The return of the Liberals

Economy and society

Changes in economic conditions during the last decades of the 19th century were of crucial importance. Mid-Victorian prosperity had reached its peak in a boom that collapsed in 1873. Thereafter, although national income continued to increase (nearly quadrupling between 1851 and 1911), there was persistent pressure on profit margins, with a price fall that lasted until the mid-1890s. Contemporaries talked misleadingly of a “great depression,” but, however misleading the phrase was as a description of the movement of economic indexes, the period as a whole was one of doubt and tension. There was anxious concern about both markets and materials, but the retardation in the national rate of growth to below 2 percent per annum was even harder to bear because the growth rates of competitors were rising, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

The interests of different sections of the community diverged between 1870 and 1900 as they had before the mid-Victorian period. In particular, grain- and meat-producing farmers bore the full weight of foreign competition in cereals, and many, though not all, industrialists felt the growing pressure of foreign competition in both old and new industries. As a result of improved transport, including storage and refrigeration facilities, along with the application of improved agricultural machinery, overseas cereal producers fully penetrated the British market. In 1877 the price of English wheat stood at 56 shillings 9 pence a quarter (compared with 54 shillings 6 pence in 1846); for the rest of the century, it never again came within 10 shillings of that figure. During the 1890s, therefore, there was a sharp fall in rent, a shift in land ownership, and a challenge to the large estate in the cereal-growing and meat-producing areas of the country. The fact that dairy and fruit farmers flourished did not relieve the pessimism of most spokesmen for the threatened landed interests.

In industry, there were new forms of power and a trend toward bigger plants and more impersonal organization. There were also efforts throughout the period to increase cartels and amalgamations. Britain was never as strong or as innovative in the age of steel as it had been in the earlier age of iron. By 1896 British steel output was less than that of either the United States or Germany, while the British textile industry was declining sharply. Exports fell between 1880 and 1900 from £105 million to £95 million.

Yet the country’s economic position would have been completely different had it not been for Britain’s international economic strength as banker and financier. During years of economic challenge at home, capital exports greatly increased, until they reached a figure of almost £200 million per annum before 1914, and investment income poured in to rectify adverse balance of trade accounts. Investing during these years in both “formal” and “informal” empire was more profitable, if more risky, than investing at home. But it also contributed to domestic obsolescence, particularly in the old industries. Thus, ultimately, there was a price to pay for imperial glory. During the last 20 years of peace before 1914, when Britain’s role as rentier was at its height, international prices began to rise again, and they continued to rise, with fluctuations, until after the end of World War I. Against this backdrop, the City of London was at the centre of international markets of capital, money, and commodities.

Meanwhile, whether prices were falling or rising, labour in Britain was increasingly discontented, articulate, and organized. Throughout the period, national income per capita grew faster than the continuing population growth (which stayed at above 10 percent per decade until 1911, although the birth rate had fallen sharply after 1900), but neither the growth of income nor the falling level of retail prices until the mid-1890s made for industrial peace. By the end of the century, when pressure on real wages was once again increasing, there were two million trade unionists in unskilled unions as well as in skilled unions of the mid-century type, and by 1914 the figure had doubled.

In terms of the distribution of the labour force in this period, among the most striking changes was the development of white-collar occupations. Between 1881 and 1921, of male workers, those in public administration, professional occupations, and subordinate services, along with those in commercial occupations, increased from some 700,000 to 1,700,000 (out of a total workforce of some 9,000,000 in 1881 and 13,500,000 in 1921). Those in transport and communications almost doubled in number to 1,500,000, while those who worked in the manufacture of metal, machines, implements, and vehicles increased from almost 1,000,000 to over 2,000,000. Those in mining also doubled in number, to 1,200,000 in 1921. These were the real growth areas in the economy. The number of individuals involved in the agricultural sector, on the other hand, declined but exceeded 1,250,000 in 1921 and thus made up a still important component of the occupational structure of the country. All other sectors remained stable or lost workers, with the growth industry of the early 19th century, textiles and clothing, decreasing from about 1,000,000 to 750,000 workers in 1921.

