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| Unionism was Joseph Chamberlain's special province when he dominated Victorian politics. Today, Theresa May is trying to spark a resurgence. Photograph: Joseph Chamberlain plaque by Simon Harriyott (License) (Cropped) |
At the beginning of last week, Theresa May launched her first full year as the leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party with a speech that called for a 'shared society' (BBC, 2017). Over the years, the Conservatives have made many rebranding attempts. Is May's any different?
For the most part, the attempts of her predecessors - Major, Hague, Duncan Smith and Cameron - have been focussed on repackaging Thatcher. They have tried to soften the harsh anti-government and anti-interventionism tone to the policies of the Thatcher-Reagan consensus (BBC, 2017{2}).
But they all contained the same disdain for the idea of a 'society' as a figment created to justify collectivism - to justify a claim that people have duties towards others beyond themselves and their own families, expressed through taxation and the state. They just tried to make rejection of the state, and embrace of the free market and privatisation in its place, palatable or 'empowering'.
May's rebrand seems different. She has appealed harder to the idea of the state's role, promising intervention in a way that none of her recent forebears would perhaps have contemplated. She has hinted at moving away from austerity and letting the state intervene more. But how does this all relate to what we know of conservatism and do these appeals follow through?
Chamberlain and Unionism
Theresa May's inspiration, it seems, for this deviation from the legacy of Thatcher is Joseph Chamberlain. Chamberlain was the Victorian political heavyweight who broke his Unionists away from the Liberals and led them into alliance, and eventual merger, with the Conservatives.
A businessman, and industrialist, he was at first aligned with the radical liberal reformers who campaigned for enfranchisement and free, compulsory - and local authority run - education. As Mayor of Birmingham he reorganised municipal utilities, bringing them under municipal control, cleared slums, and rallied public and private money to public works, such as building libraries, museums, schools and parks.
On the other hand, he proved himself to be an aggressive nationalist. He opposed Irish Home Rule and defended the Union, and further wanted to see the Empire become a truly, exclusively, British trading system, protected by trade tariffs and was willing to back military action to advance Britain's interests - in ventures not so far removed from the interventions of the neoliberal governments in oil rich countries in the early 2000s.
The Unionists, of which he was a leading figure, where a strange coalition of aristocratic Whigs with landed estates, who as a faction were drifting away from the Liberal mainstream, and a group of radical reformers led by Chamberlain. These two groups were united mostly by their opposition to Irish Home Rule, which would break up the Union.
The composition of the Unionists shifted over time, but it settled around a particular outlook: a British nationalism that transcended its constituent nationalities, built upon institutions like Westminster government, and preserved the Union; and, economic intervention at home with a protected British system of trade abroad, directed to British interests alone.
But what was perhaps most significant, from where Theresa May sit, was that the Unionists brought a working class base to the Conservative coalition. Chamberlain's personal support, centred on Birmingham, included working class voters, gave the traditional party of the landed aristocracy a broad enough base of followers to dominate government in the twentieth century.
May and Unionism
May's first conference as leader was at Birmingham, the centre of her hero's political empire and was the scene for the first two big moves of her ministry: to disentangle a still United Britain entirely from continental entanglements and to prioritise some spending over paying down the deficit (BBC, 2016; BBC, 2016{2}).
And there have been other moves. Intervening to delay Hinckley Point, alleged promises made to Nissan that speak of protectionism, hints of economic planning in the promises to develop an industrial strategy, and the continuance of the Conservative policy of devolution to the local government level that could have pleased Chamberlain (Goodall, 2016).
However - and it is a big, emphatic, however - no Conservative leader has been scared to use central government, top down, intervention when it suited them; privatisations continue; part of the Brexit rhetoric is that Britain is leaving the EU in search of freer trade, not more protected; and devolution has been hand in hand with cuts, as a way to impose austerity while handing off responsibility for its results.
Without a tangible set of policies to mark her approach out as distinct, what part of the legacy of Unionism is May promoting? Well, so far, the main thrust of May's Unionism has been cultural. Her speeches focus heavily on acknowledging injustice (Kuenssberg, 2017) and warning that it will 'undermine the solidarity of our society' (May, 2017).
That word - 'solidarity' - seems like an odd choice of phrase for a Conservative in the modern era, but it might be understood better when coupled with her phrase 'bringing our country together', which is what May presents as her solution to the rising resentment.
That phrase makes clear that this isn't 'solidarity' in its usual collectivist democratic sense, of the people standing together for mutual empowerment - an egalitarian mass movement of people aiding each other as a counter the power of an elite class.
Rather, May's point - her Unionism - seems to be very conventionally conservative: the traditional institutions have broken down and people are lost without their place in the established order. To end resentment, May seems to be arguing that a Burkean social harmony must be restored.
In that, there seems to be marked a drift in the party away from liberal conservatism towards something more purely conservative. Since the decision to enter the Coalition, a reaction within the party has grown ever louder against Cameron's soft conservative neoliberalism. In its place, rises an effort to reconcile individualism and competition, with an appeal to nationalism and community coherence, to unite the two errant wings of the ideology.
It is in the prioritising of these first two, and neglect of the last two, from which May sees resentment springing - and it certainly seems to fit how resentment has been filtered through Farage and UKIP. What May also sees is an opportunity.
Chamberlain combined local social reform with banging the patriotic drum, pitching a British system that carried a sense of a nation and tradition in which ordinary people have a stake - where everyone has their part to play. May sees a chance, in evoking the Chamberlain heritage of Unionism, to bring working people into a Conservative coalition.
Society as seen through a Prism
To do this May has taken up the language of the Left, but filtered its cause through a conservative prism. For instance, she wants to equate social justice with social harmony - in the process stripping it of its sense of distributional equality, leaving behind only class collaboration and perhaps, in the conservative sense, a 'fair deal' on work and pay.
The trouble is that social harmony is illusory. It requires citizens to accept exclusion and inequality in exchange, maybe, for a place of safety and security within the fold. Meanwhile the true elite - the wealthy, the rentiers - do not need to give up or compromise much of anything to take up their place within the harmonious order.
"A Britain that works for everyone" is not a slogan that promises very much - just as "We're all in this together" proved an empty promise to ordinary citizens, their sacrifices unmatched by the elite. Unionism addresses resentment by falling back on nationalism, looking to 'the nation', 'the Union' and their institutions as a rallying point.
Chamberlain's own Unionist star fell when colonial adventures brought misery and his closed economy could not compete with the benefits of being open to the world. The reality is that his Unionism did not leave ordinary people better off, however much it rallied them about a patriotically waved flag. Theresa May is trying to pick up and claim that fallen standard.
Progressives should not be seduced. People cannot be content with a place within May's social hierarchy: tightly ordered, tightly surveilled - living under close control, in exchange for just the hope of a little basic social security. Unionism, and its social harmony within a hierarchy, offers citizens neither liberty or justice.
References
'Theresa May: Brexit can 'change Britain for the better''; on the BBC; 9 January 2017.
'Society and the Conservative Party'; on the BBC; 9 January 2017{2}.
Lewis Goodall's 'Who was Theresa May's political hero Joseph Chamberlain?'; on the BBC; 15 August 2016.
'Brexit: Theresa May to trigger Article 50 by end of March'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016.
'Chancellor Philip Hammond on UK deficit and investment'; on the BBC; 3 October 2016{2}.
Laura Kuenssberg's 'The shared society - more than a slogan?'; on the BBC; 9 January 2017.
Theresa May's 'The shared society'; in The Sunday Telegraph; from GOV.UK; 8 January 2017.
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