ABSTRACT
Attention to the Conservative use of patriotism is not uncommon. However, there has been an overemphasis on the automatic sympathy between patriotism and Conservatism. Rather, patriotic language was a dialogue to be learnt and shaped: if the Conservatives professed ownership, they had to continually occupy the space and re-establish their claims. They had to shape their rhetoric to the outline of wartime patriotic expectations and to the political needs of the government and their party. In defining and exploiting their meanings of patriotism, Conservatives mobilized this powerful tool at a critical juncture in the rise of the Labour Party. In late 1917, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia sent shivers of fear down the spines of constitutional parties across Europe. Government efforts to avert industrial action and preserve production at full capacity were met with opposition from trade unions angered by conscription and especially by the ‘combing out’ of nonessential domestic war workers. A pre-war Labour Party that had won just 42 seats in December 1910 was by the end of the war punching – and, more importantly still, threatening to punch – above its parliamentary weight. It was to go on to win 142 seats in 1922, 191 in 1923 and become the government in 1924. This chapter explores how wartime patriotism was forged to counter this socialist threat.
