Liberalism and Literature

2015 ◽  
pp. 102-123
Author(s):  
Lauren M. E. Goodlad
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Or Practice

Liberalism in the sense of a political party did not fully exist until the years between 1847 and 1868, when the Whigs transitioned into Liberals. By the late 1850s, the Liberal Party had become a ruling force in British politics. Yet, in 1886 when the Liberals split over Irish home rule, the demise of liberalism as a coherent platform was already clear. One result of this short-lived history is a striking difference in terminology on different sides of the Atlantic. Liberal political philosophy, however, encompasses diverse referents including classical republican, Scottish Enlightenment, and German-Romantic influences. Scholars who tender specific arguments about liberalism should specify the dimensions of thinking or practice to which they refer. While ‘liberal’ discourse is, thus, contextual and multivalent, the specifically literary reference points of the term are hardly reducible to political platforms, economic doctrines, philosophical stances, or ideological agendas.

Neville Chamberlain, 1869 - 1940

1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 731-734
Keyword(s):  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Financial Loss ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The University ◽  
Short Time

There were, in two generations, three Chamberlains in the first rank of British politics. Joseph, the greatest of them in personality and in the special gifts that qualify for the highest success in public life, would almost certainly have succeeded Gladstone in the leadership of the Liberal party had they not separated in 1886 on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. O f his two sons, Austen was educated for a public career and Neville for business. Austen twice, of deliberate choice, declined a course that might and probably would have led to the Premiership. It was to the younger son Neville that the great prize came, though he had no Parliamentary ambitions during the larger part of his life, and did not enter the House of Commons till he was within a few months of fifty. He did not go to the university as Austen had done but, on leaving Rugby, returned to his home in Birmingham and, after a short time at Mason College, entered an accountants’ office. In 1890 his father bought land in the Bahamas for the cultivation of sisal which, he was advised, would produce the best quality of hemp. Neville went out at the age of twenty-one to take charge of the estate. He lived plain and worked hard for seven years and then had to admit failure. The soil was too thin and, after heavy financial loss, the enterprise was abandoned.

The Changing Context of British Politics in the 1880s: The Reform Acts and the Formation of the Liberal Unionist Party

1977 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh W. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Unexpected Event ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Separate Identity ◽  
Two Stages

In the summer of 1886, the conservative “Whig” wing of the Liberal party, led by Lord Hartington, together with a small group of Radical Unionists under Joseph Chamberlain, broke with the Liberal leader, Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, and formed the Liberal Unionist party. This not-unexpected event occurred in two stages. The first was the defection of ninety-three Liberals to the Conservative opposition on the second reading of Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule Bill in June, resulting in its defeat. The second stage was the decision of Hartington, Chamberlain, and their followers to contest, with Conservative support, parliamentary seats against Liberals in the ensuing July election which Gladstone called on the issue of Irish Home Rule.The election of July, 1886 proved to be a critical juncture in British party alignment. The shift in the strength of the parties caused by the return of seventy-eight Liberal Unionists to the parliament of 1886-92 and their support of the Conservatives ended forty years of Liberal domination and began a generation of Conservative hegemony. The Liberal Unionists maintained a parliamentary strength of about seventy members and a separate identity until they merged with the Conservatives in 1912; few of the dissident Liberal Unionists returned to the Liberal party. The formation of the Unionist (Conservative and Liberal Unionist) coalition had long-term ramifications as well because it set the stage for the emergence of class politics shortly after the turn of the century.

Parnell's fall and the nonconformist conscience

1960 ◽  
Vol 12 (46) ◽  
pp. 119-138
Author(s):  
J.F. Glaser
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Critical Phase ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catalytic Role ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
English Politics ◽  
The Relationship

The fall of Charles Stewart Parnell as a result of the O'Shea divorce case in late 1890 is a dramatic episode of lasting human interest and an event of the first importance in the history of Ireland and of British politics. The story of the crisis has often been told, usually from the perspectives of the two Homeric protagonists, Parnell and Gladstone. While it is generally agreed that the English nonconformists played a decisive part in the dethronement of ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland’, their catalytic role has never been clearly, accurately, or fully explained. The problem is of special interest because it was during this controversy that ‘the nonconformist conscience’ entered the English language as a popular phrase as it had long before entered English politics as a potent reality. It is the purpose of this article to study the Parnell affair from the vantage point of English nonconformity and, in so doing, to re-examine the origin of the famous phrase and to throw light on the relationship of nonconformity and the liberal party in a critical phase of the home rule movement.

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.

VII. Cecil Rhodes and the Second Home Rule Bill

1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-781 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. P. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Second Home ◽  
The Way

The main way in which the second Home Rule Bill differed from the first was in its provision for the retention of Irish M.P.s at Westminster. Cecil Rhodes played an important part in bringing about this change, both in the way in which he obtained Parnell's support for continued Irish representation in die Imperial Parliament, and in the assistance he gave to the Liberal Party to regain power in 1892. But while most of the facts about Rhodes' only major incursion into British politics have long been well-known, his actions have been obscured; either through misunderstanding, or because they have been considered as peripheral to the more important aspects of their subjects by biographers of Parnell and Rhodes himself and by writers on the home rule crises, and so have been underestimated.

The Little Manx Nation: Antiquarianism, Ethnic Identity, and Home Rule Politics in the Isle of Man, 1880–1918

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Belchem
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
Irish Sea ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Isle Of Man ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
The Irish Sea ◽  
Frank Kermode

As imperial pride flourished in the racial discourse of late Victorian British politics, ethnic revival and Celtic nationalism also gained purchase and resonance. These complex and seemingly competing issues of identity extended beyond the “four nations” of the United Kingdom to the Isle of Man, a crown dependency constitutionally outside the United Kingdom but at the very center of the British Isles. In this “land of home rule,” adrift in the Irish Sea, the juxtaposition of Britishness and Celticism was particularly acute, compounded by the proud persistence of Norse traditions. Manx independence within the Atlantic archipelago was symbolized by the annual Tynwald Day ceremony, a Viking “Thing” or general meeting, at which the year's new legislation was promulgated in both English and Manx Gaelic. In the late Victorian period, as Anglo-Manx business syndicates invested heavily in the “visiting industry,” transforming the island into “one large playground for the operatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire,” gentlemanly antiquarians constructed (and/or invented) the necessary traditions to safeguard Manx cultural distinctiveness and its devolved political status. Through the assertion of Celticism, a project that tended to downgrade Norse contributions to the island's past, the little Manx nation girded itself against cultural anglicization, yet remained unquestionably loyal to the British empire.Slightly other than English, the Manx have displayed what Sir Frank Kermode has described as “mild alienation” and “qualified foreignness,” characteristics that need to be considered in the wider debate about British identity.

‘Every Scotsman Should Be a Scottish Nationalist’

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-47
Author(s):  
David Torrance
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Irish Immigration

The ‘nationalist unionism’ of the Scottish Unionist Party, as formed in 1912 via a merger of Liberal Unionists and Conservatives in Scotland, is then closely examined as the first of several political party case studies. After explaining the historical circumstances which gave rise to the party, its early statements of Scottish ‘nationality’ and identity are analysed. Although the party’s nationalism had an ethnic element (opposition to Irish immigration), the chapter argues that it was mainly ‘civic’ in nature. It goes on to discuss how the party sought a ‘compromise’ with a more radical Home Rule movement by promoting ‘administrative devolution’ within the United Kingdom. It did so by depicting Scotland as a distinctive part of the Union whose traditions and identity required protection from Anglicising forces.

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.

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