The general election of 1906 ranks with those of 1931, 1945, and 1997 as among the great landslides of twentieth century British politics. After a decade in power the Unionists were turned out, replaced by a resurgent Liberal Party led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Yet in many ways, as Peter Rowland makes clear in this book, their victory was in many ways illusory. Riding a wave of anti-Unionist sentiment and with their opposition fragmented on the issue of tariffs, the Liberals had little in the way of an agenda that measured up to the opportunity which they possessed. These years in office and the policies the government pursued are the subject of Rowland's book, which examines what was achieved and what was not in that time.

Rowland does this is a series of chapters that divide the issues into the natural categories of domestic, foreign, and imperial policy. In all the goals were modest, tempered to some degree by the knowledge that any radical legislation would face certain defeat at the hands of the Unionist-dominated House of Lords. Though initially Campbell-Bannerman's successor as prime minister, Herbert Asquith, demonstrated little interest in pursuing a more confrontational approach, the "People's Budget" proposed by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, set the two houses of Parliament on a collision course with one another. In the January 1910 general election triggered by the crisis, the Unionists made significant gains, though the Liberals were able to maintain office with the support of the Labour and Irish Nationalist Parties. After months of fruitless negotiations, a new general election confirmed the Liberals in office, clearing that way for a reform measure that would allow the Liberals the ability to overcome the longstanding obstruction of their agenda by reducing permanently the power of the upper house.

By detailing the twists and turns of policymaking in these years, Rowland exposes a profound conservatism in the attitudes of the Liberal administrations - not one of ideology but in its approach to issues. Rooted as it was in its traditional philosophy, the Liberal governments offered little in the way of fresh ideas as to how to address the problems of a changing society; indeed, even the Liberals' revival in 1906 was based not on anything new but on their reaffirmation of the nineteenth-century gospel of free trade. Yet the author's success in demonstrating this is tempered by an absence of any effort to explain why this was so, leaving it to others to provide a more fundamental understanding. Such an omission limits his achievement with this book, but does not detract from its overall usefulness. Clearly written and firmly rooted as it is in the primary sources of the time, Rowland's book endures as a valuable account of a pivotal period in British politics, one that can still be read today with profit. ( )

2258 The Last Liberal Governments: The Promised Land 1905-1910, by Peter Rowland (read 22 Dec 1989) This is a very good book, covering the years named in British history. That time is a favorite period in that history for me. Its bibliography is full of good books on the period. ( )