A History of England

The last year of the First World War was one of startling about turns in fortune.

In the spring, making highly effective use of a different approach to artillery in combination with new tactics for infantry, the Germans broke through the British lines in France. It looked for a moment as though victory might be in their grasp. But clever tactics weren’t enough once they were through the lines, since to turn the British around and drive them back to the sea needed something more: massive numbers of men. And they didn’t have them.

Not that the Germans learned the lesson. They kept trying, in offensive after offensive, against both the British and the French, at one point getting right back to the Marne and threatening Paris once again. But they were blocked each time.

What was worst for them is that as they started to run out of men – and they lost 1.1 million in all those offensives – the Allies were getting huge reinforcements. The American Expeditionary Force was seriously increasing its numbers in France and, indeed, beginning to win some battles.

Slowly the tables turned. By the autumn, far from seeming to be on the brink of victory, the Germans began to look defeated. And the other Central Powers were cracking too. Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary signed armistices with the Allies from late October into early November.

Finally, the Germans too asked for it all to end. And on 11 November at 11:00 – eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – they signed their own armistice. The guns, at last, fell silent.

Illustration: Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in France at the end of World War I, in 1920. National Portrait Gallery x120172

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In 1917, all the belligerents in the First World War were reaching the limits of their resources, certainly in finances, but also in manpower. It looked as though the Central Powers weren’t doing too badly, as revolutions in Russia pushed that nation out of the ranks of the Allied powers. Those allies clearly needed help from outside, and the obvious place, if any, had to be the United States.

Ironically, it would be the leading Central power Germany itself that, by relaunching unrestricted submarine warfare and above all, by sending a telegram to Mexico proposing joint action against the US, ensured that this ultimately fatal intervention would take place.

A fine further proof of the universality of human imbecility. And its associated capacity for shooting itself in the foot.

Illustration: Arthur Zimmermann, German Foreign Secretary, whose telegram suggesting concerted action by Mexico against the United States more or less ensured US intervention in World War I – against Germany. Public domain

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Lloyd George was a Liberal, but he led a coalition government even more dependent on Conservative votes than the one he replaced under Asquith. And, not only was he dependent on the Conservatives, he also faced an Opposition – a loyal and generally supportive Opposition, committed to not blocking any measure designed to win the war – made up of Liberals, under the leadership fo the very Asquith he’d replaced.

Meanwhile, the war itself had hit something of a plateau. In country after country, men were losing heart in the war. In France, that turned into outright mutinies in numerous units, following yet another bloody and unsuccessful offensive. And in Russia things were worse still, with despair both in the military and in the civilian population, leading to the so-called February revolution (that took place in March 1917) which brought down the Tsar.

Only the Germans and the British could still contemplate major offensive actions. And, indeed, Haig organised another, that led to the Battle of Passchendaele, which again caused massive numbers of casualties and failed to achieve its objectives.

This episode looks at how these numbers were now becoming a statistically significant proportion of the total number of men available for service in Britain. That number was kept shockingly low, above all by the effects of poverty, leading to far too few men of military age having the level of fitness necessary for combat.

The most powerful Empire the world had seen couldn’t feed and care for the men of its mother country sufficiently to ensure they could defend their home against an enemy on its borders.

Illustration: Wounded Canadians on their way to a first-aid-post through the mud at the Battle of Passchendaele. Photo: William Rider-Rider / LAC.

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On Easter Monday in 1916, a group of armed Irish republicans took over the main post office in Dublin and several other public buildings. They had little enough popular support, and the British authorities were able to put down the uprising quickly, using Irish troops. Then, however, the military organised a court martial for fifteen surviving leaders and executed them, including a remarkable man, James Connolly, who was so badly injured he couldn’t even stand to face the firing squad and had to be shot strapped to a chair.

Those executions, followed by that of Roger Casement in August, only served to enhance the status of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican movement, wrongly believed by many to have been behind the uprising. As is not at all uncommon, brutal repression only enhanced the status of the insurgents.

Asquith’s government did try to take action to improve the situation in Ireland. It sent in the man of the moment, David Lloyd George, whose performance in government was constantly strengthening his reputation as an effective politician, if not a particularly trustworthy one. He failed in Ireland, but continued to strengthen his reputation. That turned into a major problem for Asquith, whose own standing was being rapidly undermined by the perception that he was indecisive and, above all, by the disaster of the Battle of the Somme, casting doubts on his capacity to manage the war.

In the end, that left him hopelessly vulnerable to attack. Lloyd George joined forces with twos Conservatives, the party leader Bonar Law, and the leader of the Ulster Protestants Edward Carson. They proved too much for Asquith to resist. Eventually, he felt forced to resign, and Lloyd George achieved the height of his ambition, by becoming Prime Minister himself.

Illustration: James Connolly, Irish Republican, Socialist and Trade Unionist, put to death by firing squad by the British Army in Dublin when he was too badly injured even to stand. www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/

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One of the men included in Asquith’s government in coalition with the Conservatives was the former Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour. He took over as First Lord of the Admiralty, the post Churchill was forced to vacate as a condition of the coalition forming.

But Balfour had already been a member of Asquith’s War Council, the only Conservative on it. One of the major concerns of the Council was to find a way to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. So many approaches were explored: the use of tanks, or of aircraft, or flamethrowers, or of gas. At sea, Britain imposed a blockade on trade to Germany, and Germany had a first campaign of submarine warfare against trade to Britain. The Germans interrupted it in the face of US objections, rather more strident against Germany’s subs than against Britain’s blockade – the US did well out of trade with Britain and was, in any case, rather more sympathetic to the Allies than to the Central Powers.

None of the new weapons or tactics broke the stalemate. So, demonstrating a massive lack of imagination, or of capacity to learn from past mistakes, the high commands in 1916 tried mass offensives by infantry again. The only great change was the use of artillery which, with the machine gun, caused for more casualties than any other weapon in the First World War. The offensives, by the Germans at Verdun and by the Anglo-French on the Somme, again failed as all others had, gaining next to no territory and causing huge losses – over a million, across both sides, on the Somme.

So 1916 ended with a lot more carnage but no progress towards peace.

Illustration: Sir Douglas Haig, the man who was sure he could command the BEF better than anyone else, and presided over unbearable losses for very little gain. By Bassano Ltd, vintage print, 16 January 1917
National Portrait Gallery x15159

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The fallout from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign together with the so-called ‘Shell crisis’, when the army began to find itself short of explosive shells for its artillery, combined to produce an increasingly toxic atmosphere for the Asquith government. Ultimately, he decided that his only way forward was in a coalition government including the Conservatives. Liberals still made up a majority of the ministers, but several leading figures had to go. One of them was Winston Churchill, made the scapegoat for the failure at Gallipoli.

Britain was still not anxious to commit itself fully to the fighting on the continent. But fears about whether the French would stick it out without help on the Western Front made Britain steadily increase troop numbers there, with the results that losses mounted frighteningly in fruitless offensives.

In April 1915, it was the Germans who launched an offensive, at the Second Battle of Ypres. Which was the first time gas was used in the war. By no means the last, of course, and it became a weapon much favoured by many armies, including the British.

Overall, 1915 left the Central Powers ahead of the game, with more territory gained in Europe than lost in German colonies across the globe. Most notably, German-led forces drove the Russians back 300 miles, at huge cost to both sides. But these apparent successes only concealed the gradual swing in fortunes towards the Allies, as they geared up for total war, and increased recruitment into their armies.

