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The Liberal Pro-Boers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

John W. Auld
John W. Auld*
Affiliation:
California State College, Dominguez Hills
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Extract

The British Liberal Party underwent a succession of crises in the years 1886-1905 which nearly destroyed it as a coherent political entity. Perhaps the most critical divisions in the 1890s were those concerning the leadership struggle, so well described by Peter Stansky in his Ambitions and Strategies, and the search for a domestic policy which would qualify the party as the major force for reform in the face of the emerging Labour alternative. But both of these problems and the divisions which stemmed from them were linked with the perennial and highly visible divisions over foreign and imperial policy. Stansky has shown how the imperial question was tied to the Harcourt-Rosebery struggle for the leadership in succession to Gladstone and how concentration on this issue detracted from attention to the more pressing question of finding a viable and attractive domestic program. Jeffrey Butler, Bernard Semmel, and Bernard Porter have illustrated other aspects of the problem of imperial policy.

Historians have long recognized the seriousness of the crisis in the party during the Boer War, when divisions of opinion concerning the war and general imperial policy were formalized in competing organizations, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman fought a frustrating campaign to consolidate his leadership and maintain the party as a functioning unit. Most of the attention, however, has centered on the leaders of the party and on the organization — the Liberal League, which grew out of the Imperial Liberal Council in 1902 — which represented the Liberal Imperialist wing inspired by Lord Rosebery.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , May 1975 , pp. 78 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1975

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References

1. Ambitions and Strategies: The Struggle for the Leadership of the Liberal Party in the 1890's (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar.

2. See Emy, H. V., Liberals, Radicals and Social Politics, 1892-1914 (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Butler, Jeffrey, The Liberal Party and the Jameson Raid (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; Semmel, Bernard, Imperialism and Social Reform (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; Porter, BernardCritics of Empire (New York, 1968)Google Scholar. See also Price, Richard, An Imperial War and the British Working Class (London, 1972), Ch. IGoogle Scholar.

4. See, for example, Douglas, Roy, The History of the Liberal Party, 1895-1970 (London, 1971), pp. 23–29Google Scholar. See also Hamer, D. A., Liberal Politics in the Age of Gladstone and Rosebery (Oxford, 1972), Ch. XIGoogle Scholar, and Matthew, H. C. G., The Liberal Imperialists (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar. John Wilson concentrates his discussion on Campbell-Bannerman's relations with the Liberal Imperialists in the relevant chapters of his CB: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

5. The term “pro-Boer” is of uncertain origin, though it became a popular epithet during the Boer War. Few of the politicians so labelled gloried in the term, though some, like Gavin Clark, who was closely identified with the Transvaal as a former Consul General, and Bryn Roberts, the irascible Welsh M.P., did so, one suspects, mainly out of spite. Surely the term may now be used as a convenient label without quotation marks and without the connotations of treason which attached to the original designation.

6. Thornton, A. P., in The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power, (New York, 1968)Google Scholar, and Bernard Porter, in Critics of Empire, have discussed views characteristic of the pro-Boer position in the context of the broader history of anti-imperialism. Stephen Koss has provided statements illustrative of their position in his recent anthology, The Pro-Boers: The Anatomy of an Antiwar Movement (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar.

7. Annual Register, 1900, p. 223Google Scholar.

8. Halévy, Elie, Imperialism and the Rise of Labour (1895-1905), Vol. V of A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, tr. Watkin, E. I. (6 vols.; New York, 1961), 107Google Scholar; Jenkins, Roy, Asquith (London, 1964), pp. 118–19Google Scholar.

9. Times, 17 October 1900.

10. British Museum, Viscount Herbert Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 46105, fols. 102-08. Hereafter referred to as VGP.

11. Even Porter, who is more perceptive than most in his awareness of divisions of opinion in the party, suggests only that there were “about thirty” pro-Boers: Critics of Umpire, footnote, p. 76. Richard Price lists fifty-two “Pro-Boer Members” in an appendix to his An Imperial War and the British Working Class, pp. 250-51. His is not a very systematic list, omitting such obvious opponents of the war as Henry Broadhurst and A. C. Humphreys-Owen and including doubtful cases such as Dalziel, Evans, W. Jones, C. Morley, A. E. Pease, Sinclair, et. al., and even Harcourt, whose position was indistinguishable from that of Campbell-Bannerman. For a complete list of Liberal pro-Boer M.P.s with constituencies represented, see the Appendix.

