Red Tories
It looks more and more as though the biggest obstacle to the proposed merger of the Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties is the "Red Tories."
Graham Fraser writes in the Toronto Star that Stephen Harper's little joke that the merger would be a civil union, not a marriage, reminds people of a range of disagreements on "social issues."
Haper said: "It's not a marriage, it's a civil union."
Fraser reports: "Now, Harper is appealing to the churches to oppose same-sex marriage--and his justice critic, Vic Toews, has said that Tories who are uncomfortable with these divisive tactics can vote against the merger."
"'This calls everything into question,' one veteran Tory said to me. "Where are they going on women's reproductive freedom? What of the gains the country has made on pay equity? Is that gone? Are we or Parliament going to vote on capital punishment again? On bilingualism, a close reading (of the merger agreement) shows that the dots don't connect. This deal would take us back to pre-1988 Mulroney reforms.'
"So the same-sex marriage debate, to which Harper referred so flippantly, may become a symbolic fault line in the merger debate over the weeks to come.
"The division itself will not go away and, as Hugh Segal of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (and a federal Tory leadership candidate in 1998) points out, the once-united Progressive Conservative party was always vulnerable to being split on divisive social questions. Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau was highly skilled in using bilingualism to drive a wedge through the Tory party."
Op eds have appeared by Sinclair Stevens (once known as "Sinc the Slasher" for his determination to cut government spending) and others. See summary here.
As with the last third or so of Dalton Camp's life, the question arises: if the Red Tories are mainly determined to show they are "progressive," how do they differ from the Liberals or the NDP?
John Ibbitson mentions several possible candidates for leader of the new party (mainly Stephen Harper and former Ontario premier Mike Harris) and says:
"In all of these names, there is not to be found a single champion from the Progressive wing of the party, confirming that this merger truly is a friendly takeover of the Tories by the Alliance. And this truly does spell the end of communitarian conservatism in this country.
"Red Tories, we sometimes call them. They share with democratic socialists the belief that government must, first and foremost, ensure the health of the community. The best way to do this, they think, is to prevent excessive disparities in wealth, and to limit the ability of the private sector to act capriciously when those actions affect jobs, neighbourhoods or the environment.
"Communitarian conservatives differ from democratic socialists in their (reluctant) willingness to leave the private sector alone, as long as it doesn't bother anybody, and their sentimental affection for the traditions and institutions that shape the country. While socialists are genuinely egalitarian, Red Tories accept egalitarian measures from a sense of noblesse oblige.
"Neither the communitarian conservatives nor the democratic socialists have any time for libertarians, who celebrate equality of opportunity over uniformity of result, and who place the individual and his or her rights at the centre of the political universe.
"Both Stephen Harper and Mike Harris are firm libertarians. Mr. Harris is even more libertarian than Mr. Harper, in that the former premier keeps his distance from social conservatives: He believes the state should have as little place as possible in either the bedrooms or the boardrooms of the nation. Mr. Harper, on the other hand, gives a sympathetic ear to those economic libertarian/social conservatives who want freedom to do what they want, while bossing you around."
There's a lot of truth to this. I still think that for Tories in general, "sentimental affection for the traditions and institutions that shape the country" should come first--perhaps expressed as "recognition that the traditions and institutions of this country are successful (in contrast to many experiments around the world), they provide a "natural" way of uniting us, and getting outside of purely selfish views, and they are unique. As I have mentioned, George Grant probably got stuck with the term "Red Tory" because he believed in (sometimes) furthering Tory ends--preserving, with only minor modifications, the "old" ways--by way of socialist means.
On the other hand, if "Red Tories" are prepared to be called that partly because their love of tradition doesn't go back before 1960, what is Tory about them?
A degree of economic egalitarianism in order to ensure the "health of the community"? Maybe. I've been reading about British politics in the 19th century--when 20th-century policies and parties were being developed. In the great Irish famine, the only "party" or loosely-defined political bloc that had any strong desire to help the starving Irish was a Tory one led by Robert Peel. The hue and cry was such that the aid was half-hearted, and only provided for one year. The progressive liberals of the day were tending more and more to be doctrinaire free marketeers, (like Mouseketeers) if I can put it that way. They were totally opposed to any help to the Irish. If those responsible for farming have over-committed to potatoes, then the market must teach them to develop other crops (possibly Belgian endive, as in the Michael Dukakis story). Starvation might be exactly the event that pushes them more quickly to make rational decisions.
Update: Here is a site on the Peel government and the Irish famine that says "the Tories were liberals...." Other than this strange, possibly true remark, there is a summary that says Peel was actually defeated because of his aid to Ireland.
Supposedly an old classics-type prof at one of the old universities (Jowett at Oxford?) overheard two professors in the new and rising field of political economy. One said to the other: "There are estimates now that a million will starve. That's scarcely enough."
So, many Tories were proud of not getting caught in a wing-nut theory, taken to an extreme of inhumanity. On the other hand, there was lots of old-fashioned bloody-mindedness and religious bigotry to prevent any effective help being given. ("No wonder they're starving. They're enslaved by the priests, acting for Rome.") From what is now called the "third sector," the Quakers helped out as much as they could for a year or two, but then decided that all their efforts were a drop in the bucket, and only large-scale government action would really help. This of course was the conclusion of even more people after the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Some decades later Disraeli, a Tory Prime Minister, introduced some measures to improve working conditions in factories. I think there is a standing observation or joke that he was willing to go after factories, which were mostly owned by Whigs and Liberals--new money; but not coal mines, which were mostly owned by Tories--old money. Even as I type those words, I'm reminded of Westray....
Here is a site which gives an overview of Disraeli's career, emphasizing the "reform" or progressive, left-leaning measures of his governments.
Mostly I think Ibbitson makes the intellectual's mistake of ascribing a kind of intellectual consistency, or program, to a large number of actual flesh and blood politicians. I think George Grant used to say you can tell what book a politician last read--at about age 20--by the cliches he keeps reciting. Of course some of them keep reading--Newt Ginrich apparently read Alvin Toffler when he was well into adulthood.
Ibbitson also says that some Red Tories would actually be comfortable with the NDP. David Macdonald was PC MP in the 70s--the only elected member of any Canadian legislature who opposed Trudeau's invocation of the War Measures Act. He ran for the NDP in 1997. There may be other examples. Many Tories might prefer the Liberals to the "social conservatives."
This is the great problem with Colby Cosh's projection that a "united" Conservative party might have won all the votes given to either of the two parties separately. In 2000, everything else being equal, this would have limited the Liberals to a minority.
But there was probably nothing that would have made all PC and Alliance voters vote for one party then. And there is probably nothing that will achieve that now. In the "old" Progressive Conservative party, pre-Reform and Alliance, the "social conservatives" would grudgingly go along as the "progressives" kept saying: "We have to keep up with change in order to win elections. And by the way, some of this change isn't so bad." Libertarians were an awkward fit with either group. Now that the social conservatives combined with libertarians are likely to be in the driver's seat, it is the progressives who are out--and they are unlikely to join the new party. Their numbers--progressives who have remained PC--may not be great, but they might prevent the new party from getting ahead.
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