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Y112: Britain 1900–1951

Enquiry: Political issues c.1900–1914 — England in 1900, Trade Unions and problems of industrial unrest

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 1

Overview

Recall questions on England in 1900, the Conservative government under Balfour 1902–1905, reasons for the Liberal landslide, the origins and development of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions from 1893 to 1914, constitutional crisis, causes, course and results.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

What caused the constitutional crisis, and what did it settle?

Who and when

Why did successive governments resist votes for women before 1914?

Numbers

Why had Ireland brought Britain to the brink of civil war by 1914?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was the condition of England in 1900?

    Model answer

    England and Wales held some thirty-two million people, about four fifths of them living in towns, still the world's greatest imperial and financial power but overtaken in steel and chemicals by Germany and the United States, and containing, as the social investigators were showing, a third of its people in poverty.

  2. 2

    What did Balfour's government achieve, and why did it end in 1905?

    Model answer

    It reorganised defence through the Committee of Imperial Defence, put schooling on a modern footing through the 1902 Act, settled much of the Irish land question by purchase and made the entente with France; but tariff reform had split the party, so Balfour resigned rather than dissolve, hoping the Liberals would fall out over office.

  3. 3

    What did Chamberlain's tariff reform campaign propose, and why did it fail to convince?

    Model answer

    He wanted duties on foreign goods with preference for the Empire, to raise revenue for social reform and bind the Empire together; but preference meant taxing imported food, and half a century of free trade had taught voters that cheap bread was the first test of any policy.

  4. 4

    How did the trade unions change between 1893 and 1914?

    Model answer

    Membership grew from about one and a half million to over four million as unskilled workers organised, the unions financed and then dominated the new Labour Representation Committee after Taff Vale, and by 1914 the largest of them were prepared to act together in the Triple Alliance.

  5. 5

    What was the scale of the Liberal victory in 1906?

    Model answer

    The Liberals won about four hundred seats and an overall majority of some 130, with Labour taking twenty-nine and the Irish eighty-three, leaving the Unionists barely 157 — the heaviest defeat a governing party had suffered in living memory.

  6. 6

    What caused the constitutional crisis, and what did it settle?

    Model answer

    A permanent Unionist majority in the Lords wrecked Liberal legislation and then rejected the 1909 budget, so the Liberals fought two elections on the powers of the peers; the Parliament Act of 1911 left the Lords able only to delay, and made a British government's Commons majority effectively sovereign.

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