Another emblem of England’s anxiety was the Boy Scout Movement. Its founder, Lieutenant General Robert Baden-Powell, had taken part in the Boer War, and knew first-hand the alarming condition of the British troops. Convinced that the British Empire was in a state of decline, he was determined to halt the process. The shadow of imperial and racial catastrophe hangs over every page of his book Scouting for Boys, which became a bestseller in 1908. The book inspired the spontaneous creation of ‘Scout Patrols’ throughout England; there were over 100,000 scouts by 1910. The boys were organized by ‘masters’, many of whom were ex-soldiers; they encouraged the scouts to become fitter, more resilient and resourceful, through an emphasis on outdoor activities and survival skills. ‘Through Scouting, sickly, weak and barrel-chested boys would’, Baden-Powell declared, ‘be trained in the traits of manhood.’ With their army-style uniforms, ranks, flag ceremonies and troop inspections, the scouts formed an unofficial youth army. Their motto was ‘Be prepared’.
6
Demands for reform
The Liberals won the 1906 election with a huge majority. The Unionist coalition lost more than half of its 400 seats, with Balfour and many members of the cabinet among the casualties. Three hundred and ninety-seven Liberals were returned to the Commons, where the party held 241 more seats than their rivals. It was one of the most spectacular defeats in Conservative history; after twenty years of dominance, many Tories found it difficult to accept. Yet Balfour was stoical in defeat. As the election results had come in, he murmured: ‘These things will happen.’
During the election campaign, the Liberals had attacked the Unionist coalition’s record, and in particular the Boer War. They had also denounced Chamberlain’s protectionist plans, arguing that tariffs would increase the price of imported food. By accepting this argument, the electorate ensured that laissez-faire doctrine would continue to determine economic policy, perhaps to the detriment of a manufacturing sector in urgent need of reinvigoration. The 1906 election was therefore a protest vote. The electorate passed the severest possible judgement not only on the Unionist Alliance, but also on the Tories and on Toryism. Voters had decided that the party was not fit to face the challenges of the new century, and that the ‘governing class’ it represented was unworthy of power. It is suggestive that half of those returned to the Commons in 1906 were new MPs, very few of whom came from the landed gentry.
Balfour’s immediate concerns involved returning to the Commons and maintaining his own position. He achieved his first aim by means of a safe seat, but the second proved more problematic. Many Tories blamed his leadership for the election defeat. Leo Maxse, the editor of the right-wing National Review, thought Balfour had ‘fallen into complete disrepute outside the Commons’. To add to Balfour’s problems, the vast majority of Conservatives and Liberal Unionist MPs returned to the Commons in 1906 were pro-protectionist. This left him at the head of an alliance whose principal policy he did not altogether support; he was also vulnerable to a leadership challenge from Chamberlain. At the age of seventy, however, the dynamo of the Unionist Alliance was finally slowing down. Soon after the election, Chamberlain suffered a stroke and was forced to retire from public life. For the moment, Balfour was unchallenged as leader.
Balfour’s inept leadership and Chamberlain’s retirement were not the only reasons for the pessimism in the Tory party. The Conservative privy counsellor Sir James Fergusson had been defeated at the election by a workingclass trade unionist, and such losses seemed to presage a difficult time. ‘The Old Conservative Party has gone forever,’ one party veteran lamented. The Labour party was identified as the primary cause of the electoral rout, as well as the greatest cause for future concern: ‘The Labour Movement and Organisation’, one Tory politician commented, ‘has been of incomparably greater importance than anything else’. Balfour agreed, hearing in the results ‘a faint echo of the same revolutionary movement which has produced massacres in St. Petersburg, riots in Vienna and socialist processions in Berlin’.
Labour’s share of seats had increased sharply, from two to twenty-nine. Their success was facilitated by the secret Liberal–Labour pact of 1903, according to which each party allowed representatives of the other to stand unchallenged in selected constituencies. The two parties were united in their commitment to anti-militarism, free trade and social reform, though there were obvious differences in outlook. The Liberals aspired to represent the whole country, whereas Labour’s aim was to further the cause of the working class and the unions. Labour MPs also advocated far more extensive social reform than most Liberals.
By making the 1903 pact the Liberals bought the support of a small group of Labour MPs, at a time when a landslide victory for them seemed impossible. They were about the rise of Labour as an independent parliamentary force, and a party that might one day monopolize the votes of the less affluent electorate. ‘We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour,’ Campbell-Bannerman remarked. ‘We have too few of them in the House.’ It was a short-term calculation which had long-term consequences. The pact helped to establish Labour as a major party which could rival the Liberals for the anti-Tory vote among the progressive middle classes. Yet the risks were not only on the Liberals’ side. There was a danger that Labour would lose its distinct identity and eventually be absorbed into the Liberal party, whose extreme radical wing espoused views on social reform that were similar to its own.
Among the new intake of Labour MPs were the eloquent Scot Ramsay MacDonald, and the methodical Yorkshireman Philip Snowden. Both of these workingclass men had former links with the Liberal party, while MacDonald had been one of the main architects of the Lib–Lab pact. Although the pair declared their support for socialism, it was a parliamentary, Christian and nonrevolutionary variety. Like most Labour MPs, they were part of a generation of newly literate workingand lower-middle-class men. Their intellectual influences were British writers such as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and Charles Dickens, rather than Karl Marx. After establishing himself as one of the leaders of parliamentary Labour, MacDonald was determined that it should develop into a serious Westminster party rather than a trade union pressure group. The party might, he believed, one day displace the Liberals as the main electoral alternative to the Tories. Arthur Henderson, a self-educated Methodist and erstwhile Liberal sympathizer, joined MacDonald, Snowden and Keir Hardie in the Commons. Henderson’s rise from prominent unionist to Labour MP is emblematic of the key factor in Labour’s success: the decision of the unions to turn to politics to secure the legislative gains they had made.
The new Labour MPs were earnest, studious and often teetotal. Yet despite their distinctly un-revolutionary nature, their arrival in the Commons caused consternation among orthodox Tories. What would King Edward make of their uncouth appearance when he opened parliament? Advanced intellectuals and optimistic reformers welcomed the advent of the new men, and in doing so offered further evidence of the cultural divide in England between those who wanted to shore up the Victorian establishment and those who hoped to build a more egalitarian country from its ruins.
The success of politicians who preached socialism indicated that attitudes to state intervention were changing. Socialism implied the reorganization of society and the economy for the benefit of the whole community, rather than in the interests of an elite. Previously associated with the hated Poor Law, compulsory education and restrictions on alcohol consumption, the state was increasingly seen in a kindlier light. People gradually began to think of themselves as stakeholders in the nation.