Bayer
Bayer AG is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, where its illuminated corporate logo, the Bayer cross, is a landmark, Bayer's areas of business include human and veterinary pharmaceuticals; the company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. Werner Baumann has been CEO since 2016. Founded in Barmen in 1863 as a dyestuffs factory, Bayer's first and best-known product was aspirin. In 1898 Bayer trademarked the name heroin for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910. Bayer introduced phenobarbital. In 1925 Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben, the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company; the Allied Control Council seized IG Farben after World War II, because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, which included using slave labour from concentration camps.
It was split into its six constituent companies in 1951 split again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. Bayer played a key role in the Wirtschaftswunder in post-war West Germany regaining its position as one of the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations. In 2006 the company acquired Schering, in 2014 it acquired Merck & Co.'s consumer business, with brands such as Claritin, Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's, in 2018 it acquired Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered crops, for $63 billion. Bayer CropScience develops genetically modified pesticides. Bayer AG was founded as a dyestuffs factory in 1863 in Barmen, Germany, by Friedrich Bayer and his partner, Johann Friedrich Weskott, a master dyer. Bayer was responsible for the commercial tasks. Fuchsine and aniline became; the headquarters and most production facilities moved from Barmen to a larger area in Elberfeld in 1866. Friedrich Bayer, son of the company's founder, was a chemist and joined the company in 1873. After the death of his father in 1880, the company became a joint-stock company, Farbenfabriken vorm.
Friedr. Bayern & Co known as Elberfelder Farbenfabriken. A further expansion in Elberfeld was impossible, so the company moved to the village Wiesdorf at Rhein and settled in the area of the alizarin producer Leverkus and Sons. A new city, was founded there in 1930 and became home to Bayer AG's headquarters; the company's corporate logo, the Bayer cross, was introduced in 1904, consisting of the word BAYER written vertically and horizontally, sharing the Y and enclosed in a circle. An illuminated version of the logo is a landmark in Leverkusen. Bayer's first major product was acetylsalicylic acid—first described by French chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt in 1853—a modification of salicylic acid or salicin, a folk remedy found in the bark of the willow plant. By 1899 Bayer's trademark Aspirin was registered worldwide for Bayer's brand of acetylsalicylic acid, but it lost its trademark status in the United States and the United Kingdom after the confiscation of Bayer's US assets and trademarks during World War I by the United States, because of the subsequent widespread usage of the word.
The term aspirin continued to be used in the US, UK and France for all brands of the drug, but it is still a registered trademark of Bayer in over 80 countries, including Canada, Mexico and Switzerland. As of 2011 40,000 tons of aspirin were produced each year and 10–20 billion tablets consumed in the United States alone for prevention of cardiovascular events, it is on the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, the most important medications needed in a basic health system. There is an unresolved controversy over the roles played by Bayer scientists in the development of aspirin. Arthur Eichengrün, a Bayer chemist, said he was the first to discover an aspirin formulation that did not have the unpleasant side effects of nausea and gastric pain, he said he had invented the name aspirin and was the first person to use the new formulation to test its safety and efficacy. Bayer contends. Various sources support the conflicting claims. Most mainstream historians attribute the invention of aspirin to Hoffmann and/or Eichengrün.
Heroin, now illegal as an addictive drug, was introduced as a non-addictive substitute for morphine, trademarked and marketed by Bayer from 1898 to 1910 as a cough suppressant and over-the-counter treatment for other common ailments, including pneumonia and tuberculosis. Bayer scientists were not the first to make heroin, but the company led the way in commercializing it. Heroin was a Bayer trademark until after World War I. In 1903 Bayer licensed the patent for the hypnotic drug diethylbarbituric acid from its inventors Emil Fischer and Joseph von Mering, it was marketed under the trade name Veronal as a sleep aid beginning in 1904. Systematic investigations of the effect of structural changes on potency and duration of action at Bayer led to the discovery of phenobarbital in 1911 and the discovery of its potent anti-epileptic activity in 1912. Phenobarbital was among the most used drugs for the treatment of epilepsy through the 1970s, as of 2014 it remains on the World Health Organization's list of essential medications.
