The Virtual Stoa

So today a handful of newspapers quoted a senior Conservative Party politician as saying:

“It’s fine. There’s really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons.”

How did the word “swivel-eyed” enter the British political lexicon, and when did we first get “swivel-eyed loons”? Here’s a preliminary report, armed with access to the Lexis database, and the help of some friends on the Twitter with very good memories.

As long ago as 1983, Michael Meacher was described in the unlamented Punch as a “swivel-eyed Leftie lunatic”, so the term has been in circulation for a while. In 1987, Seamus Milne, writing in tehgraun, wrote that it was common to portray Robespierre as “the swivel-eyed high priest of political violence”. And in 1991, in a couple of columns, Simon Hoggart used the term, on one occasion to pick out politicians who had a “swivel-eyed belief in privatisation”.

And it’s in the early 1990s that the word more or less attaches itself to a certain kind of Tory politician. In fact, we can be more specific: John Redwood is clearly the key figure here. When he was first appointed to the Cabinet in the May 1993 reshuffle, an unnamed and disgruntled Tory politician said, “we want fewer swivel-eyed ideologues not more” (interestingly, one of the stories in the press reporting this view carried Ruth Kelly’s by-line). And the term, having attached itself to Redwood, from there migrates to his key political allies–such as Tony Marlow and, especially, Teresa Gorman. Tim Collins–a hero of the Stoa in years gone by–described the Tories who backed Redwood’s campaign for the Party leadership in 1995, for example, as the “swivel-eyed barmy army, from ward eight at Broadmoor”.

So: “swivel-eyed” was most commonly used in this period to pick out the kind of Conservative politician who ceaselessly plotted to undermine the leadership and, in David Cameron’s later words, was forever “banging on about Europe”. (As Hegel presumably remarks somewhere, all great Tory crises appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as farce, the second as farce.)

So much for “swivel-eyed”. Where, specifically, do “swivel-eyed loons” come from?

The answer seems to be that Euan Ferguson first used the phrase in the national press, in his Observer column of 2 March 1997, specifically to describe Tim Montgomerie’s mob. Back in those days, long before ConservativeHome, Montgomerie ran something called the Conservative Christian Fellowship, about whom Ferguson was quite sceptical–the column was published under the headline, “The Lord deliver us from the loony right”. Various right-wing Christians were quoted in the course of the article, which ended like this:

It would be ludicrous to suggest the CCF could make much of a difference. But is it so wrong to imagine it having an effect in a marginal seat between votes for a genuine candidate and votes for, well, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, a swivel-eyed loon who glories in pious deceit, or a holier-than-thou moral crusader who still backs policies expressly designed to widen inequality, encourage intolerance and promote greed?

And to take us briskly up to the present, the last thing we need to remember is the Anthony Wells-inspired Google-bomb (remember Google-bombing?) that ensured that, around the end of 2004, anyone who entered the phrase “swivel-eyed loons” was immediately directed to the UKIP home page. (This was mentioned at the time on the Virtual Stoa here.)

But that is all history. The rest, as we might say, is politics.

[Thanks to Anthony Wells and Matthew Turner for assistance with this post.]

UPDATE: Jamie K: “I’d say it’s more ‘the first time as farce, the second time as panto’.”

The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich. He finds the cottage of his father too small for his accommodation, and fancies he should be lodged more at his ease in a palace. He is displeased with being obliged to walk a-foot, or to endure the fatigue of riding on horseback. He sees his superiors carried about in machines, and imagines that in one of these he could travel with less inconveniency. He feels himself naturally indolent, and willing to serve himself with his own hands as little as possible; and judges, that a numerous retinue of servants would save him from a great deal of trouble. He thinks if he had attained all these, he would sit still contentedly, and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the happiness and tranquillity of his situation. He is enchanted with the distant idea of this felicity. It appears in his fancy like the life of some superior rank of beings, and, in order to arrive at it, he devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness.

(more…)

So this morning everyone’s fuming about Jeremy Hunt, for obvious reasons. The man’s both a fool and a knave. I think he’s more the former than the latter, but I can appreciate why other people, especially women, might think it’s the other way around.

I joked on Twitter earlier today that future historians might see the Autumn of 2012 as the moment when the Tories entered the “taking the piss” phase of the Parliament, and I think there’s probably something to that.

