Abstract
‘I think that our election here has cleared the air’, wrote the Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, as the dust settled on the contest of December 1910. It had ‘made the way fairly plain, if not exactly smooth’.1 It is doubtful if many Conservatives2 shared this analysis. The high hopes of January now seemed a distant memory, and the Party had failed once more to recover the reins of power. Balfour’s pledge to submit the central policy of tariff reform to a referendum had not only failed to win over any significant number of new voters, but had also served to reopen deep wounds within the Party over this issue, while placing a renewed question-mark over Balfour’s commitment to the policy itself. Conservatives now entered upon a new and even more turbulent period of opposition which was only transformed by the outbreak of European war in the summer of 1914.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
S. Koss, Asquith (London: Allen Lane, 1976), 126.
G.R. Searle, ‘Critics of Edwardian society: the case of the Radical Right’, in A. O’Day (ed.), The Edwardian Age (London: Macmillan, 1979), 79.
E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), 136.
A. Sykes, ‘The Radical Right and the crisis of Conservatism before the First World War’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 661.
L. Witherell, Rebel on the Right: Henry Page Croft and the Crisis of British Conservatism, 1903–14 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1997), 18.
J. Kendle, Walter Long, Ireland and the Union 1905–1920 (Montreal: McGill — Queen’s University Press, 1992), 61.
C. Petrie, Walter Long and his Times (London: Hutchinson, 1936), 165–7.
R. Blake, The Unknown Prime Minister: The Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), 86.
J. Vincent (ed.), The Crawford Papers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 247.
J.M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries (London: Athlone Press, 1986), 27.
R.J.Q. Adams, Bonar Law (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 72.
B. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 18.
J. Smith, The Tories and Ireland 1910–1914 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000), 55.
Smith, Tories and Ireland; J. Smith, ‘Bluff, bluster and brinkmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), 161–78.
S. Evans, ‘The Conservatives and the redefinition of Unionism, 1912–21’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), 13.
J. Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1978), 67.
K. Feiling, Toryism: A Political Dialogue (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913), 8.
C. Cook, ‘Labour and the downfall of the Liberal Party, 1906–14’, in A. Sked and C. Cook (eds), Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor (London: Macmillan, 1976), 63.
A. Chamberlain, Politics from Inside: An Epistolary Chronicle 1906–1914 (London: Cassell, 1936), 534.
I. Packer, Lloyd George, Liberalism and the Land: The Land Issue and Party Politics in England, 1906–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), 194.
A. Hetherington, The Guardian Years (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981), 326.
C. Petrie, The Life and Letters of the Right Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1939), 373.
H.H. Asquith, Memories and Reflections 1852–1927, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1928), 33.
M. Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 3, companion part 1 (London: Heinemann, 1972), 652–3.
C. Hazlehurst, Politicians at War, July 1914 to May 1915 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), 286.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 David Dutton
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dutton, D. (2005). Conservatism in Crisis: 1910–1915. In: Ball, S., Seldon, A. (eds) Recovering Power. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522411_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522411_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4039-3242-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52241-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)