Beds To Unmake

Why would anyone be interested in the autobiography of Shirley Williams? Well, she is a salutory warning to the urgently necessary restoration of a political movement which combines an absolute commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled immigration, and a realistic foreign policy, with a no less absolute commitment to the Welfare State, workers' rights, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation (not environmentalism), fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State.

There must be no room for the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams, so very far removed from "Red Ellen" Wilkinson of the Jarrow Crusade, from George Tomlinson, from Sidney Webb of the old Clause IV, and from R H Tawney. There must be no room for the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins. There must be no room for the betrayal of Christian Socialism, Gaitskellism (although that fact is now largely forgotten) and much of High Toryism over nuclear weapons. And there must be no room for the betrayal of Gaitkellism and the Attlee Government over European federalism.