Conservative History Journal

Conservative chj History Journal

Winter 2009/10 | £7.50

James Inglis: Lord Liverpool the life and career of a much under-rated politician

Gavin Lambert: Was Churchill an Arthurian hero or just a politician – an iconoclastic view of the war leader's career

Join the debate at: Plus: Mark Coalter talks to John Ramsden and Keith Simpson interviews Ion Trewin about chj http://conservativehistory.blogspot.com/ Alan Clark; Kenneth Baxter on Florence Horsbrugh, the first Conservative woman Cabinet The blog of the Conservative History Journal member; Ronald Porter on Mollie Butler; Gordon Hector on Margaret Thatcher’s use and abuse of history Conservative History Journal • Issue 7 • Winter 2008 2

Conservative History Journal Cover_Jan10.indd 1-2 09/02/2010 10:49 The Conservative History Journal is published by the Conservative History Group Contents ISSN 1479-8026

Advertisements 3 Editorial Between the Thin Blue Lines To advertise in the next issue Helen Szamuely – The Agents’ View of Politics call Helen Szamuely on 07733 018999 Jean M. Lucas (ed.): 4 Lord Liverpool Editorial/Correspondence James M. A. Inglis Contributions to the Journal – letters, articles Trafford Publishing and book reviews are invited. The Journal ISBN 978-1-4251-5776-0 is a refereed publication; all articles submit- 8 Arthur Balfour – the man behind Israel’s right to exist £10 + £1 p&p ted will be reviewed and publication is not Sten A. Hankewitz guaranteed. Contributions should be emailed Available from: Jean Lucas, 1 Parkway, Stone, or posted to the addresses below. All articles Staffordshire, ST15 8PJ; 9 Professor John Ramsden remain copyright © their authors Tel: 01785 813926 Mark Coalter Subscriptions/Membership Reviewed by Helen Szamuely An annual subscription to the Conservative 12 Clark of Toad Hall History Group costs £15. Copies of the Ion Trewin Journal are included in the membership fee.

The Conservative History Group 16 ‘Where there is error, let us bring truth’ – Margaret Thatcher’s Chairman: Keith Simpson MP history Deputy Chairman: Professor John Charmley Gordon Hector Director: Nigel Fletcher hose who recall the Leyton This sums up this highly entertaining In the meantime, I strongly recom- Treasurer: John Strafford Journal Editor: Helen Szamuely 20 General notes and announcements by-election of 1965 as having and fascinating book of tales out of clubs mend anyone who is interested in how enormous political significance and committee rooms, tales of triumphs the party functioned during and between Conservative History Group 21 Florence Gertrude Horsbrugh (not least for Patrick Gordon and disasters at the lowest level of the elections for several decades, to read this PO Box 279 Walker’sT career) would find a curious party structure, where so much of the real collection of reminiscences that take us Kenneth Baxter Tunbridge Wells fascination in an account by of the political work is done. through the cosy meetings (and splendid Kent TN2 4WJ 24 Lady Butler of Saffron Walden clerks-in-charge, a young Agent. Her The whole carefully developed but rows) of the fifties, through the changes Ronald Porter story is about a meeting being held in a precarious system of Agents has now of the subsequent decades, the growth of Email: [email protected] very dusty room and her being caught disappeared, which may not be to the ideological commitment and the reforms Website: www.conservativehistory.org.uk 26 Winston Churchill – an Arthurian hero or just a politician? between the terrifying Central Office party’s benefit. The link between Central in the structure. Jean Lucas, herself an Blog: http://conservativehistory.blogspot.com Gavin Lambert Agent who wanted the room cleaned and Office, CCHQ as it is now known, and Agent and a Group Agent, as well as the equally terrifying landlady who did the membership, especially the activists the editor of the Agents’ Journal for some 29 The House of Dynevor and Conservative Politics 1910-38 not want anything touched. Describing has weakened. When questions are asked years, has put together this volume, con- Gerard Charmley herself as a ‘meek child of 26’ (in 1965?) about people not joining the Conservative tributed several accounts as well as an the former Agent draws a fascinating pic- (or any other political) party in the num- analysis of some of the finances. It must 33 Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes (1769 – 1825) ture of a vanished world, then omits the bers they used to, at least a partial answer have been a labour of love as well as of John Hirst denouement: we never find out how she may be that people do not necessarily feel much frustration. solved the problem. that it is their party any longer. 35 The Demise and Rise of the Conservative movement in Canada David McCann 38 How far was the Falklands War the main reason for Thatcher’s The Conservative History Group 1983 General Election victory? Justin Kempley As the Conservative Party regroups after three general election defeats, learning from history is perhaps more vital than ever. The Conservative History Group promotes the discussion and debate of all aspects of Conservative history. We organise a wide-ranging programme of speaker meetings and publish the Conservative History Journal. For an annual subscription of Book review only £15 you will receive invites to all our events as well as complimentary copies of the Conservative History Journal Please fill in and return this form if you would like to join the Conservative History Group 41 The Old Boys’ Network: A Headmaster’s Diaries 1970-1986 by John Rae Name Address

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2 Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10 Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10 43

Conservative History Journal Cover_Jan10.indd 3-4 09/02/2010 10:49 Editorial, Helen Szamuely Editorial

Helen Szamuely is the editor of the Conservative History Journal. Email her on [email protected]. s usual, this Editorial starts with ber, Florence Horsbrugh. It is, inciden- an apology – the Journal over- tally, of some interest to follow the progress ran its time and is appearing in of women in politics and to find how January 2010 instead of autumn often that happened in and through the Aor winter of 2009. Well, at least, it is a real Conservative Party. winter, which will encourage readers to Other articles deal with Lord Liverpool, spend time on the many interesting articles an under-rated Prime Minister, in this issue. Lord Balfour and that Declaration, We have two interviews with histo- Conservatives in Wales and in Canada, rians, though one, Mark Coalter’s with Lady Butler and Sir Winston Churchill. Professor John Ramsden, who died last The last of these is a somewhat contro- year, was so long that only an excerpt versial piece and I expect many angry could be published. The full interview is letters from readers. I shall be happy to on the secondary Conservative History publish them all on the blog as soon as Journal blog, intended for longer pieces they arrive and if a wide-reaching debate (http://conservativehistory2.blogspot. starts, so much the better. com/). The other article, reprinted from The Conservative History blog has now Total Politics, is a discussion between Keith multiplied, as I mentioned above. While Simpson MP and Ion Trewin about the the shorter pieces continue on the origi- latter’s biography of the late Alan Clark, nal (and they will continue with greater also an historian as well as a politician and frequency this year) a second one has all-round entertainer. appeared, for longer articles that will be There is an intriguing article about the linked to the original. Between the two of way Margaret Thatcher used history in them I hope to create something resem- her political speeches and campaigns and bling an on-line CHJ that will comple- one about the 1983 election. That makes ment the printed version. only two articles about the Prime Minister Happy 2010 to all our readers. Enjoy so many of us refer to as The Lady. But this edition of the Journal; please write we also look at another great lady, the with comments, suggestions and articles first Conservative woman Cabinet mem- either for the printed or the cyber journal.

Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10 3

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 3 09/02/2010 10:44 Lord Liverpool ‘… but he was a very honest, upright man & deserves a higher character as a statesman than I dare say History will grant to him.’

James M. A. Inglis, a newly qualified teacher at Church Langley Community Primary School in Harlow, Essex, writes about an unjustly forgotten Prime Minister

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obert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of paralytic stroke on 17 February 1827. He this island’s story are published without Liverpool KG (1770-1828), was was immediately certified politically if not a single reference to Liverpool. Simon First Lord of the Treasury and actually dead by his contemporaries. Some Schama presented a landmark BBC tele- Prime Minister for almost fifteen politicians instantly and entirely removed vision series called A History of Britain in Ryears in the early nineteenth century. To any thought of him from their minds. 2000 and produced a multi-volume work be quite precise about it, Lord Liverpool John Wilson Croker, the Secretary to to accompany it. Liverpool is not men- was Prime Minister for 14 years and 305 the Admiralty, noted in his diary on the tioned at all. Even his political descen- days, from 8 June 1812 to 9 April 1827. day that Liverpool fell ill: ‘I dined at the dants, the Conservatives, make virtu- He survived in the premiership for longer Speaker’s second official dinner, where ally no attempt to correct this oversight. than all but two of his predecessors and there was not only no grief, but not even Conservative politicians frequently claim longer than all of his successors, at least a decent pensiveness. In short, no one inspiration from past Pittite and Tory fig- so far.1 He served as premier for longer seemed to think or care about poor Lord ures, but they seem very reluctant to place than Salisbury, Gladstone and Thatcher, Liverpool.’5 Liverpool on a pedestal. and he resigned in the end not as a result The obscurity that has overtaken of a political crisis but on account of Liverpool’s utterances and Liverpool since he ceased to matter in his personal health. At his appointment everyday politics is not shared to the to the premiership, Liverpool was also jottings are not thought same extent by his immediate successor, younger, at the age of 42, than all but worthy of inclusion in a Canning. Canning served as premier for five of his predecessors and younger than just 119 days in 1827, from 12 April to all of his successors to date (Blair was 43). dictionary of quotations. his death on 8 August, but his last words Moreover, his premiership was far from Liverpool’s name is not were recorded for posterity; he was uneventful. Liverpool was Prime Minister buried in Westminster Abbey; a statue at the time of the revocation of the usually included on lists of was erected in his honour in 1832 and Orders-in-Council, the War of 1812, the great Britons still stands today alongside those of sev- end of the Peninsular War, the Congress eral other political figures on Parliament of Vienna, the Hundred Days, the battle Square where it was moved to in 1867; of Waterloo, the exile of Napoleon to the Liverpool died a little over eighteen a selection of his verbal and literary out- island of St. Helena, the passage of the months after he resigned on 4 December pourings are often included in diction- Corn Laws, the abolition of Income Tax, 1828. Nobody bothered to discover what aries of quotations; and a Blue Plaque the protest of the Luddites, the suspension his last words had been. His body was can be found in London at 50 Berkeley of habeas corpus, the Peterloo Massacre, accompanied at the start of the journey Square dedicated to him. the Six Acts, the death of George III, from the capital to its final resting place On those occasions when Liverpool the end of the Regency, the Cato Street in the country by a smaller escort than was recalled during the century or so Conspiracy, the Queen Caroline Affair, that which had travelled with his first after his death, he was not rated highly the coronation of George IV, the suicide wife’s coffin back in 1821.6 Of his for- as a statesman. Liverpool himself did not of Viscount Castlereagh, the return of mer Cabinet colleagues, only Viscount express much hope of being admired by George Canning to the Foreign Office, Sidmouth sent his carriage to join the future generations. He wrote to Henry and the reunification of the Pittites. procession. On 18 December Liverpool’s Hobhouse, the Under-Secretary of State Liverpool was Prime Minister in war body was laid to rest in the family vault for the Home Department, in 1825: ‘The and peace, prosperity and depression. He at the church of St. Mary the Virgin in world will at least give me credit for was premier in an age of reaction, reform Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire. It was not my ecclesiastical promotions, whatever and revolution. Furthermore, he was for about thirty years that a stone was they may say or think of me in other served by one past and six future Prime finally placed on the wall of the church to respects.’8 Liverpool was not the only Ministers.2 Liverpool’s government was a mark the spot.7 Furthermore, this memo- one to believe that he would receive little ministry of all the talents. And before he rial was not erected by a grateful nation credit. Harriet Arbuthnot, the wife of the became Prime Minister, he was appointed or even grieving friends but by a distant Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to each one of the three secretaryships cousin, Sir George Samuel Jenkinson, 11th stated in her journal a few days after of state in turn. Liverpool is, however, Bt. No statue has ever been erected to Liverpool’s death that she was admittedly one of the most overlooked and under- commemorate the life of Liverpool. critical of his conduct over the last few estimated, marginalised and maligned of Liverpool continues to be strangely years of his premiership, ‘but he was a Prime Ministers.3 overlooked to this day. There is not very honest, upright man & deserves a Of course it is the fate of all Prime a single location in London where a higher character as a statesman than I dare Ministers, from Walpole to Blair, to fade Blue Plaque has been placed to identify say History will grant to him’.9 from view after they leave office, but there Liverpool’s dwellings. Liverpool’s utter- In the nineteenth century Liverpool was is something rather unusual, if not unique, ances and jottings are not thought worthy generally dismissed as a distinctly second- about the extent to which Liverpool has of inclusion in a dictionary of quotations. rate and completely average figure. The been forgotten by the world since he lost Liverpool’s name is not usually included most famous exponent of this characteri- his grip on power.4 Liverpool had a major on lists of great Britons. Books detailing sation was of course Benjamin Disraeli. In

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 5 09/02/2010 10:44 1844 he published Coningsby in which he smeared Liverpool. He described Liverpool’s situation in 1819: Notwithstanding, however, all this successful mystification, the Arch-Mediocrity who presided, rather than ruled, over this Cabinet of Mediocrities, became hourly more conscious that the inevitable transition from fulfilling the duties of an administration to performing the functions of a government could not be conducted without talents and knowledge. The Arch-Mediocrity had himself some glimmering traditions of political science. He was sprung from a laborious stock, had received some training, and though not a statesman, might be classed among those whom the Lord Keeper Williams used to call “statemongers.” In a subordinate position his meagre diligence and his frigid method might not have been without value; but the qualities that he possessed were misplaced; nor can any character be conceived less invested with the happy properties of a leader. In the conduct of public affairs, his disposition was exactly the reverse to that which is the characteristic of great men. He was peremptory in little questions, and great ones he left open.10 He seemed to lack what been tested by adversity. One character What is less well known is that Disraeli today might be called in the novel surveys the current politi- followed this book up with Tancred in cal scene and states: ‘I don’t remember 1847 in which he refused Liverpool credit ‘the x factor’, and failed such a state of things, - so easy for the even for his ecclesiastical promotions: to fire the imagination Prime Minister, - since the days of Lord The Arch-Mediocrity who then governed Liverpool.’14 this country, and the mean tenor of whose of the political nation or The idea that anyone could retain prolonged administration we have delineated inspire devotion in his the premiership for almost fifteen years in another work, was impressed with the neces- and yet possess no talent beyond the sity of reconstructing the episcopal bench on contemporaries. He made mediocre, the absolutely everyday, does principles of personal distinction and ability. no attempt to build up a not carry conviction, and yet Disraeli’s But his notion of clerical capacity did not soar judgement on Liverpool was still being higher than a private tutor who had suckled personal following taken quite seriously by people in the a young noble into university honours; and late twentieth century. N. H. Brasher his test of priestly celebrity was the decent produced Arguments in History in 1968 editorship of a Greek play. He sought for the and devoted the first chapter to a discus- successors of the apostles, for the stewards of sion on the subject of Liverpool, ‘the the mysteries of Sinai and of Calvary, among Arch-Mediocrity’.15 Writers continued to third-rate hunters after syllables.11 emphasise similar qualities to those iden- Disraeli was joined by others who tified by Brougham and proved reluctant dismissed Liverpool in a similar fashion. to consider whether there might have Lord Brougham praised Liverpool for his been more to Liverpool than the fact mediocrity, his moderation, integrity and that he was apparently ‘nice’. Winston honesty, in 1839.12 Walter Bagehot also Churchill, in A History of the English- damned Liverpool with faint praise in Speaking Peoples, highlighted Liverpool’s 1867 in The English Constitution: ‘A Lord tact, patience and laxity, and failed to Liverpool is better in every-day poli- probe any further into the secret of tics than a Chatham – a Louis Philippe his success.16 ‘By turning his brilliant far better than a Napoleon.’13 Anthony sardonic pen to attacking the leading Trollope implied in The Prime Minister in Conservatives of the first half of the 1876 that Liverpool had served as pre- nineteenth century [Liverpool and Peel], mier for so long only because he had not Disraeli did a profound and long-lasting

