Postcards and Politics
Ian MacDonald looks at how the Edwardian political battle on tariff reform and the career of Joseph Chamberlain was advanced via the postcard.
Ninety years ago Joseph Chamberlain split the Conservative Party with his campaign for tariff reform. He aroused an economic argument that the country had not heard since the days of Cobden and Bright. With Victorian industry selling its goods throughout the world, free trade had been accepted as much by the Tories as the Liberals.
Chamberlain confronted the issue head on. He wanted a protective trade tariff which would boost the British and Commonwealth economies. He organised a national campaign and fought a general election. Early picture postcards, the television of the Edwardian age, allow us to see this campaign. They show pictures by political cartoonists, photographs of the hustings and electioneering cards by the candidates. They tell the story as it happened, sometimes day by day.
Today, as Britain struggles with the continuing trade deficit, frets with the latest round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and disputes the effect of fixed exchange rates and the ERM, we can see more than a historical relevance.
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