From Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain

The People’s Budget was the brainchild of David Lloyd George and was championed by his ally, Winston Churchill, who was accused of being a traitor to his class. Lloyd George, a Welsh politician who gained fame by his vehement opposition to the Second Boer War, was the Chancellor of the Exchequer (what would be known as the Secretary of the Treasury in the US) in 1909, and made social reform the linchpin of his political platform. Though it could be said that the Liberal Party adopted a measure of socialistic platforms to keep the Conservative Party in check, and to stem the rise of the Labour Party, Edwardian society was changing, and politicians were kicked into the twentieth century, whether they liked it or not.

After the Liberals introduced old age pensions for the sick and infirm, Lloyd George shocked both sides of the political spectrum with the budget he revealed on April 29, 1909, which proposed taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, incomes, and land, and an increase in death duties (introduced in 1894) and duties on undeveloped land and minerals, a levy on unearned increment, and a supertax on incomes above £5000 (6d. on the pound). This influx of taxes would support such programs as pensions, unemployment insurance, health insurance, free school meals for children, etc, and the costs of building the dreadnoughts the Royal Navy claimed it needed to shore up defenses against Germany. The budget galvanized the Liberal Party to action, and they fought for the Finance Bill throughout the summer, but a blow was struck when the House of Lords vetoed the budget, and the tug-of-war resulted in another General Election in January 1910.

A greater blow was struck to the House of Lords, who, though they passed the budget April 29, 1910, experienced their first real challenge of power. So great was the battle for the People’s Budget, Liberal politicians threatened to make King Edward (and after his death in May, King George) ennoble Liberal MPs so they could then sit in the House of Lords and pass the bill. This constitutional crisis did not come to pass, but 1911 saw the passing of a Parliament Act which “prevented the Lords from vetoing any public legislation that originated in and had been approved by the Commons, and imposed a maximum legislative delay of one month for “money bills” (those dealing with taxation) and two years for other types of bill.”

Further Reading:
British Social Politics by Carlton Hayes
Edwardian Life and Leisure by Ronald Pearsall
Mr. Lloyd George by E. T. Raymond

The history of the franchise reform bills in England during the 19th century represented the struggle for democracy in the country. Because the class system was so entrenched in society, most–especially politicians–believed that only certain classes had the right to vote, and the fight for enfranchisement was a bitter one until the Representation of the People Act 1918. Until then, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act (1883), the Third Reform Act (1884), and an Act of 1885, held many suffragists at bay. The first act criminalized bribing and intimidation of voters and standardized the amount of money a politician could spend on their campaign, the second extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, and the third redistributed parliamentary seats and made every constituency of uniform importance. The voting population was now at 5.5 million, though 40% of males remained disenfranchised and only a fraction of the other 60% actually could vote, due to existing property legislation. These reforms were put to the test in the General Election of 1885, where the Liberals won a slim majority, but the agitation for Home Rule split the party, which led to another General Election in 1886.

World War One put an end to the restrictions on voting (with the exception of women younger than 30) when politicians pushed through the Representation of the People Act 1918 when they realized it was unconscionable to deny the right to vote to the millions of men who fought for the country:

1. All adult males gain the vote, as long as they are over 21 years old and are resident householders
2. Women over 30 years old receive the vote but they have to be either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register
3. Some seats redistributed to industrial towns
4. Elections to be held on a decided day each year

This Act tripled the number of eligible voters from 7.7 million in 1912 to 21.4 million by the end of 1918, and women now accounted for about 43% of the electorate. The Equal Suffrage Act was passed ten years later, by which women were given equal voting rights with men.

The Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU) was born.

A far cry from the genteel group from whence they came, the WSPU immediately showed its difference in the fact that it attracted women from the working and middle-classes—women who were less inhibited by the traditional trappings of “ladyhood”. Though at first fearing the stance the WSPU took would harm the cause, the NUWSS admired their courage and refused to speak out against them.

By 1905 public interest in women’s suffrage had waned, and the WSPU made a decision that would forever change the face of the suffragist movement. Traveling to London to hear a speech by Sir Edward Grey, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenny threw down the gauntlet by interrupting Sir Edward’s speech with the cry of “Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?“.

