Introduction

The British Conservative party has been the most successful political party of the modern era. Between 1881 and 1990 the Conservative party won sixteen of the twenty-eight general elections held, and, under a variety of electoral systems, their share of the vote rarely fell below 40 per cent. The ‘peculiarities of Edwardian Conservatism’ were the product of the Conservative party’s attempt to reconstruct its identity in a period when older strategies and traditional forms of political and social authority were thought to have failed. How was it that the Conservative party, which had enjoyed great electoral success in the late nineteenth century, and which was to reestablish its dominance in the inter-war years, was so weak in the Edwardian period? The policy in question was tariff reform, and on this basis the problems of Edwardian Conservatism appear to have begun at Bingley Hall, Birmingham on 15 May 1903, when Joseph Chamberlain launched the tariff reform campaign.