Our Joe

A review of 'Joseph Chamberlain' (1977) by Enoch Powell

In ‘The Great Contemporaries’, Winston Churchill describes Joseph Chamberlain as ‘a splendid piebald, first black then white, or in political terms, first Fiery Red, then True Blue’ and as one ‘who made the weather’ in British politics of his era. This piebald nature and weather-making capacity is on full display in Enoch Powell’s 1977 biography of Chamberlain. Powell deftly guides the reader through Chamberlain’s political career, from his early defining Birmingham years through the heights of his political power opposing home rule to his final crusade for tariff reform and imperial unity.

Though Powell in his foreword describes his book as a ‘biographical study’, a better term is political biography as mentions of Chamberlain’s private life are sparse. Not that Chamberlain’s personal life is completely excluded. There are references to deaths of his first two wives and how they caused his loss of faith in God as well as a touching description of Chamberlain’s paternal pride at his eldest son, Austen, being elected as MP in 1892. Nevertheless, it is Chamberlain’s political life from 1868 until 1906 that is the focus of the book.

Powell opens his biography with the most important event in Chamberlain’s career: his resignation from Gladstone’s Cabinet in March 1886. Powell is able to clearly lay out Gladstone’s home rule proposal for even those readers new to the topic. He brings out both the drama of the scene as well as its importance to both Chamberlain’s future and that of British politics for the next 60 years.

Then Powell moves onto Chamberlain’s political rise during the late 1860s and into the 1870s. Here we see Chamberlain come to prominence as a campaigner for non-sectarian education. Powell handles this well, giving the reader a solid overview of the issue and those involved. Powell displays a clear grasp and interest without overwhelming the reader. And it was through this national campaigning that in the eyes of the Birmingham Liberals he was transformed from an able local committee chairman into someone who could lead the city itself. Through his description of Chamberlain’s term as Mayor of Birmingham, Powell draws a vivid image of Chamberlain’s energetic transformation of the city (particularly with the creation of Corporation Street) from a provincial town into the nation’s second metropolis and the beating heart of what Disraeli at the time called ‘the workshop of the world’. Powell is entirely right when he states: ‘from that day to this Corporation Street – far more than the fountain-statue erected in 1880 in Chamberlain Square next to the Town Hall – was to be his monument’.

In these chapters, Powell draws out two significant elements of this period that come to fruition a decade later. One is the occasion during his mayoralty where he worked with ministers from the incumbent Tory government. He learned that Conservatives aren’t just opponents, but men with whom he can do business on certain issues. A second is that as early as 1870, Chamberlain was writing about his opposition to Irish Home Rule, a time when the issue hadn’t come to the prominence it would a few years later. Powell shows that Chamberlain believed that the solution was a federalised Britain and points out this was also the view of the leader of the soon to be Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Isaac Butt. Powell also shows that Chamberlain’s opposition was founded in his belief that home rule would undermine the Empire. Here Powell shows Chamberlain as a perceptive political actor in his age, not merely one who was fast on his feet.

Powell continues by showing that Chamberlain’s time as Mayor paved the way for a seat in parliament in 1876 and his four-year meteoric rise from a backbencher to Gladstone’s Cabinet. At once, Powell is able to handle the events and people deftly, guiding the reader through the domestic, economic and imperial issues of the late 1870s. The relation between Gladstone and Chamberlain is particularly well done and it is clear to see why Chamberlain was regarded as Gladstone’s natural successor until his break with him. At the same time, he shows how Chamberlain was able to transform his base of supporters in Birmingham in ‘the Birmingham Caucasus’ and then build around it the National Federation of Liberal Associations. In doing this, Powell lays out how Chamberlain not merely turned local liberal associations in a national organisation, which would help deliver a Liberal victory at the 1880 General Election, but also establish the political machine which would be the foundation of Chamberlain’s support going forward and dominate Birmingham politics until the Labour Landslide of 1945.

When dealing with the 1880s, it would’ve been easy for Powell to simply focus on the Irish Question. However, Powell is able to balance this period successfully. He leads the reader ably through the rise of the IPP and Chamberlain’s attempted talks with Parnell with the attended duplicity of the cuckold Captain O’Shea. At the same time, he shows Chamberlain bringing the energy and success in his time as Mayor to his role as the President of the Board of Trade as well as being the spokesman in the Commons for the Colonial Secretary, Lord Kimberley. Powell also describes Chamberlain’s commitment to radical social reform as expressed in his ‘Unauthorised Programme’ speeches to defeat the Whigs within the Liberal Party. An ironic aim as those very Whigs would join with him to form the Liberal Unionist Party against Gladstone not long afterwards.

