The Conservative Party in the Nineteenth Century

THE AIM of this article is to examine the British Conservative party between the years 1832 and 1914 - between the passing of the Great Reform Act and the outbreak of the First World War - with the object of understanding how far the party was able to adapt and survive in an age of growing democracy. The historical achievement of the party in the longer term has been to win enough support from the British electorate to make it the natural governing party and yet to do this in a political system dominated after the Second Reform Act of 1867 by the votes of the working class. It has been the most successful right-wing party in any European democracy. Its image has always been - and indeed remains - that of a party of property. It has protected privilege, justified inequality and defended the established order of society, not, one would have thought, issues of great appeal to the British working man. Yet paradoxically its least successful period since the Great Reform Act occurred between 1846 and 1867 when the more restricted franchise might have been expected to work to the party’s advantage. Yet once the electorate was enlarged, the Conservatives’ performance improved markedly. This has remained true in the universal franchise of the twentieth century. Electoral scientists tell us that the Conservatives have been able at most general elections to win at least one-third of the working-class vote. Or, to put the matter another way, the party has consistently drawn half its own support from the working classes.

In political and electoral terms the `nineteenth century’ is best defined by the period 1832 to 1914. 1832 marks an obvious end to the old, unreformed, eighteenth-century constitution; 1914 ushered in a total war, the impact of which was not just to modify but to transform completely the political environment in which the parties operated. 1832 also usefully indicates a change of name as far as the Conservative party is concerned. Until then ‘Tory’ had been the usual description. It is of course impossible to date the origins of the Conservative party with any precision. Much depends on what you define as a political ‘party’. But the word ‘Conservative’ was first used in its modern sense in an article in the Quarterly Review in January 1830. By December 1831 the Standard was referring to the ‘Conservative party’ as if the phrase was well established and it soon became the normal term to describe the party of the political right. Moreover, its adoption from then onwards was a deliberate attempt to purge the old Tory party of its existing associations and to symbolise, if not a break with the past, at least a change of course. Additionally, 1832 saw the first systematic extension of the franchise since medieval times, whereas at the end of our period 1914 was the last moment before the introduction of universal manhood suffrage at the end of the war with Lloyd George’s Representation of the People Act of 1918. (Women had to wait a further decade for equal treatment.) For the political historian, therefore, the period 1832-1914 merits the description ‘the nineteenth century’.

Within this period which events and developments should be singled out? The first landmark is surely the Tamworth Manifesto of 1834. The task of the Conservatives after 1832 was to define their attitude towards the changed political environment created by the Great Reform Act, which many of them had vigorously resisted. Though historians have emphasised the limited immediate effect of the Act upon the political way of life, 1832 was, none the less, an important moment in the country’s political development. After it, expectations changed, the possibility of further constitutional reform was widely accepted and changes rapidly occurred in other fields. The Tamworth Manifesto was Sir Robert Peel’s response to this new climate. His statement still stands today as the classic Conservative reaction to the idea of change and reform. Discussing his attitude to the ‘spirit of the Reform Bill’ in his address to the electors of Tamworth, Peel said it all depended on what this phrase meant. Change for the sake of change he ruled out. But change as a response to proven abuses and for the redress of real grievances was another matter. This sort of change was entirely compatible with Peel’s idea of Conservatism.

The post-1832 electorate had, of course, been extended only as far as the middle-class voter, and politics were not yet a matter decided along class lines. Whigs and Conservatives were largely competing for the same votes. Though in modern times the great political issues have been economic andsocial, in those days they were religious and constitutional. As before 1832, the Conservative party never tired of proclaiming its determination to uphold the country’s traditional institutions - the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Church of England. Combined with Peel’s moderately progressive image, the party appeared likely to thrive in the still limited franchise which existed after 1832. The majority of the electorate were probably conservative with a small ‘c’, believing firmly in the traditional institutions and seeing that it was in their own best interests to keep things more or less as they were.

Indeed, the only difficulty for those who regard Peel as the founder of the modern Conservative party is one of continuity. It is a problem posed by the deep split in the party’s ranks which occurred when Peel decided to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. These laws had been designed to stop the price of corn dropping below a fixed level. The fact is that the followers of Peel on this issue were not the men who would form the backbone of the Conservative party in the second half of the nineteenth century. As the years passed by, the Peelites drifted increasingly into the ranks of the Liberal party (into which the old Whigs had evolved). It was the men who opposed Peel over the Corn Laws, the followers of Disraeli and Bentinck, who began an unbroken Conservative line which takes us through to the present day. Yet it was probably not until more than two decades later, when in later life Disraeli revamped the party’s image in a way Peel himself would probably have approved, that the true line of continuity with the twentieth-century party begins. In the meantime, shattered by the events of 1846, the Conservative party spent the 1850s and 1860s in a state of almost continuous opposition. Part of the party’s problem was the presence in the Liberal ranks at this time of Lord Palmerston who managed, in both the domestic and foreign arenas, to pre-empt Conservative claims to those aspects of policy which have become their watchwords in more recent years - sound, cautious government at home and a stout defence of national interests abroad.

