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Introduction. “One Nation Conservatism from Disraeli to Johnson”

Introduction : Le conservatisme One Nation de Disraeli à Johnson
Catherine Marshall

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1This special edition of the Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique (French journal of British studies, RFCB) was prompted by Dr. Stéphane Porion’s quest to make sense of the use of the term “One Nation Conservatism”. He saw that there was a gap in the historiography and that we needed to look at the expression over a long period, from the 1840s to nowadays. Only in this way could it be possible to understand the full meaning of the myth of One Nation Conservatism. This is how we decided, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, to delve into this highly charged expression which has been used and abused by many a politician ever since, in a speech in 1924, Stanley Baldwin referred back to Disraeli’s invention of the idiom in his novel Sybil or the Two Nations (1845).

2On this journey, John Mullen, President of the Centre de Recherches et d’Etudes en Civilisation Britannique (centre for research in British Studies, CRECIB) and Laurent Curelly, editor of the RFCB, gave invaluable encouragement and support. They were also very patient as the deadline was pushed back due to the circumstances of the year 2022. We were also seconded by a remarkable scientific committee of colleagues who agreed to take on the task of the double-blind peer-reviewing of the abstracts and articles, often agreeing to work in pressed circumstances. They have made us value even more the collegial spirit very much alive in our academic community despite the increasing pressures of academic life.

  • 1 Richard M. Langworth, ‘Great Churchillians: Antoine Capet, Tribute to a Friend’, July 15, 2022, htt (...)
  • 2 Antoine Capet, ‘La Reine et ses Premiers ministres. Le poids de l’héritage churchillien’, Pouvoirs, (...)

3Along the way too, our colleague Antoine Capet sadly passed away in the spring of 2022 leaving the community of specialists who had known him stunned.1 His Churchill article, an essential piece of our puzzle for this issue, was left unfinished. By chance circumstance, Vernon Bogadnor very generously stepped in to write a new article for us on Churchill’s One Nation Conservatism. Antoine Capet’s last article on the impact Churchill had on Queen Elizabeth II was published in September 2022, several months after his own death, and a few days only after hers.2 It is a fitting tribute to his fine qualities as a scholar of both Churchill and the British monarchy.

4We were very fortunate in the responses to the call for papers which was answered by a number of colleagues from both sides of the Channel. Rather fittingly, for an issue on Conservatism, all the articles proposed organically blended into one another and spontaneously focused on three centuries of the use of One Nation Conservatism, from Disraeli as a creator of a myth up to Johnson’s abuse of the idiom. Back in 2021, the latter had not yet resigned, nor had Liz Truss been elected as new leader of the Party and forced to leave as PM over the long summer of 2022, leaving Rishi Sunak in charge in October 2022. Back in those days too, Queen Elizabeth II had not passed away – nor had her husband – and the celebrations of the Platinum Jubilee of June 2022 were many months away. However, it became clear in early September 2022 that this issue, originally planned to come out in December 2022, would need to be pushed back to early 2023 to allow some contributors to amend and complete their articles as we all witnessed history in the making, from the death of the longest serving monarch in the history of the Kingdom, to the shortest serving PM since the role appeared in the 18th century. There was something of the passing of a certain Britain in September 2022 that will be difficult to ever match in our memories.

5In this rather strange period, the One Nation Conservative expression came back to the limelight, ideologically rejected by Liz Truss and revived in spirit by the appointment of a new Chancellor – Jeremy Hunt in September 2022 – who was very much in tune with a traditional way of thinking Conservatism, pragmatic in his approach to the various crises facing the United Kingdom and not an ideologue, i.e., closer to One Nation. Once more, it became clear that making sense of what the expression meant could help explain the predicament of the Conservatives as they are heading for the next General Election under Sunak.

One Nation Conservatism since Disraeli?

6The justification for the issue was that the expression ‘One Nation Conservatism’ had taken on a mythical signification ever since Conservative PM Stanley Baldwin used it in a speech on 4 December 1924 at the Albert Hall. In so doing, Baldwin was taking on the mantle of one of the great former Conservative Prime Ministers, Benjamin Disraeli, who had expressed the need to “bridge the gap between the rich and the poor” and “elevate the condition of the people” in order to achieve social unity in one of his most famous political novels, Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845). The cradle of Conservatism can be found in Disraeli’s desire to bring together the two nations at the heart of the United Kingdom but also the two types of Victorian Conservative thinking from the industrial North and the rural South. It was in this context that the phrase “One Nation” became a “familiar formula, which was used especially to signpost a Conservative concern with ‘social reform’”.3 Baldwin declared that the Conservative Party stood “for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago: union among our own people to make one nation of our own people at home which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world”.4 Baldwin’s use of the term took on a symbolic nature because he was channelling what had made the greatness of the Conservative Party but he was also trying to make sense of what the Conservative Party stood for in the context of the 1920s. Most of the articles presented further along refer to either Disraeli’s or Baldwin’s quote. Like two pillars buttressing the myth, One Nation Conservatism cannot be sustained without them.

