The Tory Party in Britain can count among its leaders Winston Churchill, Harold MacMillan, and Margaret Thatcher, and is now led by the Eton and Oxford educated David Cameron, who hails from Berkshire, a traditional Tory heartland.
For many, those leaders and their party is the bastion of all that is traditionally British. Yet, in one of the great ironies of history, this party, so identified with English conservatism, unionism, and jingoism, owes its name, and possibly even its existence, to an Irishman who was born in Co Galway - John Wilson Croker.
Croker’s life and ideas are now the subject of a fascinating new book, John Wilson Croker: Irish Ideas and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, by Dr Robert Portsmouth of the NUI, Galway and published by the Irish Academic Press.
Galwegian
John Wilson Croker is possibly, alongside Daniel O’Connell and the Duke of Wellington, the most influential Irishman of the first half of the 19th century and certainly the most significant figure to emerge from Connacht in that period. Why then is his name not as well known as, say, Charles Stewart Parnell or Edward Carson?
“Because he doesn’t fit into either the Irish nationalist tradition or the Irish unionist tradition,” Dr Portsmouth tells me as we sit for the interview in the NUIG History Department on Tuesday afternoon. “There are other traditions and Croker fits in with those. He was a radical reformer and argued for Catholic Emancipation. He believed in the union with Britain but wanted to improve the state of things for Ireland.”
Croker was born in Craughwell, County Galway in 1780, a distant relation of the Irish political theorist Edmund Burke, who would later prove influential on Croker’s own thinking. He attended Trinity College in Dublin, where he became friends with Thomas Moore, and while there, became a pamphleteer. His talents for writing and ideas were soon spotted and this paved the way for a distinguished career in politics and the media.
Croker sat as a Westminster MP for Downpatrick, Athlone, and Dublin University. He was on a committee that helped design regency London; he was an adviser on art and architecture to the prince regent (later George IV of Britain ); and he was an advisor to three British prime ministers - George Canning, Robert Peel, and the Duke of Wellington.
“As a press man he was the most influential spin doctor of the 19th century,” says Dr Portsmouth. “His talent for organisation led to his appointment as first secretary of the admiralty, in effect the general manager of the Royal Navy, and this was during the Napoleonic Wars, at only 28 years of age.”
An extraordinary career, but a very British one, so did Croker actuallyd see himself as Irish? “In that time Protestants and Catholic middle classes and gentry saw no real incongruity with being Irish and British,” says Dr Portsmouth, “but Croker was patriotically Irish and he liked to remind the Duke of Wellington, who was also from Ireland, that the first speech the duke made was in support of Catholic relief to the Irish House of Commons.”
Developing The Tories
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Dr Robert Portsmouth of NUIG. Photo:- Mike Shaughnessy
Perhaps Croker’s most significant legacy is in the development of the conservative political ideology and is the role he played in laying the ground for and helping develop what became the British Conservative Party. How did this happen?
“Croker was one of the foremost historians of the French Revolution in this period,” says Dr Portsmouth. “He was an avid collector of French revolutionary pamphlets and newspapers. He did not support the revolution but saw it as an example of what could happen to a society when extremism takes hold. He was sympathetic to the aims of the United Irishmen but was appalled by the sectarianism that erupted in Wexford in 1798.”
These events led Croker to conclude that the solution to Ireland’s problems at this time lay not in extremism but in the via media, the middle way. “Croker wanted to develop a middle way between the ‘ultra’ Protestants and ‘ultra’ Catholics who were opposed to conciliation and reform,” says Dr Portsmouth. “He tried to find grounds for a new unity that would be the future of Ireland but one that was disrupted by the increasing Catholicism of Ireland with O’Connell affiliating himself with the Irish Catholic clergy.”
Terms such as liberal and conservative were coming in from the French language but Dr Portsmouth argues that Croker’s idea of a middle way; opposing extremism and supporting cautious experimentation and prudent reform, while defending the constitution, ie, the essence of modern conservatism, was very much an Irish idea and Croker himself was adamant that he was working in a tradition of Irish ideas.
“My hypothesis is that this is the same tradition of Irish political thought that has its origins in the writings of William Molyneux [born in Dublin, 1656-1698], Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith.”
So how did Croker’s ideas lay the grounds for the Conservative Party? Croker was able to communicate his ideas through the media as he was one of the foremost political journalists of his day, heavily involved in the era’s most popular magazines, and friends with three of the major newspaper men of the time - who were also Irish - Dubliner SL Giffard and Corkonians William Maginn and FS Mahony. “Croker believed that the press was one of the most influential forces in society which is why he became involved in the media,” says Dr Portsmouth. “He saw it as a means to enlighten.”
The Conservatives were founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1834 with the publication of his Tamworth Manifesto, but nowhere in that document does it mention the word conservative. The name for Peel’s new party came from a term that appeared in an article in The Quarterly Review in January 1830.
Although there is some dispute about whether the article with the term ‘The Conservative Party’ was actually written by Croker, there is no doubt that the article was expressing his ideas.
“Croker was in control of the content of The Quarterly Review and oversaw the writing of the articles that appeared there,” says Dr Portsmouth, “and he was involved in other publications as well such as Friar’s Magazine and The Standard, which was run by Croker’s brother-in-law, SL Giffard. By 1835 the term ‘The Conservative Party’ was in common usage and its philosophy was composed and promulgated in and by Croker’s predominantly Irish circle of pressmen in Dublin, London, and Edinburgh, before the foundation of the party by Peel in 1834.”
Croker then can be said to have at least given the new party its name, but he was directly involved in developing the party’s ideology. “Peel was Croker’s friend,” says Dr Portsmouth. “Croker was eight years older than him and took Peel under his wing. Peel’s arguments and ideas had to be put together and this was done through the press and it was Croker who wrote the articles, and Peel gave him free rein to write what he liked.”
So in many respects the Conservative Party owes its name and ideology (and to a lesser extent its existence ) to an Irishman. How many modern Tories are aware of the debt they owe this son of County Galway?
“William Hague wrote a very good biography of William Pitt of whom Croker was an admirer, so he would know of him,” says Dr Portsmouth. “Douglas Hurd wrote about Peel so he would know of him too, but other than that, none at all.”
Two places in Canada are named after John Wilson Croker - Croker Bay, Nunavut, and Cape Croker, Ontario. Perhaps it’s now time for Galway to acknowledge the place of John Wilson Croker in Irish history. Would Dr Portsmouth like to see some kind of memorial erected to him in Co Galway? “I think his ides should be recognised,” he says. “There are people in Britain who did far less than he did but have blue plaques all over the place.”
