Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain

Joseph Chamberlain (8 July, 1836 – 2 July, 1914) was an influential British businessman, politician, and statesman.
In his early years Chamberlain was a campaigner for educational reform, and President of the Board of Trade. He later became a Liberal Unionist in alliance with the Conservative Party and was appointed Colonial Secretary. At the end of his career he led the tariff reform campaign. Despite never becoming Prime Minister, he is regarded as one of the most important British politicians of the late 19th century and early 20th century, as well as a colourful character and renowned orator.

Some quotes from Chamberlain might illustrate his devotion to the Empire, later to become the
Commonwealth, alongside social reform.


"You are suffering from the unrestricted imports of cheaper goods. You are suffering also from the unrestricted immigration of the people who make these goods...The evils of this immigration have increased during recent years. And behind those people who have already reached these shores, remember there are millions of the same kind who, under easily conceivable circumstances, might follow in their track, and might invade this country in a way and to an extent of which few people have at present any conception...But the party of free importers is against any reform. How could they be otherwise? They are perfectly consistent. If sweated goods are to be allowed in this country without restriction, why not the people who make them? Where is the difference? There is no difference either in the principle or in the results. It all comes to the same thing - less labour for the British working man."
Speech in Limehouse in the East End of London (December 1904.)
[Social legislation] raised the cost of production; and what can be more illogical than to raise the cost of production in the country and then to allow the products of other countries which are not surrounded by any similar legislation, which are free from any similar cost and expenditure—freely to enter our country in competition with our own goods...If these foreign goods come in cheaper, one of two things must follow...either you will take lower wages or you will lose your work.
Speech on Free Trade (6 October, 1903).

And yet a keen social reformer:
"The great problem of our civilization is still unsolved. We have to account for and grapple with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst, co-existent as it is with the evidence of abundant wealth and teeming prosperity. It is a problem which some men would put aside by reference to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of property...Our object is the elevation of the poor, of the masses of the people—a levelling up of them by which we shall do something to remove the excessive inequality in social life."
-1885

Imperial Preference

Imperial Preference (later Commonwealth Preference) was a proposed system of reciprocally-levelled tariffs or Free trade agreements between different Dominions and colonies within the British Commonwealth of Nations. The purpose of such practices was to promote the mutual prosperity, and thus unity, of allied imperial nations.
Chamberlain advocated Imperial Preference at the turn of the 20th century. During the 1920s, it became popular once more. Prime Minister Baldwin was a tepid supporter. His Colonial and Dominions Secretary, Amery, was one of its strongest supporters and in 1926 established the Empire Marketing Board to encourage Britons to 'buy empire'. But Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Baldwin government, and always a free trader, was an opponent.
In 1935, the Canadian P.M., R. B. Bennett, a Conservative who supported Imperial Preference, was replaced by a Liberal, W. L. M. King. King responded to pressure from U.S. Secretary of State, Hull and abandoned Imperial Preference. In true American fashion, the United States was determined to maintain its tariff protections and access to markets, but was vociferously opposed to any such preferences enjoyed by other countries. In the case of the Commonwealth, the US was hostile to it from its inceptions, notwithstanding the fact that in the cases of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, there was overwhelmingly preference for a system anchored by the United Kingdom rather than the US.