Presiding over decline

Alan Clark

For the better part of this century the Conservatives have been the governing political party of Britain.

During that period the country has fallen in statute (both comparative and absolute) by virtually every criterion of measurement which can be applied. Yet the primary objective of the Conservative Party. or so it claims and its supporters believe, is to advance and protect the interests of the British nation state.

How are we to understand its catas- trophic and repetitious failure over practi cally the whole period to attain this objective?By the time that John Ramsden's narrative opens, much crisis, defective judgment, failure of nerve, muddled improvisation and contrived auto-delusion is already in the past. The attempt to revive the Gold Standard; divisions over India; the abdication crisis; the mismanagement of appeasement, all these episodes have played their part in layering the tectonic plates which, on 8 May 1940, did finally buckle and overturn the estab- lished order of 100 years.

Dr Ramsdell promenades through the times subsequent to this earthquake sympathetically, but never with the slight est trace of sycophancy. Both volumes are beautifully constructed, meticulous in their research and in their adamant, though courteous, resistance to the received idea.

First one notes that although in power for all but 15 of the last 60 years This Great Party of Ours has not since poor Neville was so cruelly ousted in 1940, and barring that brief 18-month period in the 1960s when his PPS, Alec Home (or 'Hume' as he used sometimes to be described in Central Office papers), was in charge, had, until John Major was elected in the last month of 1990, a recognisable Conservative as leader (And a fat lot of good that's doing him, you may say.) Churchill was of an imperial cast of mind, holding Tory MPs in contempt and (reciprocated) dislike. Heath was a socialist at heart, a corporatist in declamation. What he really pined for was a Govern- ment of All the Talents, an 'Administration of Men of Good Will drawn from within and without Party boundaries'. Yet both of them, for long periods, enjoyed that ful- some obeisance which the rank and file will bestow on its leader, and the sufferance, albeit customarily grudging, of parliamen- tary colleagues.

With Mrs Thatcher this obeisance degenerated into adulation. And woe betide anyone who demurred. In her hey- day these were very few in number. The only colleagues I can recall who did so on intellectual grounds - although arguing from a leftward aspect --• were Sir Ian Gilmour and Mr David Knox. A few other (alas, the slapdash intrusion upon current parlance of mildly obscene expletives leaves me barren of any other descriptive noun than that beginning with 'w') ----'s like Sir Anthony Meyer and Mr Robert Hicks assumed the role of statutory whinger. In fact there have been very few periods when the members of Parliament, who ought to be the custodians of the Party's — - let us not stretch credulity by saying 'conscience' core ethic, have expressed much dissent; still less allowed this to translate into action.

How far this paradox explains, or to what extent it defies, the Conservatives achievement in remaining, in the mind of supporter and opponent alike, the Natural Party of Government, still eludes analysis.

But these two admirable volumes contain practically everything required to allow the reader to form his own opin- ion. We saunter along the years, from 1940 to 1975, noting whatever is the least bit politically significant. High among the author's achievements is that he never allows himself to become, in fashionable parlance, judgmental, yet is never bland. All those personal rivalries, mock crises, pointless diversions, clumsy conspiracies, are set out in the fullest detail, yet without the reader every really knowing with whose 'side' Mr Ramsden's sympathies lie.

Anecdotes, some of them completely fresh, sparkle like streaks of ore in a slag- heap. I particularly enjoyed James Stuart, the Chief Whip who succeeded Margesson 'k's how they'd have wanted it.' (as far as Churchill was concerned this must have been like vetoing de Haene and ending up with Santer), putting up a resis- tance to Brendan Bracken's promotion:

The Prime Minister kept insisting. After a bit, Stuart got up and made for the door.

'James, stop. Why are you leaving?'

'Oh I'm just going to be sick. I'll be back in a second'.

An untapped vein, really, the life and times of the Chief Whips. Yet as the broad issues of policy diminish, and politi- cal history degrades further into a cro- cheted tapestry of private intrigue and ambition, this might be the most illuminat- ing angle from which to approach the tale. Public fascination with the mythological Urquhart and now the cruder and more formidable Dunning (if you are not aware of the transformed and compulsive charac- ter of Annie's Bar let me recommend it immediately) testify to the way in which in Britain the politics of the Venetian city state have over this period displaced those of the Roman Empire at its zenith.

Opening with Churchill's accession to the leadership of the Party on Chamber- lain's death in October of 1940, Ramsden's narrative ends, 35 years later, with Mar- garet Thatcher tapping on the door of Ted Heath's room in the Commons and telling him she was going to run for his job. With- out looking up from his desk or inviting her to sit he simply responded, 'You'll lose.'

There is a certain symmetry here. Churchill was desperately worried that his own election should, even notionally, be unopposed. He well remembered the storm of waving order papers when Neville Chamberlain had entered the chamber after being displaced, contrasting with his own cool reception earlier that same afternoon. He had witnessed, and taken part in, the destabilising of coalition Prime Ministers who were dependent on the acquiescence of Conservative MPs. Churchill knew too (and rightly) that he would never either be trusted or loved by the parliamentary Party. And the old guard -- Halifax, Simon, Hoare, Chamber- lain -- had all, in the first instance, assent- ed to his coup in the confident expectation that, 'given a bit of rope, Winston will hang himself'.

So, until she had the authority of winning a general election, was Margaret Thatcher treated by most of the old Party Establishment, as no more than a transient phenomenon, something that could be controlled, patronised and, if things should come to it, dispensed with.

In both cases the process took 15 years — far longer than the attendants could have predicted. Ramsden shows how there were mutterings about Churchill as early as 1942. By 1954 his repeated undertakings, and their dishonouring, to stand down in favour of Eden had degen- erated into farce.

Yet there is a certain implacable resilience about that Conservative main- stream. Punctiliously, bit by bit, Ramsden colours the image. In the end it will not be thwarted. I myself recall that same storm of order papers waving when Geoffrey Howe made his first appearance after resigning in 1990 (but several days before delivering his speech). I had seen nothing like this in 18 years, but knew what it did portend.

And, absurdly, even today the Conserva- tive Cabinet stands in awe of two men who were first given ministerial responsibility not by Thatcher but by Heath. The only consolation for the observer, perhaps, is that they both of them would have attracted from Winston Churchill a level of contempt which Mrs Thatcher certainly felt, but did at least go through the pretence of concealing.