Abstract
The general elections of 1910 provided the first verdict on the Liberal renaissance ushered in by the great Liberal victory of 1906. They were also a final verdict, for by the time the electors were appealed to again the Liberal Party had broken asunder. As a result of this split, the Liberals forfeited for ever their entrenched electoral position as one of the two ruling parties in the system, a position they had possessed and exploited in 1910. But the elections of 1910 were not merely the last significant popular judgements on a united and dominant Liberal Party. They were also the last general elections of Edwardian England; the last general elections fought under the electoral system designed in 1884–5; and the last general elections fought within the party system moulded by the events of 1885–6, and only marginally modified by the intrusion of the Labour Party. As such they provide a final perspective on the politics of a generation.
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Notes
For this development see Paul Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform (London, 1967); E.J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party (Oxford, 1968), particularly ch. iv; James Cornford, ‘The Transformation of Conservatism in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Victorian Studies, vii (1963) 35–66; and J. P. D. Dunbabin, ‘Parliamentary Elections in Great Britain, 1869–1900: A Psephological Note,’ English Historical Review, lxxxi (1966) 82–92.
See Smith, Disraelian Conservatism, p. 314 n. 5; Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party, pp. 80–3; and Dunbabin, EHR, lxxxi (1966) 88–9.
C. H. D. Howard, ‘Joseph Chamberlain and the “Unauthorised Programme”’. English Historical Review, lxv (1950) 488, 30 Oct 1885.
This distinction between short-term switches and long-run partisan change is critical to the classificatory scheme developed for American presidential elections in Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, Elections and the Political Order (New York, 1966) chs ii-viii, a work which has influenced my approach in this book. See also the seminal article by V. O. Key, Jr, ‘A Theory of Critical Elections’, Journal of Politics, xvii (1955) 3–18. and the use of the classification with historical data in Gerald Pomper, ‘Classification of Presidential Elections’, ibid., xxix (1967) 535–66.
The effect of both questions on the Irish vote in Great Britain is examined in C. D. H. Howard, ‘The Parnell Manifesto of 21 November, 1885 and the Schools Question’, English Historical Review, lxii (1947) 42–51.
Quotations in this paragraph from S. Gwynn and G. M. Tuckwell, The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1917) ii 182–3.
A. R. D. Elliot, Life of George Joachim Goschen, First Viscount Goschen, 1831–1907 (London, 1911) i 308; and Annual Register 1885, p. 174.
Derek W. Urwin, ‘Development of Conservative Party Organisation in Scotland until 1912’, Scottish Historical Review, xliv (1965) 90–6.
Two Liberal Unionists stood for Dundee, a two-member seat. In addition there were seven Liberal Unionist candidates in Ireland, mostly in Ulster. See D. C. Savage, ‘The Origins of the Ulster Unionist Party, 1885–6’, Irish Historical Studies, xii (1961) 185–208.
G. E. Buckle (ed.), The Letters of Queen Victoria, third series (London, 1930) i 143, journal entry, 8 June 1886. For a detailed account of this crucial period in Scotland see D. C. Savage, ‘Scottish Politics, 1885–6’, Scottish Historical Review, xl (1961) 118–35. Savage gives weight to disquiet over proposals for disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Scotland as a further reason for the Liberal decline.
John P. Mackintosh, The British Cabinet (London, 1962) 197–2-3, 484–9. For a valuable critique of this thesis see G. N. Sanderson, ‘The “Swing of the Pendulum” in British General Elections, 1832–1966’, Political Studies, xiv (1966) 349–60.
J. G. Kellas, ‘The Liberal Party and the Scottish Church Disestablishment Crisis’, English Historical Review, lxxix (1964) 31–46; and Pelling, Social Geography, pp. 373–5, 381–6.
Barry McGill, ‘Francis Schnadhorst and Liberal Party Organisation’, Journal of Modern History, xxxiv (1962) 27–8.
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Blewett, N. (1972). The Unionist Hegemony 1886–1902. In: The Peers, the Parties and the People. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00652-6_1
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