A policeman's lot for the Tories
The odds are that this week's Conserva- uve party conference will be the last before the next general election. For this reason, if for no other, the party faithful will make sure that it is a great success. Tories, by and large, are not boat-rockers —least of all in front of a.-.n election, and one that they confidently expect to win. Nor is their enthusiasm in any way phoney—which is more than can be said about the euphoria generated at last week's Labour conference. The differ- nee can be readily demonstrated : which party is it that looks forward to next month's bumper crop of by-elections with eager relish? Certainly not Labour.
And yet, and yet. . . The Conservative party faithful are not really all that different from the nation as a whole: they will feel, as the nation feels, that something is missing. The lead the people of this country desperately want to be given—can the Tory party really be said to be providing it? And if not, why not? Is it, as many feel, all the fault of Mr Heath? Certainly, the Leader of the Opposition does not number among is qualities the ability either to project harm on television or make a memorable remark on a public platform. But all that his means is that any lead the Conserva- ves give has to be based on reality ather than an image, which may be hard n the party but is probably beneficial o the nation.
Is it, then, as others would maintain. hat the Opposition has produced recious few policies and been sus- ieiously imprecise about those it has? his, too, cannot be the answer. Certainly, • ven where decisions have been taken the • arty leadership is often reluctant to spell them out. This is partly for fear hat, if it does, Mr Wilson will appro- riate any popular policy for himself— somewhat exaggerated worry, since hen political clothes stealing is taken o excess the public is likely to reflect ow much better fitting the suit would ock on its rightful owner. What is more o the point, however, is that detailed ommitments, if popular, are likely to be rresponsible, and if responsible either npopular with a vocal minority (includ- ng, often, some of the party's own epresentatives in parliament) or merely gnored by the bored majority. In any event, since most people. when hey call for a 'policy', are really asking hat a government would do. and since Conservative government, by its very nature, ought to believe in 'doing' less and leaving the rest of us to get on with our own lives as far as possible in our own way, the task of matching Labour policy for policy is one that should not even been attempted. One way and another, the danger is that the Tories will produce too many rather than too few 'policies' between now and the election.
The truth of the matter is that the Tories will not be able to provide a lead until they have first succeeded in explain- ing to the nation what it is that the Conservative party stands for—and shown, too, how this is related to specific areas of policy in its fullest sense. This does not mean foreign policy—where the Tories can agree on being the patriotic party but not on what patriotism means (which is just as well since it is the state of the nation at home which is the public's cause for concern). Nor, equally, does it mean economic policy. Mr Wilson can point to the balance of payments improvement and Mr Heath to the vast burden of international indebtedness the present Government has incurred, but this is not what most people are worried about. After all is said and done, we are not a poor nation.
But are we a contented nation? What sort of a society is growing up around us? This is what people are concerned about today. The fierce debate about education which has characterised Con- servative party conferences ever since the last general election is symptomatic of this. Conservative leaders have tended in the past to take a somewhat detached view of the state school system for the simple reason that, for their own children, they have contracted out of it into the private sector. The result has been that the 'progressives' have had the field almost to themselves. But detachment is no longer possible: Britain has become almost obsessed by education; the English (in this sense at least) are becoming like the Scots. And as this happens it is becoming clear that the real issue lies not between the passionate advocates of the comprehensive school and the equally passionate defenders of the grammar schools, but between those who believe in genuine education and the absorption of civilised values, whatever the type of school, and those who are concerned with social engineering and the repudiation of traditional society.
So, too, with the rest of the welfare state. With the weakening of the family as a unit, we have allowed the old to become the outcasts of society, salving our con- sciences by voting for governments to pay them bigger and bigger pensions. But it is loneliness, not poverty, that is the curse of old age: the welfare state has largely failed them. Again, in the name of com- passion, we have raised taxes still higher, to pay not only for pensions but for cash benefits for the indigent of all ages and conditions. The result is a system that penalises the hardworking for the sake of the feckless: no better recipe for the destruction of the moral basis of society could be imagined.
It is in this sense that people are look- ing for a lead—and in which the Con- servative party needs to give one. Old values—and the institutions that embody them—are under attack: what, the public asks, is to take their place? Nothing. is the answer: because the old values and institutions—academic education, western European civilisation, the family, the traditional moral basis of society—all these must be preserved and defended, by policies for education, welfare, taxation, the environment and all the rest specifi- cally designed to do so. It is in this wider sense, too (and not simply over manifest- ations like football hooliganism), that the Conservatives need to emerge as the party of law and order.
This is, not surprisingly, a conservative philosophy, with a small 'c'. But it is hardly a rejection of change: science and technology will see to it that there is change in society and in our environment —so, even more powerfully, will private enterprise capitalism, the most potent force for change ever devised, and one to which the Conservative party is as wedded as it is to conservatism itself. What it does imply, however, is that the forces of change lie outwith the government: the govern- ment's job is to prevent undesirable change and preserve the worthwhile.
In his Ford lectures, to be published later this year, Mr Robert Blake quotes the great Lord Salisbury (who led the Con- servative party into the twentieth century) as saying 'I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman—whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals'. Today, when 'criminals' are attacking the very foundations of our society, our civilisation, anu we traditions and institutions which embody them, the country is once again looking for just such a policeman.
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