During World War I, Bayer's assets, including the rights to
Thatcham
Thatcham is a market town in the historic county of Berkshire, centred 3 miles east of Newbury, 14 miles west of Reading and 54 miles west of London. Its population grew in the second half of the 20th century: from 5,000 in 1951 and 7,500 in 1961 to 22,824 in 2001. During World War II, Thatcham housed one of the biggest Prisoner of War camps in the South, known as camp 1001. Thatcham straddles the River Kennet, the Kennet and Avon Canal, the A4 and the course of a Roman road, it is served by Thatcham railway station on the line between Newbury. Local employment is chiefly in light industrial premises and distribution, retail and public sectors. Although there are many primary schools in the area, the only secondary school in Thatcham is the Kennet School; the area has evidence of occupation dating from prehistoric times and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the strongest claimant to being the oldest continuously inhabited place in Britain. The well-preserved remains of a Mesolithic settlements dating from 8400 to 7700 BC have been found in its vicinity.
Evidence exists of Bronze and Iron Age settlements and of a Roman settlement. The name may have been derived from that of a Saxon chief called Tace, who established a village in around AD 500; the settlement might have been known as Taceham - ham meaning hamlet in Saxon. However the first written reference in c.975 records it as Thaecham. The Thaec comes from thaec meaning roof-covering. By the time of Domesday Norman Conquest in 1086 the name had altered to Taceham before going through several minor changes until the current form was adopted in the 16th century; the town had a period of great prosperity around 1304 when the Chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr on the A4, now called the Old Bluecoat School, was constructed. At that time the population was larger than Newbury's but it declined as a result of the Black Death in 1348. There is a Norman parish church of St. Mary, reconstructed in 1857; this is believed to be built on the same site as an earlier Saxon church. It was previously known as St. Luke's.
In 1121 King Henry I founded the great Abbey of Reading and endowed it with many gifts of land, including the Manor of Thatcham. At the same time Thatcham Hundred ceased to exist: the western part was transferred to Faircross Hundred, the remainder to the Hundred of Reading. In 1141 Thatcham Church the property of the Diocese of Salisbury, was granted to Reading Abbey by the Empress Matilda, who at the same time confirmed her father's gift of the manor to the Abbey. On 20 July 2007 parts of Thatcham were flooded during a period of sustained heavy rain, during which three times the average July monthly rainfall hit the town in just 24 hours. While the rivers did not overtop, the quantity of water flowing down the hills from Cold Ash and Bucklebury made many roads impassable and stranded hundreds of pupils at Kennet School who tried to wade with rope across Stoney Lane. About 1,100 properties were affected. Thatcham has a site of Special Scientific Interest just to the south of the town, called Thatcham Reed Beds.
The name "Thatcham" is brand-associated with the approval ratings for car security systems issued by the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre based near the town. For instance, "Thatcham Cat 1" is the approval for a combined car alarm and immobiliser, "Thatcham Cat 2" is for a standalone immobiliser and "Thatcham Cat 3" is for additional physical security devices such as steering wheel locks. Thatcham railway station is the only railway station within the town; the station falls on the Reading to Taunton line, with regular services between Reading and Newbury are operated by Great Western Railway, as well as between London Paddington and Bedwyn. The station saw 581,000 passengers in the 2016–17 period; the town is split in the middle by the A4, which runs between London and Bristol, in an east–west direction. This road has been superseded as a long distance route by the M4 motorway which runs parallel to the A4, located 3 miles north; the closest junction to the town is the Chieveley interchange at Junction 13.
Thatcham is home to non-league football club Thatcham Town, who play their matches at Waterside Park located 300 metres south of the town's railway station. The club reached the final of the FA Vase in the 2017–18 season, becoming the first Berkshire side to reach a national cup final, their highest league finish is fifth in the Southern League Division One South & West, the eighth tier of English football, set in the 2010–11 season. The club won the Berks & Bucks Senior Cup in 1975. Thatcham Town Cricket Club are based in the town, playing their matches 500 metres west of the Broadway – the town centre – on Brownsfield Road, next to the Town Council offices; the Henwick Worthy Sports Ground is the home of the Newbury and Thatcham Hockey Club and the Thatcham Rugby Union Football Club. The ground is 37 acres in size, located in the west of the town. Henwick plays host to a number such as football and rugby; the town is divided into four wards for West Berkshire Council elections: Thatcham Central, Thatcham North, Thatcham South & Crookham and Thatcham West.
