. Although the cuts demanded were fairly small as a proportion of the total, Powell, but not Thorneycroft,17 believed that there was a principle at stake and he was to remain a firm advocate of ­monetarism – the belief that inflation was caused by excessive money supply created mainly by governments running public sector deficits and which could only be reduced therefore by governments running sound money policies, even at the risk of higher unemployment. 60

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It followed from this that other policies supposedly designed to reduce inflation were flawed. The Keynesian view of inflation was that higher prices were caused either by excessive wage settlements or by rising costs of goods and services. The solution, therefore, was to allow governments to intervene to control wages and prices. Public sector borrowing did not have inflationary effects since such policies would only be used when the economy had spare capacity and therefore the extra money created by governments would create fuller or full employment without increasing prices. The monetarist response was to argue that borrowing only succeeded in creating higher inflation and that unemployment could only be reduced by creating free labour markets.18 Trade unions were not the cause of inflation although they did contribute to unemployment. Therefore, according to Powell, prices and incomes policies – attempted by both Labour and Conservative governments – were ‘cynical manoeuvres designed to transfer blame from the guilty to the guiltless’.19 Powell continued to articulate the monetarist view in the 1970s as part of his critique of the Heath Government: ‘inflation is a matter of money, not of those real things which money imperfectly enables us to express and compare’.20 Even after the first Thatcher administration introduced the Medium Term Financial Strategy with a firm commitment to monetary targets, Powell continued to criticise the government for having insufficient control over the money supply.21 If the trade unions were not responsible for inflation they still needed reform, according to Powell. There were two problems with the unions. The first was that they undermined the rule of law. The second was that they undermined economic efficiency. They were against the rule of law since they acted in a coercive way, especially in the case of the closed shop whereby employees of a particular company had to belong to a certain trade union. According to Powell, ‘if citizens are to be constrained for an acknowledged good end, that ought to be done by public coercion, properly regulated and lawfully applied, and not left to private hands’.22 The closed shop was a threat to free association and therefore needed to be scrapped: ‘the right to free association … means nothing unless there is an equal right of non-association’.23 However, Powell went further and claimed that trade unions had not achieved positive outcomes for their members, arguing that non-unionised sectors of the economy had seen wage increases comparable with the unionised sectors. Indeed, trade union wage demands had resulted in unemployment as companies could not afford to take on new workers and were unable to modernise machinery in order to raise productivity due to the opposition of the unions to changes in working conditions. The only way to improve workers’ pay and conditions would be through increased productivity and the best way of achieving this was through the free market, including the free labour market. The call for free markets went much further than the labour market. It re61

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quired a reversal of the post-war drift to collectivism and planning. This drift had marked a consensus in British politics as both parties had sought since at least the early 1960s to build on Keynesian economics with a central government planning framework. This had begun under Macmillan with the creation of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) and continued under Wilson with the National Plan. The use of planning required a vast concentration of powers at the centre and the ability to coerce people into following the planning decisions of central government. This was the only way of getting planning to work and therefore was essentially coercive: ‘the government, in the name of “the community”, will see to it that we produce what they think ought to be produced and not what we want to buy; that their preferences and not ours, their priorities and not the consumer’s priorities, shall determine the direction of national effort’.24 Powell’s language here was very similar to the anti-planning message advanced by Hayek,25 that only capitalism offers freedom and any form of planning is a move away from capitalism and is therefore coercive. The message would be unpopular with not just the Labour Party but also among Conservatives, who had extended planning, as seen with the NEDC. Powell’s solution was firstly that planning should be stopped. This not only meant that a future Conservative government should eschew further planning but also in the meantime that employers should resist the dictates of central government.26 Secondly, Powell advocated privatisation, or what he preferred to call ‘denationalisation’. Nationalisation, the most obvious form of central government planning since it meant not just an extension of regulation but also a transfer of ownership, was according to Powell, in language later associated with Keith Joseph, a ‘ratchet’.27 The only way of stopping the advance of public ownership would be to reverse the trend and return state-owned corporations to the private sector. He argued that ‘there is nothing impracticable at all about denationalising the nationalised industries – all of them’.28 One final issue on which Powell argued very clearly was that government should stop intervening in the hope of maintaining a fixed exchange rate.29 The Wilson Government was so concerned to maintain the parity of sterling that it sacrificed its growth targets in the national plan. Powell was not concerned about this since the government should not seek to plan the economy anyway, but he was critical of the concern of governments of both parties to seek to maintain some fixed parity of sterling. Again his argument here is consistent with his broader economic thesis. Firstly, in setting an exchange rate, governments were coercing people since they could only act within the limits imposed by the exchange rate: ‘the control of the international price of currencies, like every other suppression of market prices, leads to other controls which make a mockery of the individual’s freedom to trade, travel and invest’.30 Secondly, 62

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the fixed rate was bound to be inefficient since the exchange rate was a price mechanism which indicated what producers and consumers wanted to buy and sell. Hence the fixing of exchange rates was another aspect of Keynesian economics Powell explicitly rejected. Therefore, we can see with Powell a clear advocacy of the economic liberal position. Powell believed that government intervention was both inefficient and coercive. He applied these arguments to a broad range of economic and industrial policies – government borrowing, trade unions, planning, incomes policies, public ownership and the exchange rate. He worked closely with the joint directors of the Institute of Economic Affairs – Arthur Seldon and Ralph Harris – at a time when the Institute was not particularly fashionable. He also met the high-priest of economic liberalism, Hayek, on several occasions. His so-called Morecambe budget of 11 October 1968 can be seen as one of the clearest articulations of economic liberalism before the rise of Thatcherism. He argued that income tax should be halved and capital gains tax and selective employment tax abolished without the need for cuts in core areas of public spending such as defence and social services. This could be done through the privatisation of profit-making nationalised industries, by ending overseas aid, agricultural subsidies and regional investment and by abolishing both the NEDC and the Prices and Incomes Board.31 However, Powell’s advocacy of economic liberalism was not consistent. This can be seen in the policies he pursued as Health Minister, when he extended planning and government intervention, which he regarded as the most efficient means of managing the National Health Service.32 This was partly because he believed, rightly, that public opinion would not support the introduction of markets into the health service, but also because he drew a categorical distinction between the economic and non-economic spheres. The NHS was part of the non-economic sphere and should therefore be run accordingly. Moreover, as Health Minister – the only time Powell served as a minister other than as Financial Secretary – he actually increased government regulation and spending by imposing an incomes policy on nurses, formulating a ten-year plan to reform the health service and building new hospitals and closing older ones, particularly mental hospitals. His attitude to the NHS was a disappointment to Seldon and Harris, who sought to influence his views on the welfare state. However, Powell continued to argue that the NHS should be treated separately from economic aspects of government policy and was sceptical about the Thatcher and Major Governments’ reforms of the health service.33 Moreover, the limits of Powell’s economic liberalism can be seen in some of his statements on the policies pursued by the Thatcher Government. Here, his most outspoken criticisms were on the issues of Ulster and the EEC, but he also criticised a number of other policies which show the limits of his economic 63

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liberalism. Firstly, Powell (like John Biffen as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after 1979) was critical of cuts in direct taxation for the rich and the shift to indirect taxation inspired by the supply-side argument that tax cuts would improve productivity and wealth creation.34 Similarly, Powell was opposed to the Community Charge believing that the rates were the best form of local taxation.35 Finally, Powell had long held to the traditionalist view of education and although he was therefore opposed to comprehensive schools and other educational policies in the 1960s, he was also opposed to the education reforms initiated by Keith Joseph with the aim of creating an ‘enterprise culture’ with its emphasis on the practical nature of education. Hence, the view that Powell expressed as early as 1964 was the same one that led him to criticise the education policy of Joseph: ‘the facility with which not only politicians but people who should know better argue for education in the name of economic growth is frightening’.36 Powell’s stance on education is much closer to the traditional Tory perspective and this is where our attention must now turn. Traditional Toryism Powell’s advocacy of free-market economics only makes sense in the context of his view of the nation. The clearest expression of his sense of nationhood came in 1961 with a speech to the Royal Society of St George, an organisation set up to foster a greater sense of patriotism. Powell had been an arch-Imperialist and regarded India as central to the Empire. He expressed a sense of personal loss when India was granted independence and was later alleged to have devised a plan for its recapture. He was then a member of the Suez Group, created to oppose the surrender of sovereignty over the region. However, once it had been granted he opposed the Suez expedition in 1956, which he regarded as a belated attempt to recapture control over the waters. It was around this time that Powell began to reflect on what a post-Imperial Britain might be like, but it was not until the speech to the Royal Society of St George that he articulated this. He asserted that the Empire had been a myth and was only known to the English people for one or two generations at most. The true sense of Englishness could only be found by searching through history: ‘tell us what it is that binds us together; show us the clue that leads through a thousand years; whisper to us the secret of this charmed life of England, that we in our time may know how to hold it fast’.37 The things which Powell believed bound the English together and marked the essence of English national identity were the language and a set of institutions, most notably the Church of England, Parliament and the monarchy: ‘we in our day ought well to guard as highly to honour, the parent stem of England, and its royal talisman’.38 Hence, Powell had moved from being an ardent Imperialist to being an English nationalist. 64

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Powell’s nationalism contained two overwhelming elements. The first was a sense of cultural unity, expressed most clearly in his stance on immigration. The second element was a belief in territorial sovereignty, defined in an absolute sense as something that was either possessed or was not. Sovereignty was not something that could be ‘pooled’ or shared. For this reason the Commonwealth was also a myth and he opposed its development, believing that it diverted Britain from its true interests as an independent nation-state. His view of sovereignty determined his attitude on European integration, devolution and the future of Ulster. This conception of nationalism encouraged a sense shared on the right of the political spectrum that the nation-state was under threat. Powell’s clearest statement of this viewpoint was made during the 1970 General Election: ‘I assert … that this country is under attack by forces which aim at the actual destruction of our nation and society as we know or can imagine them.’39 The first threat perceived by Powell was that of immigration. Powell had been slow to speak out on this subject. The first racial riots occurred in Britain in the late 1950s and the Conservative MP, Sir Cyril Osborne, spoke out for immigration controls. Although he was approached, Powell said nothing at this stage, nor did he participate in the campaign of Peter Griffiths in Smethwick in 1964 that contained a clear racial element. He had made several low-key statements on immigration after this but his most famous outburst came in Birmingham in 1968: ‘those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents … It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre … As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.’40 Powell was promptly dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet for making this speech but he received popular support and was seen for some time as a clear alternative leader to Heath. He continued to make speeches on immigration and called in particular for policies that would end immigration and encourage repatriation. His reason for doing so, he maintained, was not one of racialism but his concern for national unity. Although immigration controls had been introduced in 1962 and again in 1968 and 1971 Powell still believed that governments of both parties had failed to deal adequately with the issue: ‘the nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimilable populations’.41 Thatcher’s 1978 statement that the nation was being ‘swamped’ by immigrants was welcomed by Powell, but he believed that the failure to develop policies from this showed that the moderates in the Party still had too great an influence.42 Powell was also to be an outspoken critic of membership of the EEC negotiated by the Heath Government. He was not consistent in his view on this issue as he had been in favour of negotiations for entry to the EEC on the first 65

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attempt by Harold Macmillan and then under Harold Wilson. However, by the late 1960s he had become a firm Eurosceptic and made speeches on this issue from then onwards. After 1970 these were stepped up and became his main policy concern. He argued strongly that membership of the EEC would undermine British sovereignty to the point of ending the existence of Britain as an independent nation-state. As he explained: ‘I do not understand how a nation which is in the throes of rescuing its identity from the delusions and deceits of Empire and Commonwealth can at the same time undertake to merge that identity again in half of the continent of Europe.’43 His main concern was on the issue of sovereignty, which he defined as an absolute – something that would either be possessed by the UK or by the EEC. Indeed, that the issue was one of sovereignty was self-evident: ‘there is nothing abstract or theoretical about the sovereignty which would be surrendered: it is a plain matter, which any elector can readily see and understand’.44 He was also of the belief that membership would not improve Britain’s economic prospects and also that the people should be allowed to express a view. He voted against membership in the parliamentary debates on the issue in 1972–73 and then resigned from the Conservative Party and urged people to vote Labour in the election of February 1974 because it promised to renegotiate the terms of entry and then hold a referendum. He campaigned as an Ulster Unionist in the 1975 referendum against membership and subsequently opposed all further measures of European integration such as direct elections to the European Parliament first held in 1979, the Single European Act of 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty signed by John Major.45 Powell was also to adopt a critical stance on devolution to Scotland and Wales. Demands for legislative devolution had begun in the late 1960s and increased further during the 1970s. The Conservative Party had formulated plans for devolution contained in both of the 1974 manifestos. The Labour Government of 1974–79 attempted to introduce devolution but this was to fail in 1979, when the majority vote in Wales in the 1979 referendum was against devolution. Although there was a majority in Scotland in favour of devolution, the relevant legislation had stipulated that the measure would not be carried unless it enjoyed the support of at least 40 per cent of the whole electorate. The ‘Yes’ vote turned out to represent less than 33 per cent of the electorate, thus failing to clear the hurdle imposed by Parliament. Powell was opposed to devolution on the basis that it undermined the territorial sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. Subordinate institutions, such as local authorities, were to be permitted, but the new legislative bodies would be rivals to the Westminster Parliament since they would take away its sovereignty to make decisions affecting Scotland and Wales. Should Scotland and or Wales seek independence Powell believed that this would be regrettable but permitted as an 66

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e­ xpression of nationalism, but the territorial sovereignty of the United Kingdom should be maintained. There were no halfway houses: ‘nationhood is an absolute. There is no such thing as semi-nationhood, or semi-nationalism’.46 It was the same view of sovereignty that determined Powell’s stance on Ulster. He had first made speeches defending the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the late 1960s when the civil rights movement demanded political reforms in the province. As the troubles intensified in the early 1970s the Heath Government had attempted to introduce political reforms in order to pacify the protesters. According to Powell, this view was a fallacy since it would only encourage terrorist organisations, notably the IRA, to push for further reforms. The idea that compromise could be reached was mistaken. The issues were those of sovereignty and identity: ‘to decide who we are; to establish, or re-establish, our identity as a nation’.47 Either Northern Ireland remained an integral part of the UK or it would form part of a united Ireland. Therefore Powell urged on the governments of the 1970s and 1980s a strong defence of the Union and a defeat of the terrorist threat. He joined the Ulster Unionists after he had resigned from the Conservative Party, but was to remain aloof from them since he demanded full integration into the rest of the UK whereas most unionists wanted the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland.48 Powell was to remain steadfast in his opposition to any measures he regarded as weakening the sovereignty of Westminster over Ulster and thought the AngloIrish Agreement signed by Thatcher a betrayal of Ulster.49 Hence, we can see a firm commitment to the traditional Tory notion of the nation-state. However, it is worth pointing out briefly a number of issues on which Powell was not in agreement with the concerns of most traditionalists. Firstly, he adopted a fairly liberal approach to punishment of offenders particularly in his long opposition to both capital and corporal punishment. Moreover, he held a rigid distinction between public and private morality, which can be seen in his clear advocacy of the rights of consenting homosexuals. Finally, and unusually for someone on the right of the political spectrum, Powell did not believe in the merits of the nuclear deterrent and his attitude to nuclear weapons was in many ways similar to those on the radical left. He was also hostile to the USA.50 Evaluation Having outlined Powell’s economic and political thought three issues emerge for our investigation. The first is the extent to which Powell was consistent; second, the degree to which his ideas on the broad range of issues discussed above can be deemed to be compatible; and finally the extent to which his 67

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proposals were practicable. The first issue has been widely discussed in all of the biographies of Powell. The debate is essentially between those who find consistent themes and values in his utterances and those who think that he was an opportunist. Among the former are Peter Utley (discussed in Chapter 7), who argues that Powell showed a strong and consistent concern with the idea of England.51 At first, Englishness was expressed through the Empire and then, once the Empire had ceased to exist, through the future of the nation-state. This concern was a constant for Powell. Subsequent sympathetic biographers such as Cosgrave and Heffer emphasise the same point.52 In contrast, Paul Foot stresses the opportunistic nature of Powell’s thought.53 He wanted to be leader of his party and his poor showing in the 1965 contest showed how far he had to go. His selection of issues on which to speak out was then based on those topics which would give him most publicity, such as immigration, or those which would cause most difficulty for his rival Edward Heath, such as Europe. A similar point was made by Humphrey Berkeley: ‘his eye is on the summit and his aim has always been to ascend the peak in his own time and on his own terms’.54 It is certainly the case that his views changed significantly after 1964 on a number of issues including immigration, on which he had not previously spoken out, and on Europe, having previously endorsed negotiations for membership. This debate will continue but there is little that can added since the truthful, although uninteresting answer, is that he was motivated by both principle and power after 1964. In terms of outcomes his success was mixed. He could have been a serious leadership contender, but this never seemed likely after the ‘rivers of blood’ speech and on many issues he was on the losing side – on Europe more immediately but over the longer term on other issues such as devolution and immigration. A more interesting issue is the extent to which his ideas were compatible. Certainly he thought of his economic and political concerns as forming a coherent whole, and his economic ideas can only be fully appreciated in terms of his political beliefs. The most viable way, Powell believed, of maintaining the authority of the state and the economic prospects of a strong, independent nation-state was the free market. The authority of the state had been eroded by government assuming too much responsibility over areas of economic activity: ‘the state which undertakes … the obligation to meet the general needs of the citizens is particularly vulnerable to violent agitation, for one simple reason – the obligation it has accepted is by its nature unlimited. It follows that the material for dissatisfaction is likewise unlimited’.55 Hence, the authority of the state is best preserved by limiting the functions of government. Moreover, the pursuit of interventionist policies had been accompanied by the relative decline of the British economy. It was only a short step for Powell to make this link and claim that the former had been responsible for the latter. The best way 68

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– indeed, Powell would argue, the only way – to restore national economic efficiency would be to minimise government intervention and maximise the scope for the allocative efficiency of the price mechanism. However, on a number of specific points Powell’s ideas were contradictory. We will mention just two here. The first is that of immigration. Powell demanded a free market for most goods and services. However, a free market for labour would seem to dictate that immigration controls should be as limited as possible so as to allow for the free movement of labour. This point was made directly to Powell at the time by Ralph Harris, who believed that immigration controls ran contrary to the economic liberal argument.56 Given Powell’s continued advocacy of immigration controls and repatriation, one must assume that when the ideas of free markets and nationalism collided, the latter was always stronger in Powell’s thought. However, nowhere did Powell appear to accept the conflict inherent in his beliefs. The second issue – again one clearly identified by the consistent economic liberals Seldon and Harris – was that of Powell’s views on the welfare state, in particular his attitude to the NHS. This has already been addressed above and so can be reiterated briefly here. Powell drew a sharp distinction between economic and non-economic spheres of government activity. In the former, market forces should dominate, but the existence of the latter marked a clear limitation to the scope of market forces, and this included the NHS. However, it was not clear why the NHS should be exempt. Indeed, more fundamentally, it was not clear on what objective criteria the line between the two should be drawn. All areas of government activity depended on the fiscal redistribution of economic growth. This was as true of the nationalised industries as it was of the NHS. Powell would have been aware of this given the criticisms levelled by Harris and Seldon, but again does not seem to have addressed the point directly. Arguments were put forward by the left concerning the defence of citizenship against the encroachment of market forces,57 but this idea would not have been one Powell could endorse given his emphatic support for the market in other areas. One final issue, by way of conclusion, is that Powell’s ideas seem to have an air of impracticality. This is so even if one were to accept the ethical basis for his policy proposals. Two examples can be given to illustrate this point. The first is again that of immigration. Powell believed that the immigrant community in Britain should be reduced, and that this could be achieved through a combination of ending immigration and encouraging repatriation. However, as we have seen, he did not speak out until the mid-1960s by which time there had already been a decade of immigration from the former colonies and elsewhere. Some doubted that it was still practicable to control immigration by the time Powell did speak out. Moreover, there was the question of what could be done should immigrants refuse to accept the financial rewards Powell promised to 69

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give them. Powell could not support enforced repatriation and so it was left open as to what could effectively be done to reduce numbers. As Shepherd comments: ‘in putting so much emphasis on voluntary repatriation, Powell was proposing a solution that, if it had ever been pursued with the vigour that he demanded, was likely to exacerbate race relations. Moreover, it was extremely unlikely to produce the dramatic impact on the size of the non-white population that he envisaged’.58 The second case is that of the free-market economic theory that Powell espoused. He regarded the private sector and the public sector as clearly distinct entities. The public sector had encroached on the private sector and the policies Powell advocated, he believed, would reduce the public sector and restore a free, competitive private sector. However, as a number of commentators (not exclusively on the left) have argued, the private sector was not free and competitive and required government intervention to counteract the monopolistic tendencies inherent within it.59 Hence, government intervention was not the cause of limited competition but a way of partially defending it. In the final analysis therefore, we can see in Powell a clear attempt to forge a post-Imperial English nationalism based around the maintenance of sovereignty and the promotion of the free market, ideas that were to continue to hold sway on sections of the Conservative Party as can be seen in this volume; but his thought contained a number of intellectual limitations that would need to have been resolved if it was to form a viable alternative to the dominance of progressive Conservatism. Notes   1   E. Powell, Saving in a Free Society (Hutchinson, London, 1960), p. 8.   2   E. Powell, Freedom and Reality, edited by John Wood (Batsford, London, 1969), p. 5.   3   E. Powell, A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics, edited by Richard Ritchie (Batsford, London, 1978), p. 101.   4   T. E. Utley, Enoch Powell: The Man and His Thinking (William Kimber, London, 1968).   5   P. Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell (Cornmarket, London, 1969).   6   A. Roth, Enoch Powell: Tory Tribune (Macdonald, London, 1970).   7   D. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1977).   8   H. Berkeley, The Odyssey of Enoch (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1977).   9   R. Lewis, Enoch Powell: Principle in Politics (Cassell, London, 1979). 10   P. Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell (Bodley Head, London, 1989). 11   R. Shepherd, Enoch Powell (Hutchinson, London, 1996). 12   S. Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1998). 13   Of which some of the more interesting are A. Gamble, The Conservative Nation (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975), and T. Nairn, ‘Enoch Powell: The New

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Right’, New Left Review, 61, 1970. 14   The idea that Powell was a ‘natural resigner’ comes from R. A. Butler and is highlighted in most accounts of Powell. 15   Powell, Freedom and Reality, p. 115. 16   See Powell’s speech made at Bromley, 24 October 1963, in Powell, Freedom and Reality, edited by John Wood (Batsford, London, 1965) for a clear expression of this opinion. 17   Thorneycroft believed in sound money but not with the same ideological certainty that Powell did. See Shepherd, Enoch Powell, p. 183 for a discussion of this point and the famous comment that Thorneycroft detected ‘rising damp’ in response to the economic policy of Margaret Thatcher. 18   The clearest expression of theoretical monetarism is contained in a collection of essays by Milton Friedman, Monetarist Economics (Blackwell, Oxford, 1991). 19   Powell, Freedom and Reality, p. 173. 20   E. Powell, Still to Decide, edited by John Wood (Elliot, Kingswood, 1972), p. 156. 21   This view was expressed in a significant number of speeches in 1980–81. See Powell Papers, POLL4/2/4, Churchill College, Cambridge University. 22   Powell, A Nation not Afraid, p. 121. 23   Ibid., p. 133. 24   Ibid., p. 10. 25   See in particular, F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago, Chicago, 1960). 26   This call to resistance on the part of business leaders was a frequent theme of Powell’s speeches at this time. 27   See for instance, Powell, Freedom and Reality, p. 76. 28   Powell, Still to Decide, p. 107. 29   The fixed exchange rate had been the theme of one of Powell’s pamphlets; see E. Powell, Exchange Rates and Liquidity, IEA Occasional Paper 18, 1967. 30   Ibid., p. 23. 31   Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 484–6. 32   For a detailed discussion of Powell’s tenure as Minister of Health see Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 266–333. 33   See E. Powell, A New Look at Medicine and Politics (Pitman Medical, London, 1966). Author interview with Lord Biffen, 26 April 2007. 34   Author interview with Lord Biffen. 35   Heffer, Like the Roman, p. 929. 36   E. Powell, A View on Education (Working Men’s College, London, 1964), p. 3. 37   Powell, Freedom and Reality, p. 339. 38   Ibid., p. 340. 39   J. Wood (ed.), Powell and the 1970 Election (Elliot, Kingswood, 1970), p. 105. 40   The full speech is reprinted in Powell, Freedom and Reality, pp. 281–90. 41   Powell, A Nation or No Nation, p. 165. 42   Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 801, 804. Powell was particularly concerned that William Whitelaw was stopping Thatcher from becoming more radical on immigration. 43   Powell, Still to Decide, p. 181. 44   E. Powell, The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot, Kingswood, 1973),

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p. 41. 45   See Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 901–6 for the Single European Act and pp. 936–40 for the Maastricht Treaty. 46   Powell, Still to Decide, p. 173. 47   Ibid., p. 177. 48   See Heffer, Like the Roman, p. 712 onwards for a detailed discussion of Powell’s relations with the Ulster Unionists. 49   Heffer, Like the Roman, p. 895. 50   See in particular, Powell, Freedom and Reality, pp. 215–45. 51   Utley, Enoch Powell. 52   Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell and Heffer, Like the Roman. 53   Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell. 54   Berkeley, The Odyssey of Enoch, p. 20. 55   Powell, Still to Decide, p. 26. 56   Correspondence from Harris to Powell, Powell Papers, POLL1/1/48. 57   For instance, K. Hoover and R. Plant, Conservative Capitalism in Britain and the United States: A Critical Appraisal (Routledge, London, 1989). 58   Shepherd, Enoch Powell, p. 367. 59   The idea that economic activities were dominated by large firms had been expressed most clearly by J. K. Galbraith in The New Industrial State (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1967). Surprisingly, one convert to this perspective was Angus Maude, who used the ideas Galbraith had put forward to criticise his close associate Enoch Powell. See A. Maude, The Common Problem: A Policy for the Future (Constable, London, 1969), pp. 194–202.

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5

Angus Maude To have a philosophy and then not act on it is cheating. Angus Maude, 19671

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n 14 January 1966, the Spectator magazine ran an article written by Angus Maude, the Conservative front-bench spokesman on the colonies. As a former newspaper editor, Maude could not have been ignorant of the rules governing an article of this kind, written for a publication which was closely identified with the Conservative Party without being slavishly loyal. Even if he disagreed with current party policy, he would have to express this dissent in coded terms rather than launching a frontal attack. Anything more robust would carry the risk of dismissal from his current job – unless he was on excellent personal terms with the leader or was too powerful to sack. In January 1966 Maude was well aware that he enjoyed neither of those happy guarantees. Perhaps Maude imagined that these rules did not apply to someone, like himself, who was not formally a member of the Shadow Cabinet. This seems more likely than the alternative explanations – that he was trying to force his leader, Edward Heath, into a dramatic rethink of strategy on a wide range of issues, or that he had sickened of life as an official spokesman and wanted to refresh himself with a spell on the backbenches. Whatever its motivation, the article – under the ominous headline ‘Winter of Tory Discontent’ – reads like the work of a semi-detached commentator rather than a member of the Opposition team. Maude claimed that his party had become ‘a meaningless irrelevance’ in the eyes of the electorate, and that ‘for Tories simply to talk like technocrats will get them nowhere’. He ended the article with a series of direct challenges to the leadership, which must ‘stop pussyfooting about the trade unions, and say what nearly everyone wants us to say’; to promise significant reductions in direct taxation; to devise radical changes in the social services; to pledge ‘a substantial reduction in crime at all costs’; and – last but by no means least, in Maude’s mind – to ‘say firmly that ugliness is a sign of a bad society’.2 If Maude had confined himself to just one or two serious indiscretions, or a

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series of cautious hints that new thinking might be useful for the Opposition, the article would have presented Heath with an awkward dilemma. In those circumstances, if he had felt confidence in his current position and policies a well-counselled leader might have allowed Maude to continue in his post after a stern admonition. But at the time Heath was under serious pressure, with his party split over Rhodesia and his Defence spokesman, Enoch Powell, ridiculing the incomes policy which the last Conservative government had operated. On the very day that Maude’s article appeared, indeed, Powell had delivered a speech attacking the Commonwealth.3 Heath thus had good reasons for making an example of a dissident. But Maude had made the decision easier for Heath, by eschewing subtlety and delivering an attack which no leader, in any circumstances, could have tolerated. It turned out that the Spectator article was not Maude’s only offence; he had written a similar critique for a future edition of Encounter magazine. Summoned to London to discuss the matter on 18 January, Maude knew that he would lose his front bench position during the course of the interview; the only question was whether he would jump or be pushed. On balance it looks as though the arrangement was terminated ‘by mutual consent’; it scarcely accorded with Margaret Thatcher’s recollection that Maude ‘had been unceremoniously sacked’.4 But as a parting shot, Maude implied that he agreed with Powell over incomes policy.5 It is not clear why Heath had retained Maude in a frontbench role – albeit outside the Shadow Cabinet – after inheriting him from the regime of Alec Douglas-Home. Maude, after all, had a patchy record as a team player. He had renounced the Conservative Whip in 1957, and a few months later resigned his seat. He had been a member of the Suez Group, and a vocal critic of the enforced decision to back away from military intervention. At the time, the harassed Conservative Chief Whip was Edward Heath. Back in 1950, along with Cub Alport, Maude had founded the One Nation Group of backbench Conservative MPs, and Heath had been one of their earliest recruits. In those intimate surroundings Heath would have been able to gauge Maude’s suitability as a frontbencher, and there is no evidence that he gained a favourable impression. Others clearly shared Heath’s misgivings; while most original members of the One Nation Group were identified as ministerial material at any early stage – and even that ‘difficult’ character Enoch Powell had been given a junior post before the end of 1955 – Maude was overlooked in every reshuffle before his departure to become Editor-in-Chief of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1958.6 At the time, Maude declared that he had left politics for good. But he had been bitten by the bug; and his work in Australia proved uncongenial. After his return he re-emerged as a Conservative candidate. When he lost a 1962 by­election in South Dorset he thought that ‘this is possibly the end of the road for me’; but in the following year he fought and won Stratford-on-Avon (vacated 74

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by the disgraced Jack Profumo).7 After his sacking by Heath, it seemed that Maude’s political comeback had been a mistake. But Maude, above all, was a man of ideas; before becoming an MP he had worked for the highly respected (and non-partisan) think tank Political and Economic Planning (PEP), and later had run the Conservative Political Centre (CPC), which played a key role in political education within the party. If he could not speak out freely from the front bench, then to some extent his dismissal really did constitute a liberation. He gave a brief exposition of his views at the 1967 party conference, in a speech which was immediately published by the CPC as The Consuming Society.8 The title of the pamphlet said much about its author. Maude had already co-written serious studies of social change, The English Middle Classes (1949) and Professional People (1952).9 He was, in short, the last person to confuse the atmosphere within the political hothouse of Westminster and Whitehall for the political climate in the ‘real world’; acutely sensitive to attitudes within the electorate at large, he focused chiefly on the groups which traditionally offered the most enthusiastic support to his own party. As Andrew Gamble has written, he was interested in ‘the politics of support rather than the politics of power’.10 From this perspective, Maude’s CPC pamphlet could be seen as an elaboration of the themes set out in his ill-starred 1966 article. There was indeed a deliberate echo of his most controversial phrase, although this time the indictment was broader. ‘Politics as a whole,’ he claimed, had ‘come to be dismissed by the electorate as a tiresome waste of time’.11 Yet The Consuming Society was merely an interim step in the development of Maude’s ideas. In 1969 he published The Common Problem, which resembles a philosophical treatise rather than the typical argumentative political work. In this format Maude’s presentation lost some of the punch which characterised his pamphlet; the structure of the book was also somewhat sprawling and discursive, suggesting that Maude was better at editing other people’s work than his own. Even so, The Common Problem is by any standards a work of considerable ambition, and among serving post-war Conservative politicians it is almost unique. W. H. Greenleaf has rightly described it as ‘cultured and wide-ranging’.12 As such, although Maude quickly faded from public attention after his retirement from the Commons in 1983, his ideas deserve extended treatment. The Common Problem Maude’s emphasis on principle in politics represented a significant shift in his thinking. In a 1953 contribution to the Political Quarterly he had noted that social change was creating an enlarged middle class. Such people, he believed, 75

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were ‘likely to take an increasingly empirical view of politics’, which helped to explain why the main political parties were paying more attention to ‘floating voters’. At the same time, he felt that the Conservative Party was coming closer than ever before to a genuinely ‘One Nation’ position – an outlook which had apparently helped to secure its victory in the 1951 General Election.13 Something – presumably his party’s defeat in the 1964 election, and policy changes in the late Macmillan years – changed Maude’s mind about the nature of politics and the average British voter. In The Common Problem he insists that politics ought to be about ideas, rather than competing claims to managerial competence. Ultimately, ‘We have to make some assumptions about the nature of Man if we are to deal in politics at all.’14 For his part, Maude assumes that ‘Man is a rational being, capable of making and acting upon rational decisions.’ It follows from this that the chief object of politics is to ensure ‘conditions in which individual men and women can enjoy the maximum independence and exercise the maximum of personal choice’.15 From this viewpoint, Maude takes aim at his chief target – ‘determinism’ of all kinds. The idea that human nature is essentially malleable is, of course, ‘an assumption about the nature of Man’, and thus a basis for political action. But, in Maude’s view, it is false, and therefore certain to lead to dangerous decisions. Maude recognises that people are affected to some extent by their circumstances, and argues that poor environmental conditions should be improved wherever possible. However, circumstances of upbringing are clearly not decisive, since some people are able to rise far above them. Even so, the false notion that environment is fundamental to character-development could become a selffulfilling prophecy if the opponents of determinism stay silent. Although some determinists are superficially optimistic, promising utopia to their followers if only environmental factors can be perfected, in practice the effect of their theories is to spread fatalism and depression. After all, they dismiss the idea of free will and suggest that ‘progress’ depends upon developments within ‘society’ rather than the independent exertions of self-motivated individuals.16 In his contorted journey through this phase of the argument, Maude selects some surprising figures for attack. John Locke is a leading villain in the cast, for initiating the labour theory of value which was misused by others. Yet his main offence was to inspire Adam Smith. Smith’s beneficient ‘invisible hand’ actually rests on the view that the interests of ‘society’ are something distinct from, and greater than, the well-being of specific individuals. As soon as the operations of the free market are perceived as failing to deliver general prosperity, it is inevitable that social engineers will step into the breach, promising a route to the same objective which can be made to sound much less metaphysical and (crucially) much quicker.17 In the post-war period, politicians had surrounded themselves with ‘expert’ advisers of this stamp, offering rational roads to prosperity. Over 76

