What are the main features of British conservatism - Essay Example

What are the main features of British Conservatism British conservatism takes its roots in philosophical ideas and concepts of Edmund Burke. British conservatism has a great impart on other world countries and their economic, political and cultural life. The British conservatism reflects the interests of rural land owning class and protects the Monarchy. The main values of British conservatives are the Angelical Church, family and property. Thus, during 1980s there has been a great shift towards free-market and liberal economic policies. Edmund Burke is transformed from a Whig into the crowning embodiment of everything that is valuable in conservative thought. Nineteenth-century conservatives, discouraged by the young Burke's support of causes such as Catholic emancipation, looked elsewhere for their ideological antecedents. There were, moreover, other writers (John Reeves, for instance) who elaborated a genuine Tory response to the ideas associated with the French Revolution. Burke has become the principal occupant of the Tory (Viereck, 2005). Conservatives have long believed that the operation of this 'second nature' serves to protect a minority from many of the frailties which commonly afflict people (Viereck, 2005). The argument, which took root in the relatively fixed hierarchy of a predominantly agrarian society, is that those born into a elite can, in an unusual degree, acquire knowledge and wisdom, cultivate taste and virtue, and engage in civilized conversation, as well as being imbued from an early age with the responsibilities of public service. They are therefore less likely to be corrupted by power than those untrained in its exercise (Viereck, 2005). British conservatives espouse certain virtues or characteristics: prudence, justice, wisdom, moderation, self-discipline, frugality, industry, piety, honesty, obedience to and respect for authority, duty. Two other important aspects of conservatism are its anti-speculative, anti-theoretical stance and its espousal of some form of aristocracy. Political and social theory is even a sign of an ill-conducted state (Viereck, 2005). The conservative, then, tends to mistrust theoretical answers to problems, preferring the test of time and history. The conservative tends also to mistrust intellectuals, especially liberal and radical ones. Conservatism is a set of political, economic, religious, educational, and other social beliefs characterized by emphasis on the status quo and social stability, religion and morality, liberty and freedom, the natural inequality of men, the uncertainty of progress, and the weakness of human reason" (Viereck 2005, p. 76). For British conservatives, more important is the conservative's position on liberty and equality. Liberty is insisted upon; equality, however, does not exist nor can it exist. As Burke (1955) said, with his customary eloquence, levelers, acting for equality, change and pervert the natural order of things: "In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature" (Burke 1955, p. 56 cited Stanlis 2000, p. 82). This is perhaps the single most significant difference between the conservative and the modern liberal and the socialist. Modern conservatives strongly and positively prize freedom, as do liberals, and they acquiesce to policies and programs of equality because it is necessary or politically expedient to do so. if they bow at all, to what they see as a powerful contemporary force. It may even be said that modern liberals actively espouse equality, whereas modern conservatives actively espouse freedom and liberty and leave equality to liberals (Gamble, 1995). Less remarkable are the ideas of the modern right, for they have long been the stock-in-trade of free-market Conservatives. Those who now favour an enterprise culture share with earlier individualists a fear of creeping socialism, a conviction that the poor benefit from the wealth created by the rich, a belief that welfare coddling erodes self-reliance and places unfair burdens on the more competent members of society, a preference for a state which withdraws from the economy. The only influential Conservative who seriously challenged the Keynesian consensus before the late 1960s was Enoch Powell. In 1958 he resigned from the government because of its refusal to cut public spending, and within a few years was a persistent critic of the planned economy (Viereck, 2005). He continued to advocate selective provision of social security. A free-market economy generates prosperity and maximises freedom, he asserted in speeches made in 1963 and 1964, by calling into play individual choice and initiative. Powell incorporated this system of natural liberty into a picture of the organic community evolving through the accumulated experience of centuries (Gamble, 1995). Conservative advocates of managed capitalism repudiated egalitarianism, because it was not their intention to promote social justice at the expense of economic efficiency. The termination in 1964 of thirteen years of Conservative government prompted a thorough policy review which gave added emphasis to the production rather than the distribution of wealth. Economic growth was to be stimulated by lower rates of direct taxation, greater selectivity in the social services, and constraints on trade union power (Viereck, 2005). This promise to emancipate entrepreneurs from the clutches of the state failed to rally those on the right of the party who were eager for a frontal assault on economic planning. In their view, Heathite policies for modernizing Britain were merely a bluish version of the Labour government's programme of technological innovation. The evacuation of the middle ground had begun. This shift to the right did not stem from a belief that Keynesianism had completely failed in its objectives (Viereck, 2005). A persistent claim in the 1960s was that the interventionist state had been only too successful in spreading affluence through society (Green 2004). The foundations of social order were being undermined as a consequence, for the citizens of an indulgent Welfare State had little respect for those who had traditionally exercised authority. This was said to be a problem which Heathite Conservatives not only failed to address, but seemed intent on aggravating by their preoccupation with economic growth. Hence the call to revive market forces, with their attendant inequalities, was conceived as a dual strategy to rejuvenate the economy and restore social discipline (Gamble, 1995). Free-market capitalism is linked to a mission to defend civilization through denunciation of the permissive society. Traditional values were challenged in the 1960s by a more liberal attitude on such issues as abortion and pornography, campaigns for gay rights and women's liberation, and especially by the dress, music, pot-smoking, communal living, demonstrations and university sit-ins of rebellious youth. For the right, British permissiveness is a symptom of moral decadence, and counter-cultural unruliness demonstrates that self-discipline is weakened by a nursemaid state (Green 2004). A lurid