The Anglo-Saxon Social Model

[Rattigan]

This is a TL that I originally started thinking about just after Margaret Thatcher died in 2013. I was reading an article (on a blog and by an author whose names I’ve now forgotten – sorry for forgetting to credit you if you ever come across this) reflecting on her premiership and the author ruminated that, if the country had chosen the other way in 1979, “we [the UK] could have been Sweden” and that’s something that really stuck with me. I don’t believe that the direction of the British state in 1979, sans Thatcherism, would have been a Scandinavian social democracy but I wondered about the possibility of a TL where something like that did happen. But for this to occur, I realized that I would have to change a lot of things in the nineteenth century, so that the broad-based class and constitutional compromise which existed in Scandinavia by 1914 also existed in the UK. That is why this thread is posted in the post-1900 forums, where the most dramatic changes will take place, even though it will start in the 1870s.

Couple of other things to put on the table before we go any further. Firstly, this is a TL which will reflect my own political tastes and it is one where the good guys (from my POV) win. Secondly, I rely a few times on individuals who died early not dying early. Sometimes this is a case of somebody surviving an assassination attempt they didn’t IOTL but other times people will not die of illnesses that killed them ITTL. I appreciate that this is a bit ASB for some people so I’ll try and keep that kind of thing to a minimum. Thirdly, this will be a bit Britwank for some people because the UK will finish it being richer and more influential ITTL 2018 than IOTL 2018 but it’s not going to be a story about keeping the empire together post-1945. But the Commonwealth will be very different and very important ITTL so bear that in mind.

Fifthly (?), I will be keeping the focus on the UK at least for the first few decades, so please assume that the rest of the world moves on as IOTL (or, at least, with relatively inconsequential changes). I will expand my scope to cover other countries as the TL goes on. In particular, I have changes I’d like to make re the US and Russia but we can get onto that. However, I don’t want to go to wild and blunder into countries’ histories’ that I don’t know enough about and make stupid mistakes. Feel free to ask any questions about other countries not covered in the TL and I’ll do my best to answer.

Finally, this thread will sit somewhere between Type II and Type III on the Sliding Scale of Alt Histories. I try to follow through the POD logically but as time goes by that inevitably slides into speculation and (in some regards) wish fulfilment. I'm not above making some TTL figures or events mirror OTL ones where I think it works for the thread. I'll also continue to use real people with their real birthdates and places, where possible. I'll also have various inventions being invented earlier or working out better but not by anything too radical (i.e. a widget will be invented earlier but only by a few years and still at a time when such an invention would have been plausible - you're not going to have Victorians with nuclear bombs).

Also, as a way of covering my back, a lot of the ideas in the TL are hardly original and have been discussed in loads of other TLs. However, I am really enjoying the TLs ‘Why the Chinese Play Cricket’ by Miss Construction and ‘Until Every Drop of Blood is Paid’ by Red_Galiray and was also inspired by the defunct ‘East of Suez’ TL by NixonTheUsedCarSalesman. I don’t think I’ve plagiarized from them directly but I have been inspired by them so there will be some similarities. In particular, Miss Construction’s account of a WW1 without British involvement is compelling and Red_Galiray’s description of a more radical US Civil War and Reconstruction will be the seed of my description of ITTL USA if I ever get round to it.

Anyway, if you’re interested then give this thread a subscribe. All feedback is welcome.

 

[Rattigan]

Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria, 24 May 1819 – 29 February 1872) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death.

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria or Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father’s three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the soubriquet “the grandmother of Europe.” After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength. However, when she was assassinated by a radical republican in 1872, the popularity of the monarchy recovered, as did her posthumous popularity.

She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, initiated the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father.

Assassination

On the last day of February 1872, tow days after a thanksgiving service for the recovery of Edward from typhoid, Victoria was travelling in her carriage through London with her confidant John Brown in attendance. As they approached Buckingham Palace, the carriage was attacked by 17-year-old Arthur O'Connor, the great-nephew of the late radical MP Feargus O'Connor, who fired three shots from a pistol. Brown was killed instantly and Victoria herself was pronounced dead half an hour later.

 

[Rattigan]

Following the passing of the Irish Church Resolutions by the Liberals in 1868 over the heads of the Conservative government, Benjamin Disraeli took the hint and called a general election. With the Liberals now united after the passing of the 1867 Reform Act, they increased their seats in the Commons and Gladstone was asked to form a ministry, famously receiving notice of the election results while chopping wood at his estate.


Gladstone’s ministry set the template for what came to be known as ‘Gladstonian Liberalism’, characterised by the pursuit of individual liberty and the loosening of political and economic restraints. His proposals were intended to go some way to meeting working-class demands, with the aim of a ‘free breakfast table’ a famous rhetorical target. In the pursuit of this, Gladstone’s government pursued spending restraint domestically and a foreign policy aimed at promoting peace internationally. Major legislation passed during his first term included the Elementary Education Act 1870 (which instituted national elementary education across the UK), the Trade Union Act 1871 (making membership of a trades union legal) and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 (remodelling the English court system). The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 also went some way towards cutting down landlord abuses in Ireland.


In foreign policy, the government pursued a range of reforms to modernise the army and streamline its workings. Although Gladstone did not take a personal interest in military affairs, he appreciated efficiency and supported his Defence Secretary Edward Cardwell in his efforts. Initially, small steps were taken to abolish archaic practices such as the purchase of commissions and bounty money but, after seeing the success of the Prussian army in the Franco-Prussian War, Cardwell seized the moment to institute a series of more radical reforms. Cardwell instituted a comprehensive overhaul of the army, reducing compulsory enlistment time, creating a viable reserve force for the first time and modernising equipment.


In 1872, however, the government was thrown off course by the assassination, on 27 February, of Queen Victoria by the 17-year-old Arthur O’Connor. At the time, the monarchy had been undergoing a period of unpopularity as a result of Victoria’s withdrawal from public life following the death of her husband Prince Albert, and the assassination lead to concerns about a general uprising and possibly even a revolution, especially considering how the Prince of Wales, the 30-year-old Albert Edward, was also severely ill with typhoid. However, the Prince pulled through and his natural charisma charmed the public and eased tensions following the death of his mother. He chose to reign under the name Edward VII and he ascended to the throne on the back of widespread popularity, with the public warming to his personal bonhomie and there being widespread sympathy both for his recent illness and the death of his mother. Edward was crowned at Westminster on 26 July 1872, to general public rejoicing, by the 60-year-old Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait.


Having previously led a somewhat dissolute lifestyle, Edward’s accession to the throne changed him. Although he retained his natural bonhomie and charm, he cut down on his drinking and smoking and devoted himself to the business of state. He established a warm and mutually respectful relationship with Gladstone, and Lord Hartington, the Secretary of State for Ireland, became a confidante.


Within two years of Edward’s accession, however, Gladstone’s ministry had begun to crumble largely over religious disputes. Questions of education and Irish disestablishment played an important part in splitting Gladstonians, who wanted to guard religion’s independence from a modernising civil power, and the Whiggish wing of the party, which wanted greater state control of education. These splits pressaged deeper difficulties in passing more radical land reform and education policies and so Gladstone unexpectedly got the King to agree to a dissolution of Parliament in January 1874.

 

[Rattigan]

Unlike Disraeli’s Conservatives, the Liberals had let much of their internal organisation decline since 1868 and they had also failed to ensure that their voters were kept on the electoral register. In a tightly fought election, the Liberals won a majority of votes both nationally and in each of the UK’s nations but the Conservatives took advantage of the fact that many of their MPs were returned unoposed to give the party a majority of 23. The election also saw the emergence of a formal third party for the first time in British politics, with Isaac Butt’s Home Rule League taking 60 seats (probably helped by the Secret Ballot Act 1872 preventing landlords from blackmailing their tenants into voting according to their wishes).

When he returned to the premiership, Disreali’s government’s biggest challenge was the ongoing effects of the Long Depression. With its origins in the United States in the autumn of 1873, the economic crisis did not have an immediate effect on the UK but nonetheless caused the Bank of England to hold interest rates at a relatively high 9%, causing general economic sluggishness. Although the government was constrained by its free trading ideology from making more direct investments in the national economy, Colonial Secretary Lord Carnarvon pursued a number of policies directed towards the development of colonial economies, notably in encouraging emigration to the colonies in North America, Australasia and Africa. The British East Africa Company and the British South Africa Company were chartered in 1878 and 1879, respectively, in order to sure up British trading interests in those regions and explore the possibility of establishing settler colonies.

