John Strafford runs the Conservative Campaign for Democracy and has held office at virtually every level in the voluntary party, including nine years on the former National Union Executive Committee. In his newly-published book, Our Fight for Democracy – A History of Democracy in the United Kingdom, he analyses the weaknesses of British democracy today and suggests how it could be improved.
The end of World War II was a political watershed with the Conservative Party suffering its greatest electoral defeat. The desire for equality and change brought the Labour Party to power. The Conservative Party responded to the challenge by bringing in Lord Woolton as Party Chairman. Woolton was to serve nine years as Party Chairman and was the most successful Chairman in the history of the Conservative Party. With party membership at about 250,000 in 1945, Woolton realised that he had to build up membership in order to once again create a mass membership Party. He believed that one of the reasons for the defeat in the General Election had been that the Party had forgotten the “little people”.
A membership campaign was launched in 1947 and by the summer of 1948, overall membership had increased by one million to two and a quarter million. Woolton took on over 150 paid “missioners” who worked mainly in the marginals at Central Office’s expense, and visited over a million homes. The official membership campaign ended at the Party Conference in October 1948. By 1952, party membership had risen to a staggering 2.8 million.
In 1949, in Winston Churchill’s own constituency of Woodford there were 12,898 members including 1,172 Young Conservatives. City areas were not neglected, with 60,000 members in Birmingham, two thirds of them women. The young were not forgotten. In the summer of 1945 there were only 50 Young Conservative branches in the country. By 1946 this had increased to 1,546 nationally and by 1948 to 2,129 branches with no less than 150,000 members.
Participation was the key to this success. Swinton College was opened in 1947. Its role was to educate activists, train agents and volunteers and arrange lectures. The Conservative Political Centre encouraged local discussion groups and by 1947 there were 557 of them, meeting regularly in a member’s house and all putting forward ideas and views on policy. Their views were taken seriously by Central Office.
The strength of Party membership was not to last. By 1979 it had fallen to 1,350,000. It continued to fall and went down to 400,000 by 1997. A million members simply evaporated. The most serious losses were of suburban and county activists for whom executive power on local councils was a quid pro quo for loyalty at national elections.
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