picture is painted of a nation polluted by libertines, enfeebled by egalitarians, and culturally diluted by immigration and politically threatened by the Common Market. The moral flabbiness, hedonistic frivolity and social dislocation of welfare capitalism are contrasted, moreover, with the self-reliance, thrift and discipline of the Victorian enterprise culture. In this way, the offensive against collectivism is incorporated into a plea for the restoration of traditional codes of conduct (Viereck, 2005). The state is to safeguard the British way of life by releasing its hold upon the economy, while taking firmer action against both internal laxity and intrusion from without. This requires the Conservative Party to engage in a patriotic crusade to preserve the organic unity, so that, as of old, entrepreneurial daring might co-exist with the sturdy independence, industry, sobriety and decency of common people (Green 2004). There was nothing irregular in this combination of 'the free economy and the strong state'. Laissez-faire Conservatives since Burke had wanted government to constrain individuals who failed to respond to the imperatives of market forces. In extolling the moral prowess and economic dynamism of Victorian society, too, the emerging New Right was echoing Sir Ernest Benn and others (Ludlam & Smith 1996). For instance, in the 1960s the rhetoric of economic freedom and political order coalesced into an unusually resonant appeal for national revival Conservatives were being urged to abandon illusions about imperial grandeur and the efficacy of social reform, and instead to articulate popular anxieties about race, crime, cultural unrest, licentious behaviour, heavy taxation, welfare officialdom, the EEC and so forth. They were to become, in this view, sentinels of a fortress Britain besieged from within and without. And the instrument at the disposal of the new model army of conservatism in its defence of national identity, according to the radical right, was to be a state which, though stripped of many of its economic functions, had been re-equipped to maintain social cohesion. Romantic nationalism had contracted into Little Englandism (Ludlam & Smith 1996). What eventually swung many Conservatives against collectivism was the collapse of the Heath government. Heath came to power in 1970 with the promise of a 'quiet revolution' that would reverse national decline by reducing public expenditure, rolling back the state from industry, curbing trade unions, and restoring law and order (Ludlam & Smith 1996). State intervention in the economy was increased through subsidies to the unprofitable 'lame ducks' of industry as well as by a comprehensive statutory prices and incomes policy, which was soon challenged by striking miners (Ludlam & Smith 1996). Margaret Thatcher has led an offensive against the middle way not by expounding the intricacies of economic philosophy, but by portraying her mission to restore sound finance and repair the social fabric as the pursuit of common sense. Largely through her simple homilies, usually delivered in strident tones, free-market ideology has both captured the soul of the Conservative Party and been transformed into a potent electoral message (Evans, 2004). Central to this message is the evil of socialism, which in Thatcher's elastic usage means redistributive taxation, demand management, extensive social welfare, and most of the other policies pursued by postwar Conservative as well as Labour governments. After her first administration she claimed to have 'offered a complete change in direction-from one in which the state became totally dominant in people's lives and penetrated almost every aspect-to a life where the state did do certain things. Socialism is denounced through a mixture of economic and moral arguments (Evans, 2004). One reason for a sluggish economy in the 1970s is said to be punitive taxation, which discouraged potential wealth-creators by stifling individual ambition. Lower taxes, according to Thatcher, restore incentives to those risk-takers without whom there would be insufficient prosperity to sustain a safety net of social services for the poor (Evans, 2004). British conservatism has had little concern with human rights as a doctrine. Its contemporary espousal of such rights seems to me to be more acquiescence in strong trends than enthusiastic espousal, as indicated earlier. While researchers view traditional attitudes toward education as a subset of general social attitudes, it does not seem possible to say that traditionalism arose out of modern conservatism (Evans, 2004; Macintyre, 1999). The central emphases are the intellect, tradition, moral values, subject matter, and authority and discipline. The traditionalist believes that education must be aimed at the person's intellectual growth and achievement, at factual knowledge of fundamental subjects, at sound moral development and moral character, and at adequate preparation for later education and life (Ludlam & Smith 1996). Man is conceived as rational, and children have to be taught respect for reason, how to reason, and the stuff with which to reason. Abstraction is important because students must learn to deal with ideas-literary, mathematical, historical, and others. Deduction is also important. The student has to learn general principles. The basic minimum of any large social attitude system, structurally speaking, is two relatively orthogonal dimensions (Scruton, 2007). So, British conservatism has pursued a broadly consistent strategy of pruning the state to enable it to discipline a market-oriented society. To reduce the range of government responsibilities, demand management of the economy has been abandoned, state-owned industries and public utilities, much of the public stock of housing has been sold, employment legislation protecting women, teenagers and the low paid has been repealed, personal taxation has been cut, and-though the Welfare State has not been dismantled-the value of social security benefits has been eroded and market principles have been imported into the National Health Service. Dedicated to the achievement of individualism, they have absolved themselves of the patrician responsibility to attend to the needs of those unable to respond to the imperatives of an enterprise culture. Bibliography 1. Evans, E. J. 2004, Thatcher and Thatcherism. Routledge. 2. Gamble, A. 1995, The Crisis of Conservatism. New Left Review, vol. a, pp. 214-234. 3. Green, E. H.H. 2004, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press. 4. Ludlam, s., Smith, M. J. 1996, Contemporary British Conservatism. St. Martin's Press. 5. Macintyre, C. 1999, Policy Reform and the Politics of Housing in the British Conservative Party 1924-1929. The Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 45, pp. 408-410. 6. Scruton, R. 2007, Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism. Continuum International Publishing Group. 7. Stanlis, P. J. 2000, The Best of Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Gateway Editions. 8. Viereck, P. R. 2005, Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Ideology. Transaction Publishers. Read More