This is a study of the Conservative Right since 1945: its major ideas, policy positions, organisations and personalities. It is written in the immediate context of Brexit, where the Conservative Right has gained greater significance. With the Government lacking a majority, the influence of factions within the Conservative Party increases. The need for such a study is therefore most timely. With the Conservative Right in a position of ascendance, it is necessary to trace its development historically. In order to do this, the study makes use of relevant archives and extensive interviews with key figures associated with the Conservative Right. It provides a distinctive and rigorous academic study of the Conservative Right, while adding to a growing body of literature which takes ideas and ideology importantly when studying the Conservative Party. 1
The aim is to describe, to analyse and to evaluate. The book is not a polemic, but an academic study of a distinctive tradition, one which has arguably received insufficient scholarly attention. 2 It follows a hermeneutical methodology, seeking to recover the meaning of concepts, arguments and ideas in their historical context. Rather than following a chronological framework, the book instead approaches the Conservative Right in a thematic way, examining the key ideas within its political thought. A thematic, rather than chronological, framework allows for a clearer understanding of the Conservative Right. The ideas, concepts and issues which are held to be core to the political thought of the Conservative Right since 1945 are: Empire, immigration, Europe, the constitution, the Union, political economy, welfare and social morality.
The study begins in 1945 for the obvious reason that it marks a watershed moment in British politics with the end of the Second World War and the election of the first majority Labour Government which embarked on a programme of whatâby British standards at leastâcan be regarded as a radical reforming agenda. These reformsâsocial and economicâled to a new policy consensus up until the 1970s and those on the Right of the Conservative Party were to argue that mounting social and economic problems of that era were the direct consequence of the post-1945 settlement. It was also apparent that the United Kingdom had come out of the War weakened though victorious against the threat of Nazism and Fascism. However, Britain was to continue its decline after 1945âboth relatively in terms of its economy and absolutely as a geopolitical power. The British Empire ceased to exist as the majority of its overseas territories were granted independence. The emerging Commonwealth led to dilemmas over how to handle rising non-white immigration. The emergence of European integration also posed a major challenge to the British system of government. Moreover, there were a number of challenges to the British constitution throughout this period, notably political violence in Northern Ireland and the rise of nationalism in Scotland and in Wales. The stresses and strains within the old order were apparent to those who wished to see it, and those who claimed to see it most clearly were the Conservative Right who saw themselves as not only the keepers of the Conservative conscience but also as defenders of the nation state.
The Ideology of the Conservative Right
Definition, if not quite everything in scholarly writing, is certainly of fundamental importance. Hence, we need to define what is meant by Conservative Right much more precisely.
One way of doing this is through the identification of core values and principles of an ideology. Inevitably, such an exercise is somewhat arbitrary and always open to challenge. The book will demonstrate that the set of core values identified here are recurring themes within the Conservative Right historically and contemporaneously. Another issue that needs to be discussed is whether it is possible to identify a single tradition we can term the Conservative Right or whether there are in fact multiple traditions, each underpinned by different value judgements and relevant at different times and for different reasons.
A key distinction here is between Conservatism and conservatism. While the latter concerns a more general tendency or disposition to resist change and preserve the familiar or could be understood as a wider tradition of philosophy, the former is concerned with the ideas and practices of the Conservative Party. The two may be interlinked, indeed it is one argument of this book that the traditional Conservative Right is the point at which the two most clearly intersect, but they can beâand usually areâdistinct entities. The extent to which the Conservative Party is genuinely conservative can, and has been, questioned throughout the partyâs history. The partyâs desire to remain a credible electoral force has often seen it adopt the colours of its ideological (and sometimes) party rivals. In the late 1970s and early 1980s a dispute erupted within the party between opponents and supporters of Margaret Thatcher, with both sides claiming to be âgenuinelyâ conservative. On the pro-Thatcher side of the debate, Keith Joseph argued that he always thought he was a conservative but realised at the fall of the Heath Government in 1974 that he was not. 3 By this he meant he had been insufficiently free market. However, among the opponents of Thatcher and the rapidly emerging âThatcherismâ, Ian Gilmour spoke for them when he said that the free market had nothing to do with conservatism. 4 A third possible interpretationâone with which this book generally concursâis that neither were conservative, but rather liberal in essence. Joseph was liberal in an economic sense, while Gilmour was liberal in a social and cultural sense. 5
This dispute between Gilmour and Joseph leads on to the need to distinguish the terms Right and Left. Though dating back to the French Revolution, the usefulness of the terms has been disputed for almost as long. While the original use of the terms referred to those who sought to defend the status quo (Right) from those who sought radical change (Left), the terms have not always meant this. Indeed, in the era of Thatcherism, the terms appear to have been upended with the Right seeking radical change and the Left often defending the status quo. Indeed, as this study will show, there were those on the Right who also critiqued Thatcherism for its pace and extent of reform. It is now typical to argue that the terms should be rejected completely. However, this study uses the term for two reasons. Firstly, that many of the figures we examine self-identified as being on the Right. In the extensive interviews conducted for this study, few objected to being deemed to be on the Right of the political spectrum or the Right of the Conservative Party. Secondly, the terms Left and Right are used as convenient shorthand labels in political conversation and so could be reasonably considered to have meaning to those par...