150 Facts About Joseph Chamberlain

1.

Joseph Chamberlain was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually served as a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives.

2.

Joseph Chamberlain was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

3.

Joseph Chamberlain was a radical Liberal Party member and an opponent of the Elementary Education Act 1870 on the basis that it could result in subsidising Church of England schools with local ratepayers' money.

4.

Joseph Chamberlain entered the House of Commons at 39 years of age, relatively late in life compared to politicians from more privileged backgrounds.

5.

At the time, Joseph Chamberlain was notable for his attacks on the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury, and in the 1885 general election he proposed the "Unauthorised Programme", which was not enacted, of benefits for newly enfranchised agricultural labourers, including the slogan promising "three acres and a cow".

6.

Joseph Chamberlain resigned from Gladstone's Third Government in 1886 in opposition to Irish Home Rule.

7.

Joseph Chamberlain helped to engineer a Liberal Party split and became a Liberal Unionist, a party which included a bloc of MPs based in and around Birmingham.

8.

In that government Joseph Chamberlain promoted the Workmen's Compensation Act 1897.

9.

Joseph Chamberlain served as Secretary of State for the Colonies, promoting a variety of schemes to build up the Empire in Asia, Africa, and the West Indies.

10.

Joseph Chamberlain had major responsibility for causing the Second Boer War in South Africa and was the government minister most responsible for the war effort.

11.

Joseph Chamberlain became a dominant figure in the Unionist Government's re-election at the "Khaki Election" in 1900.

12.

Joseph Chamberlain obtained the support of most Unionist MPs for this stance, but the Unionists suffered a landslide defeat at the 1906 general election.

13.

Joseph Chamberlain is most famous for setting the agenda of British colonial, foreign, tariff and municipal policies, and for deeply splitting both major political parties.

14.

Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarked that despite never being prime minister, Joseph Chamberlain "made the political weather".

15.

The elder Chamberlain was not able to provide advanced education for all his children, and at the age of 16 Joseph was apprenticed to the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers and worked for the family business making quality leather shoes.

16.

Joseph Chamberlain became known as Nettlefold and Chamberlain when Chamberlain became a partner with Joseph Nettlefold.

17.

In July 1861, Joseph Chamberlain married Harriet Kenrick, the daughter of holloware manufacturer Archibald Kenrick, of Berrow Court, Edgbaston, Birmingham; they had met the previous year.

18.

Joseph Chamberlain devoted himself to business, while the children were brought up by their maternal grandparents.

19.

In 1868 Joseph Chamberlain married Harriet's cousin Florence Kenrick, daughter of Timothy Kenrick.

20.

Joseph Chamberlain met his third wife, Mary Crowninshield Endicott, the 23-year old daughter of United States Secretary of War William Crowninshield Endicott, while leading a British delegation to Washington, DC to resolve the Newfoundland fisheries dispute in 1887.

21.

Joseph Chamberlain became involved in Liberal politics, influenced by the strong radical and liberal traditions among Birmingham shoemakers and the long tradition of social action in Joseph Chamberlain's Unitarian church.

22.

Joseph Chamberlain was active in the election campaign, praising Bright and George Dixon, a Birmingham MP.

23.

Joseph Chamberlain was influential in the local campaign in support of the Irish Disestablishment bill.

24.

Joseph Chamberlain favoured free, secular, compulsory education, stating that "it is as much the duty of the State to see that the children are educated as to see that they are fed", and attributing the success of the US and Prussia to public education.

25.

Joseph Chamberlain arranged for a delegation of 400 branch members and 46 MPs to visit the prime minister William Ewart Gladstone at 10 Downing Street on 9 March 1870, the first time the two men had met.

26.

Joseph Chamberlain impressed the Prime Minister with his lucid speech, and during the bill's second reading Gladstone agreed to make amendments that removed church schools from rate-payer control and granted them funding.

27.

Joseph Chamberlain campaigned against the Act, and especially Clause 25, which gave school boards of England and Wales the power to pay the fees of poor children at voluntary schools, theoretically allowing them to fund church schools.

28.

Joseph Chamberlain espoused enfranchisement of rural workers and a lower cost of land.

29.

In November 1873, the Liberal Party swept the municipal elections and Joseph Chamberlain was elected mayor of Birmingham.

30.

In July 1875, Joseph Chamberlain tabled an improvement plan involving slum clearance in Birmingham's city centre.