Elsewhere in foreign affairs, Disraeli’s government arranged for the purchase of a controlling share in the Suez Canal in 1875 and pursued what might be called an interventionist foreign policy. In particular, Disraeli attracted notice for his pro-Ottoman views, particularly as against Britain’s rival, Russia. In particular, Disraeli’s support for the Ottomans over the Bulgarian Uprising in 1876 encouraged Gladstone to return to public life in the West Lothian Campaign, having previously retired in 1874. Despite his pro-Ottoman views, he and Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury participated in the Berlin Congress and consented to the partition of the Balkans in return for concessions from Germany against British interests in eastern and southern Africa.

On the domestic front, Home Secretary R.A. Cross enacted several reforms, most notably in extending inexpensive credit to poorer households in order to encourage house-building and extending the period of compulsory education up to the age of 10. In addition, the government legalised peaceful picketing and introduced laws allowing employers to sue employers in civil courts for breach of contract.

However, despite the noise aroused by Disraeli’s foreign policy, what really damaged the Conservatives as 1880 approached was their inability to effectively defend their economic record. The economic stress emanating from the Panic of 1873 had not abated and had created downward pressure on wages. Although Lord Carnarvon’s policies had developed the economies of the colonies, they had not done anything to ameliorate the conditions of the British industrial working class and agricultural labourers. The government’s free trade policies made the British government defenceless against the flood of cheap wheat from North America (which was exacerbated by a bad harvest in Britain in 1879). Aware of these issues, Disraeli was initially wary of calling an early election but, encouraged a few better than expected by-election results in early 1880, Disraeli dissolved Parliament and went to the country in March 1880.

 

[Rattigan]

The Liberals won a comfortable majority of 25 with a swing of 110 seats against the Conservatives, with a campaign dominated by Gladstone’s vigorous campaigning in Midlothian, which saw him returned for the Scottish seat. Once the results became clear, the king immediately approached Lord Hartington to form a government and, after negotiations with Gladstone, he agreed to form a government with the Grand Old Man as his Chancellor. Patriotic and cautiously pro-imperialist, Hartington appointed the radical Joseph Chamberlain freshly arrived in Westminster from the mayoralty of Birmingham, to the position of Colonial Secretary, with the Gladstone’s old crony Lord Granville installed at the Foreign Office to keep an eye on him.

On the domestic front, the Liberals undertook a thoroughgoing programme of social and economic reform. In August 1880, compulsory education was extended to the age of 12. This was followed, in July 1881, when the tireless work of the Vice-President of the Committee of the Council for Education A.J. Mundella was rewarded by the passing of the Workmen’s Infants Scholarships Act 1881 (along with his promotion to the Cabinet as the first Secretary of State for Education and Science). The 1881 Act provided for scholarships and interest-free loans to be advanced to young schoolchildren from poor backgrounds to attend education after the age of 12 and, eventually university. In the decades and centuries since its passing, the Act has attracted criticism for the strictures it placed on recipients’ families (for example, all support would be stopped if either of the recipients’ parents was arrested while drunk or if they divorced) but it was nonetheless progressive in its time: giving working class children a path to higher education.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain’s meddling in colonial affairs was instantly felt in December 1880, when his attempts to fully absorb the independent Boer republics saw war break out in southern Africa. Although the British army was superior in most formal battles, the Boers’ guerilla tactics lead to a string of sharp defeats. Grenville and Hartington intervened personally, believing that conquering the Boers far outweighed any benefit, and negotiated a face-saving treaty effectively granting the Boer republics independence under (nominal) British suzerainty.

Perhaps the most significant moment in the Parliament occurred, however, in January 1881, when Chamberlain allied with Charles Stewart Parnell (the leader of the Home Rule Party since May 1880) to prevent Irish Secretary William Forster taking his Coercion Bill to the Commons (which would have, amongst other things, legalised arrest without trial in Ireland). Humiliated by the failure of his signature policy proposal, Forster resigned and was replaced by Lord Frederick Cavendish, Hartington’s brother. A triumvirate of Parnell, Chamberlain and Cavendish would not generally have been predicted five years earlier but, working together, the three of them pushed through the Irish Land Act 1885, which gave greater rights to Catholic tenants to purchase the land they farmed from their (predominantly) Protestant landlords. Within 15 years of the passing of this act, over 90% of Irish land had been put in the hands of the peasantry, at a stroke reversing the Protestant Ascendancy which had obtained since the 1640s.

Elsewhere, British force was projected with more success than had been the case in south Africa. The result of the Anglo-Egyptian War in 1882 was to strengthen British control over the region at the expense of the French and the Ottomans. When an uprising against Anglo-Egyptian rule began in Sudan two years later, General Charles Gordon was dispatched to Khartoum to evacuate the British officials there. Contrary to his orders, Gordon instead attempted to administer Khartoum and began to defend a siege from the Mahdist forces in March 1884. Despite acting contrary to explicit orders, Gordon’s refusal to surrender made him popular with the public and an expeditionary force under the command of General Wolseley was despatched to relieve him. Wolseley won a resounding victory at Omdurman in January 1885 and successfully relieved Gordon.

In India, Lord Ripon, the Viceroy, passed the Indian Legal System Act 1883, which included provision for the introduction of native Indians to the civil service and the judiciary. The provision which caused the most controversy was the proposal that Indian judges be allowed to try white defendants or claimants. However, it eventually passed with the proviso that Europeans could demand a jury made up of 50% Europeans in such a case. More importantly, however, it provided a path for higher caste Indians to enter the civil and military services, the beginning of the slow ‘Indianisation’ of the subcontinent.

Although the government has been regarded before and since as one of the great reforming Liberal ministries, as 1884 turned into 1885, Hartington found that increasing numbers of his cabinet were dissatisfied with its direction and the straightjacket of the Liberal governing tradition in general. Gladstone had remained close to the King and, in a letter in February 1885, he confided that he was concerned about what he called “Tory demagoguery” and the desire of the Liberals to “take into the hands of the state the business of individual men.” Hartington too was unnerved by the radicalism of people like Chamberlain but was also repelled by Gladstone’s moral self-rectitude and was unwilling to risk playing out Liberal divisions in public.

In this context, Hartington’s melancholy moods became more pronounced and he used the opportunity of the passing of the 1884 Reform Act and the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (which extended the vote to agricultural labourers and redistributed seats more equitably) to ask the king for a dissolution in November 1885.

 

[Rattigan]

Despite the loss of seats, the election showed that Hartington’s government had in fact retained much of its popularity, with the vote holding up reasonably well in England, Wales and Scotland. However, what cost the Liberals their majority was the success of the Irish Parliamentary Party. With their relatively advanced electoral machine, the near-dictatorial control Parnell showed over its internal workings and their record of provable legislative success (in the form of the Land Acts), they picked up 23 more seats in Ireland (wiping out the Liberals on the island in the process). These defeats, combined with the Conservatives picking up another 10 seats across England and Scotland, caused the Liberals to lose their Parliamentary majority, although they remained the largest party in the Commons. As such, the King turned to Hartington again and, in the absence of obvious alternatives, Hartington accepted the offer.

It was clear from the off that the Liberals would have to work closely with the Irish Parliamentarians and that there would be certain trade-offs required as a result. Although many Irish MPs (including Parnell himself) were not instinctively pro-Liberal, they understood that Lord Salisbury’s Conservatives had no chance of offering them the devolved Dublin assembly that they so craved. Their position was helped by the views of Cavendish and Chamberlain, who remained in their influential positions of Irish Secretary and Colonial Secretary, respectively. Both had been converted, via their collaboration with Parnell on several measures, to the cause of Home Rule. The ambitious Chamberlain, in particular, saw home rule as being a key plank towards the creation of his ultimate aim of an imperial federal parliament. Gladstone had also been converted to the cause and, after a long conversation with his brother at the Reform Club, Hartington was too.

The resulting Irish Home Rule Bill came together with significant contributions from the Chamberlainite radicals as well as the Irish Parliamentarians. Nevertheless, when the proposed legislation was presented to the Commons by Cavendish, it provoked bitter debate through the summer of 1885. While some radical Liberals held private doubts, Chamberlain’s public support for the bill meant that there was little doubt that it would pass the Commons on the back of Liberal and Irish votes. However, the Lords, with its in-built Conservative majority, was a completely different matter. Despite a rebellion of 31 Liberals, the Bill passed the Commons in November by 389 votes to 281 and then went up to the Lords. There the Liberals mounted a vigorous defence of their legislation and the King even intervened privately to attempt to persuade those peers who were thought to be amenable. But the Bill nonetheless failed by 339 votes to 121.