12. Porter discusses the dilemma in Critics of Empire, pp. 74-79.

13. Althorp, Northamptonshire, Spencer Papers, Campbell-Bannerman to Spencer, 3 Nov. 1899.

14. Consider the following exchange in the Commons during the special December session of 1900:

Mr. A. J. Balfour: We believe—the right hon. Gentleman [CampbellBannerman] believes as we believe—that the war on our part has been a just war.

(Cries of ‘No’)

Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman: I did not say so.

Mr. A. J. Balfour: I never quite know where I have got the right hon.

Gentleman.

Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), 4th ser., 88:137 (6 December 1900) (hereafter, H. C, Parl. Deb.). But, although Campbell-Bannerman did not admit the war was a just one, neither did he say it was unjust.

15. Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1900, p. 12.

16. Souttar's speeches in his constituency were reported in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard; Maddison's in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent; Labouchere's in the Northampton Mercury. Sir William Brampton Gurdon was another pro-Boer who was quite evasive with his constituents: see speeches and letters in the October 1900 issues of the Norwich Mercury and Eastern Weekly Press relating to his abstentions in divisions on war supplies.

17. For example, a warning to historians is provided by the debate carried on within the Liberal Party concerning the significance of the division on the Stanhope amendment to the Address in October 1899: the debate appears mainly in the December issues of the pro-Boer weekly Speaker. See also, VGP, Add. MS 46105, fols. 11-12, “Analysis of Stanhope Division.” Similar ambiguity resulted from other divisions in parliament during the war.

18. 4 H. C. Parl. Deb. 79: 421 (19 Feb. 1900)Google Scholar.

19. Ibid., 83:1583 (28 May 1900).

20. Speech at Penistone, 20 Jan. 1900, in Holmfirth Express, 27 Jan. 1900, p. 5.

21. 4 H. C., Parl. Deb. 78: 1311–12 (12 Feb. 1900)Google Scholar.

22. Statement of the non-partisan position of the Peace Society in annual report for 1900-01 published in Herald of Peace, 1 June 1901, p. 65Google Scholar.

23. See, for example, report of annual meeting for 1900 in its organ, Concord, July 1900, pp. 98-104.

24. See, for example, its manifesto, ‘The Real Object of the War,” which excoriated those capitalists—claimed to be “largely Jews and foreigners”—who were profiting from the war: Arbitrator, January, 1900. George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer who was to give the pro-Boers a daily paper by means of the Daily News coup of January 1901, sponsored distribution of this manifesto, signed by Labour leaders, as “Labour Leaders and the War.” Arbitrator, July, 1900. The anti-Semitic strain in pro-Boer statements is discussed below.

25. Most, but not all, of the “Lib-Labs” were pro-Boers. John Havelock Wilson definitely was not, being classified at one point during the war as a Liberal Imperialist. Sam Woods also did not take a strong anti-war stand. Others, such as Ben Pickard and Henry Broadhurst, were moderates within the pro-Boer group. It is curious that Price has no extensive discussion of the I. A. L in his An Imperial War. For Labour and the war see Pelling, Henry, “British Labour and British Imperialism,” in Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

26. See announcement of its formation in the Speaker, 20 Jan. 1900; many references to its activities appear in the Courtney Collection, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London (hereafter referred to as CC).

27. See report of its foundation in War Against War, 19 Jan. 1900, pp. 212–13Google Scholar.

28. From report of the inaugural meeting in Manchester Guardian, 15 Feb. 1900, p. 10Google Scholar.

29. (London, 1897), Preface, p. ix.

30. (London, 1900), Preface [by Hirst], p. xvi.

31. Ibid., pp. 2-3.

32. “The Reaction Against Gladstonianism", which they were resisting, has been described by Searle, G. R. in his The Quest for National Efficiency (Berkeley: 1971), Ch. IGoogle Scholar. For Liberal Imperialist strategy and tactics, see Hamer, Liberal Politics, Ch. XI and Matthew, Liberal Imperialists.