  • 5 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group: A Tory Approach to Backbench Politics and Organisation, 1950- (...)
  • 6 John K. Walton, Disraeli, p. 65.
  • 7 Ibid.

7The reality was that the Disraelian legacy was given life afresh first by Baldwin in the interwar period but much more so in the aftermath of the Second World War and Labour’s landslide victory in 1945. Some in the Conservative Party were very concerned about the need to adapt Conservative ideas and policies to post-war Britain, and more particularly to cope with the welfare state set up by Attlee’s Labour Party. This was the time of the “reiteration of Disraelian commitments to social reform” and the emergence of the One Nation Group.5 These ideas “sought to reconcile an industrial democracy with economic and social inequalities”, moving away from a laissez-faire approach and vindicating a Tory approach of government rooted in earlier Tory thinking expressed in the time of Disraeli, which blended Conservatism and democracy altogether.6 The words ‘One Nation’ had thus kept their “incantatory power”, even though, as John K. Walton puts it, “it was not quite what Disraeli had meant by ‘One Nation’”.7 According to Norton and Aughey,

  • 8 Norton, Philip & Aughey, Arthur, Conservatives and Conservatism (London, Temple Smith, 1981), p. 78

The formula of One Nation did strike a chord in the minds of Conservatives. If it was a myth that Disraeli had something of practical significance to say to post-war Britain it was an effective myth. It established Conservative credentials to manage the new mixed economy and it represented the fashioning of an electorally successful image of Conservative compassion as well as competence.8

  • 9 Michael Oakeshott, "On Being Conservative" (1956), in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Ind (...)
  • 10 T.A. Jenkins, Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996), pp. 141-145.

8The Conservative Party and what it stands for are easier to define by referring to Edmund Burke or, today, to a philosopher such as Michael Oakeshott for whom Conservatives prefer “the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery”.9 Therefore, ‘One Nation Conservatism’ is used, often, by Conservative politicians to keep alive a sort of ‘sacred flame’, a convenient impressionist idea, linked to the past of the United Kingdom,10 mostly against the dangerous consequences of the 1789 French Revolution and its misplaced demands for rational rights. It carries with it a resistance to radical change as well as a willingness to adapt to organic change in an empirical way.

9The remarkable ability of British Conservatism to elastically transfer away from the legacy of Disraelian Conservative paternalism, believing in the Monarchy, the Church and the Empire, to a ‘One Nation Conservatism’ defending the institutions whilst seeking to promote the welfare of the citizens post-WWII, is part of the story.

  • 11 Stephen Evans, ‘The Not So Odd Couple: Margaret Thatcher and One Nation Conservatism’, Contemporary (...)

10Noteworthy too, when describing the flexibility of the expression, is how it was later used by Thatcher in the 1980s to defend her own brand of Conservatism11 resting on monetarism, patriotism, and moral expressions of individual responsibility. She declared at the annual Conference of the Conservative Party in 1986:

  • 12 Margaret Thatcher (1986) quoted in Stuart Ball, The Conservative Party since 1945 (Manchester, MUP, (...)

We Conservatives believe in popular capitalism – believe in a property-owning democracy. And it works! […] The great political reform of the last century was to enable more people to have a vote. Now the great Tory reform of this century is to enable people more and more people to own property. Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation. We Conservatives are returning power to the people. That is the way to one nation, one people.12

  • 13 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group and One Nation Conservatism, 1950-2002’, Contemporary British (...)

