I Was a Progressive Reactionary

By ANGUS MAUDE, MP

IT is now just twenty-five years since I first moved a resolution at a Conservative Party Conference. That is neither here nor there as far as party conferences are concerned; they are always pretty much the same. But duting this time the Conservative Party itself has changed considerably.

There was even a period, after the war, when it seemed that the Tories might be starting one of their historic regrouping movements, to the accompaniment of an authoritative restatement 4 of principles. This did not happen, partly because Mr. Butler was unable to make up his mind whether he was Disraeli or Sir Robert Peel.

There are rumours that it is to happen now, with Lord Hailsham in the role of Bolingbroke.* Shadowy figures are to be seen in the background, symbolically dressed and clutching reliquaries containing bits of the one true faith. They in- clude Mr. lain Macleod as Disraeli, Mr. T. E. Utley as Burke and Mr. Enoch Powell as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The situation has been somewhat confused by Lord Altrincham ,making a brisk irruption on the scene as Lloyd George.

I am not exactly wide-eyed with hope. If we are to have our principles restated, I would like someone to take a little time off beforehand to read up what it is that is being restated. For the rest, I can do little more than croak on the side- lines and prophesy a certain amount of doom.

Anything else would be out of the question; for, you see, I have become a reactionary. It hap- pened quite suddenly. One day I was a Pro- gressive Left-wing Tory, lumped together in the press with Mr. Butler's Back-room Boys; the next, it seemed, I was a Right-wing reactionary. Since I am getting old and out of touch with modern thought, the natural thing to do is to write my memoirs. I shall come clean at last and reveal the discreditable truth, which is that I have been a reactionary all the time.

Skipping the 1930s, when I was trying to react all the way back to Disraeli and Lord Randolph Churchill, I shall hurry on to 1950, when I emerged from PEP heavily disguised as a Pro- gressive Tory. This disguise was virtually im- penetrable, because I was later described by Mr. Henry Fairlie as a something-or-other Planner (I do not mean to suggest that he used bad lan- guage, only that I have mislaid the reference). I also edited a book to which Mr. Butler wrote a foreword!

It is this book, which was called One Nation, that really ought to have blown the gaff. Unfor-

tunately, though everybody talks about it and a

lot of copies were sold, no one seems to have read it. It was written, by a group of Conserva-

tive MPs, founded by Mr. C. J. M. Alport, Mr.

Gilbert Longden and myself, who had come to- gether to discuss the social services. It included

practically all Mr. Butler's Back-room Boys, and Mr. lain Macleod and I edited this book (to which Mr. Butler wrote a foreword!).

*It seems that the Bolingbroke in question is Henry St. John (1678-1751). not the one who de- throned Richard.

Well, when I saw that one of the two respect- able Sunday newspapers—not the Independent and Progressive one, but the one that takes its political handouts from the Chief Whip—had published an article the other day saying that the only hope for the Tories was to get back to the sort of Progressive thinking that was being done in the early Fifties by Mr. Butler's Back- room Boys, I thought to myself, 'Ho, ho! So that's the way the wind's blowing!' And, of course, I remembered that the Chief Whip was one of the authors of this book One Nation, so

I thought I'd better get it down and read it again.

I read Mr. Butler's foreword, which said we had performed a distinguished service, but if anything went wrong it wasn't his fault. And then I made a list of the principal recommendations : (1) The abolition of the food subsidies; (2) The freeing of house building from controls; (3) Repeal of the development -provisions of the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act; (4) The introduction of charges in the National Health Service.

At this point I thought I saw what the respectable Sunday newspaper meant when it said we needed more Progressive policies like the ones Mr. But- ler's Back-room Boys had thought up in the early 1950s, so I wrote a letter to the Editor explaining what they had been. But he cut all that out, without asking my permission, and just published the parts of my letter that looked really reac- tionary. So I realised he hadn't read the book after all, and that my letter had come as something of a shock.

Well, in 1951, I became Director of the Con- servative Political Centre, and caused to be pub- lished a lot of very Progressive books, including one advocating more Free Trade which led the

Economist to refer to me as 'a Liberal-minded avant-garde.' This, however, was not yet my finest hour. In 1954 the One Nation Group produced another book, called Change is Our Ally, which was edited by Mr. Enoch Powell and myself.

For some reason that now escapes me, we wrote the foreword to that one ourselves.

The theme of this book was that the structural changes that had taken place in British industry not only from 1939 to 1951; but during the rationalisation era of the 1920s and 1930s, to- gether with the accompanying government con- trols, were mostly bad for the economy, and that we needed to get back to a state of much greater'

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competition. Both the News Chronicle and Edward Hulton wrote long articles saying Progressive this was. Emboldened, we move lot of amendments to the Restrictive Ti Practices Bill, in an endeavour to break up s■ more of the monopolistic growths of the pel since 1930; but this was felt to be a bit too 1 gressive, and I don't think we carried any of th Exactly when it was that people began rumble this gigantic confidence trick and realise that nearly all our proposals were in wholly reactionary I do not know. Certainly until most of them had been carried out by Government. I was being called a Left-wing 1 gressive as late as 1955, and even at the timi the Sitez crisis Mr. Fairlie likened my views domestic politics to those of Mr. Gaitskell. not so long ago that! addressed the Bow GI?

By this time all Mr. Butler's Back-room E had become Ministers, and I left the One Na Group in order to see whether the hoax vA work in matters of foreign policy as well didn't. No one thought I was at all Progres5 And before you could say Hailsham I wa Right-wing reactionary, economics and so services and all.

By the time I have finished my memoirs I I discover what is the moral of all this. I kt about joining the Suez Group, of course, Eli feel there is more to it than that. It can't simply that you have to be associated with Butler's Back-room Boys, because the respectt Sunday newspaper says that the new One Nai Group is ever so progressive, and they have left it. Nor are there any of them in the E Group, which the Sunday newspaper says is most Progressive of the lot and even has Edward Hulton backing it. And the old co dence trick isn't entirely exploded, eitl because Lord Altrincham, who is so Progres, that they have him on the TV as well as wril in Crossbow, says we must all be Rad Liberals now, which is much more reaction that! ever dared to be. _ Could it be that none of these people prattl about being Progressive knows what the hell I talking about? No, it must be just me getl old and crotchety, because of all these cle people like Lord A. and Sir E. Hutton and respectable Sunday newspaper and the Cl Whip, and then the Prime Minister launch Crossbow, too.

I've tried so hard to understand. I've r Bolingbrokej and Burke, and Canning, and P and Disraeli, and Lord Randolph; and Mr. 1.11 and Lord Hailsham. There's nothing in ally them about being Progressive. Only about 'fc ism being concerned with the welfare of the w.11 nation, and about the need to reform abuses. Liberals and Socialists, I find, talk about be Progressive all the time, only they don't se to mean quite the same thing. Yet it appears t they have won. They have sold us Progress un, their own branded label, and now no clever Ti dares to be without it.

I still think they don't know what the l" they're talking about. After all, look how lc I fooled them !

But now we are to have our principles restat God help us all.

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