Edwardian Liberalism and Industrial Unrest: a class view of the decline of Liberalism

Abstract

On 20th July I906, in the clubroom of the Angel Hotel, North Walsham, Norfolk, a mixed group of Liberal grandees and working men founded the 'second' agricultural workers' union the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers' and Small Holders' Union. The new union was a product of Norfolk Liberalism in both its strengths and its weaknesses. In the aftermath of the I 906 election the Liberals stood at the highpoint of their success in Norfolk all six county seats had returned Liberal members yet their triumph was incomplete. They had no permanent organisation through which to channel the support of the rural poor into the Liberal Party. Given the electoral 'pact' between the liberals and labour, and the changing tone of national, and indeed Norwich politics this was to prove a serious weakness in the future. Additionally, after the election, there had been a number of cases of victimisation of Liberal voters, which the Liberal Party was unable, or unwilling, to do anything about, and this was already causing dissatisfaction among the farm labourers.1 The union's purpose was to win the labourers for Liberalism. In Norfolk, the Liberal election victories of I 906 were not so much the result of a programme as of a tradition of political behaviour the Gladstonian synthesis an inspired mixture of religion and reform, with just a dash of class feeling. This synthesis in Norfolk dated from the I870s, the period of the first agricultural labourers' unions. In I877, George Rix, a local official in Joseph Arch's union, together with other local union leaders, established the Norfolk County Franchise Association to agitate for the extension of the franchise to the labourer. The association remained active throughout the i 88os, and after the vote was gained was transformed into a county wide Liberal working man's association based on trade union branches and village Liberal clubs. The politics of these clubs was firmly Gladstonian, and dictated by men, like Rix, who were working class themselves. Rix was an ex-labourer who had turned small shopkeeper after being victimised; a Primitive Methodist lay Preacher and Sunday School superintendent; and secretary of the largest non-affiliated friendly society in Norfolk, as well as a union agitator. To him, and to most of his supporters, Gladstone embodied radicalism. In his autobiography Rix constantly referred to him as 'my Grand Old Man',2 and he arranged for a Gladstonian candidate to fight Mid-Norfolk as a Home Ruler in i 886 when the sitting Liberal deserted to Liberal unionism.3 In two speeches in I 88 I Rix stated his political beliefs, and his politics in that year probably represent what most