11However, the ‘Wets’ – the original One Nation Conservatives – managed to survive throughout the Thatcher years and did their utmost in the 1980s and even in the 1990s to continue to spread the genuine gospel of ‘One Nation Conservatism’ couched in new terms, still inspired by the One Nation pamphlet of 1950.13

12Again, years later, in the aftermath of Cameron’s victory at the 2005 leadership election, this young new leader attempted to regain the political centre in 2006-2007 by advocating the One Nation tradition of Conservatism, before gradually moving back to a neo-Thatcherite stance of Conservatism embodied by his Big Society ideological project.14 Nevertheless, in May 2015, in another context, he also resorted to the use of the moniker to describe the Queen’s speech written by his government as a “One Nation Queen’s Speech for a progressive, One Nation, Conservative Government”.15 When Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016, she too succumbed to the need to ground her ideas in the mythical expression and gave a speech on the steps of 10 Downing street which was once again an echo to the Disraelian brand. She pledged to “make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us”.16 It is not surprising then that the debates regarding the Johnsonian “levelling-up” agenda naturally became part of the same rhetoric and that Johnson himself made his own use of the idea after becoming PM in 2019.17

  • 18 Richard Carr, One Nation Britain. History, the Progressive Tradition, and Practical Ideas for Today (...)

13In the end, ever since the 1980s, the expression has been exploited by all types of politicians from all sides of the political spectrum precisely because it can be opportunistically used for the essence it incarnates and for the genuine suspicion that the lower classes may suffer from the changes pushed upon them by an elite cut away from them, both geographically, socially and financially.18

14The problem remains that the term seems to adapt to the politicians using it, within different contexts and means something in rhetoric but often not in deed. Its elasticity is what makes it the essence of British Conservatism but what does it really stand for, for whom and how? Is its flexibility not also its demise?

Bridging the gap in the historiography

  • 19 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group: A Tory Approach to Backbench Politics and Organisation, 1950- (...)

15Starting from such premises and looking at the secondary literature, it became clear that there were practically no full-length studies of One Nation Conservatism apart from that of David Seawright, The British Conservative Party and One Nation Politics, published before Cameron’s victory in 2010, which was prefigured in a chapter published in 2005 in Kevin Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party since 1945. Although there is a range of academic papers on the subject, they usually address this specific brand of Conservatism by studying a specific Conservative Premiership or a group of One Nation Conservatives, such as the One Nation Group.19

16Therefore, the whole challenge was to breathe new life into what David Seawright had done and perhaps, too, pick up from where he had left it in 2010. The 14 articles in this special issue intend to bridge the gap in historiographical debates and focus on the wider meaning of the expression One Nation Conservatism, since the 19th century, both as the soul of the Conservative Party’s ideas but also as an expression of British politics in a wider sense.

17The papers have been arranged in loose chronological order but have also been divided into three main parts regarding the use of the expression: 1/Mythmaking, in which Disraeli and Baldwin are the father and son figures 2/ Consensus and pragmatic adaptations often in opposition to Thatcherism and 3/The plasticity of the term which ranges from tactical use to manipulation.

Mythmaking

18The story starts with Disraeli as the initiator of a certain brand of Conservatism, foreseeing political challenges, bent on defending social policies, committed to gradual and evolutionary changes. The reality is that Disraeli himself as several articles make clear, has been used as a springboard for political conservative projections, obscuring his ideas and his legacy. Emily Jones (University of Manchester) in “Impressions of Disraeli: Mythmaking and the History of One Nation Conservatism, 1881-1940” shows how, as soon as his death in 1881, Disraeli’s legacy was shaped into what the members of his party wanted it to be. Disraeli was to be the “founder and intellectual lodestar of a strand of conservative thought and British Conservative politics now titled ‘One Nation Conservatism’”. Jones analyses a large corpus of writings, portraits and various films to show how Disraeli was turned into a political presence – even a presence – without whom the Conservative Party could not exist. The end result was also that in the 20th century, let alone in the 21st century, his legacy was more often than not streamlined but also confused.

19Philippe Vervaecke (University of Lille) carries on with the same idea but this time taking us from the beginning of WWI to Brexit in “Disraeli and “One-Nation” in British cartoons, 1914-2016”. Vervaecke studies how Disraeli’s presence was kept alive in numerous British cartoons and how they mythicize One Nation Conservatism during the 20th century. Disraeli becomes a mythical Conservative leader precisely because he “has proved attractive and sufficiently malleable for his successors to attempt to seize [his enduring presence] for the advancement of their own ideas”. All in all, Disraeli’s projection and the flexibility of the One Nation expression go hand in hand in the 20th and 21st centuries to lay the groundwork for the creation of what seems to be an illusion.

