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When pressed for a statement of their beliefs, conservatives give ironical or evasiveanswers: beliefs are what the others have, the ones who have confounded politicswith religion, as socialists and anarchists do. This is unfortunate, becauseconservatism is a genuine, if unsystematic, philosophy, and it deserves to be stated,especially at a time like the present, when the future of our nation is in doubt.

Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through ourrelations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state isnot an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protectit. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship andcommunity life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown frombelow, by the ‘invisible hand’ of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed fromabove by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile ourmany aims, and not to dictate or control them.

Only in English-speaking countries do political parties describe themselves as‘conservative’. Why is this? It is surely because English-speakers are heirs to apolitical system that has been built from below, by the free association of individualsand the workings of the common law. Hence we envisage politics as a means toconserve society rather than a means to impose or create it. From the French

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Roger Scruton 4 January 2014

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revolution to the European Union, continental government has conceived itself in‘top-down’ terms, as an association of wise, powerful or expert figures, who are inthe business of creating social order through regulation and dictated law. Thecommon law does not impose order but grows from it. If government is necessary,in the conservative view, it is in order to resolve the conflicts that arise when thingsare, for whatever reason, unsettled.

If you see things in that way, then you are likely to believe in conserving civilsociety, by accommodating necessary change. New Labour sought to weaken oursociety externally and to divide it internally by its unquestioning acceptance of theprimacy of EU supranational authority, internally by indiscriminate immigration,class warfare and the ‘reform’, which usually meant the politicisation, of ourhallowed institutions. Conservatism, by contrast, aims at a cohesive societygoverned by laws of its own and by the institutions that have arisen over time inresponse to its changing needs and circumstances.

Such a society depends upon a common loyalty and a territorial law, and thesecannot be achieved or retained without borders. But we find ourselves bound by atreaty devised by utopian internationalists in circumstances that have long agodisappeared. The EU treaty obliges its member states to permit the ‘free movementof peoples’, regardless of their desires or their national interest. With its openwelfare system, its universal language, its relative wealth and its carefully defendedfreedoms, our country is the preferred destination of Europe’s new wave ofmigrants. At the top of every conservative’s agenda, therefore, is the question ofimmigration: how to limit it, and how to ensure that the newcomers integrate into acivil society in which free association, freedom of opinion, and respect for the laware all axiomatic.

Conservatives recognise that the right to vote out our rulers and to change our law isthe premise of democratic politics. Whenever possible, they believe, our law shouldbe made in Westminster, or in the common-law courts of our kingdom, not byunelected bureaucrats in Brussels nor by courts of European judges.

Until recently the conservative emphasis on civil society has led to an equalemphasis on the family as its heart. This emphasis has been thrown into disarray bythe sexual revolution, by widespread divorce and out-of-wedlock birth, and byrecent moves to accommodate the homosexual lifestyle. And those changes have tobe absorbed and normalised. Ours is a tolerant society in which liberty is extended

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to a variety of religions, world views, and forms of domestic life. But liberty isthreatened by licence: liberty is founded on personal responsibility and a respect forothers, whereas licence is a way of exploiting others for purely personal gain.Liberty therefore depends on the values that protect individuals from chaoticpersonal lives and which cherish the integrity of the home in the face of the manythreats to it.

Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squanderresources but strives to enhance them and pass them on. For conservatives,environmental politics needs to be rescued from the phony expertise of thescaremongers. But it must also be rescued from the religion of Progress, whichurges us to pursue growth at all costs and to turn our beloved country into an arrayof concrete platforms linked by high-speed railways and surveyed from every hilltopby eerie wind-farms.

Those beliefs are difficult to act upon now. Through quangos and official bodies, thestate has been amplified under New Labour to the point of swallowing privateinitiatives and distorting the long-established charitable instinct of our citizens.Regulations make it difficult for people to associate, and the nonsensical rulings ofthe European courts constantly tell us that, by living according to our lights, we aretrampling on somebody’s ‘human rights’. Conservatives believe in rights but rightsthat are paid for by duties, and which reconcile people rather than divide them.

Left-wing thinkers often caricature the conservative position as one that advocatesthe free market at all costs, introducing competition and the profit motive even intothe most sacred precincts of communal life. Adam Smith and David Hume madeclear, however, that the market, which is the only known solution to the problem ofeconomic co-ordination, itself depends upon the kind of moral order that arisesfrom below, as people take responsibility for their lives, learn to honour theiragreements and live in justice and charity with their neighbours. Our rights are alsofreedoms, and freedom makes sense only among people who are accountable totheir neighbours for its misuse.

