UK politics without WWI

Let's assume that WWI does not occur for whatever reason. Will Home Rule go through, will the Liberals be supplanted by Lab, etc? Also: will the Edwardian lifestyle which died with WWI last a bit longer?
 
As far as I'm aware the Irish Home Rule Bill had already been passed by Parliament, had it been set up I believe civil war may have broken out in Ireland, unless Ulster was to been excluded from the Irish parliament's jurisdiction.

As for Labour supplanting the Liberals, I find it most likely that it will happen eventually, although the decline of the Liberals will be a much longer process, as WWI hasted its demise in OTL as the party split between supporters of Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith. This would not happen ITTL.

Without the war I believe that the class system of the Edwardian era would remain in place longer as the war forced people of different backgrounds to work together to support the war effort. Millions of men who worked in key industries joined the armed forces and so had to be replaced, often by women as it turned out.

It will also be interesting to see what happens to women's suffrage ITTL as a result.
 
... night and day, night and day's the phrase that comes to my mind.

There was vast unhappiness and extremism within all the Entente, and especially Russia, France and UK due to the dumb way it fought the opening years. It was Vietnam x 10. Britons and French felt, rightly, that their ranks'd been sacrificed uselessly in dumb charge after dumb charge after dumb charge after dumb charge at machine guns, time after time.

Liberals stay - Labour was made powerful by broad radicalization.

Churchy'd stay powerful because no Gallipoli, though be less tested.

Home Rule'd go through earlier, albeit with more controversy, I think.

What Halton said on class.

No appeasement - it was a highly popular po licy, and a reaction to military misdeeds. Nobody trusted the militaristic parts of society when they said France and the UK had to keep up with Germany.

'Course, there'd EVENTUALLY be something, people being people. But an epter king of Germany, say, could buy a long delay; he was dumb, as events showed, to agree with Austria to enter the war.
 
I fear the tories would win the election in late 1915.

Ireland would be chaotic. It would be partitioned ,but possibly with Tyrone and Fermanagn under Home rule
 
Will Home Rule go through...


Yes. If the Lords attempted to block the bill again, the King had already signed off on a plan by the government to create as many as 300 Lib-Lab peers to pack the body. IIRC, the fellow who wrote Peter Pan was on the list.

... will the Liberals be supplanted by Lab, etc?

Eventually. The partnership will limp along with the Liberals first moving from senior to junior partner and then dwindling into irrelevance when Labor no longer needs their votes. Labor is basically going to absorb most of the Liberal party and supplant what little is left.

Also: will the Edwardian lifestyle which died with WWI last a bit longer?

Most definitely. Lifestyle will change, they always do, but without the shock of the war the change won't be as rapid or wrenching.
 
The Tories were tied with the Liberals (and won the PV both times in 1910), just that they relied on the Irish Nationalists to continue in office. Given that polling did not exist at the time, it is hard to gauge public opinion but I'd say the political momentum would give the Tories a middling majority, making Bonar Law PM. Before the war they were strategizing about how best to defeat HR, and I can't see a POD that would make the Tories realizes that it is either HR, or ICW repressed by overwhelming force followed by either the SQAB or Partition. After the fiasco of getting the HOL neutered 3 years earlier due to their idiocy on both the policy and tactics, I doubt they would really adopt a scorched-earth strategy.
 
Yes. If the Lords attempted to block the bill again, the King had already signed off on a plan by the government to create as many as 300 Lib-Lab peers to pack the body. IIRC, the fellow who wrote Peter Pan was on the list.



Eventually. The partnership will limp along with the Liberals first moving from senior to junior partner and then dwindling into irrelevance when Labor no longer needs their votes. Labor is basically going to absorb most of the Liberal party and supplant what little is left.



Most definitely. Lifestyle will change, they always do, but without the shock of the war the change won't be as rapid or wrenching.

Would the Liberals decline so quickly? They suffered a reversal in 1910 because of the switch from Gladstonianism to progressivism and the backlash against both the embyronic welfare state and the persistent attempts at HR. While postwar I agree that they abruptly transitioned from government party to permanent third party because the left and working class wanted a "choice, not an echo" to quote Goldwater, the conditions for that don't seem to exist prewar. The 1910 results seem to indicate that they were being punished for being too radical, not too conservative. Averaging the 1910 swings to Lab gets you 1.6%, while the Tory swing is 3.1%. So, assuming none of this went to IPP, they were bleeding from the right, not the left by a 2:1 ratio.
 
Would the Liberals decline so quickly?


I believe so because the "lower" classes in this period were becoming increasingly radicalized and increasingly active in the electoral process, not just in Britain but across the Western world.

