This Longman Companion provides a wide-ranging compendium of essential facts and figures on the Conservative Party - from its origins in the 1830s to the dawn of the 21st Century. Central to the book are the detailed chronologies on the Conservative Party's years in government and opposition. In addition, it contains fascinating information on the Party's relationships with women, ethnic minoirities, the trade unions, Europe, Ireland, ideology, social reform and empire.

This Longman Companion provides a wide-ranging compendium of essential facts and figures on the Conservative Party - from its origins in the 1830s to the dawn of the 21st Century. Central to the book are the detailed chronologies on the Conservative Party's years in government and opposition. In addition, it contains fascinating information on the Party's relationships with women, ethnic minoirities, the trade unions, Europe, Ireland, ideology, social reform and empire.

What do we really mean when we say a political party has changed? And exactly what is it that drives that change? Political scientists working in the comparative tradition have come up with a general explanation that revolves around the role of election defeats and loss of office, and around changes of leader and factions. But how well does that explanation cope when subjected to a historically-grounded and therefore robust examination? This book tries to answer that question by subjecting the common wisdom to a real-world, over-time test using one of the world's oldest and most successful political parties as an in-depth case study. What do the periods spent in both opposition and government by the British Conservatives since 1945 tell us about what drives parties to change their sales-force, the way they organize, and the policies they come up with? Using internal papers, memos and minutes of meetings from party archives, along with historical and contemporary accounts, memoirs and interviews, this book maps the extent of change and then explores what may have driven it. The conventional wisdom, it turns out, is not necessarily wrong but incomplete, requiring both qualification and supplementation. This approachably-written book suggests when, how, and why. Along the way, it provides a fresh and comprehensive account of the Conservative Party that should appeal equally to those interested in political history and those interested in political science.

The Conservative Party is Britain's most successful political party. For large parts of modern British history it has been the dominant party, though it has always suffered from internal division and periods of defeat. This colourful account of the Party's history since the late 18th century takes the reader on a voyage of discovery.

As the party that has won wars, reversed recessions and held prime ministerial power more times than any other, the Conservatives have played an undoubtedly crucial role in the shaping of contemporary British society. And yet, the leaders who have stood at its helm - from Sir Robert Peel to David Cameron, via Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher - have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success. With the widening of the franchise, revolutionary changes to social values and the growing ubiquity of the media, the requirements, techniques and goals of Conservative leadership since the party's nineteenth-century factional breakaway have been forced to evolve almost beyond recognition - and not all its leaders have managed to keep up. This comprehensive and enlightening book considers the attributes and achievements of each leader in the context of their respective time and diplomatic landscape, offering a compelling analytical framework by which they may be judged, detailed personal biographies from some of the country's foremost political critics, and exclusive interviews with former leaders themselves. An indispensable contribution to the study of party leadership, British Conservative Leaders is the essential guide to understanding British political history and governance through the prism of those who created it.

The Conservative Party is the least investigated and understood of British political parties, despite its long record of success. Using an original approach and an unparalleled range of sources, Stuart Ball analyses the nature and working of the Conservative Party during one of the most significant and successful periods in its history. The creation of a democratic franchise in 1918 was followed by nearly three decades of Conservative dominance: it was the largest party in the House of Commons and in government for almost 25 years between 1918 and 1945. Stuart Ball explores this remarkable record in a different way, by taking a thematic rather than a chronological approach. He begins with the foundations of Conservative principles, attitudes, and identities, and examines the nature of the party's electoral support. He investigates the Conservative Party as an organism, uncovering the composition, roles, and relationships of every level from the constituency grass-roots, through the party machine and the parliamentary ranks, to the Cabinet Ministers and the Party Leader. Portrait of a Party is based upon a wide range of archives - including the personal papers of all five Party Leaders, nearly 50 Cabinet Ministers and 85 backbench MPs, party officials and others - combined with the rich resources of the national and regional records at the Conservative Party Archive, and a major investigation to locate all the significant collections of local Conservative Association records in England, Scotland, and Wales: a total of 215 constituencies, from Truro to Inverness. These sources shed new light on topics which are essential to an understanding of British history in the inter-war period and the development the Conservative Party to the present day.