Edwardian Liberalism - historian's arguments Flashcards
Searle
Sets out Marxist case: Liberals mostly catered for bourgeoisie, middle classes, in their attack on the feudal system. At first the workers supported this, but then support stopped as gap widened between business owners and workers.
Sets out Revisionist case: Liberal party successfully adapted itself to the requirements of class politics during the Edwardian era before unexpectedly falling victim to WW1.
- Not convinced by the revisionist case
- Questions the extent to which the Liberals were developing into a social democratic party by the eve of World War One; powerful business groups in the party were disenchanted by social reform, no coherent welfare strategy was sustained. Liberals ideologically unsuited to class politics.
- The Achilles Heel of Liberalism was its particular attitude to class. Did not adopt the language of class, did not adopt any working-class candidate, ambivalent towards trade unions. New Liberals anxious to do things for the working class but not to allow it to take control of its own destiny.
- The Liberal failure post 1918 due to the war (which split the party) BUT also to determination of Labour and Conservatives – class based parties - to clear them out of the way.
Crowther
- Poor Law Commission of 1905 had roots in the royal commission on the Poor Law of 1832. Family should be regarded as the economic unit of society. People should support their relatives. Same theme can be seen in 1932 – when the Ministry of Health defended abolition of means test on ethical and financial grounds.
- Means test raised problems for the definition of the family; e.g. in 1908 legislation for Old Age pensions, ambiguous because old age pension and poor relief could not be given together. 5d not enough to live on – state assuming old people had other means of support (i.e. from family).
- Argues that moral considerations were always mingled with financial concerns. E.g. Poor Law Commission 1905 – if relief were removed from the control of small local authorities, the system would become more impartial and less concerned with small economies.
Wohl
- Describes the sordid environment of Victorian Britain. Most deaths caused by contagious diseases and 25% of children born in England died before their 5th birthday.
- Hazards of work were magnified by the conditions that workers faced on returning to their homes.
- ‘culture of poverty’
- Argues that daily experience shaped personal habit and social and political behaviour
Harris
- The evolution of a national system to deal with the unemployed was a pragmatic process, motivated by the proven inadequacy of voluntary and local forms of relief and the electoral needs and fears of the Liberals.
- Rejects the idea that ‘history marches by the left’
Hennock
- British policy makers influenced by the German model of compulsory contributory insurance adopted from the 1880s. Few echoes of Germany before 1905. German model played an important role in the change of direction between 1905 and 1911.
- Some points of difference – e.g. wrt unemployment, the British model between 1905 and 1911 focused much more on voluntary efforts
Searle
- Describes the ‘rather unthinking’ search for salvation through a businessmen’s government (Old Liberalism)
- Rejects idea that welfare legislation was a conscious attempt to apply ideas of national efficiency to the external world (Old Liberalism)
- It is because of ‘unconscious’ affinities that Lloyd George’s grandiose plan for a coalition in I910 is treated as an extension of a quest for national efficiency which had petered out years before.
Bernstein
- Argues that Liberalism was unable to extend beyond its nonconformist base
- New Liberals did not produce a vote catcher in social reform
- New Liberals were unable to adapt to working class politics.
- Liberals were doomed long before the 1918 Representation of the People Act eroded its support. (Critique – act didn’t significantly increase the working-class proportion of the franchise).
- Goes against revisionist interpretations.
- The Newcastle Programme of 1891 became the banner of traditional Liberalism by the 20C (N.B. it promoted Irish Home Rule, land reform, reform of the Lords…It was radical).
- Critique by Michael Freeden: narrows discussion of new Liberals to that existing within a party structure, as opposed to an intellectual movement. He also argues that New Liberalism continued to represent the interest of middle-class nonconformists, who also impeded progress within the Liberal party. Welfare policies of the new Liberals after 1906 stretched the limits of political action/intervention.
Tanner
- Labour often faced difficulties gaining support in working-class districts.