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time, politicians of both main parties had even adopted their ‘technocratic’ language. Thus far, the argument seems to be a fairly straightforward anticipation of Thatcherism, albeit with a few characteristic quirks which make Maude handle Adam Smith roughly while according respect to Keynes and even Marx. There is a flavour of Thatcher’s most notorious utterance in Maude’s contempt for the abstract notion of ‘society’. ‘The whole conception,’ Maude writes, ‘is a mass flight from reality, in which awkward facts are exorcised by claptrap while a diffuse and sentimental goodwill obscures the obligation to realistic thought and specific action’. For Maude, there is no such thing as ‘social justice’, and the idea of a ‘duty to society’ is nugatory. ‘Social security’ is misnamed, since it refers to benefits provided by the state. In so far as such assistance is justified, it actually reflects considerations of expediency rather than ‘social justice’.18 Maude proceeds to a discussion which would become increasingly familiar to connoisseurs of Conservative literature during the 1980s, attacking the idea of economic equality and using Anthony Crosland as his whipping boy. For Maude, Crosland is particularly useful because he is able to praise him for a (minor) aspect of his argument – Crosland’s admission that economic inequality was not widely resented in the 1950s – before embarking on an onslaught against his overall position. The limitations of Maude’s case at this point are indicated by his resort to the worst-worn cliché of philosophical disputation – ‘his argument falls to the ground’ – after raising a particularly contrived objection to Crosland’s The Future of Socialism.19 At most, Maude’s argument provides a qualifying health warning to his injunction about basing politics on principle: when people conduct a debate from contrasting principled positions the result is almost invariably a dialogue of the deaf. His own position is that ‘the present distribution of wealth’ is indeed unsatisfactory; but he claims that he differs from Crosland and other egalitarians because his preferred course of action ‘must depend on what we want to achieve rather than on what we want to get rid of ’.20 His goal is to amend the tax system to encourage wider property-ownership, because property ‘is an essential ingredient of citizenship, enriching the lives of the individual and family, widening the range of choice in living’.21 Thus the objective for Maude is to ensure more recruits to the ‘middle classes’ who had featured so often in his previous writings. Unlike Crosland, he is also resolutely opposed to the removal of perceived inequalities in education, insisting that the public schools should be retained and pointing out that comprehensive schools would damage the prospects of the most gifted pupils, regardless of their social origins. Although he accepts that the age of eleven is too early to make a final assessment of abilities, he advocates more rather than less selectivity within the education system, and argues that pupils should be 77

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allowed to leave school early if it is clear that they merely become bored and disruptive.22 The needs of the gifted child should always be paramount. It was not surprising that Maude should be a contributor to the Black Papers on education, which represented a wholesale attack on the ideal of comprehensive schooling. In Maude’s work on this subject, there is little sense of the ‘parity of esteem’ in education sought by Rab Butler (see Chapter 2). The technocratic threat As we have seen, in retrospect much of this has a Thatcherite flavour, and explains why Maude was so outspoken in his attacks on the supposedly ‘technocratic’ Heath. Maude was not alone in thinking that Heath was uninterested in ideas; Enoch Powell once mischievously claimed that ‘If you showed [Heath] an idea he would immediately become angry and go red in the face’.23 However, Maude goes out of his way in The Common Problem to distance himself from the Powellite wing of his party. On economics, Powell is no improvement on Adam Smith, since like his eighteenth-century master he constantly pontificates about the mythical ‘invisible hand’.24 But Maude’s objections to Powell’s ‘militant economic liberalism’ go beyond the abstract nature of the latter’s thought.25 Maude also believes that the free market exhibits the same ‘technocratic’ trends which have begun to infect even the Conservative Party. As such, it is an enemy of freedom rather than an essential component of a society in which individuals can exhibit their true, rational nature. According to Maude, post-war affluence had resulted in a confusion between ‘wants’ and ‘needs’. This process was being abetted by industrialists, and in particular by the advertising industry. Maude argues that ‘Today’s manager is concerned to make the consumer want what he produces rather than to produce what the consumer wants. He is not passionately anxious to make a better product so long as he can hope to go on selling what he now produces. He is not at all independent-minded, and not particularly enterprising.’26 Advertising is used by such people to convince consumers to spend more, and to develop ‘an obsessive preoccupation with the enjoyment of goods and services’.27 As a result, the public is ‘tending more and more to acquiesce in the patterns of behaviour which the purveyors of consumer goods have worked so hard to impose. The conditioning process is bound in the end to be effective if there are no alternatives and conflicting interests.’28 From the Thatcherite viewpoint these sentiments can only be regarded as wildly heretical. To compound his sin, Maude freely acknowledges his agreement with the Keynesian economist John Kenneth Galbraith – a bête noir for the Thatcherites. Keith Joseph, in particular, was starry-eyed about ­‘entrepreneurs’, 78

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partly because (as he happily confessed) he had never been successful in that role. Mrs Thatcher was equally laudatory of the advertising profession, having been entranced by invitations to consume after her marriage to a millionaire.29 In one respect, though, Maude’s views can be reconciled with the Thatcherite position. For both, the encouragement of small businesses should be a vital goal of policy. However, for Maude it would have been logical actively to discourage big business, which for him is barely an improvement on the giant nationalised concerns. He is consistent enough to argue that an ability to prevent mergers is an essential power of government. He also questions whether economic growth is necessarily a good thing. In one of the few phrases which he imported (with minor changes) from The Consuming Society, Maude asked ‘what age or civilisation was ever remembered with admiration for the amount that its members managed to consume?’30 Apart from their deliberate design of distorting the thought-processes of ‘rational’ consumers, the major companies which drive economic growth are also guilty of despoiling the physical environment; and according to Maude ‘the land and scenery, together with the best buildings of the past, are a trust which we hold for posterity’.31 For Maude, big government and elephantine industrial concerns are part of a technocratic conspiracy against the public. The objectives of both are the same – to promote ‘growth’ and to maximise ‘efficiency’ without ever pausing to ask whether they are serving the real interests of voters or consumers. The combined effect of ‘technocrats’ in government and in industry threatens to create ‘a society dedicated to sterile consumption and pointless futility’.32 The productive process has become skewed towards the creation of goods for their own sake. Successive post-war governments have tied themselves into the growth-mania by prioritising full employment and promising the painless expansion of welfare services. The idea of full employment is inspired partly by the notion of ‘social justice’, which Maude attacks elsewhere in his book; but it also reflects the persistence of the Puritan work ethic in Britain. Maude argues that this takes ‘no account of the nature or usefulness of the work done. Would the Puritan consider it “virtuous” to work on the production of gambling machines, for example?’33 This argument is another infringement of Thatcherite doctrine, typified by Norman Tebbit’s view that workers who lose their jobs have a duty to retrain or uproot in order to satisfy market demand, whether or not the current vogue is for products or services which are morally repugnant. In short, Thatcherites tend to argue that, through the beneficient working of the ‘invisible hand’, the customer is always right no matter what he or she might demand. For Maude this view was unacceptable. Yet he takes the argument still further. Influenced in this respect by Hannah Arendt, he claims that much of the work undertaken by modern people is already unfulfilling. Most people, in fact, are job-holders 79

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rather than workers engaged in useful tasks.34 This means that they are more likely to change jobs regularly, and thus tend to go on strike for trivial reasons. Although Maude canvasses the possibility that British industry would become more efficient if unemployment was allowed to rise, and social security benefits were cut, he remains sceptical of any materialistic theorising about negative or positive incentives. Against the claim that Britain’s social services had created a ‘dependency culture’ and that Britons were now much more workshy than at any previous time, Maude coolly counters that ‘society has always contained a proportion of people who are idle, irresponsible or unscrupulous, and no doubt there were those who exploited private and monastic charity long before the advent of State social services’.35 If fear of unemployment is unlikely to work, tax cuts have no better chance of inspiring truly constructive effort, since under the present dispensation extra earnings would only be frittered away on pointless luxuries. In any case, the real problem identified by Maude is the lack of job satisfaction; and the austere prescriptions of economic liberalism are not designed to address this issue. At best they are likely to produce a workforce which is disciplined by the fear of unemployment, living only for sprees of unthinking consumption. This is far removed from Maude’s own idea of healthy individualism. In some of these passages, Maude’s arguments seem to be pointing towards the radical left rather than the New Right; the attack on advertising, for example, is suggestive of Marxist ideas about false consciousness, typified by the strictures of Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). Yet elsewhere Maude takes his cue from Michael Oakeshott, the supposed champion of a revival of conservative philosophy. The whole attack on ‘technique’ is strongly reminiscent of Oakeshott’s strictures against ‘rationalism’. Maude also writes in characteristic Oakeshottian mode that ‘The consciousness of continuity, of operating within a tradition that is both moral and humane, imposing certain imperatives which are rather instinctively felt than precisely apprehended, shapes the approach of Conservatives to social and economic problems.’36 The difficulty, as Maude had already noted, was that ‘the tradition within which politics have worked has been seriously weakened and compromised’.37 For a self-styled conservative like Maude, Britain was an uncongenial place in the late 1960s, facing problems which demanded resolute, even radical action. But how radical could a conservative be, without ceasing to be ‘conservative’ in any meaningful sense? In this respect an instructive comparison can be drawn with For Conservatives Only, a book written by another Conservative politician, Lord Coleraine, and published in 1970. The son of former Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, Coleraine (1901–80) himself had served as a minister before entering the House of Lords in 1954. While Maude and his newly-elected friends had been compiling One Nation, Coleraine was writing Return from Utopia – an ­anti80

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socialist tract which included an attack on economic planning and a dismissal of the concept of ‘social justice’ for reasons which Maude would deploy in The Common Problem almost two decades later.38 In For Conservatives Only, Coleraine echoed Maude’s view that parties ought to be based on principle. He argued that the problems of the Conservative Party in this respect began after the war, when it ‘emerged from the Coalition, not only without any distinctive policy … but without any distinctive convictions’.39 Indeed, Coleraine suggests that the rot set in even earlier, with Stanley Baldwin. While Maude was less concerned with tracing the development of the party in The Common Problem, he obviously shared Coleraine’s view that Heath’s leadership had brought the question of principle to a head. As a result, Maude would have broadly accepted Coleraine’s view that the current difference between the main parties on economic matters was that ‘the Socialist believes in what he is doing, the Conservative does not … He is like a man caught up in another man’s dream’.40 Also like Maude, Coleraine focused his attention on the individual, and expressed scorn for the ‘dangerous and demeaning delusion, that man can properly be regarded as raw material for the sociologist to mould as he thinks fit’.41 Their crucial difference lay in their respective assessments of the human nature which ought to be liberated from ‘technocratic’ meddling. While Maude stressed human rationality, Coleraine tended to cite Burke’s views on this subject with approval. According to Coleraine, those who followed the Burkeian tradition fully understood ‘the dark and frightening propensities in human nature which have revealed themselves with renewed starkness in our own day, and of the importance of the institutions which keep these in check’.42 From this perspective Coleraine could sound like a Thatcherite avant la lettre, with none of Maude’s deviations. In particular, he provided a first draft for Keith Joseph’s attack on the idea of the ‘Middle Ground’ in politics, arguing that the main political parties had become obsessed with floating voters whose presumed influence on the side of ‘consensus’ inhibited any radical thinking.43 This was an ironic commentary on Maude’s own earlier writings on voters who supposedly exercised ‘rational choice’ rather than following tribal loyalties. Coleraine was also unequivocal in his praise of Enoch Powell – ‘the only leading Conservative who has made his escape from the socialist dream’ – and suggested tax-cutting measures in the vein of Powell’s Morecambe Programme. He pronounced an anathema against all interventionist government institutions, including Harold Macmillan’s NEDC.44 When comparing these two virtually contemporaneous books, the greatest oddity is that Coleraine starts from distinctively conservative premises and arrives at fairly rigid (economic) liberal conclusions, while Maude bases his argument on a distinctively liberal view of (rational) human nature yet ends 81

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up sounding like a representative of the sceptical conservative tradition. Apart from Powell, the greatest influence on Coleraine’s conclusions was the avowedly liberal Friedrich von Hayek. Among other things, this leads him to applaud free-market economics because they generate ‘a spontaneous order’ – an unplanned social condition which ‘responds automatically to changes in its environment, even before these are generally recognised’.45 To Maude, such eulogies could only be the product of quasi-mystical thinking, all too reminiscent of Adam Smith and his ‘invisible hand’. And yet Coleraine still felt able to identify himself with previous conservative oracles who had ‘always shown an aversion to systematic thought, mistrusting dogma and priding themselves on their empiricism’.46 How can this apparent ideological cross-dressing be explained? A clue is offered in Coleraine’s remark that a tradition ‘may outlive its usefulness, but it may still be imprudent to discard it’.47 This was a tacit acceptance that the Burkeian heritage, complete with its sceptical view of human nature and acceptance of social hierarchy, was no longer electorally viable, even if Coleraine himself found it persuasive. As Maude wrote in The Common Problem, it was a good thing that conservatives in Britain and America had rediscovered Burke: ‘But it was already too late, because Burke’s view of the nature of society had already been implicitly rejected – even by Conservatives’.48 However, there was one aspect of Burke’s creed that offered Coleraine a glimpse of electoral promise in the age of ‘meritocracy’. Although Burke had written before the Industrial Revolution got into full swing, he could be enlisted as a wholehearted admirer of free-market economics. Coleraine’s solution to the conservative dilemma was thus to restate Burke’s economic liberalism in the modern context, without questioning the true nature and likely social impact of the ‘free market’ in such different conditions. For a start, it should have been evident to anyone with a historical sense that Burke (and Adam Smith) would have been alarmed by the link between the free market and an apparent decline in moral standards; they would, in short, have noticed that their admiration of the market had proved incompatible with their preference for a stable social order inhabited by people of relatively settled moral principles. Coleraine’s answer was tacitly to deny any such dilemma, and to praise the market while attacking the ‘permissive society’, as if changes in the moral landscape of the 1960s had been fostered and foisted on the public by doctrinaire socialists. Thus he could write that moral decay has occurred ‘because, one by one, the restraints were removed which tradition imposes on human behaviour’.49 Evidently Coleraine was satisfied that none of this work had been performed by profit-hunters who followed Hayek in practice even if they had never heard his name. And Coleraine was by no means alone in failing to make this connection, such was the efficacy of the ideological blinkers donned by sections of the ‘New Right’ in an inhospitable age. 82

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For his part, Maude does not dwell on the contemporary moral climate in The Common Problem. When he does mention it, rather than denouncing the ‘swinging sixties’ as a harbinger of moral degradation, he portrays it as a ‘pathetic’ symptom of neurosis. In his view – which contrasts dramatically with that of the hedonistic Marcuse – the so-called individualism of his day was actually the product of conformity, induced by the triumph of technocracy. Maude claimed to identify in young people ‘a fundamental collapse of confidence and enthusiasm about the whole future of the country – and even of humanity at large’.50 No less than John Stuart Mill, Maude saw diversity as ‘the source of creation and progress’; and, also like Mill, he prized genuine expressions of non-conformity. This was no new departure for Maude. Back in 1954, in an essay on education, he had noted that: Some of the masters who produce the most marked effect upon their pupils, and who are the most affectionately remembered, are the really eccentric ones; they are the individualists, the ones who, refusing to conform to any stereotyped mould themselves, inspire in their pupils if not a desire to be eccentric at least a belief that it is possible to be eccentric and survive.51

Thus for Maude the main goal of political activity in the context of the late 1960s was to preserve individual freedom because it was good for human development, far more than for its alleged connection with material prosperity. His ‘liberal’ premises make him an optimist about the outlook for the human condition. He denies, for example, that contemporary complaints about ‘decadence’ are justified, if decadence is taken to mean an irreversible process of decline. Britain’s young people are likely to recover from their current ‘neurosis’, and given the right kind of leadership they might even become keen supporters of the Conservative Party in future years.52 Coleraine, by contrast, thought that the world was going to the dogs. The difference between the two writers can be summed up in their treatment of nuclear conflagration. The pessimistic Coleraine thinks that such an event ‘will mean the final collapse of western civilisation’.53 In The Common Problem Maude repeats one of the weakest arguments of The Consuming Society, showing that humankind could not be damned because it had a central role to play in the evolutionary process, and by comparison with the universe it was still in its infancy.54 Here Maude’s logic deserts him: the fact that humanity had only recently secured its sway over the rest of nature provided no certainty that its dominance would be of prolonged duration. But whether sound or not, his conviction gives him a platform from which to attack all those who relegate human ambition to purely material, short-term concerns. By contrast, the impermanency of things seems to have affected Lord Coleraine’s outlook, and made him feel that the well-off should eat, drink and be merry before the bomb drops; and, of 83

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course, in modern warfare there would be no requirement for a conscript army, so the poor and the unemployed could be left more or less to their own devices. The prescriptions of the New Right thus made much more sense to Coleraine than to the humanistic Maude. Maude and Thatcher The Common Problem closes with a recital of the policy prescriptions which featured in The Consuming Society: ‘Elimination or concentration of subsidies, encouragement of private rather than public provision of welfare services, a much less permissive attitude towards adult crime and juvenile indiscipline, an insistence on the legal validity of labour agreements’.55 Yet Maude is clearly concerned that his policy prescriptions will be considered insufficiently ‘tough’. He had good reason to fear that he would be outflanked on the right by the ‘Powellites’, since he left scope for very considerable state intervention. ‘The fact is’, he writes, ‘that Conservatives must admit the desirability – even the necessity – of interfering for social reasons in the operations of a free market economy’.56 Not only could the market be restrained in respect of its crucial advertising activities; it was also imperative that ‘the technological revolution [should] not be allowed to repeat, after its own fashion and on a larger scale, the inhumanity and physical destruction of the Industrial Revolution’. Technology should be ‘forced, as its industrial predecessors were not, to clear up its own mess as it goes along, devoting a greater part of its knowledge and skills to the reduction of noise, pollution and unsightliness’.57 Even at the end of the twentieth century this aspiration was far from being realised. Whatever his other virtues, Maude must be accounted one of the first senior British politicians to take these issues seriously, and to acclaim the work of anti-growth economists like E. J. Mishan.58 The eclectic blend of radical thinking and cautious conclusions in The Common Problem casts a poignant light on the subsequent fate of its author. In hindsight, Heath’s victory in the 1970 General Election looks like a boon to his critics, who merely had to sit and wait while his ‘technocratic’ outlook failed dismally to solve Britain’s deep-laid problems. At the time, though, things looked very different; after all, the 1970 result was widely attributed to Heath’s personal qualities, and it greatly strengthened his position within the party. Never a natural advocate of European unity, Maude ran into difficulties with his constituency party over Heath’s drive for EEC membership, and although he did put on record his private feelings, his voting record on the subject was more orthodox than that of his old friend Powell. In October 1972 he surprised the Conservative conference (and, he confessed, even himself ) by expressing 84

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support for the Heath Government’s prices and incomes policy. ‘We have got to try it,’ he urged, ‘because it just might work’. This attitude could be squared with the sceptical message of The Common Problem. But it also suggested that Maude was reluctant to take a second, and this time enforced, sabbatical from politics. Whether or not Maude celebrated when Heath lost office at the 1974 General Election, he certainly feared the consequences of a Labour government in those perilous economic circumstances. And unlike Powell, Maude was unlikely to desert his party, or recommend that the public should vote Labour, simply because it had promised a referendum on EEC membership for opportunistic reasons. Yet far from being finished in 1974, Maude’s political career was only just beginning. When Margaret Thatcher challenged Heath for the party leadership in the following year, Maude emerged as one of her key journalistic assistants, valued for his combination of ‘profound insights with pithy wit’.59 He wrote the Daily Telegraph article (‘My Kind of Tory’) which provided the ideological basis for her campaign. This article featured a characteristic appeal to an idealised middle class along with the rhetorical question, ‘Why should anyone support a party that seems to have the courage of no convictions?’60 Maude resisted the temptation to put it another way: why should anyone vote Conservative when the party has become a meaningless irrelevance? When Thatcher won the 1975 leadership election Maude’s reward was a key role in the party’s policy-making machine, replacing Ian Gilmour as Chairman of the Conservative Research Department (CRD). This was highly symbolic, since Maude had expressed strong opposition to Gilmour’s views in a letter to The Times of the previous year.61 Yet it was in many ways an awkward berth, since key members of the CRD (notably Christopher Patten) retained their loyalty to the previous regime. But Maude was able to provide important backing to key ‘Thatcherite’ initiatives, notably the ‘Stepping Stones’ plan to rein in the trades unions.62 He also edited the policy document, The Right Approach (1976), which allowed the warring factions within Thatcher’s shadow team to present something like a united front to the public at a time when James Callaghan’s Labour government was doing its best to hand the next election to the Tories. In the new Conservative hierarchy Maude’s position was no less symbolic than that of Peter Thorneycroft, who was regarded as a progenitor of ‘monetarism’ because, back in 1958, he had resigned from the Macmillan Government over spending cuts. Thorneycroft’s actions had been prompted in part by the arguments of his Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Enoch Powell. Thus in bringing Thorneycroft back into the party machine Mrs Thatcher was paying an indirect tribute to Powell; and her patronage of Maude can be seen in much the same light. However, this tactic overlooked the fact that Thorneycroft and 85

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Maude had never been fully-fledged ‘Powellites’. Indeed, if Thatcher had ever read The Common Problem she would have appreciated that, despite their long association, Maude was one of the few Conservative MPs to set out at length his reasons for disagreeing with Powell on a range of issues. If anything, Maude came closest to Powell on immigration, rather than economic policy. In The Common Problem he had bemoaned a policy which condemned ‘bewildered Pakistanis (with their wives and children) to freeze in Preston’.63 In 1968, having joined forty-six other Tories who voted against the Race Relations bill, Maude welcomed Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in a Spectator article on the grounds that it opened up several subjects for debate within the Conservative Party.64 Taken in sum, this meant that Maude regarded Powell as on balance a constructive force within an increasingly sterile Conservative Party, even if he was not an ideological soulmate; his value was as a stimulant for debate on topics that others wished to avoid, rather than a source of viable solutions to ‘the common problem’. In 1977, when discussing the rightward trajectory of the party under Thatcher, Lord Carrington was not far from the truth when he told Lord Hailsham that Maude was ‘not extreme, but bitter’.65 Even so, beyond any satisfaction he might have felt at the toppling of Edward Heath, Maude had reasons to look forward to a Thatcher premiership. At least in theory, Thatcher was more receptive to the arguments of small business, and her policy of selling council houses to their tenants was one which Maude had advocated in the 1960s. Above all, the advent of Thatcher promised to break the consensual logjam, forcing a space for more creative thinkers. No one could doubt that she made her pitch to the British people on principled grounds, rather than claiming that she would merely run the state more efficiently than her opponents. If all else failed, Maude could see Thatcher as a super-charged version of Enoch Powell, enjoying through the leadership of her party a platform from which to raise issues and launch ideas which went against the prevailing ‘technocratic’ trend. Even her creation of mass unemployment after 1979 could find some backing in Maude’s writings. In The Consuming Society he had argued that ‘We have got, so to speak, to atomise the mass society and the mass labour force and re-arrange the atoms in a healthy living organism.’66 Thatcher certainly did her best to pull off the first part of this act. Since the impact of her radical policies was always likely to be long-term, the eternally optimistic Maude could always hold out a slender hope that they might one day produce something constructive. Nevertheless, serious differences remained. For most of her premiership, Thatcher evinced limited concern for the environment, and when she did show some sympathy (at the end of the 1980s) it was obviously a response to the sudden political resonance of views which Maude himself had put forward with 86

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passion two decades earlier. Far from showing an overriding concern with small businesses, Thatcher was barely moved by their plight in the early 1980s, when interest rates were increased to ruinous levels. In a sense, hard-line monetarism had turned out to be just another ‘technique’ which ignored the individual and focused on economic statistics. Within big business ‘technocracy’ was scarcely checked, and the mind-bending techniques of the advertising industry were put to the service of the Conservative Party in the form of Saatchi and Saatchi. Even on constitutional issues the first Thatcher government deviated from the views expressed in The Common Problem. Instead of delegating powers from central government, as Maude had advocated, Thatcher subjected the local authorities to constant bullying, culminating in the disastrous poll tax. In terms of institutional change within government, Maude had taken the general view that people, rather than structures, were to blame; thus, for example, he felt that backbenchers could still exert considerable influence over the executive, if they would only bestir themselves.67 In his refusal to champion radical institutional reform in Westminster or Whitehall he was not far removed from Thatcherite practice, if not from Thatcherite ideas. He was never vulgar enough to swallow the New Right’s argument that senior civil servants were irredeemable empire-builders who paid no heed to the national interest. In fact, his views on institutions were more compatible with those of Ian Gilmour, who was calling for an injection of ‘creative tension’ in government at the time that Maude was preparing The Common Problem for the press.68 Maude thought that the institutions of central government should be subjected to minimal reforms because they did their job reasonably enough; the Thatcherites left them unmolested in form because they quickly realised that they could transform their essence without having to redesign the machine. There was, though, one serious disagreement over institutional structures. Maude had admonished that parliamentary select committees could not play the same role as they did in the USA, because in that country, thanks to the separation of powers, there was a more urgent need for institutions which held the executive to account.69 Yet one of the first measures of the Thatcher regime was to introduce this ‘unnecessary’ reform; and it could be no consolation to Maude that its chief promoter, Norman St John-Stevas, was quickly singled out by the Prime Minister as a central candidate for her first cabinet reshuffle of January 1981. Maude himself left the government at the same time, apparently at his own request, although it might easily have been another instance of ‘mutual consent’. As Paymaster-General, he had hardly been at the heart of events, and he may have found ministerial office uncongenial, after thirty years of waiting for a government position. Among other duties, he had been responsible for the government’s relations with the press – hardly a role which was likely to bring 87

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out the best in such an abrasive character. In July 1980 he was put up by the government to reply to a debate on unemployment, and was treated savagely by the Opposition. He closed his contribution with the suggestion that Labour should ‘belt up’ if they had no constructive alternative policy to offer.70 The fact that this was Maude’s first appearance at the dispatch box – after the government had already been in office for a year – is an indication that he was not regarded by his colleagues as a parliamentary asset. Possibly Thatcher felt that by 1981 Maude had served his purpose, as a ‘martyr’ of the Heath years who had made himself persona non grata to the champions of consensus without having the necessary ideological fervour to follow the counter-revolution wherever it might lead. While the Prime Minister saw politics as a clash between good and evil, The Common Problem had explored the nuances of decision-making, and drew approvingly on a range of sources which the Prime Minister could never have appreciated. Regrettably, there was no sequel to The Common Problem; already knighted for his services to Thatcherism, Maude accepted a life peerage in 1983 and died ten years later, a half-forgotten figure. Notes   1   A . Maude, The Consuming Society (CPC, London, 1967), p. 4.   2   A. Maude, ‘Winter of Tory Discontent’, Spectator, 14 January 1966.   3   P. Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell (Bodley Head, London, 1989), p. 214.   4   M. Thatcher, The Path to Power (HarperCollins, London, 1995), p. 273.   5   The Times, 19 January 1966.   6   See, for example, letter from Heath to Rab Butler, 3 August 1956, RAB ES/2/60, Butler Papers, Trinity College Library.   7   J. Biffen, Obituary of Angus Maude, Guardian, 10 November 1993.   8   Maude, The Consuming Society.   9   Both had been written with Roy Lewis. Another book, Biography of a Nation (1955) was produced in collaboration with his One Nation colleague, Enoch Powell. 10   A. Gamble, The Conservative Nation (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974), pp. 104–5. 11   Maude, The Consuming Society, p. 3. 12   W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Volume Two, The Ideological Heritage (Methuen & Co., London, 1983), p. 327. 13   A. Maude, ‘The Conservative Party and the Changing Class Structure’, Political Quarterly, 24:2, April–June 1953, pp. 147, 145. 14   A. Maude, The Common Problem: A Policy for the Future (Constable, London, 1969), p. 94. 15   Ibid., pp. 98–9, 101. 16   Ibid., p. 53. 17   Ibid., pp. 38–9.

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18   Ibid., pp. 42, 129–55. 19   Ibid., p. 152. In this instance, Maude was trying to convict Crosland of ‘justifying the selfish or anti-social use of wealth’. 20   Ibid., p. 155. Presumably Maude thought that he could get away with this irrelevant sally against Crosland et al. because his own readers were unlikely to delve very deeply into left-wing literature. 21   Ibid. 22   Ibid., pp. 154, 165, 168–9, 125–6. 23   Contemporary Record, 3:3, February 1990. 24   Maude, The Common Problem, p. 39. 25   Ibid., p. 201. 26   Ibid., pp. 198–200. 27   Ibid., p. 216. 28   Ibid., p. 227. 29   For further discussion of this point, see M. Garnett, From Anger to Apathy: The British Experience since 1975 (Jonathan Cape, London, 2007), pp. 230–3. 30   Maude, The Common Problem, p. 112. 31   Ibid., pp. 228–9, 220–4. 32   Ibid., p. 208 33   Ibid., pp. 209–10. 34   Ibid., pp. 218–19. 35   Ibid., p. 179. 36   Ibid., p. 284. 37   Ibid., p. 108. 38   R. Law, Return From Utopia (Faber and Faber, London, 1950), p. 87. 39   Lord Coleraine, For Conservatives Only: A Study of Conservative Leadership from Churchill to Heath (Tom Stacey, London, 1970), p. 58. 40   Ibid., p. 118. 41   Ibid., p. 45. 42   Ibid., p. 21. 43   Ibid., p. 68. 44   Ibid., pp. 118, 113–14. 45   Ibid., p. 42. 46   Ibid., p. 19. 47   Ibid., p. 27. 48   Maude, The Common Problem, pp. 44–5. 49   Coleraine, For Conservatives Only, p. 18. 50   Maude, The Common Problem, pp. 61, 63–5. 51   Maude, ‘An Educated Electorate’, in Tradition and Change: Nine Oxford Lectures (CPC, London, 1954), p. 85. 52   Maude, The Common Problem, p. 83. 53   Coleraine, For Conservatives Only, p. 29. 54   Maude, The Consuming Society, p. 8; The Common Problem, pp. 69–85. 55   Ibid., p. 293. 56   Ibid., p. 290. 57   Ibid., p. 292.

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58   See, for example, Maude’s review of Mishan’s Growth: The Price We Pay, Spectator, 20 September 1969. 59   Thatcher, The Path to Power, p. 273. 60   Quoted in J. Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, Volume One, The Grocer’s Daughter (Jonathan Cape, London, 2000), pp. 294–5. 61   The Times, 7 May 1974. Eight years after his Spectator article, Maude detected an ‘already alarming gap between the Conservative leadership and its supporters (and potential supporters) in the country’. 62   J. Hoskyns, Just in Time:Inside the Thatcher Revolution (Aurum Press, London, 2000), pp. 44–5. 63   Maude, The Common Problem, p. 205. 64   Maude, ‘The End of Consensus Politics’, Spectator, 10 May 1968. 65   Quoted in G. Lewis, Lord Hailsham: A Life (Jonathan Cape, London, 1997), p. 326. 66   Maude, The Consuming Society, p. 24. 67   Maude, The Common Problem, pp. 244–7. 68   I. Gilmour, The Body Politic (Hutchinson & Co., London, 1969), pp. 14–15. 69   Ibid., pp. 247–8. 70   House of Commons Debates, Vol. 988, col. 1186, 14 July 1980.

