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

Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party Review Essay: Renaissance on the Right? New Directions in the History of the Post-War Conservative Party A more recent version of this paper is forthcoming in Twentieth Century British History Journal doi:10.1093/tcbh/hww012 It is available to read at: http://tcbh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/recent The Conservatives since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. By Tim Bale. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012. 386 pp. ISBN 9780199234370, £66. British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality. By Peter Dorey. I. B. Tauris, London, 2010. 288 pp. ISBN 9781845113520, £68.50. Making Thatcher’s Britain. By Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (eds). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012. 368 pp. ISBN 9781107683372, £20.99 Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain. By Camilla Schofield. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015. 384 pp. ISBN 9781107595477, £24.99 The current standing of British political history is paradoxical. On the one hand more scholars than ever are working on politics. The expanded definition of ‘the political’ has ensured that more topics than ever viewed through a political lens. Yet, at the same time as interest in politics has burgeoned the fortunes of Political History have waned; its normal subjects, governments and political parties, considered almost old fashioned. At a recent conference on Modern British Studies, for example, only two panels were dedicated to what might be termed ‘traditional’ Political History—one appropriately titled ‘The Political History Blues.’1 Yet, within a subject suffering from feelings of depression one topic stands out as having undergone a renaissance: the history of the British Conservative Party. The history of Conservatives and Conservatism was once a relatively neglected topic.2 Associated with a focus on elite politics and biography and plagued by the difficulty of accessing sources 1 “Rethinking Modern British Studies” (University of Birmingham, 2015), https://mbsbham.wordpress.com/conference-rethinking-modern-british-studies/. 1 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party kept in private hands, those working on the Party in the 1970s and 80s often found that their methods as well as subject matter ensured that they were isolated from each other as well as profession as a whole.3 Since the millennium things have changed considerably. Those working on the Party now have easy access to some of the best archival resources available to historians thanks to, among others, the work of Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the Churchill Archive, and the Conservative Party Archive (CPA). Likewise there are more place and spaces present and develop work as a result of the Conservative History Journal (2003), the Political Studies Association specialist group on Conservatives and Conservatism (2008), and, most recently, Manchester University Press’s book series, New Perspectives on the Right. Indeed, as the title of that series suggests, the way historians study the Party has changed considerably and continues to do so. Much of the groundwork for this change in approach was laid towards at the turn of the millennium when a number of scholars published important new work on the Party—among them John Ramsden, Philip Williamson, David Jarvis, Alison Light and E. H. H. Green4—and when two influential edited collections on the Party appeared.5 Though the inspiration and methodological impulses that 2 For a fuller discussion of trends in the historiography of the Conservative Party in the twentieth century see, John Turner, “Review: The British Conservative Party in the Twentieth Century: From Beginning to End?,” Contemporary European History 8, no. 2 (July 1999): 275–87. 3 For a fascinating sociology of those who have worked on the history of the Conservative Party see, Brian Harrison, “Margaret Thatcher’s Impact on Historical Writing,” in Irrepressible Adventures With Britannia: Personalities, Politics, and Culture in Britain, ed. William Roger Louis (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 2013), 307– 21. 4 John Ramsden, The Age of Churchill and Eden, 1940-1957 (London: Longman, 1995); John Ramsden, The Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath, 1957-1975 (London: Longman, 1996); Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); E. H. H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Alison Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991); David Jarvis, “Mrs Maggs and Betty The Conservative Appeal to Women Voters in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 5, no. 2 (January 1994): 129–52. 