This book discusses the reasons for the failure of (classical) liberalism in general and of the old English Liberal party in particular just before WWI. Dangerfield won the Pulitzer Prize for his book The Era of Good Feelings (1770s to 1820s U.S. history) in 1953. This failure of liberalism ended the broad Victorian English consensus supported by Free Trade, a majority in Parliament, the ten commandments, and the illusion of Progress (viii).
The primary outward culprits were 3 rebellions against the liberal government by Tories, Women and Workers. The author interestingly points to a non-rational, instinctual dissatisfaction among the people as underlying these outward causes and characterizes the resulting unrest as a near nervous breakdown of the society. Another stress factor he discusses is the increasing threat of both America and Japan to British hegemony in world markets.
The book is filled with interesting thoughts: "the word 'Liberal' will always have a meaning so long as there is one democracy left in the world, or any remnant of a middle class" (p. viii), "the extravagant behavior of the post-war decade, which most of us thought to be the effect of war, had really begun before the War. The War hastened everything - in politics, in economics, in behavior - but it started nothing" (p. viii).
After calling for protectionism as a result of Japanese and American inroads into world markets, the conservatives were routed by the liberals in the 1906 election. This left the House of Lords as the last bastion of conservatism. "Free trade had been an article of British faith - whether Liberal or Conservative - since the repeal of the Corn Laws [in 1846, pushed by Richard Cobden and John Bright of the Manchester school of liberal thought]: it had been a faith to which America and Europe had subscribed because they were in no position to do anything else; it had been rooted in the backwardness of other countries. To Englishmen of the 19th century it had represented that combination of the ideal and the profitable which is peculiarly English - while it stilled their consciences, it stuffed their pockets" (p. 10).
We meet Mr. Arthur James Balfour, Conservative leader and ex-Prime Minister, philosopher, lover of golf, tennis and arranging dinner parties, coming with age to resemble "an engaging, even a handsome skull," including a skull's special property of "hollow mockery" (p. 13). He led the Conservative assault upon the Liberal party.
Discussing passage of the 1906 labor-backed Trade Disputes Bill, the author says "Each party, with a delicately unconvincing air of being elsewhere, was treading a crude path of socialism: under 20th century conditions, with a partly enfranchised and largely dissatisfied working class, they could not do otherwise. The Conservatives, who looked back to the subtle radicalism of Disraeli [a Tory who favored more social welfare] and the more distant paternal schemes of Peel and St. John, followed this path with less concern than their opponents [probably because they believed they could veto any excessive reform at the House of Lords]. The Liberals still cherished at heart the teachings of Cobden and Bright, believed that state intervention was unforgivable, and watched with a growing apprehension the growing abyss which was opening between their theory and their practice. That abyss was eventually to swallow them up. Meanwhile, as a kind of capitalist left wing, they advanced upon social reform with noisy mouths and mouselike feet" (p. 15).
"In any Protestant country liquor, religion and politics are likely to go hand in hand. In England, the Conservatives and the Established Church (whose priesthood was and is a gentleman's profession) traditionally believed in a man's right to drink strong waters: the Liberals and the Chapel (that is to say, the Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and other severe, independent and socially vulgar sects) were inclined to protest, and sometimes even to believe, that drink was the Devil" (p. 15).
We meet Herbert Henry Asquith, who became the Liberal Prime Minister in 1908 upon the death of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, which event is likened to "the passing of true liberalism." "He [Asquith] had the sort of character which is so often found in the Senior Common Rooms of Oxford and Cambridge - that is to say, he was almost completely lacking in imagination or enthusiasm. The absence of these qualities does not prevent either dons or Ministers from getting through life in a very easy manner; the pleasures of the library, of the palate, of conversation or intrigue can generally make up for mere ardor" (p. 17).
The Liberal Winston Churchill is characterized as "that volitile young convert from Conservatism" and as the person who originated unemployment insurance (18). He had brought "impudence to a fine art" (88). Being a Marlborough, he was "quite incapable of identifying himself with the public, for whom he seemed to cherish a sort of genial disdain" (89). He was "by nature flamboyant, insolent in his bearing, impatient in his mind, and Tory in his deepest convictions" (89).
The Liberal David Lloyd George, that "angry little solicitor from an uncouth, starved district in Wales," represented "all those dangerous and possibly subversive opinions which Liberalism, in its grave game of progress, was forced to tolerate" (p. 18). "If his convictions had been otherwise than emotional, he would have been a socialist by this time."
It was Lloyd George's 1909 budget attacking the rich which sparked the constitutional crisis leading to the Tory Rebellion. Since the House of Lords had never before vetoed a budget bill, their veto of this one broke an important constitutional precedent. The Liberal cabinet resigned triumphantly, assuming the ensuing election would sweep them back into power with a renewed Liberal mandate. As it turned out, the vote was close and the only way the Liberals could pass their budget and humble the House of Lords was by making a deal with the Irish, in return for the promise of Home Rule. Deal they did, and additionally convinced the King to threaten to pack the House of Lords with additional Liberal seats to compel the Lords to vote to weaken their veto powers (via the Parliament Bill).
The author indicates that King Edward VII was greatly troubled by this conflict and that it may even have hastened his death on 6 May 1910. His son George V was also very troubled by it, but nevertheless agreed to play along with Asquith's threat to the Conservatives.
This question for the Lords was "shall we perish in the dark, slain by our own hand, or in the light, killed by our enemies" (1). Their lordships eventually decided on the former fate (the acquiescing "Hedgers" having outvoted the fight-to-the-last "Ditchers" 131 to 114). The author recognizes the deeper significance of this conflict between Lords and Commons as "the last ragged skirmish of a long and sometimes heroic struggle" (30). Since power and responsibility must be related, in times past powerful aristrocracy had laid claim to political leadership. Now that it was losing its economic power, it was inevitable that it must also surrender a measure of its political power.
The author discusses the nature of "the English Constitution" as follows. "To reform the House of Lords meant to set down in writing a Constitution which for centuries had remained happily unwritten, to conjure a great ghost into the narrow and corruptible flesh of a code. For this Constitution...was nowhere set forth in an Instrument. It had no visible body. A Magna Carta, an Apology, an Act of Settlement, an Act of Union, had printed themselves across the ribbed sands of English history like the footsteps of an unseen traveler, a mighty ghost. Materialized, this spectral Constitution would have been a very monster, bearing a horrid mixture of features, from Norman French to early Edwardian; a monster flagrantly improvised, illogically permanent; a monster which existed on the principle that every grievance had a remedy, but that no grievance was eternal and no remedy a panacea...This variegated spirit...was the genius of English history" (36).
