Margaret Tatcher

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British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century: An Emerging Ideological Tradition Author(s): John D. Fair, John A. Hutcheson and Jr. Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Winter,

1987), pp. 549-578Published by: The North American Conference on British StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4049474Accessed: 01-06-2015 23:23 UTC

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British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century: An Emerging Ideological Tradition*

John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr.

Lord Acton, one of the most formidable intellects of the last century, was a master of transforming seemingly complicated or contradictory principles into concise epigrammatic statements. Attempting to reconcile Edmund Burke's many liberal views with his reputed Conservatism, Acton asked why was Burke "not an entire liberal? How thoroughly he wished for liberty-of conscience- property, trade, slavery, etc. What stood against it? His notion of history. The claims of the past. The authority of time. The will of the dead. Continuity."' One of the most important lessons to be derived from Burke's writings- recognized by countless authorities as the wellspring of modern British Conservatism-is that Conservatism is not so much a system of thought or ideology as it is a general inclination and regard for history. The behavior of the Conservative Party has been governed by precedent and pragmatism rather than by rationalism and idealism. Words such as dogma, program, or even policy have never been part of its lexicon, whereas such words as spirit, tradition, or even "way" have more aptly described its approach to politics.

By the twentieth century the Conservative Party's preference for lessons from the past (in accordance with England's common law tradition) to any scientifi- cally derived formulas had gained for it the twin monikers of "the national party" and "the stupid party." But Conservatism does not claim to possess the "keys or the Kingdom," notes Ian Gilmour, an active politician and Conserva- tive theoretician. "There is no certainty about the route and no certainty about the destination. As Burke said of himself, the lead has to be heaved every inch of the way."2 Such is the way that modern British Conservatives, at least, have wished to perceive themselves.

Perhaps they protest too much about their non-ideological bases. In a recent overview of Conservative thinking from Burke to Thatcher, Burkean scholar Frank O'Gorman advises that "we should not take too seriously the carefully fostered impression of a safe, pragmatic, and thoroughly nondoctrinaire Con- servatism as the last word on the subject."3 Indeed, an investigation of printed

*Partially supported by a grant from the Auburn University at Montgomery Grant-In-Aid Program. We also wish to thank Professor Joe Thompson for his assistance in the preparation of this article. 'Acton Papers, MSS. 5376, Cambridge University Library. 2Ian Gilmour, Inside Right, A Study of Conservatism (London, 1978), p. 120. 3Frank O'Gorman, British Conservatism, Conservative Thought from Burke to Thatcher (London, 1986), p. xiii.

Albion 19, 4 (Winter 1987): 549-578 ? Appalachian State University 1988


550 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. works reveals that there is a greater doctrinal basis for British Conservatism in the twentieth century than most party members would willingly admit. However much Conservative writers stress that the party has no ideological commitment and that it is solely empirical in its approach to government, party literature reveals an increasing preoccupation with image and ideology that developed largely as a result of the emergence of the Labour Party (with its Marxist orientation) at the beginning of the twentieth century. The need to establish a firmer sense of identity in order to combat socialism led to an examination of the party's traditions and its role in society. A body of thought constructed largely around Burkean traditions was the first result of this striving for greater coherence and purpose. By the 1920s, however, program politics-a concept borrowed from the left-became the order of the day for Conservatives. The creation of the Conservative Research Department in 1929 was a further step toward the projection of an attractive public profile to face Labour's challenge. In mid-century the Conservative Party continued to condemn its opponents for stressing ideology, but at the same time it unwittingly developed what amounted to much the same thing in its own literature. For several decades the Conserva- tive program and style of leadership resembled those of the moderate socialists, and not even a successful right-wing rebellion and a new formula for governing in the 1970s could dispel these structuralist tendencies. By the Thatcher era the Conservative tradition had hardened into a full-blown ideological matrix. Rec- ognition of this development falls squarely into an historiographical trend that has become fashionable recently with the publication of The Invention of Tradi- tion by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger and in William McNeill's 1985 presidential address to the American Historical Association.4 Conservative tradition became an ideological commitment in the twentieth century to meet democracy's need for doctrinal clarity and to establish an identity distinct from that of the emergent left.

The convergence of at least three forces at the turn of the century began to impart greater structure to Conservative thought. In the first instance, there was a natural desire for greater clarity of ideas as the party faced a growing elector- ate in the late-nineteenth century. There was also a need to offer voters a positive policy, showing initiative and intent, to overcome the largely negative course of restraint and resistance to change that was characteristic of Lord Salisbury's administration. Finally, the addition of the Liberal Unionists to Conservative ranks by the 1890s brought about an infusion of programmatic politics from the

4Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983) and William H. McNeill, "Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians," The American Historical Review 91 (February, 1986): 5. Also see McNeill's Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago, 1986). For an earlier formulation of these ideas see Henry Steele Commager, "The Search for a Usable Past," American Heritage 16 (February, 1965): 4-9.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 551

leftward side of the political spectrum. From the party which had introduced the "Newcastle Programme" came the leader who had sponsored the "Unautho- rized Programme." Joseph Chamberlain, largely by force of his personality, would endow the Conservative Party with the ideological concerns of social imperialism and tariff reform, and an intransigent stand on Irish home rule.5

Chamberlain's contribution of program politics reinforced the party's response to the rise of socialism as a political force in the early years of the century. This ideological challenge was first evident in the general election of 1906 when the Labour Party returned twenty-nine members to Parliament and there were fifty-three working class M.P.s elected. The significance of this was not lost on Arthur Balfour, who wrote to Lady Salisbury that "what is going on here is the faint echo of the same movement which has produced massacres in St. Petersburg, riots in Vienna, and Socialist processions in Berlin."6 Conserva- tive popular literature suddenly shifted from warning of the "crying evils of Radicalism" to the need to "shun Socialism." A 1906 pamphlet entitled "What Socialism Really Means" warned voters that it would mean "the end of liberty- the Socialists would make every man a puppet and a slave to the Socialist god- the STATE. All men would become machines for the use of the STATE, their work parcelled out when and where the STATE thought fit and its results snatched from them for the purposes of the STATE."7 Then, during the controversy engendered by Lloyd George's 1909 budget, there was a misguided attempt to identify the radical wing of the Liberal Party with socialism, particularly in light of its advocacy of a tax on the increment in land values: "Mr. Henry George is the real author of the Budget," it was claimed, which aimed at "Confiscation & Robbery, Socialism Pure & Unadulterated.'8 The Liberals remained in power through most of the next decade, but beyond any confusion over labels it became increasingly evident that the principal force to be reckoned with was socialism.

5Those authors who have contributed most to an understanding of Chamberlainite Conservatism as a coherent body of thought include Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social- Imperial Thought, 1895-1914 (Cambridge, 1960); G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and British Political Thought, 1899-1914 (Oxford, 1971); Robert J. Scally, The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition, The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900-1918 (Princeton, 1975); and Alan Sykes in Tariff Reform in British Politics, 1903-1913 (Oxford, 1979) and "The Radical Right and the Crisis of Conservatism before the First World War," Historical Journal 26 (September, 1983): 661-76. Also see chapter two in Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton, 1968). 6Balfour to Lady Salisbury, January 1906, in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, 2 vols. (London, 1936), 1:438-39. 7"What Socialism Really Means," Archives of the British Conservative Party (Brighton, 1977), Series One, Pamphlets and Leaflets, Part Two, 1906/51, p. 1; and "The Duty of Conservatives and Unionists," ibid., 1905/116, p. 4. Originals are located at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 8"It is Henry George's Budget," ibid., 1909/109.


552 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. The first Conservative thinker to recognize the need to challenge socialist

ideologues on their own ground was William Hurrell Mallock, who took up the quest in the 1880s, while the Disraelian afterglow still shone brightly. He was induced to write by his belief that most of his party's supporters could discern virtually no intellectual merit in Conservatism; that it was "no more than a vague sentiment, healthy so far as it went, but incapable of aiding them in controversy with any glib Radical opponent." In his memoirs he relates an electoral canvass in which a local Conservative agent in Devon once replied to a question of "what the difference be between a Conservative and a Radical? . . . I didn't rightly knaw the philosophy of the thing, so I just said to 'un this: 'You knaw me; well, I be a Conservative. You knaw Jack Radford-biggest black- guard in the parish-well, he be a Radical. Now you knaw."'9 It was to combat this kind of ignorance and to instill some intellectual rigor to his party that Mallock sought to establish a Conservative system of thought on a scientific basis. "All that bears any semblance of organized thought or system has be- longed to the attacking party," he wrote, and "it has been met by nothing but an obsolete dogmatism that cannot even explain itself."'0 In Social Equality (1882) and Labour and the Popular Welfare (1893), Mallock advanced his principal contentions on how equality benefitted no one and that social inequality would eventually produce the greatest wealth and well-being for the community at large. The themes appeared repeatedly in all his subsequent works. His argu- ments succeeded to some extent in counteracting the statistical and polemical assaults on established institutions by the Fabian Society and other leftist groups, but they failed to generate any complementary intellectual responses on the right. Although Mallock may have foreshadowed the Thatcherite initiatives of the 1980s, his propositions were too scientific to suit the spirit of his own age's Conservatism.

