Conservatives in the inter-war period

Question 1

Cowling

Answer 1

• Analyses the extent to which Labour became the ‘major problem’ for Liberals and Conservatives.
• With respect to Labour, the struggle within the Conservative Party concerned tactics rather than policy and the Conservatives who defeated the coalition in 1922 were just as opposed to socialism as those who wished to remain allied with the Lloyd George Liberals. So were the Asquithian Liberals who wanted to organise a centre party. Once coalition fell Liberals established themselves as the alternative to Labour/Socialism.
• Why did the Conservatives emerge as the alternative??
- Baldwin had political genius. The Liberal decline was not inevitable, and was in fact as a result of tactics of Baldwin (plus internal divisions).
• Conservatives successfully met the Labour threat

Question 2

Ball

Answer 2

• After 1924 there was a basic ideological unity underpinning the party – rights of property, importance of authority and order, cross-class integration, religion (C of E), private enterprise. Could see a role of the state in the economy if industry deemed it appropriate. Committed to Britain’s Great Power statue – importance of Empire.
• Conservatives clearly defined themselves against ‘fears’ such as socialism, trade unionism, moral degeneration, ‘intellectuals’, Liberals and Jews.
• Such a clear definition of Conservatism gave party unity and purpose.
• Conservative appeal had more resonance for more people than their alternatives. Failure of Labour to fully ‘replace’ pre-war Liberals.
• the higher social classes cleaved very strongly towards the Conservatives, lower middle-class support was ‘the backbone of the Conservative Party’, and the party could make strong appeals to large numbers of working-class voters despite Labour’s attempts to portray itself as the only rational choice for the workers.
• Party had 8 key strengths;
- Basic consensus on principles
- Underlying Conservative temperament
- Flexibility and pragmatism of methods
- organisational resources based on membership and wealth
- social and cultural cohesion
- unity
- clear chain of command
- moderate centrist strategy

Question 3

Ball: Baldwin and the Conservative Party

Answer 3

• The formation of the National Government was not the result of a Conservative bid for power – both Labour and Conservatives were ‘blown off course’.
• Ascribes greater importance to the influence of back-bench MPs in the struggles of 1929 and 1930, and less to the role of constituency activists.
• The power of the Newspaper Press – denies the press as a creative role in party politics. Its strength was given substance when it acted as the mouthpiece of rank and file disaffection.
• Divisions in the party in 1929 and 1930 rested on regional, social and economic interests (not on ideology or political theory). Party achieved unity in 1030 when traditional remedy for coping with economic crisis was adopted; i.e. lower taxes and reduce government expenditure.
• Baldwin gave and ‘uninspiring’ performance in 1929 and 1930.

Question 4

Ball and Holliday

Answer 4

• Focuses on the relationship between the Conservatives and the masses
• Argue that the importance of the Conservative Party has been its electoral success, and also that ‘British society and economy have been substantially shaped in the Conservative image’.
• Conservatives have been able to relate to vast and diverse segments of society.
• The Conservatives developed into an effective mass party that responded to the democratic changes of 1867-1928. Developed a self-image as a mass party rather than a class party.

Question 5

Morgan

Answer 5

• Examines how the imagery or mythology of home ownership, rather than creating a wedge of discontent between the working classes and Conservatives, actually contributed to Conservative electoral dominance during the inter-war period.

Question 6

Mandler

Answer 6

• The idea of the English national character began in 1848. Ideas about ‘Englishness’ shaped more my domestic matters than by international ones.
• The “Great Briton” of Punch’s John Bull personified for a time the English national character until the Boer War and World War I made such complacent self-imagin- ings impossible. John Bull was then replaced by the “Little Man,” Sidney Strube’s cartoon featured in the pages of the Daily Express from 1920 to 1947. The “Lit- tle Man’s” representation of national character was a strange m61lange, incorporating an older imagining of the English gentleman, along with the working-class “chirpy Cockney” and “the bourgeois suburbanite” with his pipe, his garden, and his nuclear family.