Illustration: Ruins in the Belgian town of Ypres after two years of war. Public Domain.

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The First World War was a wonderful opportunity for cockups, seized on with glee by many military commanders or political leaders. In peacetime, such cockups do relatively little harm. In wartime they lead to deaths and injuries, and in this war, to millions of them.

This episode tracks the particular series of cockups that culminated in the catastrophe that was the Gallipoli campaign, with its hundreds of thousands of casualties, to achieve precisely nothing. It follows that up with the story of one man in the campaign, and his strange turns of luck which at first sight looked like terrible misfortunes. He’s someone who’ll be back to inspire more than one episode in the future.

This week also talks about the recruitment campaign that gave Britain its biggest volunteer army, and at the universality of human dumbness, exemplified not just by the British at Gallipoli but also by the Turks in the same campaign and by the Italians, like the Turks, latecomers to the feast.

Quite a spectacle for you to enjoy.

Illustration: ‘Your country needs you’. Kitchener’s image on the iconic recruitment poster. Public domain

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We’ve been talking about the start of the First World War and, in particular, about the offensives and counter-offensives between French and Germans on the Western Front. What we haven’t considered was the British contribution to the French efforts there. That, in part, is because that contribution was, initially at least, so minimal – some 90,000 men out of a total of 2 million.

And for a while it wasn’t sure that even that number would go.

This week’s episode looks into the dithering on the British side, on the disagreements between politicians, and indeed between generals, often wrapped up with clashing personal ambitions. The dithering continued even after the troops finally went to France, epitomised by their commander Sir John French, who couldn’t make up his mind quite how to use his men or where, and had a curious way of collaborating with his French allies, whose language he didn’t speak, while his opposite number spoke no English at all.

A splendid way to go to war.

By the end of 1914, the British strength had built up considerably from the numbers originally sent. The soldiers had done well, though at the cost of taking heavy casualties. And, of course, by the end of the year they wre sitting in trenches, just like the French alongside them and the Germans opposite.

Illustration: German troops in a trench at Ypres. Public domain.

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This episode wraps up the outbreak of the First World War and the first phase of great offences in which all sides sought glory and, above all, quick victory. Something that eluded them.

We spend a little time looking at the failure of the international socialist movement, then very much in its heyday, to prevent war, even though the warmest supporters of socialism, the workers of different countries, were going to have to supply most of the soldiers put in harm’s way by the fighting. Then we move on to two other great radical movements, the Irish nationalists, who parliamentary representatives partially rallied to the British government, and the Women’s Suffrage movement, with the two main organisations taking opposed directions. The Suffragettes put the campaign for the women’s vote on the back burner and rallied support for the war effort. The majority movement of Suffragists continued to demand the vote and denounced the war for its butchery.

Finally, we briefly review how the early offensives, above all in the west, led only to the appalling construction of a double line of trenches, all the way from Switzerland to the English Channel, and the start of a war of attrition.

Illustration: The ‘taxis de la Marne’ that ferried French troops to the river Marne, to stop German offensive there.

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We’ve now reached the brink of the First World War. Before we dive in, this episode looks at how warfare had changed in the previous hundred years or so, with weapons far deadlier than had existed before, and which moved the advantage in battle from the offensive to the defensive: men with the powerful new firearms, sheltered by a good protective positions, were now well-placed to disrupt or even entirely overthrow any attempt by the other side to attack them over open ground.

Next, we move on to think about how Europe looked different in 1914, with the map of central and eastern Europe dominated by three great Empires which actually touched each other – Austria-Hungary and Germany had a common border with Russia – while all the smaller states that we know today, such as the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Finland or even Poland, were simply parts of those empires.

Finally, we look at how the continent spiralled downwards following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, to a general war involving the five greatest powers of the Old World, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, France and Britain.

Illustration: European alliances in 1914. Public Domain

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In this episode we keep following the downward spiral into violence in the years after 1910. There was the violence of the Suffragettes and the brutal treatment handed out to them in return. There was the growing threat of violence as opposing sides armed in Ireland, and some initial outbreaks of actual violence. Meanwhile, though, real violence was shaking the other end of the European continent, when war broke out in the great tinderbox, right down to the present day, of the Balkans. And not just one war but two, as the four nations that first fought Turkey (the Ottoman empire) fell out with each other over the division of the spoils.

That all led to increasingly hostile relations between Serbia, one of the new independent Balkan states, and Austria Hungary, which had major Balkan holdings, including right next to Serbia.

We’ve seen the regular three-yearly crises that afflicted Europe, from Tangier in 1905, to Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia in 1908, to the Agadir crisis in 1911. Now the fourth one came along, on 28 June 1914, when a Bosnian Serb assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, then an Austro-Hungarian province.

I think we all know what that triggered…

Illustration: Aftermath of carnage: the scene of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Public Domain

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We’ve reached a time of rising violence in English history. This episode concentrates firstly, and briefly, on the violence around the growing militancy of the trade union movement, worrying and ugly though not even remotely comparable to what was happening in the US at the time – these things are all relative…

Next we return to the women’s suffrage movement, to the growing divergence between the Suffragists of Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies and the Suffragettes of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, as the former stuck to the commitment to campaigning by legal means only and the latter moved increasingly towards violent actions.

But the changes were also producing internal splits within the WSPU itself. We talk in this episode about what happened as the Pankhursts fell out with each other, leading to Adela Pankhurst’s departure to Australia and Sylvia’s expulsion from the WSPU, with her organisation emerging as the East London Federation of Suffragettes, wedded as firmly as ever to the cause of the working class and the Labour Party, and close to one of that party’s most fervent supporters of votes for women, George Lansbury.

Finally, we mention the one martyr’s death for the Suffragette cause, that of Emily Davison, an iconic event in the campaign, though perhaps not quite what many people believe it to have been.

Illustration: The funeral procession for Emily Davison. Postcar print by Ferdinand Louis Kehrhahn & Co, June 1913. National Portrait Gallery x45196

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The general elections of 1910 left Asquith’s Liberal government dependent, to stay in office, on the votes of the Irish Nationalist MPs. The price of their support was a renewed attempt to drive through Home Rule for Ireland. That would recreate the Dublin parliament absorbed into Westminster over a century earlier.

Gladstone had twice tried to introduce Home Rule but it had split the Liberals. The party then left it on the back burner. Now it was back on the front burner.

The problem was that there was powerful opposition to Home Rule, in Britain, but also in Ireland, where Protestant opponents, especially in Ulster, went so far as to raise an armed force to resist it. That meant that Britain might find itself in the paradoxical position of having to use the military against people not for wanting to leave British rule, but to stay within it.

The resistance had support in Britain, right up to the top of the Unionists, led by Andrew Bonar Law, the son of a Presbyterian minister from Antrim in Ulster.

However, the Parliament Act, which Law referred to as the ‘Home Rule in disguise bill’, meant that legislation could be driven through parliament without the agreement of the House of Lords, where the Unionists were in a powerful majority.

Long debates led to no compromise. With the Parliament Act behind it, the Home Rule bill finally became law, as the Government of Ireland Act of 1914. But lack of support in the army for action against the Ulstermen left it uncertain it could ever be enforced.

