Ian Packer

Religion and the New Liberalism: the Rowntree family, Quakerism, and social reform

Religious historians have increasingly rejected the idea that Britain before World War I was a society in which religion played a small and diminishing role; however, the implications of this conclusion have not been fully worked out in approaches to politics in the current period. Packer argues that religious developments were, in fact, crucial in allowing the party to accept the leaderships wish to steer toward the New Liberalism. He further reviews some of the major themes in the current historiography on the relationship between politics and religion in the Edwardian era and uses the Rowntree family as a detailed example of the close connection between aspects of the New Liberalism.

Liberal government and politics, 1905-15

The Liberal governments of 1905-15 faced some of the most daunting challenges of any recent British government. They had to deal with mounting political crisis in Ireland, violent campaigns from suffragettes demanding the vote for women, serious industrial unrest and a troubled international situation, that ended with the outbreak of the First World War. In the midst of all this, the Liberals not only survived, but finally removed the power of the House of Lords to veto legislation and laid the foundations for the modern welfare state by introducing old age pensions and the system of national insurance. This book examines how the Edwardian Liberal governments charted their way through these conflicting definitions of Liberal ideology in order to understand the nature of early twentieth-century Liberalism and why Liberal governments chose particular courses of action. The book covers all the key areas of domestic and foreign policy and concludes with a section on the Asquith government and World War One.

A CURIOUS EXCEPTION

The Edwardian era saw the final flowering of the partisan provincial press. In the decade before 1914, most of the major newspapers published outside London still displayed a clear party allegiance and collectively they outsold their London rivals. Some of the most important figures in the provincial press on the Liberal side were the cocoa manufacturer and philanthropist, Joseph Rowntree, and the associated trio, often known as the “Starmer group”, of Arnold Rowntree (Josephs nephew), John Bowes Morrell (his business partner) and the newspaperman, Charles Starmer. Between them they rescued several important Liberal newspapers like the Northern Echo and Sheffield Independent for the party cause. But one of the groups lesser-known acquisitions, and its last before the First World War, was the Lincolnshire Chronicle in June 1914. This article argues that the Lincolnshire Chronicles purchase can best be seen as a purely commercial investment by the “Starmer group” and that this may indicate that the group was starting to become more interested in the press as a business, rather than as a political project. The article also examines how the layout and content of the Lincolnshire Chronicle were changed under its new owners in order to increase its profitability, often using methods pioneered elsewhere in the “Starmer group”, and resulting in a more standardised, “modern” format. In doing so, the article draws attention to the complexities of the interaction between power and profit in the Edwardian press and suggests the Lincolnshire Chronicle can be seen as a harbinger of the commercial, rather than political, future that lay before provincial newspaper groups in the post-First World War era.

Contested Ground: Trends in British By-elections, 1911–1914

By-elections in the period 1911–1914 were intensely scrutinised, both by Edwardian politicians and historians. For politicians, they were a crucial measure of public opinion at a time of intense party warfare, even though their results were capable of a variety of interpretations. Historians have shared these disagreements, both over how well Labour was performing and whether the Conservatives’ results showed they could be confident of victory over the Liberals in a future general election. This article re-examines these controversies and analyses to what extent perceptions of by-election trends influenced politicians’ political calculations and how much weight can be placed on by-election results in 1911–1914 as indications of the parties’ longer term futures.

Robert Southey and the Peninsular Campaign

This essay examines two aspects of Southey’s Romantic Iberianism that have often been overlooked—his writings on the peninsular conflict in the Edinburgh Annual Register and his unfinished series of inscriptions on the war. Both shed important light on Southey’s developing political ideas and on his sense of his public role. Moreover, they connect Southey the writer of prose (particularly contemporary history) with Southey the controversial Poet Laureate.

‘[A] treacherous allusion’: Robert Southey, Agincourt and the Hundred Years War

The Battle of Agincourt (1415) has played a central role in celebrations of English national heroism. This article examines one of the most important challenges within English culture to the battle’s status, Robert Southey’s poem, Joan of Arc (1796). The essay analyses why the poem was written, how it set out to change national views about Agincourt but why, ultimately, even Southey came to accept he had failed. Southey was more successful in critiquing Agincourt through his play Wat Tyler (written 1794, published 1817), which played a key role in creating an alternative, radical method of remembering the Hundred Years War.

International Journal of Regional and Local History Editorial

The articles in this first issue of the International Journal of Regional and Local History published with Maney are indicative of the range and scope of material the journal aims to publish in its new form. We open with an extended introduction comprised of a short series of opinion pieces, commissioned from leading scholars in the field. In the first section, Edward Royle explores the history of the journal from its origins as the Journal of Local Studies in 1980 to the point at which it incorporated Regional Studies into its title. The intellectual rationale for creating a journal with this focus is picked up in the following sections of our introduction, which deal with different aspects of local and regional history in a variety of international contexts. In Britain, an important site for the development of local history has been the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester; from there Richard Jones and Keith Snell have provided a fascinating account of the history of the politics of the subject in Britain. They outline what they feel are some of the reasons for its depoliticisation since 1979, and provide a cogent argument for the need for local and regional histories to regain a political edge. Our next two contributors demonstrate that a political purpose remains part of local and regional histories in different national contexts. Tracing some developments in the field in South Africa from the mid twentieth century to the present day, Vivian Bickford-Smith suggests – amongst other things – that the transition to a more pluralist post-apartheid society has broadened the scope of local history in that continent, considering different locations (black as well as white districts) and identities. The introduction ends with an overview of some current trends in local and regional history in Europe from Raingard Esser. As well as suggesting some different political uses of the subject in a European context, she gives an indication of the many important new methodologies that are being deployed in the field, and introduces some important large projects currently underway. Although our predecessor aimed to carry articles from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the majority of its content was historical, as Royle points out. Our new identity as the International Journal of Regional and Local History reflects this, but aims to attract articles dealing with a wide range of regions and localities international journal of regional and local history, Vol. 8 No. 1, May, 2013, 1–2

Unemployment, Taxation and Housing: The Urban Land Question in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Britain

Nineteenth-century British radicals had a long-standing interest in land reform as a means of attacking the dominant social and political role of great landowners. But it was not until the 1880s that a number of factors coincided to bring ‘the land’ to the very centre of British politics. These included the prolonged agricultural depression and the protests it produced within rural society, the extension of the franchise to the working class in the counties in 1884–85 and the defection of most Liberal landowners to the Unionist alliance in 1886.1 All these developments gave the Liberal party an incentive to promote rural land reform, both to attack their landed enemies and to gain the votes of the newly enfranchised agricultural labourers. The 1894 Local Government Act, which empowered parish councils to acquire land for allotments, and the 1907 Smallholdings Act were important parts of the programmes of the 1892–95 and 1905–15 Liberal governments.2 But as rural land reform made an appearance on the national political stage, it brought into the limelight a number of arguments which were already gaining ground in local government and which suggested land reform could present a solution to some pressing problems of urban life. This was an attractive option to many Liberals, who were only too eager to blame landowners for all society’s ills; and while large landowners were obviously less prominent in complex and economically diverse urban societies than in the countryside, there were enough high-profile examples to make them plausible targets for radical enmity.3