CONSERVATE SOCIALISM
By CANON ROGER LLOYD
THE governing factor in the reconstruction of politics after the war will be the victory of Labour doctrine. It has not been brought about nor accompanied by a victory of the Labour Party, and perhaps it will not be. But the victory of Labour doctrine looks like being as permanent as anything can be. The doctrine of Labour tends generally towards the coming of the omnicompetent State, and this it seeks to temper and control by fostering the freedom of associations within the State. We now have both the system and the tempering control in a form as nearly absolute as makes no matter ; and on any showing the condition of survival in the difficult and complex post-war world will be to retain the omnicompetent State system of government. Thus, although there are still a few details to be filled in, they are only details, and Labour has gained the chief point of its programme.
But Labour won its victory by Conservative goodwill and votes. If the votes were a war-time necessity, much of the goodwill was not. For some years past a most important wing of the Conservative Party has shown itself to be strongly in favour of socialist measures, even though it generally took good care not to call them by that name. But most of the proposals made by the " Younger Conservatives " to deal with unemployment and rearmament were either openly socialist or else of such a kind that they required a socialist system to make them work. The extent to which the strategy of the Conservative party will one day be governed by its present left wing is yet uncertain, but it seems clear that the influence of the Younger Conservatives will grow and not lessen. For they, too, have won their victory over the Old Guard, and they have now got political problems into the mould of the omni- competent State where they believe them potentially soluble. Not even the most inveterate die-hard will be able to go back on that.
That being so, what is the future of Conservatism? If, broadly speaking, it has always stood for less rather than more State control, and for the rights of the individual as against that of the State, is there a place for it in the present and future of political conditions? Surely there is, and that place is one of quite vital importance. To justify that statement it is neces- sary to ask and to answer two questions. First, why do so many young men whose ruling passion is for social justice, who believe that they can best-work for it by entering Parliament, but whose party convictions arc exceedingly vague, choose to stand as Conservatives? They often choose it deliberately, knowing very well that they must sit among members and serve under a whip whose ideals are certainly not their own. It is because they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, Wit, given the party-system, the Conservative Party is the only one which can really unite the nation. This conviction the best of them immediately put into practice in their own con- stituencies by faithfully spending a good deal of time there, and by being most scrupulous in their efforts to represent all the people, and not merely those who voted for them. In the House of Commons they have a hard time and are generally in revolt, but in their constituencies they are beloved.
Second, why do so many of the places where social misery is acute regularly return Conservative M.P.s and town coun- cillors? When I was vicar of a distressed area, where seventy- five per cent. of the people were on the means test, and yet no candidate except a Conservative stood much chance, I used to ask people why they always voted as they did. There were two answers. " We know where we are with them," an implied accusation, emphatically unjust, though the Labour Party's weakness for Russia had something to do with it. The second answer always revealed a lurking fear of the State and dread of the monotonous sameness which might creep over life unless the State was carefully watched. The Conservatives always gave the impression that they would do the watching.
None the less, in that sort of constituency before the war the Conservative Party was fast losing ground. Its behaviour over the issue of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War was im- possible to reconcile with its traditions of patriotism. Its apparent lack of interest in unemployment was causing it to be accused of the one sin which poor people would not forgive it, an adula- tion not for lords hereditary, which most of them rather approved than otherwise, but for lords financial, which no ordinary person approved. The war and the coming of the omnicompetent State has taken the edge off both those accusa- tions, and unless the Party loses its senses it will never give the slightest ground for the raising of them again. Its future as a Party is dependent on its being able to put away all memory of these reproaches.
But there is obviously a future for it, because the conception of the omnicompetent State almost shouts its need of Conserva- tive leaven. What the State does is often done well, and always unimaginatively. Its administration tends to reduce the embarrassing variety of people to a dead level of average medio- crity.. The Conservative Party has always stood for variety, for the rightful place of individual enterprise, for the homage that any living nation must pay to its history. Conservatism can be the guardian of all these things, and they will need some guarding. Emphatically the victory of the omnicompetent State has not robbed it of its future. Nor does it follow that this future must always be spent in opposition. The party has plenty of members who are perfectly at home amid socialist conceptions, and there is nothing in conservatism as such which necessarily disqualifies it from successfully operating a system of State omnicompetence. It is exactly what the Conservative Party is helping to do today. If it heeds its Left Wing more than its die-hards there is no reason why it should not continue to operate it. We have seen a thoroughly socialist conception of Government brought into existence by Conservative votes. We may yet see the Socialist State sustained and defended and made fruitful by a Conservative Government.
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