Constitutional Crisis 1909

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How Successful Was The Liberal Party In Dealing With The Constitutional Crisis of 1909-11?

The Constitutional Crisis of 1909 was essentially a feud between the newly elected Liberals and the House of Commons, against the old leaders, the Conservatives who had the help of the House of Lords. The Liberals, who had been voted in during the 1906 general election, had broken a stranglehold the Conservatives had had on Britain for over 50 years, and wished to introduce the foundations of a welfare state. The Conservatives however, had other ideas, and set out to make sure the Liberals did not succeed in changing the way they had run the country for the last half century. This reaction policy is what sparked a political war between the two parties.

The 1909 People's Budget was the Liberal Governments key weapon in instigating social reform and marked a final move away from the system of Gladstonian finance, which had seen the Liberals traditionally associated with retrenchment in government expenditure and an emphasis on self-help. With its radical plans to redistribute the burden of tax and finance social provisions, such as old age pensions, the Budget was swiftly rejected by the landed majority in the House of Lords, sparking the first constitutional crisis of the twentieth century. The Liberals wished to redistribute wealth from rich to poor and also would show working class workers that the Liberal were as radical as the newly formed, Labour party who were rapidly gaining popularity.

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On the 30th November, the Finance Bill was resolutely rejected by the House of Lords, by 350 votes to 75. The Prime Minister, Asquith, subsequently moved a motion to dissolve Parliament, declaring the act to be a breach of the constitution and the rights of the Commons. The House of Lords had gone one step too far this time, breaking an ancient, yet unwritten constitutional ‘law’ forbidding the Upper Chamber from rejecting financial bills put forward by the elected Lower House. The issue was portrayed as one of the ‘peers versus the people’ at the ensuing election in January ...

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