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disservice to the Conservative party’s of an age, perhaps even the end of the about Liverpool’s public and private life. understanding of its own history.’17 British ancien régime.18 His ministry broke This study, however, is less than three It is not difficult, however, to explain up immediately after his retirement and hundred pages in length, is based on only why Liverpool has been treated in this his three short-lived successors failed seven of the hundreds of volumes of the fashion, why he has been both over- to put it back together again. The age Liverpool Papers in the custody of the looked and underestimated to such an of Tory ascendancy was also ended and British Library and is far from exhaustive extent and for so long. There are argu- an era of Whig dominance succeeded in its use of printed sources.21 As Gash ably several personal and political fac- it. Moreover, those two great liberal himself readily admits in the introduction tors behind this. Throughout his career, measures that he had opposed through- to his book: ‘One day, perhaps, the life Liverpool steadfastly refused to blow his out his career, namely Roman Catholic of Lord Liverpool will be written as it own trumpet, did not seek enormous emancipation and parliamentary reform, deserves to be, on the basis of the mas- fame and fortune for himself and gener- were enacted in the years immediately sive archival material now available and ally avoided the limelight. He seemed to following Liverpool’s death. There is also on a scale that will require more than a lack what today might be called ‘the x a regrettable tendency in British politics single volume.’22 A quarter of a century factor’, and failed to fire the imagination for long periods of conservative hege- on and the life of Lord Liverpool has still of the political nation or inspire devo- mony to be successfully demonised after not been written as deserves to be. One tion in his contemporaries. He made no they have come to an end as dark years of day, perhaps. attempt to build up a personal following. unalloyed misrule and missed opportuni- There were no ‘Liverpoolites’ as such to ties for progressive change, and it is still Endnotes carry on his work and commemorate his the case today that writers often focus 1 Norman Gash, ‘The Earl of Liverpool’, in The Prime Ministers, ed. Herbert Van Thal (Vol. 1, London: life after he was gone. He did not write much more on the apparent shortcom- George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 285. his own self-serving memoirs or have ings than the genuine achievements of 2 Addington, and Canning, Goderich, Wellington, some disciple produce a flattering record the Liverpool administration.19 Peel, Aberdeen and Palmerston. 3 Norman Gash, ‘Jenkinson, Robert Banks, second of his life and administration. Liverpool A few attempts, however, have been earl of Liverpool (1770-1828),’ in Oxford Dictionary also managed to avoid becoming a figure made to save Liverpool from obscu- of National Biography, eds. H. C. G. Matthew & of hate during his lifetime. He did not rity and the mantle of mediocrity. Three Brian Harrison (60 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), xxix, 983-90. become infamous for some terrible public biographies have been published since 4 Norman Gash, Lord Liverpool (London: Weidenfeld deed or scandal. He was not generally Liverpool’s death. Charles Duke Yonge & Nicolson, 1984) pp. 1-7, 248-55. singled out for attack in the press and was born the year that Liverpool became 5 The Croker Papers 1808-1857, ed. Bernard Pool (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1967), p. 101. rarely featured prominently in carica- Prime Minister and he churned out 6 Gash, Lord Liverpool, p. 250 tures. He did not have a great political a three-volume study of Liverpool’s 7 Ibid. and/or personal long-term adversary. His life and career in 1868. This study of 8 The Diary of Henry Hobhouse (1820-1827), ed. Arthur Aspinall (London: Home & Van Thal, 1947), p. 32. private life was unusually spotless. Liverpool, the only significant one of the 9 The Journal of Mrs. Arbuthnot 1820-1832, eds. Francis Liverpool sat for most of his career nineteenth century, reproduces in full a Bamford & The Duke of Wellington (2 vols., and throughout his premiership in the large number of Liverpool’s papers, but London: Macmillan, 1950), ii, 225. 10 B. Disraeli, Coningsby; or, the New Generation (3 vols., Upper Chamber, the more easily man- it lacks penetrating analysis, an engaging London: Henry Colburn, 1844), i, 155-6. aged House where there were fewer prose style and of course an understand- 11 B. Disraeli, Tancred; or, the New Crusade (3 vols., opportunities for politicians to dem- ing of the political context provided by London: Henry Colburn, 1847), i, 144-5. 12 Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen Who onstrate their prowess as speakers and more than a century of subsequent his- Flourished in the Time of George III (2nd ser., London: debaters, and less chance to light up the torical scholarship. Charles Knight & Co., 1839), pp. 131-42. political firmament. He was happy to let Sir Charles Petrie published Lord 13 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Chapman & Hall, 1867), p. 32. his colleagues shine and they have often Liverpool and his Times in 1954. He repro- 14 Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister (4 vols., individually been given the credit for the duced many documents, overwhelmingly London: Chapman & Hall, 1876), iii, 6. major achievements of his administration. lifted directly from Yonge’s multi-vol- 15 N. H. Brasher, Arguments in History (London: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 1-22. Liverpool was seriously ill for the last two ume study. Petrie’s short book is highly 16 Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English- years of his life and this meant that he was readable and Disraeli’s damning judge- Speaking Peoples (4 vols., London: The Folio Society, unable to use his final days to do some- ment on Liverpool is wholly and con- 2003), iii, 283, 290, 327; iv, 4, 15-16, 21, 28. 17 David Willetts, Modern Conservatism (London: thing about his political legacy had he vincingly rejected, but this study really Penguin, 1992), pp. 10-11. wanted to. His death was not unexpected just scratches the surface of its subject 18 Gash, Lord Liverpool, p. 252. and did not take place while he was still and it is important to slap a general health 19 There is perhaps one other reason why historians have not flocked to pore over his papers. His hand- in the premiership or playing an active warning on Petrie’s contributions to the writing is appalling. role in public life. He had no children to study of the past.20 20 Martin Pugh, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ (London: oversee his posthumous reputation. His Norman Gash’s book is the first and so Jonathan Cape, 2005), pp. 39, 50, 146, 156, 161, 204-5, 236, 240-1, 268. half-brother inherited the earldom, but far only modern biography of Liverpool. 21 The Liverpool Papers in the British Library include the title became extinct on the latter’s Lord Liverpool appeared in 1984 and Gash, a wide range of documents, from his correspondence death in 1851. who died recently, undoubtedly suc- on the eve of the battle of Waterloo to a bill for his underwear; British Library, Additional Manuscripts Liverpool’s departure from the politi- ceeded in dragging the former premier 38477, fos. 307-8. cal scene marked in a sense the passing out of the shadows and uncovering more 22 Gash, Lord Liverpool, p. 6.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 7 09/02/2010 10:44 after the Balfour Declaration, in 1919, the Zionist movement envisioned the Arthur Balfour – the part of Mandate territory that was to be Israel, the Jewish national homeland. It was about 30% of the whole British man behind Israel’s Mandate of Palestine and its border was drawn abeam Jordan River, slightly to the west of today’s border of Israel and the “Palestinian territories”. right to exist Unfortunately, by 1923, things had changed dramatically and the Mandate Sten A. Hankewitz, a former Estonian journalist and territory was partitioned. The British divided the Mandate territory into two a “life-long conservative” looks at a fascinating administrative districts and Jews were event in the history of Conservative politics and permitted to live only west of the Jordan River. The British effectively chopped makes some trenchant arguments about the off 75% of the originally proposed Jewish homeland to form an Arab Palestinian consequences of the Balfour Declaration nation called Transjordan. With this par- titioning the Arabs got 75% of the man- really detest using this expression – “right Foreign Office, date and the rest – 25% was to be Jewish to exist” – how can anyone question any November 2nd, 1917. National homeland. country’s or nation’s right to exist? But since Sadly this wasn’t enough back then and Israel’s Arab neighbours use it so much, as Dear Lord Rothschild, it isn’t enough today. The Arabs who Ithey like to question and not recognize this remained to the western bank of Jordan right, the expression has unfortunately found I have much pleasure in conveying to you, River launched many murderous attacks its way into common political language. on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the against Jews on the land they thought But there really is no question. Israel’s following declaration of sympathy with Jewish would be their homeland. The whole situ- “right to exist” was declared almost a Zionist aspirations which has been submitted ation got so intolerable for the British that hundred years ago in the well-known, to, and approved by, the Cabinet: the matter was turned over to the United but sadly often neglected document called “His Majesty’s Government view with Nations and Israel lost another chunk of The Balfour Declaration. favour the establishment in Palestine of a land from Eretz Yisrael. According to the Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, is national home for the Jewish people, and UN partition plan the state of Israel was one of the greatest names in the Conservative will use their best endeavours to facilitate the to be founded on only 15% of the land Party’s history. As it is a great name in world achievement of this object, it being clearly that was originally the British Mandate of history. Although in Britain his career peak understood that nothing shall be done which Palestine, considerably less than had been was being the Prime Minister from 1902 to may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the original intention. We all know from 1905, around the world he is remembered existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, history that Israelis-to-be accepted the plan, much more for the fact that he, as Foreign or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews but the Arabs rejected it, attacking Israel the Secretary in 1917, took the first step in the in any other country”. same day the State was proclaimed. creation of a Jewish National Homeland in I should be grateful if you would bring this There has been much talk of pre-1967 the British Mandate of Palestine. He was the declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist and, even, pre-1948 borders. We could “bad man” who gave millions of Jews the Federation. also consider going back to 1917, the time right to Eretz Yisrael – Land of Israel. of the Balfour Declaration or to 1923, Balfour was born on 25th July, 1848, Yours sincerely when Transjordan was founded on the in Scotland, the son of a Scottish MP. Arthur James Balfour eastern bank of Jordan River. Let us not Educated in Eton and Cambridge, he became forget that there already is a historic two- a Conservative MP for Hertford in 1874. He This was the first document that declared state solution as two states were created held several posts in Lord Salisbury’s govern- the Jewish right to the Land of Israel in the in the former British Mandate – Israel ment and after Lord Salisbury’s resignation British Mandate of Palestine. It is the very and Jordan. Any other solution would succeeded him as the Prime Minister in 1902. basis of Israel’s existence, the document be at least a three-state solution. Israel’s As important as his tenure as the Prime that affirms Israel’s right to exist, no mat- Government, as the world community, Minister was, another highlight of his career ter what the opponents of that existence need to take the Balfour Declaration – was still to come. In 1916, he became might say or think. the first and ultimate certificate of Israel’s Foreign Secretary in David Lloyd George’s When Balfour wrote this document, “right to exist” – as their role model and government and as Foreign Secretary he the British Mandate of Palestine con- goal and work towards implementing the wrote these famous words in a letter to sisted of today’s Israel and Jordan as well final rightful borders. I hope that it will be Baron Rothschild, leader of the British as the so-called “Palestinian territories” accomplished by 2017 – the 100th anni- Jewish Community, in November 1917: – Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Two years versary of the Balfour Declaration.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 8 09/02/2010 10:44 rofessor John Ramsden, formerly at Queen Mary College, London and celebrated chronicler of the history of the modern Conservative Party, Pdied on 16 October 2009 at the age of 61. Ramsden was best known for his work on the twentieth-century Conservative Party and his three-volume contribution to the Longman History of the Conservative Party, which spans the period 1902 to 1975, continues to be highly regarded. His 1998 account of the Party’s history, An Appetite for Power: A History of the Conservative Party Since 1830, was a superb overview of the foundation, development, and survival of Professor John the Conservative Party over a tumultuous 168 year period. The irony of the book ending the Party’s history with two calam- Ramsden itous defeats (1832 and 1997) was certainly not lost on John. Writing in the aftermath of Blair’s 1997 landslide victory, Ramsden perceptively noted it was unlikely that Mark Coalter, a frequent contributor a party, which had been so successful to the Conservative History Journal, over the previous two centuries, would simply die out as a result of a single elec- interviewed Professor Ramsden in tion defeat. Ramsden was certainly no partisan and 2007. Here he gives his appreciation his narrative was laced with criticism and of a man who was one of the leading praise where appropriate. For example, he pulled few punches in relation to conservative historians until his death the Party’s tendency of dispatching leaders thought to have reached their nadir, last year although he did recognize the electoral benefits that could be derived from chang- ing riders mid-parliament. While crediting Robert Blake with making the first serious foray into Conservative historiography, Ramsden correctly per- ceived the limitations of Blake’s method in focusing on high politics to the detriment of the Party’s less interesting and well- known structural components. Ramsden turned his attention to the Party itself,

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 9 09/02/2010 10:44 particularly its organization and internal governance, and in the process placed himself at the forefront of a new and excit- ing historical movement that challenged centre-left orthodoxies then entrenched within academia. In addition to the institutional works referred to above, Ramsden brought out a well-received account of the Conservative Research Department, a selection of entries from the political diaries of Sir Robert Sanders marvellously (and somewhat accurately) entitled Real Old Tory Politics and a thought-provoking study on Churchill, Man of the Century. This book adopted a thematic and international approach to Churchill’s ‘legend’ and considered Sir Winston’s contribution, to and place within various parts of the English- Stuart broke completely speaking world. MC: What drew you to political history and in John had a wide range of cultural inter- new ground with this particular that of the Conservative Party? ests and it was perhaps fitting that after book. He showed that years spent researching the Conservative Party and its personalities he should have it was possible to write JR: As an undergraduate I was an early turned his attention to other areas. In the history of policy from modernist. Political history interested me 2002 he released a book on The Dam and I planned to do a thesis on a Nuffield- Busters, the 1955 movie based on the the viewpoint of the style study of Richard Cromwell’s parlia- RAF’s bombing of the Ruhr dams in Party as an organism and ment of 1658. I was then taught by Brian 1943. This set the scene for his final book, Harrison for a term just before I took my Don’t Mention The War, The British and illustrated just how far finals and realised with total clarity that I Germans Since 1890, a fascinating and often Baldwin responded to a wanted to be a modern and contemporary witty account of Anglo-German relations historian. And so I decided that what I over the past century. multiplicity of stimuli from wanted to do was something on the trans- In 2007 I interviewed John Ramsden all sorts of directions formation of the Conservative Party at the in his office at Queen Mary College. beginning of the 20th Century, the way Below is an extract from the transcript businessmen moved into what had previ- and the full interview has been pub- ously been a landed party. The move from lished in its entirety on the Conservative the generations of Stanleys and Cecils History Group’s blog. Re-reading the to Bonar Law and Baldwin; what AP text reminded me of the depth of John’s Thornton called ‘Bonar Law’s Dynasty’. I historical knowledge and the enthusiasm thought what would be really interesting with which he discussed issues as varied as was to look at the dynamics of the Party, Anglo-German tensions to the gaps that however, I realised very quickly that it was still exist within Conservative historiogra- absolutely impossible as nobody had done phy. Scholarship is very much the poorer the really basic and probably quite boring for his passing. legwork on how the Party functioned and its structure. Conservative Party his- Mark Coalter’s interview with Professor tory was just so deeply unfashionable that Ramsden is published in full on the nobody did it apart from Norman Gash at Conservative History Journal blog St Andrews and Robert Blake in Oxford. (http://conservativehistory2.blogspot. Blake’s Ford Lectures, an absolutely key com/2009/11/interview-with-professor- moment in the Conservative Party’s histo- john-ramsden.html). The excerpts below riography, were delivered while I was an concern Professor Ramsden’s views on undergraduate. This was the first serious the history of the Conservative Party and attempt by a real historian to write the his- how it has developed. tory of the British Conservative Party. As

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 10 09/02/2010 10:44 Professor John Ramsden

a series of lectures it was fairly lightweight successful political party in the world JR There is a whole area that has only but it was intended to be lightweight. in terms of their adaptability over two begun to be exploited, which is the way Robert was fundamentally a biographer - centuries and their hold on office during the Conservative Party, as an organisa- brilliant studies of Disraeli and Bonar Law that length of time. But it didn’t actually tion, functions. And I don’t just mean the - but he wasn’t much into institutional look that obvious in the 1960s with the really boring local level of how constitu- history and the work of the constituencies Macmillan government falling into disar- encies make their tea and run their cheese and that sort of thing. ray. Heath seemed unelectable and where and wine parties. Although without those was the Conservative Party going? Well, things, of course, the rest of it would if it was going anywhere it was only by never have functioned. This was one of MC: So why did we have to wait until 1969 imitating its opponents. the things I tried to do when I started for Blake to plug this gap with his seminal my PhD thesis, which became The Age of work, The Conservative Party From Peel Balfour and Baldwin. Robert Blake wasn’t to Churchill? MC: Of course, there were a number of interested in writing that sort of history biographies of Conservative figures already in himself, but he was very much the mov- existence, including Blake’s Disraeli published ing spirit that got the Longman History JR: I think it goes back to the gen- in 1966. Might this have pointed towards a of the Conservative Party off the ground. eral philosophy of most historians at that change in direction? When somebody else, whom I had bet- time. Academics, who were overwhelm- ter not name, never actually wrote the ingly on the centre-left, were fundamen- post-war volumes, I got drawn into tally trying to explain how Britain in the JR: There were lots of biographers work- preparing those as well, so I ended up mid-20th Century became a social demo- ing on Conservatives and that was quite writing the whole 20th Century section cratic country. Henry Pelling produced a rich field. There had been the Petrie of that series. The six volumes contain a rather grinding history of the Labour biographies of Austen Chamberlain and a framework, but enormous holes were Party from the perspective of the inevi- Walter Long, Blake’s own study of Bonar left, including discussions on how the Law, and Beaverbrook’s books on high Party functions. The first person to do I myself have often politics in the First World War. Suddenly that was Stuart Ball - I examined his PhD at the end of the 1960s we got some thesis, which developed into the book said in lectures that the serious documentary-based publications. Baldwin and the Conservative Party. What Conservatives are the Barnes & Middlemas on Baldwin came Stuart demonstrated was that there was a out in 1969. Robert Rhodes James’ book way of bridging the institutional history most successful political on Churchill, A Study in Failure 1900-39, of the Party as an organisation, which is party in the world in terms appeared pretty soon after along with the what I’d been doing, and the high politics Davidson papers and the three volumes of that Robert Blake and the biographers of their adaptability over Tom Jones’ Whitehall Diary. The whole concentrated on. Stuart broke completely two centuries and their period of the Bonar Law, Baldwin and, new ground with this book. He showed indeed, Chamberlain domination of the that it was possible to write the history of hold on office during that Conservatives becomes a rather active policy from the viewpoint of the Party length of time field biographically in addition to the as an organism and illustrated just how earlier works. Blake pulls that all together far Baldwin responded to a multiplicity tability of gradualness and how Britain very well, although his interest is really in of stimuli from all sorts of directions. was going to become a Labour country high politics. Maurice Cowling is begin- Now, in a sense we sort of thought that in due course. The Attlee consensus that ning to work in exactly the same field might be a rather special case because the Paul Addison wrote about in The Road to from the perspective of high politics - The leader was very weak and beleaguered 1945 assumes an irreversible revolution Impact of Labour comes out in 1971. And in 1929/30/31. However, following on and that even the Conservatives had to so those of us who were actually trying to from that, Nick Crowson wrote about occupy social democratic territory. Of look at the Conservative Party somewhere the Conservative Party and Appeasement. course, from the perspective of thirty outside the Westminster Village were few At the end of the 1930s Chamberlain was to forty years later it all appears to be and far between. about as beleaguered as Baldwin was in rather silly because we look back on the 1931. But in 1935/36/37 the leadership 20th Century now as a Conservative cen- was strongly entrenched and Crowson tury. This is something that Tony Blair MC: Conservative historiography has really showed that the Party was still respond- famously said while Roy Jenkins often developed over the past few decades and has ing in a similar sort of way. He has just remarked that it was a century dominated become quite sophisticated and specialised. Do published a book on the Conservative by the Conservative Party in British you think there are any obvious gaps that have Party and the idea of Europe in the politics. I myself have often said in lec- yet to be plugged? post-war period, which further examines tures that the Conservatives are the most the relationship.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 11 09/02/2010 10:44 Clark of Toad Hall Ion Trewin talks to Keith Simpson MP and Chairman of the Conservative History Group about his biography of the man who was both conformist and rebel, aristo and arriviste, family man and philanderer, backbench rebel and minister. This article first appeared in Total Politics and is being reprinted with their permission.

