The Impact of WWI on the Conservative Party - Research Paper Example

The Impact of WWI on the Conservative Party I Introduction The Conservative Party is undoubtedly one of the most prominent United Kingdom political parties alongside the Labour Party. It had a long history, which can be traced back to the old Tory Party in the middle 17th century. When the Tory Party’s reputation suffered a misfortune in the early 19th century, Tory members whose political influence remained unsullied decided to adopt the name and organised itself into one of the most enduring political parties in contemporary British politics. The Conservatives had initially represented itself as the bastion of state stability through policies that reinforced political and social life through the use of state power. This implied, within the 19th century context, holding on to proprietary and aristocratic policies. Progress, however, had made such policies obsolete and the Conservatives had to reinvent itself several times to adopt with the changing world. History is fraught with lessons that the Conservatives can draw from, which illustrate that pragmatism can sometimes lead to a political disaster. Despite their seeming political stability, the Conservative Party went through a shaking political debacle in the early 19th century that broke their political dominance with a big thud. Fortunately and ironically, World War I became a vehicle for the Conservatives to reemerge from the political dustbin and reestablish once more their presence in the country’s political arena. II Background: The Conservative Party Before WWI The Conservative Party is deemed the most successful political party in British history, winning 16 out of the 28 general elections between 1881 and 1990, their shares of the votes seldom going below the 40% level. When the Conservatives win an election they were likely to dominate the Parliament, but even when they lost an election they are still a power to reckon with denying Parliamentary dominance to the winning party. There was a period in its history, however, that the Conservative Party suffered a great debacle, one that was orchestrated by an anti-Conservative bloc that was never experienced by the party, and was poised to relegate it to the mere role of opposition for years until WWI broke its seeming political fall. 1 The Conservative Party had its beginnings in the old Tory Party, when in the 1830s Sir Robert Peel called for the adoption of the name after it was earlier suggested by the Quarterly Review that the Tory Party should change its name to Conservative Party since it stands for the preservation of institutions. In the Tamworth Manifesto, Peel outlined the programme of the Party, 2 a moderate reformist strategy whose primary goal was the maintenance of political and social stability through the use of state of power. The shift in the name from Tory to Conservatives was engendered by the Tory’s electoral crush in the 1830s due to its opposition of the 1932 Reform Act, although it did not affect the Party’s standing in the House of Lords and the local government. The Tories successful evolution to the Conservative party was underpinned by its decision to adopt the oxymoron political strategy of moderate reform and strong government rather than strictly sticking to an aristocratic-rural party of resistance to change and accept the 1932 Reform Act. 3 Peel was elected Prime Minister for two terms in 1834-1835 and in 1841-1846, respectively. Considered the founder of the Party, Peel was also the cause of its split in 1846 when he supported free trade by repealing the Corn Laws, laws that set tariffs on corn imports. When he was forced to resign due to the controversy generated by the repeal, his Conservative followers turned to the Liberal Party whilst those who opposed him and his repeal of the laws, such as Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, his main antagonist within the Party, carried on and expanded the Party under the Reform Act 1867.4 The split in the party over the Corn Laws was mainly due to lack of party cohesiveness and involved the issue that was persistently present at the core of Conservative politics which was, whether it should resist change or accommodate it to preserve the status quo. 5 Disraeli, who worked hard to destroy the leadership of Peel in the Party, took over its reins. He is deemed the founder of the modern Conservative Party after the original Party’s split over the Corn Laws and was credited with the party reforms that promoted One Nation Conservatism. Disraeli’s politics was largely reactionary and his works reflected yearning for the old aristocratic political order, veneration of the monarchy and the belief that radical parties are anti-nation. 6 Disraeli served as Prime Minister twice in February 1868-December 1868 and 1874-1880, respectively. During his first term, he introduced social reforms and augmented the central government’s powers. In 1874, the Party came to be known as the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations when the group of Joseph Chamberlain of the Liberal wing opposed the Home Rule policy for Ireland joined the Conservatives.7 After the death of Disraeli in 1881, Lord Salisbury emerged as the leading contender for the Conservative Party. Salisbury stood for the political ideals such as “security of property, social stability and order secured by a hierarchy with the landed aristocracy at its apex.” 8 Although he knew that one day, democracy and socialism would eventually win over and it is useless to stand in their way; it is the Conservatives’ role to make their coming as slow as possible believing that democracy means the taking over of men of less importance and culture where capital will be made to favour labour and property cheaper to make the poor afford them. It also means more taxes that will be spent by people who contributed to them the least. To Salisbury, the rule of the propertied is justified by their superiority reflected by their station in life. 9 Under the leadership of Disraeli and subsequently Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Party grew into a powerful political organisation with a bureaucracy that was centrally, intermediately and peripherally solid. It had well-oiled machinery that constituted local organisations all over the country as well as supporting organisation whose function was to work on the political socialisation of the electorate. The fact that the Conservatives base was the privileged class did not hinder its development as a strong organisation because of certain factors: its legitimacy was internally-based; it was centrist-based, that is its real power came from the center, a pre-existing elite headed by a prestigious leader, rather than from the periphery, and; its style suited the British bureaucracy, which had no inherent independence but dependent upon the Crown and the government. 