The Politics of Survival
MARQUAND, DAVID
MACMILLAN'S CONSERVATIVE PARTY PURGE The Politics of Survival By David Marquand London WHATEVER ELSE MAY be Said of it, no one can accuse the British Conservative party of lacking an...
...and the Liberals have made off with the difference...
...the "old" saw him as a potential savior...
...It is to say, though, that he will be unable to count on much enthusiasm from an important body of his followers until he convinces them, by results, that Lloyd's fall was necessary for the party's future...
...Instead he has been dismissed altogether, in the most abrupt and humiliating manner possible...
...To the "new" middle class, economic growth means cars, washing machines, holidays on the Continent and a steady ascent up the ladder of status...
...The real reason for the Government's loss of popularity is that the Conservatives have so far been unable to do either of these things...
...It is to them that Selwyn Lloyd's head has now been presented on a platter...
...But just as the memory of the '30s started to grow dim during the last years of the Attlee Government, so the memory of the Attlee Government is growing dim now...
...In byelection after by-election, it was they, more than any other group, who deserted to the Liberals...
...But when all the qualifications have been made, the fact remains that the Conservatives have suffered a humiliating slap in the face at the polls...
...The answer is that it has a great deal to fear...
...David Marquand, our London correspondent, writes for the Guardian of Manchester and Encounter...
...The reason for his fall was quite simply that the policies associated with his name have become bitterly unpopular with the electorate...
...Worse still from the Government's point of view, the Conservatives have lost two seats which would universally have been considered safe a year ago—one to Labor, the other to the Liberals...
...But the Conservative party is also the party of the "old" middle class, of the retired colonels and the widows living on fixed incomes in the genteel squalor of some seaside boarding house...
...What is not so certain is that these efforts will succeed...
...It must be admitted that the electorate still seems skeptical of Labor's ability to do any better...
...Most important, it is necessary to hold out a vision of Britain more inspiring than that of endlessly increasing material prosperity, and more contemporary than the traditional Tory vision of empire...
...It is no longer enough merely to offer still more prosperity...
...There are, in fact, two main reasons—one relatively superficial, the other more profound...
...In order to win elections it needs the support of the white-collar workers and the lower middle class generally, of the suburban commuters and mortgage payers who have recently been deserting en masse to the Liberals...
...This point must be emphasized if the Cabinet changes, and the course of British politics in the last year, are to be put into perspective...
...But important though it was, this political face lift was not the most important aspect of the changes...
...Lord Avon (better known as Anthony Eden, and next to Churchill the leading elder statesman of the Tory party) has publicly suggested that Lloyd was badly treated...
...The "if" is, of course, a very sizeable one...
...Had the Prime Minister wished only to change course under pressure of public opinion, and to promote younger men to high office, he could have done so without sacking Selwyn Lloyd...
...MACMILLAN'S CONSERVATIVE PARTY PURGE The Politics of Survival By David Marquand London WHATEVER ELSE MAY be Said of it, no one can accuse the British Conservative party of lacking an instinct for survival...
...The first of these is the schizophrenic social composition of the Conservative party, which is, above all, the party of the classes posturing as a party of the masses...
...They won the two succeeding elections because it seemed that their promise had been kept...
...and the Liberals would once again become a major party in terms of Parliamentary seats...
...It is also true that if the Common Market negotiations succeed, the Government may be able to present itself as the author of a bold new policy toward Europe...
...The Conservatives won the election of 1951 because they promised to end "Socialist austerity...
...the Labor party would have an enormous majority in the House of Commons...
...Lloyd, who was Foreign Secretary both during the Suez expedition and during the Anglo-American rapprochement that followed it, is no stranger to the strategy of reculer pour mieux sauter...
...new men were brought forward...
...The result was what might have been expected...
...The most significant feature of the purge was that poor, plodding Selwyn Lloyd—Chancellor of the Exchequer and chief exponent of the Government's economic policies—was thrown to the wolves...
