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III. Unionism and Tariff Reform: The Crisis of 19061

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Peter Fraser
Peter Fraser
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

The bitter hostility with which Joseph Chamberlain was pursued by the sections of the Unionist party opposed to his policy of tariff reform, even after he resigned from Balfour's cabinet in September 1903 to conduct his campaign untrammelled by office, is a curious aspect of Unionist history. The party had seen its defeat clearly foreshadowed in a series of catastrophic by-elections, and yet it persisted in fighting its own internal fiscal battles instead of closing its ranks to meet the most formidable combination of Radical and Socialist forces that it had ever had to face. It knew that no viable proposals for fiscal reform would be put forward for several years, since its opponents were all committed to free trade. Why then did it perversely continue to dispute a remote contingency, thus encouraging its opponents to drive wedges into the divided Unionist leadership by well-chosen parliamentary motions in the sessions of 1904–5, and ensuring that in 1906 it was a demoralized as well as a defeated party that emerged from the polls? After every allowance is made for the purely human impulses that might account for these fiscal quarrels—the hopelessness of defeat, weariness of office, uncertainty in new and alarming political circumstances, and the suspicion that Chamberlain's ‘new departure’ was a bid to salvage his own political fortunes from the wreck of the party—it is still necessary to adduce some more convincing explanation for this seeming folly. For such an explanation, one must appreciate the full significance to contemporaries of Chamberlain's tariff movement, and his determination to make tariff reform and its attendant social and economic policies ‘the great question of the future, and the one on which party divisions will ultimately settle themselves’. His Unionist opponents believed they were fighting to protect not simply free trade, vital as this appeared, but also the whole fabric of Conservatism, both as a historic creed, and as a practical movement.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1962 , pp. 149 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

2 Hewins, W. A. S., Apologia of an Imperialist, I, 69, 84 and 169.Google Scholar Chamberlain envisaged a 10 or 20 per cent duty on all imported articles, as a starting point from which he could bargain for specific exemptions, whether politically with interests at home, or economically with countries abroad.

3 SirFitzRoy, Almeric, Memoirs, I, 261.Google Scholar

4 Croft, Henry P., Croft, Lord, My Life of Strife, 41–5.Google Scholar

5 Letter in The Times, 7 Nov. 1905.

6 B.M., Balfour papers, Add. MS. 49858, 9 Nov. 1905.

7 Add. MS. 49735, Chamberlain, A. to Londonderry, , 2 11 1905.Google Scholar

8 Add. MS. 49735, Balfour, to Chamberlain, A., 3 11 1905.Google Scholar

9 The Times, 22 Nov. 1905, 12.

10 Chamberlain papers, A.C. 17, printed memo, by Balfour, 25 Nov. 1905.

11 Hewins, , op. cit. I, 188–9.Google Scholar

12 FitzRoy, , Memoirs, I, 245–6.Google Scholar

13 Outlook, 10 Feb. 1906, p. 183.

14 Add. MS. 49764, Sandars, J. S. to Balfour, , 13 12 1905.Google Scholar

15 Add. MS. 49805, Wyndham, G. to Balfour, , 27 12 1905.Google Scholar Wyndham had been Balfour's private secretary, and Chief Secretary for Ireland till 1905.

16 Add. MS. 49796. Iwan-Müller, E. B., memo, ‘on the present discontent’, 6 02 1906.Google Scholar

17 The figures for 1905 are taken from Add. MS. 49780, fo. 231, undated memo, of Unionist tariff reformers, which I take to be the one adopted at their meeting of 13 April. Those for 1906 are from the Annual Register (1906), 12.

