BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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limitations by encouraging ties with the Boy Scouts, an action endorsed
by both organizations.5
The Primrose League also faced competition from a number of
extra-parliamentary associations formed by Conservative party members,
by turns dissatisfied with the positions taken by Balfour and the
reforms proposed by the Liberal government.
Thus, the Tariff Reform
League was established by Leo Amery and Leo Maxse in 1903.
Its aims
were to promote support for Chamberlain's program of colonial
preference, to discourage the perpetuation of free trade policies, and
to apply pressure on the party to endorse these economic views.
Liberal legislation, most particularly the 1909 Budget, the
Parliamentary Act of 1911, and the 1912 Home Rule legislation,
encouraged the actions of protest groups opposed to these reforms.
They included Union Defense League (1907), the Budget Protest League
(1909), the Reveille (1910), and the Halsbury Club (1911), the last two
societies, in effect, challenging Balfour's authority as Prime
Minister.6
Issues which had been central to the Primrose League in the
1880's, opposition to Home Rule, imperial decline, the loss of national
prestige, and proposals to restrict the House of Lords, carried a more
limited appeal in the early twentieth century.
For individuals within
5
Ibid., 29 April 1909; 27 May 1909; 24 June 1909; 8 July
1909; 16 January 1913. The Minutes of the Grand Council provide no
mention of similar agreements reached between the Girl Guides and the
young females associated with the Juvenile Branches.
6
John Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin (London:
Longman Group Ltd., 1978), pp. 9-10, 32-33, 38-40, 58, 82.