WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TORIES
Socialist Outlook1990sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE LABOUR landslide could hardly have been more devastating to a Tory Party which has been one of the most stable bourgeois parties in the western world and the most stable in Britain for the whole of this century.
They were reduced to a rump at Westminster, with no MPs in ScotThe reasons for the Tory debacle are clear enough. There has been a 1980s and sleaze and corruption took their toll.
The central reason, however. was the civil war over Europe which years. A big yaction of the party had had started and were not prepared for a cease-fire even during the problem has been that this has not just been a split in the Tory Party amongst people with different deas - It has reflected a fundamenal spit in the brosh ruling class between those who advocate clinging on to its previous world role as those who recognise its role today as a middle ranking power within Europe.
Finance capital in particular through the City of London, whilst manufacturing capitalists are lockin tor access to the nupe curopean market without the problems of rates.
The divisions cannot be solved Dy appeais for Unity. It15 an oojec the problem, insoluble within the Tory Party, which has been a coalicon or boin wings The Tories are by any objective analysis two parties, and following the kind of defeat they have just suffered they would under other cir. with competing political lines ore, or more likely ofter the leader. ship contest, with the followers of the defeated candidate leaving to establish something new.
The problem for those who would split is that the first past the post electoral system means that one Tory Party would nave to smash up the other in the short term if either of them was to stand any chance of getting elected.
For the moment there will be a pro and anti-Europe lines with the urosceptic right likely to win. whatever the consequences, the European issue will not go away and nor will debacle they experienced at the polls.
It will take the Tory Party a long
8 ECONOMIC O Socialist Outlook The employers' offensive and the anti-