"On the morning of 23th January 1901," "Britain woke up to hear that the old queen, the queen empress, Queen Victoria was dead." "Victoria had reigned for nearly 64 years." "She was the most famous woman in the world." "And it felt like the world was over." "Victoria died in bed, surrounded by her family." "She was clasping a crucifix." "If it was there to ward off evil spirits, it didn't work, because she died in the arms of her grandson, the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, a man who would do his bit to ensure that the new century" "was the bloodiest in human history, with Victoria's British in the thick of it." "From the death of Queen Victoria to the end of the Second World War is a paltry space of time... just 44 years." "And yet during it, this country was shaken from top to toe." "The Empire tottered... women won the vote democracy came of age and we fought two apocalyptic world wars to defend it." "Dark, funny, surprising, and not so long ago." "These are the years when modern Britain was born." "These people were our grandparents and great-grandparents." "But if we could travel through time to meet them, would we feel at home in their Britain?" "Fabulous wealth was spilling from roaring, belching cities..." "But millions went hungry... really hungry, gaunt hungry." "Shoeless children could be seen on the streets of every town." "We weren't a democracy." "Only a quarter of the adult population had the right to vote." "All of them men." "Government brimmed with aristocrats." "The Tory Prime Minister Lord Salisbury was a very clever but darkly pessimistic reactionary who privately referred to voters as "vermin"." "Like Queen Victoria, he was above all a figure of empire." "Britain still ruled a quarter of the world's people after all." "But for how long?" "In 1901, British troops were fighting a brutal war over the gold-rich territories of South Africa." "The Boer War was fought between the largest empire in the history of the world and a small force of untrained Dutch farmers... or "Boers"." "The British Army arrived here supremely convinced they were going to give the Boers a damned good thrashing." "They were dressed in their latest cunning uniform, coloured dust, or to use the Indian word, "khaki"." "They had their sabres and their lances and rather old-fashioned rifles." "The Boers, on the other hand, had the latest German rifles, they knew how to dig trenches and they understood the terrain intimately." "19th-century cavalry warfare was about to meet 20th-century guerrilla fighters... and somebody was about to get a thrashing." "Running the show was Joseph Chamberlain, a man bestriding British politics, a master rabble-rouser and the most fervent imperialist in the high noon of empire." "Chamberlain had built his political power base in Birmingham as a radical liberal, before moving sharply to the right." "He'd split his own party and joined the Tories." "Joe Chamberlain was a self-made man." "He'd made his millions manufacturing screws in Birmingham." "But he was also self-made for the new media age with his swish velvet coat, white orchid in the lapel and his monocle... as famous in its day as Margaret Thatcher's handbag or Winston Churchill's cigar." "Chamberlain believed that the new century could be British, with the Empire expanding and dominating the whole world." "In 1901, for most British people, this seemed perfectly possible, and they looked to Joe to lead them." "Chamberlain was a political whirlwind." "In Churchill's phrase, "the man who made the weather"." "And now he was conjuring up a storm meant to expand Empire abroad and overturn the old politics at home." "The Boer War was known as "Joe's War"" "and Chamberlain was confident of victory." "But the Boers were outmanoeuvring the British - ambushing the Army and then disappearing into the hills." "The conflict was turning into Imperial Britain's very own Vietnam." "Joe called for drastic measures." "And Commander-in-Chief Lord Kitchener was the man to take them." "In order to flush out the guerrillas," "Kitchener created a vast barbed-wire net, spreading right across the country, with 8,000 defensive blockhouses, like this one, at every corner." "British forces swept through the countryside, killing cattle and sheep, burning crops." "There were 30,000 undefended Boer farmhouses." "Every single one of them was burned to the ground." "This destruction left thousands of Boer civilians, mostly women and children, homeless." "But Lord Kitchener had a plan for them as well." "The British army rounded up around 160,000 women and children, crammed them into wagons or railway trucks, and transported them to hastily improvised refugee camps, which, guarded by the Army, quickly became outdoor prisons and then, thanks to military incompetence," "not by design, they became places of horror." "Kitchener's policy gave the world a new phrase " ""concentration camps"." "In December 1900, a young Cornish woman called Emily Hobhouse came to South Africa to deliver food and clothing to the camps." "She found women and children living in tents under the relentless sun, starvation rations, terrible sanitation, swarms of flies everywhere." "Stepping into one tent." "Hobhouse