By then, though, other events had overtaken the whole issue. On 4 August, Britain joined what would become the Great War. Relations between Britain and Ireland would be relegated once more to the back burner.

Illustration: Ulster Volunteer Force parading in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1914. Public domain.

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This week we’re back with women’s suffrage movement, as the conflict heated up and turned a lot uglier.

That was partly because one of the main movements, the Suffragette Women’s Social and Political Union led by Emmeline Pankhurst, turned to more violent means, leading to an increasing divergence from the biggest organisation, Millicent Fawcett’s Suffragist National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Equally, the ugliness was also down to the increasing violence of the state, force feeding women in prison and displaying brutality at Suffragette demonstrations, notably at the Black Friday event on 18 November 1910.

Meanwhile, parliamentary bills to grant women the vote kept failing due to lack of time for the Commons to consider them, and on the third occasion, because the violence turned some MPs previously in favour, against the measure. And another bill, that would have granted universal suffrage for men and was due to be amended to extend to women, failed when the Speaker of the House ruled the amendment out of order, a strange decision which looked much more politically than constitutionally driven.

It seems, though, that the Liberal Prime Minister, Asquith, was far from unhappy over this outcome. The suffrage movements realised how lukewarm Liberal support for their demands had become and started to move away from the party. Again, the NUWSS and the WSPU moved in opposite directions: the former towards Labour but the latter, rather more surprisingly, towards the Conservatives.

Illustration: A victim of police brutality at Black Friday, believed to be the Suffragette Ada Wright.

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The year 1911 was action-packed.

Churchill, who’d been made Home Secretary the year before and got caught up in that great fake-news event, the Tonypandy massacre, added to his reputation, not in a good way, at the Sidney Street Siege.

His leader in their radical duo, David Lloyd George, got his National Insurance Act through and set Britain firmly on the road towards a welfare state. Not that everyone was happy about it, including many of the workers it was designed to help. But it’s noteworthy that even when the Conservative came back to power, they left the National Insurance scheme in place.

Then the Kaiser sent a gunboat to Agadir. Europe took a step closer to a major war but avoided it again. For now. Still, Britain decided it had to make some war preparations at last. One involved a change at the top of Navy, with Churchill, in yet another milestone on his career, taking over as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Meanwhile, the Irish and the women had to wait again. Though at least the women had a promise, one first made three years earlier. Now, Asquith made clear, it would at last be kept.

The Irish would have to hang on a little longer.

Illustration: Churchill (the leading figure in the top hat) at the Sidney Street siege. National Army Museum, Out of Copyright

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1910 was a year of battle between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Which means a year of battle between the Liberals, with their (initially) huge majority in the Commons, and the Unionists with an equally massive (and entrenched) majority in the Lords.

Two issues needed settling between them.

Firstly, what would happen to Lloyd George’s People’s Budget, which the Lords had already rejected once. That would be the issue decided by the general election of January 1910.

It was won by the Liberals, though only just and without an overall majority. However, with help from the Irish Nationalist MPs and Labour, they could form another government and resubmit the budget. Having seen the Liberals win the election, however narrowly, and faced with the threat of the king creating a load more Liberal peers to give them their own majority, the Lords caved and passed the budget.

Secondly, it was time to settle the relationship between the two Houses of Parliament. Since the Lords couldn’t be expected to vote to reduce their own powers, the government again turned to the king to have him create enough Liberal peers to force a measure through. He argued that it would require another election, so Brits were called to the ballot box again in December 1910, for the second time that year.

Again, and for the last time in their history, the Liberals emerged as the biggest single party in the Commons, though again without a majority. Once more, with support from the Irish MPs and Labour, they could form a government. And, again, faced with the prospect of huge numbers of Liberal peers joining the Lords, the upper house caved, passing the legislation that massively reduced its say in politics.

As their price for the support the Liberals needed, the Irish MPs were looking for renewed moves towards Home Rule, while Labour wanted to see more progressive measures adopted. And both groups had the presence in parliament to get their demands listened to.

Which must have been painful for the women’s movement. It needed influence to win the vote. Without the vote, however, it lacked influence.

A frustrating Catch-22 position to be in.

Illustration: The first page of the Parliament Act of 1911.

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Lloyd George wasn't going to be able to fund his ambitious plans for social reform by simply cutting expenditure elsewhere in government, specifically on defence. Instead he was going to have to cover both social assistance and defence.

That meant that he was going to have to raise the money from taxation. His answer was a 'people's budget'. It included a tax on value gained from selling land, and some dramatic innovations in income tax, which would certainly increase its burden.

That raised a heck of a lot of hackles, especially among the wealthy, which included most of the membership of the House of Lords. For a while, the government believed that the Lords would respect the convention, in force for over two centuries, whereby the Lords left 'money bills' alone.

Not this time. They refused to adopt the Finance Bill until the issue had been tested with the electorate. So Asquith and Lloyd George would be going to the country looking for a popular endorsement of the measures in the 'People's Budget'.

Illustration: The ‘terrible twins’: David Lloyd George (left) and Winston Churchill, the radicals of time of the People’s budget. Public Domain

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The big challenge facing David Lloyd George, and indeed the man who had become something of a sidekick of his on the radical wing of the Liberal Party, surprisingly for a former Tory, was how to pay for old age pensions and later for the other social security measures he hoped to introduce.

That was particularly difficult given the pressure to invest more in the Royal Navy, as Germany built itself more ships, and as Germany’s ally, Austria Hungary, pursued an aggressive policy in the Balkans. At one point, Lloyd George seemed to want to fund social security by cutting defence spending. But then he changed, as the Liberal Party set out to spend more on both.

Instead of choosing between guns and butter, Liberals decided to go for both.

Making Lloyd George’s challenge more challenging still.

Illustration: The first of a new class of battleships, HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906. Public domain

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The tragedy that struck Joseph Chamberlain in 1906, a massive stroke that paralysed his right side and left this outstanding orator barely capable of speaking, allowed ex-Prime Minister Arthur Balfour to confirm his leadership of the opposition to the Liberal government and of the Unionists in the Commons. He and Lord Lansdowne, in the Lords where the Unionists enjoyed a huge majority, worked hard together to frustrate Liberal legislative proposals.

They did, however, let through the Old Age Pensions Act, at least in part because they accepted the government argument that it was a ‘money bill’, a financial measure, and by convention such bills were initiated in the Commons and accepted unamended by the Lords. It came into effect in 1908 and represented a turning point. It was the first step towards the welfare state, and it marked the point when the Liberal Party abandoned classical Liberalism, focused on curbing government spending and avoiding interventions into what were called ‘condition of the people’ matters. New Liberalism took steps to alleviate poverty and was prepared to accept the increased government expenditure that this entailed.

Illustration: Amedee Forestier, Pension Day Pensioners Collecting their Old Age Pension, 1909, public domain image made available by WikiGallery.org

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The first couple of years of the Liberal government elected in 1906 saw some achievements but also a great deal of frustration. The Unionist majority in the House of Lords annulled the Liberals’ in the Commons. That blocked many of the government’s initiatives.

This period ended in August 1907 when Campbell-Bannerman, the Prime Minister, started a series of three heart attacks over the next fifteen months. Ultimately, they left him bedbound until, in April 1908, he became the only Prime Minister to die in 10 Downing Street.

