Why was there a Liberal Government in Britain from 1905 until the First World War? And why was the Liberal party replaced by the Labour party so shortly afterwards? These are the kinds of problems which Dr Clarke examines in his study of the Liberal revival in Lancashire. The vote in north-west England was largely responsible for bringing the Liberal Government into power and for maintaining its position, but it also produced almost half the new Labour MP's in 1906. Thus any satisfactory interpretation of electoral history in the early twentieth century must account for what happened in Lancashire. This book calls into question many of the conventional assumptions about British politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This title, first published in 1982, explores the new Liberalism - the great change in Liberalism as an ideology and a political practice that characterised the years before the First World War - and examines the idea that the new Liberals successfully overcame the need they saw in the 1890’s to make Liberalism more socially reformist. This title will be of interest to students of social and political history.
The Labour Party's centenary is an appropriate moment to evaluate its performance across the twentieth century, and to reflect on why a party which has so many achievements to its credit nonetheless spent so much of the period in opposition. Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo have assembled a team of acknowledged experts who cover a wide range of key issues, from economic policy to gender. The editors also provide a lucid, accessible introduction. Labour's First Century covers the most important areas of party policy and practice, always placing these in a broader context. Taken together, these essays challenge those who minimize the party's contribution, whilst they also explain why mistakes and weaknesses have occurred. Everyone interested in British political history - whether supporters or opponents of the Labour Party - will need to read Labour's First Century.
This book explores the relationship between the British Liberal party and the rural working-class voters enfranchised by the Third Reform Act of 1884. In contrast to many works that present urban voters as the primary agents of political change in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, this study argues that an examination of the dynamics of popular rural politics is essential to a thorough understanding of political developments in the early years of mass enfranchisement. Prior to 1914, capturing a substantial portion of the rural vote was essential to any political party seeking to establish a strong Parliamentary majority; and the Liberal party, coming from a traditionally strong urban base, had to work particularly hard to meet the expectations of the new rural electorate. The book shows that popular political culture in the English countryside was dominated by two important, and sometimes conflicting, traditions: on the one hand, a history of radical social protest, emphasizing attacks on the privileges of landowning elites, and on the other, a widespread concern for the harmony of the local community, coupled with a suspicion of unnecessary divisiveness. The attempt to appeal simultaneously to both of these facets of rural political culture helps to explain not only why the Liberals continued to launch rhetorical attacks on the landed aristocracy and to promote schemes of land reform long after one might have expected them to have switched to a more 'modern' emphasis on class politics, but also why the 'New Liberal' emphasis on the politics of community carried such broad electoral appeal at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book suggests, finally, that in focusing primarily on urban democratization, historians of this period may have exaggerated the role of class allegiances in shaping popular political opinion and underestimated the continuities between 'Old' and 'New' Liberalism.
"The Transformation of Urban Liberalism" re-evaluates the dramatic and turbulent political decade following the 'Third Reform Act', and questions whether the Liberal Party's political heartlands - the urban boroughs - really were in decline. In contrast to some recent studies, it does not see electoral reform, the Irish Home Rule crisis and the challenge of socialism as representing a fundamental threat to the integrity of the party. Instead this book illustrates, using parallel case studies, how the party gradually began to transform into a social democratic organisation through a re-evaluation of its role and policy direction. This process was not one directed from the centre - despite the important personalities of Gladstone and Rosebery - but rather one heavily influenced by 'grass roots politics'. Consequently, it suggests that late Victorian politics was more democratic and open than sometimes thought, with leading urban politicians forced to respond to the demands of party activists. Changes in the structure of urban rule produced new policy outcomes and brought new collectivist forms of New Liberalism onto the political agenda. Thus, it is argued that without the political transformations of the decade 1885-1895, the radical liberal governments of the Edwardian era would not have been possible.
This accessible new study provides a much-needed guide to the pivotal period of British history between 1910 and 1935. Combines an up-to-date synthesis of previous work with a re-appraisal of the main personalities, themes and events of the period.
