UK Tories don't lose their nerve, 1945

The whole point is that Conservative alternatives to what Labour proposed with its massive amount of state intervention existed and even still exist to a huge extent.

Pragmatism is indeed very important in politics and you should not go into battles which are lost in advance or where your participation is likely to reflect very badly on you later. Yet, the Conservatives did the opposite many times in the past actually, over Ireland, over the vote for women, over homosexual rights and even to an extent over race.
Would politicians in the 1900s have agreed that the arguments against female suffrage weren't rational? I'm not sure they would - but in any case, you're missing the point. Firstly, these arguments were not conducted solely for the point of a principle; in most cases electoral opportunism played at least as important a part (opposition to Home Rule played a big part in cementing the Conservative/Unionist ascendancy in British politics in the late Victorian era). Secondly, with regards to votes for women and homosexual rights, the debate was not carried along party lines. Liberals such as Asquith and Churchill were opposed or at least very lukewarm towards female suffrage, while the incarnations of country house Toryism, Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, were in favour. Thirdly, politicians are not sociologists. In the 1900s it was far from obvious that women's suffrage was inevitable; equally in the 1980s relatively few would have predicted with confidence that most people would accept homosexuals without prejudice within 20 or 30 years.

In 1945 the Labour Party had an overreaching vision for Britain and one a socialist Jerusalem. For better or for worse it got implemented as there was no Conservative alternative proposed. True the Conservative Party is the originator of the 1944 Education Act among other things, but did the party really believe in its creation? My gut feeling is that it did not considering that they turned their backs on it during the late sixties without a fight. Ideologically speaking the Conservative Party of 1945 was nearly a spent force and did not manage to offer a comprhensive vision until 1979 and even it was still far from complete.
But the Conservative Party was an emphatically non-ideological party for most of the 20th century. That was part of its appeal - it promised to provide good governance, not New Jerusalems.
 
Would politicians in the 1900s have agreed that the arguments against female suffrage weren't rational? I'm not sure they would - but in any case, you're missing the point. Firstly, these arguments were not conducted solely for the point of a principle; in most cases electoral opportunism played at least as important a part (opposition to Home Rule played a big part in cementing the Conservative/Unionist ascendancy in British politics in the late Victorian era). Secondly, with regards to votes for women and homosexual rights, the debate was not carried along party lines. Liberals such as Asquith and Churchill were opposed or at least very lukewarm towards female suffrage, while the incarnations of country house Toryism, Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, were in favour. Thirdly, politicians are not sociologists. In the 1900s it was far from obvious that women's suffrage was inevitable; equally in the 1980s relatively few would have predicted with confidence that most people would accept homosexuals without prejudice within 20 or 30 years.

Politicians are not sociologists but there were no rational arguments against denying the votes for women and criminalising homosexuality. The first one goes against the principle of one man one vote, it is obvious that once you start giving out votes for men en masse that women will have to follow next. All kinds of arguments were used against giving women the vote and and none of them were remotely rational.
The same can be said regarding the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Once you accept that everyone has the same rights and duties, you can't criminalise what goes on between two consenting adults behind the doors of their own house.

But the Conservative Party was an emphatically non-ideological party for most of the 20th century. That was part of its appeal - it promised to provide good governance, not New Jerusalems.

That's entirely true to an extent since you can't be non-ideological if you expressely support the vested interests of some groups as opposed to others. Even to this day the Conservative Party remains the party of vested interests with its support of the aristocracy (on the decline but still very present once you scratch the surface), its knowtowing towards the "rich" and more importantly its very strong connections with the establishment. When the Labour Party in 1945 pushed hard to become the party of the common man and of every Briton whatever its class or creed, the Conservative Party was still mired in its old roots, vested interests and electoral opportunism. The Conservative Party never really tried hard to become a party towards which everyone could identify with on the basis of principle and of ideology. The only time when this was attempted was in 1979 and even then Thatcher simply did not had the right personality to score the try and make the party number one everywhere.

