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Britain's altered position in the world and the smashing Labor victory of 1945 combined to whittle away the authority of the reactionaries in the Conservative Party in the years between 1945 and 1951 when it was out of office. Since then other influences, including the rise within the party of young politicians whose education and experience have little in common with those of the recognized Tory leadership, has further altered the character of the party. It has come a long way since 1945.

A young Conservative minister recalls with horror the annual Conservative conference of that year. The chairwoman, a billowy dowager wielding a lorgnette, announced with simpering pride that she had a surprise for the conference. It was, she said, "a real Conservative trade-unionist." Had the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on the platform and danced the can-can, the surprise could not have been greater. When a Negro student went to the platform a decade later to discuss colonial affairs, no one turned a hair.