The British Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful democratic political parties in the world. The party originated in the late seventeenth century as the aristocratic "Tory" faction in parliament, with the name "Conservative" achieving currency only in the nineteenth century. In 1894 the party’s official name became the "Conservative and Unionist Party" following a merger of the Conservatives and the Liberal Unionist Party. The merger was a result of a protracted conflict that split the Liberal Party into "home rule" and "unionist" groups, with the latter joining the Conservatives to maintain the union of Great Britain and Ireland. In the twentieth-century, the Liberals were replaced by the socialist Labour Party as the Conservatives’ principal rivals for power following a further Liberal split during the First World War. The Liberals did not disappear, but they remained an ideologically centrist "third" party whose fortunes mostly waned, and occasionally waxed, over time.
There are three major components in Conservative thought. The first—often labeled "Tory" Conservatism— has roots in the ideas of the British philosopher-politician Edmund Burke (1729-1797). Burke argued that societies were organic, but not static, entities. Social change should be gradual and evolutionary, rather than abrupt and revolutionary. A principal task of the Conservative Party and its leaders was to guide change in ways that would preserve the essential elements of Britain’s social fabric. For Burke, the maintenance of hierarchy, continuity, and an interlocking system of mutual social obligations were the ends of good government.
Burke’s ideas were given renewed force in the late nineteenth century by Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). Leading his party and country when the Industrial Revolution was creating a new urban working class, Disraeli propounded the idea that Britain was "One Nation." Rather than arraying itself in a coalition with the middle and upper classes that was indifferent to working class concerns, Disraeli proposed that the Conservatives develop policies that would serve the interests of all classes.
Inspired by Disraeli’s "One Nation" ideas, many subsequent Conservative politicians and political thinkers endorsed the broad panoply of social programs characteristic of the twentieth-century welfare state. Much of this was prompted by the Labour Party’s victory in the general election of 1945 and the popular program of policy changes introduced by their government. By doing this, the Conservative Party was able to recover lost ground and capture power again in 1951. "One Nation" Conservatives also adopted assumptions of Keynesian economics, particularly the idea that substantial state intervention in the economy could control inflation and unemployment, while also promoting growth and innovation. By the late 1950s, Conservative and Labour policies had become rather similar, leading observers to coin the term Butskellism—an amalgam of the names of the leading Conservative politician "Rab" Butler and the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell—to describe the convergence between the parties’ platforms.
A third, "laissez-faire," component of Conservative thought rejects the interventionist thrust of the Disraeli-Butler tradition. This reflects the free-market ideas associated with Adam Smith that were originally embraced by the Liberal Party. Beginning in the late 1960s, Sir Keith Joseph and other advocates of free-market economics and smaller government became increasingly influential in the party. This neoliberal movement found a champion for its ideas in Margaret Thatcher, who succeeded Edward Heath as the party leader in 1975. In 1979, a combination of accelerating economic decline coupled with mounting social and political turmoil enabled Thatcher to lead her party to power. Thatcherism subsequently came to describe a mix of policies designed to promote free-market economics and lessen public reliance on what Mrs. Thatcher derisively termed the "nanny state." In foreign affairs, following Winston Churchill and other earlier Conservative leaders, Thatcher vigorously opposed communism and promoted strong ties with the United States.
Although initially unpopular, Thatcher’s public standing improved markedly in 1982 as a result of Britain’s victory over Argentina in the Falklands War. After leading her party in two more successful general elections, her tenure as prime minister abruptly ended in November 1990 when she was ousted in an intra-party revolt. Her replacement was John Major, who achieved a very narrow and widely unexpected victory in the 1992 general election. Conservative support was then driven sharply downward by a relentless combination of recession and economic mismanagement, internecine conflict over relations with the European Union, and persistent allegations of "sleaze."
The party’s vulnerability was enhanced by the resurgence of the Labour Party. Labour had lurched to the ideological left in the late 1970s, effectively making itself unelectable for nearly two decades. However, under the leadership of Neil Kinnock and John Smith, and then Tony Blair, Labour again became a serious contender for power. Chosen party leader in 1994, Blair argued that a Labour government should use the tools of capitalist economics to generate the resources needed to achieve egalitarian policy goals, specifically to fund cherished social programs cut by successive Thatcher-Major governments. In 1997, Blair’s "New Labour" party won a landslide victory, reducing the Conservative vote to 30.7 percent, the lowest figure in over 100 years. In two ensuing general elections, that figure increased only marginally—to 31.7 percent in 2001, and to 32.4 percent in 2005.
In the early twenty-first century, the Conservatives are no longer the dominant force that prompted observers to lionize them as Britain’s "natural governing party." Searching for new ideas with widespread appeal, subject to continuing intraparty conflict, and suffering much reduced local party membership, Conservatives have struggled to find a formula for renewal. Acting on the correct assumption that one part of a winning formula is leadership, the party has fielded four leaders—William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, and David Cameron—since their 1997 debacle. Two of these people (Hague and Howard) promptly led the party to electoral defeat, and one (Duncan Smith) was ousted before he had a chance to do so. However, Cameron may fare better. He is attempting to cast off the legacy of Thatcherism by moving his party back to the ideological center ground and casting himself as both competent and compassionate. His efforts to improve Conservative fortunes are being helped by widespread dissatisfaction among Labour supporters with Tony Blair, and by a series of misfortunes similar to those that beset the Conservatives in the 1990s. Whether this combination of strategy and circumstance will prove a winning one for the Conservative Party remains to be seen.
