Tony Judge

Tory Socialism in English Culture Society and Politics 1870-1940 Tony Judge

This book looks at the phenomenon of Tory Socialism in theory and practice from the nineteenth century to 1940 as reflected in English culture, society, and politics. The roots are traced in the reaction to industrialism and the its effects on the landscape and environment, as well as competitive individualism and materialism. Tory socialism is discussed through the notion of 'Merry England, ' rural nostalgia, pastoral utopianism and conceptions of 'Englishness', as well as land reform, communalism, religion, education, town planning and 'back to land' movements. The influence of Tory socialism in politics is examined in the career of Robert Blatchford, and in the Labour Party through working class conservatism and middle class defections to socialism, and in the Conservative Party by its responses to the widening franchise, imperial preference, tariff reform, patriotism and empire, Arthur Steel-Maitland, the British Worker's League and other groups with links to the Tory Party. After 1918 its continuing influences are traced through the careers of Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Harold Macmillan, and the 'Middle Way'. Many personalities, social, cultural and political themes are considered including conservation, preservation, nostalgia, and the rediscovery of a sense of Englishness between the wars, and what was thought worth preserving of it in the face of threats from totalitarianism and world war