The Tories saw that the nation had changed, and they changed with it. Both the political philosophy of the party and the organization of the party were altered—the latter change being more drastic, more complete, and more rapid than the former.
In the organizational change the reports of the Committee on Party Organization in 1948 and 1949 were of paramount importance. The committee was headed by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, later Viscount Kilmuir and Lord Chancellor.
Before the party could win an election on its altered policy, a reconstruction of its machinery was necessary. To reconstruct along the lines advised by the experts, the Tories first brought in Lord Woolton, who had been a successful Minister of Food during the war. It was a sagacious appointment. As Chairman of the Party Organization, Woolton created a young, enthusiastic body of workers whose propaganda on behalf of the party began to impress the electorate—largely, I suspect, because these workers were so unlike the popular idea of Tories.
While Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, R.A. Butler led the parliamentary fight against the Labor government, a group of young Tories built the party case for the leaders. Techniques of research and propaganda were developed. Promising young men and women from all classes were encouraged.
These younger Conservative tacticians included many who are now ministers. Iain MacLeod, who has been Minister of Health and Minister of Labor, Reginald Maulding, who has been Minister of Supply and Paymaster General, Selwyn Lloyd, the present Foreign Secretary, are representative of the nucleus of talent which was built during those years. They and a score of junior ministers are young, vigorous, and ambitious. They know their own party, and, what is equally important, they know the Labor Party and its leaders.
Talking with the leaders of both the major parties, one is struck by the breadth of the Tories' knowledge of the Labor leaders' personalities, views on national issues, and aspirations. "Know your enemy" is an axiom as wise in politics as in war.
Yet I doubt that all the political intelligence and administrative ability in the Tory ranks would have sufficed without Woolton.
Frederick William Marquis, the first Viscount Woolton, is not, as one might suppose from his imposing name and title, the son of a hundred earls. He is very much a self-made man who fought his way to success in commerce and finance. He is a Jim Farley, rather than a Mark Hanna.
When Woolton took over the chairmanship of the Party Organization, the party was defeated and discredited. He left it after the triumph of May 1955 with Conservative fortunes at their post-war zenith. I have mentioned Woolton's reorganization of the Central and Area offices, but his influence on the party went beyond this. In the years when the Socialists ruled in Whitehall, Woolton transferred to the beaten Conservatives some of his own warmth and vigor. He is an urbane, friendly man; the young Conservatives then emerging from the middle class felt that they were directed not by an aristocratic genius but by a fatherly, knowledgeable elder. Indeed, his nickname was "Uncle Fred." The revived party began to talk like a democratic party and even, occasionally, to act like one. Under Woolton the Central Office in London changed from a remote, austere group controlling the party into a Universal Aunt or Uncle, ready to help constituency parties solve their problems. Yet the leader of the party and the chairman of the Party Organization continued to direct and control.