31.

Joseph Chamberlain had been consulted by the Home Secretary, Richard Assheton Cross during the preparation of the Artisan's and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875, during Disraeli's social improvement programme.

32.

Over-riding the protests of local landlords and the commissioner of the Local Government Board's inquiry into the scheme, Joseph Chamberlain gained the endorsement of the President of the Local Government Board, George Sclater-Booth.

33.

Joseph Chamberlain's first Parliamentary campaign in 1874 was a fierce one; opponents accused him of republicanism and atheism and even threw dead cats at him on the speaking platform.

34.

On 4 August 1876, Joseph Chamberlain made his maiden speech during a debate on elementary schools, using his experience on the Birmingham School Board.

35.

Joseph Chamberlain spoke for twenty minutes on the maintenance of clause 25 with Disraeli present.

36.

Almost immediately upon entry to the House of Commons, Joseph Chamberlain began to organise the Radical MPs into a coherent parliamentary group, with the intent to displace Whig dominance of the Liberal Party.

37.

Joseph Chamberlain joined Gladstone in arguing Disraeli's policy diverted attention from domestic reform, but unlike many Liberals, Joseph Chamberlain was not an anti-imperialist; although he berated the government for its Eastern policy, the Second Afghan War, and the Anglo-Zulu War, he supported Disraeli's purchase of Suez Canal Company shares in November 1875.

38.

At this stage of his career, Joseph Chamberlain was eager to see the protection of British overseas interests but placed greater emphasis on a conception of justice in the pursuit of such interests.

39.

Contemporary commentators drew often-disparaging comparisons between the Federation and the techniques of American political machines, with Joseph Chamberlain serving the role of a political boss.

40.

Joseph Chamberlain joined the Liberal denunciations of the government's foreign policy in the 1880 general election, and Gladstone returned as prime minister.

41.

Joseph Chamberlain introduced bills for the safer transportation of grain, for enabling municipal corporations to establish electricity supplies, and for ensuring a fairer system of payment for seamen.

42.

Joseph Chamberlain sought to end the practice of over-insuring coffin ships, but despite endorsements by Tory Democrats Lord Randolph Churchill and John Eldon Gorst, the government was unwilling to grant Joseph Chamberlain its full support and the Bill was withdrawn in July 1884.

43.

Joseph Chamberlain strongly opposed the Irish Home Rule movement on the belief that home rule would lead to the eventual break-up of the empire; he declared, "I cannot admit that five millions of Irishmen have any greater right to govern themselves without regard to the rest of the United Kingdom than the five million inhabitants of the metropolis".

44.

Joseph Chamberlain supported the imprisonment and used it to bargain the informal Kilmainham Treaty in 1882.

45.

Many, including Parnell, believed that Joseph Chamberlain would be offered the Chief Secretaryship, but Gladstone appointed Sir George Trevelyan instead.

46.

Nevertheless, Joseph Chamberlain maintained an interest in Irish affairs and proposed to an Irish Central Board that would have legislative powers for land, education and communications, which was rejected by the Whigs in Cabinet on 9 May 1885.

47.

Early in the Gladstone ministry, Joseph Chamberlain unsuccessfully suggested the extension of the franchise; the Prime Minister deferred until 1884, when the Liberals proposed a Third Reform Bill which gave the vote to hundreds of thousands of rural labourers.

48.

In July 1885, Joseph Chamberlain wrote the preface to the Radical Programme, the first campaign handbook in British political history.

49.

Joseph Chamberlain drew inspiration from his friend Frederick Maxse's 1873 pamphlet The Causes of Social Revolt.

50.

Joseph Chamberlain's campaign attracted large crowds and enthralled the young Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George, but disturbed leading Liberals like Goschen, who called it the "Unauthorised Programme".

51.

In October 1885, as the campaign came to a close, Joseph Chamberlain visited Gladstone at Hawarden Castle to reconcile their respective electoral programmes.

52.

Joseph Chamberlain was informed their existence by Henry Labouchere, but, did not press the issue, unsure of the precise nature of Gladstone's offer.

53.

At first, Joseph Chamberlain was reluctant to anger his Radical followers by joining forces with the anti-Home Rule Whigs and Conservatives.

54.

Joseph Chamberlain declined Gladstone's offer of the office of First Lord of the Admiralty; Gladstone in turn rejected Joseph Chamberlain's request for the Colonial Office and eventually appointed him President of the Local Government Board.

