Ed Miliband’s choice of ‘One Nation’ as the theme of his 2012 Labour party conference speech captured the moment. The note-less delivery was excellent and effective, and the concept of national unity has run through the great sporting summer of 2012, typified by ‘Team GB’ and the 65 Olympic and 120 Paralympic medals won by our athletes. What was also significant was that the speech marked not only the case for Labour being the party that can represent the whole nation but also brought into sharp focus the extent to which the modern-day Conservative party has totally abandoned the One Nation philosophy of their 19th century prime minister Benjamin Disraeli.
Disraeli himself was undoubtedly a colourful figure in politics, not least because of his wide-ranging novels, from his more famous political tracts such as Coningsby and Sybil to his church-themed Lothair. Michael Foot was a great admirer, calling him ‘The Good Tory’ in his famous essay collection Debts of Honour, and even named one of his dogs after him.
It is in Disraeli’s novels that the ‘One Nation’ theme can be initially found. In Coningsby, Disraeli criticised the parliamentarians of the day: ‘they knew as little of the real state of their own country as savages of an approaching eclipse’. He saw clearly that you could not lock power and opportunity into one class in society; society had to act as one to move forward. In Sybil, which had the alternative title The Two Nations, he remarked that ‘the claims of the future are represented by suffering millions.’ Perhaps Foot had it right in Debts of Honour when he remarked that Disraeli had ‘left his shelf-ful of novels to befuddle the Conservative, or Tory, mind for ever more.’
Yet there has been little evidence of confusion in the Tory mind about the One Nation ideal in recent years. Rather, the Conservative Party has, through its deeds, explicitly rejected it. The party vacated the ‘One Nation’ ground over a generation ago. Margaret Thatcher was the antithesis of the One Nation ideal. Her style was to deliberately divide, not to unite. This strategy was evident from her treatment of cabinet colleagues to her industrial and social policies. She deliberately fostered a sense of ‘them and us’, from the purge of the economics ‘wets’ in the Cabinet reshuffle of September 1981, to her description of trade unionists as the ‘enemy within’.
Similarly, the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, with its economic policies driving up unemployment, with the national welfare benefit cap, regional pay, anti-public sector measures, flawed NHS reforms, and divisive approach to education, are trying to drag Britain back to the ‘Two Nations’ society that Disraeli criticised over 150 years ago. Cameron‘s initial attempts to move away from Thatcherism have proved to be empty promises. Of course, he may try to reclaim the One Nation ideal at the Conservative party conference next week. Even if he does, his words will ring hollow.
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Nick Thomas-Symonds is the author of Attlee: A Life in Politics published by IB Tauris (2010). He writes the Labour history column for Progress tweets @NThomasSymonds
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