Uploaded September 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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THIRD – SQUANDREL

I

Idealistic Tory in an accepted moderate fashion
Adopting “the human face” to private enterprise
Symbolic and a very conservative reaction
To intellectual socialists with ideas flying high in the sky

Your invented Industrial Charter a commercial success
With the greatest education act for many years
The Tory research department a modernizing process
For future with discarded past thoughts and fears

Butskellism covered your views a reformist you remain
Improved antique party organisation and policy
And practical systems, modernization required once again
Break tender skins of controls with predictability

Education as the spearhead of social reform
Altered past a statute draftsman through military storm

II

Indian birth, a public-school background
The political intellectual in battle of thoughts
More memorable as an enlightened Tory, sound
Reason, logical application of attentive sorts

You wished that every child be educated
Appropriate to age, aptitude, ability
That modernization immediate and required
For this field, this unity, this leadership stability

Combined principles of the welfare state
In terms unaccepted recognized now controlled
Unlike ever present economic inflation rates
With other topics so often ignored

Today so settled in academic serenity
From active politics to the charms of Trinity

RAB Harrogate September 1973