David Willetts

David Willetts gave the inaugural lecture to the Conservative History Group, explaining what lessons there are to draw from the previous periods when Conservatives have been in opposition and made successful returns to Government.“I am honoured to have been asked to give this inaugural lecture to the Conservative History Group. The Conservative History Group is now up and running, thanks to the energy and commitment of two people – Keith Simpson and Ian Dale.It is deeply ironic that we should only now have a Conservative History Group whereas the Conservative Philosophy Group was set up over 20 years ago. Surely for Conservatives our history comes before our philosophy. Indeed, sometimes Conservatism seems to be just plain common sense, a view caught pithily by Wellington, who spoke for millions of voters over the years:

“We hear a great deal of Whig principles and Tory principles and Liberal principles and Mr.Canning’s principles; but I confess that I have never seen a definite account of any of them, and cannot make myself a clear idea of what any of them mean.”

But that isn’t the whole story. There is a deeper truth here, brilliantly captured by T.S. Eliot in an essay distinguishing between what he called the organic and mechanical model of politics.

“…political thinking, that is, thinking that concerns itself with the permanent principles, if any, underlying a party name, can follow two contrasted lines of development. At the beginning may be a body of doctrine, perhaps a canonical work; and a band of devoted people set out to disseminate and popularize this doctrine through its emotional appeal to the interested and the disinterested; and then, as a political party, endeavour to realise a programme based on the doctrine. Before arriving at the position of governing, they have envisaged some final state of society of which their doctrines give the outline. The theory has altogether preceded the practice. But political ideas may come into being by an an opposite process. A political party may find that it has had a history, before it is fully aware of or agreed upon its own permanent tenets; it may have arrived at its actual formation through a succession of metamorphoses and adaptations, during which some issues have been superannuated and new issues have arisen. What its fundamental tenets are, will probably be found only by careful examination of its behaviour throughout its history and by examination of what its more thoughtful and philosophic minds have said on its behalf; and only accurate historical knowledge and judicious analysis will be able to discriminate between the permanent and the transitory; between those doctrines and principles which it must ever, and in all circumstances, maintain, or manifest itself a fraud, and those called forth by special circumstances, which are only intelligible and justifiable in the light of those circumstances.”

Our Conservatism has emerged from political practice. It is not an abstract theory beginning with a canonical text which we then try to impose on a resistant world. Take, say, one of the great political philosophers of personal freedom – John Locke. Modern Conservatives have John Locke in their pantheon just as classical liberals do. But the difference between us and classical liberals is that we understand that John Locke could only write what he did because his principles are really an abridgement of the British common law tradition and the parliamentary battles of his own age. We are wary of an abstract and rootless freedom. We believe in freedoms which are real, concrete and protected by institutions and our constitution.There is a paradox here, however. Even if British Conservatism had a history before it had a theory, many of us individually come to it the other way round. We start off with some ideas about Conservatism and then get interested in the history of where they came from. The history comes after the belief. It is a process of excavation, digging back to find where Conservatism comes from. This history doesn’t follow in the chronological order that historians use. It’s history which follows the famous rule of the Miss World contest: it is in reverse order. And I hope you will forgive me for taking that rather quixotic approach this evening.

There are three different periods when Conservatives were in opposition, under Margaret Thatcher from 1975-79, from 1945-51, and under Disraeli after 1844. For us at this time it is particularly fascinating to look at Conservatives in opposition. When Conservatives are in government, it is hard to disentangle the Conservative bit and the governing bit, but in opposition you find a much clearer light shone on Conservatives just being Conservatives. Almost by definition it is Conservative at a time of crisis. Conservatives like to think of ourselves as a governing Party. If it were a game of cricket we would rather be batting than bowling, it is deeply frustrating being in opposition. But Conservatives are realists also. We know that in order to get out of opposition and back into government we have got to tackle the reasons why the electorate booted us out in the first place. The Conservative Party which regains office after each of these periods of opposition looks and sounds very different from the one which lost. In each case we are looking at nothing less than the reconstruction of Conservatism based on an ambitious intellectual renewal.Conservatives love history and sometimes use it rather like Russian historians in the worst days of Soviet dictatorship. If you wanted to say something about Stalin you wrote a learned book about Ivan the Terrible. But I am not going to hide behind obscure historical parallels. I am going unashamedly to draw lessons for the present from our previous experiences of opposition.

