How did the Tories fight elections a hundred years ago? How did women first find a role in politics on equal terms with men? How did young people first get involved?
The answer to all three questions is – through the Primrose League, the key Tory organisation before the First World War. With nearly two million members, it did most of the voluntary work at constituency level that brought the Tories a string of election victories beginning in the mid-1880s. Conservative constituency associations, as we know them today, developed after 1918.
Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, founded the Primrose League in 1883. It rapidly became the largest political organisation in Britain. From Torquay to Tynemouth, from Brighton to Bolton, the League mobilised Tory activists for the first time and modernised Conservative politics by recruiting members from all sections of the community, establishing the ‘one nation’ tradition, and harnessing the long-neglected talents of women.
Winston Churchill himself was head of the League in the middle of the last century. He valued it because it helped make the Conservative Party the progressive force in politics that it has remained ever since.
A Gift from the Churchills: The Primrose League 1883-2004 is published by the Carlton Club at £9.50. Copies can be ordered by email from the author: alistair.cooke@conservatives.com.
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