Many lifetime Labour Party supporters, from ex-cabinet members to rank and file, have become disillusioned by the results of Labour rule and the Party's drift to the left. In their views and attitudes they now have far more in common with us Conservatives than with their former Party.
Yet they remain cut off from us by a wall of misunderstanding, old battles, old prejudices. It is up to us to surmount these barriers.
Many Labour supporters were drawn to Labour from the highest ideals. They saw the misery, poverty, degradation, destitution and crime around them. They rightly believed that life should hold more.
They saw war, and the threat of war, unemployment and waste.
They came to believe that Socialism in one form or another held the key to relieving mankind from these ills. But they assumed that people who rejected their proposed remedies did not share their aims. They were wrong.
But perhaps we were to blame for having been so sure of our own prescriptions that we failed to see things from their point of view. We neglected to explain that although we chose different means, we wanted the same ends as they did.
By now, they have come to see for themselves that their remedies didn't work. Disillusion has set in. The trouble is that their prejudices against us, which arose under different circumstances, remain a barrier to mutual understanding. [end p1]
They still see us as the defenders of privilege, which we are not. They do not quite see that they have helped create a new privileged class and that today's need is to defend the “little” people from that—to protect the citizen from the system.
They see us as “the Party of unemployment” —which we are not. In fact for the second time within a generation it is their Party which has been responsible for raising unemployment to unprecendented levels.
They regarded us as anti-union because we criticised the way some unions used their power—but we are not. We are saying that every power carries a responsibility. If used irresponsibly power ultimately acts to the detriment of everyone. Members of Trades Unions are not only producers, they also consume the products other people produce. They are not only wage-earners, they are also wage-spenders. If they abuse their power the consequence falls on their fellow citizens and their families.
We Tories are above all a Party which believes that power should be subject to checks and balances. Special privileges and powers must carry countervailing duties. This is the basis of democracy itself.
Unfortunately many Labour supporters do not know us, so they rely on hostile caricatures which belong to a different age.
I do not ask them to take us on trust, only to judge us fairly as we really are. One traditional Labour supporter recently wrote to me that he had listed the things that he considered vital for our country. He then compared them with the different Party statements.
For the first time he realised that his thinking wasn't far from the Conservatives' and was a long way from Labour's.
He is not alone in this. Others like him are appalled by the aims and antics of the New Left and the Far Left, by their fanaticism, their violence, their denigration and undermining of the police, by the destructive forces they embody. The Law and Order debate at Blackpool brought this out with absolute clarity. [end p2]
Many traditional Labour supporters want the same things as we want, believe the same things as we do, but are held back by old loyalties and by old prejudices.
We understand these things, we too are conservatives!
They know in their hearts that Britain must take a different road.
We know that to take that road, we need their help. The more we can gain their co-operation and draw on their knowledge and experience the more we shall be able to achieve.
We must make personal contact with them.
We can offer them a political home where they can achieve the aspirations which took them into the Labour Party in the first place, although by a different route.