Looming large over the British government’s endeavours to secure imperial cooperation was the Irish Question. Before 1800, Ireland had had its own parliament, which was to a large extent the mouthpiece of the Protestant landowners. In 1801 this parliament was dissolved and thereafter Irish MPs went to Westminster. This arrangement was continually challenged by Irish nationalists, who grew stronger in numbers and determination as the franchise was extended to the majority of Gaelic, Catholic Irishmen. Militancy increased dramatically after 1870 with the foundation of the Irish Home Rule Party and the Irish issue was pushed into the forefront of British politics.
The Irish Question was debated on two levels. On one, it was a purely domestic matter concerned with the restoration of a measure of internal self-government to Ireland. On the other, it was an imperial issue of the greatest significance since it involved the future integrity of the empire. The enemies of Irish autonomy feared that it would fragment the United Kingdom and thereby wreck any chances of wider imperial union. Opposing Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill in May 1886, a Tory MP argued that if it was passed ‘the colonies would not come to join such a federation if the United Kingdom was first broken up … [for] if we could not keep our own kith and kin together we could not be expected to keep our Colonies, which were at so great a distance from us, together.’18 Gladstone, defending his measure, hoped that a self-governing Ireland would become a friendly and loyal dominion like Canada. This was wishful thinking; the legacy of hatred for England and the passionate anglophobia of nationalist rhetoric made it extremely unlikely that Anglo-Irish relations would ever be cordial. A semi-independent Ireland would always pose a danger in any future war, and one MP reminded the Commons how, in 1798, Irish nationalists had made common cause with France.19
The threat to national security and possible harm to the empire convinced a substantial body of Liberal MPs, including Chamberlain, to defect and vote against the bill. Its successor, presented in the spring of 1893, passed the Commons but was thrown out by the Lords. It had been denounced by Chamberlain as ‘the Bill for creating Little England’, which would advertise irresolution to a jealous world:
All Europe is armed to the teeth, and the causes of dispute are very near the surface. Meanwhile, our interests are universal – our honour is involved in almost every land under the sun. Under such conditions the weak invite attack, and it is necessary for Britain to be strong.20
For some, like the poet Algernon Swinburne, the Union was one of those God-given advantages which had made Britain great:
Three in one, but one in three
God, who girt her with the sea,
Bade our Commonweal to be:
Nought, if not one.
Through fraud and fear would sever
The bond assured for ever,
Their shameful strength shall never
Undo what heaven has done.
Defence of the Union was fiercest among those, like Chamberlain, who favoured tighter links between Britain and the dominions. Although in political terms these appeared unobtainable during the 1890s, there were gratifying signs that loyalty to the crown was a powerful emotional force throughout the dominions. Its strength was publicly revealed during the 1897 Diamond Jubilee celebrations which witnessed not only dominion troops marching through London, but a cascade of congratulations from every corner of the empire. The temper of all was summed up by the address delivered by the Speaker of the Victoria parliament:
At this moment there stand around her Throne representatives of every quarter of her world-wide Empire, all carrying messages of loyalty and goodwill, and accumulating the testimony that distance does not decrease patriotism. The Empire unites today in offering its homage and reverence to the illustrious Lady who for sixty years has been the worthy symbol and image of the power of a free nation.21
Two years later, when war between Britain and the Transvaal became unavoidable, such sentiment was translated into action. Australia and New Zealand immediately offered troops, as did Canada, despite considerable misgivings among the Canadien community. The raising and departures of the contingents were the cause for much celebration, and the mood of the men who paraded through the streets and those who cheered them was captured by a New Zealand poet:
The signal had flash’d oe’r the water,
The word that old England wants help;
The Mother has cried to her daughter;
The lion has roared to its whelp.
Cast away any dread that appals ye,
Any doubts to the sea winds toss –
‘Tis the Old, Old Country that calls ye,
Ye sons of the Southern Cross.
Those whose hearts were stirred by these and similar patriotic appeals were mostly men and women who had never seen Britain for, by 1899, nearly all Australians and New Zealanders were native-born. And yet they felt a powerful emotional kinship with Britain which was nowhere better summed up than by an Australian, Charles Bean, at the start of his account of his country’s participation in the First World War:
The Australian spoke the same language, read the same books, loved the same sports, held the same ideas of honesty, of cleanliness, of individual liberty; his children learned at their mother’s knee the same grand traditions of sea travel and old adventure, for he had as yet created few stories of his own.22
Just over 30,000 colonial troops fought in the Boer War and their activities were closely followed in the dominion newspapers, either as recorded in letters home or in reports from war correspondents. Public interest in the war and their countrymen’s part in it was most intense in New Zealand and Australia, which took the unusual step of issuing special postage stamps to commemorate their contingents.
Military pomp and a pride in achievements on the battlefield were part and parcel of nationalism everywhere in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and so it was both natural and inevitable that the Boer War gave a fresh vigour to dominion patriotism. Participation in the war also contributed to a sense that the dominions had ‘come of age’, that is, had reached a stage of maturity which entitled them to consider themselves nations rather than colonies. Waving flags at parades and sending volunteers to fight the Boers was not merely an affirmation of youthful nationhood. Australia and New Zealand stood to lose from the extinction of British influence in South Africa, which would have led to a shift in the balance of power throughout the southern hemisphere.
