Title: Conservative Party | History, Facts, Policy, & Structure | Britannica
Headings: Conservative Party
Conservative Party
political party, United Kingdom
History
Conservative Party

Content: From 1964 to 1979 the Conservatives held power alternately with the Labour Party. Under the prime ministership of Edward Heath (1970–74), the party pursued policies designed to deregulate finance and industry. Economic problems led to confrontations with the trade unions, especially the National Union of Miners, and to internal party dissension. Heath called an election in 1974 and the party lost, allowing Labour to form a minority government. After losing a second national election to Labour in 1974, Heath was succeeded as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, who during her four years as leader of the opposition (1975–79) frequently stated her determination to pursue deregulation and supply-side economic reforms. As prime minister after the Conservatives’ victory over Labour in 1979, Thatcher attempted to “roll back the state” in the economic sphere, weaken the power of the trade unions, and reduce welfare programs. She combined this ambitious economic agenda—which included the privatization of several state-owned industries and the sale of more than 1.5 million council houses (publicly owned houses) to their tenants—with moral traditionalism and skepticism toward further European integration through the European Economic Community (ultimately succeeded by the European Union ). Critics both inside and outside the Conservative Party contended that the “cult of the market” did much to disintegrate the social order, yet Thatcher was able to lead her party to resounding victories in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, owing in part to her decisive leadership in the Falkland Islands War (1982) and to deep divisions in the opposition. Her eventual resignation as party leader (and therefore as prime minister) in 1990 reflected the combined impact of a number of factors, including public protests over a proposal to finance local government through a flat-rate “poll tax,” a series of bitter conflicts with some of her senior ministers, her strident and authoritarian style, and a growing sense among backbenchers that she might prove unable to withstand the electoral challenge of a newly united and considerably reformed Labour Party. Thatcher’s successor, John Major, had held senior ministerial office for only a brief period prior to his selection as prime minister.