The Conservative Movement and Dreams of Britain's Post-War Future

Abstract

The 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's Party”: A necessary experiment in personalization

“…Yet, the very fact that a wartime prime minister was forced to seek the confidence of the House on a number of occasions speaks to latent opposition. Likewise, the extent to which figures from all levels of the party complained about the failure to promote the Conservative cause and the “socialism by stealth” that was supposedly occurring in government, reveals the centrality of continued Party interest even at the height of the conflict (Kowol 2019). As such, by 1942, there were already a number of senior Conservatives who, though they supported the prime minister, regretted the fact that he had also become leader of the Party.…”

Food, Feminist Rhetorical Studies, and Conservative Women: The Case of Elizabeth David

“…In 1945 the Labour Party swept to victory and thereby instigated a period in the wilderness for the Conservatives, who did not return to power until 1951—exactly when David’s career as a writer began to take off. But while political historians have been busy re-evaluating the so-called “inevitability” of the Conservative defeat in 1945, other historians have argued for a more diffusive understanding of conservatism, with a small “c” ( Kowol 474). 7 How did conservative attitudes, perspectives, and ideas develop after the Second World War?…”