The Conservative Party and the nation: Union, England and Europe

By Arthur Aughey

This book re-examines the claim of the Conservative Party to be the ‘national party’ and in its politics to express the enduring ‘national interest’. It explores the historical character of the Conservative Party, in particular the significance of the nation in its self-understanding. It addresses the political culture of the modern party, one which proclaims a Unionist vocation but rests mainly on English support, and considers how the Englishness of the party is reconciled with the politics of British statecraft. It considers the constitutional challenges which the Conservative Party faces in managing a changing Union, in negotiating a changing Europe and in defining a changing national interest. The book is essential reading not only for students and scholars of the Conservative Party but also for those who want to make sense of the transformations taking place in modern British politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526101402

Arthur Aughey

Arthur Aughey is Professor of Politics at the University of Ulster and Senior Fellow at the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull

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Series editor

Richard Hayton

The study of conservative politics, broadly defined, is of enduring scholarly interest and importance, and is also of great significance beyond the academy. In spite of this, for a variety of reasons the study of conservatism and conservative politics was traditionally regarded as something of a poor relation in comparison to the intellectual interest in ‘the Left’. In the British context this changed with the emergence of Thatcherism, which prompted a greater critical focus on the Conservative Party and its ideology, and a revitalisation of Conservative historiography. New Perspectives on the Right aims to build on this legacy by establishing a series identity for work in this field. It will publish the best and most innovative titles drawn from the fields of sociology, history, cultural studies and political science and hopes to stimulate debate and interest across disciplinary boundaries. New Perspectives is not limited in its historical coverage or geographical scope, but is united by its concern to critically interrogate and better understand the history, development, intellectual basis and impact of the Right. Nor is the series restricted by its methodological approach: it will encourage original research from a plurality of perspectives. Consequently, the series will act as a voice and forum for work by scholars engaging with the politics of the right in new and imaginative ways.

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Richard Hayton

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Edited by Richard Hayton and Andrew S. Crines

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Edward Ashbee

The territorial Conservative Party: Devolution and party change in Scotland and Wales

Alan Convery

David Cameron and Conservative renewal: The limits of modernisation?

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Rethinking right-wing women: Gender and the Conservative Party, 1880s to the present

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The Conservative Party and the nation

Union, England and Europe

Arthur Aughey

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Arthur Aughey 2018

The right of Arthur Aughey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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ISBN 978 1 5261 0137 2 hardback

First published 2018

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Contents

Prelude: Conservatives and Conservatism

1 Conservatism and the party

2 Conservatism and the nation

3 Conservative nation revisited

4 Conservatism: class and nation

5 Conservatives and the British Question

6 Conservatives and the English Question

7 Conservatives and the European Question

Postscript: Conservatism confounded

References

Index

Prelude: Conservatives and Conservatism

Students of Conservative politics are well served today by a talented generation of scholars who have produced an impressive body of work on the party. The Political Studies Association's Conservatives and Conservatism Specialist Group, through able leadership past and present, has encouraged this research as well as providing a useful forum for its discussion and dissemination. It is no exaggeration to say that, in the diversity and the range of contemporary publications, the study of the Conservative Party has been transformed. As the references in the following chapters demonstrate, this book is heavily indebted to the scholarship which has preceded it. Its subject is a particular one, the idea of the nation in Conservative Party politics. Though the concern is particular, that subject has general implications for the character of the party, its sense of political purpose as well as for positions taken on the constitution, on Europe, on the British and on the English Questions which, considered together, involve the party's traditional Unionist vocation. Today, when students are overwhelmed by the immediacy of online commentary and the abundance of diverse sources, the contribution which academic study brings to political understanding is an appreciation of historical association or, to adapt a phrase of Michael Oakeshott's, an awareness of the flows of sympathy between past and present. One can recognise patterns and traditions of thinking and this appreciation also reveals – to adapt another of Oakeshott's phrases – that those patterns are neither fixed nor finished. So, while Tories may remain Tories, they are never just ‘the same old Tories’, as their political opponents claim. This book represents an attempt to make sense of the way in which flows of sympathy from the past help to shape the changing patterns of Conservatism in the present; it does so by examining one of the party's preoccupations: its claim to be the ‘national party’.

The first three chapters are concerned mainly with flows of sympathy within Conservatism, the currents of which still can be traced today. Chapters 1 and 2 explore respectively the character (or political culture) of the Conservative Party and the significance of the nation in its self-understanding. Both chapters establish the conceptual lineage through which one can interpret contemporary debates. Chapter 3 considers the interconnection of party and patriotism by revisiting one of the key texts for a previous generation, Andrew Gamble's The Conservative Nation (1974). That book captured the party at a moment which today seems very familiar, a party struggling with the challenges of Europe, nationalism in Scotland and pressures for constitutional change. However, its assumptions about Conservatism, the party and the nation require revision even if the idea of the ‘Conservative nation’ remains a useful one.