The women were soon after charged with assault and arrested. Christabel and Annie then proceeded to shock the world when, after refusing to pay the five shilling fine, they were thrown in jail. Never before had English suffragists resorted to violence to support the cause and newspapers were quick to pounce on this new movement, nicknaming the followers of militancy “suffragettes“. Far from decrying this derogatory term, the WSPU adopted it with pleasure, the term separating them from the civil actions of the NUWSS.

Moving their headquarters from Manchester to London, by 1908 the suffragettes had launched an all-out war for the cause, targeting those MPs notoriously anti-suffrage like Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and Winston Churchill. The suffragettes marched through London, interrupted speeches, assaulted policemen attempting to arrest them, chained themselves to fences, sent letter bombs and damaged property–the most infamous being their destruction of the windows of department stores and shops in Bond Street. Viewed as unfeminine due to many of the women being unmarried and involved in careers instead of housework, the Establishment were at a loss as to how to deal with suffragettes. They baffled the common perceptions of Victorian womanhood and once released from jail, merely went out and repeated the same misdemeanors. Using this loophole in the justice system, the suffragettes increased their militant campaigns, including a devastating arson campaign during which attempts were made to burn the houses of anti-suffrage MPs, railway stations, golf courses, cricket fields and racecourse stands.

When the jailed suffragettes went on hunger-strikes while incarcerated, the government passed the “Cat and Mouse Act”: if a suffragette went on a hunger strike, once ill she would be released from prison and re-arrested when well again. However, by the summer of 1914, the militant campaign was exhausted by the imprisonment, exile or poor health of the WSPU’s leading members (Christabel had fled to Paris in 1912 to escape arrest) and the number of active members able to continue the violence was now very small. Naturally, WWI put a damper on the suffrage campaign, and both the WSPU and NUWSS focused their energies on the war effort, using their platforms to drum up support for the troops. But ever antagonistic to the end, the WSPU took patriotism to their breast as much as they did suffrage, using their newspaper to attack those in power they saw as pacifists or communists.

In then end, all women over the age of 30 were granted the vote in 1918, and ten years later the vote was given on equal terms as men (age 21).

Further Reading:
Caffrey, Kate. 1900s Lady
Crow, Duncan. The Edwardian Woman
Mackenzie, Madge. Shoulder to shoulder : a documentary
Nowell-Smith, Simon. Edwardian England, 1901-1914
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The suffragette : the history of the women’s militant suffrage movement, 1905-1910
Shaw, Frederick John. The Case for Women’s Suffrage

Booker T. Washington made his mark with the infamous “Atlanta Compromise” speech, in which he entreated black Southerners to “cast down their bucket where [they were]” and accommodate white Southerners in hope of obtaining equality through humility and diligence. This ideology of accommodation characterized Washington’s entire career as a “race man,” and laid the foundation for the establishment of Tuskegee Institute, in which he emphasized obtaining a useful trade and equipping students to become teachers of these trades (farming, cookery, etc). He also attracted the attention of America’s leading politicians and philanthropists, who viewed him as the leading voice for African-Americans, and donated enormous sums to his educational and social programs. Because of the swiftness of Washington’s rise to prominence and the influence he had over the powerful in the land, he was called–derisively by his critics and proudly by his supporters–the “Wizard of Tuskegee.” But there was a dark side of his politics: Washington was caught in his own ideology as America reached the nadir of race relations, a time where streets ran red with the blood of victims of brutal and senseless lynchings , and ruthless race riots damaged what little reconciliation established between blacks and whites during Reconstruction.

It was during this time that W. E. B. Du Bois launched his attack on Washington’s platform and established himself as a militant and passionate proponent of integration. Du Bois was gifted and relatively privileged from birth, and his early scholastic achievements led him to believe that reason and education were key to overcoming racism. His viewpoint was solidified by his well-rounded education: he attended Fisk University, a top historically black college, obtained his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and studied in Berlin. From his extensive scholastic career Du Bois dedicated himself to the painstaking task of putting the black experience into words. His most lasting and lauded achievements were the publication of his Ph.D dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638–1870 (1896), The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the last of which imprinted the phrase “double consciousness” forever into vocabulary of the black intelligentsia.

