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29 Sharpe Liberal Party and South African Boer War Iain Sharpe describes the crisis in the Liberal Party that was provoked by the Anglo-Boer War. TheThe LiberalLiberal PartyParty andand thethe SouthSouth AfricanAfrican WarWar 1899–19021899–1902 he South African War of –, com- (leader in the House of Commons from to Tmonly known as the Boer War, brought to a ) and John Morley, Gladstone’s biographer, were head long-standing divisions in the Liberal Party inclined to sympathise with these views. However, over its attitude to empire and foreign policy and some Liberals (dubbed ‘Liberal Imperialists’) be- very nearly led to a permanent split along the lines lieved that a policy of opposition to imperial expan- of the Liberal Unionist secession. The sion was an electoral albatross for the Liberal Party. general election saw the party reach the nadir of the Lord Rosebery, Gladstone’s successor as Prime Min- its pre- electoral fortunes, when it suffered an ister, and rising stars such as Sir Edward Grey, unprecedented second successive landslide defeat. R. B. Haldane and H. H. Asquith felt that the party Internal feuding between supporters and opponents was in danger of being portrayed as unpatriotic – of the war threatened to lead a permanent division willing to countenance the dismantling of empire in the Liberal ranks, along the lines of the Liberal and thus the decline of British power. Rosebery Unionist secession of . Ye t, within four years of wanted the party to shake off the Gladstonian the war’s end the Liberals were back in power, hav- legacy and positively embrace empire. Although he ing themselves won a landslide majority. Paradoxi- resigned from the Liberal leadership in , a year cally, although the war led to the Liberal defeat in after his government was defeated in a general , its legacy contributed to the victory. election, he remained a ‘king over the water’ for many Liberals who sympathised with his views. The third strand of opinion was represented by Empire and the Liberal Party Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Liberal leader The divisions in the Liberal Party that the war ac- from . Campbell-Bannerman belonged to the centuated had their origins in differing views on centre of the party, describing himself as ‘a Liberal how the party should cope with the growing enthu- and an imperialist enough for any decent man’. He siasm for empire among the electorate during the and many mainstream Liberals broadly supported s and s. On these issues the party divided the Cobden/Gladstone tradition, but saw the need into three camps. Many Liberals believed the party for the party to be pragmatic. They recognised that should follow in the footsteps of Cobden, Bright hostility to empire was not electorally popular, but and Gladstone in supporting ‘peace, retrenchment equally they rejected the views of the Liberal Impe- and reform’. They opposed overseas expansion and rialists who seemed prepared to abandon Liberal entanglements as wrong in themselves and as drains principles altogether in the cause of electoral expe- on the exchequer. Many backbench Liberal MPs felt diency. Campbell-Bannerman’s views were shared that it was a fundamental purpose of the party to by a substantial section of the party but, as is often maintain what they saw as the ‘Liberal tradition’ of a the case when parties suffer debilitating splits, those pacific foreign and imperial policy. Some leading at either extreme were unwilling to unite around a figures in the party such as Sir William Harcourt compromise policy for the sake of party unity. Given Journal of Liberal Democrat History 29 Winter 2000–01 3 the nature of these divisions, an impe- Diamond Jubilee year, Harcourt’s room opposed the war saw it as the party’s rial war was guaranteed to highlight for manoeuvre was constrained by the duty to follow in the tradition of and widen the faultlines within the need to avoid appearing unpatriotic. Gladstone’s – Midlothian cam- Liberal Party. The Jameson Raid episode highlighted paign and defend the rights of small na- the dilemma the Liberals faced in op- tions. However, Liberal MPs who were posing the government on matters that involved in anti-war agitation were Britain and South Africa appeared to involve Britain’s vital na- mostly obscure and eccentric back- 1877–1899 tional interests – a dilemma which was benchers, while their sympathisers at to recur during the war. the higher levels of the party remained The war in South Africa was the culmi- nation of a quarter of a century’s efforts To recover Britain’s position after circumspect. Thus anti-war Liberals by British governments to establish su- the raid, the government appointed Sir were unable to impose their policy on premacy in the region, which was seen Alfred Milner as High Commissioner the party leadership. Many Liberal op- as a