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· The Conservative Party had Conservative rhetoric, but many policies that were socialist in impact
· Freedom depends on an understanding of Burke's little platoons and civic institutions
· The growing ignorance of the Christian and moral principles that undermine our civilisation is a dangerous development
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Charles Moore was one of Margaret Thatcher's staunchest defenders from the leadership challenge mounted by Michael Heseltine in November 1990. But his loyalty was not a product of blind allegiance to the Conservative Party and its incumbent leader but a particular confidence in the then leader's record and philosophy.
He has shown since, in his withering editorial attacks on the Major administration, that the newspaper which left-wingers like to refer to as the Torygraph is no longer afraid to attack the Party when it believes it is deserting right-wing territory.
Was Labour the main beneficiary of the right-wing press' undermining of John Major?
Nowhere has Charles Moore's line been tougher than on the issue of Europe where the tone of The Sunday Telegraph's editorials have contributed in no small part to the nervousness of the Party since John Major's 1992 victory. I asked Mr. Moore if he ever worried that, by undermining John Major, his newspaper might be inadvertently helping to elect a socialist government that would be even more friendly to the cause of European integration.
He replied "Whenever you argue for any important point of principle you should not start making all sorts of complicated calculations about the possible side-effects of your argument. It would be ridiculously arrogant of me to believe that because sections of the press are critical of the Government that this will mean it will not win the next election.
My concern is that Europe is the main issue of our time and I want to argue for what I believe is the right approach on European policy. I actually happen to think that the more Euro-sceptical the Tories become the more likely they are to win the next election and such a stance will help to distinguish them from an increasingly Euro-friendly Labour Party. I believe that if the Tories play the European card properly it will be to their electoral advantage".
With some delight, he went on to tell me that a recent survey had shown that a surprisingly high number of his readers - relative to competitors read the editorial comment and he promised to maintain the tough line followed so far in the hope that further losses of British sovereignty might be avoided.
He applauded the work of Christopher Booker, who in his column documents the deadening effect which European bureaucracy and regulation has on British business. He believed that Boris Johnson and Christopher Lockwood had helped to increase public awareness of Brussels' excesses and he promised that there would be more and more of the same.
'The rhetoric of the modern Conservative Party is classical liberal but in its actions it is socialist to a large extent'
Freedom
I suggested to Charles Moore that Conservative Cabinet ministers talked too much about freedom and too little about responsibility within families and communities. He disagreed and said that we must always be vigilant in protecting our liberties but it was important to increase understanding of the culture in which freedom flourishes.
"Freedom can never be about doing what the hell you like. In the market it depends upon the rule of law and traditional virtues such as good manners and honesty. Freedom must always be stressed alongside a respect for traditional social organisation". Even at the height of Margaret Thatcher's success 40% of our national product was still being spent by the state.
The Conservative Government is still presiding over an engine of socialism in terms of welfare policy and the redistribution of wealth. 'When people attack the aridity of conservative capitalism they are missing the point as only the rhetoric has talked about classical liberalism - the long promised attack on the size of the state has not really been made.
Hand-in-hand with this approach we also need a Burkean Conservative understanding of the importance of nation, tradition, continuity and institutions rather than an atomistic individualism that was never present in Adam Smith's writings but is a view held by many rationalist liberals".
Community and family
In response to Tony Blair's constant talk of 'community values' I suggested that the Tories must develop a language of 'civic conservatism'. I suggested that the most important civic institution was the family and I asked what he thought of the Tory record with regard to the family.
"It has been unsuccessful but the problems of the family are not unique to Britain and are caused by innumerable factors. I would say that the people who decide family policy are not Tory ministers but a huge pseudo-professional class that has grown up around the welfare state including social and care workers.
Ministers raise a cheer at the Party Conference by attacking lesbian parenting but the anti-family people within the welfare services actually call the shots. For example, the people running AIDS education programmes in no sense share a conservative view of family life."
Moore continued, "We should at least be trying to make differences at the margin and it is right that single mothers are losing their priority access to council housing. There are too many disincentives to marry and many people must feel that the prevailing culture does not support what they do and actually penalises them with single parents getting more money from the state.
"I do not believe that women should be discouraged from working but the government has gone too far in accepting feminists' arguments that it is wonderful for all women to go out to work with the result that there has been inadequate consideration of young children's care needs."
I suggested that the Child Support Act was the most important piece of pro-family legislation passed in recent years. Was he a full supporter of it? "I have two problems with it. First, it has the power to tear up already agreed settlements which runs contrary to all principles of law and is asking for trouble and second, it is Treasury-driven and does not look at the worst cases of neglect by fathers but at the most profitable cases."
Nonetheless, the principles behind the Child Support Agency were right and he paid tribute to Peter Lilley's stewardship of the reform and the whole rolling programme of welfare reform which the Social Security Secretary had embarked upon. A sea-change in policy would only happen on Number Ten's initiative but Moore doubted John Major's commitment to necessary welfare and family policy reform.
Moore called for less hollow rhetoric at Party Conferences and more concrete action - perhaps, then, Back to Basics would not be dismissed as nothing more than a populist catchphrase and become liable to being hijacked by a media preoccupied with sex scandal stories.
Catholicism
'The ordination of women is a great setback to the cause of Christian unity'
Charles Moore recently left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic. He had become increasingly uneasy with Anglicanism's theological liberalism, vandalism of its liturgies and politicisation. But it was a desire to be part of the universal church that most drew him to Rome.
He does not share some Catholics' view that all other branches of the worldwide church are untrue and in that light welcomes Vatican II's acceptance of other church communities. He values ecumenism and was very concerned that the ordination of women was a brake on greater Christian unity.
He accepted my contention that evangelical Protestants had much in common with Catholicism in countering the liberalism of much present 'Christian' thinking which stresses self-fulfillment rather than an understanding of God's revelation. However, fundamentalist or evangelical Christians had not really faced up to the problem of authority, he suggested.
It was not enough to say that scripture was the ultimate authority, as one has to also reach agreement on what books should actually be part of the Bible before it can be seriously studied. Moore believed that it was vital to share in a community of living and dead Christians who have tried to gain a deeper and wider understanding of Christian teaching - the Catholic Church had become the most authoritative community for him.
'It is frightening that so many people do not have any understanding of Christianity'
Looking forward
I concluded my interview with Charles Moore by asking him about his mood as we approached a new millennium. I quoted the words of Lord Hailsham who has recently expressed great despondency at the age we live in and talked of the obliteration of the kind of values conservatives traditionally cherish.
"Man will continue to fail to live as he ought; that is our fundamental problem and, as Christians, we understand that as the Fall of Man. On the whole, however, we can look back over the last fifty years as very peaceful, prosperous times. I am certainly more cheerful than Lord Hailsham as one has to compare today's stability with the horrors of fascism and communism in this century.
Lord Hailsham may be on to one very important point and that is huge numbers of people in western society are frighteningly unaware of the religious and moral basis of our civilisation. People have absolutely no idea about what Christianity means. That is not unprecedented but it is new and it is frightening."
I had spent forty-five minutes interviewing Charles Moore and throughout had been thoroughly stimulated by his arguments and impressed with the passion and sincerity with which he held his opinions. I am not surprised The Sunday Telegraph readers testify to such a high degree of interest in the newspaper's opinion pages and even if the leadership of the Tory Party wished for a more gentle editorial line, it can't help but note that this newspaper's circulation is rising much faster than any other Sunday quality.
Related links
Millennium Blues - Charles Moore's 1999 Wilberforce Address
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