Why were Loyalist from the American Revolution called Tories?
For other uses, see Tory (disambiguation). The term Tory (from Irish Gaelic tóraighe, an outlaw or guerrilla fighter, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms — literally meaning “pursued man”) applied to the Tory Party, the ancestor of the modern UK Conservative Party. To this day it is often used as a shortened form for Conservatives. Its usage also applied to the pre-1965 Scottish Unionist Party which operated independently of, although in association with, the Conservative Party in England and Wales. A similar usage for ‘Tory’ exists in Canada to describe its Conservative Party. It was also used during the American Revolutionary War to refer to British Loyalists in the colonies. During the American Civil War, supporters of the Confederacy extended the term to Southern Unionists. This term is used as a shorthand for Conservative Party. Others still do not regard the terms as synonymous and some, such as the late Enoch Powell, proudly regarded themselves as “Tories”, precisely because o
