Part 5

Bipartisanship is assisted by consultation on issues of major national importance between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. But the achievement of bipartisan policies owes much more to a general understanding in both parties in the House of Commons of the country's present position.

Socialist reform and experimentation in the years between 1945 and 1951 aroused Conservative fears as fierce as Labor Party hopes. The enmity aroused in the largely Conservative middle class by the Labor governments of those years certainly has not disappeared. But much of it has been re-directed against the moderate policies of the Conservative government, which has long claimed the allegiance of the middle class.

The leaders of the two great parties--Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, and R.A. Butler for the Conservatives, and Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson, Jim Griffiths for Labor--are moderates. On the periphery of each party stand the radicals advocating extreme measures at home and abroad. Should Britain's economic and international troubles persist, the moderate approach to their solution may not satisfy either the Conservative or Socialist voters.

British politics in May of 1955 continued one of those rhythmic changes of direction which feature political life in every democratic nation. The Conservatives won a smashing victory in the general election and became the first party in ninety years to be returned to office with an increased majority.

The victory gave the Tory government a majority of 61 in the House of Commons. But this majority is not an exact reflection of the way the electorate voted. The Conservatives and their supporters got 13,311,938 votes and Labor won 12,405,146. The Liberals got 722,395 and the Communists 33,144.

This almost even division of the British electorate between the two major parties must be kept in mind when we examine the right and the left in British politics. Not since 1945, when the Labor Party swept into office, has there been a difference of a million votes between the two in general elections.

Labor's sun was sinking in the election of 1950, which the party won by a narrow margin. The Conservatives took over in 1951 and boosted their majority in 1955. Has the pendulum's swing to the right ended? The answer may lie in the policies and personalities of the two great parties today.

IV. _The Conservatives_

A PARTY AND A WAY OF LIFE

_The Conservative party have always said that, on the whole, their policy meant that people had to fill up fewer forms than under the policies of other parties._

SIR ALAN HERBERT

_The man for whom the law exists--the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame man._

HENRY THOREAU

Although they have little in common otherwise, the Great American Public and the radical wing of the British Labor Party share a strange mental image of the British Conservative. They see him as a red-faced stout old gentleman given to saying "Gad, sir," waving the Union Jack, and kicking passing Irishmen, Indians, and Egyptians. He is choleric about labor unions, and he stands for "no damned nonsense" from foreigners.

The picture was a false one even before World War II. No party could have existed for a century, holding power for considerable periods, without a basis of support in the British working class. Such support would not be granted to the caricature of a Conservative described above. Certainly the Conservative Party has now, and has had in the past, its full share of reactionaries opposed to change. The inquiring reporter will encounter more than a smattering of similar opposition to change among the leaders of Britain's great unions.

Britain's altered position in the world and the smashing Labor victory of 1945 combined to whittle away the authority of the reactionaries in the Conservative Party in the years between 1945 and 1951 when it was out of office. Since then other influences, including the rise within the party of young politicians whose education and experience have little in common with those of the recognized Tory leadership, has further altered the character of the party. It has come a long way since 1945.

A young Conservative minister recalls with horror the annual Conservative conference of that year. The chairwoman, a billowy dowager wielding a lorgnette, announced with simpering pride that she had a surprise for the conference. It was, she said, "a real Conservative trade-unionist." Had the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on the platform and danced the can-can, the surprise could not have been greater. When a Negro student went to the platform a decade later to discuss colonial affairs, no one turned a hair.

In retrospect, the election of 1945 was one the Tories could not win. Almost everything was against them: the pre-war Tory government's appeasement of Germany, the military disasters of 1940, the distrust of Churchill in time of peace, his own exaggerated campaign attacks on Labor, the superb organization of the Labor Party machinery by Herbert Morrison. Ten years later the Conservatives faced an election they could not lose. Even when all other conditions are taken into account, this was a singular example of the adaptability and mobility of the Tories.

The Tories saw that the nation had changed, and they changed with it. Both the political philosophy of the party and the organization of the party were altered--the latter change being more drastic, more complete, and more rapid than the former.

In the organizational change the reports of the Committee on Party Organization in 1948 and 1949 were of paramount importance. The committee was headed by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, later Viscount Kilmuir and Lord Chancellor.

Before the party could win an election on its altered policy, a reconstruction of its machinery was necessary. To reconstruct along the lines advised by the experts, the Tories first brought in Lord Woolton, who had been a successful Minister of Food during the war. It was a sagacious appointment. As Chairman of the Party Organization, Woolton created a young, enthusiastic body of workers whose propaganda on behalf of the party began to impress the electorate--largely, I suspect, because these workers were so unlike the popular idea of Tories.

While Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, R.A. Butler led the parliamentary fight against the Labor government, a group of young Tories built the party case for the leaders. Techniques of research and propaganda were developed. Promising young men and women from all classes were encouraged.

These younger Conservative tacticians included many who are now ministers. Iain MacLeod, who has been Minister of Health and Minister of Labor, Reginald Maulding, who has been Minister of Supply and Paymaster General, Selwyn Lloyd, the present Foreign Secretary, are representative of the nucleus of talent which was built during those years. They and a score of junior ministers are young, vigorous, and ambitious. They know their own party, and, what is equally important, they know the Labor Party and its leaders.

Talking with the leaders of both the major parties, one is struck by the breadth of the Tories' knowledge of the Labor leaders' personalities, views on national issues, and aspirations. "Know your enemy" is an axiom as wise in politics as in war.

Yet I doubt that all the political intelligence and administrative ability in the Tory ranks would have sufficed without Woolton.

Frederick William Marquis, the first Viscount Woolton, is not, as one might suppose from his imposing name and title, the son of a hundred earls. He is very much a self-made man who fought his way to success in commerce and finance. He is a Jim Farley, rather than a Mark Hanna.

When Woolton took over the chairmanship of the Party Organization, the party was defeated and discredited. He left it after the triumph of May 1955 with Conservative fortunes at their post-war zenith. I have mentioned Woolton's reorganization of the Central and Area offices, but his influence on the party went beyond this. In the years when the Socialists ruled in Whitehall, Woolton transferred to the beaten Conservatives some of his own warmth and vigor. He is an urbane, friendly man; the young Conservatives then emerging from the middle class felt that they were directed not by an aristocratic genius but by a fatherly, knowledgeable elder. Indeed, his nickname was "Uncle Fred." The revived party began to talk like a democratic party and even, occasionally, to act like one. Under Woolton the Central Office in London changed from a remote, austere group controlling the party into a Universal Aunt or Uncle, ready to help constituency parties solve their problems. Yet the leader of the party and the chairman of the Party Organization continued to direct and control.

Conservative Party policy, as it has evolved in the past decade, has moved to the left. This is not solely because, as the Labor Party often charges, it wanted to steal or adopt parts of the Socialist platform. A great many of the young men in the Tory party in 1945 sympathized with many of the Socialists' policies. "I'd have voted Labor myself if I hadn't been a Tory candidate," one of them reflected a decade later. What offended the Tories' self-esteem was that great, revolutionary changes were being made in British life by the Labor government and they, who had always assumed a special right to rule Britain, were not making the changes.

A large part of Conservative political tactics in the late forties consisted of negative criticism. The parlous state of the British economy, the withdrawals from India and Burma, the decline of British influence and power in the world offered great opportunities to a party that traditionally combines business interests and experience with an assumption of omniscience in the direction of international affairs. At the same time, the work of the back-room boys in the Central Office on the solution of Britain's economic difficulties, expressed in speeches of party leaders, gave the impression that the Conservatives, whatever their past faults, were moving to the left in their approach to the economic problem.

The present leadership of the Conservative Party--Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, R.A. Butler, and a number of the younger ministers--is well to the left of the economic position assumed by the party in the 1945 election. Indeed, the complaint of the party's middle-class rank and file that the Conservatives are carrying out a pseudo-socialist program rather than a truly Tory one is an important factor in estimating the party's ability to retain power.

A word is needed here about "left" and "right" as applied to British parties. Although the Conservative Party is frequently compared with the Republican Party in the United States and has many similarities of outlook, the Conservatives are, on the whole, well to the left of the Republicans. Thinking in the Labor Party, moreover, is well to the left of both Democratic and Republican parties in the United States.

After the Conservative victory in the election of 1955 it was generally expected that the party would move toward the right. Critics will seize upon British intervention in Egypt as evidence of such a movement. But it can be asked whether a policy designed to bring down a dictator--in this case President Nasser of Egypt--when it was evident that the United Nations was unable or unwilling to do so can be classified as a right-wing, reactionary policy. Similarly, the movement of the British government under the leadership of Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan toward entry into the European common market can scarcely be considered an example of right-wing extremism. The attacks on this policy by the newspapers controlled by Lord Beaverbrook, the most imperialist of the press lords, testify to the anger aroused by the progressive internationalism of the Conservatives.

