COPOV Forum 18th July

Do come and join us at this Forum.   Details to be announced later.   Put the date in your diary

Also:

COPOV barbecue August 22nd

Who wants eternal life?

A man is walking along a beach when he comes across a lamp partially buried in the sand.

He picks up the lamp and gives it a rub. A genie appears and tells him he has been granted one wish.

The man thinks for a moment and says, "I want to live forever."

"Sorry," said the genie, "I'm not allowed to grant eternal life."

"OK then, I want to die after a Labour Government balances the budget and eliminates the debt.

"You crafty little so and so," said the genie.

From the Grass Roots

                                                             FROM THE GRASS ROOTS

                                                                  By a Conservative

(This is the personal view of a member of the Conservative Party and does not necessarily reflect the views of COPOV or of its members)

Last month the writer attended a COPOV meeting held in Gerrard’s Cross and he now wishes to expand on some of the comments he made at that meeting.

I am a child of Harold Macmillan. He was the Prime Minister at the time and it was in my teenage years that I first became interested in politics. I vaguely remember the 1959 General Election but clearly remember Hugh Gaitskell’s forlorn look as he realised that, even after the Suez debacle, the Conservatives had not only been returned to power but for the third time in a row had increased its parliamentary majority from 58 to 100. How was it possible that a party, born from the aristocracy, the landed gentry and the Church of England could remain not only one of the great parties of the state for over 200 years but hold on to power either alone or in coalition for nearly two thirds of the twentieth century ?

When I am asked what party do I support and I reply ‘The Conservatives’ I invariably get the response: ‘You must be rich then’ or ‘What public school did you attend?’. And those at the top of our party who are generally well off financially and have been educated privately have, sadly, allowed that myth to grow and fester. The Conservative party would NEVER have been returned to power (certainly in the second half of the twentieth century) had it not been for the support of a quarter to one third of the so called ‘working class’ and their families including thousands of trade unionists. The electoral arithmetic simply would not have been there.

We glibly talk about ‘diversity’ and ‘modernisation’. That Conservative supporting electorate of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties could not have been more diverse. Men and women of all ages, shopkeepers, farmers, businessmen, teachers, doctors, seaside landladies, farm labourers, engineers, yes even the odd miner. It was a formidable coalition all contributing to the cause. And in the parliaments of those days (where 95% of the Conservative members were male and 75% educated at a public school) there were MP s from all parts of the country, the suburbs, the shires, the seaside towns, the large cities of the north, the smaller towns like Bury and Preston in northern England, Scottish MPs both rural and urban, six or seven MP s from Wales and about ten Ulster Unionists. And as for female Members of Parliament, admittedly not many of them but there on merit not as a result of some ill defined ‘quota’. Irene Ward who was MP for Tynemouth having previously sat for Wallsend on Tyne,  Joan Vickers, who beat Michael Foot twice in Plymouth Devenport, Florence Horsborough, Churchill’s Minister for Education, Pat Hornsby Smith and, of course, from 1959 Margaret Thatcher are names that immediately come to mind.

Party Conferences were the times when ministers and members of parliament mingled and talked to their own grass roots supporters about what particular concerns they had. Nowadays it is a media circus financed in the main by special interest groups. At  one conference in the nineteen sixties (held incidentally in those days in Conservative supporting Blackpool, Brighton or Scarborough) a chap named Fred Hardman (who fought Flint East three times, losing by only 75 votes in the 1959 election) got up to speak. The only words the writer can recall him saying during his speech were these: ‘These hands which have hewn coal’.  And the writer remembers thinking to himself: ‘If he can vote Conservative, I can vote Conservative’.

Fifty and more years have elapsed since those elections of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.

There have, of course, been many changes during those years not only in the composition of the electorate (and let us remember we have only been a full democracy since 1929 when everyone over a certain age was entitled to vote) but in the way the United Kingdom is governed. For better or worse we are now a multi party democracy in which various strands of nationalism flourish. (And the rise of UKIP the writer contends is a form of English nationalism). After the great defeat in 1945 the Conservative Party under the chairmanship of Lord Woolton made important changes in its constitution and financial structure. That, together with the work of Conservative Research Department under the chairmanship of R A Butler, reaped dividends for it not only led to the election in the 1950 parliament of people like Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling, Enoch Powell and Angus Maude but paved the way for thirteen years of Conservative government. The writer believes that until the lessons of those long ago years are learnt and adopted and until the party rediscovers its’ ‘raison d’être’ (why it is here) it will continue to poll between 30% to 35% and to be just one of five or six parties in a possible coalition.

N W

7 March 2015

TV debates - the solution

Letter published in the Evening Standard 26 January 2015:

People want a showdown between the contenders for PM - so have two Cameron -Milliband debates

Have another debate between leaders of the five main parties - Conservatives, Labour, Lib-Dems, Ukip, and Greens.

In Scotland stage a debate with these plus the SNP; in Wales add Plaid Cymru.

In Northern Ireland only the Conservative and Green parties put up candidates in 2010 so they should be joined by the unionists, nationalist and Alliance party leaders.

            Fairness all round.  

