Tim Evan's excellent book, Conservative Radicalism (Evans, 1996), has always evoked a sense of regret in me ever since I first read it.  Whilst by focusing on the Conservative Party's "youth structures", including their campus activities, it may give to the outsider an exaggerated picture of the influence of libertarianism on the Conservative Party as a whole throughout the 1970s and 1980s, nonetheless is does recall a time when libertarianism was a meaningful element of the Party's internal deliberations, no matter how diluted, corrupted, or simply ignored that this may have become by the time that it reached the Party's leadership.

My first regret is that, as I suggest below, this libertarian element is either no longer present, or, if it is, is now actively scorned.  The second, and more personal, regret is that I could have played some part in this more optimistic era but did not: instead it was the early to mid 1990s before I took my first steps into both proper libertarianism and university life, by which time the moment was long gone.

Attachment To The Party

At the time of writing this essay (July 1999) I remain a member of the Conservative Party, a party which I formally joined in 1987 but for which I had campaigned in elections prior to this.

Coming from a middle-class suburban background, in the late 1970s I started actively supporting the Party, and to some degree Margaret Thatcher personally, largely both because of my fear of militant socialist industrial labour, and also the belief that important sections of the Labour Party, the only other likely party of government, were at best "soft" in their attitude towards the Soviet Union.  During the early period of my membership, up to 1992 at the latest, I was not a libertarian: indeed I doubt that I knew that the term existed.  On many matters it is true that I held views compatible with libertarianism, but on others, notably on what might be called "industrial policy", so strong was my anti-socialism that I was, paradoxically, rather interventionist.

As I became more convinced of the rightness of libertarianism, I became equally aware, indeed I would have been remarkably stupid had I not, that the Conservative Party was an uneasy place for me to be, and so I have never viewed the Party as a serious vehicle for wholehearted libertarianism.  Nonetheless, I continued to be a member of the Party, and to promote the cause of libertarianism within it, for at least three reasons.

First, it appeared to be little or no worse than the other major parties when it came to its attitude on social and personal matters, and rather better, at least by way of rhetoric (Meek, 1998 [1]: 1-2), on economic ones.  The reason why I held this to be of importance was the view that, whilst parliament could and does change the law regarding matters of a personal behavioural nature by a stroke of the legislative pen, no parliament could pass a successful law ordaining an immediately prosperous economy.  (However, now that for the moment all the major parties seem to have agreed on allowing a fairly prosperous and stable mixed economy, non-economic matters have, I think, taken on an increased importance.)

Second, my belief that prospects were poor for a genuinely libertarian party in this country (Meek, 1998 [2]).  This view has since elicited a very robust response from Antoine Clarke, the Independent Libertarian Party's (ILP) founder (Clarke, 1999).  I should note that I am also a paid-up member of the Libertarian Party of the USA (LP/USA).

Third, and not the least important, has been my personal friendship with a number of members of the local Conservative Party.

Estrangement From The Party

However, just as there have been a number of reasons for remaining in the Party, others have amassed to suggest the opposite action.

First, the cumulative effect of several years of attending party meetings and having to listen to views which are not just "not libertarian" but which are positively anti-libertarian.  For example: prices and incomes policies; massive welfare spending; equally massive state intervention in industry (to a much greater extent than anything that I may once have envisaged); anti-free-trade protectionism; racism; homophobia; social authoritarianism; and the ad hoc policy making and campaign platforms which, especially since losing power at national and local levels, have often been little more than shamelessly opportunistic oppositionalism.  Indeed, it says a good deal about my wishful thinking and lack of perceived alternatives that I have remained a member at all.  The final straw in this regard was the now infamous speech by Peter Lilley, the man who I had supported for the party leadership following the resignation of John Major 1997, in which he seemed to repudiate any notion that the Conservative Party was unashamedly wedded to free-market or other non-state economics (see Sean Gabb's review of his speech and its implications (Gabb, 1999 [1])).

The second and third reasons are more specific and recent.  Over the years I have been a member of my Association's Executive Committee and Political Forum, and have sat on ab initio candidate selection boards for a number of elections including the 1997 general election; I was also for some years a member of the local European Constituency Council.  One of my humbler roles has been that of my sub-ward branch's subscription registrar, a role only of any note because the branch has until recently been one of only two within the Association which collects its own subscriptions rather than having this done via the Association itself.  In June this year, as previously, I essayed a few thoughts to go with a basic renewal letter.  In it I noted that there was a need for a party that:

1.  Rejects the notion of "the state" as an active force for social change, viewing it at best as having various emergency or safety-net roles.

2.  Robustly asserts the moral and material superiority of free-market and other voluntary means of "production, distribution, and exchange" over those of the state-owned or state-controlled sectors, most definitely not excluding health, welfare, and education.

