To What Extent Was Tariff Reform Responsible For The defeat Of The Conservatives In The 1906 Election
To What Extent Was Tariff Reform Responsible For The defeat Of The Conservatives In The 1906 Election?
Although tariff reform was a major contributing factor to the defeat of the conservatives it was by no means the most important. In my opinion, the factor that most widely contributed to the fall of the Tories was the bad leadership and poor social judgment of Prime Minister Arthur J. Balfour.
The nephew of Lord Salisbury, Arthur Balfour is generally considered responsible for the turn around of fortune for the LRC and Liberal parties in the Tom Wild1906 election.
After Salisbury stood down due to ill health in July of 1902, the chair of party leader was left open, and with some amount of bias some thought, Arthur Balfour, his nephew, took responsibility of the role. What followed during his reign was a series of events that can all in some way be linked back to his judgments. The first of these was the education act of 1902.
This was an act that in theory was taking large steps towards compulsory secondary education. It stated that newly established Local Education Authorities were allowed to tax community residents as funding for the schooling. This caused an enormous uproar among taxpayers of an ethnic minority as they rightly felt that they should not have to finance education when it would not benefit them. The majority of schools at the time were under the authority of the Church of England, who insisted upon daily prayers and the singing of Hymns. Any one of the Catholic, Jewish or Muslim faith (the later of which were a miniscule population) would now be supporting the education of Protestant families. At this time in history there was still a great need for religious belief, especially among the poor, for some it was all they had. Although Britain had entered a new industrial era and was rapidly modernising, it still held firm to many of its more traditional beliefs. It was the tampering of these beliefs by Balfour, and his strong support of this agenda that lost him many dedicated followers conservative voters who put their religion first.
The next of Balfour’s mistakes came shortly after the failure of the Education Act and is the theme of this essay. Tariff Reform, although not individually responsible for conservative down fall, is a link in a chain of events that were as a whole the fuel to Balfour’s fire. Tariff Reform was originally a proposition by the secretary of state for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain. His idea was to move away from the lais saiz faire approach to trade and make a return to protectionism, taxing incoming goods with imperial preference. Balfour then pushed this to the House of Commons. He wrote to Chamberlain on the 18th of February 1905, explaining the flaws in the plan; ‘it is a deep rooted prejudice, affecting a large mass of voters, especially the poorest class, which it will be a matter of extreme difficulty to overcome.’ It is obvious therefore, that Balfour spotted the inconsistencies, and it could therefore be laid on Chamberlain’s head, but Balfour was prime minister and it was his responsibility to suppress the act if he felt it would not benefit their upcoming election. It was a very strange move to take to even suggest such a radical change in trade laws, as free trade was an incredibly popular idea among many classes. It had been the favoured method of trade for many years and was by no means facing hard times. It was consistent and reliable, it offered equal opportunities for many and it was supported by the majority. Chamberlains argument, backed up by Balfour, was that after a while, the extra revenue generated by Tariff Reform could be used to improve national efficiency. The counter argument was that this would solve nothing, and all that would spawn from this idea would be inflation and high prices on British goods. Something that also arose from this situation was a rift in the party itself. It was initially split into three groups, those that were for, those that were against and those were indecisive. This uncertainty within the conservative party was something that the opposing parties used as a metaphor for national efficiency itself. They said that if Balfour could not manage his own party, how could he unite an entire nation? It was of course partially true, as we will see next.