This means that, for conservatives, the effort to reclaim civil society from the statemust continue unceasingly. One by one, our freedoms are being eroded: free speechby the Islamists, free association by the European Court of Human Rights, thefreedom to make our own laws and to control our own borders by the EuropeanUnion. We conservatives value our freedom not because it is an abstract possessionof the abstract individual, but because it is a concrete and historical achievement,the result of civil discipline over centuries, and the sign of our undemonstrativerespect for the law of the land.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 4 January 2014

Tags: Adam Smith, civil society, Conservatives, EU, freedom, Hume, identity, rights,values

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David Webb • 6 days agoProfessor Scruton, almost none of what you wrote above could be accepted by theConservative Party. "Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formedthrough our relations with other people, and not through our relation with thestate." I agree - but what this means is that Britishness is about a horizontalrelationship between British people - people of like descent and culture - and notabout the vertical relationship with the Home Office, which has granted a piece ofpaper (a citizenship document or passport) to millions of people who don't share anycommonalities with British people. There has got to be a distinction between beingreally British, and merely being a British citizen, which is just a relation with thestate. Because Cameron supports the extinction of our nation by mass demographicchange, he could not accept anything you wrote.

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e2toe4 • 3 days ago David WebbI found your comment a bit confusing at first as to my mind the article is agood setting out of why Conservatism is not a dead sea scroll of a politicalphilosophy but has a gaze every bit as progressive and forward looking as anyleft wing party.

But he doesn't anywhere equate this idea of conservatism with the present,pretty conflicted entity of the Conservative and Unionist party---so while Ithink it's not a bad thing to tee off against the party, the article itself isn'treally about that at all.

To my mind the article does a good job of setting out a blue print that is sodifferent from the present Conservative party's idea of conservatism (whichseems to be a kind of Wannabee New Labour but with nagging moneyworries) that it might well serve as a decent checklist for David Cameron andhis advisors to consult when they come to consider how they failed to win thelast election, and lost the next.

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Daniel Maris • 5 days ago David WebbI've up-arrowed that on the basis you haven't said commonalities are amatter of race. I am very at ease with lots of people of different racial originfrom me who I feel share in the broad current of British culture (ourlanguage, TV and film references, liking for sport, appreciation of ourfreedom, acceptance of democratic government and laws made by parliamentetc). As you say, the vertical business is meaningless.

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dalai guevara • 4 days ago David WebbYour assumptions and conclusions are fatuous. The Germans or Frenchnever faced levels of immigration like we do now? Have their nations beenwiped off the face of this planet? This has nothing to do with defining'Conservativism', we quickly understand this to be an attempt to 'repatriate'

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the split vote on the right. 4

• Reply •

Roy • 6 days agoHow can a picture of the entrance to New York harbour represent freedom when thepolicies of its government work against the original constitution, and are nowdividing that nation? How can Britain, Conservatives or not at the helm, speak offreedom when their original peoples are deprived of the very country beneath theirfeet? Forcing them to share resources with a strange lot of newcomers uninvited bythem. Is their freedom of choice worth zilch? Their law and order system taken offthem and placed in the hands of compliant forces in collusion with the new comers.Is this the "new" freedom?

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greatdivide • 6 days agoLiberty and licence, indeed. Conservatives are losing the battle, and have been for ageneration.

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Peter Stroud • 4 days agoA good article. Now it is time for our conservative leaders to rediscoverConservatism.

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Treebrain • 3 days ago Peter StroudExcellent idea but it is always worthwhile to 'follow the money' when tryingto discern where the genuine interests of any group really lie.

With patrician Tory land-owning grandees and the Crown taking the bulk ofEU subsidies to the UK is it any wonder they are not keen to halt the gravytrain?

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e2toe4 • 3 days ago Peter StroudThat's one comment I can understand...and agree with--this piece sits wellbeside the one in the issue about the Euro project and the way in which, anreasons, for labelling any non-orthodox party as 'Far Right' or 'Right wing'.

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Gergiev • 3 days agoThe Conservative Party is not conservative.

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BoiledCabbage • 3 days agoThe Coalition must be jettisoned now - plunging Cameron into the rigour of aminority Government - so that the true voice of Conservatism can be heard in timefor the election, rather than the limp compromise of the Coalition, which is a turn-offf for everyone. Sink or swim - time for the Prime Minister to believe in somethingother than greasy PR tweets.

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ROBERT BROWN • 2 days agoVery good article Roger, i heard distant drums and saw a tattered Union flag fillingwith the breeze, and my bottom lip was quivering. But this article,if it had no clue toit's author, reads like a stirring battle-cry for UKIP and the Peoples Party, and iwould be little surprised and glowing inside. Fact is, few tories believe in this or areinterested for that matter, so Ukip et al will continue to grow, and so be it.

