Diana Spearman's role within the post-war Conservative Party and in the 'battle of ideas' (1945—1965)

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-87
Author(s):  
Stéphane Porion
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Post War

‘A Party for Owners or a Party for Earners?’ How far did the British Conservative Party Really Change After 1945?

1987 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ramsden
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Characteristic Mode ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
Post War ◽  
Looking Back

THE period spent in opposition between 1945 and 1951 has generally been thought of as a key to the understanding of the activities of the post-war British Conservative Party. Autobiographies of the Party leaders of the time began to appear at the end of the Fifties, already looking back to a period in which the Conservatives had decisively changed their approach. So for example, Lord Woolton's Memoirs reviewed not only a term as Party Chairman which had been a highlight of his own crowded career, but also his sharing in a major act of transformation, a transformation that had led on to Conservative success since 1951: ‘the change was revolutionary’. Other key figures in the organisation reached similar conclusions as their own accounts appeared: David Maxwell-Fyfe argued that the new Party rules which he had drawn up had not only decisively widened the political base of British Conservatism, but that events since had confirmed the importance of the change. R. A. Butler's account of The Art of the Possible argued in 1971 that ‘the overwhelming electoral defeat of 1945 shook the Conservative Party out of its lethargy and impelled it to re-think its philosophy and re-form its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century’. The effect was to bring both the policies of the Party and ‘their characteristic mode of expression’, as he puts it, ‘up to date’. As recently as 1978, Reginald Maudling—a key figure behind the scenes in 1945–51 as a speechwriter from Eden and Churchill and as the organising secretary of the committee which produced the Industrial Charter of 1947—reached much the same view: ‘We were at that time developing a new economic policy for the Conservative Party … It marked a substantially different approach for post-war Conservative philosophy.

‘If you strike a King you must kill him’: Sir Archibald Salvidge and the Revolt of Liverpool’s Conservative MPs, 1927-1928

2020 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Paul A. Nuttall
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
News Story ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Local Party

In the spring of 1927, Liverpool’s Conservative MPs concluded that the local party was not equipped to counter the rise of Socialism in the city. They therefore demanded significant changes were made to the structure of the Liverpool Conservative Party. At the head of the local party was Sir Archibald Salvidge, a ruthless political operator who was determined not to give up the powers he had accrued over decades of service. What began as an internal row between Salvidge and seven rebel MPs became a national news story, and the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Conservative Party Chairman became entangled. In many ways, the row represented the moment when Liverpool’s pre-war rowdy Unionism clashed with Stanley Baldwin’s post-war consensual conservatism; and the outcome of the dispute determined the character of Liverpool’s politics until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Must Labour lose? Lessons from post-war history

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Jefferys
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Question ◽  
Standing Question

Kevin Jefferys addresses the long-standing question of whether ‘Must Labour Lose?’ This has been an intriguing political question ever since it was first posed in 1960 by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose. Examining the post-war record of the Labour Party, alongside that of the Conservative Party, Kevin Jefferys questions the inevitability of Labour’s decline through a detailed examination of the political results since 1945. Instead of Labour’s inevitable decline he suggests that there is a pattern of the Labour Party success and defeats that are conditioned by the economic circumstances, the performance of the Conservative party, and the leadership of the Labour Party. In the end, he argues that Labour may not always lose but that, given the gap between the opinion about the leadership in the party and the electorate in the country, it may be some time before Labour regains power.

THE PERIODICAL PRESS AND THE INTELLECTUAL CULTURE OF CONSERVATISM IN INTERWAR BRITAIN

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1056 ◽  
Author(s):  
GARY LOVE
Keyword(s):  
Effective Means ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Important Barrier ◽  
Post War

ABSTRACTConservatives usually play down their intellectual credentials because it provides them with an effective means of distancing themselves from the ‘doctrinaire’ or the intellectualized politics of the left. But this approach was challenged by a significant group of Conservative MPs and intellectuals during the interwar period. Conservatives wrote articles for a range of periodicals, which were still important channels of communication for the sharing of political ideas between the wars. Stanley Baldwin banned government ministers from publishing independent journalism, which meant that it was mainly young, ambitious, or marginalized Conservative MPs who wrote for periodicals. When left-wing sentiment started to swell up during the Second World War, some Conservative supporters started to question the interwar leadership's neglect of the party's intellectual and publishing culture. It was now thought that the Conservative party lacked a convincing media-based popular ideology to compete with the left. But if Baldwin prioritized other aspects of the interwar party's appeal, the intellectual culture of Conservatism still acted as an important barrier to communist and fascist thought in elite political circles. This culture also had important resonances for the party in the post-war period because it contributed to its self-evaluation and policy restatements after 1945.

Centre-Party Strength and Major-Party Divergence in Britain, 1945–2005

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack H. Nagel ◽  
Christopher Wlezien
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Major Party ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Post War ◽  
Party Strength

British elections exhibit two patterns contrary to expectations deriving from Duverger and Downs: centrist third parties (Liberals and their successors) win a large vote share; and the two major parties often espouse highly divergent policies. This article explores relations between the Liberal vote and left–right scores of the Labour and Conservative manifestos in the light of two hypotheses: the vacated centre posits that Liberals receive more votes when major parties diverge; the occupied centre proposes a lagged effect in which major parties diverge farther after Liberals do well in the preceding election. Data from elections since 1945 confirm the vacated-centre hypothesis, with Liberals benefiting about equally when the major parties diverge to the left and right, respectively. The results also support the occupied-centre hypothesis for Conservative party positions, but not for Labour’s. After considering explanations for this asymmetry, we identify historical events associated with turning points that our data reveal in post-war British politics.