No one can gainsay the existence of a strong nationalistic element within the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and in the country. This element rebelled against the Anglo-Egyptian treaty by which Britain agreed to quit Egypt. It supported the decision to intervene in Egypt. Parenthetically it should be noted that the moving spirits in this decision were Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, men who, by conviction, belonged to the progressive wing of the party. Finally, when the government agreed first to a cease-fire and then to a withdrawal from Egypt, this group censured both the United Nations and the United States for their part in bringing this about.

Given the character of the Conservative Party's support in the country, the presence of such a group within the party in Parliament is natural. But do not discount the adaptability of the party. When Harold Macmillan formed his government in January 1957 he found it possible, with the approval of the party, to include in it both Sir Edward Boyle, who had resigned from the government over the Egyptian invasion, and Julian Amery, who had rebelled against the government because it listened to the United States and the United Nations and halted the invasion.

The Conservatives' approach to Britain's economic and financial problems is well to the left of the policies followed by their pre-war predecessors. Britain's is a managed economy to an extent that would shake the late Stanley Baldwin and the present Secretary of the Treasury in Washington. Mr. Macmillan and his ministers are not secret readers of _Pravda_. They are political realists who understand the changes in power which have taken place in Britain, who understand that the Council of the Trades Union Congress is as important today as the Federation of British Industries.

The Labor Party, it often seems, suffers from an inability to understand the changes that have taken place in their opponents. It may be, as Socialists contend, that the changes are only a façade hiding the greedy, imperious capitalists beneath. But to an outsider it seems that the Labor Party pays too much attention to the surviving extremists of the Tory party and not enough to the venturesome, progressive younger men who will inherit the party. Surely the appeal of the Conservative Party to the electorate is based more upon the personalities and policies of these rising stars than upon the reactionaries of the right wing.

The Conservative Party arouses and holds some strange allegiances. I remember Michael Foot, the editor of the left-wing weekly _Tribune_, saying that in his old constituency of Devonport there were solid blocks of Conservative votes in the poorest areas. Foot could not understand it. The rather contemptuous explanation offered by a Conservative Party organizer was: "Why not? People who are poor aren't necessarily foolish enough to buy this socialist clap-trap."

The Conservatives have been making inroads into the new middle class created by the boom of 1953-5. This group emerging from the industrial working class was formerly strongly pro-Labor. There are indications that the more prosperous are changing their political attitudes as their incomes and social standing improve.

The Conservatives concentrate on a national appeal. Labor by its origins is a class party. In a country as homogeneous as Britain, the Conservative boast that they stand for all the people rather than for merely one class or one geographical area is effective. To this the Tories add the claim that they are the party most suited by training and experience to deal with the international problems faced by the nation.

This assumption of the right to rule is not so offensive to Britons as it might be to Americans. There is little historical basis for it. If an aristocrat, Winston Churchill, led Britain to victory in World War II, a small-town Welsh lawyer, David Lloyd George, was the leader in World War I. Nevertheless, there is a tendency--perhaps a survival of feudalism--among some Britons to believe that their affairs are better handled by a party with upper-class education and accents. And of course the Conservatives look the part. Mr. Macmillan, the Prime Minister, is a far more impressive figure than Hugh Gaitskell, who probably would be Prime Minister in a Labor government. The accents, the clothes, the backgrounds of the Tory leaders give the impression of men born to conduct government. Brilliant journalists have argued that the class they represent is unrepresentative, and that the Suez crisis proved its inability to understand the modern world. Surely the present Conservative leaders and their predecessors have been guilty of quite as many errors as the Socialists and Liberals of the past. However, they give the impression of competence. As any politician knows, even in the most enlightened of democracies such impressions are as important as the most brilliant intellects or the wisest programs.

The Conservatives enjoy another important political advantage. Until the present the leaders of the party generally have been drawn from one class, the old upper middle class. They went to the same schools, served in the same regiments. Families like the Cecils, the Churchills, the Edens, the Macmillans intermarry. The closeness of the relationship breeds coherence. Basically there is an instinctive co-operation when a crisis arises. The manner in which the Tories closed ranks after Sir Anthony Eden's resignation was an example.

The upper ranks of the civil service, of the Church of England, and of the armed services are drawn largely from the same class. Usually this facilitates the work of government when the Tories are in power. But recently there has been a change. In their drive to broaden the base of the party, the Conservatives have introduced to the House of Commons a number of young politicians who do not share the Eton-Oxford-Guards background of their leaders.