55.

Joseph Chamberlain argued that the details of the accompanying Land Purchase Bill should be made known in order for a fair judgment on Home Rule.

56.

When Gladstone stated his intention to give Ireland a separate Parliament with full powers to deal with Irish affairs, Joseph Chamberlain resolved to resign and wrote to inform Gladstone of his decision two days later.

57.

Joseph Chamberlain's resignation was made public on 27 March 1886.

58.

Immediately after his resignation from Cabinet, Joseph Chamberlain launched a ferocious campaign against Gladstone's Irish proposals.

59.

Joseph Chamberlain's motivations combined imperial, domestic, and personal themes: imperial because the proposal threatened to weaken Parliament's control over the United Kingdom, domestic because they downplayed the Radical programme, and personal because they weakened his own standing in the party.

60.

Meanwhile, to distinguish himself from the Whigs, Joseph Chamberlain founded the National Radical Union to rival the NLF.

61.

Unable to associate decisively with either party, Joseph Chamberlain sought concerted action with a kindred spirit from the Conservative Party, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Randolph Churchill.

62.

In November 1886, Churchill announced his own programme at Dartford, borrowing much from Joseph Chamberlain's, including smallholdings for rural labourers and greater local government.

63.

Joseph Chamberlain hoped an accord would enable him to claim the Liberal leadership and influence over the Conservatives.

64.

Joseph Chamberlain extracted his supporters from the Liberal Party and created the Liberal Unionist Association in 1888, associated with his National Radical Union.

65.

However, the Liberal Unionists were reduced to 47 seats, falling behind in an age of well-organized mass national politics, and Joseph Chamberlain's standing was accordingly weakened.

66.

When Hartington took his seat in the House of Lords as the Duke of Devonshire, Joseph Chamberlain assumed leadership of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons, beginning a productive relationship with Arthur Balfour, Conservative leader in the Commons.

67.

Joseph Chamberlain was replaced by Lord Rosebery, who neglected the topic of Home Rule.

68.

Joseph Chamberlain became concerned about the threat of socialism during this period, although the Independent Labour Party had only one MP, Keir Hardie.

69.

Joseph Chamberlain sought to divert collectivist energy toward Unionism and continued to propose radical reforms to the Conservatives.

70.

Joseph Chamberlain wrote an unpublished 1895 play, The Game of Politics, characterising socialists as the instigators of class conflict.

71.

Joseph Chamberlain took formal charge of the Colonial Office on 1 July 1895, with a Unionist victory assured in the upcoming general election.

72.

Joseph Chamberlain would remain in the position for eight years.

73.

Once an outspoken anti-imperialist, Joseph Chamberlain's unionism had by 1895 led him to fully embrace Imperial Federation as an alternative, with support from Conservative backbenchers.

74.

Joseph Chamberlain sought to foster closer relations between Great Britain and the settler colonies, expand the Empire in Africa, the Americas, and Asia, and reorder imperial trade through preferential tariffs.

75.

Joseph Chamberlain's proposals faced opposition from the settler colonies themselves, which sought greater autonomy under the Crown.

76.

Joseph Chamberlain recognised the need to handle the unfamiliar tropical diseases that ravaged Britain's subject peoples.

77.

In 1895, Joseph Chamberlain sanctioned the conquest of the Ashanti Confederacy and its annexation to the Gold Coast.

78.

In 1897, Joseph Chamberlain was dismayed to learn that the French had expanded from Dahomey to Bussa, a town claimed by Goldie.

79.

Subsequent concessions by the French encouraged Joseph Chamberlain, who arranged for a military force commanded by Frederick Lugard to occupy the region.

80.

Nevertheless, Joseph Chamberlain correctly assumed French officers were ordered to avoid conflict.

81.

Joseph Chamberlain appointed Sir David Chalmers as a special commissioner to investigate the violence.

82.

Chalmers blamed the tax, but Joseph Chamberlain disagreed and blamed African slave traders.

83.

Joseph Chamberlain used the revolt to promote his aggressive "constructive imperialism" in West Africa.

84.

Joseph Chamberlain placed the army under the command of Leander Starr Jameson.

85.

On Boxing Day, Joseph Chamberlain informed Salisbury that a rebellion was expected, though he said he remained uncertain of its date.

86.

Joseph Chamberlain had requested his Assistant Under-Secretary to encourage Rhodes to "hurry up".

