ABSTRACT
Campbell-Bannerman’s twenty-eight months’ tenure of the premiership has frequently been portrayed as relatively undistinguished. In offering a more provincial image, Campbell-Bannerman opened a path followed by the majority of twentieth-century premiers apart perhaps from only Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Home. In this way he inspired trust from his ministers, while his readiness to defend them from external criticism also indicates that his light touch was not the product of indolence. Smuts recounts how Campbell-Bannerman was hilly persuaded by the Boer delegation of the importance of putting the government of their provinces on a broad, expansive footing, rather than the restrictive degree of democratic participation proposed by his own departmental ministers. He managed to hold the Liberal party together through the strains imposed by the Boer War, when there was a three-way rift, between the Liberal Imperialists, the pro-Boers, and the middle group, who tried to steer between these two polarities.