Thatcher: 1975-9

Let’s start with that period 1974-79. In a way, getting a clear sense of that period is as difficult as getting a clear sense of 1945-51 but for the opposite reasons. The Butler reconstruction of the Conservative Party after the war has suffered from the subsequent dismissal of it as just ‘wet’. But pulling us back from landslide defeat to political dominance within only 6 years was a formidable achievement and we can learn much from it. I want to rehabilitate the Conservatives of that generation. By contrast the period 1975-79 now seems heroic, as a prelude to the great Thatcher reforms of the 1980s. We are so in awe of it that we fail to see the practical political skills that lay behind it and from which we can learn lessons.

We now think that by the late 1970s Britain was in such a bad state that the electors were willing to take very unpleasant medicine indeed to cure the problem. We did a lot of things that were right but unpopular. It is a dangerous fallacy from that to conclude that unless a policy is unpopular it can’t possibly be right. This ignores the sheer political skill of what the Conservatives did in opposition during that period. It wasn’t just a matter of prescribing a painful medicine. We also had to win a political argument. Tonight, I want to bring the politics back into Thatcherism. Let’s take what is often seen as the most vivid example of the ideological purity of Thatcherism – monetarism. It is treated as an academic piece of economic theory, and I happen to believe it is broadly true as an account of what causes inflation. But what is all too often overlooked is the electoral significance of monetarism. Now I am not going to claim that people were out on the streets shouting ‘what do we want, monetary targets, when do we want them? Now!’ But it was undoubtedly a skilful political project to tackle the most important single problem of the day.The problem which the opinion polls showed was at the top of everyone’s concern was inflation, the cost of living. Most people believe that inflation was caused by pay pushing up costs. That was why successive governments, Labour and Conservatives, had ended up introducing a prices and incomes policy. But Labour claimed to be able to work with Trade Unions whereas we Conservatives couldn’t. So they had a natural advantage on the bigger issue of the day.We couldn’t avoid the issue and talk about something else. Monetarism tackled this central political problem. The argument was that governments create inflation by loose financial policy and so they can bring down inflation by the right financial policy. They don’t need to do deals with Trade Unions. So it doesn’t matter that Conservatives don’t have a close relationship with Trade Unions.

There is a lesson here for us today. It is why Iain Duncan Smith is right to put public service reform at the heart of the Conservative agenda. We can’t afford to leave to Labour the issues at the top of the list of the electorate’s worries and instead talk about something else. Developing a distinctive Conservative approach to the reform of the public services is central to what we do.

There is another lesson we can learn from the Thatcherite period of opposition as well. Monetarism was neither economically nor politically obvious. Keith Joseph didn’t suddenly persuade all the upper echelons of the Party that it was what we should adopt. It was the subject of intense debate and dispute. When I came down from University and worked in 1978 for Nigel Lawson when he was a member of our Economics team, he and Nick Woodley and David Howell, Geoffrey Howe and Keith Joseph were endlessly debating exactly what the alternative Conservative approach to economic management would be. Those documents The Right Approach and The Right Approach to the Economy were fought over line by line with big differences between the crucial players. This argument was not a bad thing it was a good thing. It was the right basis of government because it meant that the Party’s ideas had been worked through, sorted out in opposition. It also helped generate sheer excitement and political interest in what we were doing in opposition. We couldn’t be ignored because we were generating light and heat. We all recognise the need for the Party to change while it is in opposition. But for the change to be credible it can’t be too easy either. It must be fought for and argued over as part of a desperately serious process of renewing Conservatism.

Let me give you an example of how we could apply this to today’s politics. One theme which is emerging very strongly in the Party’s critique of Labour’s centralisation is what we are beginning to call localism. We believe in giving as much power as possible to the individual hospital or the individual school. This is rapidly becoming a distinctive Conservative agenda for reforming the public sector. And it applies more widely. In my own area I have been very interested in Conservative controlled Kent County Council’s innovative policies to tackle problems of welfare dependence locally. Their effectiveness is then measured in a special public service agreement with The Treasury so that if they can show that as a result there is less dependence on means-tested benefits in Kent they will get some of the savings. All Conservatives will see that there is a powerful theme here. But it is not straightforward. There are difficult questions arising, for example, from England’s unitary political culture.

