Jaksokuvaus
We’ve been tracking years and years of Tory rule in Britain. It’s as though the once dominant Liberal Party had practically vanished from the scene. In fact, though, things were changing in its ranks, with new figures emerging to lead the party back towards government. One of these, David Lloyd George, we’ve met before but briefly and, in this episode, we get to know him better. However, despite the moves to start sorting out the Liberals’ difficulties and, above all, the internal divisions that were losing it so much support, it still had more pain to come. The outbreak of the Boer War only revealed more dissension among its leaders and, since split parties don’t win elections, that together with the government’s apparent victory in South Africa as well as against the Boxer Rebellion in China, would cost the Liberals another landslide defeat in 1900. Another landslide though not quite as big as might have been expected, given how much circumstances favoured the Conservatives and handicapped the Liberals. Was that a glimmer of hope for the future? As well as Lloyd George, who won re-election in 1900 despite his anti-war stance, two other historic figures entered parliament at that election. Keir Hardie of the Independent Labour Party, who’d lost his seat in 1895, returned in 1900. And Winston Churchill won a seat for the first time, at the start of nearly 64 years in parliament with only a brief interruption. Illustration: David Lloyd George, by Harry Furniss: fiery Welsh radical giving his opponents a bad time. National Portrait Gallery 3398 Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.