87.

The solicitor further alleged that Joseph Chamberlain had transferred the land to the Company to facilitate the raid.

88.

In June 1896, Joseph Chamberlain showed Salisbury one or more of the cablegrams and offered his resignation.

89.

Salisbury refused, possibly reluctant to lose the government's most popular figure, and aggressively supported Joseph Chamberlain by endorsing his threat to withdraw the Company's charter if the cablegrams were revealed.

90.

Joseph Chamberlain's name was never cleared during his lifetime, and Bower was never reinstated to what he believed should be his proper position in the colonial service: he was, in effect, demoted to the post of Colonial Secretary in Mauritius.

91.

On 29 March 1898, at a period of Anglo-German tensions following the Jameson Raid and Kruger Telegram, Joseph Chamberlain met with German Ambassador Paul von Hatzfeldt in London.

92.

When British forcefulness incensed German official and public opinion, Joseph Chamberlain made efforts to improve relations by facilitating a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II and von Bulow.

93.

At a subsequent meeting with von Bulow, Joseph Chamberlain argued that Britain, Germany, and the United States should combine to check France and Russia.

94.

Von Bulow thought British assistance would be of little use and suggested that Joseph Chamberlain should speak positively of Germany in public.

95.

Joseph Chamberlain inferred from von Bulow's statement that he would reciprocate in the Reichstag.

96.

Joseph Chamberlain was startled and irritated, but von Hatzfeldt assured him that von Bulow's motivation was to fend off opponents in the Reichstag, and Joseph Chamberlain's hopes for an alliance remained alive.

97.

Nevertheless, Joseph Chamberlain directed a steady upkeep of military pressure on the Transvaal and Orange Free State, ostensibly to protect the civil rights of the Uitlanders.

98.

Joseph Chamberlain directed the war from the Colonial Office; Salisbury rubber-stamped his decisions.

99.

Joseph Chamberlain privately criticized the Army's performance and was exasperated by Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War.

100.

Joseph Chamberlain was resistant to Milner's desire to suspend the constitution of the colony, an act that would have given Milner autocratic powers and threatened to deepen internal divisions between British and Afrikaner subjects.

101.

Joseph Chamberlain managed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act through the Commons, hoping that the newly established federation would adopt a positive wartime attitude towards imperial trade.

102.

Joseph Chamberlain defended the war, espoused the virtues of a South African federation and promoted the Empire.

103.

Joseph Chamberlain's Workmen's Compensation Act 1897, which adapted the German model, was a key domestic achievement of the Unionist government.

104.

Joseph Chamberlain attempted to design an old age pension programme but failed to gain Conservative approval.

105.

Joseph Chamberlain spoke on his behalf, and Churchill later recalled the experience:.

106.

Joseph Chamberlain loved the roar of the multitude, and with my father could always say 'I have never feared the English democracy.

107.

Joseph Chamberlain was succeeded in that role by the relatively inexperienced Lord Lansdowne, but Chamberlain seized the initiative in British foreign affairs.

108.

On 18 March, Eckardstein asked Joseph Chamberlain to resume negotiations, but he was unwilling to commit himself following von Bulow's 1899 rebuke.

109.

On 25 October 1901, as part of a defense of British Army tactics in South Africa, Joseph Chamberlain made a favorable comparison to the conduct of troops in the Franco-Prussian War, a statement directed at Germany.

110.

Joseph Chamberlain had contributed to making possible the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale that would occur in 1904.

111.

Publicly, Joseph Chamberlain called for greater deference to Roberts's military judgment and administration, insisting upon the separation of civil and military authority.

112.

Joseph Chamberlain had originally questioned the wisdom of establishing the camps, intended to house refugee families, but tolerated them out of deference to the military.

113.

Joseph Chamberlain outlined to Milner the importance of making the camps as habitable as possible, asking whether the governor-general considered medical provisions adequate.

114.

Joseph Chamberlain stipulated that unhealthy camps should be evacuated, overruling the Army where necessary.

115.

Joseph Chamberlain accepted over Milner's objection, arguing that the cost of continuing the war justified the expenditure.

116.

On 7 July 1902, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a head injury in a traffic accident.

117.

Joseph Chamberlain had three stitches and was told by doctors to cease work immediately and remain in bed for two weeks.

118.

Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain were both aware that the Unionist government's survival depended on their co-operation.

119.

