The was a period of considerable financial turmoil, mainly referenced through the huge fluctuations of the DOW index in the USA, but the principal causes stemmed from London.

Draining the Treasury

The Boer war had drained British coffers. Lloyd’s of London made a vast payout to cover insurance losses in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sucking yet more cash out of Britain.

The Egyptian stock exchange crashed and the Bank of England bailed it out with $3m in gold.

The crisis came to a head in October and centred on the Trust companies.
These were not the massive conglomerates such as US Steel and Standard Oil, but the thousands of unregulated financial houses that worked like commercial banks.

In mid-October 1907 there was a run on the curiously named Knickerbocker Trust which had been part of a group financing a failed attempt to take-over United Copper (by artificially boosting the value of copper.)  This spooked the markets leading to the largest recorded fall in the US Stock Indices – they fell 48% in the 22 months to Nov 1907.

intensive manufacturing. However their main objection was its effect on the life of working men

The Arts and Crafts movement developed from the views of people such as William Morris (1834 – 1896) which brought the middle classes into the debate. Morris and his followers believed that industrially manufactured items lacked the honesty of traditional craft work.

John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) artist and social intellectual carried the argument into the community of artists and Guilds. As the dates show the movement was well established by the turn of the century.  A number of craft settlements were formed. One of the most interesting is the migration in 1902 of craftsmen from an East End London ‘reformist settlement’ Toynbee Hall (an Edwardian philanthropic institution which as much trained Oxbridge graduates to become Colonial ‘settlers’, as it relieved London’s East End poor).

The designer/ entrepreneur C.R. Ashbee with some 100 followers settled in Chipping Campden, Glos., bringing with them the ethos of the Guild of Handicraft, set up in 1888. One unexpected outcome of the Arts and Craft movement was the rejuvenation of the City Guilds. After decades of decline (financial and socio-political) they had a new lease of life. This influence is still felt in the City of London today.

Read more on Toynbee Hall…

misunderstandings and violence.  It became a burning issue during the early years of the century when WW1 forced the government to act in 1914. The desire for devolution in the four corners of the British Isles was born.

Non-conformism in Wales grew rapidly during the 19th century. By 1900 the majority of Welsh Christians were Non-conformists, and were disaffected by the paying of tithes to the chiefly English denomination.

Disestablishment became a cause, not least since for over 150 years not a single Welsh-speaking Bishop had been appointed to any Welsh diocese. Breaking free would enable the Welsh to retain and assert their linguistic identity and their national pride.

Our villages of the English Marches, and the Cotswolds have a long history of ‘alternative’ settlements from the Quakers at Ross-on-Wye (1668), the Chartists of Redmarley, Lowbands and Staunton (1845 -1850) , Whiteway Colony (Tolstoyian, 1898 – date), the Cotswold arts & craftsmen in Sapperton and Chipping Camden, right up to the Newent Land Settlements (1935 – 1980s) plus the myriad of non-conformist chapels (from 1850s) confirm this area to be one of ‘dissenters’.

A gap developed between the serious or ‘high-brow’ culture and popular or ‘low-brow’ culture. Literature and art became more avant garde. Authors and artists challenged the values of Victorian Britain and based their work more on the reality of life, exploring the minds and characters of individuals, and political issues. They raised questions about Britain’s special place in the world.

Terms such as modernism, futurism, cubism, imagism charted the cultural changes emerging during the pre-war years.

In poetry radical new experiments saw a move away from romantic, emotional, triumphalist, patriotic and didactic verse.

Edward Marsh was the private secretary to Winston Churchill and a patron of the arts. He marketed the Georgian Poets (1912-1922) a collection of aspiring poets. Literature was being seen as serious and worth pursuing academically. Previously, it was seen as a form of study suitable only for women. In 1900 The Oxford Book of Verse was published; the Oxford University Press attempted to bring the classics to the mass of the population; the Nobel Prize for Literature was established in 1901

legislation introduced elected councils at district and parish level. (see local poor law regions map in ‘read more’ below).

The principal effects of the act were: a second tier of local government below the existing county councils (est. 1888); elected parish councils in rural areas; reform of the boards of guardians of poor law unions; and the entitlement of women who owned property to vote in local elections, become poor law guardians, and act on school boards.

The new district council areas were based on the existing urban and rural sanitary districts which, were often confused locally because they fell across ancient county borders

Through the last 100 yrs  the Parliament Act was invoked 7 times, for ‘reforming’ issues such as War Crimes, Euro Elections, Homosexual Age of Consent, and the Hunting Act.  Significantly it is the threat of it being used that highlights the schism between the Commons and the Lords: in the C21st with the proposed introduction of ID cards (2006), and in 2015 the Chancellor’s proposal to cut Tax Credits. Without a written constitution the relationship between the two chambers will always be fraught.

In 1902 the VIIth Earl Beauchamp married Lady Lettice Grosvenor, sister of the Duke of Westminster a union of two of the wealthiest families in the land.