came across an eight-year-old girl called Lizzie van Zyl." "On the verge of starvation, she was dying of typhoid." "Emily Hobhouse decided it was her duty to tell the people of Britain exactly what was being done out here in their name." "And she spoke plainly." "She talked of "wholesale cruelty"," ""murder to the children" and "a war of extermination"." "And Emily Hobhouse was proved horribly right." "26,000 Boer women and children died in British concentration camps, 80% of them under the age of 16." "Back in Britain, a powerful anti-war movement was mobilising." "It was led by the Liberal Party's rising star, David Lloyd George, the first British politician to be the subject of a biopic." "In December 1901, he was invited to address an anti-war meeting in Birmingham's Town Hall." "This was the heart of Joe Chamberlain's political power and Lloyd George had the Liberal turncoat in his sights." "This was too good an opportunity to miss, but the police told Lloyd George on no account to go to Birmingham." "His appearance here would cause a riot." "There were people in Birmingham who wanted to kill him." "Joe Chamberlain was rubbing his hands with glee." ""If Lloyd George wants his life, he'd better stay away," he said." "And then he twisted the political knife." ""If he doesn't come, I'll see that everyone knows he's afraid." ""If he does, he deserves all he gets."" "But Lloyd George didn't flinch." "On December 18 1901, he boldly stepped onto the stage of the Birmingham Town Hall." "But before he could open his mouth, an angry pro-war mob, 30,000 strong, smashed all the Town Hall windows, broke down the door and stormed in." "Two men were killed in the crush." "Many more were injured." "Lloyd George only managed to escape the mob by disguising himself as a policeman, helmet and all, and sneaking out of a side entrance." "Back down in London, a vengeful Joe Chamberlain was lurking in his club, waiting for news." "When he heard that Lloyd George had escaped, he was bitterly disappointed." "The Boers finally surrendered in May 1902." "It had taken two-and-a-half years, the equivalent of £20 billion, and an army of a quarter of a million British soldiers to defeat 60,000 Boer farmers." "And so David had given Goliath one heck of a kicking and there was a massive national crisis of confidence." "Then it was revealed that almost half of the men who'd volunteered for South Africa were unfit to fight - they were sick or too weak." "Pamphlets began to appear, asking, "Can England survive the century?"" "or "What Should England Do To Be Saved?"" "The British Empire still stood as tall, but perhaps now wobbling a bit on feet of clay." "Perhaps to save ourselves, we'd have to go back to nature." "The scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin's, believed we could breed better Britons." "Galton found his inspiration in The Bassett Hound Club Rules And Studbook." "Come on!" "He read that each individual puppy inherited its unique set of splodges and colours from its parents." "Galton came to the conclusion that our genetic inheritance also dictated our fate and that nothing could alter it... not upbringing, not education." "According to Galton, the poorest classes had little or no civic worth or value and no chance of getting better, so they should be discouraged from breeding." "Criminals should be segregated and forbidden from reproducing." "But the upper and middle classes, brimming with vigour and intelligence and virtue, should be encouraged to have as many children as possible." "For Galton, human equality was meaningless." "The ravings of a lone eccentric?" "Absolutely not." "This was an age of science, and Galton was a scientific superstar." "Cabinet ministers, bishops, and influential writers, many of them on the left, thought he was the man who could save Britain with his new science of human advancement - eugenics." "George Bernard Shaw, the playwright and Britain's leading public intellectual of the time, said that nothing short of a eugenic religion would save Britain from moral decline." ""We must never hesitate," he went on, "to carry out the negative aspect" ""of eugenics with considerable zest," ""both on the scaffold and on the battlefield."" "And these ideas went international." "Scandinavians and Americans carried Galton's ideas back with them." "So did Germans, who formed the Racial Hygiene Society." "From the basset hound studbook to Auschwitz in not many bounds..." "Francis Galton's eugenics was among modern Britain's more doubtful exports." "Thankfully, at just the same moment, there were other thinkers at work." "Saturday, 7 July 1900 was a hot, sticky day in the narrow back streets of York." "At first light, a shadowy figure stood holding a notebook, watching the door of a small, dirty pub." "By 6am, people were already rattling the door of the public house." "Everybody who went in, everyone who came out was duly noted down in the little book." "In all, 550 people went in, 113 of them children." ""Children simply abound here," the investigator wrote." ""I count no less than 13" ""sitting on the public house steps and the pavement."" "The observer was one of a team of private inspectors in an investigation into