Chris Bambery Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995, pp. 8–10.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
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The divisions inside the Tory Party threaten to bring the government down. Chris Bambery looks at how the party’s fortunes follow those of British capitalism and how shallow the Thatcher revolution really was |
Who are the Tories? The simple answer is that they are the party of the British ruling class. But it is the party of the British ruling class in decline. At the last election a Financial Times survey showed that 93 percent of Britain’s bosses wanted the Tories to win, despite the massive effort put in by Labour to court the City of London and big business.
The Tories have governed Britain for the bulk of this century. Yet as the political expression of the ruling class the party has shown great adaptability. It adapted to the extension of the vote to the working class. After the Second World War it accepted a new ruling class consensus based on Keynesian economics, the welfare state and incorporation of the trade union leaders into the lower echelons of the political system. When that consensus broke down Thatcher was able to develop policies begun by Jim Callaghan’s Labour government into a new strategy for the ruling class.
The National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations was formed in 1867 (in 1885 it was renamed the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations). The vote had just been extended to limited numbers of working class men following mass protests. The Tories had rallied the more backward sections of the landowners in support of the monarchy and the Church of England. Their other mainstay was the brewers and publicans (the Tories’ opponents disapproved of the drinks trade). They were marginalised and split.
The dominant party of British capitalism until the 1870s was the Liberal Party, which backed free trade and low levels of state spending. This corresponded to Britain’s position as the dominant world manufacturing economy. Between 1848 and 1874 the Liberals held office with just two brief interruptions. From 1841 until 1874 the Tories never won a general election. Britain’s trade unions loyally backed the Liberals.
Yet from 1875 until 1906 the Tories were in office for all but eight years. What happened to bring about this sea change in the fortunes of the two parties?
In 1870 Britain still produced a third of all the world’s manufacturing goods. Over the next 40 years it was outstripped by both the US and Germany in a period of technological change which centred on steel, electricity and machine tools. By 1915 Britain produced just 15 percent of the world’s manufactured goods. From the 1880s on there was also a revival of working class unrest which began to break workers from the Liberals.
At the same time there was a flight of wealth and property from the liberals to the Tories. Labour historian James Hinton notes:
‘Satisfied by the administrative reforms of [Liberal prime minister] Gladstone’s first ministry (1868–74); alarmed by the spectre of socialism, by industrial depression, by the rise of competing imperialisms; aware that they now had more to lose than gain by continuing the campaign against aristocratic privilege, large numbers of middle class voters turned to the Conservatives as the party of order, stability and national greatness.’
Until 1865 three quarters of Tory seats were in the English county shires. Over the next 30 years they won Lancashire, Scotland (taking a majority of seats including Glasgow by 1900) and London (where the Tories went from no seats in 1865 to taking 51 out of 59 seats in 1895 with 86 percent of the vote). The chief weapon in the Tories’ hands was support for imperialism and in particular British rule in Ireland. Their bogeymen were Irish nationalists and socialists.
In 1886 the Liberals broke apart over the issue of home rule for Ireland. A significant section led by the Birmingham manufacturer Joseph Chamberlain saw any concessions in Ireland as undermining Britain’s empire. The Tories played on support for the union with Ireland, for Queen Victoria and the empire to build a popular base. In areas like Lancashire and the west of Scotland that meant building a close alliance with the anti-Catholic Orange Order.
When Lord Salisbury (the last of the Cecil family dynasty to head the party) entered Downing Street in 1886 he was spurred on by his former Liberal allies to unleash a major employers’ offensive. Salisbury himself always referred to socialists as ‘looters’. The Tories were prepared to use new strike breaking methods imported from the US to break working class discontent and to force up productivity and profits to equal their overseas competitors.
The change in the Tory Party was reflected in the composition of its MPs. In 1868 46 percent were great landowners and 31 percent were associated with trade and industry. By 1900 42 percent were from industry or commerce and just 29 percent from the landed elite. By 1918 two thirds of Tory MPs were businessmen or professionals. In the 1860s the bookseller W.H. Smith deserted the Liberals to win Westminster for the Tories. In 1861 the shipbuilder John Laird was elected Tory MP for Birkenhead while in the 1880s the shipbuilder Sir William Pearce was returned as Tory MP in Glasgow Govan with Orange support. By the turn of the century the Chamberlain family, Birmingham manufacturers, rose to prominence in the party. Stanley Baldwin, party leader for many of the interwar years, was the son of a West Midlands ironmaster.