By 1910, when the fifth Earl of Malmesbury, a militant tariff reformer, prepared his anthology entitled The New Order: Studies in Unionist Policy, Con- servative thought still had little coherence. Malmesbury pointed out the need for a "logical and intelligible system of political philosophy" to support his party's electoral struggles. "Unionism would hardly gain more even by the longed-for return of Mr. Chamberlain to the fighting line, or by the advent of a Pitt or a Disraeli to its front bench," he claimed, "than it would if some philosophical writer of genius were forthcoming to lay the permanent foundations of its twentieth century policy." Admittedly, his volume of essays by leading Conservative spokesmen was hardly the place for such a momentous undertaking; they pro- pounded "no logical theory" or program and were even "somewhat disjointed" 9W. H. Mallock, Memoirs of Life and Literature (London, 1920), pp. 20 & 157. '?W. H. Mallock, Social Equality: A Short Study in a Missing Science (London, 1882) and Labour and the Popular Welfare (London, 1893).



in their approach to issues of the day." Things were no better by 1912. "What does Unionism stand for?" wrote the Diehard leader Lord Willoughby de Broke to Henry Page Croft. "I confess I don't know. Tariff Reform and Imperial Preference certainly. But we want to form a definite plan for consolidating the Empire. . . . We want credit, reputation, courage, and a moral existence as a Party."'2 Likewise Pierse Loftus, a businessman and aspiring parliamentary can- didate, saw the need for his party to end its state of "drifting opportunism. The Citizen could never foretell what action the party would take on any one measure, because he did not know . . . what the principles of the party were."'3 On the other hand, Arthur Boutwood, another Conservative writer, pointed out in 1913 that the reason why modern Conservatives had "never developed a distinctive philosophy of politics, or defined a distinctive ideal" was because Conser- vatism itself was "a practical attitude, rather than a reasoned creed or an articu- late hope."'4 Quite true; reluctance to formulate party doctrines stemmed from a natural Conservative suspicion about the perfectibility of man and disdain for rational formulas. But it should also be pointed out that the very notion of the Conservative Party itself, in any modern sense, was still quite new, and defini- tions of "what conservatism is" were much less obvious than they appear to historians at the end of the twentieth century.'5

More typical of Conservative writings prior to 1914 was the work of several authors who began to extract some philosophical meaning from various Con- servative historical figures. An example is the series of biographical sketches which T. E. Kebbel, noted for his works on Disraeli and Lord Derby, composed into A History of Toryism in 1886. Remarkably, he made only scant reference to Burke, but his recognition of a pantheon of Conservative heroes, including Pitt, Liverpool, Canning, Wellington, Peel, Derby, and Disraeli served as a sort of model for twentieth century writers who would extract and blend various philosophical notions from the actions and words of these individuals.'6 Foremost

"Lord Malmesbury, 77Te New Order, Studies in Unionist Policy (London, 1908), p. 4. '2Willoughby de Broke to Page Croft, March 30, 1912, Croft Papers, Churchill College, Cam- bridge, W1/4. '3Pierse Loftus, The Conservative Party and the Future, A Programme for Tory Democracy (Lon- don, 1912), p. 9. '4Arthur Boutwood, National Revival, A Re-statement of Tory Principles (1913), p. 4. '5Recognition of the rise of the modem British party system, in fact, very likely began with the social scientific studies of Moisei Ostrogorskii, Democracy and the Organization of Political Par- ties, 2 vols. (New York, 1902); A. Lawrence Lowell, "Influence of Party upon Legislation in England and America" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1 (1901), pp. 321-542; and Robert Michels, Political Parties (New York, 1915). 16T. E. Kebbel, A History of Toryism (London, 1886). F. E. Smith follows much the same approach in Toryism (London, 1903) by employing extracts from speeches and writings of representative Conservatives from James I to the Duke of Wellington. Again, however, Burke receives slight recognition.


554 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. among these writers was Lord Hugh Cecil, a son of Lord Salisbury and Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

More than any other writer, Cecil discovered the treasure trove of Conserva- tive thought in the writings of Edmund Burke, and he stands as the first twentieth century author to publish a coherent statement of Conservative principles. The origins of Conservatism, according to Cecil, were to be found in the events associated with the French Revolution, against which Pitt was the "practical leader." But it was in Burke that "Conservatism found its first and perhaps its greatest teacher, who poured forth with extraordinary rhetorical power the language of an anti-revolutionary faith, and gave to the Conservative movement the dignity of a philosophical creed and the fervour of a religious crusade." Cecil did not condemn the libertarian and individualist ideas of liberalism or the state authority and social reform concepts of socialism-herein his differences with Conservatism were more a matter of degree than kind-but he remained opposed to each on principle. The inherent tendencies of socialism, however, made it the greater threat. There appeared to be in the socialist movement

an element of Jacobinism as the antagonist Conservatives have for more than a hun- dred years opposed. The Jacobin went indeed to lengths to which no reasonable socialist would dream of following, but there is sometimes a taint of Jacobinism in socialist language. We seem sometimes to catch the Jacobin accent of reckless disre- gard of private rights; of merciless hatred towards those who, perhaps through no fault of their own, have become associated with some real or fancied abuse; of that disposition, not gradually to develop one state of society out of another, but to make a clean sweep of institutions in the interest of a half-thought-out reform. It is in so far as these elements are present in the socialist movement that Conservatism is opposed to it. Conservatism arose to resist Jacobinism, and that is to this day its most essential and fundamental characteristic.'7

Just as Conservatism, then, had originally emerged as a reaction to the threat of tyranny during the French Revolution, a similar response seemed appropriate to the rise of socialism. And it was the great body of Burkean thought, with its emphasis on organic change, that provided an inspiration for the formulation of a modem Conservative philosophy.

Cecil's preoccupation with Burke and history was reinforced by Geoffrey Butler, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, whose 1914 account of The Tory Tradition continued the practice of hagiology. It was the result of a series of lectures he had delivered at the University of Pennsylvania on the four great captains of Conservatism-Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli, and Salisbury. "Away with the glosses of the Radical commentators, away with the books about books. 'Man kann nichts anders,' 'Back to Burke,' 'An open Burke.' He must be

'7Lord Hugh Cecil, Conservatism (London, 1912), pp. 40, 246-49. In his essay on "Lord Hugh Cecil," Arthur Mejia explores the religious and libertarian bases of Cecil's thought and confirms the influence of Burke (forthcoming in J. A. Thompson and Arthur Mejia, eds., Edwardian Conserva- tism: Five Studies in Adaptation [London, 1988].


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 555 the Bible of the pure and reformed Conservatism," claimed Butler. It was only by studying the great leaders of the past that Conservatism could be made intelligible for the present-"the Tory tradition is the Tory hope.""8 Keith Feil- ing, a young Oxford don, took another tack by using the device of a dialogue. In Toryism he spoke through Edward Franklin, a sage Tory man of means and leisure, who instructs his friends on the lessons of Burke and the great Tory writers of the past. Franklin defined the "genuine Tory spirit" as a "constant and deep attachment to the Crown coupled with a horror of uniformity of institutions and of economic formulas." He rejected socialism for its doctrinal quali- ties. But these were the properties he most found lacking in his own party. "The very accusation I bring against the present Conservative Party is that their policy is not dictated by any coherent body of principles: some of it is Whig practice masquerading as Tory principles, some of it is prejudice parading with reason, some of it vote-catching, claiming the name of policy."19

The irony of desiring most the very notion they found least attractive in socialism would plague thoughtful Conservatives throughout the twentieth century. That Cecil, Butler, and Feiling first reckoned with it, and that they were susceptible to socialist methods as well as critical of them, no doubt stemmed from their association with academic life. Together they imposed a greater degree of structure on Conservative ideas, not in the sense of a rational construct for some future utopia but of an ordering of practices from the past into a coherent and defensible body of thought.

