The Conservative Philosophy Group (CPG) was formed in the UK in 1974 by Sir Hugh Fraser

Hugh Fraser (politician)

Major Sir Hugh Charles Patrick Joseph Fraser MBE was a British Conservative politician and first husband of the author Lady Antonia Fraser.-Youth and military career:...

, a Conservative MP, to provide an intellectual basis for conservatism

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 at a time when the Conservative Party

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 had just lost two general elections and elected a new leader, Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

. It was founded with four board members: Fraser, Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton

Roger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...

, John Casey

John Casey (academic)

John Casey is a British academic and a writer for The Daily Telegraph. He has been described as Roger Scruton's "mentor", and is a lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1975, along with Scruton, he founded the Conservative...

, and Jonathan Aitken

Jonathan Aitken

Jonathan William Patrick Aitken is a former Conservative Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom, and British government minister. He was convicted of perjury in 1999 and received an 18-month prison sentence, of which he served seven months...

 MP.

Other members included Alan Clark

Alan Clark

Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark was a British Conservative MP and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Trade, and Defence, and became a privy counsellor in 1991...

 MP, Enoch Powell

Enoch Powell

John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...

 MP, Maurice Cowling

Maurice Cowling

Maurice John Cowling was a British historian and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.-Life:Cowling was born in Norwood, South London, to a lower middle-class family. His family then moved to Streatham, where Cowling attended an LCC elementary school, and from 1937 the Battersea Grammar School...

, Edward Norman

Edward Norman

Edward Robert Norman was Canon Chancellor of York Minster and is an ecclesiastical historian.Norman was educated at the Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Walthamstow, London. He won an Open Scholarship to Selwyn College, Cambridge, of which he was a Fellow , before moving to Jesus College as a...

, Sir Alfred Sherman

Alfred Sherman

Sir Alfred Sherman, KBE, was a writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he began life as a Communist soldier in the Spanish Civil War but later...

, Paul Johnson, T. E. Utley

T. E. Utley

Thomas Edwin 'Peter' Utley CBE was an English High Tory journalist.Utley, blind since his childhood, went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he achieved a double first in History. During the Second World War, he was a Times leader writer and then worked for the Observer and the Sunday Times...

, Lord Black

Conrad Black

Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, OC, KCSG, PC is a Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords, and a historian, columnist and publisher, who was for a time the third largest newspaper magnate in the world. Lord Black controlled Hollinger International, Inc...

, Lord Bauer

Peter Thomas Bauer

Peter Thomas Bauer, Baron Bauer was a developmental economist. Bauer is best remembered for his opposition to the widely-held notion that the most effective manner to help developing countries advance is through state-controlled foreign aid.- Life :Bauer was born as Péter Tamás Bauer in Budapest,...

, Lord Blake

Robert Blake, Baron Blake

Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake was an English historian. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lectures...

, Lord Sieff, Lord Weinstock, Lord Thomas and Lord Quinton. The following addressed the group: F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...

, Michael Oakeshott

Michael Oakeshott

Michael Joseph Oakeshott was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and philosophy of law...

, Elie Kedourie

Elie Kedourie

Elie Kedourie C.B.E., FBA was a British historian of the Middle East. He wrote from a conservative perspective, dissenting from many points of view taken as orthodox in the field...

, and Harold Macmillan

Harold Macmillan

Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....

.

Thatcher attended the group on a number of occasions, and Aitken claims she said to him whilst attending a meeting, "We must have an ideology; the other side

Labour Party (UK)

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 have got an ideology they can test their policies against. We must have one as well." The CPG disbanded during the John Major

John Major

Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...

years.

Further reading

• Casey, John. "Welcome back to the forum where Thatcher and Powell argued", The Spectator, 17 March 2007.