The party was closely tied to industrial capital. Its Scottish secretaries up to the 1960s included steel, shipping and engineering magnates. This is still true today. The party’s board of treasurers is chaired by Charles Hambro, the merchant banker, and includes David Sieff of Marks and Spencer, Sir Philip Harris, chair of Carpetright, David Davis of metals group Johnson Matthey and Sir Nigel Mobbs of property group Slough Estates.
In the postwar years the Conservatives went along with the creation of the welfare state. They rightly perceived that such a compromise was necessary to prevent their electoral annihilation. The Tories agreed to support welfare schemes and full employment in return for Labour acceptance of the dominance of free enterprise. The Tory chancellor ‘Rab’ Butler wrote in the early 1950s that ‘modern conservatism would maintain strong central guidance on the operations of the economy’.
This deal could hold while economic growth allowed the poor to raise themselves up a bit and the wealthy to grow richer. But major economic difficulties reappeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Lack of investment was reflected in lower productivity rates than Britain’s overseas competitors. The weakness of British manufacturing meant any increase in domestic demand led to a surge in imports, creating a severe balance of payments deficit accompanied by a run on the pound.
The attempts of Harold Wilson’s 1964 Labour government to introduce a ‘technological revolution’ based on state restructuring of the economy foundered, as did the all out assault on the trade unions by his Tory successor, Ted Heath.
The Heath government collapsed in the face of trade union opposition. In August 1974 Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph set up the Centre for Policy Studies in order to formulate a clear right wing alternative.
Thatcher articulated what was a new consensus in ruling class circles. As the Financial Times journalist Samuel Brittan pointed out, ‘The postwar consensus had already been fractured before the Thatcher government came to office’. The Labour government had accepted much of what would be termed ‘monetarism’ in 1976. In a letter of intent to the International Monetary Fund, the Labour chancellor, Denis Healey, had promised to reduce public spending and set targets for the reduction of public borrowing. Labour succeeded in reducing real welfare expenditure and average living standards – something which Thatcher never did.
Thatcher expressed this break with the old consensus when she said, ‘It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism, (I had thought that I was a Conservative but now I see that I was not really one at all)’. A programme based on free market economics, minimum state intervention and the reduction of public expenditure was washed down with pure class hatred.
A report on the nationalised industries was drawn up by Nicholas Ridley. He argued that the government could choose the time and place of battle. It should build up maximum coal stocks, organise supplies of coal imports, encourage road haulage suppliers to recruit non-union drivers, introduce oil firing in all coal powered stations, ‘cut off the money supply to the strikers and make the union finance them’, and use large, mobile squads of police against pickets.
This plan was implemented in the miners’ strike of 1984–85. It flowed out of Tory thinking as articulated by Thatcher. The Chicago based economist Milton Friedman said, ‘The thing that people do not recognise is that Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a 19th century Liberal’. But 19th century Liberalism represented freedom in terms of trade, the market economy and a denial of the vote or many basic civil liberties to the majority of the British people.
Individual freedom had little to do with the economic freedom as preached by the Thatcherites. One of those closest to Thatcher was Sir Keith Joseph who wrote in 1979:
‘A person who cannot afford to buy food may well have a justifiable grievance ... but it would be misleading to describe his grievance as lack of freedom... liberty is liberty, not something else. And a slave is a slave, you do not set him free by feeding him.’
These ideas were developed by others on the new right. Maurice Cowling wrote in 1979, ‘If there is a class war – and there is – it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill’. Cowling also argues:
‘Conservatives, if they talk about freedom long enough, begin to believe that that is what they want. But it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.’
In 1984 Roger Scruton argued, ‘Conservatism regards no citizen as possessed of a natural right that transcends his obligation to be ruled’. He added, ‘The concept of freedom cannot occupy a central place in Conservative thinking’.
Throughout the 1980s such ideas were the fashion. They were accompanied by much hype about the revolution Thatcherism had accomplished. Britain’s relative economic decline had not been halted. In 1986 Britain became for the first time since the Industrial Revolution a net importer of manufactured goods.
