Contributors
"Contributors" Enoch Powell, who needs no introduction, and who was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet by Edward Heath in 1968 for a particularly hard-line speech on immigration: it was designed to advance...
...They began to conceive of their history in terms of success at power...
...It might almost be said that the Tories welcomed the intellectuals, not because they might contribute to the Party, but because the Party might contribute to them...
...But that is to look at Conservatism as a doctrine...
...All of these enterprises were smiled upon benignly by the Party leaders...
...and the so-called Economic Group of bright Tory members of Parliament has yet to develop its influence...
...The contribution of the Monday Club is negligible...
...Enoch Powell, who needs no introduction, and who was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet by Edward Heath in 1968 for a particularly hard-line speech on immigration: it was designed to advance Tory thinking on social welfare matters, and adapt the Labour inheritance of the Welfare State to Tory uses...
...and only for a very brief time indeed did the leadership of the Conservative Party afford much tolerance for Tory intellectuals on the Right --or old-fashioned liberal---side of this argument...
...Some of those who opposed him were themselves pro-EEC...
...Later still the Bow Group was created: this was an organization designed, though as a research outfit rather than a pressure group, to bring Toryism into touch with the best of modern and generally liberal thinking without sacrificing the best traditions of the Party...
...The great difference to this fragmented debate has been made by Powell...
...Throughout the fifties and early sixties the most emotional and passionate debates in British Conservatism were about the loss of empire, the foreign policy role of the country, and Europe...
...Only gradually, in the sixties, did economic matters begin to ascend to paramountcy...
...He is an economic liberal, a Friedmanite...
...Salisbury always fought for the "political predominance of the educated classes" and they, in the great majority, have supported entry into Europe, even where they admit or even desire the likely disappearance of the nation as Europe unites further...
...It did not necessarily follow, of course, that the Party could not continue to serve the nation--who ever knows what a nation's true interests are...
...Ineluctably, he was led back to the government intervention popular in the fifties and sixties, but at a much higher pitch...
...Historically, the Conservative Party of Edward Heath is far from out of tune with what has been stood for in the past...
...For a brief moment, in the wake of Powell's taking up the last subject, the club enjoyed prominence, but it has been in decline for some time, rapidly losing influence at the heights, and suffering terrible division at the grass roots...
...Hence my initial distinction between different kinds of minds...
...And they forgot that probably their most successful leader, Salisbury, had said, in the Quarterly Review of July, 1860, that Tories ought not to think simply of office for such a concern was "a degrading error which has squandered the fair fame of parties and made a byword of the honour of public men...
...But in power he developed economic management in the direction of controls and administration...
...in political science at the University of California at Los Angeles . . . Victor Gold, a former press secretary to Vice-President Agnew, is now a syndicated c o l u m n i s t . . . Haven Bradford Gow, a student residing in Fall River, Massachusetts, has written for a variety of periodicals . . . Chris Hughes, a student, has finished studying at the Sorbonne and is now travelling in Europe . . . Thomas Molnar is the author of several books, including The Decline of the Intellectual, The 7kvo Faces of American Foreign Policy, and Utopia, t h e Perennial H e r e s y . . . Felix Morley, formerly editor of the Washington Post and president of Haverford College, now lives on Gibson Island, Maryland, where he is writing his memoirs . . . Peter Rusthoven is studying at Harvard Law School . . . Jack Simmons resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . . . Rev...
...Indeed, such Tories as are on this side draw much more sustenance from Americans like Friedman than from anyone at home...
...Most notably on the question of entry into Europe, Heath has defied the wishes of the country, and of the majority of the Party: he has been elitist in the true sense that the Conservative Party has always been elitist and antidemocratic...
...but they believed that free enterprise economics offered the best guarantee of British success inside the Community...
...As I write this piece,moreover, Powell has just made a 8 The Alternative November 1973...
...The Institute of Economic Affairs is the most important propagandist of micro-economic and Friedmanite ideas...
...Gradually, with the loss of the empire, with the cultivation of intellectualism, with the attempt to win the center, Toryism lost distinction of character...
...But the most important foci of what American Conservatives would think of as Conservative economic policy in a true sense--competitive, monetarist, and concerned to reduce the power of the state--are not within the Tory Party (save insofar as they are represented by the staff at Swinton Conservative College, which enjoys a considerable measure of autonomy from the leadership: it was a gift from the late Earl of Swinton...
...This was in part the reflection of his desire to enter Europe, and his awareness of the fact that, in the Community, it would be desirable to develop British industry by fostering cross-border mergers: this need, in turn, dictated a stress on management, bureaucratic control, and government supervision...
...The foreign policy debate never attracted very much of the attention of the best minds on the Right: it spawned another pressure group, the Monday Club, which rapidly developed an emphasis on anti-Communism, support for the white nations of Africa, and the prevention of colored immigration...
...He is also a die hard nationalist...
...Broadly speaking, the economic policy division between the Labour and Tory Parties in the sixties consisted of the one leaning towards socialized industry and the other against...
...Conservatives, frightened by the terrible experience of their defeat in 1945, sought power at almost all respectable cost...
...Only with the failure of the Wilson government, and the subsequent, at least temporary failure of the Heath government, did the possibility of a serious debate about the eco-ContributorsAram Bakshian, Jr...
...He is also a democrat, believing, as is most evident in his stands against Europe and immigration, that the people of the nation as a whole have a right to determine their future as they wish...
...nomic organization of the country become possible...
...David Brudnoy is a visiting professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, a commentator with WNAC-TV (CBS) and WGBH-TV (PBS) in Boston, a free-lance writer and lecturer, and an associate of The A l t e r n a t i v e . . . George Carey is a professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and editor of the Political Science Reviewer . . . Lindley H. Clark is an associate editor of the Wall Street J o u r n a l . . . Douglas W. Cooper is a graduate student at Harvard University and editor of C o u n t e r p o i n t . . . Patrick Cosgrave, whose writings appear frequently on both sides of the Atlantic, is the political commentator for the London Spectator . . . J. Tim Fennell is working for his Ph.D...
...but it did mean that that service, considered deliberately as something distinct and definite---as an interest--no longer took the foremost position in Conservative intellectual thinking...
...is a speechwriter for the White House . . Victor Baras is an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College, Massachusetts...
...It was scarcely noticed that, throughout the fifties and the sixties the national crisis, mainly in economics---or most obviously in economics---became worse and worse with each stage of play...
...Simonds, sometime feature editor of National Review, lives in Falls Village, Connecticut, teaches at Indian Mountain School, and works the shell game at fairs and carnivals throughout New England . . . C. Bascom Slemp is the chief Washington correspondent of The Alternative . . . Robert F. Turner works at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace . . . Timothy Wheeler, an associate of The Alternative, is editor of the Financial Book Digest...
...When he became leader of the Tory Party Edward Heath gave a good run to economic liberalism and the ethic of free enterprise...
Vol. 7 • November 1973 • No. 2
