The Confederacy and the Purge of the Unionist Free Traders, 1906–1910

1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Sykes
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Secret Society ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Corn Laws ◽  
English Politics

Joseph Chamberlain's speech at Birmingham on 15 May 1903, which began the tariff reform campaign, produced divisions within the Unionist party on a scale unknown since the repeal of trie Corn Laws. Announced to a party tired and jaded after its difficulties in the conduct of the Boer War, imperial preference offered an outlet for frustrated imperialist idealism, a cause to which the enthusiasts of the party could devote themselves, ‘… in a few hours England, indeed the whole Empire, was in a ferment of indescribable excitement’ Enthusiasm for the new cause rapidly developed into intolerance towards any other opinion. In the summer of 1903 supporters and opponents of the new policy organized themselves into rival leagues: ‘For a decade the Unionist party, the great exemplar of political pragmatism, was consumed by ideological passion’. The epitome of this intolerance and ideological passion was the Confederacy, ‘this extraordinary phenomenon in English politics — a secret society with all the trappings of oaths, threats and codes’,s ‘a secret society of extremist wholehoggers … [which] … saw itself as the inquisitorial arm of the tariff reform movement…’ and whose avowed object was ‘to drive the enemies of tariff reform out of the Conservative party’.

English Politics and the Blasphemy Act of 1698*

2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (575) ◽  
pp. 804-835
Author(s):  
Eloise Davies
Keyword(s):  
Moral Leadership ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Reform ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Fault Lines ◽  
High Church ◽  
Standing Army ◽  
English Politics

Abstract In 1698, less than a decade after the Toleration Act, a blasphemy law was passed in England. No convictions were ever brought under the Act, and it has been largely neglected by historians. Yet, for all its apparent insignificance, the Blasphemy Act is an instructive episode in post-1688 politics, which sheds light on the political realignments of the post-revolutionary decade. The language of the blasphemy debates was theologically sophisticated, rooted in Calvin’s understanding of blasphemy as distinctively malicious, and it is clear that the contours of the extra-parliamentary Trinitarian controversy were a source of division in Westminster too. The Blasphemy Act was one means by which the Williamite bishops, under pressure from both the dissenter-dominated moral reform movement and High Church advocates of Convocation, tried to reassert the court’s moral leadership. But the significance of the dispute was not limited to ecclesiastical politics; the story of the Blasphemy Act was also closely entwined with that of the more famous ‘standing army’ controversy. William’s Court Whig ministers—often portrayed as areligious pragmatists—exploited the theological fault-lines among Country MPs to legitimise fiscal-military reform.

scholarly journals TARIFF REFORM: AN IMPERIAL STRATEGY, 1903–1913

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1054 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW S. THOMPSON
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Preferential Tariff

Historians of the Edwardian tariff reform movement have disagreed about its aims. This article examines the motivations of the leadership of the Tariff Reform League, which was by far the most influential organization in the tariff lobby. It argues that the League's leaders were more empire-minded than often allowed, and that it was the preferential tariff which they were most determined to promulgate and defend. Indeed, attempts by the Balfourite wing of the Unionist party to twist tariff reform away from its imperial origins were strongly resisted by the League, and the forces of protection within the organization were also carefully controlled. When the Tariff Reform League finally gave way on the issue of imperial preference in January 1913, it was not because it had suddenly ceased to be concerned about the unity of the empire. Rather, the widespread public hostility to the imposition of food duties showed no sign of diminishing, thus making it difficult to persuade a critical mass within the Unionist party that tariff reform was a politically viable strategy of imperial federation.