On the other hand the Labour Party did just that in 1945 and more recently in 1997 and the result was a landslide on both occasions.

Proposing an alternative which appeals to everyone does not necessarily requires a new Jerusalem. But it nevertheless require some vision and some philosophy on which to base this vision on. Its all good to sleep on ones laurels by proclaiming to be the "natural party of government" but this does not strike a chord with people, especially when you fuck things up or don't lead by example once you are in government as has often been the case with the Conservatives (Profumo affair, Major sleaze ...).
 
Politicians are not sociologists but there were no rational arguments against denying the votes for women and criminalising homosexuality. The first one goes against the principle of one man one vote, it is obvious that once you start giving out votes for men en masse that women will have to follow next. All kinds of arguments were used against giving women the vote and and none of them were remotely rational.
The same can be said regarding the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Once you accept that everyone has the same rights and duties, you can't criminalise what goes on between two consenting adults behind the doors of their own house.
Except that the principle of one man one vote didn't exist in 1910 given the existence of graduate and business votes. Plus, something like a third of the adult male population didn't have the vote - the franchise was still very much property-based. Similarly for homosexuals the argument about decriminalisation didn't have an awful lot to do with civil or human rights.

I don't want to get into an argument about whether from the perspective of the 1910s or 1960s the arguments against female suffrage or decriminalising homosexuality were rational because we're going off-topic. But it is far from clear to me that the Tories were either uniquely identified with the opposition to these reforms or that they in fact suffered from opposing them. Indeed during the inter-war period, just after women got the vote, the Tories were continually the largest party in Parliament - with the exception of 1929 - and held power for 18 out of 21 years. With regards to Irish Home Rule that enabled them to dominate the late Victorian era.

That's entirely true to an extent since you can't be non-ideological if you expressely support the vested interests of some groups as opposed to others. Even to this day the Conservative Party remains the party of vested interests with its support of the aristocracy (on the decline but still very present once you scratch the surface), its knowtowing towards the "rich" and more importantly its very strong connections with the establishment. When the Labour Party in 1945 pushed hard to become the party of the common man and of every Briton whatever its class or creed, the Conservative Party was still mired in its old roots, vested interests and electoral opportunism. The Conservative Party never really tried hard to become a party towards which everyone could identify with on the basis of principle and of ideology. The only time when this was attempted was in 1979 and even then Thatcher simply did not had the right personality to score the try and make the party number one everywhere.

On the other hand the Labour Party did just that in 1945 and more recently in 1997 and the result was a landslide on both occasions.

Proposing an alternative which appeals to everyone does not necessarily requires a new Jerusalem. But it nevertheless require some vision and some philosophy on which to base this vision on. Its all good to sleep on ones laurels by proclaiming to be the "natural party of government" but this does not strike a chord with people, especially when you fuck things up or don't lead by example once you are in government as has often been the case with the Conservatives (Profumo affair, Major sleaze ...).
Even if you're right about the Tories not possessing a vision until Thatcher (something that One Nation Tories would dispute strongly), how did it do them any harm? The Conservatives outperformed Labour for most of the post-war period electorally. If we go from 1945 to 1975 - the year Mrs Thatcher became Leader of the Conservative Party - the Conservatives governed for 17 years, Labour for 13. Even if we extend the period to 1979 Labour and the Tories governed for exactly the same period of time. If the Conservatives were a party whose raison d-etre (sp?) as you would have us believe were the defence of vested interests, they don't seem to have suffered for it.

Labour may have been able to mobilise the electorate to deliver them massive landslides upon the basis of delivering them to paradise in 1945 and 1997, but it says something that those massive victories were 50 years apart. If you promise a new Jerusalem, then when you inevitably fail the disappointment is so much greater. The Tories understood this and they ruthlessly focussed upon the electorate's material concerns - rationing in 1951, the continuation of the post-war consumer boom in 1959, trade unions, taxes and council houses in the 80s and so on. That may sometimes be trumped by the promise of a glorious future, but it is the type of promise that generally only works once in a lifetime.
 
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