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RETHINKING THE EDWARDIAN CRISIS OF CONSERVATISM*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

DAVID THACKERAY
DAVID THACKERAY*
Affiliation:
The Queen's College, Oxford
*
The Queen's College, Oxford OX1 4AW[email protected]
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Abstract

This article reconsiders the culture of popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain, when it has often been claimed that the Unionist parties underwent a profound crisis. According to Ewen Green, for example, in the immediate years before the First World War, Conservative leaders failed to offer policies that could unite their party or enable it to develop an effective popular appeal. Consequently, the party appeared to be drifting towards potential disaster and disintegration. Whilst historians are correct to argue that deep divisions emerged within the Unionist ranks, inhibiting their electoral prospects, the vibrancy of rank-and-file Conservatism in Edwardian Britain nevertheless tends to be underestimated. By embracing a variety of populist causes in 1913–14, the Conservative party appeared to have found a way to overcome its electoral malaise. Moreover, by taking important steps to widen their social appeal, the Conservatives laid the foundations for post-war success during these years of supposed ‘crisis’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 191 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Thanks to Jon Lawrence, David Monger, Robert Saunders, Frank Trentmann, the editor, and the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I am grateful to the Conservative party for permission to reproduce images from party literature.

References

1 The Conservative and Liberal Unionist parties amalgamated in 1912. The term ‘Unionist’ is used in this article when referring to both of these parties before this date.

2 E. H. H. Green, The crisis of Conservatism: the politics, economics and ideology of the British Conservative party, 1880–1914 (London, 1995).

3 Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian turn of mind (Princeton, NJ, 1968), pp. 12–13; R. A. Rempel, Unionists divided: Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain and the Unionist free traders (London, 1972), p. 170; Robert Blake, The Conservative party from Peel to Thatcher (London, 1985), pp. 167–95.

4 G. R. Searle, ‘Critics of Edwardian society: the case of the radical right’, in Alan O' Day, ed., The Edwardian age (London, 1979), pp. 79–96; Sykes, Alan, ‘The radical right and the crisis of conservatism before the First World War’, Historical Journal, 26, (1983), pp. 661–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Green, E. H. H., ‘Radical Conservatism: the electoral genesis of tariff reform’, Historical Journal, 28, (1985), pp. 667–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 672, 686–92.

6 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, p. 268.

7 Ibid., pp. 278–304, 332–3.

8 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, pp. 6–8, 14; For the continued tensions between the two wings of the Unionist alliance in the 1890s and 1900s see Cawood, Ian, ‘Joseph Chamberlain, the Conservative Party and Leamington Spa candidature dispute of 1895’, Historical Research, 79, (2006), pp. 554–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Victoria Barbary, ‘“From platform to the polling booth”: political leadership and popular politics in Bolton and Bury, 1868–1906’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2007), chs. 5–6.

9 John Ramsden, The age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (London, 1978), p. 86.

10 Ibid., pp. 68–9, 82–4.

11 Daniel M. Jackson, Popular opposition to Irish home rule in Edwardian Britain (Liverpool, 2009), chs. 3–5; Green, Crisis of Conservatism, ch. 11; Jeremy Smith pays less attention to the popular movement in support of Ulster, but argues that Bonar Law used the Irish issue to energize his party and end its electoral malaise. See his ‘Bluff, bluster and brinksmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the third home rule bill’, Historical Journal, 36, (1993), pp. 161–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 167, 176, 178.

12 Jesse Collings (1831–1920). Liberal MP for Ipswich, 1880–6; Liberal Unionist MP for Bordesley, Birmingham, 1886–1918; formed Rural Labourers' League; Readman, Paul, ‘Jesse Collings and land reform, 1886–1914’, Historical Research, 81, (2009), pp. 292–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Land and nation in England: patriotism, national identity, and the politics of the land, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 173–6, 180.