Although the older Conservatives of the time were rigid and inflexible, the younger ones were elastic, businesslike and, above all, in a hurry (38). The author clarifies that the "Ditcher" wing of the Conservative party were battling to keep aristocracy by fighting to the last to preserve the veto power of the Conservative-dominated House of Lords. In this way, a confusion arises between support for aristocracy and support for limiting the excesses of the "popular" will to seize and redistribute wealth from the priviledged. This obscures the possibility of avoiding both aristocracy and socialism. Ditchers were Lord Halsbury, the Duke of Somerset, Lord Willoughby de Broke, F. E. Smith, Joseph Chamberlain and his son Austin, Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, the Salisbury family (the Marquess in the Lords, and Lords Robert and Hugh in the Commons), Sir Edward Carson, the Duke of Norfolk, George Wyndham. Hedgers were Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Balfour, Curzon (a convert thus hated by Ditchers).
Of the close vote between Hedgers and Ditchers, the author writes "the Constitution, still unmaterialized in its mighty progress, had planted one more large footstep in the sands of history. Its appearance was an ominous one. It meant the death of aristocracy, the resignation of Mr. Balfour: above all, it meant the triumph of everything that Parnell had suffered for" (66, Parnell had led the Irish Party with noisy, but intractable, conviction, p. 227).
The Liberal Party is described as "an irrational mixture of whig aristocrats, industrialists, dissenters, reformers, trade unionists, quacks and Mr. Lloyd George: it preserved itself from the destructive contradictions of daily reality by an almost mystical communion with the doctrine of laissez-faire and a profound belief in the English virtue of comprimise" (72). Its leaders were Lloyd George, Lord Morley, John Burns, Lord Loreburn and Asquith. A few were peers, "preserving within the Cabinet some relic of that aristocratic whiggery which had been the bane and support of Gladstone." Summarizing what was wrong with the Liberals, the author points to "their almost cynical alliance with the Irish ... their easy tolerance for that milk-and-water socialism which, mingled with a few drops of personal vitriol, Lloyd George was prescribing for the electorate ... but something more than these...an alarming, alien spirit ... dangerous and indefinite ... animula vagula blandula, the Spirit of Whimsy, which only afflicts Englishmen in their weakness ... airy, remote and irresponsible" (p. 73).
British imperialism having by this time been "tarnished with Boer blood" (79), Irish Home Rule could have been easily accomplished politically except for the Ulster province in the north. The Ulstermen were mostly "Protestants, descended sometimes from dour Presbyterian Lowland Scots, sometimes from English settlers" (76). These were the Orangemen. Each year, they celebrated the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne (12 Jul 1690) when (Protestant Dutchman) William of Orange had defeated (Catholic) James II to assume the crown of England. The author states the Orangemen were "thrifty and industrious but not lovable" (79). "In 1911, all their talk about British citizenship, the Crown, the Empire and the Constitution was simply a way of finding synonyms for the Protestant Ascendancy" (78). The Loyal Orange Institution had been founded to 'keep alive the principles of the Whig Revolution of 1688" (81) and once they learned of Asquith's Home Rule deal with the Irish, they went Unionist "almost to a man." A key leader of this movement became Sir Edward Carson.
Now Sir Edward Carson, a southern Irish Protestant, hated Home Rule "as a religious man might hate a moral evil" (82). Those who underestimated what he could do had only to recall "a certain famous and sordid trial, when Oscar Wilde was defendant and one Carson, Q.C., was prosecutor. For 2 days Carson had endured the painful barbs of Mr. Wilde's platonic wit, but he had clung grimly to his task until, in what seemed the very moment of defeat, he had caught Mr. Wilde off his guard...and reduced [him] from a debonair philosopher to a rather fat, greasy gentleman with a peculiar taste for pot-boys" (82). He was tenacious and absolutely uncomprimising once his moral fervor was involved. The author criticizes him as being of a nature that should never be allowed in parliament, of being responsible (along with the other Diehards) for the Constitutional crisis and of being an "intelligent fanatic, with all the absence of humane qualities implied in that phrase" (84). He is later described as "that dark mind, that cold and powerful temperament" (127).
In their desire to strike back at the Liberals, the Conservatives took up the Orange cause and bacame "Unionist" backers. Mr. Balfour resigned and was replaced by Andrew Bonar Law as leader of the Conservatives.
The author is very critical of the Tories in their rebellion, blaming them for nearly ruining the English Constitution and destroying Parliament. He seems to sympathize more with the Liberals. "The Tory philosophy, up to the beginning of the War, might be summed up in this way: be Conservative about good things, and Radical about bad things. This philosophy, so far as can be seen, has only one flaw; it was always the Tories who decided what was good and what was bad. This kind of decision can be made time and time again with the best results; but it contains, in its very essence, some fatal and arbitrary elements, and mere effort of having to make it has been known to produce any number of fanatics, tyrants, martyrs, minor prophets, and, indeed, most of the disagreeable creatures which have ever plagued this long-suffering planet. In 1912, the Tories decided that a Parliament controlled by a Liberal majority was a Bad thing" (95-6).
Here's an interesting thought: "And now, by whatever secret virtue it is which relieves anything of its terrors once it is put into words..." (104).
As time passed, the speeches of Smith, Law and Carson grew more radical and threatening, until on 27 Jul 1912 at Blenheim Palace, they delivered speeches about which Asquith could later say "they were no longer the conditional incitements of an academic anarchist." Asquith later claimed that Law's speech "marked an absolute end to Parliamentary Government" and "furnishes for the future a complete grammar of anarchy" (107). Soon after, the Unionists created a Covenant, based on the older Scots Covenant, pledging loyal supporters to fight Home Rule with a religious fervor. The Liberals clearly did not have the courage to call Carson's "bluff" (a bluff is so only when someone has the courage to call it). "The Government's courage, whimsical at all times, was now almost non-existent" (109). As Parliament dithered, Sir Edward managed to amass arms and the support of key military leaders, raising the stakes for any challenge to his agenda.
This was a time of increasing ferment in Ireland as well. Carson was coming to be seen as something of a national hero for his militaristic defiance of the English Parliament. "That he defied it in the name of loyalty to England scarcely mattered; the point was that what he could do, other Irishmen could do" (131). Among other Irish movements to originate during this time was Arthur Griffith's Sinn Fein. John Redmond, Irish party leader and Liberal ally, preferred to win Home Rule by Parliamentary means, but he realized time was short as events rushed toward armed conflict. Redmond no doubt wished Asquith and company would face Sir Edward and the Tories with the serene and secure majesty of an affronted Parliament (133-4). He also likely regreted supporting them earlier and being drawn into this mess.
