The Social as the Political: thinking about Con Clubs

Two archival coincidences have been making me think at length about how important the social and socialising element in political life is – or more accurately, was. I spent a day in the lovely South Wales Miners’ Library a few weeks ago looking through the contents of the old Salisbury Conservative Club in Swansea. The place has been closed down, so things like its book collections, its folders of receipts, and all its old signs and photographs have had to go somewhere. It’s a great collection, more full of memories and a sense of a recent but lost past than most source collections I have looked at.

Similarly, a recent trawl through old constituency Association minute books in Aberystwyth demonstrated the importance of these Con Clubs to local finances and support. When these Associations met, ‘the Clubs’ were always on their minds and on their agendas.

The interesting question is how ‘political’ these Con Clubs were. Were they fundamentally integrated with the local Conservative Party, or was it simply a matter of them sharing, perhaps uneasily, the same name?

What has survived from the Salisbury Con Club would suggest that this was an organisation completely bereft of politics. OK, more of the books from its reading room are of a political flavour than perhaps one would expect, but they are not overtly party political, they cover a wide variety of subjects, from travelling to philosophy, and the evidence suggests that people (mostly men) met in the club to drink and play billiards. Annual outings were organised to the Newbury races, and to Ilfracombe – via boat. Not to party conferences.

There are plenty of examples of political meeting being held at Clubs in Wales, but with most of the patrons refusing to even walk up the stairs to the meeting on the first floor, opting to stay downstairs in the bar. In Cardiff, Skittle competitions were held between the Clubs, the Executive Committees and the Conservative ‘Organisations’. This kind of activity, along with card games and snooker tournaments, constituted the core purpose of Conservative clubs.

So the politics in Con Clubs was rarely of an explicit or outwardly enthusiastic nature. But sources like minute books reveal the key – and arguable more powerful – role that Con Clubs could play: as implicit buttresses for the local party. In all areas of the country, clubs paid subscriptions to the relevant local Conservative Association. In April 1947 the Penarth Cub told the Executive Committee of Cardiff South East that it actually wanted to double its subscriptions!

The Clubs, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s were asked by Associations to push the political message to their patrons. Prospective Parliamentary candidates would visit to meet people there, and at election time the buildings themselves were often used as campaign headquarters and venues for hustings or speeches. In areas where there were weak Conservative organisations, like in the ‘Valley’ areas of Aberdare and the Rhondda, the Clubs provided the vital (and usually free) office space for skeleton staff during general election campaigns.

But it was not just through the clubs that social activity could be utilised to drum up political support. Political meetings were often arranged by the Conservative Party in Wales in conjunction with concerts and dances. Fetes were by far the biggest fundraisers for Local Associations, but they were not nakedly political. It is hard to believe that people went to such events, however, without some understanding that the event was geared towards politics in some sort of way. ‘Big name’ individuals often opened such occasions, and spoke on the theme of the Conservative Party. Lord Woolton, the Party’s popular Chairman from 1945 to 1955, was considered a good catch for such events.

Fusing the social with the political, but with such lightness of touch, was key to building up a level of support amongst people who were not necessarily keen and eager paid-up party members, but who may have been willing to lend the party their vote on polling day. Cardiff North, once the most successful Conservative seat in Wales, threw many a fete and bazaar, raising hundreds and hundreds of pounds each time. As anyone involved with political organisation ‘on the ground’ will know, money often equals success.

All of this talk about fayres and billiard-playing club members seems so quaint and otherworldly now. The thought that an event organised by a political party would attract hundreds of people who turned up and willingly gave their money for (including in times of austerity) is laughable in the context of the early twenty-first century. As I have written here before, this is undoubtedly down to apathy and a political system which no longer represents real people with real concerns. But perhaps it also has something to do with what I’ve been discussing above. With wealth and luxury came individualism. People are far less likely to socialise in contemporary Britain now they have various gadgets and the TV for company instead. For my generation, paying to be part of a social club, or attending events like fayres (or whatever their modern day equivalent is) to meet people seems like an eccentricity, akin to church-going. Being part of tightly knit social groups, which were often organised under the banner of politics as a means of co-ordination, is now rare. Perhaps the extent to which political parties relied on this has been underestimated, and therefore the decline in the bonds of real social friendships and social interactions has consequently weakened them as much as the dearth of real ideas and ideology has. I don’t know why we aren’t more worried about this.