The economy lost a good deal of its old artisan character. Accompanying this erosion of artisan power at the point of production were some tendencies toward increases of scale in factory production. To some degree there also was a decline in the old hierarchies of skill, most notably in the erosion of the position of artisans, the mid-Victorian labour aristocracy. At the same time, the characteristics of the social structure of production in the preceding period were still apparent, namely “combined and uneven” development, whereby old and new forms of industrial organization and production methods were often combined, and overall development was not uniform. The result was that skill and authority were still distributed in a very complex way throughout industry. Older historical accounts concerning the late 19th- and early 20th-century formation of an increasingly de-skilled and uniform labour force have given way to a more nuanced picture, so that the rise of the Labour Party is no longer interpreted, as it earlier was, simply as a consequence of the supposed emergence of this de-skilled labour force. Moreover, in line with more recent scholarship, the emergence of the Labour Party in the late 19th and early 20th century is no longer viewed as a reflex reaction to economic conditions or to the situation of workers; instead, it is understood in terms of the role of political intervention and political language in shaping what was indeed a new sense of class unity and not as a direct expression of the labour force itself, which was in fact still strikingly divided not only by skill but by many other characteristics of workplace experience.

The number of women in professional occupations and subordinate services doubled to 440,000 in 1921, out of a total workforce of some 5,500,000 women. This shift did much to reshape women’s changing understanding of themselves, particularly among the middle classes, where the more public world of work called into question exclusively domestic definitions of femininity. Women’s employment in textile and clothing manufacture was, however, still massive, with the real decline in the production of textiles not coming until after World War I. In 1881 the textile and clothing industry employed nearly 1,500,000 women; though by 1921 this number had shrunk, it remained considerable, at 1,300,000. Within the textile industry, women’s trade unions made some headway, but it is testimony to the power of traditional paternalist understandings of gender relationships among workers that male authority still obtained for the most part in both the home and the workplace, where women were excluded from the better-paid and more-skilled jobs. Domestic service was still the bedrock of women’s employment, comprising some 1,750,000 workers in 1881 out of a total of 3,900,000, though by 1921 this number had grown to 1,800,000 but shrunk in relative importance.

Family and gender

The structure of families in this period was still relatively diverse and significantly unlike 21st-century versions of the nuclear family based upon co-residing parents and young children. There is some evidence to suggest that industrialization strengthened rather than weakened kinship ties and intergenerational co-residence, because of the practical help resident grandparents could render to working mothers. Relationships across generations, both within and outside the household, continued to be important. Despite the migration of production from home to factory, the traditional identity of the family as a productive unit survived quite strongly into the 20th century, notably among shopkeepers and other self-employed workers, among tenant farmers, and particularly among the still important area of “homework” production, which, as a component of the late 19th-century clothing industry, went through a massive revival. The family retained many residual economic roles and acquired some new ones. For example, there was still a strong tendency for occupations to pass from father to son in all classes. The economy of workers, however, was much more likely to involve the collective earnings of father, mother, and children, compared with the family economy of those who were better-off.

In mid-19th-century England and Wales (Scotland had its own divorce, custody, and property rights), a husband had absolute right of control over his wife’s person, as well as considerable rights over her property. He also had sole responsibility for the rearing and guardianship of children, and the common law gave him absolute freedom to bequeath his property outside his family. A wife, in contrast, had neither legal duties nor enforceable legal rights, and, indeed, under common law her juridical personality was totally submerged in that of her husband. During this period, the situation was to undergo remarkable changes as the law began to make inroads into not only the rights of husbands but also the rights of parents generally. By the end of this period, legal intervention had largely eroded the absolute paternal rights enshrined in the common law, although sexual relations between husbands and wives remained largely untouched by legal change. However, cultural changes were to lag behind legal ones.

