Review of Dr Nigel Gervas Meek’s book on the Conservative Party

Libertarian Alliance editor Nigel Meek’s book on the Conservative Party is favourably reviewed in the forthcoming issue of Political Studies Review, one of the four journals of the Political Studies Association, the UK’s leading academic politics association.

Buy it on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/d8dzgy2.

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Conservative Party Politicians at the Turn of the 20th/21st Centuries: Their Attitudes, Behaviour and Background by Nigel Gervas Meek. London, Civic Education and Research Trust, 2012, 376pp., £55.00, ISBN 978 1 4717 0080 4.

Dr Andrew Scott Crines, University of Leeds.

Political Studies Review, Volume 12, Issue 2, page 315, May 2014.

Conservative studies are a well-served field of academic scrutiny and this book makes a thoroughly researched and interesting contribution to that field. The book does not hide its attempt to present a defensive research agenda with regard to the Conservative Party and conservatism more broadly. The author highlights his former membership of the Conservative Party and how this informed his political perspective and the arguments made in the book. As a result, it is not an entirely objective account of Conservative politicians, which may lead some to discard it for pursuing a partisan agenda. That would be a mistake because this is an interesting piece of conservative scholarship that draws its conclusions from an extensive dataset on conservative attitudes. Put simply, although it is clearly partisan in its analysis, there is still significant value in the data gathered as it helps shine a light on the Conservative Party during the period under review.

The book wrestles with a wide range of issues such as re-defining conservatism by critiquing the traditional left/right ideological typology, while also scrutinising the backgrounds of local councillors, outsider attitudes to the Conservative Party and the internal views of the growing number of smaller right-wing parties in British politics. The book also presents some interesting findings on the role of religion and conservatism by attempting to draw in theological issues in explaining contemporary difficulties. The diversity of the book gives it a richness of topics that keeps the reader absorbed and enlightened by the author’s style of analysis.

As this book is a reprint of a doctoral thesis it follows a style more appropriate for a PhD than a conventional monograph. This may be off-putting to some. However, I would suggest that it gives the reader an opportunity to engage with the level of scholarship being produced by conservative scholars and the depth of research being conducted. The author does not shy away from using some unorthodox sources, such as lecturers’ university profile pages. I would have preferred the arguments to draw more from existing conservative scholarship, which is often given the courtesy of a brief mention but is by no means sufficient. Indeed, the author uses Tim Bale as a source just twice, which is surprising given the scale of work Bale has produced. As a result, the book feels as if it stands slightly to one side of the existing academic study of conservatism. Despite this, the book would be of most interest to scholars of British conservatism and Conservative Party politics.