Chapter 6
“They told me that Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.”
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(Taken from ‘Lord Randolph Churchill’ by Timothy James, Picador 1978)
“The death of Stafford Northcote risked shattering the fragile true within the Conservative Party that had held since the election the previous year. The combination of Churchill and Northcote had proved surprisingly stable. Randolph’s fiery speeches amused the rank and file, while the presence of his senior partner reassured the more traditional members of the Party. As one backbencher wrote of Northcote, ‘If he could hardly be said to lead the Conservatives in the Commons, he at all events strolled in front of them and was recognised as their nominal chief’.
The cruelty of remarks made by Churchill’s opponents within the Party reveals the bitterness of feeling against Randolph held by some at the time. Smith and Cross quickly made it clear that they held Churchill in some way responsible for their friend’s death, a charge that Randolph was deeply hurt by. He immediately wrote both to them and the Queen; the monarch for her part was unimpressed by what she called his ‘strange, mournful’ missive and doubted its sincerity. It was in this unpleasant context that Northcote’s wife Cecilia made a generous and kind gesture. After reading her husband’s obituary notice and hearing of the insinuations made by Cross and Smith, she sent Randolph a brief note to Churchill urging him not to blame himself for what had happened[1]...
...Churchill quickly moved to take over the leadership of the Conservatives in the Commons. Even as he did so however, a powerful movement began to coalesce to oppose him. In the Commons, the malcontents were unsurprisingly led by Cross and Smith, both of whom felt that Churchill was ‘little better than a radical’; in the Lords, patrician discomfort with Randolph was even more pronounced. Only two things prevented a direct challenge to Churchill’s authority.
The first was the ongoing crisis over Ireland, while the second was the utter confidence in the Duke of Richmond’s camp that the Queen would never call Churchill to the Palace to be her Prime Minister. Only the monarch could decide who to call to form an administration, and she had never been an admirer of Randolph’s, considering him ‘quite impertinent and neither reliable nor loyal’. In a letter to Richmond in December 1885, she recorded that Churchill was ‘A most selfish statesman, not caring for the good of the country, for commerce etc., provided that he could make himself popular’[2]. By spring 1886 the mood amongst Churchill’s opponents was confident; it would better to retrench in the Lords and undermine Randolph from there than to confront him directly...”
(Taken from “Churchill versus Gladstone; political calculation during the Home Rule Crisis” by Peter Drummond, in the British Historical Quarterly, January 1987)
“To understand the course that Churchill took during the crises of 1885 and 1886, it helps to understand what he hoped to achieve. Central to his approach was the desire, if not necessity, to win power for the Tories and return them to office. Churchill, recently having emerged over so many heads, had many enemies within the Party. The ‘Tory Whigs’, at this point led in the Lords by Richmond and in the Commons by Cross, posed a strong threat to his own position. Prime-Ministerial office for a leader who had never even been a Cabinet Minister, Churchill knew, was the best method by which he could acquire the prestige and moral authority to consolidate his hold on the Party.
The Conservatives by early 1886 were already beginning to unravel. Following defeat in two elections and the emergence of Churchill and the other ‘Tory Democrats’, unity was almost as strained as in the Liberal Party, although the cracks were not as obvious in the Opposition as in the Government. Nevertheless, by 1886 the Conservative Party was experiencing a collective schizophrenia, an illness that has been described as ‘sick with office hunger’. At this point, the Conservatives had few other policies or issues upon which to challenge the Liberals effectively. Traditional Conservatism was electorally moribund, while ‘Tory Democracy’ was regarded as little more than naked radicalism by the grandees. Save open alignment with the Irish Nationalists, Home Rule provided the one escape route open to Churchill; accordingly he prolonged the crisis as ruthlessly as he was able...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“After two months of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring and chicanery, by early February Gladstone finally felt confident enough to put the Home Rule Bill in front of the House of Lords. The Prime Minister had exerted every scrap of influence that he could muster to ensure the Bill’s passage, ruthlessly using Hartington’s irresolution on the issue to convince other Whigs to support the legislation, or at least abstain. As Randolph Churchill crossed the country raising the spectre of violence if Home Rule was enacted, Gladstone privately used exactly the same arguments in reverse, telling one wavering Peer;
‘Any words which may lessen Mr Parnell’s influence, or dash the hopes which at present fill the hearts of the Irish people, might lead to an outbreak of crime and the renewal of dynamite outrages’
In the House of Lords, the Earl Granville moved the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill on February 22nd, with the Duke of Richmond formally opposing it. There were four days of debate; Lord Rosebery spoke on the last, Thursday 25th. Speaking to the Press Gallery rather than the Lord Chancellor, he warned that the failure of Home Rule would be fatal to the Empire and warned their Lordships that;
‘If you prevent this measure from passing, you will be untrue to the duty which has passed to you from a splendid ancestry, you will be untrue to the trust that has been bequeathed upon you by the people, and you will be untrue to the Empire of England!’
