The Making of the Conservative Party's Immigration Policy by Rebecca Partos

Author:Rebecca Partos [Partos, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Emigration & Immigration, Social Science, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351010634
Google: lO6aDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 56448108
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-31T10:59:21+00:00

This was not just one isolated incident and there was much more at stake than the potential failure to pass one piece of legislation. The loss of the vote might have meant that a ‘long and damaging dispute would almost certainly break out within the Conservative Party, and it would become difficult to secure Parliamentary authority for any new Immigration Rules’.53 When the government was defeated in the Commons during a division against the new Immigration Rules on 15 December 1982, and despite the ‘strenuous efforts’ of the Home Secretary (or so he himself said), the Chief Whip and other ministers, immigration policy was put to one side.54 In a Cabinet meeting the next day, it was noted that many Government supporters had voted with the opposition. Ministers pressed for urgent consultation with the Conservative MPs who disagreed with the government in order to reach a solution that could be stomached by them as well as the supporters of the government.

The leadership was critical in ensuring that the disputes over immigration policy did not develop into something more damaging for the Party: it was Margaret Thatcher who made the decision to put policy to one side. The priority, as she saw it, was the unity of the Party. At one Cabinet meeting in 1982, she acknowledged the ‘considerable anger’ against the Conservative MPs who had voted against government legislation on new immigration rules.55 She maintained, however, that it was ‘of the utmost importance that further damaging divisions within the Conservative Party on this issue should be avoided’.56 As leader of the Party, Thatcher seems to have had a profound – and personal – influence on immigration policy, and in particular, its ad-hoc formation. She was notable for her interventionist approach and personal interest in policy. There are some indications, however, that Thatcher was prevented from using, or perhaps exploiting to its full extent, the immigration issue, mainly by her more moderate colleagues. Whitelaw not only ‘refused to let her’ do this in opposition; as Home Secretary, he also ‘ensured that it [migration] was kept entirely out of the 1983 campaign’.57 References to immigration in the manifesto of that campaign were relatively limited and fairly insipid (‘strict but fair’).58 Whitelaw was not the only one to hold her back:

Beyond armchair psychology, Thatcher’s approach to immigration reflected the pursuit of an explicit political aim. Throughout her career as leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister, Thatcher was not, and could not be, as far to the ideological right as she claimed, and her strongest supporters expected her to be. Her Cabinet colleagues […] would not have it.59

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