Abstract
In the last Conservative leadership election ‘run-off’ in 2001, before Michael Howard ‘emerged’ as the new leader in 2003, both Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) and Ken Clarke made claims on the One Nation tradition.2 This immediately raises the question of how Conservatives who appear so diametrically opposed, on both issues of state intervention and on European integration,3 could both possibly issue an appeal which extolled the virtues of One Nation Conservatism. This chapter addresses such a conundrum by first analysing the use of One Nation as a central Party myth and secondly, by examining the composition and the legacy of the One Nation dining group of Conservative MPs formed in 1950. Finally, it focuses on and challenges a certain portrayal of One Nation as a group exclusively on the left of the Party, as in any effective exposure of the great myths of British politics it is important to demonstrate just how distorted and pervasive such a view has become.
I am grateful to the British Academy for the research grant SG 35058 which enabled me to undertake the research for this chapter. I would also like to thank my colleagues Ed Gouge, Stuart McAnulla and Kevin Theakston for commenting on a draft of this work.
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Notes
D. Baker and D. Seawright, Britain For and Against Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), and
D. Baker, A. Gamble, S. Ludlam and D. Seawright, ‘Backbenchers with Attitude: A Seismic Study of the Conservative Party and Dissent on Europe’, in S. Bowler, D.M. Farrell and R.S. Katz (eds), Party Discipline and Parliamentary Government (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1999).
R.J. White, The Conservative Tradition (London: Nicholas Kaye, 1950), p.23.
D. Southgate, ‘The Defence of Land and Labour’, in N. Gash, D. Southgate, D. Dilks and J. Ramsden, The Conservatives: A History from their Origins to 1965 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977), p.125.
For example, see S. Fielding, ‘A New Politics?’ in P. Dunleavy, A. Gamble, R. Heffernan, I. Holliday and G. Peele (eds), Developments in British Politics 6 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), p.15.
M.A. Kebbel, Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882), p.524.
Southgate, ‘The Defence of Land and Labour’, p.123, and B. Disraeli, Sybil or The Two Nations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p.96.
R. Faber, Young England (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p.257.
P. Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p.323.
S. Baldwin, On England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1926), p.82.
I. Macleod and A. Maude (eds), One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1950) see note 33 below for full list of One Nation publications.
B. Disraeli, Coningsby, or the New Generation (London: Everyman’s Library, 1967), p.59.
E. Powell and A. Maude, Change is Our Ally: A Tory Approach to Industrial Problems (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1954); see note 33 below.
One Nation Group, One Nation at the Heart of the Future (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1996), p.7.
We should note here that by 1996 Alport believed that Macleod suggested the name and that he, Macleod, was one of the first members to join the group; see ‘Forming One Nation’, The Spectator, 30 March 1996, pp.15–16. But Alport in his ‘Red Notebook’ file for his future memoirs written in the 1980s (see p.18) clearly accepts Gilbert Longden as the first recruit and states: ‘It was Angus Maude who suggested the title “One Nation” for our book which had an immediate and remarkable success’ (see p.3), in Box 44, Alport papers. The error is reproduced in the work of Iain Gilmour and Mark Garnett, Whatever Happened to the Tories: The Conservatives since 1945 (London: Fourth Estate, 1998), p.vii.
A. Seldon, Churchill’s Indian Summer: The Conservative Government, 1951–55 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981), p.58. But see pp.57, 424 and 434 for both the limited and extended state views of the group.
One Nation publications: I. Macleod and A. Maude (eds), One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1950);
E. Powell and A. Maude (eds), Change is Our Ally (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1954);
Lord Balniel, R. Carr, W. Deedes, C. Fletcher-Cooke, R. Fort, B. Harrison, K. Joseph, G. Longden, T. Low, J. Ramsden and G. Rippon, The Responsible Society (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1959);
N. Ridley (ed.), One Europe (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1965);
A. Butler, K. Baker, L. Brittan, P. Goodhart and M. Alison (eds), One Nation at Work: By the One Nation Group of MPs (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1976);
P. Goodhart, Jobs Ahead (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1984);
One Nation, One Nation 2000 (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1992);
One Nation, One Nation: At the Heart of the Future (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1996).
Harmar Nicholls was MP for Peterborough, 1950–October 1974; see W.J. Biffen, ‘Party Conference and Party Policy’, Political Quarterly, 32 (1962), p.262, for an account of this historical decision of the conference.
Thus, arguably the One Nation group played a part in the promotion of such neo-liberal ideas in this period. See also R. Crocket, Thinking the Unthinkable (London: Fontana Press, 1995).
See D. Willetts, Modern Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992).
See ‘Varieties of Conservatism’, in P. Norton and A. Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London: Temple Smith, 1989), pp.53–89.
One Nation group minute, 28 June 1951, Alport Papers. Indeed, a similar but erroneous extrapolation could be made for an association with Lord Hinchingbrooke (Victor Montagu), who was Chairman of the Tory Reform Committee in 1943 (and was present with Hailsham at this dinner) and who was involved with Angus Maude in the Suez group and was later to become so hostile to European membership as a member of the Monday Club; see P. Seyd, ‘Factionalism within the Conservative Party: The Monday Club’, Government and Opposition, 7 (1972), pp.464–87.
For example, see J. Cole, As it Seemed to Me (St Ives: Phoenix, 1996), pp.209 and 251. On page 209, he equates One Nation with Gilmour and ‘the wets’, and on page 251 he identifies Pym as ‘One Nation’ and makes an explicit contrast with him and John Nott who was more ‘Thatcherite than Thatcher’, but of course John Nott was a member of One Nation.
Alistair Burt, interviewed at the House of Commons, 28 June 2004. See G. Streeter (ed.), There Is Such a Thing as Society (London: Politicos, 2002).
Copy of letter from Mr J. Enoch Powell to Mr Angus Maude, 20 October 1952, in Longden Box List: Temporary File Number 31.
See James Maragach in the Sunday Times, 28 April 1968.
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Seawright, D. (2005). One Nation. In: Hickson, K. (eds) The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502949_5
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