AH Challenge: Have Right-Wing Political Parties Champion 1960/70's Social Movements

WI the 1960's/70s social movements' ie racial equality, women rights, environmentalism, were championed by right-wing parties in the West?

In the early 1960's these socially progressive tendencies (well not really environmentalism, which didn't really exist at time in the way we think of it now) were not exactly a major feature of most left-wing parties. For instance in the Australian and British Labour parties there were many who saw these a 'frivilous' middle-class concerns, as opposed to the solely economic agenda they espoused. Also in the late 1950's and early 1960's many Conservatives in the UK were in favour of homosexual law reform.

Also trade unions have often been as opposed to environmentalism as business interests have.

So what POD would be required to have these social movements be supported by right-wing parties? How would this affect the political spectrum as we see it today. It was around this time that a lot of the current political demographics in terms of party support that we see today was set in place. For instance under this ATL I think that a lot of the middle/upper-middle class professionals who now support left-wing parties would not. Up until the 1960's/70's this group would have been considered a natural right-wing constituency for instance.
 

mowque

Banned
the trick is, for which nations? For the USA? You'd have to stop the high-jacking of the Republican right by the Fundamentalists.
 
the trick is, for which nations? For the USA? You'd have to stop the high-jacking of the Republican right by the Fundamentalists.

Well I meant basically all Western nations, although I used the UK and Australia as an example as those I the examples I know the most about.

I admit the USA is a harder example not just due to the rise of Evangelicals, etc, but as was pointed out in another thread once, the fact that social movements in the USA were often connected to the peace movement would make it harder for even moderate Republicans to associate themselves with them. I think it was agreed in this other thread that even a socially progressive Republican party would not associating itself with a peace movement during the Cold War (this other thread was posted by someone else and was about WI the Rockefeller Republicans remained in control of the party).
 
There's an evangelical environmentalist movement called "Creation Care."

The Draka from Stirling's novels are rather reactionary in certain respects (they're an aristocratic slave culture), but they're big-time conservationists.
 
WI the 1960's/70s social movements' ie racial equality, women rights, environmentalism, were championed by right-wing parties in the West?

In the early 1960's these socially progressive tendencies (well not really environmentalism, which didn't really exist at time in the way we think of it now) were not exactly a major feature of most left-wing parties. For instance in the Australian and British Labour parties there were many who saw these a 'frivilous' middle-class concerns, as opposed to the solely economic agenda they espoused. Also in the late 1950's and early 1960's many Conservatives in the UK were in favour of homosexual law reform.

Also trade unions have often been as opposed to environmentalism as business interests have.

So what POD would be required to have these social movements be supported by right-wing parties? How would this affect the political spectrum as we see it today. It was around this time that a lot of the current political demographics in terms of party support that we see today was set in place. For instance under this ATL I think that a lot of the middle/upper-middle class professionals who now support left-wing parties would not. Up until the 1960's/70's this group would have been considered a natural right-wing constituency for instance.
Your wrong about the UK Labour Party in the '60s. Harold Wilson was very much a social progressive, bringing in legislation over both racial equality and sexual equality in addition to the legalisation of homosexuality. The envirnoment would always be a difficult one to push until it was proven serious enough. In every way, Wilsonian technocrats ruled '60s Britain.

To switch it so the Tories got the progressive tab would be difficult as the grouse moor types were having their last hurrahs. I honestly cant think how it would have been done short of a pre-war pod.
 
Your wrong about the UK Labour Party in the '60s. Harold Wilson was very much a social progressive, bringing in legislation over both racial equality and sexual equality in addition to the legalisation of homosexuality. The envirnoment would always be a difficult one to push until it was proven serious enough. In every way, Wilsonian technocrats ruled '60s Britain.

To switch it so the Tories got the progressive tab would be difficult as the grouse moor types were having their last hurrahs. I honestly cant think how it would have been done short of a pre-war pod.

I agree that the UK Labour Party in the 1960's did introduce socially progressive reform, however I was under the impression that Harold Wilson was himself rather conservative due to his religious views, but that he let Roy Jenkins and other reformers promote reform. However I may be mistaken. Regardless Wilson did preside over the tranformation of the Labour Party into a more socially progressive middle-class party, so perhaps what I referred to is more relevant prior to Wilson leading the party.

Who are the 'grouse moor' types you mention? It's just that as an Australian, I've never heard this term before.
 
"Grouse Moor types" is a term given to the landowning Conservatives who were a major force in the pre-1960s Conservative Party who tended to be between the One Nation and Neo-Conservative wings. A better example or their political views would be to compare them to the old anti-Peel Tories in the 1830s, who opposed radical change and supported the country way of life.