Furious at the anti-democratic actions of the Lords, the King agreed to dissolve Parliament in January 1886 and Hartington called an election specifically on the issue of home rule.

 

[Rattigan]

A vigorous and divisively-framed campaign resulted in a surprisingly static set of results, with the only change being a loss by the Conservatives to a so-called ‘Independent Conservative’ (who took the Conservative whip on almost all issues in any event). This gave clear democratic legitimacy to the Irish Home Rule Bill, which was presented (in a largely unamended form) to the Commons in March 1886 and passed easily, this time by 403 votes to 267. During the course of the Commons debate, Cavendish, introducing his legislation once more, stated that he would ask the King to break the Lords deadlock “in this Parliament” if necessary, a clear reference to the oft-suggest proposal for the King to flood the Lords with 400 Liberal peers to guarantee a majority.

In high-level talks attended by Hartington, Gladstone, Chamberlain, Cavendish and William Harcourt as well as the Conservative leaders Lord Salisbury and Stafford Northcote, Hartington informed the King that his government would resign if the Lords vetoed the bill once more and asked for assurances that the King would appoint the necessary number of peers to carry it. Salisbury informed Edward that he would attempt to form a government if Hartington resigned but Edward stated that he did not believe that such a government (even if it could rely on the rump of Liberal ‘unionists’ - of which there were only two on the last division) could command the confidence of both Houses and pledged that he would honour Hartington’s request.

Nevertheless, when the bill appeared in the Lords for the second time, Conservative peers introduced a series of wrecking amendments that would have effectively nullified the meaning of the new Dublin assembly. In response, Edward agreed to Hartington’s request to make his pledge public and Chamberlain began to (in a move that was, strictly speaking, outside his brief) draw up an act limiting the powers of the Lords. New (and largely speculative) lists of potential new peers began to appear in the papers, further adding to the pressure on the Lords, although what links these lists had with reality was open to question. Cowed by this show of Liberal and monarchical force, Salisbury buckled and the Lords passed the Irish Home Rule Act on 29 April 1886 and it received the royal assent the following day.

Sensing blood in the water, the Liberals decided to press home their advantage and attempt to crush the in-built power of the Conservatives in the Lords once and for all. Their chosen means for doing this was via the Chamberlain-drafted piece of legislation known as the Parliament Bill. A series of cross-party discussions on the bill took place throughout the summer and autumn of 1886 but by November they had collapsed without agreement. In the end, the bill which was put to the Commons was effectively a combined Liberal-Irish affair, ending the Lords’ right to veto money bills and changing their power of veto over other bills to a power of delay (for up to two years). In discussions around the bill and in the bill’s preamble a revision of the Lords’ make-up was promised but there was no provision in the actual contents to make any such change.

The bill passed the Commons and went up to the Lords, where many were urging Salisbury to take a final stand and vote it down. It was known that Edward did not favour yet another election on the issue of constitutional reform but, at the same time, his threat to create 400 Liberal peers remained very much on the table. The bill was finally passed in the Lords by 131 votes to 114, reflecting both the level of aristocratic opposition and a large number of abstentions. It was signed into law on 14 January 1887 as the Parliament Act 1887.

The remainder of the Parliament was dedicated to constitutional issues and the administrative task of setting up the new Dublin Assembly. Although there was the expectation that the majority of the biggest names in Irish politics would return to Dublin, the Home Rule Act reserved a large amount of power in Westminster’s hands. Preparations were thrown into a degree of political chaos, furthermore, over the dissolution of the Irish Parliamentary Party. Having completed its stated mission, Parnell announced in January 1887 that he would be moving to dissolve the party, with MPs free to caucus as they wished. With not a small degree of lazy thinking, most supposed that the vast majority would simply join the Liberals. However, while most Irish MPs did have Liberal sensibilities, many did not. The party was rocked when Parnell began to openly caucus with the Conservatives in the Commons and, from March 1887, take the Conservative whip, announcing that he would be remaining in Westminster after the foundation of the Dublin Assembly in 1888. With such a prominent Irish figure remaining in Westminster politics, the liberal Irish faction soon came round to the idea that there needed to be a similarly prominent Irish politician in Westminster in order to speak up for liberal Irish interests. The figure chosen was Parnell’s long-time but now former ally John Dillon, who began to (with his followers) take the Liberal whip from April 1887.

Although, with the addition of the liberal Irish MPs, the Liberals had a majority in the Commons once more, the party was beginning to noticeably come apart. In particular, Chamberlain in his position as Colonial Secretary was increasingly carrying out his own private policy regardless of Hartington’s views or those of the Gladstonians in cabinet. Chamberlain began instituting a variety of policies to support British colonial settlement in Africa, culminating in the chartering of the colony of Rhodesia on 20 January 1888, under the governance of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company. Gladstone, an instinctive critic of imperialism even if he called himself a defender of the Empire, was furious that Chamberlain had circumvented cabinet discussion of the move and demanded that Hartington ask for his resignation. Hartington agreed with Gladstone and Chamberlain complied promptly with Hartington’s request and returned to the backbenches

With a clique of around 70 radical Liberal MPs at his side, Chamberlain put down an amendment to the budget in April 1888. Although a relatively minor amendment in and of itself (it regarded the funds to be spent on the continuing reformation of the Egyptian army), Hartington correctly interpreted it as a direct challenge to his authority. Feelers were put out to the former Irish MPs who now sat with the Conservatives but it became clear that the Conservatives intended to vote with the radicals on this matter, meaning that the budget would fail.

Hartington offered his resignation to the King but Edward, unwilling to see his favourite go, instead persuaded him to go to the country once more and see if he could construct a majority without needing the radicals. Although he was increasingly melancholy at the state of politics, Hartington dutifully put his shoulder to the wheel and began yet another general election campaign.

 

[Rattigan]

William Harcourt - the owner of the unfortunate record of the shortest clear and effective term as Prime Minister

The election was, in its own way, a success for both parties. The Conservatives performed unexpectedly well in Ireland, sweeping up over 50 seats in Ulster and along the east coast. Parnell was returned for his seat and even began to be spoken about as a possible Conservative leader in the future. Many of the former Irish MPs who had caucused with the Liberals lost their seats but the party remained strong in the south-west of England, the West Midlands and Scotland. They also picked up support in rural and western Ireland, gaining a total of 35 seats to recover a majority of 19. However, the areas where the Liberals had performed well were Chamberlain’s power bases. The King’s gambit had failed: instead of undermining Chamberlain the election had strengthened him as increasing numbers of Liberal MPs - some out of conviction, some out of electoral calculation - began to openly identify with his cause.

Hartington offered his resignation and was soon joined by the aged and tired Gladstone. The King, recognising but attempting to hold off the inevitable, accepted and sent for William Harcourt, Gladstone’s preferred successor. Harcourt’s short-lived ministry failed to accomplish much of note, being as it was stuck between the hostile and newly-confident Conservatives and an series of backbench Liberal MPs in almost-open revolt. But it did manage to pass the Working Class Housing Act 1888 in July, which provided for local councils to take out loans from the Treasury for the construction of what came to be called social housing. However, the Parliamentary situation was clearly hopeless for Harcourt and, after only 79 days in office, he resigned and, bowing to the inevitable, advised the King to call for Chamberlain.

Chamberlain declared that Britain and her Empire were entering into an age of what he called “new liberalism,” and busied himself with a radical series of military, imperial and domestic reforms. On the domestic front, Chamberlain and his new Home Secretary Frederick Maxse proposed a legislative platform which came to be known as the ‘radical programme,’ incorporating land reform, increased direct taxation, free public education, more protection for trades unions and an expansion of the franchise.

On the military front, George Tryon was promoted to the rank of First Sea Lord in 1888 and he instantly began the process of further modernising the training of Royal Naval officers. Amongst his most significant changes was to introduce his system of TA maneuvering, increasing both the flexibility of the fleet and the initiative of his commanders. In the army, Cavendish, now Secretary for War, built on the work of Hugh Childers in the early 1880s, bringing major improvements in equipment, tactics and recruitment. In 1889, the possibility of introducing conscription along German lines was discussed but ultimately rejected.

The remainder of Chamberlain’s first two years in government, however, was taken up by a fight over an increase in the franchise. Chamberlain was in favour of full-manhood suffrage, following the lines of some of Britain’s colonial dependencies in North America and Australasia. On occasion, this feeling had also included him making positive statements about women’s suffrage, the call for which had been gathering some pace over the past decade. The Local Government Act 1889 gave propertied women the right to vote in local government elections for the first time and this was followed up by the Representation of the People Act 1890, which extended the franchise to all men over the age of 21. Originally passing the Commons in September 1889, the Lords did their best to halt it, delaying it for a year, but it passed into law in 1890 and Chamberlain immediately called for fresh elections on the new franchise. The King was initially minded to reject Chamberlain’s request, having grown tired of constant elections and having also a great deal of antipathy for his new Prime Minister. Nevertheless, he was advised by his Private Secretary that it would not do to flat out reject such a request and so he consented to a dissolution.