The war years brought a hiatus to partisan politics and were noticeably devoid of theorizing on the nature of Conservatism. After the war the attack on socialism resumed in pamphlet and party literature. A tract entitled "Bogey Socialism and Real Socialism" warned voters not to be mislead by Labour protestations that it would not erect a republic, abolish titles, or close churches. "It is its economic demands that matter. The 'Labour' Party is going to replace individual enterprise, which has been a success, by Socialism, which, has failed wher- ever it has been tried."20 The intensity of this assault was magnified by Labour's emergence as the major opposition party to the Conservatives and by the defec- tion of many Liberals to Conservative ranks. As with the Liberal Unionists in an earlier generation, this development brought a further infusion of structuralist tendencies to Conservatism. It is hardly surprising that Conservatives adopted a more combative and principled attitude towards the Labour threat in the twenties and issued policy statements on such matters as unemployment, housing, for-

"8Geoffrey G. Butler, The Tory Tradition, Bolingbroke-Burke-Disraeli-Salisbury (London, 1914), pp. 59 and ix. '9Keith Feiling, Toryism, A Political Dialogue (London, 1913), pp. 96, 40-41. 20"Bogey Socialism and Real Socialism," Archives of the Conservative Party, Series One, Pamphlets and Leaflets, Part Three, 1922/47.


556 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. eign affairs, the empire, Ireland, trade and industry, and agriculture.2' Program politics became the order of the day.

Those who wrote on a more philosophical level, though no less cognizant of the socialist threat, approached these programmatic tendencies more warily. In an article in The Times on "Conservative Beliefs" in 1923, Edward Wood (later Lord Halifax) observed that his party had become "the only effective opponent of Socialism" and that Conservatives should "reexamine the intellectual foundations of their traditional beliefs. . . . Throughout the country men and women, of no fixed political allegiance, are eagerly and almost pathetically, inquiring for what Conservatism stands, and what message it has to give." Instead of pre- scribing any program, however, Wood retreated into the vagaries of human instincts-comradeship, independence, and reverence.22 More direct in its attack on socialism but equally indirect in formulating any campaign of action was E. H. Begbie's The Conservative Mind. Writing under the pseudonym "A Gen- tleman with a Duster," Begbie seemed to attack the socialist monster with a Burkean lance:

Conservatism is the very breath of English history. Modem Socialism is a mushroom forced by Russian atheism on the dunghill of German economics. The one is at least an element in every Englishman's patriotism; the other, the poisonous vodka with which international enthusiasts stimulate their blissful vision of a world proletariat in chains to a world bureaucracy. . . . The danger of the present time lies in a Conser- vatism false to its traditions and a Socialism masking its aims. Democracy may here very easily be confused.

Yet in order to "help people to understand and appreciate the fundamental principles of historic Conservatism" Begbie could do no more than present short biographies of leading Conservatives of his day. Sir Robert Home, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the late Coalition, most nearly approximated Begbie's views. Home wished the party's rank and file to exhibit "the same enthusiasm for Conservative principles as that which sends the volunteer missionary of Social- ism into the streets of great cities and even into the villages of the countryside." He also insisted that "the politician cannot live on negatives, and that to be anti this and anti that does not cut much ice; but he holds that an assertion and a re- assertion of Conservative principles is in fact an active and positive effort, and

2ISee such Unionist publications as "What Unionists are Fighting For," ibid., 1922/102; "An- swered, A Reply to Philip Snowden's Case for Socialism," 1923/19; "Why do Socialists call Them- selves 'Labour,' " 1923/29; "Socialists without a Practical Plan," 1923/109; "Socialism Cannot Cure Unemployment," 1923/120; "Employment, Trade, and Empire Development, The Prime Min- ister's Policy," 1923/123; "Five Points of Unionist Programme," 1923/13; "Unionist Six Point Plan to Help Employment," 1923/132; "Points from Three Programmes," 1924/47; "Looking Ahead, A Re-statement of Unionist Principles and Aims," 1924/198; and "The Young Spirit in an Old Party- Progress," 1925/1. 22Edward Wood, "Conservative Beliefs," 77Te Times, March 14, 1924, p. 13.



that it is far better to make this assertion than to attempt to outbid in detail the millennial promises of the Socialist." The leader whose views were least agree- able to Begbie was Neville Chamberlain. Ironically it was ultimately Chamber- lain, who saw much in socialism to emulate, who fulfilled Home's hope for a positive effort.23

In 1927 Walter Elliot, M.P. and occupant of various ministerial posts, published Toryism and the Twentieth Century, but there was little in it to indicate that the party had yet emerged from the nineteenth century or was prepared to handle contemporary problems in any deliberate way. Fully half the book is consumed with recondite details on the party's tradition, citing not only Burke and Pitt but John Hampden, John Wesley, and various episodes from British regimental histories. Perhaps the most atavistic display of reasoning is contained in his argument for the superiority of the English "twelve" over the metric "ten" and "five." The latter he regarded as

one of the most inconvenient numbers to figure with, since it can neither be divided into halves, thirds or quarters. The five-fingered limb was evolved millions of years ago to transmit power and not to reckon by. Therefore by practice many races have worked out a foot that should contain twelve inches, a shilling that should contain twelve pence, a day that should contain two periods of twelve hours, a year of twelve months, etc., etc., etc. Against this the rationalists still wage unceasing war-in the name of Progress.

To Elliot, Toryism was "first of all the creed of continuity, the knowledge that a generation of men is no more than a trustee in the name of the past for the sake of the future."24

The appeal of Anthony Ludovici, an author and sometime artist best known for his translations of Nietzsche, was also to history. In A Defence of Conserva- tism he disclaimed any intention to write a historical treatise, but his account is steeped in the traditions of the past two centuries. However much he avoided doing it himself, he saw the need to clarify Conservative doctrine for rank and file members who have "too often stolen a leaf from the Liberal and even the Jacobin book, or initiated policies which were not Conservative in spirit." As Hugh Cecil must have felt earlier, it was obvious to Ludovici that his party

laboured under the great disadvantage of having only a very sparse literature. Even historical treatises, ever since the Grand Rebellion, have been chiefly the work of Whigs. . . . Treatises on the principles of the Tory and Conservative faith hardly exist, and the student of these principles has to fall back upon the writings of Boling- broke, Burke and Disraeli, with possibly Pitt's speeches thrown in. Now none of these writers, except possibly Bolingbroke and Disraeli, ever set out to write a me- thodical treatise on Conservative politics, and the consequence is that, even with their

23E. H. Begbie, "A Gentleman with a Duster," The Conservative Mind (London, 1925), pp. 9, 41, 70. 24Walter Elliot, Toryism and the Twentieth Century (London, 1927), pp. 57 and 19.


558 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. works at his fingers' ends, the student is often in possession of mere epigrams and tags, rather than systematic doctrine. And the same holds good of modern writers. The majority of able penmen are either Liberal or Socialist.

The great weakness of the Conservative Party Ludovici perceived to be "the absence behind it of any thinking body, to which its active politicians could resort for enlightenment, guidance and ideas."25 Little appeared to have changed since the days of Mallock.

It was fortuitous that at the very time when Ludovici was making his appeal for a "think-tank," Neville Chamberlain was laying the foundations for the Conservative Research Department. Originally a Liberal Unionist, he shared his father's penchant for program politics, and sponsored numerous social reforms as Minister of Health in the 1920s. The Research Department developed out of the perceived need to formulate party policy for electoral purposes, chiefly in industrial, imperial, and social affairs, and thereby reverse the election defeats of 1923 and 1929. The institution resulted in a greater ideological commitment and contributed in no small way to Chamberlain's emergence as leader of the party. In 1930 he recorded that "it is an immense comfort to my orderly mind to have the Research Department in existence. I wish I knew a rich man who would give it a whacking big sum to endow it." No longer would Conservatives, with this capacity to collect, analyze, and disseminate information, deserve the derisive left-wing label of "stupid party." Furthermore, as its historian points out, the Research Department would serve as a training ground for numerous party leaders, including Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling, and Enoch Powell.26 Conservatism at last seemed to be entering the twentieth century.