But I wonder whether something else is going on, and what we’ve been seeing recently is a bunch of Tory politicians trying out different strategies to position themselves in a post-Cameron, post-Coalition, very probably post-being-in-Government Conservative Party future, with Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Jeremy Hunt each taking a different approach.

Johnson and Gove are obviously the more substantial politicians, Johnson as a populist critic of the Coalition (while also sucking up to the bankers), with Gove casting himself as The Future of the Right (the subtitle of the book he wrote about Michael Portillo once upon a time).

But Hunt’s engaged in the same kind of game: David Cameron rescued his career when he moved him to Health, and now he’s signalling to the wackier part of the Tory Party that he’s on their side in the culture wars, setting up a marriage of convenience: both the Tory Right and Jeremy Hunt now need all the friends they can get, as they look to an uncertain future.

The political strategies are different, though what Johnson, Gove, and Hunt do have in common, I think, is that they’re the three senior politicians who are most publicly betting that Leveson will prove in the end to be a paper tiger, and standing by the Murdoch gang.

But for these three–as for much of the rest of the Tory Party, I suspect–the Cameron & Osborne show is almost over, and the jockeying for position after the electoral disaster they anticipate in 2015 has already begun.

For National Poetry Day, I’ve dredged much of the #chloesmithpoetry out from the depths of my Twitter timeline to archive it here.

People may remember the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Chloe Smith MP, who appeared on Newsnight on 26 June 2012 to defend the Government’s recently-announced delay to the introduction of a planned increase in fuel duty. It is widely reckoned that she didn’t do especially well in the interview–the words “car crash” sprang to many minds, which judged her to be hopelessly out of her depth. Criticism was spread around, to be sure: some found Jeremy Paxman’s interviewing style objectionable; others–well, everyone, actually–thought it cowardly of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, to send the most junior minister he could find into the lion’s mouth, rather than defend the U-turn on television himself.

But in a small corner of Twitter the following day, some of us were more struck by the way in which English literature graduate Chloe Smith’s words lent themselves so easily to poetry, and we started experimenting with the literary form made possible by reflecting on the transcript of the interview in the context of a strict 140-character word limit.

So many thanks to Eleanor Crawford, whose marvellous idea it was, and to the others who joined in. It made me happy for days.

