Conservative Leaders, Strategy — and ‘Consensus’? 1945–1964

Abstract

The postwar political consensus ‘usually refers to the widespread elite agreement on policy goals and broad continuity of government policy’.2 This model of political behaviour has been used to explain the Conservative Party’s espousal of positive welfarism and for its supposedly newfound acceptance of state intervention in the immediate postwar years; for the apparent continuities between the Labour and Conservative governments during this period; and why there was to be no dismantling of the welfare state during the thirteen years of Conservative rule (1951–64). Consensus theory thus suggests that compromise had triumphed over conflict and, according to some, the appearance of conflict between the political parties and elites was ‘often a sham, for parties are not real adversaries and the choices they offer the electorate are imaginary’.3 This chapter will consider whether Conservative Party leaders’ actions really did converge with those of their Labour counterparts and will examine the strategies pursued by Conservative leaders in order to appreciate their political aims and vision and to comprehend the parameters within which they operated.