The Unionist Social Reform Committee, 1911–1914: Wets Before the Deluge

Abstract

‘So Arthur Balfour is really leader – and Tory Democracy, the genuine article, at an end!’ Conventional historical wisdom has endorsed Randolph Churchill's judgement of 1891, attributing the demise of tory democracy partly to Balfour himself and partly to the inexorable forces of class division. Balfour's tactical ingenuity secured the defeat of Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform, a valiant bid to revive tory democracy and turn back the tide of class politics; thereafter the Liberals, anxious to retain their working-class support, made the running on social reform, while the Unionists fell back on ‘negative’ policies and the middle-class vote. Yet perhaps historians have become the prisoners of their own orthodoxy. Though the ideology, the policies and the electoral bases of the new Liberalism have been extensively explored, the Unionists have been relatively neglected. Because it is assumed that before 1914 the Conservative party was devoid of proposals for social reform, one of the most obvious sources for such proposals has been overlooked: the Unionist Social Reform Committee of 1911 to 1914.