With the advent of the second Labour Government in 1929 there appeared a spate of books which attempted to improve upon the definition of Conserva- tism.27 Arthur Bryant was inspired to write The Spirit of Conservatism by ques- tions from students at Stott College about why they were Conservatives. Bryant,

25Anthony M. Ludovici, A Defence of Conservatism, A Further Text-Book for Tories (London, 1926), pp. 75, 131-2, 245. 26See John Ramsden, The Making of Conservative Party Policy: The Conservative Research Depart- ment since 1929 (London, 1980), p. 52. Ramsden further estimated that the Parliament elected in May 1979 included no less than 25 ex-research officers as Conservative M.P.s. 27There was also a dramatic increase in the number of books on Toryism. Keith Feiling observed that "the intellectual genealogy of Toryism has been dissected of late with as much ardour and diversity as that of Communism or the English Church." Foreword by Feiling in R. L. Hill, Toryism and the People, 1832-1846 (London, 1929), p. v. Also see his History of the Tory Party, 1640-1714 (Ox- ford, 1924); Maurice Woods, A History of the Tory Party in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu- ries (London, 1924); Sir R. M. Banks, The Conservative Outlook (London, 1929); and Viscount Lymington, Ich Dien, The Tory Path (London, 1931). On Conservatism see A. A. Baumann, Burke: The Founder of Conservatism (London, 1929); and T. E. Welby, "The True Conservatism," The Fortnightly Review 133 (February, 1930): 178-183.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 559 like many previous Conservative authors, was indirect, identifying his party less by what it was than by what it was not. "It does not pretend," Bryant contended, "to expound a programme, to discuss the details of contemporary policy, or to represent an official view." It was "history" that provided Conservatism with "a practical creed for men."28 The concomitant notion of Tories as the natural leaders of the English people is a logical extension of this concept. For many Conservatives, the belief that they had no ideology had become in itself an ideology. Despite repeated denials that Conservatism could be molded into an ideology, philosophy, or creed, the frequent embodiment of the same ideas and leaders from the past into Conservative thought was having a crystallizing effect on it. Conveniently, there now existed a corpus of twentieth century writers- Stanley Baldwin, Baron Melchett, Geoffrey Butler, Walter Elliot, Austin Hopkinson, Ian Colvin, and Lord Hugh Cecil-who could be added to party luminaries of previous centuries for inspiration and guidance.29 When a need to counter Labour policy initiatives and the desire for greater voter appeal were mingled with this propensity for historical lessons, the inevitable effect was to induce greater structure to Conservative ideas.

During the ideologically-oriented thirties the threat of socialism continued to govern the course of Conservative thought. This was essentially the basis for The Rebirth of Conservatism by Conservative writer Dorothy Crisp, who sup- plemented her own polemic with spirited essays from young Conservatives at the universities.30 But the most rigorous articulation of Conservative thought thus far came from Professor F. J. C. Hearnshaw of King's College, London. He presumed to understand the "menace of socialism" by having previously published a study of it, in which he concluded that the "history of socialism in all its protean forms-Utopian, Marxian, Fabian, Guild-is a long and lamentable record of unrealised theories, addled experiments, and disillusioned dupes."3' His observation that Conservatism was the only practical alternative to socialism, since the demise of the Liberals, was by no means new. Neither was it new that socialism, with the resources of the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics, was far more analytical and explicit about its aims. What Hearnshaw did for Conservatism was to provide an etymology and rationale for Conservative intellectual reticence. "Compared with socialists, conservatives

28Arthur Bryant, The Spirit of Conservatism (London, 1929), pp. ix-x. 29See Stanley Baldwin, On England (London, 1926), Lord Melchett, Industry and Politics (London, 1927); Butler, The Tory Tradition; Elliot, Toryism in the Twentieth Century: Austin Hopkinson, Religio Militis (London, 1927); Ian Colvin, Origins of Empire (London, 1926) and Cecil, Conser- vatism. 30Dorothy Crisp, The Rebirth of Conservatism (London, 1931), p. 8. 31F. J. C. Hearnshaw, A Survey of Socialism, Analytical, Historical, and Critical (London, 1928), p. 327.


560 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. are as a rule conspicuously unready to state precisely what they believe and why they believe it." Conservatism, a defensive creed, "tends to be silent, lethargic, confused, incoherent, inarticulate, unimpressive. . . . From the nature of things, conservatism can never produce, and can never require, such masses of verbiage as are produced and required by socialism. For socialism is little else than literature. Destroy its tracts and its manifestos, and most of it vanishes into thin air. What remains is merely the lamentable record of its few disastrous experiments." Conservatism, on the other hand, rested on tried and proven historical realities, and Hearnshaw maintained that, given the scantiness and inarticulation of Conservative literature, the best textbook on British Conservatism would be the constitutional history of England-the works of Stubbs, Hallam, Maitland, and May.32 The essence of Conservatism should be seen as implicit within the development of the English nation.

Hearnshaw's account was traditionalist in the Burkean mold. Despite his in- sistence that Conservatism was a spirit and not easily reduced to a program, he recognized that many public statements on supposed Conservative principles during the previous decade had a Marxian rather than a Burkean basis. "They all, accepting the socialist lead, lay almost exclusive emphasis on economic concerns." For evidence he cited a policy statement issued in October 1930:

Rigorous economy; reduction of taxation; thorough reform of the unemployment system; effective protection for our manufacturing industries against foreign competi- tion by the immediate introduction of an emergency tariff; a guaranteed wheat price for the British farmer, combined with a tax on foreign malting barley, and the preven- tion of the dumping of foreign oats and other produce; a system to secure a definite market for home-grown and empire wheat; and, finally, concerted action with the dominions in order to promote the economic unity of the empire.33

Especially in a section entitled "The Problem with a Programme" Hearnshaw recognized, for the first time, that the more Conservatism was defined in programmatic and economic terms the less it was Conservatism. Unfortunately the very process of his making Conservative ideas more coherent and better able to counter socialist ideas on a practical level only made them more susceptible to theoretical dilution.

With the emergence of national socialism in Germany in the thirties, Conser-

32F. J. C. Heamshaw, Conservatism in England, An Analytical, Historical, and Political Survey (London, 1933), pp. 4-10. Hearnshaw traced the lineage of his own account back to the histories of Toryism by Kebbel, Feiling, and Woods, and to the formulations of Conservative ideas by Cecil, Butler, Banks, Elliot, and Bryant. See also William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, in its Origin and Development, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1874-79); Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II, 2 vols. (London, 1827); Frederic William Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1903); and Sir Thomas Erskine May, The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George the Third, 1760-1860 (London, 1861-63). 33Ibid., pp. 294-5, and The 7imes (October 16, 1930), p. 14.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 561 vatism faced an even greater ideological threat, made much more serious because it came from the right and appealed to many of the same values Conserva- tism did. Reginald Northam, a young barrister who later became Principal of Swinton Conservative College, pronounced Conservatism as "the only way." "Socialism is defeatism. So is Fascism. To introduce either system would be to admit that we are unable to cope with new conditions."34 In an anthology on Conservatism and the Future, Lord Eustace Percy, formerly President of the Board of Education, noted that to Toryism, "more than to any other school of political thought, 'totalitarianism' is, in principle, fundamentally repugnant." Another rising M.P. (and future Speaker), W. S. Morrison, echoed Hearnshaw in his regret that economics had intruded into public affairs. The Conservative Party, he alleged, had always been "very suspicious of any meddling with its politics by non-political people." But E. Thomas Cook insisted that the only recourse Conservatives had in the face of the more structured methods of their opponents was to become more structured themselves; that they should "lay before the electors, not at a general election, but (say) two years before it, a planned long-term policy, explicitly based on coherent principles." He recognized that the secret to the socialists' strength was regimentation of the masses by the party's tuning its appeal to "one constant pitch."

The material of their propaganda has been of the crudest, unsubstantial as a wraith, often a mere emotional appeal to the discontents of the underdog; but it has proved potent because it has been embodied in the actual and continual sacrifice by thou- sands of party workers . . . If they, with such poor material, have been able to do so much, there is ground for believing that a real policy, backed by all the resources of tradition and foresight which the conservative party have at their disposal, would enlist sufficient constant support to guarantee a government at least ten years of office.

Cook believed that if dictatorship was to be averted, the Conservative Party "must formulate its alternative much more clearly than it has yet done."35

It was the achievement of Harold Macmillan to bring about a reconciliation between the seemingly disparate principles of maintaining Conservative traditions and resorting to systematic preparations for national growth. Appropriately titled The Middle Way, Macmillan's 1938 book was a culmination of ideas on national planning he had been formulating since the mid-twenties with other Conservative M.P.s representing industrial constituencies.36 Macmillan did not

34Reginald Northam, "Conservatism the Only Way" (London, 1939), pp. 257, 273. 35E. Thomas Cook, ed., Conservatism and the Future (London, 1935), pp. 21, 43, 311, 318. 36Macmillan's ideas on social and economic development were first formulated in R. Boothby, Harold Macmillan, John de V. Loder & Oliver Stanley, Industry & the State, A Conservative View (London, 1927). They were then carried forward by PEP (Political and Economic Planning) in 1931 and "The Next Five Years Group" in 1935. For a discussion on how Macmillan's group was inspired by the ideas of Noel Skelton, M.P. for Perth, see W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, 4 vols. (London, 1983), 2: 247-248-volumes three and four forthcoming.