5 Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford University Press, 1994); Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday, eds., 2 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party lay being these works varied considerably their combined effect was to refocus attention towards the interaction between elite and ‘popular’ Conservatism as well as the various means, both discursive and organizational, that Conservatives used to construct political identities. The Conservative Party was still considered as an exceptional in its ability to win elections but it was no longer studied as an exception. Recent years have seen a new generation of scholars build on this intellectual legacy with, for examples: a stress on the continuing salience of local political cultures in the early part of the twentieth century6; the importance of the First World War (WWI) in developing the Party’s patriotic discourses7; how national level discourses were received and mediated by activists8; as well as the way in which the Party interacted with those sympathetic outside organisations which make up the wider Conservative ‘movement.’9 While much of this work has focussed on the Edwardian and interwar Party, when it comes to post-war politics latterly it has been studies of the Right that have been among the most innovative in Political History; including important work on Conservative, emotions, generations, and landscape.10 No surprise Mass Conservatism: The Conservatives and the Public Since the 1880s (London: Frank Cass, 2002). 6 Alex Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism in Imperial London, 1868-1906 (Woodbridge: Royal Historical Society/The Boydell Press, 2007); Geraint Thomas, “The Conservative Party and Welsh Politics in the Inter-War Years,” English Historical Review 128, no. 533 (August 2013): 877–913. 7 Nigel Keohane, The Party of Patriotism: The Conservative Party and the First World War (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Richard Carr, Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics in the Aftermath of the Great War: The Memory of All That (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 8 David Thackeray, Conservatism for the Democratic Age: Conservative Culture and the Challenge of Mass Politics in Early Twentieth Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). 9 Kit Kowol, “The Lost World of British Conservatism: The Radical Tory Tradition, 1939-1951” (DPhil, University of Oxford, 2014). 10 Lawrence Black, “The Lost World of Young Conservatism,” Historical Journal 51, no. 4 (December 2008): 991–1024; Amy C. Whipple, “‘Into Every Home, Into Every Body’: Organicism and Anti-Statism in the British Anti-Fluoridation Movement, 1952–1960,” Twentieth Century British History 21, no. 3 (September 2010): 330–49; Gary Love, “The Periodical Press and the Intellectual Culture of Conservatism in Interwar Britain,” Historical Journal 57, no. 4 (December 2014): 1027–56; Clarisse Berthezene, Training Minds for the War of Ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party and the Cultural Politics of Britain, 1929-54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 3 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party then that in 2014 alone over 70 scholarly works were published on the Conservative Party and its ideology with the last three years seeing consistently more work published on the Conservative Party than its political rivals.11 The combined effect of this archival, institutional, and intellectual renaissance has been to provide those working on Conservatives and the Conservative Party with a feeling of confidence that the subject needs to be taken seriously—even at times when, as many of those working on the Party know, present Conservative politics often leads to objections to the way we read the Party’s past.12 I Undoubtedly, one of the more specific causes of the resurgence has been the growing number of political scientists working on the Conservative Party. Over the last decade political scientists have devoted considerable attention to explaining the Party’s protracted period out of power during the era of New Labour and its subsequent rehabilitation.13 That the Party’s matricide, fratricide, and internecine warfare over Europe seemed to flatly contradict many historical accounts of the Party which stressed its pragmatism and loyalty—what the Party’s semi-official historian John Ramsden termed the Party’s Appetite for Power—has made this challenge even more inviting.14 An attempt to show the utility of ‘generic’ 11 Data taken from the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) “Conservative Party” [2013=76, 2014=56, 2015=26], “Labour Party” [2013=72, 2014=52, 2015=16], “Liberal Party” AND “Liberal Democratic Party” [2013=50, 2014=29, 2015=5]. 12 For a recent discussion of the relationship between the history of the Conservative Party and contemporary (academic) politics see, Kit Kowol, “A Conservative 1945: Reimagining Wartime Tory Activism” (Rethinking Modern British Studies, University of Birmingham, 2015). 13 See for example: Timothy Heppell, The Tories: From Winston Churchill to David Cameron (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014); David Seawright, The British Conservative Party and One Nation Politics (London: Continuum, 2010); Richard Hayton, Reconstructing Conservatism?: The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997-2010 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 14 John Ramsden, An Appetite for Power: A History of the Conservative Party since 1830 (London: HarperCollins, 1998). 