4 - A Radical vision

Summary

Colonial affairs

Wedgwood's third great political interest after land taxing and personal freedom was the purpose and future of the British empire. Could one, in fact, be a Radical and an imperialist? J. A. Hobson thought not, seeing the fight against imperialism as a unifying struggle for radicals and social democrats. Imperialism, warned Hobson, like militarism in the days of Paine and Cobden, led to greater armaments and swollen government expenditure, which led to higher taxes and protectionism. Wedgwood, an imperialist before he was a Radical, as his South African experiences show, did not agree, or rather did not agree that all forms of imperialism would end in bloated government and tariffs, although he was aware of the risks of both. Rather than economic exploitation or military aggrandisement, Wedgwood justified the empire along lines reminiscent of Kipling's White man's burden, as he told the United Empire League at Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1912:

The glory of the British Empire was that it had been founded throughout on the principle of liberty and justice, and fair treatment of native races – (hear, hear) – treatment which had stood out in great contrast to the treatment of natives by so many other European nations…We had governed the Colonies for the benefit of the people, and not for exploitation.

Although lacking in historical accuracy, this was a sentiment that was widely shared by Radical and Labour leaders, including Dilke and MacDonald, as well as by some on the right. Indeed, as Bernard Porter has pointed out, after 1905 the anti-empire Little Englanders practically disappeared from the Liberal benches, to be replaced by Liberal Radicals and Labour MPs who were united not by their opposition to empire, but by their vision of a new type of imperialism – one based on moral obligation rather than economic exploitation. It was amongst the free-trade faction of the Webbs's imperially minded dining club, the ‘Co-efficients’, that Wedgwood may have picked up his theory of empire which was, as H. G. Wells put it, ‘the dear belief that the English-speaking community might play the part of leader and mediator towards a world commonweal.