Welcome, but...
From Dr John A. H. Wylie
Sir: It was good to see gracing your columns after so long an absence, an offering in characteristic vein from my friend, neighbour and good-natured political adversary, Mr Tom Skeffington-Lodge. This momentary delight apart, the occasion was, for a High Tory, melancholy indeed since, unless blinded by prejudice or eaten up with mean-spirited malice, one cannot but agree with every word your correspondent writes. This is, in truth, a brilliantly led administration and Mr Wilson's triumph is that he has created out of a melange of faction and protest the party of government. To say that he has done so as a result of progressively efficacious felo de se by the Conservative Party since the death of Sonar Law, the coup de grace being delivered with wanton abandon and seemingly irreversible consequences by the purblind and incompetent bigot Edward Heath, does not significantly detract from Mr Wilson's achievement nor is it anything but churlish to deny him praise for his
scintillating political opportunism. No British politician of modern times could have turned events so decisively to his, and indeed to the nation's, advantage; Sir Winston Churchill only excepted.
This brings me to Mr SkeffingtonLodge's telling critique of Heath's deplorable successor, the only runner in that ignoble race who could possibly bring about even greater disaster to the party than the squalid band-leader she dispossessed. The collapse of the Tory Party can be seen to run parallel with its abandonment of aristocratic political mores. This first became undeniable when Baldwin, upon utterly indefensible grounds, was preferred as leader to Nathaniel Curzon and although there are exceptions — Churchill, Eden and Home spring instantly to mind — the Conservatives have since plumbed ever-increasing depths of the social sump to obtain their leaders and in the foredoomed search of a spurious ground-swell of lasting support. The landed gentry were the first to be abandoned, replaced by conspicuously successful tradespeople, a genre epitomised by Neville Chamberlain and Harold Macmillan. From these dubious progenitors they plunged to the nadir of the lower middle-classes, gaffing first "grocer" Heath and now a real grocer's daughter in Margaret Thatcher. Not the least humiliating aspect of the appalling saga is the latter's attempt to ennoble such contemptible antecedents. She proclaims in affected accents with distorted pride and naked effrontery her supra-emporial domesticity as if it were a stately home. What we have witnessed is the inexorable abandonment of a great tradition of the government of a world power by a .governing class for an uncertain, tatterdemalion managership of a dilapidated corner shop with wasting assets and mouldy merchandise. The French have a word for these creatures, "Poujadistes", mean and short-sighted, small-minded and penny-pinching touts who may include not necessarily unworthy small businessmen but also include, and more typically, petty or even "grand" entre-, preneurial crooks. The loud-mouthed, ill-spoken, vulgarly accoutred new rich parvenu is one whom we are all now forced to recognise as the archetypal Conservative voter, The Kray twins we may be sure were staunch supporters of Mr Heath. The Tories have, sadly, forgotten the command implied in the refrain "Bow, bow ye lower middle classes!"
Mr Skeffington-Lodge may well be right to aver that Mr Enoch Powell's error of judgement has put him out of the race. Sir Keith Joseph has failed lamentably to live up to his early promise and, tragedy of tragedy, Mr Edward du Cann did not see fit to grasp the party reins when he alone could have stopped the rot. For those of us now on the far right our only hope would seem to lie in the creation of a small, highly elite party led, perhaps by Sir Geoffrey Howe, exerting its infltience by quality alone but never numerically large enough to hold executive power save in a coalition in a national emergency. Hopefully we can rely upon the hereditary peers in the House of Lords, whom God preserve, to curb the more damaging lunges to the far-left. It is significant that it was the disastrous Peter Walker, one of Heath's lunatic quadrumvirate of consenting adults, Rippon, Barber and Heseltine being the other three, who, because his ilk would specifically be excluded from any such party, deplored the emergence of true Toryism on these lines. Unless it too commits suicide or is destroyed by its more virulent supporters. a social democratic Labour Party will govern this country for the foreseeable future and, as Scandinavia has shown, this need be no catastrophe. The small right-wing party so understandably feared by Mr Walker would exert influence out of all proportion to its numbers. After all, neither you, sir, nor
the Times newspaper relies upon mass circulation to wield your not inconsiderable powers.
The Tories must not shirk the proper use of the emotive word "class" in the proclamation of their faith. It is the cowardice of obfuscation which has brought them to their present sorry state.
"They've welcomed those fellows from Barrow and Jarrow At Eton and Winchester, Rugby and Harrow!"
John A. H. Wylie 9A Portland Place, Kemp Town, Brighton
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