4 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party political science theories as opposed to more ‘contextualist’ historical explanations was the genesis of Tim Bale’s first book on the Party which examined its ‘failed’ adaptation after 1990.15 The Conservative since 1945 is thus something of a counterpart. In it Bale inverts his previous focus by asking how well explanations of party change derived from quantitative and comparative research fare when exposed to a genuine historical case study. Over six detailed chapters arranged chronologically between 1945 and 1997 Bale asks whether change in the Conservative Party (measured in terms of its ‘public face’, organisation, and policy) were driven by electoral defeat, change in leaders, a shift in the dominant internal faction or an interaction of these three variables. While none of Bale’s fourteen conclusions will come as a great shock there is still much to gain from this book. Its comprehensive nature alone will makes it a worthy post-war counterpart to Stuart Ball’s equally detailed analysis of the Conservative Party between 1918 and 1945.16 Perhaps most of all Bale is to be congratulated for simply bringing those working in Political Science and History closer together at a time when each disciplines has become less intelligible to the other. Of all the changes Bale examines the best are those related to the organisation of the Conservative Party. This is because the CPA is naturally well suited to such questions, as well as the fact that a sophisticated sociology of the post-war Party remains to be undertaken.17 When examining developments in the Party structure and campaign techniques even for the most picked over periods, such as after the 1945 General Election, Bale provides new insights: 15 Tim Bale, The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 16. 16 Stuart Ball, Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain, 1918-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 17 Given how much both Bale and others continue to focus on generational change as a driver in particular of ‘Thatcherism’ a sophisticated sociology of the Party which goes beyond categories such as ‘professional’ versus ‘business’ interests is desperately needed. For recent moves in this direction see: Gidon Cohen and Lewis Mates, “Grassroots Conservatism in Post‐War Britain: A View from the Bottom Up,” History 98, no. 330 (2013): 202–25. 5 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party such as how the Party’s postal vote operation in 1950 was calculated as adding 11 extra seats to the Party’s tally.18 Moreover, Bale is alive to the difficulty of ascribing changes to organised factions in the Party and reading into the post-war Party the kind of factional strife that seemed to be apparent after 1997. Likewise, he is aware of the dangers that CPA’s seemingly comprehensive nature can pose. As such, Bale resists the temptation to recast backroom staff as a united team of ‘modernisers’ and instead recognises that they too were often engaged in inter-departmental turf wars.19 Indeed, the impression gained of the Party as an institution is one where disputes between its different elements—professional and voluntary party, local and regional associations, external consultants and long-suffering staffers—is constant. Yet, while Bale demonstrates the productive tensions within the Party he is less willing to extend this analysis outwards to examine the interaction between the Conservative Party and other political actors outside of elections. This is obviously a problem when it comes to understanding policy change. Bale’s discussion of the changes in Party policy between 1945-51 is, for example, seriously hampered by a failure to examine changes in Labour’s nationalisation policy (as well as a failure to mention the cold war). Yet, political interaction is equally important in areas of organisation. As Laura Beers has shown Labour was often an advanced campaigning organisation itself.20 As such, just as we know how Conservative Central Office kept a close watch on members of their own Party it seems highly likely that they were aware of goings on among in others.21 Moreover, without understanding developments in other Party’s organisation—such as 18 Tim Bale, The Conservatives since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23. 19 Ibid., 45. 20 Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University Press, 2010). 21 For Conservative ‘intelligence gathering’ activities see, Mark Pitchford, The Conservative Party and the Extreme Right 1945-1975 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 6 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party how Labour used J. B. Priestley in its Party Political Broadcasts as the same time the Conservative’s employed the BBC’s radio doctor Charles Hill in its own—it becomes all too easy to accept the narrative of Conservatism’s uniquely innovative nature. If the increased attention political scientists have paid to the Party is one reason behind the blossoming of Conservative historiography another has been the much greater attention paid to political ideas. While the link between the Conservative Party, via Thatcherism and the New Right, to the global development of ‘neo- liberalism’ has been particularly important here, recent years have seen other more ‘ideological’ readings of the