The British Conservative Party, the Scandinavian Conservative Parties, and Inter-Party Cooperation in Europe, 1949-78

Abstract

This article explores the links between the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties in Europe between the late-1940s and the late-1970s. Its findings show that these parties were closer to each other than has been assumed. The British and Scandinavian Conservative parties built up significant relationships with each other at the organisational level throughout the 1950s, which led to transfers of political knowledge and information mostly from Britain to Scandinavia. From the 1960s the circulation of knowledge started to flow in both directions, but it was strongest in the Swedish case. The British Conservative Party then bridged the gap between the Scandinavian Conservative parties and the West German CDU/ CSU and the Austrian ÖVP in Europe, helping to cement the parties into a new centre-right international known as European Democrat Union. This gave the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties more contacts abroad and reinforced the view that British Conservatism was not an ideological outlier in Europe. But the history of inter-party cooperation shows that the British and Scandinavian Conservatives were mostly at odds with the greater integrationist and federalist ambitions of Christian democrats. Therefore, the article offers us another way of explaining the persistence of Euroscepticism in the British Conservative Party.