Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (review)

In British politics the twentieth century was "the Conservative century." The Tories were in office for sixty-eight years (albeit occasionally in coalitions) and on only four occasions suffered heavy defeats at general elections. Recently, scholars such as Richard Shannon, John Ramsden and Green himself have contributed to an account of these decades of dominance. In the process, Green argues in this erudite work, Conservative thought has been neglected. In part this is explicable by reference to the Tories' own self-image as "non-ideological" (at least before Thatcher) but the party has nonetheless possessed "an ideological map of the world which enables them to identify objects of approval and disapproval" (3). Indeed, if one goes beyond the examination of a small number of "canonical" texts to lesser publications, speeches and correspondence, then "the Conservatives' engagement with ideas is clear, rich, varied, and extensive" (14). Rather than Thatcherism heralding a new formal philosophical coherence, "the history of the Conservative party in the twentieth century is steeped in ideological dispute" (14). Such debates Green explores in a series of "cross-sectional" essays that sample Conservative ideological debate at key points throughout the century.

The first reexamines the career of Arthur Balfour, particularly in relation to his views on tariff reform. In electoral terms Balfour was the most unsuccessful Conservative leader of the century but, contrary to conventional wisdom, Green argues that rather than ineffectual and half-hearted, Balfour's position on tariff reform, and particularly his concept of "retaliation," explored in his Economic Notes on Insular Free Trade (1904), was deeply and sincerely held.

The essay on "English idealism, conservatism and collectivism, 1880-1914" will be of broader interest to historians of political thought. The case for the importance of the "New Liberalism" has been well made by Peter Clarke and Michael Freeden, but Green here explores the impact of Idealism on Conservative thought, suggesting that the "Oxford Collectivist" movement had a significant influence on Edwardian Toryism. The works of the Conservative writer Arthur Boutwood, along with the ideas of a group of historical economists, are examined in detail. Conservative collectivism aimed at a positive role for the state, for domestic social reform and for more equal imperial relationships. One prominent Tory influenced by such intellectual currents is the subject of Green's next chapter. Arthur Steel-Maitland was an active member of the Edwardian Conservative thinktank the Compatriots' Club and the driving force behind the Unionist Social Reform Committee, as well as party chairman and later a minister. The first leading Conservative to engage with Keynesian ideas, through a series of publications he developed a corporatist vision of state, employer and trade union relations.

Chapter four moves from intellectual history to "low politics," focusing on the powerful Conservative opposition to the Lloyd George coalition government that eventually brought about Lloyd George's downfall in 1922. Green situates rank-and-file Tory disquiet over coalition policies first within a broader debate over the construction of the party as an anti-socialist bulwark, and second as a key moment in the development of the party's identity as "the quintessential representative force of the middle class" (132).

"The Battle of the Books: Book Clubs and Conservatism in the 1930s" explores attempts to generate an intellectual response to socialist publishing. In 1936 the Right Book Club was founded by Foyle's the booksellers to counter the Left Book Club, followed in 1937 by the National Book Association, the brainchild of Tory historian Arthur Bryant. Neither could rival the LBC's membership and both made serious errors in publishing pro-Nazi texts and (in the case of the NBA) an English translation of Mein Kampf. As Green comments, "[t]he actions of Bryant and the NBA . . . were at best naïve and at worst deeply suspect" (148), but this did not prevent Bryant from remaining deeply involved in...