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on Trewin has effectively lived with been looked at by Jane, and for Trewin it est in and love of certain kinds of military Alan Clark for nearly a decade. Since was a literary treasure chest. history. As a child he was given a copy Alan’s death in 1999 this publisher and Friends, rivals, colleagues and lovers of Jane’s Fighting Ships and memorised all former literary editor of the Times has were in many cases prepared to talk to the facts it contained, page by page. This Iedited two volumes of his diaries and, Trewin, although there were a few nota- interest was to continue throughout his now, written his biography. ble exceptions who refused. life and he loved the technical details and When I met Trewin, a man full of One of the greatest excitements for performance of ships, aircraft and tanks. energy and enthusiasm with an infectious any writer is to find a collection of papers I asked Trewin whether Alan had been laugh, in his Norfolk home, I put it to him that nobody else has looked at and which influenced by his schooldays at Eton. It that, as this was for all intents and purposes contain new information or revelations. seemed to me that some Old Etonians an authorised biography – authorised by Saltwood Castle provided just that. regarded their old school as the most Alan’s widow Jane – there will be a suspi- important formative experience of their cion that it has been sanitised. lives. Trewin said definitely not, and Not so said Trewin, who emphasised But if this biography is an Alan was a repressed schoolboy who only that Jane was keen to see a full life of Alan open and frank one, then flowered at Oxford which was his ‘rite of with no restrictions. He was Clark’s editor passage’. At Oxford he had money, a car and publisher from 1992, and handled his the other question put to – not many students did immediately after first, hugely successful volume of diaries. me by one of Alan’s former the war – and there were women, if not all When Alan died there were outstanding to his taste at Oxford, but he was within contracts for a prequel and a sequel to the ministerial colleagues was easy access to others in London. But it first diaries, which covered 1983 to 1991. relevant, “Does he really would be a caricature to portray Alan as After Alan’s memorial service Jane asked some kind of latter-day Bright Young Trewin to edit them, and then a volume merit a full biography?” Thing out of Brideshead Revisited. of Alan’s motoring articles. According to Trewin, if Alan discov- He had to learn to read Alan’s difficult Alan Clark never wrote a memoir. It is ered sex at Oxford he also discovered his- handwriting but said he had a real buzz possible that had he lived he might have tory. There he met the first of his father from being editor and from making judge- been tempted. So his literary legacy is his substitutes, the history don Hugh Trevor- ments on what to exclude and include. novels, his military history, his speeches Roper. The second was the military his- A number of people approached Jane recorded in Hansard his diaries and his torian Basil Liddell Hart. Later in life came wanting to write Alan’s biography. She papers. A memoir would have been per- the historian and Tory grandee Robert chose Trewin because he had known Alan haps difficult for him to write as it would Blake, not quite a father substitute but and she trusted him. He showed Jane a first have required lengthy self-analysis, not someone Alan treated with great respect. draft in December 2005 and she said, having least about his unhappy childhood. Alan made much of his military expe- read it, that she ‘hadn’t known the half of it’. Trewin discovered a single page typed rience, first in the Household Cavalry, But if this biography is an open and by Alan about his childhood. The eldest and then in the RAF, in his CV and frank one, then the other question put to son of Kenneth Clark – often known as in conversation with parliamentary col- me by one of Alan’s former ministerial Lord Clark of Civilisation because of his leagues, but Trewin discovered it was not colleagues was relevant, ‘Does he really ground-breaking 1969 TV series – he was all he made it out to be. merit a full biography?’ a member of a wealthy family that saw Through checking Alan’s personal To Trewin the answer was a resounding itself as part of the beau monde. papers, looking at his service files held affirmative. Alan had lived life to the full: All his life Alan craved the love and by the Ministry of Defence and the the son of a famous man; a great lover of respect of his father, but that appears to Household Cavalry, and by talking to con- women, most significantly his wife Jane; have been denied him. Trewin speculates temporaries at Eton and Oxford, Trewin a novelist; a military historian; a louche that his twin younger brother and sister reluctantly concluded that while Alan playboy; a politician and a minister; and received all the parental love and praise had been nominally on the books of the not least a political diarist. while Alan was marginalised. In that one Household Cavalry Training Regiment Added to that was a rich seam of source page about his childhood, Alan recalls that he probably never completed his National material at Saltwood Castle, that was, in when his parents were in their London Service. His mother appears to have been Trewin’s words, ‘an Aladdin’s Cave’ for house he was usually left with the servants furious with him over this dereliction of any biographer. Nothing ever appears to and locked up in his bedroom. duty. Trewin isn’t sure why Alan avoided have been thrown away. Alan’s father, the I speculated that while Alan enjoyed National Service. Perhaps the discomfort historian Kenneth, had lived close by after company and could be very sociable, he and inconvenience put him off, but by moving out of the castle and all his papers also displayed characteristics of an only later proclaiming this non-existent service were stored there. Alan kept all his letters, child. Certainly, Trewin thought that Alan risked exposure as a charlatan. invoices, catalogues, bills and ephemera. Alan’s hypochondria, which was on display After Oxford, his parents insisted he Stored in a library, in the strong room, in his diaries, dated back to his childhood. read law, and at the third attempt he outhouses, the attic, filing cabinets, draw- That and his autodidactic approach to passed the exams, although he never prac- ers and boxes, most of them had never books and facts help to explain his inter- tised. Trewin discovered that one of the

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 13 09/02/2010 10:44 Alan began to write novels reasons behind this poor track record was the German Army as a superb military that Alan was distracted by the great love machine. His links with David Irving in the 1950s and Trewin of his early life. were tenuous, he said. Alan had been discovered that his first This came about one day when Trewin envious of the way Irving had gained had to open a jammed filing cabinet at access to the diaries and papers of leading novel, accepted on the Saltwood and discovered a letter Alan had Nazis. I felt that Alan’s fascination was 13th submission, was written, but never sent, to a girl called Pam, more macabre, as he loved to show off in which he asked her to have an abortion. his Nazi memorabilia. pulped because of a libel Jane had never seen the letter before. Trewin said Alan later claimed that Through detective work, Trewin was his knowledge of military history and able to trace Pam, a former ballet dancer. technical details meant that when he was He discovered an attractive northern- Minister for Defence Procurement he er with a strong personality who told him knew more than his military and civilian she and Alan had had a passionate relation- advisers – something they might dispute. ship. She had the abortion, illegal at the Leading on from this I probed Trewin time, arranged by Alan’s mother through with the question ‘Why did Alan go a Harley Street contact. into politics?’ Trewin said that his father Shortly after this Alan ended the rela- Kenneth was very astute and, when Alan tionship, and Trewin believes it was as was 16, said that Alan would make a career much to do with Pam’s different back- in politics because he was a fascist and had ground as the abortion. Pam remembers supported Franco. staying at Saltwood and his parents making But where did Alan’s right-wing views her feel socially uncomfortable. She also come from? After all, his father was quite recalls he was unfaithful to her – a pattern left wing. Trewin said that when Colin, that was to be repeated. Alan’s younger brother, was asked the One important consequence of the question he waved his arms and replied abortion was that Alan was forever haunt- ‘from the wind’. ed by guilt – less over what he had put And yet Alan was fascinated by the Pam through than the abortion itself. sweep of history, great leaders and pag- He became a firm opponent of abortion, eantry. For Trewin, Alan’s politics were which some might see as a matter of con- more that a one-dimensional right-wing science, others hypocrisy. caricature. Alan had written to Hugh Throughout his life Alan indulged in Trevor-Roper in 1950 saying he wanted a louche lifestyle: multiple affairs; if not to go into politics. It wasn’t until 1968, heavy then expensive drinking; gambling; in a letter to his father, that Alan said he and a fair degree of social snobbery. But would give up writing at the age of 40 to he never became one of those social drop- become an MP. outs immortalised by Evelyn Waugh. He Trewin traced Alan’s journey from wanted to prove himself and had both being selected for Plymouth Devonport, literary and political ambitions. through his machinations and member- Alan began to write novels in the 1950s ship of the Monday Club – he joined and Trewin discovered that his first novel, not only because it was within his accepted on the 13th submission, was political comfort zone but because he pulped because of a libel. He persevered saw it as useful in achieving his political as a military historian and his first book, ambitions. Alan prided himself on being The Donkeys, a critique of British generals regarded as a right-wing Tory, appearing in the First World War, was both contro- to represent the caricature hanger and versial and successful. flogger, though his political views and Other military histories followed and his social prejudices were more complex his book Barbarossa on the Nazi-Soviet than this. War, won critical acclaim. But I put it Near the end of his life he wrote a his- to Trewin that Alan had an unhealthy tory of the Conservative Party. Supposed fascination with Hitler and the Nazis, had to be his great magnum opus, it was disap- been accused of being sympathetic to the pointing, not least to him. He told his ideology and was linked with Holocaust researcher Graham Stewart that while he denier David Irving. was a Conservative he was independently Trewin said that Alan was fascinated by minded and did not easily follow the party Hitler, but only as a Warlord, and with line on every issue.

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“Why don’t people understand that Alan’s not pretending to be a shit. He is a shit!”

Trewin confirmed that Alan’s two during his ‘wilderness years’ from 1992 great political heroes were Macmillan to 97 were effectively dashed because and Thatcher, something of a contra- of his evidence at the Matrix-Churchill diction. He admired Macmillan because Inquiry over the illegal supply of arms of his style and brio, his bravery with to Iraq. Clark nonchalantly let slip that the Guards in the First World War and he had encouraged the sales, to the great his published diaries, and yet rejected embarrassment of the Conservative gov- Macmillan’s consensual politics and what ernment, and the executives charged appeared to be appeasement of the trades with the illegal exports were acquit- unions. Thatcher was an attractive woman ted. His former colleagues never for- with steely leadership qualities who gave him, and Archie Hamilton once seemed bent on destroying consensual said, ‘Why don’t people understand that politics, smashing union power and revi- Alan’s not pretending to be a shit. He talising Britain’s military glory. And yet he is a shit!’ despised some of her most ardent support- Mistresses and girlfriends came and went ers, whom Julian Critchley memorably throughout Alan’s marriage, but his wife described as garagistes. Jane remained his great love. The only Alan was no narrow tribal politician time she felt their marriage threatened was and Trewin pointed out that throughout in the early 1990s when Alan had an affair his political career he made friends across with his then parliamentary secretary. It the political divide, from Tam Dalyell to ended, but Jane was convinced it played a Alastair Campbell, whom Alan first met part in Alan’s decision to stand down from when the former was a young journal- Parliament in 1992. ist on the Mirror. After 1997 Campbell Alan Clark was a complex personality was able to play on Alan’s vanity to gain with something of Toad of Toad Hall information and sow discord within the about him: conformist and rebel; aristo Conservative Party. and arriviste; family man and philanderer; Trewin believes that, ultimately, Alan man of action and would-be philosopher, always believed in himself and thought, backbench rebel and minister. As he wrote however naively, that he would be a in his diary on 5 August 1973: ‘Am I a cabinet minister and could be party Renaissance prince, a philosopher, or a big leader. His hopes of going to the Lords ageing dud?’

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 15 09/02/2010 10:44 ‘Where there is error, let us bring truth’

– Margaret Thatcher’s history

Gordon Hector, who is a consultant at public affairs and communications agency Fishburn Hedges, has used material from his thesis to look at the way Margaret Thatcher used her own particular understanding of history to develop her policies

ast year I took a bit of a gamble on First, though, it’s worth pondering the Margaret Thatcher. I had an inkling obvious question – how do we know she that she had quite a lot to say about meant it? There is no easy answer to this, !history, and a sense that no-one but returning to the very basic methods Lhad really explored what exactly it was. of interrogating a source tends to help. Numerous texts have placed Thatcher in Context is everything, and it is usu- historical perspective, historians have talked ally possible to deduce political motives about Thatcherite history, and many pages from where she was speaking, what else have been written on Thatcher’s psycholog- was happening in politics, and who she ical and intellectual influences. But as far as was speaking to. In general, Thatcher I was aware, nobody had looked exclusively wheeled out her “history” so many times, at what she said in public about history. My in so many different contexts devoid of suspicions turned out to be justified but I any possible political gain that the only got a little more than I bargained for. conclusion must be that she believed it. As I ploughed through The Complete Anyone familiar with Thatcher’s speech- Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher, I was writing process will also recognise she conscious of the need to avoid impos- very rarely made a pre-prepared speech ing a spurious philosophy of history onto without exhaustive involvement in its a politician’s words. I was well aware content. There are exceptions, which will that ‘politicians like to use history’ is an be discussed, but in general the body of obvious observation, as is the one that evidence is too strong to ignore. Conservatives in particular have an intimate This article intends to look at what relationship with interpretations of the past. Thatcher herself said not at Thatcherites Even with these strong caveats, it was and it will present its view of her “his- clear to me that Thatcher was more than tory” in the specific political context of simply using history as a political tool, her political primacy. or indulging in historical platitudes: she With all that in mind, one can start by believed in what she was saying. After a asserting that Thatcher’s view of Britain’s few weeks of analysis, a picture started to history was rather simple: it was unequiv- emerge of Thatcher’s history, her version of ocally the story of liberty. past events. It was crude, rough-hewn and Time itself more or less began in 1215. ignorant – but it was internally consistent, Magna Carta is frequently referenced as and tangible enough to be worth exploring. the starting point of a wonderfully success- This article looks at that version of his- ful national history; other more mundane tory. It outlines some of the main elements subjects are casually dated in reference to of her vision of history, and explores some the barons at Runnymede – for example of the implications of that narrative for a church centre in Uxbridge, Westminster understanding Thatcher’s time in power. Hall and the city of Zurich.

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Of course, Magna Carta is quite an easy date to remember, and Kipling help- fully wrote a poem about it. After 1215, Thatcher starts to get a bit vague, but has a fluid sense of a common law heritage evolving via Simon de Montfort, Habeas Corpus in 1679, through 1688 and the Bill of Rights, the Reform Acts from 1832 on and, finally, universal suffrage in 1928. The order sometimes shifts, but in interviews, speeches, off-the-cuff remarks, these are the events that populate Thatcher’s sense of British history. It was unequivocally the story of gradual evolution of profound liberties - the road from Runnymede. In other words, Thatcher was something of a Whig. As in all Whig histories, Britain was quite unique in this rather jammy history. While 1688 was ‘unique in the annals of European history’1, Britain’s status as an island perhaps meant ‘we’ve developed a By her own version of Victorian: they were a consistent compo- little bit differently’. Britain was far too history, Thatcher had nent of national character. innately free to have such messy things That is, in a nutshell, Thatcher’s history as revolutions – and Thatcher didn’t shy an historical mission, a - a history of Britain with a strong whiff of away from telling the French about the providential drive not Whiggishness about it. relative importance of 1688 and 1789. But understanding simply how she More than just unique, this fundamental just to revive Britain, but described the past is only half the story. This narrative of liberty was inextricably bound set it back on its proper narrative of liberty, however rudimentary, up with the National Character. Thatcher had to have implications for elements of the depicted a crudely symbiotic view of historical course political situation of the late 20th century. character: Britain’s character was marked For a start, if Britain’s history was the by an innate taste for liberty, which con- unique story of liberty, then socialism tributed to exceptional political stability; could only be utterly alien. Socialists that stability in return had nurtured a wanted ‘merely a local version of an inter- deep-seated love for freedom. At the same national creed [rather than]…British poli- time, the national character was one of cies, for application within the framework essential enterprise. The empire and the of British institutions, which have evolved industrial revolution were its proof: the slowly since Saxon times’.4 Conservatives creamy continuum of British success was were ‘custodians of a great heritage’5, inspired by the free entrepreneurship of its because they understood history – but ‘a law-abiding, freedom-loving citizens. sense of the nature and worth of British Nowhere was this more apparent than history is not, of course, something a in the famous ‘Victorian values’. There is socialist would understand’.6 a minor misrepresentation of Thatcher on There is an intriguing moderation to this point. As her most famous historical this line of attack, as Thatcher appears remarks, her supposed support for these to describe a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ socialism. values has become the blackest stain on She distinguished between ‘a socialism her relationship with historians, but it is which valued people [and] the officious not entirely fair. She was actually at pains jargon filled intolerant socialism practised to distance them from the tag ‘Victorian’, by Labour these last few years’.7 She calling it a ‘misnomer’.2 Every time she compared Attlee and Gaitskell to Wilson was asked about the phrase, she stressed and Callaghan, saying ‘Socialism has gone their eternal, fundamental place in the sour.’8 There may be an important politi- national character, saying they ‘aren’t cal context to this – when the SDP looked Victorian values, they are eternal truths’.3 like a threat, saying Labour had lost its true They were much deeper, more rooted path and the SDP should have ‘fought in British history than simply being from within’ made some sense – but