On 28 Nov 1914 in Dublin, Mr. Bonar Law made what the author feels was one of the most reckless speeches of his whole career (137). The gist of it was that, just as earlier monarchs had arranged for the letter of the law to back their unjust and immoral projects, so it was with the Parliament s despotic intention to now coerce Ulster. Noting the noble refusal of royal armies in earlier days to support these causes, he appealed to the current army to do likewise. While the author laments that, with this speech, respect for parliamentary government died, usurped by two forces; Carson and the threat of a divided Army, a more unbiased assessment would be that when the state chooses to compromise Justice for the sake of expediency, it loses its warrant for the respect of the people and their delegated, God-given power. In my view, the main lesson here is that, while the ideals and theories of classical liberalism were (and are) correct, without religious conviction it lacked the fortitude to defend its lofty ideals and succumbed to slippage and cowardice. This should serve as a warning to current and future aspiring classical liberals. The modern Democratic party is living proof of what happens to classical liberalism once the religious conviction is jettisoned.
The author turns next to the Women s Rebellion. He notes the death during this crisis of respect for democracy, itself no more than two centuries old, followed by its rebirth afterward, albeit not with the same secure, complacent and satisfying appearance (139) as before. He observes that, although modern interpreters of events generally try to boil everything down to economics, they invariably fail to account for the human soul. What else could account for the weariness, insecurity and fear displayed by the Liberals (I d say more like a crisis of faith; in God and therefore in all western values)? He suggests that the Conservatives had become bored and (irrationally) left the safe haven of the cautious phrase, the respectable gesture, the considered display of reasonable emotions which had for a century kept the passions under control in the western world. They, like the concurrent women s and labor movements, were rejecting a moribund, a respectable, a smothering security (144). Dangerfield basically blames the conservatives, I blame the liberals.
The key word for the women s movement was emancipation. The female form ... was being released from the distortions and distentions of the Victorian era; no longer did woman insist ... upon the erotic attractions of her hips and her buttocks, thrusting these portions of herself, well padded and beribboned, into the eye of the yearning male. By 1910 the womanly body had begun to look very like a womanly body (142). We could ask (the author doesn t) whether emancipation was sought from old human strictures or from God (or both)? A style clue was that women were trying to look more masculine (while seeking formerly masculine-only priviledges). Woman, through her new awareness of the possibilities of an abstract goal in life, was, in effect, suddenly aware of her long-neglected masculinity...she pursued [this] first into politics...then into the secret recesses of her own being (144). Stages in the movement were marked by the embrace (among extremists) of militancy, starting November 1910, then lesbianism in 1912.
It is one of the peculiarities of human living that it often takes ambition and self-interest to arrive at the truth. Another is that a powerful personality, an indomitable will, must always make itself felt (153). These thoughts are given in connection with Emmeline Pankhurst, the militant suffragette leader possessing all of these qualities (but no social prestige). The author admits her methods (and those of her supporters) were bad and mistaken, but, being a liberal, feels he must support their motives (even likening them to early Christians, who also faced persecution and martyrdom for their views).
It seems reasonable to see this period (1910-14) as all hell breaking loose after the removal of the Conservatives hold on the House of Lords, which had, before that time, served as a check on the wild, revolutionary (i.e. pagan) elements of society (which interestingly normally gravitated toward the Liberals, just like today). Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey, in their book How Now Shall We Live?, make the point that one result of atheistic naturalism is social chaos, which certainly seems to have been the case here (and throughout the 20th century with communism, fascism and nazism claiming over 110 million lives).
Of Emmaline s daughter Christabel, who eventually came to lead the radical WSPU (Women s Social and Political Union), the author says there was a ruthless and intractable spirit behind [her] friendly appearance (169). The secret of her personality was an inexplicable combination of feminine caprice and masculine steel. Troubled that her main political support came from Labor (which she saw as coarse, vulgar and lower-class), she cultivated more elite connections. She eventually came to see the government, lead by the Liberal Cabinet, as the enemy, and resolved to attack it at its most vulnerable point; the protection of property. She therefore launched the argument of the broken window pane at a 16 Feb 1912 dinner speech. The resulting property damage lead to the imprisonment of about 200 suffragettes, including a few leaders, who then embarked upon hunger strikes. This was countered by force-feeding by the authorities. By July 6, the hunger strikers had all been released due to flagging health.
Christabel next turned to arson. Although many suffragettes refused to go along with this tactic, she and her mother pressed ahead, becoming the undisputed dictators of the WSPU, the movement s radical fringe. The author notes interestingly that, had it not been for the powerful leadership of the Pankhursts, the suffragettes might have contented themselves with the gospel of Mr. Wells and Anne Veronica, or strayed into the Fabian fold of Mrs. Sidney Webb, or swooned among the candles and the incense of Mr. Compton Mackenzie s Anglo-Catholic Church (168). He suggests that the Parkhursts were slaves to some inchoate and unconscious desire emerging from Englishwomen half waking from their Victorian sleep.
At this point, Christabel s sister Sylvia moved away from her sister s and mother s WSPU, openly declaring solidarity with her father s socialist sympathies and her formerly secret distaste for the WSPU policy of stealthy arson. In contrast, Christabel and her mother held more to a kind of romantic super-Toryism, focusing their efforts on exacting a rigorous obedience from the keenest brains and the best families of England (208) and showing much less interest in the lowly classes. This conflict eventually split the militant suffragette movement into two factions, with Sylvia s joining the Worker s rebellion (enraging her sister and mother).
In early 1913, the government made its final move; and the risen masculinity of the WSPU came face to face with the caprice of a fading Liberalism (188). That final move was parliamentary rejection of any form of female suffrage. This resulted in a rampage of vandalism by outraged radicals all over England. Commenting on the Parkhurst s continuing orchestration of these actions, in particular their odd division of responsibilities, with frail mother handling the sword and healthy daughter the spirit, the author notes another eternal principle of human living - that an unconscious desire will force itself into conscious thought, by any means and in any shape (198).
Christabel, paradoxically both in the grip of the idea of female solidarity and also highly egocentric, in 1913 wrote a pamphlet called The Great Scourge, which trumpeted the superior morality and nobility of women over men, even blaming most female health ailments on STDs in their men. Her slogan, Votes for Women and Purity for Men, became popular with evangelical clergymen, who took to distributing the pamphlet among the faithful (199). Its twisted reasoning, ill-repressed emotionalism and peculiar implications (201) made the Vote appear to be something between a prophylactic and a call to the higher life (199).
Turning to the worker s rebellion, the author describes a meeting at Albert Hall 1 Nov 1913, at which was represented for the first and last time the united grievances of England (214, Irish Nationalism, Militant Suffrage, Labor Unrest). The workers main complaint was the recent fall in real wages (and the Liberal governments refusal to do anything substantive about it), and out of this there rose such an assault upon Liberalism as put the two previous rebellions completely in the shade (215). The author laments that Liberalism contained a fatal contradiction which exploded at this time; between worker loyalty and security on the one hand, and independence and freedom of contract on the other. The contradiction could not be borne forever; a man cannot be simultaneously proud and prostrate: but on that contradiction was founded the respectability of the Victorian working classes (217). The great Labor Unrest of 1910-1914, characterized by the sudden class hatred, the unexpected violence, the irrational moods (217), had, at base, grim and gray economic causes (the author sheds light on why economics is known as the dismal science ... not just because it is boring and dry, but because if offers no hope of progress or change in the future, being based in unchanging human nature).
