The Rise of the British Religious Right

[Sheilbh]

Christian Tories rewrite party doctrine

By Chris Cook

Published: February 12 2010 17:23 | Last updated: February 12 2010 17:23

A Conservative MP was stage-whispering in the leathery, dark Pugin Room of the House of Commons late last year. With a view of the Thames, teacup in hand, he hissed at me: "They've campaigned to change the processes so that they can bus in their voters, stuffing the selection meetings with their people. They don't outnumber us, but they can out-organise us. They're taking over the party."

"They" are evangelical Christians, and the MP was prompted to speak by a meeting a week earlier. The party had held an "open primary" (in which members of the public can vote) to choose a candidate to stand for a safe Tory seat – Congleton, Cheshire – in this year's general election. The two leading names on the ballot were Matthew Hancock and Fiona Bruce. Both are well-known within Tory circles. Hancock is an economic adviser to the party, Bruce a solicitor who fought valiantly, if unsuccessfully, for a seat in the north-west in the 2005 general election. The main difference is religion: Hancock is secular, Bruce an evangelical Christian.

Bruce won comfortably, taking a majority of the 220 votes cast in the first round. But a rumour soon spread that most of her votes had come from members of the New Life church, a local evangelical congregation. Buses were alleged to have ferried 150 Christians from the church.

In truth, according to churchgoers and constituency officials alike, only between 40 and 60 of the people voting were parish regulars, and they made their own way to the meeting. Bruce had addressed the church shortly before the selection – but, then, all candidates had been welcome to do so.

Still, the Pugin Room MP continued: "You know, the Christians send e-mails to one another asking them to pray for them at selection meetings, but the point of the messages is to make sure that they all know who is standing where and when."

As Conservatives grasp the real possibility of victory this year, some are asking what degree of power a few evangelical Christians – only 3 per cent of the party members, according to one poll – will wield. The answer will determine the shape and sturdiness of any Conservative government.

As wary as some Tories are of their evangelical brethren, their current opinion poll lead comes in large part on the back of an alliance between secular liberals and a small core of evangelical Christians. In December 1990, weeks after the internal party coup that toppled Margaret Thatcher, a group of young Christians at Exeter University founded the Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF). "It was at a time when Tory MPs had appeared to abandon a moral case for conservatism and become narrowly economic," says Tim Montgomerie, one of the founders. "We hoped an organised Christian group could reignite the party's compassion."

Two years later, when he left university, Montgomerie – the son of an army officer – joined the Bank of England. But away from work, he concentrated on running the CCF, and, in 1998, gave up his job to run it full time. The Tory party, meanwhile, was slumping into oblivion. It had been devastated in the 1997 election. Staff at Conservative Central Office (CCO) recall speculating about what politics would be like "after the Tories".

CCO came up with "Listening to Britain", an exercise to reconnect the party to voters. And as part of a deal with the party, in which he was given a desk and a telephone, Montgomerie started an offshoot, "Listening to Britain's Churches". He contacted 300 churches around the country to ask about their concerns. Through this, he realised that the political priorities of church leaders were "much more linked to poverty, debt and drugs than they were about sexuality or bioethics". Montgomerie is staunchly anti-abortion, and had been influenced by US Christian conservativism, but he recognised that if Christian Tories were more interested in solving social problems than debating moral flashpoints, the party should respond.

Early on, most of Montgomerie's important allies were not Christians. He met with Jonathan Sacks (now Lord Sacks), Britain's chief rabbi, who helped line up £300,000 funding from Sir Stanley Kalms, a Tory donor. The only condition was that the organisation be non-denominational – and so Renewing One Nation was born, to run alongside the CCF. The new group largely recruited from the CCF and continued its policy work on poverty. Within the party, David Willetts, the Tories' foremost intellectual and my former employer, became a helper despite his own agnosticism. The atheist Oliver Letwin, now the Tory head of policy, also offered support. And the Jewish Daniel Finkelstein, then head of party policy and now executive editor at The Times, backed the project, too. Of Montgomerie's notable internal supporters, only one was Christian: David Lidington, an MP in the party's higher echelons.

