Welsh Journals

However, Dr. Barker wishes to take the argument further than this; in his own words, Gladstone had 'helped to sow the seeds of a new Liberalism which Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith ultimately har- vested after the great electoral triumph of 1906'. One step in this argument is to dispute the primacy of the Irish question in post-1886 Liberal politics, especially its unifying influence (pp. 58-75). Yet the book makes it clear that Home Rule remained the Liberal Party's legislative priority and constituted the only definite test to be applied by the Whips to aspiring Liberal candidates (pp. 136-37). The fact that the Party leaders disagreed privately over the details of Irish policy-as over most other topics-only serves to emphasize how little attention they spared for alternative reforms. D. A. Hamer's point was that Gladstone, rightly or wrongly, saw Home Rule as an organising principle in Liberal politics, and there is nothing in Dr. Barker's book to show that he or any other Liberal leader found an alternative. Gladstone as a constructive force in policy-making proves elusive, and the author's evidence is mixed, to say the least. According to the fly-cover, Gladstone did not become a 'faltering octogenarian'-a point which is, in fact, convincingly contradicted in the book (p. 167); he remained out of touch with the details of social reform (p. 197); he lacked original and precise ideas even on issues that were winning the Party seats (p. 229); his speech supposedly endorsing the Newcastle Programme was only very approximately directed towards the items before him (pp. 161-62); and by 1892 Gladstone had arrived at a position in which, though he did not favour Old Age Pensions, he would, in the author's words, 'not repudiate the possibility of a system of State pensions and national insurance being implemented as a last resort' (p. 198). It is all rather slender evidence on which to establish a link between Gladstone and a new Liberal policy; no doubt there is enough on record to keep radical backbenchers in hope of reform, but one is inclined to wonder whether social reform, seen in relation to the Gladstone papers as a whole is not an occasional and untypical diversion from greater matters. The author looks for the source of new Liberalism among the meetings and dinners of a group of younger Liberal politicians and links them to the Leadership through Morley and Rosebery: 'the constant attendance of these two statesmen was decisive in the crystallisation of the new Liberalism'. But there seems to have been no positive contribution by either statesman to the 'new Liberalism', which, when one considers the very different ways in which the political ideas of Rosebery and Morley were developing, is surely not surprising. The failure to distinguish the different types of Liberalism is acute at this point; indeed throughout the book the author refers to 'Radicals', 'radicalism' and 'new Liberalism' without making it clear to the reader what should be understood by the terms. This makes for confusion at several points and is a major weakness in a book of this sort. M. D. PUGH Newcastle-upon-Tyne.