Abstract
In May 1903 Joseph Chamberlain made a speech in Birmingham calling for the end of free trade in the interest of consolidating the British Empire. The speech was a great sensation and it opened up a wide split in the Conservative Party. In the same year, Captain Middleton, the guiding force behind the Conservative Party organisation since the 1880s, retired. The party was to suffer three consecutive defeats in general elections and would not win an election independently of other parties until 1922. In February 1903 the ‘Newcastle Resolution’ passed at the Labour Party conference stated that members of the party should not identify themselves with or forward the interests of the Conservative and Liberal Parties. Yet in the same year a secret agreement with the Liberals was a recognition that the Labour Party, for all its independence, would need the co-operation of the Liberal Party to return members to the House of Commons. In January 1906 the Liberal Party scored one of the greatest electoral triumphs in modern times.
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Notes to Chapter 3
See P. Cain, ‘Political Economy in Edwardian England: The “Tariff Reform Controversy” ’, in The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability, 1900–1914, ed. A. O’Day (London: Macmillan, 1979) p. 52.
First set of figures from J. Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1979) p. 15;
the second set of figures from N. Blewett, ‘Free Fooders, Balfourites, Whole Hoggers: Factionalism Within the Unionist Party, 1906–10’, Historical Journal, vol. XI, no. 1, 1968, p. 96.
See also A. Sykes, Tariff Reform in British Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).
See A. K. Russell, The Liberal Landslide (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973) pp. 172–82.
There is some conflict on how much the war was to the Conservative Party’s advantage. T. Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–35 (London: Collins, 1966) p. 28, represents the view that the party gained from the war. Ramsden, p. 110, offers some qualifications.
For a discussion of the various motives behind the ‘fusion’ moves, see K. O. Morgan, Consensus and Unity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government, 1918–1922 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) pp. 174–91.
Quoted in K. Middlemas and J. Barnes, Baldwin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969) p. 123.
R. T. McKenzie, British Political Parties, 2nd edn (London: Heinemann, 1963) p. 29.
See Russell, pp. 51–63, for comments on the 1906 election; and N. Blewett, The Peers, the Parties and the People (London: Macmillan, 1972) pp. 266–76, for comments on the state of the party organisation in the 1910 elections.
For details of the agreement and discussion of events leading up to it, see F. Bealey and H. Pelling, Labour and Politics, 1900–1906 (London: Macmillan, 1958) ch. 6.
See A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) pp. 114–15, for the argument that a separate political fund necessitated by the 1913 Act, far from harming the Labour Party, guaranteed it a regular income from the unions and increased the amount received from that source.
See Blewett, pp. 234–65. Also R. I. McKibbin, ‘James Ramsay McDonald and the Problem of the Independence of the Labour Party 1910–14’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 42, no. 2, 1970, pp. 216–235.
See R. Douglas, ‘Labour in Decline’, in Essays in Anti-Labour History, ed. K. D. Brown (London: Macmillan, 1974) pp. 105–25.
See R. McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party, 1910–1924 (Oxford University Press, 1974) pp. 20–8.
For local election results, see C. Cook, ‘Labour and the Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1906–14’, in Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor, ed. A. Sked and C. Cook (London: Macmillan, 1976) pp. 38–65.
D. Butler and A. Sloman, British Political Facts, 1900–79 (London: Macmillan, 1980) p. 142.
Quoted in D. Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (London: Cape, 1977) p. 88.
K. O. Morgan, Keir Hardie (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975) p. 289.
McKibbin, p. 247. See also S. Beer, Modem British Politics, 2nd edn (London: Faber, 1969) pp. 137–52.
M. Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics 1867–1939 (London: Blackwell) p. 152, disputes the claim of a possible Conservative victory in 1915.
For different views of the crisis, see ibid, pp. 65–97; Taylor, pp. 64–70; and C. Hazlehurst, ‘The Conspiracy Myth’, in Lloyd George, ed. M. Gilbert (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968) pp. 148–57.
See also E. David, ‘The Liberal Party Divided, 1916–18’, Historical Journal vol. XIII, no. 3, 1970, pp. 509–33.
P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) pp. 176–9.
For a discussion of these social and economic themes of the ‘new liberalism’, see H. V. Emy, Liberals, Radicals and Social Politics 1892–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1973);
P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 1971); and
M. Freeden, The New Liberalism (Oxford University Press, 1978), who states that ‘Liberalism was by 1906 intellectually better equipped than any other ideological force to handle the pressing social problems that had at last secured the political limelight’ (p. 255).
M. Petter, ‘The Progressive Alliance’, History, vol. 58, 1973, p. 58. Freeden, p. 148, echoes the view that ‘the majority of the Liberal Party did not and could not keep up with the developments in Liberal thought’.
G. Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (London: Paladin, 1966) p. 75.
H. Pelling, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1979) p. 120.
P. F. Clarke, ‘The Electoral Position of the Liberal and Labour Parties 1910–14’, English Historical Review, vol. 90, no. 358, October 1975. For support of these arguments, see also Douglas, ‘Labour in Decline’, pp. 105–25.
For a hostile comment on Clarke’s thesis, see J. White, ‘A Panegyric on Edwardian Liberalism’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 16, 1977, pp. 143–53, particularly for the comment on p. 51: ‘It was not “the war” but the political response to the war that was decisive, and in the crucial moment Progressivism was found wanting.’
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© 1987 Alan R. Ball
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Ball, A.R. (1987). The Parties in Transition, 1903–22. In: British Political Parties. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18725-6_4
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