The following four chapters are concerned mainly with the way in which those flows of sympathy now issue in different patterns of politics in the Conservative Party. Chapter 4 assesses the changing influence on party competition of class and nation, especially how this influences the Conservative Party's electoral identity. The next three chapters reflect the impact on the Conservative nation of the British, English and European Questions. A postscript considers the impact of the 2017 general election and makes some final reflections on the party.

Every book has its history. This book was conceived in early 2015 at the point when David Cameron delivered a surprise electoral victory for the party; it was written after the equally surprising EU referendum result in June 2016; and it was revised in the months immediately before and after the even more surprising election result of June 2017. If the author can admit to experiencing serial re-examination of his expectations about the Conservative Party, he can concede that British politics, while disturbingly unpredictable, are far from boring.

Apart from those intellectual debts already mentioned, I would like to acknowledge the support of colleagues at Ulster University, especially Professors Carmichael, Fee and Gormley-Heenan. As ever, members of the library staff on the Jordanstown campus were unfailingly helpful. All at Manchester University Press were equally accommodating and efficient, though I would like to express my thanks particularly to Rob Byron and especially to Tony Mason, who has provided consistent encouragement over the years. Professor Michael Kenny provided the inestimable service of a very close reading of the original draft. His insightful observations and suggestions improved the text significantly though, of course, all interpretations, judgements and conclusions are mine alone. Finally, I am also grateful to Sky Aughey for her comments throughout the writing of this book, especially on the politics of the Cameron–Clegg relationship, and to Sharon Glenn for taking every opportunity to challenge my assumptions about both Conservatives and Conservatism.

1

Conservatism and the party

When he reflected on the rights of men, Edmund Burke (1969: 153) observed that they are in a sort of middle ground, ‘incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned’. Something similar can be said about the word ‘Conservative’. That judgement does not invest the Conservative Party with a mystical character; it is merely to observe that any simplistic formulation of its politics or of its identity would not do justice to its institutional and historical complexity. The word Conservative contains wide varieties of expression and mood, used by a range of people, from philosophers and historians to politicians and publicists. Moreover, a problem which often confuses students (but not only students) is this: though it is possible to speak intelligibly about ‘conservatism’ and about the ‘Conservative Party’, the relation of the first to the second is far from clear. Reflection on the first may lead one to believe that political principles are fixed and settled, a conclusion which fits very uneasily with the experience of the second in all its historical modifications of policy. Nonetheless, it is possible to argue that the Conservative Party's political culture – for want of a better term – is distinctive and that, for example, the party's annual conference has a very different quality to that of the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats. It is also possible to ‘discern’ the meaning of ‘Conservative’ – as a relationship between ideas, institution and purpose in the history of British politics – according to another of Burke's expressions: that a party is best understood ‘in balances between differences’ and in the compromises attending any political enterprise. According to one Conservative politician (Norman 2013: 222–5) who has reconsidered Burke's contribution to understanding political behaviour, feeling and emotion inform any public reasoning and what binds a party together – but which can also divide it – is affection, identity and interest.

While critics often credit the party's distinctiveness to a ruthless quest for power (Davies 1995), Conservatives have traditionally argued that the party's character can be attributed to a very different principle: patriotism. Engagement with that patriotic self-understanding – one necessarily linked to the quest for office – is the subject of this chapter. The first part reflects on the relationship between conservatism as a term historically associated with the nation and with Conservative as a political practice (for these are not necessarily joined). The second considers the identity or culture of the party as a representative institution. The third examines the purpose of Conservative politics according to Burke's ‘balances between differences’ – in this case between ideas and practice. The conclusion draws out more explicitly the idea of the nation in the history of the party in anticipation of a more thorough examination in the following chapter.

What's in a name?

It is tempting to assume that the durability of the Conservative Party is related to a correspondence between the conservative character of the nation and the institution of the party. There is no necessary relationship. ‘Party names are more often hypnotic than illuminating,’ wrote the Conservative MP Kenneth Pickthorn (1951: 49–50). ‘They implant an excess of assumptions, often unconscious and still more unexamined, about the virtues of the parties most agreeably labelled and, by contrast, and often even more effectively, about the vices of their opposites’. If politics were a sweepstake, he thought, to draw the name ‘Conservative’ would not on the face of it strike you as being a winning ticket.

