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Popular Conservatism and
the Culture of National Government in Inter-War Britain
Geraint Thomas
Cambridge:
University Press, 2020 Hardcover. vii + 360 p. ISBN 978-1108483124. £75
Reviewed by Roland
Quinault Institute
of Historical Research, University of London
This study, which grew out
of a doctoral thesis, is well written, fully referenced and extensively
researched amongst both primary and secondary sources. As such, it is a
scholarly and valuable contribution to the study of inter-war electoral
politics. It is also a useful corrective to over concentration on the views and
policy of the national party leadership.
At the core of this enquiry is a detailed investigation of the
activities of grassroots Conservatives in twelve varied constituencies. They
have been selected as broadly representative of five different kinds of
constituencies: urban industrial, suburban, rural and Scottish and Welsh. These
case studies provide a wealth of interesting quotes and detail. The local focus of the book
has, however, limitations. Some issues, such as the empire and tariffs, get relatively
little attention although they were central to Conservative concerns in the period.
Nor is there any specific attention paid to the Tory Right as examined, for
example, in Neil Fleming’s recent study: Britain’s
Zealots volume I, Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right.
Grassroots Conservatism, moreover, was not always the product of purely local
concerns. Tory activists were influenced not only by local issues but also by widely
disseminated party propaganda from Central Office and the Tory press. Moreover
it cannot be automatically assumed that party activists shared the same mindset
as ordinary Conservative voters, about whose political outlook there is
relatively little evidence outside of election results. Thomas claims that historians
have unduly attributed the dominance of the Conservative Party in the inter-war
period to Baldwin’s brand of consensual Conservatism. Instead he argues that
the unique circumstances of a cross-party National Government enabled the
Tories to revive the local roots of popular Conservatism. That claim, however, is
not entirely convincing. A genuinely national cross-party government did not
survive the 1931 election. Thereafter the National Government was simply a coalition
between a large Tory majority and a very small minority from the Labour and
Liberal Parties. In that respect it was similar to Lord Salisbury’s Unionist
government from 1895 to 1902 and Lloyd George’s coalition government from 1916
to 1922. Nor was it the first time that a genuinely cross-party national
government had been proposed to deal with a political crisis. In the late 1880s
the threat of Irish Home Rule had led Lord Randolph Churchill and Joseph
Chamberlain to briefly suggest the creation of a national party, while Lloyd
George had favoured an all-party coalition during the constitutional crisis
before the First World War. More generally, the rhetorical concept of a
national government had been anticipated by Disraeli’s ‘one nation
Conservatism’ in the Victorian era. The ideological outlook of the
Conservatives did not change significantly in the inter-war years. As Thomas
concedes, both before and after the 1931 general election the Tories remained a
stridently anti-socialist party. But he overstates the novelty of the National
Government’s focus on issues of employment and industry, which had been
prominent issues in the 1920s as well. The increase in attention paid to such
issues in the ‘thirties was hardly surprising in the wake of the Slump. Also the
Tory focus on public health in the ‘thirties had been evident in the ‘twenties
when Neville Chamberlain had been Minister of Health. Likewise the divergence
between a predominantly Labour north and a Tory dominance in the south
reflected what had long been a partisan fault line. The Tory wooing of the
Liberals during the 1931 and 1935 general election campaigns was reminiscent of
their stance at the 1924 general election. On all these occasions the tactic proved
successful. Popular
Conservatism and the Culture of National Government in Inter-War Britain is a valuable addition to
our knowledge of grassroots activity but it overstates the impact of the
National Government on the party’s fortunes.
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