The lesson of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Posted by Guest Blogger on Wednesday, 29 June 2005 05:06.

Should British conservatives continue to give their allegiance to the British Conservative Party? Peter Hitchens has decided the answer is no. In a recent Spectator column, Hitchens deplores the failure of the Conservative Party to stand up to the “progressive consensus.”

Hitchens believes that the Conservative Party has been rendered ineffective, in part, by the existence of “contradictory wings”. He writes,

“The Tories’ position is hopeless. No man living could conceivably unify the party’s contradictory wings. Europhile or Eurosceptic, pro- or anti-marriage, market enthusiast or moralist – each of these quarrels is fundamental and cannot be settled by compromise. To refuse to resolve them is to ask to be dragged, by events beyond our control, into places we never decided to go.”

Hitchens also thinks that the Conservatives have failed to even identify the most important issues facing Britain. He complains that the Tory party,

“has either supported or failed to oppose all the most important actions of New Labour. These are constitutional, moral and cultural, and they are the real issue.”

Hitchens is even brave enough to criticise Margaret Thatcher in this regard. According to Hitchens,

“Margaret Thatcher certainly did not win the culture wars. She did not even fight them. On the great battlefields of marriage and the family, education and culture, morality and law, the Tories have been utterly outmanoeuvred and bypassed. Because they did not fight, they co-operated in the destruction of their own electorate.”

The solution proposed by Hitchens is to establish a new, more consistently conservative movement in Britain. He wants this movement to be much clearer in its ideas and its programme. He asserts, for instance, that,

“Once, being a disposition rather than a movement might have sufficed. But in these revolutionary times, faced with opponents wholly committed to political correctness ... it is not enough. You cannot properly defend, say, constitutional monarchy if you have no idea why you believe in it and do not understand why your opponents hate it.”

Part 2 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lord Randolph Churchill

The one thing I have to add to Hitchens’ observations is that the same maladies were also present in the historical Conservative Party. In other words, I’m not sure that the Conservative Party has ever been a reliable instrument for upholding conservative politics.

I’d like to present just one small example to illustrate this. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was a nineteenth century English poet and political activist. He was an opponent of British imperialism for the wrong reason – he liked to identify in a highly idealised and reverential way with “the other” and against his own people.

For instance, on a trip to India he declared that the Hindus were intellectually “far our superiors” and that the conversation of an old Indian he met “might have been that of a Socrates.”

Similarly when Sir Herbert Stewart defeated the forces of the Mahdi in the Sudan Blunt was deeply depressed. He labelled the British forces “A mongrel scum of thieves ... without beliefs, without traditions” whereas “on the other side” were men,

“with the memory of a thousand years of freedom, with chivalry inherited from the Saracens, the noblest of ancestors, with a creed the purest the world ever knew, worshipping God and serving him with arms like the heroes of the ancient world they are.”

In fact, the Mahdi drew considerable support from slave traders upset by the British banning slavery, and the Mahdi himself did not represent any kind of traditional national or religious culture, but instead,

“maintained that his movement was not a religious order that could be accepted or rejected at will, but that it was a universal regime, which challenged man to join or be destroyed. The Mahdi modified Islam’s five pillars to support the dogma that loyalty to him was essential to true belief.”

Perhaps you can see now why Blunt’s own daughter described his political opinons as follows:

“He was completely at the mercy of oriental deceit and Irish blarney and believed every woeful tale of oppression by the British government, however fantastic. A born agitator he became an ideal “bomb thrower” for every schemer who dared not throw his own explosives, and his house soon became famous as a hotbed of conspiracy for the scum of every nation.”

In 1885 Blunt had a Afghan sheikh staying at his house (whom he later had to throw out for attacking several Oriental friends with an umbrella. Blunt called this sheikh “a man of genius” whom he felt “highly honoured” to have as a guest despite his being “a wild man”.)

Blunt wanted a seat in Parliament and so went to see Lord Randolph Churchill, who at this time was the leader of the Tory Democrat group in the Conservative Party. According to Blunt, when he asked Churchill what Tory Democracy actually was, Churchill replied,

“That is a question I am always in a fright lest someone should put it to me publicly. To tell the truth I don’t know myself what Tory Democracy is. But I believe it is principally opportunism. But say you are a Tory Democrat and that will do.”

Encouraged by Churchill, Blunt nominated himself as a conservative candidate. He was interviewed by a party committee and by a vote of 16 to 1 he was accepted as a candidate over two others.