 

[Rattigan]

Joseph Chamberlain - Radical Imperialist, Municipal Socialist and Prime Minister

With the Liberals picking up a slough of fresh seats in urban and rural areas most affected by the extension of the franchise, Chamberlain was returned to power with an increased majority and even more of a mandate to pursue his ambitious reform policy. More secure in his power base, out went Gladstonians like Goschen, Harcourt and Morley and in came radicals in key positions such as Charles Dilke (Chancellor of the Exchequer), John Dillon (President of the Board of Trade) and Lord Rosebery (Foreign Secretary). For the Conservatives, they had gone down to their fifth consecutive defeat and many in the party felt despondent in the face of seeming radical Liberal hegemony. However, hope for the future was provided by the performance of their new leader Lord Randolph Churchill, who seemed at ease in a democratic electoral culture and was busy reforming and professionalising the Conservative infrastructure.

One of the key planks of the Liberals’ election had been land reform, which came to be known under under the slogan “three acres and a mule.” Although the phrase never, strictly speaking, became a government policy, Maxse (still Home Secretary) was greatly concerned by the plight of both the agricultural and urban poor and in 1891 introduced the Landlord and Tenant Act, which provided for the purchase by local authorities of land to provide garden and field allotments for all labourers who might desire them, to be let in plots up up to 1 acre of arable land and 3 acres of pasture. The legislation also included provisions to give local government compulsory purchase powers and the power to compel landlords to undertake improvements to their property. In 1892, the government also introduced the first old age pensions in the UK, modeled on the scheme introduced in Germany in the 1880s. The other important domestic reform was the introduction of the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1893, a key plank of the emerging British welfare state, requiring employers to take out insurance to cover the costs of injuries suffered by their employees.

In education, Chamberlain initially had ambitious plans to disestablish the Church of England and use their endowments to pay for compulsory free education up to the age of 18. However, such policies failed for a variety of reasons, not least the religious sensibilities of many of his MPs. However, Education Secretary Francis Adams still managed to pass the Compulsory Education Act 1891, diverting greater money to non-denominational schools and increasing the school leaving age to 16. This was followed up by an act in 1891 providing for free school meals across the country.

Constitutionally, Chamberlain also pursued further devolution on the model of Irish Home Rule. To this end, the Scottish Home Rule Act and Welsh Home Rule Act were passed in 1892, which created Scottish and Welsh Assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff. The powers of these assemblies differed slightly (Wales, without a distinct legal system, for example, did not have legal responsibilities devolved to it as was the case with Dublin and Edinburgh). Plans to create a further devolved assembly for England were unveiled in 1893 but ultimately foundered for a number of reasons: Irish, Welsh and Scottish MPs were concerned that England’s demographic lead would allow it to dominate a federal union; and, more prosaically, various interest groups could not agree on where the English assembly should be situated.

To pay for these reforms, in 1891 Dilke introduced a budget that included several proposed tax increases, most notable was the introduction of grading for the income tax and a supertax on incomes of over £5,000 (£519,000 today). In addition, a number of tariffs were introduced on imports with the aim of not only raising a large amount of money (which they did) but also to protect British industry and agriculture from European competition and boost trade and integration within the Empire. To balance out the price-raising effects of the tariffs, Dilke also introduced a programme to provide a complete valuation of all the land in the country and a 20% tax on increases in value when land changed hands. This had the effect of hitting the largest landowners hardest while also encouraging people to hold onto and develop their own land rather than sell it or sit on it. Shorn of their veto powers, the Lords were powerless to prevent the passing of what became known as the ‘People’s Budget.’ It was an important moment: the first time a budget had been passed with the explicit aim of redistributing national wealth.

As 1894 rolled into 1895, however, the mood in the Liberal party was one of, if not exhaustion exactly, then at least one where many thought a fresh mandate would be required for the ever-more radical policy platform that Chamberlain was pursuing. Lord Randolph Churchill, meanwhile, had recovered from a mysterious illness (rumoured but never confirmed to have been syphilis) that had debilitated him in the autumn of 1894 and returned to lead the Conservatives with renewed vigour in January 1895. Lord Randolph had formulated a policy of progressive Conservatism which he called ‘Tory Democracy.’ Key to this was the idea that the Conservatives should not oppose popular reforms but instead take on their mantle for themselves. Since taking over the leadership of the Conservatives in 1889, he had built up its organisation in towns, reinforcing its support amongst the urban middle classes while simultaneously including working class elements. When Chamberlain called an election for the early of summer of 1895, it was described by wags as ‘the first mob election in British history.’

 

[Rattigan]

Lord Rosebery and Alfred Milner (l-r) - Foreign Secretary and Colonial Secretary, respectively, and architects of the Liberal imperial policy

Tariffs were an important part of the imperialist project of Chamberlain’s government, which sought to create a tighter, political relationship between the different entities of the British Empire. Chamberlain had been a known proponent of the ‘Imperial Federation’ project for many years and, although he recognised that it was an unrealistic practical aim in his lifetime, it remained a destination to be aimed at. The first imperial conference was convened in 1892 in Ottawa and was attended by the prime ministers of all of the governments with responsible government (the UK, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland, the Cape Colony and Western Australia). Although no agreement was reached on formal imperial political structures, the colonial governments did agree to introduce their own imperial preference tariffs and promises were made to speed up the union of the Australian colonies.

Another key plank of any imperial policy was, of course, India. Lord Ripon had been Viceroy there since 1880 and Chamberlain confirmed him in this position with full backing for his modernising, reforming administration. Ripon built on the changes to the jury system of the 1880s and extended them to the army, introducing an extension to the Imperial Officer School in Quetta in order to train native Indian soldiers and selecting certain regiments for ‘Indianisation.’ In addition, primary education was made compulsory for all children up to the age of 7 (although questions were always raised about the extent to which this was followed in practice) and public school-style colleges were opened around the subcontinent to provide an Anglophile education to local elites. Reforms were also introduced to provide for a limited degree of democratic government at the continental level, creating an electoral franchise of about 5% of the Indian population. Under the terms of the Ripon Report (published 1893), plans were announced to extend the franchise (via changes to the property qualifications) to 25% in 1918.

In other colonial affairs, under Rosebery and Milner, the Foreign and Colonial Offices reversed its previous casual antipathy to British colonialism in Africa and energetically pursued British interests there. In 1890 the Ashanti Empire was conquered but the British were unable to prevent French incursions into the Upper Niger Valley over the course of the 1890s. The British government did, however, manage to formalise British control over Sierra Leone and the Sokoto Caliphate (which was incorporated into Northern Nigeria). Rivalry with the French in west Africa prompted Rosebery to put feelers out to the German Empire but any firm commitments in this area foundered on the distrust of the German political elite (who had noted the growing Germanophobia of the Conservative party and did not trust them not to immediately reverse policy should they win the next election).

 

[Rattigan]

The Mob Comes to Parliament: The General Election of 1895

The Battle of Birmingham - the worst outbreak of political violence in the UK for a generation

The 1895 election was the most raucous and demagogic in British history up until that point and, arguably, since then too. Lord Randolph and Chamberlain took their scabrous speaking style into the country, attracting huge crowds to rallies which often degenerated into violence. The Liberals accused the Conservatives of seeking to roll back the advances made in the last 7 years in order to appease their friends in the aristocracy and big business. In return, Lord Randolph made an election issue out of the suggestion that companies linked to Chamberlain (particularly a cordite manufacturing company) had profiteered in British campaigns in Africa. Although Chamberlain publicly refused to even acknowledge the scandal and, privately, denied it vehemently, this did not stop it becoming one of the major talking points of the election.

Churchill decided to stand both in his usual seat of Paddington South and in Birmingham Central, the famously radical second city of England and Chamberlain’s stronghold. On 3 July, both men held rival rallies in Birmingham, which soon degenerated into serious rioting and running street battles in which 4 people were killed and over 50 injured. The King wrote to both men expressing his concerns about the tenor of the election campaign, after which tempers seemed to cool somewhat before polls opened ten days after the so-called ‘Battle of Birmingham.’