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14 See Frans Coetzee, ‘Faction and failure: 1905–1910’, pp. 92–112, and David Dutton, ‘Conservatism in crisis: 1910–1915’, pp. 113–33, both in Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon, eds., Recovering power: the Conservatives in opposition since 1867 (Basingstoke, 2005); Philip Williamson, ‘The Conservative party, 1900–1939: from crisis to ascendancy’, in Chris Wrigley ed., A companion to early twentieth-century Britain (Oxford, 2003), pp. 3–22 at p. 6; For an important exception see Roberts, Matthew, ‘Popular Conservatism in Britain, 1832–1914’, Parliamentary History, 26, (2007), pp. 387–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 392–4.

15 Coetzee focused chiefly on the Tariff Reform League, Navy League, and National Service League. Frans Coetzee, For party or country: nationalism and the dilemmas of popular conservatism in Edwardian England (Oxford, 1990), p. 8.

16 Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the people: party, language and popular politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 140–1.

17 Kathryn Rix, ‘The party agent and English electoral culture, 1880–1906’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2001), pp. 186, 236–7.

18 Roberts, ‘Constructing a Tory world view’, p. 140.

19 Forty-nine habitations were recorded as being active, thirteen ‘absolutely dead’, thirty habitations provided no information or were in a dormant and unsatisfactory state. Agency committee report, 19 Dec. 1901, grand council minutes, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Primrose League MS3.

20 Report of the grand council to the habitations in the county of Sussex, 23 Feb. 1902, cited in Primrose League Gazette, 1 May 1902, p. 6.

21 General purposes committee special report, 2 Feb. 1906, Primrose League MS4; for criticisms of the Primrose League's socially focused culture see also John A. Bridges, Reminiscences of a country politician (London, 1906), pp. 53, 169–70; Primrose League Gazette, Mar. 1906, p. 19.

22 Memorandum on London parliamentary representation, n.d. [1906], Oxford, Bodleian Library, Sandars MSS, c. 753, fo. 189.

23 Green, ‘Radical Conservatism’, pp. 672, 686–92.

24 E. F. Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 343–4; the share of British subjects within the ‘Uitlander’ community in the Transvaal and Orange Free State was often exaggerated in Unionist election addresses. Readman, Paul, ‘The Conservative party, patriotism, and British politics: the case of the general election of 1900’, Journal of British Studies, 40, (2001), pp. 107–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 120–1.

25 Frank Trentmann, Free trade nation: commerce, consumption, and civil society in modern Britain (Oxford, 2008), pp. 7, 38–80.

26 Ibid., pp. 69–71, 76.

27 For other studies which claim that tariff reformers focused chiefly on the producer see Andrew Marrison, British business and protection, 1903–1932 (Oxford, 1996), chs. 1–10; Alan Sykes, Tariff reform in British politics, 1903–1913 (Oxford, 1979).

28 Jon Lawrence, Electing our masters: the hustings in British politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford, 2009), pp. 70–82; Thompson, James, ‘‘Pictorial lies’? – posters and politics in Britain, c. 1880–1914’, Past and Present, 197, (2007), pp. 177–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar at pp. 177–8, 183–8, 194–9.

29 Trentmann, Free trade nation, p. 76; Lawrence, ‘Class and gender’, pp. 648–9.

30 Edward Goulding (1862–1936, appointed Baron Wargrave, 1922). Conservative MP for Devizes, Wiltshire, 1895–1906; City of Worcester, 1908–22; chaired TRL organization committee, 1905–13.

31 Berrow's Worcester Journal, 8 Feb. 1908, p. 5.

32 Ibid., p. 4.

33 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, p. 137.

34 For similar examples of this language see Budget Protest League poster, Conservative Party Archive (CPA) 1909/10–16; Imperial Tariff Committee, General election 1910: A handbook for Unionist canvassers (London, 1909), p. 11.

35 Free Trade Union, Photographic reproductions of our brilliantly coloured picture and word posters n.d. [c. 1905], p. 11.

36 Mary Maxse, Tariff reform and cheap living (London, 1910), pp. 8, 11.

37 Mrs Walter [St Clair] Townsend, The influence of women in politics: an address read at the annual general meeting of the Barnard Castle Women's Unionist Association Branch (London, 1909), London, Women's Library, St Clair Townsend MSS, 7SCT/05, box FL679; TRL, Monthly Notes, 12, 4 (1910), p. 352.

