The Importance of Enoch

Abstract

It was the changing political mood of the early 1960s that spurred the rethinking within the Tory party. The customs which had long held British society together – the virtues of the Establishment, the stout independence of the middle classes, the deference and determined courage of the lower orders – was beginning to erode quite rapidly in all areas of British life by that time.¹ While the immediate political effect was the initial triumph of a technocratic style of corporatism in all parties, this erosion of custom presented a particular problem to those more traditional Conservatives who were alive to the changing realities of the nation around them.