RETHINKING THE EDWARDIAN CRISIS OF CONSERVATISM

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID THACKERAY
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World ◽  
Potential Disaster

ABSTRACTThis article reconsiders the culture of popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain, when it has often been claimed that the Unionist parties underwent a profound crisis. According to Ewen Green, for example, in the immediate years before the First World War, Conservative leaders failed to offer policies that could unite their party or enable it to develop an effective popular appeal. Consequently, the party appeared to be drifting towards potential disaster and disintegration. Whilst historians are correct to argue that deep divisions emerged within the Unionist ranks, inhibiting their electoral prospects, the vibrancy of rank-and-file Conservatism in Edwardian Britain nevertheless tends to be underestimated. By embracing a variety of populist causes in 1913–14, the Conservative party appeared to have found a way to overcome its electoral malaise. Moreover, by taking important steps to widen their social appeal, the Conservatives laid the foundations for post-war success during these years of supposed ‘crisis’.

scholarly journals THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND DREAMS OF BRITAIN'S POST-WAR FUTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIT KOWOL
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Conservative Movement ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Liberal Approach ◽  
Post War ◽  
British People

AbstractThe British general election of 1945 and the return of the nation's first ever majority Labour government was a profound turning point in Britain's political history. The scale of Labour's victory, and the belief in its inevitability, has, however, obscured important developments in British Conservatism. Historians have subsequently characterized the Conservative party as either unwilling to develop their own distinct plans for the post-war future, or divided between those who were willing to embrace the policies of social democracy and those with a neo-liberal approach to political economy. This article challenges this depiction by examining the thoughts and actions of those within what it terms the wartime ‘Conservative movement’: the constellation of fringe and pressure groups that orbited around the Conservative party during the period. In examining this movement, it identifies three major traditions of Conservative political thinking, and three sets of activists and parliamentarians all committed to developing radical Conservative plans for post-war Britain. The article demonstrates how these different traditions built upon but also radicalized pre-existing currents of Conservative thought, how the language of social democracy was co-opted and reinterpreted by those within the Conservative movement, and how the war changed Conservative perception of the British people.

Churchill, women and the politics of gender

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Toye
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
World War ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Post War

This chapter investigates how Churchill related to women at the political level, and how women voters in turn related to him. Churchill had a blurred Conservative-Liberal identity, and this affected his approach to ‘the woman question’. Hostile to female enfranchisement at the start of his career, he became a reluctant convert during his Edwardian Liberal phase, provided that it could be done in such a way as to benefit his own party electorally. As a renegade Tory during the 1930s he drew on the services of a range of female anti-appeasers such as Shiela Grant Duff. During World War II, however, he controversially opposed equal pay for women teachers. It is well-established that, in the post-war years, the Conservative Party benefitted from its gendered approach to rationing and austerity, Churchill himself did little to appeal explicitly to women voters. Although he did accept a role for a limited number of ‘exceptional’ women in the public sphere, he was never an enthusiast for substantive gender equality.

‘Action Not Words’: The Conservative Party, Public Opinion and ‘Scientific’ Politics, c.1945–70

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Economic Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Post War ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Research And Policy

Abstract From the late 1950s, Conservative research and policy thinkers underwent a conscious intellectual adjustment, which had profound implications for how the party conceived the relationship between politicians and the public during Edward Heath’s period as Conservative leader after 1965. In response to contemporaneous debates regarding ‘modernization’, and as a result of their engagement with the emergent social sciences, a new generation of Conservatives tended to repudiate the party’s traditional preference for idealist and organicist philosophical assumptions in favour of a rationalistic approach to political administration. Their preoccupation with economic management was concomitant of their loss of faith in the formative role of rhetorical and moral appeals in shaping public opinion. This article, by focusing on debates within the party’s research and political apparatus—the Conservative Research Department, the Conservative Political Centre and Swinton College—will contend that, far from being the last gasp of a post-war consensual Conservatism, Heath’s period as leader marked a relatively unique period in the party’s history, in which the conception of the nature of political leadership held by those at the top of the party differed from the conception held by both their predecessors and successors.

The Politics of ‘Affluent’ and ‘Traditional’ Workers in Britain: an Aggregate Data Analysis

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Crewe
Keyword(s):  
White Collar ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
National Average ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Class Level ◽  
White Collar Workers ◽  
Post War

In their study of the ‘affluent worker’ in Luton,1 Goldthorpe and his colleagues reached a number of important conclusions about the political behaviour of the ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ working class in post-war Britain. They rejected the belief, commonly held by the late 1950s, that a growing proportion of manual workers was beginning to support the Conservative Party as a result of attaining a middle class level of income and material possessions (the ‘embourgeoisement’ theory). In their sample, which was elaborately designed to ensure the most favourable conditions for confirmation of the embourgeoisement theory, they found (i) that the level of stable Labour support was higher than the national average for manual workers; (ii) that there was no evidence of any gradual, long-term shift of support towards the Conservatives or away from Labour; and (iii) that the small minority of Conservatives was distinguished not by a higher than average standard of living, but by a relatively large number of white collar workers among their kin. The notion that there was a necessary connection, among manual workers, between growing material prosperity and increased support for the Conservative Party was therefore decisively rejected.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document