Epilogue
From 1830 to 1885 the Conservative party, whether in its Peelite guise or in its shape as refounded by Derby and Bentinck, was essentially a minority party. It held a majority of seats for only one fifth of the time. One must try to explain why this was the case, and having done so to explain the elections which went against the normal current, those of 1841 and 1874.
But in 1885-86 a reversal of fortune occurred, and for the next seventy years the Conservative party on its own, or as the predominant partner in a coalition, was in office for forty-seven years. As with the earlier period, having tried to explain why that was so, one then has to explain the elections which went the other way—above all, those which produced landslides—the elections of 1906 and 1945—and perhaps, though less striking, those of 1892 and 1923.
So I shall propound a theory about British party politics which may or may not be correct but which appears at least a possible explana- tion of events. I begin with the premise that the political nation—particularly in England —throughout a period of great social economic and technological change has been profoundly conservative, with a small `c,' as regards its institutions, usages and habits. The sheer continuity of our institutional structure is one of the most remarkable features of British history. For example, who would have thought in the 1830s that the monarchy, the House of Lords, the Established Church. would still be features of the British scene 130 years later? One is reminded of Hilaire Belloc's Lord Calvin :
'Lord Calvin thought the Bishops should not sit As Peers of Parliament. And argued it! In spite of which, for years and years and years, They went on sitting with their fellow-peers.'
And they are still sitting there today. One could- cite many examples of this continuity, this reluctance to change. Lord Salisbury, whose career as Leader is the great success story of the period, 'always maintained,' his daughter tells us,
'that the forces which make for the defence of institutions, as well as the principles bound up with them, are immensely powerful, and sufficient in themselves to win adherence to any party that is able sincerely and loyally to place itself at their service. It was a view con- stantly disputed by his Tory democrat followers —but he held to it and could point to the pre- vailing influences which have governed every Conservative victory at the polls as proof of his contention. He used to declare . . . that Mr Gladstone's existence was the greatest source of strength which the Conservative party possessed . . . He did not shrink from facing the fact that according to his views the success of his own party was dependent on the existence of the other; "I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman—whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals." '
If it is true that the English nation is in this sense profoundly conservative, it is also true that certain features go with that sort of con- servatism. One has been 'nationalism' or `patriotism,' whichever one wishes to call it, in many ways a defensive reaction to threats and
dangers from outside. The 'patriotic' card is almost always a winner when it can be played with any relevance. Moreover, this sort of small 'c' conservatism has never been totally negative—the artificial and obdurate freezing of a particular balance of social forces, without reference to the pressures of discontent and change. To use Disraeli's frequently quoted words in a speech in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1867: 'In a progressive country change is con- stant; and the question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines. The one is a national system; the other, to give it an epithet, a noble epithet—which it may perhaps deserve—is a philosophic system. Both have great advantages: the national party is supported by the fervour of patriotism; the philosophical party has a singular exemption from the force of prejudice.'
Stern and unbending Toryism has never paid dividends to the Conservative party, nor in practice when in office has the party ever taken that line. However much his example may have been disliked in retrospect, Peel taught his party a lesson that has never been forgotten. He also taught it another lesson, though unintentionally —the lesson that party disunity is something which the 'national' party cannot afford.
The failure of the party between 1830 and 1885 lay in its failure to preserve unity over the corn law crisis, and in its inability to present itself as a plausible alternative to the Whig- Peelite alliance established by Palmerston. Neither the 'patriotic' nor the 'constitutional' card was much use against him, and while he ruled, small 'c' conservatism was not on the side of the Conservative party. Gladstone trans- formed the situation. Disraeli profited to some extent from this, but Salisbury was the real beneficiary. The 'national' cry and the 'con- stitutional' cry were assets whose possession by the Conservatives was hard to challenge when once the Liberal party had committed itself to Irish Home Rule, little Englanderism, and opposition to armaments. A conservative nation from then onwards regarded the Conservative party as the natural 'majority party.'
But the Conservatives made a disastrous error —or rather Joseph Chamberlain, a non-Conser-
vative accidentally in their ranks, made it— when they espoused the cause of tariffs from 1903 onwards. This was the reverse of conser- vatism. It was after all a major innovation. As a result they provoked a Lib/Lab alliance which kept them out of power at the next three elections. They only recovered when as a result of the war, and other causes, that alliance broke up in confusion. It has never paid the Conser- vatives to come forward as the party of avowed change. They can successfully be a party that accepts change, even a party that quietly brings about change when in office, but they have not yet won an election on a programme of change, and they have almost always fared badly when they have sought to appear in this unplausible disguise.
This article is based on the last of Robert Blake's recent Ford Lectures at Oxford. The lectures will be expanded into a book to be published by Eyre and Spottiswoode next year.
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