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 17 09/02/2010 10:44 in general it looks as though as long as to this story the fact that Thatcher was only socialism tried to respect the fundamental the second party leader to be elected, and British liberties, it was at least acceptable. came from a different social milieu to the It would still seem logical, however, that inner circles and old-boys-in-school-ties, if Britain’s history was the story of liberty, and it would be expected that the post-war and socialism had obscured that story, then Conservative party would get rough treat- surely Thatcher had to be restoring Britain ment in Thatcher’s depiction of history. to its correct path. If socialism was a cancer It is very hard to find this story pre- that went against the nature of British his- sented by Thatcher, who remains emol- tory, Thatcher must expunge that cancer. lient when discussing her party’s postwar The rhetoric of renewal has been a past. It is not surprising that she is full of much-studied element of Thatcher’s praise for Churchill, but Macmillan was an years in power. But an appreciation of ‘outstanding peace-time prime minister’, a Thatcher’s history must show that it was man ‘whom I greatly admired’, the archi- more than rhetoric. By her own version tect of ‘the only 13 years this country has of history, Thatcher had an historical had of rising prosperity because we knew mission, a providential drive not just to we had to put the emphasis back onto the revive Britain, but set it back on its proper incentive society’.14 Macmillan may have historical course. She had to free the lion given Thatcher her first ministerial post, of the national character from the fetters of but this goes further than gratefulness: the socialism. She was ‘engaged in setting free way he is talked about, he may as well the creative genius of the British people… have been ‘one of us’. only socialism could stifle that energy’.9 This is even more notable with Heath. So Thatcher’s policies were historically During her leadership candidacy, she proper. The sale of council housing stock claimed ‘we’re all Conservatives’15, and was, for example, fulfilling historical apti- played down their differences. In the 1979 tude for liberty, as ‘we said a council ten- election campaign, she politely refused to ant should be able to buy his own home. say whether he would be in the cabinet They too should have the chance to be or not. She did not publicly declare a new freeholders, heirs to Runnymede.’10 Trade course for Conservatism – she only stooped union power had to be curbed because it to patronising him, saying ‘you’ve got to threatened parliamentary democracy ‘in hand this to Ted…we did not know quite the country that was once the mother of so much about the behaviour of money parliaments and which gave that system to supply then, as we know now’.16 the world’.11 Education had to remain out Thatcher was not smashing the post-war of Labour control, because ‘it would be consensus. Nor was she constructing a myth the end of character in Britain’.12 of consensus, the better to smash it. She was Some policies even developed a distinctly ingratiating herself with party tradition. teleological edge. Unleashing free enterprise This might be hard to square with the would work, because ‘in view of our history version of history we have seen Thatcher it would be surprising if it were otherwise… expound thus far, but there is a simple it is that freedom on which the advance of political explanation. Attacking Labour was civilised societies is based, a freedom that for clearly de rigeur for a Conservative leader; if us goes back to Runnymede’.13 it happened to coincide with her vision of One aspect of studies of the rhetoric British history, all the better. Attacking her of renewal has been Thatcher’s treatment own party was something else. Even if she of Conservative Party history. There is a believed the post-war party had betrayed commonly expressed view of Thatcher’s true conservatism, and even if her followers view of the Conservative Party. It goes might publicly disown Heathite corporat- something like this: Thatcher believed the ism, Thatcher was too good a politician to Conservative Party of Macmillan, Home attack her own party publicly. and Heath had sheepishly followed the It is more interesting to look at those post-war consensus; Thatcher ripped up bits of history which were more deliber- that consensus with a more vigorous, pas- ately excluded from Thatcher’s ‘history’ sionate conservatism; she had to subdue – in other words, those areas that were her own party to get away with it; we all outside that glorious narrative of liberty, ended up with a far more radical decade rather than left out of the telling of that than anyone had really bargained for. Add narrative for political reasons.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 18 09/02/2010 10:44 ‘Where there is error, let us bring truth’

Quite simply, Scotland had Some countries were consistently complex, [and] sentimentality.’20 Russia, no history that Thatcher included in the story. America represented meanwhile, had shown that ‘a combination the best of British traditions of liberty; the of Russian history, certainly since Peter could relate to Commonwealth was the living reminder the Great, plus Communism, has meant of the tolerant, enterprising edifice that that they are just the same…they are basi- had been the British Empire. cally expansionist.’21 As the British national Two exclusions, however, are particu- character could not tolerate socialism, so in larly worth noting: Scotland and Europe. Europe ‘different national traditions, expe- Scotland is a relatively straightforward riences…must affect the social, political and case, because the Whiggish narrative is economic solutions.’22 an essentially English one. Runnymede These opinions reached their apogee at was largely extraneous to Scotland; 1688 the tumultuous end of the Thatcher years. has quite a different place in Scottish his- The famous Bruges speech argued Europe tory; a sublime history of the common was best with nation-states with their own law is clearly irrelevant. Though Thatcher ‘customs, traditions and identity’23; she herself never recognised it, Scotland was politely told the French their revolution outside her version of history. was less important in the development of This is perhaps reflected in the way she human rights than they thought; and tell- spoke in Scotland. She called Scots ‘you’, ingly, with a delightful disregard for con- rather than the warm ‘we’ she extended tinental sensibilities, proposed a ‘European to Americans or Canadians. She speaks Magna Carta’24, instead of creeping feder- to Scots in a diplomatic tone. Thatcher’s alist legislation. diplomatic speeches (those given at state The strongest conclusion that can be banquets, visits of dignitaries and such drawn from this brief look at Thatcher’s formal occasions) are a wonderful exercise “history” is that it should be given great- in platitudes: they range from the blandly er consideration, and should feed into ingratiating (‘we in Britain are in no doubt wider analyses of Thatcher’s premiership. of Egypt’s stature in world affairs’)17 to the Thatcher’s “history” may have been crude glutinous (‘the enduring spirit of the Finnish and ill-formed. But it existed, and it was people’)18 to the cheesily jocular (Torville broadly a Whig’s history. Understanding and Dean’s skating success in Budapest that can only help our understanding of being ‘the only ice in our relationship’ with Thatcher and her time in power. Hungary)19. Scottish speeches sit firmly in this category, relying heavily on the clichés Endnotes of rugby rivalries with England, jokes about 1 Speech at 1688 tercentenary, 7 July 1988, 88_238 2 Radio interview, IRN, 23 January 1987, 87_023 golf and whisky. 3 Press conference, 31 May 1983, 83_211 Quite simply, Scotland had no history 4 Interview, The Times, 10 June 1987, 87_276 that Thatcher could relate to. While a 5 Speech, Young Conservatives, 9 February 1985, 85_032 complex set of factors have to be includ- 6 Speech, Bow Group, 16 Mar 1976, 76_083 ed in discussing Thatcher’s treatment of 7 Speech, Cardiff, 16 April 1979, 79_140 Scotland, this suggests an interesting sup- 8 Speech, Con party conference, 13 Oct 1978, 78_285 9 Speech, Welsh party conference 19 July 1980, porting claim, that Scotland was quite 80_170 outside Thatcher’s history, and irrelevant 10 Speech, Wembley youth rally, 5 June 1983, 83_246 in a much deeper sense. 11 Interview, The Times, 27 April 1977, 77_127 12 Interview, the Guardian, 6 July 1986, 86_234 Similarly, it provides an interesting con- 13 Speech, Conservative Central Council, 20 March text for European policy. Whig history 1976, 76_090 places such great emphasis on English 14 BBC 4 Radio interview, 15 Dec 1976, 76_366; TV interview, LWT, 15 Jan 1984, 84_009; TV inter- exceptionalism, that the Continent had view, PBS, 25 Jul 1977, 77_214 to have an altogether different story to 15 ITN interview, 11 Feb 1975, 75_055 the narrative of liberty. Just as the British 16 Radio interview, BBC, 17 April 1979, 79_142 17 Speech, Cairo, 17 Sep 1985, 85_308 national character was informed by its 18 Speech, dinner for Prime Minister of Finland, 21 wonderfully stable history, and vice versa, May 1985, 85_187 so European national characters were 19 Speech, Budapest, 3 Feb 1984, 84_036 20 Hugo Young, this Blessed plot, London 1998, p.360 informed by their less salubrious histories. 21 Interview, US news, 5 august 1980, 80_181 At the famous seminar on German reuni- 22 Speech, London Young Conservatives, 4 July 1977, fication the German national character 77_197 23 Speech, College of Europe, 20 Sep 1988, 88_324 was summed up as characterised by ‘angst, 24 Speech, Czechoslovak Federal Assembly, 18 Sep aggressiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority 1990, 90_336

Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10 19

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 19 09/02/2010 10:44 General notes and announcements

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS “Verbal Combat”: The role of Conservative Party rhetoric, 1979-90.

This Ph.D thesis looks at Margaret Thatcher’s public, political rhetoric during the period 1979-90. It is concerned not only with the speeches themselves but also with the process which led to their creation, the manner in which they were disseminated by various media channels and their relationship to government policy.

Any information on the areas discussed above would be much appreciated. Contact [email protected]

A NEW PUBLICATION: A new history of the Conservative Research Department from 1929 to 2009 has been published recently. Edited by Alistair Cooke OBE, it has “eight contributors, who are all past or present members of the Conservative Research Department, provide inside accounts of how Conservative Party policy was made at key points over the last eighty years – under the direction of Neville Chamberlain, Rab Butler, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher – and how policy for the future is being shaped for David Cameron”.

Copies can be ordered by phone: 0207 984 8306.

20 Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 20 09/02/2010 10:44 t is a general rule that a second is less famous than a first. However, this is not the case when it comes to the first and second women to serve in a Conservative Icabinet. The second woman was of course Margaret Thatcher whose name is (almost) universally known. The same cannot be said of the first woman to hold cabinet rank in a Conservative government, for few people today have heard of Florence Gertrude Horsbrugh, who was Minister of Education almost twenty years before Lady Thatcher made her cabinet debut. While some writers such as Pamela Brooks and G.E. Maguire have shown at least some recognition of her importance, overall she has received sur- prisingly little attention by historians of the Conservative party or scholars of Scottish and British politics, with many omitting her entirely. Yet in her day Florence Horsbrugh was arguably the best known woman MP in the UK and she is deserving of being even more widely known.1 By giving a Florence Horsbrugh and Mrs Cora T. Casselman, at The San Fransisco Conference 1945 brief overview of her remarkable career it is hoped that this short article will go some way to raising awareness of her. Florence Horsbrugh’s father Henry Moncrieff Horsbrugh, a Chartered Florence Gertrude Accountant. She was born in Edinburgh in 1889 to and was educated at private schools. Her career in public life began during the Great War with work in kitch- Horsbrugh ens and canteens for which she was awarded an MBE. After the war she worked with Lady Haig for the British Legion and in the 1920s she became a prolific speaker The Conservative for the Scottish Unionist Association. The latter role brought her to speak in Dundee in 1929 and, according to Pamela Brooks, Party’s forgotten her handling of one meeting impressed the local association so much that they invited her to be their next parliamentary first lady candidate.2 While this is probably true in part she still had to answer a number of questions on a variety of political issues before she was (unanimously) adopted by Kenneth Baxter, an historian at the University the DUA’s General Council in 1930.3 When Horsbrugh was selected, few of Dundee, was awarded a PhD by the people would have thought she would University in 2008 for a thesis on Women and become an MP. Dundee had not returned a Conservative to Westminster since the Party Politics in Scotland 1918-1955. He writes Great Reform Act and Horsbrugh herself claimed that no-one could have foretold about the first woman Cabinet member in the ‘extraordinary result’.4 As late as a few British politics. days before the poll it was still thought a socialist victory in the city was a certainty.5 Dundee was a two member seat, but had slightly unusual election arrangements. Since 1923, the local Unionist and Liberal

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 21 09/02/2010 10:44 Associations had come to an unofficial ball matches during the 1935 campaign. work as Chairman of the Departmental arrangement whereby each would field just Enquiries revealed that, unusually for a Committee on Adoption Societies and one candidate in this two member seat, woman of her up-bringing, Horsbrugh Agencies, and was seen as an important with the understanding being that Unionist was actually quite a football fan and keen reform of the laws governing the adoption supporters would give their second votes to follower of Heart of Midlothian FC!13 of children. Between 1933 and 1936 she the Liberal and vice-versa. Similarly Labour Leading Conservatives respectied her was a delegate to the League of Nations fielded only one candidate in order not ability in debates. Stanley Baldwin himself and in 1936 she was chosen to move the to divide the socialist vote following the observed that ‘all parties in the House’ lis- Address in reply to the King’s Speech, election in 1922 of the prohibitionist and becoming the first woman to do so.15 This socialist Neddy Scrymgeour.6 During the War, she was caused problems as no-one was quite sure In 1931 Horsbrugh fought an ‘extensive what a woman should wear for this occa- campaign’, regularly holding and address- kept busy attending to sion (the traditional costume being court ing meetings which reportedly attracted casualty figures, setting dress and knee breeches).16 Eventually a large crowds, including seven on the eve brown evening gown was chosen. As The of the poll. She made the economy a key up rest centres for those Scotsman remarked Horsbrugh’s selection theme of her campaign and stressed that whose homes had been to move the reply was a great ‘honour’ she would work to reduce the import and it illustrated that she had made a of foreign jute products to help revitalise destroyed, and developing strong impression on the Conservative Dundee’s staple industry. This line seemed day nurseries all of leadership.17 The event attracted consid- to go down well as even a local Labour erable interest and Horsbrugh was inter- supporting newspaper acknowledged which involved travelling viewed about her speech on television, thus she was well received at her meetings.7 hundreds of miles across becoming the first MP to appear on that Nonetheless her election as runner up to new medium.18 In her speech Horsbrugh the Liberal Dingle Foot was a consider- Britain as well as coping spoke of her desire for peace - she was a able achievement given the Conservatives’ with the normal duties of self-confessed pacifist - but also noted that abysmal record in Dundee. if there was ever another war Britain must Her re-election in 1935 was even more her department be properly equipped to fight it, a view of of an achievement. The municipal elec- foreign policy which was close to that of tion at the start of November had seen tened when she spoke.14 Her skill as parlia- the Conservative leadership and probably Labour win more seats in Dundee than mentarian can be seen from the fact that she most of the population of Britain in the ever before and she faced united left-wing successfully moved two Private Member’s mid 1930s.19 opposition, there being two Labour can- Bills through parliament. The first, restrict- Horsbrugh’s abilities were rewarded in didates who were also supported by the ing the sale of methylated spirits in Scotland 1939 when Neville Chamberlain appoint- Communist Party. However, Horsbrugh in order to curb the serious problem of ed her Parliamentary Secretary to the topped the poll with an increased vote them being used in drinks became law Ministry of Health, an office she held at an election when most of the surprise in 1937. The second, the Adoption of until 1945 before moving to the Ministry National Government gains of 1931 were Children (Regulation) Act, arose from her of Food. This was only the second time swept away.8 It has been suggested that this was because she won the overwhelming backing of women voters, but it is equally likely her success was due to the fact she fought on her record as a good constituency MP.9 She had done much to try to help the jute industry, speaking on the issue at least twenty-six times in her first term in Parliament.10 This included her impressive maiden speech which The Vote, a periodical published by the Women’s Freedom League, considered a ‘challenge to any who would limit women’s political sphere’, that ‘showed a knowledge’ of the Scottish jute and linen industry which ‘many of her men colleagues might envy’.11 It is little wonder that she drew large support from the working class as a Labour opponent admitted.12 She also surprised one sports reporter who saw her at Dundee and Dundee United foot-

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 22 09/02/2010 10:44 Florence Gertrude Horsbrugh

