One of the more significant results of the election of 1892 was the election of Keir Hardie to the seat of West Ham South. He stood as an independent but he soon became involved in the creation of an Independent Labour party which would stand apart from Liberals as well as Conservatives. He had already created a surprise at Westminster by arriving in a cloth cap and tweed jacket, and his clothes perhaps marked his sense of vocation. The inaugural conference of the Independent Labour party was opened on 14 January 1893. Its purpose was to create a party majority on the necessity of labour reform, which meant they were more intent upon alliance with the trade unions than with the myriad socialist parties which had really become talking shops.
Gladstone was still in the thrall of Home Rule. He had given his assent to the Newcastle Programme but his heart was not in it. Chamberlain pressed him for the details of the imminent Home Rule Bilclass="underline" ‘How long are you going to allow ducks and drakes to be made by the Irish party of all your British legislation?’ Gladstone introduced his Second Home Rule Bill in February 1893. He and Chamberlain were now pitted against each other as in some tableau of age and relative youth. ‘I say that never in the history of the world’, Chamberlain declaimed, ‘has a risk so tremendous been encountered with such a light hearted indifference to its possible results’. The Second Reading was carried for Gladstone, with the help of the Irish Nationalists, by a margin of forty-three votes. The members of the Stock Exchange marched in formation and burnt the bill in front of the Guildhall. The bill slowly went forward, but not without great bitterness and recrimination. A fist fight broke out on the floor of the Commons, much to the horror of the public gallery. The bill was already expiring but the House of Lords killed it by a majority of ten to one. There was no public outcry. English indifference effectively put the bill out of its misery, and Gladstone was heard to mutter: ‘I can do no more for Ireland.’ It seemed that he could do no more for anyone, and there were constant whispers that it was really time for him to go.
The final moment, for him, came when he delivered a letter of resignation to the queen at the beginning of March 1894. She accepted it in good spirits and seemed not at all perturbed by his resignation. ‘Mr Gladstone has gone out,’ she told the archbishop of Canterbury with a laugh. ‘Disappeared all in a moment.’ He was deeply upset by her lack of concern and of any attempt at commiseration or congratulation. He had stumbled a weary way and had become only the queen’s donkey. At a melancholy and lachrymose cabinet meeting, whose tears he did not appreciate, he gave his colleagues notice of his decision. Without the captain of so many years the ship seemed to drift. No one seemed capable of command.
On 15 March Lord Rosebery travelled to Windsor and kissed hands with the queen. She liked him well enough, even though she had no time for the party he represented. Rosebery had the advantage of being, in the queen’s eyes, the least objectionable Liberal. She said only that ‘she does not object to Liberal measures which are not revolutionary & she does not think it possible that Lord Rosebery will destroy well-tried, valued and necessary institutions …’ Rosebery was the Whig non plus ultra, regarding Conservatives as vulgar and other less aristocratic Liberals with only distant affection. He had also gained attention and admiration in the country for his handling of a long and complicated coal strike. So he became the chosen one. He had shown much promise in the cabinet but now, at the pinnacle of his career, he spoke with an uncertain voice. He was not sure what to do. His predecessor had so dominated the party that serious questions of policy had not been debated. Yet he was witty, and articulate, with an enviable ability to turn a phrase. In demeanour and dress he was of the 1890s. He was not Gladstone or Disraeli, or even Salisbury; he was not solid or necessarily reliable. He even looked flirtatious, and there were strange rumours about his relationship with his private secretary, the older son of the marquess of Queensberry.
When out of temper, he was irritable and impatient. The Spectator described him as a ‘butterfly Prime Minister, ephemeral in his essence’. In fact the Rosebery administration lasted for only fifteen months. The burden of his office proved too much for him, and he made the unpardonable blunder of stating that ‘the majority of Members of Parliament elected from England proper are hostile to Home Rule’. So the last eighteen months of frantic negotiation and political planning had in effect been for nothing. The new prime minister had no fire. He had no fight in his belly. He never really knew what he wanted, and the irritation he felt against other people was in reality irritation with himself. The cabinet was always in a state of indecision and disarray; he was now considered both too aloof and too flippant. He informed the queen, in the formal third person, that ‘Lord Rosebery in the meantime is shut up in a House almost unanimously opposed to his ministry and, for all political purposes, might as well be in the Tower of London.’ He could not have succeeded because he was oversensitive, resentful of opposition and inclined to paranoia. ‘He is’, Rosebery told the queen, ‘as Prime Minister more unfortunately situated than any man who ever held that high office.’ He could not sleep, and remained awake for nights at a time brooding and worrying. ‘I am unfit for human society,’ he told a colleague. This was not a good sign for a prime minister. Yet his sense of duty forced him forward.
On 19 February he summoned the cabinet and read out a prepared statement: ‘I cannot call to mind a single instance in which any individual in the party or the Ministry has spoken even casually in my defence within the walls of Parliament … The difficulties to which I allude have been hard to bear, indeed I could not undertake to face another session like the last.’ It was a strangely maudlin report from any prime minister, and confirmed his unfitness to govern. He was all bluster and self-pity. He was persuaded not to resign, for the time being, but a week later his body capitulated where his mind did not. He collapsed with influenza and the debilitating effect of the illness stayed with him. He said that he understood why people in public life committed suicide. On 21 June the secretary for War, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, was censured by the Commons over a shortage of cordite, and on the following day Rosebery persuaded his cabinet to resign en bloc as a matter of confidence. A few hours later the queen sent a message inviting Salisbury to form another administration.
At the subsequent election in July 1895 a Liberal majority of forty-three was transformed into a Unionist majority of 152, which must be recorded as one of the most considerable reversals in English political history. Rosebery and his colleagues felt nothing but relief. When Chamberlain joined the new government, the pact between the Conservative and Liberal Unionists was sealed, and a formidable coalition emerged. Rosebery admitted that the Liberal party had become ‘all legs and wings, a daddy-long-legs fluttering among a thousand flames’. He always did have a talent for phrase-making. He had also invented a phrase, ‘the clean slate’, which might have been intended for Salisbury himself, who remained as prime minister for the next seven years.
27
Lost illusions
In the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895, the heart of the late Victorian world was stripped bare. Wilde’s Irishness set him apart in England, and ensured that he looked from a distance at the customs and conventions of his adopted country. Of all people he recognized the follies of Victorian society and the vices it concealed. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was so funny that English audiences forgot – at least for the duration of the play – that they were laughing at every institution and value they held sacred. But of course it is a mistake to reveal to your contemporaries that their ideals are illusions and their understanding all vanity.