Explain Why Did The Republicans Win The 1906 Election

Why did the Liberals win the 1906 election?

In the1870s, the Conservative Party won three out of four elections and formed the government for 17 years out of a total of 20 years. It reflected the Conservative Party was the most powerful party in England at that time; they even had an overpowering majority of seats in the House of Lords. They had support from everywhere. However, the situation changed dramatically when the Liberal party won the general election in 1906 with an overwhelming majority of 400 seats as against 157 seats for the Conservatives party. This event was marked as the well-known ‘Liberal landslide’. There are several reasons why the Conservative lost such a large amount of seats; national efficiency, the imposition of Education Act and Licensing Act, tariff campaign and Neglect of social reform.

To begin with, The Boer War is one of the most important events. The war started in 1899 in South Africa; the enemies of the British were the
Dutch farmers who found gold and diamonds in the Transvaal. They had conflict with the British miners and it the war began. It took them three years for the conservatives to end the war. In fact, it was too long for an empire to defeat a group of farmers. Money and time that were spent in war triggered the problem of poverty, and it got worse than the pre-war period.
This weakened the military and finance, the results were revealed overtime. When the war ended, the Liberals noticed the need of social reform and they suggested taking action immediately. The idea of solving the problem of poverty gained them a lot of supporters. Moreover, the strategy used by the conservatives party to win over the Boers were immoral then caused an outrage. At that time, people that are suffering from poverty and other citizens such as non conformists chose to support the Liberals because they wanted a new life. They believed some of the new policy might help them with their situation that they were facing; therefore, the Liberals gained a lot of support from these groups of people. The war encouraged Joseph Chamberlain to push his campaign for a tariff reform, which lead to a failure of the conservatives.

Tariff reform was probably the biggest misjudgment for the conservative party in history. The policy aimed to solve the problem of poverty. They relieved the tariff for goods coming into Britain from other Empire but not for goods coming from non-empire. They claimed that it would relieve the financial burden for the social reform and also integrate all the empires into a strong unit. Unfortunately, the tariff reform actually created a lot of problems. First, since imported goods were much cheaper than domestic goods, people started consuming the imported goods more than the local’s goods. The competitiveness become intensive and a lot of people cannot make any profit. The living standard was kept falling. On the other hand, this policy helped other empires getting stronger and richer but at the same time it was weakening their own empire. Being unhelpful to non-empire is not an action that empire should take. It gave bad reputation of England among the world and also for the citizens. As a result, the conservatives lost a lot of support meanwhile the liberals gained a lot.

Moreover, for the policy of Education Art of 1902 just raised the anger of non-conformists. The policy changed school funds from church to the local rates, which mean using the tax income to support the schools. The society strongly disagreed. The Liberal MP David Lloyd addressed a conference in Cardiff and successfully persuaded the non conformists to show their dissatisfactory of this policy by electing Liberals in the Welsh 1904 county council elections. This provided confidence to the liberals and more resources for them to take action and against the conservatives. Two years later, the 1904 Licensing Act bothered the non-conformists again. It aimed to reduce the number of pubs and it proposed to compensate brewers and pub owners by using government fund. This made the remaining voter changed their mind of voting the conservatives instead. The conservatives kept introducing policies that create anger and dissatisfaction. Eventually, voters lost faith in them and changed to support the liberal.
Lastly, neglect of social reform was a big mistake for the conservatives.
There was a growing awareness of poverty in Britain, especially in London in early 1900s. According to the research of Charles Booth in London, there were 25% of people that were living under abject poverty and over 35% of people were living under the poverty line of 0.90-1.05 pounds per week for a family with 3 children. The situation was severe and that was not only happening in London, but other cities as well. According to Seebhom Rowntree’s studies, there were 28% of people that lives in York could not afford to buy clothing and food. Social reform was definitely needed. At that time, some other new liberalism were arising, they aimed to give out minimum living standard for needy families. In contrast, the conservative was not doing anything good and the Education Act that did not please the society. As a result, a party that was providing more benefit to citizens and poverty became more successful and gained more voter’s
support.
To conclude, the conservative lost because they oversee of the problem of poverty and failed to care for the non-conformists. The neglect of social reform and the Boer war showed the careless of the conservatives among the society. The Education Act and Licensing Act turned a lot of voters away because they were using the government funds in an unreasonable way. While the conservatives performed poorly, the liberal did a great job by caring for the poverty and recruit non-conformists to join the liberals. Therefore, a lot of voters changed to support the Liberal instead. Eventually it leaded to the landslide victory that happened in 1906.

Reference(s):
1. C.Collier & C.Rowe , AQA History: Britain,1906-1951 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 10-12