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Keith Joseph It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. Keith Joseph, 19751 Capitalism has freedom and the rule of law. These virtues of the market economy speak for themselves. Keith Joseph, 19752

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eith Joseph is usually held to be the key influence on Margaret Thatcher and through this influence and the formation of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) in 1975 is regarded as a leading thinker in the Conservative Party and the development of the New Right. He has been the subject of two biographies and his work is discussed in all studies of the New Right.3 However, one aspect of his thought has been relatively neglected, namely his view on equality and how it relates to British Conservatism. Hence, this chapter will examine in detail his arguments for inequality, assessing their validity and consistency. His views will be contrasted with social democratic theorists and One Nation Conservatives, who both sought to reject his advocacy of wider inequalities in income and wealth. The chapter will begin by placing his ideas on inequality within the wider context of his thought as it evolved. He famously said that he did not become a true Conservative until the downfall of the Heath Government in 1974 and his evolving critique of egalitarianism was part of his attempt to refashion what he called ‘the climate of opinion’.4 Joseph was born into a wealthy Jewish family in London in 1918 and he was involved in the family firm before entering politics.5 Although he kept a connection with the business, politics was his main interest and he rose quickly after entering Parliament at a by-election in 1956, becoming a junior member of Macmillan’s Government in 1959 and then serving under Douglas-Home and Heath. In broad terms his position was consistent with the progressive, One Nation tendency of the Conservative Party up until the 1970s. For instance, he was an advocate of comprehensive pensions and benefits in the 1960s, opposing any proposals to scale down their universal nature as for instance advocated by Enoch Powell.6 Despite this he was not as consistently supportive of the One

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Nation approach as his comment that he was only converted to Conservatism in 1974 would suggest. He had made speeches advocating tax cuts and the need to value entrepreneurs prior to this. For instance in what was to later become his commonplace argument he stated in a 1966 pamphlet that, ‘we believe that the efficient, far-sighted businessman is an asset to the country, and that the inefficient, short-sighted businessman should go bankrupt’.7 His toughest test came in 1968 when Powell, who was admired by Joseph, made his ‘rivers of blood’ speech, which Joseph found attractive despite the obvious way in which it exacerbated racial tension. Joseph disappeared from both public view and meetings of the Shadow Cabinet for several weeks after the speech but later stated his sympathies for immigration control and Powell’s advocacy of such a policy.8 Joseph was to serve loyally as a minister under Heath from 1970–74 at the newly combined Department of Health and Social Security. However, his critique of the policies of the government in which he had served came very swiftly after its electoral defeat in February 1974.9 Indeed, his public statements on the need for a new, much more free-market policy framework was seen as a political problem for the Conservative Party given that there was likely to be a second election, which duly came in the autumn of 1974. After the second electoral defeat for the Conservatives in the same year, Joseph emerged as a front-runner for the leadership. However, his statement that the birth rate was too high among the lower social classes, thus perpetuating a dependency culture, effectively ruled him out of the contest for leader. He became a key supporter of the new leadership under Margaret Thatcher after 1975, serving as head of policy. This was a role he enjoyed, since it offered scope for him to develop new ideas. Indeed, he was more successful in this role than he was to be as a government minister after 1979. He served first as a rather orthodox Secretary of State for Industry disappointing many New Right ideologues, notably John Redwood, by his refusal to pursue consistent free-market policies such as deregulation and privatisation.10 He then became Secretary of State for Education, provoking tensions with teachers and university lecturers for most of his tenure. But he did advocate many of the key ideas that were to serve as the basis for reforms of schools and universities under successive education secretaries, such as the National Curriculum, greater use of testing, an emphasis on parental choice in schools and tuition fees in higher education. Although his change in political stance after 1974 was not as stark as the opening quotation suggests, there was nevertheless a shift in emphasis as he sought to foster a change in ‘the climate of opinion’ following the defeat of Heath in that year and the election of Margaret Thatcher in February 1975. Thatcher herself had held similar views to those of Joseph independently of him and he should not be seen automatically as her ‘guru’. However, Thatcher 92

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was more of an instinctive politician, acting, as she saw it, in line with the views handed down from her father, and she had respect for Joseph’s more ­intellectual approach to politics. He was therefore granted considerable autonomy to develop new policy ideas after 1975. His speeches ranged over a number of economic and social policy issues such as control of public expenditure, the need for lower taxation, the inflationary consequences of public sector borrowing, control of the trade unions, welfare expenditure, the development of a dependency culture and so forth. His thoughts on equality were first voiced in a newspaper article of 22 August 1976 and developed further in a volume of published speeches, Stranded on the Middle Ground, also published in that year.11 However, it was in the book Equality (co-authored with Jonathan Sumption) that his ideas were most clearly articulated.12 The book had been completed prior to the 1979 election, but its publication was delayed until after the election so as not to have any impact on the result.13 One issue that must be considered here is that of how representative Equality was of Joseph’s wider intellectual development. Certainly, the book was more outspoken than a number of Joseph’s other publications and it was also unusual in that it was on the subject of equality and social justice, whereas these had not been the main thrust of Joseph’s work since 1974, which had been on economics, and was not central to his policy concerns after 1979. However, the book can be taken as representative of Joseph’s views on these issues due to the way it was produced. The book was drafted by Joseph’s co-author, Jonathan Sumption, after considerable discussions between the two and was then revised substantially by Sumption after further discussions with Joseph. In this way, Joseph was fully engaged in the production of the book and Sumption has stated in an interview conducted for this book that he felt their book was very much a joint production and that there was nothing in it that Joseph objected to.14 Moreover, there was no attempt by Joseph later to reject any arguments contained in the book. For all of these reasons therefore, the book can be considered fully reflective of Joseph’s views on the issues it addressed. Equality was clearly radical and marked a rejection of post-war policies in this area. There had been a growing acceptance of the need to reduce inequality, certainly on the Labour right through such texts as Tony Crosland’s The Future of Socialism and Douglas Jay’s Socialism and the New Society.15 Although the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79 had not been particularly successful in reducing inequalities in income and wealth there was still a shared feeling that the goal remained desirable. Even among the views of progressive, or One Nation, Tories there was a feeling that a large welfare state was desirable and that poverty was best seen as something that was relative to average income levels rather than an absolute condition.16 Joseph’s defence of inequality was therefore a radical departure in post-war British politics. His book contains a 93

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range of arguments that need to be outlined here. Firstly, Joseph argued that there were two roots of egalitarian thought.17 The first was the scientific argument of Marx who sought to demonstrate that inequality was the natural consequence of capitalism and only the transition to communism would result in greater equality by removing the exploitative capitalist class and the need for profit. Although these ideas had some impact on the far left, the Labour Party had remained largely non-Marxist. Instead, British social democrats had been influenced much more by the utopian thoughts of Rousseau: ‘it seems clear that English egalitarianism is of the romantic rather than the intellectual kind’.18 Rousseau argued that human relations ought to be based much more on equal terms. Equality was in keeping with human nature, but this ‘natural’ condition had been distorted by economic relations which encouraged greed. However, far from providing a satisfactory basis for social democrats, Joseph believed that the ethical basis for egalitarian politics was very flimsy indeed. He argued that only two social democrats had sought to provide an ethical basis for equality.19 The first was R. H. Tawney, who had argued for equality from a Christian perspective and the other was John Rawls, who argued for equality from a distinctive philosophical perspective.20 Tawney argued that inequality undermined the sense of community. In order to increase a sense of ‘brotherhood’ there was a need to reduce income and wealth differentials that existed in society. A society with fewer inequalities would be more content. However, Joseph argued that this view was ‘based on reasoning which is itself trivial and superficial’.21 He argued that a greater sense of community existed in which there was stronger class sentiment, which in turn required clearer differentials in income and wealth. The reduction in income and wealth inequalities in Britain since 1945 had in fact fostered social resentment, not reduced it. This was so for two reasons. Firstly, the reduction of income and wealth inequalities had spawned a large state bureaucracy and interventionist government, which in turn had led to an increase in coercion. Indeed, there could be no way of reducing inequality without such an increase in the use of state power. Secondly, Joseph also argued that such a use of state power was inevitably arbitrary given the lack of objective moral principles for redistribution. Rawls had offered an alternative defence of equality. He argued that under the ‘veil of ignorance’ where individuals would not know what their economic position would be, they would choose the position where they would have economic security. This meant in practice that government policy should be such that income and wealth inequalities would only be permissible if they were beneficial to the least advantaged. Superior incomes could only be accepted as a ‘rent of ability’ – the income required to fulfil tasks needed for the benefit of the community. This idea underpinned social democratic responses to the New 94

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Right in the 1980s. However, again Joseph rejected this idea. It was based on a specific conception of human nature, one of risk minimisation. If people in the original position had not been assumed to be risk minimisers they may well have chosen to risk the acceptance of large income and wealth differentials in the hope that they may have benefited from them.22 The appeal to equality on romantic grounds had had a devastating effect in post-war Britain and ‘people of goodwill have been manipulated into confusing the ideals of eliminating poverty and of raising living standards with egalitarianism’.23 There were several consequences of this pursuit of equality, which Joseph believed was present within both parties when in government since the Second World War.24 Firstly, it had undermined the sense of community. The enforcement of arbitrary rules for the allocation of public spending had created social resentments that would not have been present under conditions of lower taxation and greater income and wealth inequality. Secondly, there had been a loss of personal liberty with the pursuit of greater income and wealth equality. In contrast to social democrats, who argued that the pursuit of equality was needed so as to increase effective liberty, Joseph argued that there was a direct trade-off between equality and freedom. Joseph was able to assert this by holding to the classical liberal conception of freedom as freedom from external constraint. Here he borrowed heavily from negative libertarians such as Friedrich Hayek and Robert Nozick.25 So long as people were not coerced into doing something they did not wish to do or alternatively were stopped intentionally from doing something they wished to do then they were free. There was no connection between freedom and agency. This was so since people had an almost infinite range of desires and the government could not redistribute to ensure that every individual could fulfil their desires. Hence, in rejecting the positive conception of liberty, Joseph was able to assert that freedom was not related to means or resources and so ‘poverty is not unfreedom’.26 In contrast, the imposition of regulations and steeply progressive marginal rates of taxation acted as a check on freedom since these were the deliberately imposed ideas of ‘socialist’ governments committed to a false principle of agency. The rich – and increasingly those on middling incomes – who faced higher levels of taxation had seen their liberties reduced. In addition to the conflict between freedom and community on the one hand and equality on the other, a further philosophical objection raised by Joseph to egalitarianism was the lack of a moral basis for fiscal redistribution. Here again, Joseph drew heavily from the work of Hayek.27 The market, according to Hayek, and by implication Joseph, was fair since it did not distribute on any ethical principle. Market outcomes were instead the result of an infinite number of transactions and reflected the return individuals could secure on labour, capital, rent and risk. This is in contrast, it should be said, to those 95

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arguments fashionable on the right that the high incomes of those at the top of the scale were fully deserved. Rather than saying that market outcomes were based on valid principles of distribution, Hayek argued that market outcomes were instead fair since they were based on no single ‘principle’ of distribution.28 Market outcomes were the result of the free exchange of goods and services and were not imposed arbitrarily on some supposed principle of ‘fairness’. In contrast, any government-determined distribution of market outcomes could only be based on some arbitrary ‘principle’ of distribution. There were in fact many ways in which this could be done – merit, equality, social justice, desert and so forth – and in a morally pluralistic society there could be no way of determining which of these principles was the right one to adopt. A case could be made for each, and each would require a very different fiscal stance and lead to different outcomes in terms of income and wealth. Therefore, the injustice of fiscal redistribution strategies lay in the fact that there was no objective way of determining between them. This in turn led to three consequences, all of which could be seen to have occurred in Britain by the 1970s. Firstly, there would be strong social resentment as people, rightly, sensed that fiscal redistribution was determined in an arbitrary way. Hence, redistribution for purposes of creating economic equality was actually undermining communal sentiment rather than increasing it as Tawney and others had believed. Moreover, since there was no way of determining objectively what redistribution should take place there would be strong pressure group competition for increased government spending.29 Finally, there would be an increase in the powers of state bureaucrats who could decide in an arbitrary way when and where to allocate public spending. Hence, there was a clear philosophical case, Joseph believed, against equality as a basis for public policy. Egalitarian politics undermined justice, liberty, community and the rule of law and increased the arbitrary nature of government. However, the case against equality did not end there since Joseph made a number of additional empirical arguments. Firstly, Joseph argued that the consistent pursuit of narrower differentials had a crippling effect on the economy and he is worth quoting at length here: Our national income depends in a highly competitive world upon our performance – as farmers, manufacturers, providers of services. And that performance depends on enterprise, judgement, initiative, effort, skills of millions of individuals – making decisions, taking risks, investing effort, imagination, cooperation, money. An egalitarian policy squeezing differentials, high direct taxation on nearly all income levels, discouraging capital accumulation and transmission, narrowing the gap between the incomes of successful and unsuccessful, will discourage wealth-creators.30

Indeed, in the examples given in Equality to justify this claim, Joseph shows 96

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a belief that all such decisions are based on narrow financial self-interest. For instance, Joseph discusses the case of a surgeon who is unlikely to perform an extra hour of work while the marginal rate of taxation was 83 per cent.31 There is no consideration here of the possibility of work for non-financial reward such as the satisfaction of having completed another successful operation and the obvious human benefit derived from this. Joseph adds that high rates of taxation on incomes are also likely to result in a lower level of productivity. Hence, incentives were needed both to encourage people to work longer hours and to raise productivity, and ‘egalitarians should face the fact that equality and prosperity are incompatible’.32 A further claim made by Joseph was that the market was a more effective way of reducing poverty than the welfare state. This was due to the trickledown effect. Joseph asserted that, ‘if allowed to, the market will provide a constantly rising set of minimum standards – including rising minimum standards of income’.33 This was closely related to the incentives argument set out above. The welfare state had faced higher and higher costs due to a range of factors such as increasing life expectancy and the rising costs of medicines. This cost had to be financed by high levels of taxation, levied on income and thus acting as a disincentive. The disincentive effects of direct taxation led to a diminishing tax yield for welfare expenditure. Moreover, individuals were trapped within a ‘cycle of deprivation’34 in which one generation of an impoverished family dependent on welfare would be likely to be succeeded by a similar second generation. It would need radical welfare reforms to make people act more responsibly to break out of such a ‘cycle of deprivation’. Hence, for these two reasons – disincentives on the wealthier sections of society and the dependency effects of welfare on the poorest – the welfare state had proven itself unable to eliminate poverty in the way in which its creators had wished. Indeed, given that it created dependency it had made poverty harder to escape. Instead, the market itself could act as a better means of reducing poverty: ‘we shall do better for all, including those now poor or hard-pressed, with a market economy precisely because the inequality of rewards and benefits involved will create greater wealth, which is bound to raise general living standards and can be used to increase social benefits for those who need help’.35 This would be so because lower taxation would encourage people to work harder and some of the extra wealth that would be created by those who succeeded in the market would pass down to the poorest, through the creation of more and better-paid jobs. It was accepted that the gap between the rich and the poor would increase but this was not seen as a problem given the categorical distinction between absolute and relative poverty, to be developed later in this chapter. However, the increase in inequality would be one between a wealthy section of society, whose incomes would rise fastest as they would be the people who would ­benefit most 97

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from the market distribution of resources, and the poorer sections of society, who would see their real (absolute) levels of income rise even if they did see a deterioration in their relative position. Hence, the clear assertion of the trickledown theory was that everyone would benefit by seeing a rise in absolute income levels. In contrast, the 1980s witnessed a rise in both inequality, as was predicted, but also deterioration in the income levels of the poorest as wealth clearly did not ‘trickle down’ and funding for welfare payments was squeezed to make way for cuts in taxation for those at the top end – as was the case most notably with the 1988 Budget.36 The trickle-down theory was acceptable to Joseph only because he drew a categorical distinction between absolute and relative poverty.37 Absolute poverty refers to the absence of the items necessary to live, such as food, shelter, clothing and so forth. Relative poverty, which had been the preferred calculation in poverty studies in the 1960s and 1970s, was the relationship between those on low incomes and the average income level. As the average income level rose so relative poverty would increase if the income levels of the poor did not increase by at least the same rate. Hence, the statistics could show an increase in poverty relative to the average earner even if absolute poverty was falling. For Joseph, this was a statistical absurdity – one created by left-wing sociologists. An individual could only be considered poor if he or she did not have sufficient income for the basic needs of life. Hence, ‘a person who enjoys a standard of living equal to that of a medieval baron cannot be described as poor for the sole reason that he has chanced to be born into a society where the great majority can live like medieval kings’.38 Once the conception of absolute poverty was adopted, Joseph argued that there was actually very little poverty left. Most of those who lived in conditions of poverty were poor, therefore, because of the ways in which they misspent their incomes rather than their incomes being too low in the first place. Several comments can be made here. The first is that Joseph was not consistent on this point. In 1976 he had argued that, ‘poverty is relative. As the general standard of living rises so does the definition of poverty.’39 However, as we have seen, by the time he and Jonathan Sumption wrote Equality he had changed his mind on this point fundamentally. The second point to make is that the relative conception of poverty had been adopted due to the inherent problems associated with the absolute conception of poverty, since it was difficult to conceive of what constituted absolute poverty without reference to the things that were then generally available in society. Indeed, this conceptual ambiguity was sometimes seen in the statements of Conservative politicians who stressed that capitalism would operate so as to make available to all those things currently enjoyed by the rich.40 A further confusion arises in that this wealth-creating role of the market was seen to be the most effective way of increasing the freedoms 98

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of the poorest – more so than the welfare state could achieve. However, this contradicts the point discussed earlier in this chapter that freedom is interpreted in economic liberal statements such as those advanced by Joseph as negative freedom (freedom from external constraint) rather than as positive freedom (freedom to do things). Freedom in the negative sense should not be seen as related to resources or to agency and so it was not clear how such a case for the market as being effective in extending freedom could be made without moving on to the positive conception of liberty. Again, this was a theoretical issue left unresolved in Joseph’s writing. Before going on to examine the critiques of Joseph’s thesis it is worth summarising the argument so far. As can be seen, much of Joseph’s thesis was negative in the sense that it sought to reject the post-war consensus of welfare rights, equality and a positive conception of liberty. In so doing, he drew heavily on the arguments of Hayek and Nozick. However, there was a positive case, which sought to justify a residual welfare state based not on the pursuit of material equality but instead on the twin pillars of equality of opportunity and social order. Joseph argued that, ‘equality of opportunity is an attack on privilege in the name of liberty … A believer in equality of opportunity regards the state as the delegate of all citizens equally.’41 Hence, he regarded equality of opportunity as being essential to freedom and also something undermined by the pursuit of economic equality, since the latter involved the state in the arbitrary use of power restricting the freedoms and opportunities of individuals in order to benefit others. Equality of opportunity was held to involve only the removal of barriers to competition such as government regulation and high levels of taxation. A residual welfare state was required to end absolute poverty and to maintain social order since too wide a gap between rich and poor could result in political instability. Since the rich would benefit from political stability they would be willing to accept some measure of state provision of welfare for this purpose, but not as a strategy for equality. Responses The response to Joseph’s arguments against equality, which as we have seen was a radical critique of the post-war framework, was initially limited. In the short term there was very little comment on Joseph’s proposals. The Conservative Party moved in to government and began to embark on a radical monetarist economic policy and attention was therefore directed at the relative successes and failures of such a policy.42 The Cabinet and parliamentary party were also split between the ‘wets’ and ‘dries’ although these debates were largely over economic policy rather than equality specifically. It was only after the second 99

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General Election victory of 1983 and the marginalisation of the wets that a more radical attitude to the welfare state was adopted. For the Labour Party, the reasons why these arguments were not adequately contested were even more obvious. Their 1979 defeat led to a rift between right and left in the party and some of the moderates left to form the Social Democratic Party in 1981. It was only with the marginalisation of the Labour left under Neil Kinnock that senior figures in the party began to take Joseph’s arguments more seriously. In the longer term there were two distinctive, and mostly valid, critiques of Joseph’s anti-egalitarianism from the Labour revisionists and from One Nation Conservatives. The clearest social democratic responses came from Labour’s Deputy Leader, Roy Hattersley43 with considerable academic input from the political philosopher, Raymond Plant44 and the clearest One Nation critique was provided by Ian Gilmour.45 The essence of the social democratic position was a defence of traditional nostrums of welfare rights, social justice, a positive conception of liberty, and a desire to reduce relative poverty, all of which pointed to a need to reduce inequality. Space does not permit a detailed exposition of these arguments, which has been done elsewhere,46 but it is worth outlining what these arguments were. Briefly stated, the right to welfare was defended on the basis that all rights – not just welfare rights (as the economic liberals had claimed) – were dependent on resources. For instance, the right to have one’s civil liberties defended by the police was not disputed by neo-liberals, but in reality these rights were dependent on the resources of the police. Just because welfare rights were similarly resource-dependent did not make them any less of a right. Social justice was reasserted against the economic liberals who believed that justice related only to the intentions underpinning human action. The failure of some people to compete successfully in the market and the resulting poverty was not unjust because it was not the intention of the rich to make other people poor. However, social democrats argued that justice concerned not just intentional acts but also the foreseeable consequences of actions. If it could be foreseen that the market would result in poverty then the failure to provide welfare to counter it would also be unjust. Social democrats also sought to defend the idea that poverty was relative since they regarded absolute poverty as an inadequate measurement. This was so partly for the reason already outlined – that it was difficult if not impossible to define poverty if it was not related to what was generally acceptable in society. However, social democrats added a second argument here, which was that liberty entailed the need for individuals to participate as citizens and not just to survive and therefore required an income above a basic subsistence level, one that had to be related to the society in which people lived. The positive conception of liberty was defended by asking the simple 100

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q­ uestion: what is liberty for? The answer seemed most likely to be the ability to do things. Hence, this implied not just the absence of external constraint but also the provision of resources to make liberty effective. Hence, poverty was unfreedom after all. The response of Conservatives who were part of the post-war, One Nation tradition of Conservatism was in many ways similar to the social democrats. However, it is worth pointing out that the One Nation rejection of economic liberalism was also different to that of the social democrats in a fundamental sense. For social democrats, as we have seen, the rejection of economic liberalism was based on abstract principles. The social democratic critique of economic liberalism was an attempt to re-assert the traditional social democratic principles of social justice, welfare rights and so forth, which had been rejected by economic liberals. For One Nation Conservatives (as well as for ‘traditionalists’, whose ideas will be analysed in the next chapter) there was a similarity between the social democratic and economic liberal positions in that they are both based on abstract principles – that is to say, using Oakeshott’s language,47 they are both rationalist political theories. In contrast, conservatism was an anti-rationalist political project – one based not on abstract principles, but rather a recognisable political tradition. The essential political objective of conservatism was the necessary, but not particularly utopian, goal of social order. Here, a difference can be identified between the One Nation and traditionalist perspectives as they developed in the 1970s. For traditionalists, the expansive welfare state after 1945 had been responsible for the fostering of social antagonism.48 It had created welfare dependency, diminished a sense of individual responsibility and fostered greater levels of resentment as those who worked hard and acted responsibly (as traditionalists saw it) had to pay more taxation in order to fund those who had become dependent on welfare. However, what becomes clear here is that many of the traditionalists converged on the same political economic position advanced by Joseph, albeit for different reasons. While Joseph emphasised the market as the most effective way to extend individual liberty, traditionalists regarded the market as the mechanism for restoring social order, which had been itself undermined by the welfare state, government regulation of the economy, the active role of trade unions and so forth. In contrast, the argument of One Nation Conservatives was that the pursuit of free-market policies would lead to increased social resentment by causing wider inequalities in income and wealth and an increase in the number of those living in poverty. The debate here is finely balanced. There was more resentment against those who were increasingly seen as ‘work-shy’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor. Moreover, the arguments rehearsed above about the arbitrary use of bureaucratic powers and pressure group competition for government expenditure in the absence, or 101

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at least the perceived absence, of objective criteria for the distribution of public money could be seen to have led to increased social antagonism. All of these points were made by Joseph and by the traditionalists. However, the result of government policies after 1979 was a rise in the numbers unemployed, a growing divide between the rich and poor and an increase in the numbers living in poverty (as measured both absolutely and relatively). Whereas some traditionalists blamed urban riots on the moral failures of the individuals who participated in them,49 others from the One Nation side of Conservatism stressed instead the effects of government policy after 1979 in fostering social resentment since they usually occurred in areas of considerable poverty and unemployment.50 It is difficult to escape the conclusion, therefore, that the economic liberal policy framework adopted after 1979 did indeed foster social unrest and if social order is to be seen as the essence of conservatism, there did seem to be some fundamental tensions between economic liberalism and conservatism. Therefore, to return to the opening quotation, Joseph did not become so much a ‘true conservative’ after 1974 as an economic liberal. Notes   1   K. Joseph, ‘Foreword’ to Reversing the Trend (Barry Rose, London, 1975), p. 4.   2   K. Joseph, ‘The Economics of Freedom’ in Freedom and Order (CPC, London, 1975) p. 11.   3   The two biographies are M. Halcrow, Keith Joseph: A Single Mind (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1989), and A. Denham and M. Garnett, Keith Joseph: A Life (Acumen, Chesham, 2001). The best book on the New Right in many ways remains, A. Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1986, 1st edn).   4   See K. Joseph, Business and the Climate of Opinion (Foundation for Business Responsibilities, London, 1975) for one such statement of his ideas here.   5   My summary discussion draws from Denham and Garnett, Keith Joseph.   6   See K. Joseph, A New Strategy for Social Security (CPC, London, 1966) and K. Joseph, Social Security: The New Priorities (CPC, London, 1966) for such a statement. However, he does allow for greater targeting of supplementary benefits.   7   K. Joseph, Social Security: The New Priorities, p. 7.   8   See Denham and Garnett, Keith Joseph, pp. 170–3.   9   His first speech was at Upminster on 22 June 1974 and was included in Reversing the Trend. According to Jonathan Sumption, Joseph was privately critical during the period he was in government. Author interview with Jonathan Sumption, London, 23 November 2007. 10   See M. Grylls and J. Redwood, NEB: A Case for Euthanasia (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1980) and J. Redwood, Public Enterprise in Crisis: The Future of Nationalised Industries (Blackwell, Oxford, 1980). 11   K. Joseph, Stranded on the Middle Ground (Centre for Policy Studies, London,

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1976). 12   K. Joseph and J. Sumption, Equality (Murray, London, 1979). 13   Denham and Garnett, Keith Joseph, p. 329. 14   Author interview with Jonathan Sumption, London, 23 November 2007. 15   C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (Cape, London, 1956) and D. Jay, Socialism and the New Society (Longman, London, 1962). 16   See, for instance, I. Gilmour, Inside Right: Conservatism, Policies and the People (Quartet, London, 1978). 17   Joseph and Sumption, Equalities, pp. 2–12. We use Joseph’s name for convenience, but of course mean both Joseph and Sumption. 18   Ibid., p. 11. 19   Ibid., p. 2. 20   The principal works are R. H. Tawney, Equality (Allen and Unwin, London, 1964, 4th edn) and J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, Harvard, MA, 1972). 21   Joseph and Sumption, Equality, p. 11. 22   Ibid., pp. 88–92. 23 Joseph, Stranded, p. 75. 24   In this he echoed F. Hayek in his dedication of The Road to Serfdom to ‘the socialists of all parties’. 25   See in particular, F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Routledge, London, 1944) and The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960) and R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Blackwell, Oxford, 1975). 26   Joseph and Sumption, Equality, p. 47. 27   Ibid., pp. 63–8. 28   See note 24. 29   This argument reflected that made by Samuel Brittan in his book, The Economic Consequences of Democracy (Temple Smith, London, 1977). 30   Joseph, Stranded, p. 76. 31   Joseph and Sumption, Equality, p. 24. 32   Joseph, Stranded, p. 77. 33   Ibid., p. 61. 34   K. Joseph, ‘The Cycle of Family Deprivation’, in K. Joseph, Caring for People (CPC, London, 1972) and Denham and Garnett, Keith Joseph, pp. 219–25. 35   Joseph, Stranded, p. 77. 36   Cuts in public expenditure were made in order to finance a reduction in income tax, nearly half of which benefited the top 5 per cent of income earners. See I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories (Fourth Estate, London, 1997). 37   Joseph and Sumption, Equality, pp. 26–8. 38   Ibid., p. 27. 39   Joseph, Stranded, p. 62. 40   See Denham and Garnett, Keith Joseph, p. 331. 41   Joseph and Sumption, Equality, p. 29. 42   Of course, Joseph had written extensively on matters of economic policy. In addition to Reversing the Trend and Stranded on the Middle Ground, see also Monetarism is Not Enough (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1976); Conditions for Fuller Employment

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(Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1978), and Solving the Union Problem: The Key to Britain’s Recovery (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1979). 43   R. Hattersley, Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism (Michael Joseph, London, 1987). 44   See in particular, R. Plant, Equality, Markets and the State (Fabian Society, London, 1984) and K. Hoover and R. Plant, Conservative Capitalism in Britain and the United States: A Critical Appraisal (Routledge, London, 1989). 45   Gilmour, Inside Right. 46   See in particular the chapter on Roy Hattersley in M. Beech and K. Hickson, Labour’s Thinkers: The Intellectual Roots of Labour from Tawney to Gordon Brown (Tauris, London, 2007). 47   Oakeshott makes this famous distinction in ‘Rationalism in Politics’, in M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Methuen, London, 1962). 48   These ideas are discussed in the next chapter, but see M. Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, London, 1978) and S. Letwin, The Anatomy of Thatcherism (Fontana, London, 1992). 49   Most famously, Norman Tebbit, who demanded that people ‘got on their bikes’ to look for work at the 1981 Conservative Party conference. 50   Notably, I. Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (Simon and Schuster, London, 1992); see also F. Pym, The Politics of Consent (Sphere, London, 1985).

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The traditionalists1 So how should Conservatives talk? What is the mood they should be seeking to promote? Authority should be the by-word, not freedom. Peregrine Worsthorne, 19782 What the Conservative Party, then, should concern itself with … is the strength of the nation. T. E. Utley, 19783

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he purpose of this chapter is to outline the political thought of the traditionalists associated with the Conservative Party. The core ideas of the traditionalists can be summarised as a strong sense of patriotism, defence of the established social order and respect for tradition and authority, as the two opening quotations highlight. The role of the traditionalists has been at times limited. This was so after 1945 when the ‘die-hards’4 fought desperately against both the end of the British Empire and the acceptance of most of the social reforms introduced by the Attlee Governments after 1945. However, both seemed futile. Britain had suffered heavy losses in life and wealth as a result of the Second World War, making the end of Empire inevitable and the Conservatives’ acceptance of progressive welfare measures was needed in order to regain popular support. Hence, the position of traditionalists was marginal after 1945, when the political thought of the Conservative Party was dominated by progressive, ‘One Nation’ ideas. The revival of traditionalist concerns was linked directly to the phenomenon of Powellism, examined in Chapter 4. The 1970s marked a continuation in the revival of traditional toryism given economic decline, increased social tension and the rise of trade union militancy. All of this came on top of liberal law and order measures in the 1960s and the growth of what traditionalists described as the ‘permissive society’. Powell had shown that a more right-wing position (combining free-market economics with a strong sense of patriotism) could be electorally popular. After 1975, the Thatcher-led Conservative Party allowed for a partial acceptance of traditionalist ideas in policy. Many of the traditionalists pinned their hopes on Thatcher. However, as will be seen, not all of them did so, or at least they were reluctant to do so at first. Others, starting from the same philosophical viewpoint, were

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initially sympathetic and then became more critical of Thatcherism. The difficulty for traditionalists within the Conservative Party was the extent to which their ideas were compatible with the (classical) liberal foundations of much of Thatcherite policy. For some there was relatively little tension between these two sets of ideas. For others the differences were harder to reconcile. This chapter, in keeping with the rest of the book, will focus on individuals. The selection of just one traditionalist thinker who warranted equal consideration to some of the other individuals discussed in this book proved impossible. Rather than looking at one individual therefore, this chapter examines the ideas of five thinkers – two journalists and three academics – namely, T. E. ‘Peter’ Utley, Shirley Robin Letwin, Maurice Cowling, Roger Scruton and Peregrine Worsthorne.5 The justification for selecting these five is twofold. Firstly, although none was an MP, they each produced a body of literature worthy of consideration for its contribution to and interpretation of Conservative politics from a clearly traditionalist perspective. Secondly, all of these individuals influenced the Conservative Party, to a greater or lesser extent, through their contributions to the Tory-supporting press and/or through scholarly debate. In addition, some made important contributions through think tanks (most notably Letwin) or through writing speeches for senior Party figures including Thatcher (most notably Utley). Finally, they provide clear evidence of the range of responses offered by traditionalists to the development of the policies and style of government after 1979. The chapter begins with a discussion of Utley’s views as they evolved from 1945. Peter Utley Utley distinguished himself both as a student and afterwards as a journalist. Born in 1921, he had been blind since childhood. He obtained a double first in history from Cambridge University and worked as a journalist from the Second World War for a number of newspapers, most notably the Daily Telegraph. He was an early critic of the post-war acceptance by the Conservative Party of the welfare state implemented by the Labour Government after 1945. As already stated, the opposition to the extension of welfare, while being substantial on certain measures, was rather muted in general since it was recognised by most senior Conservatives that such an acceptance was required given the popular support Labour had received in the 1945 General Election. Some senior Conservatives (notably R. A. Butler) embraced the welfare reforms and the mixed economy warmly, seeing them as fully in keeping with the tradition of One Nation Conservatism; using the state to improve the condition of the people and thereby overcoming class resentment and conflict. Others regarded 106

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the changes in policy less enthusiastically but still as being essential for electoral revival. It was left largely to a few backbenchers of rather maverick tendencies (such as Sir Waldron Smithers) to outline the opposing argument. Hence, the clearest case against the post-war reconstruction of Conservative policy came from outside Parliament. Making a rare direct contribution to Conservative Party politics, Michael Oakeshott set out his opposition to these reforms in the pages of the Cambridge Journal.6 Richard Law (later Lord Coleraine) also outlined at greater length his rejection of the mixed economy and the welfare state in his book, Return from Utopia.7 Utley’s earliest statement of his Conservatism, and arguably one of his best pieces, Essays in Conservatism, also set out to critique the post-war drift of Party policy.8 For him, politics as properly understood was the use of state power to maintain social order and to protect the nation from external threat. Other than this there was no valid role for politicians and in extending the remit of politics, through the provision of welfare and the management of the economy, politicians were diverting their attention from their fundamental duties. However, Utley was to accept within a short space of time that the electoral imperative demanded that the policies he had initially opposed were required. He did so with a degree of reluctance. The demands of the electorate were bound to end in failure for government since they were contradictory. The demand to maintain stable prices, full employment, economic growth and free trade unionism were incompatible. However, this was what was demanded by the electorate and so, even though irrational, it was what government must do.9 In this context, Utley later argued, the Party had shown sufficient pragmatism to regain power and that ‘within the limits of political possibility, the Tories over the last eleven years have done markedly better than could reasonably have been expected of them’.10 This included such controversial developments as the Suez expedition in 1956.11 However, by the early 1960s the failure of this approach had become all too apparent. Inflation was increasing, as highlighted by the resignations of Peter Thorneycroft, Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch in January 1958.12 Macmillan compounded these errors by extending the corporatist framework in the early 1960s with Utley arguing that, ‘the last years of Macmillan’s premiership introduced a modified version of socialist economic policy’.13 It was in this context that Utley became interested in Powell’s politics in the 1960s. He produced within weeks of the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech the first biography of Powell.14 The perspective was largely sympathetic, although not uncritical. He was one of the first people to flag up the view that Powell was consistent in his politics despite all of the U-turns on specific issues, since he had shown a consistent concern with the real interests of the nationstate: ‘essentially, Powell’s aim has been to divert the patriotic fervour of the 107

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Conservative Party from the useless and disastrous task of defending the last outposts of a deserted Empire to the essential task of defending Europe’.15 This was a personal journey and also a position with which Utley himself identified. The central issues for politics in the 1960s were how to defend the nation from internal and external threat. The way suggested was to develop a free-market economic programme best capable of reviving British economic power. There was also a need to pursue an independent foreign policy and to defend the UK from immigration, Scottish nationalism, terrorism in Northern Ireland and European integration. However, Utley also differed from Powell in important respects, most significantly in that he was more hardline on issues of law and order and the defence of traditional morality. As was discussed in Chapter 4, was liberal on many law and order issues such as the death penalty and corporal punishment and also sympathised with the rights of consenting homosexuals. These attitudes were frequently ignored by the more authoritarian-minded traditionalists who found themselves in natural agreement with Powell’s statements on the nation. The clearest statement made by Utley against the ‘permissive’ society was made in his pamphlet, What Laws May Cure in which he defended the right for society to set limits on what adults could do in the private sphere: ‘it is part of the state’s business to promote morality. This can sometimes be done by enforcing morality’.16 Utley was later to be critical of Powell’s decision to leave the Conservative Party. Reviewing the publication of a set of Powell’s speeches from 1972–78, A Nation or No Nation, Utley was critical of Powell’s refusal to play by the normal parliamentary rules by rejecting his party in the 1974 General Election, although he had himself stood as a Unionist candidate in the February 1974 General Election.17 He became much more sympathetic to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership after 1975. He regarded her as a natural tory, but was critical of what he regarded as the growth of intellectualism in the Conservative Party: ‘the odium theologicum which now blights the life of the Tory party, and which the party scarcely troubles to conceal from the public, is a new and extremely disturbing phenomenon’.18 His piece in the volume Conservative Essays, edited by Maurice Cowling and published in 1978, was sympathetic to Thatcher but in what was a commentary on Keith Joseph, critical of the deliberate attempt to bring in liberal ideas, largely from the Institute of Economic Affairs. Conservatism was a disposition, understood by Thatcher, and did not need the influx of liberal theory that Joseph had brought.19 Utley was important to the development of Thatcherism, in at least two respects. Firstly, he was a speech-writer for Thatcher on a number of issues including education and foreign policy.20 Secondly, he sought to defend the government very clearly in his journalism. He was to argue that Thacherism was fully within the Conservative tradition – something that became ­ important 108

