Conservative Party | History, Facts, Policy, & Structure | Britannica (original) (raw)

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Conservative Party, in the United Kingdom, a political party whose guiding principles include the promotion of private property and enterprise, the maintenance of a strong military, and the preservation of traditional cultural values and institutions. Since World War I the Conservative Party and its principal opponent, the Labour Party, have dominated British political life.

The Conservative Party is the heir, and in some measure the continuation, of the old Tory Party, members of which began forming “conservative associations” after Britain’s Reform Bill of 1832 extended electoral rights to the middle class. The name Conservative was first used as a description of the party by John Wilson Croker writing in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The first Conservative government was formed by Sir Robert Peel, whose program, set out in the Tamworth Manifesto (1834), stressed the timely reform of abuses, the necessity of law and order, an orderly system of taxation, and the importance of both landed interests and trade and industry.

Prospects of an extended period of Conservative rule disappeared in 1846 when the party split over the repeal of protectionist regulations known as the Corn Laws, and for most of the next 30 years they were out of government. The party was reorganized by Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister for a few months in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880. The Conservative Central Office, a professional organization established by Disraeli in 1870, and the newly formed National Union, which drew together local voluntary associations, gave the party additional unity and strength. At the same time, Disraeli’s emphasis on social reform to reduce the enormous disparity in the living conditions of rich and poor, combined with a strong, activist imperial and foreign policy, helped the party to transcend class barriers. Disraeli’s contribution was to transform the party from one that spoke primarily for landed interests to one that could draw supporters from the middle class and from newly enfranchised workers.

The Conservative Party was further strengthened in 1886 when it allied with the Liberal Unionists, a faction of the Liberal Party that opposed the policy of Home Rule in Ireland put forward by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone. Thus reinforced, the Conservatives held office for all but 3 of the next 20 years, first under the leadership of Lord Salisbury and then under Arthur Balfour. A split over tariff policy caused them to lose the election of 1906 in a disastrous landslide, and they did not regain power until they joined a wartime coalition with the Liberals in May 1915. In the election of 1918, most of the candidates elected to support the coalition were Conservatives.

In 1922 Conservative backbenchers forced the party’s withdrawal from the coalition and thereby precipitated the resignation of party leader Austen Chamberlain. The rebellion owed much to the revulsion felt by many backbenchers toward the Liberal leader and prime minister, David Lloyd George, and to their unease over some of the more interventionist reforms introduced by Liberal ministers. A surprise election called in December 1923 by Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin proved to be a miscalculation that briefly reunited the ailing Liberal Party and opened the way to a minority Labour Party government, though the Conservatives remained the largest single party and were able to regain power the following year. Apart from another brief Labour administration in 1929–31, the Conservatives dominated national office until 1945. Baldwin emerged as a popular figure and the architect of what he called the “new Conservatism,” an attempt to appeal to the middle class through a modest movement away from the laissez-faire economic policies that the party had advocated since 1918.

Baldwin’s successor as party leader and prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, was forced from office in May 1940 by his own backbenchers because of his poor leadership in the early months of World War II. Chamberlain was replaced by another Conservative, Winston Churchill, who formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. Although Churchill led the country to victory in the war, he failed to lead his own party to success in the first postwar election in 1945. The party’s stunning defeat can be attributed to the electorate’s desire for social reform and economic security, as well as its inclination to blame the Conservatives for not having done enough in the 1930s to alleviate mass unemployment or to thwart the aspirations of dictators. While in opposition, the party reformed its policies and organization. It created a new youth movement (the Young Conservatives) and an education wing (the Conservative Political Centre), revived the party’s research department, and undertook a drive to increase party membership. The party returned to power in 1951 and maintained office until 1964. Under the leadership of Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, and Alec Douglas-Home, the Conservative Party came to accept the key tenets of the “postwar consensus” with Labour—that is, it recognized the state’s responsibility for maintaining full employment and endorsed the use of techniques of economic-demand management, based on the theories of John Maynard Keynes, to achieve that objective. Moreover, the party did not seek to reverse the welfare measures nor most of the public ownership of industry that had been introduced by Labour in 1945–51. The Conservative government did embark on an extensive house-building program and was able to reduce income taxes while increasing spending on the National Health Service. In the early 1960s, however, an economic downturn and a series of scandals—one of which involved an adulterous affair between the secretary of war and an alleged Soviet spy—undermined the party’s support.

From 1964 to 1979 the Conservatives held power alternately with the Labour Party. Under the prime ministership of Edward Heath (1970–74), the party pursued policies designed to deregulate finance and industry. Economic problems led to confrontations with the trade unions, especially the National Union of Miners, and to internal party dissension. Heath called an election in 1974 and the party lost, allowing Labour to form a minority government. After losing a second national election to Labour in 1974, Heath was succeeded as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, who during her four years as leader of the opposition (1975–79) frequently stated her determination to pursue deregulation and supply-side economic reforms.

