The Interests, the Suffragettes, and the Churches

Abstract

No Ministry since the first great Government of Gladstone had challenged the status quo at so many points as had those of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith. The result was the enmity of many of the most powerful interests in the land. Assessing the position in early 1908 Montagu wrote: ‘The Liberal Party is once more in its old and almost traditional position: it has tickled up the sore points in pretty nearly every interest in the country — Land is against it, Property is against it, Beer is against it.’¹ To his list Montagu might well have added the Anglican and Catholic Churches, the Tariff Reformers, the Irish and the suffragettes. Nor had the Government satisfied many of the groups that had helped sweep it to power. The Education and Licensing Acts remained unamended, while Welsh Disestablishment had been fobbed off with the appointment of a royal commission.²