the living conditions of the poor." "The project was the brainchild of a wealthy Quaker called Seebohm Rowntree - a member of the sweets and chocolate family." "As the inspectors delved deeper and deeper into the backstreets of York, their anger and nausea began to smoke from the statistics and the dry notes." ""Dirty flock bedding in living room placed on box and two chairs."" ""Smell of room from dirt and bad air unbearable."" ""Nearby, 16 families were sharing one water tap." ""The grating under the water tap" ""is used for the disposal of human excreta" ""and was partially blocked with it when inspected."" "The rich had always blamed the poor for bringing poverty upon themselves by being idle or feckless." "But Rowntree's study demonstrated in cold, statistical fact that people slipped into poverty for many different reasons." "The poor were victims." "They weren't genetic failures." "They were women without an income who'd been widowed or deserted, they were people broken by ill health or old age, unable to work, or they were in work but simply weren't being paid enough to keep themselves and their families decently." "Rowntree's book, published in 1901 and called simply Poverty, is among the most important things written by a British person in the 20th century." "It set thinking Britain alight." "It convinced a generation of Liberal politicians they needed to deliver welfare and social reform, which is perhaps why we've never had a successful revolutionary movement in this country." "So Seebohm Rowntree didn't only trump Galton, he trumped the Communist Manifesto as well." "(UP-BEAT MELODY PLAYS)" "But it wasn't all pubs and poverty for the Edwardian poor." "# .." "Any old iron Any, any, any old iron" "# You look neat Talk about a treat" "# You look a dapper from your napper to your feet... #" "At just this moment, a raucous form of working-class entertainment was forcing its way into the heart of Britain's cities." "It's hard to imagine the sights and sounds and smells of the old music hall, the stench of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes, the air thick with tobacco smoke from the pipes and the cigars that all the men would be smoking." "A lot of the audience would be drinking, quite heavily, and eating during the acts, so the performers had only a few seconds to grab the attention of the audience." "And for those who failed, every town had a different tradition." "At Glasgow and Newcastle, for instance, they threw steel rivets." "In the East End of London, it was vegetables and trotter bones." "You'd get dead cats and even dead dogs flying onto the stage, so it kind of paid to hold a note and tell a good joke." "But Britain had talent." "Music hall was the popular telly of its day - its songs, the chart toppers, its acts, the pop stars." "And the biggest star of all was Marie Lloyd." "MARIE LLOYD: # I never was a one to go and think meself" "# If I liked a thing, I liked it And that's enough" "# But there's lots of people say... #" "Born in poverty in London's East End," "Marie Lloyd was loved for her working-class cheek and wit." "# Everything if you fancy it" "# Get on with it Don't waste no time... #" "Her act was mostly sentimental songs but her bawdy delivery was her trademark." "# ..." "A little of what you fancy does you good!" "#" "When the London County Council launched a major investigation into smut in the variety theatre," "Marie Lloyd was summoned to explain herself." "And she stood in front of the committee and sang three of her most notorious songs, but with a completely straight, butter-wouldn't-melt innocence that had them totally confused." "Didn't see anything wrong at all." "And then she chose a song their daughters would have known," "Tennyson's Come Into The Garden, Maud - about as proper as you could get." "But she sang it with such filthy suggestiveness that they were soon pink and squirming with embarrassment." "And it's said she just looked them in the eye and laughed and walked off." "MAN: # Come into the garden, Maud" "# For the black bat, Night, has flown... #" "But this rip-roaring, working-class entertainment was now finding a new, upmarket audience." "Lavish new music halls were being built all over Britain." "And on Christmas Eve 1904, the grandest music hall of all was opened." "This was the most magnificent theatre in London, complete with restaurants, writing-rooms, lounges, free telephones, and the first lifts to appear in any European theatre." "A train ran from the lobby to the royal box." "And an electric globe topped the building, spinning in the night sky." "The Coliseum was the brainchild of a showman called Oswald Stoll, who'd been managing music halls from the age of 14." "From humble beginnings in Liverpool," "Stoll had built up a music hall empire." "The Coliseum was his crowning glory." "Oswald Stoll was a shrewd businessman who wanted the middle classes to visit the Coliseum without fear of offence." "So, he decided to tame music hall, censoring the songs and the patter of the performers before they got on stage." "He put up signs in the Coliseum dressing rooms saying," ""Please do not use any strong language here."" "One disgruntled artiste said to him," ""Mr Stoll, you