The Conservative Party arouses and holds some strange allegiances. I remember Michael Foot, the editor of the left-wing weekly Tribune, saying that in his old constituency of Devonport there were solid blocks of Conservative votes in the poorest areas. Foot could not understand it. The rather contemptuous explanation offered by a Conservative Party organizer was: "Why not? People who are poor aren't necessarily foolish enough to buy this socialist clap-trap."
The Conservatives have been making inroads into the new middle class created by the boom of 1953-5. This group emerging from the industrial working class was formerly strongly pro-Labor. There are indications that the more prosperous are changing their political attitudes as their incomes and social standing improve.
The Conservatives concentrate on a national appeal. Labor by its origins is a class party. In a country as homogeneous as Britain, the Conservative boast that they stand for all the people rather than for merely one class or one geographical area is effective. To this the Tories add the claim that they are the party most suited by training and experience to deal with the international problems faced by the nation.
This assumption of the right to rule is not so offensive to Britons as it might be to Americans. There is little historical basis for it. If an aristocrat, Winston Churchill, led Britain to victory in World War II, a small-town Welsh lawyer, David Lloyd George, was the leader in World War I. Nevertheless, there is a tendency—perhaps a survival of feudalism—among some Britons to believe that their affairs are better handled by a party with upper-class education and accents. And of course the Conservatives look the part. Mr. Macmillan, the Prime Minister, is a far more impressive figure than Hugh Gaitskell, who probably would be Prime Minister in a Labor government. The accents, the clothes, the backgrounds of the Tory leaders give the impression of men born to conduct government. Brilliant journalists have argued that the class they represent is unrepresentative, and that the Suez crisis proved its inability to understand the modern world. Surely the present Conservative leaders and their predecessors have been guilty of quite as many errors as the Socialists and Liberals of the past. However, they give the impression of competence. As any politician knows, even in the most enlightened of democracies such impressions are as important as the most brilliant intellects or the wisest programs.
The Conservatives enjoy another important political advantage. Until the present the leaders of the party generally have been drawn from one class, the old upper middle class. They went to the same schools, served in the same regiments. Families like the Cecils, the Churchills, the Edens, the Macmillans intermarry. The closeness of the relationship breeds coherence. Basically there is an instinctive co-operation when a crisis arises. The manner in which the Tories closed ranks after Sir Anthony Eden's resignation was an example.
The upper ranks of the civil service, of the Church of England, and of the armed services are drawn largely from the same class. Usually this facilitates the work of government when the Tories are in power. But recently there has been a change. In their drive to broaden the base of the party, the Conservatives have introduced to the House of Commons a number of young politicians who do not share the Eton-Oxford-Guards background of their leaders.
The environment and education of this group and their supporters in the constituencies is much different. For Eton or Harrow, substitute state schools or small, obscure public schools. Some did go to Oxford and Cambridge, but they moved in less exalted circles than the Edens or Cecils. They are usually businessmen who have made their way in the world without the advantages of the traditional Tory background, and they are highly critical of the tendency to reserve the party plums for representatives of its more aristocratic wing.
They seem to be further to the right in politics than such "aristocrats" as Macmillan, Butler, Eden, or Lord Salisbury. They have risen the hard way, and they are more interested in promoting the interests of the business groups for which they speak than in the traditional Tory concept of speaking for the whole nation. This national responsibility on the part of the "aristocrats" was in many ways a liberal attitude. Macmillan and Butler, for instance, appear much more responsive and tolerant on the subject of trade unions than most members of the new group.
As the power of this group increases—and it will increase as the Conservative Party continues to change—sharper disputes on policy, especially economic policy, can be expected. This encourages some Socialists, naturally sensitive on the point, to believe that their opponents are headed for a period of fierce feuding within the party. Their optimism may be misplaced.
The Tories are adept at meeting rebellion and absorbing rebels. The indignant "red brick" rebel of today may be the junior minister of tomorrow whose boy is headed for Eton. Despite the advent of these newcomers, the party does not appear so vulnerable to schism as does the Labor Party with its assortment of extreme-left-wing intellectuals, honest hearts and willing hands from the unions, and conscientious and intelligent mavericks from the middle class.