Beginning in 1890, vast new gold fields had been opened in South Africa, leading to inflationary pressures (since money was pegged to gold), which both reduced real wages of workers and encouraged lavish spending by the wealthy (i.e. use it or lose it). Also, according to the author, wealth was increasingly concentrated. The independent small entrepreneur - that dream of Liberal economics - had vanished from the earth; the great illusion of the middle classes was over; wealth was in the grip of other and fewer and more formidable hands (219). Internationally, free trade was being threatened by American Trusts and German Kartellen, controlling their home markets while dumping abroad, increasingly challenging Britain s former monopoly in sea-borne trade. These had caused England s depressions of 1875 and 1884 and another was predicted for 1916. The scared industrialist reasoned that by going slow on wages, he could store up something against a rainy day ... he did not expect [the workers] to see eye to eye with him ... [and he resolved] to give them a black eye [if they rebelled] ... [this was] generally applauded by the middle classes who - themselves deprived of economic power and reduced to a mere assortment of clerks, salesmen, officials and civil servants - looked upon the producers [i.e. labor] of England with a jaundiced, a fearful, a vindictive gaze (221).
Faced with these affronts by capitalists at home and abroad (and by the House of Lords imposition of a huge fine against a labor union for strike damages), Labor decided that its policy of mild opportunism employed since the collapse of Chartism in 1848 just wasn t working. It was time to take the gloves off and show their power (222). They managed to get 41 trade unionist Liberals elected to Parliament in 1906 and, against both Conservative and Liberal wishes, forced passage of the Labor Disputes Bill granting unlimited immunity for union activities. But the mind of Capital is secretive and dauntless, (223) and they struck back with the Osborne Judgement, which prohibited the use of union dues for political purposes (barring union leaders from serving in Parliament) and also encouraged other union members (like Osborne) to bring action against their unions. The author agrees with Fabian socialist Sidney Webb and others who protested that it was unfair to bar union leaders, while allowing corporate leaders in Parliament (the difference is in the coerced nature of union dues vs. voluntary purchase of products).
Although the Liberals had supported Workman s Comp, Old-Age pensions, national Health Insurance and other pro-Labor laws, they would not challenge the Osborne Judgement (other than with lip service). Also, real wages continued to fall. They were prepared to propitiate, but not actually advance, the workers. The Liberal government was behaving strangely and the workers were dissatistfied by it. That fine Liberal Hegelianism of at once believing in freedom and not believing in freedom was beyond the understanding of all but the elect. To interfere in the question of pensions, health, strikes, education, conditions of labor - ah, yes, this could be done; to destroy the absolute powers of the Lords, to cripple the vast landed estates - such actions were highly desirable: but to insist that employers should pay a living wage? That was a frightful impairment of freedom (226). Indeed, even the Tories might well be persuaded to grant some of the demands of the working classes, so long as the working classes, in their turn, agreed to consider themselves as the pampered serfs of an eternal economic feudalism (227).
The leader of the Independent Labor Party, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, was a handsome and spirited young Scotsman [who] seemed well content to be a Liberal three quarters of the time and a Socialist only when occasion arose ... with extreme infrequency ... he was a man of principles, but ... quite unable, except for his splendid opposition to war, to ignore the good in anything anywhere (227-8). The socialists in the Labor Party were Keir Hardie ( but he was old and romantic ), Snowden, O Grady, Thorne, Jowett and perhaps 2 or 3 more. The workers, wanting only rising real wages, did not want full socialism or even the watered down Fabian variety (which sought a beatific state of intolerable bureaucracy 228). But in the face of their leaders apparent inability to secure their ends for them, they turned to Syndicalism.
This French movement (literally meaning trade unionism ) came to England during 1905-10, largely through the efforts of Irish labor leader James Connolly. It advocated the complete supremacy of the Trade Unions ... [which] were to gain control through a violent succession of continuous strikes, culminating in a general expropriatory strike. Nothing, of course, could be more opposed to the collectivist theories of the Sidney Webbs, the Fabians, and the socialist members of the I.L.P., who forsaw [and still do], through a series of deliberate steps more or less divinely predestined by the Webbs themselves, the gradual evolution of the State into a great organization of consumers (231). This philosophy was rooted in the anarchism of Nietzsche, had branched out into the elan vital of the Bergsonians, and finally come to flower in the Relflexions sur la Violence of M. Sorel (231).
The author now asks a hard question; given the common-sense, Anglo-Saxon aversion to revolution and non-susceptibility to ideas, how could it be that (against labor leaders wishes) things played out exactly according to the syndicalist plan (and would have culminated in a general strike in September 1914 had WWI not intervened)? He discounts the possibility that this alien philosophy was somehow being translated into Anglo terms by the press, noting that The Daily Herald was a kind of intellectual ostrich, swallowing any and every wild idea, and disgorging them all, undigested, in a very unappetizing condition (232) and that no other paper was then presenting syndicalism in a coherent fashion. He claims the answer lies in conservative writer Fabian Ware s description of syndicalism as an assertion of instinct against reason (233). The author also considers the other two rebellions in the same light.
Although it is tempting to see this conflict as a mighty battle - in which Capital, already organized through the operation of inhuman and infallible laws, is pitted against the Unions, the fallible armies of human beings (234), the author reaches beyond a merely economic explanation to find a common theme in all three rebellions; the desire to throw off the moribund security of the old arrangements in favor of the bright (but untested) hope of progress under new ones. In the case of the Worker s Rebellion, even their leaders didn t fully understand the energy driving the unrest (one feeling as though some magical allurement had seized upon the people (236)).
Noting how little physical violence resulted from these seemingly revolutionary prewar strike years (1911-14, only a few men killed), the author attributes this to the genius of the English, who by their history had been spiritually vaccinated against the infection of terrorism and the plague of sudden wrath (250). Perhaps that golden mean so dear to the heart of the Church of England and the Constitution is, as some maintain, an essential expression of the national character...when passions ran highest, and mood were incredibly ugly, something asserted itself; something peculiarly English. What was it? Kindliness, a sense of humor, a native respect for the opinions of an opponent? Or was it lack of enterprise, stolidity, phlegm? It would be difficult to say (250). He goes on to say that Mr. George Askwith, in his role as arbitrator between labor and capital, embodied the very English spirit of Compromise, and in so doing became the personification of Liberalism, doing that better even than the Liberal government could. But by 1914, the battle had gone beyond even his control.
