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Poisonous Roots

The Tories as a political grouping first emerged in the 1680s, the name deriving from the Irish word for a robber - extremely appropriate in view of their subsequent history. Over time they became identified as the party of large landowners and the established church, as the Whigs were identified with the rising industrial interests and nonconformism. This connection with landed interests is one of several threads in Conservative history which can be traced right through to the present day and the Countryside Alliance, which is clearly dominated by the class views of landowners even though it is not a party organisation as such.

A further thread is a consistent advocacy of the rights of bosses over their workforces, thus embracing both industry and agriculture. In its 1980s guise this became "management's right to manage". An early demonstration of this bias came in the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 which outlawed "combinations" of workers (i.e. unions). This measure stemmed in part from fear of the potential influence of the French Revolution upon British workers: over 100 years later Britain's coalition government, dominated by Tories, was prominent in sending forces against the Russian Revolution in the hope of restoring the ruling-class there and stopping "Bolshevism" here (for which read "working-class control".)

Economic Tensions

Robert Peel's Tamworth manifesto of 1835, which committed the Tories to moderate reform and a balance of the interests of land, industry and trade, was where use of the name Conservative begins, as they now supposedly aimed to "conserve what is good and change what is bad". This marked an attempt to recognise the growing shift in the economic organisation of society, and therefore political strength, which also stemmed from the 1832 Reform Act when the wealthy in the newly-industrialised areas had acquired the vote. This was accentuated when, as Prime Minister, Peel saw through the repeal of the Corn Laws which for several decades had acted as a guarantee of profitable prices for farmers. These laws were part of a continuing economic argument within the Conservatives, between protection of domestic producers (through duties on imports) and an inclination towards so-called free trade, something especially demanded by industrialists both to allow them easier access to foreign markets as they expanded production and to cut the cost of the raw materials that they imported. The conflict of agricultural and industrial interests has never been fully resolved. Even in the 1980s, when legislation gave much more power to bosses and weakened workers' opportunities to organise and show solidarity, manufacturing bosses bemoaned their fate as businesses closed and the Government's policies favoured the growth of the service economy.

Nonetheless, the argument between those who favour complete free trade and those who want some form of protection for British producers has continued. For example, Joseph Chamberlain resigned from the Cabinet in 1903 because he was in favour of tariffs, and Stanley Baldwin called an election largely over this issue in 1923 . Nowadays the theme is repeated under the shorthand term of "Europe", where free trade has become linked to a loss of political and economic independence (independence of the British ruling-class, that is).

Relations with the Working-Class

As with the Liberals, the Conservatives had to recognise during the course of the nineteenth century the developing strength of the working-class as a factor in their political calculations. In parliamentary terms, this first occurred in the Reform Act of 1867, piloted through Parliament by Benjamin Disraeli, which made the qualification for the vote less stringent than before. But as it remained based around the possession of property to some degree, most workers remained excluded (and all women). Not at all coincidentally, the continued expansion of the British Empire and domestic propaganda on its behalf in the second half of the nineteenth century, through such events as Disraeli manufacturing the title Empress of India for Queen Victoria, and the "Scramble for Africa" in which Britain and a number of other European powers participated, were used to reconcile British workers to their position of domestic powerlessness by creating an illusion of superiority over the workers and peasants of other lands. In other words, through nationalism and racism.

The distorted and sanitised history of these days of empire, when Britain was "great", has left an enduring impression on how many in this country relate to the rest of the world, and continues to underlie emotions in debates on issues like immigration, asylum and trade. Since the Liberals' ardent imperialism of this period was modified in the 20th century by a greater sympathy for the independent desires of the colonised peoples, the Conservatives' more single-minded imperialism and nationalism were and have remained both a distinguishing stance in their rhetoric and a stick with which to beat the other parties.

Nevertheless the Conservatives have shown varying attitudes to change, depending on the circumstances. Their instinct is to resist it, but if they cannot do that they strive to steer matters in such a way as to preserve both their basic position and the capitalist system. In addition, their patience should not be underestimated, which sees them envisaging the day when conceded ground can be taken back. Whereas in 1926, with the Russian Revolution still a recent event, the General Strike was resisted with the full force of the State mobilised to take on the strikers, whether through the police or propaganda (the "British Gazette" under the editorship of Winston Churchill), by the 1950s and their restoration to power the Tories were seemingly content to accept the nationalisations of major industries like the mines which Labour had instituted.

This was the period when "consensus politics", over such concepts as a mixed private and State economy, dominated relations between the two parties, the Liberals by this point being thoroughly outflanked by the others. The rise of the consumer society after the austere conditions of the war and immediate post-war years was of course the ideal culture within which capitalism could expand. With low unemployment and rising wages, industrial peace seemed assured. But by the 1980s, renewed economic crisis and the desire to establish political authority meant a renewed struggle to reorganise the working-class: thus the struggles with workers in steel (1981), coal (1984-85) and docks (1989), all of which led to mass redundancies and a loss of established rights at work, as well as wider discouragement and insecurity amongst workers.

