The Strange Death of Liberal England (Paperback)

In 1916, the prosecution of the Great War had forced the political parties into coalition. The Liberals have never held power since, and nearly disappeared altogether in the 1950s. George Dangerfield's book takes the story to the outbreak of war, and shows that, far from disrupting a way of life that was stable, secure and stratified, it was the climax of a decade of social unrest and was almost greeted with relief after all the internal turmoil.

Dangerfield starts with a Liberal triumph: the constitutional victory over the Lords. Mr Asquith and his colleagues seem paragons of cool composure against the rantings of the senile, inbred and / or feudal extremists among the Upper Chamber. Then come his descriptions of three great rebellions which shattered the Government's confidence and popularity, and pulled the generally understood principles of Liberalism out of any recognisable shape.

First, industrial relations collapsed. Miners, railwaymen, dockers - all went on strike one after another, then at the same time and in all imaginable configurations in between. Trade Unions were becoming aware of their strength and working class anger, tempered in the near slavery of the Industrial Revolution and, burst out in conflict after conflict. For the first time in history, a government was drawn into the minutiæ of individual disputes. Asquith was browbeaten, Churchill sent in troops - neither approach was successful.

Women wanted the vote, and were not prepared to be fobbed off or patronised in this area any longer. Politicians were attacked, heckled and their summer cottages burned to the ground. Suffragettes were imprisoned and force-fed, and their rallies charged by the police. Once the lines were drawn, the Liberals were trapped - give women the vote after all that and you enfranchise the other half of the electorate, most of whom will vote for anyone but you.

Finally, Ulster rebelled. Home Rule was an old Liberal warhorse from the days of Gladstone, defeated again and again by Tory and Unionist collaboration. When it seemed that this was now a genuine possibility, the Protestants of Northern Ireland - with decidedly Machiavellian help from the Conservatives - rose up, and were on the verge of armed insurrection when 1914 came along.

Politically, I would say (though I am quite prepared to be corrected) that its slant is Labour, setting the scene for its ascendancy as the party of the Left by showing the demise of its predecessor in that rôle. This is humanist history, however, and the larger tectonic shifts of the day are never allowed to dwarf the individuals and groups struggling to cope with them. Individual cameos leap out - an incensed 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 the Sergeant at Arms; and a totally bewildered and demoralised Asquith weeping at the despatch box as he tries to explain how his good intentions have precipitated yet more strike action. The ongoing and mutually respectful war of eternal negotiation between Messrs Askwith and Larkin almost constitutes a running joke, and the portraits of the Pankhurst family (especially the High Tory / religious maniac crossover Christabel) are an eye opener to anyone who thought of them solely as political activists.

George Dangerfield's book was written in the 1930s, and had a great influence on the style of A J P Taylor. It is compulsively readable and, for its time, very objective. 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 and potentially litigious and very little private correspondence had been released, and it is a miracle of intuition and interpretation.

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 for betterment of the situation, such as in the arena of female suffrage, this could just as easily have been a major problem for Balfour, or Bonar Law. What happened, argues the book, was that after some years of stability and affluence the very human frailty of boredom set in. Consequently, after a few years of domestic squabbling, the fight was exported to Flanders. This is a theory that could provoke free, frank and never-ending discussion, and students of political economy may sneer at its emotive content, but it rings true. There was no economic reason for the ejection of the Conservatives in either 1964 or 1997 - indeed, it is a great quality of this book that its message has bestrode the decades. Huge majorities can disappear like smoke in the wind, and great political parties can be broken and left in the wilderness.