38 Julia Bush, Women against the vote: female anti-suffragism in Britain (Oxford, 2008), p. 133; For a more detailed discussion of the culture of WUTRA see Thackeray, David, ‘Home and politics: women and Conservative activism in early twentieth-century Britain’, Journal of British Studies (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

39 Alex Windscheffel, ‘Villa Toryism?: the making of London Conservatism, 1868–1906’ (Ph.D. thesis, London, 2000), p. 275; idem, Imperial London, pp. 156–7.

40 Women's League for Municipal Reform, executive committee report, 8 June 1909, London Municipal Reform Council meeting minutes, London, Guildhall Library, London Municipal Society MSS, L.76.1 ms19527.

41 Times, 11 Feb. 1907, 12; 15 Feb. 1907, 10.

42 Neal Blewett, The peers, the parties and the people: the general elections of 1910 (London, 1972), p. 47.

43 TRL, Monthly Notes, 12, 4 (1910), p. 351.

44 For a discussion of this subject see Blewett, General elections of 1910, pp. 105–16, 125–8, 339–51.

45 Unionist Organisation Committee report, June 1911, Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland, Steel-Maitland MSS, GD193/80/4, pp. 35, 46; Unionist Organisation Committee index of proceedings to 31 Mar. 1911, pp. 24, 53, CPA, Microfilm 2923.

46 TRL, Monthly Notes, 12, 4 (1910), pp. 351–2.

47 TRL, Monthly Notes, 19, 1 (1913), p. 68.

48 Anthony Howe, Free trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 237–8; P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 274–310.

49 TRL, Monthly Notes, 13, 6 (1910), pp. 378, 397; TRL, Annual report (1913), p. 120.

50 TRL, Annual report (1913), p. 143.

51 Manchester Guardian, 28 Feb. 1912, p. 9; 1 Mar. 1912, pp. 8, 11; 6 Mar. 1912, p. 6.

52 Manchester Guardian, 29 Feb. 1912, p. 9; 1 Mar. 1912, p. 11; Walter Long, ‘Report on the South Manchester by-election’, 8 Mar. 1912, Bonar Law MSS, BL26/1/76.

53 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, ch. 11.

54 TRL, Monthly Notes, 6, 4 (1907), p. 353.

55 L. S. Amery, My political life (3 vols., London, 1953–5), i: England before the storm, 1896–1914 (London, 1953), p. 441.

56 Amery diary, 13 Jan. 1914, Cambridge, Churchill College, Leo Amery MSS, AMEL7/12.

57 Memo., statement of objects of the League of British Covenanters, [Apr.] 1914, Amery MSS, AMEL1/2/26; Walter Long, Memories (London, 1923), p. 203.

58 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, pp. 303–4.

59 Jackson, Popular opposition to Irish home rule, pp. 16, 242.

60 Ibid., pp. 174–5, 182.

61 David Dutton, ‘His majesty's loyal opposition’: the Unionist party in opposition 1905–1915 (Liverpool, 1992), p. 226; Jeremy Smith, The Tories and Ireland, 1910–1914: Conservative party politics and the home rule crisis (Dublin, 2000), pp. 79–80.

62 Kennedy, Thomas C., ‘Troubled Tories: dissent and confusion concerning the party's Ulster policy, 1910–1914’, Journal of British Studies, 46, (2007), pp. 570–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 585; Sykes, ‘The crisis of Conservatism’, p. 663.

63 Smith, Tories and Ireland, p. 173.

64 Long, Memories, p. 203; Smith, Tories and Ireland, p. 175.

65 Jackson, Popular opposition to Irish home rule, p. 182.

66 Memo. by L. S. Amery, 18 Jan. 1914, p. 5, Amery MSS, AMEL1/2/26.

67 Kennedy, ‘Troubled Tories’, p. 586.

68 Our Flag, May 1914, p. 72; Times, 6 Apr. 1914, p. 9.

69 Amery to R. Cecil, 16 Jan. 1914, London, British Library, Robert Cecil MSS, Add. 1072, fos. 219–21; for Cecil's whole-hearted support for the Covenant movement's objects see his Hyde Park speech in Liberal Magazine, May 1914, p. 240.

