- Paperback: 608 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix; New edition edition (2 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0753807653
- ISBN-13: 978-0753807651
- Product Dimensions: 20 x 12.9 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 501,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
For the better part of this century the Conservatives have been the governing political party of Britain. During that period the country has fallen in stature by virtually every criterion of measurement which can be applied. Yet the primary objective of the Conservative Party, or so it claims and its supporters believe, is to advance and protect the interests of the British Nation-State. How are we to understand its catastrophic and repetitious failure, over practically the whole of this period, to achieve that objective?
About the Author
Alan Clark, educated at Eton and Oxford, read for the Bar but did not practise. Tory MP for Plymouth Sutton 1972-1992; Kensington and Chelsea, 1997-99. Various junior ministerial appointments in the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments of the 1980s. Best-known for his Diaries (three vols) which The Times placed in the Samuel Pepys class. They were filmed by teh BBC with John Hurt as Clark and Jenny Agutter as Jane Clark. Alan Clark died in 1999.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Clark has drawn on his experience as historian, diarist and member of parliament to produce a compelling canter through the key events of the last three quarters of the twentieth century. Although principally a study of the Tory party from the break up of the Lloyd George coalition in 1922 (the Carlton Club meeting at which that decision was taken being the origin of the 1922 Committee) to the landslide defeat of John Major in 1997 the book also succeeds as a study of raw politics and personal ambition with a dash of revisionism for good measure. Would it have been better for the Tory party and the country if Curzon had succeeded Bonar Law as leader in 1923, if Chamberlain had seen Mussolini rather than Hitler as the greater threat to British interests in 1938, if Eden had not persuaded Churchill to prevent Butler from floating sterling during Churchill's second premiership, if Margaret Thathcher had promoted more of her own supporters? Clark certainly thinks so and produces powerful agruments in support of his response to these and the other major decisions which he believes to have been, with disasterous consequences, wrongly taken.
That the party whose historic justification has been the defence of the institutions and interests which comprise the British nation state should have been responsible for taking the very decisions which have caused the most damage is not lost on Clark and one senses in the writing a frustration, bordering at times on despair, that the Tory party, his party, could so often have allowed personal ambition to transcend national interest. But even Clark does not ascribe every disaster to vaulting ambition - Churchill had little interest in econonmic matters and so did not stop to consider the long term effects of the extortionate price the United States extracted for its war time support. This, combined with Treasury imcompetence and unnecessarily generous demonstrations of good will (handing over the design of the jet engine for nothing) so weakened the United Kingdom economy that policy for the remainder of the century was hamstrung by financial problems. In addition a crisis of confidence in tackling the unrealistic social expectations raised by the Atlee government's welfare programme brought on a paralysis and loss of purpose which culminated in the Heath government nationalising a greater share of the economy than the socialist government which preceded him.
There were voices of dissent in the party who did realise the fateful consequences of what had been done, who did speak out. None was strong enough to try to reverse the damage until Margaret Thatcher and she was far from unassailable until the Falklands war had been won. But even Maragaret Thatcher was ultimately sacrificed on the altar of personal ambition. Her successor did not stand a chance. Would it have been different if Alan Clark had still been in the House of Commons? Probably not but we should have enjoyed reading about it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'The Tories', as you may have gathered from the title, is a book which focuses on the Nation-State, but this requires a short explanation - Clark's conception of this notion focused very much around the nation's accumulated prestige, it's self-confidence, it's position in the world, and it's basic internal cohesiveness and economic strength. Clark links the continuing decline of those factors in Britain over the period in question with the individual personalities in the Tory Party - and how individual ambition in particular always takes precedence over the national interest. This is a frank assessment on Clark's part of the country and the Tory party, both of which he so clearly loved; of how both allowed themselves to drift aimlessly at points; and Clark's quiet anger at short-term thinking, of the 'management of decline' mindset.
Clark combines certain themes in each section - the misjudgements in the foreign policy of the thirties to the leaderships of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and their opposition in the shape of Churchill - to excellent effect. You may disagree with (for example) Clark's purely realpolitik arguments that any focus on central Europe in the thirties was utterly contrary to Britain's national interests; (which, indeed it was, purely on those terms, as Clark amply demonstrates) that Chamberlain's essential failing was to not provide an alternative, 'imperial'/Mediterranean vision as a counterpoint; and that the real problem with appeasement was that it ever got itself entangled in central Europe in the first place, but they are arguments which are highly persuasive on their own terms. (Despite Clark characteristically weighting some events, such as the Hess flight, too highly)
This book was meant to be Clark's magnum opus, although I get the sense that it rather fell down with the book world on two accounts; it was too truthful, and much too fun. This is not an academic book; it is a political/historical polemic, well upheld by personal experience and a regard for pinning down historical personalities and political trends. But it is never, ever, a dull book.
Clark combines certain themes in each section - the misjudgements in the foreign policy of the thirties to the leaderships of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, and their opposition in the shape of Churchill - to excellent effect. You may disagree with (for example) Clark's purely realpolitik arguments that any focus on central Europe in the thirties was utterly contrary to Britain's national interests; (which, indeed it was, purely on those terms, as Clark amply demonstrates) that Chamberlain's essential failing was to not provide an alternative, 'imperial'/Mediterranean vision as a counterpoint; and that the real problem with appeasement was that it ever got itself entangled in central Europe in the first place, but they are arguments which are highly persuasive on their own terms. (Despite Clark characteristically weighting some events, such as the Hess flight, too highly)
This book was meant to be Clark's magnum opus, although I get the sense that it rather fell down with the book world on two accounts; it was too truthful, and much too fun. This is not an academic book; it is a political/historical polemic, well upheld by personal experience and a regard for pinning down historical personalities and political trends. But it is never, ever, a dull book.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A fantastic book. Dont miss it!! It is especially good on the influences upon pivotal moments in the history of the Tory party, and often gives away Clark's views on how mistaken the outcomes were. This book climbs up history, political writing and biography, and presents a true human interest story of a social organisation.
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