It was during these days of unrest (1911) that Unions were recognized and legislation passed providing for government Health Insurance (Lloyd George) and unemployment insurance (Churchill). The author states the latter were based on German theories and the emotions of Lloyd George (273). He calls the result of socialized Healthcare a failure, characterizing this so-called feast of health ... [as being comprised of] nothing more than row upon row of bottles of pinkish medicine [of dubious effectiveness] (274). In his opinion, the medical mind reacted to thwart it, just as the mind of capital reacted to thwart labor gains. He seems to wish that human nature wouldn t be so selfish, although he does recognize unrealistic whimsy in Lloyd George s endless promises and pollyanna-ish optimism that soon there would be gold for all (275).
In his column in the 8 Oct 2001 issue of Forbes (Is This the End of the Liberal Age?), Paul Johnson has a thought that bears directly on the subject of this book. In reference to terrorism generally and to the 11 Sep 2001 terrorist attack on the United States in particular, he says: Liberalism, based essentially on concession to legitimate grievances, is no answer. Indeed, it feeds and spreads the problem. The new response will be characterized by such terms as ceaseless vigilance, overwhelming retaliation, the remorseless pursuit and irrevocable punishment of the wicked - and all who condone and help them - and, above all, by absolute distinctions between good and evil, which have become hopelessly blurred in this liberal age. He forsees a return to giving security of life and property ... absolute precedence over pity in the framing and execution of law, what liberals will call an age of reaction ( but we must not call it that ).
It was during the 1912 miner s strike that Prime Minister Asquith decided to intervene. Subsequent negotiations proved that ... it was extremely unwise for political power to meddle in economic battles (289-90). Once it became clear that both sides were unyielding in their demands (labor for a minimum wage of 5 and 2, and the owners against), Asquith realized his mistake. For the first time in English history the Government and not the employer was directly under fire (291). The miners had given the Government itself an ultimatum. Parliament passed a bill which refused to set the rate, but in general agreed to mandate a minimum wage. Parliament had been humbled in a way they had never been before. As Asquith begged the miners to go back to work, he actually broke down in tears before the Parliament (realizing he and Parliament had been brought to their knees, revealing failure both personally and of Liberalism itself).
The extent to which Mr. Asquith was affected by this confrontation is shown by a letter his wife wrote to a leading labor leader of the time in which she begged him to cooperate, scolded him for being heartless and failing to be guided by Love (seeking to get his way at the cost of huge suffering to others). Do you think ... making Human Nature equal [materially would make men] equal in the sight of God and Man? Equal in motive, in unselfishness, in grandeur of character? (295). The miners did go back to work and got some wage increases, but both sides remained eager to renew the battle. The author laments that Liberalism (poor slippery old faith), with its fatal trust in compromise, was destined eventually to be crushed between the millstones of Capital and Labor (299).
The next year (1912), while Asquith was away on a cruise, another strike prompted Lloyd George and a few other Cabinet Ministers to again intervene (apparently having learned nothing from the miner s strike or believing they could do much better than Asquith had). After studying the issue, they concluded that the employers should be made to form a federation (so Government could deal with them en bloc). When the employers balked, the Ministers, [believing] their solution was clearly an inspired one, [proceeded] with a simple-minded alacrity which would have done credit to an African missionary to importune every employer who could be discovered and would listen (303). In short order, it became clear to them that they were in too far to back out, and again the impression was made on the workers that the Government not only was ignorant of the issues, but could also be bullied. When not all workers joined the strike (their unions having still not recovered from 1911 s events), the Ministers, heaving a sigh of relief, made preparations to disappear from the scene as unobtrusively as possible (304).
In the author s view, the most staggering thing of all about these events was the incredible cost (in terms of lost work), the unparalleled, inarticulate and irrational energy that was required to force the principles of Trade Unionism and the Minimum Wage from the realm of formula into the realm of fact (307, i.e. why did Capital put up such a huge fight over such [to him] seemingly minor and reasonable demands). In this, he exhibits the liberal tendency to jettison principles in favor of compromise (and to blame social forces for acts committed by individual lawbreakers).
1913 was an outwardly calm year, although numerous minor strikes were taking place throughout England. To add to Parliament s loss of credibility, Lloyd George suffered a more personal loss of face in the Marconi Scandal (accused of being a closet capitalist, living beyond his visible means and of using his connections to enrich himself). The most significant event of the year was the clash between Dublin labor agitator James Larkin and industrialist William Martin Murphy. Larkin claimed to have a divine mission to create discontent (315, 323). What better field for the practice of syndicalist manoeuvres could possibly have been chosen than Dublin...having, among other likely features, the worst slums in the world, and a considerable minority of almost 18th century workers who would much rather fight than work (316). The September result: several dead, hundreds injured and hundreds more arrested. Although Murphy eventually triumphed as starving workers straggled back to work (being required to resign from the union in order to return), the author notes that this Irish labor dispute linked the Tory and Labor rebellions together, which, combined with a spineless Parliament, made civil war even more possible.
The author turns next to the Crisis, beginning with the Mutiny at the Curragh (over Irish Home Rule). By early 1914, Prime Minister Asquith has withdrawn into himself in quietude (fine for a private individual, but not for a political leader!). Could it be that the spiritual castigations which he had undergone for the last three years had bruised him into a kind of insensibility? that, having seen his most cherished reforms, his sincerest efforts thrown back at him with mockery, insolence, and suspicion, he felt he could do no more? that he was the victim of accumulated disillusion? (334). Although he was careful to fulfill all of the outward trappings of his office, he seemed inside to have given up the battle (hmmm, I guess we can all relate to that sometimes!).
Asquith seemed not to comprehend that Carson s Opposition and the Irish Nationalists had no interest in compromise. It took a member of his Cabinet, Churchill ( upon whom the merest hint of military action worked a powerful spell 340), to call the bluff and send in the military for a show of force. In response, War Secretary Seely ( being possessed of a kind heart and a pliable disposition..[and] an extreme inaptitude for the office he held 342) granted permission to officers living in Ulster to disappear rather than fight fellow Ulstermen. Although the author characterizes what followed as mass mutiny, a more accurate description is mass resignation (they had been given the choice between active operations and resignation). Resorting (it seems to me) to hyperbole, the author exclaims His Majesty s Government, for the first time since the Revolution of 1688, had lost the allegiance of His Majesty s forces (344), and further, the Army was now in control (346). It seems to me that the Army provided an important circuit breaker against reckless actions on the part of Asquith and his crowd (344) and that they had no intention of dishonoring the King or taking over the country.
