Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T10:47:24.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

John Ramsden
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 37 , December 1987 , pp. 49 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Earl of Woolton, , Memoirs (1959), 346Google Scholar.

2 Earl of Kilmuir, , Political Adventure (1964), 164–6Google Scholar.

3 Butler, Lord, The Art of the Possible (1971), 126Google Scholar.

4 Maudling, Reginald, Memoirs (1978), 44Google Scholar.

5 Iain Macleod at the 1962 Party Conference, quoted in Butler, Lord, ed., The Conservatives (1977), 425Google Scholar.

6 Hoffman, J. D., The Conservative Party in Opposition 1945–1951 (1964)Google Scholar

7 Blake, Robert, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (1970), 256–62Google Scholar; Lindsay, T. F. and Harrington, M., The Conservative Party 1918–1970 (1974), 146–62Google Scholar; Harris, Nigel, Competition and the Corporate Society (1972), 77–145Google Scholar.

8 Addison, Paul, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1975), especially 270–9Google Scholar.

9 Simpson, Alan and Galton's, Ray script for The Blood Donor, first broadcast on BBC Television, 1 10 1961Google Scholar.

10 Ramsden, John, The Making of Conservative Policy: The Conservative Research Department since 1929 (1980), 131Google Scholar.

11 Birch, Nigel, The Conservative Party (1949), 43Google Scholar.

12 See for example McKenzie's, RobertBritish Political Parties (2nd edition, 1963), 653–4Google Scholar.

13 Butler, David, The British General Election of 1951 (1952), 126Google Scholar.

14 Churchill's comment to Congress compares nicely with an earlier Conservative leader's similar comment, also favouring bipartisanship as a necessary characteristic of the British political system: Arthur Balfour's introduction to Bagehot's, WalterThe English Constitution (1928 edition)Google Scholar.

15 Thompson, Alan, The Day Before Yesterday (1971), 95Google Scholar.

16 Craig, F. W. S., ed., British General Election Manifestoes 1918–1966 (Chichester, 1970), 146Google Scholar.

17 Conservative Research Department file, ‘1955 Election: Bouquets’, quoted in Ramsden, , Making, 177Google Scholar.

18 Ramsden, John, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902 to 1940 (1978), 218–62Google Scholar.

19 Ramsden, , Balfour and Baldwin, 247Google Scholar.

20 Ramsden, , Balfour and Baldwin, 250–1Google Scholar.

21 Ostrogorski, M. I., Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties, (English edition, translated by Clarke, F., 1902), i, 370–419Google Scholar.

22 Ramsden, , Balfour and Baldwin, 359Google Scholar.

23 Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael, ‘Central Office and “Power” in the Conservative Party’, in Political Studies (1972)Google Scholar.

24 Barry, E. E., Nationalisation in British Politics (1965), 247–8, 298, 320, 360Google Scholar.

25 Barry, , Nationalisation, 354Google Scholar; Ramsden, , Making, 71–5Google Scholar.

26 Ramsden, , Making, 79–80Google Scholar.

27 Ramsden, , Balfour and Baldwin, 362–3Google Scholar.

28 Ramsden, , Making, 91–2Google Scholar; this can be compared with Conservative support for pension proposals during Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Reform crusade or with the refusal of Conservative MPs to vote again such proposals even in such financially difficult times as 1923, Ramsden, , Balfour and Baldwin, 174Google Scholar.

29 Addison, , Road to 1945, 220–1Google Scholar.

30 Ramsden, , Making, 155–6Google Scholar.

31 Dilks, David, Neville Chamberlain (1984), i. 311–14Google Scholar.

32 Finnigan, R., ‘Housing Policy in Leeds between the Wars’ in Melling, J. (ed), Housing, Social Policy and the Slate (1980), 174Google Scholar.

33 Spectator, 28 Apr. 1924 to 19 May 1924.

34 Ramsden, , Making, 97–9Google Scholar; Islington East Conservative Association minutes, February and April 1940; Totnes Conservative Association minutes, 29 Mar. 1941; Dulwich Conservative Association minutes, 9 Dec. 1943. (All these local party records held in constituency offices.)

35 Hoffman, , Conservative Party, 83–90Google Scholar.

36 Woolton, , Memoirs, 330Google Scholar.

37 Addison, , Road to 1945, 41–2, 171–4Google Scholar.

38 Craig, , Election Manifestoes, 87–97Google Scholar.

39 Butler, , Conservatives, 424Google Scholar.

40 See for example, Burton on Trent Conservative Association minutes, 25 June 1945; Lichfield Conservative Association Annual Report, 1945 (constituency offices).

41 Ramsden, , Making, 109Google Scholar.

42 Maudling, , Memoirs, 45Google Scholar; Hoffman, , Conservative Party, 162–6Google Scholar.

43 Craig, , Election Manifestoes, 140Google Scholar.

44 Ramsden, , Making, 119Google Scholar.

45 ‘Songs for Swinging Voters’, Election record published by Conservative Central Office, 1964.

46 Butler, , General Election of 1951, 55–6Google Scholar.

47 Butler, David and Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael, The British General Election of 1970 (1971), 279Google Scholar.

48 Guttsman, W. L., The British Political Elite (1963), ch. 10Google Scholar; Sampson, Anthony, The Anatomy of Britain (1960)Google Scholar; Butler, David and Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael have argued that social character has not really mattered in practice to electoral prospects, in Henry, Z. Layton (ed), Conservative Politics (1980), 186–204Google Scholar.

49 This view has been put forward recently by such unlikely allies as Morgan, Kenneth, in the process of building up the Attlee Government in Labour in Power 1945–1951 (1984), 490Google Scholar, and John Biffen, in arguing how feeble were Conservative Governments before that of Thatcher, Margaret, in Forward from Conviction (1986), 4Google Scholar.

50 Ramsden, , Making, 201Google Scholar.

51 Ramsden, , Making, 245Google Scholar.

52 Roth, Andrew, Health and the Heathmen (1972) passimGoogle Scholar; Riddell, Peter, The Thatcher Government (1985), 10–11Google Scholar.

53 Butler, , Art of the Possible, 145–6Google Scholar.