Progressive conservatism is a political ideology that attempts to combine conservative and progressive policies. While still supportive of capitalist economy, it stresses the importance of government intervention in order to improve human and environmental conditions.
Progressive conservatism first arose in Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1870s and 1880s under Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli respectively. Disraeli's 'One Nation' Toryism has since become the central progressive conservative tradition in the UK.
In the UK, the Prime Ministers Disraeli, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, David Cameron and Theresa May have been described as progressive conservatives. The Catholic Church's Rerum Novarum (1891) advocates a progressive conservative doctrine known as social Catholicism.
In the United States, Theodore Roosevelt has been the principal figure identified with progressive conservatism as a political tradition. Roosevelt stated that he had "always believed that wise progressivism and wise conservatism go hand in hand". The administration of President William Howard Taft was considered by some to be progressive conservative. Various European leaders such as Angela Merkel have also aligned themselves with progressive conservative politics.
History
Europe
Germany
In Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck enacted various progressive social welfare programs such as domestic health, accident, and old age insurance, out of conservative motivations to distance workers from the socialist movement and as humane ways to assist in maintaining the industrial revolution.
In the early 20th century, politicians of the Free Conservative Party addressed means of attracting the working class away from social democracy and towards radical nationalism such as through promoting "patriotic worker" associations. Free Conservative Party member Adolf Grabowsky advocated imperialism as a national project to unify Germans and break down internal divisions, and declared that the Free Conservative Party "finally wants to organize itself in a decisive progressive-conservative manner, and hopes thereby to call forth the great new conservative movement which should enable the educated strata to drive once again to the right".
In 1918, when the party was dissolved, moderate Free Conservatives joined the German People's Party (DVP), which was itself later dissolved in 1933 following Adolf Hitler's rise to power. After the Second World War, most members of the German People's Party joined the modern Free Democratic Party.
United Kingdom
From the 1860s to the 1970s, progressive conservative politics were popular within the British Conservative Party. Winston Churchill considered himself a progressive conservative, and once said that a "strong Conservative Party with an overwhelming majority and a moderate even progressive leadership...might well be the fulfillment of all that Dizzy [Disraeli] and my father aimed at". Progressive conservatives succeeded in pressing the Conservative Party to maintain similar social policies to that of the Labour Party, particularly the Bow Group that urged the Conservatives to be moderate on social policy and opposed more extreme conservative-minded bodies that disagreed with this moderation. One of the primary British progressive conservative advocates in this time was Rab Butler. Butler was responsible for creating The Industrial Charter (1947) that sought to combine support of free enterprise with Tory interventionism that promised security of employment, promotion of full employment, and improvement of incentives to employees to help them develop skills and talents - allowing them to fulfill their full potential as individuals, and enhanced status for all employees regardless of their occupation. The Industrial Charter was criticized by Conservative leader Winston Churchill though he eventually supported it, and more harshly condemned by more right-leaning Conservatives as being a step towards socialism.
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron was described as a progressive conservative. As British Conservative Party leader in 2009, he launched the Progressive Conservatism Project at the British think tank Demos. In his speech, he outlined his vision of a contemporary progressive conservatism: