Conservatism
United Kingdom

Modern English conservatives celebrate Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke as their intellectual father. Burke was affiliated with the Whig Party, which eventually split amongst the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, but the modern Conservative Party is generally thought to derive primarily from the Tories, and the MPs of the modern conservative party are still frequently referred to as Tories.

Shortly after Burke's death in 1797, conservatism was revived as a mainstream political force as the Whigs suffered a series of internal divisions. This new generation of conservatives derived their politics not from Burke, but from his predecessor, the Viscount Bolingbroke, who was a Jacobite and traditional Tory, lacking Burke's sympathies for Whiggish policies such as Catholic emancipation and American independence (famously attacked by Samuel Johnson in "Taxation No Tyranny").

In the first half of the 19th century, many newspapers, magazines, and journals promoted loyalist or right-wing attitudes in religion, politics, and international affairs. Burke was seldom mentioned, but William Pitt the Younger became a conspicuous hero. The most prominent journals included The Quarterly Review, founded in 1809 as a counterweight to the Whigs' Edinburgh Review, and the even more conservative Blackwood's Magazine. The Quarterly Review promoted a balanced Canningite Toryism, as it was neutral on Catholic emancipation and only mildly critical of Nonconformist dissent; it opposed slavery and supported the current poor laws; and it was "aggressively imperialist ". The high-church clergy of the Church of England read the Orthodox Churchman's Magazine, which was equally hostile to Jewish, Catholic, Jacobin, Methodist and Unitarian spokesmen. Anchoring the ultra-Tories, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine stood firmly against Catholic emancipation and favoured slavery, cheap money, mercantilism, the Navigation Acts, and the Holy Alliance.

Conservatism evolved after 1820, embracing free trade in 1846 and a commitment to democracy, especially under Benjamin Disraeli. The effect was to significantly strengthen conservatism as a grassroots political force. Conservatism no longer was the philosophical defence of the landed aristocracy, but had been refreshed into redefining its commitment to the ideals of order, both secular and religious, expanding imperialism, strengthened monarchy, and a more generous vision of the welfare state as opposed to the punitive vision of the Whigs and liberals. As early as 1835, Disraeli attacked the Whigs and utilitarians as slavishly devoted to an industrial oligarchy, while he described his fellow Tories as the only "really democratic party of England", devoted to the interests of the whole people. Nevertheless, inside the party there was a tension between the growing numbers of wealthy businessmen on the one side and the aristocracy and rural gentry on the other. The aristocracy gained strength as businessmen discovered they could use their wealth to buy a peerage and a country estate.

Some conservatives lamented the passing of a pastoral world where the ethos of noblesse oblige had promoted respect from the lower classes. They saw the Anglican Church and the aristocracy as balances against commercial wealth. They worked toward legislation for improved working conditions and urban housing. This viewpoint would later be called Tory democracy. However, since Burke, there has always been tension between traditional aristocratic conservatism and the wealthy liberal business class.

In 1834, Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel issued the " Tamworth Manifesto ", in which he pledged to endorse moderate political reform. This marked the beginning of the transformation from High Tory reactionism towards a more modern form of conservatism. As a result, the party became known as the Conservative Party —a name it has retained to this day. However, Peel would also be the root of a split in the party between the traditional Tories (by the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli) and the "Peelites" (led first by Peel himself, then by the Earl of Aberdeen). The split occurred in 1846 over the issue of free trade, which Peel supported, versus protectionism, supported by Derby. The majority of the party sided with Derby whilst about a third split away, eventually merging with the Whigs and the radicals to form the Liberal Party. Despite the split, the mainstream Conservative Party accepted the doctrine of free trade in 1852.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Liberal Party faced political schisms, especially over Irish Home Rule. Leader William Gladstone (himself a former Peelite) sought to give Ireland a degree of autonomy, a move that elements in both the left and right-wings of his party opposed. These split off to become the Liberal Unionists (led by Joseph Chamberlain), forming a coalition with the Conservatives before merging with them in 1912. The Liberal Unionist influence dragged the Conservative Party towards the left as Conservative governments passed a number of progressive reforms at the turn of the 20th century. By the late 19th century, the traditional business supporters of the Liberal Party had joined the Conservatives, making them the party of business and commerce as well.

After a period of Liberal dominance before World War I, the Conservatives gradually became more influential in government, regaining full control of the cabinet in 1922. In the inter-war period, conservatism was the major ideology in Britain as the Liberal Party vied with the Labour Party for control of the left. After World War II, the first Labour government (1945–1951) under Clement Attlee embarked on a program of nationalisation of industry and the promotion of social welfare. The Conservatives generally accepted those policies until the 1980s.

In the 1980s, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, guided by neoliberal economics, reversed many of Labour's social programmes, privatised large parts of the UK economy, and sold state-owned assets. The Conservative Party also adopted soft eurosceptic politics and opposed Federal Europe. Other conservative political parties, such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP, founded in 1971), and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP, founded in 1993), began to appear, although they have yet to make any significant impact at Westminster. As of 2014, the DUP is the largest political party in the ruling coalition in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and from 2017 to 2019 the DUP provided support for the Conservative minority government under a confidence-and-supply arrangement.
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