A Grouse Moor is a large area of highland (often in the North of England or Scotland) where shooting parties are held.
 
I agree that the UK Labour Party in the 1960's did introduce socially progressive reform, however I was under the impression that Harold Wilson was himself rather conservative due to his religious views, but that he let Roy Jenkins and other reformers promote reform. However I may be mistaken. Regardless Wilson did preside over the tranformation of the Labour Party into a more socially progressive middle-class party, so perhaps what I referred to is more relevant prior to Wilson leading the party.

Who are the 'grouse moor' types you mention? It's just that as an Australian, I've never heard this term before.
As far as womens rights, Emmeline Pankhurst, the leading suffragette was a member of the Labour Party, and womens rights have always been observed within the party. Also, going as far back as Keir Hardie, the party has aimed towards racial equality. For example, the party has always pushed for racial equality in South Africa.

Socially progressive reforms are not the reserve of the middle class you know. Butterfly away James Keir Hardie and you may well achieve a party which opposes social reforms, but that would mean the party never rises. The only real question within the party has been how quickly they happen, economically or socially.

The man was a legend.

Also, Lord Roem answered the question about the grouse moors.
 
Getting back to my comment about the Draka, if suburbs are eating up the rural areas where people hunt, you might have a lot of British landowners getting upset and supporting conservationist policies for that reason.

Furthermore, when I was in Britain, I was told the gov't paid landowners to leave their areas undeveloped. The Tories might get behind that if their constituency includes a lot of large rural landowners--it means $$ for their constituents.
 
Getting back to my comment about the Draka, if suburbs are eating up the rural areas where people hunt, you might have a lot of British landowners getting upset and supporting conservationist policies for that reason.

Furthermore, when I was in Britain, I was told the gov't paid landowners to leave their areas undeveloped. The Tories might get behind that if their constituency includes a lot of large rural landowners--it means $$ for their constituents.
Thats set a side, which was from the EU. It came around as mountains of butter and grain were being thrown away, and they needed less to be developed to bring prices down so they paid farmers not to farm.

Actually though, I agree. The one area of social reform you would expect the Tories to be ahead in, given the demography of their support, would be on the environment.
 
I think it's a matter of timing. The social movements happened during the 60's and 70's but the upswing in free market thinking happend in the 80's. I think if both ideas where on the rise at the same time, they would form an alliance.
 
Thats set a side, which was from the EU. It came around as mountains of butter and grain were being thrown away, and they needed less to be developed to bring prices down so they paid farmers not to farm.

Actually though, I agree. The one area of social reform you would expect the Tories to be ahead in, given the demography of their support, would be on the environment.

Even so, the only way for the Conservatives to put the enviroment first would be for an anti-economic development wing of the Party to develop in response to Wilson's "white heat of technology" stance. The Tories, even in the '50s and '60s have always been pro-capitalism and it would be difficult to combine that with an enviromentalist stance.

The fact is, Britain is the only major European nation never to have seen a major Agrarian Party develop to become a major political force. Aside that one episode of Absolute Power (watch it by the way, it is fantastic) pressure groups like the Countryside Alliance have never developed in fully fledged political movements.
 
Well, for the USA, the best way would be for the Republican Party to position itself as libertarian rather than conservative, explicitly supporting civil rights, abortion, and the free market. After Roe v. Wade, the Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians form a "Christian Democratic Party" basically supporting the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson but with a Christian "moral" perspective, anti-abortion, anti-gay, pushing marriage as a solution to the economic woes of single mothers, for prayer in schools, creationism, etc. This CDP would probably be divided on the civil rights issues and on war but find some way to stay unified. The "regular" Democratic Party would be much as in OTL but except for secular liberals, mostly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, its members would gradually slip away into the CDP. The question is when do the Republicans become libertarian? 1964 with Goldwater is an obvious time. But if he really went nuclear in Vietnam, would the war have lasted long enough to bring about the social movements associated with it?
 
I agree and disagree with Fletcher on this one. It is very unlikely that the Tories would support the permissive reforms of the 1960s, not because of the grouse moor - while this class were at the top of the party it doesn't necessarily follow that they oppose the social reforms, quite a few in fact supported them - but because of the suburbs. Tory support rested upon middle class suburban support, or, in rural areas, the combination of small town middle classes, the landed classes (including farmers) and the 'deferential' vote. It was the suburban and rural middle classes which formed the party's grassroots too - while the top of the party were public school and Oxbridge educated, the activists tended to be grammar-school types, small businessmen and so on. This is exactly the demographic that is amongst the most socially conservative in the 60s. They supported Mary Whitehouse in her campaign to 'clean up TV' - so, simply put, I cannot see the Tory Party being the driver of social reforms.