Party’s history and a broader attention to key post-war Conservative thinkers.22 Entering into this field is Peter Dorey’s work British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality which seeks to examine the nature of British Conservatism as well as its defining divides.23 Here, Dorey eschews the dominant approach to Conservatism which analyses’ it as made up of a set of core concepts—usually some combination of a belief in intellectual scepticism, traditionalism, and human imperfection.24 Instead, Dorey argues that one concept is the defining feature of Conservatism, inequality. Dorey then argues that for most of the Party’s modern history there have been broadly two approaches to inequality within the Party: a One Nation strand which seeks to place some limits on inequality to maintain social cohesion and a Neo Liberal alternative that argues attempts to limit inequality threaten economic growth and personal freedom. 22 For the most recent overview see, Mark Garnett and Kevin Hickson, Conservative Thinkers: The Key Contributors to the Political Thought of the Modern Conservative Party (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). 23 Peter Dorey, British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011). 24 For a selection see, Noël O’Sullivan, Conservatism (London: Dent, 1976); Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott (London: Faber and Faber, 1978); Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 281–3; Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Ball, Portrait of a Party, 12–35. 7 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party Suggesting that there was a ‘neo-liberal’ strand in Conservatism as far back as 1880 is highly anachronistic and deeply unhelpful. Nor is Dorey alone in using what has become a term so capacious that it is in danger of losing its meaning and obliterating the real and important difference between those grouped together as ‘neo- Liberals.’25 That having been said, Dorey does usefully delineates different justifications for inequality as well as suggesting why many Britons accepted it—though the fact that they might simply have agreed with the Conservative positions outlined by Dorey is never really entertained. Nonetheless, it his wider approach which is most problematic. This is because a number of ideologies, notably Nationalism and Fascism, share explicit commitments to inequality. Indeed, one of the major trends in the study of British history has been highlighting the implicit practise of inequality at the heart of Britain’s peculiar modernity.26 Nor do Conservatives support all elements of inequality, equally. Few nineteenth century ‘liberal Tories’ would have claimed that individuals ultimately have different moral worth and few Conservatives after 1948 continued claim that individuals have different political value—there have been few calls for a return to plural voting for example. Rather, it is the way inequality interacts with other concepts which gives it a distinct 'Conservative' meaning. 27 Likewise it is partly the shifting terrain on which Conservative opponents have fought, away from issues based around religious privilege and the constitution and towards social and economic rights, which has led to the centrality of debates about economic inequality (the real focus of the book) in Conservative thought. That a book on inequality and the British 25 Placing the individualist free-trade supporter Ernest Benn and the Tariff Reform advocate J. L. Garvin in the same ‘Neo-Liberal’ tradition seems particularly odd even if neo-liberalism is defined as ‘Free-Market fundamentalism’ as Dorey does. 26 James Vernon and Simon Gunn, “Introduction: What Was Liberal Modernity and Why Was It Peculiar in Imperial Britain,” in The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 27 This is a point made most strongly by Freeden in a book that Dorey cites but does not interrogate. Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 317–416. 8 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party Right makes no reference to work on equality and the British Left is thus highly surprising, to say the least.28 If the oppositional element of Conservatism is largely absent in Dorey’s work the same cannot be said for Making Thatcher’s Britain, an edited collection that brings together some of the best known writers on the period as well as a newer generation of scholars. Jon Lawrence and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite reveal, for example, how far Thatcher and her key allies were motivated in the mid- 1970s by a genuine fear of the rise of class politics and a specific concern for the de-embourgoisement of the middle class.29 Likewise, Matthew Grimley demonstrates the ways in which anti- permissiveness was a key part of Thatcher’s ideology and one which tapped into a broad anxiety over the nations perceived lack of moral direction.30 Robert Saunders similarly shows how Thatcher rhetorically linked the various ‘crises’ of the 1970s into one singular crisis of ‘socialism.’31 The cumulative effect of these pieces is thus to emphasize how much Thatcherism acted to create new binary political divisions in Britain. Here we see, for example, Thatcher critiquing almost all attempts of collective