In the event, Lord Randolph’s demagogic style had won out over Chamberlain’s. The Conservatives gained over 110 seats to complete a majority of 43. Chamberlain, bruised by his electoral rejection as well as the controversy over the cordite scandal, resigned from his position as leader of the Liberals and even decided to leave Parliament, handing his Birmingham seat to his son Austen in a by-election in November 1895. He turned down the offer of an Earldom (which reportedly privately relieved the King) and instead embarked on a world tour of the colonies. He visited British settlers in Canada, Australia and South Africa and made speaking trips to the United States. There he spoke to large cross-class audiences, making arguments for imperial federation and closer links between what he called “the two great Anglo-Saxon civilizations.”

 

[Rattigan]

Tory Democracy: The Premiership of Lord Randolph Churchill

In Chamberlain’s absence, the Liberals came to be divided between those who wanted to place more emphasis on imperial policy or domestic reform. The former perspective was lead by Lords Roseberry and Ripon (the later returned after his 15-year stint in India) and the latter by Dilke, Henry Campbell-Bannerman and John Dillon, as well as a cohort of younger MPs such as David Lloyd George. Eventually the domestic faction won out, in part because the leading proponents of liberal imperialism (as it came to be known) were in the House of Lords, which was now seen as incompatible with successfully leading a parliamentary party in the modern, more democratic age. Instead, Charles Dilke emerged as the leader in the Commons.

After over 15 years out of government, the Conservatives were keen to make up for lost time. In constitutional affairs, Churchill extended the provisions of the Local Government Act 1889 to apply to Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Dublin elections, giving women the right to vote in national elections for the first time. However, plans he had to speak more strongly in favour of the Protestant community in Ulster were stymied by the presence in his cabinet of Parnell (as Colonial Secretary) and John Redmond (as Secretary of State for Ireland), who did not want to do anything to upset the emerging political stability in Dublin.

In domestic affairs, the government pursued a policy designed to, in Home Secretary Arthur Balfour’s words, “kill Liberalism with kindness.” To this end, they launched a further vigorous round of land reform, giving landless peasants even more power to buy their land and putting further requirements for improvement on remaining landlords. By 1900, although the largest landowners in Britain remained Buccleuch and Devonshire (rural) and Grosvenor and Cadogan (urban), their enormous holdings were a fraction of what they had been a century earlier and now they were tied into a complex legal framework that committed them to improving their lands and the people who lived and worked on them. By the time Churchill left office, the question of landlordism and land reform had been largely ended.

In colonial affairs, British governments (of all stripes) had long wished for the southern African colonies and states to be unified under the British crown. However, the growing wealth of the Transvaal threatened that the future of that region would instead be Boer dominated. However, Lord Cranborne (Foreign Secretary) and Parnell found a way to undermine the Boers by taking up the cause of the uitlanders (the Anglo immigrants to the Transvaal who worked in the mines, paid heavy taxes and had limited civil rights). Parnell demanded reforms but these were rejected by Transvaal’s President Paul Kruger. This failure in part lead to the Jameson Raid of November 1895 (a private effort to overthrow Kruger lead by Cecil Rhodes with the knowledge and tacit support of London), which was a complete fiasco and further increased tensions. A conference began in Bloemfontein in May 1897 but they collapsed in September and Churchill and Kruger issued simultaneous ultimatums to one another, pressaging the beginning of war on 11 October 1897.

Sidelining Parnell, Churchill and Balfour took charge of the war, with British efforts being based out of their colonies on the Cape and Natal. There were some native African allies, but generally both sides avoided using black soldiers. The British war effort was further supported by soldiers from the across the Empire, with the colonial assemblies in Canada and Australasia all voting to contribute troops. Despite the reforms undertaken over the past decade, the British were overconfident going into the conflict, ignoring repeated warnings about the Boers’ numbers (which outnumbered Britain’s) and preparation. The Boers struck first, besieging Ladysmith, Kimberly, and Mafeking, and winning important battles at Colenso, Magersfontein and Stormberg in late 1897. Staggered, the British fought back, relieved its besieged cities, and successfully invaded first the Orange Free State, and then Transvaal over the course of 1898.

 

[Rattigan]

The Khaki Election: Jingoism and Tory Democracy

Poster from the Khaki Election of 1898

With victory in south Africa looking certain, Churchill went to the country again in what became known as the ‘khaki election.’ Amid a divisive and aggressive campaign (which included Conservative posters showing Dilke and Dillon helping Kruger to pull down the union flag), the Liberals could not find a way to square their instinctive hostility towards the war, with their own imperialism and the popular jingoism sweeping the country. In the event, the Conservatives won an extra 24 seats to further cement their majority. Notably, this was the election where the first two members of the Labour Party (then called the ‘Labour Representation Committee’) would be elected to the Commons.

At the time of the election, the Boer War was thought to be effectively over but, in fact, it was barely halfway over. The Boers refused to surrender or negotiate and, under the leadership of new generals Louis Botha, Jan Smuts, Christiaan de Wet and Koos de la Rey, reverted to guerrilla warfare. After two years of hard fighting, Britain, used over 400,000 soldiers to systematically destroy the resistance, raising worldwide complaints about their brutality. Many Boers were forcefully relocated into heavily guarded concentration camps, where 28,000 died of disease.The remaining battles against the highly mobile Boer combat units were small operations (most of the 22,000 British dead were victims of disease) but were costly in terms of morale and public support around the world.

Public support for the war quickly waned after the election and in 1899 Charles Parnell resigned over its conduct. What he had initially intended to be a protest at the war’s progress backfired spectacularly as he found himself publicly blamed despite him having been effectively sidelined by the Balfour-Churchill duumvirate. In order to protect his friend, Churchill quietly moved Balfour to the Exchequer, replacing him with Henry Drummond Wolff.

Despite Balfour introducing a controversial budget in 1901 which further raised both tariffs and taxes to pay for the Boer War, the remainder of Churchill’s time in office was generally a time of peace and prosperity, without severe depressions. Britain’s GDP fell behind its rivals the United States and Germany in nominal terms but stayed ahead of both in per capita terms and the country continued to lead the world in trade, finance and shipping, while its manufacturing and mining bases remained strong. Society became more fully commercialised as companies were quick to note the advantages of standardisation in the huge new protected markets of the UK and the Dominions. Food imports began to shift from Europe to Canada, New Zealand and Australia, with the resultant price increases for ordinary people were offset by the increased wealth and social security provided to individuals. In time, improvements in shipping and refrigeration technology contributed to a fall in prices.

However, the failure of the Boer War after the ‘khaki election’ of 1898 left a bad taste in the mouth of the electorate and the Conservatives never quite managed to regain their trust. This was not helped by a recurrence of the mystery illness which had plagued Churchill in the early 1890s and which had flared up again after 1903. As result, he was rendered less and less successful as a speaker and party manager: a particularly poor speech on the topic of African colonisation in 1904 was regarded as an embarrassing failure and probably contributed to his decision to ask the King for a dissolution later that year.

One the other hand, the Liberals had been reinvigorated by the return of Joseph Chamberlain from internal exile. Since 1898, he had completed an extensive speaking tour around the United States and the British Empire, which he had followed up with the publication of two books - ‘The Anglo-Saxon Peoples of the World’ (1901) and ‘Imperial Union and Tariff Reform’ (1903). He returned to the leadership of the Liberals in 1903 (Dilke stood aside with (public) equanimity and returned to his position as a key confidant) and, as an election approached in January 1905 he approached the zenith of his career.

 

[Rattigan]

A Military Upon Which the Sun Never Sets - The Birth of the Commonwealth Armed Forces

Henry Drummond Wolff - one of the many fathers of the Commonwealth

Drummond Wolff and the newly-promoted Secretary of War, St. John Brodrick, oversaw a number of changes to the structure of the armed forces, the most important of which was the creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence (“CID”) in 1901. The CID brought together military and civilian officials from the UK, the Dominions (now expanded to include Australia and New Zealand from 1901), India and the self-governing colonies in southern Africa. From 1905, the military forces of these governments would be combined in annual joint military exercises, although the armies of these countries would remain technically separate.

These military connections expanded on the colonial linkages which had been fostered under Chamberlain. Perhaps the most important development in this area during this period was the Melbourne Agreement of 1900, which stipulated that Australia and New Zealand would be created as independent dominions on the condition that they shared common citizenship and immigration policies as the UK. Canada also signed up to the agreement, aligning its policies with the UK and reversing the previous trend towards closer relations with the US. The various colonies in southern Africa (under a certain degree of duress) also signed up. This was followed up in 1905 with the Aliens Act (one of the last acts of Churchill’s government) and equivalent acts in the dominion and colonial assemblies. Although primarily sold to the public as a way of implementing stringent (not to mention antisemitic and sinophobic) immigration requirements and deportation procedures, the act did importantly introduce the concept of ‘imperial citizenship,’ a status enjoyed by people in the UK, the dominions and the self-governing colonies but not, notably, dependant colonies and protectorates (including India).