20Philip Williamson (Durham University) introduces the second protagonist in our story and actual creator of the Disraelian One Nation myth. In “Baldwin and a united nation” (the lack of capital letters is essential here), Williamson traces back the mistake of believing that Stanley Baldwin, Conservative Party leader from 1923 to 1937, was the one who coined the expression “One Nation” as a new creed for the Conservatives. Yet, “Baldwin did create a distinctive politics which emphasised national cohesion and Conservative classlessness” based on “political principles and moral values”. What appears in this article is the lynchpin between the New Liberal ideas of the early 20th century and the belief in the Conservative Party that its leaders should become the glue for the nation during the inter-war period. Uniting the nation was to be the rallying call of the Conservatives on the eve of WWII and not the reference to Disraeli only.

Consensus and pragmatic adaptations: the core of One Nation

21The second main theme at the heart of the articles tackles the way in which, after WWII and the welfare reforms passed by Attlee’s Labour government, most Conservatives built on the Disraelian myth of One Nation and Baldwin’s belief in one united nation to reflect a new mainstream trend in Conservatism expressed by the One Nation Group formed after the publication of the One Nation pamphlet in 1950.

22Vernon Bogdanor (King’s College, London) tackles the subject of “Winston Churchill as a One Nation conservative”. Showing how Churchill was influenced by the New Liberalism of the Liberal Cabinet he joined after 1908, Bogdanor confirms how Churchill was one of the main architects of the post-WWII Welfare State by asking Beveridge – himself involved in the pre-WWI war Liberal government – to write the report on social insurance which bore his name for the WWII war coalition government. Perhaps more tellingly, Churchill was able to preserve the Attlee reforms through “inaction” when he became PM again from 1951 to 1955. In the words of Bogdanor, Churchill’s “peacetime government cemented his reputation as a One Nation Conservative”. Thus, the New Liberal strand in the expression cannot be shed away lightly and lingers on in a number of other articles.

23What was becoming clear by the 1950s was that, in the image of the ageing paternalistic Churchill, Conservativism meant a rejection of ideology, the adoption of pragmatic views through a political consensus with Labour on the welfare state, the refusal of laissez faire views as inimical to the wellbeing of the nation, and, the belief that cooperation with trade unions would help industrial relations.

  • 20 See for example: Peter Kerr, Postwar British Politics. From Conflict to Consensus (London, Routledg (...)

24Josh Williams (Cardiff University) in a case study on the 1947 Industrial Charter draws such conclusions in an article entitled “An Assessment of The Industrial Charter’s (1947) significance in shaping One Nation Conservatism”. For Williams, “the Charter provided the basis for what would become the Postwar consensus, accepting the mixed economy, the advocacy of industrial partnership, social reform and achieving full employment in a free enterprise system”. Even though the “political consensus” has been challenged in the historiography of the period20, Williams, focusing on the period from 1951 to 1964, studies the ways in which “The Industrial Charter asserted the Conservative Party’s compulsion to transform as a means of preventing an existential crisis and set the course for a decisive change of approach”. In the same way, the Charter served as a tool to counter Thatcherism for the One Nation Group in the 1980s.

25Peter Dorey (Cardiff University) provides a wider approach to the same question in “Conciliation, Co-operation, and Consensus: The One Nation Conservative approach to industrial relations and trade unions, 1945-1990”. Industrial relations become the centre piece of the One Nation approach, according to which “industrial conflict was often a consequence of workers feeling alienated, insecure and under-valued in large-scale, and impersonal, industries, where a growing gulf between workers and managers developed, and minor grievances smouldered”. For the One Nation Conservatives this meant the disunity of the nation and was both counterproductive and morally unacceptable. The problem was that the followers of Thatcher from the second part of the 1970s onwards were very much opposed to such views.

26These Conservatives of a new type “were openly hostile towards trade unions, believing that they and their industrial militancy were responsible for many of Britain’s economic problems”. The stage was set for a confrontation between the original One Nation Conservatives and the new Thatcherites.

27One of the early “Wets” was Ian Gilmour (1926-2007) and he is brought back to life in Edmund Neill’s (Northeastern University, London) article “Ian Gilmour and One Nation Conservatism”. Gilmour’s numerous writings are analysed to bring out the philosophy of One Nation Conservatism and whether or not he really defended what he preached. Drawing extensively on Gilmour’s work, Neill concludes that “Gilmour was a powerful re-interpreter of the ‘One Nation’ tradition, even if he did not always remain true to its original tenets”. Gilmour’s writings and Neill’s analysis certainly make an essential reading for those looking for the soul of One Nation.