Meanwhile, in the women’s movement, and in particular among the Suffragists of Millicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the NUWSS, dominated by Liberals, there had been great hopes of seeing progress with a Liberal government in power. They were dashed by Campbell-Bannerman’s refusal to act. In part, this was down to party considerations, since both organisations were looking not for universal adult suffrage, but only equality of voting rights with men, on the existing basis. That would only enfranchise relatively well-off women, and they would be inclined to vote Conservative.

Just as the NUWSS was linked to the Liberals, so the other main organisation, Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was closely bound to Labour. However, the Pankhursts – both Emmeline and her daughter and closest collaborator Christabel – began to lose faith in Labour from the very time they set up the WSPU. They favoured more militant action, such as intervening in public meetings and heckling speakers. The effectiveness of their campaigning in gaining publicity for the movement even persuaded Fawcett took move towards direct methods, for instance in organising the 3000-strong ‘Mud March’ in 1907.

But when HH Asquith, an opponent of women’s suffrage, took over as Prime Minister from Campbell-Bannerman, and it became clear that the government wasn’t going to advance the women’s cause anytime soon, the two organisations’ ways began to part. The SWPU began to explore far more militant tactics yet, which the NUWSS wouldn’t be prepared to adopt.

That, though, is for later episodes…

Illustration: Christabel Pankhurst, by Ethel Wright, in a portrait exhibited in 1909

National Portrait Gallery 6921

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The 1906 general election had given the Liberals a colossal majority in the House of Commons. In the Lords, however, the Unionist opposition still held an unassailable majority against them. This meant that they could block Liberal legislation as they wished.

Some significant measures were lost as a result. On the other hand, some passed, including, strangely enough, some measures backing working-class rights, hardly the kind of initiative you’d expect Conservatives to back. However, they have felt they could win votes that way, as a higher number of working-class voters seemed to support them than might have been expected, and the Conservatives might well be able to take advantage of the fact that in some cases, there were even internal divisions within the Liberals on such issues.

Meanwhile, the new Liberal, and newly appointed Under Secretary for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, agreed with the former Boer general Jan Smuts steps towards giving the Boers equal rights with the British in South Africa. Black South Africans were denied any say in their government. It’s clear that possession of a white skin was a route to privilege even under British rule and long before apartheid.

Finally, the suffragists, as opposed to the more militant suffragettes, gained another success in a new breakthrough achieved by England’s first female doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, when she became England’s first femal town mayor.

Illustration: In 1901, during hte Boer War: surrounded by other Boer guerrillas, General Jan Smuts, once Churchill’s captor, later his lifelong friend. Public domain.

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Arthur Balfour’s intention in resigning as Prime Minister but without a general election was probably to oblige Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman to form a government, which might force their divisions to the surface. That would weaken their chances in an election that was bound to be held soon.

There was a curious symmetry between the divisions in the main parties. The Liberals were split three ways over the Boer War. Liberal Imperialist right wing backed Britain’s military intervention, while the left, sometimes called pro-Boer, opposed it, and in the middle a group around the leader accepted the need for war but denounced its most brutal aspects (such as the concentration camps).

Meanwhile, the Unionists were split three ways over tariff reform. The ‘wholehoggers’ backed a full system of import tariffs to protect British trade, the free traders wanted to stick with the old doctrine of tariff-free commerce, and a group around the leader accepted the need for reform but wanted to proceed more cautiously.

Unfortunately, tariff reform was topical while the war had been over for three years. The Liberals were able to unite in attacking the government, specifically over tariff reform. And they won their last landslide in the 1906 election.

Despite the end of the Boer War, the new Liberal government faced a world haunted by the spectre of renewed war. There was uncertainty over who the enemy would be if a new war broke out. The traditional enemy was France, and Britain likes its traditions. But an increasing threat was now coming from across the North Sea in Germany. Politicians and even novelists (the latter best represented by Erskine Childers and his Riddle of the Sands) were beginning to warn that the German threat was the more serious.

The entente cordiale with France in 1904 showed Britain beginning to move closer to France and further away from Germany. Then Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany showed up in Tangier in Morocco, making a speech designed to provoke France, and tensions quickly grew. The conference that ended the crisis failed to address Germany’s issues. That made Tangier just the first of a series of crises that set two groupings of European great powers increasingly at odds with each other.

Finally, this episode also talks about a small step forward in the ugliest of the European colonies in Africa, Congo. Again with a link to a novel.

Illustration: A 1904 British cartoon on the Entente cordiale: John Bull (Britain) walking off arm-in-arm with Marianne (France), turning their back on Wilhelm II of Germany, whose sabre is poking out of his coat. A Punch cartoon by John Bernard Partridge.

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The divisions among Unionists – the Conservative Party and the Liberal Unionists, then in government together – over tariff reform massively damaged their electoral chances and came as a real gift to the Liberals. That was on top of Balfour’s Education Act of 1902, which had allowed the Liberals to heal their rifts over the Boer War and come together in attacking the government.

It looked as though the Unionists were heading for a drubbing at the polls in the next general election. But the Liberals weren’t complacent. One of the things they did was come to an agreement with the new Labour Representation Committee led by Keir Hardie, now with four MPs, not to stand a Liberal candidate against theirs in constituencies where they had a real chance of beating the Tory. This may have been a smart move by the Liberals, maximising Tory losses at the subsequent general election. Then again, it may have been a terrible self-inflicted wound, letting in a party that would soon eclipse them as the main party of opposition to the Tories.

When the election came, it was a disaster for the Conservatives and a tremendous win for the Liberals, which took 397 seats in a House of Commons f 670. Labour too surged, wining 29 seats, 24 of them in constituencies covered by the agreement with the Liberals.

The Liberal majority meant that the doors had opened for the leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman to make some real changes in Britain. Sadly for the Liberals, however, though they didn’t yet know it, they had just had their last landslide election win and would soon have their last elections wins of any kind. They were also starting on their last term in government on their own, rather than part of a coalition.

They might be celebrating the present, but the future would turn out much bleaker.

Illustration: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Liberal leader who led the Liberals into their election landslide in 1906. The picture is from 1907, by London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company, National Portrait Gallery P1700(86b)

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A factor of small but growing importance at the end of Salisbury’s premierships, and during Balfour’s that followed, was offered by the Labour Representation Committee. It had been formed by trades unions working with left-wing parties of the working class, most notably Keir Hardie’s Independent Labour Party. With no MPs before the election of 1900, it had grown to four by 1903 which, in an environment in which third parties have trouble establishing themselves, was a substantial development.

Meanwhile, the ruling Unionists were beginning to divide against each other. The question that finally split them was Tariff reform, the same issue that had split them back in 1846 when Robert Peel repealed the corn laws to usher in a long period of free trade without tariffs, but in the opposite direction: the tariff reformers at the start of the twentieth century, led by Joseph Chamberlain, wanted to reintroduce tariffs. The aim was both to create barriers protecting British industry and agriculture (even if that meant increasing the price of food, painful above all for the poor), and to allow for imperial preference, the system which would draw the colonies closer to the mother country by exempting their economies from certain tariffs.

Three factions emerged within the Unionist coalition, right up to cabinet level. One, led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, remained wedded to free trade. A second, the Prime Minister’s, was sympathetic but wanted to proceed slowly. The third, Chamberlain’s, was for rapid introduction of tariffs and imperial preference.

