1859-1886
Chamberlain’s Radical Programme
Joseph Chamberlain, the Birmingham manufacturer, took up full time politics in the 1870s. As mayor of Birmingham he built his reputation by successfully importing business methods into local government and the Radical Programme was his attempt to apply his techniques on a national stage.
A torrent of gin and beer: the election defeat in 1874
In January 1874, the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, approached Queen Victoria to dissolve parliament, surprising both the opposition and his own party. In his election manifesto, Gladstone promised to reduce local taxes, to cut taxes on consumer products and to repeal the income tax. When the campaign was over, the Liberal landslide of 1868…
Gladstone’s first government
After an apprenticeship in government under the Conservative Robert Peel, Gladstone served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Aberdeen’s coalition and Palmerston’s Government of 1859-1865. His energy, administrative and oratorical skills marked him as the Liberal Party’s future leader.
William Ewart Gladstone, 1809-1898
As Roy Jenkins concluded in his masterly biography, ‘Mr Gladstone was almost as much the epitome of the Victorian age as the great Queen herself’. He was the political giant of his lifetime and even at the end of the twentieth century the principles and aspirations he brought to public life are still inherent in the…
Out of Chartism, into Liberalism?
Popular radicals and the Liberal Party in mid-Victorian Britain.
British Liberalism and Irish Nationalism
Review of Eugenio Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876-1906 (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
‘A dynamic force is a terrible thing’
Review of Martin Pugh, Lloyd George (Longmans, 1988).
Gladstone 1809-1874
Review of H.C.G. Matthew, Gladstone 1809-1874 (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign of 1879
The realpolitik of Christian humanitarianism.