Dominion help benefited Britain, both militarily and psychologically. Large numbers of tough, enthusiastic young men who had learned to ride and shoot in the outback were exactly what the British army needed in 1899, and in a world where Britain was conspicuously friendless, dominion support was a boost to national morale. None were happier than supporters of imperial federation, who believed their creed had been vindicated and looked forward to a post-war world in which the partnership formed on the battlefield would become permanent. As in 1885, the army’s high command was quick to recognise the future value of colonial troops. In 1902, after hearing reports of an ‘unfriendly spirit’ being shown in some messes towards dominion officers, the adjutant-general rebuked those concerned. He warned them that, ‘Imperial interests of the first magnitude depend on the reception given by British officers to those of the colonial brethren, now being introduced into our commissioned ranks.’23
Unlike the stand-offish regimental officers, he and his fellow staff officers were uncomfortably aware that in any new emergency Britain would have to depend heavily on dominion manpower to fill the ranks of its armies. Mass emigration, which showed no signs of diminishing, meant that by the beginning of the twentieth century 20 per cent of the empire’s white population was living in the dominions.
10
Be Brave, Be Bold, Do Right!: The Edwardian Empire and the People
1902 ought to have been a year for hubristic celebration. It was not; imperial soldiers may have marched in step during the coronation procession of the new king, Edward VII, but the mood of the Imp
erial Conference was one of polite disharmony as dominion prime ministers rejected suggestions for closer links with Britain. Peace in South Africa gave no cause for jubilation. It had taken two exhausting years to overcome the Boers in a tedious campaign which had inspired no headlines, save ones which highlighted ‘methods of barbarism’. The fighting over, a royal commission convened to hear evidence of how the war had been conducted. Much of it was a catalogue of mischance and muddle.
What was revealed to the commissioners on such matters as the lack of an army intelligence service, mismanaged hospitals and the rejection of thousands of young, working-class volunteers because of their physical debility appeared to confirm the fears of those who had been warning their countrymen of the dangers of national decline. Their jeremiads may have sounded ironic at a time of unparalleled imperial expansion but, as they were always pointing out, appearances were misleading. The empire may have grown, but it had also become infected with a malaise which, if untreated, would end with its dissolution. Extreme pessimists, such as Major-General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the hero of Mafeking, imagined that Britain, like Rome, would be destroyed from within by a moral virus, which he believed was already spreading among the young.
There was also an external threat. Could Britain continue to survive as a global power under the pressure of challenges from Germany, the United States and Russia (now in the process of rapid industrialisation)? Nervous sidelong glances at the progress of those rivals revealed nations with greater populations and resources, and, in the case of the former two, economies that were outpacing Britain’s in terms of productivity and growth. Social-Darwinism had intruded so far into the collective thought of the major powers that it was taken for granted that they now existed in a permanent state of acute competition. For this reason, periods of intense rivalry were commonly likened to races (the race for the Nile, or, after 1906, the Anglo-German naval race) which suggested a winning post, a prize and a string of also-rans. By this analogy, Britain had led the field for most of the previous century, but after 1900 seemed to be losing ground to stronger, healthier beasts.
The disturbing possibility that Britain might find itself among the also-rans prompted a bout of intense national soul-searching among politicians, economists, social commentators and journalists. Their diagnoses of national ills were usually accompanied by a quest for remedies that would revitalise the country, restore its self-confidence and reinforce its power abroad. Analysts of the right and left concluded that only radical nostrums had any hope of success. The old Liberal orthodoxies of free trade, laissez faire and the sovereignty of market forces had failed; indeed, had contributed to Britain’s present misfortunes. Milner, who had returned in 1906 from his controversial period as high commissioner in South Africa determined to play a part in the rebirth of Britain and the empire, blamed the sad state of both on the ‘old maidenly hands’ of the Liberal leadership.
The Fabian socialist, Sydney Webb, believed that Liberal individualism had become obsolete. Writing in 1901, he insisted that, ‘We have become aware, almost in a flash, that we are not merely individuals, but members of a community, nay citizens of the world.’ The man in the street now appreciated that ‘the good government of his city, the efficiency with which his nation is organised, and the influence which his Empire is able to exercise in the councils, and consequently in the commerce of nations’ were vital for his and his childrens’ survival and prosperity.1 For Webb and imperialists on the right ‘efficiency’ became a talismanic word, holding the key to the restoration of national well-being and competitiveness.
The application of efficiency required strong government, willing to plan ahead and intervene when necessary in all areas of national life to promote better education and state-funded pension and medical programmes. ‘The building up of the nervous and muscular vitality of our race’ was for Webb ‘the principal plank of any Imperial programme’.2 A Liberal MP, stating the case for child welfare and school meals in 1906, said that while, in theory, it sounded like ‘rank Socialism’ it was in reality ‘first rate Imperialism’, for the ‘Empire cannot be built on rickety and flat-chested citizens’.3 Indeed it could not, and concern with high infant mortality rates and the need to foster a sturdy ‘imperial race’ led to the first steps being taken to provide widespread child care in the 1900s. What was in effect the foundation of the welfare state was in many respects an imperial measure. The district nurses and health visitors who instructed working-class mothers on how to bring up vigorous children were seen as serving the greater good of the empire. Supporters of such activities argued that they had been undertaken in Germany and Japan for some time.
