Conservatism, the late philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, emerged into the modern world as “a kind of ‘yes but…’” response to liberalism. Conservatives, he observed, believe, like liberals, in the importance of the free market, of private property and of individual choice. They believe also in the overriding significance of community and tradition as setting limits to the reach of individualism. Liberalism, for Scruton, made sense “only in the social context that conservatism defends”.
The relationship between these two philosophical wellsprings of conservatism has never been comfortable. The tension between the individualism of the market and private property and the communality of custom and tradition, between promethean capitalist development and the fetters of history and culture, has always gnawed away at the heart of conservatism.
It is a tension that can be seen in a surprising ambivalence towards Margaret Thatcher. Certainly, she is an unalloyed Tory heroine, the Iron Lady who transformed both Britain and the Conservative party. Yet, many conservatives also regret the destruction Thatcherism wrought on Britain’s social fabric and its customs and traditions. Scruton himself admired Thatcher but in his memoirs, Gentle Regrets, described his 1980 book The Meaning of Conservatism as “a somewhat Hegelian defence of Tory values in the face of their betrayal by the free marketeers”.
Or take Thatcher’s favourite free-market economist, Friedrich Hayek. One anecdote has Thatcher, during a party meeting, producing a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slamming it down on the table and declaring, “This is what we believe.” Hayek was as admiring of Thatcher as she was of him. Yet, he added a postscript to The Constitution of Liberty........