shouldn't be manager of a music hall," ""you should be a bishop."" "Stuffy old Stoll was invited to stage the first ever Royal Command Performance." "This would be his finest hour." "Stoll flooded the auditorium with three million roses." "And a flock of royals, aristocrats and starchy hangers-on descended on the theatre for the social event of the season, the performance of the century..." "And yet, when it came to it, the whole evening was curiously flat." "Something to do, perhaps, with the non-appearance of the only real superstar of music hall, Marie Lloyd." "Stoll had decided that she was a bit vulgar for monarchy and he'd kept her off the bill." "Marie Lloyd was livid." "Did she get her revenge?" "Ladies and gentlemen, she got her revenge." "She hired another theatre just down the road and filled it all for herself and belted out and sashayed her way through one hit after another until the audience was roaring and stomping for more." "And on the placards outside her theatre it read," ""Every performance by Marie Lloyd" ""is a command performance - by order of the British public."" "Now that was the spirit of music hall!" "# Cos a little of what you fancy does you good!" "#" "All over Britain, salty little waves of democracy were beginning to wash around the old order." "But the aristocracy carried on regardless at its most expansively self-indulgent." "At the centre of the party was the most decadent monarch of the 20th century, Edward VII, a sleepy-eyed, avocado-shaped man known as Bertie." "His mother had believed in a life of duty and propriety." "Edward was more interested in indulgence of all kinds." "For the King and his court, the Edwardian menu involved an astonishing amount of food." "Breakfast was a light meal - bacon, eggs, sausage, kippers, kedgeree, porridge." "And then, for Edward, lobster salad or a cold chicken would be a mere snack to prepare him for lunch." "Never fewer than eight courses." "Welcome respite then until tea - cold meat, sandwiches, macaroons, scones, cakes of all kinds." "A welcome respite then before the main event - dinner, even without guests, the court would expect... 12 courses." "Before a final manful waddle to supper - cold meat, sandwiches, more cakes and cheese." "And another day of remarkable achievement." "Despite their excesses, royalty and the aristocracy were still treated with automatic deference and respect." "And the power of heredity still ruled in government." "When Robert, Lord Salisbury, retired as Prime Minister in 1902, his fellow aristocrats in government selected his nephew," "Arthur Balfour, as the new leader of the Tory party... and Prime Minister." "Even then, there was serious muttering about an act of such gross patronage." "It's said that's where we get the phrase "Bob's your uncle" from." "And certainly, Arthur Balfour wasn't an obvious national leader." "He was known for his high intellect, his delicate appearance, his love of velvet and blue china." "From university days he'd been nick-named "Miss Balfour", "Tiger Lily" or "Pretty Fanny"." "And there were plenty who thought him simply too delicate for the hurly-burly of imperial politics." "This was the great age of country-house politics." "There were a grand total of two working-class MPs in the House of Commons." "And Arthur Balfour is said to have remarked once that he had no idea what a trade union actually was." "Probably a joke but, by then, no longer a very funny one." "At the turn of the century, trade unions weren't a significant political force." "Industrial unrest was rare." "But in the summer of 1900, events in South Wales were about to change this." "In the second week of August, a signalman by the name of John Ewington, who worked for the Taff Vale Railway Company, was told he was going to be moved away from his village of Abercynon to a district 16 miles away." "He had a sick wife and ten children, and he didn't want to go." "But when he protested, he was told that this was really a punishment for his repeated requests for higher pay." "Now, this is one man's story, nothing much, but just sometimes a pebble can begin an avalanche." "The union retaliated by calling an all-out strike." "Train services in South Wales came to a stand-still." "Coal was left in heaps at the pitheads." "As the strike entered its second week, 16,000 miners were laid off." "Now, the railway's general manager," "Ammon Beasley, was a rabid anti-trade unionist." "And he brought in blackleg, outside labour, to keep the line running." "So how did the strikers respond?" "Sabotage!" "They greased the railway lines so that when the carriages came along, the wheels started to spin, and the train stopped." "And at that point, the strikers leapt out from these bushes and un-coupled the carriages." "This was extremely irresponsible and dangerous, and it worked brilliantly." "Beasley decided that he was going to discuss wages after all and the strike was called off." "But the battle was far from over." "Beasley took the Railway Workers' Union to court, where the judge ruled that the union was accountable for the strike, and should pay all damages and costs," "£23,000, over £2 million today." "Overnight, the unions were crippled." "Striking