Explaining Britain and Her Empire: 1851-1914 by Nick Shepley

Author:Nick Shepley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: First World War, Bismarck, Disraeli, Congress of Berlin, Scramble for Africa, Balkan Crisis, Kaiser, Franco Prussian War, Morocco Crisis, Dreadnought Race, July Crisis, Balkan Wars
ISBN: 9781785382437
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2015
Published: 2015-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

The Whigs and Conservatives were fiercely critical of Chamberlain, who’s programme was seen as a separate manifesto within the Liberal Party. Even though Gladstone had been a reformer in his first ministry, what Chamberlain was proposing went far beyond anything he had argued for, Chamberlain wanted direct state intervention to remove inequality. Queen Victoria was deeply alarmed by the programme and believed it was an attempt to create socialism in Britain, and the party disowned Chamberlain’s ideas. When Chamberlain’s policies to create national councils for Scotland, Wales and England were rejected by Cabinet in May 1885, Chamberlain resigned and the government fell a month later following Gladstone’s disastrous handling of the crisis in Sudan and the death of General Gordon (see Chapter Two).

Gladstone’s Conversion to Home Rule

Following the defeat of the Liberals in 1885, the Conservatives under Lord Salisbury were briefly in power for seven months (for more on this see Section Two). In the January 1886 election the Liberals won 86 seats more than the Conservatives, but Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party won exactly 86 seats, meaning that depending on which party he decided to side with, he could control the workings of parliament. In late 1885, Gladstone appeared to have become fully committed to Home Rule, his mission to pacify Ireland that had begun with the land acts (see Chapter Two) had now entered a new phase.

Gladstone became convinced that nothing less than home rule would be sufficient to solve Ireland’s problems and deliver her justice. The presence of Chamberlain in the party also had an effect on Gladstone’s thinking, the Liberals were becoming increasingly divided between Whigs and Radicals, with the latter wanting further and more far reaching social reform. Chamberlain had become the Radical leader and Gladstone feared he might split the party, which meant that the ageing Prime Minister needed a cause around which to unite the Liberals once more and hoped that Home Rule for Ireland would be it.

Gladstone’s son, Herbert made a spectacular blunder by announcing in late 1885 that his father had converted to Home Rule. Gladstone had been hoping that he could forge a cross party alliance to push a Home Rule bill through parliament and had even contacted Salisbury’s nephew Arthur Balfour to see if this was possible. When the Conservatives learned that Gladstone had been ‘converted’, all hopes of creating a deal were lost, their view of him as a religious moraliser who was unable to compromise was reinforced.

The Conservatives now became the defenders of the union and instead of a cross party agreement, battle lines were drawn over Ireland.

The Home Rule Bill and Gladstone’s Third Ministry.

Gladstone’s Liberal MPs were in no doubt that the main aim of his third ministry was to bring about Home Rule for Ireland. In his first speech to the house on the subject of Ireland in April 1886 he made the case for Home Rule saying that:

Because of Irish obstructionism in parliament, creating a separate parliament in Dublin would not only give Ireland control over her own affairs but would ‘restore dignity’ to the Westminster parliament.

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