Abstract
Chapter 1 examines the nature and boundaries of Conservatism. It assesses the degree of flexibility in terms of policy-making which can be accommodated within those boundaries without damaging the core nature of the brand. It looks, too, at the extent to which Conservatism can be regarded as an ideology, as a pragmatic approach to maintaining itself in power or as a combination of the two, with the balance between them being determined at any one time by such things as the state of the nation, international pressures and – of paramount significance in this study – the convictions and attitudes of the Party leadership.
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Notes
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P. Norton and A. Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (Temple Smith, London, 1981), p. 15.
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M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996), p. 1.
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A. Seldon and S. Ball (eds.), Conservative Century: The Conservative Party Since 1900 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994).
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C. C. O’Brien (ed.), Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin Classics, London, 1969), pp. 139–54.
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S. Heffer, ‘Traditional Toryism’ in K. Hickson (ed.), The Political Thought of the Conservative Party Since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2005), p. 198.
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R. Eccleshall, ‘Party Ideology and National Decline’ in R. English and M. Kenny (eds), Rethinking British Decline (Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 160–5.
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M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Methuen, London, 1962), p. 58.
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R. Eccleshall, ‘The Doing of Conservatism’ in M. Freeden (ed.), Reassessing Political Ideologies (Routledge, London, 2001), p. 76.
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H. Macmillan, Winds of Change 1914–1939 (Macmillan, London, 1966), pp. 223–4.
- 10.
P. Addison, The Road to 1945 (Cape, London, 1975), p. 229.
- 11.
I. Macleod and A. Maude, One Nation; A Tory Approach to Social Problems (Conservative Political Centre, No. 86, London, 1950); E. Powell and A. Maude, Change is Our Ally: A Tory Approach to Industrial Problems (Conservative Political Centre, No. 133, London 1954).
- 12.
P. Norton, Conservative Dissidents: Dissent Within the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1970–74 (Temple Smith, London, 1978), p. 29; A. Maude, ‘The Conservative Crisis – 1’, The Spectator, 15 March 1963, p. 319.
- 13.
Norton and Aughey, p. 17; N. K. O’Sullivan, Conservatism (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1976), p. 31.
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Caines, E. (2017). The Nature of Conservatism. In: Heath and Thatcher in Opposition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60246-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60246-6_1
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