Donal Blaney
Despite over a decade in opposition, the Conservative Party still looks some way from power, albeit that strides have been made under David Cameron.
Even if the next election is won, do conservatives know what a Conservative government would enact?
Is there a central theme that runs throughout the Party’s platform that is understandable to the electorate and electorally popular?
And why have conservatives in Britain not learned the lessons from the United States, where the conservative movement dominates even at a time when the Democrats control Congress and an unpopular Republican President occupies the White House?
The lesson from the United States that needs to be applied by conservatives in Britain is simple: the Conservative Party alone cannot win the next election.
A broader conservative movement is needed if victory is to be secured. As the distinguished historian Lee Edwards has noted, that movement needs a trinity of philosophers, popularizers (who translated the ideas for the politicians) and philanthropists (who bankrolled the philosophers, journalists and political campaigns).
While it is easy to blame the party machine for the failures of the past decade or more, the truth is that the blame should be shared by conservative activists.
It also needs all conservatives to remember the famous maxim that sat prominently on President Reagan’s desk in the Oval Office: “there’s no limit to what can be achieved if you don’t care who takes the credit.”
And in furtherance of the defining conservative creed of fusionism, it also needs those who make up the broader conservatives coalition to coalesce around a simple idea – such as freedom of the individual – that can bind together social conservatives, libertarians and economic liberals. Fusionists believe that the freedom of the individual is the central and primary end of political society and that the achievement of virtue is none of the state’s business – instead freedom is considered to be the indispensable condition for the pursuit of virtue. Fusionism is what has kept the American conservative movement strong and it is what needs to be adopted by British conservatives too.
In the 1970s, when conservatism was at its lowest ebb on both sides of the Atlantic after the failures of both Nixon and Heath, British and American conservatives both regrouped with remarkable speed.
In Britain, the influential Institute of Economic Affairs (founded thanks to the vision of Sir Anthony Fisher) was joined by the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Freedom Association in promoting the free society with clarity, purpose and vigour. The result of their efforts, coupled with public resentment of thirty years of corporatist failure, was the election of Margaret Thatcher and the advent of Thatcherism.
In the United States, the Heritage Foundation, the Eagle Forum, the American Conservative Union, the Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute built on the work of philosophers such as Russell Kirk and popularizers such as Bill Buckley who benefited from the financial backing of men such as Joseph Coors and a variety of philanthropic foundations to propel the conservative Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980.
In both countries the liberal-left has only been able to regain power by pretending to be more conservative than is really the case (as Clinton, Blair & Brown have shown).
And yet since those eleven whirlwind years of Thatcherism, conservatism has been in a far weaker state in Britain than in America after eight years of Reagan. Indeed after losing the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992, American conservatives regrouped and recaptured Congress less than two years later under the dynamic leadership of Newt Gingrich in 1994. George W Bush narrowly won two presidential elections in 2000 and 2004. And Congress was only lost last November as a result of sleaze and inept leadership by Republicans on Capitol Hill.
So why have British conservatives not been able to regroup as effectively as our American conservative cousins? And how can we finally do so?
Part of the problem stems from the centralisation of the Conservative Party itself over the past twenty years. The Party’s youth efforts, so important to recruit enthusiastic activists and new blood to the cause, have been neutered by the de facto nationalisation and then abolition of the FCS, YCs and Conservative Graduates. Likewise the independence of local party associations and branches has been diluted with more and more power arrogated to CCHQ at the expense of local activists.
For a political party that believes in trusting the people, decentralisation, localism and which opposes nationalisation to have behaved in such a manner has been foolhardy in the extreme and wholly counter-productive.
But while it is easy to blame the party machine for the failures of the past decade or more, the truth is that the blame should be shared by conservative activists. We have sat back rather than learning lessons and grasping the opportunities presented to us to regroup. We have failed to develop a truly vibrant conservative movement based on philosophers, popularizers and philanthropists.
In terms of philosophers, conservatives can continue to rely on philosophers of the past such as Burke, Smith and Hayek. But the conservative movement needs more philosophers for today, those who will truly think the unthinkable as radically as Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon did.
Conservatives have a strong number of popularizers. New campaigning groups such as the Reform and the TaxPayers’ Alliance are making the case for smaller government and lower taxes. The Young Britons’ Foundation evangelises in schools, colleges and universities, as well as training the next generation of conservative leaders. The blogosphere and the print media hum with conservative voices.
But conservatives are less prominent in broadcast media, publishing and popular culture than our counterparts across the Pond. And we need our think-tanks to recognise that they need to be more like the Heritage Foundation in Washington – more proactive and less reactive.
Many conservative philanthropists mistakenly give their support to the Conservative Party instead of to the wider conservative movement where they could get much more “bang for their buck”. Some, such as Patrick Barbour, Stanley Kalms and Stephan Shakespeare, understand the need to develop a broader conservative movement but too many philanthropists pour money into CCHQ and yet wonder why they see so little in terms of the advancement of conservatism.
As the American experience has shown, in addition to philosophers, popularizers and philanthropists, conservatives in Britain will need to adhere to fusionism and truly cooperate with each other.
Can the American concept of fusionism be transported to Britain? Certainly. The broader conservative movement in Britain consists of smaller government classical liberals, radical libertarians, authoritarian social conservatives, compassionate conservatives, Eurosceptics, countryside campaigners and public service consumers.
Instead of allowing issues that might divide the broader coalition to be the focus of campaigns by that coalition, fusionists such as myself would want the conservative movement to coalesce around the concept of promoting freedom for the individual.
Co-operation is also essential. Petty grievances and personality clashes that dominate conservative politics need to be set-aside for the greater good. Organisations need to work together on campaigns to avoid duplicating effort and wasting time or money. Weekly meetings akin to those organised in Washington by Americans for Tax Reform will be a good start in this regard.
The Conservative Party should not view the development of a broader conservative movement in Britain as a threat in any way. While sometimes policies or causes adopted by members of the conservative movement may be well ahead of those being promoted by the Conservative Party, the Party leadership needs to be savvy enough to understand that this will benefit the Party too.
For too long conservatives have been on the back foot, bemoaning the direction of our country and often carping at successive Party leaders. The solution lies in all of our hands. Get involved and get busy in building a conservative movement that will propel the Party back to power.