Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) became
Colonial Secretary in Prime Minister Salisbury's government in
1895. He could have been placed in a more senior role however, wanted this job as he would be in
control of Britain's colonies. He wanted to
forge a closer union between the colonies and Britain,
bring together the diverse collection of territories to create an Empire. Chamberlain was
pro Boer. But
not everybody shared his enthusiasm for the Boer War and subsequently he
became the target of the anti-war movements anger. His rivalry with David Lloyd George was legendary. Chamberlains party represented the
Conservative Party and imperialism. In
1900 Chamberlains party would storm home under the banner of
social imperialism and the coming victory in the Boer War.
Lloyd George
David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was
Prime Minister from
1916 to 1922 and beca
radicalism and earned notoriety for his opposition to the Boer War. Lloyd George had a
huge rivalry with Chamberlain. But in 1906 there was a change as
Lloyd George had his hands on the levers of power in Britain and
Chamberlains legacy was consigned to the dustbin of history. Lloyd George stressed that the
British Empire needed to be based on freedom, but he
wasn't an opponent of the British Empire.
me known for his
Milner
Alfred Milner (1854-1925) was
selected by Chamberlain to become the most important diplomat in South Africa - the
High Commissioner. Although Milner
didn't have the power to declare war, his
political union with Chamberlain unquestionably made it happen. They both had the
same views on the
Boer Republics. Milner saw the
British as a superior race compared to the Boers. In his opinion the
British aristocracy ruled the world and his views
allowed the thinking for ethnic cleansing and concentration camps, which came around in a couple of years.
Kitchener
Lord Herbert Kitchener (1850-1916) was a
senior British Army Officer and
colonial administrator who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the First World War. He felt that the
press needed to be controlled and
introduced greater censorship during the
guerrilla phase of the war in 1900-1901.
Roberts
Frederick Roberts (1832-1914) was a
British soldier who was one of the
most successful commanders of the 19th Century. He
realised the value of the press in
maintaining morale and in
generating a positive public image. He tries to get
press support by
supplying war correspondents with information and allowing them to
use army telegraph systems to relay dispatches to London.
Hobhouse
Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) was a
British welfare campaigner. Much like Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole during the Crimean War, Emily Hobhouse
traveled overseas to explore the cruelties of war. In 1901, she
visited the concentration camps of Bloemfontein and was s
hocked by the suffering of the Boer women and children in the camps. She famously
took the photograph of the young Boer girl
Lizzie Van Zyl who was
starving to death. She
increased the pressure on leading politicians to come out against the war. And around the country a
growing anti-war movement was repulsed by the photograph of what the camps had done to Van Zyl. Hobhouse's photography also
continued the tradition of photography bringing people at home closer to the reality of war.
Hobson
John Hobson (1858-1940) was an English economist and
critic of imperialism. Hobson was a
Marxist writer. He
wrote regularly in the anti-war newspaper, The Manchester Guardian. The newspaper, edited by C.P.Scott. gave
regular column space to Marxist writers like Hobson to
argue fiercely against the war before, during and after it. In The Guardian,
Hobson even exposed the fact that Chinese slaves were being used in the gold mines to increase profits further for the fat cats of the Empire. The Marxist political party of the day, the Labour Party was just starting to grow in strength and size, organizing itself through trade unions - ready for a political fight against the aristocracy. Marxists like Hobson
would be at the front of the fight, questioning how on earth British working class soldiers were dying for gold profits that go to the aristocrats in South Africa.
Campbell-Bannerman
Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1838-1908) was the
leader of the Liberal Party during the Boer War. He
wanted to become the next Prime Minister replacing Robert Salisbury of the Conservative Party. But in a time of war that would be incredibly hard because the
country was largely supportive of the war and
the Empire and the
Conservative Party best represented such views. The Liberal Party was
less supportive of imperialism and the Boer War, but even if he was strongly against the war,
Campbell-Bannerman couldn't come out and say so because in a
highly jingoistic country like Britain, it would be equal to political suicide. It took
Hobhouse exposing the conditions in the concentration camps to make him
finally speak out against the war. He moved the Liberal Party to an anti-war position in the following years but unlike Lloyd George,
could never say he fully opposed the war from start until end.