When Lord Roberts returned to England as Commander-in-Chief in early 1901, it was reasonable to assume that the few Afrikaners who had chosen to battle on rather than to surrender would soon be defeated by a policy which had been especially devised to defeat the elusive Boer commandos. The guerrillas were to be deprived of the refuge into which they disappeared when the raiding parties had done their work. The hinterland at their disposal was made up of farmhouses. So the farmhouses would have to be burned down. At first the policy was applied with some discretion. But it still attracted the wrath of radical Liberals and their newspapers: ‘Lord Roberts has written to General Botha to say that when a railway line near a Boer farmhouse is damaged, the farmhouse will be destroyed and the cattle and sheep will be removed … Is it civilised warfare to starve women and children? The remedy is to abandon the call for absolute surrender.’27
Gradually the policy was extended. After his victory at Bloemfontein in February 1900, Lord Roberts had issued instructions that farms which were harbouring men ‘still in league with the enemy’ should also be destroyed. He had attempted to justify the new tactic with the revelation that Boers had attacked British soldiers under the cover of a white flag. No doubt they did. Like all guerrilla campaigns, the final stages of the Boer War were fought with unrestrained savagery. It was not only the English who burned farmsteads: Botha destroyed the homes and livelihoods of any of his followers who surrendered to the enemy, requiring Lord Roberts’s soldiers to defend and care for Boer women and children. Convenience, or so it was claimed, obliged the refugees to be housed – ‘concentrated’ was the neutral word then commonly in use – in camps at Bloemfontein and Pretoria. The gratitude expressed by Boers whose families were saved from execution by their erstwhile comrades is not recorded. But British intelligence did report that separation from their families, after being taken into either punitive or protective custody, undermined the commandos’ morale. So a new policy was born and mercilessly pursued by General Horatio Herbert Kitchener, promoted from Chief-of-Staff to Commander-in-Chief on the departure from South Africa of Lord Roberts. The veld would be cleared of Boers, square mile by square mile.
In part, the decision to depopulate large areas of the veld was the product of desperation. The Boers were beaten, but they would not give up. Their tactic was to hit and then run and Kitchener concluded that there was only one way in which to deal with such ungentlemanly behaviour: barbed wire would divide the open country like a chess board and a concrete blockhouse would be built at the corners of the fenced squares. Each area was then systematically cleansed of insurgents. Men, women and children were taken to the ‘concentration camps’ and their farms burned. The Boers, driven to desperation, attempted a doomed invasion of Cape Colony. Not even the Cape Dutch supported them.
Yet the Boers would still accept peace only on their own terms. During the last week of February 1901, a little more than a month after Edward VII succeeded to the throne, Kitchener and Botha met at Middleburg. Kitchener suggested that, in the right circumstances, he would agree to an amnesty for all ‘Afrikaner rebels’. Milner – claiming, as High Commissioner, to speak with the authority of the British government – said that the Commander-in-Chief exceeded his authority. Botha then returned to his ancient demands for independence. So Kitchener renewed his ‘blockhouse and wire’ strategy with increased severity.
In June 1901, there were 60,000 men, women and children in the camps. By August the number had almost doubled and the adult mortality rate had increased to 117 per thousand. Among children it was 50 per cent. The British Army, short of medical supplies for its own troops, was incapable of containing the outbreaks of typhoid, diphtheria and enteric fever. In the thirteen months between January 1901 and February 1902, 20,000 internees died. Most of the ‘pro-war’ Liberals remained convinced that their cause was respectable if not quite righteous. But the moral outrage of the ‘pro-Boers’ was uncontrollable. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, speaking at a meeting of the National Reform Union in the Holborn Restaurant, broke one of the abiding rules of Westminster politics. He attacked the conduct of British troops under fire. ‘The phrase often used is “war is war”, but when one comes to ask about it, one is told no war is going on, that it is not war – when is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.’
