Home Rule, Radicalism, and the Liberal Party, 1886-1895

1974 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas William Heyck
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
British History ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party

In 1887, Joseph Chamberlain wrote a letter toThe Baptistin which he blamed the preoccupation of Liberals and Radicals with Home Rule for delaying social reform. “Thirty-two millions of people,” he complained, “must go without much-needed legislation because three millions are disloyal.” Early in the 1890s, socialists and militant working-class spokesmen sometimes took up this cry to express their discontent with the Liberal party. And in later years, the Liberal-Radical commitment to Home Rule provided one of the main historical explanations for the founding of an independent working-class party; thus the dampening of Radicalism supposedly caused by Home Rule has been regarded as the source of the most important political transformation of recent British history. In the words of G. D. H. Cole:With Chamberlain's departure, and with the increasing preoccupation of Gladstone with Home Rule, the Radical impulses of the 'seventies had died away. Some attempt was made to revive them when it had become plain that Liberalism was in serious danger of losing its working-class support. But the attempt was made too late, and the Liberal ‘Newcastle Programme' of 1892 was only a very pale shadow of Chamberlain's ‘Unauthorized Programme’ of 1885.D. A. Hamer, in a recent article, takes essentially the same view, with some modifications. The Liberals, he says, took up Home Rule in a deliberate attempt to paper over confusion and disagreement within the party over other policies. In the 1880s, the Liberal party tended to be dominated by “faddists,” who could not agree on the precedence to be given various reform proposals.

Isaac Butt and the Home Rule Movement: A Study in Conservative Nationalism

1960 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-95
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. McCaffrey
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
British History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Eventual Collapse

The formation of the Irish Home Rule movement was a significant factor in influencing subsequent Irish and British history. Irish Federalism produced a political party that often controlled the balance of power in the House of Commons; split the Liberal party on the question of Irish self-government, a prelude to its eventual collapse; secured extensive agrarian reform for Irish tenant farmers, the first serious blow to traditional property rights in the British Isles; and was instrumental in destroying the political power of the House of Lords.

scholarly journals Irish Politics in Manchester 1890–1914

1988 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Irish Politics

SummaryThis article questions the prevalent assumption that prior to 1914 the Irish in Britain were unquestioningly attached to the Liberal party. It suggests that Home Rule forced the Irish into wider political sympathies which embraced both radical Liberalism and Labour. The Irish in Manchester are highlighted and the “progressive” nature of local Nationalism described. It is also denied that the transfer of Irish loyalties to Labour was proof of the emergence of a class politics or of their integration into the unskilled working-class. It is suggested that this was, in fact, evidence of their continued cultural and political distinctiveness.

Irish Home Rule and the Social Basis of the Great Separation in the Liberal Party in 1886

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. C. Lubenow
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
British History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Voting

Though Mr Gladstone was speaking of the opposition to home rule in the country, rather than in the parliamentary Liberal party alone in the statement quoted above, this has become the rather standard interpretation of the great separation in the Liberal party in 1886. As one modern historian of the Liberal disruption puts it, ‘a striking characteristic of modern British history has been the class alignment of political parties… The Liberal Unionist party (those who seceded on the home rule question) was a half-way house, which entertained for a time much of the wealth and territorial influence which had been Liberal and was to be Conservative.’ One of the most influential historians of late-nineteenth-century Britain puts the issue in broader terms. The origins of Conservative dominance as well as the leakage of the landed and business classes to the Conservative party, Sir Robert Ensor argues, are to be found in the undermining of English and Irish agriculture by the invasion of North American wheat. This produced, in turn, agrarian revolution in Ireland, the rise of violent nationalism in Ireland, the growth of social and political conflict, and, ultimately, the rejection of Irish political demands by the English. Yet another attributes the fall of Gladstone's third ministry to a general revolt against the Liberal party by railway directors and other businessmen who had been alerted to the dangers to property which the government's railway policies implied. This theme has been taken up and many have come to argue that class voting emerged in 1886 when the upper – and middle-class Liberals, taking home rule as an excuse, departed to the Conservatives in a reaction against growing social radicalism.

The origins of the Catholic Social Guild in Scotland: ‘We have not attacked the Socialists professedly’

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Potocki
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
The West ◽  
Main Activity ◽  
Social Message ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
The Catholic Church

The activities of John Wheatley's Catholic Socialist Society have been analysed in terms of liberating Catholics from clerical dictation in political matters. Yet, beyond the much-discussed clerical backlash against Wheatley, there has been little scholarly attention paid to a more constructive response offered by progressive elements within the Catholic Church. The discussion that follows explores the development of the Catholic social movement from 1906, when the Catholic Socialist Society was formed, up until 1918 when the Catholic Social Guild, an organisation founded by the English Jesuit Charles Plater, had firmly established its local presence in the west of Scotland. This organisation played an important role in the realignment of Catholic politics in this period, and its main activity was the dissemination of the Church's social message among the working-class laity. The Scottish Catholic Church, meanwhile, thanks in large part to Archbishop John Aloysius Maguire of Glasgow, became more amenable to social reform and democracy.

scholarly journals Making Rebels: The New Zealand Socialist Party, 1901-1913

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mark Dunick
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Political Factor ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
National Organisation

