The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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distinctive
doctrine features can be detected.”10 The British Conservative Party
is
the party of the class that has its roots in the landed gentry of the early nineteenth
century.
They are various groups and institutions such as the Church of England,
ancient universities, the Guards
regiments and the legal profession, which the
studies in the first chapter described in detail. These
groups, as was noted in that
chapter, are collectively known as ‘the Establishment,’ which is
traditionally
associated most closely with the Conservative Party.

The
Conservative Party, as was touched on earlier, always overtly felt a
strong sense of involvement with the
Empire. Such sentiment was evident at the
Party’s annual conferences:

“Let us never forget the Imperial spirit, the indefinable, sentimental, if you
like, feeling
which is the spark that sets our reason aglow; and it is our
reason that tells us that the policy which
we are now advocating, the policy
of Joseph Chamberlain and the policy of Benjamin Disraeli, remains
the
right one.’11

The
“indefinable, sentimental feeling” for most Conservatives is simply
pride. For the
Conservatives, the British imperial achievement was something to
be distinctly proud of. Conservatives
credited the Empire with “maintaining over
a large part of the Earth’s surface the rule of law,
of justice, and the moral
influence of the only league of nations which has ever worked. More than this,
it
was held to provide the whole basis of Britain’s claim to national greatness in
modern times;
and Conservatives were nothing if not conservers of Britain’s
greatness.”12 The Conservatives labelled themselves the “Imperial party” and
their
attitudes towards Empire distinguished their party from others as
fundamentaly as, for example, towards
nationalisation. Cuthbert Alport argued
that “socialism by its nature could not comprehend the
problems of the Empire,
particularly the Colonial Empire.”13 He
continued by saying about socialism that:
“they nurse a few prejudices and call these a policy, but
they regard the

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