Britain's Tories are named after an old Irish word for outlaw
Tory began as an insult. During the Exclusion Bill crisis of the late 1670s, opponents borrowed an Irish word for an outlaw or robber, a pursued man, and flung it at their rivals. The label stuck so firmly that Britain's Conservative Party is still called the Tories nearly three and a half centuries later.
The party's formal name came later. In 1830 J. Wilson Croker suggested Conservative in an article for the Quarterly Review, and the word caught on at once. Robert Peel adopted it around 1834, and his Tamworth Manifesto is usually treated as the founding moment. By 1845 Conservative had largely replaced Tory in everyday usage. Some historians instead trace the lineage to the followers of William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s, who never called themselves either.
Through the 19th century the Conservatives and the Liberals dominated politics. As voting rights widened, the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli tried to broaden the party's appeal, pushing through their own Reform Act in 1867, and under Disraeli it presided over the Empire at its height. In 1886 it allied with the Liberal Unionists of Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain, who opposed Irish home rule, and the two merged in 1912 to create the Conservative and Unionist Party.
Division nearly broke it first. Chamberlain's campaign against free trade split the party, prompting a young Winston Churchill to cross over to the Liberals; he returned in 1925. Arthur Balfour lost control amid defections, and the Liberals won a landslide in January 1906. Bonar Law, leader from 1911, restored discipline and strengthened the party machinery.
War reversed its fortunes. Conservative leaders backed aid to France from the start, and after the Shell Crisis damaged the Liberal government, a coalition formed in May 1915. The Liberals then split, and a Conservative landslide in 1918 left the party dominant. It used patriotism and opposition to socialism against the rising Labour Party and actively courted women voters during the 1920s, beginning a century in which it became one of history's most electorally successful parties.
Source: Conservative Party (UK)
