Constituency : Birmingham 1876-85, Birmingham West 1885-1912 ( from 1886 Liberal Unionist ) , 1912-14 ( Conservative )
There's no doubt who the most significant by-election victor of the 1870s was. Joseph Chamberlain would have a major bearing on the shape of British politics for decades; not until his son was toppled in 1940 did his influence start to wane.
Joseph came in at Birmingham after the retirement of George Dixon. He was unopposed after publicly apologising for describing Disraeli as "a man who never told the truth except by accident".
Joseph was a Unitarian shoemaker's son from Birmingham. He was educated at University College School, London. He became an apprentice in the family business at 16 . Two years later he switched to his uncle's screwmaking business which eventually became the biggest in Britain with Joseph as a partner.
Joseph became active in politics in the 1860s , agitating for parliamentary reform and supporting the campaigns of John Bright and George Dixon. In 1867 he founded the Birmingham Education League with Jesse Collings calling for compulsory secular education for all, funded by rates and NEL was nhappy with the Education Act of 1870 and grants , managed by local authorities and inspected by government. It soon became the National Education League and held its first conference in Birmingham in 1869. The NEL was unhappy with Forster's Education Bill and Joseph was part of a delegation which met Gladstone in 1870. The NEL campaigned against the clause allowing school boards to fund poor children at voluntary schools and contested some by-elections against unsympathetic Liberals. Joseph became chairman of the Birmingham School Board in 1873.
That same year he became mayor of Brmingham. He set about transforming the city with civic improvements. Most radically he compulsorily purchased the gas and waterworks companies to improve supply to the city and its public health. His Conservative opponents called him " a monopoliser and a dictator " . In 1875 he co-operated with the Tory Home Secretary Richard Cross on a massive slum clearance scheme .
To secure his position Joseph created a powerful political machine to ensure continued Liberal success in the city which became known as the "Birmingham caucus". He dressed up in response to the national attention he was receiving with a monocle, black velvet coat. orchid buttonhole and red necktie and ring.
In 1874 the Sheffield Reform Association invited him to stand in the city but he was beaten off by Roebuck and Mundella after a rough campaign.
Once in Parliament Joseph immediately set about trying to organise fellow Radicals to wrest control from the Whigs. He disliked Hartington from pure class feeling. He saw the necessity of co-operating with Gladstone when the latter returned to prominence over the Eastern Question and secured his blessing for the founding of the National Liberal Federation in 1877 to co-ordinate the various Liberal Associations throughout the country. The Birmingham men quickly colonised it and Chamberlain became president with a policy of spreading Radical influence in the party. It's an open question whether Joseph sought power to promote Radicalism or wished to use Radicalism to achieve the leadership. He criticised some of Disraeli's foreign policy but did support the purchase of the Suez Canal shares.
The NLF played a part in Gladstone's triumph in 1880 but he was already suspicious of it. On Bright's recommendation he appointed Joseph , President of the Board of Trade. He worked on patents, electric lighting and the over-insurance of ships. Significantly he did not resign with his friend Bright over the occupation of Egypt. In 1882 he helped broker the "Kilmainham treaty" with Parnell and was thought to be in line for the Chief Secretaryship after Cavendish's murder but it went to George Trevelyan instead.
In 1884 Joseph became involved in the tussle over the Third Reform Act when Salisbury threatened to block the Bill in the Lords. Joseph described him in a speech as the representative of " a class to which he himself belongs, who toil not neither do they spin". The Tories likened him to Jack Cade. Gladstone allowed him to run amok because it strengthened his own position as linchpin of the party.
1885 was a crucial year for Joseph. In May he came up with plans for an Irish Central Board to forestall Home Rule and National Councils for the other three kingdoms. The Cabinet Whigs rejected his proposals. He and Dilke presented their resignations to Gladstone but the fall of the government over the budget eclipsed them.
Joseph now set to work on the Radical Programme as a party manifesto for the imminent election. It called for land reform, universal male suffrage, disestablishment of the church of England, free compulsory education and protection of trade unions.He wrote to Morley "we will utterly destroy the Whigs and have a Radical government before many years are out". Joseph saw it as pre-emptive politics to prevent class polarisation and socialist dispossession ; it was primarily aimed at the newly enfranchised county voters. His Whig opponents re-christened it the "Unauthorised Programme". Unabashed , Joseph went out on the stump speaking at a public meeting in Hull with posters proclaiming him "your coming Prime Minister". During one meeting he promulgated the idea that the aristocracy had to pay a "ransom" to hold on to their privileges. He tried to bargain with Hartington on three core objectives , compulsory land purchase, free public education and graduated income tax offering to drop the others if one was conceded. Gladstone met with him in October to try and effect a reconciliation with little effect.
In view of such flagrant party disunity it's surprising that the Liberals fell just short of a majority. Joseph initially kept his own counsel when Gladstone's commitment to Home Rule became known. Nevertheless his colleague Collings brought the party crisis closer by bringing down Salisbury's government with his "Three Acres and a Cow" amendment in January 1886. Hartington and Goschen voted with the Conservatives.
Gladstone offered Joseph First Lord of the Admiralty which he declined. Gladstne then turned down his request for the Colonial Office and they settled on President of the Local Government Board. Two months later he resigned over Gladstone's Home Rule proposals and started sending out feelers to the Tories. In April he attended a meeting summoned by his former arch-rival Hartington to oppose Home Rule ; this gave rise to the Liberal Unionist Association. In May the NLF decided to back Gladstone; Joseph set up the National Radical Union in response. This helped him control a solid bloc of seats in the city in the next two decades
Home Rule was defeated and a general election called. Gladstone said "There is a difference between Hartington and Chamberlain, that the first behaves like and is a thorough gentleman. Of the other it is best not to speak". Despite Tory suspicions of Joseph, Hartington and Salisbury managed to construct an electoral alliance which returned most of the Liberal Unionists and an anti-Home Rule majority.