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when moderates (wets) sought to argue that what she was doing was alien to the Party. In a pamphlet entitled One Nation: 100 Years On, he argued that Thatcher was actually closer to the original Disraelian position than were the so-called One Nation Conservatives on the left of the Party.21 ‘One Nation’ Conservatism should be seen as the promotion of the national ideal while maintaining a largely free-market economic structure, something that Thatcher was doing. However, he also pointed out on a number of occasions that she could sound more resolutely conservative than she often did. This was certainly so in the period prior to the Falklands War, when the discourse was one not of nation but of liberty. In what was ostensibly a review of the new book by Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England, Utley wrote that in all of the debates between the wets and the dries, ‘what is absent is anything which corresponds even remotely to the description of a traditional English Conservative as that phrase would have been understood right up until 1939’; essentially the defence of the nation from the enemies within and without.22 This opinion was to be silenced by the Falklands War, but only temporarily so given other developments in the 1980s such as the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Single European Act. These concerns were also taken up and added to by the other individuals we will discuss in this chapter. Hence, we can see that Utley clearly articulated the traditionalist perspective on the development of Conservatism after 1945 – initial opposition to and then reluctant acceptance of the Middle Way variant of Conservatism after 1945, followed by a strong sympathy for Powell and an endorsement, although not an uncritical one, of Thatcherism. The traditionalists were to make additional contributions on these subjects and also to become highly critical of the Major Government. However, Utley died in 1988, before Thatcher left office. Shirley Letwin Letwin contributed to the political thought of the Conservative Party, both as a researcher and tutor at the London School of Economics and through her involvement in the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS). Letwin’s core academic contribution was an attempt to argue that the difference between freedom on the one hand and order on the other was a false one.23 This was so since the concept of responsibility connected the two because in order to act freely one needed to act responsibly: ‘individuality is displayed not by egoism, wilfulness or rebellion, but in the integrity of a man’s personality’.24 Responsibility could only be understood in the context of established patterns of authority: ‘the kind of security that the conservative individualist wants can only be found in an order that rests on tradition and authority’.25 The ideal was one of the English 109

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gentleman, an idea not the possession of a particular social class but instead something within the English social tradition itself. The gentleman sought to live by what Letwin described as the ‘vigorous virtues’.26 These virtues included hard work, individual responsibility, self-help, thrift and so forth. It was these virtues that allowed man to live a free life. However, the post-war development of the welfare state, together with the relaxation of traditional moral codes in the 1960s, had undermined the vigorous virtues. The result was the decline in political authority and the essential task facing British politics in the 1970s, therefore, was how to respond to this collapse in virtue. The thesis developed by Letwin, with considerable flourish, was that Thatcherism could be understood in terms of the political attempt to restore the vigorous virtues: ‘the individual preferred by Thatcherism is … upright, self-sufficient, energetic, adventurous, independent-minded, loyal to friends and robust against enemies’.27 Hence, Thatcherism could also be defined by what it was not. Firstly, according to Letwin, it was not ideological since it was not based on abstract principles but instead on a recognisable tradition – that of the English gentleman – and the specific context of politics at the time, namely the collapse of this tradition in the 1970s: ‘Thatcherism has seen Britain at the end of the twentieth century as a place in which the softer virtues have been too much stressed and the vigorous virtues insufficiently regarded’.28 Secondly, it was not, as many commentators had assumed, essentially a liberal political project, but instead given that it was based in this English conservative tradition, recognisably conservative.29 Finally, it was not even primarily about economics, even though most policy developments had been in relation to the economy (monetarism, privatisation etc.), but rather about morals – the attempt to restore traditional morality or the ‘vigorous virtues’.30 This could be seen in a number of policy areas. Firstly, economic policy had been about restoring discipline to public finances and leaving the economy to operate without government interference as far as possible so that individuals would have to act responsibly in their economic activities. Similarly, the welfare state would be reduced in order to encourage the virtues of self-help and restore the position of the family as the primary means of welfare provision. Even privatisation could be interpreted this way since by creating a ‘popular capitalism’ of small shareholders the policy would encourage people to act responsibly in terms of managing their own wealth. Hence, most of the policies developed during the 1980s were aimed not at promoting individual freedom, as the economic liberal ideologues claimed, but instead at restoring the individual responsibility that had been undermined by the drift of policy after 1945. However, even if one leaves aside the more overtly ideological arguments against the New Right, Letwin’s thesis is still open to criticism. Firstly, it is important to emphasise that she had difficulty applying it to all areas of policy. 110

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This was most notable in the case of education policy. The emphasis on the vigorous virtues could have been used to defend educational reforms but instead the liberal influence was much greater. Many traditionalists were critical of the liberal influences on the development of education policy in the mid-1980s under Keith Joseph, with the explicit aim of creating an ‘enterprise culture’.31 The government appears to have been influenced by the Barnett-Wiener thesis,32 which stated that education policy had for too long been dominated by an aristocratic tradition that placed emphasis on the arts and humanities at the expense of scientific and practical subjects. According to this view, the need was therefore to divert expenditure to more relevant subjects in order to promote economic growth and avert decline. If the government had been directed mostly by the idea of restoring the vigorous virtues then the arts and humanities would not have come under the attack that they did in the later 1980s and there would have been much greater autonomy granted to schools in the design of the curriculum and to the universities. Indeed, in the other areas of reform it was possible to interpret the same policies differently: as either the promotion of individual liberty as classical liberals would define it (the absence of restraint), or as the promotion of authority and individual responsibility. However, where these ideas diverged in terms of policy outcomes – as was the case in education policy – then it was the liberal notions that won the day. The other difficulty for the Letwin thesis was that the distinction between authority and freedom remained and therefore there was still considerable scope for government policy to determine how much freedom or how much authority there should be.33 For instance, the promotion of the free market did impose responsibilities on trade unionists and welfare recipients but there seemed to be no corresponding set of obligations for those who benefited from the interplay of supply and demand. There was no attempt to set standards of conduct for the wealthy. This was of course a point made frequently by the left, but it was also a criticism levelled, as we shall see, by one other traditionalist thinker – Peregrine Worsthorne, who in many ways provided one of the most interesting critiques of Thatcherism over the course of the 1980s. Equally there was no attempt under Thatcher to reverse the ‘permissive’ legislation of the 1960s, again pointing to the possibility that freedom was given greater weight than authority in the conduct of public policy in areas of social morality, despite some of the authoritarian rhetoric of the government. Maurice Cowling The principal ideas of the three remaining individuals had little direct influence on the conduct of policy after 1979, but still provide us with ­interesting 111

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perspectives on the development of Conservatism in Britain. Maurice Cowling had been a student at Cambridge University and became a leading figure of Peterhouse College, supposedly a recruiting ground for a number of Conservative politicians including, later, Michael Howard and Michael Portillo. His work contained two, not easily reconcilable, elements.34 The first was a rejection of liberalism. This could be seen in his study of John Stuart Mill, who Cowling uniquely argued was not a liberal at all but really an authoritarian figure: ‘Mill, the godfather of English liberalism, emerges … considerably less libertarian than is sometimes suggested. He emerges considerably more radical, and without straining words unduly, may be accused as more than a touch of something resembling moral totalitarianism.’35 He had been seeking in his major work, On Liberty to reject the authority of the clergy and instead to argue that liberalism should take its place as the dominant religion. However, in distinguishing between higher and lower forms of desire and emphasising the idea of progress Mill had been seeking to convert everyone to the beliefs of the liberal elite. These ideas had, in British political terms, been dominant for some time at an elite level even though they were not shared by the masses: something amply demonstrated by the contrasting responses to Powell’s immigration speeches from the mass and the elite. Cowling sought to outline a revived Christian public doctrine, capable of replacing liberalism.36 The other thrust of Cowling’s work was to show that in major historical developments it was not the mass guided by political principle that shaped political outcomes, as radical historians had claimed, but instead the interaction of members of the political elite guided by the quest for personal and/or party advantage. This he sought to demonstrate in three historical studies: of the 1867 Reform Act, events leading to the formation of the first Labour Government in 1924 and the opposition to fascism in the 1930s leading to the outbreak of war in 1939.37 In each it was not popular pressure but the actions of members of the political elite, on each occasion a Conservative political elite, that determined the outcomes of these actions. One conclusion that comes out of these studies was that politics continued in the democratic age much as it had done before, with a closed political elite making the decisions. The second important conclusion was that none of these developments was inevitable. Indeed, Cowling came close to arguing that the outcomes were also undesirable and could have been avoided if only the political elite had acted differently. It was this point that was made explicit when Cowling argued that the decision to go to war in 1939 was the wrong one.38 What emerges is a considerable fondness for the pre-democratic era, or at least a fondness for the pre-1939 political settlement. The result of the war was a Labour majority administration, the introduction of the welfare state and the end of the British Empire. The real patriots had been the Appeasers, not Churchill. 112

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In terms of the politics of Thatcherism, what can be gleaned from these ideas? Firstly, Cowling argued that the New Right was not ideological since it was a continuation of the art of high politics. The New Right had not been a mass political movement but instead had been the creation of a small band of elite politicians, academics and journalists – which he did not feel part of – totalling only ‘about 50 people’.39 The second point that Cowling makes in terms of the New Right was the rather critical stance he adopted in the volume he edited in 1978, Conservative Essays, in which he argues that one form of liberalism (welfare liberalism) which had dominated the thinking of post-war Conservatives was being replaced by an alternative form of liberalism (free-market liberalism) in the form of Thatcherism. What was needed, and what he hoped to establish in that volume, was something ‘less liberal and more populist than the first and less liberal and more political than the second’.40 The publication of Conservative Essays was to mark the formation of the Salisbury Group, named after Lord Salisbury, the last Prime Minister to sit in the House of Lords. In the 1990s the significant contribution by Cowling to Conservative Party politics was limited essentially to one article, in which he argued that the Party’s prospects were best guaranteed by keeping on the right of the political spectrum. The Party had become divided after the removal of Thatcher, but her long-term impact could not be doubted. The future of the Conservatives depended, he argued, on the continuation of Thatcherism and opposition to the politics of ‘virtue’ as exemplified by New Labour.41 The development of the traditionalist perspective after 1990 is best encapsulated in the work of Roger Scruton. Roger Scruton In a similar way to Cowling, Scruton, who had been a research fellow at Peterhouse from 1969–71, operated at some remove from the core activities of the Thatcher administration. He also believed that Thatcher had borrowed too heavily from the liberal political philosophical tradition under the influence of Keith Joseph. His arguments were, however, rather abstract, reflecting his interests in political philosophy. For instance his remarks on the ‘politics of culture’ in Conservative Essays are somewhat more abstract than the concerns of many other writers in that volume.42 Similarly, his major work on conservatism, The Meaning of Conservatism, which undoubtedly contains much of serious philosophical reflection, included few direct references to the practical politics of the late 1970s and early 1980s.43 Although the book, first published in 1980, appeared critical of free-market economics, he was in fact only critical of the liberal basis of such thought. Specifically, he was concerned that the new leadership lacked a concern with the condition of the nation-state: ‘I was sceptical of 113

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Thatcher at first because she seemed to wish to reduce all politics to economics, and to think that the market (which is the solution to the problem of economic order) is the solution to everything. After the Falklands War I began to see that she had a conception of national identity, that she recognised the self-identity of the country was at stake, and that its revival was a political task.’44 As with all other traditionalists, he believed that the essential problem of the 1970s was not the loss of freedom as neo-liberals were asserting, but rather the excess of freedom, something expressed most clearly by Worsthorne and discussed in the next section. In economic terms this implied too much state interference, excessive trade union power and so forth. The free market was needed for the restoration of economic order in Britain. It would reduce the arbitrary interventions of the government and discipline left-wing trade unionists and local authorities into facing economic realities. The problem with Thatcherism was that it appeared to be concerned solely with economic policy. This was expressed in Scruton’s publications and also explains his actions in forming the Conservative Philosophy Group and establishing the Salisbury Review. The aim, in common with Cowling’s reasons for compiling the Conservative Essays, was expressly to promote the non-economic side of Tory thought – essentially a concern to defend the nation-state, which was deemed to be under threat from several quarters by the late 1970s. During the first years of Thatcher’s leadership the traditionalists remained concerned that the new government was not sufficiently concerned with the threats to the nation-state. It was only in the Falklands War that traditionalists felt Thatcher demonstrated her commitment to defend the interests of the nation-state, for that war ‘showed the reality, durability and efficacy of patriotism as the foundation of political unity’.45 Even after this, Scruton and others (including Powell from the opposition benches as a member of the Ulster Unionist Party) were critical of the limited patriotism of the government. The most notable examples were the Anglo-Irish Agreement, attacked since it extended formally the scope for the Republic of Ireland to influence decisions in Northern Ireland, and the Single European Act of 1986 which was seen as further surrendering sovereignty to the EC. This was partly assuaged by the Bruges speech in 1988, but again at the end of the Thatcher years the decision to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism was attacked by traditionalists, although Thatcher was praised for seeking to hold out on this against most of her senior Cabinet colleagues. After the removal of Thatcher in 1990, the traditionalists (and Thatcher) were to lead a strong and sustained attack against the Major administration, particularly over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which was viewed with almost as much contempt as the original decision to enter the EEC under Heath; as a great betrayal of the British national interest. Hence, although not uncritical of the Thatcher Government, many traditionalists viewed her period 114

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in office as a success. Certainly, she was viewed much more favourably than both her predecessor and her successor. The economic policies pursued by the Thatcher Government were deemed a success by Scruton – especially policies of privatisation and control of the trade unions.46 These measures had restored national economic efficiency and order and removed egalitarianism as an influence on public policy. This was combined with a successful personal and party political strategy, winning three elections in a row and thus demonstrating that the Conservative Party could combine right-wing views and electoral popularity. Indeed, for traditionalists such as Scruton, one of the key differences between Powell and Thatcher is that whereas the former held much more strongly to the key nostrums of traditionalist conservatism, the latter was a much more effective political operator and was therefore able to become party leader and then Prime Minister. This was done by exploiting an unambiguous rhetoric of personal freedom rather than confronting the electorate directly with increasingly unfashionable truths about nationhood as Powell unwisely did in 1968 in particular.47 By the mid-1990s there were two pressing political concerns from a traditionalist perspective. The first was the need to restore moral order.48 The most intellectual approach to this problem – communitarianism – was flawed since it accepted the liberal measures that were implemented after 1945 to emancipate the individual, while still stressing the need for a moral identity. For Scruton, the liberal measures had been responsible for the decline in community and so the only way of restoring moral order was to reverse as far as possible the liberal reforms. In particular, the Conservative Party ought to seek to promote traditional forms of loyalty such as the family and in particular it should ‘grasp the nettle and make clear that it is the voice of the nation’.49 In terms of policy this would involve tougher measures to control immigration and the rejection of all further European integration. New Labour posed further challenges to the nation-state by seeking to introduce radical constitutional reforms such as devolution and the removal of hereditary peers, which involved the rejection of traditional authority and the imposition of alien constitutional measures.50 Indeed, New Labour has shown habitual disregard for traditional English institutions and customs, so much so that Scruton adopted a pessimistic stance arguing that what traditionally passed for authentic Englishness had been lost.51 Peregrine Worsthorne Of all the individuals studied in this chapter, Worsthorne is in many ways the odd one out since he was to be particularly critical of Thatcherism. His views are idiosyncratic with his concentration on the virtues of the British, or more 115

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precisely English, aristocracy. For this reason it is possible to dismiss his views as those of a maverick. Certainly his memoirs add to this reputation, describing his experiences as a student at Stowe and Peterhouse College, together with his colourful family history.52 Moreover, by his own admission, his journalism often expressed contradictory and inconsistent viewpoints, making him seem more of a dilettante than a serious political thinker.53 Finally, his views were usually against the current fashion, so that he made a number of arguments up until 1979 that were critical of the One Nation position dominant in the Conservative Party until that point and fitting with many of the views expressed by the right of the Party,54 but increasingly after 1979 he was to adopt a critical stance against the Conservative Government. However, in spite of all these points, there is a consistent theme concerning the need to maintain the authority of the ruling class: ‘Conservatism has no choice but to admit the truth – that (it is) about satisfying the needs of the strong.’55 Given that the interests of the Conservative Party are with the minority, the aim of Conservatism is to find ways of persuading the masses to grant authority to the political elite56 and from this basis can be taken a novel critique of Thatcherism. Worsthorne was critical of post-war Conservatism, which he believed had gone too far in its acceptance of the mixed economy and the welfare state with key figures such as Macmillan and Butler believing that such largesse was needed in order to maintain the support of the masses. This approach was deemed necessary since the traditional sources of working-class loyalty to the nationstate – essentially the Empire – were now lost. However, Worsthorne argued that such a strategy would not create the new conditions for working-class loyalty since post-war policies lacked any romantic appeal of the nation.57 What was needed, therefore, was a firm commitment on the part of governments to the nation in order to inculcate a strong sense of patriotism among the working classes.58 The second reason for rejecting the post-war orthodoxy of the mixed economy–welfare state nexus was that it led to stagnation and the stalemate state, in which the compromise reached between the two major parties had halted both the drift towards socialism and towards free-market capitalism. The result was a colourless compromise and economic decline. Powellism offered the first serious attempt from the right to break out of this stalemate situation and won the support of Worsthorne.59 However, he was later to argue that in accepting the end of Empire, Powell had formulated an isolationist variant of English nationalism, whereas Worsthorne believed even as late as the 1980s that there was still scope to re-invent the Empire.60 By the 1970s the main problem had become the collapse of the authority of the state. The new Conservatism being formulated by Thatcher and Joseph failed to appreciate this by emphasising the need to extend individual freedom. For Worsthorne, this was a mistaken view. There was in fact clearly ‘too much 116

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freedom’61 and this was seen in the militancy of the trade unions in particular. Hence, ‘what Britain is suffering from is “riotous disorder” and to argue, as Mrs Thatcher does, that “setting the people free” will cure it is as senseless as trying to smooth raging waters with a stick of dynamite or to quieten hubbub with a brass band’.62 What was needed was a resolute form of Conservatism emphasising the restoration of the authority of the state and the promotion of a firm patriotism: ‘the spectre haunting most ordinary people in Britain is neither of a totalitarian state or of Big Brother, but of ordinary people being allowed to run wild. What they are worried about is crime, violence, disorder in schools, promiscuity, idleness, pornography, football hooliganism, vandalism and urban terrorism … And rightly so.’63 It could be argued that Thatcherism did restore social order and the authority of the state in the 1980s and Worsthorne has little to say by way of criticism of specific policies.64 There was a need to combat trade union power, most notably in defeating the direct challenge to the authority of the state posed by the National Union of Mineworkers.65 The economic reforms were necessary to restore competitiveness and price stability. Moreover, the Falklands War was a clear act in the restoration of national prestige.66 However, Worsthorne was to become increasingly critical of the Thatcher Government, partly because of Thatcher’s leadership style: ‘her preachy manner, with that self-righteous, censorious – “this hurts me more than it hurts you” – schoolmistressy voice’.67 However, it was also because of the apparent risks to the established social order she was prepared to make in the pursuit of policy.68 Above all it was the failure to be concerned with standards of conduct that infuriated Worsthorne and thus showed that in the tension between freedom and authority it was the former that the government promoted. Hence, in terms of the growth of inequality in Britain, Worsthorne welcomed the move back to a more hierarchical society and the final rejection of egalitarianism that the Thatcher Government constituted.69 However, the new rich needed to create a culture in which they earned the respect of those further down the income scale. This they did not do and according to Worsthorne they created social resentment through their selfish, irresponsible conduct. In his view they were: ‘vulgar, loud-mouthed, drunken yobboes, scarcely better, if at all, than football hooligans’.70 Indeed, the damage done to the ideal of the traditional ruling class by the individualistic culture of the 1980s fostered by the Thatcher Government made Worsthorne more appreciative of the deference paid by the post-war generation of Conservative leaders to social stability.71 One final twist was in Worsthorne’s adoption of a pro-European stance on the basis that Britain was no longer a great power and that the only way of defending traditional values from the threat of liberalism was to integrate much more closely with the European Union: ‘so long as our politics are played by the traditional insular rules, Britain will always be liberal Britain. For Tory Britain to have a chance, 117

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we need a new pack of cards. That is why it is such a disaster that the Tories seem determined to reject the only remotely respectable new international pack of cards that has ever been seriously on offer: Federal Europe.’72 In summary, the Thatcher Government was broadly supported by the traditionalists. Certainly it was viewed more favourably than the post-war form of Conservatism and also more positively than the Major administration was to be. However, this support was not uncritical, as we have seen here. There was, initially at least, some concern that the Thatcher Government was insufficiently resolute in the defence of national sovereignty. Also, there was too great an emphasis on individual liberty according to the traditionalists, without a corresponding attachment to authority and community. Ultimately, some traditionalists – notably Utley and Letwin – continued to support Thatcher on the basis that her policies were restoring social order, the authority of government and national prestige, notably Worsthorne, others took the opposite view on largely the same grounds. Notes   1   I am grateful to Arthur Aughey for comments on the chapter.   2   P. Worsthorne, ‘Too Much Freedom’, in M. Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, London, 1978), p. 152.   3   T. E. Utley, ‘The Significance of Mrs Thatcher, in Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays, p. 49.   4   The term ‘die-hard’ is taken from A. Gamble, The Conservative Nation (Routledge, London, 1974).   5   The principal works of each of these individuals are contained in subsequent endnotes. They were chosen over other individuals who did not produce a body of literature of equal weight (such as John Biffen) or whose work did not have the same direct impact on the thought of a section of the Conservative Party (such as Noel O’Sullivan or Richard Kidston Law (Lord Coleraine)). For O’Sullivan see his Conservatism (Dent, London, 1976). For Law see [Lord Coleraine] Return from Utopia (Faber, London, 1951) and For Conservatives Only (Stacey, London, 1970).   6   See in particular, M. Oakeshott, ‘Contemporary British Politics’, Cambridge Journal, May 1948.   7   Law, Return from Utopia.   8   T. E. Utley, Essays in Conservatism (CPC, London, 1949).   9   See C. Moore and S. Heffer (eds), A Tory Seer: The Selected Journalism of T. E. Utley (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1989), pp. 4–15. 10 Ibid., p. 4. 11 Examined and defended at length in T. E. Utley, Not Guilty: The Conservative Reply (Macgibben and Key, London, 1957). 12 Defended in T. E. Utley, Enoch Powell: The Man and His Thinking (William Kimber,

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

London, 1968), p. 74. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid. Ibid., p. 112. In Moore and Heffer (eds), A Tory Seer, p. 331. Ibid., pp. 59–61. Utley, ‘The Significance of Mrs Thatcher’, p. 44. Ibid., pp. 41–51. Correspondence in relation to education policy is contained in the Keith Joseph Papers, KJ11/4, Bodleian Library. T. E. Utley, One Nation: 100 Years On (CPC, London, 1981). Moore and Heffer (eds), Tory Seer, pp. 64–8, p. 65. This view was set out most clearly in S. R. Letwin, ‘On Conservative Individualism’, in Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays, pp. 52–68 and also in S. R. Letwin, The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1982). Letwin, ‘On Conservative Individualism’, p. 59. Ibid., p. 62. This idea was set out in S. R. Letwin, The Anatomy of Thatcherism (Fontana, London, 1992). Ibid., pp. 32–3. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid. Critics included Powell, Utley and Worsthorne among others. See ibid., pp. 250–1, for a clear statement of the alleged influence of this thesis on British education policy. See A. Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty (Polity, Cambridge, 1996), pp. 123–4 for a discussion on this point. Not easily reconcilable because one sought a value-neutral account of politics and the other a value-based critique of liberalism. M. Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1963), p. xii. This was the aim of his Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England (3 vols, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980, 1985 and 2001). M. Cowling, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967), M. Cowling, The Impact of Labour (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971) and M. Cowling, The Impact of Hitler (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1975). M. Cowling, ‘The Case Against Going to War’, Finest Hour, 70, 1991. M. Cowling, ‘Sources of the New Right: Irony, Geniality and Malice’, in Encounter, November 1989, pp. 3–13, p. 11. M. Cowling, ‘The Present Position’, in Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, London, 1978), pp. 1–24 and p. 194. M. Cowling, A Conservative Future (Politeia, London, 1997). R. Scruton, ‘The Politics of Culture’, in Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays, pp. 101–16.

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

R. Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1980). Correspondence from Roger Scruton to Kevin Hickson, 19 January 2007. Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (2001 edn), p. viii. See in particular, R. Scruton, The Conservative Idea of Community (Conservative 2000 Foundation, London, 1996). Correspondence from Roger Scruton to Kevin Hickson, 19 January 2007. Scruton, The Conservative Idea of Community. Ibid., p. 27. See Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (2001 edn). R. Scruton, England: An Elegy (Chatto and Windus, London, 2000). P. Worsthorne, Tricks of Memory (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1993). See, for instance, P. Worsthorne, Peregrinations (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1980), pp. 3–5. See in particular, P. Worsthorne, ‘Priorities for Capitalism’, in Conservatism Today (CPC, London, 1966), pp. 17–33 for a clear statement of this viewpoint. Worsthorne, ‘Too Much Freedom’, p. 143. This view is expressed in Worsthorne’s ‘Too Much Freedom’, and also in more detail in The Socialist Myth (Cassell, London, 1971) and In Defence of Aristocracy (Harper Collins, London, 2004). See, for instance, Worsthorne, Peregrinations, p. 118, for a clear expression of his opinions on this issue. See Worsthorne, ‘Too Much Freedom’ Worsthorne, ‘Priorities for Capitalism’, pp. 18 and 33. P. Worsthorne, By the Right (Brophy, Dublin, 1987), pp. 153–6. The title of Worsthorne’s chapter in Conservative Essays, see note 2. Ibid., p. 149. Ibid., p. 150. Confirmed in a recent interview conducted by Kevin Hickson, Hedgerley, 18 January 2007. Worsthorne, By the Right, pp. 86–9. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 114. On the aristocracy see Worsthorne, In Defence of Aristocracy – esp. p. 104. On the working classes see, for instance, Worsthorne, By the Right, p. 88. P. Worsthorne, The Politics of Manners and the Uses of Inequality (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1988). Ibid., p. 9. Interview, 18 January 2007. For a particularly damning statement on Thatcherism see P. Worsthorne, ‘Preface’, in S. Roy and J. Clarke (eds), Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution (Continuum, London, 2005). P. Worsthorne, ‘Only a Federal Europe can stop the Abolition of Britain’, Spectator, 4 September 1999.

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8

Ian Gilmour and the wets Few things concerning politics, government, and society, a Conservative believes, are as simple as they seem, and any statement of opinion, fact or belief will at best express part of the truth and often merely distorts it. Ian Gilmour, 19691

O

n 14 September 1981, Sir Ian Gilmour was told by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, that she no longer required his services as a cabinet minister. This was no surprise for Gilmour. Back in May The Times had reported that ‘Friends of Sir Ian say he is half-expecting to be sacked’, and he had composed a resignation letter during his summer holiday. He completed his preparations by giving an interview in advance to the Press Association, saying that it was no use throwing a man overboard if the ship was heading for the rocks. Gilmour favoured such nautical imagery; he had used a similar metaphor in his book The Body Politic, first published in 1969. In that work Gilmour had written that in the eyes of Conservative supporters, even if the steerage was erratic and the captain unequal to the job, ‘it was the duty of the minister to remain on board and keep his mouth shut. Mutiny is unpardonable’.2 From the start of Thatcher’s premiership – indeed, since her elevation to the Conservative leadership in 1975 – Gilmour had been acting against this model of Tory reticence. He had remained on board the ship, while repeatedly opening his mouth to utter thoughts which loyalists could easily regard as ‘mutinous’. Mrs Thatcher had kept him within the Shadow Cabinet because she ‘valued his intelligence’, but had no intention of giving him any role in economic policymaking, to which, she later claimed, ‘neither his training nor his aptitudes suited him’.3 This barb could, with more justice, have been aimed at Thatcher herself. What she really meant was that Gilmour disagreed with her own views, and not just on economics. Indeed, there was hardly any opinion which they shared. As a result, on assuming the leadership she removed Gilmour from his chairmanship of the Conservative Research Department (CRD) – a post to which he had been appointed only the previous year. In short, although the captain had invited Gilmour on board her ship, the terms of his employment implied that he would be made to walk the plank if he took disobedience too

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far. It hardly helped that Thatcher initially asked him to shadow Home Affairs. This marked a significant promotion, although Gilmour had served as Defence Secretary in the last weeks of the Heath Government. At the same time, it meant that he would be covering subjects on which his differences with his leader were particularly acute – and the Conservative rank and file, to whom he would have to explain himself at the party conference, were on Thatcher’s side. Within a year Thatcher thought better of this assignment and Gilmour was shuffled to Defence, where he remained until the election of 1979. Then he was appointed Lord Privy Seal, based in the Foreign Office which was headed by his friend Lord Carrington. For Gilmour this should have been a highly congenial post, opening the possibility that he would one day become Foreign Secretary himself. In fact, had he survived in office until 1982 he would almost certainly have resigned that April, in solidarity with Carrington, who honourably accepted responsibility for the Falklands fiasco. Carrington, after all, had intervened to prevent Thatcher from sacking Gilmour in January 1981, and offered to speak up for him again in September. But by that time Gilmour no longer wanted to be saved. He was tired of playing a would-be Fletcher Christian to Mrs Thatcher’s Captain Bligh. Indeed, with hindsight he felt that he should have resigned earlier, in the spring of 1981, over Geoffrey Howe’s ‘appalling’ deflationary budget.4 Whatever his aptitude for economics, Gilmour had agreed with the 364 members of the profession who wrote to The Times in protest against that controversial package. If Gilmour had resigned rather than waited to be sacked, he might have destabilised a government which was already in serious trouble. But Gilmour was not one of nature’s rebels. The social polish he had acquired at Eton and Oxford could not entirely conceal his shyness, and he was the first to acknowledge that he was no orator. As a result, although it would be unfair to say that he conducted his mutinies entirely through ‘coded messages’, the full force of his critical public comments about Thatcherism could only be appreciated by those who were already conversant with the issues at stake. The idiom in which he caged his attacks, and the manner of his eventual departure from office, greatly assisted the task of those who wanted to portray him as a ‘wet’ – someone who lacked the courage to take effective action against his political enemies, or to stick with resolution to the tough policy decisions necessary to restore Britain’s economic fortunes. The defeat of the ‘wets’ According to his enemies within the party, Gilmour was an inveterate believer in ‘consensus’, whose first instinct was always to appease. This trait, his critics 122

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alleged, arose from his privileged social background, which had left him with an exaggerated sense of social guilt. For Alan Clark, Gilmour and his kind were ‘Pinkish toffs’. Thatcher’s freelance adviser Woodrow Wyatt thought that he was ‘wracked with guilt at his privileges of wealth and birth’.5 Although such comments catch nicely the element of class hatred which was directed by Thatcherites towards their aristocratic opponents – Clark himself belonged to a family with only a very recent acquaintance with Burke’s Peerage – ‘wet’ was far more effective as a slighting epithet. Gilmour himself preferred to characterise his position as ‘moderate’ rather than ‘wet’, but his opponents were less discriminating. Wyatt thought him ‘extraordinarily wet’, while a cabinet colleague jested that ‘Ian is so wet you could shoot snipe off him’.6 Gilmour himself found it impossible to avoid the terminology of relative dampness in his book on the Thatcher years, Dancing with Dogma.7 ‘Wet’ would hardly have persisted as a pithy verbal stick with which to beat Thatcher’s opponents if their case had prospered. It could be argued that this was inevitable, and that the ‘moderates’ failed because they were ‘wet’. In fact, the wets were disastrously disunited from the start. Supposedly, they owed their allegiance to their ‘King over the sea’, Edward Heath. Certainly Heath fully shared their reservations about the Thatcher project; and his stature within the party meant that if Thatcher were ever to be toppled, he was sure to command a very senior position in a reconstructed Conservative hierarchy. Yet on balance Heath was a liability rather than an asset to the wets. After the second consecutive electoral defeat for the party, in October 1974, even his close allies thought that he should step down as leader to leave the way clear for Willie Whitelaw, who broadly shared his views. His stubborn resolution to stay on precipitated a change in the rules governing the election of a leader, allowing Mrs Thatcher to challenge him in circumstances which made it impossible for Whitelaw to mount a successful campaign of his own. Heath’s subsequent behaviour allowed Thatcher’s allies in the press and in the party to accuse him of ‘sulking’. This, of course, could be portrayed as another ‘wet’ characteristic, implying that, in addition to being political appeasers, Thatcher’s critics were incapable of accepting defeat at the hands of a woman. Although Heath did retain considerable popularity – and ambition – he never intrigued against Thatcher or even allowed his name to be associated with attempts to dethrone his successor. Willie Whitelaw was, if anything, an even more serious handicap after 1975 than Heath proved to be. He had never really wanted the leadership, and after Thatcher had beaten him he gratefully accepted from her a renewal of his tacit position under Heath – the deputy leadership of the party. In truth, Thatcher’s victory presented Whitelaw with an awkward dilemma. He could stay true to his beliefs, and at the very least play ‘hard to get’ before agreeing to serve 123

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­ nder her; or he could obey his instincts, in which case the obvious course was u to swear unconditional allegiance. Whitelaw’s supporters, who included Ian Gilmour, were dismayed when his instincts proved stronger than his convictions; and the unsuccessful candidate made matters much worse by privately stressing, after his defeat, the extent to which he disagreed with the new leader. As a result, Gilmour thought that Whitelaw was the only senior Conservative politician who truly deserved to be called a ‘wet’. As Gilmour put it, he ‘conceived it his duty to support the Prime Minister, right or wrong’; and in his eyes Whitelaw was rarely called upon to throw his weight behind Thatcher when she was right.8 Gilmour was more generous in his assessment of other senior cabinet colleagues. Lord Carrington, he explained, thought that Thatcher’s monetarism deserved a fair try, given that everything else had apparently failed by 1979. As Gilmour acknowledged, ‘That of course was an error – things always can be worse, and they soon were – but it was an understandable one’. He permitted himself a coded criticism of Lord Hailsham, who decided that the constitutional changes he had urged in Opposition were no longer necessary as soon as the Tories returned to office in 1979, and made no concerted effort to restrain the Prime Minister despite ‘some electric dissenting interventions’. By contrast, having opposed proportional representation in the 1960s Gilmour had come to accept that electoral reform was a necessary barrier against ‘elective dictatorship’. However, Gilmour was always ready to err on the side of leniency in the case of Hailsham, who had been a close friend for many years and who Gilmour regarded as the most intelligent politician of his era.9 Even so, on Gilmour’s account Hailsham’s alibi was much weaker than that of Francis Pym, who offered real resistance against Thatcherite cuts in his role of Defence Secretary.10 Thus, when he looked back on the days when Thatcher was outnumbered – and heavily outweighed – within her leadership team, Gilmour found himself having to make implausible excuses on behalf of close friends and allies. But the real reason for the failure of the ‘wets’ to nip Thatcherism in the bud was the performance of the 1974–79 Labour Government. For partisan Conservatives, in those years Labour lost its only rationale as a party of government – its supposed ability to exert some control over the trade unions. Given Labour’s slender parliamentary majority, it was difficult in the opposition years to argue against the idea that potentially mutinous members of Thatcher’s team should ‘remain on board’ and ‘keep their mouths shut’. After all, even the wets accepted that Britain would be better off under a Conservative government, however wrong-headed. To make matters worse for the wets, the Labour Government had implemented (albeit half-heartedly) Mrs Thatcher’s own favoured monetarist remedies in the fight against inflation. If even the Labour Party was prepared to adopt a course which inevitably led to rising unemployment, surely 124

