Liberty, retrenchment, and reform

About this book

In common with republicanism or socialism in continental Europe, Liberalism in nineteenth-century Britain was a mass movement. By focussing on the period between the 1860s and the 1880s, this book sets out to explain why and how that happened, and to examine the people who supported it, their beliefs, and the way in which the latter related to one another and to reality. Popular support for the Liberal party was not irrational in either its objectives or its motivations: on the contrary, its dissemination was due to the fact that the programme of reforms proposed by the party leaders offered convincing solutions to some of the problems perceived as being the most urgent at the time. Part I examines popular Liberal attitudes towards issues of economic and social reform, starting from an analysis of what ordinary people thought and the way they expressed it--'the language' of popular Liberalism. As one labour leader put it in 1878, the mainstays of popular Liberalism could be summarised 'in the old watch-word of the Whigs of "Civil and Religious Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform"'. 'Liberty' and 'Retrenchment' are discussed in Part I, which concentrates on questions of contents and rational argument, while 'Reform'--democracy as the hoped-for panacea--is at the core of Part II. The latter gradually switches the focus on communication, and the means whereby the activists managed to involve those of a less developed political consciousness. Here rational arguments and emotional factors are studied as they affected one another, leading to a climax in the last chapter: an investigation of Gladstone's 'rational-charismatic' leadership.