By the 1900s, Washington and Du Bois placed themselves on opposite ends of the anti-racism spectrum. As a result, much of their similarities were obscured, and posterity has passed down the belief that Booker T. Washington was passive and desired blacks to remain content as maids and Pullman porters, and that W. E. B. Du Bois desired only for the uplift of light-skinned, college-educated blacks over their darker, less-educated brethren. In both cases, I feel the scope of their writings demanded the inclusion of African-American narratives into the greater American narrative, while acknowledging the multiple threads from which the African-American experience derived.

Further Reading:
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington,W. E. B. Du Bois, et al
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements ed by Booker T. Washington
Of the Training of Black Men by W. E. B. Du Bois

Anglo-Irish tensions were further exacerbated by the presence of the “Protestant Ascendancy,” or the “Ascendancy,” who were comprised of the Protestant English landowners who received large swaths of land from the Crown after a series of unsuccessful revolts against English rule caused much Irish land to be confiscated by the Crown. English soldiers and traders became the new ruling class, as its richer members were elevated to the Irish House of Lords and eventually controlled the Irish House of Commons. This process was facilitated and formalized in the legal system after 1691 by the passing of various Penal Laws, which discriminated against Irish Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants deemed “Dissenters.” Though the Ascendancy lost much of its overt political and social clout by the early 19th century, the “abolition of the Irish parliament was followed by economic decline in Ireland, and widespread emigration from among the ruling class to the new center of power in London, which increased the number of absentee landlords.” The Potato Famine of 1848-1852 exposed the vulnerability of Irish tenant farmers, and as a consequence, the British Parliament was moved to pass a number of acts to bolster the Irish economy. But these belated Acts did little to counteract the centuries of absentee landlord abuses, nor the history of British oppression.

The life of an Irish tenant farmers was difficult. Land prices in Ireland were high–sometimes 80-100% higher than in England–and those who leased land from an absentee landlord, rented out small parcels of land to those who paid to farm it. Each estate leased out was divided into the smallest possible parcels of land and many families who worked the land had only half-an-acre to live off. There were no rules controlling the work of those who had leased land from absentee landlords. They worked in conjunction with the Royal Irish Constabulary and it was the RIC and Army which enforced evictions if needed. There were three systems in place which forced Irish farmers into the endless cycle of debt:

Rundale: a system whereby land rented to a person or persons was scattered throughout an estate. Therefore, it was very time consuming to travel to each parcel of land. The argument given for using this system was that everyone got a chance of getting at least some good land to farm. One man in Donegal had 42 pieces of land throughout one managed estate.

Hanging Gale: a system whereby a new tenant was allowed to delay his payment of rent for 6 to 8 months from the start of renting the land. Therefore, he was permanently in debt and had no security.

Conacre: a system whereby the landlord/manager prepared the land and then the tenant moved in. The tenant was then allowed to pay part of his rent using the crops he had grown. If there was a bad harvest, then he had no crops to pay part of his rent. Therefore, he was gambling that he would get a good harvest. In 1845 to 1847, this was a disaster.

Dissent spilled over in the 1840s and 1850s with the rise of the Young Ireland party. They believed the only solution for Ireland was complete independence: Home Rule. After a failed attack on the government, Young Ireland’s most prominent leaders, James Stephens and John O’Mahony, fled for Paris. O’Mahoney later found his way to America where he stirred up the ire of Irish-Americans to create the Fenian Brotherhood. The Fenians planned a number of rebellions and uprisings, and though initially their causes garnered much sympathy, after December 1867, when several Londoners were killed when a bomb planted by the Fenians exploded at Clerkenwell Prison, there was a wave of anti-Irish feeling in London and elsewhere in England.