The Liberal Party was divided over South Africa by genuine and passionate differences of opinion, as it was divided over every other great issue of the day. But Rosebery, still highly resentful about the disloyalty which had first crippled and then killed off his premiership, added a more personal bitterness to the conflict. During the summer of 1901 he exploited the differences over the Boer War as a justification for speaking out. However, he did not confine his criticisms to one area of policy. He was against Home Rule, against Gladstone’s Newcastle Programme (with its promise of manhood suffrage and disestablishment) and against the policies which Gladstone had set out during the Midlothian Campaign. He was against everything that the Grand Old Man, once his mentor, had stood for. South Africa was the occasion, not the cause, of Rosebery’s assault on his successor.
No one was sure if the opening salvo in Rosebery’s sustained barrage was fired off in a moment of sudden emotion or if it was the result of careful calculation. For the speech was delivered, apparently impromptu, to a lunch at which Rosebery had refused to make a formal address. It began with the demand that the Liberal Party ‘start again with a clear slate as regards those cumbersome programmes with which [it was] overloaded in the past’. He moved on to a maudlin passage about his own future. ‘I must plough my furrow alone. That is my fate, agreeable or the reverse.’ Then he ended on what sounded almost like a threat. ‘But before I get to the end of that furrow, it is possible that I shall find myself not alone.’28 The Liberal Establishment grew anxious. Did Rosebery hope to regain a place in the Liberal leadership or was he merely, and characteristically, making trouble?
Their fears were increased by a letter which Rosebery published in The Times. It described attempts to restore Liberal Party unity as ‘an organised conspiracy’. The remarkable events of December 1901 heightened the crisis. On 16 December Rosebery spoke in Chesterfield. The speech, which lasted for two hours, was a frontal assault on the government. Anxious Liberals studied it in the hope of finding confirmation that it was made in a spasm of jealousy rather than as the beginning of a long campaign. But it was by no means certain that abdication was the intention which Rosebery meant to convey. The substance of his speech was summed up in a single, obscure image. The time had come to abandon ‘fly-blown phylacteries’ – a strange metaphor built around the leather wallets, containing Hebrew texts, which Orthodox Jews wear as evidence of their obedience to the law. Rosebery certainly meant to dissociate himself from every aspect of Gladstonian orthodoxy But he struck where he thought his blows could do most damage. The war in South Africa had moved on. So he was emphatic that he ‘could have nothing further to do with Mr Gladstone’s party’ in its pursuit of Home Rule.
Campbell-Bannerman, hoping that reconciliation was still possible, met with Rosebery to discuss the views they held in common. Rosebery was irreconcilable. Indeed he was on the point of issuing a public repudiation of the party leadership. For a time it seemed that Campbell-Bannerman was doomed. Asquith, his natural heir, made a less than heroic speech which, while not wholly antagonising the peace wing of the party, made clear that he did not share his leader’s conciliatory views. For the war to end, the Boers had to be convinced ‘of the finality of the result and the hopelessness of ever renewing the struggle’. At the end of January 1902 he abstained on the Opposition’s official amendment to the Loyal Address, even though he had helped to draft what was meant to be a form of words which would unite all strands of Liberal opinion.
The rival forces began to regroup. The Liberal Imperial Council was disbanded and replaced by a slightly more moderate but, in terms of membership, far more powerful Liberal League. Rosebery was Presi
dent, Asquith and Grey were his deputies. Some of its wilder members talked of purging the party of men who were not fit to govern the Empire. No one suggested that the dissidents should be disciplined, but Rosebery, in a choice of words which might have been carefully calculated to excite passions and increase anxieties, promised ‘to prevent [his] friends from being drummed out of the party’. Although Asquith said that he would ‘have nothing to do with any attempts to weaken or destroy the organisation of the party’, there were real fears (and, among some imperialists, some hopes) that the Liberals would split in two. It even seemed possible that the imperialists would make a rapprochement with the Liberal Unionists who had deserted Mr Gladstone during the Home Rule debate. The disagreements were so great that it seemed the Liberal Party might never be elected to office again.