1. el_crawford: They fall across and in different ways/ And that figure will progress, if you like…/that figure is evolving somewhat. #ChloeSmithPoetry Wed Jun 27 09:34
2. el_crawford: Two roads diverged in a wood and I-/I took the one less travelled by/And that has helped households and businesses. #ChloeSmithPoetry Wed Jun 27 09:35
3. el_crawford: For reasons which are interesting in themselves/the figures are interesting in themselves. #ChloeSmithPoetry Wed Jun 27 09:36
4. chrisbrooke: It’s valuable to help / Real people in this way / And I do think that is valued / By people who drive. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 13:06
5. el_crawford: I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox/and which you were probably saving for households and businesses/Forgive me #ChloeSmithPoetry Wed Jun 27 13:11
6. chrisbrooke: It’s an aggregate figure / If you look at the data / It’s an aggregate figure / And I think that’s what’s important here. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 13:47
7. chrisbrooke: On Tuesday’s Newsnight / A slogan was unfurled: / Jeremy, I don’t think many things / Are certain in this world. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 13:49
8. thhamilton: In front of Parliament we revealed to Parliament / As is right and proper, by the way, to Parliament / Help #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:07
9. chrisbrooke: When I am not sure what to think / I find it helps to say / “The figure is evolving somewhat / As per the data today.” #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:16
10. woodscolt79: We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Listening to families and businesses. Alas! #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:19
11. chrisbrooke: They do relate / To rather one-off factors / Specifically in terms / Of when some payments were made. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:20
12. chrisbrooke: I woke up in this morning / And know actually that some of my constituents will really value not having to pay… [etc] #chloesmithblues Wed Jun 27 14:23
13. chrisbrooke: In a world that we’re facing / Where things are very hard / You have to do what you can / In these hard times. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:28
14. chrisbrooke: Things fall apart / The centre cannot hold / They fall across / And in different ways. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:32
15. chrisbrooke: We had a collective discussion / Of that in due course / Although I can’t tell you / The ins and the outs. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 14:47
16. chrisbrooke: Households and businesses / Families and businesses / Households and businesses / And families. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 15:02
17. ejhchess: It doesn’t matter if you’re shite / You’ll get support from Michael White #chloesmithpoetry #sortof Wed Jun 27 15:20
18. chrisbrooke: As Chloe Smith was fumbling with fuel duty / Old Aaro, watching, thought, “You gorgeous beauty.” #chloesmithpoetry https://t.co/RYsfh1IK Wed Jun 27 15:24
19. chrisbrooke: The question being asked in May / Was about full cancellation /But as you’ll be aware today / We’re talking about deferral #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 15:39
20. chrisbrooke: That is of interest perhaps / In a different conversation / But the fact is here / We are sticking to the overall plan. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:05
21. chrisbrooke: It’s not just a Westminster Village / Story, Jeremy / It’s real money / In real people’s pockets. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:12
22. el_crawford: @chrisbrooke I find her turn of phrase Audenesque. Almost chillingly so. Wed Jun 27 16:15
23. chrisbrooke: As a Minister / In the Treasury / I’ve been involved in the discussions for some time / As a Minister in the Treasury #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:15
24. chrisbrooke @el_crawford Yes: some of the rhythms of her speech esp. at the end of sentences & the partial repetitions are very twentieth-century verse. Wed Jun 27 16:17
25. chrisbrooke: It’s not that, I’m afraid, Jeremy. It’s not that I’m afraid, Jeremy. It’s not that. I’m afraid, Jeremy. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:22
26. chrisbrooke: Mortal, guilty, but to me / Rightly what we seek to use for the credibility of our fiscal plan. #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:34
27. chrisbrooke: I think the point to be made out of that / And out of what’s been said today / Is that it’s important to do what you can #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 16:44
28. microlambert: I love you Twitter, because you did this: #chloesmithpoetry Wed Jun 27 20:08

From this week’s TLS:

It is one of the many strengths of Christopher Brooke’s fascinating new study, Philosophic Pride, that he is aware of the multifarious nature of his subject; he knows that he is dealing with a fluid cluster of ideas and themes, not as a unitary philosophical movement. Not that he has set out, in any case, to write a history of (Neo-)Stoicism; his task is both narrower and harder than that. The subject of this book is the relationship between Stoicism and early modern political thought; since there was scarcely such a thing as a worked-out body of Stoic political theory (unless we count Seneca’s fanciful portrayal of the monarchical ruler – Nero, of all people – extending the empire of reason), this means that an already elusive subject is considered here from a variety of oblique angles…

It’s a long review, too, filling all of p. 5.

Me, over at Comment is Free.

David Cameron recently said that his preferred English national anthem, for use at sporting occasions and the like, would be ‘Jerusalem’. (I agree: if you’re not going to have the theme tune of The Archers, then ‘Jerusalem’ is the best-available option.) And it turns out the history of the song is even stranger than I thought it was.

Let’s do this backwards.

In 1968 the song entered the public domain after the copyright on it expired, fifty years after the death of its composer, Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918). That copyright had been held by the Women’s Institute, and they held it because it was transferred to them by Parry’s executors in 1928, when the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies was being wound up, thanks to the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act of the same year. And Parry had assigned the copyright to the NUWSS towards the end of his life because he was so pleased with Millicent Fawcett’s enthusiasm that his song should be, as she called it, ‘the Women Voters’ Hymn’.

Now we’re heading towards the bits of the story I didn’t know before today.

If you read the Wikipedia article, “And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time”, you learn that Blake’s text was rescued from comparative obscurity when it was re-published by the Poet Laureate, Sir Robert Bridges, in an anthology of poems, The Spirit of Man [pdf], in support of the war effort in 1916. And it was Bridges who suggested to Parry that it be put to music, specifically for a meeting of the Fight for Right campaign in March that year at the Queen’s Hall (which was later destroyed in the Blitz, which is why the Proms are now held at the Royal Albert Hall instead).

