The Liberal Unionist Party: A History by Ian Cawood

Author:Ian Cawood [Cawood, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848859173
Google: mCGozQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 13169539
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2012-01-15T10:40:31+00:00

The Pursuit of the Working-Class Vote

The Reform Act of 1884 had created a large number of working-class voters, as the electorate had increased from 3.04 million to 5.7 million in Great Britain, particularly among the rural communities. While the impact of this electorate on the rise of independent labour parties has been endlessly examined since the 1960s, the appeal of Unionism to this new political class has been explored only recently. There has been no published study examining the appeal of Liberal Unionism to this group. Only now, with Patrick Joyce and James Vernon’s analysis of how the contemporary language of politics must be understood in order to explain the way the political elite engaged in a discourse with the burgeoning electorate, has a methodology developed which allows historians to explain how the Unionist Parties spoke to the new voters.81 In particular, Jon Lawrence has encouraged historians to examine how activists attempted to create political identities among the new electors by building on existing models of masculinity and freedom.82 In contrast to the perception of the Liberal Unionist Party as ‘generals without an army’, analysis of local campaigns proves that they were just as adept at doing so as the other two Parties.

The first person to identify the problem of persuading working-class men to support Liberal Unionist candidates was A. V. Dicey, who revealed his contempt for the mass electorate, believing that ‘National Schoolmasters would act as effective propagandists’ and were ‘more accessible than many electors to argument.’83 Courtney articulated Dicey’s point more fully, when he quoted a working man who disliked Home Rule, ‘but Mr Gladstone has been the friend of the working man and we must stand by him.’84 As early as June 1887, the energetic Robert Bird, secretary of the WSLUA, noted that any attempt to appeal to working-class voters was bound to be difficult, given the Unionist alliance and the traditional working-class distrust of the Tories. He asserted that:

the [Liberal Unionist] cause is growing in popularity and strength, and it has got a strong hold upon the middle and the mercantile classes … Working men generally follow the lead of their employers; but in order to secure that following it is necessary that the working man should be got to see … that the working man who also becomes a Liberal Unionist will not be called upon to renounce or in any way modify his Radical opinions.85

As a result, the WSLUA opened the first Liberal Unionist reading room in the working-class constituency of St Rollox, where James Caldwell only had a majority of 119.86 The Party clearly had some way to go, however, as the by-election defeats at Ayr and Govan demonstrated.

When he visited the WSLUA in April 1890, Lord Wolmer emphasised future priorities:

There are infinitely more Liberal Unionists among the working classes in any given constituency than any gentleman here has any idea of … They won’t come to you … You must go to them … you must conduct a canvass, either by paid agents or by volunteers.

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