The 1846 Repeal of the Corn Laws: Insights from a Classification Tree Approach

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-203
Author(s):  
Stephen Peplow
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Classification Tree ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Corn Laws ◽  
The Government ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
First Time ◽  
Tree Approach

Prime Minister Robert Peel was forced to resign in 1846 over the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Far from being a relatively unimportant piece of agricultural legislation, the Corn Laws, and their continuance, formed part of the ideology of the Conservative Party of the time. By proposing to Repeal the Corn Laws, Sir Robert was attacking the beliefs on which his party had won victory in the 1841 General Election. The result was a serious split within the Conservative Party over the Corn Laws. The majority of Conservatives voted against their own government, while 114 ‘Peelite’ Conservatives voted with Peel and the government. Why those particular Conservative Members decided to split away from their colleagues has been the subject of a large amount of research, mostly with ‘demand-side’ models which assume that the MP is little more than a mouthpiece for constituency interests. Peel's 1845 motion, a year before Repeal, to increase the yearly grant to the Irish Catholic seminary at Maynooth created very large controversy, and a backbench rebellion in which half of his own party voted against the government. As with Repeal, Maynooth passed only because the Opposition party decided to side with the government. This article uses principal component analysis and a classification tree analysis for the first time to show that while Conservative Members were voting with constituency interests in mind, their previous voting record over Maynooth is an overlooked and important predictor.

Joseph Chamberlain and the Genesis of Tariff Reform

1967 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney H. Zebel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Free Trade Policy ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Political Decision Making

This paper is concerned solely with the genesis of the 1903 Tariff Reform Movement. Why did a veteran, realistic politician like Joseph Chamberlain challenge Britain's long-sacrosanct free trade policy? What political, economic, social, or other factors influenced him to make his decision? Was he really the originator of the program which he championed? What empirical lessons can be learned about the methodology and rationale of political decision making? The existing scholarly works dealing with the Chamberlain agitation, although exceedingly numerous, provide no really satisfactory answers to these questions. Thus a fresh appraisal of the origins of the Tariff Reform Movement seems clearly warranted.IThe Liberal journalist-statesman John Morley, who became acquainted with Chamberlain in 1873, is reported as once saying that his friend's faith in the free trade policy was always “only skindeep.” Chamberlain himself said that he was first shaken in his free trade beliefs in 1881 when, as President of the Board of Trade in the second Gladstone Government, he was asked to reply to a protectionist speech by a then-obscure Conservative M.P. named C. T. Ritchie. Contrary to Chamberlain and Morley, however, one of the Birmingham leader's official biographers states that he has found no indication that his hero entertained any fiscal heresies prior to the winter of 1902-03; and though the date he gives may be disputed, the view that Chamberlain was a late convert to protection is substantiated by considerable evidence. Chamberlain's reply to Ritchie, despite his later admission of doubt, reveals no misgivings about the free trade credo.

The Tariff Reform Movement in Great Britain, 1881-1895.

1944 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Arthur Redford ◽  
B. H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Tariff Reform

Radical Conservatism: the Electoral Genesis of Tariff Reform

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. H. H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
The Self ◽  
Reform Policy ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
The Core ◽  
Tariff Reform ◽  
Preferential Tariff ◽  
Severely Handicapped ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

For historians of the Edwardian Conservative party one problem in particular continues to present severe difficulties. This problem in the history of the Conservative party was first outlined by Lord Blake in his study of the party from Peel to Churchill, namely how to explain the feet that Conservative politics came to be so dominated by the issue of Tariff Reform in the decade preceding the Great War. Indeed, to Lord Blake it seemed scarcely credible that the Conservatives should have even considered, let alone shackled themselves to, a policy which was apparently so disastrous both for the party's unity and its electoral prospects. Such incredulity is, in many ways, hardly surprising for, as all the studies of Tariff Reform have agreed, there were enormous difficulties involved in the adoption of this policy – and two problems in particular were clearly almost insurmountable. Firstly, the core of the Tariff Reform policy, that is to say the securing of the imperial markets for British producers through a system of preferential tariff agreements with the colonies, was severely handicapped by the fact that the self-governing colonies, the only worthwhile markets, were very lukewarm about the whole idea. This difficulty stemmed from the fact that the colonies had begun to develop their own fledgling industries and were thus none too keen to have them swamped by a flood of imported British manufactures. Secondly, the only agreement in which the colonies were interested entailed the Conservatives advocating duties on imported foreign grain and agricultural goods. This, of course, led to the Conservatives being labelled the party of ‘dear food’ and there seems little room for doubt that these ‘food taxes’ did the Conservatives a great deal of electoral damage, especially amongst the working-class electorate.

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