Throughout the months of controversy, one young Liberal managed to keep independent of both the factions but, at the same time, remain irresistibly in the public eye by employing the simple expedient of attacking his opponents rather than his friends. On 18 December 1901, two days after Rosebery had told the Chesterfield Liberals that ‘the slate must be wiped clean’, Lloyd George addressed an anti-war meeting in the Birmingham Town Hall – an imitation of the Temple of Castor and Pollux which was built (or at least started) as a celebration of the 1832 Reform Bill. The police warned him that his safety could not be guaranteed. Lloyd George was still going for Joe, and Birmingham was Joe Chamberlain’s own country.
When he accepted the Birmingham invitation, Lloyd George made clear that he was an unrepentant ‘imperialist’ and asked for the meeting to be chaired by a local Liberal with similar views. Neither of those concessions to Joe Chamberlain’s supporters did much to assuage the animosity which he had, apparently intentionally, attracted during the previous few months. In Pontypridd, as well as describing Campbell-Bannerman as a leader with ‘cool head and stout heart’, he had told a group of suffragettes in the audience that if women had been allowed to vote ‘there would not have been all this bloodshed’. In Wrexham he had counted the cost of the war to the borough – ‘One hundred and twenty thousand pounds and per contra six little graves in Africa.’ Perhaps most inflammatory of all, during what was billed as a scholarly lecture on empire, he had announced, ‘We will never govern India as it ought to be governed until we have given it freedom.’29 It is not surprising that the jingoistic Birmingham Daily Mail and Daily Post regularly described the unwelcome visitor as ‘the most virulently anti-British’ Member of Parliament.
Two days before the meeting was due to be held, the Chief Constable recommended that it should be cancelled, and the ‘imperialist’ chairman found that he must attend another pressing engagement. Despite the obvious risks to his safety, Lloyd George insisted on going ahead. Three hundred and fifty policemen surrounded the Town Hall, facing more than 30,000 demonstrators. When the mob rushed the door, valiant attempts were made to hold them back. Two people, including a policeman, were killed and forty sufficiently badly injured to be taken to hospital. The meeting was abandoned without a word being spoken from the platform and Lloyd George was smuggled out of the artistes’ entrance disguised as a policeman. It is hard to imagine the diminutive, long-haired Welshman making a convincing constable, though easy to understand how he felt on the long journey home. ‘Going for Joe’ had made him famous. But the Liberals, as well as the Boers, had lost the war.
The Boers fought on into 1902. By the end, British losses were 5,774 killed, 22,829 wounded and 16,000 dead from disease. The Boer losses were unknown. The cost to the British Exchequer was £222 million. The price, in terms of fives as well as treasure, may well account for the subdued language with which Victor Cavendish recorded the moment of victory. ‘Nice day. Great excitement over peace. Great stir in H of C … The Ministers were well cheered.’ In Bradford, Rowland Evans spread the news, in half-inch letters, over a whole page. ‘Sunday June 1st 1902. Boer War Ended. Peace Proclaimed. This Memorable Day Has Come at Last.’ That was a prelude to a cartoon published in the local paper by arrangement with the Westminster Gazette and carefully glued into the diary as an illustration of young Rowland’s view on the conduct of the war. The cartoon showed the angel of peace shaking hands with Lord Kitchener. It was captioned, ‘Thank you. I knew you would be a good friend to me.’ The young diarist added, ‘What a great blessing it will be to the parents of the soldiers who are fighting in South Africa.’
CHAPTER 6
A Preference for Empire
The end of ‘Joe’s War’ was marked by peace terms – embodied in the Treaty of Vereeniging in May 1902 – which, by the standards of the time, were remarkably magnanimous. The Dutch and English languages were to be afforded equal legal status in the new South Africa. Both languages were to be used and taught in schools. The Boer commandos, who held out to the end, were (with the exception of those who were said to have ignored the articles of civilised war) granted honourable pardons and, like the other farmers of the veld, allowed to license and keep their sporting rifles. The British Treasury provided £3 million towards rebuilding and restocking the farms which the British Army had devastated. The promise of self-government in 1906 was kept.
