Books that should make you a conservative

Conservatism is felt, emotional, not analytical. I try here to walk you through some books that sing with this idea...

Matthew Parris, that definitive centrist Tory, wrote a short piece in the Spectator about two books that made him a conservative. One of them, Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was an unsurprising choice (although more of an argument against socialism than a case for conservatism). The second book, which Parris says he read as a six year old, was more interesting: “Pookie Puts the World Right” by Ivy Wallace is not an obvious choice for a book that sets somebody’s politics! Parris sets out the reasoning:

“And – this harsh lesson I took to heart – how it was only the lazy animals who burrowed in places that flood, or nested on branches that were rotten, or stored no nuts for winter, who fell foul of the storm. Prudent creatures made provision. Prodigal creatures had been taught a lesson. Winter takes Pookie in his cupped, icy hands and flies him back safely to the forest and to Belinda, before beginning his cruel but necessary work.”

I got to thinking on the back of Parris’s interesting selection of books. What are the books that should make you into a conservative? There’s obvious choices, Disraeli’s “Sybil” or “Coningsby” for example, but I want to get beyond books written by politicians, especially 19th century politicians. This isn’t to dismiss Disraeli since he did set the direction for British conservatism and, I think, was the greatest politician of the Victorian age, but rather to explore the books that sing to us of conservative values - trust, personal responsibility, community, family - as well as the ancient virtues - courage, faith, justice.

I’m going to start, however, with a book by a sociologist: Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”. I don’t think Putnam is any kind of conservative but this book describes the atomising, in some places complete collapse, of those conservative values - family, community, trust - under the assault of liberalism. It reminded me, as did his more recent book “Our Kids”, that whereas the evidence of economics points to liberalism, the evidence from sociology is eternally conservative. Few conservatives would find much to contend with in this:

“Light-touch government works more efficiently in the presence of social capital. Police close more cases when citizens monitor neighborhood comings and goings. Child welfare departments do a better job of “family preservation” when neighbors and relatives provide social support to troubled parents. Public schools teach better when parents volunteer in classrooms and ensure that kids do their homework. When community involvement is lacking, the burdens on government employees—bureaucrats, social workers, teachers, and so forth—are that much greater and success that much more elusive.”

Until I read “Bowling Alone” I’d probably have described my politics as classical liberal, not just the free markets bit but the whole package. Like many 80s Tory activists, the Hayekian part of Thatcherism was the bit that stuck with us, a sort of buccaneering free-living, free-trading ideology driven by the truth that, in economic terms, liberalism works. Putnam’s shtick is, at its heart, about community and this takes me to a book that captures my sense of conservatism, the idea that politics starts, and mostly finishes, with what we can see from our doorstep.

In the late 1940s an Italian journalist and satirist, Giovannino Guareschi published a short story about a Catholic priest, Don Camillo, and his battle with the local communist mayor, Peppone. Guareschi sets the scene by evoking a sense of a magical place:

“…I want you to understand that, in the Little World between the river and the mountains, many things can happen that cannot happen anywhere else. Here, the deep, eternal breathing of the river freshens the air, for both the living and the dead, and even the dogs have souls. If you keep this in mind, you will easily come to know the village priest, Don Camillo, and his adversary, Peppone, the Communist Mayor. You will not be surprised that Christ watches the goings on…and that one man beats the other over the head, but fairly – that is without hatred – and that in the end the two enemies find they agree about essentials.”

Although the Don Camillo stories are steeped in the politics of post-war Italy (Guareschi was a monarchist and anti-communist who was imprisoned for taking the piss out of a Christian Democrat President), they tell a deeper story about how the love of a place trumps the political contest within that place. In the end Don Camillo and Peppone would stand shoulder to shoulder - and they are broad shoulders - to protect and defend their little world.

Throughout the stories Don Camillo has conversations with Christ which Guareschi described as the voice of his Christ, his conscience. Often Christ gently chides Don Camillo for being too harsh, too angry, too judgemental. Again and again the priest’s simple faith draws him back to his community and to the fact that, for all their faults, he loves them. And, when a foolish bishop exiles Don Camillo (forced into this act by a sort of cancel culture), we discover that the community loves the priest - “we’ll have the child baptised when Don Camillo returns”.