It was the Tory drive towards patriotism and national greatness which structured much of the foreign policy of Churchill’s post-Boer War premiership. In particular, Drummond Wolff was concerned to create alliances with both Germany and France in order to diffuse imperial tensions between the three powers. To this end, the Treaty of Friendship (1902) with Germany and the Entente Cordiale with France (1904) were negotiated and have come to be seen as some of the most consequential moves of Churchill’s premiership. The two treaties agreed the contours of future zones of influence for each country in Africa, Asia and the Balkans while successfully improving British relations with continental European powers and keeping Britain out of lasting commitments to European defence.

 

[Rattigan]

The Mid-Edwardian Political Settlement

So, after nearly two pages of just me putting up posts, I hope it's a little bit clearer why this TL had to begin in the 19th century. As you might have noticed, we've ended up in 1905 with almost exactly the same position as IOTL - a Liberal landslide to defeat a long-time Tory government. However, as you'll also notice, the UK is looking radically different ITTL. Firstly, the UK is becoming a fully federal country (albeit with devolved assemblies with far more limited powers) and the Irish question has been substantially solved.

At the same time, the reforms of the Edwardian era had underwritten a lasting class compromise, between an entrepreneurial and landowning political and economic elite, which was tied into legal requirements and demands for progress and improvement. At the same time, the working class voice in formal politics was increasing (both through their support for the Liberals and the Conservatives, or via trades union participation in the Labour Movement) and had undercut the potential for the working-class unrest seen in other European countries at the time. How this compromise was expressed differed in subtly different ways. For the Liberals, it was expressed as a monument to individual liberty, with the state involving itself in the market in order to ensure the correct workings of market forces and provide a minimum safety net. For Conservatives, the attitude was more paternalistic: the party retained its influence amongst the landed interest but now expanded its reach in working class communities with its emphasis on imperialism and national greatness.

The other key change from OTL is that ITTL UK has a substantially different relationship with free trade and tariffs. The free traders have been conclusively defeated in both Tory and Liberal parties, with the Empire hedged behind large tariff barriers.

I'll begin my next post with the return of Chamberlain in 1905 but after this my posting rate will go down as we go into more detail on the various changes. I will also shortly have to pause and go into American history, which is the only other country that by this point will have had substantial changes from OTL (so apologies in advance for another swift diversion into the 19th century) but that won't be for long.

 

[Rattigan]

Chamberlain's Final Zenith: The General Election of 1904-5

King Joe - Chamberlain's return to power in 1905 solidified his status as an Edwardian titan and one of the most consequential men of his era

Dominating what came to be called “Joe’s Election,” Chamberlain began to refer to himself in the third person as “the Liberal leader” or even simply “the leader,” fostering a cult of personality. The campaign was fought over the dual issues of imperial grandeur abroad and economic redistribution at home and the Liberals made the running on both fronts. Although the Conservatives had been successful in painting themselves as the party of national greatness, the sorry end of the Boer War meant that the public was increasingly skeptical of military involvement which was seen as taking place for its own sake. Instead, Chamberlain was able to carve out a vision of what he called “the liberal [or Liberal – it was not always clear] empire” focused on colonial governments improving their subject peoples and binding together the nations already ‘fit’ for self-government. To defend their record in this respect, the Liberals could point to Lord Ripon’s reforms in India which the Conservatives had failed to build on.

The twin issues of foreign and domestic affairs were united in a debate about the tariff. Chamberlain credited the tariff with protecting British industry and agriculture, while the price increases which it had caused had been successfully mitigated by the Liberals’ canny use of redistributive measures. At the same time, the tariff was successfully ensuring that the self-governing Dominions were still looking to the UK as their lodestar. At a time when concerns were increasingly being raised about the future of the UK as a global power in a world where the United States (which was recovering strongly from its long Civil War and Reconstruction) and Germany were gaining strength, closer imperial cooperation promised one possible future for national greatness.

This caused problems for the Conservatives, who found themselves divided over the issue. To make matters worse, the divisions in their electoral coalition ran along both geographic and class lines. In the cities, their working class voters wanted free trade food but the bourgeoisie and upper classes were more concerned about imperial unity. In the countryside, smallholders and labourers tended to be of a more libertarian mindset and resentful of the destruction of their intra-European trading networks that had occurred due to the tariff. This contrasted with the larger landowning squirearchy, which generally preferred protectionism. Randolph Churchill had been able to hold together that coalition for two consecutive elections but his illness meant that he was almost completely unable to campaign (he would die on 24 January 1905, only a fortnight after leaving office), leaving a gaping hole in the Conservative campaign where a competent leader should have been.

The Conservatives were on the back foot almost from the go, with the free trading and protectionist wings of the party campaigning on almost completely different platforms. When the manifesto was published in December 1904, it almost immediately provoked derision in the press as its attempt to square Conservative divisions resulted in some policies which were almost directly contradictory (for example, one page promised renewed tariff negotiations with the Dominions and another promised free trade with France). Perhaps the most decisive propaganda victory for the Liberals was the decision by Randolph Churchill’s son, Winston, to run as a Liberal candidate in Dundee.

In the end, the election saw a 6.4% swing from the Conservatives to the Liberals (the largest ever at the time) and a Liberal gain of over 200 seats. Labour was much more successful than in the previous election, winning a total of 29 seats and making notable gains in London, Liverpool and Dublin. But with a majority of 144, however, there was no mistaking who the true winner was. Ten years after his defenestration in the rancorous 1895 election, Joseph Chamberlain returned to Number 10. One of his first acts was to formalise the use of the term ‘Prime Minister’ on official documents to describe his position.

Domestically, Dilke (Chancellor once more) and David Lloyd George, the new President of the Board of Trade, decided to push further at the welfare state. The budget of 1905 announced an increase in the state pension. The Workmen’s Holiday Act 1906, piloted through the Commons by the Home Secretary Henry Campbell-Bannerman, introduced mandatory one week of paid leave for all workers.

In July 1906, Chamberlain celebrated his 70th birthday with several days of official lunches and dinners, parades and public addresses (attended by tens of thousands of people) in which he promoted the virtues of radicalism and imperialism. However, such public vigour could not cover up forever for the fact that he had just turned 70. On the evening of 13 July, Chamberlain collapsed while dressing for dinner and suffered a stroke that left him paralysed down his right side. When, 10 days later, he was still incapable of walking and had not recovered his speech fully, it became clear that he would have to stand down as Prime Minister and retire from public life.

As he had done in 1895, Dilke emerged as the successor. Given that he had been on an extensive speaking tour in 1871 advocating republicanism (and had secured a Parliamentary debate on the abolition of the monarchy in 1872, only for it to be hastily cancelled in the aftermath of Victoria’s assassination), the King’s reaction to his new Prime Minister can perhaps be guessed at. Nevertheless, whatever his private thoughts, Edward kept them to himself and he seems to have recognised that the time had passed when he would be able to dispute the leadership choices of the political parties.

Dilke’s smooth succession as leader showed that the radicals were well and truly in control of the Liberal Party. Prominent Gladstonians remained in the Cabinet, notably Campbell Bannerman (who was moved to the War Office) and H.H. Asquith as First Lord of the Admiralty (and then at the War Office after the former’s death in 1908) but they were stationed in administrative or military departments where they could have little effect on the government’s domestic spending plans. On the other hand, the radicals (also known by the expression ‘social liberals’ or the Chamberlainite phrase ‘new liberals’) controlled the great offices of state and other departments closely overseeing the expanding welfare state. David Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer (ably assisted by Winston Churchill as President of the Board of Trade), Richard Haldane was Foreign Secretary, Herbert Gladstone (William’s son) was Home Secretary, Sir Edward Grey was Colonial Secretary, John Dillon was Education and Housing Secretary, Sydney Buxton was Postmaster General and Charles Hobhouse was President of the Local Government Board.

 

[Rattigan]

On the Highest Planes and Deepest Rivers: The Last Imperial Wars, 1905-09

The Kingdom of Tibet and the Sultanate of Egypt - a couple of extra jewels in the crown

One of the long-term effects of the Second Boer War was an increasing distaste for purely imperial wars. Ironically, this came at a time when the ‘imperialist liberal’ wing of the party was increasingly dominant in the party’s foreign policy thinking. It was in this context that final two imperial ‘small wars’ broke out in 1905.