Each elect two councillors in elections, with the Conservatives having six and the Liberal Democrats having two. These wards are used in town council elections with fifteen Conservatives and four Liberal Demcorats sitting on the council. Thatcham is twinned with: Nideggen, Germany HMS Thatcham, a Ham class minesweeper Thatcham Town Council Thatcham Historical Society
Mortimer Common
Mortimer Common referred to as Mortimer, is a village in the civil parish of Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire. Mortimer is in the local government district of West Berkshire and is seven miles south-west of Reading. Historian David Nash Ford believes the name Mortimer stems from the Lords of the Manor, the Mortimer family, a powerful magnate family and the Earls of March from Wigmore, Herefordshire; the family were given the manor, along with Wigmore Castle by William I shortly after the Norman Conquest and held it throughout the Middle Ages, as recorded in the Domesday Book. Roger de Mortimer, 1st Earl of March was for three years de facto ruler of England after leading a successful rebellion against Edward II, before being overthrown and executed in 1330 by Edward III, with his lands seized by the crown; the Mortimers came close, during the reign of Richard II, to the English throne again, but the claims of the family were ignored and the throne was vested in Henry IV instead. During the Tudor period Mortimer was one of the lands granted to each of the wives of Henry VIII.
There are several Bronze Age burial mounds in the area. Excavations at one have shown that it was used for burials when the Anglo-Saxons moved into the area. In 1976 Princess Anne visited Mortimer as part of a horse display at Mortimer Fairground. Mortimer stands at the top of Mortimer Hill, at the bottom of, Stratfield Mortimer. To the North lies Burghfield Common and Wokefield. To the West lies Mortimer West End and Padworth Common; the Lockram Brook flows through the middle of the parish and joins into Burghfield Brook further to the Northeast, this in turn feeds into Foudry Brook, a tributary of the Kennet and Avon Canal. There is much woodland in the area, including Wokefield Common and Holden Firs; the three main roads in Mortimer are West End Road and Victoria Road. Bus travel from Reading is provided by Reading Buses services 2a. Mortimer railway station, on the Reading to Basingstoke Line, is down The Street from the main village, frequent services are operated by Great Western Railway.
Mortimer Village Partnership is an independent not for profit organisation, set up by volunteers in 2009. The purpose of MVP is to involve people and groups in the life of the village, to improve communications, to connect people together and facilitate activities and events in order to enhance the lives of those who live and work in Mortimer and nearby. Several events are organised annually. Including a regular lunch club, theatre trips, travelling theatres, events for children and the famous annual Mortimer Fun Day in July which attracts thousands of visitors from all around. In 2014 the group was awarded The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service and it continues to recognise the hundreds of volunteers annually by presenting them with a certificate and the addition of their name into a book of honour. Mortimer has several senior football teams including Mortimer FC as well as two youth football teams. Mortimer Football Club was founded as the Mortimer Garth Club by Miss Bertha G. P. Capron of Garth House, Mortimer.
Miss Capron paid for the construction of a hall for the Garth Club, known as the Garth Hall, in 1915. Miss Capron was the eldest daughter of the Rev. George Halliley Capron of Southwick Hall and Stoke Doyle and settled in Mortimer with her unmarried sisters after her brother inherited the Southwick estates in 1909. Mortimer FC is in the Reading Football League Senior Division, in tier 11 of the football pyramid. Mortimer has won the League four times. Mortimer has amateur cricket and tennis clubs, scouts, girl guides and brownies clubs as well as the Mortimer Dramatic Society. A community centre was completed in the autumn of 2009, used as a cricket pavilion; the fairground is used for travelling funfares. On taking over from Sewards Supermarket, Budgens took over the tradition of arranging the annual'fun run', a 10 kilometre race around the village, which takes place on the last Sunday of September. Lt. Col. Herbert St Maur Carter D. S. O. M. D.- a surgeon who retired to Mortimer after service in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Decorated by the British and Serbian governments. Robert Newman David Tuttle Rt Hon Sir John Mowbray, 1st Bt, PC, MP, JP, DL, DCL, MP for Oxford University 1868-99 and Father of the House of Commons 1898-99, lived at Warennes Wood, Mortimer. Sir Robert Mowbray, 2nd Bt, MP, JP, DL, MP for Prestwich and Lambeth, lived at Warennes Wood, Mortimer. Professor Kenneth Mason MC, Professor of Geography, Oxford University 1932-53, lived at Sylvanway, West End Road, Mortimer. Julia Foot RGN, RMN, DN, BSc - District Nurse and Community Matron and Non Medical Prescriber 1965 to present day born in Briar Lea Road and lived in West End Road and Summerlug. Worked at Basingstoke District Hospital, Battle Hospital Reading and Chase Farm in Enfield. Community Nursing in Enfield and Stevenage.* Mortimer Village Website Royal Berkshire History: Stratfield Mortimer
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is an area of countryside in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of their national importance, by the relevant public body: Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, or the Northern Ireland Environment Agency. In place of AONB, Scotland uses the similar national scenic area designation. Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty enjoy levels of protection from development similar to those of UK national parks, but unlike with national parks the responsible bodies do not have their own planning powers, they differ from national parks in their more limited opportunities for extensive outdoor recreation. The idea for what would become the AONB designation was first put forward by John Dower in his 1945 Report to the Government on National Parks in England and Wales. Dower suggested there was need for protection of certain beautiful landscapes which were unsuitable as national parks owing to their small size and lack of wildness.
