This ten minute video emphasises the progressive character of conservatism. It takes us right up to present day's Cameron-led party and the Built to Last values statement. Thanks to Louise Bagshawe for alerting us to it.
« Steve Richards asks Ken Clarke about the hare versus tortoise debate | Main | Public increasingly unhappy with Labour's economic performance »
The comments to this entry are closed.
My, my how wonderfully Whig.
Posted by: Hannah T | January 25, 2008 at 19:02
I believe they showed this at the 2006 party conference. I liked it then, and I like it now. (y)
Posted by: Will Burstow | January 25, 2008 at 19:11
It's a tremendous clip. In turn I have to credit legendary Tory activist Paul "the Machine" Seery, on whose blog I found it.
Editor, I have been searching for the video tribute to Margaret Thatcher I'm sure I saw on ConHome a while ago... or maybe Iain Dale... without success, if anybody knows where it is to be found could they please post a link?
Posted by: Louise Bagshawe | January 25, 2008 at 19:13
They played it at a 900 seat Tatton Conservatives dinner where DC was guest of honour. Heath got a boo.
Posted by: Ashton | January 25, 2008 at 19:32
Someone should make a military alternative video history of the Tories. It should include Churchill v Hitler, Thatcher v Argentina and the Soviet Union, Major v Saddam, IDS v the Taliban but that wouldn't be very Cameroon!!!
The soundtrack should be Holst's Mars!
Posted by: Alan S | January 25, 2008 at 19:36
Paul Osborn designed it for CWF
Posted by: Donal Blaney | January 25, 2008 at 21:07
I have not seen this video, and it is a reminder of what a great historical institution the Conservative Party is, and the profound contribution it has made to the country's welfare in the past two centuries.
Posted by: Votedave | January 25, 2008 at 22:09
Oh dear,Oh dear,Oh dear.... what a load of nonsense we have before us here.
Where do I start? At the begining.
Pitt's manning of the Royal Navy was done by press-ganging- working class men forcibly sent to their deaths to fight the politicians war. Like Maggie, Major, Bush and yes Blair, you can bet he was well away from the frontline.
Do you think the Conservatives would have consented to any increase in the franchise in the 19th/20th centuries without pressure from everyone from the Chartists to the suffergettes??
Pensions and unemployment benefits came in under Lloyd George, not Baldwin, and in the face of massive Conservative opposition
And we continue.....'Better health provision'...from the party that later opposed the NHS, and then ran it into the ground under Maggie
And Chamberlain's 'Holidays with Pay act" and the wages boards that went with it were of course abolished by Maggon as well.
Indeed virtually all of these changes only came about because of grass roots working class pressure on the government. Time after time over history your party has been on the side of the weathly over the poor, the privelidged over the voiceless, the large concern over the common man. And now you expect me to believe the concessions wrung out of you were in fact 'progressive'?
Oh and interesting admission that the war in the Falklands was an excercise in 'restoring national pride'. You should try telling that to the families of the dead.
Posted by: Comstock | January 25, 2008 at 22:28
So, you give credit to other parties for representing the working classes in introducing public health reform, electoral reform etc. but not when the Conservatives react to the same pleas and recognition of interest.
Oh dear.
Posted by: David | January 25, 2008 at 23:23
I think it is unfortunate that Neville Chamberlain is usually portrayed in populist history books and documentaries as a weak character. Chamberlain worked hard to try to avoid the slaughter of World War 2 through diplomacy and should receive more recognition for do what he could under very difficult circumstances. The failure to guarantee Poland's borders from Soviet attack, even though it would have been impossible to do so, as good as invited the Communist invasion of that land and allowed the Germans to claim that the war was more about destroying Germany than defending Poland. Such a guarantee would have been a significant gesture and would have pushed the Soviets closer to the Germans. Nontheless I think Chamberlain was a good man who tried to avert a dreadful calamity. It is sad that he is often held up as a figure of ridicule in the popular media.
Posted by: Tony Makara | January 26, 2008 at 01:04
Tony, I agree totally.
Posted by: Comstock | January 26, 2008 at 08:49
This video is rather incoherent intellectually, but on the whole it is part of the "worship of the state" and social liberalism which is the very essence of the Left.
And the maker is happy thatHeath took us "into the common market"??
If that is conservatism, I am against it.