provision or government intervention in the economy as ‘socialist’; pitting 1960s expressive individualism against Britain’s half remembered Judaeo-Christian tradition and ‘common sense’ morality; and suggesting support for thrift, homeownership, and ‘getting on’ were ‘ordinary values’ and only opposed by those wedded to ideas of class-war. As such, as Lawrence and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite argue, in an analysis that could be pushed across the book, Thatcherism was no ‘hegemonic’ 28 Ben Jackson, Equality and the British Left: A Study in Progressive Political Thought, 1900-64, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 29 Jon Lawrence and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, “Margaret Thatcher and the Decline of Class Politics,” in Making Thatcher’s Britain, ed. Robert Saunders and Ben Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 132–47. 30 Matthew Grimley, “Thatcherism, Morality and Religion,” in Making Thatcher’s Britain, ed. Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), 78–94. 31 Robert Saunders, “ ’Crisis? What Crisis? Thatcherism and the Seventies,” in Making Thatcher’s Britain, ed. Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 25–42. 9 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party project.32 Rather, its nature and success was predicated on the existence of those who challenged these ideas and whose patterns of life and experience ran counter to them. Such analysis should force those working on the pre and post- Second World War Conservative party—all too often treated as discrete periods—to examine the continuities in Conservative politics that spanned the century.33 For as a number of the essays point out Thatcher’s strategies were similar in shape, and in the case of Thatcher’s religious appeal similar in content, to those deployed in the interwar period.34 Indeed, this desire to place the Thatcher era in a wider chronological perspective is one of the hallmarks of the collection. Likewise its commitment to a four nations approach as well as one which gives as much space to Thatcher and her government’s European, Atlanticist, and imperial dimensions is refreshing in a historiography all too often focussed on domestic (English) policy. Nonetheless, given this broad based analysis and frequently ‘political’ reading of the origins of Thatcherism it is disappointing to see so little discussion of Thatcher’s political opponents during her time in office. There are only single references to Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, and Tony Benn in the collection—the latter two not in connection with their part in Labour’s leadership in the 1980s. Such omissions are particularly sad given how good the chapters are that do take into account the activities and actions of political actors outside the Conservative Party. Richard Vinen’s chapter on the Cold War especially stands out, demonstrating just how far Labour, not the Conservatives, changed in the 1980s.35 Paying more attention to opponents does not mean 32 Lawrence and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, “Margaret Thatcher and the Decline of Class Politics,” 134. 33For an excellent recent exception see, Clarisse Berthezene, Training Minds for the War of Ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party and the Cultural Politics of Britain, 1929-54 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 34See in particular, Williamson, Stanley Baldwin; Ross McKibbin, “Class and Conventional Wisdom: The Conservative Party and the ‘Public’ in Inter-War Britain,” in Ideologies of Class (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 228–58. 35 Richard Vinen, “Thatcherism and the Cold War,” in Making Thatcher’s Britain, ed. Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 10 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party we need to accept the suggestion that Thatcherism was coherent only in its desire to weaken the Labour or that Conservative politics in general is best understood as the art of ‘statecraft’36—though the former argument certainly has more merits than the latter.37 But attention to Labour and especially the SDP—a quintessential product of Thatcher’s Britain—is necessary to draw out why Thatcherism evolved as it did and how political dividing lines drawn in the 1970s remained salient for so long. Once the backbone of writing on Conservatives and the Conservative Party, biography has often been accused of abstracting its subjects from their wider social and political contexts. This is certainly not the case in Camilla Schofield‘s Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain which sits alongside Robert Crowcrofts’ work on Attlee as one of the most ambitious recent attempts to broaden the possibilities of political biography.38 In this book Schofield makes the case that Powell cannot be understood outside of his political generation, his thought and actions neither provoked by decolonization alone nor simply the continuation of older imperial (especially Liberal Imperial) traditions. 