How the ragged troused philanthropists were right...

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'The present system means joyless drudgery, semi-starvation, rags and premature death; and they vote for it and uphold it. Let them have what they vote for! Let them drudge and let them starve!'.

So proclaimed Frank Owen of the 'ragged trousered philanthropists' who had the audacity to vote Conservative. And thus was born the myth of the Tory working class - trained, almost dog-like, to nod to their betters and defer to their thoughts.

It always seemed that 'the left' are deeply concerned at the prospect that any 'worker' might vote for a political party other than one 'of the left' (whatever that means). After all, Tories "despise the working class", how can a member of that class vote for them?

All this explains why the Conservative politicians for whom 'the left' reserve the greatest vitriol - even hatred - are those who challenge their perspective. When Norman Tebbit, Eric Pickles, Patrick McLaughlin or even Nadine Dorries speak up the sound of left-wing hackles rising can be heard right across the nation. These people are the acme of class traitorhood, the very personification of false consciousness, the quislings of the working class.

The left is quite comfortable with David Cameron and George Osborne because they are what Tories should be: inherited wealth, top public school, Oxford, horse-riding - all the stereotypes of left-wing iconography. It makes for an easy campaign, roll out Dennis Skinner ranting about privilege, talk about 'out of touch Tory toffs' and add in images of top hats (or that over-used Bullingdon photograph - I wonder whose copyright it is, they should have made a fortune).

The problem is that it really isn't as simple as that, this class divide malarkey. For sure we can show people about the idea of surplus value with three slices of bread and a knife but that doesn't make it true nor does it put a roof over someone's head and a meal on the table. More to the point Norman, Eric and Nadine are proof that, not only does the Conservative Party not "despise the working class" but people from that class can get to powerful positions in the Party. This is not how it should be!

Today a man earning fifty or sixty thousand a year as a skilled operator working on shift is considered working class (and will most likely be a member of that working class institution Unite the Union) whereas a man earning half that amount from his fields is a rentier ("boo-hiss"). The argument to those ragged trousered ones a hundred years ago - that they should throw off those capitalist shackles - no longer stands since the ragged trousers have been replaced with designer clothes, two weeks in Tenerife and a new (-ish) Audi.

It seems the 'philanthropists' were right - invest in the free system and everyone gains. We don't know whether Owen was right (although there has been the occasional hint as to socialism's inadequacy as a system) but it doesn't matter because capitalism worked. The 'conditions of the working man' (the improvement of which Disraeli had set as the Conservative Party's mission) were raised and continue to rise.

We will continue to see the myth of the working-class Tory peddled - the idea that independence, self-reliance, hard work, decency and choice represent some sort of misplaced confidence in the capitalist system, a confidence that will fail the working man. And the belief that some syndicalist wonderland will come forth from the casting aside of capitalism.

Those values - working class Tory values - that the left rejects are in the soul of the Conservative Party. But we are, above everything, pragmatic and know that the consequence of Frank Owen's system is not Utopia but Venezuela.

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Tories wouldn't vote for UKIP if the Party listened to what they are saying

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You disparage the electorate at your peril – tell them they’re committing one of the great sins of political correctness (racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia and so forth) and they look you in the metaphorical eye and tell you politely to shut up and go away. And this lesson is especially important for the Conservative Party because those slightly grumpy, politically incorrect voters are part of our core audience.

So when we adopt a superior position – proclaiming in the cause of “detoxification” that we will be saints of political correctness – we annoy that audience. Now, in times past they’d nowhere to go – just as Tony Blair could patronise the traditional, working-class, council-estate dwelling Labour voter secure in the knowledge that he’d nowhere to go, the current Conservative leadership seems hell-bent on doing down my sort of lower middle-class, beer-drinking, cigar smoking, steak-eating Tory.

The problem is that UKIP has provided a place for those voters to turn. And don’t give me all the “elections are won from the centre ground” twaddle. I’ve seen what the residents on my ward – a ward that returned a Conservative councillor yesterday with nearly 60% of the vote – have to say about the issues. Not much mention of climate change, gay marriage or constitutional reform. But a great deal of worry about immigration, crime, jobs and, of course, Europe. For the older of these Tory folk, there’s the stress over living on a fixed income when government policies have led to higher inflation. And everyone is annoyed by ever higher taxes – Granny-tax, Pasty-tax, fuel duty, the cost of fags and the price of a pint.

These people – let me remind you again that they are good Tories at heart – look at the government and see waste. They look at the welfare system and see spongers. They like the NHS but think it over-filled with pointless form-filling and political correctness rather than focusing on the core point – treating us when we’re ill. And these people would rather like to see the occasional policeman other than on the television. You know – on the beat, dealing with noisy kids, catching burglars and keeping an eye out for trouble.

I could continue – talk about schools and how the refusal to accept selection fails young people, ask why we send millions to India in aid when even the government there says they don’t want it and enquire gently as to how it is that we can deport an autistic kid to the USA but can’t send a known terrorist supporter back to Jordan.