Plasticity of expression: from simple elasticity to political strategy

28The last set of articles tell the story of the use of One Nation Conservatism or the ways in which the plasticity of the expression gives way to tactical use, even manipulation in the hands of certain politicians.

29Dean Blackburn (University of Nottingham) in an article on “Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher and British Conservatism’s Politics of Negation” takes on the difficult task of making sense of two very different traditions represented by One Nation and Thatcherism. Looking at them through the lens of the question of equality, Blackburn brings to light how the two very different PMs “arrived at their views about equality” and the inner logics pinning down their opinions. This new grid of reading is also helpful if applied to any other Conservative PM, focusing on what they reject rather than on what they claim to defend.

30The same grid can also be applied to the early members of the One Nation Group, founded in 1950. Stéphane Porion (Université de Tours) explores “Enoch Powell’s contribution within the One Nation Group (1950-1955): Towards a proto-Thatcherite appropriation of One Nation Conservatism”. As one of the early members of the ONG, Enoch Powell was on cusp of the movement as it helped him bridge the gap between traditional 1950s One Nation Conservatism and the liberal elements which were inspiring him. Clearly, Powell makes use of the plasticity of the expression to serve the cause of his own camp and reject both socialist ideals and the moderate consensus of the traditional One Nation Conservatives.

31Stéphane Revillet (Université de Bourgogne Franche Comté) uses the very same technique to show how, years later, Major, Cameron and May opposed Labour in tactically using the One Nation Conservative rhetoric. Moving away from Thatcher, in “The strategic use of One Nation as a symbol during PMQs from J. Major to T. May”, Revillet brings out the “high degree of ambiguity, fluidity and multivocality” of One Nation. Studying the language used by the three Conservative leaders during Prime Minister’s Question Time, several catchphrases appear, revealing much more about their authors and their exploitation of One Nation Conservatism than what the PMs would have liked.

32R. Espiet-Kilty (Université Clermont Auvergne) follows the same line of thought, asking straightforwardly: “Was Theresa May a One Nation Conservative?”. Going back to the 1950 Pamphlet One Nation, she highlights how its core ideas – “socially paternalistic, Europhile, economically interventionist (its most controversial aspect) and generally favourable to a strong United Kingdom acting as one nation” – were recovered by Cameron first but much more by May in the aftermath of Brexit. And yet, as Espiet-Kilty argues, “May’s One Nation Conservatism would become the first victim of a combination of bad decisions, of a lack of conviction and clarity, and of extreme tensions within the party and the government over Brexit”. Her successor, Boris Johnson, was to mercilessly bend the expression to fit his own agenda.

33This is precisely what Ben Williams (University of Salford) and Kevin Hickson (University of Liverpool) do in “Boris Johnson and Beyond: The Revival of One Nation Conservatism?”. They take us back to the context of 2019 and how from the GE of 2019, the COVID pandemic and the levelling-up agenda, Johnson had a unique occasion to claim a new type of One Nation Conservatism for his party. Yet, Williams and Hickson show that “the subsequent leadership contest of 2022 and Liz Truss’s disastrous attempt to revive economic liberalism has revealed the extent to which this was not achieved”. Taking us all the way from Johnson to Rishi Sunak, via the short premiership of Liz Truss, the two authors bring up to date what the expression can still mean in the present context.

34In a postface, Noel O’Sullivan (University of Hull) ends the issue by asking: “Has Conservatism a future?”. What was originally a double review of Ferenc Horcher’s A Political Philosophy of Conservatism. Prudence, Moderation and Tradition (Bloombury, 2020) and Edmund Neill’s Conservatism (Polity, 2021) becomes a full-length article on “what kind of conservatism is likely to survive in practice” in our troubled times.

35Two reviews of our colleagues, Agnès Alexandre Collier (Université de Bourgogne Franche Comté) and David Fée (Sorbonne Nouvelle), complete this collected work, helping us in their readings of Nick Timothy’s Remaking One Nation (2020) and David Skelton’s Little Platoons: How a revived One Nation can empower England's forgotten towns and redraw the political map (2019).

  • 21 Interview with the Lord Biffen of Tanat, 4 March 1998 in Robert Walsha, ‘One Nation Group and One N (...)

36To conclude, all the articles presented here answer one another in echo, blend into one another too and attempt to seize the essence of One Nation Conservatism over a long period of time. This will certainly not be the definite answer but it is the best answer we can give in our times. Lord Biffen, himself a One Nation Conservative of the 1980s, had written that One Nation was just about “being able to give the public rhetoric a bit of lift, a bit of nobility, a bit of history, a bit of sacrifice”.21 The issue hopefully proves that One Nation Conservatism is much more than just that.