The Anglo-Ottoman War (also known as the Turkish-Egyptian War) was caused by the issue of Egypt and, in particular, control over the Suez Canal. Britain had dominated Egyptian domestic politics since 1875, since the government had bought a large portion of shares in the Suez Canal and its control had been further cemented as a result of British victories in the Anglo-Egyptian War (1882) and the Anglo-Sudanese War (1884), which had overthrown governments hostile to British intervention and given the British effective control over the Nile Valley and Red Sea. Under the long reign of Isma’il, the Egyptian government had aligned itself with British interests after 1882 and the situation had been, by and large, a pacific one since then. Lord Cromer, the British resident in Port Said, was regarded as the power behind the throne and de facto head of the Egyptian government, while Isma’il supported his Westernising efforts.

However, upon Isma’il’s death in July 1905, the title of Khedive passed to his nationalistic grandson Abbas II. Abbas immediately took steps to end British influence in his country, the most notable of which was the expulsion of Lord Cromer. In response to this, the CID immediately dispatched the Mediterranean Fleet under Charles Beresford to put down the uprising. After a short naval bombardment, Alexandria, Port Said and Cairo were occupied by Royal Marines over the next month. In September, Abbas was formally deposed and replaced by his pro-British uncle Hussein Kamel. Hussein declared Egypt’s independence from the Ottoman Empire as the Sultanate of Egypt under British protection.

As expected, this drew an immediate Ottoman response, with the government in Istanbul sending both a naval and a land force to attempt to reconquer their territory. However, both would end in disaster. The invading Ottoman land force of around 60,000 men was met outside of Port Said by an army of around 30,000 imperial and local Egyptian men, under the command of Herbert Kitchener. In a brutal display of superior Anglo-Egyptian firepower, the Ottoman army was routed with around 30,000 men killed or wounded (compared to 882 dead and 7,000 wounded on the Anglo-Egyptian side). In the Mediterranean, the out-of-date Ottoman naval force was annihilated in an enormous mismatch of forces. The two Ottoman protected cruisers and its one ironclad were both sunk within an hour of the fighting beginning. Humiliated, the Porte was forced to sue for peace. The subsequent Treaty of Rome was largely dictated by the British and the Egyptians and required the Ottomans to recognize Egyptian independence.

Almost immediately upon the conclusion of the Egyptian campaign, imperial forces were in action once more, this time on the Indian Subcontinent. The cause of the outbreak of hostilities in the Himalayas remain obscure and seem to lie somewhere between outright falsehoods and a comedy of errors. It seems that the British administration of the newly-arrived Rufus Isaacs (now Lord Reading) were concerned about rumours that the Russians were interested in expanding into Tibet and that the Qing Empire was considering handing over the province. These concerns were made worse by the regular Russian explorers visiting Tibet and the emissaries sent by the Dalai Lama to the imperial court in Moscow. Under the previous administration of Lord Minto, the British government had opened trade talks with the Tibetan government but little in the way of concrete steps had occurred. From these talks, it appears that Reading got the impression that the Tibetan government would be receptive towards a British mission and he ordered the despatch of a small force, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel George Roos-Keppel, in July 1905. It is not known if the government in London knew about the operation when it was ordered but, once news of it began to trickle back, they gave it their enthusiastic support. Initially, the British forces were allowed to march unopposed through Tibet towards Lhasa, although whether this was because the local TIbetan elites welcomed the British or because they wanted to avoid bloodshed is unclear.

The 13th Dalai Lama, however, resolved to oppose the British. He massed his best troops and only artillery pieces at the fortress of Gyantse Dzong. When the British arrived on 6 March 1906, a fierce siege broke out, which ended when the 8th Gurkha Rifles forced a breach in the walls on the following day. Roos-Keppel managed to keep looting to a minimum and ordered a quick march on Lhasa, occupying it with only minor bloodshed on 27 July. Although the exact facts remain confused, it appears that the Dalai Lama had fallen victim to a palace coup to prevent him fleeing the province. In these circumstances, Roos-Keppel was able to more or less dictate terms to the Dalai Lama. Under the terms of what became known as the Treaty of Lhasa, Tibet was ordered to pay an indemnity covering the costs of the expedition and ‘agreed’ to not have relations with any foreign powers other than Britain, effectively reducing it to the status of a British protectorate.

Both wars proved controversial at home and the only things that saved them from being opposed absolutely was the fact that both concluded relatively quickly and without any great loss of life (from a British perspective). Haldane seized the opportunity to use them as an opportunity to try and diffuse tensions with Russia and China over the borders of the British Empire in India. The Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1908 confirmed the independence of Tibet as a protectorate and officially set the western and southern borders of China. This was followed up by the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1909. Aimed at easing Anglo-Russian hostilities, the convention solidified the boundaries of Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet, recognising the British protectorate in Tibet and Afghanistan’s place in the British zone of influence. It also delineated a British and a Russian sphere of influence in Persia, without going to the trouble to consult the Persian government overmuch, of course. Heralded at the time as a final conclusion to the Great Game, the diplomatic moves concerned many in Berlin who were fearful of closer Anglo-Russian collusion.

 

[Rattigan]

Si vis pacem, para bellum: The Asquith Reforms, 1908-09

Edmund Allenby - The Lightning General

With the radical wing of the party in charge of domestic reforms, the final remaining province of the Liberals’ Gladstonians came in the War Office. When the Liberals returned to power in 1905, Henry Campbell-Bannerman was installed as Secretary for War. While this was initially thought to be a prestigious appointment for the department – Campbell-Bannerman was respected on a cross-party basis and had the additional cachet of having served in every Liberal government since the 1860s – and was widely held to have expertise in military affairs (he had been a parliamentary assistant to William Cardwell in carrying out the Cardwell Reforms). However, it rapidly became clear that Campbell-Bannerman had been cut out of the inner workings of the Liberal government and he was more or less ineffective in his role up to his death in April 1908.

Perhaps the only lasting effect of Campbell-Bannerman’s tenure at the War Office was his ordering of the creation of the Land-Ship Committee in February 1905 under the chairmanship of R.E.B. Crompton, to look into the possibilities of developing armoured vehicles for use in the military. The existence of this committee was kept secret from the rest of the cabinet until July 1905, when the first prototype tracked vehicle (codenamed ‘the tank’ in order to conceal its nature, a word which soon came to stand in for the entire concept) was unveiled. The original Mark I tank proved to have too high a centre of gravity to negotiate the broken ground and trechlines that was anticipated on future battlefields but the subsequent Mark II demonstrated the rhomboidal shape and sponson weapons that would become iconic. After a demonstration in January 1906 to members of the cabinet (in utmost secrecy), the War Office placed an order for 150.

By the time H.H. Asquith took over from Campbell-Bannerman as Secretary of War in April 1908, the ordered tanks had been delivered but the extreme secrecy under which they were held meant that the infantry, cavalry and artillery had not had the chance to train with these new vehicles (and, it was alleged, some brigade commanders were even unaware of their existence). Furthermore, the Second Boer War and the Anglo-Tibet War, along with supply difficulties during the Anglo-Egyptian War, had revealed the bad communication between the different armed forces of the empire and the problems inherent in trying to coordinate the tactics and a number of different organisations each with different histories and combat doctrines.

With an analytical mind that enjoyed working with numbers and chairing committees, Asquith was the ideal person for the job and set himself the task of reorganizing the different military forces of the empire in conjunction with the CID (although one of the first of these ‘Asquith Reforms’ was renaming the CID the Imperial Chiefs of Staff or “ICS”). Although the Dominions continued to raise their own land armies (and coast guards, where relevant), the budding Australian and Canadian navies and the longer-established Royal Indian Navy were scrapped and control was centralised with the Royal Navy under the command of the ICS. The secrecy around tanks was lifted (albeit only to an extent – they remained unknown to most of the public) and the active home army was reorganized into an active force of three cavalry divisions and three mixed infantry and mechanized divisions. This reorganization allowed a number of surplus infantry and artillery brigades to be disbanded, meaning that the government actually saved money. To support the active army, the various Yeomanry and Reserve forces were reorganized into the 28-division Territorial Force. In October 1908, the 11th Hussars became the first cavalry regiment to ‘mechanise’ permanently (i.e. get rid of their horses and replace them with tanks and armoured cars).