a Conservative woman had held ministe- In 1950 she returned to the Commons. or rebel (like Atholl, Nancy Astor or Irene rial office (her fellow Scot the Duchess At the general election she initially con- Ward). No. Horsbrugh made her mark on of Atholl had served as a Parliamentary tested the new seat of Midlothian and Parliament by being an outstanding politi- Secretary to the Board of Education Peebleshire, but, predictably, was unsuc- cian and it was this that allowed her to 1924-1929) and was the first time any cessful in what was fairly solid Labour terri- make the breakthrough to Cabinet rank. woman had occupied a government post tory. At the urging of the Party Chairman, It is tempting to speculate that she made since 1931. Her early days in office were Lord Woolton, she immediately became some of her parliamentary colleagues, dominated by the looming Second World the candidate for the Conservative tar- including Macmillan, Douglas-Home and War. She helped the Health Minister, get seat of Manchester Moss Side, where Heath, fully appreciate that able female Walter Elliot, prepare the medical profes- polling had been delayed until March Conservatives could and should hold high sion for dealing with the likely civilian following the death of the Conservative office, thus indirectly making Margaret casualties and played a key role in organis- candidate.26 Her campaign was aided by an Thatcher’s path to power possible. ing the evacuation of 1.5 million women open letter from Winston Churchill which and children.20 During the War, she was praised her time in office and stated that her Notes 1 P. Brookes, Women at Westminster, (London, kept busy attending to casualty figures, ‘return to Parliament will provide a valu- 1967), passim; G. E. Maguire, Conservative Women setting up rest centres for those whose able accession of strength to the opposition (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 10; and K.J.W. Baxter, homes had been destroyed, and develop- benches’.27 Clearly, senior Conservatives ‘“Estimable and Gifted”? Women in Party Politics in Scotland c1918-1955.’ Ph.D. thesis, University ing day nurseries all of which involved wanted their most able woman back; they of Dundee, 2008, pp. 205-207 & passim. Note that travelling hundreds of miles across Britain would have been pleased when she secured the Conservative Party was officially known as the as well as coping with the normal duties an impressive victory. Unionist Party in Scotland from 1911 until 1965 2 K. J. W. Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative of her department. She carried on even In 1951 she joined Winston Churchill’s City? Women in Politics in Dundee c. 1922 to c. when injured as a result of an air raid in Government as Minister of Education. 1955’, Honours History dissertation, University 1944. She was also responsible for carry- Initially this post was outside the Cabinet, of Dundee, 2003, p.11; and K. Elliot, ‘Florence Gertrude Horsbrugh’ in E. T. Williams and C.S. ing out preliminary work on healthcare but in 1953 she was elevated to Cabinet Nicholls The Dictionary of National Biography 1961- reform, which would eventually evolve rank becoming the first woman to hold 70, (London, 1980) into the National Health Service. In one in a Conservative administration, 3 University of Dundee Archive Services (hereafter UDAS), MS 270/1/1/1 DUA Minute Book 1, passim 1945 her hard work was recognised with but she was ‘unlucky in holding office 4 Ibid., 27 Nov. 1931 her appointment as Privy Councillor.21 at a very difficult time’.28 The post-war 5 Forward, 24 Oct. 1931 Around the same time she was appointed population boom meant a shortage of 6 Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative City?’, passim as one of four assistant delegates to the schools and economic difficulties meant 7 The (Dundee) Courier and Advertiser , 22 Oct. 1931 San Francisco conference which set up that Horsbrugh was restricted to trying to and passim; and The Dundee Free Press, 13 Oct. 1931. the United Nations. Lord Halifax praised provide additional places for a rising num- 8 Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative City?’, p.16 & The Courier and Advertiser, Nov. 1935 passim her contribution to the British Delegation ber of school children rather than being 9 N. Watson, Daughters of Dundee, (Dundee, 1997), noting that she was a ‘tower of strength’ able to improve or replace crumbling p.45 who provided valuable assistance.22 school buildings. She resigned from office 10 The Courier and Advertiser, 12 Nov. 1935 11 Churchill Archives Centre (hereafter CAC), HSBR Although Lord Halifax hoped that her in 1954 and was made Dame Grand Cross 2/3, Horsbrugh Papers, Scrapbook 1932 office at the Ministry of Food would be ‘a of the British Empire.29 12 The (Dundee) People’s Journal , 16 Nov. 1935. stepping stone to something else’, almost Horsbrugh retired from Moss Side at 13 The (Dundee) Sporting Post, 16 Nov. 1935 14 The Courier and Advertiser, 30 Nov. 1935 certainly a reference to cabinet office, the 1959 general election and was imme- 15 Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative City?’, defeat in Dundee in 1945 brought her diately made a peeress, thus becoming pp.33-34 career to a temporary halt.23 The loss of the first woman to serve in both Houses 16 The Times, 8 Dec. 1969 17 The Scotsman, 3 Nov. 1936; and Brookes, Women at her seat was by and large a consequence of Parliament. Her Conservative col- Westminster, pp.115 – 116 of the national mood which swept Labour league and fellow Scot Baroness Elliot 18 The Courier and Advertiser, 6. Nov. 1936 to office and a refusal by Dingle Foot to of Harwood noted that she brought to 19 Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative City?’, pp.33-34 tell his supporters how to use their second the Lords ‘her own outstanding skill in 20 The Times, 11 Dec. 1969. vote. She probably also was hindered by debate’.30 Despite increasing frailty she 21 Baxter, ‘“Estimable and Gifted”?’, pp.193-194. the fact that the Conservative Party was attended the Lords as often as she was able 22 CAC, HSBR 1/4. Horsbrugh Papers, Letters th Winston Churchill March 1945, and from Lord now led by Winston Churchill, a for- to, until her death in Edinburgh on 6 Halifax, 30 May 1945 mer Liberal MP for the city (1908-1922) December 1969.31 23 Ibid who had recently controversially refused Florence Horsbrugh is undoubtedly one 24 Baxter, ‘Radical Toun or Conservative City?’, p.14; and T. Paterson, A Seat for Life, (Dundee, 1980), an offer of the freedom of the city, and of the most remarkable women ever to passim. New research into the subject of Churchill who had a history of acrimony with have sat on the Conservative benches. At a and Dundee is currently in progress the (staunchly conservative) Dundee press time when the Parliamentary Conservative 25 The Courier and Advertiser, 5 July 1945 24 26 The Times 8 Dec. 1969 baron D. C. Thomson. However, even Party was still very much a man’s world, 27 CAC, HSBR 6/1, Horsbrugh Papers, letter from in adversity she showed remarkable char she carved out a successful career. Unlike Winston Churchill 4 March 1950 acter telling one meeting where elements most other well known Conservative 28 The Times 8 Dec. 1969 29 Ibid. 18 Oct. & 3 Dec. 1954 of the crowd were against her ‘I never run woman MPs of the time she was not best 30 The Times 11 Dec. 1969 away from boos’.25 known for being an outspoken eccentric 31 Ibid

Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10 23

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 23 09/02/2010 10:44 ollie Butler was the second wife of the highly distinguished ‘wet’ Tory politician of the 1950s and early M1960s, Richard Austin Butler. He was known to all as ‘RAB’ Butler. Mollie was, understandably, his staunchest supporter and never forgave Macmillan for allowing Alec Home, instead of her ‘beloved RAB’, to succeed him in 1963. Lady Longford was to describe RAB, somewhat gushingly, as ‘the best Prime Minister we never had’. Mollie Montgomerie was born in 1907, the eldest daughter of Frank and Esme Montgomerie. Her father was a gentleman farmer and owner of Great Codham Hall in Essex. Both parents were descended from Lowland Scottish families. ‘Money was never plentiful in our house’, Mollie was later to recall in her memoirs, August and Rab. Her childhood years were spent partly in the Essex coun- Lady Butler of tryside, which she always adored, and partly in Wimbledon, where she went to school with her younger sister, Pam. The Saffron Walden school was very near to the Common and was run by two able and efficient old ladies called Miss Farman and Miss Carter. It was due to them that she grew up with Mollie Butler, second wife of RAB Butler – a reasonable knowledge of Latin and a life ‘the best Prime Minister we never had’ – died long love of English literature. One of her father’s neighbours in the in February 2009. Ronald Porter, a frequent Essex countryside was August Courtauld. The Courtaulds, mega rich textile manu- contributor to the Journal, writes about her facturers, were originally Huguenot immi- life and her marriage grants who had settled in this country in 1685. August Courtauld was three years Mollie’s senior. She met him through his sister, Betty. Because he was seriously rich, never having to think about working for a living, August spent most of his life as a yachtsman and Arctic Explorer. They became engaged in 1930 and married, in Southwark Cathedral, on 2 January 1932. The first part of their honeymoon was spent in the Sudan. As they arrived at Dover for the Night Boat, a ticket collector said to August, “I hope you won’t be taking the lady

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 24 09/02/2010 10:44 Lady Butler of Saffron Walden

to the Arctic, sir!” During their mar- mise candidate who could unite most of generous hosts to students and academics ried life Mollie and August shared many the Conservative Party, in the country alike. Both of them kept a kindly eye on happy holidays and expeditions togeth- and at Westminster. None of the other Prince Charles during his time at Trinity er. She became one of the first women candidates not Butler, not Hailsham or from 1969 until he graduated in 1971. to visit eastern Greenland. When they Maudling would ever have been able to Butler’s KG in 1971 was a public recogni- were in England, they lived in a large command such support. It is as simple tion of this fact and subsequently the Prince Georgian house called Spencers, near has placed on record, on more than one Great Yeldham, in Essex. It was a house Mollie Butler always occasion, his gratitude to the Butlers for she grew to love over the years and she their unfailing help, kindness and abundant lived there until her death. She took a believed that Macmillan hospitality. Lord Butler died in 1982. Even pride in it and over many years she would double-crossed her after his death, the Queen continued to open the house and grounds for the day invite his widow to the annual Garter Day to visiting members of the Georgian husband and said so Luncheons at Windsor Castle. Group. August and Mollie had six chil- quite vocally after Mollie kept very busy after her hus- dren, two of which were raised mostly band’s death. Her children egged her by her alone during the Second World Macmillan’s death. Her on to start writing and in 1987 her War, while August served in Naval emotional bitterness was memoirs were published to great critical Intelligence. In the autumn of 1953, acclaim. August and Rab dealt candidly August started to show signs of multiple understandable but it had with her life and her marriages to two sclerosis. He died in March 1959. no sound basis in reality contrasting men. In a letter she wrote Her second husband, the Cabinet to me on 4 September 1987, she said Minister Richard Austin Butler, was a and as straightforward as that. Macmillan that ‘some find it too starry eyed, but I close friend. By coincidence, he had also recommended to the Queen the right wrote as I felt’. In the early 1990s, she married a Courtauld. Sydney, his first wife man for the job. Alec Douglas-Home was kept very busy helping and advising and a cousin of August’s, was the daugh- went on to unite his party and to come English Heritage on their great - and ter of Sam Courtauld, whose fabulous art within a whisker of winning the 1964 very expensive - project of restoring collection is now housed at the Courtauld election. Butler would have done nei- and re-furbishing Sir Stephen and Lady Institute in London. Butler and Sydney ther. And contrary to what some have Ginie Courtauld’s Eltham Palace, with married in 1926 and they had three sons suggested, Mollie’s dislike of Macmillan the ultimate aim of opening it up to the and a daughter. Both families would see a while he was alive was certainly muted. public. She was in a unique position lot of each other at big Courtauld family She was every inch a lady and was never because she was the only Courtauld, gatherings and also at Eltham Palace, the openly bad mannered towards him. There still alive, who could explain what the magnificent South London home of the is plenty of evidence to suggest that Palace had actually been like in its glory highly hospitable Sir Stephen Courtauld. Macmillan received hospitality from the days of the 1930s as August and Mollie Sydney died of cancer in 1954. In October Butlers at the Master’s Lodge when he had been frequent visitors to this amaz- 1959, six months after August’s death, visited Cambridge in the late sixties and ing South London medieval royal palace Mollie married Butler. She was to prove early seventies. Both the Butlers thought then and during the war. So, too, were one of the most devoted of political wives. that Macmillan was a bit of a poseur. Lord the Butlers. Much of Butler’s White In 1963, when Macmillan resigned, she Butler went as far as to suggest that some Paper on Education Reform was writ- thought her husband would automati- of Macmillan’s mannerisms were ‘all put ten by him, as President of the Board cally succeed him. A lot of other people on, you know’. But these asides were not of Education, during weekends spent at did as well - the newspaper editors, the malicious and Macmillan took no offence. Eltham Palace. In the current guidebook TV commentators and even the book- In 1965, Butler retired from politics. there are two charming photographs ies. They were all proved wrong. Mollie He took a Life Peerage as Lord Butler of August and Mollie taken at Eltham Butler always believed that Macmillan of Saffron Walden and became Master Palace, one taken in the splendid garden double-crossed her husband and said so of Trinity College, Cambridge. Mollie at the back of the palace, the other in the quite vocally after Macmillan’s death. Her and her husband were popular occupants magnificent Art Deco Dining Room on emotional bitterness was understandable of the Master’s Lodge from 1965 to 1978. the ground floor . but it had no sound basis in reality. Alec They were supportive and loyal as regards She died, aged 101, at Great Yeldham in Douglas-Home was the obvious compro- the academic staff and sympathetic and Essex on 16 February, 2009.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 25 09/02/2010 10:44 Winston Churchill – an Arthurian hero or just a politician?

Gavin Lambert, a UK Tax Director at a major European ban, who has been involved with the Conservative Party since his teens, analyses Winston Churchill’s political career

Churchill: A Reassessment of expediency of financing Total War, Churchill is an Arthurian figure in British when the economy required a reduction history, a man voted the “Greatest Ever to stimulate new enterprise. Briton”. It is time to revisit Churchill’s When Churchill became Prime record, both in peace and warfare, to Minister in 1951, repeating a previous determine if he was, indeed, the great mistake, he refused to float sterling despite Conservative Prime Minister. This essay contrary recommendations, again leaving examines his peace and wartime records Britain handicapped by a price disadvantage. He failed to correct the major Churchill’s Peacetime Administrations fiscal error of the postwar period of not In 1924 Churchill became Chancellor building a fund to pay the future pension of the Exchequer, returning the UK obligations. The 1951-1955 Government to the Gold Standard a year later. actually increased welfare spending as Putting the currency of a major trad- a proportion of GDP from the level ing nation onto a fixed exchange rate inherited from Labour, despite the fact always wrongly presumes that govern- that Labour constantly failed to control ments can trump the market; putting NHS spending and a slowly improving it on the pre-1914 rate, ignoring the economy1. This economic record should massive impact of World War 1 on the be contrasted with that of Germany UK economy, and not giving due cre- post-war, when the Christian Democrats dence to the increasing power of other abolished price controls, reduced mar- economies, put national pride before ginal tax rates and despite reparations economic reality, and rising unemploy- achieved substantial economic growth. ment was the inevitable consequence. Churchill was also guilty of one of the To be fair, Churchill did not have all the worst acts of individual selfishness in UK bad experiences of fixed exchange rates politics. Past being past it, he became and single currencies, current authors Prime Minister at 77, but then con- can point to. However, the error was tinued on despite a number of strokes. soon evident, and Churchill can be Consequently, the Conservative Party blamed for not devaluing or exiting lacked direction, his near to known suc- the Gold Standard entirely. Churchill cessor remained trapped at the Foreign was not beyond a Brownite sleight of Office lacking breadth of experience, and accounting hand and retained much of the phrase “thirteen wasted years” has at the high taxation levels that grew out least 4/13ths of truth in it.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 26 09/02/2010 10:44 Winston Churchill

Was Churchill even a Conservative? Attlee’s government only had 2 Cabinet Ministers who did not have Ministerial experience under the coalition government, and who mainly used the oppor- tunity to increase vastly the level of state interference in people’s lives. Churchill allowed the Beveridge Report to be published mid-war, and introduced Family Allowances, whereby taxpayers paid tax only to have part of it refunded depending on the number of children they had, irrespective of need. The biggest opponents of the National Health Service and Nationalisation were not the Conservatives concerned about state- owned monopolies being detrimental to the consumer’s interests, but the British Medical Association and Tate and Lyle, showing Churchill’s reluctance to stop the Labour Government dictating the terms of debate. Churchill’s key promotions were of Eden, MacMillan and Butler, all notably on the left wing of the Conservative Party, one so much so that his name the post-war population was concerned was responsible for the British defeat in became half of an adjective to describe about rebuilding post-war domestic lives. Norway though somehow Chamberlain political androgyny. The period is remark- There was too much concentration on got the blame. Churchill subsequent- ably deprived of a key right winger in a what Conservatives will do and why people ly sought to attack Sumatra, Norway major cabinet post, despite more notable would be grateful, not why they should again, Rhodes, Japan from India, despite rightwing presence on Tory backbenches. vote Conservative to control and improve the problems of western troops fighting Overall Churchill was at the very left wing their own lives. The common perception in tropical jungles, (note how well this of the party. of history is that Churchill was vastly popu- worked in Vietnam). All of these would lar but his electoral record is actually worse have taken UK troops away from the key Churchill at the Polls than those of John Major or Ted Heath. and more immediate task of knocking out Churchill may be popular now, yet no-one Churchill had previous form. In peace- a Nazi regime, rightly rumoured to have better recognised his failings than voters. time, scandal-light incumbent govern- undertaken mass civilian killings, not to In 1945 his speech comparing then well- ments are generally re-elected if they mention the logistical problems of the known Labour figures, one of whom had keep the economy on even-keel. As distances involved. been his Deputy Prime Minister, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the years There is no better example than “Gestapo” did untold damage to a party prior to the 1929 General Election, he Churchill’s desire to reconquer the whole already struggling in the polls, convert- must bear a good part of responsibility for of Italy, putting it before Operation Anvil ing defeat to landslide. WSC then lost the Conservative Party’s share of the vote and at times Overlord was a major error. the 1950 General Election, polling 6% falling from 46.8% to 38.1%3. Whilst it can be debated whether the behind Labour2 and only won the 1951 conquest of Sicily and the Foggia airfields one by a freak of electoral statistics aris- Churchill at War was valuable, the subsequent decision to ing from Labour overworking safe seats, Churchill’s reputation as a great war leader try and reconquer Italy was wrong. Italy and fewer Liberal candidates. He actually owes much to his being on the winning was impoverished and unindustrialised by lost the popular vote for a 3rd consecutive side, his self-promotion and the modesty European standards, its liberation would time. What makes this worse is that the of others. In truth his was an ego oblivi- bring minimal additional resources and 1945-51 Labour administration failed to ous to practicality. At Gallipoli the Allied manpower to the Allied war effort. Indeed, end rationing, when even Germany did so, army, un-coordinated with the Navy due civil disorder, could actually have soaked up created currency, fuel and groundnut crises, to an impatient Churchill, tried to land Allied resources. Compare that to the more actually increased taxation above wartime in near mountainous terrain, thickly held advanced and democratic, France and the levels, failed to build the promised housing by Turkish troops, in the days before Low Countries, who offered greater fruit stock and bodged the partition of India, aerial support. Rather than learn from this, to the Allies, were based closer to the UK yet Churchill could not defeat it. The Churchill became addicted to military and hence easier to supply, and you can Conservative Prospectuses contained too expeditions, aimed at a dramatic results understand US frustration at Churchill’s much discussion of foreign policy, when but with operational flaws. In 1940, he Italian fever. Furthermore, the problems of

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 27 09/02/2010 10:44 advances ordered by a misguided supe- rior. Churchill’s desire for total victory must be questioned. Whilst understandable, an appeal to the German military leadership, would potentially have driven a breach between the Nazis and the military. An earlier surrender could have saved many lives. Most of Churchill’s military wrongsteps came with a death toll, yet amazingly, this never seems to have caused him to doubt his own tactical capabilities. Churchill once said that Russia “was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. No, Winston, Stalin was evil and responsible for the needless deaths Sidney Street Siege of millions throughout his dictatorship. invading a fascist country, heavily wood- Churchill, with all his experience ought to ed and mountainous against an oppo- have expected Stalin to be playing Eastern nent as cunning as Kesselring somehow Europe for keeps but Churchill played bypassed Churchill. The Italian campaign into Uncle Joe’s hands. The repatriation of saw 300,000 Allied casualties. Bomber hundreds of thousands of Cossacks at the Command was a similar matter, there were end of the war, to Russia and their deaths, too many long range expeditions trying to remains one of the most shameful events wipe out civilians in a glory seeking attack in UK history. on Berlin rather than strategic operations to Churchill’s optimism during the war, his speed the Allied advance. Morally dubious, ability to recover from so many political it was also economically unwise: there is, near-deaths, his wit and triumph over his after all, little benefit in vandalising your bi-polar disorder were all fine attributes main European trading partner. of what was a remarkable character. Yet Many Allied victories happened despite, his errors were not just many, but with rather than because, of Churchill. The Gallipoli, the return to the Gold Standard, Battle of Britain probably would not have his opposition to Indian independence, been possible had Sir Hugh Dowding the Italian campaign, the Cossacks and his not refused Churchill’s request to transfer electoral record, Churchill’s failures were squadrons to France in 1940, where they often massive, and with a human cost. could have been destroyed. Dowding’s His “Conservative” reputation is dubious; operational talents and foresight, which he showed little appreciation of the free enabled the RAF to obtain Hurricanes market and believed in state intervention. and Spitfires, and ability to preserve his His true political stance was probably social fighter base were instrumental in win- democrat, as best illustrated by the 2001 ning the Battle of Britain. His reward was biography where the author concludes that Churchill allowing him to be effectively Churchill was almost as great a man as Roy sacked, an amazing decision when incom- Jenkins5. It is time Conservatives reassessed petents such as Mountbatten remained Churchill, free of the mist of victory and in command throughout the war. Alan the histories he wrote. That reassessment, Brooke deliberately kept Churchill in alas, does not make pretty reading. the dark, and away from Montgomery before the El Alamein advance4, because Notes he did not want Churchill to intervene 1 Nicholas Timmins: The Five Giants, A Biography of the Welfare State (London, Harper/Collins, 2001), and endanger the affair, one of several page number not indicated instances of Brooke regarding Churchill 2 Wikipedia, 1951 General Election, as ill advised. Montgomery’s slowness in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_ general_election,_1951 committing troops to battle in Italy has all 3 Wikipedia, 1929 General Election, the signs of a general, known for doing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_ his best to avoid unnecessary losses and general_election,_1929 4 Andrew Roberts: Masters and Commanders (London, thinking ahead to Overlord, not want- Allen Lane, 2009) p. 289, ing to waste good troops on pointless 5 The author of course being Roy Jenkins

