ABSTRACT
Between 1910 and 1914 political conflict in Britain reached new levels of intensity. The period began with the two general elections of 1910 and the controversy over Liberal plans to reform the House of Lords. It continued with the deepening confrontation over Irish Home Rule and popular protest linked to large-scale labour unrest and the campaign for votes for women. There were problems within each of the major parties as well as in relations between the parties and in the relationship between the parties and the wider political community. By the summer of 1914, as Home Rule was about to be placed on the statute book and a general election loomed, there were fears that the normal conventions of parliamentary and party government were breaking down and that the country stood on the verge of civil war. In the event, such fears were not realised, not least because the outbreak of the First World War interposed itself into domestic concerns. But the increasingly febrile and partisan atmosphere of pre-war politics nonetheless played its part in the developing crisis of the party system, even if the coming of war prevented this phase of the crisis from reaching its natural conclusion.
