With the UK elections nearly upon us, we take a look back at some of the Prime Ministers that have graced the halls of the House of Commons over the years, what their greatest political achievements were and how this has impacted directly on Ireland.
From the wartime leader Churchill to what is considered by many to be the greatest prime minster ever, Clement Attlee, the careers of these great Prime Ministers changed the course of political history in the UK.
First off, and perhaps most significantly from an Irish perspective, we will examine the career of the great Liberal leader of the late 19th century, the Grand Old Man, William Ewart Gladstone.
Who was he?
William E. Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809, the fourth son of merchant, John E. Gladstone who was of Scottish ancestry. Educated at Oxford and receiving a double first in Mathematics and Classics, he became President of the debating union at the University and was renowned as an excellent orator, a skill which followed him to the Commons. He was first elected to Parliament in 1832, interestingly as a Tory and held some junior positions in Peel’s government.
Following the Conservative split in 1846, and with his political interest beginning to lean towards liberalism, Gladstone followed Peel as a Liberal Conservative, later joining the Liberals and becoming their leader in 1867. He held a number of important positions over the years, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Despite the change in party, Gladstone the man was a far more complicated character. Most historians determine that he remained a Conservative at heart but did wish to reform the political system in Britain which was, in some ways, masquerading as a democracy.
In terms of his leadership and work ethic, he was unrivalled, possessing a massive energy and the “fanatical belief” in not wasting a moment. He was also a firm believer in punctuality, formality and his moral code, which was largely influenced by his religious beliefs (he was a devout High Anglican). Hilariously, Queen Victoria, with whom his relationship was pretty poor, once commented that “he always addresses me as if I were a public meeting.”
The Liberal Party
Unlike the party system that we are completely au fait with in Britain and Ireland at the moment, politics in Britain at the time didn’t exactly work the same way. Politicians were occasionally not loyal to their own parties, which were loosely held together by policies and personalities, but to their own position within the Parliament and furthering their interests personally, something that reared its head particularly in relation to Ireland. Often, they would vote against their own party if the bill which was presented before the Houses went against their own advantage. Gladstone led an unstable party, never mind an unstable coalition and one whose policy was so fluid that most couldn’t exactly determine what being a Liberal meant.
Loosely speaking, the Liberal party stood by the policy of freedom; economic freedom, free trade, a free press, freedom of speech and of religion, which was interesting to note in the case of Gladstone as he remained staunchly devoted to his church. Although a democracy didn’t exist in the purest sense of the word, there was a constitutional government but this was still influenced by the monarchy under the rule of Victoria. Unlike the empty formality that exists now in terms of calling and dissolving the government, Victoria called on the Prime Minister to form his government. She despised Gladstone, yet she couldn’t argue with the fact that he held the majority in the Commons at any given time and his party's victory in election in 1868.
A very different Britain
Britain went through a number of dramatic changes just before and during the period of Gladstone’s “rule”. Lest we forget, the Prime Minister held much less power in 1868 compared to what David Cameron holds now. With a lack of cabinet committees and the positions that some of the MPs hold now, one historian described the Prime Minister as merely a “first amongst equals.” Let’s be fair here, they certainly weren’t under the same amount of media attention that they are subject to on a daily basis now.
The Prime Minister’s lack of real authority was cemented by the fact that Victoria could still call her Prime Minister and the existence of the House of Lords, which seemed to block as many reforms as was humanly possible in the late 19th century. This didn’t happen on every occasion, like the introduction of the Reform Act, but with the “Upper House” consisting of hereditary positions of influence, bills like Home Rule were stopped at the final hurdle.
Most of Britain also didn’t have the vote, a “privilege” that women wouldn’t obtain until the next century and a right that the government of the day actively prevented the working classes from receiving, mostly out of fear of being unable to preserve the system that existed. However, Gladstone recognised that the new urban classes in Britain, who were without land, were under-represented. The distribution of the votes also needed to be examined with areas like Manchester electing just two MPs.
The class structure in Britain was changing, people were becoming more educated, Ireland was on the brink of revolution again and the impact of the upheaval of political systems abroad could only be ignored up to a certain point. Reform was on the cards.