39 Instead, she suggests Powell’s nationalism was of a distinctly English post- colonial and post-war character; it stemmed from his participation in Empire and war and evolved with his attempts to grapple with the transformations that occurred afterwards. In particular, she emphasises how much Powell’s thought was concerned with need to uphold and then reinvent a particularly Tory conception of authority based upon an organic and hierarchical community legitimated by 2012), 203. 36 For the classic exposition of statecraft as it relates to Thatcherism see, Jim Bulpitt, “The Discipline of the New Democracy: Mrs. Thatcher’s Domestic Statecraft,” Political Studies 34, no. 1 (March 1986): 19–39. 37 For a recent critique of the statecraft approach see, Simon Griffiths, “Statecraft as a Straightjacket: A Reply to Gamble and Hayton,” Parliamentary Affairs, September 27, 2015, 1–9, doi:10.1093/pa/gsv050. 38 Robert Crowcroft, Attlee’s War: World War II and the Making of a Labour Leader (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2011). 39 Though Schofield clearly disagrees most strongly with the later see, Peter Brooke, “India, Post-Imperialism and the Origins of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech,” Historical Journal 50, no. 3 (September 2007): 669–87. 11 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party history and embodied in institutions. This was a type of authority whose fragile nature Powell had first understood during WWII and which he later saw as threatened by a moralized dualistic view of international relations; from social democratic politics which sought to change the nature of its citizens; and in the amalgamated student, anti-war, and civil rights protests which by the late 1960’s Powell labelled ‘the thing.’ Most of all, however, Schofield emphasizes how Powell saw the threat to order in the presence of Black Britons in the metropole. Unable to ‘shed their skin’ their loyalty to the nation, the entity which for Powell gave life purpose and meaning, was always questionable.40 Powell’s role in the making of postcolonial Britain would revolve around these ideas and his capacity to give already existing racism a new political logic. This, Schofield reveals, Powell did by retelling the ‘people’s war’ as one fought for self-reliance with ‘the people,’ by 1968, threatened by a new fascism in the form of a guilt-ridden liberal Establishment betraying their paternalistic duties. Schofield’s work is thus more a history of the interrelationship between race, decolonization, wartime memory and the welfare state than any ‘simple’ biography. It is also fiendishly complicated. Such complications should not however put off those working on the Conservative Party from engaging with this book. Schofield’s work on political generations is highly instructive and should act, like Richard Carr’s research into Conservatives in WWI, to provoke others to examine the impact of war on Conservatives as well as the Conservative Party.41 Likewise her analysis of the essential Tory nature of Powell’s thought needs more careful attention. As Schofield demonstrates both in this book and in her chapter in Making Thatcher’s Britain the way that Thatcher critiqued social democracy was not the only one available to the Party. Refocusing 40 Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 6–8. 41 Richard Carr, Veteran MPs and Conservative Politics in the Aftermath of the Great War: The Memory of All That (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 12 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party on these alternatives and figures like Michael Oakeshott and Maurice Cowling will do much to redress the nagging teleology often present in analysis of the post-war Party as well as putting back much of what was ‘Right’ about the New Right. Indeed, this excellent book would have been even better had Schofield demonstrated just how many Conservatives shared Powell’s analyses—such as his totalitarian critique of social democracy which was long present in Party both before and after Churchill’s notorious ‘Gestapo speech.’42 Perhaps more than anything though the best part of Schofield’s book is her careful use of the thousands of letters received by Powell —which like the constituency papers of numerous other local associations should not go unstudied just because national sources are now more easily accessible. 43 Re-reading these letters she demonstrates how memories of war service, the promises of the welfare state, and ‘alien’ invasion were closely interwoven. Such letters speak not only to the latent racism of Powell’s supporters but, as Bill Schwarz has argued, the profound emotional content of British politics in the period where immigration, community transformation, and the loss of Empire were, for many, processes of deep trauma.44 Likewise, Schofield’s analysis of the way that such letters were re-incorporated into Powell’s analysis, speech making, and sense of purpose, is a powerful reminder that the interaction between party and people is not confined only to questions of support versus opposition or expressed solely at election time or via organised pressure. Most of all however, the joy of this book is that these letters are present at all. Though we are now at a stage where the voices of grassroots Conservative activists are represented in work on the Party, Schofield’s book reminds us of the need to hear Conservative voters too. The scholarship on Conservative leaning 42 Kowol, “The Lost World of British Conservatism,” 145–204. 