Traditional Britain Group Vice-President Gregory Lauder-Frost analyses the tragedy of contemporary Conservatism and discusses paths for national renewal. (2002)

How many true Conservatives do you know? Is it possible that conservatism is dead? Between the media, now virtually taken over by the liberal-left fraternity or at best by libertarians, and the schools and colleges, long recognised as hotbeds of Socialism, recent generations have been brainwashed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Conservative Party where, it appears, all conceptions of conservatism has vanished, to be replaced with the standard liberal-left agenda.

"I am a Conservative," said Disraeli, "to preserve all that is good in our Constitution." Yet the present party have failed to conserve anything. Eighteen years solid until 1997 and the Tories' priorities were essentially those of a 19th-century Liberal administration. Throughout the 20th century Death Duties (under various headings) destroyed our upper classes just as effectively as Lenin & Trotsky managed it in Russia. The only difference was that here in Britain it was a slower process. The end result was the same. The Tories, too, have failed utterly to reverse any Socialist social legislation, apart from that which nationalised Thomas Cook!

They instead carried on in assisting Socialists to set up such draconian, almost communistic organisations as the Commission for Racial Equality, abandoned our Empire, fought for with British blood over centuries; abolished the death penalty, promoted gay rights, and co-operated fully in the exiling of our great and noble hereditary peerage. Those families served this nation unswervingly for a thousand years, and now they are thrown out from their House of Lords. The Tories sold the Royal Yacht without replacing it and have been active in other spheres in reducing the status of the monarchy. They did no stop, as they promised in 1970, all large-scale permanent non-European immigration into our tiny island. Indeed, more people came in under Conservative Governments than under anyone else!

Only one way exists out of this political confusion. It is a return to the principles which were once the bedrock of Conservatism. We could also look at the 'principles' which govern Socialist policy. For the moment I shall leave Liberalism as the people of Great Britain, generally, choose between Conservatism and Socialism. The Liberals, or Lib Dems as they now style themselves, appear to be just a nuisance to the two bigger parties, although even they are managing to displace sitting Tory MPs from their strongholds in the south and west of England!

Conservatism was once the very breath of English history. Modern Socialism, as practised by 'New' Labour, is a mushrooming philosophy of political-correctness, fuelled by internationalism 'equality' and republicanism. Conservatism is a pure element in every Englishman's patriotism; Socialism, the poisonous vodka with which internationalist enthusiasts stimulate their blissful vision of a globalised humanity in chains to a world bureaucracy. But not every Conservative uses his brain, and not every Socialist shows his hand. The danger of the present time lies in a Conservatism false to its traditions and a Socialism masking its aims. Democracy my here by very easily confused and betrayed.

Conservatism has two principal duties: honourably and courageously to live up to its traditions; fearlessly and earnestly to tear the mask of moderation from the underlying extreme features of Labour. Unless it sets itself to discharge both of these duties, and to reverse much of the legislation that has permitted this nation to reach the point it has today, Labour will return to power with yet another great majority, the people sleepwalking and deprived of the choice of real opposition.

Returning to Disraeli, we would do well to recall his objectives, he constantly and emphatically insisted upon the need to maintain our institutions, and believed absolutely in the improvement of the conditions of the people. But the shameful day has now arrived when our Parliamentary institutions, such as the Lords, are regarded as a mere sideshow--the invention, and preserve, of a hypocritical, Islington-type bourgeoisie. Christianity, too, is constantly under attack, yet we are a centuries-old Christian, European Kingdom, our culture and history suffused with the story of the saints, with the morals and ideas of the church. It is now the urgent duty of the Conservatives to profess their faith in the efficacy of our historic institutions and to tell the people why Conservatism regards those institutions as essential to the liberty, the happiness and the identity of the British Nation.

True Conservatives must be able to understand and confront the nature of the conflict against idealistic Socialism and its continuing poisonous doctrine of class war and cultural atomisation. They must constantly tell the nation that 'New' Labour is still Socialist--still the fiefdom of "Red Ken", Prescott, republicans, levellers and those committed to the imposition of a new type of sovietised society. Until almost yesterday Labour still sang "The Red Flag" at their conferences, the words of which are almost too nonsensical to comprehend in this land of freedom, law and tradition. Socialism--at least in its class-war, multiculturalist, globalist form--is one of the most destructive delusions that ever vitiated human judgement.

Let us always remember our ancestors and their greatness, those who created the incomparable beauty of the English countryside, and were responsible for giving to the English character that marvellous bravery which manifested itself on so many battlefields, in so many encounters on the sea, and in the heroic work of pioneering through the length and breadth of the British Empire, in order to benefit the backward races of the world with civilisation. There was something Shakesperean about those men, and what radiance now persists in our grim inner cities shines from their tradition.

The Socialists still dream longingly of a monolithic global bureaucracy. They still dream of 'one world' where nations and nationhood, traditions and the rich differences of humanity, are meaningless. Will the present-day Conservative Party ever heed what the great Tory and three-times Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, taught us: "The Englishman is all right as long as he is content to be what God made him, an Englishman, but gets into trouble when he tries to be something else. Let it be a warning to us not to ape any foreign country. Le us be content to trust ourselves and to be ourselves. It is the Englishman who has made England what it is. Let us see to it that we never allow our individuality as Englishmen to be steamrollered. The preservation of the Englishman is essential to the preservation of our race, and if our differences are smoothed out and we lose that great gift, we shall owe at the same time our power. Uniformity of type isa bad thing."

The fate of our country is now largely in the hands of men and women who grabbed power and authority without also gaining the difficult and compensating wisdom of culture. We are today an urbanised nation of half-educated people, and it is a mark of the half-educated to be sceptical, apathetic, unimaginative, selfish, and capricious. The awakening of our nation to the true nature of the many great moral and catastrophic changes confronting our civilisation is one of the most urgent duties of our time, as it is also one of the most difficult. Who will waken them?

Reprinted from the Traditional Britain Newsletter (Autumn 2002)