“My mission is to pacify Ireland”
Arguably, no other Prime Minister has quite had the same effect on Ireland as Gladstone. At the beginning of his first ministry in 1868, the Grand Old Man declared that he would “pacify Ireland”, something that may have seemed entirely impossible at the time.
His reform came in three distinct areas, land, Home Rule and the Church.
Ireland was, to all intents and purposes, a mess in 1868. Having never really recovered from the impact of the Famine, the Roman Catholic tenants in the country were under the thumb of their Protestant landlords and often evicted for not paying rents. They were poor, starving and often faced the final option of emigration. The Fenian movement had drawn attention to their plight in some ways but Ireland was an escalating problem that needed to be solved. The Land League (of the time) demanded that tenants would have the three Fs, fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale of leases. Gladstone introduced all of these in his 1881 Land Act, the second of his land acts, which caused major ructions in his own party. The bill was seen as an “assault on the rights of property” but essentially paved the way for tenants in Ireland to own and sell their land.
He also began dismantling the power of the Church of Ireland. Although serving just a minority of the population, the Church had a firm economic standing and was partially funded by the State. Gladstone pushed through a bill effectively ending the connection of the State with the church which resulted in the Church losing a quarter of its revenue. However, the move was extremely popular, not just in Ireland among Roman Catholics who made up the bulk of the population but within his own party who saw this as a move towards freedom of religion.
The third, and perhaps the most controversial involvement in Ireland, was the issue of Home Rule, something that the Conservatives and even some members of the Liberal party were opposed to. Although they couldn’t argue with the plight of starving tenants, the ruling classes in Britain didn’t think Ireland had any more right to rule itself than London did, both having equal population at the time. Gladstone, with persuasion of Parnell and his Home Rule movement, became convinced that the Irish needed to govern themselves while still remaining within the Empire. The Unionists wouldn’t even hear of it. There followed years of political dramatics with MPs from the Home Rule movement holding up Commons proceedings to eventually holding the balance of power for government. Parnell in the end proved their undoing and Gladstone failed to bring Home Rule to the country. The cause was not completely abandoned but delayed by the onset of the First World War. However, 1916 changed everything.
Impact on Politics
Many point to the fact that British reform didn’t happen as the result of a major armed rebellion but merely coming to peace with the “new”, something that Gladstone is often credited with addressing. The voting system in Britain forever changed in Britain thanks to the influence of the Liberal party. By the end of his time as Prime Minister, Gladstone had introduced an extremely important Franchise Bill in 1884. This, along with the Redistribution Act, which ensured fair parliamentary representation, meant that by 1886 the electorate in the United Kingdom reached a total 5.5 million, up from 3 million in 1883. Voting was one of the key issues addressed by the Gladstonian government which also had a huge effect on Ireland. The introduction of the Ballot Act meant tenants no longer had to vote in front of their landlords while others were able to vote for the first time, something which directly swayed control in Westminster.
Through Liberal policies, the working classes also benefitted. With free trade policy came cheap food and better living standards. In fact, you could say that this was where Gladstone had his greatest influence, directly changing the everyday lives of people right from what was being put on their table to the houses of Westminster to reform of the Education System (his party introduced the Education Reform Bill).
On a personal level, Gladstone’s work ethic and moral approach to politics left quite the legacy in the Liberal party. He was really the first Prime Minister who was popular with the people and was nicknamed the “People’s William”.
He remained a huge opponent and critic of the Conservative party, particularly in the case of Turkish involvement in the Balkans but his abandonment of some Imperial matters, often in the name of Home Rule, cost him dearly and he left behind a party that was often at odds with itself.
Perhaps the greatest measure of the man was the fact that when Lord Randolph Churchill’s health began to deteriorate due to syphilis, his speeches in parliament became rambling and on occasion incoherent. Gladstone, who was criticized openly by Churchill in the past, always stayed and listened until Churchill finished.
The defeat of another Home Rule Bill resulted in his resignation in 1894. He passed away in 1898 from cancer and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Best speech – The Home Rule speech in 1886
“Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single book, find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article, unless the product of the day, in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No; they are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history; and what we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country. So we treat our traditions — so we hail the demand of Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, Sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.”
You can find the speech here.