43 For another interpretation of these letters see, Amy Whipple, “Revisiting the ‘Rivers of Blood’ Controversy: Letters to Enoch Powell,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 3 (July 2009): 717–35. 44 Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 13 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party but supposedly non-political organsiations has taken us a good way in this direction. Lawrence Black and Amy Whipple’s work on figures like Mary Whitehouse, the National Festival of Light and the anti- flurodizsation movement being of particular importance.45 Yet, as well as the need to examine perhaps more ‘banal’ small c- conservative leaning organisations—another area ripe for comparison between pre-and post-war—Schofield also shows the importance of examine those whose engagement with the Party and its members might have been more temporary and organised but no less significant. Where then does this leave the wider history of the Conservative Party? As this review suggests, the history of the Conservative Party is in many ways in rude health. Indeed, between the commissioning of this review and its tardy completion even more work has been produced.46 As such, we now know more about the post-war Party’s internal organisation, ideas, rhetoric, and strategy than was imaginable even a decade ago. Yet, as the Conservative Party itself has learnt since the 2015 General Election, success brings its own challenges. In particular, as this review highlights, there is a real danger of those who study the history of the Conservative Party slip into becoming Conservative Party historians. Yet, without placing the Conservative Party in its political context we not only lose 45 Lawrence Black, “Whitehouse on Television: The National Viewers’ and Listeners Association and Moral and Cultural Politics,” in Redefining British Politics: Culture, Consumerism and Participation, 1954-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 105–38; Amy C. Whipple, “Speaking for Whom? The 1971 Festival of Light and the Search for the ‘Silent Majority,’” Contemporary British History 24, no. 3 (2010): 319,; Amy C. Whipple, “‘Into Every Home, Into Every Body’: Organicism and Anti-Statism in the British Anti-Fluoridation Movement, 1952–1960,” Twentieth Century British History 21, no. 3 (September 2010): 330–49. 46 Jeremy Black, ed., The Tory World: Deep History and the Tory Theme in British Foreign Policy, 1679-2014 (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2015); Charles Clarke and Toby S. James, British Conservative Leaders (London: Biteback Publishing, 2015); Eliza Filby, God and Mrs Thatcher: The Battle for Britain’s Soul (London: Biteback, 2015); Richard Hayton and Andrew S. Crines, Conservative Orators: From Baldwin to Cameron (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015); Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Two: Everything She Wants (London: Allen Lane, 2015); Robert M. Page, Clear Blue Water? The Conservative Party and the Welfare State since 1940 (Bristol: Policy Press, 2015). 14 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party perspective on what made the Party distinctive but also underestimate the degree to which it was shaped by constant interaction with others. That what it meant to be a Conservative was often simply not being a Liberal or a Socialist. Likewise as Schofield’s work reveals, histories of the Conservative Party and Conservatism still requires a history of the Conservatives who made and sustained the Party in order not only to explain the Party’s but to understand it. As much as the Conservative Party, like any organisation, contains structures, cultures, and ideas these are nonetheless still made and maintained by real existing men and women, not abstracted subjects liberal or otherwise. Paying attention to their actions and motives requires (in ‘Conservative’ style) a keen awareness of the role played by self-interest and the drive for power in politics.47 Yet, it also means a willingness to appreciate how Conservatives at every level—just like those who supported other parties—often believed powerfully in the veracity of the views they held and the actions they undertook. From Norman Gashs’s work on Peel to Robert Blake’s biography of Bonar Law, an attention to political interactions and the conflicts between interest and ideals, was of course once the hallmark of writing on the Conservative Party.48 While the history of the Conservative Party has come a long way since the turn of the millennium, let alone since the 1950s, it would be a tragedy if in a moment of success these lessons were lost. 47 For a discussion of such an approach see, Robert Crowcroft, “The New Labour History: A Cowlingite Perspective,” in The Philosophy, Politics and Religion of British Democracy: Maurice Cowling and Conservatism, ed. Robert Crowcrcoft, Simon J. D. Green, and R. C Whiting (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010), 153–85. 48 Robert Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955); Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation, 1830-1850 (London: Longmans, 1953). 15 Kit Kowol – History of the Post-War Conservative Party 16