Conservative Success: Stanley Baldwin and 'Safety First'

• Given that 80% of the British electorate were working class and the Conservatives are often seen as the party of wealth & privilege, Conservative success is an interesting historical problem
• Conservative Success between the wars in part due to a successful rebranding of the party which began in 1872, under the leadership of Benjamin Disraeli
• Benjamin Disraeli promoted the Conservatives as a 'one nation party' of empire, national defence and patriotism, which appealed to many working class voters as well
• Stanley Baldwin was able to build upon Disraeli's rebranding after he became Prime Minister in 1923
• Despite inheriting a fortune from his family's steel company, Stanley Baldwin successfully presented himself as an ordinary man of the people
• Stanley Baldwin ran his factories fairly and was keen to promote harmony between workers and employers in the British economy
• Stanley Baldwin also wanted to promote class-based politics and destroy the Liberal Party
• On the 19th October 1922, the Carlton Club Meeting was held by Stanley Baldwin to abandon the coalition, and when the MP's voted on whether to remain part of the government, the opposition won by 187 votes to 87 (and those who voted against it resigned from government, triggering Lloyd George's resignation)
• Stanley Baldwin won over Lloyd George's remaining supporters by adopting Protectionism in 1923 then dropping it after it was rejected by voters in the 1924 election; this removed the one issue that reunited the Liberals which was Free Trade
• Protectionism is the use of import taxes (tariffs) to make foreign goods more expensive than domestic ones. This protects domestic producers from foreign competition but increases the cost of imports, including food items
• Free Trade is the rejection of Tariffs. This was opposed by the British arable landowners, who suffered from cheaper imports of grain from abroad, but promoted by industrialists who wanted to sell their products abroad cheaply
• Although Baldwin was accused of being dull (for example, his lacklustre 1929 election slogan: "Safety First"), many working class people respected his apparent financial competence
• The Conservative also benefited electorally in their interwar period from the:

  • The 1948 Representation of the People Act
  • The Irish Free State
  • The FPTP System
• Until the 1948 Representation of the People Act, the 'plural vote' allowed Oxford & Cambridge Universities and the City of London to return 14 MP's, mostly Tories, between them
• Because of a loophole in the 'plural vote', graduates who resided for part of the time in a University town were able to vote in more than constituency, and some landowners were allowed to vote in 3 (so they were more likely to have connections with the Conservatives and vote for them)
• In 1921, the Irish Free State gained independence from the UK
• In 1921, the Irish Free State gained independence from the UK, while the Liberals lost the support of around 80 Irish Nationalist MP's, the Conservatives continued to received the support of around 10 Northern Irish MP's
• The FPTP System, combined with the uneven distribution of votes in different constituencies benefited the Conservatives
• In 1918, it took an average of 15,943 votes to return each Conservative MP, 29,868 for a Labour MP and 36,116 for a Liberal MP (under the FPTP System)
• Baldwin's aim to attract the remaining wealthy middle class Liberals to the Conservatives as the best defence against Labour Socialism succeeded brilliantly