Split parties don’t win elections, and now the Unionists were hopelessly split.

With an election looming.

Illustration: Some of the white, male attendees at the 1902 Colonial Conference. Joseph Chamberlain is in the middle of the front row, with Wilfrid Laurier,Prime Minister of Canada to his right (our left).

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A major issue the Balfour government had to deal with was immigration. That became a thinly veiled pretext for anti-Semitism, since increased persecution of Jews inside the Russian empire sent huge numbers abroad seeking for refuge. A great many reached London, though far fewer than was often claimed.

This episode looks at the reactions to the problem, which was often surprising, at least in appearance. Some Jewish leaders backed measures to restrict immigration. So, at one time, did the kind of figure you would imagine to be more sympathetic to people fleeing persecution, such as Keir Hardie in the forerunner of the Labour Party, though he and his colleagues later came down firmly against anti-immigration measures.

Many of the backers, though, were the usual suspects. Some were genuinely convinced that what they were seeking was restriction on destitute and undesirable immigrants. Many others, however, felt that what was really being sought was an anti-Semitic measure to keep Jews out of Britain.

Illustration: Sir William Evans-Gordon, cartoon by ‘Spy’, from ‘Vanity Fair’, 11 May 1905 National Portrait Gallery D45274

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Poor Balfour. He achieved a surprising amount considering how little time he had as head of government. What made it worse was that most of the measures he pushed through attracted at least as much criticism as praise. Often they caused deepening rifts amongst his own Unionists and even, on at least one occasion, strengthened the Liberals by helping to unite them again after their own deep splits on the Boer War.

At least he did manage to get an Entente Cordiale with the French, ratcheting way, way down the traditional tensions between Britain and its neighbour across the Channel.

On top of that, he had to deal with an old friend, George Curzon, who as viceroy of India found himself, like other colonial governors, unable to resist the temptation to launch a military adventure. The expedition into Tibet cost lives, though mostly among the poorly armed Tibetans, cut down by the superior British weapons, and in the end achieved virtually nothing.

Which was entirely emblematic of Balfour's time in the top job.

Illustration: Detail of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Balfour in 1908. National Portrait Gallery 6620

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The first thirty years of the twentieth century were a crucial period in the campaign to win the vote for women. But women’s rights concerned far more than just the vote. Across the nineteenth century, a series of remarkable women campaigners had pushed back the boundaries in significant ways, in property rights and status in law especially for married women, as well as in access to higher education and to the professions, notably in medicine.

They had also gradually won the right to vote in an increasing range of local elections, making it hard to maintain the opposition to their voting for parliament. At least, hard to maintain on the principle that the nature of women meant that they needed protection from the ugliness of politics. Though, as this episode points out, the objection may not have been exclusively one of principle.

At the end of the century, for the first time in Britain a major, unified women’s suffrage movement emerged, the Suffragists, led by Millicent Fawcett. But the episode ends with a group peeling off, under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst. These far more militant campaigners would be the Suffragettes.

Both groups would pursue the campaign in the coming years, though with very different tactics.

Illustration: Emmeline Pankhurst by Christina Broom (detail), National Portrait Gallery x6194), and Dame Millicent Fawcett by Walery (detail), National Portrait Gallery Ax38301

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Eventually, Britain brought overwhelming force to bear on the Boer fighters. Combined with the mistreatment of their civilians, that at last forced them to surrender, though that meant abandoning the independence of the two republics and accepting their absorption into the British Empire.

There were some lessons to be learned from the heavy work that the empire had to make to beat the small irregular force facing it. Whether Britain learned them is far from clear. Other nations, on the other hand, quickly cottoned on to the fact that the empire’s power wasn’t anything like as irresistible as Britain had tried to make it look. That gave some of the colonies the feeling that it might not be unrealistic to imagine they could break free from imperial control.

A striking example of someone moving in this direction was Mohandas Gandhi. He was in South Africa and had provided a stretcher-bearer service to the British army. Sadly, his reward had been a medal, followed by reduction to second-class citizen status, when the new British rulers of Transvaal decided to register all Indian and Chinese residents. Gandhi would, of course, soon emerge as the major figure of the Indian independence movement.

Just to add a more human touch to all the high principles, this episode also contains a fine love story, as impressive as the one between Charles and Katharine Parnell.

Illustration: Gandhi in front on his law practice in South Africa by Keystone Press Agency Ltd National Portrait Gallery x137615

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Celebrations over victory in the Boer War, and the landslide general election win it led to for Salisbury, turned out to be premature. Indeed, towards the end of 1900, the war was entering its darkest phase.

The Boers, far from admitting they were beaten, switched to guerrilla warfare. And the British Army responded with scorched earth and concentration camps. Farmhouses were burned, as were crops, and livestock was killed. Boer civilians, mostly women and children, were herded into the recently invented institution of concentration camps, first used by the Spanish colonial authorities fighting an insurrection in Cuba. Many thousands of Boers died, most of them children. And there were camps for black prisoners too, where mortality was also shockingly high.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t one of the aspects of British imperial history that’s particularly well known in Britain.

The use of concentration camps, and the shameful conditions inside them, were revealed by two remarkable women. Emily Hobhouse, who was close to Liberal circles, first exposed them in the report of her trip to South Africa. Such was the outrage in Britain, that the British government felt it had to send a commission out to investigate, and entrusted it to the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett, who held Unionist views. However, she entirely confirmed the earlier findings of the Liberal Hobhouse.

Illustration: Emily Hobhouse, by H. Walter Barnett, 1902, National Portrait Gallery x81401

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We’ve been tracking years and years of Tory rule in Britain. It’s as though the once dominant Liberal Party had practically vanished from the scene. In fact, though, things were changing in its ranks, with new figures emerging to lead the party back towards government. One of these, David Lloyd George, we’ve met before but briefly and, in this episode, we get to know him better.

However, despite the moves to start sorting out the Liberals’ difficulties and, above all, the internal divisions that were losing it so much support, it still had more pain to come. The outbreak of the Boer War only revealed more dissension among its leaders and, since split parties don’t win elections, that together with the government’s apparent victory in South Africa as well as against the Boxer Rebellion in China, would cost the Liberals another landslide defeat in 1900.

Another landslide though not quite as big as might have been expected, given how much circumstances favoured the Conservatives and handicapped the Liberals. Was that a glimmer of hope for the future?

As well as Lloyd George, who won re-election in 1900 despite his anti-war stance, two other historic figures entered parliament at that election. Keir Hardie of the Independent Labour Party, who’d lost his seat in 1895, returned in 1900. And Winston Churchill won a seat for the first time, at the start of nearly 64 years in parliament with only a brief interruption.

Illustration: David Lloyd George, by Harry Furniss: fiery Welsh radical giving his opponents a bad time. National Portrait Gallery 3398

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The tide turned for the British in South Africa when they sent enough troops out to overwhelm the Boers entirely – well over half a million over the whole length of the war or approaching half as many again as the entire Afrikaner population. They also replaced some hopeless generals by a couple of more effective ones, Frederick Roberts, who’d served with distinction in the Second Afghan War, with Herbert Kitchener, fresh from his triumphs in Sudan, as his chief of staff.