- Need to appreciate the complexity and diversity
Clarke
• Challenges traditional interpretations of the decline of the Liberals (based on ideological bankruptcy, personality conflicts, the inevitable rise of Labour).
• Sees the North West of England as a microcosm of the nation.
• Clarke goes against the view that modernization and class polarisation pre-determined the decline of the Liberal party in the twentieth century.
• By 1906 the Liberals had successfully shaken of their Gladstonian mantle, and made a successful bid for the urban working classes. Uses evidence from by elections in Lancashire. Successfully contained the challenge of Labour within the confines of a ‘Progressive Alliance’.
• Close Labour-Liberal cooperation during this period
• Challenges the view that certain individuals in the Liberal Party, such as Asquith, ‘were to blame for giving room to the Socialist cuckoo in the Radical nest’.
• National and local press played a role in party development.
• Tory democracy survived.
• Critique:
- how far is Lancashire typical of other areas? More comparison needed?
- Evidence that Liberal and Labour parties locked in rivalry
- New Liberal social reforms had little appeal to workers (Thane)
- Worsening industrial relations undermined cross-class Liberalism (Howkins)
- Working class was becoming more homogenous therefore it was inevitable that it would come to support Labour (more obviously ‘class-based’) at the expense of the Liberals.
Clarke (other)
- The Liberals made a successful adjustment to the arrival of class-based politics by emerging as the party of social reform (this not accepted by Searle).
- The prominence of class issues was troublesome in the long-run for the Liberal Party.
Lawrence
- Evidence of Liberal-Labour electoral conflict cannot automatically be equated with an absence of ‘progressivist’ thinking. Struggle for supremacy within progressivism.
- Despite apparent disagreement over electoral matters, did the two parties speak a common political language, even if it was used to argue against the other side?
- Wolverhampton a classic example of the ‘Progressive Alliance’.
- The progressive alliance declined after 1911 because a new generation of Labour leaders did not have a sentimental attachment to the Liberals.
- Strength of Toryism amongst the working class was a complication for progressivism in Wolverhampton. Tory/Lib-Lab schisms of the late 19C had weakened local trade unionism, people did not want to see these divisions revisited.
- ‘progressivism’ remained a ‘sickly political child’ in Wolverhampton. Labour and Liberals did not share an ideological commitment to collectivist social reform/ideas of ‘New Liberalism’.
- After the Great War the labour party argued that only it was radical enough to fulfil hopes for progress.
Green
• 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.
• Conservatives faced key problems;
- Electoral system increasingly dominated by the property-less
- Challenge of socialism
- Britain’s decline as an economic and imperial power
• Intense debate within the Conservative party over the role of the state in society, the path of Britain’s economic development, the future of the empire, the Conservative constituency and the nature of Conservatism itself.
• Focuses on the ideology of Conservatism; much policy debates between 1880 and 1914. Radical Conservatives encouraged the party to support tariff reform.
• Edwardian period saw a deepening of the crisis of Conservatism; 1913 the ‘Bonar Law Memorial’ was signed – committed the party not to introduce imperial preference until it had won a second general election.
• In the immediate pre-war years Conservatism suffered from intellectual aridity. Leaders possessed not policies which could unite the party nor enable it to develop an effective popular appeal.
Thackeray
• The vibrancy of rank-and-file Conservatism in Edwardian Britain tends to be underestimated.
• By embracing a variety of populist causes in 1913-14, the Conservatives appeared to have found a way to overcome electoral malaise.
- Tariff campaign: encouraged a more ideologically driven activist commitment amongst party supporters and substantially enhanced women’s role within Unionist politics.
- Cooperation with populist organisations (defence of established church, rural smallholdings).
• They laid the foundations for post-war success by widening their appeal
• Conservatives had strong alternative policies, such as a popular alternative DLGs land reform.
• Green underestimates the extent the importance of religion to Edwardian Conservatism. A Liberal Unionist identity survived into the 20C, linked by opposition to Irish Home Rule.