Joseph Chamberlain was aware that the Bill would estrange Nonconformists, Radicals and many Liberal Unionists from the government, but could not oppose it without risking his cabinet post.

120.

Joseph Chamberlain did temporarily secure a major concession: local authorities would be given the discretion over the issue of rate aid to voluntary schools.

121.

On 23 October 1902, Joseph Chamberlain met with Theodor Herzl and expressed his sympathy to the Zionist cause.

122.

Joseph Chamberlain was open to Herzl's plan for settlement on the Sinai Peninsula near Arish, but his support was conditional on approval from the Cairo authorities.

123.

On 24 April 1903, convinced that such approval would not come, Joseph Chamberlain offered Herzl a territory in British East Africa.

124.

The proposal came to be known as the Uganda Scheme, as Joseph Chamberlain saw the land as he was passing by on the Uganda Railway, though the territory in question was in modern Kenya.

125.

From 26 December 1902 to 25 February 1903, Joseph Chamberlain left Britain for a South African tour, seeking to promote Anglo-Afrikaner conciliation and integration into the British Empire.

126.

Joseph Chamberlain thus departed for his tour thinking that he had gained the agreement of the Cabinet.

127.

Joseph Chamberlain publicly professed support for neither policy, earning him criticism from the Liberals.

128.

Joseph Chamberlain then forced the resignations of Ritchie and Lord Balfour of Burleigh.

129.

On 6 October 1903, Joseph Chamberlain began the campaign with a speech at Glasgow.

130.

The newly formed Tariff Reform League received vast funding, allowing it to print and distribute large numbers of leaflets and even to play Joseph Chamberlain's recorded messages to public meetings by gramophone.

131.

Joseph Chamberlain himself spoke at Greenock, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Leeds, within the first month.

132.

The campaign had a brief intermission in February 1904, when Joseph Chamberlain, suffering from gout and neuralgia, took a two-month holiday.

133.

Joseph Chamberlain now hoped Balfour's guarded fiscal doctrine would fail, probably with a strategy of eventually leading the Unionists on a purely protectionist platform after their expected defeat in the general election.

134.

Publicly, Joseph Chamberlain claimed that Balfour's stance was a precursor to full imperial preference.

135.

Joseph Chamberlain ignored his demand and intensified the campaign in November 1905, resulting directly in Balfour's resignation on 4 December.

136.

Joseph Chamberlain asked for a party meeting, and Balfour agreed on 14 February 1906 in the "Valentine letters" to concede that,.

137.

On 8 July 1906, Joseph Chamberlain celebrated his seventieth birthday and Birmingham was enlivened for a number of days by official luncheons, public addresses, parades, bands and an influx of thousands of congratulatory telegrams.

138.

Joseph Chamberlain had suffered a stroke that paralysed his right side.

139.

Joseph Chamberlain lost the ability to write with his right hand and his speech altered noticeably.

140.

Joseph Chamberlain speaks very slowly and articulates with evident difficulty.

141.

Joseph Chamberlain opposed Liberal proposals to remove the House of Lords' veto and gave his blessing to Unionist opposition to Home Rule for Ireland.

142.

On 2 July 1914, six days before his 78th birthday, Joseph Chamberlain suffered a heart attack and died in his wife's arms, surrounded by his family.

143.

Joseph Chamberlain's family refused an offer of an official burial at Westminster Abbey and a Unitarian ceremony was held in Birmingham.

144.

Joseph Chamberlain was laid to rest at Key Hill Cemetery, Hockley, in the same grave as his first two wives, close to that of his parents.

145.

Joseph Chamberlain is commemorated by the large Chamberlain Memorial in Chamberlain Square, in central Birmingham, erected in 1880; and by the large cast-iron Chamberlain Clock in the city's Jewellery Quarter, erected in 1903.

146.

Joseph Chamberlain's Birmingham home, Highbury Hall, is a civic conference venue and a venue for civil marriages, and is open occasionally to the public.

147.

Joseph Chamberlain proposed the establishment of a university to complete his vision for the city, seeking to provide "a great school of universal instruction", so that "the most important work of original research should be continuously carried on under most favourable circumstances".

148.

Joseph Chamberlain is regarded as the university's main founder and was its first chancellor.

149.

Joseph Chamberlain was largely responsible for its gaining its royal charter in 1900, and for the development of the Edgbaston campus.

150.

Joseph Chamberlain's papers are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.