These are the British

by Drew Middleton

Conservative Party policy, as it has evolved in the past decade, has moved to the left. This is not solely because, as the Labor Party often charges, it wanted to steal or adopt parts of the Socialist platform. A great many of the young men in the Tory party in 1945 sympathized with many of the Socialists' policies. "I'd have voted Labor myself if I hadn't been a Tory candidate," one of them reflected a decade later. What offended the Tories' self-esteem was that great, revolutionary changes were being made in British life by the Labor government and they, who had always assumed a special right to rule Britain, were not making the changes.

A large part of Conservative political tactics in the late forties consisted of negative criticism. The parlous state of the British economy, the withdrawals from India and Burma, the decline of British influence and power in the world offered great opportunities to a party that traditionally combines business interests and experience with an assumption of omniscience in the direction of international affairs. At the same time, the work of the back-room boys in the Central Office on the solution of Britain's economic difficulties, expressed in speeches of party leaders, gave the impression that the Conservatives, whatever their past faults, were moving to the left in their approach to the economic problem.

The present leadership of the Conservative Party—Harold Macmillan, Lord Salisbury, R.A. Butler, and a number of the younger ministers—is well to the left of the economic position assumed by the party in the 1945 election. Indeed, the complaint of the party's middle-class rank and file that the Conservatives are carrying out a pseudo-socialist program rather than a truly Tory one is an important factor in estimating the party's ability to retain power.

A word is needed here about "left" and "right" as applied to British parties. Although the Conservative Party is frequently compared with the Republican Party in the United States and has many similarities of outlook, the Conservatives are, on the whole, well to the left of the Republicans. Thinking in the Labor Party, moreover, is well to the left of both Democratic and Republican parties in the United States.

After the Conservative victory in the election of 1955 it was generally expected that the party would move toward the right. Critics will seize upon British intervention in Egypt as evidence of such a movement. But it can be asked whether a policy designed to bring down a dictator—in this case President Nasser of Egypt—when it was evident that the United Nations was unable or unwilling to do so can be classified as a right-wing, reactionary policy. Similarly, the movement of the British government under the leadership of Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan toward entry into the European common market can scarcely be considered an example of right-wing extremism. The attacks on this policy by the newspapers controlled by Lord Beaverbrook, the most imperialist of the press lords, testify to the anger aroused by the progressive internationalism of the Conservatives.

No one can gainsay the existence of a strong nationalistic element within the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and in the country. This element rebelled against the Anglo-Egyptian treaty by which Britain agreed to quit Egypt. It supported the decision to intervene in Egypt. Parenthetically it should be noted that the moving spirits in this decision were Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan, men who, by conviction, belonged to the progressive wing of the party. Finally, when the government agreed first to a cease-fire and then to a withdrawal from Egypt, this group censured both the United Nations and the United States for their part in bringing this about.

Given the character of the Conservative Party's support in the country, the presence of such a group within the party in Parliament is natural. But do not discount the adaptability of the party. When Harold Macmillan formed his government in January 1957 he found it possible, with the approval of the party, to include in it both Sir Edward Boyle, who had resigned from the government over the Egyptian invasion, and Julian Amery, who had rebelled against the government because it listened to the United States and the United Nations and halted the invasion.

The Conservatives' approach to Britain's economic and financial problems is well to the left of the policies followed by their pre-war predecessors. Britain's is a managed economy to an extent that would shake the late Stanley Baldwin and the present Secretary of the Treasury in Washington. Mr. Macmillan and his ministers are not secret readers of Pravda. They are political realists who understand the changes in power which have taken place in Britain, who understand that the Council of the Trades Union Congress is as important today as the Federation of British Industries.

The Labor Party, it often seems, suffers from an inability to understand the changes that have taken place in their opponents. It may be, as Socialists contend, that the changes are only a façade hiding the greedy, imperious capitalists beneath. But to an outsider it seems that the Labor Party pays too much attention to the surviving extremists of the Tory party and not enough to the venturesome, progressive younger men who will inherit the party. Surely the appeal of the Conservative Party to the electorate is based more upon the personalities and policies of these rising stars than upon the reactionaries of the right wing.