The Progressive Alliance and the Rise of Labour, 1903-1922

Political Change in Industrial Britain

Samantha Wolstencroft

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319757438
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319757445
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book provides a detailed study of the politics of the Progressive Alliance at the constituency level from its inception in 1903 to collapse during the First World War. It evaluates the character, development and difficulties of progressive co-operation and considers the long-term viability of an electoral alliance between the Liberal and Labour parties. Samantha Wolstencroft provides an exhaustive analysis of political change in two of Britain's major industrial centres, Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent, during a period that witnessed the decline of the Liberal Party and rise of Labour. She evaluates the difficulties faced by the early Labour Party in its attempt to attain a foothold within the political landscape, examines the impact of the experience of the First World War upon the political parties, and demonstrates the power of issues and the role of candidates in the transformation of electoral politics in Britain in the immediate aftermath of war.

© The Author(s) 2018

Samantha WolstencroftThe Progressive Alliance and the Rise of Labour, 1903-1922https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75744-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party

Samantha Wolstencroft¹

(1)

Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

End Abstract

The collapse of the Liberal Party after 1918 and the subsequent rise of Labour remains one of the most important events in modern British political history. Few subjects have attracted more attention or debate. Such fascination is understandable, not least because the scale and speed of collapse was so dramatic. The turn of the twentieth century had seen the Liberal Party reinvent itself: the party’s organisation had been overhauled and ideologically the period witnessed the emergence of pronounced Liberal radicalism, subsequently known as the New Liberalism. Throughout the process of reorganisation, the Liberal Party sought to focus upon the democratisation of its selection policy and new candidates tended to be younger and more radical than their predecessors. One might suggest that the early twentieth century saw the modernisation of British Liberalism.

At the same time, Britain saw the appearance of a new political movement. The impact of the formation of the Labour Representation Committee (from 1906, the Labour Party) on British politics was immense. Few could have predicted that just over two decades later this organisation would be in a position to form its first, albeit minority, government. During the 1900s both parties of the left, despite maintaining their own strict independence, sought to advance their electoral positions by way of a policy of cooperation, later known as the Progressive Alliance . Although the extent of its acceptance within both parties on the eve of war may be questioned, it seemed unlikely there would be an imminent and overwhelming restructuring of the political system: the significant ‘rise’ of Labour at the expense of the Liberal Party. On the contrary, the Liberals appeared to be sustaining their position as a major electoral force. The party was returned to office with one of the most significant victories of modern times: four hundred seats and a majority of one hundred and thirty in the 1906 general election. The Labour Representation Committee could also afford to be satisfied after securing forty members in the new parliament. By 1924 these figures had all but reversed, with only forty Liberal MPs to nearly two hundred Labour. After 1918, the collapse of the Liberals to the status of a third party was swift and unrelenting; one contemporary observer went so far as to describe the political situation of the Liberal Party as a ‘holocaust’.¹ Nearly a century later, entirely satisfactory explanations for the decline of the Liberal Party and rise of Labour remain elusive.

The first major work examining the post-First World War fortunes of the Liberal Party appeared close to the time of the transformation itself: George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England set the tone of interpretation for the next three decades.² Dangerfield’s main contention was that the decline of the Liberal Party was a reflection of the wider collapse of Liberal political culture and the specific difficulties that arose during the pre-war period. After 1906 the Liberal Government had been confronted with an array of disaffected groups and political problems: trade unionists, the House of Lords, suffragettes, the Tariff Reform League and the Irish Question to name but a few. In embarking upon the radical course that it did, the Liberal Government, and party, managed to alienate itself from substantial sections of public opinion. These factors undermined the party’s energy and strength. Furthermore, there was the question of the emergence of the Labour Party with its demand for increased independent labour representation. For Dangerfield , British Liberalism was defunct by 1914 simply because it could not cope. Implicit in his assessment was a degree of inevitability about the ‘death’ of Liberal England and his overall conclusion was effectively that it was not strange at all but easily explained. Still in print today, The Strange Death of Liberal England was a pioneering work of its age. Dangerfield successfully identified four great crises omnipresent within Edwardian politics and society: workers, women, the aristocracy and the Irish Question. In his view, these ‘problems’ overwhelmed not just Edwardian Liberalism but the assumptions of ‘Liberal England’. He recognised, however, that the Labour Party was part of this culture and was as much at sea as the Liberals themselves. Dangerfield’s interpretation of Edwardian politics generated significant debate and, in a sense, the importance of The Strange Death of Liberal England lies not necessarily in the strength of its argument, but in relation to the historical debate it helped to foster. Whilst historians today are generally sceptical about Dangerfield’s array of events and the effects these had upon political change, particularly the extent to which the Liberals were unable to cope with the problems they encountered, it remains an important part of the historiography on Edwardian England.³

