Voices in the air

The telephone, invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, an American of Scottish descent, had been introduced into Britain by private companies and taken up by a number of local councils. As the system expanded, independent groups merged into the National Telegraph Company. Ultimately the Post Office, which had controlled all the main trunk lines since 1892, took over the whole operation.

The Post Office also imposed its rule on the newest means of communication. The Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1904 forbade the installation or operation of wireless equipment without a licence from the postmaster-general.

Experiments in the wire-less transmission of messages by radio waves had been carried out in Italy by Guglielmo Marconi, and after taking out a patent he came to England to demonstrate its potentialities to the army and navy. Messages were exchanged between warships eighty miles apart. In 1901 a message was transmitted from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland.

Operation of wireless transmitters and receivers was greatly improved when in 1904 Professor (later Sir) John Fleming, who had supervised the introduction of incandescent electric lighting into this country on behalf of the Edison Company, invented the thermionic valve.

In that same year a scientific theory of far-reaching importance was expounded, though at the time it meant little to any but the most advanced researchers: Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy stated the general theory of radioactivity. Rutherford, who had been working and lecturing with Soddy at McGill University, Montreal, was appointed professor at Manchester University in 1907 and there, with Niels Bohr, and later as Cavendish professor in the University of Cambridge, continued his work on nuclear physics.

Entente Cordiale

Task 22. British Foreign and Home Policy

1. What was the importance of Britain’s entry into Entente Cordiale ?

2. What was the King’s home policy?

3. What reforms did the Liberals manage to push through Parliament?

Queen Victoria had misjudged her son. As Prince of Wales he had been addicted to racing, shooting and gambling. He had hobnobbed with the new financial tycoons. Both before and after marriage to the beautiful Danish princess, Alexandra, be had enjoyed the com­pany of pretty, witty women. He established his own country seat at Sandringham in Norfolk, and much preferred it to Windsor or Buckingham Palace, which he referred to during his mother's seclusion as ‘the sepulchre’. As King Edward VII he varied his routine and diluted his pleasures as little as possible. He still went shooting, still loved Ascot and Goodwood: he was the first reigning monarch to win the Derby, with his horse Minoru in 1909.

Yet he was not the irresponsible playboy Victoria had feared. His travels as Prince of Wales forged many useful links, and his visit to France as king in 1903 was a personal triumph. At a time when the French were suspicious of British foreign policy and especially antagonistic towards recent treatment of the Boers, he gave a speech in fluent French without a single note, and showed himself so genuinely fond of the country and its people that he overcame all doubts. If not the event of international importance which some admirers have claimed, it eased tensions between two countries which had long regarded themselves almost as hereditary enemies, and paved the way for the Entente Cordiale of 1904, in which a number of outstanding problems were settled and mutual interests recognised. Kaiser Wilhelm II, on whom even the affable Edward could make no impression, was far from cordial. Although there was no military alliance between Britain and France, this new friendship, and then in 1907 the formation of a Triple Entente in which Britain agreed Eastern spheres of influence with France's ally, Russia, led Wilhelm and his advisers to complain of encirclement.

In home affairs, Edward insisted on knowing everything his ministers were planning, though he was by no means a meddler. When Haldane, secretary of state for War, instituted the Territorial Army in 1907, the king on his own initiative assembled all the lords-lieutenant of the counties and rousingly invited their thorough support. Both he and Queen Alexandra devoted much time to charitable causes, especially those concerned with medicine and the improvement of health services. After his death Alexandra continued this work until her own death in 1925, when nearly a quarter of a million pounds subscribed in her memory was used to extend the district nursing service and provide pensions for queen's nurses. In 1909 the king faced a constitutional crisis.

After a Liberal victory in 1906, zealous reformers began to push through Bills which shocked the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. The Lords blocked a couple of Bills but allowed through the Trade Disputes Act, reversing the much-deplored Taff Vale judgement. In 1908 old-age pensions were introduced by David Lloyd George, a Welsh solicitor from a working-class home who had entered Parliament in 1890 and was now chancellor of the Exchequer. The president of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill, who started as a Conservative M.P. but changed his allegiance to the Liberals, was behind legislation to establish labour exchanges. A Trade Boards Act was passed to deal with wage disputes and to eliminate some of the injustices of 'sweated' labour in trades which had so far wriggled through holes in existing factory legislation.

The clash came with Lloyd George's 'People's Budget' of 1909. This proposed a super-tax over and above income tax, a rise in death duties, and a tax on land values, to pay not only for military expenditure in the face of Germany's increasing armaments, but for social reforms not to the peers' tastes. Although it had always been understood that the Lords did not interfere with money Bills, this time they threw the budget out. A general election followed, and the Liberals were returned, though saddled with the problem which had bedevilled them in the previous century — enough Irish Nationalists to hold the balance of power.

At once a Bill was introduced to limit the rejecting or delaying powers of the Lords and to reduce the Parliamentary term from seven to five years. This, too, the Lords threw out, so the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, went to see the king. But it was a new king.

Edward, depressed by tensions in Europe and by the irreconcil­able differences between the Lords and Commons, had been further worried by failing health. Early in May 1910 he succumbed to an attack of bronchitis, and was dead within two days. Among the nine reigning monarchs at his funeral was the Kaiser, who had disliked his uncle Edward but got on very well indeed with his cousin George.

King George V was Edward's second son. He had been put to a naval career until the death of his older brother made him second in succession to the throne. He married Princess May of Teck, who had been engaged to that brother, and turned his mind to the affairs of state which must now concern him. He was a staunch, straight-forward man, at first inspiring respect rather than love — a situation which was to change during and after the First World War, when he attracted greater affection from his people than any sovereign since the Hanoverians first came to England.

Asquith asked from him the assurance that, should another election give the Liberals a mandate to proceed with their Parliament Bill and the Lords again threw it out, the king would create enough new Liberal peers — about 250 were needed — to outvote the Con­servatives. King George deplored such measures; but consented.

There was another election, which the Liberals won. The Lords gave in, and after some last-ditch struggles the Bill became the Parliament Act of 1911.

Also in 1911 Lloyd George introduced national health insurance, and one of the key demands of the Chartists was granted at last: salaries were to be paid to M.P.s Those who benefited most from this were the members of the young Labour Party.

King George and Queen Mary escaped for a while from strife at home to appear as emperor and empress of India at a magnificent Durbar (Hindustani for a levee or public audience) in Delhi, which was then proclaimed capital of India in place of Calcutta.

Development of the party system. The Labour Party.

The Suffragettes

Task 23. Find answers to the following questions.