Better generals and huge numerical superiority turned the war in Britain’s favour. In the course of 1900, the three cities the Boers had besieged were relieved, and British troops drove the enemy back onto their own territory, and then occupied the capitals of both Boer republics. The war seemed to be over and the British government at home was so sure of its victory that it called the first ‘khaki’ election, chalking up a major political win to go with its military success in South Africa.

However, victory against the Boers was by no means as secure as the Salisbury government thought. Indeed, the war was on the brink of its third phase. That we’ll be looking at soon and it was anything but a credit to the British Empire.

Illustration: Robert Baden Powell, defender of Mafeking and founder of the boy scouts, in 1908. Bromide print by H. Walter Barnett National Portrait Gallery x45253

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Two depressingly similar men, unbending, old, bearded, entirely committed to the advantage of their own race, were glaring at each other between the Boer Republic of the Transavaal and the imperial heartland of Great Britain.

President Kruger of the Transvaal was determined to protect the way of life of his Boer people, at the expense of denying the other whites moving into his country any of the rights associated with democracy, while regarding its black inhabitants as entitled to still less consideration.

Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was determined to show that it was Britain that was boss in South Africa. He was also keen on avenging Britain’s humiliation in the First Boer War, when its army was beaten at the Battle of Majuba Hill.

When the two countries came to blows, however, things seemed to be going strongly the Boer Way. After a few months of fighting, at the end of 1899, complacency by the British authorities and some astonishingly bad generalship on the ground, had combined to make it look as though the Second Boer War might go the same way as the first, with another British defeat.

Illustration: Stephanus Johannes Paulus ('Paul') Kruger, President of the Transavaal, by Duffus Bros, 1890s

National Portrait Gallery x19163

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An episode in two parts.

The first is an adventure story, the extraordinary march across Africa of a small detachment of French troops led by Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand. He occupied the abandoned Egyptian fort on the Nile at Fashoda. There he was met not by the planned supporting columns of Frenchmen, but by General Kitchener with a massively bigger force. In fact, the two men didn’t fight, but met and were perfectly courteous with each other. It was up to the politicians in London and Paris to sort out the Fashoda incident. Given how precarious the French position was, inevitably it was resolved in favour of the intransigent British Prime Minister, who emerged with a British monopoly on access to the Nile in Sudan. Poor Marchand had to march away again having achieved very little, except to establish himself as a model for little boys to admire.

The second part is about the other side of the coin of imperial Britain. That was the unbearable, crushing poverty in which a huge proportion of the population lived. Charles Booth, arguably the first Social scientist, established in his remarkable research that 30% of the population of London were living below the poverty line, and that line was a lot lower than it is today. Grandeur was the outward-looking face of Empire; behind the scenes, things were a lot uglier.

Fashoda was just one critical incident for Britain in Africa. The next would be in South Africa. And the Empire would be looking for the men to fill the ranks of its army among just those poor, crushed by their misery and undermined by disease.

Illustration: Jean-Baptiste Marchand on the cover of French magazine celebrating his march across Africa. © Paris - Musée de l'Armée, Dist. RMN - Grand Palais / Pascal Segrette 06-506187 / 2001.72.2

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Salisbury had a fairly accurate view of just what Britain could and couldn’t do on its own, given the limitations on British power itself, but also the blocks caused by domestic political opposition . He equally had a clear notion of just what massive damage the new generations of weapons might do in a war in which both sides had them, essentially a war between great powers. Finally, he also understood that the point of empire wasn’t sentiment, it was business.

All this made him deeply suspicious of the Jingoist spirit of many who wanted to push Britain’s imperial interests ever further forward. Instead, however much the Jingoes might criticise him for it, he preferred to concede to rivals in areas where he felt no vital interest was at stake.

On the other hand, where such an interest was on the table, he was more than prepared to fight. He’d decided, in particular, that given his colleagues’ fear of taking on Turkey, the best way to protect the Suez Canal, the vital link to India, was through Britain’s control of Egypt. But Egypt depended on the Nile, and that river ran through Sudan. That’s why, while Salisbury avoided war over West Africa, or over holdings grabbed by other powers in China, or with the US over the Guyana-Venezuela border dispute, he stood firm over Sudan and sent Kitchener in there to win his victory of Omdurman and then against the remaining Mahdist forces as he swept southwards.

Control of the Nile Valley was a goal he felt Britain could achieve and which would be key to its imperial interests. So it was worth fighting for. Even, as we’ll discover next week, when that brought him into conflict with a great power.

Illustration: The main gate to the munitions depot in Quingdao, after the German occupation, in 1898. From the Bundesarchiv of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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The running sore of British relations with Ireland was running still and just as sore. This time another Balfour, Gerald as opposed to his brother Arthur, but like him a nephew of the Prime Minister Salisbury who nepotistically appointed him, was pursuing a policy designed to address some Irish grievances, rather than simply tighten repression.

That was made easier by the reduction in unrest and even of Home Rule fervour in Ireland, together with the loss of the iconic leader Parnell. Balfour felt it was legitimate to reward a quieter Ireland with concessions, while at the same time, it also helped reconcile the Irish to British power and even to undermine still further the demand for Home Rule. That, in turn, weakened the Liberals’ and Irish Nationalists’ position, since they were firmly committed to seeing an Irish Parliament recreated.

Balfour would always claim, however, that these political advantages, while welcome, were never his main aim.

Abroad, Britain sent a joint Anglo-Egyptian force out from Egypt to reconquer Sudan. That would complete the uninterrupted sting of British holdings or controlled territories across the whole continent of Africa, from South to North. It would also provide the opportunity, at the Battle of Omdurman, for a young lieutenant, Winston Churchill, to take part in the last significant cavalry charge in British history.

Illustration: The Charge of the 21st Lancers by Edward Matthew Hale, a key moment in the Battle of Omdurman, and in the military history of then Lieutenant Winston Churchill. Public Domain.

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Henry Labouchère’s amendment of 1885 had criminalised any sexual act between men, labelling it gross indecency, an offence which was a great deal easier to prove than the older charge of sodomy.

In 1895, Oscar Wilde was at the peak of his fame and acclaim, with his play The Importance of Being Earnest having had a hugely successful premier. He was also in a stormy relationship with Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry (yes, he of the rules of boxing). Queensberry had already lost his eldest son, killed it was maintained in public in a shooting accident, believed in fact to have committed suicide, following an affair with no less a man than the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. When Queensberry realised that another son was involved in something similar, he hit the roof. He left a card at Wilde’s club with the accusation that he was a ‘sodomite’. Wilde felt the accusation was so serious, he had to sue for libel.

Sadly, his case fell apart, especially under the acute cross examination of a lawyer destined for a brilliant career in the law and in politics, Edward Carson. He defended Queensberry by setting out to show that the allegation against Wilde was true. Sadly, by doing that he provided all the evidence Wilde’s enemies needed to have him condemned in a criminal trial himself.

And with that, Wilde was bankrupted and his career destroyed. “I have ruined the most brilliant man in London,” Carson is reported to have said. Certainly, he contributed. But the real blame was a law that made the unorthodox behaviour of the most brilliant man in London not just a difference to tolerate, but a deviance to persecute.

Illustration: Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, in a gelatin silver photo of 1893, by Gillman & Co, National Portrait Gallery P1122

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Lord Salisbury had decided to serve as his own Foreign Secretary and, indeed, it was events abroad that most marked his third administration.

