The Conservative Research Department: the Care and Feeding of Future British Political Elites

Abstract

One of the distinctive characteristics of the Conservative Party's history has been its ability for a century or more to moult its plumage at the right political season without really altering its gestalt. This comment does not imply an act of deception by Conservative Party leaders. Rather it recognizes that Peel, Pitt, Disraeli and, in the twentieth century, Tory leaders like R. A. Butler, Harold Macmillan, Iain Macleod and before them, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill, somehow understood the need for social change and the politics of compromise; so much so that they were quite prepared, in the words of New York's Mayor Jimmy Walker, “to rise above principle” where and when it appeared to be necessary. The Conservative Party has endured as a party because of its unusual adaptability compared to conservative parties in other Western societies. Indeed, it has more than merely ‘endured’: the Conservative Party in an apparently hostile atmosphere, has been able to take and hold power for huge blocks of time in the past century.This adaptation to reality in the interests of power was particularly apparent after the landslide Conservative defeat in July 1945. Some party leaders were determined to adapt to the new realities by attempting to recapture the support of as sizeable a segment of the British working class as the party had enjoyed at the turn of the century. Promulgation of the Industrial Charter through the efforts of a high-powered Tory Committee and the Conservative Research Department was a significant step in that direction.