1 - The National Government and Interwar Conservatism: The Historical Task

Summary

Chapter 1 outlines the purpose of the book. It assesses existing accounts of interwar Conservatism and highlights our inadequate understanding of the Conservative party’s role within, and its reasons for supporting, the cross-party National Government of 1931-1940. The chapter explains the benefits of focusing the analysis on the role of party activists and local politics as a way of reassessing how the party responded to the challenges of mass democracy after 1918, before introducing the reader to each of the twelve constituency case studies which form the analytical basis of the book and to the related archival material. It then offers a re-reading of the electoral performance of interwar Conservatism, arguing that contrary to the picture of electoral ‘dominance’ normally associated with the party’s national performance, the local experience in the 1920s proved to be one of stagnancy and even decline from the pre-war heyday of local politics. It argues that this re-reading of the 1920s is crucial to understanding the attitude with which the Conservative grassroots approached membership the National Government in 1931 and beyond. The concluding section provides a summary of the book’s chapters.