BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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Increasingly the party made inroads into the growing ranks of
the professional middle class, the gradually assimilating
Nonconformists, and substantial sectors of labor not aligned with the
more vocal and unionized members of the working class.46
The result
was the creation of a broad-based coalition wishing to preserve
imperial and personal interests against the perceived threat of
decline.
The Conservative legacy of Tory Democracy under Salisbury's
able hand was transformed into a Conservative policy of strong national
interests combined with active resistance to the sweeping tides of
reform.
To be sure, it was a gradual process, uncertain and hesitant in
character, its victory far from certain, particularly in the early
years.
Both Churchill and Chamberlain sought to exploit the reformist
tendencies associated with Tory Democracy as a means to power only to
discover the rewards elusive at best, confined, as they were, to
restricted Cabinet posts under Conservative party sponsorship, with the
ultimate benefits accruing to Salisbury.
As for the Primrose League, its endorsement of religion,
"estates of the realm," and the "Imperial Ascendancy of Great Britain"
made it particularly well suited to defending national institutions
under crisis.
Likewise its professed nonpartisan status and its
46 James Cornford, "The Transformation of Conservatism in the
Late Nineteenth Century," The Victorian Revolution, pp. 294, 305, 316­
18. Stephen Koss, Nonconformity in Modern British Politics (Hamden:
Archon Books, 1975), pp. 15-16, 23-24, 26-27. Alan J. Lee,
"Conservatism, Traditionalism and the British Working Class, 1880­
1918," Ideology and the Labour Movement, ed. David F. Martin and David
Rubinstein (London: Croom Helm, 1979), pp. 84-85, 92-94, 96.