BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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Middleton's nine agents in the regional operations of the Union
likewise served to keep administrative expenses at a minimum, enabling
the organization to devote the bulk of its efforts to publication and
propaganda services.
An issue frequently raised in the continuing campaign of
Primrose League recruitment was the first principle of the League, "the
maintenance of religion."
The overwhelming basis of League support was
derived from members of the Established Church.
The diminishing
influence of Anglicanism in the course of the nineteenth century was
gradual, uneven, but inexorable.
The process unfolded in three
successive stages encompassing respectively significant concessions,
revived influence, and irreversible decline, a progression which
roughly corresponded to the years marking the passage of the three
electoral
reform bills.69
The mounting influence of nondenominational
and secular
concerns was reflected in the formation of the most significant Liberal
political
pressure group of the age, the Liberation Society,
particularly during its years of greatest ascendance, 1874 through
1885. Just as Nonconformists increasingly came to dominate the
politics of the Liberal party, the Conservatives became the repository
of Anglican interests. 70
69 p.T. Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 1-2, 5-6, 8.
70
Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure, pp. 1-2, 4-5,
91, 139, 145, 159-60. Koss, Nonconformity in Modern British Politics,
pp. 15-16, 18, 23-24, 26-27. Marsh, The Discipline of Popular
Government, pp. 165-67. Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine
in Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp.
364, 374-76, 378. Kenneth D. Wald, Crosses on the Ballot (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 55-60, 62.