ABSTRACT
The Conservative party entered the general election campaign of January 1910 with tariff reform the coping stone of an ambitious and radical policy structure. Conservatives, grudgingly in some cases, had come to accept this programme as the best hope for Conservatism in the early twentieth century. Electoral history after 1885 showed that the Conservatives were essentially an English party. Having entered the January 1910 general election campaign with high hopes and a clear sense of direction, the Conservative party descended into confusion; on the eve of the Great War it was unsure of its future strategy or even its future. After the 1910 elections, the Liberal government’s determination to reduce the powers of the House of Lords produced deep fissures in the Conservative ranks. Either we are a Party that stands for the Union, the whole Union and nothing else but the Union, or else we are for disintegration, there is no half-way house.
