BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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a brake to the frightful locomotive-like influences of the leveling,
popular democracy.
The Primrose League with its quasi-medieval titles
and orders, its reformulation of deference, and its popular call to
arms in support of broadly "conservative"2 aims was to become the
great Conservative weapon of the late nineteenth century, a veritable
army of supporters to counteract the onslaught of the mass, democratic
age.
The League was founded in November, 1883 by key Fourth party
members,3
ostensibly in memory of the recently deceased leader of the
Conservative party, Lord Beaconsfield.
Its primary function, however,
as envisioned by Lord Randolph Churchill, was to assist him in his bid
for the Conservative party leadership.
The Primrose League was
intended as Churchill's caucus, the Conservatives' response to the
Liberal machine politics introduced by Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham
in the 1860's and extended nationally in 1877 through the establishment
of the National Liberal Federation.
However, with the rapid expansion of the League, particularly
during the General Election years 1885-86, came changes.
The Primrose
League quickly evolved from a vehicle for Churchill's drive for power
to a quasi-independent bastion of support for the traditional
^ The terms "conservative" and "conservatism" written in the
lower case refer to those individuals who, while not necessarily
aligned with the Conservative party, nevertheless, maintained indirect
ties with party officials either in their voting patterns or through
their support of political associations endorsing a broadly
Conservative stance.
3 Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, M.P.; Lord Randolph Churchill,
M.P.; John Gorst, Q.C., M.P.; and Sir Alfred Slade, Bt.