562 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. believe his new philosophy, based on Keynesian economics, was inconsistent with Conservatism. Indeed, it represented an evolutionary rather than a doctrinaire approach to the social and economic problems of his day. His recommen- dation for a modicum of regulated capitalism was based not so much on any abstract principle as it was on the Conservative tradition of applying knowledge gained from experience to the solution of current problems. He advocated a Burkean view that society should not be seen as a laboratory but as a complex organism, "as an inheritance of the past and a precursor of the future; as a changing and developing structure which must of necessity be modified and adapted to new circumstances." Britain, he insisted, "has been moving along the road towards economic planning for many years now in accordance with the traditional English principles of compromise and adjustment." It was only by pursuing "this middle course that we can avoid resorting to measures of political discipline and dictatorship."37

Macmillan's initiative brought about the so-called "New Conservatism" and shaped the party's development over the next thirty-five years. It could be argued, indeed, that The Middle Way even preceded any Labour manifesto as a harbinger for post-war planning. Though eclipsed by the Beveridge Report, it did at least serve as a basis for the Conservatives' Industrial Charter of 1947. This remarkable document, though adopting the style of socialism, drew a sharp distinction between the parties. "Socialists believe in giving people orders. Conservatives believe in giving people opportunity. That is the great difference between these two big Parties.' A bitter denunciation of socialism was accom- panied by a vigorous claim that planning was, after all, not out of line with Conservative traditions.38 In spite of its devastating electoral defeat in 1945, post-war Conservatism obviously had never resigned itself to defeatism or guilt for alleged shortcomings during the interwar period. Two years before the In- dustrial Charter, Quintin Hogg, a Macmillan protege who later served as Lord Chancellor under both Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, fought fire with fire by countering various scurrilous socialist publications point by point on the same level in The Left was Never Right. 39 By such means Conservatives began to resemble their opponents in style and eventually in substance. 37Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way: A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society (London, 1938), pp. 109-86. For commentary on this important statement of conservatism see also Macmillan's The Middle Way: 20 years after (London, 1958) and Winds of Change (London, 1966), p. xvi. 38"The Industrial Charter," Archives of the British Conservative Party, Series One, Pamphlets and Leaflets, Part four, 1947/36. Also see "The Right Road for Britain," 1949/27. 39Quintin Hogg, The Left Was Never Right (London, 1945). The publications which Hogg attacked most strongly were Guilty Men, Tory M.P, The Trial of Mussolini, and Brendan and Beverley. For other attacks on socialism, on a slightly different plane see Aubrey Jones, The Pendulum of Politics (London, 1946), pp. 30, 32, and the Marquess of Salisbury, "The Faith of a Conservative," Ar- chives of the British Conservative Party, Series One, Pamphlets and Leaflets, Part four, 1948/20.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 563 Despite Macmillan's claims of continuity, his gospel of planning departed

from traditional Conservatism in two important particulars-its emphasis on structure and its almost total preoccupation with economic matters. There still existed, however, a distinctive and distinguished body of Conservative writers who adhered to Burkean values. L. S. Amery, R. J. White, and Nigel Birch all reiterated the Conservatives' view of society as an organism, the impossibility of codifying its precepts, and the importance of history to any understanding of them.' Such an approach underlay what is generally considered the most reveal- ing statement on post-war Conservatism, made in 1947 by Quintin Hogg in Case for Conservatism. Relying heavily on Lord Hugh Cecil's Conservatism, Hogg denied the existence of any precise philosophy for his party and devoted chapters to "The Liberal Heresy" and "The Socialist Heresy." Conservatives, he said, see "no inconsistency in having opposed Liberals and Whigs in the name of authority, Socialists in the name of freedom. The ground is the same, but it is being attacked from a different direction. . . . The great heresy of our age is no longer self-interest, it is State Worship, and instead of the altars being ablaze in honour of Mammon, we make our children pass through the fire of Moloch." Successive chapters dealt with policy matters, but they were largely couched in terms of traditional Conservatism and freely laced with quotes from Cecil.4'

Much serious thinking was going on about the party's identity by mid-point in the twentieth century. Although it still clung tenaciously to the inarticulate traditions of the previous century, the structured force of socialism was driving the party forward along the path of ideology.42 Some of the most important contri- butions to Conservative philosophy at this time came from abroad. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, American writers demonstrated a strong anti- communist bias, but their views on British Conservatism were often objective and astute. Peter Viereck, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, attempted to define the Conservative position in Conservatism Revisited, The

4OSee L. S. Amery, "The Conservative Future, An Outline of Policy," ibid., 1946/68; R. J. White, The Conservative Tradition (London, 1950), p. 1; and Nigel Birch, The Conservative Party (Lon- don, 1949), p. 31; and a series of articles by W. L. Burn on "Conservatism" in the Nineteenth Century and After 141 (February, 1947), 57-67; 145 (January and February, 1949), 1-11, 67-76. A very young Peter Walker, who later held Cabinet rank under Edward Heath, recalled meeting Amery about this time and was strongly urged to read the works of Burke. Peter Walker, The Ascent of Britain (London, 1977), p. 14. 4'Quintin Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (West Drayton, 1947), pp. 13, 62. This blend of tradition and regimentation is echoed to a great extent in Conservatism, 1945-1950 (London, 1950) published by the Conservative Political Centre. 42A realization of the impact of Labour on the Conservatives was evident in the contemporary observations of Marxian theorist John Strachey: "If a man were asked to name the greatest single achievement of the British Labour Party over the past twenty five years, he might well answer, the transformation of the British Conservative party." A. Rogow and P. Shore, The Labour Government and British Industry, 1945-51 (Oxford, 1955), p. x.


564 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. Revolt Against Revolt, 1815-1949 and Conservatism, From John Adams to Churchill. Especially in the latter book he drew from the experience of Britain, noting that "so many authorities agree that hers is the most conservative temperament of all," which pervaded "the Labor party as much as the Conservative party. The result is to make her capitalists nondoctrinaire and her socialists gradualists." He dated the origin of Conservatism to Burke's publication in 1790 of the Reflections on the Revolution in France "in the same way that the birth of international Marxism is dated by the Communist Manifesto of 1848," and he recognized Hugh Cecil as "a leading twentieth-century philosopher of conservatism." Encapsulating the movement as an "ism," Viereck derived perhaps a more succinct definition than any previous author, considering it to be

an inarticulate state of mind, not at all an ideology. Liberalism argues, conservatism simply is. When conservatism becomes ideologized, logical, and self-conscious, then it resembles the liberal rationalists whom it opposes; it becomes a mere liberalism of conservatism. . . . Because conservatism embodies rather than argues, its best in- sights are not sustained theoretical works . . . but the quick thrust of epigrams.43

Likewise, Russell Kirk, America's foremost theorist of Conservatism, denied that it could be reduced to any set formula in a book incongruously titled A Program for Conservatives. The ideologist, he asserted, "is convinced that in his rigid closet-philosophy all the answers to all the problems of humanity are plain to be discerned. . . . He is the devotee, often, of what Burke called 'an armed doctrine.' His ancestor was Procrustes, and he is resolved to stretch or hack all the world until it fits his bed." The true Conservative, on the other hand, "knows that the economic problem blends into the political problem, and the political problem into the ethical problem, and the ethical problem into the religious problem."'

Conservatism could outwardly be perceived as a religion, but the forces that most mattered in the New Conservatism of the fifties and sixties were material- istic. In the early fifties there emerged three socialist-style supporting groups that would lend it structure and identity. The Conservative Political Centre, formed in 1947, sought to disseminate ideas within the party by providing party workers with general information through twelve area officers, organizing con- ferences and meetings (including a summer school at Oxford or Cambridge), stimulating discussion between the party faithful in the constituencies, and serv-

43Peter Viereck, Conservatism, From John Adams to Churchill (Princeton, 1956), pp. 10, 15-16. Also see his Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Revolt, 1815-1949 (New York, 1949), and Luigi Savastano's Contemporary British Conservatism: Its Nature and Content (New York, 1953) for similar views. "Russell Kirk, A Program for Conservatives (Chicago, 1954), pp. 3-5. See also his The Conserva- tive Mind (London, 1954).



ing as a publishing house. By 1961 the Centre had published over 225 titles.45 Secondly, in 1951 a small group of recent Oxford graduates at an east London Conservative club formed the Bow Group. It developed into a sort of Fabian Society for Conservatives, having as its object the promotion of ideas that were liberal and progressive, but without adhering to any collective policy. The group exercised influence through several dozen study groups, which performed research, and educated the public by means of pamphlets and its quarterly journal, -the Crossbow. Finally, the One Nation Group was founded in 1950 by a group of outspoken backbenchers to exercise influence over the parliamentary party. The effect of these three bodies, contended the Bow Group's Julian Critchley in 1961, was to change the public image of the Tories and to disprove the once fashionable leftist taunt "that to be both a Conservative and an intellectual was impossible."47 After nearly a century the Conservatives were still trying to divest themselves of the "stupid party" sobriquet.