3.  Retains a strong "enlightenment" view of material progress, taking the lead in demonstrating that much "green" and "environmentalist" thinking is based on a mixture of socialism-by-the-back-door, pseudo-mystical irrationalism, and outright misanthropy.

Third, which in fact happened a little before the preceding, was the Euro-election held on the 10th June.  Despite everything, including re-reading a powerful article by Dr Gabb offering his thoughts about the election (Gabb, 1999 [2]), I was minded, albeit just about and with a very heavy heart, to vote Conservative that day.  However, that morning I received through the post a flyer for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) along with a brief hand-written appeal from a gentleman who I admire and whose name would be known to many readers of this present essay.  And so, having thought about it further, that afternoon I voted UKIP.

(I should explain that my opposition to the EU is not due to any crude nationalism, but for other reasons including: the utter insanity of a one-size-fits-all economic and monetary policy across an heterogeneous Europe; that the EU is a corporatist's dream, being in its effective workings wholly immune from public scrutiny and devoted to bureaucratic or quasi-bureaucratic control (see the entry for "Corporatism" in Bealey, 1999: 89-90); that its proposed criminal justice system seems to strip away the last vestiges of protection for the individual against the state; and that, especially in this country, its leading supporters have felt obliged and very willing to prosecute their cause by means of deception.)

I am now in my mid thirties, and this was the first time since I have been able to vote that I have done so for a party other than the Conservative Party.  (I abstained at the previous Euro-election, held under first-past-the-post rules, at least in part due to an intense personal dislike of the Conservative candidate.  An unpleasant individual even by Euro-federalist standards, he lost the election and has subsequently found a more congenial home with the Liberal Democrats.)

To many readers this will seem a trivial matter, but to me it meant a profound split with the political actions, if not thoughts, of my entire adult life.  I felt perhaps a little like a sincere communist finally forced to break with his party after the Hungarian Uprising: an analogy made stronger by conveying the idea of someone who, year after year previously, had gritted his teeth and kept up the support even in the knowledge of what the Party was really doing.

What Now?

A good question indeed.  The reader may well enquire why I do not simply resign from the Party or let my membership lapse when it comes up for renewal next year.  Perhaps I shall, although one of the reasons for staying in it noted above, personal friendship, still exercises a power that possibly it should not.  I think too that I want the Party to have to go to the trouble of actually expelling me: to say actively and publicly that there is no place within it anymore for libertarianism, and that Dr Evans was writing about foolish dreams long forgotten in the pursuit of power and an efficiently despotic state.  Or maybe, taking into consideration my now publicly admitted recent voting behaviour, I'll be expelled for that reason.

But where, if anywhere, would I go?  Despite Mr Clarke's trenchant remarks, I remain dubious about the prospects for the ILP.  But then I belong to the LP/USA, not out of any belief in its imminent electoral success, but both out of solidarity with other libertarians and also simply because it makes me feel good.  Or perhaps I should just give up on party-politics altogether?

In any event, what I do know is this: whatever connection there may have been in the past, there is not now any "proper" relationship between the Conservative Party and libertarianism correctly stated.  And let me hear nothing about "changing the Party from within": statist authoritarianism and lack of integrity are not malign elements within the modern Conservative Party: they are the Party.  Paul Johnson (1999) was surely correct when recently he noted that party leader William Hague had "… turned intellectual bankruptcy into a principle of action …" and that "when the vision fades … for each party member the organising principle becomes:  what's in it for yours truly?"

The Conservative Party may still be better than a New Labour Party which, in its 1997 general election manifesto (p2), made the terrifying assertion that it was "… the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole", or it may still be better than the flatulent populism of the Liberal Democrats, but there comes a point when such relativism will not do.  That point, for me at least, finally came this summer.

References

BEALEY F. The Blackwell Dictionary of Political Science,  Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1999.

CLARKE A.  The Independent Libertarian Party: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Being Among Other Things, A Reply to Nigel Meek), Tactical Notes No. 25,   Libertarian Alliance, London, 1999.

EVANS T.  Conservative Radicalism: A Sociology of Conservative Party Youth Structures and Libertarianism, 1970-1992,  Berghahn Books, Oxford:, 1996.

GABB S.  (1)  a review of The Butler Memorial Lecture, 1999, given by Peter Lilley, in Free Life, No. 30, London, May 1999, pp15-17.

GABB S. (2)  "A Vote for Independence", in Free Life, No. 31, London, June 1999, p1.

JOHNSON P. "The Death of Ideas", in The Daily Mail, London, 3rd July 1999, pp12-13.

MEEK N.G.  (1)  ‘Society' Does Not Exist (And If It Did It Shouldn't), Political Notes No. 144, Libertarian Alliance, London, 1998..

MEEK, N.G.  (2)  The Libertarian Party of Great Britain: An Idea Whose Time Has NOT Come, Tactical Notes No. 22, Libertarian Alliance, London, 1998.