Madam, – Kevin James O’Mahony wants to establish a “Conservative Party of Ireland” (July 26th). But we have one already. It’s called Fine Gael. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – In response to Kevin James O’Mahony’s call for a Cameronian style “Conservative Party of Ireland”, he may be interested to know that the Conservative Party was something of an export from this country to Britain.
The inventor of the term “Conservative party” was a Galwegian, John Wilson Croker MP, a close friend and advisor to Sir Robert Peel, and the most influential press spin doctor of his day.
Peel is commonly credited with first founding the party by appealing for a coalition of moderate Whigs and “liberal” Tories in his Tamworth Manifesto (1834).
However, its principles of resisting extremes on both sides, firm defence of the constitution, and advocacy of unitary prudent reform, had been promulgated some years earlier by Croker and his predominantly Irish press circle in Ireland and Britain.
Notable among them the Dubliner, SL Giffard, founder of the Evening Standard, William Maginn, who established the forerunner of Punch, Fraser's Magazine, and his fellow Corkonian, F S Mahony.
Furthermore, although almost entirely neglected in Irish history save for, as far as I know, a section of the MA history course taught at NUI Galway, they took some patriotic pride in seeing the principles of modern conservatism as part of an Irish tradition of conciliatory political philosophy promoted by their heroes, Swift, Molyneux, Goldsmith and Burke.
(My book, John Wilson Croker: Irish Ideas and the Invention of Modern Conservatism, will be published by Irish Academic Press in October.) – Yours, etc,