10 Thus, the Conservatives dominated British politics from 1886 to 1902, despite the Liberal Party winning the election of 1892. From a country party in 1868, it gained Parliamentary strength with support from urban constituencies despite the passage of the 1884 Reform Act, which raised the size of electorates from the working-class. This was due Lord Salisbury’s crafty maneuver insisting on seat redistribution whilst accepting the electoral reform. Redistribution allowed representation of minorities that were constituted by Conservative suburbs and rural areas. 11 One of the reasons of the Conservatives’ dominance in the last thirty years of the 19th century was the Liberal Party’s disarray in 1886 when Prime Minister Gladstone of the Liberal Party promoted the Irish House Rule, which caused the split of its party members, 12 and prompting Joseph Chamberlain, on one of the party stalwarts, to abdicate it.13 The Irish Home Rule Bill sought to devolved power from the English central government to the Irish, where the latter’s administrative area is concerned. It was a divisive issue especially for the Liberal Party in 1886 and was largely unpopular with the voting masses, which cast a suspicious eye at the odd partnership between the English Nonconformists and the Roman Catholics that constituted the Irish Nationalist Movement. Moreover, the Catholic Irish immigrants in Britain were known supporters of the Liberal Party because of the Home Rule, which created repercussions especially in largely dominant Protestant communities, benefiting greatly the Conservatives. 14 Thus, the Liberal Party’s disarray became the Conservatives victory in the succeeding election of 1886, albeit the former remained a formidable party as can be gleaned from the voting patterns of the electorate in 1886 and the succeeding years. The 1886-1902 period referred to as the Conservatives political peak years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was characterised by a low turnout of voters during election times and the times when there was a big share of Conservative electorate voting were the times when the Liberals were experiencing intra-party difficulties such as the years 1886, 1895 and 1900. The implication is that a low turn-out of voters benefited the Conservatives and that during Liberal intra-party disorder, the party failed to mobilised Liberal voters, who abstained from voting rather than vote for the Conservatives. 15 In 1900, the Conservatives won the elections third time in a row, a victory that can be characterised as one of their greatest; but in 1906 the Conservatives were at their lowest political ebb routed decisively by the reinvigorated Liberal Party. The events that occurred between 1900 and 1906 foretold the utter defeat that relentlessly hounded the Conservatives in three successive elections from 1906 to 1910. The scale of its defeat convinced the Conservatives that indeed Socialism was largely looming in the near horizon. This suspicion was not without basis as the period was alive with the proliferation of trade unions and industrial unrest, the emergence of the Labour Party, and state interventionism. 16 The issue that turned the tide against the Conservatives was tariff reform, which came about when the British fiscal crisis emerged in the early 20th century. The turn of the century was characterised by a British fiscal crises that was spurred by the second Boer War occurring between the last ten years of the 19th century to very early 20th century. It was a war that was fought between the British and the Boer republics comprised by the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Although it ended with both republics annexed to Britain, the war hurt British finances a great deal. To deal with the financial crisis, the Conservatives, who were the ruling party at that time, raised funds through indirect taxation. This meant imposing duties and tariffs on imports like tea, tobacco, sugar and corn and even on exports such as coal, but such duties and tariffs were insignificant not enough to turn around the economy. Neither was increasing income taxes an option because it was already high enough at that period. The only other options were either retrenchment or tariff reform.17 Tariff reform was a very big issue to Edwardian Britain because it meant an attack against free trade, considered an economic sacrilege in the early 20th century. This perspective was borne by the historical economic boon to the country that followed every introduction of policies that upheld free trade such as the repeal of the Corn Laws. This, thus, made British equate free trade with progress and prosperity. 18 The issue of tariffs, which was intertwined with the issues of protectionism and free trade, further endangered Conservative intra-party relations when in 1903, Charles Ritchie, Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, revoked the corn tariff imposed in 1902. This engendered the resignation of many Conservatives from the cabinet, both free trade and protectionist supporters, including Joseph Chamberlain, a Unionist tariff reform stalwart. But retrenchment offered only an economic panacea that would not last long and for the Conservatives, tariff protectionism seemed to be the only solution in the offing. 19 On May 15, 1903, Joseph Chamberlain, whose Liberal Unionists that split from Gladstone’s Liberal party was then in collaboration with the Conservatives, launched his own tariff reform programme. Conservatives adopted the tariff reform programme, made central to their politics and vigorously defended it even after their resounding defeat in 1906 because of it. This is where the real Conservative political crisis began and the reinvigoration of the Liberal Party Commenced, which was an irony considering that Chamberlain’s defection from the latter in 1886 initiated that Party’s damage. The damaging effect of the tariff reform, especially to the Conservatives, was its core tariff policy, which entailed preferential tariff agreements with its colonies for the purpose of securing British imperial markets. Such a proposal did not sit well with the colonies that had already developed self-sufficiency to get by on its own without being flooded by British imports. What the colonies can agree only was the imposition by the Conservative government of duties on imported food stuff. The Liberals seized this opportunity to campaign against the Conservatives’ “dear loaf” approach in contrast to their “free breakfast table.” It was a campaign that many low earners electorate related to, an approval that was translated into three successive victories for the Liberals and three successive resounding losses to the Conservatives. 20 III WWI and the Conservative Party: Second Wind The advent of WWI had a strong impact on the Conservative Party perhaps because the importance it gained during the war was in stark contrast to its resounding defeat in the 1906 election and the subsequent two elections thereafter. As with its strong emergence in 1886, the Conservative Party’s second wind beginning the outbreak of the WW1 was again at the expense of the Liberal Party’s disarray, which at this point had ended its political domination. With the decline of the Liberal Party as a consequence of events during the war, the Labour Party began to surface as one of British foremost political parties together with the reemergence of the Conservative Party from its pre-WWI electoral debacle. The advent of the WWI ended the highly partisan politics that the Conservatives were engaged in passionately. The Irish Home Rule was again at the centre of political debates and with Andrew Bonar Law at its helm, the Conservatives were once again playing the staunch oppositionist. But the onset of the war compelled Law to offer a political truce to the Liberals in the government and this meant refraining from attacking the government.21 Initially, the Party was weakened with many of its young members volunteering in Flanders to serve in the war, in addition to being tied to its promise of political truce. This was the state of politics until New Year 1915 came when Conservatives ire was awakened in light of new issues proposed by Liberal government, especially the “prosecution of war.” The Conservatives objected to the way the Liberals were handling the war, such as the recruitment strategy where the government was perceived to have exhibited lack of planned coherence. Unable to express themselves in the Parliament, the more radical Tories resorted to party press.22 The war witnessed the break-up of the Liberals who were assailed not only by the Conservatives but from all other factions at the way they handled the war. In 1915, for example, the ‘shell scandal,’ where failed British offensives particularly in the Gallipoli campaign was attributed to deficiency in munitions, broke out through a Times of London article. The Liberals were forced to consider the establishment of a political coalition that would take over the helm of the government from the Liberals, since a defeat would be inevitable in an election. For the Conservatives, albeit a victory in an election would have been certain, a partisan election would not be good for the country at that time. Thus, they agreed to a coalition among the various parties, albeit the same would still be headed by Herbert Asquith, a Liberal Party leader. The coalition, however, did not end Liberal Party woes. There was controversy and much doubt about Asquith’s leadership ability, and the attacks against him did not only come from the Conservatives but also from within the Liberals itself, particularly from the Lloyd George faction. Lloyd George assailed Asquith for the latter’s inability to lead the War Committee and the generals as well as for his opposition of the conscription issue. This development led to the Asquith’s resignation and Lloyd’s taking over the coalition as head. 23 George Lloyd’s ascendancy as head of the coalition further eroded the Liberal Party’s integrity as Asquith retained the loyalty of many party members, compelling Lloyd to fill the coalition ranks from the Conservative Party such as Bonar Law, Milner and Curzon. The factionalism between Lloyd and Asquith’s respective groups tore the Liberal Party into two and reinforced the standing of the Conservative Party. IV Conclusion World War I had such a big impact on the Conservative Party – it paved the way for their return as a dominant political party intact as opposed to the broken Liberal Party. This was an ironic turn of events, but the war was instrumental in bringing back the Conservatives political fortune, just as it was instrumental in bringing down that of the Liberals. Evidently, the Conservatives lack of resiliency in their economic perspective brought them down as evidenced by their utter defeat in 1906, which is not surprising considering that the party was then known for their policy to slow down changes towards democracy and socialism as much as can be permitted. Free trade represented democratic ideals and tariff protectionism represented the maintenance of status quo. References: Ciment, James and Russell, Thaddeus. The Home Front Encyclopedia: United States, Britain, and Canada in World Wars I and II, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO, 2007. Evans, Brendan & Taylor, Andrew. From Salisbury to Major: Continuity and Change in Conservative Politics. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press ND, 1996. Green, E.H.H. The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics, and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880-1914. London: Routledge, 1996. Hobson, John (1997). The Wealth of States: A Comparative Sociology of International Economic and Political Change, Vol. 52. Cambridge University Press. Keohane, Nigel (2010). The Party of Patriotism: The Conservative Party and the First World War. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Lee, Stephen (1996). Aspects of British Political History, 1914-1995. Routledge. Panebianco, Angelo. Political Parties: Organization and Power. Cambridge: CUP Archive, 1988. Searle, G.R. (2005). A New England? Peace and War, 1886-1918. Oxford University Press. Wright, Thomas Edmund. A Dictionary of World History, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Read More