vital British strategic interest as a to the Cape Colony in . Milner, a ponents of the war became involved in committed imperialist who described non-party organisations such as the key point on the route to India. South Africa consisted of the two British himself as a ‘British race patriot’, was South Africa Conciliation Committee colonies of the Cape and Natal and two a highly-regarded administrator and and the more extreme Stop-the-War independent Dutch republics, Transvaal had close links with the Liberal Im- Committee. In February some of and Orange Free State. In perialists, sharing a Balliol back- them set up the League of Liberals Disraeli’s government annexed the ground with Asquith and Grey. He Against Militarism and Aggression as a Transvaal, but after an uprising by was determined to bring matters to a pressure group for anti-war Liberals. Transvaalers and the defeat of a British head and assert British supremacy in Opponents of the war were dubbed army at the battle of Majuba Hill in South Africa. After abortive negotia- ‘pro-Boers’ by their opponents, and tions during the summer of , often adopted the label themselves as a , the new Liberal government ef- fectively restored its independence un- Britain despatched troops to South badge of defiance. In response to the der British suzerainty. The discovery of Africa in September and in response creation of the League of Liberals gold in the Transvaal in made the Transvaal and the Orange Free Against Militarism and Aggression, matters more pressing as it meant that State launched a pre-emptive inva- Liberal Imperialists founded the Im- the Transvaal could be in an economi- sion of Natal. perial Liberal Council in the spring of cally dominant position within South , although the most famous Lib- Africa. Over the following decade eral Imperialists such as Rosebery, Britain tried to force the Transvaal into The outbreak of war Asquith, Haldane and Grey held aloof accepting a British-dominated South From the start Campbell-Bannerman from the Council as it was inconsistent African federation. as Liberal leader tried to resolve the with their previously expressed criti- At the end of the Cape Prime problem of how to lead an opposition cisms of the factionalism of the pro- Minister, Cecil Rhodes, engineered the party during wartime, without appear- Boers. For Liberal Imperialists the war ‘Jameson Raid’, an invasion of the ing unpatriotic. His position was made offered an opportunity to restore the Transvaal in support of a planned ris- more difficult by the fact that British party’s patriotic credentials by putting ing by the Uitlanders – British citizens territory had been invaded and, in the party differences aside and supporting living in the Transvaal who dominated early part of the war, was under enemy the government. In June the occupation, so opposition to the war Imperial Liberal Council scored a the gold mining industry there. The rising did not take place and the raid was not a realistic political option. propaganda victory when it managed ended in fiasco with the invading force Campbell-Bannerman pursued a mid- to get thirty-eight Liberal MPs to vote being captured by Transvaal comman- dle course, agreeing to vote supplies with the government on a pro-Boer dos. The embarrassment of the raid’s for the war, but criticising the govern- motion on the defence estimates, ment’s aggressive diplomacy in dealing while only thirty Liberal MPs voted failure was compounded by a wide- spread suspicion that the Unionist Co- with the Transvaal. But while many for the motion itself. lonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, Liberal MPs could support this posi- The initial months of the war saw a was complicit in its planning. How- tion, there were many on either wing series of humiliating setbacks for the ever, when a House of Commons com- of the party who would not rally British forces, but from early for- mittee of inquiry into the raid made no round it. tunes changed. The news of the relief of criticism of the government the Liberal Splits in the party became apparent the siege of Mafeking arrived on leader, Sir William Harcourt, who almost immediately after the outbreak May, and led to spontaneous patriotic served on the committee, was widely of war. An amendment to the Queen’s demonstrations in major towns and felt to have let Chamberlain off the Speech in October criticising the gov- cities and attacks on the homes of hook. Yet, since the inquiry took place ernment’s diplomacy, moved by Liberal prominent pro-Boers. In Battersea, the at a time when delicate negotiations MP Philip Stanhope, won the support future cabinet minister John Burns had of fifty-five Liberal MPs even though his windows smashed by a jingoistic were taking place with the Transvaal and in the middle of Queen Victoria’s the leadership abstained.
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