Asquith was not able to get agreement in the ICS to amalgamate all British and Dominion forces into a single army. However, he was able to get agreement as to the preparation of a single manual in 1907 that would be distributed to the armies and practiced at the combined empire military exercises. The man chosen to draft the manual was Edmund Allenby, a major-general who had served with distinction in the Second Boer War. Allenby was not known for being the most cerebral military mind in the world but he was experienced, tactically and strategically astute, open to new ideas and technology and had experience of commanding Australian and Canadian troops during the Second Boer War. Furthermore, he was well liked by the other staff officers both in Camberley and on the ICS, something which was regarded as vital considering that the writing process consisted of widespread consultation with other commanders in order to create a synthesis of the best ideas.

When it was published in 1909, the manual (nicknamed ‘Plan 1914’ for the date of anticipated implementation of all of its provisions) proposed a big break with previous orthodoxy, which had stressed good defensive preparations combined with maneuverable cavalry formations in order to destroy the opposing forces. Instead, Plan 1914 called for rapid strikes lead by mechanized infantry to punch holes through the opposing front line and make advances to the enemy’s rear, destroying lines of supply and communication. In the ensuing confusion, the enemy’s command could be eliminated. Allenby memorably described this kind of assault as “a shot to the brain.”

The manual was controversial amongst an older breed of commander but was generally accepted thanks to rapid advances in technology. In 1908, 2,000 of the heavier Mark IV tanks had been ordered, alongside the smaller Mark III tanks (of which there were 4,500 in service), creating the conditions for heavy tanks to punch holes in the opposition line, with lighter tanks and cavalry exploiting the breakthroughs. Research was also put into the potential use of planes, not only for reconnaissance but also for strafing runs on enemy infantry and bombing attacks on supply lines and artillery. Artillery doctrine was also changed to place emphasis on smaller, mobile guns which were capable to providing a rolling barrage ahead of the advancing tanks and infantry. Through the deployment of this fast-moving, combined-arms attack, the enemy would, in theory, be continually off-balance and unable to respond. The doctrine soon came to be known as ‘Lightning Warfare’ and Allenby himself as ‘The Lightning General.’

 

[Rattigan]

Peace, Redistribution and Reform: The New Liberals in Power, 1906-10

Sir Charles Dilke - The Last of the Whig Radicals

Although the incapacitation and forced retirement of Chamberlain so soon after his greatest triumph was an enormous psychological blow to the Liberals, they still had a massive majority in Parliament, more or less complete control over the sinews of legislative power and enormous public support. With this in mind, the party turned its attention to its transformative domestic agenda, attempting to not only carry through their manifesto commitments but lock themselves into power for the foreseeable future.

Many Liberals had been growing increasingly concerned about the potential challenge of Labour in the future. Rather lost amidst the massive Liberal gains, Labour had picked up 27 seats in 1905 to cement their position as a coherent third party. The fact that Labour was, effectively, the political face of the trades union movement ensured that it was well funded and had lasting power, especially given the large numbers of working class voters now enfranchised. During 1904-5, the parties had struck an informal alliance in order to lock out the Conservatives in certain target seats but few believed that such an arrangement could last for long: although the radical wing of the Liberals found itself closely aligned with Labour on many issues, there could be no doubt that the long-term future of the parties were as rivals. As such, the Liberals rolled out a series of policies designed to curry the female vote and peel off voters otherwise heavily influenced by their union. The fact that they aligned with a number of the Liberals’ long-term principles was all to the better.

Dilke had been a private supporter of women’s suffrage for some time and in his first six months in office his government passed the Sex Disqualification Removal Act 1906, which equalized the voting rights of men and women (by removing property disqualifications and reducing the age at which women could vote to 21) and removed all disqualifications of women from public life (for example, from serving on juries, receiving university degrees or being qualified lawyers). In 1907, the first minimum wages were introduced for agricultural workers, albeit at a rate not notably higher than the market rate. This was followed, in 1908 and 1909, with the Workmen’s Compensation (Silicosis) Act and the Blind Persons Act, respectively. Although both pieces of legislation can hardly be considered generous by contemporary standards, they were expansive for their time and represented the first time that the British government attempted to provide state aid for disabled and injured labourers outside of the strictures of the Poor Law.

The Poor Law itself remained in place, despite mooted attempts by Charles Hobhouse to replace it. However, the successive reforms of various Liberal and Conservative governments since the 1870s had progressively centralized much of British government and rendered much of the Law's contents moot. That being said, there remained significant differences between the quality of welfare provision across the country: radical strongholds such as Bermondsey and Birmingham retained their excellent services but other parts of the country (notably rural areas, where the dispersal of the population made delivery much harder) had far worse reputations.

But, while the government took power away from local councils in the form of welfare, it gave something back in the form of housing. Aside from its social reforms, one of the most obvious physical consequences of Dilke’s government was probably the Town Planning and Housing Act 1909, which provided further subsidies for local governments to demolish slums and build social housing in their place. Around 250,000 council-owned houses were built in the first four years of this act, supplemented by 30,000 privately-built houses which received government subsidies also provided for in the act. These changes not only created the rows of distinctive terraced housing so closely-associated with the late-Edwardian period but also ensured that local councils (taken together) had become the country’s largest landlords by 1919.

With social relations pacific, the economy growing and the Conservatives largely neutered in their Parliamentary opposition, Dilke asked for a dissolution and went to the country in December 1910.

 

[Rattigan]

Natural Wastage: The Election of 1910

David Lloyd George (l) and Winston Churchill (r) - allies who represented the Liberal unity of the upwardly-mobile lower-middle classes and the progressive-minded aristocracy

Despite a large turnover in seats, commentators at the time regarded the 1910 election as one of the least consequential of recent political events. In a marked contrast with his predecessor and with recent elections, Dilke did very little personal campaigning outside of his Chelsea seat and instead the bulk of Liberal electioneering was done by Dilke’s acolytes, most notably Lloyd George in Wales, Churchill in Scotland, Dillon in Ireland and Austen Chamberlain (assisted, when he was able to, by his father) in the Midlands. While this inevitably lead to a degree of difference between the Liberal message in different parts of the county – famously, in a speech in Birmingham, Chamberlain claimed that the Liberals would immediately move to have a devolved English assembly in the city, which earned him a private rebuke from Dilke – but nothing that appeared to have had a consequential impact on the election. The informal electoral pact with Labour was dissolved, although local Liberal parties did not run serious candidates in seats Labour already held (mostly because of their moribund local organisations).

The Liberals’ laid back attitude may have had something to do with the disunity in the Conservative party. While Liberal splits over trade had largely been settled by 1900 (and before then had often taken place under the cover of debates about Ireland in the 1880s), for the Conservatives they were now out in full force. The pro-tariff wing of the party – largely the most strongly imperialist wings or those most close to the landed interest – saw the benefits of protectionism for agricultural products and closer unity within the Empire. On the other hand, the free trade wing argued that tariff reductions would lower prices, enable the government to scrap the Liberal food subsidies and save money. Many of the free trade Tories also argued for a closer alliance with the French and Americans (perhaps even joining the Triple Entente). While the Conservative manifesto wasn’t as comically contradictory as it had been in 1905, it still failed to paper over the party’s divisions.

In the end, the Liberals lost 76 seats, of which 11 were to Labour (who ran an efficient campaign in their urban targets). While this would have been considered an election-losing result in almost any other circumstance, in the context of the 1904-05 these loses could simply be written off as, in Churchill’s famous words, “natural wastage.” No ministers lost their seats and the party could continue to pass its legislative agenda with a comfortable working majority of over 60.

A total gain for the Conservatives of nearly 70 could also, on most nights, be regarded as a great result. But here it only caused the party to fall further into recrimination, partly because it was their second successive defeat and partly because power seemed to now be within reach (if only tenuously). Arthur Balfour resigned from the leadership of the party in February 1911 and it soon fell into a vigorous internal fight between protectionists such as Bonar Law and Walter Long against free-traders, most notably Charles Ritchie and Michael Hicks-Beach. Long would eventually emerge as the leader but he could do so only by promising Ritchie and Hicks-Beach prominent positions in any future government. As Bonar Law privately commented at the time, this promise was easy to make in opposition but hard to keep in government.

However, whatever hopes the Liberals may have had for a few months of smooth government were dashed by tragedy within a month of the election. Dilke, dressing for a dinner with Lloyd George and Churchill in Number 10, died very suddenly of a heart attack in January 1911, meaning that, for the second election in a row, the Liberals were required to replace an election-winner struck down by illness. This time, however, there was less doubt about the outcome, as Lloyd George was confirmed as Prime Minister eleven days after Dilke’s death, making what many assumed to be his natural promotion a few years earlier than planned. With a small reshuffle of the cabinet – the most notable change of which was the promotion of Churchill to the position of Chancellor – Lloyd George prepared to govern.