Prior to his taking up the cudgel for Home Rule, William Ewart Gladstone’s political career was distinguished but somewhat ordinary. In 1867, Lord Russell retired and Gladstone became a leader of the Liberal Party, shortly thereafter becoming Prime Minister where he remained in the office until 1874. According to wikipedia:

In the 1860s and 1870s, Gladstonian Liberalism was characterised by a number of policies intended to improve individual liberty and loosen political and economic restraints. First was the minimization of public expenditure on the premise that the economy and society were best helped by allowing people to spend as they saw fit. Secondly, his foreign policy aimed at promoting peace to help reduce expenditures and taxation and enhance trade. Thirdly, laws that prevented people from acting freely to improve themselves were reformed.

During Gladstone’s rise, there also arose Ireland’s most intelligent and charismatic leader, one whom many on both sides of the political spectrum could have swayed the tide of Home Rule: Charles Stewart Parnell. Born into the gentry and, surprisingly, of American stock via his mother, he rose swiftly through the ranks of politics, gaining fame during the 1870s when he refuted the claims that Fenians had been behind the murders in Manchester. His defense gained him the attention of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a physical force Irish organisation that had staged the rebellion in 1867, and Parnell began to cultivate Fenians from America and Britain. By the 1880s, Parnell had become the face of Irish Nationalism, and so popular was he, during his tour of Toronto, an associate dubbed him the “uncrowned king of Ireland.”

By the time of Gladstone’s Second and Third Ministries, he became aligned with the pro-Home Rule movement. Gladstone, impressed by Parnell, had become personally committed to granting Irish home rule in 1885. With his famous three-hour Irish Home Rule speech Gladstone sought to convince Parliament to “pass the Irish Government Bill 1886, and grant Home Rule to Ireland in honor rather than being compelled to do so one day in humiliation.” The bill was defeated in the Commons by 30 votes. This split the Liberal (Whig) Party, and led by Lord Hartington (later the Duke of Devonshire, whose brother was murdered by Irish nationalists at Phoenix Park in 1886) and Joseph Chamberlain, the party formed a political alliance with the Conservatives in opposition to Irish Home Rule.

From then on, the “Irish Question” was fought bitterly in the House of Commons, and politicians were not afraid to resort to various deceptions such as forgeries, bribes, dissenting anonymous pamphlets, etc. One of these backdoor deals is rumored to have resulted in the sudden petition for divorce by Captain O’Shea, the husband of Parnell’s longtime love, Katherine, with whom he had three children. The divorce scandal stunted his political career, and though he remained popular, his character was tarnished. The fight for Home Rule marched on, and prior to the Great War, two more Home Rule bills were introduced in 1892 and 1914 to a crushing defeat (though the 1914 bill was interrupted by WWI and the Easter Rising). Though the issue of Home Rule was settled violently and bloodily, it cast a pall over British politics and was the first sign of a weakness in the armor that was the British Empire.

Further Reading:
Home Rule: an Irish history, 1800-2000‎ by Alvin Jackson
Seventy Years Young by Countess Fingall
Gladstone: A Biography by Roy Jenkins
The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism by Robert Kee
The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood, from the Land League to Sinn Fein by Owen Mcgee
Handbook of Home rule, being articles on the Irish question by James Bryce
Ireland in the Nineteenth Century
Irish Home Rule Bill

In the past, titled women such as Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, whose “kisses won the votes of Covent Garden porters for Fox,” and others like Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, the Duchess of Portland, the Countesses of Derby and Beauchamp, the Ladies Waldegrave, etc, all “reveled in election fights in the days when every man knew how his neighbor had voted, and when polling days were marked by fierce rioting and savage intimidation.” By the Edwardian era, it was acceptable for women to canvass for votes, make speeches and otherwise take public part in their husband’s political campaigns. The most notable was Lady Randolph Churchill, who made waves both during the extent of Lord Randolph Churchill’s career, and that of her son Winston’s–her plea, “Never mind about dear bread. Vote for dear Winston,” when he was fighting for election in North Manchester became infamous.

