Colin Challen
Vision Paperbacks, London, 1998, £7.99
It says something about this society of ours – and about the academics who make a living teaching what they call ‘politics’ – that this is the first book about the funding of the political party which has been in power for most of this century; and it says something else that despite Challen’s pulling together of the available material – some chapters have over 70 endnotes – at least half of the Conservative’s recent financial sources remain a mystery. Even so, even in the triangle Challen identifies as being at the heart of the British political system, the City, the secret state and the Conservative Party, there is quite a lot of information available
Inevitably, the chapters on the pre-Thatcher years are thinner than those since she came to power. One of the ironies of our time is that while Mrs T took office determined to keep a lid on the public’s knowledge of the secret state and the other potential embarrassments to our ruling elites, her period in office coincided with an explosion of knowledge in all those areas – including the funding of her party. But in the pre-Thatcher period there is more available than you might think. Challen’s research shows that this is an area where our collective ignorance was due simply to idleness: this information’s been there waiting for someone with the patience to dig it out and assemble it.
Given that the Tories have always declined to say where the money came from, it is extraordinary that their opponents never adopted some variant of LBJ’s pig-fucker strategy. The story goes that LBJ was discussing how to attack an opponent in an election early in his career. The opponent was a farmer, and LBJ said, ‘Let’s accuse him of fucking his pigs.’ ‘You can’t do that,’ replied LBJ’s advisor. ‘Why not?’, said LBJ. ‘Let him deny it.’
I have no information that the Tory Party was funded by the world drug traffic in the 80s and 90s – though it wouldn’t surprise me much, considering how many little remnants of the British Empire are drug traffic air-strips – but had the charge been levelled by a senior Labour Party figure, since the Tories are unwilling to reveal their sources of income, what could they have done but deny it?
Challen works for the Labour Party and, as Labour adopts the same approaches to raising money – and taps the same sources – as the Conservatives, in ten years time we will need a book like this one on Labour’s funding sources. (Current proposals on the disclosure of funding of political parties are not nearly tight enough to preclude hanky-panky.)
Challen is an old friend of mine so it’s hard for me to evaluate this when I am so familiar with his writing. (I had not intended reviewing this but the person I asked to do so didn’t deliver.) But what I can safely say is that as the only book on the subject it is absolutely invaluable.