Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher
Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through
our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the
State. In the modern world the State’s role is inevitably extensive, but
Conservatives believe its reach should always be subject to
challenge.
1. The Nation State is the sole vehicle for democratic legitimacy. New
Labour sought to weaken the nation externally and divide it internally –
externally by its unquestioning acceptance of the primacy of EU
supranational authority, internally by indiscriminate immigration and class
warfare, which were at the top of the domestic agenda in the time of Blair
and Brown. We need to remind the people that as the most elected party in
history the Conservatives are dedicated to forging a new unity for our
country, one that will integrate all our communities into a shared national
idea.
2. Civil society depends upon a common loyalty and a territorial law,
and these cannot be achieved or retained without borders. Immigration must
therefore be controlled and contained. Although “free movement of people”
was in the Treaty that the electorate endorsed 40 years ago, and although
our present anxieties are shared on the Continent, it is not enough to rely
on hopes of renegotiation. We have in the last resort to be prepared to
challenge, or defy, the Treaty in the national interest. With its open
welfare system, its universal language, its relative wealth and its
carefully defended freedoms our country is the preferred destination of
Europe’s new wave of migrants. Our services and infrastructure are being
stretched to breaking point, and our legal and political culture is at risk
from communities who cannot or will not endorse it. If we do not take the
need for restraint as our starting point we forfeit the right to call
ourselves One Nation Conservatives.
3. The nation state requires the sovereignty of Parliament. The right
to vote out our rulers and to change our law is the premise of democratic
politics. We willingly sacrifice some independence to conduct international
trade and to use the world’s sea, air and wireless lanes. But whenever
possible our law should be made in Westminster, or in the common-law courts
of our kingdom – not by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels nor by courts of
European judges. Our taxes too should be fixed by our elected
representatives in a sovereign Parliament.
4. As believers in civil society conservatives must protect the
institutions and customs that turn human animals into responsible citizens.
Ours is a tolerant society, in which liberty is extended to a variety of
religions, world-views, and forms of domestic life. But, as Locke argued
three centuries ago, liberty is threatened by licence: liberty is founded on
personal responsibility and a respect for others, whereas licence is a way
of exploiting others for purely personal gain. Liberty therefore depends on
the values that protect individuals from chaotic personal lives and which
cherish the integrity of the home, in the face of the many threats to it. A
conservative policy should reward stable households. It should not reward,
through the welfare system, the kind of fecklessness that has become so
widespread. We must protect children from the predatory culture that has
grown through the Internet, and an attempt must be made to tackle
pornography, and the attitude to human relationships that is fostered by
it.
5. We must make the environment, the countryside, and the settled
communities of our nation into priorities of government. Conservatism is a
philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources
but conserves and enhances them. Environmental politics therefore needs to
be rescued from the phoney expertise of the scare-mongers and from the
top-down manipulation of the activists. Properly understood, environmental
protection is not a left-wing but a conservative cause.
6. The State should not be permitted to confiscate the work of civil
society. Through quangos and official bodies the State has been amplified
under New Labour to the point of swallowing private initiatives and
distorting the long-established charitable instinct of our citizens,
improperly using tax money to create ‘sock puppet’ charities and quangos
that lobby for New Labour policies. Civil society must be freed from the
regulations and the officialdom that make volunteering
difficult.
7. Freeing civil society must go hand in hand with encouraging small
businesses and economic initiatives. The regulations that make it difficult
for people to help their neighbours also make it difficult for them to help
themselves. In this sense the old conservative call to ‘roll back the
frontiers of the state’ is as valid today as it ever was. Left-wing thinkers
often caricature the conservative position as one that advocates the free
market at all costs, introducing competition and the profit motive even into
the most sacred precincts of communal life. Adam Smith and David Hume made
clear, however, that the market, which is the only known solution to the
problem of economic coordination, itself depends upon the kind of moral
order that arises from below, as people take responsibility for their lives,
learn to honour their agreements and live in justice and charity with their
neighbours.
8. Education must reflect the real interest of future generations. A
conservative policy must therefore free education from all the
non-educational purposes to which it has been subjected, so that schools,
colleges and universities can offer opportunities suited to the needs of all
children. We should free schools from the dead hand of the bureaucrats, and
remake education as a contract between the teacher and the parents of the
child. There is a vast knowledge bank contained in the brains of older
people, and it must be made easier for them to enter the teaching
profession, so as to pass on their knowledge to those who seek to acquire
it.
9. Law and order must regain their place at the centre of political
thinking. We have too many laws, too loosely applied. The safety of
citizens, and their freedom to go about their business undisturbed, must be
a priority. The police force should be an integral part of the local
community, inspiring trust in the law-abiding citizen and fear in the
criminal. Likewise our armed forces should return to governance by Queen’s
regulations and be allowed to create the spectrum of forces required by the
defence of the nation and its interests.
10. Conservatives should advocate a cultural policy that reaffirms
our national heritage and values. Such a policy should acquaint the people
of this country with the institutions, traditions and achievements of which
they can be proud. We need to change cultural direction, away from
self-denigration towards a cheerful and confident reassertion of the
national idea.
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