The social success and personal satisfaction of a political wife obviously depended on her own temperament as well as her husband’s talents and popularity. An accomplished political hostess could oil the wheels of her husband’s career, though a talented hostess could rarely push her husband’s interests if a powerful political enemy halted his progress. Anomalies to this process were Arthur Balfour and W.E. Gladstone, the latter of whom had a retiring wife, and the former, who had no wife at all. Women were denied a formal education but they often were very well read, articulate and knowledgeable about politics, and they grew up immersed in a political atmosphere and revered parliamentary leaders as their heroes, espousing the cause of their family’s party. For example, the Lyttleton, Gladstone and Talbot women were influential on such topics as Irish Home Rule, the complex relationship between Church and State, and the iniquities of Conservative foreign policy.

According to the Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, “Leading political hostesses, of course, take a keen interest in the doings of these leagues and associations, which may be said to keep the rank and file of the parties together. But they also have the responsible duty of furthering the interests of their husband and party by extending to the principal members of the latter cordial hospitality at all times. ‘Given average ability, the young politician who marries a clever wife is bound to come to the front,’ remarked Lord Beaconsfield on one occasion. He was referring more particularly to the clever wife who can maintain a brilliant home, charm people with her conversation, prove a discreet and tactful friend and adviser, imbue others with her enthusiasm – in a word, make people want to cultivate the acquaintance of herself and her husband.”

During the 1880s, women boosted the image of the Conservative Party with the foundation of the Primrose League. In 1885, a Ladies Branch and Grand Council was founded by Lady Borthwick and a committee meeting took place in her house on Piccadilly with the dowager-duchess of Marlborough (first lady president), Lady Wimborne, Lady Randolph Churchill, Lady Charles Beresford, the dowager-marchioness of Waterford, Julia, marchioness of Tweeddale, Julia, Countess of Jersey, Mrs (subsequently Lady) Hardman, Lady Dorothy Nevill, the Honorable Lady Campbell (later Lady Blythswood), the Honorable Mrs Armitage, Mrs Bischoffsheim, and Miss Meresia Nevill (the first secretary of the Ladies Council).

Lady Randolph Churchill spoke thus of the league’s early days in her 1908 memoir:

As a Dame I was determined to do all I could to further its aims. The first years of its existence were a struggle. The wearing of the badge exposed one to much chaff not to say ridicule, but we persisted. Recruits joined surely if slowly and today after twenty five years of existence the League can boast of having 1,703,708 knights dames and associates upon its rolls and of having materially helped to keep the Conservative Party in power twenty years.

The Liberal Party had its own counterpart–the Women’s Liberal Federation, the president of which was the Countess of Carlisle, and the Women’s National Liberal Association–though this had considerably less fame and impact than the Primrose League. Of the political hostesses, they have been discussed extensively in other posts. Needless to say, the Duchess of Devonshire, the Marchioness of Londonderry, and Margot Asquith, among others, were extremely powerful and exerted much influence over their husbands and their protegees. Because of their peculiar status, many of these socially- and politically- powerful women were anti-suffrage, feeling that women did not require the vote because they had always wielded political power. In hindsight we know this was short-sighted, and that their reasoning was obscured by their exalted social status, which by and large protected them from the vulnerabilities women of the middle and working classes faced. Nonetheless, in this period of increasing suffragist protests, women in England were powerful and influential on a public scale.

Further Reading:
Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography by June Purvis
Political woman by Melville Currell
Women, marriage, and politics, 1860-1914 by Patricia Jalland
The Edwardian Woman by Duncan Crow
1900s Lady by Kate Caffrey
What It Means to Be A Political Hostess and Worker

Near the strangers’ gallery were three or four benches in the center of the floor, facing the Lord Chancellor, known as “the cross benches,” upon which sat those Princes of the Blood Royal who had been created peers of the realm and who, though they were allowed to vote, belonged to no political party. A few peers also chose to be seated thus. Behind these benches was the place known as “the Bar,” where the Speaker and the members of the House of Commons stood when summoned by the Black Rod to the House of Lords to hear the Royal assent signified to the Bills agreed upon by both Houses. The divisions in the House of Lords mirrored that of the Commons, except the peers declared themselves in the Old Norman French “Content” or “Non Content” rather than “Aye” or “No,” and the tellers counted these votes with a white wand.

