For a statement of Liberal Party policy and intentions on the eve of the general election of 1906, no single Liberal Party manifesto exists. Reference needs to be made to the address to the voters of Stirling Burghs by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, their representative in eight successive Parliaments since 1868 and now Prime Minister. It was largely concerned with the record of the late government which Campbell-Bannerman described as ‘in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications’ and with a critique of Unionist policy for the future which, he considered, embodied the most mischievous characteristics of their past. He concluded:

Education, which had provoked such strong feeling both in 1902 and in Wales thereafter, received only passing mention. Along with other domestic legislation, the manifesto suggested, it had been treated by the late government more with the aim of propitiating its powerful friends than in settling a problem of national consequence with due regard to its needs.1 It was only as the election campaign proceeded that the issue received attention.