Mr Balfour's Poodle(3)

It is clear from these addresses and from the spate of oratory which accompanied them that, apart from the fiscal controversy, which was outstandingly predominant, and apart also from purely ephemeral issues, attention was most concentrated on the legislation which would follow from a Liberal victory, which both sides discussed in terms of measures dealing with education, licensing, the land, and possibly Home Rule.

The extent of the Government’s victory became known only gradually, for polling in the different constituencies was then spread over a period of nearly three weeks. But from January 12, which brought the news of the first gain at Ipswich, and January 13, when Arthur Balfour lost his seat in a spate of Government successes in Manchester and the North-West, right through to the end, the story was always the same. Supposedly safe Conservative seats crumbled, and Government victories in the most unlikely places brought into the House of Commons a flood of new Liberals who had been fighting almost without hope. There were in all 377 Liberal members. And with them, in some ways an even greater sensation, came fifty-three Labour members, twenty-four of whom were closely allied to the Liberal Party, with the other twenty-nine elected under the auspices of the Labour Representation Committee; but even these twenty-nine had in most cases escaped Liberal opposition in the constituencies. The Irish produced their usual contingent of eighty-three, which, added to the Liberal and Labour strengths, gave a total of 514 members who, in a straight clash with the Tories, might be expected to support the Government. The Opposition numbered 132 Conservatives and twenty-five Liberal union  ists, or, by an alternative method of classification, 109 Tariff Reformers, thirty-two upholders of Balfour’s tortuous view, eleven ‘Free Fooders’ and five who were uncertain. The Government’s normal majority was 357 —a preponderance unequalled since the Parliament of 1832—and the Liberal Party’s majority over all other parties was 129.

The election brought into the House of Commons more than 300 men who had not been members before, and many of these came from a social background which had not previously supplied more than a handful of members of Parliament. Obviously this applied with especial force to the new Labour members, but the Liberal Party itself was more widely based socially than had ever before been the case. Of its 377 members, which excludes the ‘Lib-Labs’, sixty-four were practising barristers, twenty-two were service officers, and sixty-nine were in the category attracting the label of ‘gentlemen’; all these followed ways of life which had been well represented in previous Parliaments. There were eighty businessmen who had started life in well-to-do circumstances, and another seventy-four who had started from humble conditions. Both these categories had, of course, been represented in previous Liberal parties and in the union  ist Party, but never to this extent. Of the remaining sixty-eight Liberal members, twenty-one were solicitors, twenty-five were writers and journalists, nine were teachers, mostly university teachers, eight were trade union  ists, and five were doctors of medicine.1 In the Conservative and Liberal union  ist parties there were forty-eight ‘gentlemen’, thirty-two service officers,2 twenty-six businessmen who had started life in easy circumstances, and thirteen who were self-made (the majority of these were Liberal union  ists); in addition there were six journalists and writers, five solicitors, three dons, two doctors of medicine, and one accountant. So far as the main categories are concerned, it is clear that the relative strength of barristers, solicitors, journalists and writers, and businessmen was greater on the Government side of the House, although only in the case of self-made businessmen was the preponderance overwhelming; officers and country gentlemen were much more heavily represented on the Opposition side.

In so far as their occupations are a guide, the Liberal members of this Parliament had clearly not become a true cross-section of the nation (no parliamentary party is ever likely to be quite this), but they had for the first time become a real cross-section of the middle and upper classes; and as such they were much more broadly based than their opponents.

This analysis of the social composition of the Parliament may be pushed a little further by a consideration of educational background. One hundred and twenty-five—a third—of the Liberal members had been to a public school, thirty-two of them to Eton; and 135 to Oxford or Cambridge. Of the Conservatives, eighty-two—nearly two-thirds—had been to a public school, and forty-five of them to Eton; fifty-six had been to Oxford or Cambridge. The Liberal union  ists had ten (out of twenty-five) who had been to a public school (five to Eton), and twelve who had been to Oxford or Cambridge.