Also present in the House of Lords were the peeresses, whose galleries lined both sides of the Upper Chamber, foreign Ambassadors, invited guests (“Strangers”), and reporters, who each also possessed galleries of their own. But unlike the House of Commons, where the sexes were separated into their own galleries, ladies and gentlemen could sit together.

Contrary to popular belief, most peers sat regularly in the House of Lords, and throughout the nineteenth century, attendance reached its peak in the 1830s, 1850s, 1870s and late 1880s–no doubt spurred on by such issues like the Irish Question or the Deceased Wife’s Sister Act. However, sittings were usually brief, a quarter of an hour not infrequently the length of a sitting. Sometimes a sitting might have extended to an hour, on still rarer occasions it prolonged until seven pm, and at times on two nights of a Session of seven or eight months’ duration, the sitting could last until midnight. But it was more likely that newspaper reports would announce the adjournment of the House fifteen minutes after it first sat. Far from being lazy, the reasons behind these short sessions was because the House of Lords was practically barred from initiating legislature of an important nature.

Sittings in the House of Lords began at four, though as a rule, no business was done until half-past four, and during this interlude, the Lord Chancellor would essentially twirl his thumbs. The number of peers of the realm fluctuated over the years, but generally hovered around five hundred and seventy. Where the House of Commons required forty members to “make a House,” three peers formed a quorum, but if it appeared on a division that thirty lords were not in attendance, the question was declared not decided.

When the Government changed, the parties crossed to floor, with the “ins” sitting on the benches to the right of the Lord Chancellor, and the “outs” occupying those on his left. The Lords Spiritual always occupied the same benches on the Government side of the House, near to the Throne, no matter which party was in office. Twenty-six in number–the Archbishops Canterbury and York, and twenty-four bishops–were distinguished from the Lords temporal by their full, flowing black gowns and their lawn sleeves. The peers in the House were much more soberly dressed except at the opening of Parliament by the Sovereign, whereupon they appeared in scarlet robes, slashed across the breast with stripes of ermine, few or numerous according to the low or high degree of the wearer in the peerage. Though the Lords temporal–royal peers, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons–were allotted certain benches according to their rank, they only sat thus during the opening of Parliament.

Opinion of the day claimed that speeches made in the House of Lords were of an eloquent and more able quality than those made in the Commons, for members of the lower house spoke as often as possible to get their names in the papers. The demeanor was quite different in the Lords as well–none of the fury and raucous which characterized the doings in the Commons. But if order cannot be maintained, the procedure of the House provides for the quelling of the disturbance by the reading by the Clerk of two old Standing Orders in relation to asperity in speech and quarrels in the Chamber.

Though of lesser political power, the House of Lords was the Supreme Court of Appeal from the Courts of Justice of the United Kingdom. If a claimant felt an injustice was done him by the decision of any of the law courts, they could come to the House of Lords, whose judgment on the matter would be final and irrevocable. This court sat on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays throughout the legal year from 10:30 am to 4 pm, and gravity, dignity and decorum reigned supreme. No witnesses were examined, nor was there a jury, and sparring between opposing lawyers was unheard of. The lawyers would address the House at the Bar and lay down, in placid, conversational style, the facts of the case and the points of law on which he relied for judgment. After both sides presented their case, the House would adjourn and the parties involved would be informed of the day on which the House would deliver its decision.

As with such great power, there came resentment, and the growing dissent against the House of Lords affected the House of Commons, where the Conservative Party was defeated in 1906, and then invoked a Parliamentary crisis in 1910. Meanwhile, books and pamphlets filled bookstalls with such titles as Peers and bureaucrats: two problems of English Government and The Old Order Changeth, the Passing of Power from the House of Lords, one of which went so far as the proclaim that “our victory at Waterloo was a great misfortune to England….the feudal system, broken down and disorganized all over the Continent by Napoleon, preserved its old tradition in these islands…[and Britain] is now a hundred years behind the rest of Western Europe.”

The trouble began when in 1909 David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced into the House of Commons the “People’s Budget”, which proposed a land tax targeting wealthy landowners, among other benefits for the common people of England. This bill was immediately defeated by the House of Lords, and in response, the Liberal Party made the curtailing of the House of Lords’ powers their primary campaign issue for the General Election of January 1910.