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 28 09/02/2010 10:44 The House of Dynevor and Conservative Politics 1910-38

Gerard Charmley is working on a thesis on D. A. Thomas and the politics of South Wales. Here he looks at two Barons Dynevor and the changes in Conservative politics in Wales

he decline in the fortunes of Carmarthenshire. It is the intention of this Welsh Conservatism in the latter article to examine the way in which this part of the nineteenth century family came to terms with the changed wrought major changes in the political conditions. Tpublic lives of many of the ancient county The Rice family of Dynevor were families. From 1885, dynasties who had one of only two noble families in hitherto represented counties as if by right Carmarthenshire (the other being the for decades, or had played a major part Campbells, Earls of Cawdor). Unlike the in shaping the politics of their respective Campbells, who were Scottish interlop- counties, such as the Williams-Wynn ers, the Barons Dynevor had held their family of North Wales, the Vaughans of lands since the fifteenth century, and Trawsgoed, and the Earls of Cawdor, traced their descent back to Rhys ap were relegated to the role of opposi- Gruffydd, ‘The Lord Rhys’, Prince of the tion, able to run the representatives of South Walian kingdom of Dehaubarth, Nonconformist Liberalism close in a good through Rhys ap Thomas, a key ally of year, and to secure county council seats, Henry VII.2 The family supplied a num- but not control of those counties. The ber of MPs for Carmarthenshire, the most future Fourth Earl of Cawdor’s candida- notable being George Rice Trevor, later ture for Pembrokeshire, a county once fourth Baron Dynevor, who served as controlled by his family, at the 1898 by- Deputy Lieutenant of the county during election was not only unsuccessful, but the period of rural unrest known as the his performance moved the Returning Rebecca Riots. On his death in 1869, the Officer to pity.1 It is not surprising that title passed to a clerical cousin, the Vicar other landed Conservative families with- of Fairford, Gloucestershire, along with drew from politics altogether, or at least a diminished estate, signalling the eclipse drew back from the rough and tumble of of the family’s political influence for the electoral politics while continuing to con- remainder of the nineteenth century.3 tribute handsomely to the funds of local While his son, Arthur, sixth Baron, played Conservative Associations. This eclipse of a part in county politics, serving as Deputy local power, however, drove some of the Lieutenant, and securing election to the gentry to seek more promising political first Carmarthenshire County Council,4 it territory, while retaining the connection was with his son, Walter Fitz-Urien Rice to the land of their fathers. Among these that the house of Dynevor began once were the Rice family of Dynevor Park, more to play a part in national politics.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 29 09/02/2010 10:44 The death of his father from pneumo- nia in June 1911 necessitated his remov- al to the House of Lords as seventh Baron Dynevor.15 In his own words, he ‘…went up to the Lords with the Parliament Act’, achieving the distinction of being the only person to vote against the Bill in both Houses of Parliament.16 This earned him an early reputation as a ‘die hard’, his attitude being that: ‘It is usually better to go down fighting, rather than to raise the white flag and surrender’.17 Given this spirit, it is not surprising that Lord Dynevor was prominent in the campaign against the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, which reached its final stages in the years 1910-14, proving an indefatigable critic of the Government.18 The speech he delivered extempore on the Welsh Church Bill when it came before the Lords a second time, under the provisions of the Parliament Act, he considered ‘… the best one I have ever made’.19 Primarily directed against the clauses dealing with the endowments of the Church, it contributed to the rejec- Dynevor Castle, ancestral home of the Rhys family tion of the Bill by the Lords for a second time.20 Secure in the knowledge that the Walter Rice was born 17 August 1873,5 Member for Brighton would have to Bill would, in any event, be passed under and educated at Eton and Christ Church, resign before even taking his seat. In fact, the provisions of the Parliament Act, the Oxford.6 He returned to Dynevor after his he was only returning home to vote.12 Government largely ignored the debate, marriage to the Hon. Margaret Villiers, a Having ‘…fought the election on and the ministerial peers were conspicuous daughter of the Seventh Earl of Jersey.7 The Tariff Reform and a strong Navy’, Walter by their absence.21 The Bill received the next year, Walter Rice began his political Rice’s maiden speech was on the Navy Royal Assent shortly after the outbreak apprenticeship, serving as Assistant Private Estimates, urging increased naval expendi- of the Great War, although its operation Secretary to the Secretary of State for India, ture in response to the German naval pro- was suspended until after the conclusion Lord George Hamilton, from 1899 to 1902, gramme.13 Not every vote won had been of the conflict, when the final settle- and performing the same role for Lord due to their policies, however. Walter ment was renegotiated. Even then, Lord Selborne after Hamilton’s resignation from Rice later recounted the story of how Dynevor made a ‘gallant …effort to save the Cabinet in 1902, up to the resignation one man came to vote for him, which he the churchyards’, handed over to the state of the Government in 1905.8 Perhaps advis- learned at a dinner in the constituency: under the provisions of the Established edly, he played no part in the Conservative As I was leaving a young man came up to Church (Wales) Bill.22 Party’s shattering defeat of 1906. In 1908 me and said ‘I have never seen you before, Perhaps inevitably, given his status as he was selected as one of the Conservative I am not your colour, but I should like to a landed magnate, Lord Dynevor was candidates for the two-member Brighton tell you, that I voted for you.’ I expressed a vociferous supporter of the rights of and Hove Constituency, alongside George my pleasure and gratitude and asked him to property, serving on the council of the Tryon, son of the unfortunate admiral.9 tell me how it was that this had happened. Land Union, and occupying the post of The fight at the General Election of He replied, ‘It is like this. Mother, who is chairman from 1920.23 In this position, he January 1910 was a stiff one, national a widow, went to one of your meetings, took an active part in opposing attempts figures such as Asquith and Lord Curzon and when she came back he said, “Jim, you to impose additional taxes on land and addressing meetings in the constituen- must vote for Mr. Rice.” I was annoyed increased death duties, appropriately, as cy.10 Nevertheless, the two Conservative and said, “Why should I vote for him.” She death duties were to cause the sale of the candidates were returned by handsome answered, because he has got a curly head estate in 1976.24 majorities.11 The election produced one like your father has.” So I did what mother Unable to serve in the Great War due to strange story, when Walter Rice was seen wanted.’14 the loss of an eye in a riding accident soon purchasing a ticket to Llandeilo soon after Although re-elected comfortably in the after his marriage, Lord Dynevor instead his election, and it was rumoured that his December election, Walter Rice’s time worked at the Ministry of Munitions.25 father had died, and the newly-elected in the House of Commons was short. His eldest son, Charles, born in 1899,

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 30 09/02/2010 10:44 The House of Dynevor and Conservative Politics 1910-38

joined the colours, but left Sandhurst Dynevor’s son, Charles Rhys, later eighth A year later, he resigned, in order to be too late to fight in the war, although he Baron Dynevor, was forced to look else- free to criticise the Rating and Valuation saw action against the Bolsheviks in the where for a Parliamentary constituency. Bill, on the ground that it was likely to injure North Russia campaign of 1920, and was Narrowly failing to be adopted for the agriculture, already in a state of depression.44 awarded the Military Cross for conspicu- Isle of Ely on the eve of the 1923 General Together with Edward Ruggles-Brise, MP ous gallantry.26 Election, he was selected Conservative for Maldon, he was responsible for the Sympathetic to Welsh national aspira- candidate for Romford, ‘…a division I clause exempting farm buildings from the tions, Lord Dynevor supported Leolin had never previously even visited’, then a re-rating process, which was later picked Forestier-Walker, MP for Monmouth, Liberal-held seat.39 Trading on his military up by the Government.45 This resignation, in his advocacy of federal devolution.27 experience (his election address showed which appeared to be a principled decision A more cosmetic gesture towards Welsh him in uniform), this ‘smart young son of based on the principle of defending the nationality was his re-adoption of the Lord Dynevor’,40 was elected by a major- rights of property, together with the mod- surname Rhys by Royal warrant in 1916, erate terms in which he couched his criti- identifying more closely with his famous In 1926, Rhys was appointed cisms of the Bill, did no lasting injury to his forebears, and seeking to rebut claims career.46 In 1926, Rhys was appointed PPS that the family was largely anglicised.28 It PPS to William Ormsby- to William Ormsby-Gore, Under-Secretary was enough for one of the early leaders Gore, Under-Secretary of of State for the Colonies.47 In this capac- of Plaid Cymru, who suggested that the ity he accompanied Ormsby-Gore, on an Dynevor family should become the royal State for the Colonies. In this official visit to British West Africa. While house of an independent Wales.29 capacity he accompanied he enjoyed the visit, his comments that the Lord Dynevor became President of majority of lawyers he found there were the South Wales Area Council of the Ormsby-Gore, on an official corrupt aroused some controversy.48 Conservative Party in 1913.30 At that time, visit to British West Africa. Rhys’ appointment as Parliamentary South Wales returned only one Conservative Private Secretary to the Prime Minister in MP – Lord Ninian Crichton Stuart, a While he enjoyed the visit, July 1927 marked the apogee of his career. brother of the Marquess of Bute, who sat for his comments that the In this capacity, he wrote the majority Cardiff.31 The redistribution of seats which of Baldwin’s letters to the King.49 Just as took place in 1918 was a factor in increasing majority of lawyers he found important was the close working relation- this to four seats (the total Conservative rep- there were corrupt aroused ship that was to develop between Rhys and resentation in Wales), although this would Baldwin, which continued even after Rhys drop as low as one seat in 1929.32 Lord some controversy lost Romford to Labour at the General Dynevor occupied this post, whose duties Election of 1929, an event which Baldwin included hosting the Welsh Conservative ity of 470 in a three way contest, one of informed Rhys: ‘This has grieved me per- conference when it met in his area, until his the few Conservative gains in an election sonally more than anything for I shall be retirement in 1938 on grounds of ill-health which saw the loss of the Conservative lost without you’.50 There was probably a and increasing deafness.33 He was replaced majority and the formation of the first little hyperbole in the letter, but no more as President by the Earl of Plymouth.34 As a Labour Government.41 than Rhys’ reflection that ‘…it was almost major donor to, and sometime president of Charles Rhys showed his colours during worth while being defeated to get it’.51 the Carmarthen Conservative Association,35 this short Parliament, defending Baldwin’s In the aftermath of the election defeat, Lord Dynevor played an active part in the leadership against the grumblings of former Rhys continued to work for Baldwin, as life of the Association during a period in coalitionist ministers, who felt the election the Conservative leader became increas- which the Carmarthen constituency was defeat had shown that the Coalition had ingly embattled. Selected as Parliamentary a battleground between the once-hege- been the best hope of keeping Labour candidate for Guildford in early 1930,52 monic Liberal Party and the rising Labour from office. In the course of one such Rhys nevertheless ‘…offered to fight St. Party, acting as an adviser to successive exchange with Lord Birkenhead, the for- George’s myself on the straight Baldwin chairmen and agents to the Carmarthen mer Lord Chancellor informed the young ticket’, 53 when it seemed that the inter- Conservative Association.36 However, in MP: ‘If you think you are ever going vention of a candidate sponsored by Lord spite of running candidates at every election, to see another independent Conservative Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the Daily the Conservative Party remained a distant majority in this country, you are very Express, would cause the Conservative party third, occasionally polling sufficient votes to much mistaken!’42 Only six months to depose Baldwin. Given the feeling of deprive the Liberals of the seat.37 Even the later, Ramsay MacDonald’s government Lord Middleton, President of the Guildford defection of the former minister Sir Alfred fell, and the Conservatives returned to Conservative Association, that Baldwin was Mond, MP for Carmarthenshire since 1924 Government with 412 MPs, Charles doomed, it is perhaps fortunate that Rhys had no lasting impact on electoral politics, in Rhys’ majority rising by two thousand was not taken up on his offer.54 spite of speculation to the contrary.38 votes. He joined the Government shortly The death of the sitting MP for In spite of the decline of Liberalism in after, as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Guildford in early August 1931 meant that Wales, the Conservatives were unable to Captain Douglas Kirk, Financial Secretary Rhys’ return to the House of Commons take advantage, even in rural Wales. Lord to the War Office.43 coincided almost exactly with the events

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 31 09/02/2010 10:44 leading up to the formation of the Welsh Conservatism. Although he showed Papers 4: War Diary Australian Detachment North National Government.55 He was returned some enthusiasm for devolution following Russia Relief Force 45th Royal Fusiliers. 27 Carmarthenshire Record Office Dynevor unopposed on 25 August, after the other the end of the Great War, Lord Dynevor Muniments 114/1, Report of the Unionist Committee candidates had withdrawn.56 was largely involved in the official and on Federal Devolution. For Charles Rhys, however, it was to ceremonial side of Welsh Conservatism, 28 Obituary, Times, 9 June 1956. 29 D. J. Davies, ‘Wales Must Have a King’, in Towards be ‘never glad confident morning again’. his presence on the platforms of Welsh Welsh Freedom (Cardiff, 1958), p.170. He was not appointed to office in the Conservative conferences harking back to 30 South Wales Evening Post, 26 February 1938. National Government. He attempted to the days when his ancestors had played a 31 Lord Ninian was killed in Action in 1915. 32 Arnold J. James & John E. Thomas, Wales at organise a group of backbenchers support- central role in Carmarthen politics. His Westminster: A History of the Parliamentary ive of the aims of the Government, and work for the South Wales Area Council Representation of Wales 1800-1979 (Llandysul, 1981), to bring the landed and industrial interests of the Conservative Party, and his patron- pp.109-10. 33 Carmarthenshire Record Office Dynevor together, in the belief that this was the age and guidance of the Carmarthen Muniments 114/1 Lord Dynevor to Sir John Cope, only way to ensure national prosperity.57 Conservative Association show a man still 16 February 1938. Following disagreements of a personal deeply immersed in the politics of the land 34 Western Mail, 26 February 1938. 35 Carmarthenshire Record Office Dynevor Muniments nature with the Guildford Conservative of his fathers. In Charles Rhys, by contrast, 114/1 Annual List of Subscribers; Valencia Peel to Association, Rhys stood down from we see a British politician who showed Lord Dynevor 13 January 1938. Parliament at the 1935 General Election.58 early promise, in his Parliamentary career 36 CRO Dynevor Muniments 114/1 Valencia Peel to Lord Dynevor, Dec 13th 1934; Major Philipps Although he would unsuccessfully contest no more Welsh than Geoffrey Howe or to Lord Dynevor, May 22nd 1937; Valencia Peel to North Islington in 1945,59 and remained Michael Heseltine, although he was pre- Lord Dynevor, Jan 13th 1938; Carmarthen Journal, 7 active in London Conservatism, serving pared to give a nod to his Welsh birth in April, 1939. 37 James & Thomas, Wales at Westminster, pp.132-48. as Chairman of the Cities of London and order to tease Lloyd George. In remaining 38 National Library of Wales Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Westminster Conservative Association,60 active in Conservative politics for as long Papers, diary entry, 30 January 1926. the political renaissance of the Dynevor as they did, however, and at a time when 39 National Library of Wales Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 16 unpublished reminiscences of Charles family effectively ended with his father’s many Welsh estates were being broken up, Rhys, c.1929. resignation of the Presidency of the South their owners retreating from politics, the 40 Essex County Chronicle, 14 December 1923. Wales Conservatives in 1938. Charles House of Dynevor demonstrated a remark- 41 National Library of Wales Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9 Election Address of Charles Rhys (figures Rhys inherited the family title on the able vitality, demanding of further study. written on front): Rhys (C) 9,585; Davies (Lab) death of the seventh Baron in 1956, 9,109 Mason (Lib) 8,144. shortly before his unexpected death in Endnotes 42 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 16. 61 1 H. M. Vaughan, The South Wales Squires (London, 43 Ibid. late 1962. 1926, reprinted Carmarthen, 1988), p.73. 44 Times, 22 June 1925. As a Member of Parliament, Charles 2 Matthew Cragoe, An Anglican Aristocracy: The Moral 45 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, E. A. Rhys was bound to represent the interests Economy of the Landed Estate in Carmarthenshire 1832- Ruggles-Brise to Charles Rhys, 14 July 1927. 1895 (Oxford, 1996), pp.12-3; Black’s Picturesque 46 Times, 22 June 1925. of his constituents, which were centred in Guide Through Wales (London, 1859), p.275. 47 Obituary, Times, 17 December 1962. the Home Counties, rather than Wales. 3 David Williams, The Rebecca Riots (Cardiff, 1955), 48 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, undated However, he was to refer to his Welsh pp.3-4. criticism of remarks. 4 Cragoe, Anglican Aristocracy, p.248; obituary, Times, 49 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 10, covering origins on the occasion of the admission of 10 June 1911. letter to facsimile copies of letters to the King, by Major H. L. Nathan, the Liberal MP for 5 Lord Dynevor, My Reminiscences (Carmarthen, Charles Rhys. Bethnal Green, to the Welsh national group 1937), p.1. 50 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Stanley 6 Obituary, Western Mail, 9 June 1956. Baldwin to Charles Rhys 1 June 1929. of MPs after his decision to leave the official 7 Carmarthenshire Record Office Dynevor Papers 51 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, diary Liberals. Rhys wrote a mildly anti-Semitic 266/9 ‘Home-Coming of The Hon. Walter Rice entry, 3 June 1929. letter to Lloyd George asking to be admit- and his Bride the Hon. Lady Margaret Villiers-Rice’ 52 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Stanley 62 (Carmarthen, 1898). Baldwin to Charles Rhys 30 January 1930. ted on the grounds of his Welsh birth. 8 Dynevor, Reminiscences, pp.23-7. 53 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, diary This was rebuffed on the ground of his 9 Ibid., p.41. entry 2 March 1931. continued support for the Government.63 10 Times, 5 January, 8 January 1910. 54 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Lord 11 CRO, Dynevor Additional MSS 4, Arthur Balfour Middleton to Charles Rhys 9 March 1931. The political renaissance of the house to the Hon. Walter Rice, 19th Jan, 1910. 55 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Stanley of Dynevor illustrates the way in which 12 CRO, Dynevor Additional MSS 4, unattributed Baldwin to Charles Rhys 2 August 1931; Times, 3 Welsh Conservative families adjusted to press cutting. August 1931. 13 Dynevor, Reminiscences, p.44. 56 Times, 26 August 1931. the changed realities of politics in the 14 Ibid. 57 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, diary Principality in the early twentieth century. 15 Times, 10 June 1911. entry 8 December 1932. While father and son sought constituen- 16 Dynevor, Reminiscences, p.47. 58 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Stanley 17 Ibid., p.47. Baldwin to Charles Rhys, 20 January 1934, 26 cies outside Wales, they did not sever 18 Letters, Times, 13 April, 12 May, 1912. October 1935; Times, 15 January 1934. their connection with the Principality. 19 Dynevor, Reminiscences, p.48. 59 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Election The seventh Baron, on inheriting the title, 20 Western Mail, 23 July 1913. Address, North Islington, 1945. 21 Times, 22 July 1913. 60 Times, 6 November 1959. identified himself strongly with the inter- 22 Archbishop of Wales, Memories, p.314. 61 Obituary, Times, 17 December 1962. ests of Conservatism in Wales. Opposing 23 Times, 11 February 1920. 62 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, Charles the Disestablishment and Disendowment 24 Times, 13 February 1922, 19 November 1923; Rhys and Jim Thomas to David Lloyd George, 9 National Trust, Guide to Newton House (2007). February 1933. of the Church in Wales to the end, he 25 Dynevor, Reminiscences, p.53. 63 NLW Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Papers 9, David fought for the most famous lost cause of 26 National Library of Wales Lord Dynevor (8th Baron) Lloyd George to Charles Rhys, 11 February 1933.

32 Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 32 09/02/2010 10:44 s a young child during the mid 1950s I enjoyed going along with my foster father in his red and cream coloured Austin Apick-up from South Milford to collect fish from Hull docks and distribute it to fish and chip shops all over the North, West and East Ridings of Yorkshire. On our regular journeys places of historical interest would be pointed out to me as we went along. One day, as we passed the stately home of J. M. W. Turner's 1816 painting Grouse Shooting on Beamsley Beacon - Fawkes is one of the subjects Farnley Hall, near Otley, my foster father said: “Horton-Fawkes lives there. He’s a farmer and is related to Guy Fawkes.” Wikipedia tells us that “In 1792 Farnley Hall was inherited by Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes (1769 – 1825), who Walter Ramsden was a Yorkshire landowner, writer and MP for Yorkshire (1806 – 1807). Born on the 2nd of March at Hawkesworth Hall, near Hawkesworth Guiseley, he was the eldest son of Walter Ramsden Beaumont Hawksworth, Esq., of Hawksworth. He assumed the surname and arms of Fawkes, pursuant to the will of Fawkes his cousin, Francis Fawkes, Esq., of Farnley Hall, near Leeds, who, owing to the death of an only son and heir-apparent, left his (1769 – 1825) estate to Mr. Hawksworth in 1786.” During the first Government of All the Talents (1806-1807), when Lord Grenville John Hirst, author of Jailhouselawyer’s became Prime Minister on the death of William Pitt the Younger, Walter Ramsden Blog, looks at an unlikely descendant Hawkesworth Fawkes was elected as one of the MPs representing Yorkshire. The of Guy Fawkes and his connection with other MP for Yorkshire at that time was William Wilberforce Hull born William Wilberforce, famous for his anti-slavery campaigning. Charles, 3rd Earl of Stanhope, who owned a house at Horsforth and Cannon Hall near Barnsley, was a good friend of Fawkes who was also a supporter of anti-slavery along with Wilberforce and both of these men were regular visitors to Cannon Hall. All were good friends of William Pitt the Younger and Stanhope was also Pitt’s brother in law. Unfortunately Wikipedia’s entry on Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes is just a stub, and it may lead some who come across it to dismiss the man as not worthy of further attention on this

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 33 09/02/2010 10:44 basis. However, in 1797 the artist Joseph was officially described as a Tory main- Mallord William Turner “visits Otley in tained that he was an MP independent of Yorkshire where he is commissioned to party. Stanhope also accepted that he was paint watercolours of the area. While there, a Tory, but even he held himself to be an he meets Walter Ramsden Fawkes who independent politician swayed by prin- will become an important patron and ciple not party. At a crucial time Stanhope close friend”. Fortunately, A Social History is said to have defected and threw in his of Modern Art, Volume 2: Art in an Age of support behind William Wilberforce. Bonapartism, 1800 – 1815 provides us with Whatever the politics, one thing both some information to flesh out the character Fawkes and Wilberforce had in com- of Walter Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes. mon was their oratory skills. On Fawkes: He is described as “A major landed pro- “Mr Stanhope relates of him that once prietor with both agricultural and indus- at a meeting which was convened in trial interests, he was renowned for his Yorkshire to discuss the Peace of Amiens, he made a speech so brilliant that the reporters declared themselves unable to During the Napoleonic take it down, so completely were they car- wars, Fawkes took the ried away by its extraordinary eloquence and beauty of language” (Source: The government’s side on Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope all major foreign policy v. I.). In relation to the crucial York meeting in March 1784, Boswell reports that the decisions, but gradually crowd was weary until Wilberforce climbed the economic hardships of up on to the table to speak. He feared that the frail looking 25 year old would not be the Continental blockade heard against the violence of the weather. and popular dissent forced However, “I saw”, says Boswell, “what seemed to be a mere shrimp mount upon him to modify his position the table, but as I listened, he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale”. scientific farming and cattle breeding. His Wilberforce held the crowd spellbound for shipments of cattle to domestic markets an hour, until the spell was broken by the developed into a large-scale enterprise. galloping arrival in the courtyard of a mes- He helped found the Otley Agricultural senger from Pitt on horseback. “I have to Society and produced some of the finest announce to you”, Wilberforce said quiet- shorthorn cattle in the world. Fawkes was ly, “that the King by dissolving Parliament also a Whig liberal on domestic issues and has at this very moment appealed to the supported the abolitionist movement. As decision of the people”. MP for the County of York during the It is not recorded whether Fawkes period 1806-1807, he helped Wilberforce attended the York meeting. In any event, pass his measures outlawing slave traffic. whilst the Whig Lords did not accept their He approved of liberty in moderation defeat gracefully they retired to their hotel and despised despotism because he valued peacefully. On the other hand, the Tories his freedom of action and believed that and their confederates went to their hotel private property flourished best under a and a massive brawl broke out with the liberal regime. During the Napoleonic frail Wilberforce caught up in the middle wars, Fawkes took the government’s side of it before he saw peace reign again and on all major foreign policy decisions, but was able to go to bed. Wilberforce went gradually the economic hardships of the onto win his seat as a MP for Yorkshire for Continental blockade and popular dissent a second term, whereas his friend Fawkes forced him to modify his position. His ini- announced his intention to stand again but tial patriotism is expressed in the works he did not actively campaign and only polled purchased from Turner.” two votes. This end result is not really any “Mr. Fawkes’s politics were supposed yardstick by which to measure the histori- to be most nearly allied to those of the cal and political and social life of Walter Whigs; but on this subject, from his course Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes, because, of public conduct, it is difficult to speak like his famous ancestor Guy, he also with accuracy.” And Wilberforce who entered Parliament with honest intentions.

34 Conservative History Journal • Issue 8 • Winter 2009/10

Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 34 09/02/2010 10:44 Brian Mulroney Kim Campbell Preston Manning Stephen Harper Paul Martin Pierre Trudeau Prime Minister 1984-93 Prime Minister 1993 Reform Leader Current Prime Minister Liberal leader/Prime Prime Minister/ and Conservative leader Minister 2003-06 Liberal leader

The Demise and Rise of the Conservative movement in Canada

David McCann, a final year student of Politics and Social Policy at the University of Ulster, discusses the fate of conservatives in Canada

Demise of the Progressive anti-Trudeau sentiment throughout the Conservative party nation proved electorally very successful October 25th 1993 saw Kim Campbell lead for the Progressive Conservatives, as they the Progressive Conservative party to elec- ended nearly two decades of Liberal domi- toral annihilation; the party won just 2 of nance in 1984 winning 211 out of 282 seats the 295 seats in the House of Commons. in the House of Commons making Brian Campbell who had been Prime Minister Mulroney the Prime Minister with the big- and leader of the party for just four months gest majority in Canadian history. naturally received a lot of blame for the Brian Mulroney was faced with the party’s defeat but in order to understand challenge of keeping his new Conservative fully the reasons behind the demise of this coalition together in power. The party, the events of the preceding decade Canadian economy was struggling in a must be examined. deep recession in the early 1980s with When the charismatic Quebecer Brian unemployment rising to 11.3% in 1984. Mulroney replaced Joe Clark as party Furthermore the previous Liberal admin- leader in June 1983, he set about creat- istration’s inability to get spending under ing a new coalition of Quebec national- control had left the new government with ists, Ontario and Eastern Conservatives a $39 Billion deficit. along with fiscal Conservatives in Western The Mulroney government began Canada. This new coalition combined with implementing some free market reforms

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 35 09/02/2010 10:44 along with spending restraints in order The popularity of the accord was fall- to stimulate Canada’s weak economy; ing across Canada and many prominent however it would be that determination politicians like former Prime Minister to open up the Canadian economy that Pierre Trudeau and Preston Manning would cause the Progressive Conservatives lambasted it. To get a quick resolution the serious political problems. deadline of June 23rd 1990 was set for the The issue of free trade with the United provinces to ratify the accord. The Prime States dominated the second half of Minister embarked upon a tour of each Brian Mulroney’s first term as Prime province in Canada trying to gain sup- Minister; his determination to implement port for the accord. However, on the day the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement the accord was to be ratified the Premier provoked fierce opposition from both of Newfoundland and Labrador, Clyde Liberal and New Democratic parties. Wells, refused to hold a ratification vote. Canadian parliament Opposition to the agreement was so great A demoralised Mulroney addressed the that Mulroney was forced to call an early nation to explain his defeat. election in 1988 in order to get a mandate This was the final nail in the coffin for the agreement. This election would see for Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Mulroney go on to win a second term, the coalition as two major groups now first Prime Minister to win two consecu- turned away. The first were Quebec tive majority governments for 25 years nationalists, who were infuriated that and achieve a mandate for free trade. This English Canada would not accept victory, however, did not come without a Quebec’s proposals. This anger led price as over 40 Progressive Conservative to senior Conservative Quebec MPs MPs lost their seats. under Lucien Bouchard to leave the The long battle over free trade did party in order to form a new separat- not stop Mulroney from reforming the ist party called the Bloc Quebecois. Canadian economy further. This time The second to turn away were Western Brian Mulroney was determined to bring Conservatives, many of whom thought Canada’s massive $27.9 Billion bud- that Mulroney had focused too much on get deficit under control. In order to Quebec and who in turn found a new achieve this objective, the Progressive political home with Preston Manning’s Conservatives implemented a new Reform Party. tax called the Goods and Service Tax The Mulroney government limped on (GST) in 1991. This new tax like free for another three years but with deepen- trade was deeply unpopular with the ing unpopularity in the country Mulroney Canadian public and put more pressure resigned as Prime Minister in June 1993. on Mulroney’s already unstable coali- The Progressive Conservatives made his- tion. Many of the Western econom- tory again by selecting Kim Campbell ic Conservatives who had supported to become Canada’s first female Prime Mulroney were now turning away from Minister. the Progressive Conservatives because The Campbell government offered the of the new tax to the new centre right hope that the Progressive Conservatives Reform Party who had opposed the could be renewed. However with a introduction of the GST. Federal election just a matter of months Brian Mulroney had already used up a away and the Budget deficit at an all time lot of political capital in getting many of high of $42 Billion, the coalition that his economic reforms implemented but had helped the party win the two previ- his biggest gamble would be his consti- ous elections was now fragmented and tutional crusade to bring Quebec into disillusioned with the party. In the 1993 the Canadian Constitution. The Prime election the Progressive Conservative Minister gathered all the Provincial party was decimated as they lost all but Premiers together to negotiate consti- two of their parliamentary seats and, add- tutional reform, this long and arduous ing insult to injury, the Prime Minister process culminating in the Meech Lake lost her own seat in British Columbia. Accord which recognised Quebec as a Kim Campbell had little choice: after just distinct society within Canada while also four months in office, she duly stepped giving the province a veto on future con- down as Prime Minister and leader of the stitutional amendments. Progressive Conservatives.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 36 09/02/2010 10:44 The Demise and Rise of the Conservative movement in Canada

The Conservative Movement after the Paul Martin’s election as Liberal leader The new Conservative party adapted 1993 Federal Election put pressure on the new Progressive quickly to the new political environment The 1993 election result would Conservative leader Peter MacKay as his in Canada which is more than can be see Conservatism in Canada led by a party was under a real threat of being said for their Liberal counterparts. The new political force in the name of the wiped out by the Liberals at the fol- Conservatives began developing policies Reform Party but unlike its Progressive lowing election. This led MacKay to on tax cuts, crime and cleaning up gov- Conservative predecessor it held no seats begin talks in late 2003 with Stephen ernment. The last of this was particularly outside of Western Canada. The failure to Harper on merging the two parties which important. Harper also managed to pro- expand outside Western Canada led to the resulted in the October 2003 agreement mote the image of himself as a moderate party being portrayed as a regional group who could be trusted to protect Canada’s with hidden right wing extremist views, social programmes and would not impose unable to command support in seat rich The new Conservative an extreme right wing agenda. provinces like Ontario and Quebec that party selected Stephen The Conservatives’ new policies gave are critically important to any party seek- the party some definition while the Liberal ing to form a government. Harper as leader in March government was racked with scandal, The Progressive Conservatives did not 2004 but as he faced which made Harper feel confident enough break up after the 1993 election but they to face an election. In November 2005 did have a hard time adjusting to the new the hugely popular Paul with support of the Bloc Quebecois as well reality of being a minor party in Canadian Martin, his task appeared as the New Democrats, the Conservatives politics. The next decade would see tabled a motion of no confidence in the the Progressive Conservatives and the to be monumental Liberal government, which brought down Reform party attack each other as they the battered Martin government after just both tried to consolidate as well as expand of establishing a new Conservative Party 17 months. their support across Canada. This rivalry of Canada. A Progressive Conservative The election was set for January 23rd tended to split the Conservative vote membership vote was held on the issue 2006. The Conservatives set about orga- as well as demoralise the Conservative of merging with the Canadian Alliance nizing their campaign. Determined not movement and allow the Liberals to win in December 2003 and was given a to be labelled as extremists again, the majority governments in both the 1997 resounding endorsement with 90% of Conservatives made numerous policy and 2000 Federal elections. members voting in favour. announcements aiming to reassure voters The Reform party, changed its name The new Conservative party selected that the Conservatives would continue to the Canadian Alliance and by 2003 Stephen Harper as leader in March 2004 to run budget surpluses, cut taxes and there all three of Canada’s political par- but as he faced the hugely popular Paul clean up government. This campaign of ties had seen leadership changes, which Martin, his task appeared to be monu- promoting risk free change combined were to change to dynamics of the mental. However, events would turn with a less wasteful, more transparent Conservative movement. The election in favour of the Conservatives as the government appealed to a section of the of Stephen Harper as Canadian Alliance Liberals were hit by the Sponsorship Canadian population as the Conservatives leader in 2002 saw a renewed attempt to Scandal which led to their popularity fall- made gains in provinces like Ontario and unite the political right in Canada, as a ing across the country. Quebec at the expense of the Liberals. number of overtures were made to the In order to limit the damage of the The thirteen yea-long Liberal party rule Progressive Conservatives to merge the Sponsorship scandal and to put pressure on in Canada was brought to an end as the two parties; however the leadership of a newly formed Conservative party, Paul Conservatives celebrated their minority the Progressive Conservatives rebuffed Martin called an early election for June 28th government win. any proposal that included a merger with 2004. The new Conservative party suffered In the space of 20 years the the Canadian Alliance. from not having had enough time to define Conservatives went from winning the The second leadership change that themselves or to formulate new policies. largest majority in history to the big- had an unintended effect on the This allowed the Liberals to portray Harper gest electoral defeat in Canadian his- Conservative movement was the elec- and the Conservatives as extremists with tory and to make matters worse they tion in November 2003 of Former a hidden right wing agenda. This strategy would respond to this defeat by dividing Finance Minister Paul Martin as Prime proved to be very successful for the Liberals and demoralising the whole movement. Minister and Liberal leader. Paul Martin as they managed to regain the lead in the However, like a phoenix from the ashes, had ascended to the leadership on a tide opinion polls and defy the sceptics by win- the Conservative movement in just 2 of overwhelming popularity, winning ning a minority government. Although the years united and established a new party with 94% of the vote. The Liberals Conservatives did not win the election, that has the broadest support base of any were confidently predicting that Martin they were not wiped out as many pundits political party in Canada. No longer rep- would lead them to the biggest majority had predicted just a few months before the resenting the ideology of a small section in Canadian history and reduce all the election and denied the Liberals the massive of the nation, the Conservative party has other political parties to tiny rumps at majority that had seemed easy to win just a once again proved that it can be Canada’s the next election. few months previously. natural governing party.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 37 09/02/2010 10:44 How far was the Falklands War the main reason for Thatcher’s 1983 General Election victory?

