Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [236]
The Parliament of 1906 convinced the Tories of the rise of Socialism with its explicit threat to the existence of Privilege. Until now the landed aristocracy and squirearchy had believed that they could speak for the people, that their national interest was the same, that in that sense they were one. They believed in the benevolent working of Tory Democracy as long as it did not interfere with the existing order. They thought of the populace in terms of the rural and servant class whom they knew. George Wyndham, Chief Secretary for Ireland in Balfour’s Cabinet, a dithyrambic true-blue Tory who retained his seat in 1906, believed he had won, as he wrote his mother, “because the working men love me. I won by their hearts.… All my song has been the brotherhood of the Empire for us all, fair terms for the Foreigner, and the glory of Empire for our children with a little straight talk for Christianity in our schools.… I have opened my heart to all their hearts and we just love each other. I won on Toryism, Empire and Fiscal Reform. The Irish voted for me, the Fishermen voted for me, the Soldiers voted for me, the Artisans voted for me! Simply because we liked each other and love the traditions of the past and the Glory of the future.”
Wyndham’s charming Eighteenth Century picture, whatever the case in his own constituency, was for England, as for the rest of the world in 1906, as dead as the Prince Regent. The agricultural class was disappearing, seeping into the cities, and between the industrial proletariat which was replacing it and the patricians, there was no love or common interest. Wyndham and his kind knew nothing of miners and millhands and people who lived in long monotonous rows of urban houses. “Fancy,” said Winston Churchill, born in Blenheim Palace, when canvassing with a friend in Manchester they entered a particularly drab street, “living in one of those streets, never seeing anything beautiful, never eating anything savoury—never saying anything clever!” The partakers of that fate were the new voters.
Among the 377 Liberal M.P.’s, 154, or 40 per cent, were businessmen, 85 were barristers and solicitors, 69 were “Gentlemen,” 25 were writers and journalists, 22 were officers and the remaining 22 included university professors, teachers, doctors and champions of causes. Among the defeated Tories the largest category was still Gentlemen, representing 30 per cent, followed by businessmen at 25 per cent and officers 20 per cent. Almost half the House, to the number of 310, were new men who had never sat in Parliament before. A noble lord on visiting the newly assembled body was relieved to find that few were in “unconventional dress,” but Punch’s veteran correspondent Sir Henry Lucy found the tone, character and social behavior of the House “revolutionized.” The Irish were a rough group notable for bad manners which they exercised deliberately, uncowed by the traditions of the House. Since it was English they hated it, and since the Liberal majority had no need of them, they had no bargaining value and could do little but take out their frustration in noise and nuisance value to impede any legislation that was not Home Rule. Their old, hard-fought, ever-foiled battle to unseat English rule and govern themselves was not helped but swamped by the size of the Liberal victory.
When Balfour returned, the hostile majority openly showed their dislike of him as leader and symbol of the defeated party. New members, according to Austen Chamberlain, were “intolerant and rude to him … jeered at him and constantly interrupted him.” Unmoved, debonair as ever, he remained master of debate and was able within a year to re-establish his ascendancy and win the respect of his opponents who “felt he gave distinction to the House.” Although many of the new Government were his personal friends,