Conservatism at the crossroads: Conservative thought and the renewal of democratic politics in Britain and Scandinavia, 1930-1963

In its original form, the project was designed to try to identify and assess the historical and contemporary significance of external thinking on British and Scandinavian Conservatism in the period 1930-1963. This was a period when Conservatives had to re-evaluate their political ideas in response to the challenges of the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the rise of Labour or social democratic politics. These challenges cemented the breakdown of a global economic system that had been built on nineteenth century ideals of liberal democracy. In Britain and the Scandinavian countries this resulted in the transition from the old liberal order to a new social democratic one after 1945. Therefore, in its first stage, the project explored how British and Scandinavian Conservatives adapted their ideas in response to calls for more state intervention in economic and social policy. In doing so, it focused on the degree to which British and Scandinavian Conservatives opened themselves up to transnational or foreign influences when they had to rethink these important aspects of their Conservatism. By rethinking Conservative contributions to democratic politics in these ways, the research team were able to begin to compare the similarities and differences of British and Scandinavian Conservative thought in this period and to start to think about how the project could be used to engage with broader historiographies on centre-right parties in Europe during the longer period of the Cold War. In the second phase of the project, individual members of the project team started to publish a series of academic articles on the development of British and Danish Conservatism in the 1940s and 1950s, addressing important questions about the emergence of a ‘New Conservatism’ or a ‘liberal-Conservatism’, as well as the relationship between Conservatism and Christian democratic politics. Meanwhile, the PhD candidate continued to research Norwegian Conservatism in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s but with a special emphasis on the moral foundations of Norwegian Conservatism. These approaches coincided with the opening up of new archival collections in the British Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which not only allowed the project team to think anew about links between the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties, but also between Conservatives from these countries and Christian democrats from a number of other continental European countries like West-Germany, Austria, and Italy. Furthermore, these collections allowed the project leader to start researching more deeply the broader roles of the British and Scandinavian Conservatives in the building of the new centre-right internationalism that culminated in both the European Democrat Union in 1978 and the International Democrat Union in 1983. In the final stage of the project, the team organised a major international workshop online in 2021 on the nature of Conservatism and Christian democracy in Britain, the Nordic states, and Western Europe more broadly, covering a larger chronological period from the 1940s to the 1990s where the historical development of Swedish Conservatism took centre stage. Beyond the project’s original and individual research goals, the project team used another workshop and a major conference in 2022 to develop their work and to start to move towards thinking about publishing a collaborative edited volume on the subject of ‘Conservatism, Christian democracy, and the Dynamics of Transformation: Traditions, Cooperation and Influence in North-West Europe, 1945-91’. The projected volume and culmination of the entire project draws upon the expertise of the network of scholars that joined the conference to discuss these comparisons across the entire period. The volume is contracted for publication with Manchester University Press in 2024 and it includes essays on the history of conservatism in Britain and the Nordic countries, but also Austria, West-Germany, France, and broader transnational case studies that seek to explore and to look beyond centre-right party networks. At the same time, one member of the project team has published an article exploring the inter-party relations between the British Conservative party and the Scandinavian parties. While another member has published a major ‘popular science’ book relating some of the findings of this project to current affairs in Denmark. In this way, the main issues raised by this project can be used to inform contemporary debates about the nature of Conservatism in Britain and the Scandinavian countries in the twenty-first century. Research on the project was still ongoing and the writing up of existing results was continuing when the project period came to an end in August 2023.

The project has helped the project manager to expand his research into new areas of the history of European conservatism and Christian democracy. This means he has significantly expanded his research profile and built several new areas of competency in his field, particularly in relation to transnational relations and exchanges between conservative and Christian democratic parties in Britain, the Nordic countries, West Germany, and Austria. He has also been able to develop a new strand of his research by looking into two centre-right internationals based on new discoveries in the archives (European Democrat Union and International Democrat Union). The project has also allowed him to expand chronologically from the early to mid-twentieth century, meaning he is now an expert on the whole of the twentieth century in this research area. Therefore, the Young Research Talents Scheme has really helped him to solidify and extend his area of expertise, which will allow him to make more connections between past and present. His research in these areas also helped him to be promoted to full professor at his institution and the experience of applying for the grant and managing the project team helped him to win another competitive grant in the UK, which has helped him build yet another research network in addition to the Scandinavian one that has grown out of this project. The results in the form of publications have greatly expanded historians’ knowledge of centre-right politics in Britain, the Nordic region, and western Europe, and they have helped to open new avenues for future research in these areas that have some relevance for the development of political ideas and policies in the present. At the core of the project was an attempt to establish a new network of scholars from different countries to focus on the subject matter. The core research team was made up of scholars working in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (though the project manager is from the UK), and connections were made with scholars working in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Finland, and the UK. New working relationships have been established that can contribute to future grant applications, publications, and the researching of new knowledge about political history. The core findings of the project have helped the postdoc to write a popular history book about Danish politics and he has now established a think-tank and writes regularly for the Danish press. In this way, the project has contributed to the postdoc’s ability to transfer knowledge from academia to Danish politics and society. Furthermore, the project has had a real practical impact or at least it will do when the publications have appeared in print because knowledge that was previously only available in Scandinavian languages will now be available in English; a good example of this will be the guest researcher’s work on Swedish conservatism that had only previously appeared in Swedish.

This project will identify and assess the historical and contemporary significance of external thinking on British and Scandinavian Conservatism in the period 1930-1963. Conservatives had to re-evaluate their political ideas in response to the challenges of the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the rise of Labour or social democratic politics in this period. These challenges cemented the breakdown of a global economic system that had been built on nineteenth century ideals of liberal democracy. In Britain and the Scandinavian countries this resulted in the transition from the old liberal order to a new social democratic one after 1945. Conservatives also had to respond to transnational ideas and influences in this period, but without any systematic research into the transnational dimensions of Conservative parties in these countries it is impossible to know how important these influences were for the development of Conservative thought in each country. This project combines comparative and transnational approaches to throw new light on the development of intellectual cultures of Conservatism in these countries. The overarching research questions focus on how British and Scandinavian Conservatives adapted their ideas in response to calls for more state intervention in economic and social policy, and, the degree to which British and Scandinavian Conservatives were open to transnational influences when they had to rethink these important aspects of their Conservatism. The main hypothesis is that British and Scandinavian Conservative parties were not as different and national as we assume. By comparing Conservative contributions to the renewal of democratic politics in this period we can research the similarities and differences of British and Scandinavian Conservative thought. The main issues raised by this project can be used to inform contemporary debates about the limits of state intervention in the twenty-first century.