That reflection on the electoral utility of the party's name has its historical precedents. In 1912, at the height of the Irish Home Rule crisis, the leadership wanted to drop the word Conservative altogether and rebrand the party exclusively as Unionist (which had been in common usage since the first Irish Home Rule crisis in 1886) not only to demonstrate the party's constitutional and patriotic purpose but also to integrate the associated Liberal Unionist Party. In the 1930s, the heir to the latter and later Conservative prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, wanted a ‘National Party’ in order to ditch what he thought to be the ‘odious title of Conservative which has kept so many from joining us in the past’ (Lexden 2012: 48). And following the landslide victory of Attlee's Labour Party in 1945, Harold Macmillan proposed that the Conservatives should change their name to the ‘New Democratic Party’ to be aligned better with the post-war mood. There have been subsequent suggestions. One of David Cameron's former speech writers (Birrell 2016) proposed the ‘One Nation Party’, and the reason appeared as self-evident to him as it had done to Chamberlain: ‘Few people really see themselves as conservative, trapped by tradition and averse to change. The word implies fearful resistance to innovation and modernity’. Former deputy chairman, Robert Halfon, suggested the ‘Workers’ Party’, the spirit of which, if not necessarily the title, appealed to Theresa May (2016a), who has spoken of her commitment to achieve ‘a truly meritocratic Britain that puts the interests of ordinary, working class people first’.

Clearly, the relationship between the ideological category ‘conservative’ and the institution of the Conservative Party is not a necessary but a contingent one. The reason for the periodic return to the matter of name has to do with one key concern: the concern that the party has lost touch with the nation. Then there is the other side of Pickthorn's reflection. ‘Conservative’ can implant an excess of assumptions, often unconscious and still more unexamined, about the party. Unfortunately, those assumptions may not be agreeable, can accentuate, by contrast, the virtue of the party's opponents and focus all attention upon Conservative vices. The ‘toxic’ image of the party after 1997 is a case in point, where it risked becoming identified as anti-national. As Pickthorn admitted, at such times it is far from self-evident that the word Conservative conveys an appropriate patriotic image of the party.

That there should be some relationship, given the historical lineage, between being ‘conservative’, or what is often called ‘small c’ conservatism, and the party organisation, or what is often called ‘large C’ Conservatism, is something we assume must be true. As Pickthorn (1951) conceded in a judicious expression, conservative does ‘not unfairly’ indicate the historical identity of the party even if it conveys only a ‘hypnotic rather than illuminating’ association with its practice. There are two alternative readings which follow from this. The first is that when we talk of ‘conservatism’ as a set of ideas we are talking of the purposes of the Conservative Party as an institution, such that its meaning at any one time is given by the interests of the party. This involves a creative act of politics which brings into being a broad constituency of support – at least if it appears that the national interest and the party interest coincide. Elie Kedourie (1984: 38), for example, thought that conservatism ‘is the outcome of activity in normal circumstances and over a long period of the Conservative Party, an abridgement, and so to speak a codification of this activity’. The meaning of conservatism followed – it did not precede – the activity of the party and was thus ‘a natural attempt by a body with a long continuous existence to articulate and make intelligible to itself its own character’. The real measure of conservatism – rather, Conservatism – is its practice, not its philosophy, a proposition which almost matches Herbert Morrison's view that socialism is what Labour governments do. In this case, the national interest is what Conservative governments do.

The second reading is to consider the party as merely the vehicle for the achievement of conservative principles which exist independently of it. It is these principles which call into being the institution of the party, and the politics of the party express, or should express, pre-political sentiments of the nation. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party has been too often tempted, as T.E. Utley thought (Moore and Heffer 1989: 73–4), by ‘a kind of sophisticated timidity’ whereby politicians preside elegantly over the destruction of those same principles, making the process as painless as possible, saving only what they can from the wreckage. Negatively the recurring criticism has been that for all its presumed identity with the nation – possibly because of it – the Conservative Party can confuse its own self-interests with the interests of the nation and ‘put party before country’.

If the first of these readings can tend towards the cynical and the second towards the disillusioned, both of them find their place in Conservative Party politics. Lord Salisbury, who was both cynical and disillusioned, warned that ‘the dangerous temptation of the hour is that we should consider rhapsody an adequate compensation for calculation’ (cited in Roberts 1999: 2). Rhapsodic principles (in patriotic voice) and the calculating requirements of party advantage (what do we need to say to get elected?) are two sides of the Conservative Party and the reckoning of their claims has never been straightforward. Even Kedourie (1984: 46) was conscious of the problem: defining conservatism as merely what the party says it is means that what Conservatives will come to understand by its principles was far from clear. Though it is of advantage to politicians pressed, as they always are, to make compromises, this approach may strike some supporters as betrayal of both party and the country (as some thought of Edward Heath's commitment to Europe).

