Top products from r/tories

Not a conservative myself, but I'll try to help.

This post seems a decent list, particularly Burke and Mill, to which I would add some others. Lately I've been working my way through The Foundations of the British Conservative Party, a collection of essays by scholars and others, including John Major, and British Conservatism: The Politics and Philosophy of Inequality, a fair analysis of the ideological role inequality plays in British conservatism. I haven't yet finished either completely, but I would recommend both. With regards to biographies, Thatcher has had such an influence on British conservatism that a good biography on her is useful - I enjoyed Moore's Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume One, and presumably Volume Two is also a decent read, although I haven't yet got round to it. For other biographies, I'd recommend Anthony Seldon, as his works (such as Cameron at 10) tend to be fairly thorough.

Feel free to ignore me, but I think you'd enjoy this.

Don't be put off by the fact it's a bit old. 95% of its ideas are as relevant today as when it was published.

And you can get it for 1p.

Do yourself a favour, stick Roy Foster on your list for Santa and read some proper history.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Ireland-1600-1972-R-Foster/dp/0140132503

The Associations were set up in 1868, a year after the Second Reform Act, which gave the vote to skilled working class, and four years before this speech.

The quote is from Blake's 'The Conservative Party from Peel to Major': https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Party-Peel-Major-ebook/dp/B007BLOEDK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539809285&sr=8-1&keywords=robert+blake+peel+to+major

I read it because my History A-level, which from what I understand of AP is the UK equivalent, course was about British history. If you are just studying empire in general, there's no need to buy it as most of it would be irrelevant.

Unfortunately this requires breaking through the rather shallow mantra of "business = bad, worker = good". Certain groups seem to fail to grasp that healthy business means a healthy economy, with job prospects and wage increases.

They fail to grasp this simply because they don't want to. This book Post Truth made me realise just how f*cked up we are; people do not want to challenge their own views, and only seek to find confirmation of what they suspect to be true.

Thus we find ourselves in a situation where the Labour narrative is incredibly difficult to break, because it's such a convenient belief to hold.

Firstly you need to understand a lot of the history pre1979 (she becoming 1979)

• 3 Day week
  
• Defeat of Ted Heath Oct74
  
• Winter of Discontent
  
  This is what she came into power after - the phrase at the time was manage the decline
  
  What helped was the Falklands War that people saw that you could put the Great back into Britian
  
  What really lead to the ruthlessness label is the [miners strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_(1984%E2%80%9385), coupled to the no lame ducks policy. The no lame ducks policy was, to be brutally honest, the nationalised industries were lossing money had over fist. Either they were privitised or shut, except for Rover as it was too big to fail -hence it was broken up.
  
  There had been numerous and long term issues with these industries, it can be summed up as
  
  
• 1914 - 1918 Great War WWI
  
• 1929 great crash
  
• 1939 - 45 WWII
  
• 1950 rationing still in effect
  
  By 1960's you already have decades of under investment coupled to a make do and mend attitude. Now the bills for the new NHS/rearmament (Nuclear) are coming due and money is tight. It's easier for any chancellor to raid the public utilities/not invest in nationalised industries than put up taxes.
  
  Once the 70's roll round, all this pent up, inefficiency, over manning comes to a head.Hence the no lame ducks.
  
  Now were she is really really unfairly judged is the miners. Scargill needs to shoulder most of the blame here, a good 60%. he has stated that for a mine As far as I can see, the loss is without limits and he set out to enforce that. Miners had done this before in 1974 (see above 3day week/fall of Health) Rather than accept that mines had to close and remember that no miner wanted his son to have to go down the mine, which should have meant fighting for retraining/enterprise zone proper redundancy etc. Scargill was after a repeat of 73/74.
  
  It literally was a case of who governs the country? The miners or the elected government? By breaking the miners union she was able to push through other reforms and we now have no-strike agreements etc.