Mr. F. E. Smith of the Opposition stated that historians won t care that the Conservatives blamed the Liberals subjugation to the Irish Nationalist party or that the Liberals blamed the Conservatives encouragement of insurrection, only that The whole House of Commons - all of you - who ought to have been trustees, not for any party, but for the nation as a whole, inherited from the past a great and splendid possession, and where is it now? (346). He went on to describe the recent military strategy as Napoleonic ... but there was no Napoleon.
Although Sir Henry Wilson (Director of Military Operations, Opposition sympathizer who had encouraged Army resistance to attacking Ulster) tried to assure France that recent events did not imply unreliability in war, the author indicates that the Germans very likely took this interpretation. Pondering why Wilson was not dismissed, the author proposes that Asquith and others were now extremely frightened of him (347). Wilson was gunned down by Irish Nationalists in front of his London home in 1922.
The author clearly believes that these events of March 1914 have a special (infamous) place in English history, perhaps even serving as a defining moment in the fall of an empire through human treachery and folly. His view is that a little bloodletting in Ireland (he later admits the numbers would have been appalling, p. 350) would have been far better than to humble a great political philosophy (Liberalism), a great institution (Parliament) and a great country. My view is that when an institution or country ceases to be good, it also ceases to be great. It was irresponsible for Liberals to order the killing of Englishmen (not to mention to risk civil war) over such a comparatively petty matter as pleasing the constituency that kept them in power. Force must only be used to defend vital interests, and whether Liberals retained power was not such an interest.
The next stage of the Crisis (The Guns of Larne) relates the story of Orange fanatic Major Crawford s smuggling of a huge cache of guns and ammo from Germany to Larne in northern Ireland, which, combined with the mutiny, brought Ireland to the brink of civil war, as tens of thousands of Irish Nationalists formed a ragtag volunteer militia (with [no] taste for discipline nor any distaste for looting and riot 358). John Redmond saw it as his duty to unite the Irish.
Sinn Fein had split in 1910 into republican revolutionaries, who wanted to achieve their objectives by force and rejected English authority, law, justice and legislature and high Tory promoters (like founder Arthur Griffith) who called for an Irish King, Lords and Commons and respect for the Irish constutution of 1782. Similarly, the Irish generally were divided. Pearse (Sinn Fein thinker) loved and respected the Orange volunteers he was prepared to kill and shared their hatred of the Liberals, while Redmond and company loathed Ulster and saw the struggle as a fight for Liberal principles against a Tory plot. Its interesting to note the same split among the suffragettes; with Sylvia Pankhurst favoring a people s movement and her sister and mother favoring high Tory methods.
In the spectacle of a helpless Parliament there is something frightening and something funny; it is like a South American football game which breaks up because the spectators have begun to burn the stands (362). The author sums it up as Tory treason and Liberal weakness [leading to] the violent reality outside [and] a vicious unreality within [the walls of Parliament].
The author notes that for some time it had been the opinion of Europe that English democracy was in swift decline [into decadence and weariness]; in 1914 it was generally considered that this decline had turned into a galloping consumption (365-6). Some Orangemen had even expressed the sentiment that it would be better for Germany to defeat England than to submit to Irish rule in Ulster! Many German observers interpreted the Tory Rebellion as signalling that England s day was over. The author notes that we can see in retrospect that England rose successfully (some say miraculously and magnificently ) to the challenge of war, but suggests that while the reason may be miraculous, it is not magnificent (in the sense of being in the great tradition of England). He calls this huge energy source the unconscious turning from respectability (370), a rejection of restraint in favor of violent direct action. After the old (Liberal) England died (he claims with General Gough s mutiny), a new and terrible England (371) took its place and eventually hurled itself against Germany. The author claims the latter became the new focus of this unconscious raging energy, replacing political furies, sex hatreds, class hatreds.
A turning point came June 18, 1914, when Sylvia Pankhurst, clearly in the last stages of exhaustion, was brought to the Stranger s Entrance of the House of Commons and placed on the steps. Shortly after, Prime Minister Asquith agreed to meet with 6 working suffragettes. Upon meeting with them a few days later and hearing their sordid tales of life in the slums, Asquith suprised everyone by suddenly deciding it was time for him to support the Vote for women. Once again, the author suggests it was due to some unconscious energy making itself felt on the public stage (other explanations were that the battered Asquith reasoned that one more concession wouldn t mean much or was perhaps bullied by the prospect of working women, upon whom the Liberals depended for support, joining the suffragette movement). Lloyd George warned Sylvia that militant violence would now delay the achievement of her goal, and Sylvia agreed. The WSPU, however, did not. Throughout July, they escalated their violence. Christabel, in a revealing quote, declared the militants will rejoice when victory comes, and yet, mixed with their joy, will be regret that the most glorious chapter in women s history is closed and the militant fight over - over, when so many have not yet known the exaltation, the rapture of battle ... (386).
And then, in the middle of these battles, there fell the extinguishing shadow of the World War (387). The suffragettes suddenly turned patriot to a woman...and so, in loyal fervor and jingoistic enterprise, ended the great Woman s Rebellion. Only Sylvia, the single realist among the suffragette leaders, maintained that war was a disaster. She alone continued to call for the Vote, and to declare that women should stand for peace, not bloodshed. But what was the use? ... even the ... Worker s Rebellion ... now threw that banner aside (387-8) and joined the war effort.
The author believes that, between 1913 and 1914, a new world has been born. He cites Ramsay MacDonald s The Social Unrest, which points to a new age of the financier...[as] the rich, gathered from all quarters of the earth ... received the [grudging] homage of every dignitary in society. Although they could buy their way to every form of privilege, they did not command the moral respect which tones down class hatreds, nor the intellectual respect which preserves a sense of equality even under a regime of considerable social differences, nor even the commercial respect which recognizes obligation to great wealth fairly earned (391). The author claims that, by going through the Punch cartoons of these 2 years, one can clearly sense the passing of an older world and the emergence of a new one.
Social history, like history itself, is a combination of taste, imagination, science, and scholarship; it reconciles imcompatibles, it balances probabilities; and at last it attains the reality of fiction, which is the highest reality of all (393). While it would be easy to portray Imperial England ... living in majestic profusion up till the very moment of war (394), the author doesn t believe this reflects the truth, since the winds of change were blowing before 1914.
As a great general strike (by the triple alliance; miners, railwaymen and transport workers over a living wage) in the fall of 1914 became more and more likely, German observers became more interested. Labor negotiator George Askwith, in mid 1914, recollected the rather too anxious interest which, for the past year, Prince Metternich and Baron Marschall von Bieberstein had shown in the progress of the Unrest ... of all the German diplomats, only Prince Lichnowsky, the Ambassador, had remained indifferent to the course of the strikes ... but [he had been] a victim of that powerful delusion known as Anglophilia (399). Both Capital and Labor were willing to fight to the death and had lost confidence in their Government. The author conjectures that the Government would havve taken the side of Capital ( democratic governments are, strange to say, always on the side of the employers 401) and starved or shot Labor into submission, but leaves open what Civil War in Ireland might have caused had WWI not intervened.
