A very zealous man
David Gilmour
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN: ENTREPRENEUR IN POLITICS by Peter T. Marsh Yale, £30, pp. 725 Judged by the fate of the causes he championed, Joseph Chamberlain was a failure. Passionately he directed his talents and energy into a series of campaigns, and after long and exhausting struggles he was defeated. His two greatest crusades were not only unsuccessful in the long run; they proved immediately shattering to the parties he belonged to. By dividing the Lib- erals over Home Rule in 1886, he awarded their opponents two decades of dominance; and by subsequently splitting the Unionists over Tariff Reform, he gave the country 17 years of Liberal prime ministers. No one, not even David Owen, has had such a negative influence on the fortunes of different political parties.
Surveying Chamberlain's career in this massive biography, Peter Marsh concludes that his subject's greatest achievement may have been as Mayor of Birmingham. In the city where he made his fortune as a manu- facturer of screws, Chamberlain tried to instil a spirit of civic enterprise comparable to that of mediaeval communes such as Bologna or Siena. His drive and vision went into slum clearance and redevelop- ment, 'gas-and-water socialism', improve- ments in education and industrial relations. Birmingham rewarded him with idolisation and electoral support, but the civic spirit appears not to have lasted. No one survey- ing the city landscape from the environs of New Street station is now likely to be reminded of Bologna.
On reaching the national stage at West- minster, records Marsh, Chamberlain `floundered forcefully'. Yet he was not solely to blame for the issue which broke the Liberals and cost him the succession to Gladstone. The author rightly stresses the personal antagonism in their dispute over Home Rule which made it almost impossi- ble for them to compromise. But agree- ment would have been difficult in any case. Gladstone wanted a solution unacceptable to England; Chamberlain advocated a scheme unacceptable to Ireland. Fearing that a parliament in Dublin would jeopar- dise the cohesion of the United Kingdom, the Birmingham MP hoped that the Irish could be fobbed off with elective local gov- ernment that would divert the nationalists from 'bullying' the House of Commons. It was a most naive expectation.
Anxious to enact radical reforms in Eng- land, Chamberlain would have welcomed Liberal reunification if the Irish issue could have been defused. Yet he believed there was little hope for the party while Glad- stone was still 'rampaging about', and after the failure of the second Home Rule Bill he joined Salisbury's Unionist Cabinet as Secretary of State for the Colonies. To his previous careers as industrialist, municipal reformer and Radical MP, he now added the improbable role of imperialist prophet. More floundering went on at the Colonial Office, notably in an unsubtle attempt to promote an alliance with Germany — a matter which in any case fell outside his sphere of responsibility. As usual, plenty of vision and energy went into what he described as 'the great work of controlling and civilising the tropics'. But there was not so much to show in the achievement. He had successes, as Marsh points out, in his boundary negotiations over West Africa and in his campaign against tropical dis- eases. But they hardly compensated for those disasters in southern Africa, for which he was ultimately accountable.
In the course of his career Chamberlain made the trajectory, less familiar in his age than our own, from radicalism to conser- vatism. A politician who could sneer at the House of Lords almost as cruelly as Lloyd George, he ended up as its most passionate defender, a position inherited by his son Austen who became a die-hard over the Parliament Bill in 1911. Yet Chamberlain's imperialism did not negate his zeal for reform. Like Lloyd George and many others of the period, he considered empire and social reform as partners, not as con- tradictions. Only later generations and con- temporary film-makers have failed to observe the connection.
In the late 1870s Chamberlain had agreed with Matthew Arnold that Britain was a weary Titan unable to cope with her imperial responsibilities. But a few years later he rejected the view and proclaimed himself and his Radicals to be 'more stern- ly imperial than the most bigoted Tory'. A visit to Canada at the end of 1887 stirred his imagination and induced him to realise the dream of imperial federation. On becoming Colonial Secretary in 1895, he told his deputy that he aimed to make the Any idea when I'll be on Crimewatch, luv?' British understand what their empire stood for and what part it might play in the world. Fighting an expensive and incompe- tent war against a small number of Boers, however, was not an ideal aid to compre- hension.
For most of his life Chamberlain believed that the empire could jog along happily on its traditional diet of free trade. But he noticed sooner than most of his contemporaries the economic challenges of Germany and the United States and was determined not to let them go unanswered. His response was on two levels: to improve Britain's ability to com- pete through better education, and to bind the empire by economic interest as well as by ties of culture and sentiment. Originally drawn to politics by the issue of education, he was appalled by his country's inferiority in this field to Germany and America. His personal contribution, the founding of Birmingham university with its faculty of commerce and its emphasis on applied science, was remarkable — Marsh calls it `arguably his most enduring achievement'. But the country should have had his gifts as President of the Board of Education.
Fearing that Britain was in danger of losing her position as a Great Power, Chamberlain embarked on his last crusade in 1903. Tariff Reform, the binding of the empire by granting its components preferential trading terms, was above all a political and emotional response to the threat of decline. Impetuously promoting the policy, he did not really work out its economic implications and he ignored its potential impact on India. In the end, despite his oratory and his tireless campaigning, he failed to convert the country or even his own party, and the dream dissolved. With hindsight, imperial federation appears to have been a chimera, anxiously embraced by Edwardian imperi- alists who suspected that the trend of history was against them. But it was at least an attempt to do something about Britain's long-term decline.
Chamberlain's life, like Salisbury's, has until now defied serious biographical attempts to get from the beginning to the end. Professor Marsh, the author of an excellent work on Salisbury's domestic policies, has achieved it in a monumental volume that is judicious, scholarly, dispassionate and authoritative. Yet after 12 years' labour, Marsh still remains puz- zled at the contrast between his forceful and talented subject, with his deceptively stiff accoutrements of monocle and orchid, and the paucity of his legacy. Part of the achievement — his galvanising contribution to national debate — is necessarily unquantifiable, as was his ability to foster what Marsh calls 'an unfamiliar level of patriotism'. Yet these were important con- tributions which should be added to the credit of a man who, despite his failures, stimulated loyalties that helped carry the empire through two world wars.
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