Journal Article

Joseph Chamberlain and the Third Reform Act: A Reassessment of the “Unauthorized Programme” of 1885

Blaxill, Luke

2015

Overview

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.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: 19th century / Agricultural workers / Analysis / Chamberlain, Joseph / Chamberlain, Joseph (1836-1914) / Conservatism / Conservatives / Constituents / Countryside / Democracy / Elections / England / Farmworkers / Historians / Land reform / Legislation / Liberalism / Linguistics / Manual workers / Negative campaigning / Political change / Quantitative analysis / Radicalism / Reform / Rural areas / Speeches / Success / Unauthorized / United Kingdom / Voting rights