The Lords divided. Every Bishop voted against the Bill, as did the almost all the Conservatives and many of the Liberal peers who Gladstone had so painstakingly canvassed in the previous months. Over a third of eligible Peers voted in the highest turnout in the history of the House of Lords. The result was not even close. Peers rejected the Bill by to 306 to 106, a crushing victory for the ‘Not Contents’[3]...”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“The struggle was not over. The rejection of the Home Rule Bill by the Lords merely moved the battleground back to the House of Commons, and here, the Conservatives adopted the Fourth Party’s surreal obstructionism as Party policy. The Tories had learnt the techniques employed by the Irish Nationalists in the previous Parliament well. Churchill and Balfour would speak for hours at a time to delay proceedings, much to the disgust of the traditionalists; ‘It is a good cause, but he is making a mockery of Parliament!’ Edward Stanhope wrote to WH Smith in April[4].
Soon, enthusiastic Liberal dissidents began to copy the Conservative tactics, finding endless discussion points in obscure pieces of legislation, questioning the smallest expenditure and generally frustrating not only the Home Rule Bill but all aspects of Government. In May, after four months of constant obstruction, a despairing Gladstone allegedly remarked to his son that ‘Even if we prevail, the genie of parliamentary Fabianism has been awoken. It shall not be easy to force it back into the lamp.’ The remark stuck, and on June 3rd a party of thirteen Conservative and Liberal Unionist backbenchers led by Henry Drummond Wolff held the first meeting of the famous ‘Fabian Society’[5]. It was the first formal manifestation of the impending re-alignment of the parties...
Much to the delight of the Opposition, the Government’s final attempt to introduce the Home Rule legislation in the Commons before the summer recess was talked out on June 17th. Randolph Churchill was on fine form as he batted Liberal and Irish protests at his obstruction aside; ‘They complain that all I do is talk of Ulster. Ulster! Ulster! I shall shout ‘Ulster’ - and ‘Ireland’ - from now until eternity if it prevents this monstrosity from being inflicted upon our nation!’...”
(Taken from “Social Imperialism; the Popular Unionist movement in Britain, 1880-1898” in The Journal of Social History, November 1968)
Even as the Parliamentary battle over Home Rule raged, the popularity of the semi-political ‘Leagues’ grew in leaps and bounds. The Primrose League was the prototype for those that followed. Organised on the same basis as the Orange Order and shrewdly targeting the aspirational working and lower-middle classes with grand titles and the promise of social advancement, it was a powerful vehicle for ‘Tory Democracy’. Randolph Churchill’s grip on the organisation was total, and the administrative talents of Henry Drummond Wolff soon made it a genuine mass movement. In 1884, the year of its foundation, the Primrose League had 957 members. By 1886, at the height of the Home Rule crisis, it had more than 240,000[6].
The organisation had always been a front for Churchillian Conservatism, but as 1886 wore on it increasingly became the vehicle for working class Unionism. In March of that year League ‘Habitations’ began to sign the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ drafted by their Irish Unionist cousins, and in Glasgow and Liverpool the League became practically synonymous with the Orange Order. From these links the practice of marching spread, and on April 19th 1886 the first ‘Empire Parades’ took place in London and Birmingham to celebrate Primrose Day[7]...
Another manifestation of Unionist sentiment amongst the working classes were the ‘Round Table’ groups, the namesake for which was founded in 1886. Inspired by the tradition and rituals of the Primrose League and also by the supposed proliferation of secret societies involving Irish Republicans, a young businessman named Horatio Bottomley[8] devised the idea of a ‘clandestine brotherhood to defend the Queen and Empire’, mainly as a convenient method to extort subscriptions from gullible patriots. In reality, the inaugural ‘Round Table’ was simply a supper club for City financiers with ridiculous Arthurian and sub-Masonic symbolism grafted on; Bottomley’s talent for self-publicity however meant that while the many imitators that sprang up across the country tended to be just as theatrical, some took matters rather more literally[9]...”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“In October, the battle over Home Rule resumed. On the 21st, Gladstone personally re-introduced the Bill into the Commons, as he had a year before; after three days of debate and a Government guillotine motion that almost caused a fight to break out in the Chamber, the Bill scraped through the Lower House by 333 votes to 322. The Prime Minister was ecstatic; he had even slightly increased his majority, partly due to Whig disgust at the obstructionist tactics favoured by Churchill, Chamberlain and Goschen. For a time, it seemed that the Lords might be forced to accept the will of the Commons, and the Government quickly pressed on with the legislation. On November 4th 1886 the Home Rule Bill reached the Lords for a second time. Amidst cries of “Treason and Plot”, the Earl Granville again moved the legislation; this time, his words contained a thinly veiled threat to the Peers.
‘If you reject this measure, it should not be forgotten that the decision against Home Rule has been given by several hundred Peers- Several hundred! Out of an electorate of 4,800,000!’[10]
The Earl badly misjudged his audience; when the Lords went to divide the Government found itself defeated by an even greater margin than before, 310 to 102.