First published in 1984. This book is a detailed study of the way in which the growing Labour movement gradually ousted the Liberals in West Yorkshire between 1890 and 1924. It demonstrates the basis of old Liberalism and the strength of local non-conformity, and its powerful links with the textile and engineering industries. It shows how the Liberalism of this district was dominated by small groups of well-to-do leaders involved in these main industries. This study also shows the gradual breakdown of the political consensus established between the Liberal party and the working classes and explains how the increasing opposition to Liberalism was channelled into the socialist movement. In all, the authors present a thorough and extensive study of the political changes in a particularly interesting part of the British Isles.
Most interpretations of late-Victorian and Edwardian social and economic trends have relied heavily upon the industrial labour statistics published by Whitehall. This book, originally published in 1985 incorporates a critical examination of the human resources, motivation and statistical techniques which generate that data base. It focuses on the production, structure, and output of the official statistics relating to a range of imperfections in the labour market and industrial relations, characterised by contemporary social observers, administrator and policy makers as ‘the labour problem.’ This study makes a significant contribution to the recent debate over the nature and motivation of late-Victorian and Edwardian social policy. It provides a case study with which to assess the hypotheses put forward by social scientists as to the relationship between social statistics and policy. Thirdly, in examining the motivation of official statisticians, the book will illuminate the changing role of the expert in British government growth since 1800. This book, with its wide range of primary sources, will be valuable to students of the history of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and to the development of British industrial relations and the welfare state.
As a study of the greatest middle class party of Imperial Germany, The Splintered Party is inevitably, in its broadest aspect, an inquiry into the weaknesses of liberalism in the Empire of Bismarck and Wilhelm II. How did the National Liberals, the dominant force in the Reichstag of the 1870s, become by 1914 a spent and divided power? Professor White explores this question from a new perspective, emphasizing regional circumstances as primary agents of the party's decline. The resulting portrait underscores the paradox of the National Liberals: a party with strength in all areas of the Empire, a rarity before 1914, yet a party whose impact was undermined bydivisions among its regional branches. In The Splintered Party the former Grand Duchy of Hessen serves as a testing ground where the regional foundations of National Liberalism can be exposed. As Professor White points out, the party's reversals on the Imperial plane after 1878--rejection by Bismarck, electoral defeats, internal splits--not only ended its early primacy in German affairs but also shifted political initiative from Berlin and the Reichstag delegation to the National Liberal branches in the states and provinces, which had maintained unity, power, and alliances with local government in spite of the upheaval above them. The consequences of this change become visible through close examination of the political and social structure in Hessen. On the regional level a liberalism based on the claim to majority representation by the notables (Honoratioren) of bourgeois society, a creed no longer plausible in national politics, remained defensible. Through the Heidelberg Declaration of 1884 the National Liberals of the German Southwest attempted to buttress this approach with an economic and social platform and, simultaneously, to make it the impulse of the national party's revival. But they succeeded only in deferring National Liberalism's adjustment to democratic politics and in subordinating their movement to the clash of regional and constituency interests. The result was a chronically splintered party. Against the backdrop of this main theme, White delineates several additional features of the changing political and social scene in Imperial Germany--the local power of the notables, Bismarck's skills as a political manager, the character of agrarian discontent and rural anti-Semitism, the steady advance of socialism. The uniquely German element in National Liberalism's failure is assessed in a concluding comparison with the development of liberal politics in Britain and Italy.
Once teetering on the brink of oblivion, the British Liberal Party has again re-established itself as a major force in national and local politics. David Dutton's approachable study offers new insights into the waning, near death and ultimate recovery of the Liberal Party from 1900 to the present day. Discussions of politics, philosophy and performance are all skilfully interwoven as Dutton demonstrates how the party has become, once more, a formidable player on the political stage. The second edition of this established text offers: - An entirely new chapter on the coalition government - A chronology of key events - Numerous suggestions for further reading This lively survey of British Liberalism from the era of Campbell-Bannerman to that of Nick Clegg reviews existing literature while offering its own distinctive perspective on one of the most compelling of political dramas.