Trade unions were still managing to negotiate wage rises above inflation – often without conceding real productivity gains. Thatcher boasted that from 1982 onwards Britain had enjoyed the highest growth rates in Europe and big increases in productivity to match. But the growth rates only looked good if the years 1979–81 were excluded (the worst years of the first Thatcher recession). Productivity increases were largely a result of the steep increases in unemployment in those years which meant remaining workers had to maintain production levels.
Even at the supposed height of Thatcherism in 1983 the survey How Britain Votes concluded:
‘The working class has been relatively immune to the blandishments of free enterprise with an increase of only 14 percent in favour. The petty bourgeoisie and the salariat have responded more enthusiastically with increases of 31 and 32 points. The shift to the right could perhaps be described as a successful attempt by the Conservatives to articulate the latent interests of their natural supporters.’
Indeed throughout the last 15 years of Tory rule a large majority of the population preferred more public spending to lower taxes, and lower unemployment to lower inflation.
The crisis in the Tory Party today reflects the failure to arrest the decline of British capitalism. This underlies the splits and tensions within the present government. The division over Europe reflects a widespread debate within the post-1945 ruling class over whether Britain should look to integration within a European trade zone or towards its historical trading area across the Atlantic and further afield.
History has come full circle in the last 15 years. Then Thatcher seemed to offer an alternative to the U-turning governments of Heath and Callaghan which disintegrated from within. Today, watching Major’s government fall apart is like a repeat of those years – minus the flares and the kipper ties.
Despite claims to be the party of democracy and freedom, the Tory Party is run in a way which would make Stalin feel at home.
In strict terms there is no Conservative Party. The National Union of Conservative Associations is responsible for the 634 constituencies. A separate body, Central Office, employs the full time staff and runs the national and regional offices while the Conservative parliamentary party is separate again. The only link between these three bodies is the party leader!
Individuals join a local constituency association but are not members of the National Union. There is no democracy whatsoever in the running of the Tory Party. The annual seaside gathering has no constitutional powers over anyone. One Tory leader, Lord Balfour, said he would ‘rather consult his valet than the National Union’.
The party’s membership, as a recent study – True Blues by Paul Whiteley, Patrick Seyd and Jeremy Richardson – reveals, is overwhelmingly middle class.
There has been much talk about the popular support Thatcher built among workers. But there has been no real change. In 1983 the Tories got 35 percent of all manual working class votes. In 1951 the figure was 34 percent. Large numbers of workers have always voted Tory. Pollsters Robert McKenzie and Alan Silver described these as forming two sorts, ‘deferential voters inspired by “traditional emotions”’ and ‘secular, self-seeking voters’. In less polite words: arse lickers and greedy bastards!
For much of the last 15 years the Tory Party has seemed a well oiled machine capable of sweeping all before it. Reality is somewhat different. The Tory vote has been in decline since 1931. Thatcher’s highest share of the poll was 42.4 percent in 1983. Yet only Bonar Law in 1922 and Harold Wilson in October 1974 had polled less this century. As late as 1955, the Tories won 49.7 percent of the vote. In the big cities the Tory share of the vote has been in constant decline since 1959.
In the 1950s the Tories claimed 2,750,000 members. By 1990 they claimed 1 million, while the figure now stands at 750,000. The party is losing 60,000 members a year. In the 1950s the Young Conservatives boasted 100,000 members. In 1994 the YCs were abolished.
The average age of a Tory Party member is 62. Half are over 65, just 5 percent are under 35, and 68 percent have not attended a ward or constituency meeting in the last year. Nearly a quarter have had no contact with party activists in the last year. Some 41 percent believe that the party leadership does not pay a lot of attention to the views of ordinary party members while 51 percent would like the party leader to be elected by ballot.
This ageing band is not as stable in support of the government as one might suppose. Four out of five support more spending on the NHS with just 11 percent opposing more health expenditure. Surprisingly, 69 percent oppose the death sentence, though this must be balanced against 70 percent support for repatriation of immigrants. Just 33 percent want access to abortion to be made more difficult.
The once well oiled machine is also showing signs of rust. In 1966 there were 421 full time constituency agents but this has fallen to 234 as ‘a result of a declining party membership’ according to True Blues. The authors of the survey challenge the perceived notion of how elections are won:
‘Local association campaigning has a significant impact on election results ... contrary to what many academic psephologists tell us, general elections are not won or lost solely in television studios and advertising offices.’
