The Reasons for the Liberal Election Victory of 1906

The Reasons for the Liberal Election Victory of 1906

The Liberal election victory of 1906 was due to key issues that the

Liberals manipulated to their favour whereas the exhausted

Conservatives barely defended their actions. This election victory was

on the back of Unionist dominance that had spanned a decade driven by

three key issues: "the crown, the church and the constitution." After

the Second Boer War in South Africa, everything began to go wrong for

the Unionists who then found their own leader, Balfour, losing his

seat in his own constituency of Blackpool.

The key areas of victory are the Tory blunders and the Liberal

successes. The decline of the Unionists seemed to begin after the 1900

Khaki election when things began to go wrong in South Africa.

Guerrilla Warfare began, and for a while, the sure victory appeared to

become a long, hard struggle. This raised questions within Britain at

the army's strength and the countries health. Firstly, "22,000" were

killed in South Africa and this raised questions about the army's

competence as they resorted to "Scorched Earth and concentration

camps" which raised ethical questions in Britain. Secondly the army

rejected "34.6%" of volunteers which also suspected the health of

Britain's youth as it would be them who would have to fight in the

future. This coincided with the studies of Rowntree and Booth, who

concluded Britain was poor and becoming poorer. As a result, people

would think that Britain was not as secure under the Unionists as it

could be under the Liberals and this would be a reason for their

election loss. It can be seen that the Unionists won the 1900 election

mainly ...

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Overall, the Liberals won the 1906 election due to the Tory decline

and Liberal supremacy. The Liberals had good organization attacking

key areas and issues with powerful and crowd pleasing speakers. The

Unionists however were weak and exhausted. They had run out of ideas

and looked lethargic. They were beaten on key issues such as Tariff

Reform and had incited people who would not usual vote, to vote

against them. They even turned their own supporters against them on

moral issues and were badly divided on Tariff reform. Britain was

going through bad times as Rowntree concluded and the Unionists were

not inspiring the county to change this. Overall as Churchill said the

Unionists lost as they were exhausted this explaining the need to call

an early election, which in the end turned out to be their downfall.