Foreign Affairs and Immigration

In foreign affairs a similar pattern holds. Independence movements in all the colonies were at first resisted, often with brutal effect, such as the Amritsar massacre of Indian nationalists in 1919, or the repression loosed on Kenyan nationalists in the 1950s. But in each case the leash was gradually loosened (at least in overt form), and it was the Tories who largely oversaw the transition from the subservience of the Empire to the looser ties of the Commonwealth. This still permitted, on the one hand, access for British investment and on the other the export of products from the former colonies with no or lesser duties imposed upon them compared to countries outside the Commonwealth. Furthermore, the limited education available to the majority coupled with the conscious training of local political and military elites by Britain were a further way of maintaining a real measure of influence after the achievement of "independence". This form of connection also helped, and has continued to help, give British companies an advantage, notably in the arms trade.

But it was Britain's imperial past that in the long-term also led to a range of problems with which the Tories, in power for 35 years out of 52 in the period 1945-1997, had to contend. One of the key feelings living under capitalism breeds is insecurity. Thus even at a time of prosperity, the arrival of new people can come to be seen as a threat. This was exactly the case with the development of immigration from the Commonwealth countries from the 1940s onwards. Indeed this hostility was accentuated by their origin in countries that once were colonies. Black people had lived in Britain for centuries, but after World War Two Britain's very need for cheap labour in certain fields made black communities more substantial. Particularly ironic was the position of Enoch Powell, who as Minister of Health in the early 60s oversaw efforts to bring West Indians into the lower reaches of the NHS, but who within a few years was warning of race war and arguing for repatriation.

Though they have never gone as far as a programme of repatriation, starting in 1962 with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, all Tory administrations have passed laws whose net effect has been not simply to restrict immigration but especially, because of the way in which they have been framed, to hamper that of the non-white. The instinctive Tory sympathy for authoritarian and fascist regimes is reflected in such laws, and it is their existence and the pronouncements that go with them (e.g. Margaret Thatcher's 1978 comment about the fear that "this country might be swamped by people of a different culture" ) that has generally tended to siphon off potential fascist support in this country. In the 1990s this tendency led to the Tories' deliberate confusion of asylum seeking by political refugees with the issue of immigration. Naturally making no attempt to explain how the plight of many of these people stems from British and more broadly western backing for repressive regimes, the Tories have once more shown how xenophobia and racism are core parts of their creed.

In the early Cold War era, when Britain had been frozen out of continuing co-operation with the USA in developing nuclear weapons, the ludicrous notion of pursuing a so-called "independent" programme (first begun under Labour) was fully supported. This was seen as the supposedly prestigious behaviour of a "Great Power", something which did not finally fall apart until the early 1960s. After this point, British nuclear facilities were ultimately run to tie in with NATO strategy and therefore American interests.

The resurgence of the Cold War in the 1980s which brought Cruise missiles to Britain saw Thatcher continuing to repeat the fantasy of the "independent deterrent", the notion that potentially invading Russians would swear off such adventurism because they faced not only the nuclear wrath of America but might also be hit by Britain as well. It was a particular instance of how British rulers' vanity had still not accepted that there were two superpowers in the world, and Britain wasn't either of them. Huge sums were consequently spent on both Cruise and Trident missiles, as part of a general upsurge in military spending at this time.

Although no war occurred with the USSR, the traditionally militaristic cast of Tory thinking led to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, a campaign which was given much credit for the Tories' 1983 General Election victory. Certainly it was a political rather than an economically motivated war: in time-dishonoured fashion, it served to distract enough people for long enough from real issues like the steady rise in unemployment. This war was also significant for the amount of State control exerted over the media's coverage, lessons from which have been all the more firmly applied since then. For all the Conservative talk of freedom, they have always slipped quite smoothly into totalitarian behaviour as soon as the so-called "national interest" is threatened : the mass media share so many Tory assumptions that they are for the most part all too willing to cooperate. It is usually far too late to matter when something of the truth as to what went on in a modern-day British war emerges, and it is the Tories under Thatcher and then John Major during the Gulf War in 1991, who really perfected this manipulation. (Partly they needed to as the enemy in both of these wars had previously been sold Britsh weaponry within the previous few years.)

The Home Front

Domestically, as already outlined, the Tories' have always loathed all working-class organisation which isn't for the purpose of ensuring more efficient exploitation. During the period of relatively low unemployment in the1950s and 1960s, the economy was able to provide more in the way of rewards and unions were able to press for better wages and conditions knowing that their bargaining position was strong (unlike, say, in the 1930s Depression). The greater working-class confidence of this period, though limited in its ambitions, was enough to make the government of Edward Heath (1970-74) bring in an Industrial Relations Act. This introduced various measures, such as union registration and compulsory strike ballots, to hamper unions in pusuing disputes effectively (which was of course the motive). Some workers were imprisoned as a result of the Act, but mass demonstrations in their support helped bring about their release.

