Throughout their history the conservative party had many leaders, five in total. Of all of these leaders Lord Salisbury is considered by many as the most successful leader, in office 3 times over 17 years and he also passed many reforms. He was born in 1830 into an aristocratic family; he started his life in politics when he became foreign secretary. What really mattered was the fact that he passed many reforms that directly affected the working classes, who at the time were the main body of voters; Salisbury saw this and acted upon what he observed. Salisbury was a strong leader and did much to keep the party in line. He also enabled splinter groups to join more easily with the conservative party and so they were able to make influential alliances. Salisbury believed that after the report on poverty, national decline was immanent and that something had to be done in order to maintain the stature of the country. This struck a chord with the people and it became an important party policy.
Out of all of the party leaders Salisbury and Balfour both introduced many reforms. They passed more acts and reforms that the other leaders put together. These reforms covered many aspects of 19th century life, including the Labourers Allotment Act of 1887, this allowed local authorities the power to buy land and rent it cheaply to the people in an attempt to improve their health growing more vegetables and healthy foods. They also introduced the Mines regulation act in 1887. This act dramatically changed the safety in mines and pits by regulating the hours people could work and the conditions in which they worked. This was a successful reform for the conservatives as it gained the support of the working classes. Another act which made the working classes happy was the unemployed workmen act of 1905. This act provided money from the rates paid to create projects that the unemployed could work on. This reduced the unemployment level in Britain at the time and also helped the overall state of the nation. Another big issue at the time was education and the Fee Grant act of 1891 was a turning point, it granted free elementary education to children. This again helped to improve the overall state of the nation and would help to reduce future unemployment.
Overseas issues were at the forefront of the public’s minds during this time and the conservatives saw this. They put imperialism on their list of things that the public wanted and they satisfied this need by holding many public jubilees and reporting in great detail events that were happening in the empire at the time. Salisbury saw that imperialism could be used to distract the people from any wayward political issues.
Along with all of the reforms, strong leadership and the issue of imperialism another reason the conservative party was so strong at this time was the fact that it has such a strong party structure. The conservatives led the way in party organisation; they tried to develop a string bond between the party and the local areas and constituencies. The party developed the primrose league, created in former leader Benjamin Disraeli’s memory, which was a series of working men’s clubs across the country which helped form this relationship with the working & middle classes. The conservative party soon grasped the country with many more party agents that the liberals, 10 times the number in some places.
So as we can see the conservatives were a force to be reckoned with and they were worthy opposition to the liberals, but was their huge win in 1895 entirely down to their political prowess? - Possibly not. The liberals at this time were going through a very rough time; they faced crisis and internal division. The main problem was that there was a big party split over the issue of home rule. Gladstone, the liberal leader, tried to pass a bill that would give Ireland its own parliament and be separate from the government in London. However many of the liberals at the time opposed the ideas that Gladstone had put forward and so they broke away and voted with the conservatives to defeat the bill. This splinter group was called the ‘Liberal Unionists’ and Salisbury maximised the potential of the split by changing the name of the conservatives to unionists in an attempt to attract more liberal unionists.
Another problem facing the liberals was the lack of strong leadership, as they could not find a suitable replacement for Gladstone. This meant that the party was in disarray and as a result they could not compete with the rapid production of reforms coming from the conservatives. When the liberals tried to pass some bills they were strongly apposed by the House of Lords, which reduced the status of the party yet further.
So from both sides of the story we can see that the conservative party was very strong, they passed many bills and they connected with the people at a local level, how responsible they were for their rise however, is a different story. I think many people at the time would have voted for them because their policies were good but many others would have voted because they were the only option and they didn’t want to vote for a weak, unstable party that had a limited future.