To influence people you need a network of individuals who can explain and carry those ideas in everyday language. Most Tory members – rather than reacting to events – are watching them snuggled up in an armchair clutching a gin and tonic.
This then is the good news. In the event of a serious crisis like that round the introduction of the poll tax in England and Wales or over Heseltine’s pit closure programme in 1992, local Tories can be thrown into confusion and disarray. The Tories may be a nasty bunch but this ageing band are hardly likely to form the shock troops of the counter-revolution.
The party’s top ten backers between 1979 and 1993 were United Biscuits, British and Commonwealth Holdings, Hanson Trust, George Weston Holdings (a subsidiary of Associated British Foods, Britain’s biggest baker), Taylor Woodrow, P&O, Forte, Trafalgar House, Western United Investments and Glaxo.
The Tory party is tied to Britain’s ruling class by a myriad of golden threads. Brewing has long been associated with the party so it is no surprise to discover that Samuel Whitbread, chair of the family brewing giant, is chair of the Bedfordshire Conservative Association as well as the county’s High Sheriff and Deputy Lord Lieutenant.
Tim Sainsbury owns shares in the family supermarket giant worth £115 million. Michael Heseltine is worth £108 million. This makes them two of the top five wealthiest Tory MPs. Sainsbury went to Eton and oxford and is, according to Who’s Who, ‘a whizz at bridge’, and Heseltine owns Haymarket Publishers, a £2.5 million country house with 550 acres in Oxfordshire and another home in Belgravia worth £1.5 million.
Joining them are Paul Channon of the Guinness brewing dynasty, whose seat – Southend West is regarded as a family hand me down. Educated at Eton and Oxford, his homes include an Essex mansion, a £2 million London house and a winter home in Mustique. His wealth is totalled at £190 million. Mark Lennox Boyd is also part of the Guinness mafia and attended Eton and Oxford, with wealth totalled at £138 million. Lord James Douglas Hamilton, who sacrificed becoming Earl of Selkirk to save Major a by-election defeat, was educated at Eton and Oxford (you may have spotted a pattern here).
Before the last election 62 Tory MPs, including seven ministers, were Lloyd’s underwriters. This helped ensure that debates on state intervention to bail out the huge losses incurred by investors in Lloyd’s were very well attended. The minister presiding over this matter, Michael Howard, had a stake in Lloyd’s but this, naturally, did not affect his judgement.
Another disinterested public servant is Sir Marcus Fox, chair of the powerful 1922 Committee which groups backbench Tory MPs. By 1989 he had acquired six directorships and four consultancies. He formed his own lobbying outfit, Westminster Communications, after his sacking as a minister. This now represents 50 companies within the corridors of Westminster, including the Pools Promotion Association and Suzuki.
At the close of 1993 the cabinet joined together to be photographed. Out of 23 ministers, 18 had been at Cambridge University. Of Thatcher’s first cabinet back in 1979, 86 percent had gone to public school, 71 percent were company directors and 14 percent large landowners.
In contrast the last three Conservative leaders, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, did not come from wealthy backgrounds. All three went to state schools. But Thatcher married into wealth. After she ceased to be prime minister she was given use of a house in Westminster by the Britain’s top property magnate, the Duke of Westminster (as was Norman Tebbit when he quit as Tory chairman).
Top Tories can look forward to being well rewarded for their services. In 1987 Geoffrey Rippon retired from the Commons to take the usual peerage plus 48 different directorships, which included pocketing £60,000 as chair of Britannia Arrow.
A shuffle through the directors of the top British companies reveals that former ministers taking seats on the board include George Younger, who chairs the Royal Bank of Scotland, Nigel Lawson at Barclays Bank, Peter Walker at British Gas, Dalgety and Tate & Lyle, Norman Tebbit at British Telecoms, while former chair of the Tory Party, Sir Norman Fowler, sits on the board of National Freight.
The party’s treasurer for the first half of Thatcher’s reign, the builder Lord McAlpine, kept the only list of party donors locked at home in his own desk. One Tory official was quoted as saying, ‘The secrecy involved ... gives the opportunity for fraud to exist on a grand scale.’
Between 1987 and 1992 the Tories spent a total of £73 million, leaving an overdraft of £16.5 million Strangely the banks have not called in the receivers.
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Last updated: 3 November 2019