18 Outlook, 3 Feb. 1906. Art. on ‘Mr Balfour and the Unionist Leadership’.

19 Add. MS. 49858. Draft of letter endorsed ‘not sent’, Jan. 1906.

20 Add. MS. 49796. Memo of 6 Feb. 1906 cited above.

21 Chamberlain papers, M.C. 21. Mrs Chamberlain to Mrs Endicott, 6 Feb. 1906.

22 Chamberlain papers, A.C. 2/1.

23 Newton, Lord, Lansdowne, 248Google Scholar, Lansdowne, to Balfour, , 28 01 1906.Google Scholar

24 Add. MS. 49764, Sandars, to Balfour, , 29 and 30 01 1906.Google Scholar

25 Chamberlain papers, M.C. 21, MrsChamberlain, to MrsEndicott, , 3 02 1906.Google Scholar Hewins (op. cit. I, 170) notes a somewhat exaggerated account by Amery, that ‘they sat in the same chairs from 8 p.m. till 1.15 a.m., Balfour lecturing Chamberlain on high and dry economics, Chamberlain trying to extract something definite and concrete from Balfour, neither getting on terms or common ground with–the other, and Mrs Chamberlain almost in tears’.

26 Chamberlain papers, A.C. 2/1. J. Wilson (Chamberlain's private secretary) says in his covering note that ‘Mr Chamberlain left long before I finished transcribing. He hopes it will give you an indication of the situation.’

27 Newton, , Lansdowne, 349–51Google Scholar, Lansdowne, to Balfour, , 4 02 1906.Google Scholar

28 Dugdale, Blanche E. C., Balfour, II, 23.Google Scholar

29 Dated Torquay, 6 Feb., and printed in The Times of 8 Feb. The Times' version omits the phrase about separate Whips, owing to circumstances described in Hewins, , op. cit. I, 162–3.Google Scholar

30 Add. MS. 49774, Chamberlain, to Balfour, , 7 02 1906Google Scholar, partly quoted in Dugdale's Balfour. Chamberlain also mentions a vote on party organization, ‘with a view (a) of bringing the existing organisations into closer harmony, and (b) of giving a more representative character to the Central Office, and bringing it more closely into touch with the popular organisations’.

31 Add. MS. 49729, Lansdowne, to Balfour, , 7 02 1906.Google Scholar

32 Dugdale, , Balfour, II, 25Google Scholar, Balfour, to Chamberlain, , 8 02 1906.Google Scholar

33 Add. MS. 49774, latter part of same letter.

34 Ibid., Chamberlain to Balfour, 9 Feb. 1906.

35 Ibid., Chamberlain to Balfour, 10 Feb. 1906.

36 Add. MS. 49771, Hood, A. Acland to Balfour, , 12 02 1906.Google Scholar

37 Add. MS. 49729, Lansdowne, to Balfour, , 12 02 1906.Google Scholar

38 Hewins, , op. cit. I, 168.Google Scholar

39 Chamberlain papers, M.C. 21, MrsChamberlain, to MrsEndicott, , 17 02 1906.Google Scholar

40 Newton, , Lansdowme, 352.Google Scholar

41 One clause stated that it was ‘inexpedient to permit differences of opinion as to methods to divide the party’, and the other stipulated that the general tariff ought not to be imposed ‘for the purpose of raising prices or giving artificial protection against legitimate competition’.

42 Morgan-Browne, H., Balfourism (1907), 25.Google Scholar

43 Add. MS. 49796, Iwan-Müller, to Balfour, , 16 02 1906.Google Scholar

44 Chamberlain papers, A.C. 8. 4 May 1906.

45 Add. MS. 49796, Iwan-Müller, to Sandars, , 10 06 1905.Google Scholar Résumé of a conversation with Joe, to be forwarded to Balfour. Chamberlain wrote to Mrs Endicott on 30 Jan. 1906 that he would not compete with Balfour as leader ‘both on personal grounds, and also because I feel that without his influence I could not hope, in what remains to me of active life, to restore the Party to its old efficiency and predominance’ (Chamberlain papers, M.C. 21).

46 Chamberlain papers, A.C. 1/4, Chamberlain, J. to Austen, , dated Cairo, 11 03 1904.Google Scholar

47 Chamberlain papers, M.C. 21, MrsChamberlain, to MrsEndicott, , 27 01 1906.Google Scholar