If the Conservative Party wants to become a party of the wealthy shires – of Beds, Herts, Bucks and Surrey – then it’s going about it the right way. If it wants to remain relevant up here in the bit of the North no-one ever mentions – decent, family-oriented, hard-working, not especially wealthy but OK – then it needs to stop implying that UKIP are the BNP in blazers and start engaging with the issues and problems that are making very loyal Tories turn away in sorrow and vote for another party.

In our survey of Bingley Rural residents – not scientific but a pointer none-the-less – we’ve seen response after response indicating these very concerns. And a goodly chunk saying they might just consider voting UKIP.  Respond to their concerns – on Europe, crime, immigration, schools and taxes – and they’ll stay loyal and contribute to a real Tory government after 2015. Ignore those worries and we'll have another disastrous Labour government.

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A polite request from Yorkshire to David Skelton and Policy Exchange

It’s all well and good talking as if the Conservative Party has any history of electing MPs in Durham – here’s David Skelton from Policy Exchange:

I was brought up in the former steel working town of Consett in County Durham. Like many working class towns across the North, it was felt that if you were born and brought up in Consett, the Conservatives were not the party for you.

They were regarded as the party of the South and the party of the rich. To many people in Consett, the Tory party was the party that had presided over the closure of the steelworks and behaved as though it didn’t care about the social consequences. Many in the town still associate Conservatives with deindustrialisation, unemployment and the social problems that followed in their wake.

But the truth is that County Durham (other than Darlington) hasn’t elected a Conservative since before the first world war - not voting Tory isn't exactly a recent phenomenon. Some parts of the County such as Bishop Auckland have never elected a Tory. Not even once.

It seems to me that our strategy should concentrate on places where there’s a slight chance of us getting elected – which means that David, instead of getting all misty eyed about his upbringing and pontificating about industrial policy, should come and talk to those of us who actually have got Conservatives elected in Yorkshire.

If Policy Exchange and David Skelton want to learn about the North perhaps they could do what the Joseph Rowntree Trust has done – set up shop in Bradford with a ten year research programme looking in some detail at the needs, wants and aspirations of communities in the area.

It would be better than sounding grand from the glories of London.

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"Fake Tories" - why Sarah Wollaston isn't a Conservative

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We have heard – perhaps less so recently – David Cameron’s call for personal responsibility. It may at times seem like mere rhetoric, a call to the traditional Tory gallery but to those of us brought up in the Party it is a message that matters. Along with independence, tolerance and freedom sits responsibility as a central element in the pantheon of Conservative values. You cannot stand up and lay claim to being a conservative if you do not accept these values. And that these values are individual values not collective values.

Only a person can be independent, tolerant, freedom-loving and responsible, these are not values that can be ascribed to the collective. Yet there are those – we’ll call them “Fake Tories” – who promote ideas that directly contradict, even deny, these values. By way of example, here is the MP for Totnes writing (why am I unsurprised by this) in the Guardian:

The alcohol strategy is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change Britain for the better. If we waste it with ineffective "industry partnerships" and voluntary codes we should not delude ourselves that local public health initiatives can have any effect. Strong central action on pricing is essential, combined with the ability to introduce locally relevant measures on availability and treatment.

Now leaving aside that Ms Wollaston plays fast and loose with the evidence (I love that she acknowledges the reduction in alcohol consumption but says that it is making no difference – a degree of epidemiological ignorance I don’t expect from someone with her superior educational background), she absolutely refuses to see that the problem isn’t the drinking. For sure the drinking helps but the behaviour is learned:

Intoxicated people have much greater control over their behavior than generally recognized. For example, in those societies in which people don't believe that alcohol causes disinhibition, intoxication never leads to unacceptable behavior. 

Research in the US has found that when males are falsely led to believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they tend to become more aggressive. And when men and women falsely believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they experience greater sexual arousal when watching erotica.

The issue is one of personal responsibility rather than something to be passed off onto an inanimate third party – alcohol. People act with freedom – something we Tories believe in – by choosing to drink but not always responsibly. Therefore we should deal with the irresponsibility – which in Ms Wollaston’s pathology is a public order issue. It should be treated as such.

Others – and our ‘Fake Tory’ describes this too – are irresponsible enough to drink so much that they damage their health. This isn’t a new phenomenon – alcoholism has been around almost as long as booze itself – and ultimately it is for the individual to embrace the consequences and either die or else do something about it.

In the end – as Conservatives – we believe that people make their own choices and take the consequences of those choices. We do not believe that the inanimate – let alone society – made us do it, our choices are not forced but free. If Ms Wollaston believes otherwise – and the article in the Guardian suggests that this is the case – then she isn’t a real Conservative but just another social democrat, another person who believes that the state must force, must direct the choices we make.

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On working class Tories...

