All text and images on this site are original unless otherwise indicated. Above: Chamberlain trying to tackle the Big Loaf (free trade) Little Loaf (protectionism) argument. This is a photograph of an illustration in Donald Read's book Edwardian England (and was first published in the Illustrated London News).
Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary in Balfour's Unionist government, resigned in 1903 to campaign for protective tariff borders to be constructed around the parts of the world controlled by the United Kingdom (a quarter of the earth's land surface). This policy (designed to achieve ever closer union of the British territories) was massively rejected in the 1906 general election in favour of the existing policy of free trade. Although protectionism and integration (there was already a common currency) would on the face of it have created a stronger power bloc, Chamberlain was unable to deny that the policy would inevitably lead to higher food prices and higher manufacturing costs (and thus economic decline, followed in turn by military decline).
It's an important historical lesson for the European Union.
One they seem determined to ignore.
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