Dower's recommendation for the designation of these "other amenity areas" was embodied in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 as the AONB designation. The purpose of an AONB designation is to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the designated landscape by placing it under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. There two secondary aims: meeting the need for quiet enjoyment of the countryside and having regard for the interests of those who live and work there. To achieve these aims, AONBs rely on practical countryside management; as they have the same landscape quality, AONBs may be compared to the national parks of England and Wales. National parks are well known to many inhabitants of the UK. However, the National Association of AONBs is working to increase awareness of AONBs in local communities, in 2014 negotiated to have the boundaries of AONBs in England shown on Google Maps. There are 46 AONBs in Britain; the first AONB was designated in 1956 in South Wales.
The most confirmed is the Tamar Valley AONB in 1995, although the existing Clwydian Range AONB was extended in 2012 to form the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB, the Strangford Lough and Lecale Coast AONBs were merged and redesignated as a single AONB in 2010. AONBs vary in terms of size and use of land, whether they are or wholly open to the public; the smallest AONB is the Isles of Scilly, 16 km2, the largest is the Cotswolds, 2,038 km2. The AONBs of England and Wales together cover around 18% of the countryside in the two countries; the AONBs of Northern Ireland together cover about 70% of Northern Ireland's coastline. AONBs in England and Wales were created under the same legislation as the national parks, the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Unlike AONBs, national parks have special legal powers to prevent unsympathetic development. AONBs in general remain the responsibility of their local authorities by means of special committees which include members appointed by the minister and by parishes, only limited statutory duties were imposed on local authorities within an AONB by the original 1949 Act.
However, further regulation and protection of AONBs in England and Wales was added by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, under which new designations are now made, the Government has in the National Planning Policy Framework stated that AONBs and national parks have equal status when it comes to planning decisions on landscape issues. Two of the AONBs, which extend into a large number of local authority areas, have their own statutory bodies, known as conservation boards. All English and Welsh AONBs have other staff; as required by the CRoW Act, each AONB has a management plan that sets out the characteristics and special qualities of the landscape and how they will be conserved and enhanced. The AONBs are collectively represented by the National Association for AONBs, an independent organization acting on behalf of AONBs and their partners. AONBs in Northern Ireland was designated under the Amenity Lands Act 1965. There are growing concerns among environmental and countryside groups that AONB status is under threat from development.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England said in July 2006 that many AONBs were under greater threat than before. Three particular sites were cited: the Dorset AONB threatened by a road plan, the threat of a football stadium in the Sussex Downs AONB, larger than any other, a £1 billion plan by Imperial College London to build thousands of houses and offices on hundreds of acres of AONB land on the Kent Downs at Wye. In September 2007 government approval was given for the development of a new football ground for Brighton and Hove Albion within the boundaries of the Sussex Downs AONB, after a fierce fight by conservationists; the subsequent development, known as Falmer Stadium, was opened in July 2011. The Weymouth Relief Road in Dorset was constructed between 2008 and 2011, after environmental groups lost a High Court challenge to prevent its construction. Writing in 2006, Professor Adrian Phillips listed threats facing AONBs, he wrote that the apparent big threats were uncertainty over future support for lan
Pangbourne
Pangbourne is a large village and civil parish on the River Thames in the English county of Berkshire. Pangbourne has its own shops, schools, a railway station on the Great Western Line and a parish hall. Outside its grouped developed area is an independent school, Pangbourne College. Pangbourne is situated on the A329 road 6 miles west of Reading, its nearest town and 22 miles south east of Oxford on the River Thames and is across the river from the small developed cluster of the Oxfordshire village of Whitchurch-on-Thames; the two villages are connected by both Whitchurch Bridge and by the traversable weir of Whitchurch Lock, though the latter is not for public use. Pangbourne railway station is a minor stop on the Great Western Main Line and has stopping services to Oxford via Didcot Parkway and London Paddington via Reading two stops away; the Pang flows through the centre of Pangbourne village before joining the Thames between Whitchurch Lock and Whitchurch bridge. Its water voles are thought to have inspired author Kenneth Grahame's character Ratty and his book The Wind in the Willows.
