Hughligans

The Hughligans - originated as a suitcase word from the English first name Hugh and the word hooligan , for example "Rüpel" - were a group within the House of Commons of the British Conservative Party in the years from the turn of the century to the outbreak of the First World War.

The group essentially consisted of a clique of rebellious young backbenchers from the Conservative faction around Hugh Cecil, 1st Baron Quickswood , and defined themselves through criticism of what , in the opinion of their relatives, were misguided policies of the conservative leader Arthur Balfour . The Hughligans were given their name based on Cecil's first name and the English word hooligan , which was used to describe the rowdy, indecent manner in which the young MPs around Cecil behaved in the opinion of their critics.

In addition to Cecil, members of the group included Frederick Edwin Smith , Earl Percy, Arthur Stanley , Ian Malcolm and Lord George Hamilton and, until his party change in 1904, Winston Churchill .

After the overthrow of the conservative government in 1905, the Hughligans embarked on a sharp confrontation course with Balfour, whom they accused of not showing enough aggressiveness in his role as the current opposition leader. In the years that followed, the Hughlighans continued their anti-Balfour agitation within the party, contributing to Balfour's fall as party leader in 1910. After Balfour's overthrow, the group gradually disbanded, only to finally disappear from the scene during the First World War as a result of the “re-mixing” of the British party landscape by the grand coalition government of 1915 and the accompanying external reorientation and internal restructuring of the conservative party.