Renaissance on the Right? New Directions in the History of the Post-War Conservative Party

Having been unexpectedly and comprehensively defeated at the 1945 general election, the Conservative Party returned to office just six years later. While the Tories languished in the wilderness, Labour enacted a series of sweeping changes, nationalising large swathes of the economy, establishing a National Health Service and implementing many of Beveridge’s social insurance recommendations. When the Tories returned to office, they pledged to leave most of their predecessors’ changes intact, including many of those which they had vehemently opposed in Opposition. This has led some historians and some Conservatives themselves variously to celebrate the advent of ‘new Conservatism’, lament Conservatism’s descent into watered-down socialism, or conclude there was not really much change at all, with some further claiming that the 1950s was characterised by a cross-party ’consensus’. This thesis explores whether there really was a shift in the Conservatives’ attitude to the role of the state. On the basis of extensive archival research it examines Conservative policy development in three major areas: nationalisation, the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) and social insurance. Using these policy areas, this thesis argues that while the Party made pragmatic accommodations to measures once they were enacted, there was no underlying shift in its broad conception of the role of state. Where the Conservatives supported measures before their introduction, they did so in part for electoral reasons, but also because they were reconcilable with the Conservative tradition as interpreted in the context of the time. Where measures went beyond what they were prepared to accept, the Conservatives opposed them, even where that opposition proved electorally damaging. The mere fact that the Conservatives subsequently resigned themselves to accept measures to which they were previously hostile should not in itself be read as a shift in, nor a deviation from, pre-war Conservatism. The Party had a long history of working with changes created by rivals where it was felt those changes were irreversible. Minor exceptions aside, major alterations to the post-war settlement were rejected mostly on the pragmatic grounds that doing so was both impractical and would hinder the Conservatives’ chances of blocking further, more radical, change. This thesis concludes that, in an era of apparent popular demand for increased state intervention, most of the party could tolerate Labour’s changes, even if private doubts remained, as the alternative appeared even worse.

2019

Britannia's Zealots, Volume I opens the first longitudinal study to examine the Conservative Right from the late-19th century to the present day. British Conservatism has always contained a significant section fundamentally opposed to progressive reform. A permanent minority in Parliament, dissident right-wing Conservatives nevertheless had allies in the press and sympathy among grassroots party members enabling them to create crises in the media and at party meetings. It charts the evolution of reactionary politics from its preoccupation with the Protestant constitution to its fixation with the prestige and strength of Britain's global empire. He examines the overlooked ways in which Conservative Right parliamentarians shaped their party's policies and propaganda, in and out of office, and their relationships with the press and ordinary activists. He seeks to demonstrate that this influence could be circumscribing, and on occasion highly disruptive, with consequences which remain relevant for today's Conservative party. Britannia's Zealots, Volume I will be of great interest to academics and students of British history, right-wing politics, imperialism, and 20th century history.

From Crisis to Coalition describes internal party aspects of the British Conservative Party's recovery from landslide defeat to leading a coalition government. The book, by three significant historians of the Conservatives, provides many nuggets of interest. The reader should be aware that it is much more narrowly focused than the subtitle and cover blurb suggest. Three-quarters is devoted to Cameron's modernisation project and the 2010 election. Only 23 pages discuss 1997-2005, and a figure as significant as Michael Portillo rates merely a single entry in the index.

Back to the Past: Notes towards a Conservative Revolution, 2023

Preliminary draft version of my paper to be presented at The Conservative Critique of Liberalism Workshop, to be held on 19th-20th January, 2023, at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. Workshop organized by Dr David McGrogan of Northumbria Law School and Dr Martin Beckstein of the University of Goettingen.

Trends of falling membership and support spell a time of crisis for political parties, possibly of transformation. Dilemmas of principle arise: should partisans revise their normative commitments in whatever way garners new supporters, or would that be to sell their party's soul? The article investigates this as a problem of intergenerational obligation, examining what consideration, if any, partisans owe their party's past and future. It seeks to show the limits of conceiving partisanship as a 'presentist' activity, legitimately governed exclusively by the concerns of the present generation, and argues it must include some notion of showing loyalty to the actions of predecessors and advancing the prospects of those to come. Two corresponding norms of ethical partisanship – fidelity and sustainability – are outlined and discussed. The article's goal is to refine our concept of what a party is, and in so doing contribute to a broader ethics of activism.

Thatcherism and the reforming of the conservatism philosophy of the United Kingdom and the impact of Margaret Thatcher

English Historical Review, 2016

This article investigates the emergence of neo-liberalism in Britain and its intellectual relationship with each of the three main British political ideologies. The article distinguishes between different currents of neo-liberalism that have been absorbed into British political thought, and shows that this process to some extent pre-dated the electoral success of Thatcherism in the 1980s. The article further suggests that labelling recent British political discourse as unvarnished ‘neo-liberalism’, while at times analytically useful, simplifies a more complicated picture, in which distinctively neo-liberal ideas have been blended in different ways into the ideologies of British Liberalism, Conservatism and even Labour socialism. The article therefore turns the spotlight on a more obscure aspect of the making of British neo-liberalism by exploring how politicians and intellectuals of varying partisan stripes generated policy discourses that presented neo-liberal ideas as an authentic expression of their own ideological traditions. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this article, then, is that neo-liberalism, although frequently characterised as rigid and dogmatic, has in fact proved itself to be a flexible and adaptable body of ideas, capable of colonising territory right across the political spectrum.