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for the Conservatives there was ‘no alternative’? It seemed as if events were conspiring to persuade the senior wets within the Cabinet to let Mrs Thatcher have at least one free run. If she had lost the 1979 election, they would have disposed of her without mercy. Even after her victory she remained on probation; and the worst fears of the wets were subsequently confirmed, as monetarist policies transformed the existing economic recession into a slump. With unemployment soaring, a series of riots erupted in the summer of 1981, and Thatcher became the most unpopular prime minister on record. Accordingly, in July of that year, the Cabinet rebelled against a new package of expenditure cuts, and Mrs Thatcher made concessions. Just conceivably, had Thatcher been an ‘orthodox’ prime minister who followed the conventional rules of the Party – namely, that a leader should resign in the face of indisputable policy failure – there might have been a change of leadership at this point. Instead, Thatcher resolved to fight on, and the senior wets had no idea how to respond to her defiance. In this context, Thatcher’s party management was impeccable. In the reshuffle of September 1981 she picked off the critics who, although relatively obscure to the public, were most likely to use what weight they possessed in opposing her views. Hence the main victims of the September purge were Christopher Soames, who was Churchill’s son-in-law but little-known to the general public, and Ian Gilmour. Thatcher also took the opportunity to demote James Prior from the key post of Employment Secretary to the marginal and hazardous position of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Although this still left Thatcher in a theoretical minority within her Cabinet, her position was at least clarified by the purge of September 1981. If her policies failed to win over an adequate number of voters at the next election, she would be ditched. But she no longer had to fear obstruction from within the Cabinet, because the Party’s heavyweights had already demonstrated that they would not act against her unless and until circumstances forced their hands. Carrington’s subsequent resignation over the Falklands proved another uncovenanted boon; in strict constitutional theory, if his departure was justified, Thatcher should have followed him out of office. As it was, the British victory in the Falklands War virtually coincided with an improvement in the economic outlook, and a recovery for the Conservatives in the public opinion polls. Unemployment, of course, was still rising, from levels which would have been unthinkable during the 1970s. But enough people were feeling optimistic about the future, and the Opposition was divided thanks to the emergence of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). So the Conservatives might have scraped a victory in 1983 even without the ‘Falklands factor’ and in spite of the enduring unpopularity of the Prime Minister outside the prosperous south-east of England.11 125

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Gilmour and ‘Conservatism’ After his dismissal, it was inevitable that Sir Ian Gilmour would be seen as the intellectual leader of the ‘wets’. He had consolidated his claim to that title even while holding office in the Thatcher Government, through a series of critical speeches on economic policy.12 These were entirely consistent with the message of a book, Inside Right, which Gilmour had written two years before Thatcher became Prime Minister (and which was published in a new edition just before his dismissal). But Gilmour’s dissenting credentials had actually been established in The Body Politic, published before Edward Heath had become Prime Minister. In this book, a study of the British constitution, Gilmour argued forcefully against the view that British government had become too powerful. Despite the absence of formal constitutional checks and balances the system had proved quite capable of generating effective obstructions to purposeful governments. A key constitutional check was imposed by the two-party system, which produced leaders who were bound to counteract the militancy of their followers. As a Conservative partisan writing in the late 1960s, Gilmour was under an obligation to attack Harold Wilson’s tactical approach; but the overall impression of The Body Politic was that even though Wilson occasionally broke the rules, he still managed to conform to the benign overall pattern of post-war party competition. Labour and the Conservatives were coalitions in themselves, and both had to compete for the ‘middle ground’ of opinion. ‘Parties and politicians,’ Gilmour wrote, ‘tend to start on the extremities and finish in the centre’. Within the two-party system, he argued, ‘The parties, while appearing to divide the country, are in reality almost its most potent unifiers’. In direct contrast to continental experience, ‘the British system keeps apart politicians who fundamentally agree’.13 In short, Gilmour’s account of the British constitution is a product of the ‘consensus’ years, and reflects the author’s profound satisfaction with that arrangement. ‘There is always a residue of principle, policy and programme to separate the two sides and to edify the populace,’ Gilmour acknowledged, but ‘two-party politics do not lend themselves to a straight-forward contest of ideas’.14 There are ideological crusaders in all parties, but ‘the dissatisfaction of the crusaders with the humdrum party struggle and with their failure to drive the parties apart often says more about their own psychological needs than about the defects of the two party system’. In fact, ‘There is usually something wrong with a cause if it has to be “elevated” into the status of a crusade’. Voters sense this, so that ‘If a party sticks to its principles, it will stick to opposition’.15 These remarks indicate a remarkably relaxed view of Labour, which other Conservatives regarded as a fundamentally ideological party even in the age 126

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of Wilsonian pragmatism. The Body Politic implies that while Labour is far more likely than its chief rival to indulge in ideological politics, its leaders are too wily to let the contagion get out of hand. In this regard, the task of a Conservative leader is less onerous. For Gilmour, ‘The organisation of the party, the concentration of power in the leadership, its wide electoral support, its empirical approach, its will to power, have assured its primacy over those behind it’. Conservative supporters believe that ‘theirs is the only party consistently pursuing the national interest, undeluded by the claims of doctrinal orthodoxy or outdated political dogma’. The more raucous participants at the party conference, and the grass-roots Party activists have no impact on policy, and Gilmour is clearly content with this state of affairs.16 For Gilmour, ‘Scepticism and empiricism are the foundations of Conservatism; scepticism of all human ideas and all human endeavour, and the determination to look at things as they are’. Thus the party ‘stands for the country at any given moment, for society as at present constituted, for all the various relationships and institutions, which make up the body politic, and for the religious, political, economic and social structure of the nation. To try to sum this up in neat doctrinal formulations would be an attempt to codify the mystery of life’. The Conservative Party, for Gilmour, ‘has emotions but no doctrine’. The good Conservative believes that ‘simplicity of doctrine and institutions … is the path to tyranny’.17 In this account of Conservatism, David Hume (rather than Edmund Burke) is the prevailing spirit; Gilmour had also read Oakeshott, which explains some of his phraseology. Yet his treatment of the Conservative Party is based on some questionable assumptions. Overall, it builds a portrait of an ideal Conservative leader; but even on Gilmour’s own account, the rank and file tend to think very differently, and to demand much more radical policies. Gilmour implies that these dissonant voices can safely be ignored within an hierarchical organisation. But even in 1969 this must have struck readers as altogether too complacent; after all, the party had only just been convulsed by the speeches of Enoch Powell, on economics as well as race. And it was odd to invite Conservative Party supporters to ‘stand for the country … for society as at present constituted’ in the late 1960s, when many Conservative voters were perplexed by the nature and speed of social change. On these matters Gilmour is silent in The Body Politic, which gives his book a strangely abstract flavour. To the extent that he sees constitutional change as isolated from social developments, he departs from Aristotle’s view that a constitution is how a particular people live. Enoch Powell scarcely figures in Gilmour’s book. In the most pertinent reference Gilmour alludes to the fact that although Powell was ‘The most prominent exponent of the virtues of the market’ within the Party, he was ‘not a businessman’, which was unsurprising because businessmen ‘cannot afford ideological 127

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purity’.18 Powell might have been ushered out of the Shadow Cabinet in the year before Gilmour’s book appeared, but it was surely too early to write off his ideas, and his style of politics, as a force within the party. Although Gilmour was unaware of it, another danger was looming within his own camp. He wrote that ‘The scholastic conception of politics, the suggestion that it is the function of a political party to adopt a policy and stick to it even when conditions change, is odious to the Tory party’.19 Yet when Edward Heath composed his foreword to the 1970 Conservative manifesto, he wrote that ‘once a decision is made, once a policy is established, the Prime Minister and his colleagues should have the courage to stick to it’.20 Heath should have consulted Ian Gilmour before letting those words go forward in his name. In this sense Harold Wilson, rather than Heath, was closer to Gilmour’s counsel; Wilson regarded any policy decision as provisional, and like Gilmour had a healthy disregard for the ‘absurdly legalistic’ idea of a ‘mandate’ from the people.21 Heath clearly believed that he would gain from the impression that his word could be trusted, which would mark a refreshing change from the endlessly flexible Wilson. The result was that when he decided to change the emphasis of his own policies in government, his pragmatic move was open to mockery as a ‘U-turn’.22 Equally, before the 1970 election Gilmour advised Heath to promise a referendum before taking the UK into the EEC, but his far-sighted proposition fell on deaf ears.23 On this score Wilson proved more amenable. Thus in The Body Politic Gilmour had identified the structure of power within the Conservative Party according to his own ideal, rather than reflecting contemporary realities. Ted Heath was certainly a pragmatist (if not, in Angus Maude’s words, a ‘technocrat’ who hated ideas); but it is unlikely that he had read David Hume very deeply, let alone consulted the work of Professor Oakeshott. Among Conservative leaders, probably only Margaret Thatcher herself has been less ‘sceptical’ than Heath. This failure to appreciate contemporary realities within the Party was the more surprising because, as Gilmour well knew, Heath had been the first Conservative leader to be elected by the Party. He had been chosen precisely because he represented a new ‘meritocratic’ generation, whose standard-bearers were more likely to be impressed by ‘rationalistic’ solutions rather than the appeals to emotion which Gilmour thought characteristic of the Conservative Party. From his vantage point in 1969, Gilmour thought that there was no problem in conflating ‘Conservatism’ – the politics and approach of the Conservative Party leadership at any given time – with the attitude of mind traditionally called ‘conservatism’. He could never be persuaded that the two things might be distinct, despite strong evidence to the contrary. To his mind, ‘conservatism’ was not an ideology like liberalism or socialism. The unfortunate devotees of these belief-systems were pre-programmed to think in certain ways, which 128

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­ ictated their responses to a given situation. By contrast, Gilmour thought, the d conservative (or Conservative) was pragmatic, basing his or her views entirely on a common-sense appraisal of the facts. His position implied that an ‘objective’ approach to politics – that is, one which was not informed by presuppositions about human nature and a preference for specific social arrangements – was entirely possible. Such a position, however, cannot be sustained. Gilmour’s own work bears the hallmarks of ideological thinking, on any tenable understanding of that word. What he considered to be ‘pragmatism’ was really the product of a distinctive, highly sceptical world-view, leavened in his case with sincere social compassion. The difference between Gilmour and the ‘ideologues’ of left and right was that his own beliefs about human nature permitted him a wider degree of flexibility in his political preferences. As such, the most that can be said is that Gilmour’s version of ‘Conservatism’ made him a less ‘doctrinaire’ ideologue than his opponents. Inside Right Although The Body Politic is really the best argument against the Thatcherite infiltration of the Conservative Party, Gilmour felt compelled to restate the case as soon as Heath’s leadership came under threat. He wrote several articles for The Times after the Party’s defeat of February 1974, and again when that electoral verdict was repeated in October.24 In both cases his main message was that the Party should hold its nerve; its policies had failed to excite the electorate in either poll, but there was no need for a radical re-appraisal. Gilmour was being faithful to the line laid down in The Body Politic, that the chief job of an Opposition was to oppose, rather than to float alternative ideas which could easily be plagiarised or unfairly traduced by the Government. However, after 1975 Gilmour could no longer write articles for The Times with the automatic authority of his leader, and he had lost his key policy-making role within the CRD. Also, although he ridiculed the idea of writing for posterity, he did think that books could have a more lasting effect than newspaper pieces.25 Accordingly, in 1977 he published Inside Right, a barely veiled attempt to prove that Thatcherism was at odds with the conservative (or Conservative) tradition. Nine conservative thinkers, starting with the seventeenth-century Marquess of Halifax and ending with Oakeshott, were examined; the roster gave almost equal prominence to intellectuals and to individuals who had achieved political eminence. After appraising the legacy of his representative figures, Gilmour produced a list of Conservative themes: ‘freedom, patriotism, a national party, one nation, national unity, authority, continuity, the rule 129

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of law, the improvement of social and economic circumstances, ­balance and ­moderation, as well of course as the importance of “circumstances”’.26 It was interesting that, in the context of 1977, Gilmour was no longer prepared to include in his list ideas about human nature, such as the scepticism which he had highlighted in The Body Politic. However, Gilmour did not entirely neglect such ‘ideological’ issues in Inside Right, and the sceptical David Hume was one of his nine case-studies. The politician who won the greatest respect was Benjamin Disraeli, not least for his Crystal Palace speech of June 1872 which furnished Gilmour and other wets with their central themes of national unity, the preservation of institutions, and the elevation of the condition of the people.27 However, the real argument of Inside Right was contained in the chapter ‘What Conservatism is Not’; and it transpired that ‘Conservatism’ was not compatible with the views of the current Party leader. In this book Gilmour made sure that he only quoted Mrs Thatcher saying things he could accept; he was equally tender towards his Shadow Cabinet colleague Sir Keith Joseph. He could, though, finally come to grips with Enoch Powell, who was no longer a Conservative MP. Powell, he wrote, was ‘the nearest thing the Tory Party has, or rather had, to an ideologue’. The example was hardly auspicious, since on Gilmour’s account Powell had not just been eccentric and divisive but also deeply inconsistent.28 On a charitable interpretation, Gilmour might have thought that a critical analysis of Powell’s career would cure Mrs Thatcher of her infatuation with the Wizard of Wolverhampton. More likely, he was just using Powell as a surrogate for an attack on the incurable habits of mind which had been adopted by Thatcher and Joseph since 1974. In the opening pages of his book, Gilmour had delivered a more direct attack on the latter, though without naming him. He noted that some people had formed the view that the Conservative Party had been ‘following a false and non-Conservative trail’ since the Second World War. This, in Gilmour’s view, was implausible: ‘it implies that Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Butler, Douglas-Home, Heath and Macleod were all either grossly misguided or were not true Tories’.29 The inclusion of Churchill and Douglas-Home in Gilmour’s list was a clever tactic; in the eyes of Joseph and others, all the rest were indeed open to the accusation that they had not been ‘true Tories’.30 Despite these risky sallies, Gilmour showed in Inside Right that he differed from the other Shadow Cabinet critics of Thatcherism – and from Thatcher herself, in her non-dissenting days as a minister in the Heath Government – because he had the courage to speak out openly, instead of merely waiting in the hope that ‘events’ would tame the leader. It is even possible that he felt compelled to put his thoughts into the public domain because developments since Thatcher became leader were so blatantly contradictory of the insouci130

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ant portrait of the Conservative Party which had appeared in The Body Politic – a book of which Gilmour was justly proud. Inside Right actually shows that Gilmour agreed with many of Mrs Thatcher’s aims. For example, he ridicules the idea of economic equality, although some of the grounds for his opinion are questionable. Thus he writes that widely spread private property ‘provides a defence against the prevalent ideology of the time’. This could hardly be true if the ‘prevalent ideology’ favoured property-owners at the expense of the poor. Whatever the force of that point, Gilmour does accept that inheritance is a good in itself, as is the sale of council houses and the reduction of income tax. He even advocates a shift from direct to indirect taxation, though not so heartily that he could have endorsed Geoffrey Howe’s near-doubling of VAT in 1979.31 Gilmour’s internal critics supposed that he was unwilling to confront trade union power, and indeed one of his Times articles of 1974 suggested as much.32 In truth, like so many veterans of the Heath Government he was determined to redress the balance of power in the workplace, and merely wanted to ensure that legislation was more prudently devised than the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. He acknowledged that ‘In the years ahead Conservative Governments are going to have to do so many difficult and unpopular things that they will need a real majority of the country behind them’.33 In this respect Gilmour was arguably more Thatcherite than Mrs Thatcher and her closest allies, who believed that their policies reflected the common-sense of the British public and were thus unprepared for the hostile reception of their initial economic measures. Gilmour’s alternative programme Thus it would be reasonable to argue that despite his initial reservations Gilmour might have come round to supporting Thatcher by 1979 if she had put forward the same policies without infusing them with the doctrinaire spirit which he abhorred. Inside Right even included a justification for Thatcher’s approach in opposition. ‘In the British two-party system,’ Gilmour wrote, ‘moderation in one party is likely to engender moderation in the other, and extremism is likely to breed extremism’.34 On Gilmour’s own account, Labour was ‘extreme’ when it fought both of the 1974 elections, and the changing nature of the party could not be effaced by the emollient public displays of Wilson and Callaghan. Yet the situation changed after 1979, since Mrs Thatcher still refused to conform to the approach prescribed by The Body Politic. Instead of acting to restrain the ideological enthusiasms of the rank and file, the Party leader inflamed them. With no sign of a change of mood in Downing Street – except, perhaps, symptoms of a deeper addiction to what Gilmour called ‘ideology’ – a rethink was necessary among the ‘wets’. Instead of just saying that the same policy goals 131

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should be pursued with less ideological inflexibility, they began to contemplate alternative policies. In this respect, Gilmour was beaten out of the blocks. In October 1981 – the month after his sacking – a group of Conservative MPs published Changing Gear: What the Government Should Do Next. The group, which included such notable parliamentary newcomers as William Waldegrave, Christopher Patten and Robert Cranborne, argued that rigid ideology was ‘not only profoundly antipathetic to our traditional approach to politics, but … brings with it a danger of inflexibility now that the problems are changing’. The pamphlet, which seemed to owe some of its inspiration to the original One Nation production – not least because, like its exemplar of 1950 it included the brightest talents of its parliamentary generation – argued for an ambitious programme of economic reflation. Assistance should be offered to the high-technology ­industries of the future – an approach which Thatcherites habitually derided as ‘picking winners’. The Government should ensure that, wherever possible, it ‘bought British’, even if domestic producers could not offer the lowest prices. Welfare assistance should be targeted on the poorest working families with children. Heretically, the authors argued that income tax should be raised as an alternative to the government’s ruinous policy of high interest rates. Above all, something effective should be done on behalf of the unemployed. ‘It is surely not possible,’ the authors argued, ‘to tolerate for much longer a situation where a diminishing work-force looks after itself in terms of pay at the cost of a growing second nation of the unemployed’.35 Here the group showed more practical humanity than almost any other political organisation of the time, putting its finger squarely on the factor that kept Thatcher in office despite the economic mayhem of her first term – namely that those who kept their jobs continued to demand, and receive, ever-rising living standards, even though so many of their fellow Britons were on the dole. The authors of Changing Gear shared many of Gilmour’s views, which was not entirely surprising since Patten was a close friend from CRD days. Yet there were significant differences. For the older ‘wets’ – even for Gilmour, who was ten years younger than Heath – the deprivations of the 1930s were ineffaceable memories, making the Thatcher Government’s attitude to unemployment morally repugnant. Even those among them who retained personal ambition realised that a return to high office was on balance unlikely. By contrast, the young moderates had committed themselves to political careers at a time when the ‘consensus’ was breaking down; for them, the intrusion of ‘ideology’ into the Conservative Party might be regrettable, but it was a fact of life which they would have to accept if they had any desire for preferment. As it was, any chance of constructive cooperation between this new ­generation of ‘wets’ and the old guard was impaired by the swift action of Thatcher’s 132

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­ arliamentary intelligence network. Waldegrave, indeed, had already accepted p a junior office by the time that Changing Gear was published; far from showing any desire for the Government to change gear, he ended up as a leading culprit in the Poll Tax fiasco. The lack of coordination amongst anti-Thatcher Conservatives also caused some embarrassment when the pamphlet was issued just days after a well-publicised expression of dissent from Edward Heath (and shortly before a crucial party conference). An opinion poll had showed that although more than a third of Conservative supporters approved of Thatcher as leader – a dismal showing by any standard – 18 per cent would have preferred Heath, while a similar proportion looked towards Carrington as a compromise candidate.36 Meanwhile, the former Conservative minister Geoffrey Rippon had argued that ‘The alternative to consensus is confrontation. That way lies disaster for all of us’. In this atmosphere of crisis for the party, members of the ‘Changing Gear’ group had to distance themselves from Heath, claiming that they disagreed with his evident hope of a change of leadership as well as of gear.37 By this time, the Conservative Party looked to be on the verge of an electoral disaster, not least because of the emergence of the SDP. In these circumstances, the ‘wets’ had no alternative but to rally around the tattered Party standard; they could only have moved against Thatcher if things had been less desperate. While the ‘wets’ could anticipate an improvement in the Party’s fortunes, none of them expected that a war in the South Atlantic would transform Thatcher’s travails into a triumphant victory. Sir Ian Gilmour was seriously discomfited by the sudden shift of debate, from economic gloom to military triumphalism. As a result, his 1983 book Britain Can Work was unlikely to make more than an ephemeral impact on public debate. The main argument echoed that of Changing Gear; the economy, Gilmour argued, could be reflated without triggering off an inflationary spiral. As if to challenge in advance Thatcher’s gibe about his lack of economic expertise, Gilmour presented a highly literate Keynesian case, and had consulted a variety of experts to ensure that his programme was practicable. However, Keynes was the prophet of the ‘Middle Way’ which had been abandoned by both main parties, and, outside the universities, his name no longer commanded the level of respect it had enjoyed up to the mid-1970s.38 The biggest problem for Gilmour was best expressed by Chris Patten, in his own 1983 book The Tory Case. Surveying the heated debates over the nature of Conservatism since 1975, Patten wrote that ‘the traditional Tory case has sometimes been argued in a way which suggests that it rests on nothing more than a majestic pragmatism. The attempt to demonstrate that Conservatism is not an ideology can come perilously close to suggesting that it is nothing much at all’.39 Moderate Conservatives could agree with the reflationary ­programmes of Britain Can Work and Changing Gear, while remaining doubtful that any of the 133

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‘wets’ would have done the necessary groundwork – namely the creation of mass unemployment without which the union movement could not have been brought to accept the reforms supported by virtually all Conservatives. For Thatcherites, in 1983 the decisive struggle with the unions had yet to be conducted; the Government had backed down from a brewing confrontation with the miners in Thatcher’s first term, but by 1984 it was ready for the final showdown. In this context, it was ironic that Ian Gilmour participated in his most organised act of ‘mutiny’ just as Mrs Thatcher was about to enjoy her triumph over ‘the enemies within’. In May 1985, while the resistance of the miners was crumbling, Francis Pym launched ‘Conservative Centre Forward’ – a ginger group within the parliamentary Conservative Party which expressed the hope of holding the Government to more moderate courses. The group comprised of thirty-two dissidents, although only twelve of them were brave enough to be named. Apart from Pym, Gilmour and Rippon, none were well known outside Westminster; and the Government had been informed about ‘Conservative Centre Forward’ even before it was launched. Gilmour did his best to rally the motley band of recruits, with an article in The Times which noted that the whips paid attention to numbers rather than arguments. But after Thatcher’s landslide 1983 victory the numbers were not on the side of Pym’s group, which soon capitulated.40 As so often, the arguments of the group were not considered; even Peregrine Worsthorne, for all his deep reservations about Thatcherism, jeered at Centre Forward’s lack of populist appeal and unfairly accused Pym of a ‘waffling lack of clarity’.41 But for most Conservatives outside Westminster, the main issue was the supposed disloyalty of people who seemed prepared to act as ‘a party within a party’, complete with their own whipping system to ensure that the elected government was embarrassed as often as possible. During the 1990s, such a level of organisation would be tolerated and even approved by many members – so long as the dissidents were Eurosceptics who enjoyed the tacit backing of the deposed Lady Thatcher. In the very different context of the mid-1980s, Pym, Gilmour and the rest ran the risk of comparison with Labour’s Militant Tendency. Conservative Centre Forward proved nothing more than the unerring ability of the ‘wets’ to time their actions badly; at the beginning of 1986 Michael Heseltine’s resignation over Mrs Thatcher’s style of government could have given them an issue to crystallise their grievances, but by that time their rebellion had been quashed. Gilmour’s conservatism In one respect, Ian Gilmour had the last laugh over Thatcher. In 1989 he was a leading figure in the attempt to dethrone the Prime Minister by means of a 134

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‘stalking horse’, the Europhile Sir Anthony Meyer. Superficially Meyer’s challenge looked like a failure, but since fifty-seven MPs refused to back Thatcher in the poll it seemed as if the end-game could not be long delayed. Learning of the Eastbourne by-election defeat in October 1990, Gilmour expressed the view that, in the face of backbench fears about the consequences of the Poll Tax, Mrs Thatcher was doomed unless she could take a prominent role in the looming conflict over Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait.42 Indeed, by that time the collective resentments and fears of Conservative MPs, accumulated since 1975, proved more than a match for the notion that Mrs Thatcher could prove an electoral asset because of her proven warlike propensities; and in any case the first Gulf War did not begin until she had left office. No less than Edward Heath, Gilmour was invigorated by Thatcher’s decision not to contest the second ballot of the 1990 leadership contest; and although his first choice, Michael Heseltine, was eventually defeated by John Major, he had good reason to hope that the result would mark a return to ‘One Nation’ Conservative policies. Although Gilmour was careful to offer his support to Major in Dancing with Dogma (1992), that blistering critique of Thatcherism in theory and practice was written after its author had realised that the new Prime Minister would not be willing or able to throw off his predecessor’s legacy. Gilmour’s last (co-authored) political book, Whatever Happened to the Tories? (1997), correctly predicted a long spell in the wilderness for his party, thanks to its inability to emerge from Thatcher’s shadow.43 In his last years, Gilmour no longer held out much hope for his party; indeed, his public expressions of disdain inspired a formal letter of expulsion in 1999, though having not paid any dues for some time it was questionable whether he was in any position to be ‘expelled’. He replied with another wide-ranging critique of the party under its new leader, William Hague.44 If anything, though, he was even more disparaging of ‘New’ Labour, which had moved far to the right of his model, consensual Conservative Party. After taking a seat in the House of Lords in 1992, Gilmour had allowed himself to be more eclectic in his choice of associates; in particular, he enjoyed the company of Michael Foot, who had been the target of violent criticism in The Body Politic and Inside Right. But this was not a sign that Gilmour himself had moved to the left politically; apart from their shared idolatory of Lord Byron, Gilmour and Foot could feel a mutual sense of comradeship as refugees from the pre-Thatcherite world, where former differences suddenly seemed wafer-thin. In many ways, Lord Gilmour conformed to the conservative tradition that he extolled in his writings. Above all, despite his own comfortable lifestyle he was not inclined to rate the human condition too highly. Even so, just as commentators question the ideological identity of his master, David Hume, it is possible to ask whether Gilmour ever was a conservative in any meaningful 135

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sense of that much-abused word. Even before he became an MP he supported the destruction of the BBC monopoly on televised broadcasts, ridiculing Lord Reith’s cultural paternalism from a pluralistic viewpoint which would have won approval from John Stuart Mill. He received warm congratulations on his maiden speech in 1963 from the then Liberal leader, Jo Grimond, who noted that Gilmour ‘has not been afraid, in a most liberal and humane way, to differ occasionally from the line of the Conservative Party, and I hope that he will continue to do so’.45 This tribute could be dismissed as a biographical accident, since Grimond was both a personal friend and a contributor to The Spectator, which Gilmour owned at the time. But as an MP he lived up to Grimond’s hopes by taking the ‘progressive’ side on most social questions. In particular, he backed Rab Butler’s cautious attempts to remove the legacy of Victorian values from the statute book; and he was a close friend of an even more liberal Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins. According to Alan Watkins, Gilmour ‘became a Conservative MP in 1962 not so much because he wished to exercise political power as because he wanted a change in his life’.46 Whatever the motives behind his decision to stand for parliament relatively late in life, on the face of it Gilmour’s decision to run as a Conservative was odd, since he regarded the Suez misadventure as the greatest stain on Britain’s post-war record, and the Party leader at the time (Harold Macmillan) had not emerged from the affair with an enhanced reputation (see Chapter 1). Of course, The Spectator magazine had Conservative leanings, although under Gilmour’s ownership it adopted a distinctly liberal tone. A more relevant consideration was suggested by Woodrow Wyatt, who in 1987 speculated about Gilmour’s reasons for staying on as an MP despite a third victory for an increasingly triumphalist Thatcher. Wyatt wrote that ‘the answer seemed to be [that] he likes writing about politics and, as perhaps a theorizing surgeon would like to have a base in a hospital, to go and look at it occasionally’.47 In attempting to explain why Gilmour refused to relinquish his seat, Wyatt probably explained why he had sought a political career in the first place. The chance of ministerial office, while not a compulsion, was certainly not distasteful to him either. These factors, rather than his ideas or his friendships, ruled out adherence to the Liberal Party. A revealing passage from The Body Politic suggests his thought-process at the time: ‘Any Conservative who wants to belong to a party of protest should join the Liberals’. By the same logic, any ideological liberal who wants to engage in serious politics should join the Conservatives.48 Despite his change of mind over proportional representation, Gilmour never believed that a third party could make a significant breakthrough. When Roy Jenkins tried to ‘break the mould’ of British politics by helping to establish the SDP, Gilmour poured scorn on the exercise because the new party would share the dilemma of the old Liberals: it would ­represent no organised social interest 136

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to provide it with a reliable base of electoral support.49 In this respect Gilmour was proved right; the general outlook of the SDP could only succeed once it had infiltrated the Labour Party in the shape of ‘Blairism’. But long before his death Gilmour realised that ‘New Labour’ had shifted far enough to the right to endorse most of the Thatcherite policies which he deplored. Back in 1969, he had written that ‘Most of the electorate are too uninterested in politics to resent the restrictions on their choice’.50 By 2001, when the extent of popular alienation from the new ‘Thatcherite’ consensus between the two main parties was registered in plummeting electoral turn-out, it had become clear that many voters were uninterested in politics because it no longer made any difference if they voted Conservative or Labour. This account of Gilmour’s career suggests an ironic conclusion: namely that when he was struggling against Keith Joseph for the soul of the Conservative Party, both of the disputants were representatives of variants of the liberal tradition. On this view, Joseph stood for the laissez-faire liberalism of the nineteenth century, while Gilmour was a ‘new’ or ‘social’ liberal, upholding the principle of state intervention on behalf of the underprivileged. Gilmour’s ready acceptance of liberal social causes supports such an interpretation; in this context it is significant that his Oxford college, Balliol, was a bastion of this outlook, having played a formative role in the lives of Asquith and Jenkins as well as Edward Heath. Yet when questioned on this subject Gilmour denied that his university career had made much difference to his adult outlook; and this seems plausible, given his habitual pessimism about the human condition.51 On balance, a more fruitful explanation for Ian Gilmour’s political views would focus on the connection with David Hume – another ‘conservative’ who is sometimes claimed for the liberal tradition. In both, scepticism is combined with an absence of strong religious convictions. In Gilmour’s case, this explains an ‘unconservative’ readiness to run ahead of public opinion on social issues, at a time when traditional moral standards were coming under unprecedented stress. Although Gilmour never laboured the point, he could easily have argued that he was merely responding to pressures which had been engendered by the workings of the free market in the age of affluence. By contrast, his Thatcherite opponents supposedly wanted to turn the moral clock back to the Victorian era, while unleashing on Britain the very economic forces which had made traditional morality unenforceable. The most plausible verdict is that both parties to the dispute genuinely thought that they were being consistent with what they understood as a ‘conservative’ tradition, and that to different degrees both were mistaken. But, with their disdain for old institutions, their inability to understand the importance of ‘community’, and their emphasis on the ‘rational’ individual actor in the economic marketplace, the Thatcherites were a great deal more mistaken than Ian Gilmour. 137

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Notes   1   I. Gilmour, The Body Politic (Hutchinson, London, 1971 edn), p. 85.   2   The Times, 2 June 1982; I. Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (Simon & Schuster, London, 1992), p. 40 note; Gilmour, Body Politic, pp. 209–10.   3   M. Thatcher, The Path to Power (HarperCollins, London, 1995), p. 286.   4   Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma, p. 36.   5   S. Curtis (ed.), The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Volume Three (Macmillan, London, 2000), p. 398; A. Clark, Diaries: Into Politics (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000), p. 248; Diaries (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1993), p. 350.   6   Curtis (ed.), Journals of Woodrow Wyatt; The Times, 2 June 1982.   7   See for example, Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma, p. 43. Gilmour’s former cabinet colleague Francis Pym wrote after being sacked by Thatcher that he was ‘resigned’ to the epithet, and joked that it was an acronym for ‘What Everybody Thinks’; see Pym, The Politics of Consent (Sphere, London, 1985 edn), p. 24 note.   8   Ibid., p. 35.   9   Conversations with the late Lord Gilmour, April 2007. 10 Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma, p. 35. 11   Francis Pym felt that the Conservatives owed their victory to the ‘Falklands Factor’, coupled with the ineptitude of the Labour opposition. As a result, he believed that the Government should have regarded its victory ‘as an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the first term, rather than as a mandate to repeat them’. Naturally his leader disagreed with this analysis; Pym, The Politics of Consent, p. 27. 12   In particular, Gilmour voiced his misgivings in two speeches as Cambridge, on 7 February and 8 November 1980. 13   Gilmour, The Body Politic, pp. 45, 35, 57. 14   Ibid., pp. 57, 51. 15   Ibid., pp. 54, 60. 16   Ibid., pp. 76, 79, 81–2. 17   Ibid., pp. 86, 88, 84. 18   Ibid., pp. 74. 19   Ibid., p. 86. 20   A Better Tomorrow (Conservative Central Office, London, 1970), p. 1. 21   Gilmour, The Body Politic, p. 147. 22   When a researcher advising Heath on his memoirs suggested that he should admit that the foreword to the 1970 manifesto was a mistake, the former Prime Minister seemed to agree with the argument. However, when Heath’s memoirs were published no such admission appeared (private information). 23   Private information. 24   The Times, 2, 3, 4 May; 22, 25 November 1974. 25   A. Watkins, Brief Lives (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1982), p. 52; conversations with the late Lord Gilmour, April 2007. 26   Gilmour, Inside Right, p. 146. 27   Ibid., p. 83. 28   Ibid., pp. 133–9. 29   Ibid., pp. 12–13. Lord Coleraine (along with Rhodes Boyson) is singled out as

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­someone who had tried to disown the post-war Conservative tradition. 30   Although Churchill was even more vulnerable to the ‘non-Tory’ charge, for understandable reasons most Thatcherites preferred to celebrate his anti-Soviet rhetoric and forget that he had ever belonged to the Liberal Party. 31   Gilmour, Inside Right, pp. 149–50, 251. 32   The Times, 2 May 1974. 33   Gilmour, Inside Right, p. 226. 34   Ibid., p. 130. 35   Changing Gear: What the Government Should Do Next, (Macmillan, London, 1981), pp. 2, 10, 7. 36   Guardian, 9 October 1981. 37   The Times, 9 October 1981. 38 I. Gilmour, Britain Can Work (Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1983). 39 C. Patten, The Tory Case (Longman, London, 1983), p. vii. 40   At the time, Peter Riddell estimated the number of wets within the parliamentary party at between forty and sixty. Just before Thatcher’s fall Philip Norton calculated that the combined figure for ‘wets’ and ‘damps’ was sixty-seven – less than one-fifth of Conservative MPs; see P. Riddell, The Thatcher Government (Blackwell, Oxford, 1985, revised edn), p. 12, and P. Norton, ‘“The Lady’s Not For Turning”: But What About the Rest? Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party 1979–89’, Parliamentary Affairs, 43, 1990, p. 52. 41   Sunday Telegraph, 19 May 1985. 42   Conversation with Sir Ian Gilmour, October 1990. 43   I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories? (Fourth Estate, London, 1992), p. 385. 44   Guardian, 23 June 1999. 45   Hansard, Vol. 677, col. 274, 7 May 1963. 46   Watkins, Brief Lives, p. 52. 47   S. Curtis (ed)., The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Volume One (Macmillan, London, 1998), pp. 439–40. 48   Gilmour, The Body Politic, p. 132. 49   I. Gilmour, ‘Tories, Social Democracy and the Centre’, Political Quarterly, 54:3, 1983, pp. 257–67. 50   Ibid., p. 141. 51   Interview with the late Lord Gilmour, April 2007.