The pursuit of efficiency in the name of empire demanded the discarding of old shibboleths, breaking up vested interests and the abandonment of systems which had become arthritic. ‘Something businesslike’ would have to replace the ‘smartness, gilt braid and gallantry’ which had hitherto characterised the army, insisted Leo Amery in 1900.4 He was then The Times’s correspondent in South Africa and so knew at first hand the shortcomings of the old army system. He was also a dedicated imperialist who admired Milner, and became one of a knot of impatient young politicians who were appalled by their elders’ failure to grasp the imperial vision and make it reality. Among his fellows was Max Aitken, a Canadian who held a Tory seat in Lancashire and later became Lord Beaverbrook.
Imperial issues were now in the forefront of British political life. They became the focus of a national debate in the spring of 1903 when Chamberlain, inspired and invigorated by a tour of South Africa, launched his tariff reform campaign. It was based upon the assumption that free trade had failed disastrously and the British economy would only thrive again if all foreign imports were taxed throughout the empire. Imperial products, chiefly foodstuffs, would be admitted duty-free so creating an empire-wide free trade system. The benefits were twofold; the imperial customs union would pave the way for an imperial federation, and the revenues raised would pay for the social reforms needed to create a robust imperial race. ‘The ideals of national strength and imperial consolidation’ were complementary to those of ‘domestic and social progress’, claimed Milner, a keen tariff reformer. National greatness, he believed, rested ultimately on ‘the welfare and contentedness of the mass of the people’ and he felt sure that working men took more pride in being members of the vast empire than their social superiors. But, he warned, patriotism could be ‘choked … in the squalor and degradation of the slums of our great cities.’5
The sheer boldness of this dual programme for imperial unity and national regeneration was its political undoing. It proved too far-reaching and radical for most of Chamberlain’s Conservative and Unionist colleagues, who split, with Churchill crossing the floor of the Commons to line up with the Liberals. The tariff debate was a godsend for the Liberals, who had spent the past eight years out of office and divided over policy, particularly towards the empire. Now they rallied behind the old battlecry of free trade and won the general election of January 1906 with a massive overall majority, their last this century. The Liberal victory owed much to their having frightened the working-class electorate into believing that the Conservatives would tax imported cereals and raise the price of bread. The most telling image of the election was a poster which showed a plump and substantial ‘Free Trade’ loaf alongside a miniature, bun-sized ‘Tariff Reform’ loaf.
Liberal vote-catching was not only aimed at the nation’s stomach. Another imperial issue, the employment conditions of Chinese indentured labourers in South Africa, was invoked to stir the nation’s conscience. What was by now an antique imperial expedient to provide cheap and abundant labour had been adopted as a stopgap measure to raise productivity in the gold mines. The scheme had Milner’s blessing and he had, imprudently as it turned out, approved flogging as a means of imposing discipline on the Chinese. The cry of ‘slavery’ was immediately raised by Liberals, the Labour party and sundry Nonconformist clergy, and with some justification. British
sexual morality was offended by the official banning of women from the mineworkers’ compounds, a restriction which, it was alleged, would cause a mass outbreak of sodomy among the frustrated Chinese. This proved not to be the case as a government enquiry of 1906 discovered. Among the evidence were the tart remarks of the Medical Officer of Health for the Rand, in whose opinion there was, per head, more sodomy among the men of London than the Chinese in Johannesburg. Understandably, the report was never published.6
The affair of the Chinese coolies had aroused the passion of the Labour party, for which the 1906 general election had been a breakthrough. Labour politicians had been and would remain ambivalent in their attitudes towards the empire. On one hand, the middle-class intellectual Fabians such as Shaw and Sydney and Beatrice Webb considered the empire a national asset which, properly managed, could benefit all its subjects. On the other, Labour leaders whose origins were in the working class and whose ideology had its roots in mid-Victorian Nonconformity and Radicalism, were deeply apprehensive about an institution that was authoritarian in its nature and seemingly devoted to the world-wide extension of capitalism, often by force.
For this reason James Keir Hardie, a Scottish ex-miner who had become the Labour party’s first MP, joined forces with left-wing Liberals to denounce the Boer War as capitalist aggression unleashed on a race of farmers, whom he likened to the now extinct, independent English yeomen. Like other Socialists, Keir Hardie was distressed by music-hall jingoism, which he believed was deliberately fomented by the bosses in the hope that working men, intoxicated by belligerent patriotism, might forget such knife-and-fork issues as wages and unemployment. This did not happen; the Labour party managed to increase its vote despite the clamour of the Jubilee and the street junketings during the early phases of the Boer War. More importantly, the party flourished in the face of a cheap popular press which, by 1910, had become for the most part Conservative and imperialist in outlook.
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire Page 39
