Joseph Chamberlain was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually served as a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. He split both major British parties in the course of his career. He was the father, by different marriages, of Nobel Peace Prize winner Austen Chamberlain and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain's third wife, Mary, by John Singer Sargent, 1902
William Ewart Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Chamberlain as depicted in Vanity Fair, 6 July 1880
The Gladstone cabinet as depicted in Vanity Fair, 27 November 1883
In 1892, Chamberlain became leader of the Liberal Unionists in the House of Commons, beginning a fruitful relationship with Conservative leader and future Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (right).
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade-supporting Peelites, and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election.
Viscount Palmerston
William Gladstone
Liberal politicians David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill enacted the 1909 People's Budget which specifically aimed at the redistribution of wealth.
Liberal poster c. 1905–1910, clockwise from the left: Joseph Chamberlain (satirised as an unmarried mother leaving her baby at a Foundling hospital) abandons his commitment to old age pensions after failing to reach agreement with the Friendly Societies; Chancellor Austen Chamberlain threatens duties on consumer items which had been removed by Gladstone (in the picture on the wall); Chinese indentured labour in South Africa; John Bull contemplates his vote; and Joseph Chamberlain and