33. See, for example, Bryn Roberts' speech at Pwllheli, 23 Oct. 1901, in which he blasted the Liberal Imperialists' “political immorality” and opportunism and charged them with being mere office seekers instead of striving “to make Liberal principles prevail.” North Wales Observer and Express, 25 Oct. 1901, p. 5.

34. In fact, the organization avoided a definite position concerning the justice of the war, taking what might be called a “left-center” stance.

35. The Land of Free Speech: Record of a Campaign on Behalf of Peace in England and Scotland (London, 1906)Google Scholar.

36. See North Wales Observer and Express issues of April, 1900 for reports of Lloyd George's speeches; South Western Star, May-June, 1900 for Burns' speeches.

37. Where the historian, Bolton King, stood as a pro-Boer: Stratford-upon Avon Herald, June, 1901.

38. Described in Owen, Frank, Tempestuous Journey (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

39. See Lawson's autobiographical sketch in Russell, G. W. E., (ed), Sir Wilfrid Lawson: A Memoir (London, 1909), p. 246Google Scholar, and his speech of 10 Nov. 1900 after his election defeat: Carlisle Journal, 12 Nov. 1900, p. 6. For Watson, see quote in Corder, Percy, The Life of Robert Spence Watson (London, 1914), p. 280Google Scholar.

40. At the dissolution in 1900, 11.9 percent and 14.3 percent of pro-Boer M.P.s sat for London and Welsh seats respectively, while the number of London and Welsh Liberal M.P.s represented 4.8 percent and 12.6 percent of the total Liberal contingent. For English boroughs and Scotland, the figures at the dissolution were: pro-Boers, 14.3 percent and 19 percent; Liberal Party, 23.3 percent and 21.6 percent respectively. After the election, the figures for the areas listed above were: London: pro-Boers-10 percent, Liberal Party-4.3 percent; Wales: pro-Boers-20 percent, Liberal Party-l4.6 percent; English boroughs: pro-Boers-13.3 percent, Liberal Party-20.5 percent; Scotland: pro-Boers-13 3 percent, Liberal Party-19.9 percent.

41. Social Geography of British Elections, 1885-1910 (New York, 1967), pp. 416–17Google Scholar.

42. See Caithness Courier, 24 and 31 Aug. 1900.

43. Pelling, , Social Geography, pp. 231-32, 417Google Scholar, and September, 1900 issues of Sheffield and Rotherham Independent.

44. See statistics in Pelling, , Social Geography, p. 415Google Scholar and Thompson, Paul, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London (London, 1967)Google Scholar, passim.

45. Pelling, , Social Geography, p. 370Google Scholar.

46. Morgan, Kenneth O., Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (Cardiff, 1963), p. 181Google Scholar.

47. See report of campaign in North Wales Observer and Express issues of September, 1900.

48. National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, J. H. Lewis Papers, Group 5, #35, diary entries, 18 April 1900, 27 July 1900, 30 July 1900.

49. No two-member constituencies or three-way contests are included in this evidence. In both groups of polls the voter turnouts fell, but by approximately the same amount: 1.5 percent in pro-Boer constituencies and 1.8 percent in the others.

50. Before the election, the Times estimated about sixty-eight in the pro-Boer faction; after the election, it maintained a grossly inflated list. Times, 17 Oct. 1900.

51. This leftward swing, especially Campbell-Bannerman's denunciation of “methods of barbarism,” has led historians mistakenly to identify leaders like Campbell-Bannerman and Harcourt with pro-Boers like Lloyd George and Labouchere: e.g. Douglas, , History, p. 26Google Scholar. But this is to neglect such incidents as Lloyd George's bludgeoning attack on Campbell-Bannerman at the time of the official Liberal (Cawley) amendment to the Address in January 1902; he charged him with having been captured by the Liberal Imperialists and “stripped of all his principles”. See 4 H., C., Parl. Deb. 101:537–43 (21 Jan. 1902)Google Scholar for Lloyd George's speech.

52. Kate Courtney wrote to Brooke Lambert: “No I will not read a paper on the ‘treatment of the Native Races in S. Africa’ at the Christian Conference. While we are sinning so deeply in S. Africa it seems to me to be mere hypocrisy to be condemning other peoples' sins.”: CC, Vol. VII, fol. 104, 16 Nov. 1900, copy.