The stories show us that community isn’t about sameness or conformity, indeed Guareschi teases both communism and the church for their insistence on a rule book and their loss of what we might call simple faith but which is in truth, as Catholics sing, the “faith of our fathers”. A faith that gave people the strength to do incredible things, as the hymn continues “...In spite of dungeon, fire and sword…”

Courage is the virtue that shines out most from my next book, “The Lord of the Rings”, Tolkien’s masterpiece and the most important book written in the 20th century. We see two people with no special talent or capacity take on an impossible task and through sheer bravery, tenacity and mutual support complete that impossible task. More importantly, having done the impossible, our heroes don’t become powerful lords or kings but return to a comfortable and ordinary life in The Shire.

I wrote a while ago how conservatives don’t need philosophers, we have Sam Gamgee:

“We can describe what conservatives feel about things, explain the importance of tradition, of family and of community, but there is no philosophical rule book here nor should there be one. I can take my well worn copy of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, turn to the 'Scouring of the Shire', that part so tragically left out of the film, and tell you this is the most profoundly conservative piece of writing. If you want to understand, don't bash your way through dry tomes, just ask why it was that Sam Gamgee took his gift from Galadriel and went to every corner of The Shire to share its benefits. Ask why Sam got married, raised a family, became just a well-regarded but ordinary hobbit rather than some great and dominant ruler. Ask why unchanging is so important in a changing world.”

One thing that alway struck me as important, and this is why leaving out the “Scouring of the Shire” from the films was such a tragedy, is that Tolkien wanted us to understand that evil - original sin for those more theologically inclined - is present everywhere. The One Ring exploited and amplified this evil, it didn’t create it. Moreover the defeat of evil led to restoration not revolution, Sam (unselfishly) uses Galadriel’s gift to help restore The Shire to what it was before the likes of Ted Sandyman had spoiled it. It is a wonder that “...the person who walked into the heart of evil and returned becomes someone respected more for their community activity as for saving the world.”

Sam’s sense of community leads us to another conservative value, the idea of stewardship, that we’ve a duty to try and make our own little world, the place we’ve inherited from past generations, a bit better. We look out the window and see something that could be fixed, improved a bit and we go and do this work. I think of my friend and parish councillor Tony Caunt who, with a few others, set about mending walls in his village. And I think that we, at least collectively, will forget these people where we remember the great and good who rule us. Tolkien finishes his book with Sam, having waved off those great and good (along with his friend Frodo), returning to his family in The Shire.

That our community isn’t just us here now is another conservative theme, one that comes out strongly in our next books: Kipling’s evocations of England, “Puck of Pook’s Hill” and “Rewards and Fairies”. Kipling opens “Rewards and Fairies” with a charm:

“Take of English earth as much

As either hand may rightly clutch. 

In the taking of it breathe

Prayer for all who lie beneath. 

Not the great nor well-bespoke, 

But the mere uncounted folk 

Of whose life and death is none 

Report or lamentation…”

Immediately we see both transcendence, the idea of magic, and that the places we love were built by ordinary people like us, not by the great men in the history books. Elsewhere, Kipling returns to this theme in The Land where he reminds those great men that the land is all of ours whatever it may say on their deeds:

“His dead are in the churchyard—thirty generations laid.

Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;

And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line

Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.”

Some see a sort of Tory socialism in stewardship but Kipling doesn’t ask for collective ownership but rather for us to remember that the places we live in are a consequence of centuries long work, those little betterments, by ordinary men and women like us. And Kipling asks that the great and good take note of this and respect the history of these ordinary folk. Throughout his writing, Kipling champions the ordinary, whether it is the common soldiers that feature in “Barrack-Room Ballads”, the forgotten men of England in “Rewards and Fairies” or the brave little mongoose Rikki Tikki Tavi in the Jungle Book. “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din” speaks of a casual and violent racism in language we’d not use today but Kipling makes a big point - the brown man the narrator treated so wrongly is the better man because he set aside that cruel racism to save his oppressor’s life.

