Existing accounts of how the Conservative party responded to the challenges of mass democracy after 1918 draw heavily on Stanley Baldwin’s leadership. Chapter 2 explores how local Conservative parties related to this Baldwinite public appeal, which was created in their party’s name using the latest mass-media technology but which they often found at odds with their own conception of popular Conservatism. It considers how activists sought to rehabilitate a ‘politics of place’ after 1918, shaping their own policy appeals, choice of language and public identity according to local political traditions and the perceived interests of the local electorate. It argues that the Conservatives’ experience of the 1920s was therefore marked by an uneasy asymmetry of appeals at national and local levels and highlights the mixed reception and doubts about the effectiveness of Baldwinite Conservatism. In doing so, it brings to the fore the attitudes with which Conservative activists approached the formation of the National Government in 1931.

This chapter charts the overall course and key episodes of the National Government during Ramsay MacDonald’s premiership (1931-1935) and that of Stanley Baldwin (1935-37), considering in particular the fortunes of popular Conservatism in the constituencies. It has four sections. The first explores how the Conservatives exploited the financial and political crises of August 1931 to construct a new anti-socialist paradigm that gave the outgoing Labour government’s alleged failing a concrete form around which all Conservatives could mobilise. The second and third sections outline the National Government’s work in securing economic recovery and responding to the plight of the unemployed. It argues that this reflected a culture of active and imaginative government. The final section explores the relationship between party and ‘national’ political identities in the constituencies. IT argues that the process of defining the National Government in the interests of local Conservatism introduced the rank and file to a broader range of political discourses, which complemented but did not supplant their preoccupation with rehabilitating a traditional politics of place.

Chapter 1 outlines the purpose of the book. It assesses existing accounts of interwar Conservatism and highlights our inadequate understanding of the Conservative party’s role within, and its reasons for supporting, the cross-party National Government of 1931-1940. The chapter explains the benefits of focusing the analysis on the role of party activists and local politics as a way of reassessing how the party responded to the challenges of mass democracy after 1918, before introducing the reader to each of the twelve constituency case studies which form the analytical basis of the book and to the related archival material. It then offers a re-reading of the electoral performance of interwar Conservatism, arguing that contrary to the picture of electoral ‘dominance’ normally associated with the party’s national performance, the local experience in the 1920s proved to be one of stagnancy and even decline from the pre-war heyday of local politics. It argues that this re-reading of the 1920s is crucial to understanding the attitude with which the Conservative grassroots approached membership the National Government in 1931 and beyond. The concluding section provides a summary of the book’s chapters.