Most of the developed area is just above the current flood plain of the River Thames which benefits from hay meadows traditionally used as flood meadows to either side of Pangbourne, fewer than 15 properties here flooded during the Winter storms of 2013–14 in the United Kingdom. Pangbourne has its own shops, primary schools, a railway station on the Great Western Line and a parish hall. In recent years Pangbourne has become a centre for high end sports cars with Lamborghini Pangbourne and Aston Martin Reading joining the long-standing Bentley Berkshire dealership as part of the H. R. Owen group. Outside its grouped developed area is an independent school, Pangbourne College. Pangbourne is a civil parish with an elected parish council; the parish covers the immediate agricultural green buffer and a woodland and cultivated south-western area. This rural area includes Pangbourne College; the parish shares boundaries with the Berkshire parishes of Purley-on-Thames, Tidmarsh with Sulham, Englefield and Basildon.
Along the River Thames to the north, there is a boundary with the Oxfordshire parish of Whitchurch-on-Thames. The parish is in the area of the unitary authority of West Berkshire; the parish council and the unitary authority are responsible for different aspects of local government. Pangbourne forms part of the Reading West parliamentary constituency; the parish is twinned with Houdan in France. Pangbourne's name is recorded from 844 as Old English Pegingaburnan, which means "the stream of the people of Pǣga"; this name was shortened to make the name of the Pang. In Norman times, the manor was given to Reading Abbey and the manor house – called Bere Court – became the Abbot's summer residence; the last abbot, Hugh Cook Faringdon, was arrested there in 1539 and subsequently executed in Reading. The manor was purchased by Sir John Davis, the Elizabethan mathematician and the Earl of Essex's fellow-conspirator, his monument is in the Church of England parish church of Saint James the Less. The Pangbourne war memorial is found in the grounds of the church.
It was designed by the artist Vera Waddington. Other monuments and hatchments in the church are to the Breedon family. John Breedon senior bought the manor in 1671, he was High Sheriff of Berkshire and brother of the Governor of Arcadia and Nova Scotia, whose son succeeded him. The family produced a number of sheriffs and MPs for Berkshire, as well as doctors and rectors of the parish. Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, retired to Church Cottage in Pangbourne, he died there in 1932. E. H. Shepherd's famous illustrations of his book are said to have been inspired by the Thameside landscape there; the Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at Pangbourne College was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in March 2000. It was built to commemorate the lives and sacrifice of all who died during the Falklands War of 1982, the courage of those who served with them to protect the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands; the Queen revisited the Memorial Chapel in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Falklands war.
At the north-west of the village is wildlife gardens Beale Park. The history of the Pangbourne Band began in 1893 when a fife and drum band used to rehearse in a shed behind the water mill, but when the First World War broke out the band broke up, re-forming in 1919 after the Armistice. Regular concerts were held from until the outbreak of the Second World War, when many of the bandsmen served in the Armed Forces and the band again broke up and the instruments were held in storage. In 1962, Henry Fuller, a local tutor, started the village brass group. Local musicians became involved when the old instruments were recovered from storage, the band was established as a full-size contesting brass band within a few years. In 2009 in music Pangbourne All-Comers' Band was begun incorporating brass and for parade days drums and bell lyre glockenspiel. Notes References Ditchfield, P. H.. H. eds.. "Pangbourne". A History of the County of Berkshire. Victoria County History. 3. Pp. 303–306. Pevsner, Nikolaus. Berkshire.
The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Pp. 191–192. Pangbourne village website Royal Berkshire History: Pangbourne ≈
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. The governing party since 2010, it is the largest in the House of Commons, with 313 Members of Parliament, has 249 members of the House of Lords, 18 members of the European Parliament, 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 8,916 local councillors; the Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party—the Conservatives' colloquial name is "Tories"—and was one of two dominant political parties in the nineteenth century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912, the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. In the 1920s, the Labour Party surpassed the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rivals. Conservative Prime Ministers — notably Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher — led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century.
