pragmatism. It is a descendant of the land-owning Tory party which was in
competition with the party of the rising middle class, the Whigs (later the
Liberal Party). The Tory party had received support from the Liberal
Unionists, a group which had split from the Liberal Party as it opposed home
rule for Ireland, since 1886, and the two formally merged in 1912 becoming
the Conservative and Unionist Party, which remains the official title. Despite
its aristocratic and rich industrialist background, the Conservative Party was in
fact the first to organize on a mass basis to attract those newly-enfranchised by
the parliamentary reform acts of the last third of the 19th century, and has
always managed to attract a sizeable share of the working-class vote.
It has combined a patriotic outlook and support for the status quo with an
acceptance of an extendedwelfare state. It has always placed a strong value on
the ownership of property, while accepting since 1945 the existence of a mixed
economy. After 1945 the party became, in turns, imperialist under Winston
Churchill and Anthony Eden, ‘high’ Tory with considerable leanings towards
practical social-welfare provision under Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec
Douglas-Home, and technocratically Keynesian and Europeanist under
Edward Heath. However, two distinct factions emerged in the party from
the early 1970s. One of them, which dominated the Conservative Party under
the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, from 1975–90, advocated, and to a large
extent carried out, a reversal of many of the initiatives undertaken by govern-
ments since 1945 and the introduction of a more vigorous (monetarist) form
of market economy (seeThatcherism). To that extent it had much in
common with classical 19th-centuryLiberalism. The other faction invokeds
the Disraelian tradition of one nation and sought to preserve the Conservative
Party’s tradition of social concern and pragmatic solutions to political issues.
Briefly at the beginning of the 1990s, under John Major, it seemed that this
other, and earlier, tradition of conservatism (seemanagerial capitalism)
might become dominant once more. However, the electoral defeats of 1997
and 2001 were each followed by the election of a leader who adhered much
more closely to the Thatcherite legacy. Sympathizers of the two schools of
thought were sometimes labelled ‘dry’ and ‘wet’.
By any standards the party has been enormously successful electorally.
Between the end of the Second World War and 1997 it was out of office for
only 17 years and won four consecutive general elections between 1979 and
- While this record was a result as much of the distorting effect of Britain’s
simple pluralityvoting systemand the inability of the left to cohere, it also
suggests there is something in the pragmatism of the Conservatives that appeals
to the British electorate. Whether this electoral dominance can ever be reborn
after the crushing defeats byNew Labourin 1997 and 2001 must be in doubt.
The Conservatives found themselves in opposition to an equally pragmatic
party, and one, furthermore, which had clearly captured the middle ground of
Conservative Party