154. A great man falls, a lesser one fades
A History of England6 Elo 2023

154. A great man falls, a lesser one fades

With both eyesight and hearing fading, Gladstone couldn’t last long after his defeat on Home Rule. Though he lasted as long as he could. Even after almost the entire cabinet prevented him from blocking an increase in naval expenditure, demanded by the admirals, and which he feared would merely add fuel to the fire of an arms race, he still clung on for a while longer. Finally though, in February 1898 he went.

But who would replace him? Would it be Spencer, his favoured candidate despite having opposed Gladstone over the naval expenditure? Well, Victoria didn’t even do him the courtesy of consulting him about his successor, so what he favoured didn’t matter.

Might it be Harcourt, the Chancellor and ‘little Englander’ whose cautious view of imperialism was in line with thinking across the mainstream of the Liberal Party?

Or would it be the Liberal Imperialist Rosebery, who’d keep the party firmly anchored to its right wing?

Well, Victoria was quite an imperialist herself. Rosebery was picked. He head a short-lived, inglorious government, torn by internal dissension – Harcourt couldn’t forgive him for depriving him of a position to which he thought he was entitled – which fifteen months later simply imploded and meekly resigned, letting Salisbury form his third administration.

That was the opening of a Tory decade. It was that long before the Liberals got another chance to form a government.


Illustration: Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, by Henry T. Greenhead, published 23 October 1894, when Gladstone’s successor was a fading Prime Minister. National Portrait Gallery D39875

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.


Jaksot(274)

209. Aftermath of defeat

209. Aftermath of defeat

We pick up the story just after the defeat of the 1926 British General Strike. It was a bad time for the unions, with strikes accounting for only just over a fifth as many working days lost in the wh...

15 Syys 202414min

208. Taking a break

208. Taking a break

It's time for A History of England to take a short break, until 15 September. So this episode is a brief review of where we’ve got to, after the defeat of the General Strike. That defeat showed the po...

18 Elo 20246min

207. Revolution?

207. Revolution?

It’s the general strike! This time the unions couldn’t push Stanley Baldwin’s government into making concessions to the miners. That was because while, in his own words, in the previous year Baldwin ...

11 Elo 202414min

206. Confrontation

206. Confrontation

The Labour government was kicked out of office at the 1924 General Election, in a campaign marked by the Conservative-leaning Daily Mail engaging in some fake news. It published a forged letter claimi...

4 Elo 202414min

205. The Empire at its peak, the country in the pits

205. The Empire at its peak, the country in the pits

In contrast to the last episode, where we saw how dire the state of the British economy was and how close to violent confrontation society was coming, this episode is the one where we find Britain rea...

28 Heinä 202414min

204. Forward to revolution?

204. Forward to revolution?

The promise of building Britain into a ‘land fit for heroes’ never came close to being kept. Instead inflation undermined wages, unemployment rose, and living conditions, with widespread slum housing,...

21 Heinä 202414min

203. Carthaginian Peace

203. Carthaginian Peace

Before moving on from the times when Lloyd George held power, we take a look in this episode at one of the major moments of his time as an international statesman: the Paris Peace Conference and, abov...

14 Heinä 202414min

202. Fall following the decline

202. Fall following the decline

The Chanak crisis of 1922 brought Britain to the brink of war with Turkey. Saner heads, in particular those of both the British general on the spot and the Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal, soon to be Tu...

7 Heinä 202414min

Suosittua kategoriassa Historia

olipa-kerran-otsikko
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
mayday-fi
huijarit
mystista
rss-ikiuni
tsunami
konginkangas
totuus-vai-salaliitto
rouva-diktaattori
rss-i-dont-like-mondays-2
historiaa-suomeksi
rss-kirkon-ihmeellisimmat-tarinat
rss-subjektiivinen-todistaja
rss-sattuu-sita-suomessakin
sotaa-ja-historiaa-podi
historian-nurkkapoyta
apinan-vuosi
rss-peter-peter
maailmanpuu