With the groundwork laid, Powell examines Chamberlain’s practical opposition to Home Rule and the formation of the Unionist coalition. Powell rightly sees this, not the campaign for Tariff Reform, as the turning point in Chamberlain’s political life and that of British politics. Powell shows that the split over Home Rule changed Chamberlain’s political trajectory from being the leader of a Liberal Party under the firm control of the Radical wing to the most influential Non-Tory Unionist in the country, but without dampening his support for social reform. Powell illustrates the change in Chamberlain’s opposition to home rule from opposition unless within a federal system to outright opposition as it would have been too radical a change. This is shown notably when Chamberlain wrote in an 1886 article that such a proposal ‘involves the absolute destruction of the historical constitution of the United Kingdom…’ and ‘…it is hardly conceivable that the people of Great Britain as a whole are prepared for such a violent and complete revolution.’

At the same time, Powell here makes the rarely commented upon point that the split in the Liberals caused its ultimate political death. Powell adds to this by stating a Liberal party led by a pre-1886 Chamberlain would certainly ‘become the party of the working class candidate’ instead of the then nascent Independent Labour Party and eventually the Labour Party.

It is through these chapters that you get hints in the books of Chamberlain’s life reflecting Powell’s own and made this biography somewhat more personal for Powell than it is with most biographers. With Powell’s comments on the possibilities of a Chamberlain led Liberal Party, one cannot escape thinking that Powell might have been considering his chance as Tory leader lost with his endorsement of Labour over the European issue in the February 1974 General Election. Chamberlain’s personal fiefdom over Birmingham and the wider West Midlands at his height must have been something Powell could see in his own career as he had used his own political support in the West Midlands to deliver the Conservatives an overall majority at the 1970 General Election and then deprived them of another in 1974. Yet the clearest example of this reflection and one where Powell must surely have been smiling, given his sacking from the Tory Shadow Cabinet in 1968, is shown when he writes about the ‘Unauthorised Programme’ speeches:

‘How many other politicians have made use of it since have assured their leaders retrospectively, as Chamberlain did Gladstone, and equally sincerely, that ‘had it been possible for me to submit to you beforehand that I have recently delivered, I would readily have cancelled any part of them (3 February 1885)?’

In the final chapters, Powell describes the transition of Chamberlain’s focus from opposing Home Rule to his crusade for Imperial unity and Tariff Reform. This shift in focus is shown to stem from home rule on the backburner due to Unionist electoral dominance from 1895 to 1905. This bought the Empire into sharp focus for Chamberlain as he was Colonial Secretary. Powell capably shows how most of Chamberlain’s time at the Colonial Office was dominated by the tensions with the Boer Republics, especially the Transvaal, in South Africa, which would lead to the Second Boer War.

Powell demonstrates how Chamberlain came to understand, with the backdrop of this war and after his unsuccessful attempts to broker an alliance with Germany, the Empire’s survival lay in forming an imperial federation. Earlier in biography, Powell references Chamberlain support for the idea of a federalised Empire alongside a federal Britain, but shows that it is as Colonial Secretary where Chamberlain becomes a true advocate of it. And it is through this advocacy at Colonial Conferences and interacting with the Statesmen of the dominions, and soon-to-be-dominions, where Chamberlain saw that tariffs were the biggest stumbling block to this scheme. Powell neatly lays out the paradoxes of Chamberlain’s crusade for Tariff Reform. The crusade failed to get the proposals adopted by Balfour when the Unionists were in government, but Chamberlain succeeded in converting the Liberal Unionists and Conservatives in the country to the cause. This meant that in the aftermath of the Liberal landslide in 1906, the Unionists were both in the Parliament and the country now the Party of Tariff Reform.

And it is at this point of Chamberlain’s great success where he was struck down by a stroke. Powell handles Chamberlain’s declining years sensitively with a sympathetic but never mawkish tone. We see a great statesman become the shadow of his former self, which leads to Powell writing one of the most accurate quotes about political life: ‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.’

In conclusion, Powell does an admirable job in leading the reader through Chamberlain’s career and gives a vivid picture of his times and the notable statesmen of his age with brevity, but never leaving the reader unsure. Whilst there are one or two inaccuracies such as stating the Battle of Isandlwana took place on New Year’s Day 1879 instead of 22^nd January, my only real criticism is that Powell did not write more political biographies. A political biography of Sir Edward Carson or Sir James Craig covering the Ulster Crisis before WW1 and the creation of Northern Ireland would’ve made a perfect successor to this biography and been an undoubted joy to read. Yet that fact makes this biography an enriching experience for both admirers of Enoch Powell and those who are interested in Victorian and Edwardian politics.

[Joseph Chamberlain (1977) by Enoch Powell, Thames and Hudson]