Ever since the rise of Margaret Thatcher, personal responsibility has been the irresistible itch that the Conservative Party dare not scratch - at least not in public. Notwithstanding the party's boosterish slogans of enterprise, freedom and low taxation, many of its elderly members - and some of its politicians - have long held to a more cautious ethos of middle-class respectability, restraint and downright frugality. In theory, these Conservatives wished to roll back the restrictions of the socialist state; in practice, many of them reckoned that wartime rationing had been good for the moral fibre of the nation, and took the view that the softness of modern consumerist lifestyles had raised a society of degenerates. It was but a small step from inside lavatories and quilted toilet paper to long-haired decadence, dysfunctional families and drug addiction.

LRB 3 December 2009 | PDF Download