BIRMINGHAM, January 13, 1909[13]

(From The Times, by permission.)

I am very glad to come here to-night to wish good luck in the New Year to the Liberals of Birmingham.  Good luck is founded on good pluck, and that is what I think you will not fail in.  Birmingham Liberals have for twenty years been over-weighted by the influence of remarkable men and by the peculiar turn of events.  This great city, which used to be the home of militant Radicalism, which in former days supplied with driving power the cause of natural representation against hereditary privilege, has been captured by the foe.  The banner of the House of Lords has been flung out over the sons and grandsons of the men who shook all England in the struggle for the great Reform Bill; and while old injustice has but been replaced by new, while the miseries and the privations of the poor continue in your streets, while the differences between class and class have been even aggravated in the passage of years, Birmingham is held by the enemy and bound to retrogression in its crudest form.

But this is no time for despondency.  The Liberal Party must not allow itself to be overawed by the hostile Press which is ranged against it.  Boldly and earnestly occupied, the platform will always beat the Press.  Still less should we allow ourselves to be perturbed by the fortuitous and sporadic results of by-electoral warfare.  I suppose I have fought as many by-elections as most people, and I know that all the advantages lie with the attacking force.  The contests are complicated by personal and local influences.  The discussions turn upon the incidents of current legislation.  There are always grievances to be urged against the Government of the day.  After a great victory, all parties, and particularly the Liberals, are prone to a slackening of effort and organisation; after a great defeat all parties, and especially the Tories, are spurred to supreme exertions.

These factors are common to all by-elections, under all Governments; but never, I venture to say, has it been more important to an Opposition to gain by-electoral successes than during the present Parliament.  It is their only possible line of activity.  In the House of Commons they scarcely show their noses.  In divisions they are absent; in debate—­well, I do not think we need say much about that; and it is only by a combination of by-electoral incidents properly advertised by the Party Press on the one hand, and the House of Lords’ manipulation upon the other, that the Conservative Party are able to keep their heads above water.  And when I speak of the importance to the Opposition of by-elections, let me also remind you that never before have by-electoral victories been so important, not only to a great Party, but to a great trade.

Therefore, while I am far from saying that we should be content with recent manifestations of the opinion of the electorate, while I do not at all deny that they involve a sensible reaction of feeling of an unfavourable character, and while I urge the most strenuous exertions upon all concerned in party organisation, I assert that there is no reason, as the history of this country abundantly shows, why a general election, at a well-chosen moment, and upon some clear, broad, simple issue, should not retrieve and restore the whole situation.