Table of contents

Jack Pease was at the heart of the British Liberal government from 1908 to 1915, holding the position of Chief Whip through two general elections, and a member of the Cabinet confronting domestic tumult, international tensions, and war. Pease was an unassuming participant in the deliberations of a unique gathering of political talent. His journals as President of the Board of Education from 1911 to the formation of the coalition ministry in 1915 are a closely observed, unvarnished record of what he saw and heard in Downing St and Westminster: constitutional and Home Rule crises, industrial conflict, electoral reform, women's suffrage controversies, struggles over budgets, naval estimates, and foreign policy. Despite his Quaker beliefs, Pease committed to supporting war against Germany, and his troubled conscience is laid bare in letters to his wife and friends. Replete with intimate portraits of his revered chief H. H. Asquith and the Prime Minister's social circle, the journals also provide evocative observations of the contest of ideas, arguments, and moods of prominent contemporaries, especially David Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill as Home Secretary then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War. Pease's candid accounts, augmented by the diaries and letters of others privy to Cabinet policy secrets and personal rivalries, reveal the stories not told in the Prime Minister's reports to the King. Together with the editors' biographical introduction, extensive explanatory commentaries, and bibliographical guidance, Pease's text provides a uniquely comprehensive understanding of Asquith's Liberal government in peace and war.

"Unlike available biographies of David Lloyd George, Jerry Gaw's study focuses on the popular British statesman's religious convictions and his lifelong adherence to Churches of Christ doctrine. Gaw explores the way George applied Christian principles to the diplomatic and military crises he encountered beginning with his time in the British legislature. Gaw's interpretation of George is largely based on the latter's eleven diaries and more than 3,000 letters written to his brother from 1886-1943. These diaries and letters have been little explored by modern biographers of George. Gaw's deep analysis presents an entirely different perspective on David Lloyd George and explains, in part, how he came to the decisions now enshrined in the annals of political history"--

She reveals how conviction-style politicians have appeared in the U.S. and U.K. at the same time: individuals who articulated similar ideas that adapted liberal ideology to shifting circumstances and who achieved fundamental change at critical moments in their nations' histories.".

This title, first published in 1982, explores the new Liberalism - the great change in Liberalism as an ideology and a political practice that characterised the years before the First World War - and examines the idea that the new Liberals successfully overcame the need they saw in the 1890’s to make Liberalism more socially reformist. This title will be of interest to students of social and political history.

Explores the many issues surrounding by-elections in the period which saw the extension of the franchise, the introduction of the ballot, and the demise of most dual member constituencies. Between the 1832 Great Reform Act and the outbreak of World War One in 1914, over 2,600 by-elections took place in Britain. They were triggered by the death, retirement or resignation of sitting MPs or by the appointment of cabinet ministers and were a regular feature of Victorian and Edwardian politics. They furnished political parties and their leaders with a crucial tool for gauging and mobilising public opinion. Yet despite the prominence of by-election contests in the historical records of this period, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. As this book shows, these elections deserve to be taken as seriously today as people took them at the time. They providedimportant linkages between local and national politics, between the four parts of the United Kingdom and Westminster, and between foreign and domestic affairs. They are vital to understanding the evolving electioneering machineries, the varying language of electoral contests, the traction that particular issues had with a growing and frequently volatile electorate, and the fluctuating fortunes of the political parties. This book, consisting of original work by leading political historians, provides the first synoptic study of this important subject. It will be required reading for historians and students of modern British political history, as well as specialists in electoralhistory and politics. T. G. Otte is Professor of Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author and/or editor of some thirteen books. Among the most recent is The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865-1914; Paul Readman is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity and the Politics of Land 1880-1914. Contributors: Luke Blaxill, Angus Hawkins, Geoffrey Hicks, Phillips Payson O'Brien, T.G. Otte, Ian Packer, Gordon Pentland, Paul Readman, Kathryn Rix, Matthew Roberts, Philip Salmon, Anthony Taylor

Here is the first book to cover the history of British Liberalism from its founding doctrines in the later eighteenth century to the final dissolution of the Liberal party into the Liberal Democrats in 1988. The Party dominated British politics for much of the later nineteenth-century, most notably under Gladstone, whose premierships spanned 1868-1894, and during the early twentieth, but after the resignation of Lloyd George in 1922 the Liberal Party never held office again. The decline of the Party remains a unique phenomenon in British politics and Alan Sykes illuminates its dramatic and peculiar circumstances in this comprehensive study.

This book focuses on the leading figures in radical politics in Ireland and Scottish highlands and explores the links between them. It deals with topics that have been at the centre of recent discussions on the Highland land question, the politics of the Irish community in Scotland, and the development of the labour movement in Scotland. The author argues that the Irish activists in the Scottish Highlands and in urban Scotland should be seen as adherents to notions of social and economic reform, such as land nationalisation, and not as Irish nationalists or Home Rulers. This leads him to make radical reassessments of the contributions of individuals such as John Ferguson, Michael Davitt and Edward McHugh. Andrew Newby looks closely at the political activities and ambitions of the Crofter MPs showing them to be a widely influential but diverse group: he reveals, for example, the extensive links between Angus Sutherland, the most radical of the Highland MPs, and John Ferguson's groupings of Irish political activists of urban Scotland. This is a balanced and vivid account of a turbulent period of modern Scottish history.

The enduring 'Town versus Country' debate lies at the root of modern British society. How far did the idealization of the countryside by artists and writers since the Industrial Revolution foster anti-urban, anti-industrial values? How have such values affected government policy, social structure and economic dynamism? Did post-war developments, in particular rural-urban commuting and environmentalist criticism of modern 'industrial' farming, undermine the traditional distinction between town and country, or are they themselves symptoms of the continuing allure of the rural idyll? This book will demonstrate the remarkable influence that attitudes to the countryside have had on the evolution of modern British life.

First published in 1986, Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England makes a lively contribution to the historical debate over whether the Liberal Party was already threatened by decline before the First World War. It challenges the current orthodoxy among historians of the Liberal Party, arguing that neither the new liberalism nor the progressive alliance with Labour helped to make it more attractive to working-class voters. Dr. Bernstein takes a wide view of liberal ideology and policies, stressing that the new liberalism cannot be treated in isolation from traditional domestic and external policies. He examines the crucial relationship between party leaders and constituency activists and argues that the party was more effective when the leadership could mobilize the activists in support of traditional domestic and foreign policies such as peace and retrenchment, free trade, education and temperance reform, land reform, the House of Lords and Irish Home Rule. This book will be welcomed by both scholars and students of history and political science.