In the late 1860s this situation changed. In 1865 Palmerston died and the emergence of Gladstone as his ultimate successor - a man of very different political views - opened up the possibility of a realignment of political attitudes and loyalties. Then, in 1867, during a brief spell of minority Conservative government, Disraeli succeeded in forcing through the House of Commons a second and more far-reaching reform of the political system. The Second Reform Act of 1867 brought a substantial section of the working classes into the political nation for the first time and represents a major landmark on the road to democracy in Britain. Yet there was no real intention on Disraeli’s part to create a democratic system in this country. His behaviour in 1867 was that of the great improviser. All the changes and amendments to the bill which Disraeli accepted as it went through Parliament are only explicable in terms of his determination to stay in office, to pass some sort of bill and to steal the thunder of his great Liberal rival, Gladstone. Indeed, Disraeli expected that the extension of the franchise would damage Conservative prospects, but he trusted that such damage could be repaired by a skilful redrawing of constituency boundaries. Certainly, the Conservatives lost the first General Election held under the new franchise in 1868. But this defeat and the need for the party to come to terms with the expanded electorate, coupled with the opportunities offered by Palmerston’s removal from the political stage, encouraged Disraeli when in opposition in the early 1870s to rethink and reshape his party’s public image. To avoid losing middle-class support Disraeli recognised that the Conservatives had to appeal to the new working-class electors in terms of those interests which they shared with those above them in the social hierarchy. The party had to proclaim the community of class interests. He focused on three main themes: 1. The preservation of the existing constitution; 2. The maintenance of social stability, while accepting the sort of moderate and judicious reforms which Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto had appeared to envisage; and 3. An assertive foreign policy designed to arouse the basic patriotism of the British people. These ideas have remained central to Conservatism ever since, and those who profess the notion of ‘One Nation’ Conservatism look back to Disraeli as their inspiration.

Through his speeches and campaigns in 1872 and 1873 Disraeli re-established the Conservative party as a viable party of government - something it had not been since 1846. In many ways he had stolen Palmerston’s clothes. He could appeal to the working-class voter without alienating the forces of property. Disraeli had probably hit upon a successful recipe as the electoral victory of 1874 showed. But he proved stronger on rhetoric than action. By the time Disraeli formed his 1874 government he was elderly, ill and past his best. Especially after 1876 his administration drifted rather aimlessly, unable it seemed to translate Disraeli’s vision of a Tory democracy into reality. In the years after his death others such as Lord Randolph Churchill made attempts to base the party firmly on a solid foundation of popular support, but with only limited results. Though the party enjoyed considerable electoral success in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, this owed much to divisions within the Liberal party over the question of Irish Home Rule. Many Liberals were unwilling to follow Gladstone on this issue and moved ever closer to the Conservatives. As the new century opened there seemed signs that the Conservatives were, if anything, veering away from the course which pioneering Tory democrats had begun tentatively to chart. Sidney Low, writing in the journal, Nineteenth Century, in 1902, drew attention to a reactionary trend in the party and noted the absence of the progressive and vitalising contributions made by Peel, Disraeli and Randolph Churchill.

Overall, it can be argued that the party was vulnerable to the emergence of a new party with a broader appeal to the working-class vote than its own. There was little evidence that the Conservatives had genuinely succeeded in widening their power-base. Yet with the extension of the franchise - and there had been a Third Reform Act in 1884 - the party could not afford to be complacent. The catastrophic General Election loss in 1906 should have shaken Conservatives into a period of critical self-analysis and rethinking. The combination of a massive Liberal majority in the new House of Commons and the emergence for the first time of a substantial group of Labour MPs was ominous indeed. Yet few Conservatives seem to have appreciated the gravity of the situation. Most attributed the 1906 defeat to the natural swing of the electoral pendulum after ten years of Conservative government - the idea that it was ‘the turn’ of the Liberals to win. Few Conservatives could have imagined in their worst nightmares that it would be 1922 before the party would again win a General Election in its own right. But instead of a period of constructive opposition, Conservatives after 1906 engaged in an internal feud over the question of tariff reform - the debate between protection and free trade - and then after 1911, under the leadership of Andrew Bonar Law, proceeded to take up again the question of Ireland - and particularly Ulster - in such a way as to cast doubts upon their claims to be a lawful and constitutional political party.

