III.

The Conservative Party in Great Britain

Burke was claimed as the intellectual ancestor of both a conservative tendency of mind, shared by Whigs as well as Tories from the 1790s onward, and of British Conservatism as a party doctrine. British conservatism and the Conservative Party that evolved during the third quarter of the 19th century each remained attached to parliamentary and constitutional democracy. Gradual extension of the franchise, ameliorating social legislation, and better cooperation between the poor and the rich became part of the conservative tradition, classically highlighted in the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, whose Sybil (1845) identifies the danger of there being “two nations” within one country: the rich and the poor.

During the 20th century, the Conservative Party accepted and even initiated economic control by the state, and broadened the social responsibility of the state to intervene in matters of health, education, and economic security, as well as in national defence. After World War II, the Conservatives went so far as to accept the nationalization of key industries that had been instituted by the socialist Labour Party and to endorse fully the tenets of the welfare state. Only after 1979 did the Conservative Party begin to reconsider the practice of state controls, welfare measures, and nationalization, in a re-evaluation which became influential in many other countries.