Tom Gatenby
To what extent did the Conservatives lose the election rather than the
Liberals win the election?
“The election of 1906 was a significant watershed in the political
history of Britain” Kenneth Owen Fox
The election of 1906 was a landside victory for the Liberal Party.
This is due to many factors, it could been influenced by the manifesto
of the Liberal Party, or perhaps even more strongly the failure of the
Conservative Party to unify on such reforms as the Tariff Reform. The
lack of a strong unified Conservative government clearly had a large
effect upon the outcome of the 1906 election, to what extent this is
true will be explained in the essay.
In the 1906 election, the number of seats won by Liberals increased
from 184 to 377, in contrast the numbers of seats lost by the
Conservatives went from 402 seats won in 1900 to 157 seats lost in the
1906 election, this represented the lowest number of seats held by a
Conservative government since 1832. This dramatic reversal of
constituencies held, is due to a number of reasons. An argument is
that, due to some poor decisions made by the Conservative governments,
they in fact contributed largely to the landslide result in the 1906
election. ‘They were in effect the architects to the own downfall.’
William Palmer
Taff Vale was an important example of the Conservatives failure of
judgement; this was to have disastrous results in regards to the
popularity of their Party. The ‘Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants’ a trade union, because of their strike action was ordered to
pay to the Taff Vale railway company a sum of £23,000. This enormous
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...rrick Thomas
To conclude, in my opinion it would be fair to allocate much of the
blame for the result of the 1906 election to the Conservative Party
under Balfour. Though in fairness the Liberals, through clever policy
did capitalise on Balfour’s mistakes. Perhaps Balfour’s biggest
mistake was his constant misjudgement of public opinion, this is
especially true in regards to the working classes. Between 1900 and
1906 Balfour failed to realise the potential of the working class, he
continued to upset them through such political misjudgements as Taff
Vale, or the Unemployment Workers Act 1905. In the run up to the
election therefore the Liberals won the working class support. It was
perhaps the working class who had the biggest effect on the result of
the election, this proved to be in favour of the Liberal Party.
It could be argued that Gladstone’s failure to unite his party, during a time when their ultimate support and confidence in his leadership was crucial, was a significant tactical error that contributed heavily towards the failure of the 1886 Home Rule Bill. The results of the 1885 general election were to have a significant impact on the political landscape of Britain; despite winning the most seats, the Liberals did not have an overall majority.As Parnell and the Irish Parliamentry Party (IPP) held the balance...
Assess the Claim that the Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31 Were Unable to Achieve Anything
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.” (Jefferson, 1801) This idea echoed far beyond it’s time and into the minds and hearts of the Populist’s, and became the center and the driving force of the Progressive era. During the gilded age railroads were being built, Industrialization was rising, the population of United States was increasing dramatically; and corporate businesses were becoming extremely powerful. The gilded age was known for its corruption and business domination, it wasn’t until the Populist movement when people started to fight back and also not until the Progressive movement when people started changing the government system.
who had been seen by many Tories as a future leader of the party lost
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The election of 1896 changed American politics forever. The Populist Party came to its end as its members joined other major parties. Gold had also become the national standard and ended up benefitting the United States. However, the inflation helped the debt-ridden farmers and helped them pay their mortgages. Bryans lost marked the end of trying to win the presidency by the rural vote. Though our country was out of its depression and going well, there may have been others who wanted to reform issues to help our country
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How the Vote Was Won introduces the role of brave women in their journey to success of the national suffrage movement. Mead writes about the success that was brought by the women in the western states, and gives the readers an insight on the struggles of racism and elitism that played throughout the suffrage movement in the western states. In eight perceptive chapters, the authors focuses on a few states in the west, in which she explains the successes or failures of the campaigns for woman suffrage. Mead also addresses readers with significant descriptions of how the woman 's suffrage served as both economic and political justice giving women the right to vote.
The issue of electoral reform has become more important than ever in Canada in recent years as the general public has come to realize that our current first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system, formally known as single-member plurality (SMP) has produced majority governments of questionable legitimacy. Of the major democracies in the world, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom are the only countries that still have SMP systems in place. Interestingly enough, there has been enormous political tension and division in the last few years in these countries, culminating with the election results in Canada and the USA this year that polarized both countries. In the last year we have seen unprecedented progress towards electoral reform, with PEI establishing an electoral reform commissioner and New Brunswick appointing a nine-member Commission on Legislative Democracy in December 2003 to the groundbreaking decision by the British Columbia Citizen’s Assembly on October 24, 2004 that the province will have a referendum on May 17, 2005 to decide whether or not they will switch to a system of proportional representation. This kind of reform is only expected to continue, as Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty decided to take BC’s lead and form an independent Citizen’s Assembly with the power to determine whether or not Ontario will have a referendum regarding a change to a more proportional system. There is still much work to do however, and we will examine the inherent problems with Canada’s first-past-the-post system and why we should move into the 21st century and switch to a form of proportional representation.
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This is confirmed by the period 1945-79, when power tended to alternate frequently between the Labour and Conservative parties. However, during this period, Labour won power twice with a majority of less than twenty seats, resulting in a near hung parliament. This tends to weaken the idea that the electoral pendulum has swung evenly for both parties. It is important to consider the period of time looked when attempting to identify which system best describes
The 2005 General Election Campaign and the Democratic Party The 2005 general election campaign has been a defective democratic
The Populist Party, also known as the People’s Party was a former political party of the United States in the late 1800s with roots in the Grange and Farmer’s Alliance and the Knights of Labor. The agrarian farmers viewed that urban life, capitalism, and technology to be destructive to the independence and dignity of the weak and improvised. The aggrieved workers wanting reform banded together with the indebted farmers wanting reform to battle against the capitalist order of the mistrusted elitists and Big Business in partnership with the national banks. Together they advocated for a Populist democracy which included more political participation through reforms such as the use of popular referendums where citizens would be allowed to propose and review legislation. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. In addition, they advocated for government ownership of public services and currency expansion and the abolishment of the national bank.
“After the passing of the Great Reform Bill, the liberal Whig leadership struck a snag. Several years of depression put the conservative Tories back in power in 1841. Wages and living conditions grew steadily worse as the industrial revolution permitted the rise of great fortunes for owners and employers along with starvation and poverty for great numbers of the working classes.” (Earl Davis, The Flint and the Flame, Page 115)
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