It is exactly a hundred years since the Party Conference last took place in Manchester.
Back then in 1909 the older delegates would have recalled a remarkable, sudden surge in Conservative support in the Lancashire constituencies forty years earlier which had ended a long period of Liberal domination and greatly increased the Party leadership’s interest in the politics of the north-west.
Disraeli himself, who rarely spoke outside Parliament, journeyed to Manchester in April 1872. Sustained by two bottles of white brandy poured into an ordinary water glass, he addressed a vast meeting in the Free Trade Hall for over three hours at the age of sixty-eight.
Then, as now, the Tories were in opposition facing a government that was visibly disintegrating. ‘Extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government’, Disraeli said, before launching a famous attack which resonates today. ‘The ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest’. By contrast a new Conservative government would know where its duty lay:’ the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people’.
Disraeli did not return to address the first Party Conference held in Manchester four years later, but it followed exactly the course that it would have wanted during its one-day proceedings held in the Town Hall on 25 October 1876. Disraeli’s policies for better health and other welfare measures were designed to strengthen the Conservatives’ position as the Party representing the whole nation. The first Manchester Conference sent him most encouraging news about ‘ the enormous development of Conservative feeling in the ranks of the working men, which has led to the establishment in all parts of the country of vigorous organisations formed and conducted by artisans’. The Conference noted that, since Disraeli’s speech in 1872, the total number of Conservative associations had more than doubled to nearly 800 with new working men’s associations making a healthy contribution to the total.
In those days the annual Party Conference was almost always held in one of the great industrial or urban centres, again emphasising the Party’s one nation stance which brought it support from all social classes. Nowhere was this seen more clearly than in industrial Lancashire where at the 1885 election the Conservatives won 38 of the county’s 58 seats, including all but one of Manchester’s six constituencies. They remained well entrenched in the heartland of the cotton industry when the Conference returned to Manchester twice in quick succession in 1902 and 1909; though on the second occasion the Party’s fortunes in the area were in temporary eclipse.
Hopes were high, however, that ground would be recovered at the imminent general election, precipitated by the clash between Commons and Lords over Lloyd George’s so-called ‘ People’s Budget’, denounced by the Tories as a flagrant example of class warfare since it introduced a new super tax on the rich and set the scene for a land tax. The forthcoming campaign dominated the minds of the delegates– some 1,000 of them–during the two-day Conference at the Midland Hotel. They were told that ‘millions of leaflets, pamphlets, posters and cartoons’ had already been sent to constituencies.
That pre-election Conference one hundred years ago closed with a rousing speech from a Mr Howell, a local Manchester delegate. He called on the Conference to ‘ pledge itself to a democratic and national line of policy…it was now for the Party to prove that it was above all Parties the Party of the British people’–sentiments that were greeted with ‘ loud cheers’ and ‘ much enthusiasm’. It is on the basis of Disraeli’s definition of Conservatism as an unending campaign to unite all sections of the community that the Party’s success has always been built.
View a selection of archive material in the Flickr gallery.
Alistair Cooke is the Party’s official historian. He recently edited Conservative History Week, inaugurating the new history section of the Party’s website.
This article draws on material in the Party’s Archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Visit the Archive’s Stand at Conference where Jeremy McIiwaine, the Party’s dedicated Archivist, will have a range of interesting items–including posters and mugs–on display. Copies of Alistair Cooke’s recent publications will be on sale at the Stand.
( 3 comments ) Tags: Conference, Disraeli, history, Midland Hotel, town hall
Comment by Cllr Felton on October 4, 2009 at 12:30 pm
The location of the party conference is relatively immaterial. What is relevant to the next election is how you can re-capture disillusioned Conservatives and floating voters; otherwise you are unlikely to win the next election.
The big problem is that the Conservative party has evidently not learned anything from decades in the wilderness of opposition. The Major government shot itself in the foot. Thatcher alienated a lot of your supporters by her successive “U” turns after claiming not to be for turning. You destroyed many qualified people’s professions by your policies, including mine, and consigned them at the peak of their careers to exclusion from employment due to ageism at the age of 43 and above. You have never openly recognised what you did, destroying swathes of real wealth creating enterprises which will never return; you have never apologized for any of it. You have never admitted your errors or stated that you have learned the lessons and would act differently in future government.
Instead you have adopted Blairism – that is not Conservative and is not a Tory position; it is hardly distinguishable from Zanu Labour! Cameron has implied on TV today that he will avoid giving the UK electorate a referendum on the new EU Constitution by another name of treaty. Even Boris Johnson wants a referendum!
The reason of course is that everyone knows that the UK would vote NO! That is why UKIP is gaining ground. We do not want Blair as President of the EU. That would be Zanu Labour governing Europe and the UK by stealth! We do not want a Labour or Socialist government of any sort.
I put it to you, that unless you recognise what your disillusioned Conservative supporters and the floating voters want, UKIP will gain further ground and the best result you may be able to hope for is a Hung parliament at the next election.
I had always voted Conservative until the Major government ruined my career and our country. I and many others will not vote Conservative again unless your party reverts to being real Conservative again! I will be voting UKIP otherwise.
These are the issues you need desperately to consider at your conference – not where the venue is!
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Comment by X on October 5, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I would like to inform you of my great distress in seeing the Conservative Party Conference come to Manchester. I was born here, I have lived here all my life and I am a Labour supporter as most sensible people in this city and in the UK are.
Frankly, I am scared of seeing a Tory government come to power, you may have deceived a large proportion of the country into thinking that you are in any shape a different party to which Maggie and John. So please, for the good of the country and all it’s peoples, and especially for the good of my city:
go back to what your good at David, being a ignorant toff who really has no grasp on what is good for anybody, oh wait, your doing a good enough job of that already.