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The British electorate swelled dramatically with the passing of the Second Reform Act in 1867. This presented the political class with a significant challenge. Here was a large, new electorate which needed to be understood, managed, enthused, and persuaded to vote for the right candidate in local and parliamentary elections. From this time onwards education and democratic involvement of these new voters became vital for political success.In Birmingham, the town of a thousand trades, Joseph Chamberlain and his allies were faced with an electorate which had tripled in size overnight and many of whom had never previously voted or participated in politics. In response, Joseph Chamberlain and his close-knit Birmingham team developed national campaigns on issues such as universal education, democracy and tariff reform which required new methods for propagating and winning arguments that resonated across all classes and interests. At the same time they colonised Birmingham's town council, school board and other municipal bodies where they gained the practical political experience which they could transfer to the national stage.For the first time The Birmingham Political Machine lays bare how Joseph Chamberlain with his colleagues and friends was so successful that never before or since has one politician monopolised regional power as Joseph Chamberlain did for more than thirty years in the West Midlands. He made it his invincible fortress.From now on British politics would never be the same and the techniques developed by the Birmingham Machine can still be seen today.

The Chamberlains were the most powerful political dynasty in England between 1876 and 1940 when one or, more usually, two members of the family sat in the Commons, holding between them nearly all the great Offices of State. In recent times, they have sunk into relative obscurity but recent political developments have made their lives seem particularly relevant. Theresa May's listing of Joe Chamberlain in her apostolic succession of great conservatives has brought him back to the forefront of political debate; whilst Brexit has made his policy of Tariff Reform relevant once again to British economic policy. The concerns over President Putin's foreign policy, coupled with the weak state of Britain's defence forces, have mirrored the conditions that led to the humiliation of Neville Chamberlain, whilst the UK's current political turmoil reflects those of the 1920s, which led to Austen Chamberlain being mocked as a perpetual loser. In this book, the author has sought to re-examine the.

Britain should be worried about Theresa May seeking political inspiration from Joseph Chamberlain, writes Richard Allsop.

Britain should be worried about Theresa May seeking political inspiration from Joseph Chamberlain, writes Richard Allsop.

Nick Timothy, the former Chief of Staff to UK Prime Minister Theresa May, is a big fan of Joseph Chamberlain, a major British political figure of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The central theme which appears to dominate his viewpoint, and which marks him so distinctively as a politician of the twentieth rather than the nineteenth century, is his identification with 'collectivism' and the growth of an interventionist state in reaction to the classical laissez-faire ideology which dominated mid-Victorian public policy. Having entered national politics, ostensibly on the radical wing of the Liberal Party, Chamberlain proceeded to split the Liberal Party in 1886 over what were largely semantic differences with Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone over home rule for Ireland. The Liberal Party won a landslide victory at the 1906 general election, as the majority of working class voters remained loyal to the cause of cheap food.

Joseph Chamberlain, an industrial entrepreneur, proponent of the \"civic gospel,\" and emerging British Radical Liberal leader of the 1870s, established Birmingham as one of the most influential models for municipal socialism in Europe and North America. Arguing gas and water ought to be in public hands and city officials ought to take a role in securing inhabitants' health, he set the stage for continued mayoral activism and municipal socialism in the late 19th and early 20th century.

This article provides the first major analysis of the impact of Joseph Chamberlain's “Unauthorized Programme” on the General Election of 1885 in sixty-five years. Instead of focusing on high politics, it investigates the constituencies. Using quantitative analysis of linguistic data, it contends that historians have underestimated the program's impact on the speaking campaign, especially in the countryside, where its proposals of land reform, church disestablishment, and free education emerged as the dominant issues. That the “Unauthorized Programme” became so important so quickly in rural regions such as East Anglia, where radicalism had historically been weak, owed much to the underestimated importance of the enfranchisement of the agricultural laborer in 1884. Chamberlain's remarkable success in immediately setting the post-reform political agenda and in being seen as the chief threat by Conservative opponents fearful of the recently expanded democracy, arguably placed him in a significantly stronger position in the immediate aftermath of the 1885 election than historians—and perhaps he himself—imagined.

Historians have praised Joseph Chamberlain's workmen's compensation act of 1897, the foundation of Britain's modern insurance-based compensation scheme for on-the-job injuries, as a forward-looking social programme of great benefit to workers. By contrast, the Liberals' support of the option of potential unlimited employer liability for worker injuries has been viewed as unimaginative and a failure of political leadership at a crucial juncture in the history of the Liberal party's relationship with labour. This article re-examines the employers' liability/workmen's compensation debate of the 1890s, arguing that historians' criticism of the Liberals' position stems from a misunderstanding that the crux of the debate was over the method of fair compensation. To the contrary, as this article demonstrates, the real issue was workplace safety. Far from being caught napping, Liberals strenuously argued the workers' long-held position that workplace safety, that is, the prevention of accidents, was much more important than compensation after the accident occurred and that Chamberlain's compensation scheme would do nothing to improve safety. Significantly, this article reveals that the Liberals were correct in that, while employers immediately gained protection from unlimited liability at minimal cost, worker safety, in fact, did not improve and may have even declined during the first decade of the act's operation.

To elect or not to elect? The Labour cabinet in Birmingham is split over the thorny issue of elected mayors. It's a dilemma that most town halls will be facing over the next few years but it feels especially acute in Birmingham, since it was here thatthe concept of strong local government was invented back in the 19th century (which I still find myself calling 'the last century' despite the date). This unofficial rule-book of polite mayoral behaviour was torn up by one Joseph Chamberlain and if we're looking for a model (or a warning) of what an elected mayor could look like in Birmingham, then it's probably to Joe we should turn. Chamberlain put together perhaps the first faction in British politics, organised around a manifesto and a raft of policies that swept the group to political power. With that power came the numerical strength to elect Chamberlain as mayor. But Joe couldonly press forward with the manifesto after a radical reinterpretation of the office.

IF anywhere in Britain can claim to be the city of the century then it's Birmingham, whose story almost exactly mirrors that of the nation. In 1900, Birmingham was the industrial powerhouse of the greatest trading nation under the sun. Birmingham and Britain were at the height of their power, wealth and influence. The city, with a brand new university to lead the way in science and technology, was the home of engineers and skilled craftsmen who could make anything out of metal.