When Tony Blair was going on about "the forces of conservatism" in a big Labour party conference speech, it became clear he was primarily attacking people who believed that the Labour Party should stick to its socialist objectives.

On other words, who were opposed to change which they saw as harmful and unnecessary, and therefore were in that context quite correctly to be termed "conservative".

It's better to avoid using terms such as "conservative", "liberal", "radical" and so forth, as if they had an absolute meaning, as a way iof getting some kind of knee jerk reaction, pro or anti.