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Rather than trying to define conservatism as being largely backward-looking, therefore, other theorists, particularly within the conservative tradition itself, have sought to conceptualize conservatism as being an attempt to manage change cautiously. Such theorists include the British Conservative cabinet minister from the 1980s Ian Gilmour, and the influential mid-twentieth-century political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. Key to their analysis of conservatism is their claim that it does not simply consist of trying to uphold the status quo or of returning to a previous ‘golden age’. Rather, they argue that conservatism is to be identified by its commitment to careful, organic, evolutionary change, contrasting this with more radical or progressive approaches, which are characterized as ‘ideological’ in the sense of being more self-conscious, more perfectionist, more radical and less respectful of tradition. Thus, Oakeshott famously suggested that a conservative’s attitude to change is to be ‘warm and positive in respect of enjoyment, and correspondingly cool and critical in respect of change and innovation’, while Gilmour compared a conservative approach to change with that of an architectural conservationist who may regret the destruction of historic buildings, but nevertheless admits that a certain amount of updating and alteration is necessary (Oakeshott 1991: 412; Gilmour 1977: 122). To be a conservative, on such a definition, is to ‘pursue the intimations’ of the Western tradition, in Oakeshott’s phrase, rather than trying to impose a new artificial pattern on it. This meant that conservatives could indeed extract from their political tradition certain kinds of ends that they ought to be pursuing – as opposed to lurching off in uncharted new directions like the rationalists, or trying to recreate some real or imagined past like more nostalgic conservatives. But at the core of this definition of conservatism was a particular conception of evolutionary change, with a bias towards preferring ‘present laughter to utopian bliss’, in Oakeshott’s resonant phrase (Oakeshott 1991: 408).

To some extent, such an approach helps to reveal the nature of conservatism. It is certainly true that conservatives often tend to favour cautious, evolutionary change over radical innovation, seeking to uphold the worth of established institutions rather than setting up institutions from scratch. (For precisely this reason, Oakeshott himself was highly suspicious of the process of the establishing of the American constitution, despite its having some definite conservative aspects.⁴) Furthermore, perhaps more interestingly, how Gilmour and Oakeshott themselves sought to define the nature of tradition proves to be unconsciously revealing of how conservatives very commonly seek to conceptualize its nature. For by seeking to establish a sharp divide between a ‘legitimate’ approach to tradition, which respects its continuity and subtleties, and an ‘illegitimate’ one, which does violence to it by abruptly forcing it in a new direction, conservatives often set up a pronounced dichotomy between a ‘natural’ (or quasi-natural) approach to traditional norms on the one hand, and an ‘artificial’, ‘ideological’ one on the other.⁵ This is clearly a strategy conservatives often employ, either explicitly or covertly, to try to render more progressive alternatives illegitimate.

However, there are also two problems with this definition. First, as we have seen, it is not always true that conservatives content themselves with the strategy of trying to ensure that historical change occurs in a cautious and evolutionary fashion. Rather, in some instances, conservatives themselves seek to initiate change, sometimes of a radical kind, with the aim of restoring a previous status quo. (For example, as noted earlier, an important component of the conservatism of the Thatcher and Reagan governments was their attempt to reverse developments they regarded as illegitimate, not least those associated with rises in direct taxation and the expansion of the welfare state.) Second, although the attempt by conservatives to present their approach to tradition as uniquely ‘natural’ or perceptive may well be revealing of their ideological strategy, it cannot be accepted as an objective analysis of conservatism. For whether or not conservatives are convincing in their particular interpretations of tradition and their responses to it, what they advocate cannot simply be assumed to be ‘natural’; rather, as with all such responses to tradition, this is a claim that must be argued for.