Daniel Finkelstein on British Conservatism

You begin with a book on the history of the Conservative Party.

Yes, let’s start with An Appetite for Power by John Ramsden. Actually, this one book is acting as a substitute for six. Longman has produced a fabulous history of the Conservative Party in six volumes, of which John Ramsden wrote three; and An Appetite for Power is a single volume drawn from that. The series is a stunningly detailed history, which starts with constituency organisation and the power structure inside the Conservative Party and moves on to ideas. As the Conservative Party is primarily an organisational rather than an ideological body, that is a very good way of studying it. 

Ramdsen’s title, An Appetite for Power, reflects what he regards as the one consistent characteristic of Conservative organisation: an instinct for what people believe and a willingness to adapt to it; and he says the Conservative Party has done that over and over again, never remained adhering to some strict ideology for very long periods of time. And I think that’s a very adept reading of the Party, and one that is particularly interesting now. It was written during the long years of opposition before David Cameron became leader. John Ramsden recently died but he anticipated absolutely what the Conservative Party has now done. The Labour Party showed that kind of appetite for power under Tony Blair but normally Labour is much more ideological.

So, the idea which has gained currency, that Cameron sat down and studied the New Labour manual to modernise his party, is all very well but, in fact, the Conservative Party repeatedly adapts to gain power?

Exactly. A very important part of understanding David Cameron is that he is part of a very recognisable Conservative tradition of adaptability. He also owes quite a lot to what we might call a myth of Disraeli, which is the idea that the Conservative Party became a party of the people with Disraeli. Actually, Disraeli wasn’t quite that populist, a social Conservative. There has been that strand of populism in the party’s history but it was more important in the myth created about the Conservative Party. It wasn’t really about Disraeli in practice. That’s brought out very well in Ramsden’s book.

Your next choice is The Great Melody by Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Every Conservative has to read Edmund Burke, and, in particular, the Reflections on the French Revolution, a timeless and brilliant statement of Conservative ideas. Conor Cruise O’Brien has produced a book that is simultaneously an anthology of Burke and a biography. It was a simply brilliant idea. So much of Conservatism is not abstract, so to try to separate ideas from context or biography never quite works. What Conor Cruise O’Brien has done here is reconnect the two. There are brilliantly chosen selections from Burke’s major works, for example, the Reflections, his letter to the electors of Bristol, his impeachment of Warren Hastings.

What Conor Cruise O’Brien tries to do is to explain what appears at first to be an odd difference, which is that Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution, having been an opponent of the French Revolution. I believe that almost all of Conservatism can be understood by saying that there’s a difference between the American Revolution and the French one. 

The difference is between attempting to assert democratic rights and limit the power of government within an evolving system versus attempting to achieve the overthrow of all institutions and the entire class structure using blood. Burke predicted not only what happened in the French Revolution but what has happened over and over again in different revolutions of the similar kind. You could just as easily have his ‘Reflections on the Cultural Revolution in China’, for example.

So I think Burke is unmissable and particularly in this form.

You said it’s not helpful to divide the ideas from the context but is that unique to Conservatism? Is it ever a good idea?

One of the reasons why there is no such thing as a single international conservatism is because conservatism is so rooted in the institutions and values of particular places, in preserving them, in trying to understand the essence of a nation. And the essence of nations is different. So Republicanism in America and Conservatism in Britain will be different; and they reflect their nations; they are trying to preserve and advance vastly different things.

So you can see that Nixon’s cloth-coat Republicanism, for example, might be very different from contemporaneous Conservatives in the UK, reflecting more support for the royal family. And Newt Gingrich’s revolution, and the anti-Washington sentiment, has echoes in British Conservatism but it’s not the same because Britain isn’t the same. It doesn’t have a government like Washington and it doesn’t have a federal system. So Conservatives here have often employed quite centralising policies, whereas in America they are for States’ rights.

Your next book is very British.

I have deliberately chosen to be a bit arcane with my third book: Reggie by Lewis Baston. If you want to realise how conservative movements all over the world are exceptionalist in the same way that Republicans believe in American exceptionalism, then nothing could be better than reading histories of obscure British politicians. This is a book about Reginald Maudling, who was a very senior politician, singularly undynamic – so much so that when punched by a Member of Parliament over Bloody Sunday [the shooting in Northern Ireland of protesters by members of the British forces] because he was Home Secretary at the time, somebody shouted, ‘My God! She’s woken him up!’

This is a biography that takes you right into the heart of 1950s Conservatism in the same way that Robert Caro’s life of Lyndon Johnson takes you right into the Senate of the same period – it is very difficult to do if you live in another country but very important to understanding something as nationally individualist as conservatism.

Maudling was twice a contender for leader of the Party, once in a very serious way, and he lost because really, although he was thought to be the finest politician, he was thought to be too lazy.