This episode starts by looking at the great feast of Empire which was Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee of 1897. It was Britain at its peak of might, with the biggest empire the world had ever seen, wealthy, powerful, and with a people broadly united behind the Queen, her Empire and her government.

That last bit was something that men like Salisbury, in the government, made the most of.

But behind the scenes, a rather different picture was beginning to emerge, of a country whose power, while great, was already in decline. This episode looks at three widely different events, out of the many that Salisbury addressed, that suggest this was happening: the Jameson raid in South Africa, the failure to intervene in support of the Armenian Christians against ongoing massacres by their Turkish overlords, and the US support for Venezuela in a border dispute with then-British Guiana.

Illustration: Dr Jameson (fourth from left) and the officers of the Jameson Raid, 1896. National Portrait Gallery P1700(20b)

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Back in chapter 120, we met two extraordinary women, Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, who transformed the world of nursing. Now we’re looking at four more women who were just as remarkable. They took on the stronghold of the doctors, and broke in. As they did that, they also began to force open the doors of the universities.

The specific task of gaining access to universities for women was taken on by another woman mentioned in this episode, and she directed yet another towards the battle for the vote.

As well as the women, the episode also looks briefly at a Churchill and the strange launchpad for life he provided for another, his son. But that son is a historical giant, so strange or not, it was a launchpad that would work for him.

Illustration: The Elizabeth Garret Anderson Hospital building in Euston Road, London. Photo by Luca Borghi @ (July 2011)

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Salisbury was back for his third term in office, but for now without a majority in the House of Commons. He had to form a government, and for the first time it would include Liberal Unionists as ministers. One of them, Joseph Chamberlain, surprised Salisbury by choosing to be named Secretary of State for the Colonies in preference to either of the great posts he’d been offered. It seemed that imperialism mattered more to him.

With a government in place, Salisbury took the country to a general election. He won with a landslide.

In this episode, however, we take a break from all that to look at some of the great breakthroughs, other than his electoral triumph, taking place at that time, specifically in the sciences. Physics was surging. So were the life sciences. So indeed was medicine, but we’ll come back to that next week, when we look at women in that male-dominated field.

In particular, one man proposed a disturbingly new scientific viewpoint. That was Charles Darwin, with his highly contentious theory of evolution. One of his admirers, it turned out, was none other than the Prime Minister himself. And, even more surprisingly, when Salisbury did differ from Darwin, his argument was well-founded in science. Not something one would expect from most British Prime Ministers.

Illustration: Charles Darwin, pen and ink portrait by Harry Furniis, National Portrait Gallery 6251(16)

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With both eyesight and hearing fading, Gladstone couldn’t last long after his defeat on Home Rule. Though he lasted as long as he could. Even after almost the entire cabinet prevented him from blocking an increase in naval expenditure, demanded by the admirals, and which he feared would merely add fuel to the fire of an arms race, he still clung on for a while longer. Finally though, in February 1898 he went.

But who would replace him? Would it be Spencer, his favoured candidate despite having opposed Gladstone over the naval expenditure? Well, Victoria didn’t even do him the courtesy of consulting him about his successor, so what he favoured didn’t matter.

Might it be Harcourt, the Chancellor and ‘little Englander’ whose cautious view of imperialism was in line with thinking across the mainstream of the Liberal Party?

Or would it be the Liberal Imperialist Rosebery, who’d keep the party firmly anchored to its right wing?

Well, Victoria was quite an imperialist herself. Rosebery was picked. He head a short-lived, inglorious government, torn by internal dissension – Harcourt couldn’t forgive him for depriving him of a position to which he thought he was entitled – which fifteen months later simply imploded and meekly resigned, letting Salisbury form his third administration.

That was the opening of a Tory decade. It was that long before the Liberals got another chance to form a government.

Illustration: Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, by Henry T. Greenhead, published 23 October 1894, when Gladstone’s successor was a fading Prime Minister. National Portrait Gallery D39875

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The 1892 election had given Gladstone his chance to form yet another government and establish two new records: the only man to have been Prime Minister on four different occasions, and the oldest man ever to have held the post.

He formed a government which gave the young Asquith his chance to shine in a senior position, which he certainly did. It also gave the Earl of Rosebery, dithering about it until the end, playing hard to get, blowing hot and cold, the position of Foreign Secretary and a platform, as we shall see, to go still further before long. Finally, it was a government which had some valuable achievements in its short existence.

But one achievement that eluded it was the aim on which Gladstone had set his heart. He got Irish Home Rule through the House of Commons, only to see it thrown out by the House of Lords. What might have turned into a posthumous victory for Parnell, turned instead into his final failure. This episode asks to what extent that was a missed opportunity but leaves the answer to you to choose.

On the other hand, the bloodshed in the 130 years since Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill was defeated, is easy to judge. Simply, unequivocally, it is the stuff of tragedy. By no means the first in the long sad history of Anglo-Irish relations, but it would be a relief if it turned out to be the last.

Illustration: William Ewart Gladstone as a senior statesman, by Harry Furniss. National Portrait Gallery 3381

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The pendulum had been swinging fairly steadily over the twenty years up to the early 1890s, with any party that won an election generally losing the next. That happened again in 1892, although the win was nothing like as decisive as Gladstone had hoped, leaving him instead dependent on Irish MPs to have the votes to challenge for office again.

It also produced a crop of interesting new characters for the politics of the future. The first Labour MP independent of the Liberal Party, Keir Hardie. Edward Carson, the Unionist lawyer from Dublin who’d already won a reputation as a tough prosecutor in Ireland. Herbert Henry Asquith, first elected six years earlier, now on the brink of an important career. David Lloyd George whose future would be closely bound up with Asquith and had been elected two years earlier.

As well as these figures, this episode also talks about Charles Bradlaugh, who had died the year before the election, but whose campaign to allow the non-religious to sit in parliament would have repercussions long after his life and involved many of the people we’ve come to know, though not necessarily love, such as Asquith, Labouchère and Randolph Churchill.

Indeed, after his death – at his funeral indeed – it even involved a figure of huge importance later, one of the towering giants of the twentieth century, Mohandas K. Ghandi.

Yes, that’s right. The Mahatma.

Illustration: Keir Hardie, Labour’s first MP, as he was in 1892, by Arthur Clegg Weston. National Portrait Gallery x13173

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Just two weeks after the end of the divorce proceedings between Katharine and William O’Shea, the Irish Parliamentary Party assembled in Committee Room 15 of the Palace of Westminster, for the most fateful meeting in Charles Stewart Parnell’s career.

The backlash from the divorce and the revelations that emerged about Parnell’s behaviour, left Gladstone feeling that continuing his association with Parnell would fatally undermine the chances of his Liberal Party winning re-election. Paradoxically, that meant that the hopes for Irish Home Rule, which required the formation of a Liberal government, depended on his distancing himself from its most powerful champion. So in Committee Room 15, the Irish Parliamentary Party had to decide whether, to achieve its aim, it had to remove from its leadership the very man who’d brought that aim so close to realisation.

The explosive effect of this destructive paradox would be devastating for the Irish Parliamentary Party and for Parnell himself.

Illustration: Parnell addressing a crowd during the Kilkenny North by-election, from The Illustrated London News, 27 December 1890.

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We break away in this episode from our account of events in Britain’s ever-troubled relationship with Ireland, to look instead at Africa, where things were about to get a lot worse even than they were for the Irish.