Justin Kempley, who passed his History A level last summer sees many factors in the 1983 Conservative victory

hatcher’s first term (1979-1983) Conservative Party fortunes it is natural result was not won on the Falklands, stands as one of the defining to turn to the Falklands War as, indeed, but other issues, particularly economic Parliaments in our political his- writers such as Andrew Marr do. policy9. The Conservatives had already tory. The period saw Labour take Anecdotally at least this would seem recovered in the polls, so alternative fac- Ta dramatic left turn, the emergence of a true. Thatcher’s image had been trans- tors, present before the advent of the war competitive third party for the first time formed into a Boudiccan figure in the were undoubtedly more influential in the since the 1920s, major fiscal and regula- eyes of newspaper cartoonists6. The Conservative Party turnaround. tory reform and, not least, the Falklands 1960s and 1970s had seen the final It could be argued that the importance War in 19821. Against this backdrop stages of the process of decolonisation. of a ‘Falklands Factor’ as an explanation for the Conservatives won the 1983 General In this context, Thatcher’s resistance to the extent of the Conservatives victory Election with the largest majority of any Argentine aggression would inevitably is that it exposed the weaknesses of the Tory Government since World War II, give her a nationalist boost in support. In Labour Party and its manifesto in 1983. this despite the apparent contradiction particular, the national pride seen during Whilst Labour supported the conflict, the of losing over half-a-million votes2. The the conflict can be contrasted with the party had promised a number of ideologi- Falklands War and its aftermath are com- humiliation of Britain (under a Labour cal policies in favour of unilateral nuclear monly highlighted as the principal rea- government) requiring financial support disarmament which became questionable son for this3. This article argues that the from the International Monetary Fund in the context of the Falklands War. If popular myth is over simplistic. Assessing in 1976. The decisive leadership shown Labour had held a different, more prag- other common interpretations, such as by Thatcher during the crisis was clearly matic attitude towards military conflict, the importance of Labour weaknesses, the in sharp contrast to her predecessors; the Falklands factor would most likely role of the SDP-Liberal Alliance and the a desirable one as shown by the 1983 have been negligible. Other factors such economy, this article will concur with MORI poll that suggested one-third of as the economy and Labour weaknesses historians like Peter Riddell’s conclusion4; Tory voters supported the party exclu- were more important. The Falklands War that the 1983 result was fundamentally a sively on Thatcher’s strength of per- in itself cannot be considered the main product of opposition weaknesses and the sonality7. This does then support Marr’s reason for Margaret Thatcher’s electoral concurrent dividing role of the Alliance as argument that a revived national pride, victory in 1983. opposed to a ‘Falklands Factor’. particularly spurred on by tabloid support An alternative argument then that needs Firstly it is necessary to assess the appar- gave Thatcher a new political image to to be considered is that the election out- ent role of a ‘Falklands Factor’ in the elec- lead her to victory in 1983. come was the result of Labour weaknesses tion. The fact that the Tories evidently Marr’s analysis is misleading though. in policy, leadership and its record of had a jump in support of 11% between In March 1982, two weeks before the government. February and July 19825 shows there was Argentine invasion, Gallup showed the Certainly this would seem true when some positive shift in the public mood Conservatives with substantial leads8. This examining the view that the party’s towards the party. So when searching data backs an alternative conclusion drawn radical manifesto damaged its appeal for a reason for the transformation of by Patrick Cosgrave that the election to moderate voters. Gerald Kaufman

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 38 09/02/2010 10:44 1983 election

famously described it as “the longest suicide note in history”10. Labour was by its own proclamation “committed to radical, socialist policies for reviving the British economy”11. Their unequivocal support for unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the EEC and NATO, as well as the nationalisation of key industries and the financial sector can be seen as an obvious alienating factor for moderate public opinion in 1983. Indeed, David Childs mentions the fact that Labour losses were heaviest amongst the skilled working class, property owning voters12. This is convincing evidence that the party’s policies had estranged an aspira- tional body that was traditionally vital to its post-World War II electoral success. By committing itself to the far left, the more moderate voters held under Harold Wilson were lost; the party was divided. Labour’s poor record of government in the 1970s was also significant in its 1983 defeat. As well as the need for support from the IMF, the period had seen infla- The emergence of a significant third compared to Labour’s 28%19. By splitting tion in double digits and major indus- political party in the form of the Alliance the left of centre vote so evenly in two the trial action, most famously the 1978-79 has also been highlighted as a reason for Conservatives could emerge victorious in Winter of Discontent13. Criticisms of the Thatcher’s victory. Three party politics dozens of typically Labour seats, increas- Conservatives were effectively void when had not existed in Britain since the Liberal ing their majority from 43 to 144, despite, contrasted with the Winter of Discontent demise in the 1920s, so it should be seen remarkably, receiving fewer votes than in and Labour’s self-proclaimed proximity as an important dynamic to consider in the 197920. This supports Riddell’s conclusion to trade unions. Given that Michael Foot election result. that the result was a product primarily of served as Leader of the House in James opposition divisions21. With no Alliance, Callaghan’s cabinet, the damaging associa- Foot was seen as weak, Labour would have been a more competi- tion between the two was inevitable. tive force in 1983. Finally, Labour’s weakness in terms of unable to control his party However, we must not neglect the leadership also contributed to their failure and logically therefore reason for the Alliance’s creation and in 1983. Foot was seen as weak, unable to its relative success. The SDP was essen- control his party and logically therefore would not be suited to the tially born of the Labour party, its initial would not be suited to the office of Prime office of Prime Minister parliamentary composition and electoral Minister14. The fact he lost the first ballot support base being strong evidence to of his party’s leadership contest in 1980 support this. It was only because of the shows he had only a limited authority Indeed the emergence of the SDP was policy and leadership failure of the Labour over his divided party15. Whilst the public clearly to the disadvantage of Labour that the Alliance existed. Had Labour have may not have been entirely enamoured as opposed to the Conservatives. 13 of been more accommodating towards the by Thatcher’s policies, she projected an the party’s 14 defecting MPs, includ- political position of ‘moderate’ factions, image of control in government that was ing the ‘Gang of Four’ in 1981 were it may have been able to present a united attractive given the unhappy memories of originally Labour16. Polling data shows opposition in 1983. The Alliance was the 1970s. that the Alliance took two votes from the manifestation of Labour’s weaknesses, These weaknesses are clearly more Labour for every one they took from the and indeed the means by which the party important than the Falklands. As already Conservatives17. would divide itself by 1983. mentioned, it was Labour’s approach to One might suggest that the fact the Perhaps though the election was won disarmament that left Thatcher able to Alliance only won 23 seats limits their on Thatcher greatest legacy; economic capitalise on the war. Whilst the Falklands importance in the election as indeed reform. Some writers on the period such did contribute to Thatcher’s image of writers like Childs do18. However this as David Sanders have highlighted this as strong leadership, this only played to her must be considered in the context of a a great strength for her 1983 campaign22. strengths when contrasted with Labour’s first-past-the-post electoral system. The Thatcher’s economic policy certainly failures in government and in opposition. Alliance won 26% of the national vote worked in her favour to a degree. For

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 39 09/02/2010 10:44 example the Housing Act (1980) allowed fact that the laissez-faire approach was at council house rent payers a ‘right to buy’ best described as controversial in its own their homes at a greatly reduced rate after time. Riddell’s conclusion that this was long tenure23. This had an obvious appeal an election lost by the opposition is then for many working class voters, showing the most valid one to draw. This inter- how her economic policy could make pretation seems rarely supported by the real gains24. The period also saw major left (who use the Falklands as an excuse restructuring in taxation policy. The for their failings) or the right (reluctant to reduction of the basic rate of income tax admit partial unpopularity of Thatcherite from 33% to 30% in 1979 carried the ideology). There is an uneasy truth that support of 63% of the public25, further both should be more willing to acknowl- supporting the claim that the success of edge. The maxim that “oppositions do not Thatcher’s economic platform was the win elections, governments loose them”, was driving force behind the Tories’ returned upside down in 1983. This was an election. Limiting the influence of union election lost by a divided left, not won power proved particularly popular with solely by the overwhelming popularity of the public. The Employment Act (1980) an ideology, or the fortune of a conflict in showed that Thatcher’s Tories were will- the South Atlantic. ing to take necessary action against trade unions. The fact that union membership Endnotes 26 1 Andrew Marr, A History of Modern Britain, (London, had dropped 15% by 1983 , demon- Pan Macmillan, 1st Edition, 2007) p 381 strates a sea change in the public mood 2 Jessica Yonwin, ‘UK Election Statistics: 1918-2004’, towards unions. House of Commons Library, published 28th July 2004, p10, http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/ However, this interpretation is research/rp2004/rp04-061.pdf, last retrieved April unsound. Though the long term merits of 30th 2009 Thatcherism are undeniable, her economic 3 A Marr, p 381 4 Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Government, (London, policy was far from universally popular at Basil Blackwell, 2nd Edition, 1987) p 4 the time. In May 1983 unemployment 5 David Sanders, Hugh Ward and David Marsh, stood at 3 million compared with 1.2 mil- Economics and Politics, the Calculus of Support - 27 Macroeconomics, the Falklands War and the Thatcher lion in 1979 , figures of a historical level Government: A Contrary View, (Michigan, University that bolster the claim that the economy of Michigan Press, 2nd Edition, 1991) p 161 was far from a political asset for Thatcher. 6 A Marr, p 404 7 Patrick Cosgrave, Thatcher - The First Term, (London, Popular support for income tax cuts must Bodley Head, 2nd Edition, 1985) p 4 be put in the context of unpopular tax 8 Ibid., pp 145-146 rises to afford them, most notably the dou- 9 Ibid., p 147 28 10 David Childs, Britain Since 1945, (London, bling of VAT to 15% . The Conservatives Routledge, 5th Edition, 2005) p 231 lost in both vote share and popular vote 11 Political Science Resources, The New Hope for when compared to their 1979 success. The Britain [Labour 1983 Manifesto], Keele University, http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/man/lab83. argument that there was some upsurge in htm#Foreword last retrieved 30th April 2009, support for Thatcher as a result of her eco- 12 D Childs, p 231 nomic policy is clearly weakened. 13 A Marr, pp 373-377 14 Nicholas Wapshott & George Brock, Thatcher, Even if some economic issues played to (London, Futura, 1st Edition, 1983,) p 285 Thatcher’s strengths, this only stresses the 15 Ian Aitken, ‘Labour picks Foot to heal party importance of Labour’s inherent weak- splits’, The Guardian, Tuesday November 11th 1980, http://century.guardian.co.uk/1980-1989/ nesses. The Conservatives were more Story/0,,108171,00.html, last retrieved 30th April trusted than Labour in the handling of 2009 the economy, but this was a demon- 16 D Childs, p 223 17 Ibid., p 232 stration of Labour weaknesses from the 18 Ibid., p 231 1970s legacy as opposed to Conservative 19 Ibid. strengths. 20 Ibid. 21 P Riddell, p4 It would seem fair to conclude then that 22 David Sanders, Hugh Ward, David Marsh and Tony the ‘Falklands Factor’ did not determine the Fletcher, ‘Government Popularity and the Falklands outcome of the 1983 General Election. War: A Reassessment’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 17, No. 3 (July, 1987), pp 281-313, Much more important was Labour Party 23 P Riddell, pp 154-156 weaknesses and the Alliance’s success in 24 Ibid. splitting the opposition vote. The long 25 A Marr, p 387 26 D Childs, p 220 term merits of Thatcherism are undeni- 27 Ibid., p 231 able, but no historian can ignore the 28 N Wapshott & G Brock, p 190

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 40 09/02/2010 10:44 Book reviews Book reviews

hese diaries by John Rae, the Headmaster of Westminster School (1970-86), show just how extraordinary Britain’s leading Tindependent schools are––and just how entrenched they have been within the establishment. In 1979, Prince Charles sought Rae’s help for a speech, the Queen invited him to dinner and the Captain of the England Cricket Team asked to teach at his school. Among the pupils who flit in and out of the story are Dominic Grieve, Adam Boulton and Lord Nicholas Windsor. In many respects, Rae’s diaries are an almanac of the establishment in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite this, some people may wonder whether this book is worthwhile. Before he died in 2006, Rae had published more words on education than any other The entrance to Little Dean’s Yard, part of Westminster School. © James Mason-Hudson headmaster in living memory and his wife, Daphne, had also written a book about their time at Harrow, Taunton and Westminster schools. Even though he The Old Boys’ Network: had a full life, which included writing the A Headmaster’s Diaries 1970-1986 novel The Custard Boys and helping on The Killing Fields film, what more could there by John Rae be to say? Yet these diaries are different to the Raes’ earlier books: they are more Short Books, London personal and show a headmaster’s life in ISBN 978-1-906021-21-4 more intimate relief. £17.99 Three issues stand out. The first is the Review by Nicholas Hillman importance of nurture as well as nature. Rae provides a wealth of evidence to support the notion that adolescents who come from atypical families cause more problems than those who don’t: seem- ingly every recalcitrant Westminster pupil came from a family facing difficulties. It could be that Rae only wrote about the background of his most troublesome pupils because it confirmed his own preju-

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 41 09/02/2010 10:44 His attack on assisted dices. But it is more likely that his long state primary schools that was specifically experience as a schoolmaster allowed him designed ‘to prevent them being snatched’ places was a fight Rae did to discern some important basic truths, by other schools. not need and could not and one is that difficult parents can beget Secondly, he failed to recognise suf- difficult children. ficiently that the Assisted Places Scheme win (at least in the short- The second major theme is illegal was not designed for schools like term) and he made himself drugs. Because of the reputational dam- Westminster but rather as a lifeline for age for any school associated with drugs the former direct grant schools, whose unnecessarily unpopular in and the ease with which his pupils could ancient links to the state had been severed the process obtain them, Rae was obsessed with by the previous Labour Government and clamping down on drug use. If he was which could not afford generous scholar- sometimes at risk of getting the issue ship schemes. out of proportion, then at least he was Thirdly, Rae’s loud opposition was not as naïve as other heads. His wife’s out of kilter with the rest of the public memoirs recount a conference at which school sector, which had been propos- a ‘headmaster stated categorically that ing models for state-sponsored pupils there were no drug-users at his school’. for much of the twentieth century (most A policewoman from the Drug Squad notably in the aftermath of the two responded, ‘Headmaster, I could give world wars)––and it looked calculated you the names of three of your pres- to offend them. He was brave but also ent pupils who have used heroin, and a foolhardy to take them on. dozen more who regularly smoke pot.’ It is true that the Assisted Places Scheme Other headmasters were jealous of Rae’s turned out to be less progressive and more public face, but their response to the flawed than many of its supporters had drugs issue was often to brush any prob- hoped, but it was largely irrelevant to a rich lems under the carpet. school like Westminster whether or not The third issue is the amount of time the scheme existed. In this one area, Rae’s Rae spent on Oxbridge entry for his good judgement and moderate outlook pupils. He regularly met his Oxbridge seem to have lost their way. In the end, his contacts to make deals and, for pupils for attack on assisted places was a fight Rae did whom entry was uncertain, housemasters not need and could not win (at least in the spent their time ‘ringing round colleges short-term) and he made himself unneces- all day until a place is found’. The school sarily unpopular in the process. clearly gave good value for money to The most poignant moment in the those for whom Oxbridge entry seemed book comes in the summer of 1981, vital, but the deals place a question mark when Rae contrasts the position of his over Rae’s reputation as a progressive. pupils with those elsewhere: ‘While young One area that remains frustratingly Westminster boys were being congratu- opaque, despite dominating the second lated on their Latin and Greek epigrams, half of the book, is the cause of Rae’s their contemporaries south of the river vehement opposition to the Conservatives’ were throwing petrol bombs at the police Assisted Places Scheme. Rae, a Liberal/ and looting local shops.’ SDP supporter, was surrounded by people This division in society helps to explain who backed the scheme and, bizarrely, why, for much of the period covered by felt the whole issue was a resigning mat- this book, the Labour Party favoured ter: ‘My well established opposition to the making it illegal for people to charge fees assisted places scheme means that I can- for education. If Neil Kinnock or Roy not possibly continue as headmaster after Hattersley had seen these diaries at the September 1986.’ time, their opposition to the divisive- He was not alone in disliking the idea of ness of the independent sector would public money being used to pay for places no doubt have been confirmed. But at private schools, but his position is still the book also shows just how excellent hard to understand. First, he was incon- our best private schools have been and sistent. Not only did he approve of chari- why, despite their imperfections, they are table money being used to pay for public worth preserving. school places, but he even established his own scheme at Westminster ‘for offering Nicholas Hillman taught History at St. Paul’s unconditional offers to talented boys’ from School during the 1990s.

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Conservative history journal_Dec09.indd 42 09/02/2010 10:44 The Conservative History Journal is published by the Conservative History Group Contents ISSN 1479-8026