Labor is the party best poised to capture the allegiance of this newly active portion of the electorate because Labor is seen as coming from this newly active portion of the electorate. Borrowing a phrase from a later time and another nation, the Liberals are "country club liberals" whereas Labor is seen as more committed.

As for the Liberals fading into irrelevance "quickly", I think the process will take over a decade and most likely two.
 
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I'd say the biggest issue is HR. Will someone save the Tories from themselves, and more importantly keep Ireland in the UK/
 
Perhaps the Imperial Federation proposal could go through?

Perhaps the Imperial Federation proposal could go through?

That's one of Chamberlain's fuzzy dreams that, to quote Chris Christie, was "candy", not something to discuss when there were hot-button issues that might lead to bloodshed. Mostly the partisan debate, welfare state aside, revolved around HR and had been throughout the 1910s. There was absolutely no room for any sort of bipartisan compromise on the issue and the public certainly wasn't clamoring for one from my understanding. So if gridlock continues you get an Irish Civil War, and then the Army might go in. *Shudders*
 
You'll get Home Rule by early 1915 - rioting in Ulster, an limited violence elsewhere. While the Dublin Parliament is set-up, I imagine the Army will end up occupying the North.

Come next election, the Liberals are out on their arse, and Bonar Law or someone else takes over. The Conservatives will set-up an Ulster Parliament to satisfy their allies, and pissing off the Nationalists.

On the Liberal-Labour thing - no WWI helps the Liberals a lot. Remember the main reason for Liberal collapse was Lloyd-George attempting to retain National Government well into the 1920s, leading to decades of constantly dividing factions within the Party.

I can see Labour share increasing but I feel the section of the electorate interested in welfare reform would stick with the Liberals.

Irish representation will be massively decreased by Home Rule so I can imagine Labour replacing the IPP as the Liberal's main ally in Westminster however it will take major economic upheaval to get Labour to become one of the Big Two.

When the Liberals return to power, possibly with Labour support, their left-wing allies will push women's suffrage.

For the Labour Party, no WWI means no Bolshevik Revolution. This will have interesting consequences. For one 'Clause IV' a Fabian effort to secure the Party for parliamentary causes only, will never be written. Prior to that the radical side of the Party had syndicalist and militant union tendancies.

I doubt we'll see a General Strike and the collapse of the evil plutocrats, but if Labour ever does form a majority government, it'll be interesting to see what they do without the Fabian top-down tendency in charge.
 

Thande

Donor
The key point is that the franchise will probably not be broadened so early without WW1, which has significant effects, particularly on Labour not taking off so early (possibly at all).

As RB says, Imperial Federation was always a pipe dream and is about as realistic as the USA annexing Mexico in 1917.
 
The war also put the first Labour members into cabinet which helped create an image of a mature and patriotic party, whilst also benefiting those such as Major Attlee, who could not be questioned on his patriotism.

Funny how it was the major party which criticised the war most, only gain the most out of it in the end.
 
Civil War in Ireland, with the leader of the Conservatives backing the anti-government side...I cannot see it ending well. How can a political sytem function with the two oppoing parties openly backing different sides in a civil war?
 
Civil War in Ireland, with the leader of the Conservatives backing the anti-government side...I cannot see it ending well. How can a political sytem function with the two oppoing parties openly backing different sides in a civil war?

I doubt (hope) the Tories wouldn't do something as insane as backing anti-govenment rebels. However I can see them criticising the Liberals for not taking care of Ulster's concerns and attempting to win power as the reconciling party, giving Belfast it's own Parliament and organising an amnesty for the UVF.

It would be interesting to see how the Liberal Unionists take such a move. They're only recently officially united to the Tories and with Home Rule established, would they sit tight or return to the fold? After all, many of the Unionists were economically social liberals.

What effect an Ulster Rebellion would have on Irish Nationalism is a very tricky matter. Would some see the determination and extremism of the Unionists and consider Ulster a lost cause? Would it encourage the Irish Volunteers to radicalise in order to 'win' the northern counties?
 
I see no reason why the Tories would win in 1915. Although the Liberal Party's support in by-elections between 1910 and 1914 was declining as a consequence of the breakdown of the Liberal-Labour alliance at a grass-roots level, Labour found it impossible to erode Liberal working class support by taking seats from them. Ramsay MacDonald was pessimistic at the time. Before the First World War the Conservative Party was still tearing itself apart over Protectionism. The Liberals' Land Campaign and the passivity of the Conservative response alienated many farmers from the Tories. Moreover, the Liberals actually won at least a dozen seats in 1910 by mobilising the Catholic vote on the mainland over Home Rule.
 
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