Neo-Tories: The Revolt of British Conservatives against Democracy and Political Modernity

by Bernhard Dietz

The danger to British democracy in the interwar period came from a different source to that which has thus far been assumed. It came from a network of radical conservatives who challenged the political system and sought to replace it with an authoritarian corporate state.

In this book, Bernhard Dietz provides the first systematic analysis of this network and its members, which are called Neo-Tories. With strong links to the European right, yet a minority back home, this group of British conservatives are all the more fascinating today because it is on their ultimate failure that the success of British democracy rested.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Bernhard Dietz is Assistant Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Germany.

Reviews

[Ben Duckworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this an excellent (700+page) summary of the views of the inter-war traditional conservatives in the UK, their outlooks towards suffrage/mass democracy, the corporate state, imperialism, the role of the monarchy and their varying positions towards continental trends around Revolutionary Conservatism and the rise of the developing authoritarian rightist regimes there. Interestingly, they took their cue from British historical events, such as the 'Glorious Revolution' rather than, like Burke and continentals a reaction to the French Revolution and the genesis of new political conflicts and engagements emanating from this.

It offers a wider smorgasbord of attitudes therefore than the narrower - and non-British derived viewpoints - of those better known and more fashionable writers (in some circles) who are considered the European headliners for this milieu. Many of their periodicals can still be cross referenced on online archive sites to get a contemporary flavour of the wider bubbling ferment in the early 20C.

The author is not sympatico, but he is reasonably fair and it's a good launch point into acquainting yourself with this intellectual bummock of now long forgotten perspectives.