Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy
"Torrance has rescued a significant Tory thinker from the slow backwaters of history…[he] has given Skelton the posthumous recognition he deserves."
- David Melding AM, WalesHome.org
"David Torrance’s book is a radical and visionary reappraisal of Noel Skelton, the original ‘Red Tory’ and one of the most important MPs and thinkers of his era."
- Phillip Blond, author of Red Tory
Born in July 1880, Noel Skelton was a Scottish Unionist politician, a lawyer, journalist and intellectual, whose death at the age of 55 deprived the Conservative Party of a reforming and progressive spirit. The intellectual conductor of a group of young Parliamentarians which included Macmillan, Eden, Boothby and John Buchan, Noel Skelton advocated a Constructive Conservatism , in which he eschewed the party s more reactionary elements in favour of a progressive line on traditionally socialist issues such as property ownership and industrial relations. His thinking on property ownership, in particular, became the cornerstone of at first Macmillan's, then Eden's, and even Douglas-Home's policy making on housing in the post-war era. Indeed, Skelton's principles summarised by his memorable phrase, a property-owning democracy can even be traced forward to Margaret Thatcher's governments of the 1980s and beyond.