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9

John Redwood1 I have always wanted a Conservative leader who would go to Brussels once he became Prime Minister with the clear intention of solving the British problem once and for all. John Redwood, 20042

J

ohn Redwood has been one of the most consistent advocates of the economic liberal (or ‘freedom loving’, as he prefers to call it),3 variant of Conservatism for many years. He emerged as one of Margaret Thatcher’s senior advisers in the mid-1980s and continued to advocate free-market principles as an MP from 1987 and Cabinet Minister between 1993–95. Since the downfall of the Conservative Party in 1997 he has continued to advocate liberal economics, so that as the New Right academic Norman Barry has commented, Redwood is a ‘gloriously unreconstructed Thatcherite’.4 The development of these economic liberal ideas and Redwood’s place within that intellectual development constitutes a theme within the first part of the chapter. However, although Redwood developed these ideas into concrete policy proposals, especially in terms of privatisation, it is arguable that he added little theoretical contribution to that already made by Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph and therefore discussed at length already in this book. The more interesting theme to emerge from a discussion of Redwood’s contribution to British ‘Conservatism’ is the emergence of Euroscepticism in the Party. The ideas are interrelated – part of Redwood’s distaste for European integration comes from his advocacy of economic liberalism as will be developed in this chapter. However, the Eurosceptic position is not a unified one within the Conservative Party and so the chapter will discuss the range of arguments made by Eurosceptics. These range from outright opposition to further integration, for renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership or even in extreme form for withdrawal from the European Union. Hence, the rationale for including Redwood in this book. He has been both a theoretician and policy specialist who has argued strongly and largely consistently for both economic liberalism and for Euroscepticism. In this regard, Redwood is, if not unique, then certainly the most ­articulate advocate

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of these positions in the Conservative Party since the 1980s. The chapter begins with a brief overview of Redwood’s career and intellectual contribution. It goes on to examine the context for debates in the Conservative Party over European integration before placing Redwood’s own views on Europe within this context. Finally, we ask to what extent Redwood’s views on Europe are intellectually convincing. Redwood was born in 1951 and was a student at Oxford University in the early 1970s before serving as a Conservative councillor on Oxford County Council.5 It was his involvement in Oxfordshire Conservatism that led him to be involved in the publication of The Conservative Opportunity in 1976.6 The book was edited by Robert Blake and John Patten and marked a clear advocacy of economic liberalism. This was somewhat surprising given that neither editor was associated with the main thrust of economic liberalism and also that the Preface was written by Lord Hailsham, who made a clear case for reduced state intervention.7 Many of the chapters in the book stressed the need for markets and were critical of the roles that the state had assumed in the post-war years. Therefore, it did mark a clear attempt to justify a move towards free markets and the influence of economic and philosophical liberalism was clear. In some ways the book contrasts with the more philosophically conservative text Conservative Essays produced at Cambridge by Maurice Cowling and discussed in Chapter 7 on the traditionalists.8 In the 1980s, Redwood served in the Downing Street Policy Unit of Margaret Thatcher, becoming its Director in 1983. During his time as a senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister, Redwood helped to develop a number of key policies including privatisation, which became the prominent Thatcherite policy in the second term (1983–87).9 He was elected as MP for Wokingham in 1987 and has served that seat ever since. He was soon given a ministerial post and was one of the members of the Government who sought to defend Thatcher when her leadership of the Party was challenged in 1990. As a minister, Redwood was primarily responsible for two things. The first was the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry and clearly showed his economic liberal credentials. The second was that he was primarily responsible for the scrapping of the Poll Tax which he had opposed (despite his strong sympathies for Thatcher and the support of a number of then Thatcherite ministers and now ‘modernised Conservatives’ such as Oliver Letwin)10 and the introduction of the Council Tax under the new leadership of John Major. Redwood had been a supporter of Major’s in the 1990 leadership contest and subsequently argued that the Major Government marked a continuation of Thatcherism.11 He was appointed to the Cabinet in 1993 as Secretary of State for Wales although by that stage the Conservatives’ ­position in Wales 141

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had deteriorated markedly and as an English MP Redwood faced a difficult position, not helped by gaffes such as his attempt to mime the Welsh ­anthem. However, it was the leadership crisis of 1995 for which Redwood will be most remembered in these years. Major had faced a number of dangerous rebellions over the implementation of the Maastricht Treaty and eventually decided to call a leadership contest as a way, he perceived, of strengthening his position. Redwood believed that this was a foolish decision and decided to resign from the Cabinet after discussing the situation with Major. Following his resignation he was persuaded by a number of MPs to contest the leadership.12 His challenge, however, was undermined at the outset as he was surrounded by a group of maverick and discontented MPs at his press launch. The result was that Redwood got eighty-nine votes compared to 218 for Major. The contest did mean though that he was now a leading advocate of free-market economics and scepticism about further European integration, albeit outside of Government. He established a new think-tank, Conservative 2000, to promote these ideas further. New Labour’s electoral landslide in 1997 marked the end of the Major era and Redwood stood again in the leadership contest in that year, coming third behind Kenneth Clarke and William Hague and ahead of the other contenders from the right of the Party, Peter Lilley and Michael Howard. Redwood was eliminated from the contest and agreed to support Clarke in the final round on the basis that Clarke accepted that he would want permanently to rule out entry to a single currency.13 Redwood then served under Hague before being controversially dropped in 2000 in an attempt by the leader to shore up his position. The second successive election defeat a year later led to a further leadership contest, where the eventual winner was Iain Duncan Smith who beat both Clarke and Michael Portillo, despite the fact that both could lay claim to being stronger candidates.14 This period was unproductive as far as Redwood was concerned since the attempted modernisation under Duncan Smith was confused and diverted attention from the more popular Conservative policies. Duncan Smith was replaced by Howard in 2003 and Redwood was strongly sympathetic towards the apparent rightwards shift under his leadership, arguing that ‘a strong dose of popular Conservatism on the subjects that matter to electors will do it a power of good’.15 By the time of the third successive electoral defeat in 2005, however, all senior Conservatives (including Howard and Duncan Smith) were in favour of a move to the centre ground and the election of David Cameron appeared to confirm this. Cameron established a number of working groups on different areas of policy and Redwood was asked to chair the policy group on economic competitiveness, resulting in a number of proposals to liberalise further the economy in the face of what was seen as 142

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a highly interventionist Labour Government under Blair and Brown. What emerges from this brief biographical discussion is a very clear and consistent advocacy of economic liberalism, in which the drift of post-war policy whereby ‘governments have been dragged deeper and deeper into the mire of industrial intervention’16 would need to be reversed. Redwood can be seen as an early advocate of this position in the early 1970s at the time when the Heath Government, with Thatcher and Joseph as members, was intervening in industry. He was therefore an early advocate of economic liberalism before Joseph’s ‘conversion’ in 1974/75 and when only Powell, the Institute of Economic Affairs and some others such as Rhodes Boyson17 were advocating this view. Indeed, in his memoirs, Redwood discusses how Joseph had converted to an economic liberalism much tougher, in fact, than his own position.18 However, a closer examination of his published work shows that Redwood’s ideas evolved over time. In The Conservative Opportunity, Redwood stated that, ‘it is neither possible nor desirable to return to a free market economy’.19 His more detailed work on industrial policy also initially expressed a more cautious approach. Redwood was concerned to halt the trend towards nationalisation and regarded the curtailing of powers assumed by the National Enterprise Board as essential to this task.20 He further argued that nationalised industries should be allowed to borrow and invest in open competition with private companies in the finance markets and face clear government targets rather than be bailed out by the taxpayer. The main aim, he believed, was ‘to re-establish a greater degree of sovereignty for the consumer’.21 However, he was also critical of the first Thatcher Government for failing to halt the process of government intervention. This was awkward since the minister responsible was Joseph. Redwood blamed the officials in the Department of Industry but inevitably some of the blame for this must go to Joseph, who had urged the Conservative Party to ‘reverse the trend’ but had himself failed to do so as Minister for Industry in the early 1980s.22 Hence, Thatcher’s decision to appoint Redwood as head of her Policy Unit in 1983 marked a clear attempt on the part of the Prime Minister to speed up the process of economic liberal reforms. The championing of these policies was made by Redwood in his major work from this period, Popular Capitalism,23 which stated that economic liberal ideas had not just swept British politics, but were also having an international impact: ‘in the world not only are there stirrings for democracy, but there is a major movement towards greater economic freedom … Popular capitalism is nothing short of a world revolution. The politicians who try to resist it will be tossed aside like trees in a hurricane.’24 Redwood used the term ‘popular capitalism’ to describe this policy platform, saying that, ‘popular capitalism is in 143

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its ­ essence the democracy of the marketplace’.25 Such ‘popular capitalist’ policies included tougher anti-monopoly legislation, privatisation, public– private partnerships to fund large capital projects, stimulating the growth of the stock market, promotion of small businesses, lower levels of taxation and elimination of government debt.26 Redwood further argued that, ‘far from being divisive or doing people down, popular capitalism has got something to offer all of the people’,27 with the ultimate aim of creating a nation of property owners. The state created welfare dependency and made it difficult for people to break out of poverty. The market could be used as a better way of reducing poverty by allowing people to own assets – through council house sales, privatisation policies and so forth. However, it could be objected that there was nothing in these ideas to suggest how the position of the poorest could be improved if the market did not work in the way it was intended to, or an appreciation of the negative effects that increased inequality had on society. Indeed, the language is very much that of individualism – a trait much more characteristic of liberalism than conservatism. Even where Redwood did try to address the issue of ‘community’ in a later pamphlet his tone is still one of individualism.28 The Conservatives and Europe The issue of European integration is a difficult one for the Conservative Party since it cuts across domestic and international aspects of policy. During the 1990s the Party was fundamentally divided on the issue of European integration. This has in turn proved a difficult issue for academics to deal with since the divisions were not clear-cut. The issue was not a left–right one since although most sceptics were on the right, there were also some prominent sceptics on the moderate, One Nation side of the Party and some economic liberals (notably Sir Geoffrey Howe) took a less dogmatic line on the question of ‘sovereignty’. Moreover, there are varying degrees of scepticism and a number of aspects of European integration are flagged up by different Eurosceptics. We therefore need to be clear as to what the range of sceptical positions are in the Conservative Party before proceeding to examine Redwood’s own particular form of scepticism. Historically the Conservative Party has shown considerable unity as an institution. This is despite cleavages in the Party such as those between defenders and reformers of the constitution, Keynesian interventionists and economic liberals, and liberals and ‘conservatives’ on matters of social morality.29 This has led some commentators to argue that what unites the Conservative Party is not an ideology but a commitment to a ‘statecraft’, 144

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with a primary concern of winning elections and then maintaining a governing competence so as to retain power.30 It was this statecraft which explained why the Conservative Party was able to remain relatively united and to switch direction if its existing position was deemed to be electorally disadvantageous, such as after 1945 and 1974. Alternatively, the Conservative Party has been characterised as having ‘tendencies’ rather than ‘factions’ in which the commitment to specific causes was more malleable.31 However, neither of these characterisations of the Conservative Party explain the tensions over Europe, which some believed were so severe that they threatened to split the Party, as happened in 1846 over the repeal of the Corn Laws and 1906 with the attempt by Joseph Chamberlain to convert the Party to protectionist tariff reform.32 If this proved to be somewhat of an exaggeration then at least the Conservative Party relegated ‘statecraft’ to being of secondary importance to the issue of Europe.33 One attempt to outline the various sceptical positions on Europe was made by Hugo Young, who distinguished between five forms of Euroscepticism that he believed existed in the Party from the 1960s to the 1990s.34 These are the irreconcilables, the constitutionalists, the free-marketeers, the patriots and the Tory wets. The first of these, including individuals such as John Biffen and Richard Body, were consistently opposed to integration from the late 1960s.35 They opposed membership and all subsequent attempts at integration. The constitutionalists included Enoch Powell (who expressed his opposition to membership in constitutional terms) and later Bill Cash, and were strongly opposed to integration since they feared that it would undermine the foundations of the British constitution, notably parliamentary sovereignty. The free-marketeers were opposed to integration since the EEC/EU was/is protectionist and interventionist and included a group of younger Thatcherite ministers such as Peter Lilley, Francis Maude, Michael Portillo and John Redwood. The patriots, who included Rhodes Boyson, Tony Marlow and Nicholas Winterton, were sceptical of Britain’s membership of the EEC/EU on the basis that Britain is better off as an independent country. Finally, the wets – so called after the label attached to them in the early 1980s by the right – refers to some members of the left of the Conservative Party who were opposed to membership, such as Peter Tapsell and the young Peter Walker, who favoured closer ties with the Commonwealth.36 This list has a number of advantages, for instance in delineating economic and political critics of membership or of further integration and in highlighting that scepticism on matters European was not a straightforward left–right issue, with a number of sceptics on the left of the Party as well as on the right. However, it is also problematic as a classification of Eurosceptic 145

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viewpoints in the Conservative Party for a number of reasons. It leaves open the question of why the first group was irreconcilable to European integration. In fact, many of them were opposed to what they regarded as the loss of sovereignty. The sovereignty issue was central for Powell, at least after his conversion to Euroscepticism in the late 1960s. However, Powell was an English nationalist and so his opposition was not noticeably different from that of the patriots. Hence, we come to a situation where the categories devised by Young are less precise than they ought to be. A closer examination of Conservative views on Europe shows that there are three important factors in determining the nature of scepticism. The first relates to domestic political economy and in particular to the nature of the New Right. The New Right was not a unified ideological position, but rather contained, as Andrew Gamble has clearly demonstrated, two ideological traditions.37 The first was the liberal New Right which believed that the growth of the functions and powers of the state in the post-war period were detrimental to individual liberties. The state acted in a coercive way and the only way of restoring individual freedoms was to return to freemarket policies such as deregulation, privatisation, marketisation of public services and rule-bound monetarism. The majority of the Conservative Government’s policies after 1979 can be said to have been influenced by these economic liberal ideas. However, there was also a second strand of New Right thought which stemmed from the traditional tory emphasis on authority, social order, tradition and hierarchy. The conservative New Right stressed the ways in which all of these values had been undermined by the growth of collectivism, discretionary government action and the increased powers of the unionised working class and came to regard the free market as the best way of restoring them. Hence, both elements of the New Right were united around an opposition to the ‘post-war consensus’ and on the need for free markets. However, this was so for different reasons, and while the liberals continued to stress the economic aspects of the New Right the conservatives focused on the political and constitutional aspects. In terms of European integration this meant that some sceptics attached more weight to the interventionist and protectionist nature of the EEC/EU whereas others placed greater emphasis on the constitutional issues. A second important distinction can be found in attitudes towards sovereignty.38 Sovereignty is a difficult concept due to its inherent contestability. There are two meanings of sovereignty. The first defines sovereignty in absolute terms – as something that either exists or does not. Here, sovereignty is discussed in terms of the formal decision-making process of political institutions. Traditionally in Britain, sovereignty in this sense lay with the House of Commons. However, in joining the EEC in 1973 Britain was ­allowing 146

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for formal decisions to be made elsewhere and each successive phase of European integration (each Treaty and so forth) is seen by those who hold to an absolutist conception of sovereignty as surrendering yet more formal decision-making powers to the EEC/EU. In contrast, the second view of sovereignty is to see it as something that is divisible, that can and ought to be shared, or to put it another way as something that can be ‘pooled’. Here sovereignty is discussed as effective decision-making authority with the belief that the real ability of Britain to make decisions has diminished with the absolute decline of Britain as a political and military power and the relative decline of the British economy, and that as a result Britain would in reality be gaining more power by allying more closely with other European nations. Hence, for a loss of some formal decision-making powers the country would gain from the reality of being part of a larger and more powerful political and economic entity. These differences as to the meaning of sovereignty explain further the nature of Euroscepticism in the Conservative Party. The absolutist argument has been expressed clearly by the Conservative MP Michael Spicer; ‘I do not understand the concept of pooling sovereignty. One either has or does not have sovereignty.’39 In contrast, the ‘pooling’ view of sovereignty is defended by other Conservatives.40 It explains how the issue of European integration can unite Conservative politicians who are from otherwise different sections of the Party.41 More crucially for the purposes of this chapter it also explains how two politicians from the same section of the Conservative Party – the liberal New Right – can reach fundamentally different views on Europe, as is the case with Redwood and Geoffrey Howe. As we have seen already, Redwood has been a strong and consistent advocate of economic liberalism since the 1970s. For him, as will be discussed in the next section, sovereignty is an absolute and European integration is therefore a threat to it. Howe has also been a consistent advocate of economic liberalism since the 1960s and was in fact one of the first Conservatives to be associated with the Institute of Economic Affairs and later became a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He was a key player in the development of ‘Thacherite economics’ from the late 1970s and served as Chancellor from 1979–83. He was, however, also to resign as Deputy Prime Minister in 1990 and it was his resignation speech that led to the leadership challenge of Michael Heseltine and the eventual removal from office of Thatcher. His growing discontent with the Thatcher Government was largely on matters European following her hardline sceptical speech at Bruges in 1988. For Howe, the meaning of sovereignty is something that is clearly divisible. For instance, he refers to the Single Market as the ‘sharing of sovereignty without destroying the nation’.42 The process of European integration is one in which sovereignty 147

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of member states is pooled so as to increase their effective power. Similarly, in the late 1990s, Howe was advocating membership of the single currency, through which effective power to determine a common exchange rate could be achieved whereas this power had been lost by individual nation-states in the face of growing global financial markets.43 The final consideration here is that of the way in which Conservative politicians understand the nature of the international political economy, specifically the extent to which we can be said to live in a global economy. There are four positions here. The first is that of the sceptics who continue to believe that the nation-state has sufficient power over economic and noneconomic aspects of governance and that the idea of an erosion in the powers of the nation-state is very much exaggerated. Secondly, some believe that developments in the world economy have indeed eroded the powers of individual nation-states and that the only way in which to exercise meaningful influence internationally is to integrate more closely with regional blocs such as the EU. This view is itself divided between those who argue for a closed regional system, in which the EU defends itself from outside competition, and an open regionalist viewpoint that sees the future of Europe as that of an economic bloc trading openly with the rest of the world.44 Finally, there is the position of the hyper-globalists,45 who argue that the process of globalisation is now complete and that it has decisively and irreversibly taken economic powers away from nation-states and international regions. The belief here is that in the aggressively competitive world economy the role of the nation-state is essentially to devise policies that attract inward investment from global corporations. In terms of the Conservative Party we may expect to find nationalists who reject the globalisation thesis; those who wish to join more closely with the EU in its current, protectionist form; free-traders who wish to integrate more closely with a reformed, liberalised EU; and globalists who reject the EU, whether it is reformed or not.46 We will now examine Redwood’s attitude to European integration within the context just established. Redwood and European integration

A discussion of Redwood’s views on European integration reveals a strong degree of consistency.47 Redwood was opposed to membership during the discussions of the Heath Government with the EEC member states in 1972– 73 on the basis that sovereignty would be lost, and expressed his sympathy for those who most clearly articulated the case against membership at that stage, notably Powell and Neil Marten.48 He then supported the ­campaign 148

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for withdrawal in the referendum held by the Labour Government in 1975, even expressing his feelings of unease with the Conservative leadership of Thatcher for supporting continued membership so vigorously: ‘I did not enjoy the spectacle of Margaret Thatcher prominently campaigning for continued membership of the EEC on behalf of the Conservative Party, and had growing sympathy with the rebels under Heath who had tried to vote down the original Treaty commitment.’49 Hence, although he did not follow Powell in endorsing the Labour Party in the February 1974 General Election campaign, he did show a clear Euroscepticism at this stage which was much closer to Powell’s position than Thatcher’s. Outwardly, at least, despite her demand for a budget rebate in the early 1980s, Thatcher remained pro-European up to her Bruges speech of September 1988. By contrast, Redwood claimed that the referendum decision changed his stance on Europe. The people had decided to remain in the EEC and so his attitude became one of seeking to limit the process of integration so as to maintain the EEC as a ‘common market’, for which the people had voted in 1975.50 However, Redwood’s stance on Europe can be said to have been much the same as other anti-Europeans who said they would accept the decision of the referendum, such as Powell on the right and Tony Benn on the left. Essentially, this was to say that the political establishment had duped the people by hiding from them the federal nature of the European project: ‘the decision to join the European Economic Community began a long progress of dishonesty and half-truth at the top of British politics’.51 The relative support of the two lobbies in 1975 was very marked. The pro-membership lobby contained most of the senior political actors, the overwhelming majority of the press, business leaders and the largest trade unions. In contrast, the ‘no’ lobby was divided and consisted largely of the extremes of the Labour left and Conservative right (or those formerly on the Conservative right such as Powell) along with the Communist Party and the National Front, and received comparatively little press or financial support. Given the inequality of resources for the two sides in the referendum campaign, it was possible for the defeated anti-membership lobby to say that they had not received a fair hearing. In this sense, the 1975 referendum failed to resolve the issue of Britain’s membership of the EEC. In the 1980s Redwood was concerned by the integrationist logic of the Single European Act (1986) but did openly support the creation of a single market.52 By the late 1980s, Euroscepticism was given a considerable boost in the Conservative Party. This can be explained by two broad factors. The first relates to the internal politics of the Conservative Party starting with the Bruges speech made by Thatcher in 1988, which encouraged her supporters to adopt an overtly sceptical position. This was further ­encouraged by her 149

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departure in 1990 when it had been a combination of the pro-Europeans led by Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson (who was less sympathetic to European integration and especially to the single currency) that had been instrumental in her removal from office. A further boost to the Eurosceptics from inside the Conservative Party came after 1990 when Major, whom Thatcher had declared as her chosen successor, proved to be more pro-European than she had believed him to be, making early statements about his desire to be at the heart of Europe and pushing the Maastricht Treaty through the House of Commons. Given the reduced Conservative majority after the 1992 General Election the power of the sceptics within the parliamentary party increased and indeed they were actively encouraged by Thatcher to rebel. The enforced withdrawal from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS) in September 1992 further fuelled the sceptics’ cause and Thatcher was able to say that she had been vindicated in opposing initially the pro-Europeans’ demand for membership.53 The second factor is the increasingly pro-European stance of the Labour Party, whereupon it was argued by Eurosceptic Conservatives that their Party needed to distinguish itself from Labour on this issue. Redwood was able, through his resignation from the Cabinet in 1995 and his consistent opposition to both the ERM and the Maastricht Treaty, to emerge as the leading voice within the rebellious Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative parliamentary party.54 Redwood’s argument hardened in the 1990s, as did that of some other sceptics, to one demanding the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership. This view he has maintained: ‘we should negotiate ourselves with the European Union as a whole, and make it clear that all we are offering to do is to solve the British problem once and for all’.55 However, it is worth emphasising that renegotiation was presented as a viable policy option in relation to the EU since it was believed that Britain had enough power to encourage other member-states to permit renegotiated terms of membership if the negotiations were backed up by the promise of a referendum in the UK. It was never a consideration as to what should be done if the other member-states did not allow such a renegotiation to take place. Presumably, the options would either be continued, but reluctant, acceptance of membership or withdrawal. However, only one prominent Conservative politician suggested withdrawal as a serious policy option and he was marginalised for doing so, even among the sceptics.56 One further idea to stem from Redwood’s scepticism was the argument for closer ties with North America, especially through the North American Free Trade Association, which he believed provided a more satisfactory economic model for free-market Conservatives to follow.57 Although Redwood can therefore be seen as a consistent advocate of 150

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Euroscepticism, indeed more so than Thatcher herself, his views on Europe do seem to express a fundamental tension within right-wing Euroscepticism. Redwood bases his scepticism on two grounds. The first is that of sovereignty. As mentioned above, the concept of sovereignty is contested with it being interpreted as either an absolute or as something that is divisible. For some economic liberals (and of course others) sovereignty can be ‘pooled’. However, Redwood clearly echoes the views of other economic liberals in arguing that sovereignty is an absolute, a view he has held since membership was first debated in the early 1970s: ‘it was quite obvious to anyone who read the Treaty of Rome that a substantial surrender of sovereignty was involved’.58 Hence, sovereignty was lost as a result of membership on crucial matters and further sovereignty has been ceded because of subsequent treaties: ‘in treaty after treaty … the EU has taken power after power to itself ’.59 This refers primarily to the sovereignty of Parliament, but also in terms of the sovereign powers of British courts to interpret the law. Sovereignty has been transferred to the institutions of the EU, especially the Court of Justice and the Commission. However, a further examination of Redwood’s views on European integration also shows that he believes in the validity of the ‘hyper-globalist’ thesis.60 As already mentioned, pro-Europeans believe that membership of a larger political and economic entity such as the EU is necessary given the increasingly globalised world. In contrast, sceptics argue that the idea of globalisation does not make sense since power still resides fundamentally with the nation-state. Redwood seems to advocate a position much more closely related to the hyper-globalist position, arguing that the process of globalisation is complete and all nations can do is to compete for the favour of the global corporations. It can be argued that either of these arguments is correct – sovereignty can be seen as an absolute and something which nation-states may wish to defend, or alternatively the world can be seen as one which has been globalised and therefore the formation of regional economic blocs is an irrelevance. However, it is much more difficult to reconcile both of these views. If globalisation has undermined the effectiveness of regions as political and economic organisations then it has also ended the sovereignty of nation-states. Indeed, for an economic liberal this process should presumably be welcomed since it marks the triumph of the market over political and social constraints and rules out the possibility of social democratic reforms at both the national and regional level.61 For a traditional tory however, the extension of the market to the point at which it erodes traditional, national institutions would be unacceptable and they would seek to defend national sovereignty against the encroachment of global markets. This reveals a 151

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f­ urther tension within the ideology of the New Right in addition to some of the others raised in this volume in relation to other thinkers. Redwood’s own position, as with the broader economic liberal case against European integration, is problematic. Either one can be against European integration on the basis of the global nature of the international political economy, which makes regional blocs an irrelevance, or on the basis of the need to defend national sovereignty. But one cannot easily be both, and this conflict would need to be reconciled if Euroscepticism is to be a more intellectually convincing perspective. Notes   1   Kevin Hickson is grateful to Lee Miles for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.   2   J. Redwood, Singing the Blues (Politicos, London, 2004), p. 281.   3   See J. Redwood, ‘New Right’, in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945 (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2005).   4   N. Barry, ‘New Right’, in Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945, p. 47.   5   Much of this section is derived from Redwood, Singing the Blues.   6   R. Blake and J. Patten (eds), The Conservative Opportunity (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1976).   7   Redwood, Singing the Blues, pp. 39–40.   8   M. Cowling (ed.), Conservative Essays (Cassell, London, 1978).   9   Interview with John Redwood, London, 16 January 2007. 10   Redwood, Singing the Blues, pp. 94–5. 11   S. Ludlam and M. Smith, ‘The Character of Contemporary Conservatism’, in S. Ludlam and M. Smith (eds), Contemporary British Conservatism (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 264–81; p. 273. 12   Ibid., pp. 133–4. 13   Correspondence with John Redwood, 18 January 2008. 14   Portillo had been unable to stand in 1997 because he had lost his seat and returned in by-election. By 2001 he had emerged as the leading moderniser in the Party. The other candidates were David Davis and Michael Ancram. 15   Redwood, Singing the Blues, p. 4. 16   J. Redwood, Going for Broke … Gambling with Tax Payers’ Money (Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), p. 1. 17   J. Redwood, Popular Capitalism (Routledge, London, 1988), pp. 145–6. 18   Redwood, Singing the Blues, pp. 45–7. 19   J. Redwood, ‘Managing the Economy’, in Blake and Patten (eds), The Conservative Opportunity, pp. 74–88; p. 75. 20   M. Grylls and J. Redwood, NEB: A Case for Euthanasia (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1980). 21   J. Redwood, Public Enterprise in Crisis: The Future of Nationalised Industries (Blackwell,

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Oxford, 1980), p. 202. 22   Redwood, Going for Broke, pp. 127–44, and A. Denham and M. Garnett, Keith Joseph: A Life (Acumen, Chesham, 2001), pp. 334–65. 23   Redwood, Popular Capitalism. 24   Ibid., pp. 24 and 157. 25   Ibid., p. 45. 26   Ibid., pp. 27–31. 27   Ibid., p. 144. 28   J. Redwood, Conservative Philosophy in Action (Conservative Political Centre, London, 1991). 29   See Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945 for a recent discussion of these issues. 30   J. Bulpitt, ‘The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft’, Political Studies, 34:1, 1986. 31   See J. Biffen, ‘Party Conference and Party Policy’, Political Quarterly, 32:3, 1961 and R. Rose, ‘Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain’, Political Studies, 12, 1964. 32   See D. Baker, A. Gamble and S. Ludlam, ‘1846 … 1906 … 1996? Conservative Splits and European Integration’, Political Quarterly, 64:4, 1993. 33 For a stimulating discussion of these issues see A. Geddes, ‘Europe’, in Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945, pp. 113–32. 34   H. Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (Papermac, London, 1999). See also, A. Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics (Routledge, London, 2002), pp. 70–1. 35   Although Biffen was Leader of the House of Commons at the time of the vote in the House of Commons on the Single European Act (1986). 36   Although Walker was not consistent on this; certainly after the 1975 referendum he supported membership. See Forster, Euroscepticism in Contemporary British Politics, p. 55. A more recent example of One Nation Euroscepticism is that of James Prior, who joined the New Europe organisation led by Lord (David) Owen to defend membership but oppose a single currency. 37   A. Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Macmillan, London, 1988) 38   See A. Geddes, The European Union and British Politics (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 38–42 for further conceptual discussion of ‘sovereignty’. 39   Quoted in S. Ludlam, ‘The Spectre Haunting Conservatism: Europe and Backbench Rebellion’, in Ludlam and Smith (eds), Contemporary Conservatism, pp. 98–120; p. 112. 40   For instance, I. Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (Simon and Schuster, London, 1992), pp. 323–5. 41   For instance, Howe’s views are much closer on Europe to many senior figures on the left of the Conservative Party because they share the ‘pooling’ view of sovereignty. 42   G. Howe, ‘Europe: Single Market or Political Union?’, Economic Affairs, IEA, London, December 1999, p. 4. 43   The authors are grateful to Lord Howe for sending this article and others and for discussing these issues at some length. Interview with Lord Howe of Aberavon, London, 1 March 2007. See also, G. Howe, ‘Sovereignty and Interdependence: Britain’s Place

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in the World’, International Affairs, 66:4, 1990. 44   Economic protectionism more generally has declined in Britain to being of only marginal significance but was associated with the Chamberlainite tradition within the Conservative Party 45   This term is derived from D. Baker, A. Gamble and D. Seawright, ‘Sovereign Nations and Global Markets: Modern British Conservatism and Hyperglobalism’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4:3, 2002. 46   Nationalists here relate closely to the patriots discussed above, open regionalists include Howe, hyper-globalists include Redwood. The closed regionalist position, however, is harder to define since no one has been prepared openly to advocate such a position but by implication it would include those who have defended the idea of membership of an unreformed EEC/EU. 47   Redwood sets out his case against European integration most comprehensively in Just Say No: 100 Arguments Against the Euro (Politicos, London, 2001). 48   Redwood, Singing the Blues, p. 23. 49   Ibid., p. 35. 50   Ibid., p. 36. 51   Ibid., p. 30. 52   See Redwood, Popular Capitalism, p.162 for an enthusiastic view of the single market. Interview with John Redwood, London, 16 January 2007 and correspondence 12 January 2008. 53   For Redwood’s views on the ERM see Singing the Blues, pp. 104–8 and 122–6. 54   Redwood had written a pamphlet opposing membership of the ERM in 1989, see Singing the Blues, pp. 105–7. For Redwood’s views on the Maastricht Treaty see pp. 126–9. 55   Ibid., pp. 291–2. 56   This was Norman Lamont in 1994. Ludlam, ‘The Spectre Haunting Conservatism’, p. 112. 57   Ibid., pp. 137–8. Also, see Redwood’s Stars and Strife: The Coming Conflicts Between the USA and the European Union (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001) and Superpower Struggles: Mighty America, Faltering Europe, Rising Asia (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2005). 58   Redwood, Singing the Blues, p. 36. Interview with John Redwood, London, 16 January 2007. 59   J. Redwood, I Want to Make a Difference – But I Don’t Like Politics (Politicos, London, 2006), p. 56. 60   The idea that there were global economic developments was clearly articulated in the postscript to Popular Capitalism. 61   Geddes, The European Union and British Politics, p. 195.