Now on the Fight for Right campaign, Wikipedia says this (in the article on ADTFIAT): ‘The aims of this organisation were “to brace the spirit of the nation, that the people of Great Britain, knowing that they are fighting for the best interests of humanity, may refuse any temptation, however insidious, to conclude a premature peace, and may accept with cheerfulness all the sacrifices necessary to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion”’, which makes it sound like a crazy jingo campaign, and clearly on some level it was.

But it becomes more interesting when we add in this information, from tehgraun‘s Notes & Queries:

SIR Francis Younghusband was an imperialist (in India), a soldier and the conqueror of Tibet. Later, his views changed and he became a mystic, a friend of Gandhi and an idealist. On August 4, 1915, he published a letter in the Daily Telegraph, which ended: “We are engaged in a spiritual conflict – a holy war – the Fight for Right.” His words took off. By the end of August he had funds, helpers, an office and meetings up and down the country. He was supported by many well-known writers and public figures. Younghusband’s aim was to achieve something better and more lasting than a purely military victory…

And then there’s the stuff about Bridges and Parry and the composition of ‘Jerusalem’, and so on, adding the detail that Younghusband ‘hoped the sentiment would embrace all religions rather than just Christianity, but the movement fizzled out at the end of 1917, largely because of conflict between the jingoists and the idealists’. (It’s not hard to think of reasons why the Gandhians and the imperialists might have had a falling out, I suppose.)

Well, it was in 1917–after the slaughter of the Somme, before the final fizzling of Fight for Right–that Parry withdrew his song from this campaign and reassigned it to the suffragists. (Perhaps he wanted it to be attached to something?) And the rest, as they say, is (the at least slightly more familiar) history.

Patrick French’s Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (Flamingo, 1995) is apparently the place to go for more on this kind of thing. And “Jerusalem” is back in the news this month for happily non-David-Cameron-related reasons, because Prof. Jeremy Dibble at Durham has been reconstructing the original version of the song, whose first stanza was apparently scored for solo soprano.

I posted this on the Stoa a decade ago, and I’ll reprint it here, as it’s suddenly topical again, and I still more or less agree with it.

I used to think that the problem of the House of Lords was badly posed, and that the sensible thing to do was for the UK to become unicameral, and that this would be the one development which would force the House of Commons to get its one house (or House) in order, and develop sensible systems for scrutinising and revising legislation, etc. But I don’t think I think that any longer. The example of unicameral legislatures around the world (e.g. New Zealand) is too depressing, and the thought of having even more power in the hands of the whipped, drilled and disciplined Government majority is depressing, too. And I’m no longer optimistic that the change would force sensible change in the way the Commons went about its work. So perhaps the status quo is better than outright abolition of the House of Lords. (Don’t worry: I’m not going soft on the monarchy in my old age: the British monarchy remains vile, both in theory and in practice.)

The problems in the way of sensible Lords reform remain quite large, of course. A wholly elected chamber might challenge the supremacy of the Commons, which nobody seems to want; people who like the standard of debate in the Lords – which is often alleged to be relatively higher than that in the Commons – worry that having too many elected politicians in the place will devalue it of its worth; some worry that if some are elected, but not all, then the elected ones will have a kind of political legitimacy which the others lack; and virtually any mechanism of appointment or selection seems pretty ghastly to justify. And so on. The usual, familiar stuff.

So, here’s a solution, which seems to me to attenuate many of the outstanding problems. At any rate, I haven’t yet seen what’s wrong with it.

Hold elections for (all of the) membership in the House of Lords, using some kind of PR list system. (It doesn’t have to be with national, closed lists, but they make exposition easier). Voters have the choice of voting for the various party lists, but instead of voting for a party list, they can tick the box marked “Cross-Bench / Independent”, or something similar. And then, if 15% of voters check this box, then the House of Lords appointments commission (which gave us the so-called People’s Peers), would be permitted to fill 15% of the seats with the kind of people it appoints (earnest scientists, ex-police chiefs, Geoffrey Howe’s wife Elspeth, etc.)

Instead of a two-tier chamber, then, in which some owed their election to appointment and others to election, everyone in the Lords would owe their election to a combination of the two: either they were selected by a party elite to get on a list, and got elected from that list; or the people voted to have members selected by an appointments commission. Under this system, if the political parties did just put up lists of dreary party hacks, they would effectively be inviting voters to vote for the supposedly independent (in fact, of course, centrist and middle-class) peers which the appointments commission would generate. And if voters genuinely do want their legislators in the revising chamber to have a non-party-political background, they can cast a positive vote for this kind of person.