The events leading to war were the June 28, 1914 murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian radical (407) and the July 28 Austrian declaration of war against Serbia (421). Although during the last month of world peace, events in England had been accelerating toward civil war over Irish Home Rule, these world developments finally prompted all parties in England to realize that only a united England could exercise a soothing influence upon the fury of Austria and the ambition of Germany (421). Sir Edward Grey, on August 3, explained to the Commons how it had come about that England s honor was secretly and irrevocably involved ... revealing, for the first time, that private agreement which had left France s northern coasts at the mercy of the German fleet [and that] whether Belgium were invaded or not (422), England would be drawn into the war. The next day, just hours from war, he spoke those fateful and well-known words; watching from the windows of the Foreign Office the lights springing out in the dusk, [he] said to a friend, The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Whatever happened, the world would never be the same again (425, quoting The People s King by John Buchan, p. 98).
When war was declared, labor and capital joined hands in a frenzy of patriotic enthusiasm, and the Prince and the Baron and the Wilhelmstrasse were utterly crestfallen (402). The author notes the curious detachment of the English public (actually a fragmented mix), which had become accustomed to thrills - from motor cars and aeroplanes to the cinematograph, ragtime and the menace of Germany (402). They had become so inured to the craziness of modern progress that nothing shocked them anymore and they responded to everything, even the prospect of civil war, with mere pleasant excitement. The war shocked them back to reality, however, and united them with surprising vigor, fortitude and sanity in the struggle against the common enemy.
Commenting on a popular book of Georgian poetry published in late 1912, the author says it reflects the sentiments of people who had seen their cherished notions of respectibility disintegrate before their eyes; and who scarcely understood what they saw (427). When codes, when religions, when ideas cease to move forward it is always in some shining illusion that an alarmed humanity attempts to take refuge. In this case, the refuge was poetry. Although both the [Russian] Ballet and the [French] Post-Impressionists seemed aware of that nameless revolution in the soul of mankind which the rigid laws of economics and the vagaries of diplomats and politicians were already providing with a visible shape (428), this lofty shade (heralding the end of an era) was not yet discernable in the poetry (of Rupert Brooke especially). He was the poet of a young, and now vanished, England. Unlike modern poets like Hopkins, A. E. Housman and Robert Bridges (whose voices triumphed after WWI), Brooke and his type (Wilfrid Gibson, John Drinkwater, Harold Monro and Arundel del Re) sought the refuge of the past and found - in the sunlit ruins of the Romantic Revival - a place where the encroaching sounds and fears of the 20th century were quite unheard and unfelt. There was no Poets Rebellion. Until the very outbreak of war, the poets stayed unresponsive to the changing times; stubborn, sweet, unreal, they were the last victims and the last heroes of Liberal England (429-30).
Brooke was a poetical (i.e. idealistic) socialist, having fallen under the spell of the Sidney Webbs. While not inspired by class consciousness, he preached faith in the goodness of man. He once told a friend there are only 3 things in the world. One is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry (431). He was very sincere, and yet was always in flight from reality (431). He fled into art and travel, pursued by reality, seemingly staying one step ahead until he died (at 27 of blood poisoning), escaping into Death, with his illusions and beauty untarnished (432). Of Samoa, Brooke observed There it is; there it wonderfully is; heaven on earth, the ideal life, little work, dancing, and singing and eating; naked people of incredible lovliness (437). These places were for him a refuge from reality even more accommodating than the practice of romantic verse (437). Even when called to serve in the Royal Navy, Brooke embraced this new assignment as the true, knightly purpose of his life, to help defeat the magical German dragon, crowned and deadly, and breathing fantastical fire (439). The following epigram was written about Brooke while still an undergraduate, by Frances Cornford:
The author portrays the youth of 1910-1914 as a lost generation, both fearing and longing for reality, increas[ing] by some inner confusion that outer violence that has been the subject of this book (433). Many of them found refuge from that confusion in Brooke s romantic poetry. Was this innocence or perhaps childishness, the dying Romantic Revival babbling o green fields (434). At any rate, the author sees Brooke s death as symbolizing the death of Liberal England. Standing at his grave, he says in the book s closing words, one can look into the past, beyond all the violence of the pre-war world and onto the diminishing vistas of that other England, the England where ... there was Beauty and Certainty and Quiet, and where nothing was real. Today we know it for what it was; but there are moments, very human moments, when we could almost find it in our hearts to envy those who saw it, and who never lived to see the new world (442).
In his 2003 book The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, Fareed Zakaria boils down Britain's (and many other countries' as well) to a battle of democracy vs. liberty. "Across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, liberalism was under siege from mass politics. Usually the latter won. In the case of ... [Austria, a demogogue named Lueger became mayor] in 1897 ... In France, the tradition of antimonarchical liberalism (republicanism) grew strong, particularly after 1871. But it came under relentless attack from both the left (by socialists) and the right (by monarchists, aristocrats, and the church). A few decades later, even the United Kingdom, the birthplace and stronghold of modern liberal politics, saw its once-great Liberal Party fade into irrelevance, squeezed out by the more radical Labor Party and the more traditional Conservatives. As democracy expanded, the moderate, liberal agenda of individual rights, free-market economics, and constitutionalism withered before the gut appeal of communism, religion, and nationalism" (61).
Earlier in his book, Zakaria notes that "By the early 19th century in the UK and the US, for the most part, individual liberty flourished and equality under law ruled. But neither country was a democracy. Before the Reform Act of 1832, 1.8% of the adult population of the UK was eligible to vote. After the law that rose to 2.7%. After further widening the franchise in 1867, 6.4% could vote, and after 1884, 12.1%. Only in 1930, once women were fully enfranchised, did the UK meet today's standard for being democratic: universal adult suffrage. ... The US was [similar] ... In 1824 ... 5% of adult Americans cast a ballot in the presidential election. That number rose dramatically as the Jacksonian revolution spread and property qualifications were mostly eliminated. But not until the eve of the Civil War could it even be said that every white man in the US had the right to vote. Blacks were enfranchised in theory in 1870, but in fact not until a century later in the South. Women got the vote in 1920" (50-1).
Three interesting questions: 1) Has wider democracy been the downfall of once-great Britain and increasingly the US? 2) Is this a better way to explain that downfall (vs. reversion to paganism and rejection of Christianity, although the 2 are no doubt related)? Is this liberalism vs. communism/religion/nationalism just a reprise of M. Stanton Evans "Liberal History Lesson," pitting benighted religion against 'enlighted' liberalism?