The presence of these ginger groups, along with the theoretical orientation provided by Macmillan's Middle Way and the general acquiescence in Labour's collectivist innovations between 1945 and 1951, propelled the Conservative Party to a position somewhat akin to that of Labour. Conservatives merely presided over what they inherited, did not attempt to turn back the clock, and competed electorally for the middle ground. A drift, therefore, towards socialism and corporatism was a prominent feature in Conservative regimes from 1951 to 1964 and 1970 to 1974. An entire issue of The Political Quarterly devoted in 1961 to the Conservative Party emphasized its adaptability; an edito- rial introduction observed that "if a guiding principle must be looked for, it is simply the assumption, unquestioned at any level of the party, that the Conserva- tive Party ought to govern and will govern, even though there be no other principle to guide its course." Likewise Richard Hornby, Conservative M.P. for Tonbridge, stressed pragmatism. "Conservative principles, in fact, will not and cannot provide a precise and infallible guide to future conservative policy. Fre- quently these principles point in completely opposite directions."48 To Harvey

45Two of the most important CPC publications during this period were Enoch Powell and Angus Maude, eds., Change is Our Ally (London, 1954) and The New Conservatism, An Anthology of Post-War Thought (London, 1955). 46For example, see David Howell's Principles in Practice (London, 1961), a series of Bow Group essays for the sixties by Leonard Beaton, Alec Campbell, David Fairbairn, and Geoffrey Howe in which the party's principles are claimed to be "loose and unexceptionable." 47Julian Critchley, "The Intellectuals," Th7e Political Quarterly 32 (July-Sept., 1961): 267. 48"The Adaptable Party," and Richard Hornby, "Conservative Principles," The Political Quarterly 32 (July-Sept., 1961): 210, 233. An earlier special edition on Conservatism appeared in The Political Quarterly 24 (April-June, 1953): 125-209. William Rees-Mogg, in "The Personality of the Conservative Party," The Wiseman Review 236 (Winter 1962-63): 276-9, presents another typical view of this period.


566 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. Glickman it was the adaptability of Toryism and its receptivity to doctrine which enabled it to accept the welfare state after World War II. Collectivism and doctrinal concepts, Glickman argued, were as much a part of the Conservative tradition as was pragmatism.49 And David Howell, in an article in Crossbow, relished the way in which Conservatives had accepted the Keynesian framework of national economic planning. He rationalized, strikingly, that "planning becomes, in a sense, a means for doing without more detailed Socialist planning."50 This argument was simply a more explicit and updated version of the strategy of combatting socialism with socialism which Conservatives had been employing since the time of Mallock.

The Conservative Party's success in securing by such techniques a larger share of the political middle ground was called "Butskellism" in the later fifties and early sixties when R. A. Butler and Hugh Gaitskell dominated policy formation in the Conservative and Labour parties respectively. It resulted in three successive (and incremental) electoral victories and coincided with an upturn in trade and a comparative "age of affluence." The most troubling feature of this consensus style for Conservatives was its acceptance of materialist concerns as the basis for the conduct of government. The Common Problem recognized in his book of that title by Angus Maude, a former Director of the CPC, was that "the primacy of economics" had "usurped almost the entire field of politics."5 Confronted by this time with the post-industrial phenomenon of "stagflation," British politicians had become absorbed by the more bureaucratic notions of technical efficiency, statistics, and techniques, forsaking Churchill's admonition that "the role of the expert is not to be on top but on tap."52 To Frederick Hayek's observation in 1960 that "it has been regularly the conservatives who have compromised with socialism and stolen its thunder," David How- ell retorted from the vantage point of the Bow Group that "the economics of the right . . . continue to be shot through with what the Germans used to call Manchesterismus, the very antithesis of Toryism, combined with the stark stric-

49Harvey Glickman, "The Toryness of English Conservatism," The Journal of British Studies 1 (November, 1961): 111-43. Glickman hastened to add, however, that "receptivity to a lTdor mer- cantilist conceptions of the role of government should not be magnified into reformist zeal, or worse, into notions of Tory Utopianism. Although Toryism entails identifiable beliefs about the nature of society, it remains merely a simulacrum of an ideology." 50David Howell, "Modern Conservatism in Search of Its Principles," Crossbow 6 (July-Sept., 1963): 24. W. L. Burn's chapter on "The Conservative Tradition and Its Reformulations" in Henry R. Winkler, ed., Twentieth-Century Britain: National Power and Social Welfare (New York, 1976), stresses the adaptive and accommodative nature of Conservatism, and represents a considerable advance in his thinking on the nature of Conservatism from his post-war articles. 51Angus Maude, The Common Problem (London, 1969), p. 273. 52Cited in Philip Norton and Arthur Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London, 1981), p. 73.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 567 tures of professors Hayek and Friedman."53 It was equally obvious, however, that the left and the right wings within the Conservative Party were well advanced in their acceptance of the divergent concerns of economics and ideology.

The bases for an intraparty rift had been laid as early as Hayek's publication of The Road to Serfdom in 1944.54 It slowly became a reality after the Conserva- tive defeat in 1964 and reached a climax a decade later with the two electoral defeats in 1974. The first prominent party member to repudiate the "middle ground" was Lord Coleraine, Bonar Law's son, in For Conservatives Only.55 But there was a growing sense within the party in general that the policy of the Macmillan years, so closely akin to socialism, was bankrupt, as Britain experi- enced relative decline and a host of economic woes. There was also a heightened awareness of the menace of socialism as the party gravitated from the New Conservatism to the even more ideologically based politics of the "New Right." This shift took place during the Edward Heath administration from 1970 to 1974, which was permeated with socialistic tendencies. Heath professed a kind of moderate Conservatism characteristic of Macmillan, but he was forced to adopt the "Selsdon Man" approach, which required a large degree of state intervention in the form of an incomes policy.56

The failure of the Industrial Relations Act either to control inflation or break the power of unions resulted in the party's downfall in 1974 and the rise of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader in 1975. The importance of this change in leadership in the Conservatives' emerging ideological tradition cannot be understated. By her emphatic rejection of Keynesian economics, advocacy of monetarist economic policies, and emphasis on freedom from state interference, Thatcher clearly advanced to the intellectual vanguard of British politics. "I feel," she boasted in the foreword to Robert Blake's Conservatism in an Age of Revolution, "that at long last Conservatives are winning the ideological battle against Socialism."57 In 1977 Robert Behrens even labelled the resultant Con- servative search for identity in terms of ideology.

The twin circumstances of national decline and Party electoral failure have precipi- tated a retreat (or an advance) by Conservatives into a discussion concerning the nature of Conservatism. Much of the debate has taken the form of a search for what is called "true" or "authentic" Conservatism. . . . It derives from those transcendent notions which are said to constitute the Conservative ideology.

53Howell, "Modern Conservatism," p. 25. 54Frederick Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London, 1944). 55Lord Coleraine, For Conservatives Only (London, 1970). 56For studies on Heath and his approach to politics see George Hutchinson, Edward Heath, A Personal and Political Biography (London, 1970), and Andrew Roth, Heath and the Heathmen (London, 1972). 57Robert Blake, Conservatism in an Age of Revolution (London, 1976), p. 3.


568 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. The most recognizable feature of Conservative rhetoric, according to Behrens, was its emphasis on "freedom." From this position Tories denied that there was "any substantial difference between the policies of the Labour Party and Marx- ism." At the 1976 annual conference, Thatcher declared that "the dividing line between the Labour Party programme and Communism is becoming harder and harder to detect," and Michael Hesseltine declared that the "red flag has never flown throughout these islands yet.... It is only our party that can keep it that way." It was the Soviet press, after all, that first dubbed Margaret Thatcher "the Iron Lady" for her defense speech in Kensington in January 1976.58

Party moderates regarded these new posturings as regrettable and out of keeping with the Burkean traditions of Conservatism. Even as late as 1977 it was still possible for most Conservatives to believe that "any account of conservatism as a political theory must start with, and largely consist of, Burke's thought."59 What Burke was attacking, said Peter Walker, a close associate of Heath, "was very much like the ideology of Marxist, socialist, or believer in extreme laissez- faire of our own day. For, just as in the eighteenth century men believed that the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment enabled them to plan the future development of society, so, in our own time, the development of Marxism has led many to believe that politics can be reduced to ideology." Walker urged the restoration of the single nation tradition of Burke, Disraeli, Chamberlain, and Macmillan which "rejects dangerous doctrines; it is a tradition that Britain needs to turn to today more urgently than at any time in our history."' On the other hand, Rhodes Boyson, a recent convert from socialism, argued in Centre Forward that the Thatcherite position was fully in keeping with Burkean traditions. Just as Burke had reacted to the threat of the French Revolution, "a revised broad Conservatism" was emerging in Boyson's view as a "reaction to the growth of Marxist ideas and the armed threat of the brutal repressive Soviet empire. There is once again an internal ideological and an external military threat which should bring us to realize what we stand to lose: our freedom and our lives." Attacking the former party leadership as much as he did the socialists, Boyson maintained that the "real centre ground" in the views of the elec- torate on most issues was "twenty degrees to the right of the Conservative Party. The voters have not left us. We have left them."6'

The strongest expression of "New Right" views was contained in a volume of Conservative Essays produced by the Salisbury Group, a collection of scholars

58Robert Behrens, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1974-1977-a critical analysis (Coventry, 1977, pp. 3, 18, 21. 59R. J. Bennett, "The Conservative Tradition of Thought: A Right Wing Phenomenon?" in N. Nugent and R. King, The British Right: Conservative and Right Wing Politics in Britain (Westmead, 1977), p. 14. 6OWalker, Ascent of Britain, pp. 14, 39. 61Rhodes Boyson, Centre Forward, A Radical Conservative Programme (London, 1978).