Posted by: Goldie | January 26, 2008 at 22:49
In a strange sort of a way, Goldie, I prefer your frank and open "I don't care about the lower classes" attitude to the pack of lies that is presented in this film. You may be a bastard, but at least you are an honest bastard! :D
One thing you can say about, for example, Maggie Thatcher was the fact she was always quite open about the fact she didn't care about the less fortunate in society, rather than hiding behind a liberal's mask like the modern Tory party.
Posted by: Comstock | January 27, 2008 at 11:05
Oh and I've had that bloody song going around my head all weekend!
Posted by: Comstock | January 27, 2008 at 11:06
"Maggie Thatcher was the fact she was always quite open about the fact she didn't care about the less fortunate in society."
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
Thatcher cared about the hard working people and people who wanted to get on in life. She wanted everybody to own their own homes and have a share in the companies that generate wealth in the economy. She wanted to protect us from the alienation of self-serving bureaucracies that are the inevitable result of socialism.
Posted by: oxymoron | January 27, 2008 at 18:51
"One thing you can say about, for example, Maggie Thatcher was the fact she was always quite open about the fact she didn't care about the less fortunate in society"
Oh, fuck off.
Posted by: normal person | January 28, 2008 at 05:01
Despite some of the comments above I think this video is a very good history of the some of the more possitive things we as a party have done throughout history. It also highlights the fact that many policies that people would automatically assume were Labour, were in fact implemented by Tory/Conservative Governments.
If you took out some of the internal Party stuff and scaled it down a bit I think this would make a very possitive party political broadcast. We could even show it in full at the start of open slection meetings or give constituency parties copies to distribute locally.
Posted by: Richard | January 28, 2008 at 09:27
Hi there, Normal Person, nice to meet you too. :)
Interesting comment by Oxymoron "She wanted everybody to .... have a share in the companies that generate wealth in the economy."
They already did, Oxymoron, when she came to power. Unfortunately she took those companies, privatised them and put them back in the hands of the wealthy.
Posted by: Comstock | January 28, 2008 at 10:23
Progressiveness through conservativism is like chastity through promiscuity.
Thank you. This revisionist view of history gave me a good laugh. "The Conservative Party - fighting vested interests and championing the working classes throughout the ages."
Comstock, Margaret Thatcher loved the working classes, that is people who worked, not the huge number of feckless layabouts who constituted the unemployed. Their laziness and refusal to work while luxuriating in the creature comforts provided by the state led the country into recession.
Their boredom led them to protest against one of the best and most progressive tax reforms since the Peasant's Revolt - the Poll Tax.
Posted by: passing leftie | January 28, 2008 at 11:05
"Pitt's manning of the Royal Navy was done by press-ganging- working class men forcibly sent to their deaths to fight the politicians war. Like Maggie, Major, Bush and yes Blair, you can bet he was well away from the frontline."
In the Napoleonic war, casualty ratios tended to be highest among officers, as they had to to lead from the front. And there is no reason to believe that the majority of people of all classes didn't back the government in that war.
Large numbers of people volunteered to fight. The reason for impressment was that the size of the navy had to be hugely increased (the navy had no difficulty attracting enough recruits outside of major wars) - and the alternative, conscription, was politically impossible at the time. Basically, serving in the Royal Navy was a good career by the standards of its time. It was one of the few institutions where talented people from poor backgrounds could rise to quite senior levels.
"Do you think the Conservatives would have consented to any increase in the franchise in the 19th/20th centuries without pressure from everyone from the Chartists to the suffergettes??"
They did so in 1867, 1885, and 1918, as they foresaw electoral advantage from both extending the franchise, and the accompanying seat redistribution (they were wrong in the first case, but right in the other two cases).
Posted by: Sean Fear | January 28, 2008 at 11:28
Time after time over history your party has been on the side of the weathly over the poor, the privelidged over the voiceless, the large concern over the common man. "
No Conservative government would ever have been elected, from the 1870's onwards, without support from working class voters.
Posted by: Sean Fear | January 28, 2008 at 11:33
Does anyone know what the background music is?
Posted by: jeff | January 28, 2008 at 16:03
How depressing--until we get to Thatcher, it's just "regulated this, regulated that" over and over.
Posted by: Manfredo Felice | February 01, 2008 at 18:48