was now financially impossible." "The Taff Vale Ruling would transform the trade union movement and British politics." "The union leaders began to realise that if they wanted to change the law, if they wanted to protect themselves, they had to get their people inside the aristocrat-barnacled club called Parliament." "They needed MPs." "It didn't happen overnight, but slowly, awkwardly, in ill-fitting suits, sometimes even in cloth caps, former railwaymen, former miners, boiler-makers, and lowly clerks, would start to win their place in the great gothic Palace of Westminster." "Funny, the places a small, local railway can take you." "But, for now, the biggest challenge facing Imperial Britain wasn't coming from the socialists, but from the growing industrial competition from Germany and the United States." "And now, Joe Chamberlain, the great imperialist, had found a new magic potion to build a stronger, greater British Empire for the new century." "He returned to his old stomping ground to make the speech of his life." "On May 15 1903," "Joseph Chamberlain stood on this platform in Birmingham Town Hall and fired the first shot in an extraordinary guerrilla campaign to change the course of British politics." "Everything the Government thought was important would be swept to one side, he announced, for one issue." "It was about the future of the British Empire." "It was about where we stood in the world." "It was about who would do well and who would go hungry." "It had a very boring name - tariff reform." "But it would tear this country in two." "Victorian Britain had been built on international free trade." "It was almost a national religion." "But now, both Germany and America were using import taxes, or tariffs, as a defensive wall to protect their increasingly mighty markets from British competition." "Chamberlain's response was beautifully simple." "We should throw a similar wall around the British Empire." "We'd tax all foreign manufactures and food coming from outside." "Free trade inside." "British industry would supply British colonies, the British colonies would feed the British people." "And the clincher - the taxes on the foreign stuff would be spent at home on old-age pensions." "Everybody wins." "(APPLAUSE)" "Brilliant....except for this." "Chamberlain's wall of taxes would have meant British industry becoming flabbier, less competitive compared to the Germans and the Americans." "At the start of a new century," "Britain would have been turning her back, flinching from the rest of the world." "And most important, those taxes on foreign goods would make food at home more expensive, particularly harsh on the urban poor." "Very soon, Chamberlain's critics were calling his tariffs "stomach taxes"." "MAN: # All the members but one In the House of Parliament" "# Of free trade and protection They were having an argument" "# Oh, what an argument...!" "#" "Chamberlain had already torn the Liberal Party apart." "Now he was working his dark magic on the Tories." "A podgy young Conservative MP called Winston Churchill was so appalled by Chamberlain's protectionist campaign that he crossed the floor of the House of Commons himself and joined the Liberals." "Scenting blood, the Liberal Shadow Chancellor," "Henry Herbert Asquith, went on the attack." "Free trade or fortress empire?" "The argument raged for three whole years, on platforms, in Parliament, and on music hall stages." "MAN: # .." "Protection you desire Protects what you require" "# But let's have free trade among the girls. #" "Every week, millions followed the twists and turns of Joe's campaign by picking up copies of a recent invention - newspapers people actually wanted to read." "Literacy had been on the rise in England and Wales ever since the Victorian education reforms." "The Scots were able to read already, of course." "The result was a revolution on Fleet Street." "And the man leading the way was one of the "new men" of the more democratic 20th century." "His name was Alfred Harmsworth." "Alfred Harmsworth knew what poverty meant." "At times, when he was young, his mother had to keep him warm by wrapping him in newspapers." "And the family next door went bankrupt and all of them killed themselves." "But Alfred grew up to be a golden-haired, strikingly handsome young man, almost unable to contain his energy and ambition." "He was one of those determined not to know to his place." "Harmsworth had an uncanny instinct for what the man and woman in the street was interested in." ""Did they really want tens of thousands of words" ""of Parliamentary reports?" ""Long letters from bishops?" ""Boring reporting with no pictures?" ""No!" "They wanted sensation," ""gossip, laughter."" "Among the phrases coined by Harmsworth is "tabloid newspaper"." "He also said, "When a dog bites a man, it isn't news." ""When man bites dog, it is."" "And he told his journalists," ""The three things which are always news things" ""are health things, sex things and money things..."" "which, broadly speaking, remains true." "Harmsworth built up a powerful publishing empire, crowned by the Daily Mail." "For the Edwardians, the Daily Mail was a really big, new thing." "All the old ways of journalism, endless