
AceHistoryDesk – Whenever in recent years a Conservative leader has run into trouble, Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee, has had the task of detecting at what point the situation has become irretrievable, and informing him or her that the moment to admit defeat has arrived.

Ace Press News From Cutting Room Floor: Published: Dec.09: 2023: Conservative Home By Andrew Gimson Dec.08: 2023: TELEGRAM Ace Daily News Link https://t.me/+PuI36tlDsM7GpOJe
The 1922 Committee: Power behind the scenes by Philip Norton
Sir Graham performs this trying duty with the grace, probity and discretion of a senior doctor informing a patient that there is no more that can be done and the end is nigh.
He is trusted to count the letters in which Conservative MPs demand a vote of confidence in their leader, to announce when the threshold of 15 per cent of the parliamentary party has been met, to conduct along with his colleagues the resulting vote, and to take whatever action may then be required.
If Rishi Sunak were to be forced out, the ’22 would play a crucial role in deciding who was to succeed him, and on past form this would probably not be whoever the press thought was the frontrunner.
Sir Graham’s probity, professionalism and discretion mean, however, he is unlikely ever to offer the world a full account of what he does. That would mean breaking confidences.
And this is a grave difficulty for anyone who sets out to write an account of the ’22. The sources are sparse, because those who know what happened are too reputable to spill the beans.
Which is one reason why there are only two histories of the ’22. One, by Sir Philip Goodhart, was published in 1973, to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding. The other is the book under review, marking the centenary.
Some of the best shafts of insight are provided by MPs who took an irreverent view. We owe to Julian Critchley, writing in 1994 in A Bag of Boiled Sweets, the preservation of Walder’s law, coined in the 1960s by David Walder, MP for High Peak, which stated that at any meeting of the ’22 “the first three people to speak from the floor on any matter whatsoever were invariably mad”.
Critchley also recognised the importance of the ’22 in magnifying what were otherwise the insignificant opinions of isolated backbenchers:
“The individual backbencher does not count for much…but the ’22 does matter; the anger of two hundred or so backbenchers when focussed upon a man or an issue can destroy the reputation of a minister…or force a resignation…; it can also gravely weaken the standing of the Prime Minister of the day.”
So Norton has hit on a subject of the first importance, albeit one which at the beginning was not very important at all. The ’22 was founded in 1923, by Conservative MPs first elected in November 1922, of whom there were 111. Gervais Rentoul, the new MP for Lowestoft, took the initiative:
“After consulting a few colleagues who were chafing, as I was, against the feeling of ineffectiveness and bewilderment, an invitation was issued to all the newcomers to meet in one of the committee rooms and discuss what could be done about it.”
These MPs needed to learn how the Commons worked: always a difficult question for the newcomer. There was a feeling, too, that the party leader, Stanley Baldwin, did not adequately consult MPs, and that party organisation should be placed “upon a democratic basis”.
But the ’22 was not, at first, of any real significance. In his memoirs, published in 1944, Rentoul devoted only two chapters out of 40 to this body which he himself had founded, and which had soon came to include all Conservative backbenchers.
The formation in 1940 of the wartime coalition marked an important change, for as Norton says, the ’22 now became “the only authentic Conservative voice”.
It was a forum in which members could raise issues they did not wish, given the need for wartime unity, to raise in the Chamber. Conservative MPs were worried that Labour was benefitting more than they were from the coalition, and that the war itself was being badly conducted.
One of the joint secretaries of the ’22, J.E. Crowder, told a meeting in Finchley that “Conservative members are getting very restive and are very tired of all the Left Wing propaganda, especially that generated by the BBC.”
But this was not the whole story. Labour ministers who attended meetings of the ’22 appeared generally to be well received, with Clement Attlee in 1941 making “a favourable impression”.
After the Labour victory in 1945, many Conservative MPs doubted whether Winston Churchill should stay on as party leader, and his performances in front of the ’22 were only sometimes good enough to dispel these reservations.
Churchill had anointed Sir Anthony Eden as his successor, but once the latter had led Britain into the Suez debacle, the ’22 became, in November 1956, the setting for a showdown between the candidates to succeed him.
Harold Macmillan managed, in a brilliant 35-minute speech to the ’22, to give the impression that some kind of a victory had occurred at Suez, and to offer hope that the Conservative Party could win the next election.
Rab Butler, who addressed the same meeting, was a flop. The press continued to believe Butler would succeed Eden, but as so often happens the press was wrong, for it was Macmillan who six weeks later became Prime Minister.
In 1963, when Macmillan stood down, John Morrison, the Chairman of the ’22, gave Butler, once more a contender for the leadership, the crushing news that “the chaps won’t have you”.
Alec Douglas-Home came through as the unexpected victor of that contest, and proceeded to change the rules: his successor would be elected by the party’s MPs, with the Chairman of the ’22 responsible for the conduct of the ballot and “all matters in relation thereto”.
So whenever the leader is weak, the ’22 becomes crucial, both in deciding when he or she has to go, and in electing a new leader.
All this is related by Norton. He has written an admirable textbook about this obscure body which plays a vital role in crowning and defenestrating Conservative leaders, and therefore in the British Constitution.
This is not, however, an account which can be read with any particular delight. For that, and for the flavour of parliamentary life, one should turn to the diaries of Chips Channon or Alan Clark.
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