Abstract
Was Labour’s Keir Hardie prescient or premature in 1906 when he declared that it was ‘obvious to everyone who took the slightest interest in public affairs that the old two-party system is breaking up’? Alternatively, in keeping with the editorial policy of the quarterly Victorian Studies (for which Victorian England ends in 1914), ought we to look upon the Edwardian political world as constituting the ‘Indian summer’ chapter of a volume that had opened with the Reform Bill of 1832? Should stress be placed upon the ‘classical’ manner in which aristocrats (and occasional plutocrats) still loomed above the parliam entary arena, with the Right Honourable H. H. Asquith, ‘the last of the Romans’, and that scion of the house of Cecil, the Right Honourable A. J. Balfour, yet walking arm-in-arm out of the Palace of Westminster after an evening of verbal swordplay? Did the battle over the budget of 1909 and its aftermath mark, as Kenneth Morgan has recently suggested, ‘a glorious high noon’ of liberalism rather than the onset of a ‘strange death’?1 To sum such questions up, are Edwardian politics more appropriately assessed in the framework of a ‘turbulent spring’ or in that of an ‘Indian summer’?
I am grateful to Dr Esther Simon Shkolnik for her assistance
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Bibliographical Notes
Any brief survey of books on Edwardian politics must of necessity be highly selective. The classic account remains the two-volume ‘Epilogue’ to E. Halévy’s History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, first written in the 1920s (revised edn, 1961): Imperialism and the Rise of Labour, 1895–1905 and The Rule of Democracy, 1905–1914, trans. E. I. Watkin (revised edn, 1951). Also still relevant are Sir Robert Ensor’s volume in the Oxford History of England series, England, 1870–1914 (1936) and A. Briggs’s ‘The Political Scene’ in S. Nowell-Smith (ed.), Edwardian England, 1901–1914 (1964).
The two most valuable books on politics at the constituency as well as the parliamentary level are A. K. Russell, Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (Newton Abbot, 1973) and N. Blewett, The Peers, the Parties, and the People: The General Elections of 1910 (1972). Neither volume confines its attention to just a single year. Blewett’s article, ‘The Franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885–1918’, P & P (Dec. 1965), remains central to our understanding of the electoral framework. Several of the essays in H. Pelling’s Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (1968) are equally relevant for Edwardian developments, as is the same author’s Social Geography of British Elections, 1885–1910 (1968) and P. F. Clarke’s ‘Electoral Sociology of Modern Britain’, History (1972). M. Kinnear’s The British Voter: An Atlas and Survey Since 1885 (1968), and D. Butler and J. Freeman’s British Political Facts, 1900–1975 (4th edn 1975), provide detailed election results. Chris Cook illuminates local election trends in ‘Labour and the Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1906–14’, in A. Sked and C. Cook (eds), Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor (1976). Two other relevant essay collections are A. J. A. Morris (ed.), Edwardian Radicalism, 1900–1314 (1974) and K. D. Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History (1974).
Important monographs devoted to specific geographical regions include K. O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868–1922 (Cardiff, 1963); P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals, and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (1967); and P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (1971). Thompson minimises and Clarke emphasises the vitality of pre-1914 Liberalism. In Nonconformity in Modern British Politics (1975), Stephen E. Koss reminds us of the importance of religion as well as social class in Edwardian politics. R. Blake’s The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (1970), R. Douglas’s History of the Liberal Party, 1895–1970 (1971), and vol. 1 of R. R.James, The British Revolution, 1880–1939, 2 vols (1976), include numerous sage observations on the era’s political leaders. So do the biographies of the leading actors: K. Young, Arthur James Balfour (1963); S. H. Zebel, Balfour: A Political Biography (1973); J.Wilson, CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1973); R.Jenkins, Asquith (1964); S. E. Koss, Asquith (1976); K. O. Morgan, Lloyd George (1974); D. M. Creiger, The Bounder from Wales: Lloyd George Before the War (1976); and R. S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: The Young Statesman, 1901–1914 (1967).
Specific political episodes are illuminated in F. Bealey and H. Pelling, Labour and Politics, 1900–1906 (1958); A. M. Gollin, Balfour’s Burden: Arthur Balfour and Imperial Preference (1965); R. A. Rempel, Unionists Divided: Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, and the Unionist Free Traders (Newton Abbot, 1972); D. Morgan, Suffragists and Liberals: The Politics of Woman Suffrage in England (Oxford, 1975); and R. Jenkins, Mr Balfour’s Poodle (1954), a lively account of the struggle between the Asquith Government and the House of Lords, 1909–1911. Further removed from day-to-day politics are studies of political ideas such as H. V. Emy, Liberals, Radicals, and Social Politics, 1892–1914 (Cambridge, 1973); and M. Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford, 1978). Books such as B. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought, 1895–1914 (1960) and G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971) remind us that some issues transcended partisan political divisions altogether.Specific political episodes are illuminated in F. Bealey and H. Pelling, Labour and Politics, 1900–1906 (1958); A. M. Gollin, Balfour’s Burden: Arthur Balfour and Imperial Preference (1965); R. A. Rempel, Unionists Divided: Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, and the Unionist Free Traders (Newton Abbot, 1972); D. Morgan, Suffragists and Liberals: The Politics of Woman Suffrage in England (Oxford, 1975); and R. Jenkins, Mr Balfour’s Poodle (1954), a lively account of the struggle between the Asquith Government and the House of Lords, 1909–1911. Further removed from day-to-day politics are studies of political ideas such as H. V. Emy, Liberals, Radicals, and Social Politics, 1892–1914 (Cambridge, 1973); and M. Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford, 1978). Books such as B. Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought, 1895–1914 (1960) and G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971) remind us that some issues transcended partisan political divisions altogether.
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© 1979 Walter L. Arnstein, Suzann Buckley, Peter Cain, Dennis Dean, T. R. Gourvish, Colin Nicolson, Alan O’Day, G. R. Searle
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Arnstein, W.L. (1979). Edwardian Politics: Turbulent Spring or Indian Summer?. In: O’Day, A. (eds) The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900–1914. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15854-6_4
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