“…For three-quarters of an hour, Asquith faced his tormentors. Sometimes the noise died down long enough for him to read one sentence from the manuscript. Then he would be overwhelmed again with hoots and jeers. Every now and then Lord Hugh Cecil, his gaunt Elizabethan frame shaken with ludicrous passion, would stand up and scream ‘You’ve disgraced your office!’”
(Dangerfield, G (1997) The Strange Death of Liberal England – p62)
Trade Unions were made more and more aware of their growing popularity by the anger of its working class members, and by the numbers of new members joining every week. More and more unions went out on strike; Railway workers, and Miners to name just two of the biggest unions to hold Industrial strike action. The Government, under Asquith was near breaking point and getting involved in too many individual disputes, yet they were at a loss as to what to do about it. A barrage of abuse was given to politicians who went out to work each day, they were being heckled, attacked and spat at in the street. Women of all ages and social classes went on the rampage, demanding the vote; suffragettes went on rallies not all of them peaceful ones, which ultimately led to their arrest and conviction for breaking such laws as ‘breach of the peace’. The Liberal Government were in a no-win situation, if they were to give the women the vote, they will create thousands of new electorates, but, as women were bitter about being robbed of their chance to vote for so many years, the chances were they would vote for any other party but the one in Government. The final straw to add to the pressures facing the Liberal Government was the age-old argument about the Irish Home Rule, which had again raised its ugly head. Troops were to be drafted in to disarm the Protestants of Northern Ireland who had become increasingly worried that a centralised government would be set up to rule Northern Ireland in Dublin, and the likelihood of an army mutiny was imminent, when World War One started and the pressure on the Government from Ireland ceased during this time.
I feel this book is written from a Labour viewpoint. The way Dangerfield sets the scene quite vividly in this book for its pre-eminence as the party of the Left by showing the downfall of its predecessor in that position. Individual character’s leap out of the story - an irritated George Lansbury berating the Prime Minister for his treatment of the suffragettes, and having to have his ejection from the House explained to him by his Labour colleagues; and a totally bewildered and demoralised Asquith weeping at the despatch box as he tries to explain how his good intentions have brought on even more strike action. The ongoing and mutually respectful war of eternal negotiation between Asquith and Larkin almost constitutes a running joke, and the portraits of the Pankhurst family are a shock to anyone who thought of them solely as political activists.
For me, the most intriguing part of the Dangerfield's work is his contention that there is no economic reason why all these areas of turmoil should have happened over the same five or six years, and within the lifespan of a progressive Government supported by a healthy economy. Even where the Liberals were not working to better the situation, such as in the arena of female suffrage, yet the book argues that after some years of solidity, the human emotion of boredom set in. As a result, after a few years of domestic squabbling, the fight was exported to Flanders. This theory will be able to rouse open and eternal debate for many years to come. But, there was no economic reason for the ejection of the Conservatives in either 1964 or 1997 - it is a great quality of this book that its message has lived through the decades and that huge majorities can disappear and great political parties can be broken.
Although this book is very well written and has a number of positive points to it, one of the criticisms I would have to add is that it is sometimes very dangerous in the way it is persuasive. Dangerfield's account seems to refer to a fundamental source for the women's suffrage movement in Britain, but his manipulation and suppression of facts wilfully twists the contributions of the Pankhursts’, radical feminists whose forward thinking was way too advanced for its time. It is very difficult to identify which he hated most: the incompetence of the Liberal Party or the women fighting for political recognition. However, the book does make highly entertaining reading regardless.
“…But the cause of Women’s Suffrage – here at least she could pursue, with unflagging diligence, her late husband’s work. Women had already obtained, or were clearly destined to obtain, all the minor recognitions that a political democracy can afford; only one reward, but that the most vital and the most obstinately contested, was still denied them – the Vote. To the vote, therefore, Mrs Pankhurst offered her life…”
(Dangerfield, G (1997) The Strange Death of Liberal England – p142)
In spite of this, George Dangerfield's book was written in the 1930s. It is instinctively readable and very objective for its time. It is important to bear in mind also that he was telling the tale from newspaper cuttings, memoirs and published records, when many of the key players were still alive, very little private correspondence which could have been seen as potentially controversial had been released, Dangerfield’s book, I feel is a miracle of intuition and interpretation. It, for me, has been essential for an understanding of politics within a democracy, and also gives an example to learn from, rather than being bogged-down with detail and continuous theory. It is also a great study in human relationships and the rather farcical nature of life. Dangerfield tells this somewhat complex account very well and amusing in parts. After some 65 years, this book is still as readable as ever.
Bibliography
Dangerfield, G (1966) The Strange Death of Liberal England. 2nd ed. Granada Publishing Ltd