<p>The New Zealand Socialist Party (NZSP) was the first radical socialist party in this country. The decade in which it existed was a time of rapid social change. The NZSP began in 1901 as a reaction against the Liberal Party which dominated New Zealand politics at the time. In its first five years the party had two main branches in Wellington and Christchurch, but it grew rapidly after 1907 with the expansion of industrial unionism. The NZSP was overshadowed by the Federation of Labour and never developed a coherent national organisation. As the working class began to organise nationally to challenge the Massey Government, the NZSP failed to adapt to the new political situation and dissolved in 1913.  The party began as a group of marginal outsiders, but as society changed and class became an important political factor, the NZSP played an important role in spreading new ideas and educating a generation of socialists. When the NZSP ended in 1913 the ideas it had promoted were widely accepted among New Zealand’s organised working class.</p>

Building Workers’ Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-98
Author(s):  
James Muldoon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
The Press ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Rosa Luxemburg

This chapter argues that council theorists considered it important to shift the balance of power between social classes in order to achieve political transformation. It theorizes differences between those who advocated ‘organization’ (Kautsky) versus those who advocated ‘mobilization’ (Luxemburg, Pannekoek) as the most effective method of developing the independent power of the working class. It claims Karl Kautsky advocated a strategy of developing power through building worker-led organizations such as the party, unions, and the press. His strategy involved the gradual growth of power through organization-building, parliamentary activity, and developing workers’ consciousness within existing organizations. Underlying this strategy of organization lay a conception of power as something that could be incrementally developed and stored through sound organizing, discipline, and patience. In contrast, Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek considered that power could only be developed through political struggle and direct clashes with the ruling class. They argued that previously unorganized workers could be mobilized through the escalating dynamics of political struggle and that consciousness-raising was best conducted in militant action rather than administrative party activities. These two fundamentally different analyses of how workers should develop their power shed light on different aspects of the council movements’ political struggle.

The Irish War of Independence and The Irish Civil War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Weihman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Irish Republican Army ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The United Kingdom

The Irish War of Independence (Irish: Cogadh na Saoirse), also known as the Anglo–Irish War, began in January 1919 as a guerrilla war waged by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) against the British Government. Ireland was formally a part of the United Kingdom as a result of the passing of the Acts of Union in 1800. In the late-nineteenth century, the Irish Parliamentary Party, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891), advocated home rule for Ireland through cooperation with the Liberal Party in the English Parliament, but it was unsuccessful until the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912. This bill provoked Unionists in the north of Ireland to form the Ulster Volunteers, who feared a predominantly Catholic Irish Parliament in Dublin. In response, Nationalists formed the Irish Volunteers. The Third Home Rule Bill never took effect because of the outbreak of World War I; Irish troops fought with England in the war with the promise that home rule would be granted at the conflict’s end.

Home rule and the liberal party, 1899–1906

1963 ◽  
Vol 13 (52) ◽  
pp. 316-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.W. McCready
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Financial Measures ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
History Of ◽  
Liberal Reform ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Pros And Cons

Gladstone’s dramatic commitment of the liberal party to a policy of home rule for Ireland in 1886 was followed by the Grand Old Man’s two attempts at turning his policy into legislation. The first home rule bill, that of 1886, was defeated in the house of commons and then in a general election: the second, that of 1893, was overwhelmed in the house of lords and then dropped by Gladstone’s fourth government. Though the Gladstonian commitment remained and the liberal party continued to be a home rule party — and though the pros and cons of the union of 1800 remained the major structural feature of British party politics — it was not until 1912 that the liberals did anything further about their major Irish policy. For most of the period 1893-1912 they were, of course, impotent in opposition and consequently in no position to take the initiative on home rule. In 1906, however, they won a landslide victory over their unionist opponents and it is striking that this electoral victory and the great impulse it gave to one of the most dynamic governments in the whole history of British liberalism was not followed, as had the last two liberal victories under Gladstone, by the introduction of a third home rule bill. Had the liberal landslide of 1906 been put behind another home rule measure the whole history of the matter would certainly have been radically different. The house of lords would have been easily overwhelmed; the great advance in constitutional reform for Ireland would have been carried in a spirit of liberal reform rather than of political surrender; the development of Sinn Fein would have been frustrated or at least diverted. But the liberal victory of 1906 was not so used. Home rule was postponed and sidetracked and was taken up again only when the liberal party once more desperately needed Irish votes in the budget election which followed the rejection of Lloyd George’s financial measures by the lords in November 1909. The home rule banner was hoisted afresh by Asquith, the prime minister, in his Albert Hall speechof 10 December 1909 and the third home rule bill appeared in due course in 1912 in direct — and significant — succession to the budget and the parliament act for both of which the Asquith government needed Irish support in the commons.

The Conservative Party and the Formation of the National Government: August 1931

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Ball
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
National Government ◽  
General Election ◽  
British History ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Intrinsic Interest

On 24 August 1931 the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, tendered the resignation of the second Labour government. In its place he became the premier of an all-party ‘National’ cabinet. This included both the leader of the Conservative party, Stanley Baldwin, and the acting-leader of the Liberal party, Sir Herbert Samuel, together with a number of their senior colleagues. This temporary emergency administration went on to win a landslide majority in the general election of October 1931, and to govern for the ensuing decade. The crisis which created the National government has proved to be of enduring fascination, as a result of its intrinsic interest as the major political crisis of the inter-war period and its profound consequences for subsequent British history. However, historical attention has been principally focused upon the problems of the Labour government, the decisions of Ramsay MacDonald, and the contribution of King George V. As a result the role of the Conservative party – often portrayed as having been the sole benefactor from these events – has been either neglected for its supposed passivity or misunderstood in its mood and intention.

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