The chaos produced by this was enormous, and King Edward let it be known his willingness to raise men to the peerage to force the bill to pass through the House of Lords. He died in May however, before he could implement this, and when the Conservative Party, with their Liberal Unionist allies, gained more seats than the Liberals, the fight intensified. After another general election in December, the Asquith Government secured the passage of a bill to curtail the powers of the House of Lords. In the end, The Parliament Act 1911 effectively abolished the power of the House of Lords to reject legislation, or to amend in a way unacceptable to the House of Commons; most bills could be delayed for no more than three parliamentary sessions or two calendar years.

Further Reading:
Edwardian England: 1901-1914, ed. Simon Nowell-Smith
The Book of Parliament by Michael MacDonagh
How We are Governed: Guide for the Stranger to the Houses of Parliament‎ by Howard Vincent
The House of Lords Question by Andrew Reid, Philip Stanhope, and Robert Collier Monkswell
The Rise of the Democracy by Joseph Clayton
House of Lords on Wapedia

Daisy, Countess of Warwick

by Victoria Fishburn

Imagine a beautiful woman from Edwardian England who married an Earl, became mistress to the Prince of Wales and astonished Society by standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament. Such a woman was Daisy, Countess of Warwick. Her words, written in two memoirs and countless other books, are still quoted by most historians of the period. In her youth, she was famous for her looks. Cartes-de-visites with her likeness were bought by those who followed the ‘Professional Beauties’, society women whose beauty was admired amongst all classes. Her friend Elinor Glyn referred to her as an ‘It girl’. The fair, curvaceous heiress hit London Society in the 1880s but, although she was painted by Sargent and sculpted by Rodin, her beauty was only part of the reason that she was famous in her lifetime. Even today, her name is widely recognized. This is largely because the life that she led followed so unconventional a path. Despite having good looks, a fortune, a lasting marriage and nine successful years as mistress to the Prince of Wales behind her, she embarked upon a radical life as a social reformer.

My interest in her was sparked by the sheer unlikeliness of her character. She leaves a confusing legacy: an heiress, a Countess and a landowner and yet she signed up to the socialist ideal of land nationalization and tried to give her house away. She had the love of the Prince and yet she pestered him with her ideas for reform. Hugely extravagant, she spent lavishly on entertaining her guests, whilst supporting reforms to help the poor and downtrodden. She stood for a parliamentary seat as a candidate for the Labour party but appeared on political platforms dressed in pearls and furs. Daisy’s life was marked out as unusual from the age of three when she inherited the estates of her grandfather, her father having already died.

The self-confidence and determined independence that characterized her approach to life, started early. She rode dangerous racehorses from her stepfather’s stable, she went to the theatre with Disraeli and, most shockingly, she thwarted the plans of Queen Victoria to marry her to the youngest Prince, her haemophiliac son, Leopold. Brookie was a good catch as heir to the Earl of Warwick but did not have the cachet of a Prince. Young, active and gorgeous she swept all before her as she reveled in her position as Lady Brooke. Having produced a son for her husband, infidelity was accepted in the aristocratic circles in which she moved, as long as affairs were conducted according to that all-important quality of the age: discretion. Daisy threw parties, she bought dresses from Paris by the great French designers, Charles Worth and Doucet, she had lovers and she hunted. But the same impulsiveness that she brought to the hunting field made her indiscreet.

Her reputation was first tarnished by a reckless letter she wrote to her lover, Lord Charles Beresford, berating him for his wife’s pregnancy. The affair foundered at the insult to his wife and recognizing the dire threat of ruin to her reputation, Daisy fled into the arms of the Prince. She entertained Bertie and his friends, first at her own Essex estate and subsequently at Warwick Castle, inherited by her husband Lord Brooke in 1893. Her years as royal mistress should have made her reputation unassailable but even then she was criticized for her indiscreet gossip: a gambling deal involving the Prince of Wales, earned her the nickname, ‘Babbling Brooke’. But both Bertie and Brookie were devoted to her and put up with a great deal. Brookie wrote that he would rather have been married to Daisy ‘with all her peccadilloes’ than to any other woman in the world. They remained married until his death.