• How comfortable would people be with services that are different in Bristol and Birmingham and Bradford?
• How much difference are we willing to accept?
• Will we as an opposition foreswear for ever that seductive political slogan ‘the postcode lottery’?
• Are we willing to allow prosperous areas to purchase better services for themselves?
• What are the responsibilities that rich areas have for poor areas?
• If we are to have real diversity are we going to allow people to fail as well as to succeed?
• Is there such a thing as a right to fail?
• If so, what chance has it got in a culture that is so horribly preoccupied with naming and shaming?

These are all fair questions. They are not a problem: they are an opportunity to make the whole debate come to life. There is no harm if we debate and argue about them. There is no right answer that should immediately command universal consent. Provided that we respect each others views and treat each other with courtesy I think it is positively advantageous if prominent Conservatives argue about exactly what localism means in practice. And if we do that the big wide world out there might even notice it’s a Conservative theme.

Churchill: 1945-51

When I got interested in politics 1975 was my year zero. Before that was a dark age of wets. I now see how mistaken that was. The Party pre-1975 was ideologically disputative and intellectually lively We might even learn from some problems the Party faced then.The 1945 landslide defeat was a catastrophic blow. Quintin Hogg in the Mail described it as the result of:

“… a long pent-up and deep-seated revulsion against the principles, practices, and membership of the the Conservative Party.”

Another observer put it like this:

“Bedevilled by years of pseudo-Conservatism, shaken in morale by the intellectual superiority which they had allowed the Labour Party to assume, ashamed of many of the things they believed in their hearts, the Conservatives lacked a doctrine. It was fatal that they should have lacked a method too.”

The Party was in shock. One reaction was to say how much they agreed with Labour. Winston Churchill’s response to their first King’s Speech was as follows

“Here and there, there may be differences in emphasis in view, but in the main no Parliament has ever assembled with such a mass of agreed legislation.”

Meanwhile Party getting restless. Party Conference passed following

“That this Conference is of the opinion that the Conservative Party, in order to counter the misleading and insidious propaganda of the socialist party, should, without further delay, prepare and issue a statement, in a concise form easily understood by the electorate, setting forth the policy for which the Conservative Party stands and simultaneously a statement giving in fuller detail the principles and programme of the Party.”

The result was the industrial charter.

There was a debate amongst leadership about whether to have a policy. Rab Butler records a conversation with Churchill.

“He lectured me ‘When an Opposition spells out its policy in detail the Government becomes the Opposition and attacks the Opposition which becomes the Government. So having failed to win the sweets of office, it fails equally to enjoy the benefits of being out of office…’ There is rather more truth and tactic in this than I was always happy to allow at the time.”

Harold Macmillan summarised the issue as follows:

“Do we mean a philosophy, do we mean a policy, or do we mean a programme? We are not immediately embarked on a new election. We do not know the conditions when it comes. We do not even know what will be the political international situation during the next few years. Therefore, the point now is, what philosophy and broad policy we are to preach. I should be less happy about a detailed programme.”

Disraeli

Disraeli spent most of his political career in opposition because the Conservative Party was deeply divided on the fundamental issue of the day. Free trade or protection. It was a long hard slog. Randolph Churchill summarised his career very crisply: “Failure, failure, failure, partial success, renewed failure. Ultimate and complete victory.” And that reminds us that he did, of course, secure in 1874 a landslide Conservative victory and gave use the first solid Conservative government for nearly 30 years.

The start was not auspicious. Peel wanted to repeal the Corn Laws and a rural rump of the Conservative Party, the old Tories, essentially protecting the rural, agricultural interests, stuck with protection. Disraeli was one of the few intelligent and thoughtful Conservatives who stayed with the Tories. A lot of other potentially significant Conservative figures, such as Gladstone, went with Peel and via Peel into the mid-19th century Liberal Party. Disraeli stayed with the rural gentry.

