LAUSR

ABSTRACT Despite being hidden from view and side-lined by history, women were a key and active part of the Conservative Party's success in Wales in this period. Although rarely candidates or Agents, a number of Conservative women were forceful and brave political campaigners. Whilst they were often the defenders of social conservatism and rigid gender norms their actions and discourse sometimes owed more to the kind of ‘progressive’ politics they were resisting than they seemed to realise. On a wider scale, many middle-class women members in Wales, as in Britain on the whole, provided the Party with financial and electoral support, but their membership of branches and associations was often part of a broader patchwork of respectability, social activity, conservatism and resistance of societal change. As a result, these groups offered women an opportunity to exercise a form of social and organisational leadership.