Montgomerie's most important ally, however, was Iain Duncan Smith. Elected to the party leadership in 2001, the Roman Catholic was best known for his staunch Euroscepticism. But during a visit to the Easterhouse Estate in Glasgow in 2002, he became convinced of the need for social reform. Poverty moved up the agenda, and Montgomerie rose to become chief of staff.

. . .

"No one wants to cast a vote that makes them feel selfish," Montgomerie says. This attitude extended beyond poverty. As Duncan Smith's right-hand man, Montgomerie also advocated a more liberal line on sexuality than most of his co-religionists would be comfortable with, recommending, for example, that the Tories vote for the abolition of "section 28", a clause in the Local Government Act that forbade the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. "[The legislation] was supposed to stop some of the odd things local authorities were giving kids," he says. But many people saw it as homophobic in its singling out of gay-related material. Montgomerie agreed. "They were giving kids all sorts of objectionable things. I thought it was absolutely wrong to pick on gay people."

The social conscience at the top of the party did not last long. Duncan Smith was ousted in 2003 and replaced by Michael Howard. Though Howard had promised to continue the focus on social policy, leading from "the centre", the party tacked to the right and poverty became a backwater issue. Supplanted, Duncan Smith decided to carve out a new role. With Montgomerie and Philippa Stroud, another Christian activist, he set up the Centre for Social Justice – a successor to Renewing One Nation. While secular in its arguments, the CSJ was Christian in tone and hiring.

In 2005, Howard resigned the leadership after another general-election drubbing for the Tories. A leadership election followed that turned into a contest between David Cameron, known as a modernising liberal, and David Davis, the shadow home secretary and a "security Tory". Neither contender initially had social conservatives in the bag. Cameron, however, won over suspicious rightwingers with Eurosceptic pledges and a promise to continue the work on social policy that had begun under Duncan Smith – endorsing an early proposal by the CSJ to introduce an income tax break to support marriage.

Christians were a small part of the coalition that won Cameron the leadership battle, but they became crucial to him in office. His mission was to "decontaminate" the Tory party's "devil take the hindmost" image. Along with environmentalism, poverty became one of his big themes. But the older right-of-centre think-tanks rarely looked at welfare – only the CSJ devoted resources to it. In the words of one research department official, when it came to starting the push on social deprivation, "we had no support at all. Our family and welfare policy was all outsourced to the CSJ. Oh, and Frank Field [a prominent Christian Labour party MP]."

Soon after Cameron's election, Duncan Smith was invited to write a series of reports on poverty as part of the party's policy review. And while some at the CSJ were concerned about losing their independence, it was worth what they won: relevance. Two years after being exiled by Michael Howard, a small group of Christian Tories was defining the party's social policy. Today, the CSJ says it has crafted a full 70 Conservative policies.

Among the secular members of the party machine, there is unease about that sort of influence. The use of the CSJ's research, in particular, causes concern. One official – who, like all party staff I spoke to, refused to go on the record – said: "Their hearts are in the right place, but loads of their stuff is ropey. They just seem to make up statistics or use dodgy assumptions." The think-tank's support for subsidising marriage through the tax system is a particular bugbear. Another official said: "The CSJ claims that there is evidence marriage helps the poor. But you have to chase down a jungle of references to find anything serious. It's mostly rubbish that doesn't overcome the self-selection problem [that couples who choose marriage are more likely to have qualities that make it easier to stay together and be good parents]. We have repeated some wholly indefensible claims." The CSJ stands by those assertions. A spokesman said that "it is not simply a matter of selection. Regardless of socio-economic background, cohabiting couples are at least twice as likely to break up as their married counterparts and new research has revealed that 97 per cent of intact families with children aged 15 are married. To dismiss marriage as irrelevant is to ignore the evidence: children need stable, two-parent families and in the vast majority of cases, this means marriage."

Cameron's public position on tax and marriage has been undermined by murmuring from party apparatchiks, some of whom insist the marriage support proposal will never be implemented. As one adviser put it: "Will we really spend billions of pounds subsidising middle-class women to stay out of work if unemployment is rising? Of course not." This whispering campaign meant that when Cameron seemed to shift his position on marriage last month, the social conservatives and the rightwing press had every reason to think the worst. But the party scrambled to reassure them. The alliance between social conservatives and the party's metropolitan leadership has required tending; Cameron will not, at least ahead of the election, allow it to fail.

The tensions within the party, however, run deeper than concern over a few pieces of disputed research or a single policy. Last year, Samantha Callan, who produced the CSJ's policy review papers, took up a post in the Tory internal policy unit. There, she produced a position paper on the "commercialisation" of childhood, in which she proposed a tough line on sexualisation of young girls. The government, she said, should "extend the rules on teenage magazines and give them a statutory underpinning by applying them to all magazines with a significant readership of under-18s". The vague proposal could be interpreted as advocating government censorship, and received a frosty reception from the largely secular staff of Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), as CCO is now known. Callan endured a number of bitter arguments with party colleagues about a long-mooted proposal to abolish the formal distinction between the UK's current same-sex marriages – civil partnerships – and heterosexual civil weddings. After only 10 months within CCHQ, she left – frozen out by a Tory apparat that is overwhelmingly liberal, particularly on sexual mores and civil liberties. This division may be a harbinger of things to come.

. . .

That is not to say the Christians will be completely disappointed by a Cameron government. Even if they lose all their fights with the party machine, on issues where CCHQ has no say, such as abortion, traditionally a "free vote" topic, policy will change. FT research, looking at polls of parliamentary candidates and the existing stock of MPs' voting records, suggests that a Tory government elected with a single-digit majority would probably have enough support in the House of Commons to tighten abortion laws. Senior Tories expect that the cut-off dates for abortions under ordinary circumstances will be reduced from 24 weeks after conception to 20. This is not an indicator of growing religiosity among the Conservative party, nor renewed pro-life fervour. Rather, it is a herd effect. A liberal Tory adviser described it, tetchily, as "rightwing political correctness". "They think it goes with the package: pro-nuclear power, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-army, pro-life."

While the votes may come from secular Tories, the ringleaders of any abortion-tightening attempt will be Christians. In 2008, when parliament was debating embryology, Nadine Dorries, a high-profile backbench Tory MP, led the charge against abortion – and says she is informed by her Christianity (though "if you mention God in an argument in the UK, you lose," she says). One leading anti-abortion activist noted that behind the scenes the Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyers Christian Fellowship were "absolutely indispensable. They did most of the heavy lifting on research. But we could never acknowledge their role. Never. People would never take us seriously again." (Dorries says another reason she avoids talking about faith in parliament is out of fear it will set a precedent by which Muslim MPs could express – and impose – theirs. "There is no place for sharia law in Britain and as politicians we have to be aware and vigilant to ensure that we don't ease or facilitate its acceptance," she says.)

As well as tightening the abortion laws, Dorries expects to launch an attack on the Embryology Act. In parliament, she compared the current law's provisions to (false) claims about Soviet research programmes: "Stalin told his top scientist, Ilya Ivanov, to turn his skills to breeding an ultimate soldier by crossing human beings with apes ... The Department of Health says that what we do today will never be abused or subject to experimentation in the future, but I would not be so sure ..." In contrast to the abortion debate, however, on embryology Dorries and other Christian Tories will fail. As Boris Johnson put it to MPs as they went through the lobbies, it's a vote "for science or against science" and fewer MPs are willing to obstruct medical research than tighten abortion restrictions.

. . .

At last year's party conference, Cameron delivered an angry riff on the UK's poverty trap – and received a standing ovation for it. Montgomerie says it brought tears to his eyes. After all, it was the culmination of two decades of largely behind-the-scenes work. Now the 39-year-old is a more public figure. Five years ago, he set up the website ConservativeHome. Thanks to its strong following, he is seen as the voice of the conservative grassroots. Having built a research machine to craft the party's policies on poverty, he now has a weapon to force the party to follow through. If Cameron does renege on his tax and marriage promises, for example, Montgomerie will make his views heard.