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 569 sharing a common association with Peterhouse, Cambridge.62 Maurice Cowling, the editor, explained that Thatcher grew up in the late forties and early fifties, and reflected "the antitotalitarianism invented at that time by writers like Hayek, Popper, Talmon, and Berlin," though it was hardly their intention that their ideas should be appropriated by the Conservative right. Likewise her use of Adam Smith was "partly to play a respectable theoretical name against Marx." Cow- ling regarded Lord Salisbury, whom he called the "giant of conservative doctrine," as a much more appropriate model, whose traditional Tory views evoked more sympathy than Thatcher's classical liberal tendencies.

Thatcher's doctrinaire approach to party politics had a strong appeal, and Cowling looked approvingly on the reentry of the intellectual into politics. "It used to be implied-it was one of the most important assumptions of post-war Conservatism-that the intelligentsia had done enough damage and should now keep quiet. In face of Cole, Laski, Strachey and Tawney and in the shadow of Churchillian reassurance, this was an understandable reaction."63 The intellectual bases for the "New Right" were sketched with sympathetic irony by T. E. Utley's essay on "The Significance of Mrs. Thatcher":

On the one hand, we are told, there is Sir Keith Joseph and his intellectual Mafia. This is represented as a group of dedicated fanatics wholly outside the authentic English Conservative tradition and committed to a total reorganization of society on the basis of the principles of classical liberalism as understood by the populist inter- preters of Professor Hayek. Sir Keith is portrayed as sitting in a private office in Westminster, surrounded by remorseless academics, of alien spiritual ancestry, pre- paring the establishment of a liberal Utopia in Britain.

Although Utley made light of the new doctrinaire quality of Conservatism, he did admit that the circumstances of Thatcher's rise "made it easy for her to become a prisoner of a faction." Her interests in economic and fiscal matters were derived largely from her tax lawyer training, and she rose to the leadership as an understudy of Sir Keith Joseph, an Oxford don. Utley insisted, unconvinc- ingly, that despite these ideological inclinations Thatcher "is an instinctive and wholly English Conservative" who possibly has "less need of support from busy pamphleteers, think tanks, seminars and research than she has been led to suppose."'

Other authors in Cowling's group were less assured of the authenticity of Thatcher's Conservatism. John Casey, in "Tradition and Authority," insisted that

62See David Edgar's elaboration on "The Peterhouse School" in Ruth Levitas, ed., The Ideology of the New Right (Oxford, 1986). 63Maurice Cowling, Conservative Essays (London, 1978), pp. 2, 19, 21-22. According to Cowling, "the giant of conservative doctrine is Salisbury, with Churchill, Eliot, Disraeli, Waugh and Burke in the 1790s best thought of as trailing in his wake. Yet all of these (except perhaps Burke) are inadequate." 64Ibid., pp. 41-2, 50.


570 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr.

the "conservative temperament is at present much more beset and challenged by liberalism than it is by Marxism," and that "the liberal position is at present being taken within the Conservative party, where it is mistaken for some sort of authentic Toryism."65 Peregrine Worsthorne, Fellow of Gonville and Caius Col- lege, Cambridge, even asserted that there was "too much freedom" and that Thatcher's view of Labour as an agency for authoritarianism was the opposite of reality. What the Labour Party stood for, Worsthorne declared, was a collapse of authority and discipline, and there was actually little danger of totalitarian despotism.

The real cause of the growing disillusionment with British Socialism has very little to do with its threat to individual freedom, and a very great deal to do with its failure to discipline the social forces it has unleashed. The underlying fear is of a collapse of authority, of having to live in a leaderless society that is being allowed to spin into chaos; of being the passive victims of a growing licence in private and public life, of being preyed upon by corruption and profligacy; of there being no escape from the very ills to which the Iron Curtain countries are not at all prone. Britain is not the Soviet Union, and when Mrs. Thatcher bends her knee to Solzenytsin, she is wor- shipping at the wrong shrine and going wrong where George Orwell went so wrong with his nightmare predictions of 1984. The spectre haunting most ordinary people in Britain is neither of a totalitarian state nor of Big Brother, but of other ordinary people being allowed to run wild. What they are worried about is crime, violence, disorder in the schools, promiscuity, idleness, pornography, football hooliganism, vandalism and urban terrorism. The film Clockwork Orange, with its terrible portrait of a gang of juvenile thugs bereft of all moral restraint, terrorizing the old and the weak without mercy, is what most people fear today.16

Nevertheless it was clear that the authors of Conservative Essays were more supportive of Thatcher's embrace of classical liberalism than Edward Heath's flirtations with socialist traditions.

Moderates and extremists at least agreed that the Conservative Party, which traditionally stressed unity, was very divided, and that this had come about because of a greater preoccupation with ideological matters. In The Tory Party, Trevor Russell emphasized the uniqueness of this situation. "On only a few occasions during the last century have the reactionaries actually dictated Con- servative policies: contrary to the claims of the Right, the self-appointed guard- ians of the so-called 'true Toryism,' successive Conservative leaders and governments have seldom been motivated by ideology, dogma or doctrine." Rus- sell praised the moderation of Macmillan and Butler, and heaped contumely on the reactionary tendencies of Salisbury and Balfour. "The dream of Tory reactionaries has always been to stop the clock, then turn back the hands of time.

65Ibid., p. 84. 66ibid., pp. 148-50.



Now, they are in their strongest position for perhaps fifty years to try to do S0.267 Less willing to admit the ideological course in which his party was moving was Ian Gilmour: "Conservatives avoid ideology because they have seen that all ideologies are wrong" and suspect that "the adoption of an ideology would make them a party based on class:' The closest the Conservative Party had ever come to an ideologue, noted Gilmour, was Enoch Powell.68 Yet it was the free market strategies introduced by Powell in the 1960s that were the entree for the ideas of Joseph and Thatcher. Powellism, in effect, became Thatcherism.69

The dilemma that confronted Conservatives in the seventies, according to Noel O'Sullivan, was by no means new. "Whether the party would indeed be able to proceed 'in the spirit of the old constitution" or whether it would not (in the face of the socialist challenge identified by Mallock) have to find some other means of holding the nation together, was the problem to be faced by British conservatism in the twentieth century." O'Sullivan believed the time had come to remove the "mistaken prejudice" that

conservatism is not really an ideology at all, but merely a collection of emotional and pragmatic responses to change by men who are either too indolent to face a new world, or else too complacent to risk sacrificing one which they have a vested interest in preserving. In practice, of course, a conservative ideology involves emotional and pragmatic responses to change, but then so does every other political ideology. The main point, however, is that a conservative political commitment is just as capable of being defended in the light of a philosophical view of the nature of man, of society, and of the world as is a liberal or socialist one.70

Coinciding with O'Sullivan's exhortations, there was a concerted effort amongst those who were receptive to the party's new direction and commitment to discredit previous traditions as unconservative. R. J. Parlett, in Conserva- tism, The Standpoint of a Rank & File Tory, admitted in 1976 that although

67Trevor Russell, The Tory Party, Its Policies, Divisions and Future (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 7, 9, 12. Other assessments of the Conservative Party prior to its resumption of power in 1979 are included in Philip Vender Elst, "Radical Toryism-The Libertarian Alternative," Political Quarterly 46 (January-March, 1975): 65-72; Lord Blake and John Patten, The Conservative Opportunity (London, 1976); Robert Eccleshall, "English Conservatism as Ideology," Political Studies 25 (March, 1977): 62-83; William Waldegrave, The Binding of Leviathan, Conservatism and the Fu- ture (London, 1978); Robert Behrens, "Diehards and Ditchers in Contemporary Conservative Poli- tics," Political Quarterly 50 (July-September, 1979): 286-95; and Zig Layton-Henry, ed., Conservative Party Politics (London, 1980). 68Gilmour, Inside Right, pp. 132-33. 69For studies on Powell and Powellism see T. E. Utley, Enoch Powell, The Man and His Thinking (London, 1968); Andrew Roth, Enoch Powell, Tory Tribute (London, 1970); Douglas E. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (New York, 1977); and Roy Lewis, Enoch Powell, Principles in Politics (London, 1979); and Greenleaf, British Political Tradition, 2: 316-326. 70Noel O'Sullivan, Conservatism (London, 1976), p. 118 and 31.


