Young Conservatives

The Young Conservatives was the youth wing of the United Kingdom's Conservative Party until the organisation was replaced in 1998 by Conservative Future.

Origins

The "Junior Imperial and Constitutional League" was formed in 1906 with objectives to encourage practical political work and organisation among young people in Britain. Junior Associations were set up in each Parliamentary Division and throughout the British Empire, co-operating closely with Conservative and Unionist Associations with an ambition to create Imperial unity and to further the Conservative and Unionist cause.

In 1925 the "Young Britons Organisation" was formed as the juvenile branch of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations. It closed down during the Second World War.

After the Conservative Party suffered a catastrophic defeat in the 1945 general election, the "Young Britons Organisation" was reformed to cater for both boys and girls aged 6-16, while the "Young Conservatives" was set up to cater for an older age group.

Rise and fall

The Young Conservatives attracted a large following and, by 1955, claimed a membership of 150,000. This made it the largest political youth movement in a liberal democracyFact|date=August 2008, though not all its members were strongly motivated by politics. A large part of its appeal lay in its social activities that brought young people together in a socially safe environment. Countless middle-class British couples met through the "YC's" dances, rambles, and charity events in the 1950s. However, the social dimension of the movement was to prove its ultimate downfall. By the 1980s, the party leadership were embarrassed by all-too-frequent media revelations that alleged the Young Conservatives held drunken balls and espoused extreme right-wing policies, although most of the stories concerned the rival Federation of Conservative Students. The future BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, was National Chairman of the YCs in the mid-1980s, elected as a moderate candidate.

Membership fell from a peak of 250,000 to just a few thousand, while the rival organisation Conservative Students claimed significantly more members. The end came in 1998 when Conservative leader William Hague announced the closure of Young Conservatives and the launch of a new organisation, Conservative Future.

In popular culture

"Young Conservatives" is the title of a 1982 song by The Kinks, in which Ray Davies comments on the general swing to the right under Margaret Thatcher.

References

* [http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/modern/cpa/cco/cco506.html#cco506.intro Conservative Party Archive Youth Organisations, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/politics/50178.stm BBC News Online Tories ditch Young Conservatives]