The Peers, the Parties and the People The General Elections of 1910

When the Lords rejected the Budget of Lloyd George on 30 November 1909 they provoked one of the most acute constitutional struggles in modern British history. This book is a study of the two critical elections of 1910 which provided the resolution to that controversy.

Drawing on a wide range of manuscript sources, on the archives of the political parties, and on the national and provincial press. Neal Blewett has analysed in complex and fascinating detail the popular context of the constitutional struggle. An authoritative narrative of high politics is linked with grass-roots preoccupations, the debates in Westminster with the conflict in the constituencies.

Analytic techniques developed in the Nuffield studies of contemporary elections have been employed in this study of two Edwardian elections. The outcome of the elections has been related not just to the immediate context, but to the electoral order ushered in by the reforms of the 1880s and the disruption of the party system in 1886. The result is a major contribution to our understanding of late-Victorian and Edwardian politics in Britain.