Moving Right ? CHANGING FACE OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY?

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28926, 20 June 1959, Page 12

Moving Right ? CHANGING FACE OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY?

[By ANTHONY HOWARD in the ••Manchester Guardian”!

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

London, June 2.—Before the House of Commons rose for the Whitsun recess four Conservative members of Parliament gave their support to Mr Sydney Silverman’s private member's motion calling for the abolition of capital punishment. Immediately 50 of their colleagues put down a counter-motion demanding that there be more hangings, rather • than none.

Although the names of most of those who signed Mr Cyril Osborne’s counter-motion had a familiar, military ring (embracing all ranks from captain to brigadier), the incident serves perhaps as a salutary reminder of the submerged strength of the Tory Right-wing. But even more significant for the future than the actual proportions of Tory support that the two rival motions attracted is the fact that the four Conservative members of Parliament—Mr Nigel Nicolson, Mr Montgomery Hyde, Mr Howard Johnson, and Mr Denis Keegan—who signed Mr Silverman’s motion all share one thing in common. None of them will be a member of the next Parliament; all are, in the Conservative Central Office’s euphemism (which can disguise quite a lot), “members due to retire at the next election.”

“Progressives” Disappear , In fact, when nomination day for the general election does finally arrive there wild probably be found to have been a great carnage of the progressive wing of the Conservative Party. O 1 the eight Conservative M.P.’s who came nearest to taking a stand on Suez—by abstaining in th© “confidence” debate on November 8, 1956—0n1y two (Sir Edward Boyle and Mr William Yates) survive politically to fight another day on the hustings. And the roll-call of 44 Conservative M.P.’s who, for one reason or another, are not seeking re-elec-tion includes nine of those who persisted in the 1956 struggle over capital punishment in doing what they thought was right and not what the Chief Whip told them.

This, combined with the fact that a number of the younger, less unbending Tories who came into the House in 1955 have perilously small majorities, possibly provides a case for inquiring into what kind of Conservative Party is likely to be seen in the next Parliament. The answer, of course, must depend largely on the general election result itself. But at least the Conservative Campaign Guide has already revealed the election tactics that the party intends to pursue. _ “Tough” Tactics? Clearly they are to be “tough” tactics in which everything, including Suez, will be justified up to the hilt. A Conservative victory with this as its basis would certainly buttress tljg position of the Right within the party, and would scatter in disarray those Conservatives ranging from Mr Colin Welch to Lord Altrincham, who have made it clear that in their view there is much in the present Government’s record that the party must live down and indeed “expiate.” The kind of Horatio Eottomley victory (“the Labour party has shown itself lacking in patriotism—and as such it will be judged”) for which the Conservative party now seems to be looking has little in common with the benign moderate conservatism to which Mr Butler and Mr Macleod introduced the nation in 1950. The keynote speech for the election was probably made by Lord Hailsham at Blackpool in October when he attacked the Opposition for “the quaverings over Quemoy, the stampede to the summit, the H-bomb horrors, the Cyprus capers, and the Jordan jitters.” The echo, if anything, is of the full-blooded, rip-roaring —and at that time disastrous — 1945 campaign. Looking beyond the likely tone of the campaign, what if the country does for the third time running return a Conservative Government? Obviously the party will be entitled to accept the verdict as freeing it from any restraints and shackles that it may voluntarily have worn since the awful nemesis of 1945. After a successful conclusion of what Lord Hailsham has called “Operation Hat-trick,” the pressure on the Government to. do the kind of things that most Tories would like to see done rather than the kind of things that its electoral managers deem advisable will be strong. And as far as can be foreseen, the people whose task it would normally be to strengthen the Government in resisting that pressure just will not be there. Constituency caucus decisions and selection committee’s choices will have attended to that. The progressive wing of the Conservative Party has never been either as vociferous or indeed as courageous as those who defend the party's wild frontier on the Right, It was, after all.

Mr Angus Maude, speaking f OP the Right, who said when SuJ was over: “There is no place for me—or for scores of my Co i leagues—in the Tory Party undei its present leaders.” None of the original Suez dissidents had said anything as bold or as uncompromising as that. And whereas the power-and-glory Suez protesters were content to organise themselves openly, the neares» that Mr Nigel Nicholson’s alleged group of 40 came to concerted action was in a couple of meetings—informal and secretin Sir Alexander Spearman’s London flat.

It is not a comfortable thought that after the next election the scattered and necessarily rather discredited remnant of •' these could be the only check on a Government that will, if returned, have vindicrfled its right to conduct a “vigorous” policy both at home and abroad. It is probably wrong to present a picture—as the Labour party in a last desperate throw gives signs of beginning to do—of a Conservative Government setting to work at once to restore the Trade Disputes Act of 1927, to cut back the social services, and to evict a fresh crop of tenants from their homes. Prophecies of that sort belong properly to the melodrama of election campaigns. African Issues

But there will be some claims with which a victorious Conservative Government would have to come to terms. They would largely be demands from their own pressure groups—from their annual women’s conference for sterner penal measures, from their current business allies in the campaign against nationalisation for modifications in “the stiff financial penalties for success,” and from the “backbone of the party” for tax relief lor parents sending their children to fee-paying schools. None of these by themselves would take the ujuntry back to the age of the dark Satanic mills. And in the most important decision that the next Government will have to face—that over Central African Federation —there are indications that e/en the Conservative Party has not let Lord Malvern’s speeches go unheeded. When he recently addressed the Commonwealth Affairs Committee, he was heard in a shocked silence that provided its own commentary on the views he expressed. Yet even here. a Conservative Government would be subject to considerable pressure from its own supporters for many of whom white is white and black is black. In 1959 the “Daily Mirror” will have to find some more astringent headline for election day than “Keep the Tories Tame.” For a Government that has been tamed by its own party will certainly not materialise as a docile political animal to the country at large.