Positioned on the centre-right of British politics, the Conservative Party is ideologically conservative. Different factions have dominated the party at different times, including One Nation Conservatives and liberal conservatives, while its views and policies have changed throughout its history; the party has adopted liberal economic policies—favouring free market economics, limiting state regulation, pursuing privatisation—although in the past has supported protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing both Irish reunification and Welsh and Scottish independence, supported the maintenance of the British Empire; the party includes those with differing views on the European Union, with Eurosceptic and pro-European wings. In foreign policy, it is for a strong national defence; the Conservatives are a member of the International Democrat Union and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe and sit with the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary group. The Scottish, Northern Irish and Gibraltan branches of the party are semi-autonomous.
Its support base consists of middle-class voters in rural areas of England, its domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to it being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservative Party was founded in the 1830s. However, some writers trace its origins to the reign of Charles II in the 1670s Exclusion Crisis. Other historians point to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s, they were known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt", or "Pittites" and never used terms such as "Tory" or "Conservative". Pitt died in 1806. From about 1812 on the name "Tory" was used for a new party that, according to historian Robert Blake, "are the ancestors of Conservatism". Blake adds that Pitt's successors after 1812 "were not in any sense standard-bearer's of true Toryism"; the term "Conservative" was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830.
The name caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto; the term "Conservative Party" rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. The widening of the electoral franchise in the nineteenth century forced the Conservative Party to popularise its approach under Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, who carried through their own expansion of the franchise with the Reform Act of 1867. In 1886, the party formed an alliance with Spencer Compton Cavendish, Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain's new Liberal Unionist Party and, under the statesmen Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, held power for all but three of the following twenty years before suffering a heavy defeat in 1906 when it split over the issue of free trade. Young Winston Churchill denounced Chamberlain's attack on free trade, helped organize the opposition inside the Unionist/Conservative Party.
Balfour, as party leader, followed Chamberlain's policy introduced protectionist legislation. The high tariff element called itself "Tariff Reformers" and in a major speech in Manchester on May 13, 1904, Churchill warned their takeover of the Unionist/Conservative party would permanently brand it as: A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation. Two weeks Churchill crossed the floor and formally joined the Liberal Party. )He rejoined the Conservatives in 1925.) In December, Balfour lost control of his party, as the defections multiplied. He was replaced by Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman who called an election in January 1906, which produced a massive Liberal victory with a gain of 214 seats. Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith enacted a great deal of reform legislation, but the Unionists worked hard at grassroots organizing. Two general elections were held in one in January and one in December; the two main parties were now dead equal in seats.
The Unionists had more popular votes but the Liberals kept control with a coalition with the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1912, the Liberal Unionis
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2, it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, the ninth-largest island in the world. In 2011, Great Britain had a population of about 61 million people, making it the world's third-most populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan; the island of Ireland is situated to the west of Great Britain, together these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands, form the British Isles archipelago. The island is dominated by a maritime climate with quite narrow temperature differences between seasons. Politically, Great Britain is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constitutes most of its territory. Most of England and Wales are on the island; the term "Great Britain" is used to include the whole of England and Wales including their component adjoining islands. A single Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the union of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland by the 1707 Acts of Union.
In 1801, Great Britain united with the neighbouring Kingdom of Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, renamed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" after the Irish Free State seceded in 1922. The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years: the term'British Isles' derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain the Latin term Britannia was used for the island of Great Britain, Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia; the earliest known name for Great Britain is Albion or insula Albionum, from either the Latin albus meaning "white" or the "island of the Albiones". The oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain was by Aristotle, or by Pseudo-Aristotle, in his text On the Universe, Vol. III. To quote his works, "There are two large islands in it, called the British Isles and Ierne".
Pliny the Elder in his Natural History records of Great Britain: "Its former name was Albion. Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne; the French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Bryten, Breten. Britannia was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together, it is derived from the travel writings of the Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule. Marcian of Heraclea, in his Periplus maris exteri, described the island group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι; the peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Priteni or Pretani. Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain, which has the same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic-speaking inhabitants of Ireland; the latter were called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans. Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who travelled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in the 4th century BC.
The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" in reference to body decorations. The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to the larger island as great Britain and to Ireland as little Britain in his work Almagest. In his work, Geography, he gave the islands the names Alwion and Mona, suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at the time of writing Almagest; the name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain, after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island. After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae refers to the island as Britannia major, to distinguish it from Britannia minor, the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by migrants from Britain; the term Great Britain was first used in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily the daughter of Edward IV of England, James the son of James III of Scotland, which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee".
It was used again in 1604, when King James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine and Ireland". Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain, it is often used to refer politically to the whole of England and Wales, including their smaller off shore islands. While it is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland, this is not correct. Britain can refer to either all island