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David Willetts Conservative thought at its best conveys the mutual dependence between the community and the free market. David Willetts, 19921

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avid Willetts’s contribution to Conservatism is more substantial than that of anyone else at a senior level in the Party since the downfall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. He has been involved in all of the major debates over the future ideological direction of the Conservative Party since then – the direction that the Major Government should take, the development of social liberal ideas after 1997 and the emergence of a more collectivist form of Conservatism in more recent years. Throughout this process of ideological reflection, Willetts has sought to promote the idea of ‘civic conservatism’. The purpose of this chapter is therefore twofold. The first is to analyse the ways in which Willetts’s ideas and the wider ideas of the Conservative Party have developed since November 1990. Secondly, we will critically evaluate the ideas of civic conservatism – what it is, how consistent and coherent it is and the extent to which its core ideas allow for a Conservative ideological revival. Of all the thinkers examined already in this book, some have contributed to post1990 discussions of Conservatism. Some, such as Ian Gilmour and Peregrine Worsthorne, critiqued the New Right from very different standpoints, whereas others, such as Maurice Cowling, John Redwood and Roger Scruton have sought in their own ways to defend it.2 In this sense, David Willetts is the only person who can be considered a distinctively ‘post-Thatcherite’ thinker at a senior level in the Conservative Party. Since he was an adviser to and admirer of Thatcher, we can also examine the extent to which his own personal ideological journey marks a shift away from the New Right and perhaps allowing for a return to One Nation Conservatism. Willetts was born in 1956, making him the youngest person to be studied in this book.3 This is significant because he first became active in politics at the time of Thatcher’s leadership. He was not one of the rearguard of the One Nation Conservatives, nor one of the founding fathers of the New Right. His early work was as a policy adviser, first to the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

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Nigel Lawson and then to Thatcher herself in Downing Street at the age of twenty-eight. He then served as Director of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) until 1992 when he became MP for Havant. His time as an MP has therefore been in the post-Thatcher Conservative Party. He served on the front bench of John Major’s administration and then in Opposition from 1997. In his time on the front bench he has been a leading voice in debates over the party’s future ideological direction, starting with his main book, Modern Conservatism published in 1992.4 This book, which will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter, was his first attempt to reconcile the ideas of the free market and the community, which became known as ‘civic conservatism’ after his pamphlet of that name published in 1994.5 It was around this time that he first acquired the sobriquet of ‘two brains’.6 He continued to publish widely, largely in the form of pamphlets for various think-tanks.7 Although he was known as a moderniser he was also a loyalist, supporting in turn Major, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith. He supported David Davis in the 2005 leadership contest, as did some moderate Conservative MPs, despite the fact that Davis was seen as the right-wing candidate against David Cameron. Since the election of Cameron as Party leader, Willetts has continued to speak out on a range of issues where he has called for the modernisation of policy, including education, where he caused controversy in the Party by changing its policy on grammar schools in 2007. The other point to emphasise in this brief biography of Willetts is that after being educated in Birmingham, he went to Oxford where he studied under John Gray. Although it is very tempting for academics to over-stress the influence of a tutor over his students, the influence of Gray was significant. Firstly, Gray was a leading disciple of Hayekian, free-market, liberalism.8 Willetts was to be a clear advocate of free-market economics in the 1980s and 1990s. More interestingly though, Gray later turned against free-market Conservatism in the belief that it undermined social institutions. The pursuit of free-market economics had ‘hollowed out’ the institutions and conventions that Conservatives held dear. This led to a significant debate over the ‘death of Conservatism’ in the mid-1990s in which Willetts disagreed with his former tutor over the potentialities of Conservatism.9 For Gray, Conservatism was dead, a point that seemed to be reinforced after the Party’s 1997 landslide defeat, whereas for Willetts Conservatism still had a future both as a creed of a political party and as an ideology if markets and communities could be synthesised. Civic Conservatism Willetts attempted to establish a synthesis between free markets and communi156

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ty in his book, Modern Conservatism, first through a reappraisal of the post-war history of the Conservative Party. Then he examined the ideas of free markets and community separately before showing, he hoped, how they fitted together to form a distinctive brand of Conservatism. This chapter outlines these ideas in turn before moving on to evaluate them and showing how Willetts has tried to respond to criticisms of his ideas. The development of the Conservative Party after 1945 In Modern Conservatism Willetts seeks to defend the place of the Thatcher Governments within the Conservative historical tradition.10 Conservatives have principles, yet these principles are not abstract but instead ‘organic’. They are rooted in the traditions of the Conservative Party and only through an examination of Conservative Party history can these principles be discovered. Whereas many commentators had argued that Thatcherism rested more heavily on liberalism, in its nineteenth-century free-market form, Willetts defended the Thatcherite emphasis on free markets as being within the Conservative tradition. Conservatives were in favour of small government from the eighteenth century as the ‘country’ party. In the nineteenth century the defence of free markets was made by Lord Liverpool and then by Robert Peel. Disraeli, seen by the Tory ‘wets’ as an advocate of state intervention on social policy, was in fact much more sceptical of state action, emphasising free markets and regarding the local community as the main provider of welfare. The first half of the twentieth century was one ‘encompassing the strange decline of Conservative England’11 since the Party was dominant electorally – after the decline of the Liberal Party – but there was a clear drift towards collectivism. This collectivism, which was given theoretical support in the Conservative Party with the publication of Harold Macmillan’s Middle Way12 marked a clear shift away from the true Conservative tradition. Interestingly, in the post-1945 era the modernisation of the Conservative Party principally achieved by R. A. Butler marked not so much a shift towards collectivism according to Willetts but instead a move away from it. The 1945 General Election campaign had emphasised the Conservatives’ commitment to personal freedom and again this was central to the Party’s appeal in 1950 and 1951. The main Conservative intellectuals at this time – Michael Oakeshott, T. E. Utley and Quintin Hogg – all stressed the importance of individual liberty against collectivism. Even the One Nation Group, established in 1950 and seen as a key organisation in the development of a more collectivist toryism, was according to Willetts, much more Thatcherite than is commonly believed given its emphasis on markets and individual liberty. The years up to 1957 marked a drift away from collectivism but the Macmillan years led to a resurgence in 157

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collectivist policies – against the Conservative tradition. In the 1960s, the work of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the contribution of Enoch Powell made significant intellectual headway in the reassertion of free-market Conservatism. However, there were two further setbacks here. The first was that Enoch Powell’s statements on immigration in particular undermined the case for free markets. Given that Powell had been by far the clearest advocate of liberal economics in the 1960s, any attempt to defend free markets would be regarded as expressing support for Powell’s other views. Secondly, the Heath Government had been elected on a free-market policy in 1970 but had moved radically towards collectivism in the early 1970s when faced with mounting economic difficulties and trade union militancy.13 Hence, when Thatcher became Party Leader in 1975 and then Prime Minister in 1979 she was in fact returning to true Conservative principles, not marking a shift away from them. ‘Mrs Thatcher may have expounded those principles with a rare conviction and emotional force, and thus given them a distinctive personal tone, but it was still Conservatism which she was expounding.’14 The success of Thatcher’s leadership lay partly in her personality and also in her ability to select the issues on which to fight. She identified that the economic difficulties and the declining authority of the state needed to be addressed first. Hence, it was only in the third term of government that welfare reform started to be seriously considered. The ability to select the right issues on which to fight was, for Willetts, key to her success and marked her out from less successful politicians such as Powell.15 However, Willetts went on to argue that the real Conservative tradition is not just one of free markets but also of community. Hence, when Keith Joseph argued that he was not a true Conservative until his conversion to free markets in 197416 he was doing a disservice to the Conservative Party, which had in fact a twin ideological heritage. Hence, Willetts’s more recent criticism of Joseph on this issue.17 Thatcher could, however, be absolved of blame for this since she did in fact believe in community, and in particular in the ‘family’. Hence, according to Willetts, Thatcher’s comment that ‘there is no such thing as society’18 was frequently misrepresented. Willetts also sought to defend the Major administration in the run-up to the 1997 General Election, on the basis that it had followed the correct policies.19 It is first necessary to examine Willetts’s advocacy of the free market. Free markets Willetts makes three arguments in favour of free markets.20 The first and most conventional is that markets are an expression of human nature. Humans have a desire to improve their conditions and this will involve concentrating on what 158

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they do best. The early development of the economy was one where markets were created so that individuals could produce what they were best at and then exchange it with others in order to obtain what they most wanted. Hence, from very early history there were markets in operation. The idea of free markets is merely a development of this whereby individuals, corporations and nations could trade with one another. Ever more complex forms of production required concentrations of wealth for investment. Thus, markets are essential for the fulfilment of basic human emotions such as freedom and progress. Secondly, Willetts rejects the idea that free markets are based on selfish human interests. Instead, markets are the most efficient means of producing wealth so that individuals can fulfil their motivations, which may or may not be based on narrow self-interest. Finally, Willetts sought in Modern Conservatism to challenge the idea that markets are not efficient. There are several such arguments but the most popular one is that of Galbraith who argued that markets are not competitive since the reality is one of large firms that dominate in several sectors of the economy and are therefore able to dictate prices and promote consumer demand through extensive advertising campaigns.21 Hence, it was not true that sovereignty lay with the consumer. However Willetts, following similar arguments set out by several Conservative advocates of free markets such as Powell and Joseph against Galbraith, argued that markets were competitive and were therefore efficient and allowed for human freedom and choice. In so doing Willetts drew on two strands of thought. The first was the ‘Austrian school’ which had argued that although perfect competition as defined by classical economists did not exist there was still ‘imperfect competition’, marked by the existence of competing firms. The Austrian school also showed how tacit knowledge was crucial in the operation of markets and was reflected in the price mechanism. The other theory used by Willetts to defend free markets was that of public choice, with the argument that public services did not reflect the ‘general will’, but instead were based on the self-interest of bureaucrats. Therefore, the interests of the public were best served by the market, through which they could express their own preferences. Communities Turning to communities, Willetts draws on a number of arguments to formulate what he regards as a distinctively Conservative form of community. Firstly, he engages with the Rawlsian argument that individuals removed from existing communal relations can formulate ideas of liberty and social justice.22 The distributive effects of this ‘veil of ignorance’ are less important than the contractarian nature of the Rawlsian argument. Willetts rejects such liberal contractarian 159

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theories on the same basis as communitarian critics of Rawls,23 namely that it does not make sense. What defines an individual is the way in which they are shaped by and respond to the communities in which they live. Hence, the starting point for a Conservative definition of community is not a social contract that ‘creates’ society, but rather an organic theory of society. From this, it becomes clear that emphasis should be placed less on rights than on duties. Such duties ‘do not come from contracts which are voluntarily entered into but are inescapable parts of our life history as members of a community’.24 Willetts further defines the Conservative idea of community by echoing Oakeshott’s distinction between a ‘civic society’ and an ‘enterprise association’.25 The latter is one in which the government has clear ideological objectives and seeks to impose uniform patterns of behaviour on society in order to meet its objectives. The former is one in which the roles of the state are to defend its citizens from attack both internally and externally while at the same time allowing them to pursue their own objectives. This is an interesting discussion in the context of Willetts’s defence of Thatcherism stated earlier since some commentators have sought to defend Thatcherism in Oakeshottian terms, whereas others have seen it as an attempt to create a new kind of enterprise association in Britain.26 For Willetts, the most appropriate notion of community for Conservative politics is that of a civic society. This is crucial in relation to Willetts’s response to Gray’s assertion that Conservatism is dead and also in his critique of New Labour. Moreover, in a recent interview Willetts suggests that he has recently sought to grasp a distinctive liberal conservative notion of a national community. Both of these issues will be discussed in the next section. However, it is first necessary to examine the ways in which Willetts attempts to synthesise the ideas of free markets and communities, against claims that the former undermines the latter. Markets and communities: Providing a synthesis Willetts argues that ‘modern Conservatism aims to reconcile free markets (which deliver freedom and prosperity) with a recognition of the importance of community (which sustains our values)’.27 The reconciliation is possible despite the claims of pessimists regarding the cultural contradictions of capitalism. Some commentators have argued that free-market capitalism replaces communal sentiment and respect for traditional social morality with greed and selfishness since these are the principles on which markets operate.28 The more successful capitalism becomes the more likely it is that it will collapse as traditions are eroded. The likely outcome of this process will be an extension of government activity seeking to defend economic interests against increased social antagonism. However, Willetts makes several arguments as to why markets are 160

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not only compatible with community, but also are mutually reinforcing ideals, stating that, ‘there are deep and intricate links between markets and culture which Conservatives need to understand, treasure and celebrate’.29 The first such argument is that the institutions of the market are reliant on established social networks of trust.30 They can be and are enforced by regulation, but in most instances market transactions are based on trust. Regulation and planning therefore undermine social relations and replace them with state direction. Markets are much more likely to facilitate trust since they occur spontaneously as a means of allowing for exchange and because they require an ongoing negotiation between buyers and sellers. Here Willetts draws on the ideas of game theory, which stresses that human beings will be able to form trusting and cooperative relationships where there is a regular need to barter and compromise.31 Hence, the market is the most effective means of allowing human beings to move from positions of self-interest to broader community interests. Secondly, tradition and community are important in conditioning the motives of consumers. The market, through the price mechanism, allows consumers to express their own preferences in a way that planning cannot. However, these preferences are themselves shaped by the wider social contexts in which people live. Hence, the market will allow for the expression of individual choices from within the wider context of collected wisdom. Moreover, these established social traditions stress the boundaries to the market: ‘there are some things you can’t sell and shouldn’t be allowed to. Any market economy, in order to survive, needs to operate within a social framework that supports and sustains it.’32 Thirdly, Willetts allows for the potential of economic changes brought about by market forces to create new forms of community. There are essentially two strands of communitarian thought in Conservative writing.33 The first is elegiac, placing stress on the sense of a lost ideal of community or ‘golden age’, represented for instance in recent Conservative thought by Roger Scruton.34 The second form of communitarian thought is the one expressed by Willetts and stresses the creation of new forms of community in response to economic change; for instance, the new working-class communities formed as a response to the processes of urbanisation and industrialisation. These communities establish their own traditions and institutions. In a similar way Willetts argues that the results of the pursuit of free-market policies in the 1980s and 1990s will be the creation of new forms of community. Hence, for these three reasons, communities and markets are the twin pillars of Conservative politics and ‘Conservatism is at its finest and its most distinctive precisely when it integrates a commitment to the free market into the core values and institutions which hold our country together.’35 In Modern Conservatism the ideal economic model presented is that of the 161

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‘social market’.36 This term originated in Germany and was first popularised in Britain by Keith Joseph in the 1970s and then David Owen in the 1980s. According to Willetts, the social market model is attractive because it is based on free markets but also stresses the importance of partnerships between employers and employees within businesses and between a corporation and the wider community. However, this seems an odd choice of economic model for Willetts at this stage in his intellectual development. The social market ideal presented by Willetts seems far more interventionist than the rest of his book would permit. It may be countered that the social market concept is one of more than one meaning and that Willetts has the Joseph variation in mind: but as Willetts has subsequently argued, Joseph was guilty of downplaying the importance of the community strand within Conservatism that he is here trying to defend.37 This may well explain the limited references to the social market concept in Willetts’s later writings. There are two final elements to Willetts’s discussion of community. The first is that he was keen to fashion a Conservative notion of community relevant in a post-Christian society.38 Thatcher had sought to outline her conception of community in a speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on 21 May 1988 and it was one which rested on Christian values – seeking to reconcile, much as Powell had done, Christian values and free-market economics.39 However, for Willetts this was inadequate in a post-Christian society. For traditionalists such as Scruton the aim was to restore the importance of Christianity in communal relations by exposing the intellectual limitations of liberalism which are seen as underpinning modern social relations.40 In contrast, Willetts has argued that emphasising Christian values in a post-Christian society will simply be ineffective since many people will not identify with the message.41 Therefore, the idea of community needs to be presented in modern terms, which for Willetts meant in more liberal terms. This attempt to define and defend the ideal of community in a post-Christian society has been one of the themes underpinning Willetts’s work on Conservatism since the mid-1990s. The other theme within Willetts’s thinking on community is the rejection of egalitarianism.42 For Willetts, ‘there is one key idea, seductive, and with an emotional appeal, which cannot be absorbed into conservative thought: egalitarianism’.43 This is so for several reasons. The first is that there are no objective criteria on which to redistribute income and wealth. Secondly, inequalities in income and wealth are required to maintain individual freedom and a ­competitive economy. In total, Willetts’s discussion of equality is not original and indeed is essentially the same as the case made against equality by Keith Joseph and discussed at length already in this book in Chapter 6. The interesting observation, however, is that Willetts in his broader critique of equality also 162

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rejects the notion of social justice, which he dismisses as a ‘slippery term’.44 This belief is in stark contrast to his more recent emphasis on social justice as a guide for Conservative policies on welfare. Evaluation and subsequent intellectual developments By way of evaluation, we need to examine the arguments made by John Gray in direct response to Willetts, for it is still the case that these exchanges over the question ‘is Conservatism dead?’ in the mid-1990s mark the most detailed examination of Willetts’s thesis that the ideas of free markets and community can be fully reconciled. It is as a response to this debate and to the electoral difficulties of the Conservative Party since 1997 that Willetts’s subsequent intellectual development can best be understood.45 Gray argued that markets were destructive of community with the result that ‘Conservatism has been undone.’46 This is so for three reasons.47 Firstly, the growth of new cultures as a result of globalisation has challenged the traditional national culture that Conservatives sought to defend. The process of globalisation was both encouraged by free-market policies and in turn facilitated them. Therefore, globalisation posed the principal strategic dilemma for Conservatism and exposed the essential tension between free markets and community. Secondly, the modernisation of the Labour Party under Blair had stripped it of social democratic ideology and moved it on to the centre ground, where it was much more difficult for the Conservatives to challenge it. Finally, the ideology of the New Right was itself responsible for the death of Conservatism. Suspicion of ideology had long been part of the Conservative tradition but the New Right, dominant from 1979, was an ideology – liberal ideology. Free markets destroyed traditional communal relations: ‘in the real world, if not in the secluded study of the Tory philosopher, free markets work against traditional Tory values. Conservatism has foundered on this contradiction’.48 This argument is familiar within Conservative circles, particularly among the One Nation variety and also those traditionalists who remained sceptical of the New Right’s emphasis on free markets.49 However, Gray also parts company from these Conservatives on the basis that the kind of society they sought to defend had been lost as a result of free-market reforms. Only revised social democracy of the Blairite third way variety coincided with ‘postmodern’ social realities.50 For the Conservative Party after 1997 the major ideological challenge was how to rectify the inherent tensions between conservative and liberal elements within the New Right. For critics of the New Right these tensions had long been apparent.51 In the 1980s they could remain fairly unified since they shared 163

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the same enemies – trade unionists, state bureaucrats etc. However, in the 1990s the tensions became much more apparent. The Conservative Party between 1997 and 2001 hardly underwent serious ideological renewal, with the result that the New Labour victory in 2001 was almost as crushing as that of 1997. The only ideological conflict was between the ‘mods’ and the ‘rockers’. The ‘mods’ sought to overcome the tensions inherent in the New Right by placing much more emphasis on social liberalism. Economic liberalism would remain, meaning that greed and self-interest would be combined with an acceptance of social diversity. The ‘rockers’ – who hardly comprised a serious intellectual position at all – remained committed to social authoritarian values more akin to traditional toryism.52 Willetts’s contribution to this debate was on the social liberal side. His pronouncements at this time were seen as firmly committed to modernisation.53 However, he has since pointed to the inadequacies of this position, stressing the need to take into account citizens within their localities and not as atomised individuals.54 Willetts also made an important contribution to the second significant development in Conservative thought – namely that of localism. Just before he was removed from the leadership, Iain Duncan Smith – who had been a ‘rocker’ post-1997 – emerged as a leading moderniser and founded the Centre for Social Justice. Of the senior members of the Party, Willetts and Oliver Letwin emerged as the leading intellectual contributors to that position.55 Willetts, developing arguments made in his ‘civic Conservatism’ thesis, argued that Conservatives believed in community and was also more critical of the free market than he had been previously. He also argued, in sharp contrast to the comments made in Modern Conservatism, that social justice was a reality and a valid principle for Conservative policy.56 He was also critical of New Labour’s welfare policies, believing that they were far too centralist as a result of an underlying commitment to equality – in the sense of equal provision of education, health and other services across the country. Willetts contended that much more power could be devolved to local communities: ‘civic conservatism by contrast is about autonomy for institutions’.57 Hence, ‘community’ for Willetts was an alternative to the ‘state’. Localism implied ‘lumpiness’ in which local communities would provide different services to meet their own needs rather than having uniform services provided by the state: ‘by far the most effective schemes are local, discretionary and flexible. They are not uniform, national or rule-bound’.58 Here, the new localist thesis – of which Willetts’s civic Conservative idea became a variant – reflected the Oakeshottian ideal of active civil society and a limited state.59 However, one recent development within Willetts’s thought has been increasing scepticism towards the more radical localist theories.60 This is primarily so for two reasons. Firstly, the principle of social justice implies meeting the basic 164

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needs of all citizens. The decentralisation of power may be a good thing in that citizens can become active in their communities, but some communities may not be able to meet welfare needs. This would imply a bigger role for the state. Secondly, citizens need to feel some attachment to the wider, national community. Here Willetts has sought to outline a moderate, tolerant patriotism.61 These recent developments in Willetts’s thought may well mark the clearest attempt to return to something that may be recognised as a genuinely One Nation Conservatism.62 Although the term One Nation was used to describe earlier developments this was premature as neither the social liberalism of the ‘mods’ nor new localism marked a return to One Nation Conservatism. Social liberalism did not in any deep way challenge the primacy of the market. New localism went further in that it realised that markets and communities could conflict and, where they did, the latter should take precedence. However, new localism did not radically revise the New Right’s approach to the central state, which was still regarded as a ‘bad’ thing. Hence, it is only with this third wave of Conservative revisionism that a greater role for the central state is permitted. There are, however, several limitations in contemporary Conservative thought, which would need to be faced if it is to become intellectually convincing. These are mainly concerned with the relationship between the central state and local communities. If local communities were deemed to have failed to provide adequate welfare for citizens in their locality then the state would need to intervene, meaning potentially that there would be significant state intervention, more so indeed than Conservatives have been prepared to tolerate for a long time. Moreover, if the principle of social justice was to underpin the welfare policies of a future Conservative government, this may well require substantial state intervention since it may be deemed unjust that some citizens did not have their welfare needs met simply because welfare provision was inadequate in the area in which they lived. However, it is not easy to see how social justice determined centrally could be combined with local participation and choice for consumers of welfare in a marketised welfare system. In short, there are still many areas in which the roles of markets, communities and the state are unclear and in conflict. The task for modern Conservatives (as indeed for other parties) is to suggest ways in which the three spheres of state, civil society and markets can be synthesised. Notes   1   D. Willetts, Modern Conservatism (Penguin, London, 1992), p. 182.   2   See notably I. Gilmour and M. Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories? The Conservative Party since 1945 (Fourth Estate, London, 1997); P. Worsthorne, ‘Preface’,

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in S. Roy and J. Clarke (eds), Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution (Continuum, London, 2005); M. Cowling, A Conservative Future (Politeia, London, 1997); J. Redwood, Singing the Blues (Politicos, London, 2004); R. Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2001).   3   Much of this biographical information is drawn from www.davidwilletts. co.uk/about/.   4   Willetts, Modern Conservatism.   5   D. Willetts, Civic Conservatism (Social Market Foundation, London, 1994).   6   A nickname apparently given by Michael White of the Guardian.   7   For instance Blair’s Gurus (Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1996), After the Landslide (with Richard Forsdyke, Centre for Policy Studies, London, 1999) and Browned Off: What’s Wrong with Gordon Brown’s Social Policy? (Politeia, London, 2000).   8   Notably, J. Gray, Hayek on Liberty (Blackwell, Oxford, 1984).   9   J. Gray and D. Willetts, Is Conservatism Dead? (Profile and Social Market Foundation, London, 1997). 10   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, pp. 3–61. 11   Ibid., p. 18. 12   H. Macmillan, The Middle Way (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1938). 13   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, p. 43. 14   Ibid., p. 47. 15   Ibid., p. 54. 16   Kevin Hickson interview with David Willetts, London, 17 January 2007. 17   Ibid. 18   Made in an interview for Woman’s Own (31 October 1987). 19   D. Willetts, Why Vote Conservative? (Penguin, London, 1997). 20   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, pp. 79–91. 21   For Galbraith see notably his The New Industrial State (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1967). 22   J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971). 23   A good overview of the communitarian approach is M. Sandel (ed.), Liberalism and Its Critics (Blackwell, Oxford, 1984). 24   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, p. 68. 25   M. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975). 26   For instance N. O’Sullivan who argues that the New Right was such a rationalist project in his chapter ‘Conservatism, the New Right and the Limited State’, in J. Hayward and P. Norton (eds), The Political Science of British Politics (Harvester, Brighton, 1986) and N. Barry, ‘New Right’ in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945 (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2005), who defends the New Right in Oakeshottian terms. 27   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, p. 92. 28   Notably, J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Unwin, London, 1942), and D. Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Basic, London, 1978). 29   D. Willetts, ‘The Free Market and Civic Conservatism’, in K. Minogue (ed.), Conservative Realism (Harper Collins, London, 1996), pp. 80–97; p. 96. 30   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, pp. 96–9. 31   Willetts draws here on the work of Robert Axelrod, especially his book, The Evolution

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of Co-operation (Penguin, London, 1990). 32   D. Willetts, ‘The New Contours of British Politics’, in G. Streeter (ed.), There is Such a Thing as Society (Politicos, London, 2002), pp. 52–9; p. 57. 33   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, pp. 99–102. 34   Especially in R. Scruton, England: An Elegy (Chatto and Windus, London, 2000). 35   Willetts, Civic Conservatism, p. 9. 36   Ibid., pp. 102–5. 37   Interview with David Willetts, 17 January 2007. 38   Willetts, in Willetts and Gray, Is Conservatism Dead?, pp. 170–1. 39   Margaret Thatcher, speech made to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 21 May 1988, and discussion of Powell in this volume, especially Chapter 4. 40   R. Scruton, The Conservative Idea of Community (Conservative 2000 Foundation, London, 1996). 41   See note 37. This theme was discussed in some detail in Kevin Hickson’s interview with David Willetts, 17 January 2007. 42   Willetts, Modern Conservatism, pp. 109–19. 43   Ibid., p. 109. 44   Ibid., p. 112. 45   For Willetts’s considered response to the 1997 General Election defeat see Willetts with Forsdyke, After the Landslide. 46   Gray, in Willetts and Gray, Is Conservatism Dead?, p. 145. 47   Ibid., pp. 145–63. 48   Ibid., p. 158. 49   For instance, see the work of Ian Gilmour and Peregrine Worsthorne cited in note 2 above, and also B. Pilbeam, ‘Social Morality’, in Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945, pp. 158–77. 50   Gray, in Willetts and Gray, Is Conservatism Dead?, pp. 160–1. 51   For the clearest discussion of this viewpoint see A. Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1988). 52   A good discussion of this ‘debate’ is M. Garnett, ‘A Question of Definition? Ideology and the Conservative Party 1997–2001’, in M. Garnett and P. Lynch (eds), The Conservatives in Crisis: The Tories after 1997 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003), pp. 107–24. 53   See P. Lynch and M. Garnett, ‘Conclusions: The Conservatives in Crisis’, in Garnett and Lynch (eds), The Conservatives in Crisis, pp. 248–67; p. 260. 54   See especially, J. Sutherland, ‘The Ideas Interview: David Willetts’, Guardian, 7 March 2006 and speech to the Social Market Foundation, 2 June 2005. 55   See their contributions in Streeter (ed.), There is Such a Thing as Society, which is the most substantial articulation of this viewpoint. 56   See especially, D. Seawright, ‘One Nation’, in Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945, p. 85. 57   Willetts, in Willetts and Gray, Is Conservatism Dead?, p. 172. 58   Willetts, ‘The New Contours of British Politics’, p. 55. 59   For a brief overview of the new localist position and how it fits in to Conservative modernisation strategies see A. Gamble, ‘The Right to Return to Life’, Fabian Review, Autumn 2005.

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60   This was discussed at some length in Kevin Hickson’s interview with David Willetts, 17 January 2007. 61   In fact his clearest attempt to define his sense of patriotism was his ‘Who do we think we are?’ speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, 8 October 1998, showing an earlier concern on this issue, although one still stressing localism and free enterprise. Interview with David Willetts, 17 January 2007. 62   One Nation Conservatism, properly defined, seeks to find a balance between the state, markets and civil society, believing that each has both advantages and disadvantages. For a recent expression of this see D. Green, ‘One Nation’, in Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945, pp. 214–18.

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he post-war Conservative Party has been equivocal in its attitude towards intellectuals. In some circumstances a reputation for profound thought could be a major asset. Sir Keith Joseph, for example, won unthinking respect from many of his colleagues because of his All Souls fellowship. Joseph’s otherworldly demeanour worked in his favour, making him seem like a living refutation of John Stuart Mill’s jibe about the Conservatives being ‘the stupid party’. By contrast another All Souls fellow, Quintin Hogg, laid himself open to criticism, partly because he was so clearly convinced of his intellectual superiority, but also because he struck populist poses. Those who courted controversy within the Party could be criticised for excessive intellectualism even if they lacked the formal credentials of a Joseph or a Hogg. Notoriously, in May 1961 Iain Macleod was stigmatised by the Marquess of Salisbury for being ‘too clever by half ’. Salisbury’s attack did nothing to help Macleod’s prospects of ever becoming leader, but at least the impact was confined to a single individual. In other hands, the residual distrust of intellectual influences within the Party could extend into an indictment of the whole tendency of post-war Conservative policy. Thus Lord Coleraine claimed that one of Rab Butler’s ‘most marked characteristics … was his desire to stand well with that part of the intellectual establishment which tends to be “progressive”, forward-looking and anti-conservative’.1 This was a masterly piece of disingenuous debunking of which Butler himself might have been proud. By implication, since Butler was widely recognised as the architect of the post-war Conservative approach, from the early 1940s the party had placed its future direction in the hands of someone who was biased against conservatism because he was an intellectual. However, the Labour Party has not been noticeably kinder to its intellectuals. The brilliance of senior figures like Anthony Crosland and Denis Healey

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was not enough to win them the leadership. Harold Wilson was more fortunate, but no casual observer would have guessed from his public persona that he had been one of the most gifted students of his generation. In terms of literary endeavour, the record of the two main parties is broadly similar. Labour and the Conservatives have produced a comparable number of fairly senior figures who were prepared to expound their ideas in a systematic fashion. In fact, no Labour leader since the Second World War has written a tract which could stand comparison with Harold Macmillan’s The Middle Way; but then again, Macmillan can be regarded as sui generis. Among the more representative ranks of senior ministers, Butler, Hogg, Powell, Maude, Gilmour, Redwood and Willetts all produced work in various forms which was substantial enough to deserve inclusion in this book. David Howell, Chris Patten, Francis Pym, William Waldegrave, Peter Walker and even the flamboyant Michael Heseltine also wrote books which advanced their views about ‘Conservatism’. 2 The number of Conservative authors can be considered to be more impressive given the difference between the traditional stances of the two main parties. For a variety of reasons, one would expect Conservatives to have a lot to say when Labour was in office, but to be silent when their own side held the reins. By contrast, even (or especially) when Labour formed a government, dissident members of the Party would be tempted into print, urging ministers to seize the opportunity for a decisive transformation of British society. As this book shows, the pattern held good until the 1960s. Before then – once more leaving aside the idiosyncratic Macmillan – the major contributions were produced when Conservatives felt the need to refresh their thinking in opposition. The prime example was Butler’s attempt to cleanse the party from the imputed guilt of the inter-war period, culminating in the Industrial Charter of 1947. But in many ways Quintin Hogg’s The Case for Conservatism, and the original One Nation book, bear comparison; indeed in terms of quality of research and writing they were superior to Butler’s efforts. Without re-opening the debates on the ideological nature of all these productions, in combination they showed that the Party had something distinctive to say on a wide range of issues. The Conservatives may have been trounced in 1945, but they were certainly not short of ideas; and generally speaking the leadership was in sympathy with the Party’s thinkers. After the Conservatives returned to power in 1951 there was far less activity. The One Nation group kept up its output, but none of its productions had the impact of the original edited book. Hogg re-entered the fray in 1959, but The Conservative Case was mainly a rehash of his earlier book; indeed the main difference was a sharpening of the critique of Labour rather than a refinement of his positive ideas. Macmillan reissued The Middle Way, but by the time he became Prime Minister in 1957 even he had given up on the idea of ­implementing 170

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its strategy in full. This was the period in which Michael Oakeshott produced his essay ‘On Being Conservative’ (1956). Oakeshott noted that it was easiest to be a ‘Conservative’ when there was much to be enjoyed; and for the Party’s supporters the 1950s were pretty enjoyable. Even the disaster of Suez was not enough to force it back into itself, to brood over its true purpose in British politics. The ‘unflappable’ Macmillan – and Hogg, who coined that epithet to describe his leader – ensured that the Party won the 1959 election. In retrospect, that election victory was a serious setback for moderates within the party. Having won in 1959, they saw no reason to restate their case. At the same time, though, Conservative radicals were being attracted by economic liberalism. As a result, when Macmillan rediscovered something of his old interventionism during his second term, some anti-statist party members were already rehearsing the arguments they would use against the whole drift of post-war policy after his fall. Personal bickering – and in particular Macmillan’s determination to deny the leadership to Butler – distracted the party from the ‘battle of ideas’ in the run-up to the 1964 election. Possibly, apart from the furore over the rigged ‘contest’ which brought Alec Home to the premiership, the Party was suffering from a degree of complacency after three successive election wins; equally, members of the Bow Group which furnished the Party with many intelligent recruits at that time had a journal of their own in which they could talk amongst themselves. One Bow Grouper, Timothy Raison, did write a typically thoughtful ‘Penguin Special’ before the 1964 election; but, able as he was, Raison was not widely known and was not even an MP at the time.3 Whatever the reasons, the failure of more senior moderates to produce a sustained defence of the 1951–64 Governments at this crucial point proved to be disastrous. After the 1964 defeat, the Conservatives moved to a system in which the leader was elected. This, it can be argued, was taken as an ungagging order for politicians who had disliked what had happened in Macmillan’s later years, although independent social changes were undermining the notion that one should be deferential towards the leader of any political party. In any case, after 1965 it proved easier for dissidents like Enoch Powell and Angus Maude openly to criticise the Party’s philosophy (or lack of it), even if they spoke out to the detriment of their careers. The question which arose after 1965 was the one which Conservatives should really have considered after Suez – what was the true purpose of a ‘Conservative’ Party in a country which was subject to rapid change beyond the control of any government? Powell and Maude both thought that pragmatism was not enough; the electorate wanted to be inspired by principle, and it was too astute to accept a form of ‘socialism’ which, they believed in their different ways, was stifling individualism. Powell was much more explicit than Maude 171