Even during the election campaign Blunt maintained his anti-English prejudices. He described the election process as “a terrible come-down after the politics of the golden East, or even of an Arab tribe” and he described his own supporters as “men of no position, character, or intelligence.”

He attempted to raise the level of things by introducing some Islamic culture, even to the point that “At one meeting the speakers harangued an amazed and uncomprehending audience in Arabic and Persian.”

Not surprisingly he was judged “too advanced” by the electorate and lost by 162 votes.

Of course, this is only one case study. It doesn’t mean that the Conservative Party as a whole was as hapless as this one example suggests. Still, it tells us something that a man like Lord Churchill could become a leading figure in the party without having a principled political position, and that a Conservative Party committee could accept as an election candidate a man with such extreme liberal views as Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

Tags: British Politics

Comments:

Posted by jonjayray on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 07:25 | #

“Still, it tells us something that a man like Lord Churchill could become a leading figure in the party without having a principled political position”

Most conservative commenters—Oaskeshott, Gilmour, Feiling etc—about conservatism say it an instinct rather than a set of doctrines —a skeptical instinct, of course. Randy was just being a mainstream Conservative in that

Posted by Mark Richardson on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:15 | #

John, when someone becomes a Marxist they assent to a formal abstract theory.

This is not how someone becomes a conservative. If you were to ask a Japanese why they were patriotic, it’s unlikely they would answer that they read a book on it and it seemed logical.

In fact, many conservatives would be stumped the first time they were asked why they supported their own cultural tradition. If forced to think about it they might say something like “because it’s important to me” or “it’s an important part of who I am” or “it’s something I love and value.”

This is the sense in which conservatism can be called an instinct or disposition rather than an abstract theory or ideology.

The fact that conservatism doesn’t start out as a set of abstract ideas does mean that it’s harder to explain conservatism from all angles in a simple way.

It doesn’t mean, though, that the way conservatives feel and think can’t be described or that there aren’t definite political positions which conservatives wish to defend.

Lord Churchill ought, by both instinct and principle, to have rejected a candidate so radically disloyal to Britain as Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

He ought also, as a conservative leader, to have had a firmer idea of what he stood for than his admission of Tory democracy being mere opportunism.

The fact that he failed on both grounds casts some doubt on how well the nineteenth century Conservative Party represented conservative politics.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:51 | #

Peter Hitchens is correct, of course, in his criticism of the Tory governments of 1979 to 1990 and their total failure to comprehend culture war. But Mark’s wider point (that Toryism had lost its compass setting long ago and sought in consequence “opportunity” in the prevailing orthodoxies of liberalism) is the fundamental lesson, and that is missing from Hitchen’s analysis.

The real question, which Hitchens has answered in the negative but which I think has not been sufficiently explored, is whether Toryism can revive and “do the right thing”.

There are, pretty obviously, staging posts along the road. First, understanding, and that comes in two parts.

Part A is a clear-eyed understanding that our (English, Scots and Welsh) people are our purpose - and not the political chimera of reason, liberty, equality, “progress” et al. One Nationism, modernism, propositionism do not challenge liberal orthodoxy but, on the contrary, produce the unedifying spectacle of a Tory government leading us deeper into the mire.

Part B is an understanding that the mire - the future with liberalism - is very terrible indeed for our people and is to be avoided at any price. This is an issue of national salvation more critical than 1914-18 or 1939-45.

Out of this understanding must come the second staging-post en route to recovery, which is an intellectual rejuvenation. Tory philosophers and historians must give eyes to blind instinct, notwithstanding the difficulties of doing that. The ineluctable consequences of liberalism, the science of human difference and the rights of the native ethny based on history and genetic interest must be carried into the public arena.

Next, practical committment. That involves a certain sifting, a letting go - and replacement - of Party personnel (and attached sources of finance) that reject renewal or seek to prostitute it to other ends. If “centrists”, minorities and social-liberals within the Party wish to start their own “broad church”, let them go and do it.

Next, spreading the message into the media and fighting the liberal-left on the terms of that message ... not defensively on the left’s faux-moral terms. This was achieved in 1975-79 by Margaret Thatcher. She was helped by the decay of class-warfaring classical marxism. To fight cultural marxism (or advanced liberalism) without economic stresses in the country will be very difficult. But freedom for the native peoples may be a stirring banner after another decade of progressive national destruction. We must hope so.

Beyond that, who knows? But what has the Party to lose ... except itself, I suppose. But that was lost a very long time ago and the country will be lost quite soon. Time to start, then.