Where once the mine trains went is now overgrown, disused - a feature of a "country park". This is a bit of what remains of Shipley Collieries near Heanor in Derbyshire. It's where my Grandfather had his first job and the business for which he worked up to - as he put it - him being nationalised. I guess he was a working-class Tory - despite much of that working life being in management or one sort or another.

Not like me - I'm not remotely posh but, as these things go, just as remote (two generations) from being working class. But I like to think that there's a little bit of me that empathises with the ideas of self-reliance, independence and patriotism that typify the outlook of the working-class Tory. And I understand the scorn some working-class Tories have for fellow politicians who seem to want to hide their humble roots. To pretend that having started out nearer the bottom of the pile isn't something to be ashamed of, that that Peter Sarstedt kind of message - be proud of your roots, your accent and your heritage - is something we should all hold dear.

So yes, I like those of my Tory colleagues who don't make out to be better than where they come from - the sort like my Grandfather who made it on their own merits and abilities rather than on Daddy's cash and contacts.

So here's to Norman, Eric, David and Patrick. And yes, Nadine too. Proper working-class Tories.

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On nearly 35 years of being "Tory Scum" - and looking forward to 35 more!

Not a big celebratory year, I know but worth marking none the less!

I joined the Conservative Party – signed up as “Tory Scum” – in 1976. Eden Park Young Conservatives were in need of fresh blood and, what with my Dad being the ward councillor, I got roped in. Not that I was complaining as it was an enjoyable time – good social events and the run in to a momentous General Election in 1979.

So when I hear the protesting students crying “Tory Scum here we come”, my eyes mist over a little as 35 years of this, the left’s most plaintive cry, springs to the front of my memory. I remember the joys of trot-baiting at university, the pleasures of running picket lines just for the hell of it and the echoing sound of the massed militants (well all six or seven of them anyway) chanting “Tory Scum, Tory Scum” as one or other of us spoke at a meeting.

I remember smuggling Patrick Wall into Hull University (from where – despite him being the MP for half the students there – he was banned for being a particularly right-wing kind of “Tory Scum”) and the Union trying to censure us under their “No Platform for Tory Scum” policy. Those were the days!

I remember Luton’s three or four SWP members threatening to hound John Carlisle during the 1983 General Election – and then wondering where they were at the meetings we held in Flitwick, Pulloxhill, Westoning and Barton-le-Clay. Seems we might be “Tory Scum” but at least we understood the geography of North Luton constituency. Delightful!

And I recall the cry resounding round Bradford as Eric Pickles tried to drag the City Council from the age of metropolitian socialism into a time where delivering services to the public took priority over political campaigning. And I smiled as “Tory Scum” was thrown – almost with gay abandon – across the Council chamber once I got elected in 1995.

For me, yelling “Tory Scum, Here We Come” is an admission once again of socialism’s defeat. There is no rational, intelligent argument in this dystopic, dehumanising creed’s favour so its advocates must resort to insult – to hurling abuse, to fear, aggression and destruction as a substitute for debate and discussion.

Socialism died in 1989 – us “Tory Scum” were proved right. And when I hear it now, I smile.

…and kick socialism’s corpse once more just to make sure its dead.

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An Angry Tory writes....

Do you get angry sometimes? In our household anger is an ever present danger – usually brought on by the reading of a broadsheet newspaper or the watching of some television news programme. It is the “WTFFFFFFFF are those idiots doing now” kind of anger. The “Basil Fawlty banging his head against the wall” kind of abject despair at the total lunacy of those who pretend to govern us.

And, dearly beloved reader, we have a General Election coming up. A chance to express our anger through the planting of a livid cross against the name of the Tory candidate. A chance to rid ourselves of the most discredited, incompetent, self-serving and mendacious government since the 18th Century.

And when we’ve expressed that anger…let’s hold our breath…and hope…and pray (if that’s your bag)…that Mr Cameron will do what he says he’ll do. And as we exhale let us – very loudly and persistently – hold the new Tory government to account. Let’s demand some proper Tory stuff:

Less government – as Tories we know our governors can’t manage their way out from a rice pudding so let’s get the private sector working in proper markets to start delivering the standard of healthcare, education, transport and local government that the amount we cough up in taxes would justify

Less politics – as Tories we find politics boring and would much rather be making or spending money. So let’s have fewer MPs, Lords, full time councillors, quangocrats, so-called businessmen brought in to show the public sector how to be efficient, MEPs and all the other multifarious suckers on the taxpayers’ teat

Less law – god knows we don’t want to get like the USA and become a country run by and for lawyers. Let’s have more juries, more lay tribunals and fewer expensive supreme courts, Euro courts and other parasites on the body of society.

Less planning – and not just the town and country variety (although that serves to benefit no-one – not the public and not the developer: just bloody bureaucratic rules) but all the other attempts to guess the results of what millions and millions of ordinary people do in making billions and billions of private choices.

…if we get these things Britain will be a better place. And if we shout loud enough we will get that better place - if we don't stay angry the "great and the good" will win again.