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in implying that, by failing to tackle the legacy of the Attlee Governments, the Conservatives had themselves adopted a form of ‘socialism’. Powerful enough in any case, this argument had a much greater effect because it went unanswered at the time. Powell’s influence can be detected in the writings of many individuals covered by this volume. Yet for many reasons Powell was always likely to sidetrack the Conservative Party from the real dilemmas which it has faced in the post-war period. Despite his consuming interest in the distant past and his profound insights into the development of the British mentality, Powell had a blind spot when it came to the historical events which he himself had observed and partially shaped. The nationalisation of major British industrial concerns, in particular, could be regarded by a consistent Powellite as an integral part of the British story; after all, the pre-war record showed that the idea of state control had attractions for politicians who were anything but ‘socialist’. However, fuelled by an abstract interpretation of economics, Powell preferred to regard this instalment of British history as an aberration rather than a continuance of a narrative which began under the Tudors. Ironically, when Powell launched his far-reaching attacks on state intervention since 1945 he was granted a respectful hearing by members of a supposedly anti-intellectual party. Obviously abstract theorising was perfectly acceptable, so long as the theorist reached conclusions which chimed in with the untutored prejudices of the audience, on immigration as well as economics. Powell himself probably did not wholly grasp the potency of the intellectual cocktail which he tossed into political debate in 1968. His views contrived to square the political circle, mixing a spiritual longing for the past with approval of the narrow materialism of the present. But his social and economic thought was an exercise in pure escapism. Those who disliked the outward manifestations of modernity were invited to escape to the past, and those who merely wanted to enrich themselves could dream of swollen bank accounts thanks to Powellite tax cuts. Unlike Powell, they were unlikely to spend their surplus income on holiday tours of medieval churches. But in appealing to this constituency, Powell was beating moderate Conservatives at their own game. Butler, after all, had departed from his fairly austere view of life by justifying Conservative government in terms of material gain. In so many words, Powell was saying: ‘You’ve gained a lot since 1951, but you could be an awful lot richer than you have become, if only we trim the state back to its proper functions.’ It was a formula that Powell’s spiritual successors would put to even better effect, mainly because they were wise enough to avoid wrecking their careers on the subject of race. Heath had no alternative but to dismiss Powell from the Shadow Cabinet after his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968 – just as he had been forced to sack 172

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Angus Maude after his heretical Spectator article three years earlier. But the boil could only be lanced by two things; an electoral victory for Heath’s party, combined with a book which would, at last, justify the activities of the Party since 1951. The first of these was achieved in 1970, but the second never emerged. As Lord Blake noted, ‘The Conservatives did not win the [1970] election because they had won “the battle for the mind”: rather, the victory arose from a general discontent about high prices and sheer governmental incompetence’.4 The circumstances in which the Heath Government collapsed underlined the importance of the omission. Heath stood accused of having conducted several policy ‘U-turns’, when he had actually done no such thing. But his was a government of practical people and none of its members could provide the necessary intellectual defence against the coming storm. Heath himself took ideas much more seriously than his critics supposed, but never condescended to justify his position in print until, after much persuasion, he published his memoirs in 1999. Up to that point his most notable writings had celebrated his love of music and of sailing. Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1975 leadership election was a tribute to her own campaigning skills rather than her ideas; and if her opponents had produced a more convincing explanation for the Party’s problems since 1964 the outcome could easily have been different. Unfortunately for the moderates, one of their key supporters, Quintin Hogg (now Lord Hailsham, was now so alarmed by Labour’s actions and purported intentions that his warnings about ‘elective dictatorship’ (first broached in 1976) entirely overlooked the possibility that his own leader might one day exemplify his fears. The real counter-attack, typically, came too late. Ian Gilmour’s Inside Right (1977) was an appropriate warning against ideological excess, but by the time it appeared it was obvious that the fate of the ‘wets’ within the Party actually rested with Labour. If the Callaghan Government had been able to convince the electorate to give it one last chance, Thatcher would have been deposed in favour of a more compromising candidate. Thatcher’s arrival in Downing Street encouraged radicals like John Redwood to elaborate on arguments which the new Prime Minister had absorbed from Keith Joseph, who himself had borrowed them from others. Even so, the ultimate fate of Thatcher and her ideas depended upon re-election, which she achieved in 1983 largely thanks to the ‘Falklands Factor’. During her second term the wets mustered their remaining strength; but although they produced impressive arguments they were now heavily outnumbered rather than being outgunned intellectually. The old pattern of party competition had been overturned; it had become rather helpful for aspiring Conservatives to sport their intellectual credentials, so long as they could recite the approved Thatcherite mantras. In the late 1980s, young idealists like David Willetts filed into 173

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g­ overnment-supporting think-tanks as a preparation for careers within government. The Conservatives, it was argued, had ‘won the battle of ideas’; and after its third consecutive defeat in 1987 Labour started the long process of persuading its own supporters to accept most of Mrs Thatcher’s reforms. But dissident voices remained. There were some Conservative supporters who had always been uneasy about Thatcherism. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne proved to be an unexpected exemplar of Hailsham’s insistence that Conservatives should oppose dominant ideologies. Worsthorne was acutely sensitive to the cultural effects of Thatcherism, and found them wanting. Along with other ‘Traditionalists’ examined in this book, Worsthorne sensed that instead of arresting social change Thatcherism had accelerated it. Academic observers like Shirley Robin Letwin might claim that Thatcherism had really been about the reinstatement of ‘the vigorous virtues’ associated with the Victorian period; but Worsthorne knew better. The beneficiaries of economic policy since 1979 had not been the spiritual descendants of cultured Victorian gentlemen like Matthew Arnold. Rather, the spoils had gone to people who were very like football hooligans, only richer. From the perspective sketched out by Worsthorne, the Conservative Party had failed since 1945 to conserve anything of value. In ideological terms, it would be difficult to assign the ‘conservative’ label to any of the authors discussed in this book. Many of them were acutely aware of the traditions of the Conservative Party, and would have liked to emulate the flexible, empirical approach to politics of role models like Disraeli. However, they could not escape the fact that they lived in very different times. As a result, those who appealed to the ‘Conservative tradition’ found the sacred texts unhelpful long before Labour decided to stop talking about ‘socialism’. Thus, for example, in his time Burke – a close friend of Adam Smith – could be identified as an advocate of economic liberalism. But Burke lived in a relatively static society dominated by the aristocracy rather the unstable milieu of the 1980s in which the outlook of the nouveau riche exercised a virtually unchallenged influence. Thus, in the latter period a literal-minded Burkean was faced with the incompatible tasks of defending the existing social order while fostering the forces of instability. In this context, it is interesting that ambitious Conservatives put so much intellectual effort into attacking the European Community after Thatcher’s departure from office; although the discussions of ‘sovereignty’ tended to be arid and anachronistic, they were less likely to unsettle the Party’s rank and file than far-reaching investigations of the fallen leader’s domestic impact. Among the few Conservative politicians who have tried to rationalise and develop Thatcher’s legacy, David Willetts has provided the most interesting contributions. Whether or not his reading of the Conservative Party’s traditions was ever plausible, at least he made a sustained and sincere attempt to 174

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demonstrate that Thatcherism was not a radical departure. Since then, like the best of the authors studied in this book, Willetts has continued to rethink his position with at least one eye on the evolving party battle and changes in public opinion. It is particularly interesting that he is content to use the phrase ‘social justice’, since this was explicitly rejected by Conservative writers like Maude and Hailsham, whose ideas rarely coincided on any topic. However, despite the efforts of Willetts and others the question remains: what is the Conservative Party for? What is its purpose? If any convincing answers can be unearthed, the present volume, which covers a wide range of contributions from Conservatives since 1945, is likely to provide some valuable guidance. Relevance to present-day concerns formed no part of our brief in selecting our representative figures, but some speculation on this subject is irresistible. Ironically, a possible way forward for the Party is suggested by a significant omission from most of the speculations reviewed in this book. Postwar Conservatives have talked obsessively about the proper role of the state, but there has been little constructive discussion of the state itself. Even the socalled ‘wets’, in the course of their resistance to Thatcherism, tended to defend certain state activities rather than asserting the inherent virtues of government institutions. On the other hand, writers like Powell and Joseph – and Thatcher herself – clearly worked on the assumption that the British state would recover much of its prestige if it discarded inappropriate functions. However, this view was rarely articulated, and was obscured by Thatcherite slogans like ‘rolling back the frontiers of the state’. This line of rhetoric became so addictive among Thatcher’s successors that when Michael Howard made a declaration of principles in 2003 it sounded as if his main reason for seeking office was to defend the people from the government.5 This kind of thing obviously goes down well with Republicans in the United States; but for the British Conservative Party it must be counted as a very peculiar example of ‘statecraft’. A more sensible course for a Conservative Party trying to win back power is to criticise specific policies while expressing general confidence in the instruments of government. Reaffirmation of faith in the state suggests a return to Butler’s approach rather than Macmillan’s brand of corporatism. Butler is also of continuing relevance because of his belief that government should not restrict itself to material concerns. For Butler, as for Burke, ‘the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco … to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties’.6 Butler would never have followed Burke in arguing that the state should be an object of ‘reverence’, but he did think that it deserved respect because it embodied certain values. In turn, these imputed non-material values provided a rationale for aspiring politicians – i.e. they wanted to serve in government because the state was a 175

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positive aspect of the national life. Without this kind of view of the state, officehunting seems a purely self-interested exercise. This, of course, is an impression that the public has received since the Thatcher era, and New Labour has been unable to escape the taint mainly because it has proved no more successful than the Conservatives in propounding a positive view of the state. At best, it has merely boasted that the state now spends much more money than it would have done had the Conservatives stayed in office. When ministers announce new disbursements, it seems to be tacitly assumed that a certain proportion of the money will be frittered away. Whatever their other differences, this is a situation which no representative of the Conservative tradition could have greeted with equanimity. While Butler produced no single text to be consulted by the present Conservative leader, a selection from his speeches would certainly be helpful. Angus Maude’s The Common Problem is also relevant in contemporary conditions. That is not altogether surprising, since this was a tract ahead of its times. Maude’s scepticism about the idea of economic growth chimes in with existing Conservative Party thinking. Like Butler, Maude was concerned about the quality of life rather than statistical surveys of the standard of living. However, Maude differed from Butler in standing out against the materialist tide; while Butler found himself exulting over the rise of per capita income under Conservative governments, Maude continued to feel that politics (and life) should not be restricted to that goal. Ultimately he was prepared to risk his career because he wanted his party to offer the public something more than the promise that it would deliver goods and services more efficiently than its opponents. Despite the differences between the two men, changing circumstances have forged a link between Maude’s warnings about the dangers of economic growth and Butler’s positive view of the state. If public expectations about living standards have to be restrained in the near future – or existing comforts are to be withdrawn at least in part – then only a government which commands public respect can have any hope of delivering the message without suffering a heavy electoral backlash. In other words, if the present Conservative leadership is serious about the looming environmental challenge, it should start injecting a more positive view of the state into its rhetoric and policy statements as an essential preparation for power. Otherwise, any ‘green’ measures it might take after an election victory will be regarded with incomprehension and hostility, by a public which is accustomed to think that it, rather than its elected governors, knows best. If the Conservative Party consciously tried to rein in the consumerism which, partly thanks to its own efforts, has dominated since the 1970s, it would be following the advice laid down more than half a century ago by Quintin Hogg, 176

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and throwing its weight against a dominant idea. In practice, the Party has rarely followed that course – not even in 1979, when it was supposedly at its most radical. It can be argued that the fortunes of the Labour Party since 1979 are a further illustration of the dangers of swimming against the prevailing tide. Equally, though, there is a strong case for trying to anticipate a reaction against prevailing views, and thereby to seize the leadership of a new trend in public opinion. Of all the figures studied in this book, only Harold Macmillan and Enoch Powell can be claimed as trail-blazers of this kind; and neither example is auspicious. The lesson for the current leadership would have been endorsed by Rab Butler – to be in advance of public opinion in a ‘progressive’ direction, but not too far. Notes 1    Lord Coleraine, For Conservatives Only: A Study of Conservative Leadership from Churchill to Heath (Tom Stacey, London, 1970), p. 61. 2    M. Heseltine, Where There’s a Will (Hutchinson, London, 1987); D. Howell, Freedom and Capital (Blackwell, Oxford, 1981), and Blind Victory (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1986); C. Patten, The Tory Case (Longman, London, 1983); F. Pym, The Politics of Consent (Sphere, London, 1984); W. Waldegrave, The Binding of Leviathan: Conservatism and the Future (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978); P. Walker, Trust the People (HarperCollins, London, 1987). 3    T. Raison, Why Conservative? (Penguin, London, 1964). 4    R. Blake, ‘A Changed Climate’, in Robert Blake and John Patten (eds), The Conservative Opportunity (Macmillan, London, 1976), p. 2. 5    See M. Garnett, ‘The Free Economy and the Schizophrenic State: Ideology and the Conservatives’, Political Quarterly, 75:4, October–December 2004, pp. 367–72. 6    E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin, London, 1969), p. 194.

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186

Index Note: terms such as Conservatism and Conservative Party have been omitted as they ­appear throughout the book.

1922 Committee 15 Advisory Committee on Policy and Political Education 23 Alport, Cuthbert 23, 29, 30, 35, 74   A National Faith 29 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) 59, 67, 109, 114 appeasement 40, 41, 46, 50, 112 Arendt, Hannah 79 aristocracy 111, 115, 174 Aristotle 127 Arnold, Matthew 174 Asquith, Herbert 137 Attlee, Clement 13, 31, 42, 44, 46, 52, 55, 105, 171 Austrian school 159 authority 4, 5, 7, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 116, 117, 118, 129, 146, 147 Baldwin, Stanley 81 Balfour, Arthur 8, 24 Ball, Simon 8 Barnett-Wiener thesis 111 Barry, Norman 140 Beaverbrook, Lord 27 Benn, Tony 49, 149 Berkeley, Humphrey 58, 68 Beveridge Report (1942) 25, 41, 42 Biffen, John 64, 145 Birch, Nigel 59, 107

Black Papers 77 Blair, Tony 143 Blake, Robert 141, 173   The Conservative Opportunity 141, 143 Body, Richard 145 Boothby, Robert 9, 49 Bow Group 171 Boyson, Rhodes 143, 145 British Broadcasting Corporation 136 Brown, Gordon 143 Bulpitt, James 2 bureaucracy 93, 96, 101, 159, 163 Burke, Edmund 18, 44, 81, 82, 127, 174, 175 Burke’s Peerage 123 Butler, R. A. 1, 4, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22–39, 42, 49, 50, 59, 77, 106, 116, 130, 136, 157, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 176, 177 Butskellism 31 Byron, Lord 135 Callaghan, James 85, 131, 173 Cambridge Journal 6, 107 Cameron, David 6, 142, 156 capitalism 18, 28, 60, 62, 91, 93, 116, 160, 161 Carrington, Peter 86, 122, 124, 125, 133 Cash, William 145 Central African Federation 35 Central Educational Committee 23

index

Centre for Policy Studies 91, 109, 156 Centre for Social Justice 164 Chamberlain, Joseph 144 Chamberlain, Neville 8, 40, 41, 51 Change is Our Ally 30 Changing Gear 132, 133 Christianity 49, 53, 93, 112, 162   see also morality, religion Church of England 25, 64 Church of Scotland 162 Churchill, Winston 3, 12, 13, 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 31, 42, 45, 112, 125, 130 citizenship 69, 77 civic conservatism 156, 164 Clark, Alan 123 Clarke, Kenneth 142 ‘climate of opinion’ 92 Coleraine, Lord (Richard Law) 6, 22, 80–2, 83–4, 107, 169   For Conservatives Only 80, 81   Return from Utopia 80, 107 Commissariat du Plan 15 Commonwealth 59, 65, 66, 74, 145 Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962) 33 communism 28, 49 Communist Party 149 communitarianism 115, 160, 161 Community Charge 64, 133, 135, 141 comprehensive schools 19, 64, 77, 78 Conservative 2000 142 Conservative Centre Forward 134 Conservative Philosophy Group 114 Conservative Political Centre 19, 29, 47, 74 Conservative Research Department 23, 29, 30, 85, 121, 129, 132 constitutional reform 51, 52, 126   see also proportional representation co-partnership 27 Corn Laws 145 Corporatism 15, 107, 175 Cosgrave, Patrick 58, 68 Cowling, Maurice 1, 106, 108, 109, 111–13, 141, 156   Conservative Essays 108, 113, 114, 141

  ‘high politics’ 113   Religion and Pubic Doctrine in Modern England 109 Cranborne, Robert 132 Cripps, Stafford 55 Crosland, C. A. R. 77, 93, 169   The Future of Socialism 77, 93 Daily Mail 9 Daily Telegraph 85, 106 Davis, David 156 De Gaulle, Charles 17 Dell, Edmund 22, 31 ‘dependency culture’ 12, 54, 80, 92, 93, 97, 101, 144 devolution 52, 54, 65, 66, 68, 115 Disraeli, Benjamin/Disrealian 4, 8, 18, 19, 29, 30, 42, 48, 109, 130, 157, 174 Douglas-Home, Alec 20, 29, 36, 41, 48, 49, 50, 51, 59, 74, 91, 130, 171 Duncan Smith, Iain 142, 156, 164 Eastbourne by-election (1990) 135 economy/economic policy 3, 121, 133   see also corporatism, full employment, incomes policy, inflation, markets, monetarism, planning, protectionism, taxation, unemployment Eden, Anthony 14, 15, 32, 130 Education Act (1944) 24–5 Eisenhower, Dwight 12 Empire 64, 66, 68, 105, 108, 112, 116 Encounter 74 Englishness/English nationalism 64, 68, 146 ‘enterprise culture’ 64, 111 entrepreneurs 92 environment 79, 86, 175 equality 24, 77, 91, 95–102, 115, 131, 162–3   see also inequality Eton College 40, 122 European Declaration of Human Rights 53 Europe Economic Community/European Union 17, 59, 64, 65, 84, 108, 114,

188

index

       

115, 117, 118, 128, 134, 140–1, 144–52, 174 European Parliament 66 Exchange Rate Mechanism 114, 150 Referendum (1975) 66, 85, 149 Treaty of Rome (1957) 151

Falklands War 109, 113, 117, 122, 125, 133, 173 First World War 8, 18 Foot, Michael 135 Foot, Paul 58, 60, 68 freedom/liberty 4, 11, 12, 28, 44, 57, 58, 60, 62, 78, 82, 91, 95, 99, 100, 105, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116–17, 129, 143, 146, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162 full employment 22, 27, 28, 61, 79, 107 Gaitskell, Hugh 31, 32 Galbraith, J. K. 78, 159 Gamble, Andrew 75, 146 General Elections   1945: 2, 5, 13, 22, 25, 28, 42, 45, 52, 106, 170   1950: 29, 45, 157   1951: 31, 45, 76   1959: 17, 47, 171   1964: 59, 60, 65, 76, 171   1970: 65, 84, 128, 158, 173   1974 Feb: 2, 52, 59, 66, 84, 91, 108, 129, 131, 149   1974 Oct: 2, 92, 123, 129, 131   1979: 3, 59, 122, 125, 158   1983: 100, 134, 173   1987: 54, 174   1992: 150   1997: 142, 156, 158, 164   2001: 164 Gilmour, Ian 1, 2, 22, 23, 33, 36, 44, 50, 51, 63, 54, 85, 87, 100   Britain Can Work 133   Dancing with Dogma 123, 135   Inside Right 22, 53, 126, 129–32, 135, 173   The Body Politic 121, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 135, 136

  Whatever Happened to the Tories? 135 globalisation 148   hyper-globalism 151 gold standard 31 Gray, John 156, 160, 163 Green, E. H. H. 8, 20 Greenleaf, W. H. 18, 75 Griffiths, Peter 65 Grimond, Jo 136 Gulf War (1990) 135 Hague, William 135, 142, 156 Hailsham, Lord (Quintin Hogg) 1, 5, 12, 13, 20, 25, 26, 36, 40–56, 86, 124, 141, 157, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 176   ‘elective dictatorship’ 51–5, 124   Guilty Men 45   On the Constitution 55   One Year’s Work 42, 43, 45, 46, 51, 55   The Case for Conservatism 43–6, 47, 48, 51, 170   The Conservative Case 170   The Dilemma of Democracy 52, 53, 54 The Left was Never Right 45 Halifax, Marquess of 44, 129 Harris, Ralph 32, 63, 69 Hattersley, Roy 100 Hayek, F. A. 5, 62, 63, 82, 95, 96, 99, 156, 157 Headlam, Cuthbert 12, 27 Healey, Denis 169 Heath, Edward 30, 36, 41, 46, 50, 51, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 68, 73, 74, 78, 81, 84, 85, 86, 88, 91, 92, 114, 122, 123, 126, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 137, 143, 148, 149, 158, 172–3 Heffer, Simon 58, 68 hermeneutics 3 Heseltine, Michael 134, 135, 147, 150, 170 Hickson, Kevin 4 hierarchy 82, 123, 127, 146 Hitler, Adolf 12, 22 homosexuality 67, 108 House of Commons 41, 52, 146, 150

189

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House of Lords 35, 46, 51, 52, 80, 113, 135 Howard, Anthony 33 Howard, Michael 112, 142, 175 Howe, Geoffrey 122, 131, 144, 147, 150 Howell, David 170 human nature 81, 82, 93, 129, 130, 159 Hume, David 127, 128, 130, 135, 137 Hussein, Saddam 135

137, 140 Kinnock, Neil 100

ideology 1–6, 10, 18, 22, 53, 57, 82, 85, 86, 88, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 146, 152, 156, 158, 160, 163, 164, 170, 173, 174 immigration 33–4, 59, 65, 8, 69, 86, 92, 108, 112, 115, 158, 172 imperialism 59   see also Empire incomes policy 61, 63, 64, 84 individualism 12, 58, 80, 83, 109–11, 117, 144, 164, 171 Industrial Charter 13, 25–9, 30, 31, 170 Industrial Relations Act (1971) 131 Industrial Revolution 82, 84, 161 inequality 91, 93, 117, 144, 149   see also equality inflation 60, 61, 93, 107, 124, 133 Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) 63, 108, 142, 147, 158 intellectuals/ intellectualism 108, 169–70 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 67 Jarvis, Mark 34 Jay, Douglas 93   Socialism and the New Society 93 Jefferys, Kevin 31 Jenkins, Roy 34, 136 Joseph, Keith 1, 4, 64, 78, 81, 91–104, 108, 111, 113, 116, 130, 142, 158, 159, 162, 163, 169, 173, 175   ‘cycle of deprivation’ 97   Equality 93–9   Stranded on the Middle Ground 93 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 11, 18, 27, 31, 61, 62, 63, 77, 78, 133,

Labour Party 13, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 42, 44, 47, 48, 51, 53, 54, 59, 61, 62, 66, 85, 88, 93, 100, 106, 112, 113, 124, 126, 131, 135, 142, 143, 143, 150, 160, 163, 164, 169, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177 Lamb, Richard 15 Lamont, Norman 150 law and order 108 Law, Andrew Bonar 80 Lawson, Nigel 150, 156 Left Book Club 45 Letwin, Oliver 141, 164 Letwin, Shirley Robin 1, 2, 106, 109–11, 118, 174   ‘vigorous virtues’ 110, 111, 174 Lewis, Russell 58 see also Maude, Angus liberal/liberalism 18, 46, 82, 105, 110, 162, 163   economic 29, 57, 60–4, 78, 80, 81, 82, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 117–18, 128, 137, 140, 141, 144, 147, 151, 152, 156, 157, 164, 171, 174 social 19, 113, 137, 156, 164, 165 Liberal Party 16, 18, 44, 136 libertarianism 11, 54, 95 liberty see freedom Lilley, Peter 142, 145 limited government 54 Lindsay, A. D. 41 Liverpool, Lord 157 Lloyd, George, David 18 localism 164–5 Locke, John 76 Loder, John 9, 49 Lyttleton, Oliver 26, 31 Maastricht Treaty 66, 114, 142, 150 Macleod, Ian 29, 50, 60, 130, 169 Macmillan, Harold 1, 4, 8–21, 26, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50,

190

index

51, 54, 60, 66, 76, 81, 85, 91, 107, 116, 130, 157, 158, 170, 171, 175, 177   Industry and the State 9   Reconstruction 9, 10   The Middle Way 9–12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17–18, 19, 20, 26, 30, 46, 51, 109, 133, 157, 170 Major, John 17, 59, 63, 66, 109, 114, 118, 135, 141–2, 150, 156, 158 Marcuse, Herbert 80, 83 Marjoribanks, Edward 40 markets 26, 32, 57, 58, 59, 68, 69, 70, 76, 82, 84, 91, 92, 96, 97, 99, 105, 108, 109, 111, 114, 116, 127, 132, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 150, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165 Marlow, Tony 145 Marten, Neil 148 Marx, Karl/Marxism 77, 80, 93 materialism 175 Maude, Angus 1, 5, 15, 29, 30, 73–90, 128, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176   Professional People 75   The Common Problem 75–8, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89   The Consuming Society 75, 79, 83, 84, 86   The English Middle Classes 75 Maude, Francis 145 Maudling, Reginald 29, 50, 60 Medium Term Financial Strategy 61 meritocracy 82, 96, 128 Meyer, Anthony 135 ‘middle ground’ 81, 126 Militant Tendency 134 Mill, John Stuart 18, 83, 112, 136, 169   On Liberty 112 Mishan, E. J. 84 modernity 172 ‘mods and rockers’ 164, 165 monarchy 64–5 Monday Club 6 monetarism 30, 60, 61, 85, 87, 99, 110, 124, 125, 146

Mont Pelerin Society 147 morality 67, 82, 83, 108, 110, 111, 115, 137, 144, 160 Mosley, Oswald 9–10, 18 nation/nationalism 3, 5, 54, 57, 59, 64, 65, 67, 69, 105, 107, 108, 109, 113– 14, 115, 116, 127, 129, 148, 160   see also patriotism National Curriculum 92 National Economic Development Council 15, 17, 62, 63, 81 National Enterprise Board 143 National Front 149 National Government 10 National Health Service 63, 69 National Nutrition Board 11 National Plan 62 National Union of Mineworkers 117, 134 nationalisation 13, 26, 45, 62, 63, 69, 70, 143, 171 New Party 10 New Right 4, 6, 57, 58, 82, 84, 87, 91, 92, 93, 110, 113, 140, 146, 147, 152, 156–7, 163, 164, 165 Nicolson, Harold 12 North American Free Trade Agreement 150 Northern Ireland 59, 67, 108, 125 nouveau riche 124 Nozick, Robert 95, 99 Nuclear test-ban treaty discussions (1963) 48 nuclear weapons 67 Oakeshott, Michael 6–7, 18, 43, 80, 101, 127, 128, 129, 157, 160, 164, 171   On Being Conservative 171 One Nation 13, 29, 30, 31, 132, 170 One Nation conservatism 4, 5, 6, 22, 76, 91, 92, 93, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 115, 129, 135, 144, 156, 163, 165 One Nation Group 59, 74, 157, 170 organicism 157, 160 Osborne, Cyril 65

191

index

Owen, David 162 Oxford by-election (1938) 40–1, 46 Oxfordshire County Council 141 Parliamentary Secretariat 29 patriotism 45, 64, 105, 107, 112, 114, 117, 129, 145, 146, 165 Patten, Christopher 85, 132, 133, 170   The Tory Case 133 Patten, John 141   see also Robert Blake Pearce, Edward 15 Peel, Robert/Peelite 40, 157 Peerage Act (1963) 49 Penal Practice in a Changing Society (1959) 34 ‘permissive society’ 82, 105, 111 pessimism 115, 160, 161 Peterhouse College 112, 113, 115 planning 15, 26, 28, 46, 59, 62, 63, 80, 161 Plant, Raymond 100 Policy Exchange 6 Political and Economic Planning 74 Political Quarterly 75 Poll Tax see community charge polytechnics 40 ‘popular capitalism’ 110, 144 populism 169 Portillo, Michael 112, 142, 145 Post-war Problems Central Committee 23 poverty 12, 93, 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 144   see also ‘undeserving poor’ Powell, Enoch 1, 5, 13, 15, 29, 30, 34, 35, 46, 49, 51, 57–72, 74, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91, 92, 105, 107, 109, 112, 114, 116, 127–8, 130, 140, 145, 146, 148, 149, 158, 159, 170, 171, 172, 175, 177   A Nation or No Nation 108   Morecambe budget (1968) 63, 81   ‘Rivers of blood’ speech (1968) 51, 58, 59, 65, 68, 86, 92, 107, 172 premium bonds 14 Press Association 121 pressure groups 96, 101

Prices and Incomes Board 63 Prior, James 125 privatisation 54, 62, 63, 92, 110, 115, 140, 141, 144, 146 privilege 99 Profumo, Jack 17, 49, 75 progressivism 24, 41, 57, 70, 177 property 77, 131, 144 proportional representation 124, 136   see also constitutional reform protectionism 146 public choice theory 159 public-private partnerships 144 public schools 77 punishment 67, 108 Pym, Francis 124, 134, 170 Race Relations Bill (1968) 51, 86 Raison, Timothy 171 rationalism 80, 101, 128, 137 rationing 26, 43 Rawls, John 93, 159 redistribution 69, 93, 95, 162 Redwood, John 1, 5, 58, 92, 140–54, 156, 170, 173   Popular Capitalism 143 reform 6 Reform Act (1867) 112 regional government 48, 52 religion 43, 127, 137   see also Christianity, morality Republican Party (USA) 175 Rhodesia 74 Rippon, Geoffrey 133, 134 Robot 32 Roth, Andrew 36, 37, 58 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 93 Royal Society of St. George 64 ruling class 116, 117 Saatchi and Saatchi 87 Salisbury, 3rd Marquess of 3, 4, 113 Salisbury, 5th Marquess of 169 Salisbury Group 6, 113 Salisbury Review 114 Schoen, Douglas 58

192

index

Scottish nationalism 108 Scruton, Roger 1, 106, 113–15, 156, 161, 162   The Meaning of Conservatism 113 Seawright, David 30 Second World War 1, 3, 8, 18, 40, 41, 58, 95, 105, 106, 112, 130, 170 Seldon, Arthur 63, 69 Selwyn-Lloyd, John 8, 15 Shepherd, Richard 58, 70 Shonfield, Andrew 15 Siedentop, Larry 12 Single European Act (1986) 59, 66, 109, 114, 149 Skelton, Noel 49 Smith, Adam 76, 78, 82, 174   ‘invisible hand’ 82 Smithers, Waldron 27, 107 Soames, Christopher 125 social democracy 42–3, 60, 91, 93, 95, 100, 101, 151, 163 Social Democratic Party 100, 125, 133, 136 social justice 43, 55, 77, 79, 81, 93, 96, 100, 159, 163, 164, 165, 175 social market 162 social order 3, 4, 57, 58, 82, 99, 101, 102, 105, 107, 117, 118, 146, 174 social reform 3 socialism 17, 18, 26, 28, 44, 46, 47, 48, 52, 60, 80, 81, 82, 95, 107, 116, 128, 171, 172, 174 sociologists 81, 97 sovereignty   consumer 143, 159, 161   national 58, 65, 66, 67, 70, 118, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, 174 Soviet Union 12, 28, 43 Spectator 42, 43, 73, 74, 86, 136, 173 Spicer, Michael 147 ‘spontaneous order’ 82 Stalin, Joseph 12, 48 Stanley, Oliver 9, 26, 49 statecraft 2, 3, 144–5, 175 Stepping Stones 85 St. John Stevas, Norman 87

Suez crisis 15, 17, 46, 47, 64, 107, 136, 171 Suez Group 64, 74 Sumption, Jonathan 98 Sydney Morning Herald 74 Tamworth Manifesto 25 Tapsell, Peter 145 Tawney, R. H. 93, 96 taxation 97, 99, 131, 132, 144, 172 Tebbit, Norman 79 technocracy 128 Thatcher, Margaret 2, 3, 4, 5, 30, 32, 37, 53, 54, 55, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 77, 78, 79, 81, 85, 86–8, 91, 92, 105–6, 108–9, 110, 111, 113–14, 115, 116, 117, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 140, 141, 145, 147, 149–50, 151, 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 173, 175, 176   Bruges speech 114 The Right Approach 85 The Right Road for Britain 28, 30 The Strong and the Weak 29 The Times 9, 85, 121, 122, 129, 131, 134 think-tanks 106, 174 Third Way 163 This is the Road 28 Thorneycroft, Peter 42, 59, 60, 85, 107 Tory Reform Committee 41, 42, 55 Tory Reform Group 6, 20 totalitarianism 11, 42 trade unions 16, 27, 61, 63, 85, 93, 101, 107, 111, 114, 115, 117, 124, 131, 134, 146, 149, 158, 164   closed shop 61 tradition 5, 82 ‘trickle-down’ 97, 98 trust 161 Ulster Unionist Coalition 59 Ulster Unionist Party 66, 67, 108, 114 ‘undeserving poor’ 101 unemployment 60, 80, 88, 102, 124, 132, 134

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United States of America 67 universities 92 Utley, T. E. ‘Peter’ 1, 2, 58, 67, 105, 106–9, 118, 157   Essays in Conservatism 107   One Nation: 100 Years On 109   What Laws May Cure 108 Victorian values 136, 137 wage-fixing 26 Waldegrave, William 132, 133, 170 Walker, Peter 145, 170 Walsha, Robert 30 Watkins, Alan 136 welfare 4, 22, 54, 63, 79, 93, 97, 98, 99, 100, 106, 110, 111, 112, 116, 132, 158, 165   see also equality, inequality, National Health Service and poverty ‘wets’ 1, 30, 99, 109, 122–5, 131–4, 145, 157, 173, 175

  ‘dries’ 99 Whigs 44 White Paper on Employment (1944) 27 Whitelaw, William 123–4 Willetts, David 1, 5, 17, 26, 58, 155–68, 170, 173, 174, 175   Civic Conservatism 156   ‘death of conservatism’ debate 156, 163   grammar schools 156   Modern Conservatism 156, 157–63, 164 Wilson, Harold 35, 52, 62, 126, 128, 131, 170 Winterton, Nicholas 145 Wolfenden Report (1957) 33 Woolton, Lord 13, 27 World Federation 53 Worsthorne, Peregrine 1, 105, 106, 111, 114, 115–18, 134, 156, 174 Wyatt, Woodrow 123, 136 Young, Hugo 145–6

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