reporting of dull speeches junked." "In its place, first person, "I was there" reporting." "Short, dramatic stories." "Big and early use of pictures." "And above all, controversy." "Get people angry, get them talking, get them stirred up today, and they'll be back for more tomorrow." "Harmsworth followed the Mail with the Mirror, and in 1907 bought the Times." "By then he was known as "the Napoleon of Fleet Street"." "Alfred Harmsworth represented a new force in Britain - crude, unpredictable, but brimming with energy." "HG Wells accused him of "plastering the nation with rubbish"" "and Lord Salisbury huffily dismissed the Daily Mail as" ""a paper by office boys for office boys"." "But they were both completely missing the point." "Harmsworth's readers were the rising force in Britain." "Dismiss them at your peril." "This was the voice of Britain's new democracy." "(TOOTING)" "But not all the change-makers were targeting the masses." "In March 1904, two men were about to bring new flash and swagger onto the roads of Britain." "They were an odd couple, one, the wealthy son and heir of a titled landowner and a speed-freak." "The other, a self-made man." "He'd left school at nine and was now the proud owner of a tiny electrical engineering works in Manchester." "Their names were Charles Rolls and Henry Royce." "Unimpressed by foreign cars, Royce had taken one to pieces and rebuilt it from top to bottom, creating a vastly improved new model." "When Charles Rolls heard about the new car, he was instantly intrigued." "Perhaps Mr Royce might care to join him in London?" "No go." "Mr Royce was far too busy." "He wasn't budging." "So Rolls the aristocrat had to get in the train and come north to Manchester to meet Royce, the self-made, working-class engineer." "And that's part of the point." "Power was shifting." "Rolls had to go to see Royce." "Not Royce to Rolls." "At any rate, they met for lunch here in the dining room of the city's newly built Midland Hotel." "And perhaps surprisingly, the meal was a great success." "And after it they went for a spin in Royce's new car." "When he got back home to London," "Rolls dragged his business partner out of bed and told him," ""I've just met the greatest motor engineer in the world."" "Rolls-Royce was born." "Before Rolls-Royce, cars were derided as entirely unreliable foreign toys." "They were noisy, dirty, clunking machines." "Charles Rolls' marketing skills, combined with Henry Royce's engineering genius would change this." "But what really made Rolls-Royce's reputation was this glittering cracker." "This is not a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, this is the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost." "Unique." "It's one of the most valuable cars on the planet, worth at least £25 million." "But in 1907, what flabbergasted even the most hardened car fanatics was its performance." "Fast, powerful, reliable and remarkably quiet." "Not one of the best... the best in the world." "Charles Rolls was soon moving on to conquer the next speed frontier - flight." "He was eager to leave the road behind." ""No dust, police traps or taxes," he explained." "He became a national hero when he completed the first 90-minute flight to France and back." "Then, on July the 12th 1910," "Rolls came to Bournemouth to take part in an air show." "It was a gusty day, bad weather for flying something made out of canvas and sticks." "A French pilot had already been up and crashed." "But he was unhurt, and he came to Rolls and said," ""Look, don't do this."" "Rolls, celebrity daredevil, ignored him, took off, made a perfect circuit of the airfield, and then came in to land at a spot just opposite the judges' tent." "People watching thought he was coming in a bit too fast." "Then there was a sickening crack, part of the aircraft fell off, followed by the rest of the aircraft... and the Honourable Charles Rolls." "Rolls was killed instantly, the first British casualty of the new age of flight." "A photographer rushed forward to get a picture." "But he was set upon and his camera smashed." "And so ended one of the most successful marriages between marketing and industry in our history." "Had aristocratic flair and elan worked a little more often, hand in hand, with northern engineering grit and genius, then our industrial history would have been a great deal more successful." "In the north of England, another challenge to the old order was gaining momentum." "In October 1903, a small group of women met in this terraced house in the centre of Manchester, the home of the widow and political activist Emmeline Pankhurst and her three daughters Christabel, Silvia and Adela." "And at that meeting, in this parlour, they set up the Women's Social and Political Union." "Now, this was an age of do-goodery and busybodies, organisations of all kinds, politely, deferentially lobbying politicians for reforms, including votes for women." "But the WSPU was going to be very different." "Little did the women gathered here know that before long, one of them wouldn't be sitting in the parlour, but in a prison cell." "In 1903, more women than ever before were in work, but the limits were suffocating." "There were only six women