‘VILLA TORYISM’ AND POPULAR CONSERVATISM IN LEEDS, 1885–1902

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the continuing debate on the character and electoral fortunes of the Conservative party in late Victorian England. Using the West Riding borough of Leeds as a case study, this article focuses on suburban Conservatism (villa toryism) and situates it within the broader context of urban Conservatism in and beyond Leeds. It explores the nature of Conservative electoral dominance in the period after the Third Reform Act. In doing so, it further challenges conventional interpretations about the rise of class-based politics. As the example of Leeds demonstrates, villa toryism was not the political expression of a socially homogeneous, innately conservative suburban middle class. The intense electoral competition that ensued challenges assumptions about suburbia being politically quiescent and dull. Popular Conservatism, it is argued, was a protean and socially heterogeneous political culture, of which villa toryism was one distinctive strand. Villa toryism was the suburban incarnation of respectable, self-reliant, hierarchical, and domesticated popular Conservatism. This villa toryism was distinct from, but related to, the working-class Conservatism of the older industrial districts of urban England.