Notice that this doesn’t answer all of the questions one might have: how long should Lords be elected for?, how often should elections be held?, and so on. A variety of answers to these questions is entirely possible, and compatible with this electoral mechanism. It would even be possible to elect people to a life term, and then at periodic elections simply to fill the vacancies that existed at the time. It isn’t an argument about the powers of the second chamber, but merely about its composition. And it certainly isn’t an ideal system — the appointments commission is terribly problematic. But it is an argument that seeks to produce a chamber which has a certain kind of democratic legitimacy and which gives everybody an equally-weighted vote, but which allows the voters to prevent the House from being simply a bunch of politicadoes marking time and dutifully obeying their political paymasters as they wait for a seat in the Commons, and which won’t produce a Lords with a single-party majority, and which gives us an electoral mechanism – and one better than the mayoral ballots ever do – of assessing just how much the national party elites are alienating the voters.

Just as Alec Douglas-Home was ultimately the chief beneficiary of Tony Benn’s campaign to disclaim his life peerage, I now find myself wondering whether Michael Gove is the one who stands to gain the most from Ed Miliband’s current politicking.

Gove’s main problem in becoming leader of his party, it seems to me, is that he looks a bit odd, and the conventional wisdom in British politics for twenty years now has worked against the interests of people who aren’t conventionally telegenic and blandly Anglo. But Miliband looks a bit odd, too, and clearly part of his strategy at the moment is to get voters used to the idea that a Prime Minister might look a bit odd. Hence, for example, the passage about looking like Wallace from Wallace & Gromit in his speech on Englishness a few weeks ago.

If Miliband loses the 2015 election, then the conventional wisdom that odd-looking people don’t succeed in British electoral politics will be reinforced. And if the Tories unambiguously win that election, then there’s less likely to be a leadership vacancy any time soon. But if Miliband wins, Gove will be in an excellent place to succeed to Cameron’s throne. Miliband will have demonstrated that fortysomething men who look a bit funny can win elections, and presumably Osborne’s star will also be continuing to fall in the political firmament, since it’s hard to see how the chap who has been running the British economy could come out of an electoral beating looking like a decent prospect for the future.

Asked by crazy right-wing magazine Standpoint whether he was going to be leader one day, Gove replied:

“No, I’m constitutionally incapable of it. There’s a special extra quality you need that is indefinable, and I know I don’t have it. There’s an equanimity, an impermeability and a courage that you need. There are some things in life you know it’s better not to try.”

But I’m inclined to discount this almost to zero. Gove can’t use the Heseltine formula–that he cannot foresee the circumstances in which he might run–as that’s universally understood these days as code that he’s itching to be party leader; and if I’m right that Gove depends on Miliband to succeed in the medium term for his own political fortunes to flourish over the longer run, he has a particularly strong interest in not being publicly associated with such an ambition, since it’d be tantamount to declaring his own interest in seeing his own party soundly beaten at the polls.

And things seem to be going in the right direction for him. His own political stock seems to be rising in the party, he isn’t associated with economic policy, and even if Miliband isn’t yet on course to win the election in 2015, Cameron is very clearly on course to lose.

Very faithful readers will remember Paul “The Thinker” Richards, who lit up the world of blogs in 2003-4. He recently tried to become Paul “The Police Commissioner” Richards, but unfortunately the Sussex Labour Party failed to pick him as its candidate. Still, his propaganda was distributed along the South Coast, and since I seem to be posting things my brother has sent to me, here’s a copy of his election leaflet:

Twenty four years ago today, Edwina Currie wrote to John Major to break off their relationship.

I wrote to B on Thursday night saying that’s it, no more; posted it Friday morning, so he won’t have seen it yet, maybe not till Tuesday. Because it isn’t quite the fun it was — he has changed… [Diaries, 20.3.1988]

But what fun it once had been!

I wish my flat was filled with one big man in his blue underpants — I wish I was warm and sticky and laughing… [24.1.1991]

Apologies in advance for the mental images this post may conjure up.

