Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually served as a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. He split both major British parties in the course of his career. He was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
For other people named Joseph Chamberlain, see Joseph Chamberlain (disambiguation).
Joseph Chamberlain
Arthur Balfour
8 July 1836
Camberwell, Surrey, England
2 July 1914 (aged 77)
Birmingham, England
Key Hill Cemetery, Birmingham
- Liberal (1866–1886)
- Liberal Unionist (1886–1912)
- Conservative (1912–1914)
Businessman
"Our Joe", "Joseph Africanus"
Chamberlain made his career in Birmingham, first as a manufacturer of screws and then as a notable mayor of the city. He was a radical Liberal Party member and an opponent of the Elementary Education Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 75) on the basis that it could result in subsidising Church of England schools with local ratepayers' money.[1] As a self-made businessman, he had never attended university and had contempt for the aristocracy. He entered the House of Commons at 39 years of age, relatively late in life compared to politicians from more privileged backgrounds. Rising to power through his influence with the Liberal grassroots organisation, he served as President of the Board of Trade in the Second Gladstone ministry (1880–85). At the time, Chamberlain was notable for his attacks on the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury, and in the 1885 general election he proposed the "Unauthorised Programme", which was not enacted, of benefits for newly enfranchised agricultural labourers, including the slogan promising "three acres and a cow". Chamberlain resigned from the Third Gladstone ministry in 1886 in opposition to Irish Home Rule. He helped to engineer a Liberal Party split and became a Liberal Unionist, a party which included a bloc of MPs based in and around Birmingham.
From the 1895 general election the Liberal Unionists were in coalition with the Conservative Party, under Chamberlain's former opponent Lord Salisbury. In that government Chamberlain promoted the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897.[2][3] He served as Secretary of State for the Colonies, promoting a variety of schemes to build up the British Empire in Asia, Africa, and the West Indies. He had major responsibility for causing the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa and was the government minister most responsible for the war effort. He became a dominant figure in the Unionist Government's re-election at the "Khaki Election" in 1900. In 1903, he resigned from the Cabinet to campaign for tariff reform (i.e. taxes on imports as opposed to the existing policy of free trade with no tariffs). He obtained the support of most Unionist MPs for this stance, but the Unionists suffered a landslide defeat at the 1906 general election. Shortly after public celebrations of his 70th birthday in Birmingham, he was disabled by a stroke, ending his public career.
Despite never becoming Prime Minister, he was one of the most important British politicians of his day, as well as a renowned orator and municipal reformer. Historian David Nicholls notes that his personality was not attractive: he was arrogant and ruthless and much hated. He never succeeded in his grand ambitions. However, he was a highly proficient grassroots organiser of democratic instincts, and played the central role in winning the Second Boer War. He is most famous for setting the agenda of British colonial, foreign, tariff and municipal policies, and for deeply splitting both major political parties.[4] Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarked that despite never being prime minister, Chamberlain "made the political weather".[5]
Early political career[edit]
Calls for reform[edit]
Chamberlain became involved in Liberal politics, influenced by the strong radical and liberal traditions among Birmingham shoemakers and the long tradition of social action in Chamberlain's Unitarian church.[21] There was pressure to redistribute parliamentary seats to cities and to enfranchise a greater proportion of urban men. In 1866, Earl Russell's Liberal administration submitted a Reform Bill to create 400,000 new voters, but the bill was opposed by the "Adullamite" Liberals for disrupting the social order, and criticised by Radicals for not conceding the secret ballot or household suffrage. The bill was defeated and the government fell. Chamberlain was one of the 250,000, including the mayor, who marched for Reform in Birmingham on 27 August 1866; he recalled that "men poured into the hall, black as they were from the factories...the people were packed together like herrings" to listen to a speech by John Bright. Lord Derby's minority Conservative administration passed a Reform Act in 1867, nearly doubling the electorate from 1,430,000 to 2,470,000.