For example, Maurice Cowling's influential work (1971) interpreted such principled rhapsody that is found in political speeches and programmes by Conservatives (or indeed, by any politician) to be mainly strategic manoeuvres, within and between parties, in the search for position and precedence. Patriotic rhapsody is useful but the important thing is calculation, for it is that very practical political intelligence which is required for success. In other words, Conservatives should be cautious about confusing rhapsody with calculation. To formulate ideas and proposals in such a manner as to be both persuasive (rhapsodic) and ambiguous (calculating) is profoundly challenging, albeit part and parcel of the political craft. Not to acknowledge their necessity and therefore fail to become proficient in both rhapsody and calculation is, in terms of Cowling's political realism, to lack seriousness as a politician. Vagueness, elusiveness and allusiveness are necessary not only to attain self-interested ends but also to avoid potentially destructive – or self-destructive – political failure. The Conservative Party has experience of both self-interest and self-destruction in its history. This implies, nevertheless, a real and not imaginary relationship between party and principle, if only because it is a question which also keeps recurring. For example, Benjamin Disraeli's novel Coningsby presents its hero searching to find an answer to the questions: what are Conservative principles and what do they aim to conserve? A century and a quarter later, Andrew Cooper (2005: 38) asked similar questions: ‘What does the Conservative Party stand for? What is its vision?’ And though Disraeli was concerned to recover traditional Tory values and Cooper to modernise the Tory message, they both touch on a contentious issue: the relationship between conservatism – an attitude to life – and Conservatism – the purposes of the party (O'Hara 2005: 27–31) and the party's ability to convince a democracy that both are ‘national’.

One philosopher who engaged with the conundrums these questions raise and whose contribution helps to clarify the issues involved was Michael Oakeshott. Although he has been revered in the abstract as ‘Mr Tory Philosopher’ (see Casey 2007), the truth is that he was, and remains, a little too unworldly (or rhapsodic) for most Conservative politicians. Nevertheless, Conservatives seeking an intelligent defence against socialism often look to Oakeshott for support and find much of value. His celebrated essay ‘On being Conservative’, for example, is frequently read as a concise statement of the conservative ‘disposition’, one which informs the fundamental sensibility of Conservative politics. Commentators have been seduced by his poetic depiction of conservatism as a preference for the familiar to the unknown, ‘the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss’ (Oakeshott 1991: 408–9). Sometimes there is a failure to look beyond that descriptive rhapsody or to note this was only the first part of the essay and not the most significant. Even those tasked with promoting the party's electoral interests often explore no further, albeit conceding, as any sensible politician must, that Conservatives cannot be only traditionalists in that manner (Herbert 2014: 30). Indeed, Oakeshott went on to argue that this disposition – which Herbert celebrated mainly because it infuriated opponents – is actually inappropriate ‘in respect of human conduct in general’.

Conservatism, he thought, does remain appropriate in one respect of activity – government – and this is all the more necessary in a society that puts much store by its individualism, its dynamism and its many enterprises. Government ought to be a specific and limited activity and the main qualification for office was ‘coming to be at home in this commonplace world’ of practical activity, something for which a person of conservative disposition was, so Oakeshott believed, well suited (1991: 196). In other words, the political world is the practical world and that ought to favour those most in tune with its realities and most sympathetic to its inherited character – those in tune with the nation, in other words. It is a claim Conservatives like to make, of course, expressed as their being the ‘natural party of government’. One could even argue that the title of Andrew Gamble's description of ‘Thatcherism’ as The Free Economy and the Strong State (1988) – if not necessarily its practice – is intimated in Oakeshott's essay. What is involved is a distinctive understanding of the relationship between historical identity and political change, one which at first glance seems very un-conservative or which begs the question: is it liberal conservatism or conservative liberalism? Oakeshott could be categorised both ways, as could the party. It is worth pursuing this relationship a little further because it helps to make sense of enduring debates about the party's patriotic identity.