During the election campaign, Montgomerie will behave himself. He has made little of recent Tory gaffes and has called for activists to remain loyal. But, in the past, he has proved willing to stand up to CCHQ. In 2005, he successfully opposed plans to strip party activists of their votes in leadership elections; in 2007, he was a driver of a political argument about grammar schools that helped lose the party its opinion poll lead. Individual MPs are worried. Andrew MacKay, who was forced to stand down in the expenses row, credits Montgomerie for his scalp. Another MP says of his vote on abortion laws: "I don't want to be just a constituency MP, answering letters. I want to be a minister. And the last thing I want is for ConservativeHome to take against me because I dared to vote against the approved Tim Montgomerie line."

The party machine is worried, too. One central office adviser said that "Tim's name is probably mentioned more [inside the party headquarters] than any other single outside observer, pressure group or journalist". (A shadow cabinet minister attempted to play down his influence: "Well, I wouldn't put Tim in the inner circle. He's probably not even in the top 10 most important people in the Tory party.")

In the past decade, Montgomerie has worked to build a broad, inclusive conservativism. In the coming decade, he could play a role in splitting the party. As he said last year, about Europe, where Cameron is planning a purely cosmetic Eurosceptic policy: "If Britain's relationship with the [European Union] is fundamentally the same after five years of Conservative government, the internal divisions that ended the last Tory period in government will look like a tea party in comparison."

And while poverty brought Montgomerie and Cameron together, another "decontaminating" element of the modern Tory platform may yet divide them: climate change. Montgomerie has become increasingly vocal in his scepticism. As he said just two months ago: "It is an issue that can split conservative parties around the world." Cameroons, take note.

Chris Cook is a leader writer for the FT

[Sheilbh]

..............................

Courting the black vote

Ipsos-Mori research suggests that at the 2005 election, only 3 per cent of British Caribbean voters and 2 per cent of British African voters supported the Conservatives. Only 3 per cent of the population comes from these communities, but if the Tories want to make progress in inner cities, they will need to rack up votes from these groups, who are concentrated in the country's big conurbations. Tory Christians are leading this charge.

Churches are central to Britain's black communities. A recent survey by Tearfund found that 48 per cent of black British adults are regular churchgoers, compared with 15 per cent of the population at large. Nine per cent of the country's congregations now have black majorities. Of these churches, a little under one quarter are Pentecostal. These churches are becoming more politically engaged and Elizabeth Berridge, director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, has been instrumental in arranging meetings between David Cameron, the shadow cabinet and leading figures in the black churches.

These community leaders are often socially conservative, taking hard lines on sexuality in particular. The issues that are motivating their moves into political engagement, however, are social. Simon Woolley, national co-ordinator of Operation Black Vote (a non-partisan group that campaigns for a stronger political voice for non-white Britons), says "the black churches and their leaders want a government that will address social and racial equality." The most important political topics for African and Caribbean churchgoers are the over-representation of young black men in the criminal justice system, school exclusions and the national DNA database (there is a widespread belief in black communities that the police arrest young black men specifically to get their personal details on file).

Woolley adds: "The Tories recognised very early on the potential of the black vote and have been courting church leaders for a while. That groundwork has started to pay dividends." Matilda MacAttram, director of the charity Black Mental Health UK, says: "Like most people in my community, I was a second- or third-generation Labour supporter, because there was a belief that they had our interests at heart. This last term in office has shown that this is clearly not true." She is clear about what changed her mind. "The Christian Conservative Fellowship has worked very hard at building bridges and have made the Tories accessible in ways we have never seen before."

Sharon Pennant has also been won over, and is now a Tory council candidate for Ladywood, Birmingham. "I was drawn to the Conservative party because of the notable and significant effort they have made to engage with the black and faith communities," she says. "It is also the party that I believe is most compatible with my Christian values." But winning over enough hearts and minds will not be easy. It will require paying attention to communities that, in the words of one front-bench MP, the Tories "have ignored for 60 years, and abandoned to Labour. This will be an extremely long haul."

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Preaching to the converted

ConservativeHome is not just another political blog: "ConHome" has become a Westminster institution. Its genius, in the view of Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, stems from Tim Montgomerie's "kindness, contact book and excellent journalistic instincts".