Even more important in this period for showing that the State is not invincible were the two national miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974, the latter helping to bring down the Heath government. The Tories never forgot this resistance, and in the years of opposition that followed developed plans for taking on the working-class and its official organisations. For example, Nicholas Ridley, later a minister under Thatcher, was drawing up such a plan (to build up coal stocks and then provoke a strike) to crush the miners in 1978. Thatcher and Keith Joseph set up the Centre for Policy Studies, one of a number of think-tanks which laid the intellectual groundwork for an end to the mixed economy and in particular the installation of a "free market" in labour. This could only be achieved by making it as difficult as possible for workers to organise and act collectively, and in a series of acts this aim was pursued by such means as outlawing so-called secondary picketing and solidarity strikes. Yet another legal ploy was sequestration, the seizure of a union's assets, which was a key tactic used to attack the miners during the strike of 1984-85. This strike especially faced outright class war, and in the brutal alliance of Government, courts, police and the media against the miners was the conclusive answer to any fantasies that the State is a neutral arbitrator in the "national interest", or that the class struggle is an outmoded concept.

Parallel to these policies of attacking working-class organisation (leaving aside the great limitations of unions, as the key point here is the Tory fear of them ) were others which tried to make workers more individualistic and consciously identified with capitalist social and economic organisation. One major way was by the selling-off of council homes to their tenants. Later came the privatisation of State-owned companies (oil and telecommunications being among the earliest ones) and freer movement of finance capital. For all that these measures might be sold as building a "property-owning democracy", the reality was that share ownership remained very much in the hands of the rich and of institutions, and homelessness grew.

But the area of taxation more than counter-balanced these measures to supposedly make workers more prosperous. In general, the rates of tax were changed so that the already wealthy retained more of their income and taxes were made more indirect. However the measure which caused most outrage, to the extent of its eventually being overthrown by mass resistance, was the Poll Tax. This way of raising revenue for local councils, by charging everyone in an area the same with no recognition of thier differing incomes, naturally hit the poorest the hardest. Mass non-payment, storming of council chambers, and angry public demonstrations not only led to the tax's demise but seriously affected Thatcher's hold on her party, as they witnessed her ballooning arrogance and lack of judgement in championing the tax.

For those who didn't get to participate in theThatcherite middle-class bonanza (and even the middle-class were notably suffering from unemployment and "negative equity" on their homes by the early 90s, as John Major continued on the Thatcherite path), there was a gradual dismantling of social security when out of work to go with the increased oppressiveness and insecurity of conditions at work. For it must not be forgotten that conservatism is as much governed by the desire to see that most people remain in their place as by any rational economic imperative. The professed belief in individuality and social mobility - both Thatcher and Major, and much of the rank and file today, are not the classic Tory grandee who felt some sort of paternalistic concern for the working-class but middle-class and "aspiring" working-class - depends on a basic conformity to the capitalist system and its accompanying institutions.

"At the Heart of Europe"

One key development since 1950, but gathering pace during the era of Thatcher and Major, has been the entrenchment of the European Union as a factor in British politics. In the earlier period of its existence the Tories preferred to look to the Commonwealth and America for Britain's main economic ties. However by the early 60s Britain was applying to join, and finally entered membership in 1973. In the eyes of Edward Heath it was a way of maintaining British influence in the world as part of a bloc to counterbalance the USA and USSR. But the political as opposed to the economic dimension of Europe took time to clearly emerge: for many years its offical name, the European Economic Community, emphasised the latter, and European Union was only adopted as its name as part of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.

Although there had been misgivings before, it was really in the 1990s that Europe became an issue which caused severe dissension in Tory ranks, with some MPs becoming identified as "Eurosceptics". The fear was a loss of domestic political and economic control to a central government in Brussels along with a European Central Bank. This was deeply ironic, coming from a party which since 1979 had overseen extensive centralisation of power within Britain, and showed that it was not democratic principle but their own loss of power which rankled. Thatcher, although a signatory to the 1985 Single European Act which initiated the process culminating in Maastricht, emphasised the economic aspects such as deregulation and downplayed the political and social. Major, for his part, negotiated opt-outs over the Social Chapter ( a granting of some mild concessions to workers in the tradition of European corporatism) and monetary union.

Under William Hague since 1997, the Tories' official policy over Europe has become still more strident . Monetary union has taken place for most member states but Hague says that under the Tories Britain won't join it for many years, if ever. The Tories have also continued to oppose such "interference" as the Working Time Directive: as far as they are concerned we should be "free" to work to the point of exhaustion. The directive is limited in effect because of the many groups of workers exempted from it, but such Tory bile towards even these mild reforms show that they remain the capitalist party.

Summing Up

All in all the record shows them to be friends of exploitation, the protectors of owners against workers, authoritarian, racist, militaristic, corrupt, arrogant. Their lying rhetoric about freedom and reducing the role of the State all depends on ignoring the central issue of class: the net of laws they wove together in 18 years were time and again pointed at working-class organisation, as well as rights of assembly and demonstration. But they also stand in the tradition of the Combination Acts and the Six Acts of 1819. This tradition means freedom is for the ruling-class, and it is their activities in which the State should not interfere in case it damages their wealth and profits. Yet the State will always be called upon to protect the ruling-class with every means at its disposal: one present consequence of this is one of the largest prison populations in Europe. What for Conservatives is a boast is for anarchists a summing-up of just how odious they are: they are indeed "the natural party of government".