13 November 1907

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman makes his last major speech

Speaking in Bristol on the eve of the Unionist convention in Birmingham, Campbell-Bannerman painted a picture of Balfour travelling to a Midland Canossa to make his submission to Joseph Chamberlain before emerging ‘as an honest protectionist – positive, settled, full blooded and aggressive’. Campbell-Bannerman concluded with a word about the Socialist dragon. ‘I should have thought that if there was one country in the world where property was more secure than another, it was this country…because it is a country in which men’s hearts have neither been wholly spoilt by social wrong not wholly hardened by wealth out of all responsiveness to social obligations. Therefore, it is a country with the will and capacity to move quietly and steadily forward along the path of social reform towards a fairer and more enlightened common life, free from the disgrace of the existence of unnecessary and unmerited misery and poverty’.