The Liberal Party won the 1868 election. Chamberlain was active in the election campaign, praising Bright and George Dixon, a Birmingham MP. Chamberlain was also influential in the local campaign in support of the Irish Disestablishment bill. In the autumn of 1869 a deputation headed by William Harris invited him to stand for the Town Council; and in November he was elected to represent St. Paul's Ward.[22]
Chamberlain and Jesse Collings had been among the founders of the Birmingham Education League in 1867, which noted that of about 4.25 million children of school age, 2 million children, mostly in urban areas, did not attend school, with a further 1 million in uninspected schools. The government's aid to Church of England schools offended Nonconformist opinion. Chamberlain favoured free, secular, compulsory education, stating that "it is as much the duty of the State to see that the children are educated as to see that they are fed", and attributing the success of the US and Prussia to public education. The Birmingham Education League evolved into the National Education League, which held its first Conference in Birmingham in 1869 and proposed a school system funded by local rates and government grants, managed by local authorities subject to government inspection. By 1870, the League had more than one hundred branches, mostly in cities and peopled largely by men of trades unions and working men's organisations.
William Edward Forster, vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, proposed an Elementary Education Bill in January 1870.[23] Nonconformists opposed the proposal to fund church schools as part of the national educational system through the rates. The NEL was angered by the absence of school commissions or of free, compulsory education. Chamberlain arranged for a delegation of 400 branch members and 46 MPs to visit the prime minister William Ewart Gladstone at 10 Downing Street on 9 March 1870, the first time the two men had met. Chamberlain impressed the Prime Minister with his lucid speech, and during the bill's second reading Gladstone agreed to make amendments that removed church schools from rate-payer control and granted them funding. Liberal MPs, exasperated at the compromises in the legislation, voted against the government, and the bill passed the House of Commons with support from the Conservatives. Chamberlain campaigned against the Act, and especially Clause 25, which gave school boards of England and Wales the power to pay the fees of poor children at voluntary schools, theoretically allowing them to fund church schools. The Education League stood in several by-elections against Liberal candidates who refused to support the repeal of Clause 25. In 1873 a Liberal majority was elected to the Birmingham School Board, with Chamberlain as chairman. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the church component of the school board agreeing to make payments from rate-payer's money only to schools associated with industrial education.[1]
Chamberlain espoused enfranchisement of rural workers and a lower cost of land. In an article written for the Fortnightly Review, he coined the slogan of the "Four F's: Free Church, Free Schools, Free Land and Free Labour". In another article, "The Liberal Party and its Leaders", Chamberlain criticised Gladstone's leadership and advocated a more Radical direction for the party.
Mayor of Birmingham[edit]
In November 1873 the Liberal Party swept the municipal elections and Chamberlain was elected mayor of Birmingham. The Conservatives had denounced his Radicalism and called him a "monopoliser and a dictator" while the Liberals had campaigned against their High church Tory opponents with the slogan "The People above the Priests". The city's municipal administration was notably lax with regards to public works and many urban dwellers lived in conditions of great poverty. As mayor, Chamberlain promoted many civic improvements, promising the city would be "parked, paved, assized, marketed, gas & watered and 'improved'".[24]
The Birmingham Gas Light and Coke Company and the Birmingham and Staffordshire Gas Light Company were locked in constant competition, in which the city's streets were continually dug up to lay mains. Chamberlain forcibly purchased the two companies on behalf of the borough for £1,953,050, even offering to purchase the companies himself if the ratepayers refused. In its first year of operations the new municipal gas scheme made a profit of £34,000.
The city's water supply was considered a danger to public health – approximately half of the city's population was dependent on well water, much of which was polluted by sewage. Piped water was supplied on only three days per week, compelling the use of well water and water carts for the rest of the week. Deploring the rising death rate from contagious diseases in the poorest parts of the city, in January 1876 Chamberlain forcibly purchased Birmingham's waterworks for a combined sum of £1,350,000, creating Birmingham Corporation Water Department, having declared to a House of Commons Committee that "We have not the slightest intention of making profit... We shall get our profit indirectly in the comfort of the town and in the health of the inhabitants.” Despite this noticeable executive action, Chamberlain was mistrustful of central authority and bureaucracy, preferring to give local communities the responsibility to act on their own initiative.
