The Newcastle Programme.
As the General Purposes Committee placed upon the agenda for the Council only resolutions on which the party was believed to be united, it is not strange that they were invariably carried, and almost always with substantial unanimity. The surprising thing is the number of questions on which the whole body of Liberals appeared to agree; but it must be remembered that the party was in Opposition, so that neither the leaders, nor any one else, could make any effort at present to put into effect the resolutions that had been voted. They expressed merely aspirations, and the impulse of every one was to assent to any proposal for a reform to which he had no fixed objection. This was the more true because all assemblies of that kind are attended most largely by the ardent or advanced members of the organisation, the more moderate elements caring far less to be present. The resolutions, therefore, increased until they reached high-water mark at the very meeting of 1891,[521:1] where Dr. Spence Watson in his opening address said he thought them too numerous already. From the town where the Council met that year the resolutions became known as the "Newcastle Programme." At the evening meeting Mr. Gladstone took up, one after another, most of the subjects included therein, and dwelt upon the importance of each of them; but before doing so he remarked that when the Liberals came to power they would want the additional virtue of patience, because with the surfeit of work to be done it would be difficult to choose proper subjects of immediate attention.[521:2]
The virtue of patience was needed very soon. The Council had met at Newcastle in October, 1891. Owing to a change in the date of meeting, it was not called together again until January, 1893; and in the meanwhile a Liberal ministry had come into office. The Council took up no new questions, and passed a single modest resolution relating to the party policy, saying "That this Council confirms the series of Resolutions known as 'the Newcastle Programme,' and confidently expects that Mr. Gladstone's government will promptly introduce into the House of Commons Bills embodying Reforms which have been declared again and again by this Council to be essential to the welfare of the people of the United Kingdom."[522:1] As the reforms contained in the Newcastle Programme could hardly have been embodied in statutes in less than ten years by a cabinet with a large and homogeneous majority, the demand that bills upon all those subjects should be promptly introduced by a ministry with a very narrow majority, and depending for its life upon the support of Irish votes, showed the need of patience rather than its presence. In fact most of the speakers at the meeting emphasised the reforms in which they were especially interested, and the rest urged the importance of the whole array.
Its Effects.
The wealth of the programme speedily caused embarrassment to the leaders of the party. Home Rule, as every one admitted, was entitled to the first place; but after that had been put on the shelf by the House of Lords difficulties arose, for the Liberals in the House of Commons were not all of one mind. Some of them were more interested in one reform, some in another, and each had an equal right to feel that his subject had been accepted as an essential part of the Liberal policy deserving immediate attention. People said that the traditional division into parties was passing away, that the parties were falling apart into groups, like those in continental legislatures. The assertion was frequently repeated, although it was disproved by the constancy with which the ministers were supported by their followers in a House of Commons where the defection of a dozen members at any moment would have turned the scale. Month after month the whips came regularly to the table with their slight margin of Liberal votes. In fact the government defeats on minor matters were less frequent than in Mr. Gladstone's previous administration; and no defeat on a question of political importance occurred until June, 1895, when it was accomplished by the trick of bringing Conservatives secretly into the House through the terrace. After that defeat the ministers resigned, not because their followers had ceased to vote with them, but because they were weary of a hopeless struggle. Nevertheless the Newcastle Programme with its magnificent promises had been a source of weakness to them. It restrained their freedom of action, and forced their hands. In short, it hampered their initiative in party policy, and it caused disappointment among their followers.
Lord Rosebery's Criticism.
Lord Rosebery, who had succeeded Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister in 1894, felt the bad effects of the Newcastle Programme. At the public meeting, held when the Council met in January, 1895, he spoke of the function of the Federation in threshing out the issues lying before the party, and that of the cabinet in winnowing them, selecting from a vast field the bills to be brought forward in the session. "Now, this programme," he went on, "as it stands now, without any addition, would require many energetic years in which a strong Government, supported by a united and powerful Liberal Party, would have to do their best to carry into effect (sic). But what is sometimes forgotten is this—that we cannot pass all the measures of this programme simultaneously. . . . Whilst this process of winnowing is going on, all Cabinet Ministers are subject to a bombardment of correspondence . . . by appeals, some of them menacing, some of them coaxing and cajoling, but all of them extremely earnest, and praying that the particular hobby of the writer shall be made the first Government Bill. . . . Any delay in pushing forward each measure that has been recorded in what is called the Newcastle programme implies, we are told, the alienation of all the earnest and thoughtful members of the Liberal Party—in fact, the backbone of the Liberal Party. And I have come to the conclusion that the Liberal Party is extremely rich in backbones."[523:1]
At the public meeting in the following year, after the fall of his government, he spoke even more plainly. He said there had been complaint that officialdom had crept into the National Liberal Federation. His own experience was that it played a very subordinate part there, and if he had a secret hope on the subject, it was that officialdom might have a little more to do with the organisation. "I remember two occasions on which the National Liberal Federation took the bit between its teeth and, certainly uninspired by officialdom, took very remarkable action. The first occasion was when it made at Newcastle a programme, a very celebrated expression of faith which, I confess, was in my opinion too long for practical purposes."[524:1] Later in alluding to the fall of his ministry he asked: "Why did it fall? It fell because, with a chivalrous sense of honour too rare in politics, and with inadequate means, it determined to fulfil all the pledges that it had given in Opposition. It had, I think, given too many pledges—partly owing to you, Dr. Spence Watson. It had, I think, assumed too many responsibilities, it had taken a burden too heavy for its back, or the back of any Government or any Parliament, to bear."[524:2]
The Programme Cut Down after 1894.
The lesson of the Newcastle Programme had not been in vain. Already in 1895 the "omnibus resolution," which, by way of comprehensive reform, threatened the interests of the landlord, the manufacturer, the mine owner, the Church, and the House of Lords, had been omitted, although most of the matters covered by it were made the subject of special votes. The next year the programme was left out altogether. Apart from resolutions criticising the Conservative government for its foreign policy in Armenia and Egypt, and stating on what terms an education bill ought to be based, the only vote dealing with the policy of the Liberal party declared simply, "That this Council reaffirms its adherence to the principles for which the Federation has always contended," a confession of faith not likely to cause acute discomfort to a future cabinet. As the years went by the pressure for specific reforms was too strong to be resisted, and resolutions dealing with them were adopted; but they have never again reached anything resembling the range, the well-nigh revolutionary proportions, or the suicidal capacity, of the Newcastle Programme.