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Notes

1 Richard M. Langworth, ‘Great Churchillians: Antoine Capet, Tribute to a Friend’, July 15, 2022, https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/antoine-capet/ consulted 18 December 2022.

2 Antoine Capet, ‘La Reine et ses Premiers ministres. Le poids de l’héritage churchillien’, Pouvoirs, revue française d’études constitutionnelles et politiques, n°182, 182 - Élisabeth II, pp. 55-70.

3 John K. Walton, Disraeli (London & New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 4.

4 Some extracts from the speech may be found at: http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/161/2012/10/1-of-2.jpg consulted on 20 April 2021.

5 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group: A Tory Approach to Backbench Politics and Organisation, 1950-5’, Twentieth Century British History, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2000, pp. 183-214 & Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group and One Nation Conservatism, 1950-2002’, Contemporary British History, 17:2, 2003, pp. 69-120.

6 John K. Walton, Disraeli, p. 65.

7 Ibid.

8 Norton, Philip & Aughey, Arthur, Conservatives and Conservatism (London, Temple Smith, 1981), p. 78.

9 Michael Oakeshott, "On Being Conservative" (1956), in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1991, 2nd edition), pp. 407-437.

10 T.A. Jenkins, Disraeli and Victorian Conservatism (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996), pp. 141-145.

11 Stephen Evans, ‘The Not So Odd Couple: Margaret Thatcher and One Nation Conservatism’, Contemporary British History, 23:1 (2009), pp. 101-121; E. H. H. Green, Thatcher (London, Hodder Arnold, 2006).

12 Margaret Thatcher (1986) quoted in Stuart Ball, The Conservative Party since 1945 (Manchester, MUP, 1998), p. 179.

13 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group and One Nation Conservatism, 1950-2002’, Contemporary British History, 17:2 (2003), pp. 69-120.

14 Alexandre-Collier, Agnès, Les Habits neufs de David Cameron (Les Conservateurs britanniques 1990-2010), (Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2010) & Richard Hayton, Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1997-2000 (Manchester, MUP, 2012).

15 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/queens-speech-2015 consulted 21 April 2021.

16 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-from-the-new-prime-minister-theresa-may consulted 19 April 2021.

17 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-statement-in-downing-street-13-december-2019 consulted 23 April 2021.

18 Richard Carr, One Nation Britain. History, the Progressive Tradition, and Practical Ideas for Today’s Politicians (2014) (London and NY, Routledge, 2016).

19 Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group: A Tory Approach to Backbench Politics and Organisation, 1950-5’, Twentieth Century British History, Volume 11, Issue 2 (2000), pp. 183-214 & Robert Walsha, ‘The One Nation Group and One Nation Conservatism, 1950-2002’, pp. 69-120.

20 See for example: Peter Kerr, Postwar British Politics. From Conflict to Consensus (London, Routledge, 2001); Brian Harrison, ‘The Rise, Fall and Rise of Political Consensus in Britain since 1940’, History 84, no. 274 (1999), pp. 301-24.

21 Interview with the Lord Biffen of Tanat, 4 March 1998 in Robert Walsha, ‘One Nation Group and One Nation Conservatism, 1950-2002’, p. 108.

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References

Electronic reference

Catherine Marshall, Introduction. “One Nation Conservatism from Disraeli to Johnson”Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXVIII-1 | 2023, Online since 03 February 2023, connection on 05 June 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/10183; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rfcb.10183

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About the author

Catherine Marshall

Catherine Marshall is Professor of British Studies at CY Cergy Paris Université in France (formerly the Université of Cergy-Pontoise), Director of the Master’s degree ‘Political Ideas in a Digital Age’. Her research focuses on political ideas in Victorian Britain and on their legacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her most recent publications are a monograph entitled Political Deference in a Democratic Age. British Politics and the Constitution from the Eighteenth Century to Brexit with Palgrave (Palgrave, 2021) and two articles, one, in Rivista di Politica (April-June 2022) on Walter Bagehot and the concept of deference, and the other, in Pouvoir (Sept 2022) on the constitutional education of Elizabeth II. Her next two projects are an international conference on Disraeli (for 2024) and a monograph on the role and the invisibility of Liberal women in Liberal Victorian England.

By this author

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