For the better-off in society, marriage was gradually transformed from what was in large measure a property contract into a union in which companionship and consumerism played a larger role. That women were increasingly becoming consumers was reflected in the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1882, which allowed women to control their own income. The period was therefore to see changes within marriage in the direction of greater independence for women, as well as changes in the status and independence of women outside marriage. At the same time, the legal and administrative code remained decidedly biased against women; for instance, income tax was framed as a duty of the male head of household. In terms of what might be called upper-middle-class society, traditional gender roles were still extremely powerful: girls were educated at home up to World War I and were trained for the social conventions of home life and home management; boys were sent to school, often to boarding school; and more companionate versions of spousal relationship were accompanied by the preservation of distance between parents and children, with much child care still being left to servants. Lower down the scale, things were much the same, although few middle-class households could afford a wholly idle wife.

In this period it was widely established that natural processes no longer gave an adequate account of motherhood, which was increasingly seen as an activity of great moral, intellectual, and technical complexity that had to be learned artificially like any other skill. Indeed, there was an unprecedented concern with the nature of motherhood, which was not seen as a private matter but as something involving the future of society, the country, the empire, and indeed the “race.” This concern was an expression of changing gender roles; but, while on one hand it embodied a reaction against forces of change, in some respects it also signaled the movement toward greater gender equality. The role of the state was to reflect these changes, as its intervention in family life also reached unprecedented levels.

From the 1860s to the ’80s, the agitation surrounding the Contagious Diseases Acts—an attempt to control venereal disease in the armed forces that involved state regulation and inspection of prostitution—laid the foundations for subsequent feminism. The campaign for the repeal of the acts generated public discussion of the double standard of licence for men and chastity for women. This agitation brought women into the public sphere much more directly than before and in new ways. Moreover, it served to complement changes in education, charity work, political organization, and associational life (which for women expanded considerably in this period), all of which took women outside the home, especially better-off women. This was also the case with the growth of women’s role as consumers, with shopping and the new department stores further increasing women’s involvement in public urban life.

The discussion generated by these acts resulted in a series of feminist responses varying from the more socially, sometimes politically, conservative emphasis on traditional family roles and on maternalism, seen in the “social purity” campaigns of the late 19th century (with their links to “social hygiene” movements espousing hygiene as the gateway to moral betterment), to the more radical, egalitarian political feminism of the early 20th century. The latter form was itself split into radical, socialist, and constitutional variants. In 1903 the women’s suffrage movement split dramatically over the issue of the parliamentary vote, some pursuing the vote as merely one item on a long list of political and extra-political reforms and others concentrating on the single aim of obtaining the vote. These agitations also influenced men’s conception of themselves, notably in response to the social purity movement’s emphasis on the importance of chastity for men as well as women. Male roles were further defined in the 1880s with the consolidation of male homosexuality as a distinct social identity, given legal definition at the time (in the Labouchere amendment of 1885, which criminalized homosexuality as gross indecency), not least in the famous case involving the arrest and imprisonment of Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde. From this time the rise of “scientific” understandings of sexuality, including the science of sexology, also served to redefine gender roles. However, there as in so many other realms, recognition for women lagged behind that for men, and it was not until the 1920s that a similar delineation of lesbian identity became fully apparent.

Mass culture

Class distinctions in cultural life continued to be very important. “Rational recreation” (productive and socially responsible recreation) remained an aim of those who wished to reform the culture of the lower classes. However, it also came to characterize the provision of recreation for the upper classes too. The idea of “playing the game” and “the game for its own sake” represented an extension of rational recreation into the sphere of sports, particularly as developed in the public schools, which in this period were reformed so as to institute a sense of public duty and private responsibility among the propertied classes. The cult of the disinterested amateur was part of the notion of the classically trained English gentleman, whose education and sense of moral duty purportedly created a moral superiority and disinterestedness that uniquely fitted him to rule. The development of popular forms of literature aimed at boys in this period served to glorify this particular manifestation of gentlemanly rule. More broadly, the model of the reformed public school itself, as well as a reformed Oxbridge (the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been restructured in large part somewhat earlier to meet the needs of a changing, moralized civil service), came to have a considerable influence on educational institutions in Britain. The masculine emphasis in sports was complemented by the club life of the upper classes, which, while always decidedly masculine, in the 1880s and ’90s, in terms of the development of London clubland, served even more to emphasize expressions of masculine identity in leisure activities.