70 Yorkshire Observer (Bradford), 13 Mar. 1914, p. 8; Darwen Gazette, 21 Mar. 1914, p. 8; Berrow's Worcester Journal, 23 May 1914, p. 6; Hampshire Advertiser (Southampton), 7 Mar. 1914, p. 12.

71 Long, Memories, p. 203.

72 Amery, My political life, i, p. 441; Hampshire Advertiser (Southampton), 11 Apr. 1914, p. 7.

73 L. S. Amery, ‘“Sign for Ulster”: what the British Covenant stands for’, Manchester Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1914, cutting in Amery MSS, AMEL1/2/26; Shoreditch Observer, 7 Mar. 1914, p. 5; Eastern Daily Press (Ipswich), 18 May 1914, p. 5.

74 Newcastle Daily Journal, 18 Mar. 1914, p. 12.

75 Darwen Gazette, 21 Mar. 1914, p. 8; 18 Apr. 1914, p. 5.

76 J. J. Oddy to Andrew Bonar Law, 11 Dec. 1912, Bonar Law MSS, BL82/1/17.

77 Yorkshire Observer (Bradford), 6 Mar. 1914, p. 8.

78 Yorkshire Post (Leeds), 20 Mar. 1914, p. 4.

79 Berkshire Chronicle (Reading), 7 Nov. 1913, p. 5.

80 Scotsman, 20 Feb. 1914, p. 9.

81 Jarvis, David, ‘British Conservatism and class politics in the 1920s’, English Historical Review, 61, (1996), pp. 59–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar at p. 64; Windscheffel, Imperial London, pp. 75–8; Windscheffel's interpretation of working-class Conservatism builds on Lawrence, ‘Class and gender’, pp. 640–6.

82 Liberal Agent, July 1913, p. 8.

83 K. M. O. Swaddle, ‘Coping with a mass electorate: a study in the evolution of constituency electioneering in Britain, with special emphasis on the periods which followed the Reform Acts of 1884 and 1918’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1990), p. 127.

84 Ian Packer, Lloyd George, Liberalism and the land: the land issue and party politics in England, 1906–1914 (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 126, 130, 137, 157.

85 Green, Crisis of Conservatism, pp. 289–94.

86 Readman, Land and nation, pp. 173–6, 180.

87 Packer, Lloyd George, Liberalism and the land, p. 135.

88 Times, 20 Feb. 1914, p. 8.

89 Newmarket Journal, 10 May 1913, p. 5.

90 Berkshire Chronicle (Reading), 17 Oct. 1913, p. 8.

91 Jesse Collings, The colonization of rural Britain: a complete scheme for the regeneration of British rural life (2 vols., London, 1914), ii, p. 351.

92 East London Observer, 14 Feb. 1914, p. 8.

93 Daily Herald, 6 Jan. 1914, p. 6; see also 9 Jan. 1914, p. 2; 17 Feb. 1914, p. 5; 20 Feb. 1914, p. 5.

94 Times, 12 Feb. 1914, p. 8; 14 Feb. 1914, p. 9.

95 Times, 13 Feb. 1914, p. 8; 16 Feb. 1914, p. 9.

96 Neil Evans, ‘“A nation in a nutshell’: the Swansea disestablishment demonstration of 1912 and the political culture of Edwardian Wales', in R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins, eds., From medieval to modern Wales (Cardiff, 2004), pp. 214–29.

97 Times, 10 Mar. 1913, p. 6; 2 June 1913, p. 10.

98 Ibid., 23 June 1913, p. 9.

99 Amongst the most detailed analyses of by-elections in the immediate pre-war years are P. Clarke, F., ‘The electoral position of the Liberal and Labour parties, 1910–1914’, English Historical Review, 90, (1975), pp. 828–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duncan Tanner, Political change and the Labour party, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 11; Green, Crisis of Conservatism, ch. 11; Dutton, ‘Conservatism in crisis’.

