How has the image of the Church of England as the 'Tory Party at Prayer' been challenged since the 1980s?

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How has the image of the Church of England as the ‘Tory Party at Prayer’ been challenged since the 1980s?

While tensions between religious groups over political issues and affiliations are now perhaps more commonly associated with violence in the Middle East or the latest dogfight amongst US Presidential hopefuls, denominational affiliation was once an important part of British politics also. The Labour party, perhaps drawing on its strengths in Wales and Scotland, was seen to be associated with the non-conformists and free churches, whereas the Church of England was stereotypically tied to the Conservative party; the established church and the party of the establishment. However, recent decades have seen the stereotypes challenged by changes both in image and substance within both the Conservative party and the Church of England.

Although suffering from great economic hardship in the wake of the Second World War, the UK’s post-1945 reconstruction was apparently highly successful for its first few decades. The era saw the development of the welfare state, and while political power changed hands between the Conservative and Labour parties with reasonable frequency, the ‘post-war consensus’ on certain social and political issues ensured a reasonable degree of continuity and agreement between the two major parties. The period also saw a period of fairly stable levels of support for each party amongst the electorate.

However, the 1970s saw a wave of economic and social problems hit the country. High inflation, the power of the trade unions and successive Labour governments seen by many as weak amounted to what was termed ‘the future that does not work’. There had been stirrings against the consensus in the Conservative party since the 1960s, when Enoch Powell attempted to revive a more laissez-faire approach to economic policy, arguing that ‘the free market is... essential for a free society’. The influence of economic and political thinkers such as Hayek and Friedman, who advocated libertarianism and free market economics, and groups such as the Adam Smith Institute, which has strong ties to several Conservative MPs, and worked to promote privatisation, were strongly felt throughout the 1970s.

This growing backlash against the consensus and tensions between the ‘neo-liberal’ and ‘collectivist’ wings of the party came to a head in 1974 after former Prime Minister Edward Heath lost two elections in the same year to Harold Wilson’s Labour. His leadership of the party was challenged, and then Shadow Environment Secretary Margaret Thatcher won the post in February 1975. Support for the Conservatives grew throughout the remainder of the 1970s, as the Labour government faced further obstacles, culminating in the 1978-9 ‘Winter of Discontent’, which saw widespread strikes across the UK. The Labour government lost power in the May election of that year, with Thatcher’s Conservatives gaining a majority of 43.

The Thatcher years saw the introduction of sweeping economic reforms and massive social change after the upheavals of the 1970s, spearheaded by Thatcher’s own neo-liberal ideology. She ‘saw herself providing the political resolution that had been lacking hitherto’. This commitment to seeing through policy regardless of the odds saw increased privatisation of industries that had, post-war, been incorporated into the public sector, such as railways and steelworks, and a stern line with the trade unions who dissented. Her government’s economic policies were heavily tailored towards individualism and private enterprise rather than the communitarian ideals and extent of state ownership of industry that had prevailed in the consensus years However, it was the social upheavals of the 1980s that her government created which saw a firm break established between the Conservative party and the Church of England.

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Like the Conservative party, a change in the perceived ‘political’ position of the C of E was not an overnight transformation. Despite the church’s usual conservative image, many members identified with the socialist movement throughout the twentieth century, such as William Temple,  Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-44, who also expressed distaste at the state over government actions taken during the Second World War. Although perhaps something of a maverick figure, Dick Sheppard, then a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, became a prominent pacifist as early as the 1930s.

However, in 1983 the growing state of deprivation in the ...

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