In the first elections called under the terms of the 1832 Reform Act the Tory party appeared doomed. They had recorded their worst set of results in living memory and were organizationally in disarray as well, importantly, seemingly completely out of touch with the current political mood. During the intense pressure brought to bear by the supporters of political reform was the use of “pressure from without” and in this tactic the industrial working class were highly visible. Calls for political reform had been growing since the 1760s and given fresh impetus with the revolutions in America and France respectively. The old Tory party had been resistant to all but the most glaring corruption and abuse under the pre-Reform system, not least to the idea of extending the electoral franchise to the ‘swineish multitude’, as Edmund Burke notoriously described the working class. Yet within five years after the passing of reform the Conservatives — the natural heirs to the old Tory party — were attempting to politically incorporate sections of the working class into their ranks. This book examines how this process of making these ‘Angels in Marble’, to use Disraeli’s phrase from a later era, took shape in the 1830s. It focuses on how a section of the industrial working class became the target of organizational inclusion into Peelite Conservatism and ultimately into the British party political system.

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Dr David Walsh was formerly a Research Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Senior Research Associate, University of Liverpool and Lecturer in History at the Department of History and Economic History, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 • The Emergence of Political Parties and the Transformation of Toryism

Whigs and Namierites

Eighteenth-Century Gradualists

The Defenders of Orthodoxy

Nineteenth-Century Gradualists

The Inter-disciplinary Approach

The Transformation of Toryism

The Influence of Burke

The Transition to Conservatism

Chapter 2 • The Emergent Working Class and Political Relationships, 1800-1832

Tory Attitudes

The Emergence of the Working Class in the Industrial North-West: An outline of the debate

Working Class Politics before 1820

Working Class Developments in the 1820s

The Working-Class and the Reform Bill

Chapter 3 • The Re-organization of the Conservative Party after 1832

Political Organization before 1832

The Conservatives and the First Reform Act

The Conservatives Organizational Response

Widening the Conservative Appeal

Popular Political Organization: Loyalist Associations

Local Political Organization in the Early Nineteenth-Century

The Middle Classes and Early Political Organization

Chapter 4 • Operative Conservatism: Its Development, Structure, Role and Function

The Middle Classes and Operative Conservatism

The Development and Structure of Operative Conservatism

Aims, Objectives and Financial Basis of Operative Conservatism

Operative Conservatism and Political Science

The Idioms of Politics and the Role of Issues within Operative Conservatism

Operative Conservatives, Radical Tories and Paternalism

Issues and Political Re-alignments

Chapter 5 • Operative Conservatism and Local Political Developments: Three case studies

The Market and County Towns

Developments in Lancaster

The Old Industrial Boroughs, Preston: Economic and Social Background

Municipal Politics

Parliamentary Politics

Operative Conservatism in Preston

Chapter 6 • The New Boroughs

The Economic and Social Structure of Blackburn

Early Working Class Militancy

Reform and Parliamentary Politics in Blackburn

The Political Culture of Blackburn

Political Organization in Blackburn

The Role of Issues and Working Class Politics

Developments in Bolton and the South of the Region

Chapter 7 • Working Class Political Integration and the Conservative Party

Appendices

Bibliography

Index