From 10% of the landmass being controlled by European colonial powers in 1870, by 1914 the figure had grown to nearly 90%. Some of the drive to extend European possessions had been driven by individuals, such as Cecil Rhodes in British South Africa, or the even more extraordinary character, Leopold II, not a private individual, since he was king of the Belgians, but acting in a private capacity in Africa. He eventually controlled as his own personal domain the whole of what he called the ‘Congo Free State’ (there’s an unintended irony in the word ‘free’), a territory 75 times larger than Belgium where he was king.

We follow the exciting events that led to his incorporating the still-troubled region of Katanga into his holdings, as a telling example of how the Europeans behaved in that unfortunate Congo.

Leopold’s rule over the Congo was particularly appalling, but the other colonial powers (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain), though less awful than he was, had little enough to be proud of either.

Illustration: Cartoon by François Maréchal in Le Frondeur, (Liège, Belgium), 20 December 1884, showing Leopold II carving up the Congo with Bismarck to the right and a crowned bear for Russia on the left.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

This episode picks up Ireland’s story again, just as the English establishment turned its guns on Charles Stewart Parnell.

Round 1 of its attack was launched through the Times newspaper, in a series of articles entitled ‘Parnellism and Crime’. It set out to show that, despite his public commitment to the parliamentary road to achieving Ireland’s aspirations, in reality and in the background he was prepared to collaborate with men of violence. Indeed, in the second article of the series, the Times published a letter apparently from Parnell to a leading Fenian, in which he seemed to condone one at least of the Phoenix Park murders of 1882.

That attack failed when it emerged that the letter was simply a forgery.

Even so, damage had been done to the Irish movement by the sheer extent of the investigations carried out by the Commission set up to examine the allegations against Parnell. It cleared him but found other mud to throw at different parts of the Irish movement.

Round 2 of the attack came when William O’Shea, husband of Katharine, the great love of Parnell’s life, sued for divorce. The revelations at the trial were immensely damaging to him. In this episode, we follow events up to the point where the Irish Parliamentary Party, having rallied to him at one meeting, have called another to review that decision and Parnell has weakened his position by publishing a manifesto that could hardly have been better calculated to offend people on whose support he needed to count.

Illustration: The Times attack on Parnell, accusing him of association with criminality.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

This episode looks at the strange behaviour of Captain William O’Shea, the husband of Katharine. She was in one of the great love relationships of their time, with Charles Stewart Parnell. O’Shea wanted to get back into parliament and Parnell, to indulge Katharine, perhaps even to deflect O’Shea’s hostility if not blackmail, went to great lengths to make sure he did. And yet, once he had, O’Shea stood down again within just four months.

Next the episode turns to Salisbury, then heading his second government. He decided to fill the recently vacated post of Chief Secretary of Ireland by appointing his nephew Arthur Balfour to it. This is strictly nepotism, since the Latin word nepos means nephew, but to everyone’s surprise, the appointment worked well for Salisbury. Balfour revealed a steeliness no one suspected in him and found the way to impose on Ireland just what Salisbury had called ‘resolute government’. That’s a euphemism for something pretty repressive.

At the same time, he set out to address Irish grievances over landholding and over agricultural incomes, pursuing a strategy he called ‘killing Home Rule with kindness’.

Together with the repression, that worked, and broke the latest wave of unrest. Still, it’s pretty clear that it wasn’t his kindness that Irishmen focused on most. No, it was the stick, not the carrot, that won him his new nickname: Bloody Balfour.

Illustration: Arthur Balfour by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant), circa 1890. National Portrait Gallery P144

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Before we return to the sorry tale of British rule in Ireland, this episode looks at some of the many other issues that Lord Salisbury addressed during his second ministry. What emerges is the portrait of a man of his class, moulded by the outlook of the aristocratic landowner, convinced that his peers were the men best positioned to lead without being ‘defiled by the taint of greed’ and therefore able to ensure that England, and by extension Britain, avoided change that was altogether too radical. That’s too radical not just for him but, indeed, for most Brits.

He was a man for whom all change was necessarily change for the worse. And yet, he could read circumstances well enough to know when certain changes were necessary, and ensure, heavy-hearted or not, they were made. One type of change he particularly disliked was modification of principles to suit electoral considerations, but he could make those too.

Indeed, that willingness of his contributed to driving forward the process that would make of the Conservative Party the most effective election-winning machine Britain has ever seen.

Illustration: Lord Salisbury during his second ministry, Harry Furniss, 1891. National Portrait Gallery 3411

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

It was a bad time for Gladstone, defeated in an election held just a few months after the previous poll which he’d won.

It was a bad time for Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Parliamentary Party who’d felt Home Rule for Ireland was within their grasp only to see themselves cheated of the prize.

But it wasn’t an easy time for Salisbury either who had to approach building his second government with a lot of care, watching out who he offended and who he couldn’t afford to offend.

But Salisbury’s biggest problem was the most outspoken and best-known parliamentarian his Conservative Party had in the House of Commons, Lord Randolph Churchill, father of the Winston who would ultimately become far better known than he ever was. Randolph Churchill was a problem for Salisbury until the latter showed his skill by turning the tables on the former.

And making it a bad time for Churchill too.

Illustration: Photo of the original performance of Shaw’s Arms and the Man, 1894.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

It was heartbreak time for Parnell. He’d spent eleven years in parliament, leading to the emergence of a powerful Irish Parliamentary Party that eventual won the balance of power. That put Home Rule, the restoration of a Dublin parliament, apparently within his grasp. Yet all that culminated in defeat and disappointment when Gladstone’s bill was thrown out.

The loss led to the fall of Gladstone’s third government and the formation of Salisbury’s second. In turn, that was the start of a long period of Conservative dominance over British politics, lasting for nineteen years. Or, in my view, more like 137 years right up to the present day.

But to get that well launched, Salisbury had to deal with one great thorn in his side. That was Randolph Churchill. And he sorted that problem with his customary skill.

Illustration: Gladstone, Hartington and Chamberlain: political allies but not for much longer. Caricature by Théobald Chartran for 'Vanity Fair', 1880. Public Domain.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

The storm that had been building for years over Ireland broke just as soon as Gladstone, with Irish support, finally brought down the Salisbury minority administration. His problem was that quite a few of his own Liberal MPs were unenthusiastic about Irish Home Rule, a policy to which he was now firmly committed, especially as he was dependent on the votes of Irish MPs.

Both the Whig tendency within Liberalism, whose leader was Hartington, and quite a few of the Radicals, following Chamberlain, were beginning to separate from Gladstone’s brand of Liberalism. When, therefore, he went into the campaign for his Home Rule Bill, he faced attacks from two wings of his own party, as well as from the Tories, now openly against restoring the Irish parliament since they were no longer hunting for Irish votes.

He might have handled some of the opposition more tactfully, especially Chamberlain’s. But it may have been a hopeless task anyway, given the depth of feeling against Home Rule among so many in both parties. Either way, the vote on the measure went just the way one might imagine, as Liberal rebels voting with the Conservatives made sure it was defeated.

The first squall of the storm had struck. It had left Gladstone’s attempt at Home Rule in pieces on the floor. And his government was in just as bad a way.

Illustration Joe Chamberlain by Harry Furniss. National Portrait Gallery 3349

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.