The last feather-bedded industry?: Government, politics and the hospitality industry during and after the 1992 General Election

This paper examines political debate and rhetoric attendant on those issues perceived as germane to the hospitality sector by industry operators at the time of the 1992 UK General Election. By extensive use of secondary, mainly journalistic, sources, an analysis of such issues is undertaken, located in the specific context of the various conservative ideologies that are shown to be associated with the hospitality industry. The paper's main theme is that far from endorsing a commitment to the agenda of the Conservative government, the hospitality industry's conservatism reflects more a form of special pleading comprising demand for particular economic privileges based on a form of protectionist corporatism. It is concluded that rather than representing a model of the vanguard of free-market culture, the hospitality industry in the UK represents the last gasp of conservative corporatism, bent on the maintenance of economic privilege rather than offering a commitment to economic liberalism.