Like so many who lavishly entertained their future King, Daisy was extravagant and, what had seemed a great fortune, diminished to the point when she had to sell many of her possessions and property. Her most ignominious episode came about because of debt. After the death of Edward VII, she attempted to raise money by the sale of his love letters to her, offering them, at a price, to George V. The royal advisers were not moved to help her, despite the fact that she had never had the financial benefits and protection given to some of Edward’s other mistresses. She was threatened with an injunction and forced to give the letters to the King. Kept secret at the time, this affair emerged in the 1960s in a book by Theo Lang called ‘My Darling Daisy’ – the affectionate address used by the Prince of Wales in his letters. The name stuck.

She was given many labels in her life: Professional Beauty, It girl, Babbling Brooke and My Darling Daisy but, before the end of her life, the Countess of Warwick was known by another, and very unlikely, name: the Socialist Countess. At a time when many Edwardians were clinging to the vestiges of a glamorous Society life which was to end with the First World War, Daisy was again stepping out of the mould. Her kind nature and sympathy with those suffering hardship, had inspired her to many philanthropic actions over the years. She had started a home for cripples and a needlework school for rural girls with a shop to sell their work. She funded a secondary school and championed the cause of women’s education by establishing a training college for women. When her days as royal mistress were behind her, she became interested in the rising Socialist movement. Philanthropy turned to Socialism by 1904, when she joined the Social Democratic Foundation. It perplexed her society friends that she should join the highly unfashionable world of trade unionists and socialists. But Daisy had changed. She was no longer interested in Society, her friends now encompassed many fellow Socialists: George Bernard Shaw, H.G.Wells and Gustav Holst were amongst them.

Bravely independent, Daisy increased her literary output in order to make some money. Although never an author of the calibre of Shaw or Wells, it is through her writing that Daisy Warwick maintains her hold on posterity. Between 1898 and 1934, twelve books came out under her name, the first a book on gardens. The subjects were varied: essays on Socialism; a short biography of the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris; a well-respected history of Warwick Castle; a book of essays on the First World War and two substantial books of memoirs. She edited and wrote introductions or essays for a further eight books. Daisy sailed to America in 1912, to give a lecture tour in New York and Washington: the newspapers were full of the outfits she wore and were more interested in society gossip than the socialism she wanted to preach. Back home she contributed articles to London newspapers and the Daily Sketch commissioned her as an advice columnist and editor of their womens’ page. This astonishing literary output kept her name in the public eye.

In 1923, Daisy Warwick stood as a candidate for the Labour Party for the parliamentary seat of Warwick and Leamington. Her opponent was her relation, and later Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. But the overdressed Countess of Warwick, who owed money to many of those who might have supported her, was shunned and, ignominiously, beaten into third place. With this result, she left parliamentary ambitions behind her although she continued to support the Labour Party. In the late 1920s she tried to give her house in Essex away, first to the Labour Party and, when that failed, to the Trade Union Congress. Ironically, it was the fact that she was a Countess and a symbol of privilege that caused the rejection of her offer. Disillusioned with socialism, she retreated back to her home and an old age concerned with the welfare of animals.

Daisy Warwick’s seventy-eight years had been eventful: from her birth as a beautiful and privileged heiress to an old age where looks, money and society friends had all gone. But her name lives on today and this is where her literary output has extended her fame. She is a valuable source for most historians of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. Theo Aronson in The King in Love, Stanley Weintraub in Edward, King in Waiting, Henry Vane in Affair of State, Leo McKinstry in his recent biography of Rosebery, Andrew Roberts in Salisbury: Victorian Titan and Anthony Allfrey in Edward VII and his Jewish Court are just some of the many historians who use Daisy’s insights taken from her memoirs and other writings.

Victoria Fishburn is presently writing a biography on Daisy, Countess of Warwick and can be contacted by email: victoria [at] fishburns [dot] co [dot] uk.