The Daily Telegraph (Torygraph) today gives prominence to a pamphlet by a former prominent Thatcherite Conservative minister: >Peter Lilley, the former deputy leader of the Conservative Party, is >calling for cannabis to be legalised and sold through special off-licences. > >Mr Lilley has urged the party's leadership contenders to think radically >about the issue of decriminalising soft drugs. > >He believes one of the biggest handicaps of the Tories' general election >campaign was the perception that the party's policies were negative and >punitive. Regardless of personal views listmembers may have in favour of or against this proposition, what is interesting is how it symbolises the struggle for the British Conservative Party to reposition itself to have a chance of winning a future election, in a complex late capitalist society. The strident views of Anne Widdecombe, are now seen to be completely out of fashion. The Party is having to abandon adherence to old (often hypocritical) values associated with the upper classes and those who ape them, and is having to gesture towards the more pluralist society of late monopoly capitalism in Britain. They may well try to swing towards a concept of individual liberty, which will appeal to the younger elements of the middle strata, really intelligentsia, who want to think they are autonomous and want to defend their right to take certain decisions for themselves like about cannabis and sexuality. In this vein it is also important symbolically that the front runner for the leadership contest, Portillo, has openly admitted a period of homosexual activity in the past. Socially liberal ideas on these questions however will be very unattractive to the militant rank and file members of Conservative Party local associations, who bitterly need to defend some sort of concepts of their own social superiority. They are fuelled by projecting their jealous feelings in wishing to defend their own material privileges out by attributing envy onto "socialists". Even if the Conservative Party becomes less stridently Little Englanders defending the identity of the pound, they are still going to find the pluralist tone of late capitalist bourgeois politics difficult. Chris Burford London PS IMHO the above comments attempt to apply what might be called aspects of the Marxist method (plus remarks about the role of projection in politics). Criticisms and comments appreciated.
