The new king, George, was ‘heart-broken and overwhelmed’ by the death of the man whom he called ‘the best of fathers’. As a youth, Edward’s second son had trained as a naval officer, but on the death of his elder brother towards the end of Victoria’s reign he had become second in line to the throne, and his naval career had come to an abrupt end. Marriage, children, a crash course in constitutional history and tours of the empire followed, though George did not enjoy either of the latter pursuits, being as averse to foreign food as he was uninterested in books.
Short in stature and knock-kneed, George was a modest and devoted family man. His naval training had moulded his character. Although he lived like a conservative country squire, he thought and talked like a naval officer, with a booming gruff voice and a fondness for salty humour. He had inherited his father’s blue eyes and fair hair but lacked Edward’s Falstaffian figure, energy and bonhomie, as well as his passionate interest in high society and continental diplomacy. Within weeks of his ascent to the throne, George had the luxurious decor of Buckingham Palace toned down; he also decided to keep lavish public banquets to a minimum, since they did not agree with his poor digestion. George was intent on restoring the atmosphere of simplicity, earnestness and domesticity that had characterized the English court in the reign of his grandmother. While the king’s air of melancholy was sometimes dissipated on public occasions and while he could be explosive in private, he never acted impulsively. To the outside world, it seemed that the private and reserved king dedicated his time to hunting and stamp collecting. Yet his passion for those pursuits revealed a singlemindedness as well as a desire for order.
The history lessons George had received in his youth could not have prepared him for the political crisis that he faced after his coronation. Asquith had urged the new king to threaten the Tory-dominated Lords with the creation of new Liberal peers if they did not pass the bill that would restrict their powers. If George refused to do so, the prime minister would resign and go to the country. As a natural Tory, George had an instinctive dislike of the Liberal government; he hated that ‘damned fellow’ Lloyd George and regarded Asquith as ‘not quite a gentleman’. Yet against his instincts, he acceded to his prime minister’s demand; siding with ‘the peers against the people’ had seemed too dangerous in a nation increasingly exercised by inequality. In retrospect, George believed he had made a grave error, and blamed Asquith for exploiting his inexperience.
The early years of George’s reign would be both testing and fiery. Between 1910 and 1914, England’s society and economy seemed to be on the point of collapse, while the population was described as seething with unrest. The minority Liberal government – and the political system as a whole – appeared impotent in the face of new challenges and progressive demands. ‘In 1910,’ wrote the historian George Dangerfield in The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935), ‘the fires long smouldering in the English spirit suddenly flared up, so that by the end of 1913 Liberal England was reduced to ashes.’
The first of the social and political conflagrations identified by Dangerfield came in the form of industrial action, which spread across the country after 1910. The Times described the strikes as ‘of an unexampled character’ in their extent and intensity. Throughout England, groups of workers downed tools. Most were protesting for better working conditions, while some were demanding an increase in wages, which had declined sharply in real terms. The failure of the ‘New Liberal’ social reforms to substantially reduce the incidence of poverty was also a source of discontent. ‘Some magical allurement,’ commented Ramsay MacDonald, seemed to ‘seize the Labour world’ as 1910 progressed. Without warning, hundreds of women factory workers in London stopped work and poured onto the streets. There the strikers shouted, sang and encouraged other workers to join the protest.
In 1911 the strikes proliferated and intensified. Protests overwhelmed the ports, the mines and the railways. ‘More works are being closed down every day,’ wrote Austen Chamberlain, son of Joseph and leader of the protectionist wing of the Unionist Alliance. ‘More trains are being taken off the railways. The whole machinery of national life is slowly stopping.’ Asquith used a similar metaphor when he spoke of the ‘severe strain upon the whole social and political machine’. It seemed that society and the economy, which in normal times worked independently of government control, were in danger of breaking down. The vast majority of trade unionists and Labour MPs did not want to replace the machine with another, socialist model, but they did want the government to ensure it apportioned a higher percentage of profits to the workers. State intervention should, MacDonald argued, be in the interest of the general community. Yet many Liberals felt this would represent a categorical rejection of laissez-faire politics and economics; it would also encourage the idea that wealth ought to be redistributed along with profits, through increased progressive taxation on incomes, on property and on assets, or even through direct redistributive socialist legislation. While the ‘People’s Budget’ had made steps in a reformist direction, Lloyd George had intended it as a defence against socialism, rather than as a promotion of that ‘illiberal’ ideology.
Asquith’s government had to improvise a response to the strikes, and without the benefit of a parliamentary majority. They tried various strategies, which enjoyed varying degrees of failure. Churchill, who had been promoted to home secretary in 1910, tried to force the strikers back to work by sending in the army to confront them. In Liverpool, riots broke out and the troops fired on protesters, killing two men. King George thought the situation ‘more like revolution than a strike’ and felt the government’s response should be more draconian. The English establishment was beginning to panic.
When Labour MPs attacked government coercion, Asquith tried passing legislation. One government-sponsored bill guaranteed a minimum wage to the miners, while another granted unions the right to establish funds for political purposes. Yet it was not enough to appease the strikers, including those who worked on the railways. In 1911 the government decided to play its best card and sent Lloyd George to broker a deal between the railway workers and their employers. The chancellor was famous as a ‘man of the people’, and posed as their ‘champion’. ‘He plays upon men round a table,’ Asquith’s secretary wrote, ‘like the chords of a musical instrument … until a real harmony is struck.’ Lloyd George’s verbal dexterity had its effect and an agreement was reached, though he could not repeat his success the following year, when he was unable to reconcile the striking dockers and their employers. After that failure, the government retreated from direct involvement in industrial disputes, and the strikes continued with increasing intensity. More than a thousand protests now took place annually, and involved over a million and a half workers – eight times the number who had gone on strike in each year of Edward’s reign.
In the long term, the consequences of these strikes were beneficial for both the unions and for the working class generally. Union membership swelled, becoming twice as high in 1914 as it had been in 1906, while workingclass consciousness was encouraged. Along with the rise of the Labour party, the strikes gave a clear indication to the government and ruling class that the low place allotted to workers in Victorian England was unacceptable to the labourers of the new century. They demanded a greater share of the fruits of their labour, and were prepared to take action if denied it.