Rethinking the ‘Transformation’ of Popular Conservatism

Abstract

If popular Conservatism is defined as electoral support for the Conservative party, then it formally came into existence in 1830. This was the year in which the term ‘Conservative’ was first used in English political language as the new name for the old Tory party. The Conservative party was in a perilous state at the moment of its birth. The granting of full political and civil liberties to both Protestant Dissenters in 1828 and Roman Catholics in 1829, along with the passage of the 1832 Reform Act, greatly weakened the Anglican and aristocratic edifice of the English constitution, the integrity of which the Tories had sworn to preserve. There is an irony in dating the formal existence of popular Conservatism from 1830, as it was the old Tory party’s resistance to popular politics in the shape of parliamentary reform that was responsible, in part, for the coalescing of Tories and conservative Whigs into the new Conservative party. Despite this decidedly unpopular birth, the party soon established itself as one of the most successful and popular political parties of the modern world. The Tories were in office, either on their own or as part of a coalition, for nearly 58 years of the nineteenth century.