A couple of weeks ago I thought people might be interested in discussing Noel Skelton’s “Constructive Conservatism”.

I was wrong.

(4) But to pass to the Referendum—crown and apex of a constructive Conservatism in the new era. Accepted by Conservatives in the Constitutional crisis of 1910-1911, its value and necessity are infinitely more obvious now. It was called for then to save the House of Lords; it is needed now to protect democracy. For if democracy, faced in the new era by Socialism as its scarcely disguised enemy, is, from a constitutional point of view, to be made stable and safe, if its property and liberty are to be preserved, the people, in the last resort, must directly and for themselves decide their own fate. And for this duty they are ripe. Meantime, it needs only a blunder or two on the part of a Cabinet, a General Election dominated by passion or prejudice, and the flank of the Constitution is turned. The task of Conservatism in the new era would be only half done if the British democracy were to be denied a means of protection the value of which has been amply proved elsewhere.

And, in conclusion, whatever means be taken to stabilise democracy, this much is clear—that the Conservative Party cannot leave it a matter of guesswork what its outlook is. “Democracy,” Lord Balfour once said, “is government by explanation.” The mass of the people are profoundly perplexed by the paradox that Conservatism, in which they have so deep an instinctive belief, is apparently content to leave its view of life unexplained, its principles unstated, while Socialism, which they distrust exceedingly, is fearless and untiring in setting out its aims and ideals. Liberalism is dying because its principles are dead. It will fare ill with Conservatism unless it breaks its silence and makes clear to the nation that it, too, has a vision of the future—of a property-owning democracy, master of its own life, made four-square and secure, and able therefore to withstand the shrill and angry gales which, in the new era’s uneasy dawn, sweep across the world of men.

(2) Of small ownership in land, only a word can be said. In principle, generally recognised to be a most powerful factor in the stability of the State and in the development of a rural democracy of character and intelligence, the policy of small holdings has greatly suffered in Great Britain from the methods which have been adopted. Extravagant expenditure on equipment and administration by Government departments or County Councils has been combined with demands for payments from the holder, based upon the principle of making him pay rent for the land, and in addition interest on the full cost of erecting the buildings. No private landowner gets an annual return if he lets his land, or a purchase price if he sells it, calculated in this way. The result has been that our State-constituted holdings have imposed on their cultivators burdens which no other agriculturists in Britain have to bear. The resettlement of the land of England and Scotland, the development of intensive cultivation, the reconstitution of rural community, are matters so vital that every effort to devise sounder methods of instituting small holdings than those presently in operation must be made by Conservatism. And this is pre-eminnently a problem which Conservative knowledge and resource can solve. Let it not be forgotten that the Wyndham Land Act was the last and greatest constructive work which Unionism did for Ireland.

(3) And agricultural co-operation. The foundation of modern agriculture throughout the world, the way to prosperity for the small cultivator and large farmer alike, it is inextricably bound up with the Conservative view of life, because it is essentially the means whereby in the cultivation of the soil the individual can be helped to help himself. On this there can safely be neither silence nor indifference. All that the State can do, all that the politician can say, should be said and done to spread a knowledge and assist the development of agricultural co-operation, if in the new era Conservatism is prepared to give of its best to the nation.

And if it be here objected that apparently all parties in the State are alive to the importance of agricultural co-operation, it must be said, in rejoinder, that so preponderating is the influence of Conservative thought on at least two out of the three great agricultural classes, that without active and ardent Conservative support and exposition, confidence in co-operative principles in agriculture would advance only at a snail’s pace, since distrust of Liberalism is complete in rural England, and is rapidly increasing in rural Scotland, while the country populations of both nations agree in their contempt for the town-bred fallacies of Socialism.

(1) First, then, as to industrial co-partnery. It rests on a firm basis of principle. Capital and Labour by it are to the full recognised as partners in the work of the production of wealth, for each shares in the true profits of that production, arrived at after each, the one by way of a fair rate of interest, the other by way of a fair wage, has been paid the price for its services in the common work. And further, the wage-earner’s proportion of the profits is paid to him partly in cash, partly invested for him in the concern, while, as the workers become capitalists, “seats on the Board,” either for the domestic internal government of the concern, or for its general direction, very naturally follow.