            John Strafford

            Campaign for Conservative Democracy

Let Party members have a vote on any coalition agreement

The following is an extract from Tim Montgomery of Conservativehome to Grant Schapps (Chairman of the Conservative Party).   We await his response with interest.

I’m glad to hear that Conservative MPs are likely to get a vote on any coalition deal that might be necessary after the next election. That’s at least how I read your answer to the question posed by my Times colleagues Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson. May I encourage the party to go further and also give all paid-up members a vote? Because a) they deserve one, and b) they can be trusted with one…

• Over the next few months tens of thousands of party members will give an enormous amount of time to the party’s candidates and ground war. They’ll give up weekends. They’ll go out on evenings after busy days at work to deliver leaflets and knock on doors. Some will use their annual holiday entitlements for campaigning. Other less mobile members will also be doing their bit. Stuffing envelopes. Processing questionnaires. Staffing call centres. Many members will write large cheques to local associations. They’ll do all of this without hope or expectation of any personal gain. They’ll be doing it all because they love their country and want her to have a Conservative prime minister and cabinet.

• Some people in the press – and a few too many near the top of the Conservative Party who should know better – would hate the idea of the Tory grassroots having any say in the future government of the country. We know that the caricature of party members is grossly unfair. Rather than being backwards in their social attitudes the bluest of blue Tory Associations keep choosing women candidates, gay candidates and candidates from ethnic backgrounds. ON MERIT! If you look at the ratio of “diversity” candidates actually selected versus the percentage of “diversity” candidates who actually apply to be on the PPC list the party is taking giant strides forward and all without the unmeritocratic measures deployed by Labour. The political views of party members are also much more mainstream than most outsiders might believe. A large majority of Tory members reject a pact with UKIP in the regular ConHome surveys. They are not obsessed with tax cuts but put faster deficit reduction before, for example, a cut in the 40p tax band. More members think students should be excluded from the immigration target than included.

Paul Goodman and Peter Hoskin have already recommended giving party members a vote on any coalition deal. It seems a proper way of recognising their contribution to the party – and it would go much beyond the traditional warm but not necessarily meaningful words of “thank you” that are uttered in their direction.
There is another reason why I hope you and David Cameron will think about this extension of party democracy. One of the reasons that Nick Clegg has not suffered defections or other big wobbles during this parliament was that he consulted his whole party on the Coalition Agreement. He explained what he was doing and then they endorsed his deal with Mr Cameron. Democratically. Because of that “buy in” they’ve held together much more happily than if there never had been a consultation. David Cameron could enjoy a happier second term if his programme for government is similarly endorsed. Given the party membership’s record of loyalty to previous leaders I would even predict that the grassroots are more likely to endorse any deal proposed by the prime minister than the parliamentary party.
I’d be grateful for your thoughts,
With best wishes, Tim

PS I’m also fed up of being told by Liberal Democrats that their party is more democratic than ours!

COPOV Forum December 13th

For details of the next COPOV Forum see Events on right.

Extracts from COPOV meeting on 1st November

View this: the grass roots speak.

Party democracy in action!

A lesson in democracy from Hong Kong!

Tens of thousands Hong Kong Chinese are demonstrating in the streets for democracy.   What is this all about?   The Chinese authorities are happy to let them elect a new Chief Executive for Hong Kong on the basis of One Person One Vote.   However only four candidates can stand and they have to be agreed beforehand.   This of course is a distortion of democracy.   Why can't anyone stand?
The supreme irony in all this is that it was agreed with the Chinese authorities by ex Conservative Party Chairman Chris Patten.   Why irony? Because this same system of election is used by the Conservative and the Labour parties in this country.   In a genuine democracy any member of the Conservative Party would be able to stand as a candidate, but what happens?   The Committee on Candidates (Chairman appointed, so unaccountable to the members) decides whether anyone can be on the candidates list.   There is then a sifting process at the end of which four names are put forward to be elected either by the public (so called open primaries) or by party members.
When can we expect demonstrations in the streets of the United Kingdom against this distortion of democracy?   What a shame that we are given a lesson in democracy by people in a far away land.

English Votes for English Laws

Ed Milliband’s refusal to accept “English votes for English laws” will rightly be seen as party political bias of the worst kind and should be condemned by all fair minded people who believe in democracy.

Now that more powers are to be devolved to Scotland the same powers should be devolved to an English parliament made up of English MPs at Westminster.   There should be an English First Minister and government, just as in Scotland.   The costs of this extra bureaucracy would be offset by reducing the salaries of Westminster MPs as they would only need to work for say two days a week.

All the above could be done very quickly but there are consequences.   To deal with these a constitutional convention should be set up immediately with a period of one year in which to report.   The convention should consist of one third MPs and two thirds members of the public.   It would need to examine House of Lords reform, necessity for a written constitution, revision of constituency boundaries and number of constituencies, over representation of Wales at Westminster and funding for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.   One further consideration should be to look at the system of elections as it is quite clear that First Past The Post has broken down.

With goodwill all this can be achieved relatively quickly and we can create a democracy for the 21^st century.   All we need is the will to get on and do it.

Stephen Parker lecture on "Education"

Stephen Parker's edited lecture on "Education" given at the COPOV meeting on 6th September.

http://youtu.be/0uwoeTUl13I