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global city • 5 days agoYes, absolutely. This is why our 'Conservative' party, who have in actual fact been anugly patrician party of the elite's vested interests masquerading as a ConservativeParty, has finally had history catch them up.

Squatting on political lands that they do not believe in, the Tories have for way toolong been able to promote themselves as supporting the aspirational, theentrepreneurial, to be Eurosceptic, when all along the grandees have pursuedpolicies utterly in conflict with these values.

Not any more. 3

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Daniel Maris • 5 days agoRoger, nice Hegelian chap though he is (I've heard him speak), really has nothing tooffer us where we are today.

We need some clear thinkers and doers, not romantics. 4 3

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goldushapple • 5 days ago Daniel Maris Roger may not be a doer, but he is a clear thinker - though somewhatmuddled in prose. I would suggest the doers adopt some of his conservativebeliefs.

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Magnus Hirschfeld • 3 days agoAfter emphasising how important the family has historically been to conservatives,Prof. Scruton refers to "recent moves to accommodate the homosexual lifestyle." Atthe end of this paragraph, he lumps tolerance of people being gay together with "thesexual revolution, (...) widespread divorce and out-of-wedlock birth." He asserts thattolerance of gay relationships has been one of the factors that has thrown theconservative empasis on the importance of the family into "disarray". At the end ofthat paragraph, he says, "Liberty therefore depends on the values that protectindividuals from chaotic personal lives and which cherish the integrity of the home in the face of the many threats to it."

As a Conservative, I agree with much of what Prof. Scruton has written elsewhere inhis piece. But it is really saddening to see a person of his intellectual staturesuccumbing to ignorance, prejudice and sloppy thinking in the area of gay andlesbian relationships. Gay people no more have a "homosexual lifestyle" thanvegetarians have a "vegetarian lifestyle" or left-handed people a "left-handedlifestyle". The term "homosexual lifestyle" is one that so frequently and casually usedby people who choose to denigrate all gay people as being alien, feckless, narcissistic,

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Picquet • a day ago Magnus HirschfeldNot the case at all. The essential point of Prof Scruton's word on that subjectwas the key part which 'family' plays in the beliefs and outlook of theconservative Briton. It isn't unique to the United Kingdom; all successfulsocieties have the loyalties and bonds of family at their heart. Unsuccessfulones invariably reject the family as the key element, and instead project thestate in its place. Homosexual 'marriage', a perversion if there ever was one,is a symptom of a decline in the strength of the society's confidence in itself.

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Sumoking • 2 days agoAnti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill 2013-14, talk Freedom, legislateAUTHORITY! Conservative mantra never changes.

• Reply •

Julieann Carter • 3 days agoIt's a shame our Conservative Party changed it's emblem from 'the flame offreedom', to an environmentally conscious, tree! It's a shame our Conservative politicians rush to apologise whenever one of the Leftsincreasing myriad of 'minority communities', claims they are offended!It's a shame that presently Mr Gove is being criticised by his own colleagues forrobustly arguing his point of view, re WW1. We love conviction politicians, don'tforce him to be silent. Can't you see that is in large part the appeal of Nigel Farage?

The Conservatives, in my view, need to confine to history the words, 'benefits', and'entitlements'. They belong to New Labour. The Conservatives need to better define what welfare payments are for, and wherethey come from. Something like 'Temporary Tax-payer Aid'. It still astounds me that so many still believe they are entitled to a certain lifestyle atthe tax-payers expense. Like bemoaning having to 'pay bedroom tax' - (though stillin receipt of some subsidy) - while at the same time acknowledging ownership of abrand new car, and related monthly payments. I read this today, along with anotherquite shocking testimony. These people didn't even realise the implications of whatthey were saying. They were simply 'entitled'. The other testimony related to a 4 bedflat purchased by parents for their daughter. The daughter 'paid them' the monthlymortgage - entirely met by HB. The hard-working tax-payer paid for that flat

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dalai guevara • 4 days agoWhile reading the article one thing struck me immediately.

What the author has attempted to describe is not 'Conservatism' but thejuxtaposition of those who require a Constitution to have themselves governed andthose who do not. So this does not seem to be about political affiliation in an increasingly internationalpost-left/right world, the argument appears to be designed as a counterpoint to aFrench 'outlook'.

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Guest • 4 days agosome blue sky thinking if I may:the tree... is green.thank you, that's all for now.

• Reply •

PierreRobert • 3 days ago GuestI guess you mean that the tree leaves are green thanks to CO2, water andsunlight.

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