“If they answer not your call, walk alone, walk alone”
Mahatma Gandhi

This paper sets out a Conservative approach to issues such as international development, human rights, the arms trade and the environment. We believe there is a natural alignment between Conservative philosophy and standing up for the oppressed and alienated. The Conservative Party is the party of William Wilberforce, the man who led the drive towards the abolition of slavery, and yet in recent years that radical commitment to human rights, and to humanitarian foreign policy, has seldom been remembered.

Many people in Britain, particularly the young, have switched off party politics, but they retain an interest in issues and a desire for a new sense of idealism from politicians.  If the Conservative Party begins to seriously address questions of human rights, poverty and suffering around the world, by promoting a bold, principled and imaginative foreign policy, reflecting Conservative beliefs in freedom, the rule of law and individual dignity, this could help to enthuse the British people to consider the Conservative approach to government once more.

In the 1970s as the Conservative Party was re-thinking its political platform, groups such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute put forward bold ideas for economic reforms. At the time many of the free market ideas proposed were believed to be too radical, but the think-tanks and some Conservative politicians believed it was time to “think the unthinkable” in economic policy. Those ideas soon became mainstream economic policy for most of the developed world and some developing countries too. The time has come now to start “thinking the unthinkable” in foreign policy.

This set of ideas is “New Ground” for the Conservative Party, and yet it is rooted in the values that are the bedrock of Conservatism. Taken alongside the Party’s focus on reform of the public services and compassionate policies for disadvantaged communities, a bold, principled and imaginative foreign policy is right for the Conservative Party, and an essential precursor to our political recovery.

James Mawdsley and Benedict Rogers
January, 2003