Joseph agreed with Hartington's policy of remaining on the Liberal benches, not wishing to alienate his Radical supporters and aware that the Tories would keep him at arm's length. He participated in the Round Table Conferences of 1897 to try and restore Liberal unity in good faith but no agreement could be reached. Later that year Salisbury appointed him to lead a British commission in the USA to settle a fishing dispute. While there he was married for a third time to the much younger daughter of the US Secretary for War.
Reliance on the Liberal Unionists meant Salisbury's ministry had to undertake domestic reforms such as the introduction of county councils, encouraging smallholdings and extending education. Joseph wrote in 1891 "I have in the last five years seen more progress made with the practical application of my political programme than in all my previous life. I owe this result entirely to my former opponents and all the opposition has come from my former friends". He supported workmen's compensation and declared in favour of old age pensions in 1891. In 1892 Gladstone clawed back enough seats to form an administration with the support of the Irish and he led the fight against the Home Rule Bill in the Commons as Hartington had moved into the Lords.
When Gladstone finally retired the prospects for Liberal unity should have been better under Rosebery who had little enthusiasm for Home Rule but antagonism between Joseph and his former colleagues ran too deep. In 1895 the Conservatives won a majority on their own and the Liberal Unionists, reduced to around half their original number, had little choice but to accept Salisbury's offer to come into the administration.
Salisbury offered Joseph a wide choice of posts and he took Colonial Secretary. Domestic reform started to take a back seat to his interest in expanding the British Empire. His writings take on a racist tone - "I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen. It is not enough to occupy great spaces of the world's surface unless you can make the best of them. It is the duty of a landlord to develop his estate". He was at once involved in controversy when he secretly supported the Jameson Raid against the government of the Transvaal. This failed but Salisbury protected him from exposure and suppressed incriminating telegrams revealing Joseph's support.
Having survived that Joseph sought to bring the Transvaal under British control by supporting the rights of the Uitlanders against the Boers and massing troops around the border. It finally provoked a declaration of war from the Boers in 1899. While public opinion favoured the war Joseph was fiercely denounced by former admirers such as the young David Lloyd George. In September 1900 following British successes the Transvaal was formally annexed and Salisbury called an election to capitalise.
Joseph fought a very negative campaign with phrases such as "Every seat lost to the government is a seat sold to the Boers". Lloyd George responded with suggestions that some firms in which his family had an interest were profiting from the war. Observing Joseph during the campaign the young Winston Churchill wrote "Mr Chamberlain was incomparably the most live, sparkling, insurgent, compulsive figure in British affairs..."Joe" was the man who made the weather. He was the man the masses knew". The Unionists won this "khaki" election and Joseph's position was greatly strengthened.
In 1902 the government got most of what it wanted and the Boer War was concluded although Britain's reputation had been damaged by the revelation of the concentration camps. Salisbury retired and his nephew Balfour became prime minister after his uncle took advantage of Joseph's indisposition following a carriage accident. Balfour immediately caused Joseph difficulties with the 1902 Education Act which abolished the school boards replacing them with local education authorities supporting voluntary aided schools through the rates. Joseph knew what his nonconformist followers would think of it but he did not have the numbers to amend it. He wrote at the time " I consider the Unionist cause is hopeless at the next election , and we shall certainly lose the majority of the Liberal Unionists once and for all".
Painfully aware of the underlying weakness of his position and desperate to gain the initiative Joseph now declared himself in favour of imperial preference in trade influenced by Bismarck's Germany. This was a decisive break with free trade which the Conservatives had endorsed since Derby's capitulation in the 1850s. His scheme would both strengthen imperial bonds and provide the finance for progressive schemes such as old age pensions. Joseph thought he had the Cabinet on board when he went to South Africa in 1902 but the Chancellor Charles Ritchie was vigorously opposed and won the majority of the Cabinet to his views. When Joseph returned he publicly announced the policy in May to the dismay of Balfour who didn't know which way to jump. He hoped to persuade Joseph to moderate his proposals during the summer recess but instead he got a letter of resignation leaving him free to launch a campaign in the country. Balfour's cackhandedness also lost him Ritchie and Devonshire , gravely weakening the government.
This left Joseph in charge of what remained of the Liberal Unionists and the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations endorsed his stance. Joseph toured the country as money poured into his Tariff Reform League drawing large crowds. This transformed the political situation. The Liberals rallied round Free Trade and Asquith began to shadow him around the country.The Unionists were in disarray, losing by-elections and unable to agree on a fiscal policy. Joseph expected electoral defeat and hoped to lead a protectionist opposition to the Liberal government. He wrote to his son Neville that "the Free Traders are common enemies. We must clear them out of the party & let them disappear."
Joseph's campaign lost momentum as his health began to fail and he had to take recuperation breaks. The arguments eventually got too much for Balfour and he resigned in December 1905 allowing the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman to decide the date of the next election. The result was a Liberal landslide far bigger than Joseph expected. Of the paltry 157 Unionists elected around two-thirds were pro-tariffs and Joseph seemed set to become the party leader. However in July 1906 he suffered a severe stroke just after his 70th birthday which paralysed his right side and affected his speech and ability to walk. His active career was over and tariff reform slipped off the agenda for nearly twenty years. He made no oppsition to the final merger of the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives in 1912 and died two years later of a heart attack aged 77.
His sons Austen and Neville remained prominent politicians over the next three decades.
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