Abstract
As the election results of late January were declared, evening after evening, and the columns of small ‘M’s denoting elected members of the new 1906 Parliament that supported the Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, chased the opposing ‘O’s across the graph that topped each morning’s issue of The Times, the paper itself became increasingly confident about the causes of the Liberal landslide. On the morning of 17 January, the day before the Birmingham polls were called and Joseph Chamberlain’s own constituency result declared, The Times mused that for all the confidence Tariff Reform organisers had about the result, it would be, crucially, a limited one. ‘The further they go afield the more difficult does their task become of getting “the man in the street” to realize that the “big loaf versus little loaf” cry is a meaningless shibboleth’, the paper concluded.1 As more results came in and the sheer scale of the Liberal victory became apparent, the more the press was willing to venture into analysis. Two days before, on the 15th, the Manchester Guardian had already passed judgement on the results in Lancashire. ‘A candidate had only to be a Free Trader to get in’, it argued, ‘he had only to be a Protectionist to lose all chance.’2 By the 20th the Spectator felt able to declare that the fact ‘that the election was fought and won on the issue of free-trade is beyond dispute’.3
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
A.K. Russell, Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles), 1973, pp. 65, 83.
M. Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics: 1867–1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 102.
D. Judd, Radical Joe: A Life of Joseph Chamberlain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), p. 242.
T.L. Crosby, Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist (London: I.B. Taurus, 2011), p. 164.
P.T. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 563
J. Lawrence, ‘The Culture of Elections in Modern Britain’, History, 96 (2011), pp. 461–2.
F. Trentmann, ‘National Identity and Consumer Politics: Free Trade and Tariff Reform’, in D. Winch and P. O’Brien (eds), The Political Economy of British Historical Experience 1688–1914 (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 216–17.
J. Amery, The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, vol. 4 (London: Macmillan, 1951), p. 452.
C.W. Boyd (ed.), Mr Chamberlain’s Speeches, vol. 2 (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1914), Birmingham 4 November 1903, pp. 253–4.
M. Roberts, Political Movements in Urban England 1832–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 118–27.
J. Thompson, British Political Culture and the Idea of ‘Public Opinion’ 1867–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 243–4.
In particular see A. Sykes, Tariff Reform in British Politics 1903–1913 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 55–74
and G.R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Politics Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 142–70.
E.H.H. Green and D.M. Tanner (eds), The Strange Survival of Liberal England: Political Leaders, Moral Values and the Reception of Economic Debate (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 1–36.
See, for instance, A. Clark, ‘The Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity: Gender, Language, and Class in the 1830s and 1840s’, Journal of British Studies, 31.1 (1992), pp. 62–88.
R. O’Day and D. Englander, Mr Charles Booth’s Inquiry: Life and Labour of the People in London Reconsidered (London: Continuum, 1993), pp. 42–5.
B.S. Rowntree, Poverty: A Study of Town Life. (York: Policy Press Edition, 2000), p. 12.
Lady F. Bell, At the Works: A Study of a Manufacturing Town (London: Virago Edition, 1985), p. 76.
R. Jay, Joseph Chamberlain: A Political Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 293–300.
I. Gazeley and A. Newell, ‘Poverty in Edwardian Britain’, Economic History Review, 64.1 (2011), p. 69.
Although the phrase itself was coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1839, the Condition of England question really came of age in the Edwardian era. See, for example, W. Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (London: McCorquodale and Co., 1890);
C. Masterman (ed.), The Heart of Empire: A Discussion of the Problems of Modern City Life in England (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901) and, for a more everyday use, ‘A National Emergency’, The British Medical Journal, 1.2570 (2 April 1910), pp. 831–2.
B. Doyle, ‘A Crisis of Urban Conservatism? Politics and Organisation in Edwardian Norwich’, Parliamentary History, 31.3 (Oct. 2012), p. 430.
I. Cawood, The Liberal Unionist Party: A History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. 230.
M. Brodie, The Politics of the Poor: The East End of London 1885–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 42–3.
T. Otte and P. Readman (eds), By-Elections in British Politics, 1832–1914 (Oxford: Boydell Press, 2013), p. 1.
R. Dennis, English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century: A Social Geography (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 186–99;
J. Dunbabin, ‘Electoral Reforms and Their Outcome 1865–1914’, in T. Gourvish and A. O’Day (eds), Later Victorian Britain, 1867–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), p. 102.
Brodie, Politics of the Poor, p. 47; D. Englander, Landlord and Tenant in Urban Britain 1838–1918 (Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 8–9.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Oliver Betts
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Betts, O. (2016). ‘The People’s Bread’: A Social History of Joseph Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform Campaign. In: Cawood, I., Upton, C. (eds) Joseph Chamberlain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-70803-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52885-8
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)