As prime minister after the Conservatives’ victory over Labour in 1979, Thatcher attempted to “roll back the state” in the economic sphere, weaken the power of the trade unions, and reduce welfare programs. She combined this ambitious economic agenda—which included the privatization of several state-owned industries and the sale of more than 1.5 million council houses (publicly owned houses) to their tenants—with moral traditionalism and skepticism toward further European integration through the European Economic Community (ultimately succeeded by the European Union). Critics both inside and outside the Conservative Party contended that the “cult of the market” did much to disintegrate the social order, yet Thatcher was able to lead her party to resounding victories in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, owing in part to her decisive leadership in the Falkland Islands War (1982) and to deep divisions in the opposition. Her eventual resignation as party leader (and therefore as prime minister) in 1990 reflected the combined impact of a number of factors, including public protests over a proposal to finance local government through a flat-rate “poll tax,” a series of bitter conflicts with some of her senior ministers, her strident and authoritarian style, and a growing sense among backbenchers that she might prove unable to withstand the electoral challenge of a newly united and considerably reformed Labour Party.

Thatcher’s successor, John Major, had held senior ministerial office for only a brief period prior to his selection as prime minister. His less charismatic political style did not prevent him from winning the general election of 1992, but he had to contend with a prolonged economic recession, internal party conflict over the question of European integration, and dismally low opinion-poll ratings. The party’s economic policies were questioned after Britain was forced to leave the European exchange-rate mechanism and devalue the pound in 1992. Further hampered by a series of personal scandals involving prominent officials of Major’s government and facing a rejuvenated Labour Party under Tony Blair, the Conservatives suffered a crushing defeat in the general election of 1997, losing more than half their seats in the House of Commons.

Soon after the 1997 elections, Major resigned as party leader. With some potential leaders suddenly ineligible because they had lost their parliamentary seats, William Hague, former secretary of state for Wales, was elected party leader. Like Disraeli more than a century earlier, the 36-year-old Hague—the youngest Conservative leader in 200 years—set out to reform the party’s organization, reestablish its appeal outside traditional Conservative strongholds, rebuild its image, and end the factional strife that had plagued the Conservatives during their last years in power. Despite those efforts, Hague’s tenure was marked by continued discord, and in 2001 the party suffered a second consecutive landslide defeat to the Labour Party. In 2005, under former home secretary Michael Howard, the Conservatives won some 30 additional seats in the House of Commons but remained well shy of a parliamentary majority. Howard promptly resigned as party leader, and David Cameron presided over the gradual ascent of the Conservatives over the next five years. Having captured 307 seats in the general election of 2010, the Conservatives became the largest party in the House of Commons, but their failure to win an outright majority led to a hung Parliament. Conservative and Labour Party leaders met with the Liberal Democrats over the ensuing days in an effort to secure enough seats to form a new government. When it appeared that those talks would result in a formal “Lib-Con” coalition, Brown announced his resignation and Cameron was confirmed as prime minister of Britain’s first coalition government since World War II. In midterm local elections in 2012, however, neither the Conservatives nor their coalition partners fared well, with the Conservatives losing more than 400 seats in England, Scotland, and Wales. That trend continued in the May 2014 elections for the European Parliament, in which the Conservatives lost seven seats to finish not only just behind Labour but in third place; the United Kingdom Independence Party finished in first place. Opinion polling before the May 2015 U.K. general election promised more of the same, with the Conservative and Labour parties seemingly in a dead heat as late as the eve of the election. In the event, however, the Conservatives pulled off a stunning victory—winning 331 seats, a gain of 24 seats over their showing in the 2010 election—that allowed Cameron to form a majority government.

For several years disaffection had been growing within the party over Britain’s continued membership in the European Union. In 2013 Cameron first promised a national referendum on the issue, and in February 2016 he succeeded in winning concessions from EU leaders that were aimed at pleasing Euroskeptics. The party divided in the lead-up to the referendum in 2016, with Cameron leading the “Remain” side and former London mayor Boris Johnson heading up the “Leave” side. In the event, voters chose to leave the EU, and Cameron announced his intention to resign as prime minister and party leader. In July 2016 he was replaced by his home secretary, Theresa May, who became the second woman in British history to serve as prime minister.

Seeking a mandate to bolster her hand in negotiations on the British exit from the EU (“Brexit”), May called a snap election for June 2017. Opinion polling had led her to anticipate big gains in the House of Commons. However, instead of increasing their presence in the Commons through the election, the Conservatives lost their legislative majority, falling to 318 seats. May was forced to enlist the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to empower a minority government. May failed in repeated efforts to win approval from Parliament for the exit agreement that she had negotiated with the EU, and, as a result, she was eventually forced to resign as party leader. Boris Johnson triumphed in the campaign to replace her as leader and became prime minister in July 2019.

Initially, Johnson also failed to push Brexit across the finish line, but, when he turned to British voters in a snap election in December 2019, he was rewarded with a historic landslide victory in which his party won 365 seats, a gain of 47 seats, the biggest triumph for the Conservatives since their Margaret Thatcher-led landmark victory in 1987. Johnson finally succeeded in overseeing Britain’s formal exit from the EU on January 31, 2020, but in short order he was confronted with a new challenge, leading the U.K.’s response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. Johnson’s status as Conservative leader became tenuous in the wake of the so-called “Partygate” scandal, which involved social gatherings that were attended by Johnson and his staff in violation of pandemic-related public health restrictions. Although he survived a vote of confidence in his leadership of the party on June 6, 2022, Johnson was forced to resign on July 7 when his apparent prevarication regarding his awareness of allegations of sexual misconduct against a senior Conservative Party official shattered his already fragile support within the party. In September he was replaced as party leader by Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who was chosen in a vote by party members over the other final candidate, former chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. After her proposed economic plan panicked the financial markets, Truss was forced to resign as party leader in October after only some six weeks in office. She was replaced by Sunak.