Recently (29 Dec 2003 at Tempe's Old Town Bookstore) I came across the book The Left and WWI by ?. In its introduction it clarified what should have been obvious, that the pre-WWI period in England saw the birth of a new party, the Labor Party (coalescing by 1918), as a third alternative to the older Liberal and Conservative parties. The introduction explained that, prior to this time, most of the Left felt more at home in the Liberal party, but they became increasingly dissatisfied with the Liberals during this period. Given Zakaria's voting enfranchisement figures above, it seems obvious that, as more commoners were empowered to vote, they came to demand their own party rather than being merely a small voice within the Liberal party. As they broke with Liberals, that party would (and did) experience a sudden loss of support (the strange death) and would have reacted by desperately trying to woo them back (creating a yawning gap between their principles and their actual policies). So, in the end, Labor, Liberal and Conservative represented sympathizers of workers (proletariat, lower class), aristocrats (bourgeois, middle class) and royalists (upper class).
From WorldBook Encyclopedia:
1. Tory, from Gaelic word meaning pursued or Irish outlaw, term first used in English politics 1679 to ref. those who wanted (Catholic) James, Duke of York, on the throne, favored empowered Church and King, chief opponents, the Whigs, favored empowering the people via the House of Commons, after 1832 the name Conservative began to replace Tory, by the 1850s, two new parties had emerged; The Conservatives, led by Benjamin Disraeli, and the Liberals, led by William E. Gladstone.
2. Whig, term first used c. 1768, originally derogatory for 'lower-class trash,' opposed growing royal power in late 1600s and favored Protestantism, in 1850s Whig progressives realigned to Liberals, the rest to Conservatives. In America, similarly, northern Whigs joined the Republicans, southern ones the Democrats.
3. Liberal, emerged in 1850s, British Liberal Party laid foundations for others throughout world, disliked imperialism, state intervention, after 1867 Reform Bill giving workers the vote, the party changed drastically, appealing to workers instead of the middle class, as before, notables Asquith PM 1908-16, Lloyd George PM 1916-22, John Morley.
4. Labour, the great Liberal victory of 1906 saw the appearance of a rival party, Labour, favoring more socialism, election of 1922 made Liberals a small 3rd party, with most Liberals either moving left into Labour or right to the Conservatives.
"Though Liberalism imagined itself to be a glorious new flower, in fact ... it was a parasite upon the decayed trunk of the old order: the morals and politics of Liberalism took their sustenance from the traditional soil which Liberalism repudiated, and if that order perished, they must wither. The skepticism of Benthamites and Manchesterians could flourish only in a society still controlled substantially by orthodox belief; Liberal parliamentarianism was sustained by the aristocratic loyalties of the old England. Let orthodoxy and traditional political estanblishments die, and Liberalism must sink into the grave after them" (Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, p. 262).
"Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was an English astronomer, cosmologist, science popularizer, sci-fi writer, combative gadfly, and restless intellect ... His politics leaned to the right, albeit with a technocratic emphasis on giving scientists funding and authority. He wrote a book criticizing the postwar Labour govt for stifling economic growth and dismantling the empire" (Reason Mar 06 p60, i.e. another reason for Britain's fall from greatness).
The article "Hitler's Mufti" (David G. Dalin, FT Aug/Sep 2005) suggested another possible [theological] reason for Britain's fall; God's anger at them for abandoning the Jews in 1948. "Hajj Amin al-Husseini (1893-1974), the viciously anti-Semitic grand mufti [appointed by British 1922, even though a known terrorist, due to his status among Palestinians] of Jerusalem and the leader of Muslim fundamentalists in Palestine, ... resided in Berlin as a welcome guest of the Nazis ... emerged [1920s] as the recognized leader of the Arabs under the British govt in Palestine ... after the defeat of the Axis powers, the mufti fled to Egypt, meeting teenager [and 1rst cousin once removed] Yasser Arafat, who became his protege." While this article suggests British complicity, other sources (e.g. Arthur Kac's The Rebirth of Israel, Edmund Wilson's The Scrolls from the Dead Sea, ...) clarify that the (liberal-led) British first tried to compromise, balancing support for Jews and Arabs, and later pulled out. "The Mandate came to an end. The British simply departed. They had refused to allow their control to be transferred to any other body or to legalize a local militia. They were leaving the Jews and the Arabs already at one another's throats, and were counting on the 7 Arab states arrayed against the small Jewish colony to fall upon it and destroy it or drive it out" (Wilson p20). Perhaps God had ordained Britain to assist His people in returning to Israel and was now angry at Britain for this abandonment, and this helps explain Britain's dramatic fall from world leadership?
"Like Matthew Arnold, [Disraeli] believed that England's strength and purpose derived from the moral laws of the Hebrews transmitted through the Bible" (Bible and Sword, Barbara Tuchman, 1956, p220).
"The idea that weapons cause wars has a long pedigree. It began as spin for Imperial Germany. In his excellent history of arms control, Closing Pandora's Box, Patrick Glynn traces the history of what he calls the 'Sarajevo fallacy' ... the widely accepted version of how WWI began. The great nations of Europe had engaged in an uncontrolled arms race in the 10 yrs before 1914. They were so bristling w/armaments ... Archduke Franz Ferdinand['s assassination] served as the spark to ignite all those weapons into a general conflagration ... [Germany fueled this interpretation w/propaganda to play down its own responsibility, and this view was further] popularized by historian Barbara Tuchman['s] The Guns of August - a book that JFK insisted his entire foreign policy staff read ... oversimplified ... there was rivalry ... [but also] a powerful pacifist wing [in brit govt] that succeeded in slowing British production of large battleships, destroyers, and submarines. 'We desire to stop this rivalry,' the PM, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, told the House of Commons, 'and to set an example in stopping it.' GB also pushed hard for disarmament talks at The Hague. The German response, however, was to redouble its military efforts. The Foreign Office senior clerk would write in 1907: 'Our disarmament crusade has been the best advertisement of the German Navy League and every German has now been persuaded that England is exhausted, has reached the end of her tether, and must speedily collapse, if the pressure is kept up.' Just as American policymakers would engage in 'mirror imaging' when it came to interpreting the behavior of their Soviet adversaries, British statesmen made the identical error vis-a-vis the Germans prior to WWI. With a surprising failure of imagination, they tended to assume that Germany's motivations and goals were similar to GB's ... British goodwill was interpreted as weakness in Berlin, while German aggressiveness was interpreted as insecurity in London ... [the Germans realized that a Tory-led Britain would be more dangerous to them than a Liberal-led one]" (Useful Idiots, Mona Charen, pp152-3, see br-ui).
Pictures from The Prime Ministers: From Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher, George Malcolm Thomson, Wm. Morrow, 1981.