A. J. Davies
Little Brown and Co
London, 1995, £20
Davies provides in equal measure a perceptive and comprehensive account of the modern Conservative Party which, hopefully, will lead to further reappraisals of Conservative history. In contrast to, for example, Lord Blake’s standard history of the Party over much the same period, We, The Nation provides an upstairs and downstairs view of the Party. Blake would have us believe that, with the exception of a few minor hiccups, the Conservative Party was an honourable conduit through which aristocrats and, more recently, respectable representatives of the middle class could uphold the eternal, blessed, values of England. Much Conservative history has been written by Conservatives, and a myth has been perpetuated. As Davies points out in his introduction, the Labour Party and its politicians have been the subject of much greater and more critical exposure – as one would expect of anything new. As a consequence, it has appeared as if Labour was more often the party beset by turmoil and internecine warfare.
Three major Conservative themes emerge from this book: the state, survival, and a schizophrenic approach to foreign policy. The first is easy to understand and informs the other two. The Conservatives’ assumption of the ‘We, The Nation’ mantle reflects their confidence that their values are indistinguisable from ‘British’ values – values which later became crystallized as Victorian values, even though the 19th century failed to be a Conservative one.
But a more accurate depiction of the Conservatives might be ‘We, The State’. The pursuit of power is more real than the pursuit of Britishness which is hard to pin down, except perhaps in the minds of Orangemen and butchers trying to sell their surfeit stocks of beef. The Conservative Party expects to be in power, and many Conservative leaders have taken power with a nonchalance that befits their expectations. These are the people whom Blake would rather we observed (in Davies’ analogy) gliding along like an elegant swan. Deference to the supposed superiority of Conservative statecraft may explain why many people still vote Tory.
The Conservative claim to the state – to be the state – rests as much, if not more, on the interconnected nature of their party with the establishment than it does upon any election. Even when Conservatives were theoretically out of office, as in the inter-war coalitions, they were the power behind the throne. Even during the minority Labour governments it is hard to imagine the members of the Carlton Club choking too much on being out of office. Such terms were blips, an opportunity to regroup and improve their machine.
Davies provides a lot of detail of the inter-war period which demands greater exposure. The links between fascism and the Conservative Party are known, but were clouded after the war – perhaps wiped out by the shock of Labour’s landslide. Blame for appeasement was tied round Chamberlain’s ankles and he was tossed overboard, just as in later years blame for Suez was attached to Eden. Davies’ history endeavours to get behind the smokescreen the Party has put up in defence of its supposed generic ability to create ‘statesmen’, whilst devising all manner of means to dispose of its progeny when they make a complete hash of it.
But ruthlessness is the Party’s strength, as we saw in 1990, and one which its principal opposition failed to grasp. However, the instinct for survival is strongest, as one would expect, in those who have exercised power at the highest levels – among the Men in Suits. From Chamberlain through Heath and Thatcher, each deposed leader retained the support of the Party beyond Westminster. Tory supporters in their associations and clubs felt a great sense of loss and bereavement upon the dispatch of these great people. Even the bulk of the Parliamentary Party seemed to be at a loss to understand why Chamberlain had to go, and then their favoured successor was Lord Halifax, the arch appeaser.
There is no greater litmus test of a party’s will to govern than its ability to commit parricide. The next test is the ability to ditch its policies; and this, too, is a sustained feature of Conservatism. Principles are not at stake – there are no principles. Macmillan nearly joined Labour in 1938, after he had resigned the Tory whip. Heath was famous for his mid-term abandonment of all he apparently stood for; and Thatcher, too, despite her rhetoric, relaxed her convictions when it suited. For her, of course, all post-war Conservative leaders, with the exception of Churchill (and then only because he was the great war leader who went ga-ga in his second term) were little better than closet socialists, accepting the ‘ratchet effect’ of not undoing the changes brought about by previous Labour administrations.
To find what the Party stood for – really stood for – one might have sought an answer in its foreign policy. Despite being remembered for having one of the most infamous foreign policies of all time, Chamberlain had virtually no knowledge of foreign affairs: his background was in administration and organisation. After the war, the Party seems to have been for the most part bewildered by the changes taking place in the world. The leftist Macmillan understood and eased the decline of Empire, and Heath had grasped the nettle of the Common Market. But they both met sustained opposition from their own ranks, from people who saw how they were fundamentally changing the nature of the British state.
And this is again the dilemma for the Conservative Party, the Party which has thought itself synonymous with the British state. In a Single European Act they have wished away the powers they formerly draped with the Union flag. Mrs Thatcher came away from the Madrid European Council in 1989 claiming she had been duped. Did the Tories feel a sense of deja vu?
Given the opprobrium attached to appeasement, one wonders what prevented the Tories from being obliterated for good. As it was they only suffered a temporary setback. It is hard to believe for one moment that the present very serious Euro-dilemma to which the Party has succumbed will be its death knell. The lesson from Davies’ book is that current predictions of the Conservatives’ demise are much exaggerated. Their capacity for self-preservation is only rivalled in the world of fiction by the creature in Alien..
What is different is that there is little in its history to inform its present leaders as to how to integrate the party with the new form of statehood that will emerge in about ten years time. Blinded by the idea that the EEC offered unfettered free trade, the Party entered into the Treaty of Rome promising that it would have no impact on British sovereignty. But now the British Parliament is unprecedently subordinate to foreign dictates. No amount of dirty trickery can relieve the Tories of this hook. No amount of huffing and puffing by the Sun and the rest of the Conservative press can alter commitments which were made, after all, by someone who likened herself to Boadicea.
A general election defeat (or tactical withdrawal), followed by a regrouping and renewal is the most likely Conservative route. Not merely because that’s what the polls predict, but because whichever way the European question is resolved, the Conservatives need the Labour Party to provide them with the tools to reunite; nothing unites all Tories more than a Labour Government. The question is in what form the Conservative Party will unite; not whether it will split.
Perhaps this prediction is overly confident. This writer would be happy to be proved wrong. But the modern Conservative Party begins with the Tamworth Manifesto in 1834, which was followed not long after by a ‘catastrophic split’ when Peel repealed the Corn Laws. During those years of upheaval many discussions took place over the name of the Party – a sure sign of self-doubt.
But it is academic what the Party is called. If it still represents the same interests, the only matter of importance is how strongly it chooses to do so.