However I disagree about the Labour Party. Yes, they did introduce and were responsible for what many called the 'rise of permissivism', but there were significant sections of the party opposed to them. Wilson himself was lukewarm, and his deputy, George Brown, along with Jim Callaghan, were not supportive. Basically you have a distinction between the public school educated intellectuals and the rather more ordinary working class/lower middle class MPs which made up the PLP. Indeed, when the Wolfenden Report was first published (the report which first recommended the legalisation of homosexuality), Harold Wilson pushed quite strongly against adopting the Report's recommendations as Labour Party policy because, as he put it, it would lose them six million votes automatically. The Wilson Government was always quite careful about putting some distance between them and most of the reforming legislation in this sphere.
 
As far as womens rights, Emmeline Pankhurst, the leading suffragette was a member of the Labour Party, and womens rights have always been observed within the party. Also, going as far back as Keir Hardie, the party has aimed towards racial equality. For example, the party has always pushed for racial equality in South Africa.

Socially progressive reforms are not the reserve of the middle class you know. Butterfly away James Keir Hardie and you may well achieve a party which opposes social reforms, but that would mean the party never rises. The only real question within the party has been how quickly they happen, economically or socially.

The man was a legend.

Also, Lord Roem answered the question about the grouse moors.

Actually I admit that I may be extrapolating too much from the state of Australian politics onto British politics. I mean, I'm sure that some of what I said must be true to some extent to British politics (ie working class social conservatism and middle class social progressivism/liberalism), but it was probably a much more significant factor in Australian politics.

In the 1950's in Australia, the Australian Labor Party consisted by and large of two major factions. The Left was strongly old-style democratic socialist and the Right was strongly Irish Catholic, which reflected the disproportionately Irish Catholic working class here.

Neither of these two groups were predisposed to social liberalism. The Left viewed it as unimportant middle-class concerns, whereas the Right viewed it as morally wrong and against Church teaching.

Until the 1960's the Liberals were actually seen as the more inclusive party for women. For instance I believe that even back then the majority of rank-and-file Liberals were women, whereas the ALP rank-and-file was predominantly men. From its founding in the 1940's the Liberals had high numbers of women in the extra-parliamentary wing of the party and some boards even had a 50:50 gender quota. The ALP extra-parliamentary wing was made up of primarily male trade unionists. Of course since the 1970's the position has totally changed and the number of female ALP MP's far outpaces the numbers of Liberal MP's. In fact many commentators have derided the Australian Liberals for being unable to move beyond a mindset where 'inclusion' for women is primarily seen as organising fundraisers and meetings.

On the issue of race, it is probably true that until the 1960's both parties were equally racist and believed in the White Australia Policy, albeit for often different reasons. Most right-wingers believed in the notion of the 'Yellow Peril' etc, whereas left-wingers often feared low-wage immigrants, etc.

At this time while the Liberal Party had quite a significant conservative wing, it also had a large group of moderate socially liberal, economic centrists. In fact at least some of these people would have been mildly social democractic, but didn't join the ALP, because as non-socialist nominal Protestants they didn't exactly fit in with the internal cultures or ideology of either wing of the ALP.

However the above mentioned group did start to join the ALP in the 1960's and 1970's, due to the modernisation effort of Gough Whitlam who championed social progressivism. If however, this modernisation effort hadn't taken place it is likely that this group may have stayed in the Liberals and agitated for reform from within the party.
 
Last edited:
I've been thinking about this and I can think of a way we can get this to happen in the UK case at least. As we know in the late 1970's and early 1980's the Militant Tendency and other hard-left groups joined the Labour Party. Now, if we can get hard-left groups to do this in the 1950's and 1960's, then we can perhaps have more of the middle-class intellectuals etc (except for the hard-left socialist ones) leave the Labour Party or not join in the first place.

Now, the point here to make this timeline work is to have these disaffected socially progressive people not go and form an SDP-style party, but to join the Tories instead. Is this plausible? I see no reason why not.

Yes as pointed out the grammar school small business types who make up a huge amount of rank-and-file Torie would not like this, but it would only take significant numbers of social progressives joining the Tories to change the nature of the party. Of course in the Tories they can't really influence policy but they can choose candidates.
 
Top