Max Wind-Cowie is a researcher at Demos, where he works on the Progressive Conservatism Project.
OK, don’t skip to the bottom to denounce me as an unhelpful pinko just yet – hear me out. I used to believe that inequality was, possibly, the least important issue a government could concern itself with. Thatcher’s last stand at the Despatch Box, and her swift dismissal of complaints from Simon Hughes and others about the gap between rich and poor, informed my view of this issue – that it simply wasn’t an issue at all.
But I have changed my mind and I now believe that conservatives need to revisit the equality debate. It’s not that I’ve succumbed to a lefty concern for the fairness of the thing, I haven’t; it’s that it has become clear - in light of a great deal of evidence - that rampant inequality does damage to conservative values. I am a conservative because I believe in the traditions, institutions and heritage that bind our country together; because I respect the law and favour order; because I believe that while the state is one tool for achieving social justice it is neither the only, nor the best.
These virtues are actively damaged in our society by the massive and unjustified inequalities that people see around them everyday. What is more, none of these conservative beliefs mean that we are necessarily predisposed to admiring or desiring an unequal society – they just mean that we have a different view of how entrenched inequality should be combated.
As I discovered whilst writing my recent pamphlet for the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos, Everyday Equality, there are real community problems that arise when inequalities go utterly unchecked. Crime and anti-social behaviour occur at a higher rate in communities that are unequal (greater even than in communities that are simply poor or deprived), volunteering is less frequent and less embedded and political and community engagement are muted. The reality is that very unequal communities are simply less conservative – less community spirited, law abiding and democratically involved – than equal ones.
This has profound affects on the ability of the Conservative Party to deliver its agenda. A Britain in which communities look after themselves, people engage and are enthused by the localist agenda and empowered neighbourhoods check anti-social behaviour is more difficult to establish in a Britain that ignores the corrosive effect of everyday inequalities on those very communities.
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