53. For a discussion of this point, see Thornton, A. P., The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies, pp. 155 ff.Google Scholar

54. Porter discusses this point in Critics of Empire, pp. 64-70. At the time of the final constitutional settlement of the Union of South Africa, Sir William B. Gurdon, Leonard Courtney, John Burns, and W. P. Byles were among the few former pro-Boers who took an active interest in the rights of natives. The Liberal most active in the matter was Sir Charles Dilke, a “radical imperialist” who had not been a pro-Boer at all.

55. By James Nisbet & Co., Ltd. of London.

56. Porter discusses this in Critics of Empire, pp. 61 ff., but the attitude was more widespread than even he suggests. The Liberal Imperialist Professor Massie complained at the National Liberal Federation meeting in 1900 about the pro-Boers' tendency to see “a traitor under the coat of every Jew.”: Manchester Guardian, 28 March 1900, p. 4Google Scholar. The fact that the Liberal Imperialist leader Lord Rosebery married a Rothschild may have given added incentive to some pro-Boers to adopt this line.

57. (London, 1901).

58. Porter discusses the cri de coeur of anti-imperialists against the spirit of jingoism in Critics of Empire, pp. 88 ff.

59. This tradition is discussed in Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers (Bloomington, 1958)Google Scholar, and illustrated in Bullock, Alan and Shock, Maurice, (eds.), The Liberal Tradition From Fox to Keynes (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar.

60. Francis W. Hirst refers to Morley's talk about “new combinations” in politics at the time of the election of 1900: In the Golden Days (London, 1947), p. 209Google Scholar. In a letter to Lord Spencer, 22 Sept. 1900, Morley hoped for a “smash” of the Liberal Party so “the friends of peace and prudence may try to build up another party.”: Althorp, Northamptonshire, Spencer Papers. See also Hamer, D. A., John Morley, Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford, 1968), pp. 323-24, 329–30Google Scholar. In his speech to the Oxford Palmerston Club in June 1900, Morley said he would almost rather work with socialists than Liberal Imperialists: Manchester Guardian, 11 June 1900, p. 7Google Scholar. Keir Hardie responded, calling upon Morley to lead the Liberal and Labour anti-war cause: Poirier, Philip P., The Advent of the British Labour Party (New York, 1958) p. 125Google Scholar; Bealey, Frank and Pelling, Henry, Labour and Politics, 1900-1906 (London, 1958), p. 50Google Scholar. Just after the election Keir Hardie referred to the possibility again: interview in South Wales Daily News, 16 Nov. 1900, p. 4Google Scholar. Keir Hardie speculated on political reconstruction again at the height of the Liberal Party crisis of 1901: Manchester Guardian, 18 July 1901, p. 5Google Scholar.

61. He was supported in this suggestion by Bruce Glasier and Fred Brockle-hurst: Poirier, , Advent, pp. 124–26Google Scholar; Bealey and Pelling, Labour and Politics, p. 42.

62. For this important by-election, see Foulger, J. C., “Liberalism and Labour,” New Liberal Review, II (Nov., 1901), 462–68Google Scholar; Motherwell Times; special correspondent articles in Manchester Guardian, Sept., 1901, passim; Poirier, , Advent, pp. 175–76Google Scholar; Bealey, and Pelling, , labour and Politics, pp. 129–31Google Scholar; Smillie, Robert, My Life for Labour (London, 1924), pp. 107–12Google Scholar.

63. Poirier, Advent, Ch. X; Bealey, and Pelling, , Labour and Politics, pp. 131 ff.Google Scholar; BM, Campbell-Bannerman Papers, Add. MS 41216, fols. 130-33, Herbert Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, 24 Sept. 1901.

64. For this connection see Semmel, Imperialism, Ch.'s. III, VI, and Searle, Quest, Ch. IV.

65. See Porter's discussion of this failure in Critics of Empire, pp. 84 ff.

66. The Harcourt-Rosebery split was not identical with the pro-Boer-Liberal Imperialist division, though with some in each group it served as an irritant. But Harcourt was not a pro-Boer and was too old to lead a campaign anyway; Rose-bery went his own way during the war, occasionally frustrating strong Liberal Imperialist enthusiasts with his moderation on some war issues.