85 Report Little Joseph Chamberlain July 2014
REPORTS The man who made the weather: Joseph Chamberlain – imperial standard bearer, national leader, local icon Centenary conference, Birmingham 4–5 July 2014 Report by Tony Little bout 100 people attended was compounded both by his crea- the special conference – tive vision of the post as prime Aheld in Birmingham and ministerial rather than merely an partly funded by the Liberal Demo- honoured chairman, and by his crat History Group – to mark the unexpected partnership with Sir centenary of the death of Joseph Richard Cross of Disraeli’s 1874– Chamberlain. Making the open- 1880 government.1 ing address at Newman University, The rest of the first day was Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Alan taken up with a series of papers cov- Beith, summed up Chamberlain as ering Chamberlain’s interactions a man whom Birmingham should with the wider world: Chamberlain thank but the Liberal and Con- and his rivals; Chamberlain’s post- a British South Africa or recog- servative parties probably wished home-rule career; and the repre- nise the British contribution to its they had never met. A pioneering sentation of Chamberlain in the rebuilding. There are no memorials executive mayor whose enterprise rich visual media of Victorian and to Chamberlain in South Africa. still shapes Birmingham, he was Edwardian Britain. These formed Relations with New Zealand’s also the figurehead, and more, for the real meat of the conference for charismatic, radical premier, Rich- the emergence of the Liberal Party historians. ard Seddon, were rather more cor- as an accountable, campaigning, dial, as Tom Brooking explained. national, mass-membership organi- Seddon was an autodidact – a self- sation.
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