Propaganda and political reality: The British Conservative Party's unemployment insurance policy, 1930--1935

This dissertation examines how the Conservative Party constructed a Conservative constituency among workers during the years of 1930 and 1935 by means of both policy and propaganda. During the years, mass unemployment and its relief constituted one of the most significant socio-economic and political issues in British society. In the absence of any effective employment policy, the Party's only active policy toward the issue was its unemployment insurance system.; Indeed, the Party's propaganda for the system contributed much to the formation of a Conservative constituency among workers. The Party's propaganda repeatedly stressed that the ultimate goal of its unemployment insurance system was to help the unemployed maintain their employability and then return to the decasualized labor market as self-reliant regular workers—self-help through decasualization. Simultaneously, the Party elevated traditional values such as individual independence, initiative, and self-help to the level of English virtues and patriotism, while presenting the Conservatives and the National Government as a national party representing such virtues.; However, the formation of a broad base of support among workers was a result not only of the Party's propaganda for self-help but also of its political pragmatism which made its unemployment insurance policy flexible. Whenever working-class voters protested against the Means Test and the unemployment assistance rates (the Means Test crisis and the UAB crisis), the Conservatives were willing to grant more generous unemployment relief at the expense of many of their own essential unemployment insurance principles. Consequently, the Conservative Party could assuage the popular rage and thus maintain the existing social order, ultimately winning elections and remaining in power.; Simultaneously, the generous unemployment relief helped many unemployed workers maintain their employability and their hope for self-help, and then return to the labor market. The goal of the Conservatives' unemployment insurance system was achieved. But the means of achieving the goal was, contrary to the Conservatives' propaganda, not decasualization and regularization of employment, but generosity of the benefit/assistance rates. Casual labor and other irregular forms of employment persisted. Propaganda for self-help went hand-in-hand with flexible unemployment insurance policy in the construction of a Conservative constituency among workers.