Religion has been the rock in the life and character of the British people upon which they have built their hopes and cast their cares. This fundamental element must never be taken from our schools, and I rejoice to learn of the enormous progress that is being made among all religious bodies in freeing themselves from sectarian jealousies and feuds, while preserving fervently the tenets of their own faith.10
Writing in a more personal vein in A Sparrow's Flight,11 the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, says that Christianity is the abiding religious background to his personal, family and public life. He describes the paradox of Christ crucified:
I seek God and behold a bedraggled human figure impaled for public ridicule upon a gibbet ... Remaining Christian, I am constantly reassured in my wandering, in my doubting, and as constantly led back by my trusting. I do not know. I do not pretend to know. But I trust and therefore I believe.
The Anglicanism of Hailsham and Heath, and before them Macmillan and Churchill, have been submerged by the ascendency of the New Right in the Conservative Party. However, the battle is by no means over. Chris Patten, the Chairman of the Conservative Party, is a Christian, and in an interview with Marxism Today12 he signalled his determination to see 'one nationism' emerge in the new clothes of Christian Democracy:
I find myself very much at home talking to German Christian Democrats. They've constructed a political philosophy which works and delivers not only in terms of the prosperity which it helps to produce but also in terms of - to use a rather Christian Democrat word - the solidarity which it establishes.
New Right Conservatism has its roots in the thinking of Locke and Mill and in the Utilitarianism of the nineteenth century.13 Mrs Thatcher used to say that there is no such thing as society, simply individuals. The individual's freedom is paramount. New Right thinkers emphasise freedom of choice and self interest. A leading supporter of Mrs Thatcher was Lord Harris. In his 'The Morality of the Market' which appears in The New Right and Christian Values,14 he says the market is the