Kipling also gives us the idea that our hearts are small, that we live in our own version of Don Camillo’s little world. I spoke this in my last speech as a Bradford councillor:

“I was sat on top of Denholme Edge the other day eating a ham and tomato sandwich, admiring the view. Much of what I see from there is Bingley Rural. And it is beautiful.

Anyway I was sat there and I got to thinking. Each way I looked, into every nook of the places in that view there was a story – something that had been done to make the place a little better. Some of those stories were about stopping something – the ten year campaign, ending in the High Court, to stop a landfill blighting Denholme – but most were about improvement, little acts of betterment. A new kids playground, some traffic lights, a crossing – small things that matter to people far more than the big things we usually talk about in these Council meetings.

Bradford is a place of a thousand little worlds, each one different and each one precious to the people who live in them. It is those little worlds that my motion is about. First that we should celebrate the ordinary folk who, every day, do something to make those places better or the people in them stronger. And second that, even in these financially constrained times, us councillors – individually and collectively – can do something to help those good people with their betterment.”

American science fiction writer, David Brin wrote two books that help us get this idea of betterment. One “The Postman” got made into a not especially good film starring Kevin Costner that rather missed the point of the book, and the other “The Practice Effect” invents a world where things improve with use.

The central point of “The Postman” is that simple things like a postal system are familiar and important. In a collapsed society the arrival of a man in a postman’s uniform provides a bit of hope and reassurance even if, at the start, that man is a fraud. What Gordon Krantz did was to create a little myth that gave frightened communities a little faith that there was a “Restored United States” and the courage to rebuild links and connections with friends and families thought lost. Brin provides us with a bleak world where the response to a violent dog-eat-dog world isn’t simply meeting violence with violence. Instead the force used to resist oppression is provided by faith in an institution, the United States, and by that institution making the response legitimate.

In one sense “The Postman” is an attack on the survivalist movement in the USA and on the post-apocalyptic chaos made popular through the Mad Max films but it makes that attack by seeing that people need to identify with an authority, to have faith that it will redeem them, and that the idea of nation is powerful. Self-reliance is good and important but nation, like community, provides something for people to identify with, even to love.

“The Practice Effect” is a little different and creates a parallel universe where things improve with use. If you want a spade, you create something that looks vaguely like a spade and start using it. After consistent use the spade becomes the very best spade you’ve ever had - and it is still getting better. If you stop using it, however, it gradually deteriorates, eventually back to its original basic state. Brin explores the social effect of this idea - he has peasants walking round wearing aristocrats’ best clothes so they don’t deteriorate and how the effect results in an ossified society since people didn’t need to do anything more than using something to improve that something.

For me the concept on which Brin builds his story is one that suggests that attending to things makes them better. We clearly don’t have a world where using a spade makes a spade better, rather the opposite we improve the more we use the spade. What we do have, back to the idea of fixing what we can see from our doorstep, is a world where society improves with use. If we attend to making our little bit of society better, then the whole of society improves. Our efforts drive betterment, not the efforts of managers or technical experts.

Why, though, do we want to make the place outside our door better? The answer, in another Kipling poem, his love letter to Sussex: “God gave all men all earth to love, But since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove, Belovèd over all…”

There are so many books and poems about our love of the place we live from that Kipling poem through works like “A Year in Provence” or “Extra Virgin” to Casey Bailey’s passionate poems about Birmingham. But if I was to choose one set of books that relate perfectly what conservatives understand by love of place and the desire to make that place better, it would be James Herriot’s “All Creatures Great and Small” series. The books capture Heriot’s love of the Yorkshire countryside a little bit better than the two TV series, but however we met the vet in the dales, we come away knowing that this love of place was real.

And loving where you live isn’t simply an indulgence but rather the reason for places succeeding. The Knight Foundation in the US asked what made places work. They found that the amount of love people had for their place was a huge factor in economic success - the more love the better the place got. But what brought about that love was more surprising - it wasn’t beautiful buildings or glorious countryside but rather the sense of belonging people held, the social capital Robert Putnam talked about in “Bowling Alone”. And it is a relationship with home, the feeling I get when cresting the top of the hill at Harecroft and looking across the little valley to Cullingworth. For a fleeting moment all your worries lift as you gaze upon home. The place with your family, your neighbours and friends. The place where you live out your life. The place you find belovèd over all.