Welsh Journals

WALES AND THE BOER WAR THE application of numerical methods to political history may enable us to reconsider some problems of the past to which a more purely literary approach is inconclusive. An instance of this may be provided by the 1900 general election in Wales. The election took place in September of that year, at a time when the South African War, after initial reverses, appeared to have turned decisively in favour of British arms. The leaders of the Unionist government, and particularly Joseph Chamberlain, sought to focus the campaign on the question of the war, and Chamberlain branded all the Liberals as 'pro-Boers', implying that a seat won by the Opposition was a seat won by President Kruger. In the upshot, the Unionists won a victory which was almost as complete as that which they had won in 1895. They returned with a total of 402 members, having lost ten seats in England and four in Wales, but having gained five seats in Scotland. The four seats lost in Wales were, in fact, half their 1895 representation there. Thus, on the face of it, the war issue appears to have held things in balance, more or less, in England, to have been to the Unionist advantage in Scotland, and to have been detrimental to the Unionists in Wales. Dr. Kenneth O. Morgan, in his Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922, has challenged this interpretation. He argues that enthusiasm for the Boer cause in Wales, at any rate in the first year of the war, is 'a myth'. He points out that many Liberal M.Ps., such as Ellis Griffith, Lloyd Morgan and Brynmor Jones, were keen imperialists, and that there was the same frenzy after the relief of Mafeking and the same jingoistic rioting in Wales as elsewhere in Britain. Only ten of the Welsh Liberal candidates standing for election in the general election were definitely hostile to the war, and of these, one was defeated (J. A. Bright at Montgomery District). Dr. Morgan finds 'only two clear-cut cases of revulsion against imperialism', namely, Lloyd George's success at Caernarvon District and Keir Hardie's replacement of Pritchard Morgan at Merthyr Tydfil. Let us first see if numerical analysis confirms the impression given by the turn-over of seats. If we take the Unionist poll as a percentage of the total poll in individual constituencies, and then work out the