The move from the sociability that characterized upper-class culture in the 18th century to the more didactic, socially concerned interventions of the early and mid-19th century gave way to a gradual involvement in hitherto forbidden forms, forms now suitably sanitized and made rational (or, as in the case of classical music, made sacred). It was not only music that became respectable but also the reading of novels, the playing of cards, and theatre attendance. The growth of the “legitimate” theatre from the 1880s, in distinction to more popular, melodramatic forms, is indicative of this development. Institutions and locations that were defined by associations with class especially harboured these changes, most notably the school and the suburb. As the transport system developed, especially the expansion of railway commuting from the 1870s and ’80s, suburban life grew in importance, most notably in London. However, it was not only the propertied in society who sought to create rational recreation: in continuance of earlier attempts to influence change from within the labouring population, the reform of low culture was sought by the appeal to high culture in radical and socialist movements such as the Cooperative movement, the Workers Educational Association, and, after World War I, the Left Book Club. Radical rationalist recreation took the form of rambling, bicycling, and educational holidays.

However, this very negotiation of the hitherto forbidden cultural forms also represented a qualification of the class character of culture and the development of what came increasingly to be called “mass culture.” In part this represented a nationalization of cultural life that reflected the increasing importance of a mass polity. Britain also became a more centralized, homogeneous national society. But a simple, linear development toward uniform experience had not characterized British history. The earlier development of modern British society had seen an emphasis on the significance of local and regional cultures, which echoed and reflected the relationship between state and society. While the four nations of the British Isles had constituted a unitary state since the end of the 18th century, Britain remained in the early and mid-19th century a society that was highly diverse and localized. Different cultural, religious, and legal traditions reinforced the very diverse occupational and manufacturing structure that industrialization brought with it. The importance of political decentralization was reflected in very strong municipal cultures, so that the centre of gravity of a good deal of British artistic and literary life long continued to remain in the English provinces and within each of the constituent nations. The growth of organized sports reflected not only the social separation between classes but also the strength of regional and local attachments.

Nationalization was apparent in an increasingly elaborate and integrated communications structure represented in the railway, the telegraph, the postal service, and later the telephone. By the beginning of the 20th century, the local press, while strong, was beginning to give way to mass-circulation newspapers, most famously the Daily Mail. The nationwide retailing revolution apparent from the 1880s, along with the development of an increasingly nationally coordinated and centrally based entertainment industry, which could be seen, for example, in the development of music hall, were part of the process too. So was the migration of intellectual life into the universities, which tended to be dominated by Oxbridge and University of London colleges, despite strong provincial resistance and pride. London itself became the cultural centre of the country and therefore the cultural centre of the British Empire. A fundamental influence on this change was the shift in the British economy from manufacturing industry to international finance and, with it, the migration of wealth, prestige, fashion, and social status away from the provinces to London.

While organized sports might express regional loyalties, their increasingly organized and commercialized basis—whereby rules were drawn up, leagues founded, and competitions inaugurated—served to coordinate local loyalties on a national basis. National bodies were created, along with national audiences. Spectatorship gave way to participation among all classes. In this sense, a “mass” culture was evident. This culture, however, might occur within and across class lines. For example, professional football (soccer) and county cricket, the best-known instances of mass sports, particularly in the early days, witnessed the class distinction between “gentleman” and “players,” as well as north-south differences. Particular sports developed along class lines: tennis and golf, at least in England, were played by the higher orders of society, and rugby was divided along the class lines, with rugby union for the higher classes and rugby league for the lower classes. (See rugby for the history and development of both traditions.) Indeed, professional football has only relatively recently lost its working-class character in Britain. Nonetheless, in the 20th century, developments of mass culture across class lines were increasingly important—with cultural and social homogeneity increasingly going hand in hand.