October 19, 2023 - 11:45am
Among those Tories whose veins run truly blue, Tamworth is a semi-mythical name. It has clear Romantic heritage: Anglo-Saxon, former capital of Offa’s Mercia, a market-outpost on the edge of Birmingham sprawl. But for some Conservatives, it’s more like Bethlehem or Arthur’s Tintagel: the hallowed birthplace of the so-called Tamworth Manifesto, a letter sent in 1834 by then Tory leader Sir Robert Peel to his constituents in the town, and then widely circulated in the press. It was in this letter, as many political commentators are unthinkingly repeating today, that Peel supposedly “founded” the modern Conservative Party.
For now however, and certainly for today, the name and reputation of Tamworth is blighted. The by-election in the town will see it finally elect an MP to replace Chris Pincher, the nominatively-determined groper who dragged his exit out so long that he has outlasted the prime minister he helped topple.
The Pincher debacle seems a world away from the stately Victoriana of Robert Peel. But Peel and the ongoing idolisation of his Manifesto is really symbolic of the Conservative Party’s one constant: its ceaseless ideological revisionism, product of a simultaneous allergy to stasis and revulsion at change. British Conservatism is truly a movement that has always preferred inventing its traditions to establishing them.
Mostly a statement on the arcane debates of its day, the key passage in the Manifesto comes when Peel concedes that the 1832 Great Reform Act was “a final and irrevocable settlement”, before promising “a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper”. These clauses alone are seen to mark a new era of pragmatic leadership, accepting mild democracy and promising measured, Burkean reform.
But as a democratic document, it was redundant months after production — the Peel family had effectively owned the Tamworth seat for decades and like many Victorian elections, the subsequent vote there was unopposed. And this wasn’t a direction of travel so much as an acknowledgement of political defeat. The early 1830s had been the most politically violent in our history. As the issue of Parliamentary reform was repeatedly blocked, Britain’s famously quiescent population took up pikes and muskets for the last time in real anger.
In 1831, a crowd smashed all the windows of the Hyde Park mansion belonging to the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington; in Bristol, the town hall’s wine cellar was emptied and the building set on fire. The Duke of Newcastle’s castle in Nottingham was so thoroughly razed that it couldn’t be restored until 1875. “Britain”, E.P. Thompson later wrote “was within an ace of revolution”.
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SubscribeI found this interesting, not least because the period of history following on from the French Revolution and the fears of it spreading to these islands as the Industrial Revolution gained pace is a fascinating example of how a nation state can evolve an already ancient system of government to just about accommodate the needs of the population enough to prevent it from tipping over from rebellion into revolution.
There are lessons to be drawn for our era, which is no less turbulent and primed with new technologies.
The French Revolution did spread to these islands. The 1798 Rebellion in Ireland was a massive upheaval. Tens of thousands died and it led to the Act of Union
Yes, fair point. The mainland feared the landing of a Napoleonic army on Irish shores, and it very nearly happened, but for adverse weather conditions.