Reform and Ideological Restoration
The obvious, but ignored, difficulties of building something from nothing in politics.
In 1849, the famed art critic John Ruskin brilliantly explicated his principles of architecture in The Seven Lamps of Architecture. In the chapter on memory, though, we find some harsh views on the restoration of historic buildings. Ruskin declared that such an idea was “a Lie from beginning to end” and that “you may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse… but the old building is destroyed.” He continued by claiming the need for restoring a building “is a necessity for destruction… [to] pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar.” Polemically argued as ever, whilst sounding more akin to a Futurist than a Victorian with a deep sense of history, Ruskin’s eventual moral in this passage was “take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them.” Perhaps this latter comment is more worthy of appreciation than what immediately precedes it, but the chapter as a whole is recommended.
During the nineteenth century, thousands of churches faced sometimes less than faithful ‘restorations’ from architects inspired by medievalism and the Gothic Revival, despite many possessing only traces of original features from the idealised period. Some churches were destroyed in the process and rebuilt, whereas others had their original material gutted for whatever was necessary to achieve their supposedly ‘correct’ state in around the year 1300. These were the sorts of lies Ruskin referred to in The Seven Lamps, which makes his opinions above more reasonable overall given the historical insensitivity of particularly the earlier ‘restorations’. Influential individuals like him and William Morris vociferously opposed the Victorian ‘restoration’ movement and might have tempered the scale of alterations later into the Gothic Revival, although not their pace. Arguably, their advocacy of protecting historic buildings in their present state helped to develop our modern understanding and expectations of restoration. Some remain less sympathetic to such a plight, but if an old building worth saving is pulled down, we can at least be assured its replacement will be totally different in material terms.
What does any of this have to do with politics and the Reform Party? After all, these things are not automatically comparable to buildings and architecture. To put it slightly academically, there are significant connections which can be drawn between the tensions in Ruskin’s ideas about restoration and the ideological situations of the parties currently battling for control of the centre-right. The Conservatives and British conservatism certainly face a “necessity for restoration” after the party’s election defeat, one which should return the fruitful historical inheritance to the fore rather than disavow it once again. With some searching, the cornerstones and adornments alike are mostly still present, just strewn about with the same wanton abandon as the philosophy has been treated lately. Reform, by all appearances, would take a Ruskin-like stance about the prospects of their opponent’s restoration and the “necessity for destruction” that reveals. Indeed, the party has reason to feel this way from the many mistakes of prior Conservative governments. However, there is little evidence Reform is serious about constructing a centre-right ideology anew or adopting one already established, a plainly vital development to gain a realistic chance of entering opposition or government at the next election as they have planned.
They could do as Ruskin suggested and make a strong ballast of the debatably crumbling conservatism to establish some long-term viability, but instead they choose to reject any precedence and place all faith in their notion of a popular ‘movement’. To build something from nothing, founded on the ever-shifting sands of public opinion, and expect it to achieve lofty objectives in just five years is a foolish endeavour. It is true of buildings and ideologies alike that they are not constructed by almighty conflagrations of desires, even if there is popular want of either, but by the concerted efforts of a select group who know what they are doing. The latter cannot occur if Reform idealises the formation of their ‘movement’ above all other options for political development. The Primrose League of the late nineteenth century could be seen as a popular Conservative movement, equal to the trade unions in terms of membership, but they were happy to be led and reinforce pre-existing principles rather than split the party by attempting to lead themselves. This dynamic was a far more mature and productive use of mass politics, from a party not altogether comfortable with the idea at the time, than Reform currently intends. Their ‘movement’, therefore, is little more than a mirage of the populist imagination, another phantasm of success which Reform can add to their growing collection.
For a final point of historical reference, contemporary to Ruskin and The Seven Lamps, the failure of Chartism is worth heeding for those seeking to build a viable political force or use the weight of a popular movement to effect political change. Despite the millions signing petitions to the Commons, meetings of hundreds of thousands and sporadic violent risings, the People’s Charter was never accepted by Parliament during the decade or so of the movement’s prominence. After they failed to emulate the success of revolutionaries elsewhere in Europe in 1848, the movement quickly declined into irrelevance. If Reform wants to constitute a ‘movement’ for constitutional reform, it is at least doing better in terms of Members of Parliament elected, five versus Chartism’s solitary victory in Nottingham in 1847. Yet the British constitution at its best is one which steadily and prudently evolves, as shown by the same prevailing elite accepting some former Chartist demands for greater democratisation in later decades. This revelation should come naturally to those within the conservative tradition. Reform, like the Chartists in their heyday, instead want a level of change resembling the instant replacement of the current constitutional order with another. This may be needed after the radical constitutional alterations of Blairism, but not in a way which preserves a similar sense of discontinuity, inflexibility and disregard for Britain’s inheritance of functional institutions by furthering the very legislation which partly caused those problems. The characteristics which made the unwritten constitution effective for so long are eluded from such narrow-minded, momentary conceptions of what reform must mean. It is clear, as with other problems facing the country today, that the only way to pursue their adequate resolution is through a restored conservatism forming, at this rate, the foundation of a restored Conservative Party in government.