Oakeshott identified two ideas of historical identity (1993: 65–7). The first is an argument according to foundations, ‘the theory of identity without difference, the theory by which difference of any sort destroys identity’. The second is an argument according to ‘unchanging substance’ which assumes an authentic core which persists through change. While both of these ideas about identity have their articulate advocates, historically they are unsatisfactory. Identity can be discovered in history but not as some original or in some unchanging substance. ‘Identity, so far from excluding differences, is meaningless in their absence, just as difference or change depend upon something whose identity is not destroyed by that change.’ In politics, perhaps more than any other activity, identity is maintained ‘not in spite of, but because of, differences and changes’. To assume, for example, that the identity of conservatism or the Conservative Party exhibits an original state (if that could be found) or an authentic core (if that could be known) is really ‘to deny its nature’. Either the wish to re-state foundational principles to which the present generation can anchor itself or the aim to return to an authentic set of values is understandable but they are really unattainable political objectives – John Major's ill-fated and much-misinterpreted ‘back to basics’ campaign springs to mind (Redwood 2005: 205). As Oakeshott later observed (1991: 61), a tradition (like the Conservative Party):

is neither fixed nor finished; it has no changeless centre to which understanding can anchor itself; there is no sovereign purpose to be perceived or invariable direction to be detected; there is no model to be copied, idea to be realized, or rule to be followed. Some parts of it may change more slowly than others, but none is immune from change. Everything is temporary.

If, on the one hand, Oakeshott appears to undermine the traditional ‘certainties’ which Conservatives ‘on principle’ hold dear, on the other hand his essay suggests that, in a world of constant change, we do have one certainty: the institutions, laws and practices of the nation. Insofar as the Conservative Party can persuade voters that it possesses – to paraphrase another of Oakeshott's images – superior political seamanship, is familiar with the capacity of the ship of state and knows how to get the best from its crew, then it has hope of success. This is especially so if the party can persuade people that it embodies the patriotic interest, and not just a sectional purpose.

Of course, to argue that there is neither firm foundation to which a party may anchor itself nor authentic form to which it may return does not mean that both are not useful, persuasive and persistent forms of argument for politicians to deploy. To argue that politics is so radically about change that everything must be considered temporary is not to deny that arguments in favour of continuity remain powerfully attractive. To think that there is no ultimate model or doctrine to follow is not to ignore the utility of proposing, or the comfort of believing in, those very things. Politics is indeed a practical activity, not a philosophical one, and the rhapsody of such rousing themes has an obvious value for the Conservative Party – the ‘good cry’ which Disraeli acknowledged. This does not mean that Conservative leaders act in bad faith, saying one thing and meaning another. Rhetoric is part and parcel of the political craft and though it may be vague, elusive and allusive, it is not merely (or always) an instrument to attain self-interested ends. Political leaders, like their party members, share many of the same national prejudices (in Burke's sense of moral intuitions) and instincts but they may have come to the conclusion that they are not possible to legislate for. It is notable that, despite recurring arguments for changing the name, the party has remained the Conservative and Unionist Party. This does say something significant about its self-understanding and the importance placed on the evocative, as well as the historical, associations of the word. To be ‘conservative’ does not mean necessarily that one supports the Conservative Party (as Disraeli recognised); and to be a supporter of the Conservative Party does not mean necessarily that one is conservative (as Cooper acknowledged), but the two are not entirely unrelated. As Burke might say, there is a middle where a Conservative identity can be discerned. That middling territory, always changing as Oakeshott recognised – where liberalism and conservatism meet – has been the idea of the nation.

Perhaps the word ‘belief’ captures this aspect of Conservative politics which was often thought to distinguish it: an aversion to mere ‘ideas’. It was once succinctly expressed by Lord Hailsham (1959: 7), who wrote that, for Conservatives, ‘an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory’. The implication is that being in sympathy with the national inheritance is worth more than any theoretical knowledge. The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset thought the difference between the two lies in this: we have ideas about the world but we live on our beliefs. Indeed, Ortega y Gasset's distinction struck Alfred Sherman (2005: 25; see also Moore 2013: 391) as describing perfectly Margaret Thatcher's leadership when, for the first time, commentators thought that the party had been gripped by an ideology and was putting more faith in theory (Thatcherism) than in practice (national unity). Sherman thought that Thatcher was ‘a woman of beliefs, and not of ideas’ and by this he meant that insight of Burke's: her emotions were invested in patriotic identity. If Margaret Thatcher's beliefs were not universally shared either by the country or by the party, it can be said that they were well understood as an expression of the Tory mentalité (Coleman 1988: 4). Yet how do we explain that Conservative patriotic ‘mind’? Is it to be understood narrowly or expansively?

What's in the party?

W.H. Greenleaf – who was influenced by Oakeshott's thought – identified the difficulties involved in understanding what makes the party tick. On the one hand, one can try to elicit ‘a single set of key concepts that must be called the core of this doctrine’ (Greenleaf 1973: 178–80). He