But part of its success is the result of astute personnel choices by the well-funded site (Lord Ashcroft, a prominent Conservative donor, invested in ConHome last year). Montgomerie has hired Jonathan Isaby, formerly of The Daily Telegraph, as a co-editor. Paul Goodman, who is standing down as an MP at the coming general election, has joined as a writer.

In addition to its articles, the site's main selling point is its comprehensive compilation of links to news about the Tory party, and reports on candidate selections and council elections from around the country. The site also polls parliamentary candidates and the party membership to discern the views of the party.

But the site's position as the guardian of the activists does not pass unchallenged: one CCHQ employee demanded I refer to Montgomerie as "the self-appointed voice of the grassroots". Another said: "It's just 30 people speaking to 30 people." Many people suspect it does not attract a wholly representative sample of Tory party members.

But party staff worry about ConservativeHome's ability to whip up outrage in the rightwing press. One former senior party press officer said "the Mail used to ring 100 constituency chairmen if they didn't like what we were doing, and they'd get a story out of that. You know, 'hard-working activists outraged' stuff. Now they just need to ring Tim. The old 'Tory splits' stock story just got that much easier."

The site could also act as a platform for rebels. One front-bench MP described its likely future role as a "serial harbourer of fugitives. I would expect Tim to back MPs who stand up to the whips in pursuit of the ConservativeHome agenda. God only knows what that means for our policies on climate change, Europe, on immigration or on defence."

[Jaron]

Hopefully the Jedis will rise up to save us.

[Viking]

I think Gordon Brown just had a new found flowering of faith, he might just keep his job yet.

[Martinus]

People who are left wing on economic issues and right wing on social ones should be turned into animal feed - they have no redeeming value for the society.

[CountDeMoney]

Serves you Brits right.  It's about time you had screwball religious types as well.  And Cromwell didn't count.

[CountDeMoney]

The most important political topics for African and Caribbean churchgoers are the over-representation of young black men in the criminal justice system, school exclusions and the national DNA database (there is a widespread belief in black communities that the police arrest young black men specifically to get their personal details on file).

[Razgovory]

I imagine this is going to happen more and more in Europe.  It's really the only way to respond to the muslim thingy in Europe.

[Martinus]

I imagine this is going to happen more and more in Europe.  It's really the only way to respond to the muslim thingy in Europe.

Not really. In fact it's the opposite - only by adopting a staunchly secular stance (like France does) instead of treating religions as these dotting and a bit whacky but harmless relatives, the way we used to in Europe, we can hope to oppose the "muslim thingy" without becoming like the enemies we despise.

[CountDeMoney]

It's really the only way to respond to the muslim thingy in Europe.

Nonsense.

[Josquius]

Fiona BRUCE Fiona Bruce?
Or someone who has the same name?

The CSJ claims that there is evidence marriage helps the poor.

Bloody hell.
They need a primer on causation != correlation.

Much of their stuff though (focus on poverty issues) sounds very leftist and not at all evangelical christian....

[Queequeg]

Not really. In fact it's the opposite - only by adopting a staunchly secular stance (like France does) instead of treating religions as these dotting and a bit whacky but harmless relatives, the way we used to in Europe, we can hope to oppose the "muslim thingy" without becoming like the enemies we despise.

Yes and no.  I think it is pretty clear, in Turkey at least, that every single day everyone chooses European sex and glamor over Islam and Piety, even if they don't know it.  With that said, I think the most sensible solution is something akin to America's, where we have sex, glamor and religion. 

[Pat]

There's nothing sensible about american religion, and adding american religiosity would not be sensible. I, for one, would combat such a development wherever I saw it.

[CountDeMoney]

There's nothing sensible about american religion, and adding american religiosity would not be sensible. I, for one, would combat such a development wherever I saw it.

There are flights to Atlanta daily.

[Queequeg]

There's nothing sensible about american religion, and adding american religiosity would not be sensible. I, for one, would combat such a development wherever I saw it.

The South gives American religion a rep it doesn't really deserve.  Look at the Civil Rights movement and Abolitionism.  I actually think it is weirdly healthy that in America it is possible to go to Church Sunday and jerk off to the thought of the preacher's daughter that same night. 

*Prepares for shitstorm*