2018 Note then original Summary Martin Kemp ‘The Left and the Debate over Labour Party Policy, 1943-50’ PhD Thesis, submitted 1985 Explanatory Note, 2018 By the time I had completed this thesis I had a ticket booked for newly independent Zimbabwe, where I immersed myself in the study of African history – the subject I was to teach for the following two years in a ‘high density suburb’ of the capital, Harare. I had no headspace to respond to an enquiry from an Oxford publisher about preparing the thesis for publication. When, years later, I googled the title, I was pleasantly surprised to find Stephen Brooke, in the bibliographical essay that appended his 1995 book Reform and Reconstruction: Britain After the War 1945-51, describing the work as ‘important but regrettably unpublished.’ Many years have passed since, and it may well be of little interest today. Still, when I recently re-read the thesis, it seemed to me to have some interest given recent developments in Labour Party politics in the UK. The prevailing assumptions of British history in the 1980s were those with which the post-war generation had been raised. The ‘social problem’ had been solved. It was no longer meaningful to worry about the destructive, wasteful or socially divisive nature of capitalism, as developments in economic theory had transformed the prospects for a managed, socially inclusive, mixed economy. Those who were regarded as having been sceptical or reluctant to accept the new truths were dismissed as dinosaurs. History being on the side of the ‘revisionists’, the ‘Left’ were regarded askance in works such as Ben Pimlott’s Labour and the Left in the 1930s and Paul Addison’s The Road to 1945. Yet, even while I was studying Labour and the Left in the 1940s, these assumptions were themselves already becoming history. This was the time of the defeat of the miners’ strike, a most dispiriting moment, and of Thatcherism and the wholesale rejection of Keynesian notions of economic management. The Left of the Labour Party attempted to construct a socialist alternative, but their ideas were denounced as extremist by the media, and defeated by a ‘centrist’ leadership which ultimately, in the absence of any more creative vision, embraced neo-liberalism and privatisation itself as the basis on which to reduce poverty and sustain public services. As we now emerge from the Blair years, amazed and heartened by the upsurge of radical energy that found its expression in the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, we witness another exciting attempt to challenge the thinking behind austerity. And to transform the party from an efficient electoral machine into a real movement of people and ideas. The era when progressives had to channel their energies into a range of single issue campaigns may be over. Ultimately, the Baloghs, Coles and Kaleckis may have more to say about the future than the Durbins and the Croslands. The Left in the 1940s was stricken by the split between Labour and Communist Parties. The group I was interested in could be characterised, I felt, as opportunists in the best sense of the word, seeking to maximise the potential at any one time, given the international situation, the state of the economy and above all the public’s openness to radical ideas. It allowed them a flexibility and creativity that seemed denied the leaderships of the two main parties on the Left, neither of whom trusted or respected them. I have reproduced the text exactly as it was submitted in 1985, except in one or two sentences which were really too ugly to allow through. For the most part this has been done by scanning each page onto a computer. It seems that the computer could read English and reproduce it in editable form, but that it had no idea of page set-up. I am not happy at the result – and apologise to readers who will quickly realise what I’m referring to – but not having the time to re-type the entire thesis, this will have to do. Summary. This dissertation traces the intellectual and political development of Labour's Left-wing during the 1940s, concentrating on the groups which produced the Tribune and the New Statesman. The first section considers the 1930s. to 'establish the essential background to later debates, and to clarify the character of long-standing divisions in the Labour Party. The period 1939 to 1942 is considered briefly in the Prologue, on the basis that it constitutes an exceptional period for left-wing politics in Britain. The end of 1942 is the point at which an analysis of the Left's politics is resumed in more details. The Left's part in the discussion of post¬war reconstruction plans and future economic' policy is examined. Another chapter looks at the political atmosphere in the decade's middle years, and the state of relations between the Left and the rest of the Party and, briefly, in contrast', the outlook of Labour's Right wing. The Left's view of foreign affairs forms another part, and the last chapter dealing with this period examines the left's analysis of Government economic policy, both domestically and in relation to the outside world. The last section of the thesis, covering 1948-50, is divided into two chapters. The first relates the political situation, foreign affairs and economic developments to the shifting aspirations of the Labour Left. The final chapter considers the role of the debate on Labour's future direction in the divisions that beset the Party from 1951.

2003

Nick Randall wishes to acknowledge an ESRC Postgraduate Training Award (R00429634225), which allowed him to conduct the doctoral research on Labour's ideological dynamics on which his chapter is based. In addition he would like to thank Martin Burch, David Coates, Colin Hay, Steve Ludlam and members of the PSA Labour Movements Group for their comments on earlier drafts of chapter 1. Lawrence Black wishes to thank John Callaghan, James Thompson, Nick Tiratsoo and Leo Zeilig, and the audience at a seminar held at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, for their comments and advice about sources. Michael Newman is grateful to Tony Benn for permission to quote from the unpublished version of his diary. Steven Fielding and Declan McHugh wish to thank

2004

This thesis explores the complexity, divisions and eventual fragmentation of the parliamentary right of the British Labour Party in the late 1960s and 1 970s, and its implications for Labour's intra-party politics. It argues that the Labour right in this period, in contrast to the Labour left, has been comparatively under-researched. It further stresses that the detail of inherent complexity and divisions on the parliamentary Labour right was previously concealed within broad agreement around an adhesive framework of Keynesian social democracy and the basic principles of '1950s revisionism'. As the core pillars of this adhesive ideological and political framework collapsed in the particular economic and political context of the late 1960s and 1970s, the complexity and divisions of the parliamentary Labour right were made explicit. Attempts at intra-party organisation on the parliamentary Labour right in the 1970s further reveal its ideological and political fragmentation...