The Conservatives since 1945 is about how and why parties in general, and the Conservative Party in particular, make changes to the face they present to the electorate, the way they organize themselves, and the policies they come up with. This is an in-depth but comprehensive study based on original archival sources.

***Winner of the Political Studies Association Conservatism Studies Group prize 2020*** This book provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the Conservative Right in Great Britain since 1945. It first explores the movement’s core ideas and highlights points of tension between its different strands. The book then proceeds with a thematically structured discussion. The Conservative Right’s views on the decline and fall of the British Empire, immigration control, European integration, the British constitution, the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, Britain’s economy, the welfare state, and social morality and social change are all explored. In the concluding chapter, the author evaluates the extent to which the Conservative Right has succeeded in its core objectives since 1945 and addresses how it can best respond to a contemporary Britain in which it instinctively feels uncomfortable. The book is based on extensive elite interviews and archival research and will be of interest to anyone who seeks to place the contemporary Conservative Right in a greater historical context.

This volume provides an up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to British policy in Europe. By exploring the schisms within the party over Europe, through primary source-based history and theoretical discourses of political science, N.J. Crowson gives the reader the best sense of understanding of how and why the Conservative party’s policy attitudes to European integration have evolved. The Conservative Party and European Integration since 1945 adopts a thematic line based around two chronological periods, 1945–75 and 1975–2006, and uses different methodological approaches. It explores the shifting stances amongst Conservatives within an economic, political and international context as the party adjusted to the decline of Britain’s world role and the loss of empire. Crowson analyzes Britain’s role and relationship with Europe together with the study of the Conservative Party, and deals with economic, commercial and monetary issues, successfully bridging a serious gap in any discussion of the UK’s relations with the European Union and appreciation of the political world in which Conservative European policy has been framed and pursued since 1945. This book is recommended for background reading in undergraduate courses in British politics and European history.

First published in 1976, and revised in 1996, George H. Nash’s celebrated history of the postwar conservative intellectual movement has become the unquestioned standard in the field. This new edition, published in commemoration of the volume’s thirtieth anniversary, includes a new preface by Nash and will continue to instruct anyone interested in how today’s conservative movement was born.

From the middle of the twentieth century, think tanks have played an indelible role in the rise of American conservatism. Positioning themselves against the alleged liberal bias of the media, academia, and the federal bureaucracy, conservative think tanks gained the attention of politicians and the public alike and were instrumental in promulgating conservative ideas. Yet, in spite of the formative influence these institutions have had on the media and public opinion, little has been written about their history. Here, Jason Stahl offers the first sustained investigation of the rise and historical development of the conservative think tank as a source of political and cultural power in the United States. What we now know as conservative think tanks--research and public-relations institutions populated by conservative intellectuals--emerged in the postwar period as places for theorizing and "selling" public policies and ideologies to both lawmakers and the public at large. Stahl traces the progression of think tanks from their outsider status against a backdrop of New Deal and Great Society liberalism to their current prominence as a counterweight to progressive political institutions and thought. By examining the rise of the conservative think tank, Stahl makes invaluable contributions to our historical understanding of conservatism, public-policy formation, and capitalism.

Bryan M. Santin examines over a half-century of intersection between American fiction and postwar conservatism. He traces the shifting racial politics of movement conservatism to argue that contemporary perceptions of literary form and aesthetic value are intrinsically connected to the rise of the American Right. Instead of casting postwar conservatives as cynical hustlers or ideological fanatics, Santin shows how the long-term rhetorical shift in conservative notions of literary value and prestige reveal an aesthetic antinomy between high culture and low culture. This shift, he argues, registered and mediated the deeper foundational antinomy structuring postwar conservatism itself: the stable social order of traditionalism and the creative destruction of free-market capitalism. Postwar conservatives produced, in effect, an ambivalent double register in the discourse of conservative literary taste that sought to celebrate neo-aristocratic manifestations of cultural capital while condemning newer, more progressive manifestations revolving around racial and ethnic diversity.

This is a succinct, timely introduction to one of the most highly charged political questions which has dominated British politics since 1945: Britain's position in Europe. The study traces the evolution of British policy towards Europe since 1945, presenting the full international context as well as the impact on domestic party politics - including an analysis of the divisions in the Conservative Party under John Major.