The Rise and Progress of Tory Democracy

Abstract

This paper is concerned with what must be regarded as the central paradox of British politics: the continuing electoral success of the Tory party in an age of political democracy. Chronologically the centre of gravity lies in the last third of the nineteenth century. The two reform bills of 1867 and 1884 substantially established the structure of political democracy, although it was well into the twentieth century before the principle of one-man-one-vote prevailed with reasonable efficiency. Universal manhood suffrage, however, the basic prerequisite of political democracy, had more or less arrived in 1884, even if it was not yet fully effective, and it was a general expectation at the time that it would usher in a period of prolonged dominance by the political Left. Yet exactly the opposite happened. In the general elections beginning in 1885 and ending in 1966, some 14,000 seats have been at issue. The Tories obtained 51 per cent, the Liberals 20 per cent, and Labour 24 per cent. Such figures might be held to give a distorted picture, for during this period Labour replaced the Liberals as the principal party of the Left. If these eighty-two years are divided into two spans, 1885 to 1918 (during which the Liberals were the main opponents of the Tories) and 1922 to 1966 (when Labour was the chief antagonist), the conclusion is, however, no different. During the first period the Conservatives obtained 47 per cent of the seats, the Liberals 37 per cent, and Labour 3 per cent; during the second, the figures were 53, 6, and 40 per cent respectively.¹ Thus the predominance of the Tories has, if anything, been reinforced in the latter period, and this belongs to the realm of fact, not myth.