In July 1875 Chamberlain tabled an improvement plan involving slum clearance in Birmingham's city centre. Chamberlain had been consulted by the Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross, during the preparation of the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, during Disraeli's social improvement programme. Chamberlain bought 50 acres (200,000 m2) of property to build a new road, (Corporation Street), through Birmingham's overcrowded slums. Overriding the protests of local landlords and the commissioner of the Local Government Board's inquiry into the scheme, Chamberlain gained the endorsement of the President of the Local Government Board, George Sclater-Booth. Chamberlain raised the funds for the programme, contributing £10,000 himself. However the Improvement Committee concluded that it would be too expensive to transfer slum-dwellers to municipally built accommodation, and so the land was leased as a business proposition on a 75-year lease. Slum dwellers were eventually rehoused in the suburbs and the scheme cost local government £300,000. The death rate in Corporation Street decreased dramatically – from approximately 53 per 1,000 between 1873 and 1875 to 21 per 1,000 between 1879 and 1881.
During Chamberlain's tenure of office, public and private money was used to construct libraries, municipal swimming pools and schools. Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery was enlarged and a number of new parks were opened. Construction of the Council House was begun, while the Victoria Law Courts were built on Corporation Street.[25]
The mayoralty helped make Chamberlain a national as well as local figure, with contemporaries commenting upon his youthfulness and dress, including "a black velvet coat, jaunty eyeglass in eye, red neck-tie drawn through a ring". His contribution to the city's improvement earned Chamberlain the allegiance of the so-called Birmingham caucus for the rest of his public career.
His biographer states:
National politics[edit]
Parliament and National Liberal Federation: 1876–80[edit]
Chamberlain was invited to stand for election as an MP by the Sheffield Reform Association, an offshoot of the Liberal Party in the city, soon after starting as mayor. Chamberlain's first Parliamentary campaign in 1874 was a fierce one; opponents accused him of republicanism and atheism and even threw dead cats at him on the speaking platform. Chamberlain came in third—a poor result for a leading urban Radical—and rejected the possibility of standing in Sheffield again. Instead, he stood unopposed for a Birmingham constituency by-election in 1876, after George Dixon resigned. Following his nomination, Chamberlain denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as "a man who never told the truth except by accident." After Chamberlain came under heavy attack for the insult, creating anxiety for the Liberals, he apologised publicly.[27] Upon his election, Chamberlain resigned as mayor and was introduced to the House of Commons by John Bright and Joseph Cowen. On 4 August 1876, Chamberlain made his maiden speech during a debate on elementary schools, using his experience on the Birmingham School Board. He spoke for twenty minutes on the maintenance of clause 25 with Disraeli present.
Almost immediately upon entry to the House of Commons, Chamberlain began to organise the Radical MPs into a coherent parliamentary group, with the intent to displace Whig dominance of the Liberal Party. Early difficulties within Parliament led Chamberlain to favor a grassroots approach instead, organising local chapters as the foundation of an effective national movement.
To gain footing for the Radicals, Chamberlain sought to close ranks with Gladstone to profit from the leader's increasing popularity and harness popular opposition to Disraeli's aggressive foreign policy, beginning with outrage over Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria and the resulting Russo-Turkish War. Chamberlain joined Gladstone in arguing Disraeli's policy diverted attention from domestic reform, but unlike many Liberals, Chamberlain was not an anti-imperialist; although he berated the government for its Eastern policy, the Second Afghan War, and the Anglo-Zulu War, he supported Disraeli's purchase of Suez Canal Company shares in November 1875. At this stage of his career, Chamberlain was eager to see the protection of British overseas interests but placed greater emphasis on a conception of justice in the pursuit of such interests.
On 31 May 1877, the National Liberal Federation (NLF) was founded at Bingley Hall, with Gladstone offering the inaugural address, Chamberlain as its president, and Birmingham politicians playing a dominant part in its organisation. The NLF enhanced Chamberlain's party influence and gave him a national platform. Through the NLF, Chamberlain tightened party discipline and campaigning, enlisted new party members, organised political meetings and published posters and pamphlets. Contemporary commentators drew often-disparaging comparisons between the Federation and the techniques of American political machines, with Chamberlain serving the role of a political boss. Chamberlain joined the Liberal denunciations of the government's foreign policy in the 1880 general election, and Gladstone returned as prime minister.