Though the Conservatives (or Unionists as they now increasingly called themselves because of their commitment to the Union with Ireland) looked likely to win a General Election in 1914 had one been held, this reflected short-term political and tactical considerations rather than the long-term good health of the party. In these last years before the outbreak of the First World War the Conservative party seemed to have forgotten the crucial lessons suggested years earlier by Peel and Disraeli. While the Liberals, through their programme of social reform, including old age pensions and National Insurance, were making some progress in coming to terms with the demands of the enlarged electorate, the Conservatives seemed not to see that the whole nature of political activity was in a state of flux. They refused to bring the working classes into the political framework to the detriment of their party’s own long-term interests. As the Party Chairman warned after two further General Election defeats in 1910:

What then are we to make of the development of the Conservative party over the nineteenth century? Only to a very limited extent by 1914 had the party succeeded in adapting itself to a changing political, economic and social environment. In the context of an expanding electorate - and one which would expand again in 1918 - the party showed few signs that it was ready for the politics of the twentieth century. In that century class would become the single most important influence in determining voting patterns. Despite the signposts erected by Peel and Disraeli the Conservatives were making slow progress. It is a stunning commentary that in the decade before the outbreak of the First World War not one Conservative working man sat in the House of Commons. Yet the party expected to win elections in a political environment which was dominated by such men and would be even more dominated by them after 1918. As the Earl of Derby had said of the working man as early as 1875: ‘He is master of the situation. His class can, if it chooses, outvote all the other classes put together.’ The party had survived after 1867 largely because a gap existed between the parties and the electorate. The Liberals too, more plagued by internal splits in this period than were the Conservatives, had also found the process of adaptation no easy matter. In a sense both parties had become divorced from political reality and they had managed to share the votes between themselves because no alternative was on offer to the electorate. From the beginning of the twentieth century, however, with the rise of the Labour party, this was no longer the case.

We have become familiar with the idea of the decline of the Liberal party and its replacement by Labour. For a long time the survival of Conservatism seemed a matter not open to debate. Increasingly, however, historians have become aware that there was nothing predetermined about these developments. They have come to the conclusion that it was the Conservatives rather than the Liberals who were in a state of crisis in the last years of the old nineteenth century (that is, the decade and a half before the outbreak of the First World War). They have written about the ‘New Liberalism’ of these years which showed that the Liberals were more flexible than their Conservative opponents in adapting to the changed political, social and economic environment. In the final years of peace the Liberals were proving quite successful in resisting the challenge of the Labour party. The British political system, with its first-past-the-post electoral victors, does not favour third parties and this has been the problem confronting the Liberal party ever since 1918. It is at least arguable, however, that but for the intrusion of the First World War, the Conservatives might have been the party condemned to this fate.

Be that as it may, the evidence suggests that before 1914 the Conservative party still had a long way to go to ensure its long-term survival. Somehow, and before much more time was wasted, it needed to produce a formula which could cash in on the inherent conservatism of the electorate without saddling the party with a totally reactionary image. The First World War, however, transformed the political landscape. The Conservative party which emerged from it was well on the way to becoming the natural governing party of twentieth-century Britain.

constitution: the institutions and rules, written or unwritten, by which a country is governed.

franchise: the right to vote.

institution: an organisation, governed by rules, to undertake part of government.

pre-empt: to act before another.

rhetoric: persuasive speaking and argument.

suffrage: see franchise. Universal suffrage - the right of all adults to vote.

Further Reading: Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, 1970; Lord Butler (ed.), The Conservatives: A History from their Origins to 1965, 1977; Bruce Coleman, Conservatism and the Conservative Party in Nineteenth-Century Britain, 1988; David Dutton, His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition: the Unionist Party in Opposition 1905-15, 1992; Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 1967; Robert Stewart, The Foundation of the Conservative Party, 1830-1867, 1978; Robert Stewart, Party and Politics 1830-1852, 1989.

The Conservative Party in the Nineteenth Century, 1832-1914 by Dr David Dutton. © new perspective 1995

Dr David Dutton, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Liverpool, is the author of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition (the Conservatives in opposition 1905-15) and Austen Chamberlain.