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There’s something comforting in knowing that a feeling of mine has previously been voiced by others. Especially if they’re remarkable people. And even more if they’re well qualified to make the judgement.
“The stupid old Tory Party”. Now, though I don’t disagree with it, that’s not my judgement of that fine British institution, the Conservative or Tory Party. It’s the view of a man who’d spent nineteen years as a Tory minister. Whatever else you can say about him, he knew what he was talking about.
Nor was he an obscure nonentity. He went on to be Foreign Secretary three times, Home Secretary once and Prime Minister for two terms
He was Lord Palmerston. When he expressed that view of the Tories, he was firmly associated with the Liberal wing of the Party. He was two years from resignation and four years from re-emerging for his first tenure as Foreign Secretary in a government led by the other main party, the Whigs. They later merged into the Liberal Party in which he completed his career and achieved his greatest success.
He’d clearly learned from experience. He knew he had to move on once he realised that the Tory Party was dominated by those who hankered for the times of a Prime Minister who’d been dead a quarter of a century, William Pitt the Younger:
… those ignorant country gentlemen who drown in port the little senses which nature bestowed upon them & bawl out the memory & praises of Pitt, while they are opposing all the measures & principles which he held most important it is by these that the progress of the government in every improvement which they are attempting is thwarted & impeded.
He had the courage to admit his error and join the other side, where he might do some good.
Sadly, today the Tory Party seems immersed again in nostalgia, this time for the times of Thatcher. It doesn’t just impede and thwart every progressive move but actually reverses them where possible, as in the catastrophe that is Brexit. Not just the Party but even its supporters seem incapable of admitting their error over Brexit, and it’s only by admitting a mistake that you can start out on the path towards putting it right. Why, even the opposition Labour Party has come up with the extraordinary slogan of ‘making Brexit work’, which is like promising to make the best of a cholera outbreak.
Nor is the stupidity Palmerston identified limited to Britain.
Here, where I now live in Spain, I see a similar saddening inclination to look backwards towards a past, sanctified by nostalgia, so that the horror of the man then in power is forgotten in longing for his authoritative – or rather authoritarian – government. A party embodying the values of the old dictator Franco is exerting far more pressure on the traditional conservative party than is healthy for the country.
That’s particularly depressing because I find this warm-hearted nation a joy to live in. The Spanish are easy to like. And it’s astonishingly easy to make friends here.
That makes it extraordinary to read the words of an Englishman who came here to fight Franco, to try to preserve legitimate, democratic rule against an authoritarian rebellion. He proclaimed:
I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain!
George Orwell put his life on the line to fight for the liberty of a people whose generosity overwhelmed him:
… I defy anyone to be thrown as I was among the Spanish working class … and not be struck by their essential decency; above all, their straightforwardness and generosity. A Spaniard’s generosity, in the ordinary sense of the word, is at times almost embarrassing. If you ask him for a cigarette he will force the whole packet upon you.
He continued, in Homage to Catalonia:
And beyond this there is generosity in a deeper sense, a real largeness of spirit, which I have met with again and again in the most unpromising circumstances.
He saw this in a group of men on leave from the front line:
They were talking excitedly about their experiences and were full of enthusiasm for some French troops who had been next to them at Huesca. The French were very brave, they said; adding enthusiastically: ‘Más valientes que nosotros’—’Braver than we are!’ ... An Englishman would cut his hand off sooner than say a thing like that.
Well, despite that generosity and decency, they were defeated, as the rest of the democratic world stood by and did nothing for them. And today there’s a depressing inclination to see good in their brutal conquerors. The ones who ran a forty-year dictatorship after their victory.
Ah, well. Palmerston spotted the stupidity in the British Tory Party, but even if it is the Tories’ most enduring characteristic, they clearly have no monopoly on it. And, it seems, it extends far beyond Britain.
Palmerston’s words date from 1826. It’s sad that nearly two centuries on, stupidity remains as much a power in society as ever. As our own experiences show.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
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