Interest in the decline of the Liberal Party was heightened from the 1960s, a period that coincided with the growth of social history alongside a predominance of left-leaning historians. Many of the new generation of historians became interested in debates surrounding the development of class consciousness during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that overlapped with the period of Liberal resurgence and decline. It was not surprising perhaps that some historians began to focus attention upon the transformation of the political parties during this period. The ‘rise of Labour’ approach was appealing for some historians because that party’s ‘onward march’ could be presented as a victory of the working classes over elite intransigence with respect to their political rights.⁴ Labour historians and their perceptions of class consciousness, politicisation and political mobilisation became hugely influential in the debate surrounding the decline of the Liberal Party.⁵ For them it was important to highlight examples of independent working-class action that would serve to destroy the existing order. The collapse of the Liberal Party could be cited as a case in point. Some historians also suggested that Nonconformists and also business interests were beginning to move away from the Liberals and this became an even more pronounced feature after the party had begun to court the working-class vote more directly.⁶

The publication of Ross McKibbin’s The Evolution of the Labour Party in 1974 represented a significant turning point in the historiography of the Labour Party and ignited considerable debate.⁷ McKibbin’s work suggested that the seeds of Labour growth were already in place before 1914. Labour’s rise was assured for a number of reasons including the growth of an acute sense of working-class class consciousness, trade union expansion and the eventual extension of the franchise. Other factors such as better party organisation, continuity of personnel and appeal of policy also served to underpin Labour’s advance; as McKibbin concluded, ‘everything pointed to Labour’s enduring Ante-bellum character’.⁸ For McKibbin, the franchise factor (the limited nature of the parliamentary franchise) blocked an immediate advance because the party’s natural constituency was itself disenfranchised. His core argument, therefore, was that war acted as an accelerant on an already established process. The implication of his research was that the Labour Party existed as a ‘sleeping monster’ on the political landscape in the decade after its formation. In collaboration with Matthew and Kay , McKibbin later argued even more explicitly that, had there been a wider franchise, the decline of the Liberal Party would have been even more rapid.⁹ Other historians perceived the failure of New Liberalism to stem the tide of an ascendant Labour Party. In his study of the West Riding, Laybourn portrayed the local Liberal organisation as ‘aggressive’ and ‘unwilling to compromise’.¹⁰ Similarly, Lancaster suggested that Ramsay MacDonald’s 1906 victory in Leicester heralded ‘the beginning of the end for the Liberal Party’ in that area.¹¹ McKibbin has since modified his position, stating that he no longer considers ‘the Edwardian system as already disintegrating’.¹² His view now is that the Edwardian political system was based upon an ‘equipoise in balance’, critically one ‘delicate enough … to be severely unbalanced by events which began with the outbreak...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party
• 2. The Politics of the Progressive Alliance: Manchester Liberalism and the Emergence of Labour, 1906–1908
• 3. The Viability of the Progressive Alliance: Electoral Politics in Manchester, 1910–1912
• 4. Municipal Politics and the Progressive Alliance in Manchester, 1906–1914
• 5. The Complexities of Progressive Cooperation: Lib-Labism and Electoral Politics in Stoke-on-Trent, 1903–1910
• 6. A Fragile Alliance: The 1912 Hanley By-Election
• 7. The Impact of War and the Collapse of the Progressive Alliance: Political Change in Manchester, 1918–1922
• 8. Manchester’s Municipal Politics in the Aftermath of War and the 1922 General Election
• 9. The Politics of Change: The End of Lib-Labism in Stoke-on-Trent, 1918–1921
• 10. The Rise of Labour: The 1922 General Election in Stoke-on-Trent
• 11. Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Alliance
• Back Matter