Earl Beauchamp, a natural Tory (Unionist) prepared to throw himself into British politics. The Unionists’ move after 1903 towards the policy of tariff reform alienated this life-long free trader. Not surprisingly, he was received with enthusiasm into the Liberal ranks. He was known to be wealthy and influential and had the reputation of being a model landlord. He held high office throughout the war.

Residing at Madresfield Court He owned the ‘living of the vicar’ of Kempley, as well as most of Dymock and Redmarley.

For more information about Earl Beauchamp and his estate (with maps and audio commentaries) visit  www.kempleytardis.org.uk .  This online social archive maps in great detail the social history of this slice of rural England, up to the period of the 1911 census.

Here The Moment Centenary Project follows the fate of the villagers through to 1919 when the Beauchamp Gloucestershire estates were sold at auction. At a stroke the old social order was changed forever.

class membership and partly an attempt to show their power.  Their campaign brought the most savage response with imprisonment. Force feeding and the passing of discriminatory laws.

Amongst these was “The Cat & Mouse Act 1913″ (officially Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge – for Ill Health – Act) designed to manage the women’s hunger protests in jails. The same law was later applied to other dissenters such as conscientious objectors who were dealt with under Military jurisdiction.

It was not all anti working class. There was a strong liberal (small and large L) movement and the foundations of the welfare state were laid. The first Labour Exchanges were opened and a National Insurance scheme created.

Industrial strife was commonplace.  A national coalminers strike began in January 1912 and lasted through the month into February.  Interesting to note that this resulted in the agreement to a minimum wage for miners. Another moment event that resonates strongly today.

Nov 1910 Beauchamp was moved to the cabinet post of First Commissioner of Works.  We know that he argued against war but, in the absence before December 1916 of cabinet minutes, it is not easy to determine the nature of Beauchamp’s contribution to the turbulent political years before the outbreak of the First World War.

The evidence and history suggests that he was rather overshadowed inside a cabinet of political heavyweights such as Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Edward Grey and R.B. Haldane, as well as Asquith himself. He was, judged one colleague, except on ‘office questions’, a ‘silent member of the Cabinet’.

Given all this it is ironic that when the moment came he was, however reluctantly, as Lord President of the Privy Council compelled to be a signatory to the “Declaration of War”. His works locally demonstrate his pacifism, a supporter of the Arts and Crafts ethos, and regarded as an actively committed social reformer. While serving in Parliament, Beauchamp also voiced his support for a range of progressive measures such as workmen’s compensation, an expansion in rural housing provision, an agricultural minimum wage, improved safety standards and reduced working hours for miners.

His life is recognised to be Evelyn Waugh’s source for the character of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited.  (Read more here)

in his opposition to the war. Aug 2^nd 1914 Trafalgar Square saw a crowd of 15,000 oppose the looming war. This on a wet and windy day.

Similar protests involving hundreds of thousands had occurred a few days before in Germany and other European countries. In almost every city and major town in the UK thousands of people met to voice their opposition to the impending conflict.

Sure enough two days later in Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace an equally full crowd of largely young men, smartly dressed in boaters and whipped into a fever of patriotic nationalism, confirmed his fears.

We may take this extract, about the event, from The Telegraph (Nov 2013) both as a critique of then and a warning for now.

“as warring nations came to terms with the devastating human and material legacies of the conflict, these images of enthusiastic patriotism seemed to encapsulate the tragedy of European and imperial populations, hoodwinked into the conflict by patriotic lies, maintained in a state of mental subjugation by propaganda and censorship, and led into battle by incompetent and callous generals.”

The Suspensory Act provided that the two other Acts would not come into force until the cessation of hostilities.

The Welsh Church Bill was politically and historically significant as one of the first pieces of legislation to apply solely to Wales (and Monmouthshire) as opposed to the wider legal entity of England and Wales.  In Wales the passing of the Bill was seen by many as the culmination of a long campaign, which had begun in the mid-nineteenth century, led largely by Welsh Nonconformists who objected to paying tithes to the Church of England.

As you can imagine it was extremely controversial and fiercely opposed in the Lords. It was finally driven through parliament under the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911.

have no relevance.  (see also  The Moment Diary August 2014 )

It is hard for us to comprehend the complacency shown by the government during the first half of 1914. But then we have the benefit of hindsight.

Their geopolitics were not shaped by the mass intelligence of today but by an almost parochial set of relationships between close relatives. How could George, Nicholas and William, all descended from Victoria, fail to resolve their differences peacefully?

They were also comforted by the knowledge of Imperial might. Having ruled half the world for 50 years it seemed inconceivable that any challenge would actually mature into conflict.

Thus it was that complacency and the inertia it spawned meant that the British Government was more concerned with Irish Home Rule than events on the continent.

Thus it was we slipped into a war that changed the whole social and economic order. Even today on many levels we are still paying the price for the events of 1914.