Gladstone was appalled; he knew that stalemate had been reached. The following day, the Prime Minister went to see the Queen to request the creation of several hundred new Liberal Peers to overturn the Unionist majority in the Lords. The Monarch was withering. Citing precedents fed to her by Goschen and Richmond, she pointed out that the Lords had every right to refuse to allow the new Peers to take their seats, which could happen if ‘there was any circumstance attaching to their creation that indicated an intention of the crown to encroach on the independence of the House’[11]. The Queen told Gladstone bluntly that only a dissolution would solve the crisis. After several days of agonising, the Prime Minister realised that he had no choice. On November 15th, an election was called for January 6th the following year...”
(Taken from ‘The Fall of the Liberal Party’ by Steven Dyson, Peterson 1964)
“From the very beginning, Gladstone cast the debate in terms of ‘Peers versus People’; his Manchester speech of November 20th deserves to be quoted extensively.
‘Last year, the Home Rule Bill was freely and exhaustively discussed in the House of Commons, and in the end it received the approval of a majority of the representatives of the people. The House of Lords, in defiance of the counsels of the wisest and coolest heads in the Tory party, has rejected the whole provision which the Commons had made for the Government of Ireland[12].
The experience of the Parliament which has today been dissolved shows that the possession of an unlimited veto by a partisan people, however clearly expressed, is always liable to be rendered inoperative.... a Liberal majority in the House of Commons, as has been demonstrated during the last four years, is, under existing conditions, impotent to place on the Statute-book the very measures which it was sent to Westminster to carry in to law.
It is absurd to speak of this system as though it secured to us any of the advantages of a Second Chamber, in the sense in which that term is understood and practically interpreted in every other democratic country. The limitation of the veto is the first and most urgent step to be taken; for it is the condition precedent to the attainment of the great legislative reforms which our party has at heart!’
The insults soon began to fly. When Churchill claimed that ‘’Peers versus people’ could be more accurately described as ‘Everyone against Mr Gladstone’’, the Prime Minister sourly described him as a ‘political gadfly’. Never one to lose a battle of insults, Churchill cheerfully responded that Gladstone was ‘an old man in a hurry’. Despite the bitter tone of the hustings however, the election itself was actually far less rowdy and violent then the previous one; voters were far less motivated by the Irish Question then by the ‘three acres and a cow’ that the previous election had promised them, and the novelty for voting had worn off for many in the expanded franchise[13]...”
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of British Politics”, ed Fred Timms, Star 1976)
1887 ELECTION: General Election held in January 1887 after W E Gladstone decided to fight a ‘peers versus people’ election thanks to the House of Lords’ continued rejection of the Home Rule Bill. Although the Liberal vote hardly fell, electoral pacts between the Liberal Unionist and Conservative parties caused a catastrophe for the Government[14]. The Conservatives were the largest Party in Parliament, but could only form an administration with the help of the Liberal Unionists.
The results were as follows:
Conservative: 320 (+87)
Liberal Unionist: 82 (+82)
Liberal: 179 (-155)
Irish Parliamentary: 83 (-2)
Crofters’ Party: 1 (-2)
Independent: 2 (+1)
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[1] Similar things happened following Northcote’s death in OTL, although the context is rather different.
[2] The Queen said both things in letters OTL; she really wasn’t a fan of Randolph, and his friendship with the Prince of Wales ITTL will make matters worse.
[3] OTL when the Second Home Rule Bill went to the Lords it got rejected by an even greater margin.
[4] Tory traditionalists frowned on Parliamentary obstructionism, seeing it as childish and dishonourable; ITTL it’s been adopted as Party policy but many are extremely uncomfortable with the move.
[5] OTL’s Fabian Society has already been founded, although slightly differently; more on this later...
[6] All of this is OTL. The rapid growth of the League occurred OTL as well; ITTL it’s even faster for a variety of reasons including the worse Home Rule crisis.
[7] This didn’t happen OTL, but I think it’s a plausible- if unpleasant- development. 19th April is Primrose Day OTL, although it hasn’t been celebrated for many years.
[8] OTL Bottomley is best known for founding the Financial Times, as well as being a compulsive swindler, gambler and cheat. As an ultra-nationalist MP he was forced out of Parliament twice thanks to criminal charges and bankruptcy, and ended his life in disgrace. Noel Coward may have planned a musical about him too...
[9] The majority of ‘Round Tables’ involve a group of middle-aged men wearing silly robes and calling each other codenames like ‘Lancelot’ before swearing undying loyalty to the Queen; they are almost identical of all the Fenian groups in New York and Boston. As with the Fenians however, there are a few who take it a bit too seriously...
[10] OTL, Salisbury used a similar line of rhetoric on the opposite side of the argument in 1892
[11] This is partly true; in 1711, Scottish Peers of British creation were prevented from voting and sitting until 1782, and in 1852 the House barred Baron Wensleydale from sitting after he was made a life peer by Royal Prerogative
[12] This neatly neglects to mention the role Liberal Peers had in the bill’s rejection.
[13] This was the case in OTL’s 1886 election too.
[14] Something similar happened OTL in 1886, but here it is on a much larger scale.
) the Jubilee Plot sounds too good to pass up.