572 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. Tories "acquiesced in left-wing policies" during the previous thirty years, there was "a gut reaction that it would prove the ruin of the country in the end."7' David Howell, reversing his stance of twenty years earlier, agreed that "the more one thinks about the Tory tradition the odder this post-war episode in Tory thinking becomes." Conservatives of the Macmillan years, he claimed, were preoccupied with "a Whitehall world of institutions and bureaucracies and supposed classes and class interests, playing court politics with a vengeance," and were "tossing aggregate abstract concepts about, shunting around things called 'demand,' 'the working class,' 'employment,' 'growth,' 'investment,' 'manufacturing industry,' as though they could, by being placed in proper magical se- quence, generate creative activity and prosperity all on their own." The current retreat from that position, argued Howell, was "not because we have read a few books-Adam Smith, Hayek, Friedman-and have been converted. It is because the certainties of the past thirty years can no longer be taken for granted. It is because things have not worked out as we were promised they would."72 Of all the voices clamoring to lend an aura of historical credibility to Thatcher's new course, perhaps the most formidable was that of Robert (later Lord) Blake, the biographer of Disraeli and Bonar Law. Ironically, in Conservatism in an Age of Revolution he spoke more in the tone of a party ideologue than of Burke, pro- posing that "Butskellism" should end and that the British people should be set free. It was not so much revolutionary movements staged by other countries which threatened Britain, wrote Blake, but "rather the dark forces of barbarism from within" and omnipotence of the state.73

Socialist writers have been perhaps most sensitive to the changes wrought by the new right and most adept at describing them. Contrary to the reluctance of many Conservatives to admit their party's doctrinal character, Labourites increasingly labelled the new movement "Thatcherism" and repeatedly referred to it as an ideology. "Thatcherite ideology and practice" was examined in a series of lectures given by a group of Christian socialists called the Jubilee Group in 1980. In "The Changing Face of Toryism," Eric Heffer, a left-wing Labour M.P. argued that the Conservative Party was possessed of a group of ideologists who "proclaim a positive 'conservative' philosophy." He sported with the Con- servatives' internal rifts by quoting the scathing remarks of Julian Critchley in an unsigned article in The Observer:

Mrs Thatcher is didactic, tart and obstinate. Her economic policies are "Thatcherite" rather than Conservative, for her Treasury team have placed the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement up on a pedestal. . . . We are suffering

7'R. J. Parlett, Conservatism, The Standpoint of a Rank & File Tory (Cobham, 1976), p. 16. 72David Howell, The Conservative Tradition and the 1980s, Three Gifts of Insight Restored (London, 1980), pp. 1-4. 73Robert Blake, Conservatism in an Age of Revolution, pp. 3, 8.


British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century 573 from "'A" level economics. In consequence of this new ideology, economics have been elevated above politics . .. and it cannot be long before the Conservative Party will be obliged to pay the price.

To Heffer, the Thatcherite Tories were outside the tradition not only of Macmil- lan, Butler, and Macleod, but also Disraeli and other great Tory figures. "They are, despite being designated by some as the 'true Tories,' actually a new brand of Right-wing radical Tories, whose thinking is not pragmatic but is dominated by dogma and ideology."74

This harsh assessment was reinforced by a host of articles that appeared in Marxism Today from 1979 to 1983 and were collected by Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques into The Politics of Thatcherism. A common theme is that the Thatcher ideology arose as a common sense reaction to an economic and social crisis resulting from the break-down of the social-democratic consensus.

The main reference points of the postwar political settlement-already weakened and eroded in fact under successive Labour governments-have been contested in principle. One after another the old landmarks-full employment, welfare state support, equality of opportunity, the "caring" society, neo-Keynesian economic management, corporatist incomes policies-have been reversed. In their place a new public philosophy has been constructed, rooted in the open affirmation of "free market values"- the market as the measure of everything-and reactionary "Victorian" social values-patriarchalism, racism and imperialist nostalgia. The whole shift towards a more authoritarian type of regime has been grounded in the search for "Order" and the cry for "Law" which arises among many ordinary people in times of crisis and upheaval-and which has been dovetailed into the imposition of authority from above.

Editor Hall contended that these new elements did not just "emerge"-"they have to be constructed. Political and ideological work is required to disarticulate old formations, and to rework their elements into new ones." The Thatcherite system was consciously aggressive, innovative, combative, and populist. Hall credits Thatcher's "translation of a theoretical ideology into a popular idiom" as a "major political achievement," and recognizes "the conversion of hard-faced economics into the language of compulsive moralism" as "the centerpiece of this transformation.""5 It arose as a stern remedy to a national crisis perceived to have been abetted by earlier compromises with socialism and which was incapable of solution by any stock Conservative methods.

The most recent socialist pronouncement on the new right, composed by Ruth Levitas in 1986, recognized that the present upsurge in ideological Conserva-

74Eric Heffer, "The Changing Face of Toryism," in Kenneth Leech, ed., Thatcherism (Milton Keynes, 1980), pp. 2, 5, 7. 75Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques, 7he Politics of 7hatcherism (London, 1983), pp. 11, 23. Andrew Gamble, concurring with Hall, contends that "unless Labour can recapture the 'popular' from Thatcherism, it will remain on the defensive, ideologically and politically; and threatened by decline into a permanent minority position." "Rise of the Resolute Right," New Socialist (January- February, 1983), p. 14.


574 John D. Fair and John A. Hutcheson, Jr. tism owed much to the traditional fear of socialism that fueled Conservative polemicists at the beginning of the century. The "Cold War is a vital ingredient. The national interest is situated within the NATO alliance, and opposed to the 'Red Menace,' both in the form of the enemy without (the Soviet Union) and the enemy within." But the unique feature of Thatcherism was that it had by the mid-eighties become as formidable an ideological force as socialism ever was within the Labour left. "It is precisely because New Right ideology, in its various forms, has become influential beyond obviously definable social groups, that it is necessary to combat it in its own terms, as an ideology." Indeed, the Thatcherite assault on the social-democratic consensus was devastating. Levitas conceded that "the New Right has succeeded in its hegemonic project so that we are all Thatcherites now."76 The element that was most common to all such socialist accounts was that they were on the defensive ideologically and thereby occupied much the same position as Conservative writings held previously throughout the twentieth century. The whole Labour movement seemed stunned and in a state of disarray by the intellectual thrust of Thatcherism and its three successive electoral triumphs.77

Thatcherism occupied the very unconservative role of being an ideological force to be reckoned with. Indicative of the Conservative Party's enhanced profile since the late sixties was the appearance of numerous party histories. Robert Blake's The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, an expanded version of his 1968 Ford lectures at Oxford, was the foremost of these undertakings, and in a 1985 edition of this popular work Blake brought his story up through the first Thatcher government. Although dispassionate and traditional in approach, it does refer at least once to "her ideology."78 A more Burkean conception in- formed a collection of historical essays written by Norman Gash, Donald Southgate, David Dilks, and John Ramsden which was edited by Lord Butler in

76Levitas, The Ideology of the New Right, pp. 7, 10, 12. Just as there has been a great outpouring of books on the Thatcher phenomenon from the left, the number of sympathetic biographies has been no less remarkable. See Patrick Cosgrave, Margaret Thatcher, A Tory and Her Party (London, 1978); Allan J. Mayer, Madam Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and Her Rise to Power (New York, 1979); Patricia Murray, Margaret Thatcher (London, 1980); Hugh Stephenson, Mrs Thatch- er's First Year (London, 1980); N. Wapshott & G. Brock, Thatcher (London, 1983); Penny Junor, Margaret Thatcher, Wife, Mother, Politician (London, 1983); R. Lewis, Margaret Thatcher: A Personal and Political Biography (London, 1984); Bruce Arnold, Margaret Thatcher: A Study in Power (London, 1984); Patrick Cosgrave, Thatcher, The First Term (London, 1985); and Hugo Young & Anne Sloman, The Thatcher Phenomenon (London, 1986). 77Attempts to mount a counter-offensive from the left are cont

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