architects, three vets, two accountants." "Women were allowed to study, but at Oxford and Cambridge, they weren't allowed to graduate." "And women still weren't allowed to vote." "On the morning of the 13th October 1905," "Christabel Pankhurst was still respectable." "She was a well-dressed, middle-class law student." "But she was on her way to break just about every taboo she could think of." "She was walking along here with her new friend, Annie Kenney, a working-class mill girl, known as "the blue-eyed beggar"." "But what they were planning was truly shocking." "Because they were on their way to a huge political meeting at Manchester's Free Trade Hall, and they were determined, at all costs, to be arrested." "The meeting was a Liberal rally attended by the MPs Sir Edward Grey and Winston Churchill." "Christabel and Annie jumped up onto their seats and yelled," ""Will the Liberals give women the vote?"" "They refused to answer." "So the women unfurled a banner emblazoned with the words" ""votes for women"." "Some people in the hall told them to, "Shut up!"" "Others cried, "Let the women speak!"" "The police ordered them to act like ladies." "In response, Christabel spat at the policemen and started to hit them." "Exasperated, the police bundled both of them outside onto the street." "It was proving a little harder to get arrested than Christabel had imagined, so again, she spat at the officers and hit them." "And this time, they were arrested." ""Never mind," said Annie Kenney, "we've got what we wanted."" ""Yes," said Christabel, "I wanted to assault a policeman."" "They were convicted and offered the choice of prison or a fine." "And they chose prison." "WOMEN: # Shout, shout!" "# Up with your song!" "# Cry with the wind For the dawn is breaking... #" "Annie Kenney went to Manchester's Strangeways Prison for three days." "Christabel Pankhurst for six." "And their short imprisonment was an inspiration to women all over Britain." "When Annie and Christabel emerged from Strangeways, there was a great crowd cheering them." "And then, on the 19th October, thousands of people went back to the scene of the crime, the Free Trade Hall, to welcome the women on their return from prison." "Here, in Manchester, the suffragette movement had taken a decisive step and there would be no going back." "But at the end of 1905," "Joe Chamberlain was still making the political weather, still dominating the headlines." "For two-and-a-half years he'd been campaigning for a fortress empire, defended by protectionist tariffs." "In the process, he'd split his own party - the Conservatives - in two." "The Prime Minister, poor "Pretty Fanny", sat uneasily on the fence while his government descended into civil war and the free-trade Liberals were winning ground." "Because Britain was never going to accept a policy that would increase the price of food." "Quite simply, Joe Chamberlain, the man who'd offered the British an alternative 20th century, had lost the argument." "But he was going to draw blood and bring the Prime Minister down with him, and publicly he attacked Arthur Balfour as the "lamest man ever to govern the march of an army"." "Last straw." "In December 1905," "Balfour called a general election, for one thing was certain - the Liberals couldn't win it." "Could they not?" "Balfour couldn't have been more wrong." "The Liberals successfully positioned themselves as the party of the people." "They campaigned on a manifesto of social welfare, free trade and reform." "And they won a landslide victory." "The Tories were annihilated." "Even Arthur Balfour lost his seat." ""What a smash!" declared Chamberlain, who seemed rather chuffed that he'd now managed to destroy two political parties in the course of his extraordinary career." "But his political failure over tariff reform was soon followed by personal disaster." "Six months after the general election," "Chamberlain failed to turn up for a dinner appointment." "And his wife found him lying helpless on the bathroom floor, struck down by a devastating stroke." "Joe Chamberlain never fully regained his extraordinary powers of speech." "But through a miraculous effort of iron Victorian will, he did return to the Commons benches." "And the man who'd set out to transform Britain in so many different ways, now found Parliament radically changed." "And more change, much greater change, was on the way." "29 new MPs dedicated to defending the interests of the working class were now sitting in Parliament." "They would soon take on a new name, the Labour Party." "That 1906 election was a big blow for country-house government." "A new generation was coming in..." "Asquith, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill." "And as for Joe Chamberlain, who'd done so much to shake the old order, he was condemned to a pitiful Parliamentary afterlife, left lolling voiceless on the benches he had once commanded." "The last great Victorian radical could only watch as the young century's first great age of reform flared into life all around him." "A new dawn, was it not?" "In the next programme, a German invasion magnificent men... fighting women... and Charlie Chaplin." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"