In ten years time if nothing ignites, Hitchen’s might be right about a new Party. I’m inclined to think, though, that a professionalising BNP will step into that gap before Hitchens can.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:06 | #

John,

A Torism whoring after a leftward migrating centre cannot offer my people salvation from liberalism. Even if they get into power one fine day they will do so in thrall to liberal tennets and in no ways cogniscent of their duty to us. Understand that the Party is liberal today. Everything is liberal.

You are right that under such conditions it doesn’t work electorally when the right of the Party threatens to turn away from “opportunism”. That’s because turning away from liberalism does not involve turning towards a clearly enunciated alternative with a sound intellectual foundation.

John, the only success in combatting liberalism that the Party has had in the past sixty years was when Monetarism caught the anti-marxist tide. Within narrow economic terms they understood, finally, the job they had to do in 1979, and they did it. I am advocating the same now outside of the purely economic sphere.

It is the only way a Tory Party can save our home for us, consign liberalism to history and fulfill its historic purpose.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:29 | #

“But Randy was probably full of syphilis by that time (if I remember rightly) so his judgment was probably impaired—unless of course Blunt was a member of his club. In that case he knew Blunt was ‘sound’ “

Advanced syphilis doesn’t always get to the brain, John—think of all the writers, composers, philosophers and so on (yes, statesmen and kings too) who produced great works and did great deeds while positively riddled with the stuff (or, so it is claimed—personally I doubt lots of these modern-day theories about the “syphilitic” greats of two and three hundred years ago: Ancient Rome had as much or more eccentricity in its greats and way more debauchery, yet had no syphilis to blame, apparently ...). In Randy’s case, though, marrying an American girl from Brooklyn, NYC, when he could’ve had his pick among a surely wide selection of English beauties of that era does raise serious doubts about his, shall we say, “mental health”? (certainly about his taste in women ...) Btw, was this Blunt character any sort of relation of the English Soviet spy’s of the same name (Sir Anthony, I think it was)?

Had the Tories been a broad tent like the GOP, they might have won. (—John)

Which brings us back to exactly why GW is right: the undivided GOP “broad tent” that did win has done us no good whatsoever, but is moving ahead with race-replacement as feverishly as if Bill & Hillary were still in office. We don’t want any “broad tent” if it’s not going to take us away from where we are now to a better place, John. GW is right: it may be that a new party will have to emerge and displace what passes today for “conservatives” (what I call “normals”). GW’s statement was overall excellent.

Posted by Martin Hutchinson on Wed, 29 Jun 2005 15:31 | #

In 1885, Salisbury, who actually ran the party at that stage, was giving Randolph Churchill enough rope to hang himself—which he proceeded to do in December 1886. Even before his syphilis, Randolph Churchill was a fruitcake, who joined the Tory Party because his perfectly sound father was in Disraeli’s cabinet at the time. His American wife was a much better Tory, albeit of rather sporting inclinations.

The lack of a central philosophy has always been a problem; it’s the fault of Peel (who betrayed the philosophy the party had in place) and Disraeli (who confused it utterly.) Before Peel however there was a perfectly coherent philosphy, technically the only one with an “original meaning” right to the term “Conservative” to which we should make every effort to get back.

Given the swing of the pendulum, if Lord Eldon* was today made leader of the party and ran a decent campaign with no gaffes and full support from the membership, he would win his share of elections. The constant search for semi-left votes in the moderate center is very silly as well as infuriating; those people really don’t pay enough attention to care, but will vote for you if you aren’t bickering and they’re fed up with the other lot.

A splinter party would be unlikely to work and even if it did, would in the British system take 20 years to do so. Much better to agitate for the most right wing available candidate, who has a perfectly decent chance of winning in 2009, just as IDS did in 2005 if he hadn’t been stabbed in the back (in practice, a much better chance, as the economy will be clearly in trouble in 2009, whereas in 2005 the problems could be hidden.) Davis probably the best bet of those we haven’t already tried, though socially I prefer Ancram.

Howard needs to be taken out and shot. Of course the Tories should stand for lower taxes, as the result of smaller government. If Howard wants to expand government, he should go join the LibDems. The man’s an economic illiterate, among his other failings.

* For those who’ve missed Eldon, he was Lord Chancellor in 1801-28, having worked his way up from a coal merchant’s son, and can truly be said to have been the most right wing figure ever to have graced British politics. A genuine Grade 1 hero!

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 30 Jun 2005 13:17 | #

<u>Here</u>‘s the guy I meant—I was right, it was Sir Anthony (though his knighthood was later rescinded); family name sometimes spelled Blount with an o, apparently—which is how I remember it when it was all over the news twenty-five years ago.