...By-elections are an unsafe guide to subsequent general elections: It is quite normal for the pendulum to swing away from the Government in the middle of its term of office, and to return once again at the end...
...Before long, it became clear that the pause would in fact affect only those too weak to resist it...
...To win their support, it has to present itself as the architect of prosperity and economic growth...
...But, unfortunately for its own future political prospects, the Government imposed the pause without the agreement of the unions, and in a high-handed and arbitrary manner perfectly calculated to alienate them...
...The superficial reason is the Government's economic policies during the past year, particularly its so-called "pay pause.' The pay pause was originally imposed a year ago to halt inflation...
...Yet the policies which made him unpopular were not his alone, they were the policies of the whole Government—officially regarded until a few weeks ago as the height of fiscal wisdom...
...And the economic interests of this group are diametrically opposed to those of the "new" middle class in the housing estates...
...The higher income groups were not touched by it in any case, and organized labor was able to fight back...
...For the Government has to face two formidable obstacles...
...It is altogether too soon, in fact, to start singing a requiem for the Conservative party...
...To the "old" middle class it means, in practice, inflation— and inflation means slow strangulation...
...Already the voice of the "old" middle class has been heard, tuttutting morosely over Lloyd's fall...
...Another point should be emphasized, too...
...Gnarled party war horses were put out to grass...
...Those who suffered were the unorganized and semi-organized white-collar workers—a social group whose support is indispensable for the Conservative party if it is to stay in power...
...If the pattern of these by-elections were to be repeated at a general election, the Conservative party would be massacred...
...But why should such a drastic maneuver be necessary...
...It is also necessary to offer a solution to the problems which the existing level of prosperity has brought...
...Breaches in the Government's incomes policy began to appear almost as soon as the policy was announced...
...It now looks like they will lose the next election...
...And if it had been thought unseemly that Lloyd himself should preside over the retreat from what were nominally his own policies, he could have been moved discreetly to some other department...
...The unions failed to cooperate...
...This is not to say that Macmillan now faces a revolt from outraged Lloydites: that is not the Conservative way...
...Lloyd's function was to act as the scapegoat whose sacrifice is designed to protect the rest of the tribe from the wrath of unseen powers...
...The second and more profound reason for the bleak prospects, although few Conservatives are prepared to admit it, is that the Government's unpopularity has deeper roots than the discontent of this or that social class...
...During the last six months the face of British politics has been transformed, at least for the time being, by an astonishing series of Parliamentary by-elections...
...That instinct was shown at its most ruthless in Prime Minister Macmillan's purge of the Cabinet last month...
...It is they who have changed the British political landscape out of all recognition...
...The "new" middle class saw Lloyd as an economic executioner...
...But when one remembers how static the last decade has been, that modest generalization amounts to quite a lot...
...Lloyd fell, not through extraordinary incompetence or sudden unpopularity in his own party, but because of his unpopularity in the country...
...Clearly, then, Macmillan wished not only to change course but to advertise the change as dramatically as he could...
...All that can be said at the moment is that British politics are in a state of flux, unprecedented for 10 years...
...Not surprisingly, the white-collar workers took their revenge...
...What has the Conservative party really to fear from unseen powers...
...For 10 years, the British people voted against the restrictions and shortages of the 1940s, much as in the 1940s they had voted against Munich and the Great Depression...
...the Labor share has remained more or less constant...
...The Government can certainly be expected to exert its most strenuous efforts toward winning back this crucial group...
...In the reconstruction, about a third of the Cabinet lost their jobs...
...For the first time since the Conservatives came into office, the affluent society is being taken for granted...
...In these by-elections the Conservative share of the total poll has fallen by as much as 30 per cent...
...This is due to a growing sense that the country has been allowed to drift for too long, and a growing—if still confused— appetite for change...
Vol. 45 • August 1962 • No. 16