Despite that, all the Boer generals were dissatisfied with the offer and some of them refused to accept it. Campbell-Bannerman’s assurance that the terms were just and fair helped to convince Botha that the English would keep their word. The more moderate Boers remembered that the Liberal Leader had spoken out against ‘methods of barbarism’. But Botha could not be finally reconciled to the terms until he had visited London and been personally convinced that there would be no better offer. Kruger outraged British opinion by touring continental Europe appealing for both financial and political support. The Kaiser implied his sympathy, to the fury of his English cousin who recalled that he had sent a message of congratulations to Commandant Conje after the Jameson raiders had been repelled at Doornkop. In an attempt to win favour at Windsor, Wilhelm II then proclaimed his affection for Britain in a way which caused Edward VII even more offence: in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, he claimed that he was the author of the ‘wire and blockhouse’ strategy which had won the war for Britain.
For a moment it seemed that South Africa slept and the Empire was secure. But the debts incurred during the war – and the cost of the voluntary reparations, had still to be met. Joe Chamberlain – who had several solutions to every problem – proposed that the tariff imposed on corn imports as a wartime expedient should be made permanent, but that exports from the colonies should be granted a ‘preferential reduction’. In November 1902, the Cabinet approved the scheme despite the reservations of Charles Ritchie, the Chancellor. At first he reluctantly accepted his colleagues’ decision. As he worked on his budget, Ritchie grew increasingly opposed to Chamberlain’s scheme and more and more resentful that it had been forced upon him.
Believing that the plan for ‘imperial preference’ was set in the stone of government policy, Chamberlain set out on a celebratory tour of South Africa. The clash of wills which followed destroyed the apparently invincible government and condemned the Tory Party to almost twenty years in the political wilderness. Joe Chamberlain was to become the only politician in British history to split two parties and destroy two governments of which he was a member. But the real blame lay in the shifting sands of history. The Mother Country was not quite sure how to hold fast colonies which were no longer her obedient children.
Chamberlain returned to England in March 1903 and was greeted by the government as a hero. The Earl of Selbourne joined his liner at sea and the Prime Minister, accompanied by his sister, was waiting on the platform at Waterloo. The warmth of the reunion did nothing to reconcile Chamberlain to a swathe of policies which the Cabinet had adopted in his absence. He was opposed to the Irish Land Purchase Bill because it gave government money to old landlords and created new ones (two classes of men which he despised), and he objected to the Education Bill because its central proposition, the aboliti
on of school boards, meant that church schools would be subsidised from public funds.*1 Chamberlain’s mind was as capricious as it was fertile. At a time when the government was putting aside its differences with Germany in the interests of a joint demand that the Venezuelan navy should cease to harass Anglo-German shipping, he changed his opinion about the balance of power in Europe. France, he decided, was Britain’s natural ally and Germany the inevitable enemy. Chamberlain was looking for trouble. Fie found it in the argument over free trade which had been renewed in his absence by the United States imposing increased tariffs on British imports.
He was not alone in feeling aggrieved about the increasing exclusion of British goods from American markets. A Cabinet minute recorded the government’s reaction to an invitation for Britain to participate in the St Louis International Exhibition. It reflected the resentment which was felt by the whole Cabinet. Ministers had been asked to urge private companies to take part, but they found ‘no small absurdity in asking them to show their best products in a country which absolutely excludes them from its markets’.2 Canada, although the first dominion in the worldwide commonwealth, had followed the American pattern of trade and imposed import duties on British exports. However, at the turn of the century, the government in Ottawa had cut tariffs by 25 per cent in favour of British goods. Germany, which enjoyed no such concession, retaliated by imposing import duties of its own. Chamberlain was determined that – by retaining import duties on corn, with special remission for Canada – the British would repay the Dominion’s imperial loyalty. But his scheme had a wider and greater purpose. He wanted to bind the whole Empire together by creating a federation of colonial nations which offered trade concessions to the members of the insoluble union but denied them to foreigners. Ritchie destroyed Chamberlain’s dream. With the budget statement which he was to present only days away, he announced that, despite his earlier concession, the government must make a choice. If the corn tariff was not removed completely, he would resign.
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