The environment and education of this group and their supporters in the constituencies is much different. For Eton or Harrow, substitute state schools or small, obscure public schools. Some did go to Oxford and Cambridge, but they moved in less exalted circles than the Edens or Cecils. They are usually businessmen who have made their way in the world without the advantages of the traditional Tory background, and they are highly critical of the tendency to reserve the party plums for representatives of its more aristocratic wing.

They seem to be further to the right in politics than such "aristocrats" as Macmillan, Butler, Eden, or Lord Salisbury. They have risen the hard way, and they are more interested in promoting the interests of the business groups for which they speak than in the traditional Tory concept of speaking for the whole nation. This national responsibility on the part of the "aristocrats" was in many ways a liberal attitude. Macmillan and Butler, for instance, appear much more responsive and tolerant on the subject of trade unions than most members of the new group.

As the power of this group increases--and it will increase as the Conservative Party continues to change--sharper disputes on policy, especially economic policy, can be expected. This encourages some Socialists, naturally sensitive on the point, to believe that their opponents are headed for a period of fierce feuding within the party. Their optimism may be misplaced.

The Tories are adept at meeting rebellion and absorbing rebels. The indignant "red brick" rebel of today may be the junior minister of tomorrow whose boy is headed for Eton. Despite the advent of these newcomers, the party does not appear so vulnerable to schism as does the Labor Party with its assortment of extreme-left-wing intellectuals, honest hearts and willing hands from the unions, and conscientious and intelligent mavericks from the middle class.

Finally, the power of what has been called the "Establishment" is primarily a conservative power that wishes to conserve the governmental and social structure of Britain against the majority of reformers. On great national issues this usually places it upon the side of the Conservative Party. If it can be defined, the Establishment represents the upper levels of the Church of England, of Oxford and Cambridge, _The Times_ of London, the chiefs of the civil service. The direct power of this group may be less than has been described, but few would deny its influence.

The common background has served the Conservatives well in the past. Open political quarrels within the party are rare. (The conflict over the Suez policy was an exception.) "The Tories settle their differences in the Carlton Club," Earl Attlee once said. "We fight ours out in public. We're a democratic party that thrives on contention." Perhaps, but the contention nearly wrecked the Labor Party between 1953 and 1955 and had much to do with its defeat in 1955.

Much of the comparative tranquillity of the Conservative Party is due to the power of the party leader. Nominally, he is elected by the Conservative Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, all prospective Tory candidates for Commons, and the executive Committee of the National Union. But, as Robert T. McKenzie has pointed out in his _British Political Parties_, the leader is often selected by the preceding leader of the party when it is in power. Thus, Sir Winston Churchill made it clear that Sir Anthony Eden was his heir as leader, and Sir Anthony was duly elected.

A different situation arose when Sir Anthony resigned as Prime Minister because of illness. In that instance the Prime Minister was selected before he became leader of the party. It was widely believed outside the inner circles of the party that there was a choice between Harold Macmillan and R.A. Butler. Actually the leaders of the party, including Sir Anthony, Sir Winston, and Lord Salisbury, and a substantial number of ministers, junior ministers, and back-bench Members had made it clear that their preference lay with Macmillan.

The structure of the British government and of the Conservative Party give the leader a good deal more authority over his party than is enjoyed by a President of the United States as the head of the Republican or Democratic Party. In power or in opposition the leader has the sole ultimate responsibility for the formulation of policy and the election program of his party.

The annual party conference proposes, the leader disposes. Resolutions passed at the conference do not bind him. The party secretariat (the Central Office) is in many ways the personal machine of the leader. He appoints its principal officers and controls its main organizations for propaganda, finance, and research. Consequently, it is unlikely that a Conservative politician would challenge the authority of the leader as sharply and directly as Senator McCarthy challenged the authority of President Eisenhower in the latter's first administration. The conclusion is that, although Tory democracy is an attractive political slogan, it has little connection with the almost autocratic authority of the party leader.

In the field of political tactics moderation is the guiding principle of the new Conservatism. This became evident in the election of 1955, which the Tories fought soberly and efficiently. Pointing to Britain's evident prosperity--the stormclouds were already piling on the horizon, but campaign orators seldom see that far--the Conservatives asked the people if this combination of good times at home and easier relations abroad (the summit conference at Geneva was in the offing) was not better for the nation than revolutionary policies and hysterical oratory.