Explain why free trade was an issue for the 1906 General Election. (12 marks)

Furthermore, the “small loaf, big loaf” campaign by the Liberal Party won favour with the working /middle class electorate – because they were able to actually afford the food. This, as well as the poor leadership that was presented by AJ Balfour for the Conservative Party meant that the Conservatives looked rather out-of-touch with regards to the issue of free trade – he was not able to present the case for protectionism/tariff reform in a suitable way; so this led to the nail in the coffin at the election.

Also at the time – the Conservative Party wanted to introduce an imperial preference to encourage people to buy food from the empire. This was in order to raise money for the government through the tariff reform and the protectionism that they were introducing. However, the electorate were not able to afford food at the current prices; so for food prices to rise would have meant that people just couldn’t eat. Evidentially, this led to the Liberals suggesting that free trade was again the more favourable idea as it would lead to cheaper food prices.

To conclude, I believe that the campaign on tariff reform, most notably the “small loaf, big loaf” posters, meant that the electorate were favourably sided with the Liberal Party in introducing free trade as it simply meant that they would have cheaper food and this was presented with the core necessities of bread. Regarding the imperial preference, I think it was evident that because they would implement a tax in order to implement this, it didn’t sway favour – as it meant from two different ways the Conservatives were putting up food prices. All of this as well as Balfour’s inability to present tariff reform properly – made it look an extremely bad policy.