100 Bonar Law's speech at Blenheim, 29 July 1912, qu. in Smith, Jeremy, ‘Bluff, bluster and brinkmanship: Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill’, Historical Journal, 36, (1993), pp. 170–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Sir Robert Sanders (1867–1940). Conservative MP for Bridgwater, Somerset, Jan. 1910–23; Wells, Somerset, 1924–9; party whip; became deputy Conservative chairman, 1918; appointed chairman of National Union of Conservative Associations (NUCA), 1927; Sanders diary, 18 June 1914, in John Ramsden, ed., Real old Tory politics: political diaries of Sir Robert Sanders, first Lord Bayford, 1910–1935 (London, 1984), p. 78; See also Green, Crisis of Conservatism, pp. 301–3.

102 For a perceptive discussion of this trend see Clarke, ‘Electoral position of Liberal and Labour parties’, p. 829.

103 Tanner, Political change and the Labour party, pp. 318–37.

104 Ibid., pp. 123, 320.

105 Liberal Agent, July 1913, p. 11; see also Apr. 1913, pp. 185–6, July 1913, pp. 23, 26, Apr. 1914, p. 206.

106 For Sanders's increasing confidence in Conservative electoral prospects see his diary entries for 24 Feb. 1914, 5 Mar. 1914, 18 June 1914, in Ramsden, ed., Real old Tory politics, pp. 73, 78; Walter Long to Lord Lansdowne, 27 June 1914, London, British Library, Long MSS, Add. 62403, fo. 172.

107 Roberts, ‘Villa Toryism’, p. 244; Martin Pugh, The Tories and the people, 1880–1935 (London, 1985), 160.

108 Jackson, Popular opposition to Irish home rule, pp. 20–1, 242; Smith, ‘Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill’, p. 178.

109 Neal R. McCrillis, The British Conservative party in the age of universal suffrage: popular Conservatism, 1918–1929 (Columbus, OH, 1998), pp. 10, 20–3, 84–5, 225; Jarvis, ‘Conservatism and class politics’, pp. 64, 71, 80.

110 For detailed analyses of the divisions which tariff reform caused at constituency level see Witherell, Larry L., ‘Political cannibalism amongst Edwardian Conservatives: Henry Page Croft, the Confederacy and the campaign for East Hertfordshire, 1906–1910’, Twentieth Century British History, 8, (1997), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sykes, Alan, ‘The Confederacy and the purge of the Unionist free traders, 1906–1910’, Historical Journal, 18, (1975), pp. 349–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Peter Marsh, The discipline of popular government: Lord Salisbury's domestic statecraft, 1881–1902 (Hassocks, 1978), pp. 204–5; Matthew Roberts, ‘W. L. Jackson, Leeds Conservatism and the world of Villa Toryism, c. 1867–1900’ (Ph.D. thesis, York, 2003), pp. 222–4; Frans Coetzee, ‘Villa Toryism reconsidered: Conservatism and suburban sensibilities in late-Victorian Croydon’, in E. H. H. Green, ed., An age of transition: British politics, 1880–1914 (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 29–47 at p. 44.

112 The Outlook, 8 Nov. 1913, p. 633.

113 Duchess of Atholl (Katherine Stewart-Murray, 1874–1960). Known as marchioness of Tullibardine, 1899–1917; Leading figure within female Conservatism in Scotland; Unionist MP for Kinross and West Perthshire, 1923–38; first woman to serve in a Conservative government, as parliamentary secretary to the Board of Education, 1924–9; Caroline Bridgeman (née Parker, 1873–1961). Vice-chairman of WUTRA; member of British Women's Covenant Committee; chairman of Women's Unionist Organisation, 1918–25 and NUCA, 1925–7; S. J. Hetherington, Katherine Atholl, 1874–1960: against the tide (Aberdeen, 1989), p. 62; John Gore, ed., Mary Maxse 1870–1944: a record compiled by her family and friends (1946), p. 100.

114 G. E. Maguire, Conservative women: a history of women and the Conservative party, 1874–1997 (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 80.

115 Pamela Graves, Labour women: women in British working-class politics, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 41.

116 Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, ‘Rationing, austerity and Conservative party recovery after 1945’, Historical Journal, 37, (1994), pp. 174–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Jarvis, ‘Class politics’, pp. 64, 80; Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin. Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999) p. 206.