He offered a critique of free trade that had an authentic Tory strand to it. It was the Tory romanticism of Coleridge, of Walter Scott, of Southey. It was hatred of that utilitarian, rationalist calculating strand of economics. It is captured in Quintin Hogg’s famous remark that “economic liberalism is very nearly true”.

Disraeli’s critique of Manchester Liberals followed that romantic Tory critique and looking back to the Middle Ages. His ideal community was a monastic community. It was the political equivalent of the pre-Raphaelites. It could have been a dead-end and collapsed into anachronistic romanticism.

Then something remarkable happened. Disraeli started to understand these messages about social obligation, about there being more to life than economics, about those truths about human nature that economics could not understand and calculate, were relevant to the industrialising Britain that he saw around him. He said that “the principle of association replaced that of dependence as the foundation of the community.” (Tancred). He developed what I can only call a Compassionate Conservatism - tackling what was defined as “the condition of England” question. Let me quote from his novel “Sybil” a passage you’ll all be familiar with. It still sends a frisson of emotion through any thoughtful Conservative. It’s an exchange of dialogue where the first character describes two nations:

“between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy: who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.” ‘”You speak of -”, said Egremont, hesitatingly. “The rich and the poor.”

And I still think it contains a powerful message for us today. Disraeli was against Conservatives “who wish to keep things as they find them for as long as they can.” He wasn’t that sort of Conservative. He was an optimist. He thought the human condition should be improved. He said, “Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of angels.”

So he had a vision of how “the condition of England” could be improved. The elevation of the condition of the people became his watchword. He escaped from historical romanticism and suddenly had a message that was charged and with enormous political significance for his society and him. He captured it in great speeches in 1872 in one in Manchester Trade Hall, one in Crystal Palace, where he put the elevation of the condition of the people at the heart of the Conservative programme. And in 1874, the Conservative Party won a landslide victory. And it won a landslide victory with a wider electorate than any Conservative Party had to fight on before - there had been an expansion after 1867 with a Liberal victory straight afterwards.

Then he came to office in 1874 and what the conventional historical narrative says is that it all proved to be rather an anti-climax. The historians argue about the Public Health Act of 1875, the Artisans Dwelling Act on 1875, and whether or not these items of legislation are as significant as they ought to have been. The conventional view is they are not very significant. They are not the expansion of the welfare state which was to come later under the New Liberals and the Fabians. But that’s the point. Disraeli’s wanted to gain and retain for the Conservatives the lasting affection of the working classes. But he wasn’t going to do it by just expanding state responsibility. He wanted to empower local communities to legislate and do what they wished to do locally. Very little of his legislation is imposing national obligations on a uniform basis. It was, in the best sense of the word, permissive legislation to allow local organisations - school boards, local authorities - to carry out more functions if they wished. He said, I quote: “Permissive legislation is the characteristic of a free people.”

Disraeli died in 1881. In many ways, his crowning achievement came after his death. In 1886 the Liberal Party split and a large group of Liberals - the Liberal Unionists led by Joseph Chamberlain, moved to an alliance with the Conservative Party. They were only able to move to the Conservative Party because of the way in which Disraeli had reshaped it. That event in 1886 is the biggest single reason for the extraordinary political success of our party in the 20th century. It explains the difference between our political success and the much more troubled history of the centre-right political movement on the continent. In many countries, you had on one hand a ruralist, peasant, clerical party - a country party. Then you have separately a rationalist, anti-clerical pro-business with a small ‘l’ liberal , often large ‘l’ Liberals. It was when the Liberals split in 1886 that we overcame that divide from Birmingham, Scotland, the City of London when high finance came over to the Conservatives. It was at that point when the distinctive British Conservative movement - that combination of an understanding of the case for community and at the same time the importance of business and commerce.

One final point. Disraeli succeeded not because of great political wiles or memorable policies but because, if I may be so contemporary, he offered a narrative. He offered a narrative in the most obvious form, in his novels. And in his novels “Coningsby” and “Sybil”, above all, he offered a picture of our country. He offered a vision of what Britain could be like. He offered a picture of our country where there was both social obligation and market economies. It is a vision which remains compelling and attractive today.”