Thus status and property-owning grow together; the wage-earner, as industrialist, from a machine becomes a man. Nor is this all. To the wage-earner, co-partnery brings a new incentive and a new kind of interest in his work, arising out of his new relation to it; a wider industrial outlook, since, as his savings in the business increase, so does his interest in its general prosperity, for that prosperity affects him directly as a shareholder.

To the community it brings all the results that flow form a real identification of interest between Capital and Labour—reduction of the number of strikes, with their waste of the national wealth and dislocation of the national life; the elimination of such crazy doctrines as that of “ca’ canny”’; improvement in the standard of both management and work, since the wage-earner will not readily submit to his own good work being neutralized by the slackness of his neighbour, or the incompetence of his manager.

Moreover, co-partnery is clearly on the broad highway of economic evolution, for it is the next available incentive to increased productivity. Increase of wages and reduction of the hours of labour have both contributed largely in he last hundred years to this result. But it is more than doubtful whether both of these factors have not exhausted their impetus, and from a purely economic point of view are not now “squeezed oranges”.

And finally, the development of co-partnery and profit-sharing is the natural and obvious concomitant of any system of protecting British industry. For it has told against Tariff Reform that it has seemed to many to be the sole constructive suggestion which Conservatism had to make, and it has, perhaps in consequence, acquired almost the character of a substitute for, instead of a part of, a general policy of improving the status of the wage-earner. Certainly many opponents have made haste to point out to the working classes that, in the existing industrial system, the lion’s share of any advantage would, in their opinion, fall to Capital rather than Labour.

Such a criticism would be of no avail under a system in which employer and employee clearly shared alike in the increased prosperity.

Yet there are objections. It is said, “Some industries are not suited to the system.” Possibly not. But has there yet been any determined effort to work out in practice the modifications necessary to make it suit the special circumstances of particular trades? The overcoming of practical difficulties is a matter for resource and will-power, once the value of the underlying principle is realised. Conservatism in the new era must refute Anatole France’s mocking remark that moderate men and women are those who have only a moderate belief in moderate opinions.

And again, “The Trade Unions are against it.” Perhaps their Socialist leaders are, but battle has to be joined with them in any case. That the great mass of the wage-earners is hostile can hardly be maintained, since the fact is that no political party has yet seriously addressed itself to the exposition of co-partnery in all its bearings. In any case, co-partnery is the ideal ground on which to fight Socialism, for it emphasizes the distinction, fundamental but neglected, between a property-owning democracy and the Socialist ideal, and if the Trade Union leaders hide away from their followers the more excellent way, so much the worse, when the truth is discovered, for them and for their leadership.

If, therefore, the master-problem in our highly industrialised country be how to bring the economic status of the wage-earner abreast of his political and educational, the master-key to that problem is clearly industrial co-partnery.

IV — Democracy Stabilised

In the preceding pages, an attempt has been made to sketch the main features of the new era, and to indicate the opportunity which opens to a constructive Conservatism to solve the problem it presents. It remains to state as clearly as may be some of the means which lie ready to develop a property-owning democracy, to bring the industrial and economic status of the wage-earner abreast of his political and educational, to make democracy stable and four-square.

These (to mention only subjects of the widest importance) are, it is submitted, four: (1) for the wage-earner, whether in factory or in field, industrial co-partnery, or its halfway house, profit-sharing; (2) for the agriculturist, who seeks to become completely his own master, small ownership; (3) for the rural world as a whole, agricultural co-operation; (4) for the community, to secure it against sudden assault, the Referendum.

One common principle underlies these proposals, making them a practical and accurate expression of the Conservative “view of life,” for each, in its own way and in its own sphere, at once develops the character of the individual, and the stability of the social structure. It may be objected that, of these, co-partnery and profit-sharing cannot successfully be brought into operation by Act of Parliament, but must grow as the nation’s understanding of them grows. So be it—though the extent to which the State can induce the adoption of profit-sharing by legislation has never been zealously or exhaustively explored. All the more natural and essential it is that Conservatism should make this great topic its own: for it offers a means of economic, social and national progress which the State cannot dole out with a spoon. And if Conservatism fails to show the nation an alternative line of advance, it would have to bear the blame should the people come to the conclusion that the only way forward lay along the Socialist path, however desperate and perilous that might be.